EP015: Rey DeArmas & How To Impact The Workplace

Hey everyone, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. My name is Jeff. We are at episode 15.

Can't believe how quickly these things are flying through. We've got a great one here.

The other day, Ray Diarmus, online pastor over at Christ Fellowship Miami, he and I were sitting

together at a shade shack and he dropped this knowledge bomb on me. And when he said it,

I just, I needed to unpack it. This is what he said. He said, the greatest opportunity for

evangelism in America today is in our workplaces. And once I picked my jaw up off the table, I said,

Ray, tell me more. And at the end of that conversation, I said, hey, you know what,

we got to record this and get it public and get it out there so that others can hear this.

See today, church, we've got the opportunity to reach people within our buildings,

but we have the opportunity, even greater so I would suspect, to reach people outside of our

buildings. And what better place to do that than through the workplace where our attenders,

where Christians, where people spend, other than home, the majority of their time.

And so church, what an opportunity for us to resource, to train, to empower people,

to share their faith, to get them connected, to be comfortable in speaking in spiritual things,

to be able to engage people within the workplace for the good of God, for the sake of the gospel.

I don't know. It sounds like a fun conversation to me. And that's exactly where we are. We've got

Ray DeArmus on how to impact the workplace for the gospel here at the Church Digital Podcast. Here you go.

Each and every one of us that are on church staff, we're building relationships with our folks on a

regular basis. And hey, we're enjoying it. It becomes like family. And that becomes one of the

harder things, right? Like whenever you have to transition out of church, it's not just that you're

leaving your church, but you're leaving this microcosm family that you've been spending hours and

hours and grabbing coffees and breaks and sharing videos and having fun and laughs and you're doing

life. But what we underutilize is equipping our people to reach their friends and their co-workers

inside the workplace. They're spending 50 to 60 hours with these folks each and every day, or excuse me,

each and every week. And there are genuine relationships that they're building here where

they're in each other's lives. They care about each other. And so just to give you just to give

you like a little insider. So over the last few weeks, just for funsies, we've been doing some

stuff with CF online where we've been working with Baptist Hospital. And, you know, we've got some of our

content there for folks who are receiving chemotherapy treatment to, you know, to be able to watch

services while they're receiving their chemotherapy. It's a great way to encourage folks and it's a great

way to reach them for Christ. And so I was like, all right, so what are some other opportunities that we can do to take

this to the next level? And so I've been shadowing my sister who works in the ER, the hospital. And I've seen

the kind of relationships that she's been able to build with these people. She's only been working

there for five years. And it's just incredible the kind of family that they've built there.

This isn't just unique to my sister. This is something that each and every one of them, they're

talking about their families. They're talking about what they're doing on the weekend. They're talking

about belief systems, about all sorts of stuff. And it's fantastic. I've met a lot of these folks. Whenever my sister

and brother-in-law throw a Super Bowl party, who do they invite? They invite their co-workers. And so they're

bringing them into their house. But then they're also bringing in pastors. They're also bringing in other people that are

connected with them. Why? Because they want to surround them with other believers so that maybe it'll start more

spiritual conversations. Even though it's watching Tom Brady chuck a ball into the end zone, we can all

laugh and cheer and boo together and have some fun. But at the same time, these folks, they don't know

Jesus. But they're not in a judgmental situation in which, oh, well, I can't like you because of your

beliefs. Sometimes those of us who work in church, we put more of a stigma of what the workplace is like

than what it actually is. And the truth is, is that this is a great opportunity for our folks who are

already connected with people. And don't forget, it's just like scripture says, Ephesians, right?

Our job is to equip them to do the work of the ministry, not to do the ministry for them. And so,

so often we tell our folks that ministry is done at church when the reality is the ministry can be done

where? In the workplace, where they're spending constant nonstop time around, around non-believers,

giving an opportunity to witness to them, not just by wearing their, and in my case, not just by,

you know, flashing a CF invite. There are different ways that we can, we can equip them in church online,

especially in digital tools are made for this.

I love, I love that. You know, there was, there's some research that backs this up, but we've talked

about it in the past, or I know I've blogged about it, but like Lifeway Christian Resources 2016 did a

survey. It was either 63 or 66% of people are not interested in coming into your church building.

They're just not. They, they've already established, or they think they've established where they are,

and they're not going to be proactive in attending some service. And so the majority of people out

there today are not open to the evangelical model where they go to a building looking for salvation

or going to find salvation. That's correct. Those, that same survey will tell you 80% of people will

have a conversation about faith as long as they see that the faith is important with, to their friends.

So they'll talk to their friends about faith if they see that faith is important to, to their friends.

And so the ability for us as Christians to live out the gospel, to, to be able to be confident to have

those conversations in the workplace is so important. I don't know if you remember this, Ray, like maybe 10,

15 years ago, like there was the desire. There was all this talk about the third place, like remember

this? So like, you know, first place is, is like your home. It's where you spend the most time because

you sleep there. So like at least eight to 10 hours a week, even like crazy people, you know, the majority

of your time is spent in, in the home. Second place was always your, your workplace, you know,

because that's where you spend to your point 40 to 50 hours a week. And there's, there's this awesome

community, this body of people that, that exists there. And it was funny, like the church, the drive

for the church was, should church be the, be the third community, uh, the third place. And we've kind

of turned that on its ear a little bit now by saying, Hey, the church can be third, can be fourth, can be

fifth. It doesn't matter. But really the effectiveness of, of the church and evangelism isn't what happens

at that third place. We, we, we picked the wrong place. We need to get more involved in the second

place. Well, and, and part of that Jeff is, isn't our mistake in turning church into the place? Isn't

church supposed to be the people? Like we say that a lot, you know? And so if church isn't supposed to

be the place, if it's supposed to be the people, then really if, if there, if, you know, if there's a

modern diaspora Monday through Friday, right? Of like the church being spread out

and in their workplace, you know, where they're supposed to be and not just cause they're making

money to tithe. Right. But the reality is, is that they're there to build relationships. And so much

of this, you know, think about where we're missing like millennials and Gen Z and like some of the

folks that are coming behind us. Like they're looking for workplaces where they can have real

relationships with others. You know, like it's not just about the job, but it's also about the

relationships that they have. And we didn't really think about this a whole lot recently until we

started getting into shows like the office, right. Where all of a sudden we realized, oh my gosh,

I care about Jim and Pam the same way that I care about like some of my other coworkers,

because yeah, that's a shared environment, you know, in which I'm sharing so much space with these

folks. I love that. And I'm a radio TV film major. So like you just lit me up like in the eighties,

the eighties, it was, uh, it was cheers and it was Cosby show. It was, it was first place. It

was not workplace. And so having that come more to awareness of we've got this community. It's not

just the drudgery of, let me, you know, serve the man. Let me work for the man. Let me just get my

paycheck. But it's become more of that, that, that community, that, that friendship. That's,

that's really cool.

So because I love TV so much. So like we can take that even further, right. In the nineties,

it became the coffee shop at Seinfeld and friends became coffee shop. Like that was the place to

gather around. And even Starbucks was fighting for the third place. Cause they started to see that

they were losing that battle into the two thousands. Why? Because really work and play and life are kind

of, you know, just expanding. And so, you know, things like DoorDash or whatever else, like Starbucks

is more of a convenience place where you go to pick up stuff and go, you don't necessarily go there to

hang out unless Starbucks is the office. Right. So even then, like, it's not the, it's not really

the place where people go to gather for a whole lot of events or whatever else. It's the same way

that movie theaters are struggling. And now, Hey, even churches like we're struggling, right? Because

a lot of folks are either doing life at home or they're doing life at work. And then they've got

digital spaces that they do life in between. But with the workplace, we've already got great content

that we give away for free in churches. Right. And so why not encourage our own people? Hey, listen,

we're resourcing you. We're creating all this stuff. If you've got a friend at work, who's going

through a hard time, why not take that two minute clip, that three minute clip and text it to them,

airdrop it to them, you know, show it to them. And it just creates a great conversation starter

because you're already in their life. We're even taking the work out of your hands in that you don't

even have to know exactly what to say. You can just tell them, Hey, you know what? My pastor talked

about that exact same thing this week, man, I'm going to send you a two minute video. Why don't you

just watch it? And then, and then let's talk about it. And it just creates that conversation. And I know

that there are HR concerns, but really a lot of the HR concerns aren't so much that you can't be a

follower of Jesus in the workplace. The HR concerns are you can't put up your Christian flag and blast your

Carmen CD, you know, or your DC talk CD while you're in the workplace. Yes, you cannot be an annoying

Christian to other people in the workplace, but you can still be very much who you are. And if we as

believers continue to place a stigma on that, then we're creating a cloud in our own mind. My wife

is a public school teacher. If her students engage her in conversation, she's allowed to talk about

Jesus, church, whatever else. She's not allowed to initiate the conversation. And so when people start

saying, well, God's not allowed in public school, I'm like, but Christians are, they're in administration,

they teach. They're there and they're very active with their faith. What are we talking about? God's

not allowed in public school. The church is in public school. It's already active. It's already

there. We don't have to worry as much about whether or not quote unquote, we're teaching it from the

classroom when we've got believers who are already there and being solid teachers where they're at or

being solid administrators. That's great stuff. Yeah. By the way, DC Talks going on tour.

I'm so excited for that. Oh my gosh. Yes. Like that, that's gotta happen. Moving on.

You've been talking. Do we get free tickets if we promo it? Does this happen?

Somebody get Toby Mac on the phone. Call him up. We deserve some ticks. All right. Hey,

so you're, you're, you're, you're Christ fellowships doing some of this and I know they're, they're

exploring in this area and trying to do more Christ fellowship down here in Miami. What, so you're

talking about the sermon, cutting it up in the, in the smaller pieces, maybe having some clips that are

available, highlights, uh, mic drop moments, things like that, that, that create easily shareable

content. So like walk me through a scenario like that. So, um, uh, I'm in the workplace or you're

in the workplace, your sister's in the workplace, talking to somebody, your sister, that'll be fun.

Um, like, like walk me through how a scenario like that would look with giving some of this,

using the shareable content. So, uh, so for instance, uh, and depending on when you're watching

this, you know, I'm referencing a sermon from the past, right? So this last week, uh, Omar,

one of our pastors here, one of our teaching pastors, uh, talked about the importance of rest

and the importance of why God established rest and how a lot of that works. Now we live

in a workaholic society, right? And so as we're talking about work, work can go

bad. Work is a good thing. Work is established by God, but so is rest. Right. And so we've got a lot

of folks and especially in the ER that are pulling like 16 hour shifts and they're grabbing more shifts

because, Hey, they're trying to pay for that next vacation or they're trying to do some of the same

stuff that we're trying to do. Right. And so they're overexerted with that, but then they're not

taking a consideration. Hey, but what about taking some time to just breathe? What about taking some

time to just be? Because I'm so concerned with being the world's best mom or the world's best dad

and so concerned with being the top earner and the top this that all of a sudden I'm just freaking out

and I've got so much anxiety in my life. You see, that's not just unique to Christians.

It's not. And so if we take like a two minute blip, which we have, and we put it out there on

Instagram, right? We put it on IGTV or whatever else where the intro is just on the post.

My sister works with folks who are way overworked, right? I mean, they've got doctors and nurses

there that are just cranking it out. And by the time that they're done working on their shifts,

they've got a chart galore. They've got to, they've got to document everything. And none of that,

they're getting paid for it because they spent so much time with patients that they've got to spend the

back end doing the admin stuff. And so then after that, I mean, they're just burnt.

And so of course they're going to need a moment or they're saying, you know what? I'm just freaking

out. Insert the conversation. Hey, you know what? You know what? Pastor Omar was just talking about

that this weekend in my church. In fact, I was watching it online. My sister right now, because

she's got a five month old child, CF online is like prime time for her. And so it creates

this instant opportunity where she can be like, Hey, this exact thing that you were talking about,

Dr. So-and-so it's exact thing that you're talking about nurse. So-and-so don't want to use

names. She can just go ahead and forward it over to them. She can show it to them and she can encourage

them to watch it. And it creates that conversation. In fact, she's already done this kind of thing

with them. And it just creates great conversation that leads to gospel conversations. You know, when I

worked at Apple, this happened for us like almost a decade ago. And this is when Jeff, you were still

here on staff at CF. And this was a time where before even I was on staff, I was working at an

Apple store, coming straight out of seminary. And it was a great environment. And we actually had a

coworker come to Christ simply because we would constantly share content with her. We would constantly

just tell her, Hey, listen, that exact thing that you're talking about, like, check this clip out.

She's tech savvy. You know, she's working with us at the Apple store. Now she's still working for Apple

corporate, but guess what? In the time that's happened since in the last 10 years, she's been

coming to our church. She met a great man of God. They got married. They're starting their own family.

They're a part of our Miami Springs campus. And she's still working for corporate and doing her thing

in the workplace and being a solid believer and growing as a believer there. Now, a lot of folks think,

oh, well, the great end of that story is, wouldn't it be great if she came on staff at CF?

No. Wouldn't it be great if she was a great Apple employee, right where she's at? That right there

is, if she's a solid believer while she's there at Apple, working for them, doing a great job.

And at the same time, reaching more and more of her coworkers for Christ, that's the win.

That's a huge win. And so why not continue to resource our folks with content in order to do that?

Jeff, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier. One of the ways that we're doing this,

and I want to encourage folks to check this out and think about this methodology, is now we opened

up a Dropbox and we made it publicly accessible for all of our folks in which we're posting full

quality social media content. And we're now going to be encouraging our people to go there to download

it in full quality so that they don't have to use apps like Repost or whatever else.

We've tagged it cfmiami.org slash share. And if you go there, it's basically like a WIC structured

website with direct access to our Dropbox in which they can go just grab full quality photos,

series content, event content, whatever else, we're giving it away. And we're encouraging

them to share it. Because what I'm hoping and what I want to see happen is not just our

own social media account talking about us, but everybody in our church talking about us

as well and doing it right.

Yeah. The algorithms have shifted. That's great, Ray. That was a good move. The algorithms

have shifted, especially with Facebook within the past, I don't know, probably three or four

months. It was even referenced recently, earlier this year at the F8 Facebook conference, dev

conference, where what an organism, what an organization says on Facebook, on a Facebook

page, it really doesn't matter anymore. Like Facebook doesn't value page level information.

information. And so if you really organization, if you really want to make an impact, create

a group, and then do it within the group, invite people in the group, that's what the algorithm's

pushing. But to your point, like, and there's actually has been talk, you know, earlier this

year of the ROI, the return on investment of, you know, we put it, we pour as a church, we

pour all this effort into social media. And then we drop it on a Facebook or on an Instagram

where Facebook or Instagram really limits who's seeing it because of how engaged it is or isn't.

And there was actually talk about, should we even give up on social media? That was a very

popular conversation around the water cooler. But the idea of giving it away to people, because

while Facebook doesn't care about what your organization says, it cares about what your Aunt

Ruth says. That's right. And the more that you can get, you know, the Ruth to talk about

it, the, the, whoever it is within your community to, to use in the talk about your, your, your

church or organization, the better off that you will be. That's right. So the ability to crowdsource

some of that and get it into the people so that they can be cheering for you, that they can

be your, I mean, back in the day used to be brand ambassadors. Now we say, use the word

influencers. But ultimately it's, it's, they, you want them to be the hero of the organization

to, to encourage others to access and share it. I mean, social media at some level is like

entry level evangelism. Now it's not completely deep and it doesn't, it doesn't take you to

the finish line, but at least it's the one that's going to get you off the start.

Right. No, but, but even then, and look at that shift and this is where the church should have made

the shift a long time ago where corporations did. So yeah, corporations, and I'm not saying that

churches should pay brand influencers or ambassadors to do it, but, but the reality is, is we should be

encouraging our own people to make their own recordings, to take their own photos and to begin

sharing them to doing that. So, you know, being in Miami and being, you know, a large church, we've got

some, some folks who have a lot of influence here, both in Miami, but also globally because of Hispanic

television and movies and different folks. And so, you know, I'm more excited when they do an Instagram

story than when we do an Instagram story and they don't do it well, right? Like, like just cause

they're, they're a star doesn't mean that they're, they're great at video or they're great at photo,

but I know that more people are going to see their story. More people are going to see their foot,

their photo or their post about our church for the positive than, than anything that we create.

And we've got a great following on social media. It's not that it's just that it, it opens us up

to this larger environment. Now, once again, that's, that's them leveraging a channel that,

that they received. Why? Through work, through what they do for a living. Yeah. And now they're

leveraging this great thing that they received, you know, this platform that they received

through their, through their workplace, boom, they're leveraging it for the gospel.

Listen, anybody out there, anybody out there who's tuning in for the church digital, I just want to

encourage you, whoever is in your congregation, however many people, it doesn't matter how many

people there are. The point is, is that you can resource them to reach their coworkers. And that

reach can be much larger than just your Sunday morning reach. The influence that they have there

is amazing. So encourage them, give them shareables, give them ways to do it,

tell them to take it. And even if their friends never actually show up on Sunday morning,

if they heard the gospel, or if they heard the message, man, that's a discipleship win on a part

of your congregant. And also that's an evangelism win on the, on the part of the person who heard.

All right. So let's, let's keep going down this conversation. So I am, I love this idea of

shareables and as a, you know, hypothetically or as, as a, as a new Christian, somebody I'm passionate

about helping reach people. I've got friends in the workplace. I can definitely, you know, tag somebody

on a, on a Facebook image or upload a graphic or a video, uh, share an online service that, that part's

easy. Um, what, what resources are, or coach me through here on, yeah, but what happens after the

video? Like I actually have to talk to this person. What do I, how do I talk to them? What do I talk

about, um, from, from a, from a pastoral level? Like how, how do you coach people do that?

I think the first easy question is, Hey, what'd you think? What'd you think? Just start with that

and hear them process whatever it was that they heard, man. I completely disagreed with it. Okay.

Don't get instantly offended. Believer. Don't get instantly offended. You know? Oh, I completely

disagreed with that guy. Well, why not? Why, why did you disagree with him?

Why did that happen? And keep the conversation going. Keep the conversation going. Uh, now I

understand not all content is PC. Sometimes your content, you know, that you might be sharing,

Hey, Jesus is the only way to heaven, man. I completely disagree with that. Why, why that

just, it opens up the channel. It opens up the channel for conversation and you don't have

to be Ravi Zacharias. What you need to do is you just need to be a good relational person in

that person in that person's life. You just need to be somebody who cares.

So just open up. Hey, what did you think? What did you think about that clip? I'm going

through a hard time. Here's a clip of encouragement from my pastor. Hey, what did you think about

it, man? I needed to hear that right now. Here is where I'm at. I'm going through a hard time.

My wife's left me or this has happened. And all of a sudden, what did you think? Just opens

up conversation. It just does. It just does. And then the next natural question can be,

Hey, would you ever like to join me in person? Would you ever like to come with me to church?

I'd be open to that. Or no, that's not really my thing. Okay. Well then let's work down the

workflow. If you get a no, would you ever be, well then, all right, that's cool. Would you ever

be down for at least coming over to my house and watching, watching the rest of this talk?

That just creates another opportunity or just maybe it's not even a personal invite like that.

Maybe we want, we don't want to bridge the work environment like that. Maybe we're uncomfortable

with that. Hey, do you want to see the rest of this talk? Do you want it? And don't even call it a

sermon. Don't call it a message. Just call it a talk. Do you want to see the rest of this talk?

I'll never forget when I was doing youth ministry, I had, for some reason, this guy who was of the

Islamic faith, loved coming to our student gatherings. Just loved it. And he wouldn't

call it the sermon. He wouldn't call it the message. He would call it the speech. And be like, man,

you know, I really liked the speech. And I had to pause because I had to take off my Christianese hat

and I had to reflect, oh yeah, that's what he would call it. That's what he would call it. And so I have

to use language. I have to just tweak the language a little bit to relate to him a little bit more.

So if you have to call it the talk, the speech, whatever, the message, use language that they're

going to be comfortable with and then encourage them to just watch a little bit more. Watch a

little bit more. Watch a little bit more. Hey, if you enjoyed a two minute clip, you got to hear the

other 30 minutes. How can I engage with it? Aha. Now this is where digital platforms come into play,

right? Hey, we've got a YouTube channel. Let me go ahead and send it to you. Hey, we've got a podcast.

You can listen to it on the way home. I'd like that, but leave them with the next step,

but then send it to them. Send it to them. Don't just wait and don't encourage them to go find it.

No, instead you have a link, share it with them and make sure church leaders, give your people handles

on how to do this. Make sure that they're equipped with the stuff. Okay. Don't just have people come

to our website, share your content as much as possible. Okay. Disseminate it as much as possible.

And don't be afraid of where it lives. If it's in YouTube, great. YouTube is the largest search

engine we got, period. It's outpaced Google and Google owns them. Put it out there on your YouTube

channel. Okay. Put it out there on podcasts. Oh, there are a zillion podcasts, right? Okay. There's

room for one more. There's room for yours. Go ahead and give your people handles on how to share content

and then encourage them to do so. But if you don't tell them how to do it, they won't do it. Or as

Craig Groeschel and Andy Stanley and Rick Warren have always reminded us, our people will only go to

where we lead them. They can't go to a place where we've not led them to. So if you're not saying this

from the pulpit, your folks aren't thinking about it on a regular basis. So give them handles on how

to share content. Yeah. And I'm even going to push on that a little bit a step further. You've got to

model it. Have people, you know, pastor, even yourself, go as far as to show them specifically

what this looks like. Model this with your own accounts and have that be a reference. It's not

an ego thing. It's using it to connect with people and utilizing the content that exists

from our services in Ray's context to impact and to change lives outside of the building.

The value of what we're creating is not just the 40 minutes in the building. It's not just in the

online broadcast. There's opportunities for that content to go even farther and be far more effective

if our people see it. And to see it, it needs to be modeled. People don't want to be the first. And

what we're talking about here, while it sounds like it's simple, it's within church realms, it's not

often done. And so this is an opportunity for you, pastor, you, communications director,

to model and experience what this is firsthand so that others can replicate it. Once they see it,

they'll understand it better. And before you think that this is just,

for anybody out there who's listening to us and they think, oh, well, this is just kind of a young

people thing. No, it's not. My dad engages with YouTube more than anything else nowadays on

television. He's constantly sending me links and sharing stuff. And my dad's 63. Jeff, I've heard

you talk about how your parents both engage in different social media environments and how they're

constantly like sharing things as well. So this isn't just, oh, well, this would be great for student

ministry. No, this isn't everybody thing at this point. Okay. This isn't just for a particular young

age group. Now we're talking about the spectrum here. Now we're talking about folks who are empty

nesters. And yes, we're talking about their college student. And by the way, the empty nesters in your

church, they want to reach their college student for Christ too. Okay. They see what's coming behind

them. They don't want a generation without Jesus. Why not give them the same handles? Hey son,

pastors, pastor, so-and-so talked about this this week while you're away at college, man.

Even if you've not connected to a church yet, why don't you see what he said about it?

Instant shareable. Instant shareable. This isn't just a young people thing, guys. This isn't everybody

thing. So let's take advantage of the shareables. And then I don't want to get too much off of this.

Let's please take advantage of the workplace. Let's take advantage of the workplace and encouraging our

folks to share content there because they've got the people around them in relationship. It's there.

So what are some other options or ways to really target the workplace? I know we've got our sermon content.

You know, there's always the right now medias and stuff like that to throw out, to use as hook it up to an

Apple TV, do a small group or a conversation there in like a conference room. What are some ways that we can

start to impact the workplace? Um, for God, the workplace small group to me is like the biggest

ideal. That's something that we stole from Saddleback a long time ago. And really, we just

started to equip some of our folks to take 15 minutes at lunch once a week, have a devotional

parade and invite anybody who wanted to be part. It wasn't a force kind of a gig. It was anybody who

wanted to be, who wanted to be invited to it could come and make sure you'd go through the right

channels, go through HR, make sure you get all your checklist and what you can and can't do.

Etc. And go for it. Okay. Um, we've partnered with organizations at schools, you know, uh, like

FCA or, um, or, and there are other, some other words at Bible clubs, um, first priority Bible

clubs that we've partnered with, uh, where this has happened for teachers as well. Now it doesn't

just have to be at the lunch hour. It could be before work. It could be after work, but however

you want to do that. It's not just, you'd be surprised. It's not just a place for Christians

to have a Holy huddle. Now, if you keep it, that if you never invite anybody to that, or

if you never encourage anybody to attend that, that's all it'll be. But if you encourage the

people in your congregation, Hey, listen, this creates opportunity. We've got great content

that we've already made for you. So you don't have to worry about creating Bible study or

whatever else we've made that for you. Why not take a small clip? And even listen, pastors

out there, just write three discussion questions for your folks, or give them three standard

discussion questions. Like the ones that I gave you. What did you think? Would you like

to see more? Would you ever come with me? Those are three easy questions that you can give

them to just start the conversation, keep the conversation going and see what happens because

the workplace it's needed. Now you can always encourage them to continue to be, and they

need to be each and every believer in our congregation needs to be a great worker. Does it mean

they have to be the best worker at the place? They might not be talented enough. They might

not be gifted enough. They might be number two or number three in their office. That's

okay. They can be the person who loves. They can be the person who encourages. They can

be the person, a person of integrity. They can be a lot of things where they're at, but

we've got to teach them how to do it. We've got to preach towards that. We've got to

encourage them to live that out. And also we have to model that as well. Something

that we do at CF that I love, we'll encourage some of our own pastors to go and have lunch

at the person's job. So not too long ago, I went to go visit Chuck Frady. He's a member

at our Coral Gables campus. And Chuck works with Royal Caribbean. I went to go down there

and see him. And I got to see him in his environment. I got to talk to him about how God uses him

at work. It was awesome. And I even got to give him some more ideas about what I can do with him

at work. I love that. One of the ways that I started engaging with Chuck, search online. He's

always, even though he attends in person, he's when he's out there in Royal Caribbean, out there on the

cruise stuff, he's also engaging with us on the go. And so great ways to encourage people. Just do it.

Visit your folks, encourage them. Work is the mission field. It is. Do it.

Ray, what else you got? Jesus loves your coworkers. He does. And you got to remember that Jesus loves

the coworkers that are out there. The mission field, the mission field in ministry is not just

our folks coming to church on Sunday. And we can't just talk about it in the sense of, Hey,

give invites to your coworkers. That's not enough. We've got a lot better content now that we can

encourage our people to share. So let's not be afraid to give it to them. Let's give them handles

on how to do that. Let's show them how to do it. In some cases, if you want to do a workshop

online and record yourself on YouTube, as far as how some of these things go, even if you want to

share this episode and just send it to somebody and say, Hey, look, they talked about how you can

reach Jesus in your workplace. Why don't you take some of these ideas and just see if any of them

work for you and then talk to me about it. And let's see if we can equip you to go, go for it.

You'd be surprised as to what could happen. Just give it a shot.

Awesome. Hey man, this is great. Uh, hopefully there's some, some lessons here. Uh, we can take

away, uh, church so that we can help empower people, uh, to create disciples outside of the

church building, uh, and impact them, uh, in the workplace, the number two spots. Don't try to make

church the number three spot, the hub, help whatever number two is, be the spot. So work towards that.

Ray, man, thanks for this. This has been, uh, been a great, uh, session and looking forward

to what's next. Uh, Ray, 20 seconds, uh, as we're landing the plane.

Give, give it a try folks. You'd be surprised how many people you could reach at work.

If you've got questions about workplace small groups from Saddleback, I'd Google it, take a

look at what they've done there. Work, uh, workplace small groups, look up Steve Gladen's stuff.

It's been phenomenal. They've already done the legwork as far as researching HR practices

and everything else. So just check out what they've done and run with it because it's been

phenomenal. And don't forget, you already make content. Tell your people to share it. Just do it.

Awesome. For Ray, uh, my name is Jeff with the church digital. Thanks for joining us. And we'll

catch you next time here at the church digital podcast. Y'all have a good day.