EP018: Randy Kirk, Church Anywhere, & Not My Kingdom

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Welcome to The Church Digital Podcast. My name is Jeff, and it is a pleasure to have you all join

me today. We are on episode 18, and this is a phenomenal episode we've got set up for you.

We're in the midst of a little micro series talking about micro locations and micro sites,

and that's one of many, many puns that are coming in this interview. You've been warned. If you're not

familiar with First Capital, it's a small church in a small town in Indiana who's had a huge success

doing micro sites and micro locations using Church Online through their Church Anywhere program.

Episode 17, we talked with some of their volunteers that are basically operating as the leaders, as the

campus pastors at some of these locations, reaching as many from, you know, 30 to over 300 people a week

doing ministry. And we just heard some awesome stories about how God is moving in a big way

through some of these small locations. If you didn't listen to episode 17, you definitely want

to take some time and go back and listen to it later. Today, episode 18, we're going to dive in

with Randy Kirk, who's the lead pastor over at First Capital. And honestly, I was a little surprised

by Randy a bit. He was on the older side. I mean, I'm not putting a number on that, but he was

definitely more experienced in ministry and closer to retirement than not. But looking at him, it made me

want to ask some questions like, how could someone at this stage of life be on board with such a

non-conventional model of ministry, non-traditional model like micro sites and micro locations,

even the church online and a lot of the things that their Church Anywhere program does. You typically

don't see someone on board with somebody who's at that age and stage of life. So what was that like,

Randy, as the lead pastor? How were you able to get on board? How were you able to turn the corner

for this? The conversation, by the way, was incredible. Straight up, Randy's a humble guy,

transparent. I can honestly tell you, I've never heard a pastor say the thing that came out of his

mouth publicly like it did here on this broadcast. What specifically that was, hey, you're just going to have

to listen to hear that one in real time. So audience, I give you Radiarmus, online pastor at Christ

Fellowship Miami. I give you Tyler Sampson, engagement pastor over at First Capital, and Randy Kirk, lead

pastor over at First Capital. In a conversation on Church Anywhere that I'm calling, it's not my kingdom.

Hey everybody, here you go. So Church Anywhere is a ministry philosophy that was birthed out of our

online campus. We started streaming online about three years ago, and we noticed that we had some

viewers. And so we decided to look into what it would look like to gather them in physical locations.

And we started in a county jail, and from there it expanded to more prisons and jails, and then from

there to elementary schools and nursing homes and even neighborhood. And yeah, that's been our

ministry shift over the last couple years. And I think God has really done some amazing things through

that. I'll tell you, since the last time we talked that evening, we had two jail services, and they had

a spontaneous baptism at one of them, which was the coolest thing ever. Yeah, so we just did that podcast,

and like a couple hours later, my volunteer that leads that campus called me and was like floating

out of the jail because he was so excited. So that's awesome. And what I love about this is the

church is getting outside of its four walls. It's getting involved into the community. It's utilizing

some of the content that the church is creating, and it's empowering volunteers to be the ministers,

to be the pastors, to be the heroes of this story. And so I wanted to get a little bit into Randy Kirk.

And by the way, if you want to hear some of those stories in the episode that Tyler was just talking

about, it's episode 17. And so check that out. It's the stories of Church Anywhere and those

volunteers with it. But on that episode, I said I wanted to start off by asking Randy a question.

And so this is a loaded one. Randy, gear up for this. It's coming. So Randy, and let me set the stage

because I'm looking at Randy on video, but podcast listeners may not be. Randy, you're on the older

side of life. And I don't want to offend because I don't want you coming after me all the way from

Indiana down to Miami. But he's closer to the retirement age than not with that. And so obviously,

some of the things that Tyler is doing and that Church Anywhere is doing is really stretching the

norms of established church. You know, like, hey, we want to do church outside in 16 locations.

Normally, like church is this idea of, in today, 2019 churches, come to this big building. It's more

more attractional. It's just if you build it, they will come time type of thing. Let's set up these

church or let's set up these micro or these multi site locations around and get people to come to it.

What you've done is you kind of turned it on its ear. And now you're pushing people,

you're pushing people out of your building into the community to do church where the community is.

So when when Tyler cast that vision to you for the first time, I just I got to know, like,

what was your response? What was the first thing that went through your head? When you heard about

this?

First of all, I'm old. So I'm not held responsible for anything that happened three years ago.

Correct.

I just I'm not responsible for that. So, but no, when we first started talking about it,

my initial reaction, and again, I had no context.

This was just online.

This was when we were talking about going online. And I told him I didn't want to give people an excuse

to stay home in their pajamas and not come to church. And that's what I believed it to be,

was just a way that people would start not coming to the building and engaging in our worship

experience. And we dialogued about it for several weeks back and forth. But I believe that Greg

Rochelle says that we'll do anything short of sin to help people come to Jesus. And we believe that.

And so we just said, let's give it a try. And let's see what happens. And so we went online. And about

six weeks into our online experience, we had people showing up. And we heard the same story over and

over and we still hear it today. And that is we've been stalking you. That's no language, not ours.

Sure.

We've been stalking you. We've been watching you online. And we have a sense and a feel for what we're going

to experience when we get here. And so we came in a lot more comfortable and confident about the experience

because of our online experience.

Yeah. And with that, we are located in the actual worst location you could possibly be located for a

church. We are in a neighborhood that's like we're the only thing non-residential on our street. And it's

a dead end street on the wrong side of town. But there's no drive by traffic. You can't even see us.

And we're also connected to the high school parking lot. So nobody knows where we're at,

even in town, really. And so the big thing for us online that we noticed was even people within our

own city limits were like, I didn't know there was a church that did the things that we do in our own

town. And so they started coming just because they didn't even know we were here before that.

That's powerful.

So now, picture that. I don't know if you can even picture this, but we're on the back end

of a dead end street on the wrong side of town in a small town. And you can't find us. When I first

came here 16 years ago, my first slogan was, you'd like us if you can find us.

Because you can't find us. And people didn't know we existed. And again, our parking lot backs up to

the high school, but it's a half a mile from the high school entrance to our parking lot, because

you've got to go all the way around to get there. And so we have this unique location that we've

turned into a positive. And the only way people are going to find us is if we tell them and bring

them with us. And so we've created a culture where it's bring with, not invite to.

That's good. You know, those kinds of things are, they seem like small shifts in terms of

language, but they're big shifts in terms of perspective. And I think it's great that you

guys took those shifts. Both. First, I mean, you mentioned, Randy, that, you know, hey, so we're

going to open ourselves up to doing anything short of sin to reaching folks. And I've heard Craig say

that too. A lot of folks, of course, get offended by that, you know, in the wrong way. They're taking it in

the wrong sense. They're focusing on the sin portion of that statement as opposed to the reaching folks

portion of that statement. But the other thing of being willing to encourage folks to gather as

opposed to just watch, that's huge. When did you guys make that shift to encouraging people to get

together and actually watch the service? That's a big deal.

So that would have been about a year and a half ago. Actually, I brought that to you shortly after

we started online. And it was a lot of conversation. Two years ago, I put one microsite in the budget.

I will never get this. And that was, that was literally the first thing that our elders cut from

the budget for the year. So we were, they tried to, they always go through a final check and they're

like, what can we cut to cut this down a little bit? Number one was microsites. Cause like nobody

understood it at that point. Like, I mean, go back to two and a half years, like nobody's doing

microsites. This is still a fresh thing. So it's not like there was a lot of churches we could model

these after, um, or people would have heard of them or anything. So they cut that first thing.

Um, and so we really didn't get to try our first one until about a year and a half ago.

Hmm. Well, I'm going to throw a number at you. You've got 16 of these locations scattered around

cordon and surrounding areas, right? You got a prison ministry in a couple areas, but, um,

you know, and just Tyler to just to summarize, uh, four or five prison ministries that are happening in,

in area prisons, um, hospitals, schools, homes, rehab centers for, uh, for Hodgkin's,

which is by far my favorite story. Huntington's, I'm sorry, Huntington's disease. Um, that's by far

my favorite story of, of all of them. Um, like what this does is, is it encourages people to

get out of the building? Uh, maybe the best place for them to be in a given Sunday is not sitting in

a pew watching your service in your building on the wrong side of town, but instead doing ministry out

in the community and being the pastor, being the, the, the campus pastor, being the, the representative,

being the, being the person that God called them to be right now. And, and, you know, Tyler, you had

this conversation, you guys have been on this road two or three years, like churches struggle with that

today. Um, there are many conversations that I've had where, where pastors, uh, Randy, they,

they struggle, like they're not ready to let people go out of the building. Um, did you,

did you struggle with that? Was your DNA already wired to go outside? Like, I want to dig in a little

bit to you here. How does it feel to shove people out the door? Go for it. Is that me? That's you. Yes, sir.

I thought that was you. Jeff, you need to know a little bit about who I am very, very quickly. And,

and, um, uh, my background is I was a college basketball coach. And so for 20 years, I coached.

And all I do today is I coach a church, coaching a basketball team, but everything I know about

church, I learned in a gymnasium. And so with that, what you do, the first thing you do is you recruit

people that have the potential to be all Americans. If you don't recruit talent, you're never going to

be good. And so we recruited talent and Tyler is one of those all Americans. Yeah. Yay, Tyler.

Yeah. We could, we could spend, we could spend 10 minutes talking about the story of how I found

Tyler and how he ended up here initially with us. That's a great story, but I'm going to skip past

that. But what we've done is we put together a staff that then are all Americans or potential

all Americans. And then how do you make those all Americans into a team? Because a team is better

than the sum of its parts. But a part of that is you trust them and you turn them loose.

You don't, you don't, you don't buy a stallion. If you're in Kentucky, you don't buy a thoroughbred

and put him in a stable and expect him to be what you want him to be. You've got to let him get out

and run. And you got to let him run. Well, what we did is we recognized that in Tyler, we had an

extremely gifted and extremely good outside the box thinker. And we just, we turned him loose.

Now that doesn't mean that that was carte blanche and that we never had conversations because we had

some really hard conversations. We still have hard conversations, but it is don't recruit your staff

unless you're going to turn them loose to do what you've recruited them to do.

Okay.

And so we have created this, again, it's, it's just, it's just good coaching.

Talk to me about this. Because I, and I understand like the, the staff is, is one piece. One of the

things that I, that I see a lot of, or that I hear a lot of, um, and, and with pastors is they have to be in the,

the, the people, the, the audience, the church has to be together. The ecclesia, the church body

has to be in the worship center, worshiping together. Uh, and so that's where, when I,

when I have these conversations about the micro locations and getting out there, like the pastor

struggles with the theology of, no, they, we need to be gathering together. They need to be part of this

larger thing and not necessarily, I, I don't know if it's, they don't trust the people to be the

ministers. They don't feel like they've equipped them well enough. Like, I don't, I don't know what

the, the, honestly, I don't know what the struggle is. I'm just curious, like, were there struggles

for you? Because you're a lead pastor. You've been doing this for a while coming into this. And so like,

did you struggle with this different way of thinking or was it natural for you?

Um, one of the things Tyler and I have in common is we're both outside the box thinkers.

So that makes it easier for us. But, but one of the pieces that we have discovered,

um, I'm going to walk you through another piece that leads to a philosophy. Um, when I was a,

back when I was a boy, that was before you all were even thought of, but back when I was a kid

in the fifties and the sixties, the model was that you had a revival or a crusade and people came to

Jesus. And then out of that revival or crusade, they came to church where they identified a cause

or a place where they would plug in and serve in the church. And that's the way it was that they

became, it was this, this, uh, uh, uh, revival or a crusade that led them to the church that led them.

Then, uh, uh, along came this little church called Willow Creek. And in the, uh, late eighties, early nineties,

everything shifted and it became about the church. And you became this attractional model of church

where you brought people to church because they liked what you were doing church. And that's where

they met Christ. So before you, they had met Christ, then came to church. Now they've come to

church and they meet Christ. And then they find a place to use their giftedness and plug in.

But along about 2010, there was another shift that's taken place and it took place outside the church

rather than in the church. And that is you've raised up a generation that are looking for a

cause. They're looking for a cause, a place to plug in, a place to serve, a place to make a difference.

And so we use cause in order to bring people to the church, to bring them to Christ. But sometimes

in the cause, they come to Christ. That's what happened Tuesday night. We were out in the cause

and people found Christ. And they come to church. But it is understanding that our generation is,

everybody's looking for a place where they can use their giftedness and their passion.

And what we want to do is help people identify their passion and purpose and give them the opportunity

to explore that and use that. And several years ago, we began tracking, not baptisms. We've tracked

baptisms all the way through. We started tracking baptizers. Wow. How many baptizers do we have?

They are responsible not to bring them to the baptistry. Baptistry is just an entry point.

Their job is to take them on and mentor them beyond that. And so we track baptizers. And

you know, last, we'll have about 90% of our baptisms, about 90% of them will have a different baptizer.

And, which is pretty cool. And our staff barely is in the water anymore. I mean, you know, we are,

it's not like we aren't leading people to Christ too, but compared to most churches. Does that all make

sense? I'll add on to that. With that shift from like big, if you build it, they will come to let's

find a cause and use that to bring people to the kingdom. It has, Randy said it a couple years ago,

and it's stuck with me since then. We've spent like 15 to 20 years figuring out why in the world

God would plant a church on the wrong side of town on a dead end street. And it's, we realize this

because it doesn't matter where the church building is because we are the church. And so like the,

the walls don't necessarily matter as much as long as we're empowering people to go follow these

passions and these causes. Um, and that kind of gave us our answer. It was a strange way. So

one of the things that came up in the last episode, episode 17, talking with your, your volunteers

was this, um, was the passion that your church has to love on the community. Like I, I just, I can

remember Cindy, um, going, Cindy, right? Yeah. Cindy going on and on about how that's just wired into

who the church is. Um, did that happen overnight? Did that, I, obviously it didn't happen overnight,

but like, tell me about that, that Genesis of how, you know, a lot of times churches talk about loving

the community and loving the community means passing out a bottle of water or, um, you know,

doing yard work, uh, for a church or something like that, or for a school, not, not to downplay those

acts of service, but what you, what you're doing is, is forming discipleship relationships with people

in the community for the purpose of making disciples and leading them to Jesus. And there, that's a big

shift that some churches struggle with today. How did that happen for, uh, for First Capital?

Um, I, I wish that we could take credit for that, but that predates our coming. The congregation was

founded in, in, uh, November of 1990. And it's, the, the first pastor was Drew Ashwell. And, uh, Drew was

a really, really young guy, 22 years old when he started pastoring here in this new church. And, uh,

Drew brought in this relational piece. I believe that any time that a, uh, uh, a guy is the lead

guy for five years or more, he leaves a mark on the church's DNA, good or bad. He's going to leave

a mark. The mark that drew left was relationship and this welcoming, uh, everybody, every God loves

everybody. And so do we kind of a idea. He didn't market it that way. He didn't language it that way,

but that was what was, was here. And so from the get go, they had this, uh, uh, we had the advantage

of being a church that already had that here. All we had to do was build on it. All we had to do is

play to it or just tell them, sick them because they, they, they were there. And, uh, so Drew left

that with us. The guy that followed Drew taught him about worship. And, uh, that was the mark that

he's left on our DNA. And then I'm the third pastor in the history of the church. And I've just got to

build on what they've already done. That's, that's awesome. What are some ways, you know, and we're

talking about this like discipleship, um, rich relationship, empowering the, uh, attenders of your

church, the people involved in your church, the volunteers to be the hero of ministry, the, the

baptizers, the, the spontaneous baptisms, the campus pastor of the, of these micro locations. Um, I'm

just curious, what are some other ways, maybe less technological, more, um, physical where, where it's

this discipleship rich volunteer is able to, to thrive and lead in your church? Like how, how, what does that

look like in a, in a physical sense, less, uh, virtual or digital? Um, in the, uh, in the last six

years, our shepherds group, which is our, our elders, our leader, elder, and those, that's

completely volunteer. I mean, it's, it's, it's all of those are volunteer, but me. Okay. I'm the only

one that's a shepherd that is on our staff and, um, I'm old enough to be one, but, uh, um, that room

has turned over in the last six years. There's only one other than me that, uh, continue to serve

in the room. So in the, in the, they, what they have done is they have raised up men to take their

place. Uh, Jim Collins says that, uh, and, and good to great that you get the right people on the bus

and you get the right people in the right seat on the bus. But then he comes along about eight years

later and he says, but then you have to recognize when I am the right person in the right seat on the

bus that I have to be ready to give up my seat, even though it's the right seat for me, for the next

guy. And I have to be willing to give up my seat on the bus for the next guy. So we are right now,

we're talking succession plan for me. And I have to be willing to give up the seat that I love

and the seat that I could rightly call my seat, but it's not my seat. It's just the seat that I

have been given the privilege to occupy. And it's not about me. And so I went to the leaders a couple

of days ago and we're talking about a succession plan and, uh, we have some names in mind that could

be viable. And I said, what if we hire two of those and I step aside? Um, I just think it's appropriate

that we consider that. Um, if, if we get guys, if we find two all Americans and they can take us

places that we need to go, I don't need to get in the way. Yeah. Um, just, just transparently,

I can't believe you just said that on a podcast. I mean, like, yeah, I mean, I'm not saying listening

audience all over 43 States, uh, 20 countries. I don't know, but like, so this is, um, this is

amazing to me, um, because of, of your, your humility and transparency in this. Um, I, I don't,

I don't see, I'm forgive me. I don't, I don't want to speak bad of, of, of the pastors I work with,

but that right there, like, that's not something that, that transparency, humility of, Hey, you know

what, uh, Jim Collins, I may need to give up my, my seat. And by the way, if, if we can get people,

better people to do this, let's, let's look and have those, those conversations like that's healthy

in the long, in the long stretch organizationally. But, but just out of respect for you, sir,

like it takes a chunk out of you to be able to step aside and say, Hey, um, you know,

God must be glorified. I'm, I'm not pieces, two pieces. The first is it's not my kingdom.

It's his kingdom. It's not my kingdom. It never has been. It's never been about me. And number two is

we work with a homeless ministry that I can plug right into.

So to go back to your initial question about how, how do we empower volunteers?

I would say a vast majority of our staff would have a similar answer to Randy. Like I have a tattoo on

my arm that says not the kingdom of Tyler. It's a constant reminder. And I, we, we're intentional

about bringing people on staff that like we, I don't want to just talk the talk. I want to walk the walk

as well. So I'm okay. If, if I don't get the glory for, uh, for ministry being done, if that means that

someone like a Brad Reed from the last podcast gets to fulfill his potential, that dude was only

baptized two years ago. Um, before that he was living in, um, an apartment that he couldn't even

pay for the electricity because he was so on drugs and things like that. So in two years, God has taken

him from that to leading a church anywhere side of 300 prisoners. I mean, I'm okay with that. If that

means that he gets to further the kingdom. Um, and I think that's really important to, uh, to this whole

thing is you have to have that sense of humility of it's not about you anymore. And people will follow

that. We can empower people. If, if, if you live that life, they will want to follow and they will

want to do it as well. Yeah. So like, I mean, the picture you're painting is you're not recruiting

these, these leaders. You're, you're developing your discipling, you're, you're growing them. Um,

you're not coming out and saying, Hey, I need somebody to do this. They are growing up within

your system and they're saying, I want to go here. I mean, is that, is that, is that kind of where it's

at? But, but here's another place. And that is the people that are most hungry to serve are those

that have just come into the kingdom. The longer somebody's in and doesn't serve, the harder it is

to move those people. And so many churches are just filled up with those people. And they, the,

so the, the, the guys in our roles are trying to move people that aren't going to move.

But it's, if you can create the inertia where, uh, lost people are being found and they come in

and they value what they have and you start working with a, with Brad immediately upon his accepting

Jesus and, and just say, you don't have to have experience and you don't have to, to know all the

answers. You just have to know Jesus and be able to tell your story. And that's really all that we

require. Um, and so, so what we're trying to do is cultivate, uh, a, um, an environment

where, uh, where that happens. And then what happens is some of these old timers start watching

these new people and they say, I want some of that. I like that. I want some of that. And the next

thing you know, you've drug one of those in that you would have had to have him kicking and screaming

before. And now he gets it. And one of the craziest parts of it is the thing that we hear the most is,

uh, even with like baptizing someone, it's, well, I'm not qualified to do that. Or even praying out

loud. I'm not qualified to do that. This kind of a, a model gives people no excuse. Um, we, we just did

a story on a guy named Nick that we put on Facebook that, um, got to baptize his very first person ever

at a church anywhere location. And, um, so he told his story on a video and he basically just said,

I didn't feel qualified to baptize somebody, but he left different because of that. Um, they,

because he stepped out of his comfort zone, because we gave him permission to do that. Um,

he left different and now he was actually the guy that baptized the spontaneous baptism this

Tuesday night. Um, so he went from not feeling qualified to do ministry to now have baptized two

people in the last four weeks. Wow. You know, and it's that, that idea of, of decentralizing

ministry. And we've talked about this in, in previous podcasts, but it's like, I, I love this

idea of counting the baptizers. And we've, we talked to, you know, we talked about this with, um,

it's, uh, with, uh, man, I can't think of the guy's name was the online pastor, uh, the online

groups pastor from Saddleback. And so like, uh, not Jay, it's the guy who works under Jay, Kevin Lee.

Kevin, if you're listening and now you are, I'm sorry. It took me a while, but, uh, but Kevin was,

was talking about how they've, they've got like pages of people that need to get baptized. And it's

like, they're all over the country and, and, and how you baptize these people, you know? And so

instead of them flying all over the country, you know, to do these fly, but literally fly by baptisms,

let me fly into the city, take an Uber to where you are, dunk you, and then fly back home.

They started training people, uh, getting them spiritually capable to the place of where they

could baptize someone. And, and, and that by doing that, it decentralizes and it allows

the, the people to grow spiritually deeper because they're challenged to do things like

pray publicly, uh, share, share their faith, be able to stand up and speak towards spiritual

things, complimenting, uh, something that, that said from, from the stage, like that's phenomenal.

I will, I'll say this. I would say about 15% or so of our volunteers are not from first capital.

Um, so we have several other churches that we've, um, like, we don't want this to be an

only first capital thing. This is a kingdom thing church anywhere. And so, um, let's, let's park

there. Cause, cause that like that is another thing of this collaboration in, in context of,

of church. It's not often found. How did that happen? Tell me that story.

Well, it's, it's, it just go, it goes back to this tattoo on my arm for, for me, it's really not my

kingdom. Um, I have never sought to make the name first capital famous, but to make, um, make the

capital C church, the kingdom, uh, famous. And so, uh, I know that there's a thriving jail ministry

that, um, there's a community of people that like to do jail ministry. So why would we not tap into

those people? We're already going in jails every single week and these people love prisoners. So

of course we want them to come along. Um, we found out there's a, there's a homeless ministry,

um, and they, they already provide a meal for, for people every Sunday. So why not do church

and the meal? Um, and so now like we, we don't send hardly any volunteers there. They have recruited

all their own volunteers to do church. We just provide the material, um, and so on. And if you can

get past, if you can get past yourself a little bit, um, God makes some pretty amazing and big

things happen, which, um, has been really fun to watch. That's right. Wow. What have been

the response response from other churches when they're like, you want to do what? Or are they

on board? Like the, the relationship that you have with the other, other churches? How is

that positive? Yeah. Both. Yeah. You have some that value it and appreciate it and you have

others. Um, they're like, what the heck are you talking about? I lead, I lead another thing that's

completely different from this. It's large churches in small towns. And, um, uh, so, so we meet

together and talk about the unique challenges of being the large church in a small town. And, uh, with

that, one of the things that you learn very rapidly is when your church starts, becomes the large church

in town. The other churches resent you. And, uh, there's a resentment that can build up because

you are having success that they are not having. And, um, so we, we face some of that and that's

just reality. You just can't, you can't focus on that. And yet those that want to partner with us,

uh, then they're welcome. And, uh, those that want to, uh, want to learn from us, uh, we want to,

we want to share that. This isn't, uh, uh, um, you know, we're not looking at copywriting material

and charging you to, uh, to go there. This is, it's not ours. It's, it's God's.

Amen. And all we want to do is I'm going to stand before him someday. And I want to hear,

well done, good and faithful servant. That's all good and faithful. That's all. And, uh, it's not

measured on how many we did or what numbers we did. It was, were you, were you good and were you

faithful? That's what I want to be. And that's what we want to be. And it's, it's not rocket science.

It's, it's, as long as you understand that it's his, then, uh, we do what we can with what we've

got. So with that, when somebody wants to give their life to Christ and be baptized on our online

campus, we have absolutely no problem saying, man, that's awesome. Let's connect you with a local

church where you're at and, and, uh, and we'll hand you over to, to a physical body of people.

Um, we have no problem with that whatsoever. Where is this going? You're, you're doing the

micro locations. Um, we can tell you, and like, and, uh, and, uh, Randy, you just quit your job on air

level, but like, um, so when churches talk micro locations, uh, a lot of times, especially in the

multi-site movement, multi-site churches, you know, they're doing the, the micro locations for purpose

of one day combining them into a campus to launch maybe a satellite multi-site campus, something like

that. Are you guys like, what is, is, what's the, what's the next step in this? Or have you even

gotten there yet? I don't know the, I don't know the end. I really don't know the end of where this

ends. I know the things we wrestle with. I know the challenges that we are concerned about. Uh, we are

concerned about engagement and we, we believe that, uh, yeah, Carrie Newhoff has said, internet's, internet's

not going away. And, uh, and so, uh, uh, we know that that's where the world's going and, and, uh, you

can either sit back and take shots at, well, these people aren't in a, in a body and all that and do

nothing. And they're going to be on the internet anyway, whether you want to be or not. So we have

to figure out what engagement looks like and how do we enhance engagement. And so Tyler and Jared,

another guy on our staff have started a rooted, uh, experience online. Jeff was actually involved

in this for a little while. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And we're going to, I'm excited. We're going to talk

with Jared, uh, and Tyler, I think in the next episode, uh, cause I, and I really want to dive into

that. I'm actually trying to get, uh, somebody from rooted to jump on the podcast with us. So you just

even dive into what that online discipleship piece looks like. I didn't mean to trump where you're

going, but. Well, all I'm saying is we're trying to gather a, how do we create engagement? Yeah. What

does engagement look like? And what does community look like? How do you define community in our culture

today? And we don't know the answers to all that, but we also know that we create a culture

with what we present and leaders, leaders create culture. You're talking to a lead pastor out there

who's considering some of this, but may have some questions on where this is going. What's the finish

line? Yeah. Talk to that lead pastor out there and explain to him your stance and your take on this.

Okay. I don't know. Cause I think the finish line's moving. I think it moves. Uh, but here's what I do

know. And that is that there are people that, uh, that are lost that don't even realize they're lost

and there are people missing out. They don't even realize what they're missing out on. And there are

people that are needy and we have what they need. And I can't wait till I've got it all figured out

before I go to those people. I go to them with what I've got and I say, let's figure it out together.

And the line's moving. And so we're already at places that I didn't see us going when Tyler came

and said, let's do something. Let's do our services online. We already have moved.

We're, we're already moving like the, the micro sites that are awesome, but we're going to continue

expanding, but we're in talks of like, what is next? Um, so on that, beyond that. And, and it comes

back to this cause piece, by the way. And if we tell you more, we do have to kill you. So

Jeff, to answer it. And that is, all I know is if this is the tool that I have available

to connect to people who need what we have found, then I use the tool. And, uh, uh, that's what,

that's what happened when we started with the organ, uh, in, in the 1500s, the organ was the tool that

brought people to the assembly because that's the only place you could hear an organ and take

advantage of it. That's great. Well, we have a new tool and, uh, we just want to use the tool

and, and, and how can we maximize that? And, uh, so we have a really creative team and, but the one

thing they have in common is they all love Jesus a whole lot and they want people to have what they

have found. So we're just going to turn this team loose and I'm going to try to stay out of the way.

That was awesome. Um, I, I, I literally don't even know what to say. I will utilize church online is

the new church organ analogy for years. I, I, I just, I, that, that right, you know, Tyler's got his

little tattoo there. Um, I, I have, I have a running joke on this podcast that whenever there's a mic drop,

whenever there's a bubble quote, like, is that tattoo worthy? And, and will I put Randy Kirk's

name on my body? Um, that right there may actually make the cut. Um, my wife won't let it happen.

And it's listening to this. Don't worry. It's not ever going to happen. Um, but my gosh, that was

like, I may be tearing up here just thinking about that. Um, this has been a great podcast. I want to

thank you for this. I know lead pastors are busy and, uh, just your transparency and openness

in this conversation has been encouraging for me. It's been encouraging for the listeners out there.

Uh, Ray was on with us and I don't know if the listening audience noticed, he just disappeared,

uh, where he was, where he was broadcasting from, uh, lost internet. And so, uh, he's, was just, um,

out of luck. So he, uh, will listen in and, um, and, and sure enjoy this as much as I did. But as we're

landing the plane here, wrapping up, um, Tyler, Randy, 20, 30 seconds, any, any closing thoughts,

anything to add at this point? I would just on the, on the talking to lead pastors, you had asked me

that question last podcast and I didn't have a good answer, but, um, yesterday we had a, a pretty real

crisis in the morning with a person that watches us online. That's, uh, in an online small group,

um, that had, um, since a really serious emergency text to the church. Um, and so for a, for a lead

pastor that thinks online viewers are not people or not like they can't see them. So they're not

actually there. Um, I had, we had to deal with a very real problem with a very real person, um,

yesterday that I only know because of the online campus. I've never met her. Um, but I know her

because I'm her on, I'm her, I'm her pastor. And so she, we were the first people that she came to.

And, um, because, because she came to us, we were able to get her the help that she needed, um,

in an, in a crisis, a very real emergency.

She reached out to Tyler. She's with, with a life threatening situation. Tyler, because of our

microsites reaches to the sheriff. Like, I mean, on speed dial, like give me immediately. Yeah.

And he has access to the sheriff because of our relationship with the jail. The sheriff sends out,

uh, he tracks her, he tracks her, which we couldn't do, but he can, because he's got the stuff to do

that. He gets then, uh, EMTs to her in time to save her life. All, all while, uh, Donnie, who's the

other pastor on staff that helps a lot with, with Church Anywhere, the one I mentioned yesterday with

the jails or Tuesday, um, all while she, he's, he's talking to her on the phone until the paramedics

get there. Um, so it was a team effort, but all, all because she's an online campus viewer, right?

That is, that's it. Yeah. So if you're a pat, if you're a senior pastor and you hear stories like

that, I want, I want them to know, like, these are real people that have real problems that may,

they may have a legitimate reason not to come to church. They may not, but what does it matter

if you're bringing them to the kingdom? That's a, a, okay. So I've had a conversation with a pastor,

um, not dropping names. He's not listening to this podcast, but at the end of the day,

I would, I've told him a story, not a life threatening story, but a story like that.

And that pastor would say, yeah, that person online is not my responsibility. And so, I mean,

literally in this situation, you've, it sounds like you've saved a life and we're part of not a virtual

salvation, but a physical, this person is still alive today as a result of you guys being a church

in a virtual space and connecting with people, um, who aren't just sitting in a pew in your

building. Yeah. I'll tell you this on that though, with, with this online small group that she's in,

we now have, we have a couple from West Virginia who want to drive up to, to where she's at to visit

her because they're in an online small group together. That's like a five hour drive.

So, yeah. And so like they want to visit just the, the, uh, the relationship, the, the, is so tight

through talking through like, you guys use what zoom for the online. So, so talking through a webcam

using zoom software, the relationship is so tight. These people are willing to drive five hours, uh,

to come and check and to be with this person in her time of, my gosh, like if, if that's not the church,

I don't know what is. So, um, to, to you guys and, and, and what you've done, uh, with embracing this

church online model with running with it as a small church, you know, and, and 800, sorry,

I'm using numbers again. It's, it's big, big church, small town that majority of churches out there,

there's 365 evangelical, 365,000 evangelical churches in America today, maybe 10 to 15,000 are

broadcasting any given Sunday. So you're embracing of this, this technology is rare, especially with,

with smaller size churches and you're seeing results from it and you're using it for discipleship.

You're growing your base, not just to consume content, but to actually live out the, the disciple

making disciple model that God's called us to. Um, and so if I was wearing a hat, I'd say hats off,

but I can tell you, I, I, I respect and I honor, uh, what you guys are doing and have done, um,

in the virtual space by making disciples who are making disciples. And so thank you for, for doing

that and modeling what, honestly, uh, what I would call a good solid biblical model of what

the church should be in 2019. Um, now is to take what we've given you and make us look good.

Yes. It may take some editing. We'll see.

But you don't need my help a lot for that. And, and, and I just, and I'm, I'm going to keep that in.

Um, you guys have done, I want to encourage you. You've done a phenomenal job and, and the things

that you're wrestling with the way that you're marching forward with, um, uh, doing this realizing,

Hey, God is going to say, yes, it may not make sense, but God's being glorified through it. So why

would I stop? God's bigger than my problems. Um, thank you. And, and my, my prayer, literally

my prayer is that people listening to this, that there are going to be church staffs. There's going

to be online pastors. There's going to be volunteers listening to this saying, my church needs to do

this. And they're going to forward this podcast on to their lead pastor. And hopefully that lead

pastor is encouraged to realize, Hey, there are opportunities here to utilize technology, to get

people out of the building, to get people into the community where they can love disciple and grow

people closer to God. And that God can be glorified through the efforts of, of what's happening.

Technology's not the abandonment of community. It's the birthing of new communities, uh, which is what

we're literally seeing through your church anywhere program. So, um, if you can inspire one church

through this, um, it's a win. And I'm telling you, many will be inspired by, by what's happened

here. And we're not even done. We're going to come back with, uh, with Jared, uh, and some guys

talking about your online discipleship. Cause I really want to talk about how that, that is fostered

and grows. Cause that's a big deal, uh, in creating, um, uh, a disciple, uh, who's capable of training

other disciples. And so I really want to explore that, which is what's coming up here in the next

episode. Gentlemen, this has been phenomenal, uh, for, uh, for Tyler, uh, for Randy, uh, for Ray,

who was here for a little while and, and, and disappeared. My name is Jeff, uh, with the

church digital podcast. Uh, looking forward to next time. See you then.