EP007: Kevin Lee & The Arguments Against Church Online

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. My name is Jeff Reed, and it is a

pleasure once again to have you all join us today. We've got a great episode here. This is episode

seven. We've done seven of these things already, and time has been flying by. I'm joined today by

Kevin Lee, who is the online small groups pastor over at Saddleback, just a small little church

over there on the West Coast. You may remember his name. He came up a couple times in conversation

during episode three, talking with Jay Cranda. Jay tried to steal some of his thunder, but we saved

it, and we got it. It's going to be a great episode. Hey, Kevin, man, why don't you just

take a minute, just tell us a little bit about yourself and your ministry and what it looks like

over there at Saddleback. Yeah, Jeff. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. My role at Saddleback

Saddleback is Small Groups Faster for our campus, which is the online campus. So just for short,

I just, you know, titled myself Online Small Groups Faster, and a lot of people think that I deal only

with the online small groups, and a lot of people actually don't know what that means. So, but actually

half of our groups, majority of our groups are actually meeting at home groups that meets in,

you know, other states outside of our physical campus' immediate reach, and about another half

of our small groups are meeting online. So I don't know if you're going to ever talk about that, or in

your previous episodes, you've talked about that. But so I care for, I pastor, along with our volunteers

and our team to help our small groups do well and be healthy.

Yeah, and I hate to slap a number on that, but you told me earlier, it's like 2,400 small groups?

Yeah, right now, 2,400 small groups registered under our online campus. Yeah.

And so that's 2,400 small groups that are outside of the circle of influence of your physical campuses.

So like 25, 30 miles, something like that? Yeah, correct. So outside of our physical

campuses' reach, 25 miles outside. And we have 19 campuses around the world right now. So anything

outside of those, you know, campuses' reach will fall under me. So if the funnel kind of goes like where

if someone watches Satterback Worship Service and they want to start a small group or join a small

group, we, at first, we want to see if they're connected to a local church because we want to be

the advocates for the local church. And if they are, we actually recommend and suggest, hey, you should

check out the small groups at your church, at your local church. And if they're, you know, for whatever

reasons for, you know, geographical or security or health reasons, they are not part of a local church,

we help them, you know, start a online small groups or home small group with their friends and family.

That's amazing. And so all that still equals 2,400 groups that are either meeting in homes or outside of

location or, you know, via technology like a Zoom or a Skype or something like that.

Yeah, you're exactly right. That's it.

Wow. You know, and that sets up perfectly what I wanted to talk about a little bit with this episode

because we're getting to this place of, and I wrote about this recently on a blog. I was writing about

Judah Smith over at Church Home. Judah's up there in California as well.

Yeah. And so he was getting a lot of flack and he created this church home model of a mobile app to

create discipleship. And, and it was interesting. I was reading in, it was USA Today. So it was a,

it was a complimentary piece that I wrote on the USA Today. And like, he got a lot of flack and a lot

of people were angry and upset. And we'll link to the blog in the show notes and Judah Smith.

But like, people are like, I don't know what that is, but don't call that church. And to me, I just,

I kind of stepped back and I was like, well, let's really break down, you know, what church is and

what church isn't. And so with this episode, like I want to hone in a little bit on some of the

arguments of, okay, well, church online isn't this and discuss with Kevin and just try to even talk

through. Well, how do we answer that? How can we solve some of those? Sure. Because in my experience

with, with church online, it's, it's not so much what it can't be, but it's more of, we don't have

vision to figure out how to solve that problem, but we're not giving it a chance to. And so like in

context, you know, and just to kind of unpack here on, on the biblical community piece of this,

you know, so often I hear you can't have biblical community online. You can't do

small groups online. And so, you know, Kevin, when somebody says to you, man, you can't do,

you can't do small groups online. Like you can at a physical church, like you who's managing and

overseeing and shepherding 2,400 groups. Like what's your response to that?

Wow. That's a, it's a question that, that I have a whole lot to say, not because I haven't, you know,

opinions on that, but because I have so many stories of, you know, life transformation that happened

through our, our groups. And just, just what Jay and I try to do is we look at the Bible and see,

hey, what are the essence of the church? What, what are some things that we cannot sacrifice on?

And we just go and see if we can bring those essence into our online community. So just for

example, you know, we know, we all know that technology is, is changing the world. And I was

just at the gym the other day and I saw someone working out very hard and they had a phone in front

of them. And it was a, you know, it was a FaceTime and there was another person at the other side of

the phone and what they were doing, essentially they were keeping each other accountable, training one

another over the FaceTime. And I was just thinking something so individual such as working out,

you know, is, is, is they're able to, um, have accountability through, you know, FaceTiming.

And just, I just thought that was, you know, just a small example of how technology is changing the

relationships, uh, changing the just accountability aspects. And we're just bringing that over to our

church and seeing, Hey, we want to, we know that relationships are important and we know that

accountability is important and we, we know that community is important and we want to bring that

in whatever way to our, our church, uh, to people that we minister to. And we just said, Hey, uh, you

can use whatever you want to have this community and let's see where it goes. And we have some of

most vibrant and deep conversations in our Skype groups, uh, people who meet through zoom. And we

even have some people that do text groups because just they're, these people are working professionals,

working moms. They have really no time that they can designate that like a designated time to meet

regularly. So they put them in, uh, themselves in a Slack. And these people tell me that these

conversations are what gets them going, you know, they literally are encouraged by the texts that they

get. And they, they try to meet, you know, um, every once in a while, just to, just to, um,

they just confirm with one another that they're doing good and just to check on themselves. But

those text messages and those, you know, um, checkups are literally what keep, what's keeping

them alive and do well in their relationship with God and relationship with other people. So

there's so many different stories like this, you know, that are doing the work of the church,

right? So that are bearing the fruits of, of ministry to say, Hey, that's not the ministry

of the church. That's not church. That's we can't, I feel like that's discounting people's story.

If you say that, so yeah, just let's, let's unpack a little bit. Cause this is good. You're so the text

groups, the, um, uh, you know, the, the Skype groups, the ones that are using virtual software

cause cause there's home groups and I want to get to that in a second, but the ones that are using

the technology as, as the vehicle to stay connected to communicate, uh, are the people all within the

same geographical area? Like they're in the same city. Are they separated by distance? Kind of what's

the examples you have there? So some are, some aren't. So we have, we say we purposefully don't

have a specific software for, for our groups to meet. Um, that's because we have groups in Asia,

we have groups in Europe and they have softwares that they're familiar with. And if we say, Hey,

this is the only platform that you can use. Um, we, we become the bottleneck of, of, of how,

how they can meet. And we don't want to do that. Um, there's, you know, with technology, there's a

bandwidth issue. There's with different, um, countries, there are different, you know,

tech not technological issues that, that we don't want to become the limitations to. So, um, these,

these groups use whatever that they're comfortable with. And some groups are, um, just like the,

the Slack group that I talked about, um, they're geographically close somewhat, but not, um, not

so close so that they can meet every week. But, um, we have also some groups that are literally

across the country. Uh, we have some people that meet in West coast, uh, some, some live in the West

coast and some people who live in East coast. So they have to account for time zones and different

things. Um, but they, they meet like that. That's awesome. Yeah. I, I lead a, I myself,

I lead a, uh, an online small group, an online Bible study. We meet every Tuesday night. Um,

within my study, I'm down here in Miami, Florida, and I've got people in the group from Miami, Florida.

I've got people from, from Fort Lauderdale, from, uh, North Florida up in, uh, the land plant city

area. I've got people up in New York. I've got people in, um, uh, Houston, uh, that, that jump

on. And so it's, it's, it's this really, one of the things that I love about it, it's this really

unique mix. Um, when I talk about like online groups, I think you can get people in a virtual

conversation. Uh, you can get them together in a room, but if you tried to get them together,

like in a physical room and try to do the same thing, I don't, I just, I don't think it,

it works like, yeah, I'm 42. Um, I've, I've got people, I've, there's a woman in the group

who I was actually friends with her daughters, like growing up together, you know? And so

it's like a 70 year old person plus, and I'm not putting, you know, an age on Janice Collins.

I apologize. So, but you know, a 70 something, you know, um, I'm, I'm 40 somethings and there's

20 somethings in there. There's single moms. There's, uh, you know, uh, lawyer, dad with

working too much. And so it's, it's like all these different, um, types of personalities

come together, uh, and, and growing together. And what's, what's interesting and like, I didn't

put pressure on this and the group's only been meeting like six, seven months now, but they've

started calling themselves family. Like this wasn't me prompting or pushing them. They, they did that on

their own. And so now it's, it's like, uh, I wasn't, I wasn't able to be on recently and

had someone else lead the group for me and like, I'm getting messages, you know, hope things

are okay. Miss you today. And so like, there's, there's self accountability that that's grown

up within this group. That's so, um, it's so awesome, you know? And, and like the people

who are in the group, this online group that, that live in Miami, they're like a couple miles

away from a physical campus, but it's, it's a, it's a single mom. Who's like, yeah, I don't

have, I don't have the capacity to try to get my kid together and go join this thing, but

I need biblical community. So let me get it online. Or it's like I said, it's, it's a,

it's a dad who's a, uh, the single lawyer in his law firm. And he's getting home at work

at like, you know, eight o'clock at night and then to gear up to go, you know, do a

small group at a house isn't happening, but jump on a computer and do zoom, you know, all

of a sudden it opens the door for more of, of, of this community. Um, tell me like, give

me one story and exciting, keep going. I get my mom, my mom, she leads two online small

groups and we're going to get her on a podcast, but, and for her, like it was a rejuvenation

of, of her ministry life. You know, she's, she's 70, she's retired. She's thinking, okay,

it's, it's a, it's a young kid's world. Let, let them kind of, kind of run with the ministry.

And so she was literally like ending off her ministry responsibilities to simplify her life.

And then she discovered this niche of, of mentoring and discipling, you know, young professionals,

young girls and the availability to just do that. And so she picked it up and ran with it.

And so like one group wasn't enough. Now she's doing a second one. Um, so anyway, I can keep

going. I can brag about my mom. Yeah. Kevin, tell me one story, man. Tell, tell me something

cool. Yeah. So, I mean, I have, I have a lot, but, uh, let me just share with you the most

recent one. So at Saddleback, we do what we call quarterly planning. So we meet, uh, every

quarter and we just plan for, um, what new thing that we want to do. So, um, and we just plan

it by week by week. And at the end of this planning section, we have what we call vision stories.

What, what this is, is we have to write a fictional story. Uh, uh, if all these plans go well,

what kind of story are we going to be able to tell to other people? How will it, um, make

itself into a story? Cause we don't want to make it a, it just a work plan. We want to

be able to see the vision behind it. So my story has always been, Hey, we have, um, a person,

uh, who's in 40 somethings and who's just thriving in business. Uh, don't know the Lord, just doing

well on business, being recognizing knowledge in his neighborhoods and his corporate world and

everything, uh, kind of type a personality. And I always use, you know, that he, he's a, he's in

Ohio at Columbus, Ohio. I just make it up, you know, just to make it fun. And, and this person just

goes through, you know, coast through life and is really driven, but some, something really happens

where, you know, he starts to lose things and that could be anything. And it's just, we can just say

that life happens and it could be health, uh, related things. It can be relational, uh, related

things. And he just begins to drop everything. And, and in the midst of this, you know, there's a

neighbor, um, of, of his that hands him the purpose-driven life book right here. We got to

throw in there some, something in there and just reads the book, you know, gets to know that, you

know, there's a online service at Saddleback and he's heard of Saddleback church, but he doesn't

really know what it is. So he goes to our worship, uh, online and just watches it. And, you know,

long story short, uh, accepts Jesus Christ and he wants to dive into what this means.

Um, he wants to know more about the decision that he just made. So he just reaches out to

us and he realizes that there's, that he needs to belong to a family, just like you were saying,

Jeff. Um, it's not, uh, you know, church is not something that you put faith in. Uh, it's a

family you, you belong to. So he realizes, and there's some options for online small groups.

So he joins the online small groups and excuse me. And then he just gets to know all these

different people who are there to love him and support him. And after all of this, he decides

that because we, every, every now and then we say to the online small groups, Hey, if there

are people that are around you that you want to have home groups with, why don't you do that as

well? And so he decides to do a home group, he hosts it. And then he starts to meet with, you

know, with his small group to worship together and to have baptism and community, which we'll

talk about. So that has been always the Maya vision story. So a couple of weeks ago, I went to

Florida actually, um, in Tampa, Florida for a conference. And I, I knew there was a small group

out there that was meeting and that was meeting, uh, it was really growing. So I thought, Hey, uh,

it wasn't Kissimmee, uh, which was, I think hour and a half away from Tampa. So I just drove out

there and said, Hey, I'm going to, I want to come to your small group. And they were getting ready

for me and let's work worship together. And I just went without not really knowing who I'm going to

meet. I knew of the host, but, uh, not the stories behind it. So I went and I just, um, started talking

to them and her name's Connie and she gave me permission to share this wherever I want. Uh,

and so she, her story reflects the vision story that I've been, been writing, uh, for past couple,

couple of quarters. And it's just, Connie was doing really well in the business world. And, um,

something tragic happens and she gets to a point where she cannot leave the home. So literally,

uh, online church has become her family and her church. And she went to online small groups. She

joined another online small groups. She began to host a home group. And then the midst of all of this,

she, you know, gets baptized. And so, um, I, I visited her and we were, we were talking about it and I

had a, um, this is my new life t-shirt. This is the baptism t-shirt that we do on our, our baptisms.

And I just brought it not, uh, and I thought there may be someone that I need to baptize in my,

in this trip. I just brought it and she saw the shirt and she said, Hey, I'm baptized, but this is

such a, uh, uh, it's my story. Um, and she wanted to be baptized again. So I had a chance to baptize

her again. Um, and this, so it, it was so cool that we had someone come through our, the, the front door

of online church and she's now gathering in her home with, you know, friends and neighbors. And, um,

that's just a cool little story of how, how our ministry really works. So sure. That's, that's

awesome. And, and so, and, and Kevin, a lot of the listeners out there, man, they, they are starting

this, this church online. Uh, maybe they're toying with, they're asking questions and, and like the

story you, you just said there, uh, it's so powerful in the fact that it reflects an individual

like Connie is a real life person who was impacted by, uh, by church through Saddleback Church

online. And, and as a result of that and, and Saddleback providing online discipleship opportunities

for her to, to grow deeper in her faith and to strengthen what she believes, she got to the

place where she not only wanted to do physical or not only doing virtual, but eventually even going

to online, but to do a, a, a house, a, a home where now she's impacting people within, within her

physical community and, and bringing in and that store, just the, the angle of, would you baptize

me again? Like, it's so, it's so important to who she is. And so, you know, churches that are out

there that are just starting out, like, don't forget the stories. Don't forget the people. Um, Kevin,

how many times have you told that story? Man, since that happened, probably six or seven, eight times.

Yeah. When you get the wins, church online people tell everybody and their mother, text whoever,

put it on social media, like get it out there. Cause what you, and people who don't agree with,

with church online or think church online is wrong, they, they can have that opinion, but, but they

can't argue, uh, they can't argue a story. Like somebody cannot argue against whether or not Connie's

life was changed as a result of church online. Yeah. And so don't lose the individual, uh, aspect of

that. Celebrate the individual aspect of it. Yeah. And when you're discouraged, hang on to the, the,

the stories like Connie's that that's so good. I just want to encourage, uh, the listeners if

they're, you know, uh, if, if they're at a point where they're kind of considering to start it or not,

man, there are so many stories that God's brewing. Um, when you started that you, you'll see so many

stories of life transformation and life impact, um, through this, through this ministry.

Amen. Awesome. We're not done. I felt like that was a great place to land the plane, but I got more

questions. Remember. So what we're talking about here is, um, is, you know, challenges that people

have against church online. And so, you know, church online can't have biblical community.

Forget about it. Like, and Connie, Connie's a prime example of how, you know, and utilizing online,

online, the offline. We've talked about that. Connie grew in her faith online. Then eventually the gospel

impacted her offline world when she created her own home group. I mean, that's like the prime example

of how online, offline works. You don't know what online, offline is. Check this, the, the show notes

will link. And there's plenty of resources out there for that. But one of the other challenges, you know,

that, that I hear about, and to me, this, this is, this is funny, but you know, I understand, um, well,

it's, it's, yes, it's biblical, but the, um, you know, it's how this plays out kind of in the church world

is biblical ordinances, things like, uh, baptisms, things like communion, um, some of, some of these items

and, you know, and being a former online pastor, you know, I've, I've heard these stories all the

time of, or the challenges of how, how do you do communion online? You can't, you can't do communion.

You can't baptize somebody through a computer. Like, and so it gets, so it, it can't be church

because you're not, you're not able to do this. And, and, you know, once again, you know, it's funny,

the first couple of times I kind of like, I kind of like got angry. And so confession, confession is

good for the soul. Right. And so when, when the challenges come up on me, I am a type A type person.

And so somebody steps up, I'm going to step up too. Um, but it, but it's interesting how, you know,

when, when you really listen to the questions about what they're, what they're questioning and how

they're wrestling with these things and now, okay, how, so if you were trying to like lead a discipleship

movement online and was important, you know, ask the person, how would you do communion and get them to even

start to, to wrestle with, with what it looks like, kind of flip the coin a little bit on them. Um, but, but in

your context, Kevin, I'd love some of the stuff that Saddleback's doing on this, you know, especially as

you're looking at doing the, the home groups, uh, the micro locations that, that, that you guys are starting to

grow into like, or just in general, somebody watching a service, how do you do communion? How do you do baptism?

Yeah, for sure. That's a great question. And that, that is a question that we get asked often, uh, even in the

midst of our staff say, Hey, so I know you guys do baptism and communion. Do you guys baptize people online, like

virtually? So we get that questions a lot. So the short answer for that is no, we don't do baptism

virtually. Uh, but we do. Although how funny talking about your guy with the gym, get an iPhone that's

waterproof, like habit first, like, no, I'm totally kidding. Don't do that. Sorry to interrupt Kevin,

please keep going. No problem. No problem. So we're all about just decentralizing and empowering people

to become the, the person who can baptize another person. So what we do is, so I'll just talk about

baptism first, um, for baptism, um, for baptism, because we have small groups, literally all around

the world. And there are people who wants to make the decision of, uh, of being baptized. So whenever

we get those requests, we just go through, uh, some, some of the basic trainings. And like I said,

in the introduction, we try to look at the Bible and just draw out the essence of these ordinances.

What does baptism mean essentially in the, in, in the biblical times and what, and for what Jesus

says and what Paul says in, in first Corinthians, um, sorry, that's, that's communion, but what,

what Gospels says about baptism. So we go through basic definitions of baptism and something that we

really stress on, uh, regarding baptism is baptism is your outward expression of your inward decision.

And baptism doesn't save you, but it means that you are already saved. So we go at the heart of that

person's decision of taking, uh, of putting their faith in Jesus Christ. And as long as we confirm that

we want to have you be baptized. So we would get on a three-way call with someone who's, who's already

been baptized by immersion. And then we would go through this training together and say, Hey, so-and-so

is interested in being baptized. And we noticed that she lives by you. And we would love if you could

be baptized, uh, baptize her. And, uh, we go through the definition of what baptism is. And just like we're

going through it right now. And then we just go through some logistics, say, Hey, um, let's pick a

location, uh, like a lake or pool or beach where you can, you can be completely under the water. Um, and,

and, and, and, and baptize you, if, uh, baptize one person at a time, if there's couples, um, you

would want to baptize one person first because we want to make this an individual, um, event and,

and, and just have people around, um, that person who's been a part of her faith journey. Uh, so,

because this is a celebration. So we would go through these logistics and, um, of how you can,

you know, do baptism in their, in their area. So, uh, we do all of the trainings virtually like this on

a zoom call or on a, on an audio call. And we answer all the questions and we just release them. Hey,

you're free to, to baptize and just pick a location and a date and, um, go ahead and, and baptize that

person. So that's how baptism works for, for us. I, I, I love this. And one of the things,

and you flew by it real fast, but what it, what it is, is it's, it's decentralizing the ministry

in context. Uh, and so, and if you're, if you're serious about church online, you gotta look at that

phrase of decent because in the reality is, and we talked about this with, uh, with Jay back in episode

three is church online, as it grows, will quickly outscale, um, what you're able to do organizationally,

you know? And, and I think Jay was, Jay was mentioning that right now there's like 50 people

on a waiting list to get baptized. And so if it's, you know, if, and he was talking about if it's,

if it's waiting for, for saddleback staff to fly out there, uh, you know, I mean, so that that's,

that's a lot of expense back and forth to do that. But, but what I love about this is we're,

we're decentralizing the ministry away from church leaders, church staff, uh, paid pastor professional,

uh, and, and realizing, Hey, the same gospel works for the people as it does for the pastor,

the same Holy spirit that's in the pastor is in the, is in the people. So let's train the,

the people to do this, to, to be the pastor, be the shepherds, uh, to, you know, to be able to

spiritually lead in those, those situations. And so you're, you're empowering not the pastor to be the

hero coming in, but you're empowering, you know, the, the people to be the hero and, and leading,

uh, in that situation. So, uh, I love the fact of, of decentralizing and I've, we've got some other

resources and stuff we talked about. We'll put it in the show notes, but decentralizing it is a great

way to empower and spread the reach of your ministry beyond just the, the circle of influence of, of where

your physical church is. Yes, exactly. That's, that's exactly right. So we've got, we've talked about,

uh, we talked about baptism, we, you know, some of, some of the trainings and that, and, uh, what,

what is, what is, what does communion look like? How have you been kind of creative in that space

or what does Saddleback do when they handle communion online? Yeah. Communion, we take the

same approach of, Hey, what does communion look like in, in the new Testament? And we, um, basically

look at Matthew 26 where Jesus does the communion with this, with his disciples and the first

Corinthians, uh, where Paul addresses the Corinthians about the community, uh, about the communion.

And we just realized that it's an, it's something that you do with your community to give thanks

and to remember what Jesus has done in, in, uh, in their lives. And we just realized that this doesn't

have to be in the physical building of the church, right? Because it doesn't say anything about the

physical space. It just says, Hey, do this in remembrance of Jesus Christ and what he has done

in the cross. And these, there are elements that are involved that symbolizes Jesus's body and Jesus's

blood. And we just wanted to say, Hey, this is what communion is. It's meant to be done in community

with believers. Um, real time. Um, real time. We just add that because we, we, we want to have some

people in the, in the, in the same virtual place at the same time. And, and we say, this is something

that you do for to, to give thanks and to remember what Jesus has done in your life. So it's gotta be,

uh, for believers. If you're not a believer yet, uh, we just, uh, we just want you to actually watch

and see what we do, uh, to, to, to give thanks to, to our Lord. So we just thought those are the

essence of what communion is. And we just said, Hey, just like baptism, we want to empower you to do

communion in your small groups. So for some people that would be home groups. So I think you can

just kind of imagine, uh, what could happen in the home group space because they can get the elements,

uh, prepare elements and they read the verse, uh, first Corinthians verse, and then they take a time

to thank God for the forgiveness that they received. And then they take the elements and then just stay

sure, uh, about what, uh, what that means for one another for online groups. Uh, it takes a little

bit more effort, but it's not something that's unnatural because we can just come together like

you and I are coming together in this virtual space, which everybody's now acknowledging as a real

legitimate space. If we come in a lot real time and then we prepare elements individually. So you,

Jeff, you would prepare the elements, uh, just bread and juice, and I would do the same and go through

the same thing. Uh, there will be a host or facilitator of communion saying, Hey, um, this is

what communion means. And this is where it comes out in the Bible. And for what Jesus has done,

let's take a time to give thanks to Jesus individually and take the elements and share in, in, in a conversation.

So that, that would be what communion looks like on an online spot.

So you guys, I mean, there, there's so much there, but in context of communion, you guys do communion

more in the group environment online than you do in the, in a church service environment.

You know, we, we used to do it in a church environment where we said, Hey,

because we do, we do communions, uh, and we broadcast that whenever we do it at our physical

campus. And we say, Hey, we're doing communion this weekend. So why don't we, you watch and do it with

us? But we just thought Jay and I thought, Hey, we are all about decentralizing and empowering

believers to do, uh, to these ordinances. Why don't we do a training? So we did a training last week and

we're basically launching this idea of, Hey, you can do it with your small group whenever you want to,

to remember, to remember what Jesus done in your life. So, uh, we're still doing the online service, um,

and inviting people to do it with us in the online service, but Hey, you could do it with your small

group whenever you want.

We're more intimate, more familial. Um, yeah, there, there's a, there's a lot of good there. I

hadn't, I hadn't flipped that switch in my head, but that's really a good idea. Um, you know,

still do church, still do communion in context of the entire church. When you're gathering together

as a whole body, even doing online, you know, at the same time as an, as an online former online

pastor, like I've done that and I've, I've gone through those experiences. Uh, but there's something

intimate about doing it, you know, in the, in the, in the small, um, six people, eight people,

10 people, people that you, you know, um, you know, gather, get the elements together and do it

either in, in a home group or, you know, virtually through like a zoom thing and everybody bringing

their own, um, you know, uh, bread and juice or, or whatever the representation of a fed is, um,

man, that that's awesome. But by doing these things, right, we start to, um, chisel away at

some of these perceptions of what we can't be church online because we're not doing,

you can't, you can't baptize somebody. You can't do communion. Well, no, you can, it,

it looks different. Um, arguably, if you really look at some of the context and to your point,

biblically, there are times where a church online actually looks more like the

biblical model of the church than the church is, but, um, you know, uh, but I, the, so the,

the, but the coexistence of online and physical, like, I think they both work together well.

And so, man, you've told some, some great stories, uh, and some, some great examples.

I will not forget Connie's story, uh, for, for a long time. Hey, we're going to link to the, um,

the, the trainings, uh, that he had talked about. Uh, I think they're on YouTube, right? Um,

yes. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll link to it in the show notes and, and you can have it there. So it's nice

and easy, uh, and clean for you. Hey, um, just, just as we're wrapping up, we got maybe five more

minutes, but like what, what, what's another challenge out there that you've, you've heard?

I'm just curious. Cause this might, Kevin, this might be the thing that I'll see the next step or

another, another episode soon. What's another challenge that you've heard? Hey, you can't be

church because blah, blah, blah. Um, I think the, everybody has, what I realize is everybody has

different definition of community. Um, and I think that the aspect of community is actually being

developed as the technology is changing the world. So I used to think, you know, I was raised up in a

very conservative church where, Hey, community can only happen in a church. Like you're, you're a church,

but you're part of the church family. If you're inside of a church and you meet the other person

inside your worship center. And so that has been, you know, my, my definition of community, but I realized

that there's community outside of church, you know, in my school and in my, you know, there's people that

I met outside the church that I still do life with, and that's also my community. So that kind of broke

out the definition that I was given when I was being raised up in a, in a church. And I realized

through the stories like, um, the, the, the working out at the fitness and through the stories of,

of Slack and, you know, the, the story of the Slack group is actually, it was told by someone

as, as a vice president of, of a very well-known company. And just to see that happen, uh, for our,

for someone who was very successful, it just began to break down what community actually means.

So the, the, the, the challenge that I get, the question that I get was, Hey, can you call

a virtual community, real community? And I think the answer is absolutely yes, because,

and I think the people outside of the church answer this question for us because they're already doing

community, um, virtually and through the things like Skype and Slack, they're already doing it. And,

and, and let me tell you something that I learned. Um, I was, I use Zoom, uh, mainly for our, our video calls.

And I was trying to have a way to subgroup and subgroup we can talk about later, but it's a way

to when in a home group, we wanted to put, um, kind of divide the group into, you know, men and women

so that we can talk about things in a more intimate ways. And, and I was, you know, thinking of ways

how we can do subgrouping online. And I was just talking to my volunteers and he, uh, one of my

volunteers uses Zoom and he actually told me a way to do, you know, subgroups by using the, the breakout

function in, in Zoom and they Zoom has just developed this. And my volunteer told me about this. So

what I realized was, Hey, there are people in my community that are already using this at work

and they're giving me solutions to my questions and my, uh, my challenges of how can we create

authentic, realist, real, real, uh, community, and they're already putting the answers out there for

us. So there are a lot of questions, but then with the effort of our community, I feel like we're making

progress. That's awesome. Yeah. The breakout rooms are very cool. That, that is a relatively new feature,

but you know, and the thing that I love about this is your volunteers, you know, your leaders,

the people that are involved within your online community care enough about it to like dig in

and explore and, and to learn what's out there. Um, you know, and I often found for myself that,

that they were, they were, and I'm an, I'm a, an aggressive, innovative type of guy, but they were

often people that were leading me and saying, Hey, have you seen this? Have you tried this? Have you thought of

this? Um, and so like they were aggressive as well in trying to figure out how best to use

the technology for it to, to solve a lot of these problems. Um, and to try to help proclaim and to

get, you know, church online, the exposure that it needs. Um, well, I tell you what, Kevin, man,

this has been a great conversation. We're going to have to do it again. Cause I feel like, um, we just,

just, we barely scratched the surface of, of a much deeper thing. Uh, but I love what, uh, what you're

doing and what J combination are doing out there, uh, to kind of push the, the limits, uh, of, of

community in context of, of online. Like it's not enough just to do the, um, uh, just to do broadcast

the service, but to work in the focus on creating that community piece. That's so essential. Uh, if

we are really going to call church online, a church that functions in online space, uh, the best thing

you said, and if I want, I want to sign up someone up just in this one statement, at least of what I

heard today, uh, church don't become a bottleneck, uh, release some of the power that we would normally

say, oh, that's something that church has to do, or, you know, let's get a pastor to do that.

Let's put them on a list and we'll figure out how release that power and let, um, and train, uh,

volunteers, train people to, to do those things, train them how to do the baptisms, how to do the

communion. Um, you know, and you'll see, you'll see the ministries expand and grow because you're no

longer the lid. You're no longer the bottleneck. It's, it's much larger than that. So decentralize

that and empower people out there, uh, to become the spiritual leaders really that God empowered

them to be. So Kevin, thank you very much for joining us today. Uh, this has been awesome. Uh,

any 20 seconds, any closing thoughts before you go? Yeah, I, you know, what online church has

allowed me to do was by thinking, um, what could be, it actually helped me to go deeper into the Bible

and see the essence of what Christianity is. So I want to invite, you know, the listeners to get into this,

to development so that you can continue to see what Bible Christianity really is.

That's, that's awesome. There's so much to that, um, of, of digging into it. I mean, I've, I've often

thought about doing an online Bible study just for like online pastors and some of us that are out there

and just unpacking that because there's so much richness in the Bible towards what church really is

that defines church online, but doesn't necessarily match the, what the typical of American church model

has become not slamming the model. Just it's, it's, it's, uh, doesn't always match up. So yeah, I would love

that. If you're interested in that, uh, hit me up on social media. Kevin, where can people find you on social

media just as we close?

Yeah, I'm on Facebook and I'm on Instagram, uh, as Kevin Chaehwan Lee. And I, I'll tell you what Chaehwan

is. That's my Korean name, but, uh, you can maybe link that on, on the, on show notes.

Yeah, we'll put that on the show notes and, and that'll be great. Uh, I'm dear Fedge on all the

networks and hey, Kevin, it has been a pleasure to hang out with you. This has been great. Thank you

for your time and your insight listeners. Glad you could join in and be part of this. Once again,

next up episode eight, we've got Ben Stapley coming up, uh, talking about communicating in context

of church online. It's going to be a great episode. You don't want to miss it. Uh, for Kevin, my name is

Jeff. Thank you very much for being here and we'll see you next time on the church digital podcast.

Y'all have a good day.