EP006: Jason Morris & Discipleship Pathways for Church Online

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. My name is Jeff Reed, and I'm joined

today by our guest host, Ray DeArmas from Christ Fellowship Miami. Hey, Ray, you want

to say hey to everybody?

Hey, everybody. It's good to be with you again. We're so excited to be back.

Awesome. Thanks for that. And I'm joined by a special guest today, Jason Morris from Westside

Family in Kansas. And we are actually, hey, Jason, man, why don't you just tell us a little

bit before we dive into all that, just tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of

what your role is there at Westside Family and who you are.

Okay. My official title is Global Innovation Pastor at Westside Family Church. And usually

when I tell people that, they kind of tilt their head and say, well, what does that mean?

And that's when I get to have the fun conversation of sharing with them that I wear a lot of hats

at Westside. But my main responsibilities is overseeing all things technical, which would include

our IT stuff, as well as all of our online ministry, website, things of that nature. But as we have

globally scattered the seed with our messages and church online and things of that nature,

the crazy thing is that it's spawned off global church planting movements all around the world,

specifically where we're working is in Southeast Asia, South Africa, and India. But we also have like

microsites in France and Paraguay and peppered around all over the place. And basically, because

I enjoy tech, that's the tool that I tend to use the most. And since tech tends to scale well,

we're able to leverage that technology to resource a lot of these places all around the world that are using

our content and in their own way, sharing the gospel wherever they live.

I love that. By the way, like that's the coolest job title, Global Innovations Pastor.

I mean, I've had a lot of job titles in my life, but I'll just be honest, that gives me something to

aspire for. So, well, you know, a lot of what we do here at the Church Digital Podcast is we talk

through innovations. And so I definitely want that Jason and Ray on to have this conversation. But today,

I want to hone in specifically in context of Church Online. And we've been talking a lot about,

you know, doing the services and the necessity of having the Church Online services. But then a lot of

it's what happens next or why are we doing this? And so that we can start to understand why we're doing

these services and what do we do with these people once we connect with them in context. So much of

Church Online is all about that weekend or it's all about that broadcast, but there's really so much

more that comes in context to it. And so what I wanted to talk about, and this may be a new term for some

of you that are out there listening or watching, is this idea of a discipleship pathway. And so in

context of Church, a discipleship pathway is basically it's everything that happens except Sunday or Sunday

is the first step of what happens. And so, you know, let's say somebody gets saved watching your

service online. What happens? Now, in a physical environment, a lot of time we have that plan already

placed where there's, okay, well, if somebody gets saved, we do this and we connect them to this person and

they join this small group or this thing. And there's intentionality towards that. But a lot

of times when that happens in an online space, it just, it gets crickets. There's really no plan for

that. We haven't thought about that. And so I really wanted to take this conversation to just learn from

these two guys here, Jason and Ray, and start to unpack, hey, why are we not paying attention to this? Or what

can we do to start to leverage some of that? And so Jason, man, start the conversation for us. Like,

what does the discipleship pathway, what does that look like there?

Okay. We are, just to be completely transparent, we are in the middle of a year-long transition right now of

upgrading and updating our discipleship pathway. And we're on the tail end of a campaign or journey,

whatever you want to call it, church-wide. It's using the Believe material. Our new lead teaching pastor,

Randy Frazee, wrote the book. And basically it's a data-driven, results-based form of knowing what

key beliefs, practices, and virtues actually move the needle in someone's spiritual life.

And it was data that was, you know, pulled from Gallup and all these other guys. And they figured out,

okay, if we could distill down into a framework of what discipleship actually is to begin with,

then we can actually start to work on it. So we're actually in the middle of right now taking our

church through that. We've gone through the 10 beliefs, the 10 practices. And this past Sunday,

we started on our first of the 10 virtues, which was love. And what ends up happening is that it's,

the 10 virtues are basically the fruit of the spirit with humility and hope thrown in.

And so when it comes to the virtues, that's what people tend to, that's what they experience with

a person. Because like Jesus said, from your fruits, you will know them. And so in that sense,

people see your virtues. They may not know what your beliefs are, or they may or may not know what

your practices are, but they can definitely sniff out your virtues fairly quickly. And so what we've done

is, is we've kind of done it reverse foundation layer by layer saying, okay, if these are your virtues,

what are the practices that one would do so that that becomes who you are? And then what are the

beliefs that underlie those particular practices that cause you to act the way you do? And so basically,

that's, that's what we're doing. We're, we're unpacking the whole thing. It's not a short process.

It's 30 weeks. We've taken, you know, by the time we're done this may, it will be pretty much a year

that we've taken our folks through this process. When we're finished with introducing people with the

framework, then we'll be able to say, okay, we've got an assessment prepared for them so that they can

take it and then find out, okay, what am I weak in, in my beliefs, practices, and virtues, and what then

would be the thing that I could work on going forward as I want to grow in my spiritual walk. So

that is the update to what we've done. Now, what that whole framework does is it really concentrates

hard on one's character. Yeah, there is so much right there. I want to back up because I don't want

this to get, get lost. Your entire church is, is going through this strategy right now, not just

physical, online, virtual, everybody is, is going through. Everybody, and not just the adults either.

The kids are doing it. They're memorizing verses for each of the beliefs, practices, and virtues.

There are declarations for each of them, and there's 30 of them. Holy cow. And our small group

material is on it. Our student ministry is doing it. Kids ministry is doing it. Family devotionals,

the whole thing. And we kind of flip the classroom in that people are reading the chapters of the book

to introduce themselves to that particular key practice or virtue or belief before they hit Sunday.

And then Sunday is kind of like the cherry on top because we've read it, we've talked about it in

group together, and then we hear about it on the weekend. Okay. Jason, this sounds very similar to

what I've been a part of with churches before. Is this kind of like a campaign strategy where it's like,

hey, everybody across the board has taken a pause from what you're doing, and we're all going to do this

together. Yes, that's exactly what's going on. It is a campaign strategy, and it is a campaign

that churches can use and purchase and that sort of thing. Fortunately for us, Randy, he's the author,

so he developed it. And our Next Steps pastor helped Randy develop it many, many years ago. So with

those two guys on board, on staff, of course, it's like, yeah, let's do this. You know, we totally know

what's going on. Let's do this campaign, but it's available for any church to use.

So tell me about how that's impacting some of your digital environments because I'm familiar with,

and especially some of the folks who might be listening, like if you've ever done purpose-driven

life or purpose-driven church, that was kind of a campaign strategy that many of us did like back

in the day that like, hey, everybody's on pause. Back then I was a student guy, and so students would

not like, this is how it impacts us, like in particular. And so what I'm curious to see as

to how the campaign strategy has impacted your digital environments as far as that's concerned.

Well, our digital environments are designed to synergize with what we're doing on site,

because in my mind, online and on site should not be separate. They should synergize with each

other. Like on site helps online, online helps on site. So when we're doing our online life groups,

they're doing belief stuff, and the weekends are all belief stuff. So for us, it was a no-brainer.

We're not going to reinvent the wheel here. We're going to do what everybody else is doing.

And yeah, so for us, it was actually pretty easy. Now, again, trying to convince everybody,

because I know how those campaigns work, because I've done them, and I actually helped facilitate

40 Days of Purpose in South America way back in the day. And I know the angst that many ministries

feel whenever they're doing a campaign, when the whole church begins to align, is that everybody has

to lay aside their own little pet things that they want to do for six weeks. Well, this one,

the cool thing about it is, is that we laid aside everything for an entire year. And what it's done

for us is that in six weeks, you gain a lot of synergy and momentum, and then everything goes back

to normal. Because you know that you can like take a pause. For us, this was a whole lot more than a

pause. This was a reset for the entire church to all of us know and to align ourselves well, and to get our

systems to align well. So we do that over the course of a year, you begin to create ministry habits that

force alignment in ways that even in six weeks, you can still do and get the benefit of, but you just

get so much more out of it from a system standpoint as a church when you do a churchwide over the course

of a year. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And I think for some folks, this probably may sound

nuts to them. But to me, it's kind of freeing in terms of content, you know, done for an entire year

and giving direction. Just imagine what your worship arts people could do if they knew six months ahead

of time, what the sermon was going to be about. Yeah, exactly. It gives them a lot more time to

free up to spend time on the actual ministry to people as opposed to, well, we got to develop content

week to week. It can't be very free. And then for digital environments, especially for promotion and

kind of leading up to it, you're almost, you know, I'm even thinking of like the online service, you're

able to say, hey, next week, we're going to talk about this. It's almost like, you know, the next time you

join us, we already know where we're going. And we can even give you a hint as to where you're going,

kind of bridging the gap between the two. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, what's great about it is if

you have a plan like this for an entire year, then you're absolutely right. It helps to create new

ministry ruts for people that instead of being a slave to Sunday, because it's always coming, and always

being about the weekend and the production of the weekend, when a lot of that stuff is already done,

then you actually can focus on what's actually more important. And that's what's not really

happening on Sunday, but what's happening throughout the week, when it comes to the one-on-one

relationships, and the real discipleship that takes place outside of the Sunday service. And I think

it's been really healthy. I'm confused. There's stuff that happens at church outside of the Sunday

service? We just pray, clap, and whistle the whole time, and you know, in the church office.

We just like turn the entire like thing on its ear. That's incredible. I kid. So let me ask this

question, because I was incredibly rude. So this rolls for 12 months, right? So what happens in the 13th

month? Because you've got people that are probably coming in, in that 11th month, in the 12th month,

they're catching the end of it. Does this recycle? Do you do it again? Do you launch it

at times? Like, how does this belief ideology, once you get past the initial onboarding of your entire

church, how does it live on beyond that? Well, it will always live on as like a small group curriculum

as part of the way for us to, with new folks, introduce them to the discipleship framework as it

relates to their character. And so that will always be available for them. We also have as part of our,

you know, the app that we're working on with the assessment and the discipleship pathways uses that

framework as well. All of the messages that we will preach, you know, because I've, you know,

talked with the, you know, our teaching team, and they've got a cycle already mapped out past in like

month 13, 14, where they talk about, okay, we're going to be talking about the virtue of joy this week,

you know? And so they will be referencing this underlying framework, you know, for the foreseeable

future. And so even if they're, even if the sermon topic is a little bit different, you know, you've got

30 things to talk about. Now that's enough to talk about really. And they're foundational types of

things, whether you're talking about beliefs, like, um, I believe in a personal God that he cares about

and is interested in my daily life. Or another big one is, uh, the authority of scripture. I believe

that the, the Bible is, you know, God's inspired word and is relevant to rule my daily life. I mean,

you get those two things together. Holy cow. You know, you're already, those worth of stuff right

there. Yeah. You know, you could, you could call it whatever you want to call it. We're going to be

doing at the movies series right after we finish off Believe. But I'm telling you, a lot of the,

a lot of the topics, even though we're talking about like Black Panther or whatever, we're actually

going to be referencing a lot of these core beliefs, practices, and virtues when we're talking about,

you know, whatever movie that we happen to be talking about. Well, that's good. So did,

did your pastor freak out when you told him, Hey, listen, I got the great idea to take this online

or was this his driving force? Was he like, no, man. Loved it.

Part of the reason why Randy, uh, part of the reason why Randy came to Westside is because he loved

what we were doing online. That's great. Because he was like, dude, you know, you guys are rocking it.

Because he was used to what was going on with O'Kills. And he was like, dude, you know,

we've got an online pastor, people who actually, you know, care and talk to people who are showing

up online that do follow up and discipleship. You know, he was like, and then micrositing with it

and stuff. I mean, he's been pushing me and it's been really, really great because he has such a social

media presence anyway. It's really did a lot of our efforts anyhow, which is so great when you have the

leader who's digitally minded and social media minded to begin with and knows how to leverage it

and uses it, you know, to get the message out. So it's been a really joy to work with him.

Well, and Randy may be, I mean, just even looking at his pedigree and his experiences coming through,

he may be one of those, um, you know, cutting edge guys who has a, has a richer picture of that,

just through of where he's come from. And he sees the benefit of that and, and even working under,

um, you know, he was XP under Lucado for, I don't know how many years down in San Antonio. And so

like the majority of the pastors out there, let's, let's just, you know, bring it back to maybe reality

for the majority of those listening. They don't have that guy. Um, they don't have it. They don't

have a 12 month plan. They don't have, um, you know, they're, they're week to week. They're trying

to, um, to, to, to build something or design something out. And so we're, let's, let's, so maybe

let's, let's reflect, reflect back a little bit. Like I've had a conversation with a pastor, um,

a guy and I've told this story probably on this podcast, but a guy gets saved in Finland, um,

watching a church online service. And so I tell the story a lot, Hey, pastor, you're putting your

services on Facebook. Let's say somebody gets saved in Finland. We're, we're not called to drive by

evangelism. We should actually care for this soul that God's entrusted to us. What should we do?

You know, in the pastor and I tell the story and I've had it multiple times. I've had a pastor tell

me that guy in Finland's not my responsibility. Yes. He came to Christ listening to my message,

but he's, yeah, sorry. Um, not out, not outing any churches, not saying who, but I've had that

response multiple times. So like, let's, let's hone in on that because those people are out there

and they, they do need, and, and our, our listeners are online, you know, ministry people,

our online pastors need to address that and work through that. So like, what are some takeaways?

What are some things that you guys are in the front lines of, of, of ministry here? Like what's,

what's a, what's a baby step? What's a next step for somebody like that who needs to set up some

sort of a discipleship process, but maybe isn't clearly defined on what that even is in the physical

church, much less for the virtual side. Well, let me, let me, let me kind of interview Jason a

little bit on this. All right, Jason. So within your, within your process, um, somebody gets

outside of your context. Um, what, what's the process that you guys typically do for this person?

Um, what's their next step? What do they do? Okay. Well, here, here's, here's where I think,

um, it's super helpful for churches because they can easily think, oh, with the billions of people

that are on the internet, how do I structure a system that will scale to do a lot of volume?

And the truth of the matter is for most of us, especially with the ratios that we do with

online, the number of people that actually respond or do baby steps of what I call baby steps of

obedience, whether it be, you know, clicking on a link or raising their hand for salvation or

whatever. The number of those is usually way more manageable than what we're thinking. So we're

thinking, you know, okay, how do I, how do I deal with thousands of people? Well, dude,

just deal with the one person who responded, you know, that means that they're on Facebook and they

came to Christ. In my mind, I would be like, forget about the system. If the person were like right

smack in front of you, what would you do? Do that, you know, just use Facebook, you know,

DM the guy and start the relationship in a personal human way. Because the truth of the matter is a lot

of times I think people, they look at the big numbers of online, the vanity metrics, and then

they think, oh, if I had a church of, you know, 40,000, how would I structure my church? And then

they get overwhelmed. When the reality is those vanity metrics are so wildly inflated that usually

when you're dealing with people that actually obey, it's way more manageable. So you're talking about

the one guy in Finland, well, dude, it's just one dude, you know, and not to mention the fact that I do

feel that I would be responsible for that guy. And the reason why is because Jesus brought that guy to

me. So it's like, it would be a lot like Philip going to the dude who was, you know. Yeah, the Ethiopian

eunuch. And he's like, oh, well, you know, he's outside of Jerusalem, so I don't have to worry about

him. Well, you know, no, the spirit brought him there for a reason. And so if Jesus is bringing you to

Finland for a reason, you had better execute, dude. That's how I see it, because we're going to give an

account for that. You can make a phone call, you can, if they're contacting you on WhatsApp, and make

it as human as possible, and then only create a system as volume warrants. And you'll probably find

that you don't need much of a system, and you probably would over-engineer it anyway. And just,

just, just be a human being, be a pastor, do your job, you know. And then if the volume gets high

enough, you will probably figure out the system, because you'll notice patterns as you do ministry,

rather than trying to engineer those patterns ahead of time, and then have crickets and have nobody

show up. Ask me how I know that. That's good. That's good. And you know, it's great that you

mentioned this, Jason. I think so often we get so caught up in the vanity matrix, like you said,

but the reality is, is we're accountable for each and every person that God brings to us. And you

know, pastors, we're so quick to talk about that in terms of evangelism, but as we think through these

next steps for online, we do kind of get in our own way in terms of how we would take somebody through

that next step, what we would do for that person. So I think a lot of times, even in the way that we

think about it, where the process, the discipleship process would start at conversion, the way that

we think about it starts way before then. Discipleship starts before conversion. So if

people are showing up, and they're like listening, and they're, they're actually, you know, paying

attention, that's like the Zacchaeus in the tree, you know. And what you need to do is go over to his

house for dinner, you know. And part of that, all of that is part of the discipleship process

before he believed. So when you unpack the pathway, for us, it starts with the Get Connected

orientation. And inside the Get Connected orientation, we do talk about salvation, we do talk about

baptism, we do talk about all of the resources that we have, so that you can find your character

and your calling, and find out the unique way that God has wired you and has you alive, so that you can

make a dent in the universe before you die. So that's basically what we do. We throw all that

out there and say, okay, here's the tools that we have at your disposal. And we even have like

shape coaches. I don't know if you're familiar with like purpose driven shapes. So we have a shape

server that, that we developed that helps people as it relates to their calling side. And, you know,

shape.westsidefamilychurch.com. So they're, they're digital tools that we use, whether you're on site

or online. And since we're digitizing everything anyway, just so that it can scale well with our

people that are on site, well, then that's a slam dunk when it comes to online ministry. But that's,

that's what I would do is from our context is just put you right into the slipstream of what we

already have as a church on site. And that way it really helps to have one unified strategy across

the church. And a couple of things happen when you synergize that way. One is with your staff,

many times online pastors really struggle with having the onsite staff get a vision for what's really

going on. But when that online admin staff has to do the follow-up for that guy that's in Finland,

he will immediately get a global mindset. If, because we already had a system where we had,

you know, deacons that would call up people who on a connect card would say, you know, I just accepted

Jesus. I'd like some follow-up where they call him up on the phone. Well, dude, that's easy. You know,

somebody from Finland just accepts Jesus. Well, I just throw them in that same system. And the deacon

calls them up because he's calling them up in Finland, whatever. It doesn't even matter. Right. And now

that deacon, he has a completely different mindset of what online ministry can do. So that really helps

sell for our staff team, what online ministry can do. And the other thing that happened was,

was as I started developing digital tools to help get this job done, a lot of our folks who then were

burdened with all of this follow-up in a global fashion, they came to me and said, Hey, well,

what would you do? And I'm like, well, I'd, I'd shoot him this email or whatever. And they'd be

like, dude, we should do this for all of our stuff on site. That's the key. It scales. And so what

happens is, is we just created a unified discipleship model, whether you're online or on site, it doesn't

really matter because at the end of the day, for most admin people, when it comes down to follow-up,

they're calling somebody or they're sending them an email. You can do that wherever you are in the

world. It really doesn't matter. You're exactly right. In terms of people need to stop viewing

the two audiences as separate. They need to start singing this together, which has kind of been a

theme that Jeff and I've been running with this time is a lot of folks want to separate as if

they're, they're serving two different churches when the reality is it's the same church.

Right. You know, everywhere. It doesn't matter if, if they're, if they're watching it digitally,

if they're, if they're sitting in a pew, they're obtaining the same content. They're going through

the same pathway and you're going to love them just the same. Right. Yeah. And

not only that, but I think, especially as we're noticing as pastors, how attendance patterns

have been shifting where, uh, they're not coming every week anymore. Right. Um, we're lucky if

they're coming twice a month, but what they're also doing while they may not be on site every week,

they're supplementing with online. So church attendance and, you know, Dave Adamson, I love

his quote when he says this church attendance is not declining, it's decentralizing. So when you look at

everything as one church anyway, chances are you're going to be finding that you're dealing with

people that are on site and online and they're probably the same people anyhow.

Um, yeah, like that's beautiful. So what are some, what are some like practical steps? What are,

what are some application? What are some touch points? I know you talked about like text. I'm just

thinking like guy at home, man, how do, how do I do this? We're doing phone calls. We're doing,

um, uh, emails. Texting is an option. You know, you talk some and you're doing some stuff with,

with mobile app. You hinted at that earlier. Like what some touch points that, that we can use to

interface with, with people, um, virtually or physically. Uh, well, I mean, you kind of mentioned

the bit, the big ones, I mean, especially texting super easy to do scale, copy paste stuff and people,

they read their texts. Holy cow. You know? And so for us, we use, um, with our church management

system, part of the reason why we decided on the one that we're using is that it has what's called

process cues inside of it. Um, and it basically creates a workflow with which, um, we can take

people through discipleship. So we take, we've got a master process cue or workflow for everybody in

our church and we can run reports off of it and help people step them through from one part to

another. And the main mechanism with which we use is email and texting because it just, it scales super

easy and it doesn't hardly cost anything. I mean, texting is even super cheap. So, but a lot of those

automated tools that we use so that nothing gets dropped to the, you know, so that we don't drop the

ball or people don't fall in the cracks that, that you would really only need if you're dealing with

a diverse and large staff with lots of handoffs between different ministries or departments.

That's why we needed that cohesive strategy for most churches, man, it's, it's actually a lot

simpler because you're probably dealing with one or two people or maybe even three staff people

anyway. And so those types of systems I think can be helpful, but it can also make, uh, make a,

a pastor kind of over-engineer himself. And so he's spending all of his time on the system

instead of spending his time with people. So if, if you can just think through, like if you were

face-to-face with somebody and say, okay, well, what would you do? Well then do that,

you know, and then just keep it very simple. And, and you could do like, if they're on Facebook or

whatever, a lot of folks are doing, you know, Facebook live or whatever. Well, Facebook gives

you a ton of tools, whether you're talking about Facebook message, you can call them up

with Facebook using the Facebook tools. You can do a video call, video chat, group chat,

group video call using all the Facebook tools right there for you. And so I would just stay within that

environment and try to stay native inside whatever environment that you found the person in or that

Jesus brought you to them in whatever environment that happens to be. So if it's in Twitter, then DM them

if they come to you, you know, using the church online platform, pretty much all you've got at your

disposal is an email address. And so use that, do whatever you need to do to actually have, begin a

conversation. Because what a lot of times happens in the, especially in the, in the online space,

is that everything feels like a download instead of a conversation. But church in its, in its best form

is really not a download experience, or at least it shouldn't be, in my opinion. It should be a

conversation. It's the one another's of ministry. It's the community that people really long for.

And what you might get them initially with like a download or a content or whatever that happens to be,

real church happens in community. And those are conversations. So the sooner you get to a

conversation, the better when it comes to their discipleship or whatever. And, you know, we can

talk about systems and stuff all day long, but really nothing beats the one-on-one conversation

that you can have with people and to pray with people and to find out, you know, what's going on

with them and where they feel like they need to grow and then create these individualized maps for

them. The only reason why we're creating algorithmic based discipleship pathways is because of the

scale that we're at right now. And not because it's really better, because, you know, we're going to

spend a whole lot of time creating all this stuff, you know, that we could be just with people.

But what we've learned over time is, is if you, if you're with people enough, you start to notice

patterns and that helps inform whatever kind of algorithm you wanted to make. So some of the

things that we found is, is that the big things that if you have someone who believes in a personal

God and the authority of the Bible, those are linchpin beliefs that affect everything else. So,

you know, if you can get them in scripture, then dude, do that. I mean, it's just like,

if you led somebody to Jesus, what would you do? You tell them to start reading scripture. Well,

if you lead someone online to Christ, what are you going to do? You're going to tell them to read

scripture. And one of the great things, even YouVersion has some really great tools to have

daily reading plan groups where you do that together. I've got one of those. So I invite them into a

daily plan group and I go through the scripture every year. So I'm on, you know, I'm on my 20th time

going through scripture. Right. And so I invite them into that. And there's ways that we can interact

with each other and kind of encourage each other, but just getting them in the scripture by itself,

there is no close second. Like when you do the data and we've got all this data now, but the funny

thing is, is that the data tells us what we already know is that, um, Bible engagement is the greatest

force for someone's spiritual growth with no close second. There is nothing out there like Bible

engagement. So you get someone in the scripture that will change their life way more than anything else you

could do. That's the biggest lever you can pull. So for me, it's just like, okay, get them in a YouVersion

group and encourage them that way. You know, get them in the scripture. You know, I gotta tell you, I was, I

wasn't expecting a global innovations pastor to walk on and say, yeah, just Bible engagement. Like that,

that's the, right. I mean, it's, it's like, I was kind of expecting the, the, Oh, we got to do this

and this and this and develop this system and API. Well, what you've really done here is you really

just made it very, very practical. Like it's, it's, it's not about designing all these systems. And,

you know, I think you use the word over engineering a couple of times in there. It's, it's the relational

aspect. There was a book maybe 15, 20 years ago with kind of the, the, it was a business book,

but it was high tech, high touch. And this idea of the more technology that we, we have and we utilize

the more important that, that, that touch is. And, and we, we, we lose the word engagement. We use it

so much that I think it's really lost. It's, it's meaning in context of engagement is a two-way

conversation. And as much as we're pushing content one way, we're having a conversation where it's

coming back to us. And, and, and we lose that in social media and we lose that in economy of scale

and all of these things where we're somewhere along the way, it really does come down to a,

a discipleship oriented relationship where we're helping people take these steps of faith where,

wherever they are. You know, I, and one of the things, and you said it earlier, I love the fact

that, that for you, the discipleship process doesn't happen at evangelism. It happens before that.

And so that, that you're tracking and you're building those relationships as, as you're going,

utilizing online and physical and, and melding and meshing them all together. And, and, and honestly,

Jason, you and Westside, man, you're, you guys are, man, more cutting edge, I think,

than I realized that you are, but cutting edge in the simplicity of, man, it's not about systems. It's

about relationships. And that's something that I think is, is very needed when we're looking at

churches and church onlines today.

Well, you also have to, um, I think one of the things about being innovative is not necessarily

being technological there. There, there is a sense in which, you know, the, the goalpost is moving

constantly. And one of the things that after doing this for a long, long time was back in 2010, when

we were first starting the tools that we had to actually follow up with people, weren't nearly as

personal as they are now. So before we had to do things a little bit in an impersonal way, because

there wasn't a good way for us to do it in a digital fashion. But today, man, I mean, look,

we're having the zoom call, we're having a face-to-face conversation for crying out loud,

you know, that kind of stuff wasn't really readily available. And it wasn't ubiquitous,

like it is now in 2019. And so all of these new things are appearing, giving us new tools

to be more, um, more focused on the community side of church instead of the content side of church,

because the truth of the matter is today, we do not live in an information scarce environment,

like we did back in 1950, when people would drive for miles to get content that they could not get

anywhere else. But what people will do, they will, they will go through all kinds of hoops to get to

true authentic community. Because while we live in a content rich environment, we live now today in a

community starved environment. And so our church, and I think most churches, if they were, if they were

thinking about where society is headed, and if they're thinking about how they can meet the needs

of society, they could pivot from a content based ministry to a community based ministry, and really

meet a whole lot more needs than by giving them this fancy sermon or whatever, which don't get me wrong,

sermons are great. But if you spend all of your time on content, and not on community, well, you know,

you're going to be competing with everybody else that probably has better content than you anyway.

So, and at the end of the day, that's a consumer. I mean, what you're doing is if the only thing you're

doing is you're creating, and I've been talking about this and blogging content and having

conversations, whatever. But at the end of the day, church online is a mirror of your church.

And if your church online is guilty of just creating content, you're creating consumers,

and chances are you don't like church online as a result of that. But truthfully, it's probably

because all you're doing is creating content, and not actually creating that community in your own

physical spaces. If you value the community physically, it's going to drip down to your

online spaces. If all you're doing is creating content, that is going to drip down to your online

spaces. And so it's having that wisdom to push community, to reinforce the gospel in that context.

Jason, man, that's so good. Ray, what are you thinking?

This is a fantastic word, Jason. And especially, you know, for the future, as we talk about content,

you know, and it's funny, because, and I don't think you're saying this at all, Jason, they're not

against each other. You know, a lot of folks...

No, they're synergistic.

Right. A lot of folks think, well, we have to focus and get like the best content out there. And they

don't see the link between the two as far as how content and community can work together to drive,

you know, the discipleship that's supposed to take place in the church. And so this is where,

you know, a lot of churches nowadays, you know, and many of us, we may get lambasted for, well,

you guys seem to be so much about, you know, the production of the show. And what they don't

realize is, no, no, no. If the content that we are producing doesn't drive people towards the

community that we're looking for, then really, this is where we're missing out on church. And it's

been that way since, you know, Jesus preaching at Sermon on the Mount.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And even he said, look, you're only sticking around because I fed you last time,

you know? So it's like, there are, there is a consumer mentality that happens, but that didn't

stop Jesus from putting the majority of his focus on the 12 and on the three. So you have different

scales and different sizes of groups that are better for different things. And there's a really great

book that really helped me to understand this, especially with a lot of the church planning

movement stuff that we're doing all around globally, was to understand that different scales,

different sizes of groups do different things better. So when you're talking about, you know,

teaching and, you know, healing ministry and stuff like that, like you see in Jesus,

that's for the thousands. But when you're talking about prayer, that's 120, like the group that met,

you know, before, before, before Pentecost. And when you're talking about training, like church

planner training or ministry training, he did that in groups of 70. And when, when he did discipleship,

he did that in groups of 12, but he didn't do accountability in groups of 12. He did accountability

in groups of three. So the three saw Jesus at his best, the transfiguration, and at his worst in the

garden of Gethsemane. And the 12 didn't see that. They got discipleship. They didn't get accountability.

So part of our discipleship strategy is also looking at, okay, what size group is better for what? And try

not to fool ourselves into thinking that we're doing discipleship on Sunday mornings with thousands of

people. It doesn't work that way. Discipleship works in those groups of 12. And we try not to kid

ourselves into thinking we do accountability in those small groups of 12. It doesn't work that way.

It works in those triads. And so we, part of our discipleship strategy as well, when we're talking

about people really digging down deep into what they're really struggling with, we look at the size of

the group that best matches what type of, uh, movement that we're looking for, whether it be

accountability or discipleship or training or prayer or teaching. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. I, you know, this is the Ted talk that I think people need to hear as far as these

environments are concerned, because so often, uh, you know, depending on who you talk to and

especially, you know, there is kind of an old school and new school mentality in this. When you talk to

folks about where does discipleship happen and where do, where do people get that in-depth teaching

the person who's a little more expository oriented may say, well, of course they get it on Sunday

morning, but what, what's tough to recognize. And even they'll agree with is not everybody's at the

same place wrestling with the same questions or even on the same level of obedience in terms of,

right. I'm here in the passage. I'm digesting this. Amen. Pastor, this already applies to my life.

And this is the next level that I'm ready to take it to. Some are still on step one. And so that can

be very frustrating for a lot of people to hear. What was the book? You said that was based on a

book, by the way, I love that talk. Like if, if there's anything people hear today, it's that there's

different types of, of messaging. There's different types of communication for different sizes. And, and,

and that, that thread, as, as you were describing it, like I could spend the whole episode just talking

with you. But like, what was, you said it was based on a book. Yeah. It's, it's church 3.0 by Neil

Cole. Church 3.0. One of the chapters in that book. And it actually, when you're talking about

micrositing, that book has been super helpful for me to help orient myself, um, into what, uh, a smaller

sized group could look like in a microsite environment. Um, because a lot of, a lot of churches that do church

online generally do it from a larger scale to begin with. So they're broadcasting the big scale.

And because that's what they broadcast and because people kind of imprint when they first, their first

experience with that particular church is at the big scale, they have a harder time, um, getting down

to the little things. Because if you notice the way that Jesus did it, he called his disciples before he fed

the 5,000. So a lot of times we get it a little bit backwards where we show them the big scale first,

because it's a lot harder than to have people, you know, we, we think it works, but it generally

does it. Well, you know, it's, it's, it's fun. You, uh, you, you said the average is all the stats,

there's flew by really fast, but you said that church planning training goes in groups of 70.

I think the average church in America, I may be quoting the wrong stat, but I'm pretty sure the

average church in America is 78 people. And so this, this idea of let's not just hoard these people in

buildings, but let's literally kick them out of the building and empower them with the gospel to do

these things and plant the little micro locations or whatever you want to call it. Yeah. It's a

little radical ideology. And sometimes it was funny. I used to feel like I was being subversive when I

was talking about this, but I realized like, I'm not, I'm not, it's not subversive. It's biblical.

Like we just, we just suck at this idea of trying to, you know, get people out of the buildings and

you need to talk about it. So. Well, it's interesting too, where even the groups of 70,

um, as I think it was like earlier this year when I was going through the scripture again,

um, I, it never hit me before, but there was also, there's these two groups. You have like 72 and

one and like 70 and another. Um, and somehow I came across scripture where I talked about Jesus,

you know, had another group of 70 and I was like, Oh, so there were two groups. So instead of having

150, which would be like, you know, or 142 or whatever, um, where, where the pastor would think,

Oh, there's more people. Jesus intentionally split the groups up to do what he needed to do.

So we had two groups of set one with 70, the other was 72, but the point being, and I think,

you know, Jeff, you're right on it is that most churches are primed to do some real church planner

training to do training at a level that, um, most churches, if they're in the thousand range,

like, you know, the upper 5% or whatever, that, um, it's really difficult to do that on a,

on a Sunday, but a church of 70 can do that on a Sunday. And that's a little bit of the,

the, the mind shift that can happen is that when you're dealing with different scales of groups,

it's better for different types of things. So if your group tends to be smaller, well then just do

with that, what is good for that size group. And then, you know, if it gets bigger, then you multiply

it out into, if you want to keep training, well then that means that you need to split off that,

you know, group into two groups of 70 instead of one big one of 150, because if you go to 150,

you're not going to get church planner training done, you're going to get a lot of prayer done,

you know, and that'll be great for that, but it just won't help you with the training stuff.

You gotta, you gotta get them, you gotta subgroup it if that's what you want to do. And you know,

the book kind of details that a little bit too.

By the way, like those, and you're just getting back to the audience that's listening,

like smaller church people. Some of you guys are at smaller churches and are trying this church online,

and some of you are struggling with budgets and why and vision and some of that. I mean,

I just want to encourage you guys to keep going. I'm more excited about the idea of a smaller church

doing church online than I am a mega church. And just coming from a guy who's literally working

in with churches in both environments, a mega church has red tape, it has leadership teams,

it has different vision, and it's a very long, in-depth conversation. A smaller church, though,

tends to be more of, let's give it a shot. Let's adjust. Let's see what happens. They're more hungry.

They're more interested in doing something innovative. And yeah, the budgets may not be in

place. But honestly, and just calling out, you know, some of the stuff that's Jason saying,

it doesn't require a massive budget to do some of this stuff. It just requires a different way of

thinking. Hey, listen, I could sit around here all day and just continue this on. I don't even know

how this conversation's been going lengthwise. But I know we're longer than what I said we were

going to do. Jason, thank you very much for that. I pray for the day where we actually get global

saturation in context through church online. That was beautiful. Ray, hey man, thanks for joining us

again. My name is Jeff. This has been the Church Digital Podcast. Thanks for the time, and we'll see

you later. Have a good one. See you next time.