BETA20: Rethinking Church Small Groups, Peloton Style (Clubhouse Edition)

Hey, welcome everybody to Clubhouse. Tom, you're welcome to hang out at the speaker level if you need to. You can go back down however you want to regulate yourself, man. This is going to be a fun conversation either way. But we are—I'm Jeffrey Reed. I'm excited to have you here.

So we are going to have a conversation here in context of small groups and how small groups maybe needs to change or what it looks like moving forward. It's interesting. We have conversations like this all the time here through Church Digital, through State Insurance Planning, talking with digital pastors, executive pastors, church leaders trying to figure out how to be effective in moving forward in physical space and digital space and everything in between. And so in a conversation with Lee Cote recently, talking with some other churches, honestly, it just sprung up in me this idea of, hey, we need to get some people together and kind of unpack this.

So we'll get into it a little bit, but at the core of it, it's, hey, let's rethink. What if we kind of paused? What if we kind of restarted? What if we blew up this idea of physical small groups, digital small groups, just the whole thing in general, and kind of revisited this concept?

So we are recording this conversation. I want to say this up front. This is on Clubhouse. I don't know about you, but there are people that love Clubhouse. I'm among them. But there are people that can't stand Clubhouse because they can't get on it because they're on an Android device or they're not able to jump in. They have FOMO. They're not able to engage it in real time. And so they want to have it. We distribute it on the Church Digital podcast. There's links to it in my bio, and we also distribute it in other ways on social media. And so we want to enable this conversation to go well beyond the 20-some people that are in this room right now.

But at some point, I'm very big on conversation, so like we want to hear from the audience. If you've got questions, raise your hand, so to speak, within the platform. We'll bring you up. Even if there's thoughts on this, like I want this to be an open dialogue, not so much like the three of us, the four of us, kind of monologuing towards it. So at some point, we'll open it up and be more aggressive towards Q&A. But I want to do this just to even introduce the room real quick.

Andy Mage is in. He is a digital pastor with—oh my gosh, I just blanked on the church—Bay Hope Church in Tampa, Saint Pete, somewhere in that area, right?

Yeah, Tampa, Florida.

Awesome. And so he's been a friend. I've done online Bible studies with him, and he's been one of my go-to guys for a while now, even just dreaming about what digital church could be pre-COVID, not even recognizing, oh my gosh, all this COVID has turned all this stuff into a crazy reality.

Also in this is Stan. So Stan Rhoda—how do I pronounce that? Rada? Rada? This is the awkward part of having friends on social media. You actually don't know how to pronounce last names and stuff like that because it never comes up. But Stan has been, is on staff at New Life Church in the DC area and has been really a voice. And I don't know that I want to give him credit for this, but towards Michael Church, towards discipleship, towards disciple-making, and really been one of those voices that I've listened to and even repeating in some areas as is helpful.

And so if we're really talking about reimagining groups, Stan is one of these guys, and I'm like, hey, man, Stan, I'd love to have you come in and share some insight towards this.

And then there's Lee Cote, who is executive pastor at the Crossings in Las Vegas, is part of a church consulting group called Gromentum, and just one of these voices, honestly, that when he speaks, he speaks. Let's just be honest. Like in a physical world, the guy was thinking digital. As things pivoted physical and digital, as the church was dealing with this COVID thing, Lee was one of the voices of church leaders that were leaning very hard towards a digital space. And even in how he was consulting and coaching other churches, it was a surprise to me to hear guys like Lee with the credibility that they had in the physical ministry really pivoting towards a digital.

So when Lee's—and I said this earlier, I know some other people have walked in—I was in a coaching call with Lee and some several other of the Stadia people were there and other churches were there. I asked Lee to come in and speak on a topic, and Lee, almost at a throwaway thought, was talking about, man, what if we like threw away the whole small group model and started from scratch?

So I want to hand it over to Lee to start this thing off. I've been talking a lot. I'm going to shut up for a while. Lee, kind of set the stage here as we're talking about what maybe small groups is, where the weak spots are, and maybe why it needs to blow up, why it needs to change, why we need to maybe look at this towards starting over. What are you thinking? Kind of relive that conversation.

You really want to know that, Jeff? That's how you're inviting that. That's great, Jeff. First of all, thanks everybody for being here. And Jeff, thanks for putting this together. And Andy and Stan, and yeah, I think, just to piggyback on Jeff and maybe start the conversation, it has struck me in both my conversations in leadership here at the Crossing in Las Vegas and I'm having with church leaders across the country, Jeff, with this idea that engagement is this on our team here and conversations, and you got caught in the middle of them when you invited me in. It sort of began to morph for me into, in reading Adam Grant's "Think Again" book, which is very challenging and very timely for this season, back and go, what are the things that we are going to recreations of the old and results to think again about and recreate in a way that would reach the objective of not just engagement, but we believe in the church that we are, we are attempting to do engagement towards discipleship and someone growing in Christ and growing in community with others who are like-minded and doing the same thing, right?

So that's where the Peloton thing came up, and you included that in the title. I don't know how many people on here have a Peloton. It's kind of a cult, and I'm part of it, and I'm not in denial about that. It's fantastic.

And so part of this conversation came out of us going, what is it that Peloton has captured that makes people get up at 5 a.m. to join a ride with an instructor they've never met and thousands, hundreds if not thousands of people from around the world, and to high-five people digitally and to race people digitally and to participate with the objective of health and fitness in something virtually like that? And what is it about that experience and that motivation where we can't get people to show up once or twice a month to somebody's living room for 60 minutes for something that we believe is really important?

So I started digging in personally and with my team to what is it about this methodology? Is small groups now the old Sunday school, right? Where most of us would say, yeah, Sunday school is kind of a dinosaur. I'm starting to quickly become the Sunday school of the last generation in charge, right? Like, is there churches that are running Sunday school? And that's funny. The model is there for people, right?

Exactly. But there's this goal in this challenge, I think, even coming out of it, of maybe we need to challenge our people, our individuals to do more.

So yeah, here's what we're wrestling with, even this morning, Jeff, in context here, is the objective of what all the guys listening on this call, all the leaders on this call would say is we want people to grow spiritually, spiritual disciplines to develop in their life, you know, connection to Christ, all that. And we would use whatever method of life groups, small group, cell groups that we would do to try to make that possible.

Here's where we have to admit that in some ways it's breaking down is that one, we are combining—we are combining a content space with a community space and trying to accomplish both. So most small group models, there's a content element and there's, you know, bonding community and maybe even a care element that goes along with that. All three of which are very good, they're excellent. But at the same time, you begin to wonder, like, can a small group of eight to ten people sitting in a living room—can I legitimately stand on my platform or on our social media platforms and push people into a small group and go, listen, if you go to this environment, this is going to resolve? Because I can get on the Peloton, and if I get on the Peloton every day and I ride for 30 or 45 minutes, I may not lose weight or become an athlete, but I'm going to be physically in better shape. There's no way around it. It's going to happen, right?

And so I'm just concerned that we are—we have said over and over again to our people, go do this. But if we were honest, even those that are going and doing it, the amount of what we say is going to be accomplished in their life is a much smaller percentage than we would probably even want to know. So we just turn up the music on the engine that's rattling and keep doing the same thing.

And so we're like, we're not going to turn the music up anymore. We're going to try to figure out how to change that.

That's beautiful. Turn up the music, crank up in your AirPods, and start living a Peloton life.

Hey, let's hand it over to Andy. Stan, I would love some insight. Is this resonating with you? I don't know about the Peloton thing. I don't have one, but I know kind of that passion and activating people and getting them moving towards that. Have you seen that in small groups? Do you think we need to pivot as well? What's your kind of observations towards that?

Andy, why don't you get started on your side?

Yeah, um, actually it's funny that we're kind of having these conversations and thoughts kind of across the country. Lee, I think we're not the only ones. I think there's many, many, many other people that are thinking the same thing. I actually wrote a blog and gave it to Jeff, what, three or four weeks ago?

Yeah, it had to be three or four weeks ago about this concept of our small groups were not working. And this is me seeing this on the front lines during COVID, but even before COVID. I was a worship pastor for ten years, and then I got called to be a digital pastor. And so I was a digital pastor for about eight months before COVID started, which was kind of fortuitous that our church had foresight to say, hey, we need to do this thing.

And so in that, even in the eight months prior to COVID, it was trying to get a group up off the ground was just—it wasn't working. And something about it wasn't necessarily the content. Like Lee said, we were trying to jam the content and the community into the same space. And you know, you're almost like this weird dichotomy that happens in the human head when you're trying to do two separate things at the same time.

So during COVID, it got even worse. All of our existing groups obviously were trying to figure out Zoom and figure out FaceTime and figure out Google Hangouts, and just nobody knew what a mute button was. Inevitably, somebody's kid had their shirt off and was walking around in the background. And like, you heard my dog earlier barking, and just, you know, all that stuff happens when you get eight to twelve people on a call.

And so I grew up a...

A gamer, um, a pretty competitive gamer. I actually played, uh, for those nerds out there that are listening, I played uh Halo One and Halo Two competitively in tournaments and we won money and all sorts of stuff and it was great. But, but, but the core of that was there was three to four people all the time and we had a team of four people and myself included, so three other people on a what was essentially a Skype call at the time, uh, over Microsoft, uh, the Microsoft Live servers. And we, our team actually came up—this is back in 2006, 2007—we would start our training sessions, quote unquote, this is super nerdy so just forgive me everybody out there, but we would start our training sessions with about thirty minutes of prayer and Bible study. And mind you, I'd never, I'd never met these guys. Like, they were, we literally would play virtual tournaments. So uh, one guy was in Albuquerque, another guy was in my old hometown up in, up in Michigan, and another guy was in New Jersey. And so we would just do Bible studies and I knew more about their life, I knew more about them, I knew more about where their trajectories were and all that other stuff through that thirty-minute Bible study. And then of course, you know, you go try to figure out headshots and strategies and capture the flag and all the other nerdy stuff happening. But, but the core of it was I was learning about those people and there wasn't the distraction of another four to six people.

And so my thinking, Lee, and, and you're, you're, I think that you have the broad strokes. I was actually just trying to do a little bit of triage in uh the digital pastor realm, kind of in the three thousand plus people I'm trying to minister to on it on a daily basis. And I said, what if we didn't do the eight to twelve kind of, you know, right now media type thing? Not saying it's bad, but what if we instead tried to get two to three, maybe four people, same sex or maybe one or two couple type thing? Let's get more intense about the actual community thing because the content, the content's gonna happen. I mean, we, you know, God gave us sixty-six books of the Bible for content, um, plus all of the other stuff around it. Let's actually concentrate on the community. And so that, that was kind of our path. And I'm, and again, it's kind of funny that we're all thinking about this right now. I think a year on in COVID, we're technically a year on from everything just basically shutting down in the Western world. And we've learned so much and yet we've learned nothing at all.

Yeah, that hurts. We've learned so much yet we've learned nothing at all. You know, and so Stan, I, I want to ask you, like, you've, Europe, you're a discipleship, a disciple-making guy. When I'm looking at people that are aggressive in the discipleship space, you're one of those. You're one of those voices through the things that that you're working towards. So the idea of, of not content but focusing more in deeper relationships, I would imagine the idea of even a smaller group gathering together, this is going to resonate with you, right? What are you thinking?

Um, yeah, so I'm probably the uh, I'm probably the oddball in the group since I don't spend a whole lot of time, I mean, I have a little bit of connection to the digital and all that kind of stuff, but man, I, I think my perspective really does kind of begin from, can we just, can we start with kind of the end in mind? Like, what, what's the hope out of small groups? What's the hope out of digital engagement, online engagement? Like, what's ultimately the hope? Is the, is the hope or is the win at the end of the day that that there's more community, that people that we know each other, that we, you know, kind of have that kind of rhythm, someone is kind of walking in the shepherd and following. He lands squarely on the show and I learn from other people who probably have much smarter things to say than me. But what can I learn about digital as a tool for um, for disciple-making specifically, not so much about like the arenas of church? I kind of feel like, you know, the Sunday morning celebration is one arena, the corporation, the body of Christ is kind of an arena, the, the community is an arena, the, like, there's these different kind of aspects to it. But ultimately all of these things are supposed to be pointed squarely at go and make disciples. So I'm coming from a disciple-maker background saying, how do I get people who I'm engaging with either online via Zoom—because I do a ton of my training now via Zoom—how do I get those people on Zoom not just, how do I get to a place where I don't just know what they're doing and about their life, but how do I develop that into a long-term relationship where we're walking in steps of obedience together and they're actually reaching people as well? So I guess part of my question with it is, I'm, I feel like I'm partly here to learn, but um, I think beginning with the end in mind is a really important uh concept here for us. What's the, is it just engagement? Is it just community? Or how are we taking this to the next level and helping people hear the voice of Christ in those relationships, in those spaces, and then walking in obedience? That's kind of what I'm processing.

Yeah, I, I love that. And let's let's open that up. By the way, I, I don't, I don't know that I'm necessarily suggesting a digital-only approach. Um, I actually think that there's things in the physical realm that that we need to be addressing and revisiting in there. But um, and let's let's open it up, Lee. You know, uh, Andy, I, I would love you guys' input on this. The end game, what, what are we as a church, what are we expecting, what, what is our desire? To what, what's the finish line? What's the goal of our, of these new groups? Where are we, where are we wanting them to take the, the attenders, the, the members, that the people who are in the groups?

Well, and I think to Stan, I appreciate what he said. I think partly why, why I'm using Peloton and I promise not to keep saying it for those of you that resent Peloton, but part of why I keep saying it is because unfortunately in the church we have a prime example of an organization that probably both intentionally and accidentally has figured out how to leverage human behavior in a way that is both beneficial for the, for the end user. And so it's like, where I feel like sometimes to Stan's point, we don't understand, we get caught up in the minutia of, for example, for example, it's like we, we would count when they watched an Andy Stanley DVD and they had a conversation. We would go, man, we count that. And I'm asking the deeper questions of, are we towards our end objectives, right? Because we had a day-long, um, here two days ago, which sparked even more of a number of things that came out. But as far as attendance, including our online, like we're, we're at either pre-COVID levels or even above, which would have been the typical uh pre-COVID indicator of, or at least what would uh church endeavor. But one of the elements that we would consider at least indicators of engagement, right? You can't medicate engagement. It was, it was that when I ran them to soak it up, um, it was shocking when we started looking at things like, you know, are people giving? Are they connecting? Are they serving? Are they, are they influencing people outside of the church in their neighbor, in their neighborhoods? And when the data told us that on a larger scale that was not happening, but, but people were still showing up and people were still giving, so we could just keep going forward like that. But we're asking the question, what are we really trying to accomplish? And what are some, what are some new methodologies using the virtual uh tools that we have that we can, so we've begun some preliminary conversations and some beta stuff that's starting to happen to towards that. Um, and our plan right now is not even to blow up our life groups as they are, but we believe there's some things we can roll out that will run alongside those that will either eventually bring life to those or will give them a a necessary funeral. And so that's the type of stuff that we're talking about right now. And what we're doing, I mean, I'll throw this out there, Jeff, and then I'll be quiet, but what we're doing is we're having conversations around separating content from the community aspect perspective groups, just to, to, to strategically look at those as two. They integrate, but it's two separate paths of engagement and spiritual growth with people. And try to figure out, how do we do, what do we do, the how do we provide content and provide life change through that content at the best possible ways with the best possible delivery systems to people? And then separately, how do we bring people together in community as they need it without being, you know, the church that, you know, we don't want to, we don't believe our primary goal is to help people make friends. But how do we bring people at similar life places together so that they can do life together, care for each other? And then the content stuff that they're learning will leak into that. But we're starting to have conversations around not trying to accomplish all of that in the same, in in the same sphere.

Awesome. Hey, clarify for me. I mean, just like, define content and define community for me. Devil's in the details, so to speak.

I get it. Like, yeah, I would say in a typical small group model, life group model, right? And we would even have said this, we probably still would say this, like, how do you define a small group? And we would define it by it's a group of people that meet on a, on some kind of definable regular basis, and they have some sort of biblical content that is a part of it. So when I'm saying content in our context, it's you know, our typical small group will meet in a living room or in some space, coffee shop, they will have some degree of community, pray for each other, and they will have some degree of biblical teaching or biblical study that will go alongside of that. And I'm not, I hope people are, I'm not against any of that. What I'm saying is, how do we do that better? And maybe they don't all need to happen in the same, in that same space at the same time.

Andy, Stan, what are you thinking about that? Any response?

Well, see, I, I view all of this, Lee, and I, I really appreciate your view. I view all of this through obviously my vocational perspective, and that's strictly digital. Um, for us, for a digital model to work in this aspect, so let me let me also back up real quick. I owned a CrossFit gym. Um, it was a faith-based non-profit CrossFit gym, but I started it and did all that for about two years with my wife. And then we really didn't make any money on it, so so we had to kind of, you know, let it go. But um, the whole point of it was, let's leverage that community that is in those fitness, the fitness realm, uh, and this was, you know, four or five years ago. And so we saw great strides. And so Lee, to your point of, of Peloton, I think there's a shared struggle in that, um, and I think there's a definite band of brothers mentality, even if it's, you know, um, um, multi-gender, you know, it doesn't matter what it is, there's a shared sense of struggle. So how, and this could be a, this is a rabbit hole that we could go down if we wanted to, but how do you get that shared sense of struggle in a small group, uh, other than, you know, I, I don't know, I don't know how to do that. But in the online, in the online sphere, in the online world, the eight to twelve just doesn't work. Um, it's just, it's too many voices. It's two, there's just always some sort of delay, uh, there's always some sort of something. And so we have found and I have found, uh, making it smaller is the way to accurately and adequately serve the needs of everybody in that group. Pretty simple.

For us, Stan, how do you, how do you get this in in a in a physical environment? I know through the disciple-making and ignore the maybe the digital context, but you know, at the heart of this...

And Lee, I want to come back later and talk more about, even to the point of how do we activate these people? But like in a house church and in those environments, you're really stand active towards mobilizing and releasing people, training people, discipling people. That's in these smaller environments.

Right, I mean, yeah, absolutely can be. I mean, I'm sitting here listening and I love what I'm hearing. I love the idea of taking the tools that are available, the all of these pieces that are available to us through technology and all the stuff. Like, I love all of it. But I guess for me, I'm still coming back and just wrestling with what I'll end up reading in a Barna research study, you know, in five years, right? Like, I've stood up and preached I don't know how many hundreds of sermons over 20 years of ministry, and I've, you know, quoted the statements about how the church is losing the culture war and people are leaving the church in droves and 75 percent of high school students when they go to college they leave the church. And like, I mean, I remember some of these quotes and those numbers may have changed and whatnot. My thing is still just trying to get back to the basics of like, how do we take each of these elements here and get people moving more toward movement rather than kind of to what Lee was saying, I guess, coming in for community and content?

So like when Lee was talking, my head went to the way we structure, the way I train and structure all of our small group leaders, my house church leaders. I give them a process. It's a seven-step format. It's a tool called Three-Thirds. But the whole point of it is not to deliver content. The whole point of it is to kind of walk through a little bit of community, a little bit of content. But the way I train it for our people, whether they're meeting in person in a living room, whether they're meeting on someone's driveway, whether they're meeting in a cigar lounge, whether they're meeting via Zoom, it doesn't really matter. The formatting of the group leads toward some kind of a step of obedience and goal setting for each person that's a part of it. So everybody's taking steps forward in obedience and surrender to Jesus. And so that's it. Really doesn't matter to me what the format is. I want to try to take advantage of all of the tools and use them to the best of my ability, but to get to that point.

Because like we're talking about, I think small groups and Lee said it way better than I would have, small groups are kind of becoming the Sunday school of the 2010s, 2020s, kind of a thing. Like it's starting to, it feels like it's not really relevant almost. In Northern Virginia, we deal with people who have three and four hour commutes a day, and we were saying that their discipleship next step was a small group. So I've got guys in the Pentagon, White House, NRO, whatever, you know, leaving home at five or six a.m., coming home at seven or eight at night, or being gone for two weeks on a Secret Service mission or whatever. And then they're hearing from their church, "Well, you got to get in this small group every Tuesday night for two hours to be..." And so then there was this feeling of guilt building up, and I don't know if I can fit here. So we were at the place of scrapping groups as well, just kind of like, what do we do?

So for me, all of it just comes back to let's get these things formatted, whether we're using Zoom, whether we're using Clubhouse, whether we're using, you know, a meeting in a driveway, whatever it is. Let's format it more toward obedience and goal setting to try to move, try to take some kingdom territory rather than kind of riding on the heels of like, "Oh, well, this is the latest trend. The church has to jump on it because this is the new thing." And then a year or two later, going, "Oh, wasn't the thing? Let's go back to the drawing board. Well, why did we lose a whole generation of people?" Kind of a thing. So maybe my cynicism is coming out a little bit, but I'm really just all about how do we get people to take a step of obedience?

Well, I don't think it's cynicism. I think it's, and this again, so again a digital guy, so go with me real quick. But there's the eight to twelve model. Again, not to bash it, it there's, it feels very cumbersome. It feels very weighty. It feels very much like the, you know, the old church adage is, you know, churches are a cruise ship and it takes a mile to turn a cruise ship and all that, and you can't turn it too fast, everybody flies off. And like, that feels very antiquated because our culture, none of our culture is like that anymore, as shown through COVID. I mean, how many people transitioned to going to school online within a week and, you know, working from home within a week? You know, the eight to twelve small group model feels very cumbersome, whereas we need something agile, a little more, uh, less burdensome, a little bit more able to kind of, I failed to think of the word, but almost like a quick response team.

Andy, as you were talking about that, uh, I was thinking about what makes the power of the shared experience within the Peloton world, and again circling back to that, and what are the learnings there? As you were saying that, and it's like, what they're doing is they're understanding what they're trying to accomplish, and they're putting the best people on it, right? So part of what the secret to a Peloton experience or other places is they're finding the best spin instructors in the world, right, with a variety of backgrounds, a variety of styles, and they are offering them at your convenience across the board, right? So you can tap into the best anytime that works for you and accomplish something that they're telling you and you believe is very important, right? And so the virtual aspect of that obviously fast forwards that for the church if we can start to get our minds around everything doesn't have to be physical. That's step number one. And then step number two is figuring out, are we comfortable putting less than productive content in front of people and calling that okay? Because the model is what we care more about than actually the data?

I would challenge people that are on this call that if they really haven't dug into their data, and again, I'm not a data person and people that work with me know that, but if you start to dig into your data and you start to really run numbers around the things that you're trying to accomplish, my gut would tell me, and if it doesn't scare you and you're like, "We're killing it," please reach out to me because I want to know what you're doing. But my gut would tell me that you're going to be so shocked at what those numbers tell you.

And I think those numbers are reasonable to Andy's point. I think it was Andy who said, you know, we're also asking people to do a multitude and a multiple of stuff who have very little margin. In my life, I told somebody yesterday, the people that have enough margin in their life to do all the things that we as a church sometimes point them to actually scare me, right? Like, who has that margin? Who has that freedom? You know, and maybe their priorities are messed up. I mean, it's like, you know, there's only, you know, 168 hours in the week. You know, and if you have a normal life and family and maybe a spouse and all those things and some sort of a career, you know, we've said this before in the church, but we have a slice there. And so how do we leverage that?

So we're starting to have conversations around how do we get those objectives in front of people in ways that they can opt in and grab a hold of it as frequently and often as possible and do it in a way that actually is accomplishing things? Because the other conversation we're having is actually this, going to surprise some of you. We're looking at models that actually promote scarcity. In other words, how do we present a level of scarcity around content specifically that people have to opt in now and they have to get it now and they have to choose it now versus, you know, just a content dump that has no value whatsoever? You know, and so that's why Peloton does live rides. I've only done like two of them, but the point is that they do it because it creates that level of urgency with people. I want to be part of that community, so I bookmarked to do that. And so anyway, there's some of that that I believe if somebody will dig in and try to innovate around that, I'm sure there'll be a lot of failures in that process, but coming out the other side, it's going to be there's going to be some amazing stories of how we tapped in. Because I know, you know, I'm a middle-aged guy and a lot of my friends that I hang out with, play golf with, and go eat with, they aren't doing a lot of the things that I'm standing on stage telling everybody in my congregation to do, and they're not going to do it in the way that we're modeling it. So I'm personally convicted to solve that.

That's great. Yeah, I mean, you feel that, right? If you're doing, there's always this tension between live and on demand. The reason why you want to do things live, this may be getting into some into the weekend service, but live is going to give you more ability to have a shared experience simultaneously with more people, which gives you the opportunity to create community. And so live experiences for the most part are going to give you more people to build a community around, whereas if you do things on demand, make it readily available, that's not giving you the shared community. You've got two people watching at four a.m. on a Tuesday morning. Like, you're not going to create community around those two people at four a.m.

Now, traditionally, we actually see that on demand gives you more reach. It gives you more eyeballs. And so you've got more consumers of the product, but maybe not necessarily more people being activated, more people being sent out, more people making it, you know, online to offline. The gospel we hear in the online world has to influence our offline relationships, releasing these people and getting them not just consuming a product but doing some things in the physical realm.

Stan, I want to come back to you, and you were the one I think that was dealing with, uh, you know, in Washington D.C., the Secret Service, the guy who's way too busy, working five a.m. to eight p.m., and he needs to be dad, he needs to be husband. Uh, and so you don't want to over-tax him, and you don't want that guy to feel guilty because of, you know, there's 27 things that he needs to do as a Christian in context of the church. And so you're reimagining some things, I would imagine. You're reprioritizing maybe what it means to be. And so I'm walking through that mind space a little bit. Okay, what does it mean? Like, how did you reprioritize some things? What did you value over others? Maybe what was some of the decision process? How did you get from, you know, maybe a buffet of options down to more of a leaner approach in your church?

Yeah, so, um, sort of to what I mentioned a little bit ago, um, you know, we started really with the end in mind. We wanted to define a disciple. We wanted to have a really clear picture of at the end of the day, if you went through a small group, if you went through an online service, if you were on a Zoom call, no matter what it was, we knew exactly what we believed you were supposed to look like if you're following Jesus. So we cheated. Uh, we did not do the creative church approach. I should have a disciple to be super trendy. We just stole it right from Jesus in John 10:27. "My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me." So we started to define a disciple, a new life, as somebody who hears...

The voice of the shepherd and followers hears the voice of God. We basically reversed said, okay, when we live stream Sunday mornings, Zoom Bible studies, men's groups, whatever—it didn't matter to us. We wanted to use the tools effectively, but at the end of the day we wanted to say, what does that disciple look like? Let's break it down.

So we broke it down this way: somebody who is hearing the voice of the shepherd is a follower or a disciple of Jesus who hears God's voice through Scripture and can communicate back to God through prayer. So we said one of the two skills we want every disciple to have—we want every disciple to know how to read the Bible and how to pray. And then I started implementing a lot of that in my training through Fortune. But we went to the next level: what did it look like to actually obey God? We started talking in terms of engaging the mission of God. So at that point we said, we know that part of the mission of God is well, it's the Great Commission. It's go and share the Gospel. So we broke down the Gospel. We have some tools that we use and have developed to help people share the Gospel. But we also, I look at John 9, the story of the blind man. He has the most powerful 13-word story ever told. He says, "I don't really know if Jesus was a sinner or not. All I know is I was blind, now I see." So we started training people how to tell their story. We've done these trainings on Zoom. We've done them on—we've had some of these conversations, I think even on places like Clubhouse. We've done in-home things. We've done some of these things from stage, blah blah blah.

So boil all that down, we said a disciple hears the voice of Jesus and follows, hears the voice of God and obeys. Every disciple of Jesus must be able to do these four things. And when I train it through Fortune, I say, imagine the transformation in your church's disciple-making efforts if 100 percent of the believers in your church all know how to read their Bible, how to pray, and through that they know how to hear the voice of God, to discern the will of God for their life, what step of obedience they should take. And every single disciple can share their story of how God is changing their life: "I was blind, now I see," and share the Gospel with anybody at any time. Would that transform your city, your church, your community, your neighborhood?

And so for us, all of these tools became super helpful to say, let's get this stuff out there in about as many ways as we possibly can. But every single one of them needs to point to these core foundational things to help a disciple of Jesus hear the voice of God and obey through these four specific practices. That's where we landed. So we just tried to simplify everything we did to those four things. Those are the things I do most of my training in through 4G. Like, we just pointed everything we had right at that and then went from there. But we've used physical, digital, all the stuff to point directly at those four practices.

Yeah, I mean that was rich. That was thorough. But there's a lot there, and it's really—it's funny, and I didn't know we were really going to get to this place, but there is a tension I think sometimes between—and Stan, I don't know if this is language with you through Fortune—but like a knowledge discipleship and this idea of obedience-based discipleship, right? Where sometimes in our churches we're educating people in mass, but we're not exactly seeing where they're living it out in their life, where they're not being obedient to Christ, they're not living out the Great Commission. They have the knowledge of that, but they're not feeling it towards the obedience point. But some of the stuff that you're talking about really gets more towards the heart of activating these people, getting them out, giving them personal mission, helping them realize what God's called them to do, and then as a church more releasing them out to do that. Maybe it's not, "Hey, get that high-level volunteer to be a guest services person greeting you know as they're coming into the building." Maybe instead it's something about engaging missionally within the communities, or maybe even being the church more in a digital or a physical environment. Like, have you seen people respond well to that? Like, as people do, are they receptive or are they hesitant to kind of embrace into that idea?

No, I mean, we definitely have stories of people trying to embrace into that. Tom, who was on here a little while ago, he's got a team of people, like chat hosts and people engaging online who love that process of connecting with people online, trying to touch base with them during the week, trying to make those conversations happen. We've got people who are taking full advantage of God's uniquely positioned me somewhere. So we got a guy who's trying to do all of his disciple-making efforts in a prison. We've got, you know, I've got a guy who's using his entire three or four hundred person business network to try to disciple. He's baptized, I don't know, people down to like the fourth generation.

I think Christians are hungry for an adventure and meaning and purpose. And I don't—I do not mean this to sound harsh or negative—but not just kind of come back next week for the next step and how to whatever. Like, they're really hungry for this experience of God. And my preacher side comes out, Jeff. I'm sorry. When I start talking about this, I start preaching and it all comes out of my mouth and it gets messy. But I absolutely think we have people engaging that online, in their homes, wherever, because they want it. And I think we maybe for years have undersold people on the adventure of following Jesus at that level. But anyway, I'll stop preaching.

Oh, I mean, the heart of what you're talking about really is some of my motivation behind saying—and I would love feedback because I'm perfectly willing to be wrong—but when I talk about, "Hey, maybe we should blow up small groups like this model and start over," the reason, one of my motivations behind that is I don't see small groups necessarily being that Great Commission vehicle to get people outside. You know, Lee, I'm pretty sure you guys at the Crossings have used the word "activator." Like, I do the podcast or one of the times we've talked, I just remember you guys have used that term, activating people within the church, right? Like, is that—was that you? Like, what does that mean? What does that look like?

Activating, look like they're at the Crossing. Yeah, we use the term in a practical way, Jeff. Like, people on the call, you know, dream team, owners, you know, whatever term we would use. In a practical way, obviously we've got t-shirts that say "Activator," so it's a thing, right? So but what we mean by that is what we're now defining as kind of a fully engaged individual, right? Where they're fully engaged in what's going on. I think the challenge that we're also wrestling with is even with that "Activator"—love the idea of that, right? That shows ownership. There's a church community element that I believe is important. You know, but I think we're wrestling with that as well. Like, you know, what qualifies somebody to be in that, to be considered in that group circle, whatever you want to define it? And you know, is that actually something that we are comfortable applauding at this point? Or is there elements of that that we're like, "We got to rethink that a little bit"?

And so I think in a purest form, we're looking at activation or "Activator" as someone who is evidencing the elements of what a life on mission would look like. They're living a life on mission, like influencing others, they're giving, they're serving, they're connected to—Jeff, and you would say that, like, I know "Gather Ring" is still a thing, right? It's just—and I think that would be the same in the Activator realm for us here at the Crossing. And having some more conversations around, you know, how do we do that? Because we've treated that as the group that we want to kind of give much more than an insider look. He is. And so we want to make sure that that continues to be. It's going to really be important for us to figure out how do we now communicate leaders to our Activators. Activators really is that opportunity to multiply, to create new community, to get that person to share Christ, to be able to bring others into the faith where it's not just growing in context of what's happening in a large service, you know?

Event-based evangelism may be questionable, maybe iffy, kind of moving forward if it wasn't even pre-COVID. But now seeing some of those people being released and be able to create new expressions, you know, one of the things that we talk about with Stadia is we're using a new word. We were one of the first to use "digital church." That's awesome. And so for us, the new word we're creating here is this idea of "multimodal." It's churches that are doing different models of church. They're being the church in different shapes. So an established church that's doing a church in virtual reality, or that's releasing people and doing workplace ministry, or creating a church or a micro-location network as well, you know? I think you need different models to reach different types of people. And I actually think coming out of this, the physical approach is going to have limitations, and we're going to need to be more organic with some of these approaches. And that's why I love this idea of utilizing the groups to equip people to do things even outside of what the physical church space is. And that may be a radical approach, but I think it's one that's going to be necessary. That's going to help our groups have purpose, maybe even beyond what it's typically done in creating just a small community, giving those people purpose, maybe even beyond that quarterly service project the church asks them to do.

I mean, just even today I was talking with a pastor of a church that we work with with Stadia, and he was telling me that they've abandoned this idea of small groups and for them they call them "impact groups," where they're challenging all their small groups to have service impact within the community. And there's this one particular group, and this is 100 percent volunteer-led. They've adopted the local firefighter station to the point where the firefighters, the head—whatever they call the head guide, the firefighters—says, "Hey, you know what we need? We need a chaplain. We would love to have somebody that could shepherd the 25 people that operate this fire station. Would any of you like to do that?" And so there's a volunteer who is now the quote-unquote shepherd pastor firefighter chaplain doing ministry in this area. And they're providing food, they're coming for times of prayer, they're doing services. And this is beyond, I think, what we would see out of a normal small group. But now you've got really a multiplication opportunity where you're creating an expression of church within a fire station for the 25 people that are there. And I think that's an example of creating a new expression of community.

So hey, we're going to get to some questions. Go ahead, raise your hands if you're interested in asking questions, sharing thoughts. Would love to kind of dialogue through this. But is—and I mean this completely transparent and humbly here—sometimes I lean heavy one direction. Is there? Are we seeing opportunities like this, like, "Hey, let me take over and let me be the chaplain at a fire station"? Are we seeing that typically in small groups? Am I blind and that level of buy-in is there? Or are we really not getting these people on mission at that level? Honestly, would love feedback on that. What do you guys think? It's a hard question, right? Well, I mean, I feel—

Like I've talked too much and so I keep wanting to be quiet, but yeah, I mean I think we are like I think we're seeing people engage right where they are and finding creative ways to do that. And again, that can be, you know, that can definitely be this whole kind of rethink the small group. It can be just engaging right where I'm at. I definitely think we're seeing people do that. Like I've got a guy with a 400 person business network and he'll travel to a conference, take a hundred of them to church and share the gospel with them. And he's baptized like three or four generations worth of disciples out of his business network, just right where he is, kind of seeing that as his mission field.

So for me, again, this whole conversation to me is like a tool to say let's get toward the mission. But yeah, I 100 percent think that we're seeing people take full advantage of the mission field right where they're at. Fire stations, offices, you know, the Pentagon. I'm trying to disciple a guy who's Secret Service in and out of the DC area, you know, in the mornings and whatnot. Like there are people taking full advantage of the mission right where they're at.

So yeah, I don't know how else to speak to that. I just definitely see that happening.

What's maybe a key component? How do we find people that are willing to invest in that area? How are we training people that can maybe invest into that area? You know, Andy, in a digital space, maybe even what does some of this look like in a digital component, in the digital environment?

It's funny. I was just going to chime in with almost that exact same thing. It's tougher in the digital realm because the first thing that a digital pastor or any digital, quote-unquote, missionary has to do is get past the mask that everybody puts on their social media. Because, you know, everybody wants to see the best picture and yada yada, and so you don't actually learn the person until you have gone to a face-to-face type thing.

And kind of the goal of our, the goal of the digital ministry that I've been kind of running is we don't, it just doesn't stop at a chat room or just doesn't stop at, hey, you did a six-week discipleship course. Like that doesn't cut it. We want this to eventually turn into a face-to-face relationship, whether that is face-to-face in, you know, a two to four person online group or whether that's, hey, you're physically in one of these groups or something like that. And then we can help you discern who you are, who God has created you to do, you know, the spiritual gifting type thing.

I have found, at least in the Baja breach that we have seen, an inordinate amount of people just working what I call small miracles throughout COVID, especially just blessing people, you know, blessing shut-ins and things like that that are unable to get out of the house. And I've seen an overwhelming amount of things like that that I just kind of redirect to our care department and say, hey, look, see the digital? Like this works. The ones and zeros, they work. They, people actually connect through this stuff.

I think there's an interesting personality trait though, again, digital guy, digital realm. An interesting personality trait that comes through. I hear a lot of stories about people being introverts, and yet when you give them a task or you say, hey, I would love it if you would be able to jump at the chance, and it's almost like, and I think Lee's talking about activated all over the place, and they just don't know how.

Yeah, I think part of that challenge to what Andy said is, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, personal to me, the type of people that we are trying, that is that are challenging, and I'm talking about two areas. Number one, I would talk about people who are past the lifestyle, whether that's somebody who's a mom or a dad with three kids, once or stage of life that they're a model for our model to actually meet that towards the growth of that, who's far from God, and how do they actually make a move to connect to the church and connect to Christ? And do our systems of group engagement actually meet somebody who's a minus five or a minus three, even a minus three on the spiritual spectrum? I'm not, you know, that's a whole nother thing.

See, and I find I have an opposite kind of reaction, not reaction, but an opposite experience to that. Because in the digital space, at least the people that I connect with on a daily and weekly basis, you know, a lot of them are, especially, you know, died in the wool, been going to church for whatever, and can't go out of the house now because of COVID type stuff. But there have been, an over, not overwhelming, there have been a lot of people that are far from Christ that really are interacting and engaging with some people tweet or some, you know, Instagram post or something. I could probably count ten to fifteen people that started actively become members of the community and across the threshold of, hey, let's actually join a small group with you. Those people are there, and as long as you can get the keyboard junkies to back down a little bit, I think you can speak truth into them.

Yeah, that's an interesting backup to what you were saying. You know, Barna, December stats that came over research, Christ do not have relationship with Christ. They're not interested in the physical building or they're not watching the digital services as well. Like that's not something they're interested in. And so what Barna was finding is that those people, Jesus Christ, they're going to their friends. That forty percent is going to pastor Google. We're going to YouTube to find the answers to this. And so like, which really I think gets back to this place of activation, because if we can equip our people to honoring conversations with others, maybe even be aggressive towards connecting with their circle of influence towards it, I just think activation looks different or suggests maybe there's an opportunity to do something different, even in context of as before we put so much energy into that physical gathering. But realizing that the physical gathering in itself is losing its effectiveness towards an evangelistic point, where now we need to do other things to really reach out, engage with others, maybe even leaning on others to be that voice. Maybe it's not one person exuding a spiritual gift in front of thousands like a pastor typically would, but maybe it's empowering thousands of individuals to be have those spiritual conversations with their ten people within their circle of influence.

I just think the standards that we have, I think need to shift. And with that, honestly, comes a lot of maybe the assimilation strategies and the groups and the ideas of what we've been doing and what the expectations that finish line with our groups are. I honestly just feel like we need to revisit what that activated person looks like and what we're challenging them to be. Maybe not as a desire that we want them to have all sorts of checks off that they have to do, but maybe it's as simple as obey some of the Jesus commands and the Great Commission and the things towards that and be more of being Christ as opposed to being seen in a building worshiping Christ.

I don't know, it's a weak thought. It's something I'm working through, but I definitely just feel that there's a shift necessary as we're trying to re-adapt towards this new culture.

Are you guys feeling that shift by the way? I would love questions and comments from the audience, so if you've got something, click the hand raise icon. Let's bring you up. Happy to let you dialogue up here with us. But while they're listening, like, does the, are you feeling the shift that aggressive? Do you think that it will revert back to some semblance of normality post-COVID, or am I being a little too aggressive here?

Lee, you're wise.

No, I'm just loud. You know, I think I've started using the term "better normal," Jeff, and maybe it's more of an incentive or a hope then maybe we'll get there. You know, the "new normal" phrase is popular and I agree with it, but I've begun to talk in the frame of we are in new normal now. Where are the opportunities for a better normal as we emerge?

So my hope would be that, and I think someone mentioned earlier in the clubhouses, you know, that we wouldn't just revert back. Unfortunately, everybody on this call knows that without intentionality, without a little bit of innovation, and without some real push, we're just going to drift back to where we were before. And so I think now in this season, probably the next six months, maybe through the end of the year, is probably the biggest opportunity for a better normal to emerge. Because otherwise, I think 2022, assuming things health-wise go back, will probably in most cases just go back to an old normal, and I'm not sure that that was as effective as we would like it to be.

New normal, I may have to borrow that. I'll give you credit the first couple times I like that. New, the new normal.

How are you guys, Andy? What are you feeling? New normal coming out of this?

Yeah, we're actually having large-scale church. We have like a we have what's called a discipleship task force, which feels very GI Joe to me, but it is. It's a collection of all of our ministry champions, and we've been meeting fairly regularly, once or twice a month now, trying to figure out the, I think the question, and I forget who it was, maybe Jeff was raising about what is what's the disciple of Christ doing now? And so we're actively engaged in those things. And I think it's not just in the digital sphere. I think it's not just in the physical sphere. I think it's also in like the metasphere, and then that sounds very Infinity War, but it's a very prevalent thing in our world right now. Everybody's trying to figure out the meta feeling kind of everything that's going on. And there's going to be a weird, I think Lee, I think you're absolutely right. There's going to be six months. I actually think it's going to be even longer than that. I think it's going to be one to two years just as the economic recoveries slow down. And not to get, I'm not getting political. I'm just saying, you know, there's this is going to have wide-ranging effects into a lot of industries, especially into the tech industry.

I look at the fact that we're not able to produce silicon chips right now as such things as the iPhone release and things like that. It's gonna have ripple effect trying to figure this out for a while. One to two more years. I had even had taken was hoping it would be sooner, but well, just keep thinking, you know, it's not just schools now. We now have to let manufacturing catch back up. And like I said, that's, and that's just with silicon. But silicon, if you think about the supercomputers and things that are being powered by these little chips, that's cars, that's refrigerators, that's phones, that's computers, that's the little computers that are at your restaurants. And so if something breaks down, you know, there's a backup effect that we've had in this. And I think church leaders right now are scrambling with good reason, but I think there's going to be a little bit more grace involved as a byproduct of all of this.

So you're telling me I've got COVID to blame for the fact that Apple has not released my augmented reality glasses yet?

I mean, you've got that. You've got a lot to blame for that. It's been in talks for what, ten years now?

One day, one day we'll hope.

Um, hey, yeah, so this has been a great conversation, um, looking and trying to figure out how to honestly just wrestle with.

The new normal, what community looks like, what small groups looks like, how are we equipping people towards the next normal, towards activating them and releasing them out. Let me ask this question, um, because I'm also interested in this. There's the typical, and thank you very much Rick Warren, even twenty, thirty years ago, purpose-driven church. The baseball diamond strategy of connect to God, which is that weekend service. Connect to others, which is typically the small groups. Connect to serving in some capacity, which is getting people serving within the building, and then maybe getting people on mission, which is mission trips, which is multiplication, evangelism. You know, that's kind of like that home plate kind of thing. Um, is the, as we're rethinking what small groups could be, is there an opportunity to maybe revisit some of that order? Is first base the church service? Is that really the most effective? Is, you know, group second? Is getting him serving third? Like, is that the correct order? Or even in context, while we're reimagining some of this stuff, is it not time to maybe revisit some of that structure and context of our churches? Would love to know what you guys are thinking from your perspectives.

Andy, what are you feeling? Um, as the digital guy, I always think that it, not always, but for me, whenever I hear this talk, it brings up the old seeker-friendly, this seeker-friendly church. But this is a bit of weight has been put on the production. I think a lot of weight has rightfully so been put on that scene. You know, people, people, but all I got to do is go type in that has better production than my church, and I can go to, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever dot com and watch something. And so I think you're right, Jeff. I just don't, I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater because I think there's a one A, one B situation happening here. I think we need a platform, and I don't know how, and this is thirty-thousand-foot view of making it so that community and engagement are just as important as the live or simulated live streaming or in-person church service. And I don't know how to do that because people smarter than me are trying to do that, but that's exactly what I'm feeling. In a digital component, oftentimes it almost does feel like the relationship comes first. You talk about, you know, thinking about the funnel before even that service, trying to build relationships above. I feel like Jason Morris, we talked about that here in Clubhouse. There's a podcast on that on the Church Digital kind of touching on that. And so yeah, kind of trying to reimagine that in a digital context. I feel that too.

Um, you know, Stan, where are you? Are you, does that feel like the correct order? I know you're kind of like that disciple guy, and you're all honestly thinking backwards in a lot of this approach. So do you feel that normal one, two, three base path, or do you feel something different too?

Yeah, I mean, to some degree, I think a lot of it is similar to what Andy said. I mean, I feel like there's a lot of both and kind of approaches that need to be taken. I think there's a space for, you know, the whole digital conversation. There's a space for the megachurch. There's a space for the house church. There's, you know, there's kind of this both and approach that needs to be taken. Um, however, I mean, like I said, it's hard for me to get away from my heartbeat on this whole conversation and how it overlays with disciple making and the mission that the church has seen worse times than COVID. Like COVID's not the worst thing that the church has gone through, and not only survived but actually thrived as a result. I think a lot of what we're seeing is in any tragedy, pandemic, or chaos, a lot of what we see is not a new character in a person developing, but we just see revealed what's really there. And I think maybe more than anything, I don't know about reframing Rick Warren's structures, but maybe we need to start looking at the results of COVID and the impact on the church and say this kind of shows us where we were in reality with our mission efforts. How many people were genuinely, you know, following and pursuing Jesus? And so whatever structure that needs to take, whether part of it's digital, whether part of it's still physical, because I think there will always be a place for the physical gathering of the church. I think the future absolutely, there's a place for the digital gathering of the church, and who knows, maybe there's going to be an augmented reality space someday. Like, I don't know what all the future holds on that front. But I think maybe if I could just encourage people a little bit too, like the church has been through a lot worse than COVID, and in those times the church thrived and God did incredible things. And so I think if I had to sum all that up, I would say no matter what your system or baseball diamond strategy or whatever it is that you've got going on, you just fully surrender it to the will of God and what He wants you and your church and your ministry and context to be doing, and do your best to make disciples out of that. But let God use it more than just saying, hey, how can I get on the next cool train and try to take advantage? Like, genuinely surrender it and allow God to use you through it. So anyway, those are just kind of my thoughts on that.

It's beautiful. I saved Lee for last because he's the one. He's the smart one. He's the smart one. That was beautifully said, Stan. Uh, but you know, Lee's dealing, uh, in his role as XP, he's dealing with the physical. He's dealing with the digital. He's dealing with, you know, multiple aspects of that. And even kind of wrestling with, and we've talked about this, is the idea of like physical discipleship and digital discipleship. Sometimes that looks different. And I can even remember Lee looking at your funnel where there's this line down the middle, and it's like, okay, sometimes this is over here, sometimes this is here. Sometimes the physical is doing this. Sometimes the digital, um, how do you keep all that straight and having the strategies where it aligns in the physical and the digital because you're having to deal with both hemispheres? Like, what does that pathway even look like?

I have no idea. Awesome. I mean, I think that's part of the learning that we're in the middle of right now, as Stan and Andy are. I mean, I would hate to even pretend to be that we've figured anything out. I think we are figuring. Encouragement would be, I do that. What we have, experience, conversations, we, I don't know what the word is. You said, Jeff, that you said we've introduced a new word, multi-mogul, or you said something? It was really cool word for me.

Yeah, it was multimodal. I love it. We're using an easier word. We just call it an integrated model. And I know some use the word, some use the word. I've heard people say hybrid. Find more deeply, and how you're describing it, we're using that. I think is truthful and physical. I meant probably even when you and I talked to Jeff, is we thought, okay, so what this is going to demand is that we create words that we create a duplicated virtual environment for everything that we feel is that the church does. Okay, this is overwhelming. What we've come to learn, and I think how do we prioritize the key elements and the key roles that the church can play in helping people discover Jesus and their own personal journey of faith? How do we prioritize those and the virtual experience, the experience there? When we say integrated here at the, what we mean is that people can experience things both as they so desire and so troll, and so we don't limit one or the other. We just started making some decisions as to what will be in that integrated mode that we're creating. And so that's been some interesting conversations to have, to try to decide that or to try to prioritize that and then execute that in the real world because what I know a lot of leaders are discovering is what they were so excited about ten, eleven months ago, when they actually start getting back to in-person, the demand on resource, time, et cetera, starts to change some of those decisions. And so my encouragement would be, don't allow that to determine it. Find a load that you guys feel committed to, and then begin to move there, whether it's in the area of small groups, whether it's in the area of, you know, your gatherings, all of those things.

We have one cool thing going on right now, and I don't know, it's just kind of interesting. As many people, we've moved some of our key environments online. So we're right now we're still in a mode where we use, um, as many are aware of, like a rooted model of kind of initial discipleship step. And so that's been on. We've been doing a virtual option or an integrated option for rooted, um, twice. We've done it. This time we've really leaned in. Our online campus guy, Aaron, who's on this call, is facilitating that. And one of the things that's really cool is at the end of that nine or ten week experience, we do a physical celebration. People come together in their groups. Any of you that are doing it know what I'm talking about. We see people get baptized. They share a meal. So we're doing that here in a couple weeks, and we actually have, I believe, four or five people who have experienced it completely virtual, outside of Las Vegas, who have made the decision to hop on an airplane and fly here to be present physically for that celebration. And I'm like, okay, wow, that's that's again, it's a small anecdotal story, so you know, I get it, but still, it kind of goes, it kind of proves to your point, Jeff, that things can work on that bridge. We always think of people physically going into the virtual, but what we're experiencing there is a little bit of the virtual, then kind of engaging with the physical, if even for a brief moment. So those are the type of things that we're wrestling with strategically on a daily basis as we pursue that multimodal, modal. How did I do there, Jeff?

Multiple. Getting better, getting better. Uh, it's a mouthful. Multimodal, or what we would call integrated model. So that's some of the stuff that we're wrestling with.

Well, you know, and I even love there that, you know, we mentioned online to offline. The gospel we hear in the online world influences our offline relationships at some small level. You're seeing that because the relationship with these four or five people that need to travel to the shared experience, um, to Vegas, to further rooted, like the relationships, the content, the process for them in their digital communities drove them to pay for a ticket in the physical world, jump on an airplane, drive a car, pay for the gas, whatever. But it got them from their environment and they got it to yours. They were so invested in what they learned and what they experienced and the people they had relationship with in digital space that it affected and it drove them to do something in the digital realm. You know, I even, and it's going to sound cheesy, like I can't think of the last time, you know, something on Netflix drove me to the point of affecting and doing something physically. Like, okay, one division that has Disney Plus, as there's the king of everything, and I'll watch that thing over and over again, but from an average standpoint, content really is hard to affect people physically. But through the community and some of the stuff that you're describing, Lee, that's beautiful to see.

So hey, guys, I want to thank you for this time. It's been a great conversation looking at rethinking small groups and what this looks like. Hey, you know, let's just do this.

As we're landing the plane here, one minute. Just any closing thoughts, any closing vibes, stuff like that. Um, Stan, why don't you go first?

Sure, thanks man. Um, yeah, my closing vibe number one is I think my biggest takeaway from Lee was buy a Peloton. I don't know if that's what he was trying to say all night, but that was the big feel I got was get a Peloton.

Um, no, that was just Jeff. That was just a joke, man. That was just a joke.

Um, yeah, trying to land the plane. I just think so much of it comes down to our ability to surrender to what it is that God would have us to do next. Um, it's far less about the specific platform we use or whatever. It's about are we surrendering these things for the purposes of God and for His kingdom to pursue the mission? Um, and do we have a really clear picture of that, you know? Can we take the digital presence that we've got, can we take the physical presence that we have, can we use all of that and point it very, very specifically and intentionally at the mission? And so I think if everybody wrestles with that, that would be one of the big things I would encourage people to wrestle with is just having a really clear picture of what the win is at the end of the day, no matter which one of these things we use or how we rework groups or whatever, you know? What's the big win at the end of the day? Will said kind of get discover that why, discover that finish line, and hopefully that dictates and drives how we're gonna get people to that place in discipleship.

Well said. Andy, what do you think here as we're wrapping up?

Yeah, I'm extremely excited about the future. I'm extremely excited about how church is going to look in the next year, two years, five years. I think this defining moment that we all had in 2020 was actually started way before that, and I think the seeds that we were sowing are we're starting, just even now, starting to reap them. Um, and Stan, to your point about the platform or the mode or anything, I think culturally and contextually we now have the ability to have two, three, four different types of models and within the same church. And that to me is be multi-generational, make disciples of all nations, right there. Multi-generational is an awesome challenge, I think, for us, not even to just affect the one generation but get that generation to share others. Jeff, by talking about multi-generational, I just feel like that should be said.

Hey, Lee, what are you thinking?

I would just say a couple things to everybody to kind of wrap up this conversation. I think number one would be, um, don't turn up the radio. We said it earlier, right? So there's going to be that temptation to avoid the important noise that's out there right now that can be exhausting for leaders. I feel that at times. You can feel overwhelmed. There's so much noise and there's so much change happening at such a large pace, and we're still mourning the loss of a lot of the things that used to be sort of the cornerstone of what we did. And so there's going to be that temptation for you to just kind of say, you know what, I just can't even process another thing. So I would encourage you, number one, to fight that urge to just turn up the music and ignore what's happening under the hood of your organization or whatever you're leading. And I think secondly, kind of alongside that, I would encourage, and as the old guy, I guess, Stan, right? I would encourage those on the call that have an opportunity—there may be even as you might be getting a little bit fatigued—team or those guys by the opportunities for innovation in the city or at least one hundred percent of conversations with them. Collaborate with them. Continue to do things and provide an avenue for them to innovate, provide an avenue for them to tap into that alongside the mode. And I think progress, which is what we all want, because what we're talking about has consequences for well-being.

Well said. From not old in any way, shaped, eligible, and soft-spoken, never abrasively. Thank you very much, man, for that. Let me, in inaudibly, I didn't even know you were going to say the innovation thing, but I was going back to an odd, which I'm pretty sure he wrote before I was born, this idea of see where God's moving in the fidget. March 16th, noon to 4 p.m. Eastern time, we've got twenty-plus churches just talking about some of the innovations that they're seeing and doing in and through this COVID season. Things like, um, you know, watch parties, micro locations, house churches, um, discipleship, things like QR codes, you know, all sorts of different innovations. And it's fascinating. I so much think churches aren't interested in that innovation piece. They like things where it's standard, where it's normal, where it's comfortable. But I really believe that God moves when we innovate, when we change. And what's fascinating is there's stories coming out of this season of where God's doing some phenomenal stuff with churches that are being innovative, when they're trying to do things differently. And I would challenge us all, maybe this is an opportunity to look and see what this innovation looks like and maybe for us to even evaluate how we do this within our church. So, um, Stadia Church Planting dot org slash innovation is the link up for that. And it's going to be like I said, Tuesday, March 16th at noon to 4 p.m. Eastern.

Um, three. I'm going to tell you what, this is where we are publicly releasing for the first time. I'm gonna be publicly talking about multimodal. This was actually the test drive for that term. It's the first time I've talked about it publicly here, but I got to get my act together by Tuesday because that's when I'm saying it for real in front of like a whole bunch of people. So thank you for being my guinea pig in this experiment.

Well, while I'm trying to figure out like how to use that language and Lee struggling to pronounce it actually really meant a lot to me because now I've got to be very clear as I do it on my side.

So gentlemen, to kind of wrap up on here, thank you very much for jumping in this conversation while we're looking at reimagining what church small groups can look like. And by the way, we will post a link to Lee's commission page where if you are interested in buying a Peloton, if you would buy through links for Lee's referral link, I'm sure he will get like ten of whatever the monthly is from now on. So Lee, you can go ahead and send that to me. I'll make sure it's published there, and that way, you know, we can fund your future vacation or something since you are evidently the Peloton man.

So for Andy, for Stan, for Lee, this is Jeff with the Church Digital and with Stadia Church Planting. I just want to thank you all for joining us today. We'll do it next week at 5 p.m. on Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern. We'll see you then. Talk to y'all later.