EP019: Church Anywhere & Discipleship

Hey everybody, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. My name is Jeff and I am excited that

y'all are here today. This is episode 19. By the way, can you believe we've done 19 of these

episodes? I just, on a personal note, I just wanted to tell y'all, I hope that this has been

a beneficial resource for you all. It's been great having these conversations, digging deep

into what church online can be, what church online should be, and hopefully these resources,

not only in the technical aspects, but in the ministry side, in the small group, biblical

community, the discipleship aspect of church online. Hopefully this has been a rewarding

benefit for you, and it's making your ministries better. By the way, we are not slowing down.

The next couple months are going to be phenomenal, and I'm really excited to continue this podcast

and bring you all into these conversations as we discover what's working at church online,

how people are seeing success, and how God is blessing the ministry of church online's across

the country. Well, cool. We've got a great episode here at episode 19. We're going to be digging in

talking about discipleship in context of Church Anywhere. This is our third week talking about

Church Anywhere. As you may remember, Church Anywhere is a program that's set up by First Capital

Christian Church that really utilizes their online campus as a way to cluster and gather people together

in the physical space. They're literally doing micro locations in office workspaces, in prisons,

in hospital rehab centers, in homeless centers, in after-school centers, even in homes, gathering people

together to watch the broadcast, to do Bible studies, to grow together in the physical space, as well as

watching and processing things through the Church Online broadcasts. And they've seen some phenomenal

results of it. We've talked about it in past podcasts, but as many as 450 people scattered across this small

town in Indiana, Court in Indiana, have watched and are part of these Church Online locations. And it's

phenomenal to see this ministry happen. But the challenge before First Capital Christian is how to

create a disciple who can in turn create disciples. As that ministry has grown, as many as 16 micro locations

that are meeting in a given week, they've grown past the ability to have staff. So we've got to empower

volunteers to do that. How do you take a volunteer, how do you take in a church attender, how do you take a

consumer and groom that person to the point that they are now a disciple who can create a disciple? And it's

that discipleship process that I want to dig in. What's the material? What's that conversation? What does that

look like? That span of time where you take someone who was an outsider to the church, may not truly

understand, and then groom them to the place where they are a disciple who's now capable of leading

others to Christ and leading others to a deeper relationship with Christ through discipleship.

And so that's the core of the conversation today. And to dig in, here's what we're going to do. We're

going to bring in Tyler Sampson, once again, from First Capital Christian. He's the engagement pastor over

there at First Capital. We're going to bring in Ray DeArmis, who is the online pastor of Christ Fellowship

Miami and a dear friend, of course. And we're also going to bring in Jared Kirkwood. Jared is the pastor

in charge of this discipleship material called Rooted, which is based out of Mariner's Church. Now,

here's what's interesting. Jared is a pastor at Mariner's Church. Some of you may remember back in

episode nine and 10, Eric Geiger, lead pastor at Mariner's Church, was on this podcast. It was a

complete coincidence that we're going back to Mariner's for this. We were interested in having

this conversation on discipleship at First Capital Christian. Come to find out that First Capital

Christian has based their discipleship pathway off of this material called Rooted, which is distributed

and managed here in the United States by Mariner's Church out in California. So we're going coast to

coast here, conversations in Miami, talking with a church in California about how people in Indiana

make disciples. Online church is phenomenal. I love what we're seeing here. So ladies and gentlemen,

I bring to you this conversation of discipleship in context of church online. Jared Kirkwood from

Rooted, Tyler Sampson, Engagement Pastor at First Capital, Ray DeArmis, Christ Fellowship Miami,

and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital. Hope you all enjoy this, and here you go.

So Rooted's a 10-week small group experience that helps people within the church get connected to God,

the church, and ultimately to discover their purpose. We use Rooted at Mariner's as a tool to help

anybody who comes to our weekend service that's looking for their next step. This is not only an

assimilation tool, but it's a generator of small groups. It's a cultural baseline. It's the way in

which we create shared experiences and common language so that everybody who comes to our church

that says, how do I get involved? They go through Rooted. At the other side of that, that Rooted group

becomes a life group. That life group has a rhythm of serving and praying and these other rhythms that

exist within the Rooted material. That helps them understand what does it look like to be equipped for

group life at Mariner's. And so now part of my role is overseeing Rooted at Mariner's, but also

equipping the roughly 800 churches that are using Rooted all across the country. And so I spend a large

part of my day doing coaching calls, coming alongside churches that are trying to figure out how to

implement Rooted within their context. And then we run various training retreats and all that kind of

stuff throughout the year. Awesome. And so that's Mariner's Church, by the way. That's Eric Geiger. If you

want to go back to episode, I want to say it was nine and 10, the famous Geiger, we're bringing in some

more people from Mariners. And honestly, like that wasn't intentional. The real reason we brought this

podcast together was because we were talking about First Capital Christian and how they've created this

discipleship process that takes a volunteer and creates an opportunity to create a disciple who's comfortable with

leading and doing more discipleship. A disciple is creating a disciple. And we're seeing that happen in

context with First Capital's Christian Church Anywhere program. A couple episodes ago, episode 17, we were talking with

Cindy and Brad, Brad Reed, my brother from another mother, who are volunteers, who are basically campus pastors

at these Church Anywhere programs. Cindy leads a Hodgkin's Rehab Center, I think, that sees like 40

people a week coming together to experience church. And that church is, or in that rehab center is basically

conference room or community center. And Brad is part of a church service for, man, it was, I felt like it was

anywhere between 30 to almost 300 people sometimes. About 350. Yeah. And so just depending upon what week

it is and whether the prisoners can all come together or not. But that's a phenomenal thing when you think

that, you know, First Capital Christian is empowering these people to basically go out and be the spiritual shepherds

responsible for it for these souls at at these these locations. And so I wanted to explore a little bit more of

this. And Tyler, you guys have been using at First Capital, you've been using the rooted material for for a while

now, right? Yeah, yeah, we, we went through it as a staff and a elder group first. We call our elders

shepherds. So if I slip up and say shepherds, know that that's the same thing as elders. But we went

through it as staff and shepherds first and loved it. And then we launched our first group, I would say

probably a year and a half ago. So we've been doing rooted for about a year and a half, two years.

How's that experience gone for you, Tyler? Like, what does that what does that felt like? What is

that? What what have you seen come from that? Oh, man, it's been amazing. I love it. It was really

hard at first. So we did it at the 10 week experience during workday. The first time we did it just

because of scheduling and it was just staff. So that made it a little difficult to motivate yourself to

want to stop for an hour or two during a workday. But man, it was it was so rewarding.

Specifically, there's a prayer experience that really stands out that every time I've done it,

I feel like I've got a different God telling me something out of it, even though I've done

rooted multiple times now. And I've heard about that prayer time, even from from other people that

have gone through it and seeing how that's really has had an impact in people's lives. Before we go

any further, let's let's stop and kind of just pick this apart. Because the word discipleship,

I mean, I can say that to probably 10 different people, what does discipleship mean? And I'll

probably get back 15 answers, because it just it's so varying at levels. And so, you know, Jared,

as somebody who's written this discipleship material that that's really used as the framework,

the way that you guys have created it at Mariners, kind of this front door to leading towards groups and

other community and things. You know, how do you guys at Mariners define discipleship?

Sure. So just to clarify, while I have done lots of writing and contribution to rooted, I didn't

originate this program. It actually comes from a partner church of ours in Kenya, which is a big

part of our story. So, you know, the funny thing about trying to make disciples is an intentional

conversation that really points back to the gospels about what does it mean to follow Jesus. And I think

you said it really well, Jeff, that disciples make disciples. So it's not a what conversation as much

as it's a how. So it's a real strategic conversation about, okay, so how and how on earth do we help

the average person become more like Jesus? And a part of that is an entire conversation around

church strategy. What is it? What are the markers of a Jesus follower? It's a leadership development

conversation. There's a maturity conversation. So there's a lot of stuff that goes into how do we

help someone become more like Jesus, right? In America, that's usually a Western approach, which is

about intellect and knowledge informing our behavior. If I can learn enough, it should inform how I live my

life. Well, we all know, and Romans 7 is a good validation for this, that I can know what is right and

still do what is wrong. So there's got to be more than just an intellectual approach to understanding

what does it mean to follow Jesus. And for us at Mariners, for years, we had great small group

programs, we had lots of, you know, adult education, we had classes, we had great opportunities for people

to grow in their understanding of God, hoping that that would be would really help inform their behavior

to become more like Jesus. But what we learned from our partners in Kenya was that it's more of an

experiential model that leads to the true kind of behavioral change, which then of course, knowledge

and intellect is all wrapped up into that. But if we aren't going to the places that Jesus went, doing

the things that Jesus did, we aren't actually becoming more like Jesus, we're just thinking more

like Jesus. So we found this program that they were doing over 10 years ago, we met them through our

partnership. And we said, Hey, could we kind of translate this and bring it back into to contextualize

it really to what it would look like to use for our church in Southern California. And they said,

sure. So we brought it back, did it at Mariners, and we taught it. And it was more like a small group

model with a curriculum that was sort of fueling it. And quite frankly, it just didn't work. So we went

back to them and said, what did we do wrong? And they said, you did everything wrong. So they said,

well, we'll come back and we'll help you figure out how to do it. We spent the next year or two after

that. This is around 2008, nine, 10, right around in there, where they started helping us understand

more of a, for lack of a better generalization, an Eastern approach, which ties in much more

experiential learning than just intellect and understanding. And so that really informed the

way in which we wanted to approach discipleship at Mariners. And so since then, Rooted has been a

program that hinges on these experiences. And Tyler mentioned the prayer experience already.

We would also talk about the serve experience be an element where we need, as a group, we need to go

out and serve our community so that we can go be a part of what Jesus is doing in our city, be a part

of the story that God is writing in our neighborhoods, right? We'd also would include sharing our story as a

critical component of that. So one of the things that I think the Western church has, you're either really

good at it or you don't do it, which is evangelism, right? Sharing our own story, you either do it because

you're seeing your pastor loves evangelism and it's hardwired into your DNA, or you don't do it because

it's really hard. Well, what Rooted does is it helps people see that evangelism doesn't have to be

telling my testimony. It can actually be talking about what God's doing in my life right now,

and leads me to my family or my workplace or neighborhood and allows me to share my story

of what God's doing in my life today, right? A little different than how we typically talk about

evangelism. So as you can see, when we approach discipleship, we want to come from an experiential

angle that allows people to intermingle intellect and experience so that we might actually think like

Jesus, but also do things more like he did, hoping that we develop more integrated spirituality in our

life rather than just simply knowledge-based. I've worked in churches personally that have been on

both sides of that coin, that have been very evangelical-driven where we're out there,

we're witnessing, we're sharing. I've worked with churches that do the, hey, let's invite to the

service, let the lead pastor do the witnessing, but your job is just to get them in the pew.

And I've worked with churches that are very grow-oriented where it's not necessarily evangelism

as much as, hey, when a person outgrows the evangelical church, they're going to come over

and just take part of what's over here. We get our growth when churches just want to get more in a

growth. And there's obviously, there's pros and cons to all that. Some churches would say that there's a

difference between discipleship and small groups, some churches that would say it's the same. I'm just

curious as a guy who works so much in context of coaching and helping churches through this,

like, what's your opinion on all this? What is the role of discipleship in groups? What's that

relationship look like?

Sure. It would be very difficult to separate the two out as if they're mutually exclusive.

But I do believe that those of us who are growing to become more like Jesus would have a very difficult

time doing it outside of community. Community is a critical element to being a part of following

Jesus. And so you saw Jesus build it with his disciples. You saw those apostles then do that

with their communities. You saw Paul travel around the ancient Near East building churches that were

communities that were sharing things. They were praying for one another. They were working together for

the good of the city. So a small group has become our approach to ensure that to become more like Jesus,

I have to do it with others, right? That's also discipleship. The problem though is that most churches

that I've worked with, and to be honest, it was our own church a number of years ago, that most small

groups turn into cul-de-sacs. They become, to make it actually a little bit of a sadder phrase, most small

groups become support groups. They become places in which we spend time together so that I can

talk about my problems, I can be, you know, I can vent my frustrations, and I can receive prayer that I

kind of need for my people. But a support group is not what I saw Jesus create with his disciples.

I saw him activating people who are following Jesus and saying, we're going to go and do something.

This is going to be about us, but it's also going to be about, actually, it may be better said is it's

going to be God's work within us, but also God's work through us to benefit those around us.

So, you know, what do you guys think?

No, that's solid, Jared. You know, and I've even seen this in my own small group, where when

challenge is presented in small group, it seems like folks want to take a step back,

as opposed to embracing the challenge, and taking a step forward in their faith. And so what are some

ways that you guys encourage folks to take a step forward? Because it almost seems like small groups

tend to be the pathway that we introduce new Christians who are obviously like the most excited

people about growing in their faith. At least that's, that's been my experience. So they're willing to

like take those big leaps early on. Whereas the people who've kind of been coddled in church,

or they've been in church for a while, I'm just here to receive and I'm just kind of here to just

check things out. And so how do you guys kind of wrestle with that tension?

Yeah, great question, Ray. So part of it is, within Rooted, which becomes our, it's our cultural

baseline, where we're going to help you understand what does it look like to be equipped for life

in community to really be in a life group at our church. And so there are these seven rhythms. And

I'd actually love to hear Tyler talk about how this has been expressed at First Capital. But

in these seven rhythms, we're going to create some habits that your group is going to eventually do

together once you graduate Rooted. So when you move on to become a life group, you're not going to forget

everything you learned in Rooted. Instead, you're going to use it as a launching pad for the things

that we did together. Like that prayer experience, we're going to continue to pray together, both in

our group, but we're going to set aside extended periods of time to pray for our city, for our neighbors.

We might do a prayer walk, we might get out into our city, and truly pray for the government or for

our school district or whatever that may be. We're going to not just talk about those areas of sin or

struggle in our life. We're going to pause for a moment, have a moment of honesty, and then I'm

going to ask my group to pray for me to experience spiritual freedom in whatever that area is in my

life. So with everything that we talk about, these rhythms are not just things that we're trying to

seek to understand. We're truly developing a practice that's going to be something we do together

in community. So serving is another good example of that. We don't just study serving or study the poor

in the marginalized. We're going to invite groups on a reoccurring basis to go out into the city and

they're going to go serve together. Good. So that one right alone is actually a great example of a

group that has fighting as they're drifting towards, and it's a natural drift. This is actually something

that Eric Geiger talks about. Churches naturally drift towards complexity. Small groups naturally drift

towards inward focus. So we need to introduce outward focused invitation for them so that they

might be able to go into the community and see that the world really is bigger than just them

and that Jesus cares for people beyond just who's right in front of them. So again, we want to invite,

we want to try to help them step outside of what they're normally comfortable with. And that breaks down

some of that support group type things that start to take place in a group.

Oh, go ahead, Tyler.

Yeah, I think that the struggle in churches, period, is to get out of that inward mindset. So imagine how

much harder that is to facilitate online. Whereas, I mean, you watch church online a vast majority of

time as a consumer. The typical person that I talk to that joins us online does not get on there to be

like, man, I hope this church fills me up so I can go talk to my neighbor about Jesus later. That's not

how that works. And so what we have tried to do by using the rooted material, we thought that that would

be a really good way to start moving towards the outward focus rather than just the inward focus.

And so we're actually doing rooted online with a group of 10 people right now. It's kind of like

the guinea pig for it. But it's been amazing to see how that has shifted that small group mindset of

inward focus to outward focus. I would love to hear how you are approaching those group experiences like

prayer, like serve. How are you doing that with your online community? Because this is so intriguing to me.

Sure. Yeah. So I'll hit the prayer one first. We met on a zoom call for the first hour and we prayed

together. So we went through some guided prayer from the group leader. Actually, I'm not leading this

one, which is really cool to be able to just kind of sit and observe and participate. So the group leader

was, uh, let us through some guided prayer. We prayed on the zoom call and then we just left the zoom call

open. Um, and, uh, we told everyone to, uh, either set an alarm on their phone, but keep their phone out of

reach. Um, so like they know when to come back or like go take a walk and pray while you're walking, uh,

whatever you feel comfortable with. But then we, we broke off for another hour, um, came back and broke

our fast together at the very end. So we finished off by praying. Um, obviously we weren't in the same

room eating together, but we were watching each other on zoom eat, which is a super weird thing to do.

Um, but yeah, so it was, it was basically the exact same as how you could do it in person. Um,

just without being able to touch someone. Um, as far as the serve experience, we gave them three

options. You could serve, um, someone in your neighborhood. You can serve with, uh, your

community. So for example, like a soup kitchen or something like that. Um, and then, or you could

serve, um, a specific person. So that could be a family member. It could be a friend. Um, and we gave

them those three options and came back the next week and just talked about what, how, what we did to

serve. So we couldn't do that as a group because of the, uh, the physical distance between us, but we were

all on the same page of what type of service that we were doing. And so that's, that's incredible,

Tyler. Did you then, you've been in groups, both physical and then now this online one,

I would love to hear some of the contrast of what you felt like really worked, what didn't work,

um, between being someone together, serving together and praying together versus when you

were able to do this through zoom. Obviously it is, uh, more personal. Um, if you are seeing them

face-to-face, uh, and being able to touch them and, and, um, and be in their physical presence.

But with that being said, technology, uh, has continued to advance to a point where I, um,

I don't know in the, uh, most of these people in the group, I'm not, I don't have personal

relationships with outside of online yet. I still know them as friends and as, as people that

I'm close to. Um, and so while it's not exactly the same, it is really good for specific types of

people that do not interact well, um, in person. So you just, Tyler, you just wrapped up this group,

right? Uh, one more week. I knew it was, I knew it was right around here. So when this airs,

you've wrapped it up. Um, what, what's the next step for, for the group in, in your application at

first capital, you got six, eight people all over the country. Like where are they going?

We're going to be a small group. Um, and we're going to do that through a Facebook group. We'll

do it through, uh, obviously text messaging, calling and things like that. Um, but we are also

on Marco Polo, um, which I don't know if you guys know what that is. Yeah. But, um, it, because of

the time differences and things like that within the group, it makes it a lot easier to, um, not have

to be live, um, when we meet. And so, um, moving forward, I think that's the route we will go.

I don't know if you remember, Jeff, we had someone that I told you was going to be from London in the

group and the time difference just killed him. And so something like Marco Polo could really help that

out with, um, moving forward. And here, here's my question because once again, Geiger groups point

towards inward systems point towards complexity. Uh, I probably would have that as a tattoo if I was

getting tattoos back in the day. Cause he just would say that so much. I love him for that.

Uh, at what saddleback online to offline and Tyler, you know, this, like they, they push people out of

their online groups, like six to nine months at that. Hey, I'm glad you could be in this group.

It's time to birth something different. And there is, there is an aggressive strategy, not saying it's

right, not saying it's wrong, but there's an aggressive strategy towards them towards, okay,

Hey, we're going to go birth something over here. So it's, it's really, let me help you with

these finishing touches, but we're, we're training you to go do that. At first capital, have you wrestled

with something like that? What, what does that look like over there with you guys?

Yeah, they, they have, um, a little thing called church anywhere that they can, uh, that they can

start. Um, that's, that's pretty much kind of what we're training them up to do is, is to one,

find their purpose. Uh, so, uh, Jared, you don't know a whole lot about church anywhere, but it's,

it's very passion and purpose based. Um, we, we try to empower someone that like when

they have this purpose, when they have this passion, for example, the person with the Huntington's

disease rehab center, she worked there. Um, so she had a passion for these people. So we

said, Hey, let's help you go in and do this. And so through rooted, people are finding their

purpose, finding their passion. Um, we're using the serve experiences to give them exposure

to church anywhere. So many of our rooted groups, um, in person or online are serving within church

anywhere groups outside of our, um, our physical location. Um, so their serve experience could be

like, I'm going to go create a meal for, um, our homeless shelter, um, church anywhere. Um, and so

we're, we're giving them that exposure and we've already seen, uh, probably 30, 40 people that have

either jumped in a church anywhere location as a volunteer or began to lead one.

And so, um, I, I, I, I'm excited to meet with my team after this and share some stories of what you

guys are doing out there. Cause it's, it really is incredible. And this to really speak to something

here, you know, we're working with lots and lots of churches and, and a lot of them are asking this

online digital strategy kind of thing. And we've yet to really hear a story of a church utilizing

rooted in this way. That's been this impactful and effective. And so Tyler, I'm going to be calling

you up soon to get some more wisdom from you. Cause this is amazing. This will be a huge blessing

to so many churches. So well done.

Awesome. So we're going to expect to see lots of little rooted communities,

a lot of studies popping up all over the place. And out of the 16 micro locations are currently

running, uh, going to get some rooted going on in, in some of the prisons. You know, Brad mentioned,

I would love that. Yeah. That's a Bible study. Is he doing rooted with them?

He's not, but, um, I, we, we've been in talks of figuring out how we can get that it within,

uh, like obviously the kids one, it wouldn't work, things like that. But, um, for specific

locations where the people will be there, um, I absolutely think we can get it in there.

We do have some churches that have used rooted in a prison environment. We created a specific

format for them because you can't have any kind of hard binding or wire or anything like that. So

we created a glue bound for them so that they could do that. And it's been really pretty amazing.

We even have some global stories of some global partners who have used it in prison systems down

in the Dominican Republic. And I've seen some really remarkable life change stories of like

300 men in a prison of 500 go through rooted 300 baptisms. It's just remarkable stuff that we've

been able to see, uh, God. And it's not because there's any magic sauce in the curriculum, right?

It's, it's really is God's hand. This is such a beautiful picture of God's favor utilizing this

thing.

Both of these things we're talking about church anywhere and rooted are very simple. Um, it's,

it's already stuff that we're called to do as Christians. Um, it's just putting it into

practice. And it's, it's, it's a, um, a strategy to actually put that into practice.

That's it. That's it.

It's interesting to me. Uh, and, and, and Jared, you said this came from, from Kenya. Um,

and I know like I've, I've experienced with the Timothy initiative, which was, uh, David Nelms

out of India, I think somewhere out in that area. Um, why, and I just, maybe it's a two minute

conversation, but why is it that the, the international curriculum has this effect and

usefulness here in America? What is there, is there something about the culture here? Like

what, what, what are the things that we're sensing and struggling with here where, where maybe

it's not as, as comfortable? Well, that's a pretty, that's a huge question that I don't

want to pretend I'm any kind of expert in responding to, but I can say that I think one

of the saddest things in the history of the church as of late has been the West to the

rest kind of mentality, as if America knows everything and we can inform the rest of the

world on how to follow Jesus. Right. I think that kind of arrogance has done the damage,

you know, it's done a lot of damage in America. And so there's been a really beautiful shift

in an openness and a recognition that maybe we don't have everything figured out. And there

are brilliant people globally. I mean, there are some amazing things happening all around the

world that now we're finally willing to listen and to open our hands and say, okay, maybe we

don't know everything. And so that doesn't mean that you have to do it exactly the way that

they did it, but it is more of a posture of learning and listening that I think the church

in America is now way more open to than it ever has been. Well, in my lifetime, at least.

And so I am, I am so grateful now that we live in a generation that's looking to our global

partners to say the church globally is more important than just simply the church in America

getting better. And so it becomes a mutually beneficial relationship when we choose to listen

and to learn rather than to try to inform and to teach in every environment we're in.

That's good. Jared, as, as obviously folks are, are looking to, you know, expand, I mean,

how does Rude help them kind of come to an understanding of, hey, listen, so there's a big

difference between creating disciples and creating leaders at your church, because some folks try to

lump them all in the one, in the one thing, like, are we creating new small group leaders or are we

creating, you know, people who are closer to Jesus? Like, how is all this working out and how is

Rude helping people kind of clarify those conversations? Sure. So this is a little bit of

the shifting gears, right? And kind of the conversation, but we would say that you cannot

have a conversation about discipleship or helping people become more like Jesus and separate out

leadership development. If we're becoming more like Jesus, that means we're influencing others,

which means we're becoming a leader, right? So there's, there's just a, it's all encompassing in

one way. And so what I love a lot about Rude, it is that you see people get their first glimpse of

what it means to serve and to, to be involved in some things. And so they start to tap into that passion.

A lot of what Tyler's saying about people recognizing that they do have experience or

passion or love for nursing facilities or, you know, whatever it is, the prison system,

that's a really beautiful thing where people start to tap into how God has hardwired them

and then utilizing their experiences and then getting a chance to serve the kingdom of God in that way.

Well, that's leadership development, right? So within Rooted, we're giving people a chance to

try some things on and to develop some leadership skills. But another thing that we're starting to do

is we ask people to consider if you want to really be involved in any ministry of Mariners,

we want you to be as best a leader as possible. And I know in our church, the very best leaders are the

people who facilitate Rooted because it gives you within 10 weeks, a really good chance to lead a

discussion, deal with crisis, learn to defer, deal with conflict. You've got to lead experiences.

There are so many things that you're going to do in a 10 week window that will equip you to be a great

leader anywhere in our church. And I can say that actually as the former high school pastor of our

church, the very best volunteers I had in high school ministry were people that I led through Rooted

that I then intentionally asked them to be involved in student ministries.

They were well equipped to be a part of our student ministries program. So, and I would imagine that if

you ask Tyler that same question, you're going to see those who have facilitated Rooted are uniquely

equipped to lead anywhere within the church. Awesome. What challenges or what advice would

you kind of give to somebody who's starting out in groups and trying to do this from a discipleship

perspective? Yeah. Communication throughout the week is very key. That's key in person for any small

group too. But it's, it's a lot easier to forget that you have an online small group on like a Monday

night. So constant communication to keep it in the forefront of people's minds is huge. We haven't

really faced very many issues. It's been a really, really good and surprisingly good experience for us so

far. One of the absolute craziest stories that I've ever had in ministry came out of this rooted thing. So I think that

my view is very skewed because of how insane this was that came out of it.

Well, you're going to share that story now. So you can't set it up.

We alluded to it on, on the podcast with Randy and I, but one of the people, so the Rooted

online group that we did, you were only allowed to join it if you were from the online campus only.

So like you couldn't just be in our location and join it online.

One of the ladies, I mean, my care team has talked to her multiple times. Like we know who she is,

but I've never met her physically before. But she joined the, the rooted group online.

And, um, we quickly found out that she, she was struggling with some, some anxiety and depression.

And, um, she became very comfortable with us. Uh, like we, we became a family to her, um, even though

it was online. And, uh, she reached out a couple of weeks ago and said, um, she can't take it any

longer and she was going to take two bottles of pills. Wow. So it, yeah, we, she reached out to the group

and said that. So, uh, immediately we kind of sprang into action. Um, because of church anywhere, um,

I have a good relationship with several of the sheriffs in our area, um, because we're in their prisons.

So I was able to call his personal cell phone. He, uh, he traced her phone number to get her location.

Um, we talked to her on the, uh, the entire time that, uh, the paramedics were coming and, um, and now

she's okay. Um, and I, I don't say this to sound arrogant, but she literally texted us the next day

and said, thank you for saving my life. Um, and so that would have never, ever happened had she not

decided to join this rooted group. I mean, I would have known her from like seeing her on the online

campus, but that was it. Um, and so now we specifically are able to pray for her. We have

people from out of state that are wanting to come and visit her driving five or six hours because

they're in this group with her. Um, so it was just a, an absolutely humbling experience to be a part of

that. That's awesome. Wow. You know, so often we hear when we're talking about church online, it's not real

community. It's, it's not real. It's, it's, it, there's no relationship aspect to it because you're not

breathing the same air, um, conversate like stories like that. And I wanted you to tell that again,

like that, that, that redefines what church online is. That would, that would have been a very real

suicide. And now she has an extremely real testimony to share. Wow. Um, because of that.

Very cool. Ray. Um, and I know you're doing a deep Christ fellowship. Miami's got a lot of groups

going down there, your online pastor there. Um, man, what, what feedback, what, what, what experience

in context of, of groups and doing things like what, what are the groups look like there at Christ

fellowship? So some of our more successful groups have actually done something like rooted in that

they did foundations. I mean, Jeff, you know, you're aware of this, you helped establish this,

you know, before, before you went on to some different things. And yeah, that's Timothy initiative,

by the way, I mentioned that earlier. We, we, with David Nelms permission kind of rewrote that.

So, but go ahead, Ray. We tweaked it and we adapted it, which actually gave people a good

intro in the spiritual disciplines, but it also gave people a great introduction in the small group

ministry, which was huge. And so, you know, for us, that was very helpful early on and helping

establish a pattern for many of these groups. And so hearing this, you know, it's great to hear how

rooted is being used over at first capital, but also over at Mariners. And the fact that this kind

of structure it's, it's proven true that people need an introduction to not just spiritual disciplines,

but really rhythms of the faith and just a better understanding of what it means to be a Christian

and how that affects their personal lives on the day to day and giving them the simple tools of how

to break that down.

Man, this is, this has been great. I'm just looking at the table of contents here. Who is God? How does God

speak to us? Where is God in the midst of soft suffering? There is an enemy. How can I make the most

of my life? Part one and part two. How does God view money? Why and how should I tell others? Why is the

church important? Like that's, and so that's, that's your nine of 10 week, you know, stuff there. And so

taking people through that. And then with, with the adage of now that you know, this go and, and take

someone else through that, that, that duplication process, training somebody, training for trainers,

you know, just, just that approach of helping somebody understand it and then empowering them and

challenging them and holding them accountable to, to go as well. Um, that's an exciting thing. And so,

man, Jared, thanks for, thanks for doing this. Sounds like this materials had a, had a, a lifelong

impact or at least a long impact with you guys, even outside of when you were at, at Mariners, right?

So, yeah, absolutely. This, this thing, it really is by God's grace, transforming not only our church,

but a lot of the churches that we're working with. There's something to be said about,

the, the American approach to lowering the bar and trying to make things as easy as possible to be

involved. Rooted is quite frankly, the opposite, right? It is raising the bar and it is asking people

to do things that are in, in some cases, well outside of their comfort zone. It's demanding of

their time and their resources. It asks a lot of people, but we found a direct correlated relationship

to the lower, the lower, the bar we, the lower we brought the bar of discipleship, the lower the impact

we saw. And so we just started raising the bar higher and higher and higher. And people continue

to exceed our expectations, no matter how high we place it. Um, and that beyond just the table of

contents, it really is a remarkable thing to see people rise to the occasion and take a risk experience

like going out and serving or praying or sharing their story or leaning into honesty and confession

through that strongholds week. When we get outside of our comfort zone, that is really where God wants

to write the best stories in our life. We cannot go on an adventure if we're going to stay in our own

comfort zone. And so those, and those kinds of things, everybody wants to live a great story,

but no one really knows how to go do that. Right. That's why we love the entertainment industry right

now is somebody else is living a great story and we get to pretend like we're part of it,

but really following Jesus, there is no greater story than that. And so when we take people and say,

Hey, let's go actually do the things that Jesus did. It blows their mind that they look back and they

go, I actually am living a pretty courageous story right now. So I'm really excited about, I'm excited

about any church that's leaning into this kind of discipleship conversation. That's about spiritual

growth. And it's about people becoming more like Jesus. I really could care less if people use

rooted or not. Cause if what they're, if they're, whatever they're doing, if it's making disciples

that are living this way, praise God, I'm so excited about that. I just know that I've had a front row

seat to rooted and it's been a pretty impactful part of my story. And we get to see some pretty amazing

things, both in America and around the world. So I'm really grateful for you guys giving me some time

to talk about this. So Tyler, I'll be talking to you soon, my friend. Yeah.

Well, Hey, we're going to, we're going to wrap here. Tyler, any 20 seconds, closing thoughts

before we land the plane? I got nothing, man. Got absolutely nothing. Three weeks of talking

about church anywhere on this podcast and the guy's out of gas. All right, Ray, you got anything?

It's just a wonderful thing to hear how it's happening. Discipleship is taking place online

and people are growing in their faith and they're being sent out to make an impact in their communities.

And so for those of you churches that are still on the fence, this is possible. This is something that can

happen. You've, you've heard it here. You've seen it over the past couple of weeks. If not, go back

into the archives and check out some of the other stuff that's going on with church anywhere.

It can happen for you too. Yeah.

Jared, you got any closing thoughts before we go?

Two quick things. If you are interested in rooted, experience rooted.com is the website to find all

information for the pastor that's looking to implement rooted. And then Tyler, you might be interested

to know that we have just released an app. So there's a digital version of the rooted workbook.

Yes. Email me. I'll get you a code.

I'm going to tell you to do that. So well done. I don't have to say.

Yeah. We're really excited about it. It's, it's still in version one. There's lots of great things

that we want to do. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm pressing our app developer guys to help us on

the connectivity piece to it so that a group could go through it and they could have a,

a feed or a wall or some kind of a social connectivity piece to it.

So we're moving that way right now. It's a, it's a platform to go through the workbook and

there's some great features involved, but we're working on that connectivity thing that I think

will help the church online even better. So good things to come.

That's good to know that that app is going to make, especially in the digital realm,

it's just going to make it a lot less clunky. I mean, it's a, it's a, I'm making fun of the book.

I'm not making fun of the book. It's a big book. I get it. I get it. It's good stuff.

I don't, I like as a former bookstore owner, like I don't, I don't get anybody giving me books

anymore. I just don't. Cause like, you know, Amazon and iPad. And so when, when Tyler's like,

Hey, let me mail you this book. I'm like, wow, somebody still out there is using paper. That's,

that's awesome. Hey, so we're good. We're going to wrap here. This has been the,

the end of a three week conversation about church anywhere which I really believe is,

is the future model of what church is going to look like. I think churches will continue to,

to operate the way they are. The mega church is going to get bigger,

but I think the smaller churches are going to get smaller and you're going to see more and more of

these volunteers pop up and start to lead at the micro level. And, and so I hope you've enjoyed

this three week deep dive in as, as we've talked about, um, about the, the, the serving,

the volunteering, about the leadership and about the discipleship of what's involved here. And so

Tyler, man, thanks for, thanks for your patience, um, going through all of this for three weeks.

Uh, Jared, uh, man, thanks for jumping on this and I'm excited to see that app. I'm excited to see

where rooted goes. And, uh, I know that already in the amount of time since I've been exposed to it,

I've already been recommending it and passing it on to other pastors and churches that I'm working

with and helping to go through, um, these steps. So man, I pray that the ministry there with rooted

and, uh, with, um, Mariners and in general continues to go well, Ray, uh, man, I feel like I see all the

time. So we'll just continue to see each other. That's awesome. No big deal. Hey, but this has been

the church digital podcast. Uh, thanks for being here and hope to see you next time.