EP124: Disciples Making Disciples in a Multimodal Church

All right, you got the Church Digital Podcast once again. It's powered by Stadia Church Planting. I love this conversation, and this was really facilitated by the family over here with Stadia. Timothy Initiative is a disciple-making organization, and I've had some history with them over the years. We utilized some of their content in the context of disciple-making when I was the digital pastor over at Christ Fellowship Miami, and I've just loved seeing the fruit of what came from the relationship through CF Miami. During the time when I was there, I've been blessed as Stadia has a very rich relationship with the Timothy Initiative. It's one of their partners, one of our partners, and as a result of it, I get to have cool conversations like the one that we're having right here.

Kevin Marcico is the US Director of the Timothy Initiative. Now we're going to go into detail talking about what TTI is and how it works digitally, and all of this conversation is incredibly rich. But the heart of this really gets to this place of how are we as a church, how are we multiplying individuals, how are we planting, how are we growing churches, what does it even look like to multiply a church, and what does that process look like?

Now the majority of this conversation is really centered around not technological things. This is one of those conversations where you need to kind of turn off the tech side if you're the techie guy in this. You need to lean in. You need to listen to this because the heart of this is not tech. Once again, rarely in this podcast is it ever really about tech. The heart of this really does come into this core of discipleship, of disciple-making, of disciples who are making disciples, and really maybe some of the challenges that the Western church, the USA church, the American church has today, and how maybe just how we can get past this and move on and start growing again.

There are plenty of trends pointing out the negative. Eighty percent of people called to Christ are not interested in our church services, whether physical or digital. It's coming out of Barna. We talk about it a lot. Gallup. We talk about it in this podcast. Gallup are showing that we are now 47 percent church attendance, church involvement here in 2020, 2021. That's not just Christian churches. That's mosques, that's synagogues. Less than 50 percent of Americans today are involved in church. That's a decline all the way from 70 percent involved in church from 1999. So there's lots of trends showing us maybe some of the stuff we've been doing isn't working in your physical church, in your digital church, in whatever context it is you're doing it in.

Let's have an honest conversation. Let's pause and evaluate if what we're doing is being effective, and maybe listen to some of these ideas that Kevin's talking about towards looking at it differently and maybe redefining or maybe even creating a new word, a new idea centered around this discipleship, around this disciple-making, around disciples making disciples. And so for the conversation, we're bringing in Kevin Marcico once again, US Director of the Timothy Initiative, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm calling "Disciples Making Disciples in the Multimodal Church."

Okay, everybody, here you go.

Yeah, so back in the early nineties, mid-nineties, I was. I graduated from school, but I had always had this compulsion to start churches. And in the Maryland-Delaware region, which is where I lived just outside of Washington DC, they began to ask, you know, back with the old stuff from Bob Logan, you know, the leaders are from the harvest, right there they're in the harvest. Now the future leaders. We begin to ask what a church plant movement would look like. So I ultimately planted a church in 2001 in the Washington DC suburbs, and we began to plant churches out of that. Ultimately started nine churches in the first seven or eight years out of the church.

But when we started planting churches, you know, people were saying, "Hey, would you help us plant churches? Would you train our leaders?" And I was doing that. But as I began to train other leaders, I began to look at my church and realized every time we sent out a group of people to start a church, we had all of these gaping holes in our church. Like I had all these coffee makers and greeters and Sunday school teacher type people that would go out with the new church, and then we had all these holes left behind. And I kept trying to fill the holes. I kept going, "I gotta re-teach coffee and re-teach, you know, children's ministry." And I realized, "Hey, we need to do a better job of reproducing our leaders."

And I realized, man, I'm doing a really poor job being able to fill all these holes with greeters and coffee and all the things we do. And but about seven years—I'm really a slow learner, by the way—about seven years into it, as we're starting churches and training leaders, I realized, "Wait a second. I can't even reproduce a coffee maker and get someone making coffee to reproduce a coffee maker." And then it occurred to me, "What's happening with discipleship?" I'm like, "Wait a second. No wonder we can't get any disciples to reproduce. Like, we're doing some of this stuff fundamentally incorrect."

And I did really well. What I learned about myself is I trained one level really well, but I never trained leaders how to train the second level well. And that's where the breakdown began because we had the heart and we had the vision and we had systems in place from a movement perspective, but we didn't have the fundamentals correct.

And here's what I found out: if the foundation is correct, no matter how you build your building, the building will be wrong. Like, you can't have a crooked foundation with a straight building without—unless you have a lot of manipulation. And so we were doing some foundational things incorrect. We were not actually teaching the correct—from my perspective now—the basic skills and practices and habits and beliefs. Those basic things we did not create them to be easily reproducible from the very beginning. And so we kept trying to fix a building that had already been built. And I could make a wall inside the building look good, but it just wouldn't. I couldn't get it to reproduce. And I realized it's because the foundation was off.

So I began to back up and began to work harder on what are those core principles and practices that we need to actually make discipleship reproducible. And at the same time, by the way, what I realized is I was doing amazing jobs starting new churches and training leaders to start new churches. But you know, now looking back, what we realized is the vast majority of them—we were planting churches we hoped would do discipleship, and instead of doing discipleship that led to church planting. And it began a journey. It took me years to figure it out.

And as I began to work through stuff in my church planting world, it was actually going back to some of the basic stuff that I had missed. And I actually began to learn stuff from my great-grandma and my grandma. It occurred to me even when I was young, my grandmother used to pick me up every Sunday morning, and she would drag me to a local nursing home, and we would walk from room to room inviting people to come to church. And I would put out Bibles and set up chairs and drag over a piano, and a preacher would come in and talk, and people were coming to Jesus. And I realized, man, my grandmother was a church planter.

And so as I started looking through my history, I had always been a part of church planting. But where I ended up, I actually became a part of church planting, not discipleship-making that was reproducible that led to church planting. So I did well setting up. I did well evangelistically. But I didn't do well reproduction-wise. And so that's been the journey for the last ten years for me—is trying to figure out how do we do the reproduction well, which I think most of us would argue is what Jesus was asking for. But I think what we fall short on most of the time, especially in the American church—you know, a lot of times it's funny. I have a joke like if you line up ten pastors and ask them what discipleship means, you'll probably get twelve different answers.

And so like, even the word discipleship, I kind of twinge on when I say it because it varies in concept. And even the word like disciple-making or disciples making disciples, which really kind of gets to that place of that second generation, that third generation—some of the things that you were talking about. So let me just ask, let me get your impression. Discipleship. Like, when you say that, let's put meaning behind that word. What are you referring to?

So I'm not going to give you a quick answer. I got to give you at least context because I'm in agreement with what you just said. Listen, the number one problem from my perspective in discipleship is we're all using the same word with different meanings. So that is a major issue because we're making some assumptions when we come to that word. I almost wish—I almost wish we could just restart with a whole new word.

Um, but hey, listen, I make up words all the time. That's what I do. Digital, multimodal. Like, we need to come up with a new word. Let's do it. We think about it, man. I love digital multimodal. If I understood what it meant, I'd probably use it more often. But you know, you will. You'll love it. We'll talk later. I know it's something like multi-personality too. Like, there's lots of them there.

So here's the thing with discipleship. At the end of the day, listen, there's a lot of different ways people will define the word disciple, really, but really just means from my perspective to look more like Jesus and love more like Jesus, live more like Jesus, right? They're going to add all kinds of qualities and characteristics. But here's what I'm going to argue: let's say go ahead and define discipleship however you want because even the word—like, what? Who is a follower versus a disciple versus a discipler versus disciple-making, right, versus disciple-making a disciple? Let's leave this part. I'll give lots of freedom to however we decide the definition of disciple. But let's make sure—let's talk about the system and the process.

When Jesus said, "Go make disciples," there was this basic understanding that if I had a faith relationship with Jesus where I'm trying to look like Jesus and live like Jesus and love like Jesus, right, if I'm doing those things, then the natural outflow as you are going would be that new disciples are made. So I'm not arguing about the definition of disciples, but whatever disciple it is, there's an assumption that more of them would be made. And the assumption is if that's true, then if I'm a disciple, then at some point the proper definition of discipleship would mean I'm engaged in that same process, whatever it is, okay?

So let's stop arguing about disciple, what it means, but make sure we understand the end result process. If I'm a disciple—which let's just go, love and look like Jesus, live like him—I should be helping others love, look, and live like him. But the piece I miss is then if they become a disciple, they have that same basic mandate. They need to love, look, and live like Jesus, that helps other people do it. And so that's the reproduction.

So our problem is we're fighting so much about what we say a disciple is, we forget what the end result is. It's the end result of whatever you think a disciple is that needs to place into somebody else. And that person should also be able to place it into someone else. And that person should also be able to place it into someone else. So we're fighting so much about the means we're forgetting about the end result.

And that's where we need to change the conversation. Is listen, however you want to argue about what you think a disciple is, at the end of the day, if that's not being reproduced, it's being reproduced. We are missing out on the most basic mandate. So I mean, it's just like the evil one gets us arguing about this simple topic when it actually just the results of what the expectation is. So we can't get to a movement by making disciples. We can only actually make disciples who make a disciple because that's what the definition would ultimately mean. That's the end result of what it means.

So that's why I would argue there's a difference between that system and process piece, right? We're talking about this argument on a definition, but we're forgetting the result of it, of what that definition should lead to. And that's why I've also said we joked before, this is where I think the difference between the goal of a pastor and the role of a pastor. It's the same thing. There's a goal of discipleship and a role of discipline, and I think we look at those and get those things confused quite easily. The goal and the role of a pastor, that sounds like a tangent I would love to go down. I'm not going to do that right now, but that's an intriguing idea when it comes towards this multiplication angle.

And it's funny, like I've worked with church staffs that, you know, I was more explicit. Hey, we literally need to say multiplication. We need to have on mission activation. We need to have that part of clearly stated in our chat or in our strategy because if we don't, it's often forgotten. And what, but in some churches, like it's more understated, which means that if it's not stated, it's not done by the staff or by the volunteers, the attenders, things like that. And it's what's the struggle in churches right now? And I'm speaking more generically here, but it feels like, especially in this COVID season, it's been much more inward facing. It's been even before then though. When we're looking at Gallup, just recently came out, the church is in a twenty-year decline going all the way back to nineteen ninety-nine. For the first time, at least domestically here in the United States, we are under fifty percent church involvement. And that's not just Christian church. That's mosque, that's synagogues. Like involvement with organized religion overall is under fifty percent here in America. And so the idea of, I mean, shoot, even like the millennials think the word evangelism is a bad word, and we've talked about that recently on podcasts and in other areas with some recent episodes. So like, what's the struggle, maybe organizationally with evangelism, with sharing our faith, with getting to that multiplication piece, even at an individual level? And like, how do we get past this?

A couple things. It's interesting, you know, the millennials and the younger generation, one of their interesting things is a rise in Buddhism right now in the USA. And when asked why do you choose Buddhism, and they said it's because from our perspective, it's one of the only religions that puts into practice that which they learn. And I thought, wow, that's a pretty telling thought, that someone who's a Christian would choose Buddhism because they actually put it into practice. But this is what their argument was. Christianity is content oriented, right? It's content oriented. And so in this aspect, I think we've come through generations where knowledge was the key. That if I had a superior level of knowledge, that was part of spiritual growth, right? If I could quote it, if I could share it, if I believed it, but we've left off, for most, mostly in the USA, we've left off the practices. And I don't mean private practice. So, you know, it was, you know, a lot of people won't work on spiritual disciplines, but those spiritual disciplines, those are good, but again, they should all result in something. There's got to be some level of impact that's out there.

So where you're seeing that breakdown is, is I believe in evangelism, but I don't think I have to do it, right? And so when I start this dialogue with people and I'm trying to process what's keeping you from being everything you should be as a disciple, like what's keeping you? Most all of them, they've got a level of belief down. They've got this knowledge-based act thing, but what they don't know, they've got a belief, but they don't have the skills to put that belief into action. It's the skills that is the problem. And then if they have developed skills, they don't have a system to help them practice it.

So let me just say, when it comes to evangelism, for example, so if I went into the average evangelical church in America and I just said, hey guys, raise your hand, do you believe you need a personal relationship with Jesus to go to heaven? Well, many would say yes. In fact, the vast majority above the millennial age would say yes. Millennials, again, they'd argue that evangelism may be a bad word, right? But if you said, how many of you need a faith relationship with Jesus? The vast majority would say yes. But if you ask the second question, how many of you have been trained and equipped by the leaders of your church or by somebody that you could actually sit down and dialogue with somebody about how to come to faith in Jesus? What does that mean? The vast majority of the rooms will have crickets. It'll be silence.

So I have this belief. I think people need Jesus. But then I have this second issue, which is now, do I have a skill? Could I actually share my faith with somebody? Could I have a biblical conversation with somebody? Could I dialogue? So most don't have the skill. Then you say, okay, well, as a leader, let us train our people for those skills. So I began working on training for skills. But then this third thing happens. So now I've got a belief and I've got a skill, but then now becomes the question, so how do I put it into practice? So if I've been trained in something on church on Sunday, what's going to help me put that into practice on Tuesday or Thursday when I'm at my work or I'm at my sporting event with my buddy bowling, pre-COVID, when I could actually bowl or something like that, right? I'm out with my people. How do I intentionally work, you know, have a practice in my life that somebody's saying, hey, have you done this? Hey, have you worked on it, right?

So it's that belief, skill, and then ultimately that practice. And but then when we have beliefs and we've been trained in skills and we put it into practice, that's what actually begins to change our values. I think people often think, well, I have to change my value to put something into practice. Well, that's true, but until you put it into practice, it won't actually change your value. So I could value good food, but that doesn't mean I'm giving up pizza today, right? I mean, like, so until I actually stop eating pizza, which is, by the way, the best food, so let me clarify, you know, maybe something, just, you know, I added vegetable to my diet or something, right? So I need that belief, skill, and practice, but that'll grow my values, which will create new habits in my life that'll make me look, living, love more like Jesus.

So knowledge alone is not going to move us towards living, loving, and looking more like Jesus. It is a practice and skills. And here's the sad part. In our churches on Sunday morning, I believe the average person, I'm going to be generous and say only ninety, I think ninety-five percent of people sitting in the pews this Sunday do not know how to have a basic quiet time, do not know how to pray, do not know how to share their faith, you are struggling with their basic understanding of Scripture. And we're preaching messages to them trying to encourage them in their spiritual journey, and we keep trying to inspire for somebody who doesn't know how to do the basic skills. And where actually we built a faulty foundation.

And the picture on the other side, I would give it, it's kind of like every week I get up and talk about, here's a hammer, here's a nail, here's a saw, here's a screw, here's wood, and I constantly describe wood and saws and hammers and nails, but I've never actually walked out back and let someone pick him up and actually build something, right? And this is where discipleship, we've gone from content, and I think we need to go back to discipleship as apprenticeship. That for someone who wants to build something, they actually want to pick it up and learn how to do it. If I wanted to golf, you don't sit there reading books all day long and talking about it in dialogue. At some point you grab a club, throw a ball on the ground, and you take a swing, right? And we believe discipleship can happen with a knowledge-based where nothing is trained like that. You've got to get. If you're going to be a pilot, you got to fly. If you're going to be a doctor, you go through this training, but you got to get your hands on. We've missed out on the basic components of practices and skills so we actually apprentice.

And we know, I think most Christian leaders, just go look at the basic world that Jesus lived in. When you use the word disciple, there was this automatic reality that whatever my master, my teacher, teaches, I will put into practice. That was an automatic assumption. And we'd miss that today. Is that what our masters, our pastors, leaders teach? I will memorize and learn it. It's not, I will put into practice. And I think that's actually anti-biblical.

And that even pulls the thread we've talked here a little bit, going back to a podcast with Ricky Bailey centered around digital discipleship, where we're actually talking about Timothy Initiative, the organization that you're championing and working with. But the conversation was really centered around knowledge-based discipleship versus obedience-based discipleship. And Ricky is much more in that obedience base, and obviously Timothy Initiative is really leans more towards that obedient side. So maybe could you speak towards that? What that relationship is between like a knowledge-based and obedience-based?

Well, so let's make sure we're on the same page for anybody who wants to question anything. Um, listen, I'm not that smart. I'm more attractive than I am smart, and that doesn't say much, okay? So let's go with this. I'm not brilliant, but here's what I would argue, just to make sure we're all on the same page. Jeff, you shouldn't give a crap what I personally think. I mean, really, you shouldn't care what I think, and most leaders out there shouldn't care what I think. The question is, is what does the Bible say, right? And there's this assumption that what I'm saying as a leader is what the Bible is saying biblically, right? So but often that assumption is a very bad assumption, all right?

But so when it comes to obedience-based versus knowledge-based, here's what I'm just going to argue simply. Show me in Scripture what the Bible says, right? And if you go to Jesus, here's Jesus. I mean, he finishes this entire Beatitude, Sermon on the Mount. He goes through all of this stuff for chapters in the book of Matthew. He's talking about all these practices in life, and he gets to the very end, and he tells a very, very familiar parable that most people seem to forget the context of. The parable, he gets to the end, and he talks about this wise man and this foolish man. And he says the wise man built his house upon the rock, and the foolish man built his house upon the sand. But he gives a definition for the distinction of the two. He says, whoever hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is a wise man. Whoever hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is a foolish man.

And so we talk about all this stuff of a wise man and foolish man. It's simple. The distinction is they heard the same message. The one who practiced it is wise. The one who ignored it is foolish. And we stand up giving a message every week, and we're going, it's okay to hear when...

That's not what Jesus says. I mean, he goes, "When you hear it, go put it into practice." By the way, go look at the other scripture on it. He says, "He who loves me"—John—"he who loves me will obey my commands. They'll put my commands in practice. That's how I know you actually love me." You know, or you go into the book of James, who's not Jesus, but at least James. It's like a person looking in a mirror and it goes away ignoring what it says, you know? You don't respond to it. So I just would say the normal outflow of a spiritual journey—it was never about knowledge. Never. Now, knowledge must lead to practice, but we're again so focused on the knowledge that we don't put it into practice. And so I'm not even sure we use two words: knowledge-based discipleship versus obedience-based discipleship. But listen, the definition of discipleship would mean—like, I don't know how you get away with the definition that is knowledge-based. I just don't see it anywhere scripturally. "As you are going, make disciples," you know? And so that even that is an action-based oriented thing. And in any way that we think we can do this by knowledge, not practice, I just don't see that as being biblical. Give me an argument for anything else in scripture, and I'd be willing to have a conversation, but I don't see it.

Yeah, okay. My experience going through—and I've worked with several churches on staff where we've tried to bring in maybe some of this obedience-based discipleship type of thing—we've got healthy small group environments. They're used to learning things in those studies. And I'm not saying like it's unhealthy. I think there's an opportunity where they are learning, they're experiencing, they're growing in community. But what I've seen specifically in my own life with my own church staff experiences, when we try to bring in some of this obedience where maybe it's more of, "Hey, we want to hold you accountable. We want to help equip you with the ability to share your faith with others," that conversation always tends to go difficult. Always seems to be stress. Always seems to be awkward. Like, I've never seen those transitions go well. Now, eventually they get there, but it's through this giant awkward phase of, "No, I didn't do it. Yes, I know that that's what God calls me to do." And it's funny—what's funny is that's often on the staff side. Like, I haven't even gotten to the volunteers. That's us, right?

Yeah, it's on the staff. It's sometimes it's the pastors because we're so used to—which is why I would love to have that pastor conversation later—but it's this: we know we're supposed to, but how these organizations are built in such a way, often it's not the obedience side as much as it is gaining that knowledge, and the obedience of actually doing the multiplication act gets lost in our churches. So I know you work with churches that are legacy, that are established, and help them adjust and adopt. I love working with church planters because they're clean, they're fresh. You can create that healthy DNA. What does it look like to maybe convert a church that was more aimed at knowledge-based and kind of help them understand that obedience side?

A couple things. One of the hardest things for me to do is I can't believe how long of a struggle I had to go through for my personal paradigm shift to change, right? It's really tough as a leader, and people say this to me regularly: "Kevin, if I'm supposed to believe this, that means much of what I've done for discipleship in my ministry is actually non-biblical." And I want to sometimes argue, "Well, I'm not arguing that. That's not what I'm arguing." But I am arguing you to evaluate. I mean, listen, if you're concerned—we all want to hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servants," and we all want to be biblically oriented. So how, when we have patterns and habits that we're doing, how do we—and they're being challenged because part of what we're saying is that it's almost anti-biblical? It's hard to think, "I'm an evangelical Christian doing borderline anti-biblical practices," right? Like, all I do all week long is spend forty hours a week preparing for Sunday and don't know how to disciple leaders outside of Sunday and call Sunday morning discipleship. I'm not saying Sunday morning is bad. I'm not arguing against that. We just have to ask some more questions. I think we need to go back and actually begin to look at that.

So as we talk with leaders in churches, I'm constantly just going back, going, "Let's look at Scripture again." This is really tough. I've struggled with this, but I've been back trying to read Scripture as if I'm reading it the first time, right? Our problem is we have a fully formed theology, or predominantly formed theology, from whatever perspective, and I'm always looking at Scripture with a bent based on what I know. But if I was just to go look at Scripture, if we can look at Scripture and say, "Wait a second, what do we think Jesus is really teaching from scratch?" And if you can get people to just look at Scripture from scratch and then say, "If I'm reading this correctly, would what I'm doing today be the end result of what I'm reading right here in Scripture?" Right, then we can let them go on a scriptural argument, right? I think that's going to be the key. Again, it's not what I think or not think. And you added a word into there because you said obedience-based discipleship, but you also added the word accountability in there. And here's what's interesting: obedience isn't the issue. Accountability is the issue with most people, right? So let's just throw out the word and say we don't need accountability. I'm just going to say be obedient, right? Obedience-based discipleship—that is biblical. Accountability is the system. It's a system to hold me accountable. I'd like to see that as a system for obedience.

So I'm not going to argue that accountability in and of itself is the perfect biblical paradigm. I'm going to say accountability is an answer to how I deal with the biblical issue of obedience. And what people want to do is they want to argue against accountability, saying, "Well, you don't really see them hold each other accountable in Scripture." But wait a second, then let's talk about obedience. Are you being obedient to the things that he's asked you to do? And most of them will say no. I mean, it knows going to be the major result response. Then what can we do as brothers and sisters in Christ to walk with one another, to encourage one another, to disciple one another, right? So we need to make sure we watch those phraseologies, like, because that's where people—they get stuck on something over here and argue that point. But again, it's off the point. If we can agree that disciples must make disciples, must make disciples, if we can agree on that, the whole conversation changes. If you don't agree on that, then we have a problem. We're trying to argue two different paradigms. We're seeing Scripture different at that point. All right, so we have to—that's where the definition is so important.

So with churches, as I'm even working, you have to work back because here's what I'm going to argue: if disciples—well, this is, you know, they give this credit to a lot of people, but you know, one of the definitions I heard: if your disciples are not making disciples, then you're really not making disciples, right? That's the negative phraseology that they will use for that. But if your disciples are not making disciples, then you're really not making disciples. So say we agree with that statement. Then well, now I have paradigm shift and implications, and our people's problem is they want to argue about implications instead of agreeing on the basic realities. So yes, there are things that need to change in our church, but you'll never change it until we agree upon a definition. If you agree upon the definition, then you start asking the question, "Okay, what does the disciple look like? And what's it going to take for us to accomplish it?" That's really what it comes down to. And most of our churches don't even define what a disciple will look like. But if they do, I promise you, Jeff—you and I've kind of played with this before—but if you just put a whiteboard on the wall and you just write on this: "You have someone that came to Jesus today, and eighteen months from now I want to see them, you know, be a disciple because I'll be gone. Say I've got eighteen months with somebody. What do I want them to look like eighteen months from now?" The interesting thing is very little of what people will say is actually knowledge-based. They'll say stuff like, "Well, I want them to serve. I want them to give. I want them to go. I want them to share. I want them to pray. I want them to have a handle of Scripture." Most of it's action, action-oriented, right? It's not belief-oriented. But then if you just ask this question: "So then what are we going to do as a church to help that disciple look like that? What are we going to do?" Most churches do not have a simple answer on how to answer those questions. And so you need to help a church walk back through. They may say something like, "Small groups." Okay, so let's say small groups. How does a small group help them to serve? How does a small group help them to pray? How does a small group help them to actually, you know, grow in the fruit of the Spirit? How does a small group help them in their quiet time? So you just have to ask: whatever you think your issue is, we need to be honest and say, "Are the things I'm doing actually giving us the results we want?" And most people—the results that they want, the things that they're doing will never get them to the results they want. And that's the biggest issue in America. It's not that we're doing bad things, but we're not getting the result we want. And that's the problem with this knowledge base. We gave all kinds of knowledge. It's not getting the result we want because we're not helping with the practices and skills. And by the way, they did a survey—Harvard did a survey about twelve years ago looking at the Fortune 500 companies in the USA. And even amongst Fortune 500 companies, here's what they found out: ninety-five percent of Fortune 500 companies did not have the plan or structure to actually carry out their corporate goals during that year. So these are our goals, but they actually didn't have a plan or structure to accomplish that goal. But they just threw out what a goal is, and it was funny because most of these companies—they were either succeeding or not—but most of them, they found, even the successful ones, didn't actually have a plan to be successful. It just worked out that way because of secondary factors. And I think that's what's happening in our churches. The vast majority of us don't have a plan to get us where we want to go. And when we do establish goals, we measure, we get some of them sometimes because of exactly what we do, and a lot of times just because it's God's favor or for some other reason. But it actually rarely has anything to do with what we planned or strategized to see accomplished. That's really interesting—a whole bunch of corporations, even at the Fortune 500 level, are just randomly succeeding without having the systems or the infrastructure in place to help us get there. Like, that was not expecting that one to pop up in this podcast.

Well, let's pivot a little bit here. Because what Timothy Initiative—I would imagine that's starting to get some practical application here, you know? You mentioned earlier about accountability and how that's some of the challenges of that, maybe even philosophically. I'm...

I'm wondering, kind of wrestling in my mind, well Timothy Initiative. What I've seen, give some of that accountability at a practical level. So like, what is Timothy Initiative? How does it work? How does it operate? And maybe how does it swing the pendulum the other way? How does it help solve some of these problems, uh, from a practical standpoint that we're wrestling with in the church?

Yeah, so, um, the Timothy Initiative, you know, we're just a disciple-making organization that results in church plants. So that's the goal is that church plants are actually formed all over the world. Most of them are microchurches. Uh, I mean, they've started well over a hundred thousand churches around the world in the last ten years. And, um, and again, most of these principles and practices overseas—it's funny because when you go overseas, there's it's normal. You think like a missionary, you act like a missionary, you teach in basic skills, you empower laity, and then you allow them to reach their family, friends, and neighbors. And then you bring it back to the USA and it just seems like this crazy anomaly, right? That we're just supposed to show up at the weekend and serve in whatever position I get in as a church and then leave for the next seven days.

So, uh, what we've done is just made a very simple foundational, uh, training. I don't want to use the word curriculum. Here's the number one thing we found: you can go online to TTI USA, whatever, and you can order a book today. If you take that book and train that material, it will make no difference in people's lives as a norm, right? You can, and here's what I mean. Um, I had one leader, um, and he would—his name's Rich, up in Detroit. He grabbed our book and went through the curriculum and trained his leaders in ten weeks. And then he called me, said, "Okay, now what do I do?" And, um, and I asked him some questions. And even with the material he had walked through the content, but trained it as knowledge base. And so we got to like write a list of thirty people that you'll pray for. He never asked him to write that list down. Uh, how do you share your story? Write your story down. He never had them write their story down. He never had them, uh—he never asked them, "Hey, how did this past week?" I trained you on how to have a quiet time, to do a SOAPS, you know? If you don't—you know, if you're familiar with SOAPS now—but read Scripture and observation, application, prayer, and then S, share it with somebody. He trained them on how to do it, but never once asked. Never. He didn't even think about it. He never once said, "So how's it going?" Right? He never. It just, he trained in his content.

And so when we got together, I said, I said, I said, "Rich, man, what are you doing?" I said, "Most people take twenty-five or thirty leads to go through this." Let me tell you, so when you train on something—here's the only thing I'm asking you to do. Let's say quiet time. So ask somebody. So at the end of the training, you train, and you just ask this question: "What do you think God's Spirit's saying to you? What did you learn today from the material? What did you learn today by reading Scripture? And how do you put that into practice this week in your life?" That's, that's the only question: "How do you put it into practice this week in your life? And who could you share this truth with?" And so at the end of all of our trainings, that, that's what we do. It's a training, again. It's not curriculum. You know, we're just not looking at material, and then the question is, "What can I do as a leader to help you be more successful in that this week?" Or, "What can somebody do to help you in that?" So someone's like, "Well, I've never had a quiet time." So let's stop right now. Let me practice a fifteen-minute quiet time in front of you, and you actually show them how to do a quiet time, right? So that's the difference. It's not just taught. It's then shown. And then if you need me to sit next to you, well, hey, why don't we break up into groups and let's practice a quiet time together right now, right? And then we say, "So what do you want to do this week?"

And I remember one of my leaders named Matt down in Florida. Uh, he trained on quiet times, and he had this brand new believer in his group. And he said, "Hey, I challenge you to do this every day." And these leaders like, "I'm going to do it every day for fifteen minutes this week." And he got to one guy, and he looked at him, and he said, "Hey, so what about you? What do you sense God's saying to you?" Says, "God's telling me he wants me to have a relationship with him and I should spend time with him doing it." He says, "What are you going to try to do?" He said, "I'm going to try to have a quiet time three days this week, three times." And it's funny because I could see Matt kind of stop, and he's, he wanted to say, "Why aren't you doing it seven times?" But then I realized what Matt was thinking. He's, "Wait a second. This guy has never stopped in his entire spiritual journey and had fifteen minutes alone with Jesus. Man, if he could spend three days this week with Jesus, that's better than last week, which he spent no days with Jesus, right?" So instead, he just encouraged him and said, "Man, I hope you do it three times. In fact, I hope you do it five or seven, but I'm gonna challenge you. I hope you do it three times." And then the next week, here's all Matt asked him. Matt said, "Hey, man, how did your quiet times go to Jesus? And you said you were gonna try it three times. Did three times work?" And the guy went, "Yeah, man, I actually did three times this week. In fact, I started a fourth one but got interrupted." And he cheered him on.

So the only difference in our material—to go from knowledge base, you have to give them a skill. Let me show you how to have a quiet time. And then give them a practice. How could you do this on a daily practice? But then, and let me model it for you, right? Let me model chill. But then you just simply ask the next question: "How do you apply that to your life this week? And is there anything I can do?" And then the next time we get together as a group, we just ask, "How's your spiritual walk going? Hey, you were trying to do this. How did it go?"

And we use the word—that word accountability that you use—is, I'm holding them accountable. But let's just change the language. Let's use this: I'm encouraging them. You know, Hebrews 3 says, "Encourage one another daily as long as it's called today." So how do I encourage somebody on a regular basis in their spiritual journey? So if someone says, "Hey, I'm trying to learn how to do a quiet time," and I never ask them how it's going, well, how stupid of that is, is that of me as a leader? So if I just say, "What do you sense you need to do to help yourself grow? And how can I encourage you in that area?" Well, now, see, for all those who want to take accountability and put this negative—like, "Oh, you've got to do this or else"—figure all that out. Let's go with the word encouragement. Come from a grace-based perspective, not a law-based perspective. A grace-based, going, "Hey, if Jeff looked at me and said, 'I'm struggling with this,' then I hope Jeff would want me to say to them, 'Dude, how's it going?' Later, right? I mean, that would show I actually care. It would show I was listening to you. It would show maybe I prayed for you, or I'm interested in how you're doing."

So that's just using accountability. Might be a word we use, but just use it as encouragement-based discipleship. That I really want to come back and say, "How is it going? Are you struggling anywhere? Is there any questions? What can I do to help you?" Which, exactly, like if I was a carpenter and I taught someone how to build a box, and I came back and the box was all crooked and they couldn't do a ninety-degree corner, and they weren't trying to be eclectic or something, but they really wanted a ninety-degree, I would say, "Hey, you did a good job. Let me show you how to do the corner better, right? Like, let me show you how you messed up a cut. You did this. Let me, let me help you in that area and help them redo it again."

So when we see discipleship as encouraging someone to go to the next level in their spiritual journey, I think it changes everything. And, and by the way, one last thing for that—I always, this is how I do the dialogue because I think it helps people to self-evaluate. I say, "Listen, on a scale of one to ten, and let's say ten's high, one's low, how do you feel like your spiritual journey is going right now? How would you grade yourself?" "Well, I'm a four." "Why? What could I do to help you be a five or six?" That's my simple questions. I just want to help someone go to the next level.

And the secret is, it doesn't matter what number they use. It's the dialogue that's important. If they say, "I feel like I'm a one spiritually," that doesn't mean they're not spiritual giants. And here's why I would argue that, uh, the Father Paul got along in his life. In fact, at the end of his life, if I looked at Paul and on a zero to ten scale, I would rate Paul like as a level nine leader, like right now. If we put Jesus as ten, Paul would be like a nine from my perspective. Would you agree with that?

One job? Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. But if you ask Paul, Paul on a scale of zero to ten, how do you rate yourself? How do you think Paul would rate himself at the end of his spiritual journey? Uh, I mean, I, I think he would show some meekness, some humility, you know? He talks about the thorn on the side. So maybe a five, six, right? So here's the thing: it's not you and I would look at Paul and say, "You're a spiritual giant." He might say, "I'm a one, two, four, five." In fact, here's what Paul would ultimately say: "Actually, the more I understand Jesus, the lower my number gets, right?"

So the question isn't what is your number, because if I was just to score numbers, I might look at the most spiritual person and think they're giants, but their personal perspective says, "I feel lower than I've ever felt in perspective to Jesus." And on the other side, I have some really immature people. I mean, some of them was in which I, they, they barely make a level one in my perspective, but they think there are nine, right? So the goal is, how do we open up a dialogue to encourage you in your spiritual journey, no matter what you think, right? And how do we just look at someone, say, "Man, I believe in you. I want to encourage you. What can I do to help you do that?" And then we can even identify areas.

So you ask about our curriculum and stuff in the training. I think there's, you know, for us, might, this is how we built the most simple curriculum we have. We took some of the most foundational—I mean, just the basic stuff—and we said, "These foundational issues, everyone should be succeeding in." And then everything beyond the foundation, I'll be honest, I'm not that worried about, because if you get the foundation right, um, and you build the right foundation, you can build a really large building. But, but the exigencies we focus on, all these edge of thoughts, but we miss the most basic stuff.

So here's what we're going to do: we're going to challenge for that big of a foundation. Get everyone. There's no one in the USA I don't want to have that foundation. No one is a follower of Jesus have that foundation. Get that foundation down, and you can build anything you want off of it. But if that foundation's messed up, whatever you build off of it will also be messed up, right? So when the foundation's off, the whole building's off.

So really focus on simple stuff. What does it mean to pray? What does it mean to understand and read Scripture? What does it mean to have a quiet time relating with the Father? What does it mean to be sensitive to God's Spirit? If I sense him whispering to me through the Word or maybe something directly, right? What does it mean to share my story and share God's story and to live a life on mission? Like, those core things to serve, to give—like, those four things. If you get those down and you're in some form of community, the community could...

Be big, it could be small, but if you're in some form of community that's encouraging you and those foundational issues, I promise you, you'll have a successful Christian life. But if you're not in a community or you have those foundational issues off, you're going to struggle at some point. This is why we can find people who've been a Christian for 40 years but they still can't forgive their father because they're mad at him 40 years later. And you and I know that's a foundational Christian issue. That because I've been forgiven much, I too must forgive. That's part of the living and loving thing that Jesus has asked. But if I don't get that right, my whole foundation's off. Like, it's just you got this whole piece of bitterness and anger and frustration and you're going, you're 40 years of a follower of Jesus. Like, this is a foundational thing. So it's pieces that we've missed. Now in knowledge, they may quote that I know it, but no one's ever helped them put that into practice. Let me teach you how to release somebody and to release yourself on this process of forgiveness that Jesus asked. See, that's the skill in the practice.

So good. So much right there. I, I promise I will never say the word accountability again in the context of church. I will shift entirely to encouragement. But no, that's good. I mean, honestly, for me it's been, hey, church, we need to figure out—and I don't know, I don't know how to—we need to figure out how to hold people accountable. But even flipping the script and not making it accountable, you have to, but encouragement. Let us help you get there. And so I love that.

Now you said earlier, hey, Timothy Initiative, we're all about planting churches, but everything that I've heard you say has been about helping individuals, ministering to individuals, multiplying individuals. Tell me a little bit here because I want to work with this a little bit. How do we get from individuals to that planting churches piece?

That's good. Um, so here's where we get the roles and the goals defined again. Maybe, let me give you three minutes on the pastor thing and then just come back. We'll come back later. But this is, if I come to the average pastor, let's say from a church perspective, and I say, what is your role as a pastor? What do you do on a daily basis? Or if you were just to write down everything you do, most of them are going to narrow down. Let me get what I was told as a kid before I became a pastor. Pastors protect, provide, they lead, they guide, right? So that's what you do. You train your people, you protect your people, you provide the food for your people, you lead them, you guide them, just like a good shepherd would his sheep. But that's the role of a pastor. The goal of a pastor is different.

Now the injuries are gold. So if I go to a shepherd in sheep, I protect and provide, lead and guide my sheep. I take them beside the still waters. I get them to the green pastures, you know, that's what I do on a daily basis. I fight the lion and tigers and bears, just like David did for his sheep, right? Like, that's what David did. But people forget David didn't do that just because David liked the sheep. David did that at the end of the season. What David wanted was a whole bunch of pregnant sheep that were starting a new generation of sheep. And then he wanted to shear them all because all those sheep had been able to produce a product. I didn't save a sheep just because I like the sheep. I saved the sheep because they—I want them to have baby sheep and I want them to be sheared. Like, there was a reason that he did all he did.

So a shepherd that protects and provides, leads and guides, but forgets while he does it, would be a very bad shepherd. If you got to the end of a season and not one sheep was pregnant, if you got to the end of the season and not one sheep was sheared, you haven't actually done the job of a shepherd. But you've done the role of shepherding. And so when you come over to the church, here's how I look at it. We know pastors were made to equip the saints, not teach them material, equip them for things that they were created to do. And if disciples make disciples make disciples, that is the multiplication. I have sheep that have baby sheep who have baby sheep. And one of the things that we've messed up is we've got so focused on our weekly role that we forget the ultimate goal. We forget the implications. There's this assumption that if I teach and I teach and I teach, it will give me the result that I want. But that's where it's not occurring and it breaks down because I'm doing a role that isn't actually accomplishing the goal that's where the breakdown is occurring. That's a system issue.

So I can get up and talk about people going, you've been created, you have gifts, you have this, you have that, now go do it, and none of them know what to do with it. They still don't know what it means. I'm a prophet. What does that mean? Or I'm an evangelist. What does that mean, right? So we don't help equip them and then actually help them be successful. That's where the whole breakdown is.

So now you come all the way back to the question you asked me. So we come back to the groups. Our end result is always seen that churches would be planted, but churches being planted always starts with disciples being made. So our process—I was talking about the process that we train and equip on these simple things with the end result of this. If I have a disciple that makes a disciple that makes a disciple, then all of a sudden I'm going to have a crowd. If you have a crowd, you have one of two options. You can either gather them together in one place or another. So either I can make lots of little groups of disciples and then say, hey, let's all go to that building on Sunday or during the week. But then as it morphs out, as another group begins and another group begins, they either have to all come to one location or at some point we release them and say, hey, why don't you just consider that your proper location? So whether it's here in my house, over at a coffee shop, or online while playing Roblox, right, it doesn't matter where you gather. The question is, ultimately, if we go through this simple process, what's the end result that we're looking for? And here's what I find. If I make a disciple that makes a disciple, I will have community being created on the other side, whether I wanted to or not, because that's the natural result. But if I teach in a large group with the assumption that that natural result will happen, it almost never does. There has to be a level of intentionality about it.

So we're really going, listen, and don't feel guilty about the word accountability, Jeff. I just realized, just like all our other definitions, everyone has a perceived notion when you say that word. What is it? They think. And it's always negative. It's never positive. But listen, how can we talk about encouragement being negative, right? So I'm hoping they see that as a positive reality. But that's the goal is, hey, I can multiply. And then we believe the biblical principle things always multiply. If I make a disciple, then the natural result is they should make a disciple, right? So that's a natural reproduction that's built into the system. And then all we need to do is bless and release.

So our foundational training, which just takes, you know, you can really do it in less than six months, is just how to be a good disciple, which is these basic skills. But we teach you how could you teach someone else these basic skills? So we just make that as reproducible as quickly as possible. Basic skills. I train you to do these basic functions and skill sets and practices. You can teach someone else how to do it the same way. And then what we find is the people that do that best, then all we need to do is come to say, now how do you create a community out of that? How do you actually get biblically trained and qualified to lead a group like that? And that becomes a secondary training.

So our discipleship foundation, you can do in six months, and then the reproduction and developing as a leader, really about two years to have ongoing growth development, just to have a good biblical perspective, solid theology, good practices for what functions as a church. So the goal is to get discipleship, create communities created, and many of those will go to a format that you should actually maybe call them a church in the future and have qualified leadership for that. So we have the material to be able to serve that also.

That's beautiful. And it's funny, I said the word multimodal and you were like, hey, what is that? This is really the heart of what Stadia wants to do for us. There's multiple types of churches. It's multiple steps here. Number one, there's multiple types of churches. Discipling and growing people looks different in the context of the type. So, you know, gigachurch, megachurch, multisite church, established church models—I mean, that's kind of like the one, the building-esque type of stuff. Then you've got digital-only expressions of church. You've got digital churches that are doing physical and digital and working them together. You've got house churches, you've got prison church, you've got workplace ministries. Like, there's so many different types of churches out there. And for us, Stadia, one of the things that we're encouraging, and honestly, I didn't think I was going to pitch this, but you've set me up. It's this idea of, hey, church organization out there, let's look at doing multiple strategies here. The building is reaching a certain type of person, but we're discovering, as the majority of churches are doing the building ministry, hey, we're at a 20-year decline. And even in this mid-post-COVID season, I don't think that the building's going to reach everybody.

Just recently, I can tell testimony of a guy I know that has recently accepted Christ through a digital-only expression of church, Lux Digital Church, a church that meets on Twitch. He accepted Christ through a Twitch church, a video game church. And in his testimony, 10 years ago, religion was shoved down his throat. He did. He swore he'd never go back to a building. And so literally, we're seeing people come to Christ through these different other approaches. So why are we not church? Why are we not looking at multiple models? And even building off of this, how can we not empower and grow and encourage our people not to be consumers watching one man exude his spiritual gift behind the podium to thousands? How can we not encourage these thousands of people to exude their spiritual gifts, to share the gospel within their circle of influence, their oikos, that 10, 20, 50 people that they know, and to follow their own passions and find ways to create more of these churches, even in the organic realm?

I've been a centralized guy. I've never been an organic guy. But the more in this COVID season, the more that I'm realizing, man, if we could really figure out how to create church—I don't even know it needs to be formal church expressions—but get people on mission within their influence, man, God can do some incredible things. And I think looking at the struggles that the buildings have had, I think this is how the gospel is proclaimed in the future. Not in our cathedrals or temples, but in our living rooms and in our houses and in these circles that we have Monday through Friday, much less on that one hour on Sunday.

So how are you seeing this? Like, when you interact with churches, are they catching this vision? Even to the idea of planting churches, has it been more of a struggle? Like, how are they responding? Not only with the disciple-making piece, the multiplication at the individual level, but even maybe going out and starting to call these new churches, like releasing to multiply as opposed to gathering to get bigger? So a couple things.

Where we are in agreement, I want to make sure everyone knows I'm not anti-vague. In fact, I've never said that. Making sure I am pro every mode. Also, I'm going, what is it? What modes can we offer in a biblical framework that would provide opportunity for people to be able to grow in their spiritual journey, to look in love and live more like Jesus, right? And from that discipleship perspective, so I'm pro all the moods. And so I'm in agreement with you. We need to help churches see different perspectives on how they can rethink discipleship. That's what most of them are struggling with in the church right now.

So you're asking, especially what COVID did, I think for most churches, and I'm just telling you, I'm hearing this across the board as loud as can be. They're saying we're doing discipline. We've done discipleship poorly. That's a reality. And I understand that because I did it poorly, right? And I'm not saying I'm doing it well now. I'm just wrestling with it.

Maryland, Delaware, with the Baptist in the Maryland convention, it was back in like 2008, 2009, 2010. They did a long survey with Lifeway, and they went out to pastors and said, "What do you think your number one role is as a pastor?" And over 90 percent of them said, "My number one job is to make disciples." Then they asked a second question. They ultimately asked, "If there could be one thing that we'd help you with as a leader, what do you wish we did more than anything else? The thing you struggle with most?" And 95 percent of them said, "I don't know how to do discipleship."

So it was interesting. The number one thing that they said is their job was an even higher percentage. "I don't know how to do it." And so this is part of the struggle in America. You know, I think one of our big issues is the vast majority of us would never discipled well, which makes creating a new generation of disciples really tough. We came out of, I think, a faulty form or a broken, it was just a partial form. So now I meet with churches, and listen, I planted an attractional model church that led lots of people to Jesus. So I'm not talking against the attraction. I'm just telling one dialogue I had with one church, one of the largest churches in America. You would know if I talked about it.

But in their conversation, what they talked about is how the attraction model. You know, one guy said, "Hey, I've had multiple families that I've been able to invite to our church over the years, and their lives have been radically changed." And he's talking about it, and over a 20-year period of time, he says he can identify 20 different families that came to his church, and three of them, like the whole families came to Christ. Like 10 complete lives changed. I mean, there's nothing but a celebration on that. So he goes, "That's why our church is so pro-attractional, that we're trying to get everyone to invite everyone."

And I just said, in a casual conversation, I just said, "Hey, imagine what could happen if your really high number of attenders. If I gave numbers, it would narrow down the church. Let's say if you got over ten thousand. If you've got ten thousand people that are inviting, imagine how different it would be if ten thousand people are actually praying for their family, friends, and neighbors. If ten thousand people could actually present the gospel. If ten thousand people could actually share their story. And if ten thousand people are actually trying to engage their workplaces and their stuff. I mean, what would you do if ten thousand people were actually engaging, not just inviting to your church, but actually equipped to engage with the gospel? What would you do with that?"

And it's interesting. It just led to dead silence for a while. And even what they were doing, they were trying to start a new mode. They were trying to get, well, with COVID, we're trying to start stuff in people's living rooms. But it was still pumping the church to there and pointing back to the church, which again, I'm not inside. Don't you hear me? I'm pro at all. I am that people's lives are changed. But I'm thinking, I would never do that initially. Overseas as a missionary, I would say, "How do I engage the lost? How do I help them come to Jesus? And how do I help them impact their own community?" That's my first thought. But in the USA, we begin from an ecclesiology perspective. This is what the church does versus the missiological perspective, which is this is how people should be developed in that sense and go.

So I think what we need to do is switch that conversation to this: "This is how I do church. Therefore, this mode should work to make the church continue to grow." Because we look at the church as that building or that location, right? And instead, look at it from a missiological perspective. How do I help people be missionaries? Actually understand and live out that philosophical mindset and train them to do it. And so we need to shift back that mentality to the empowerment of the laity. It's just that simple. We need to move from, you've said it, you know, that the one-headed pastor, which again is good, it's got a purpose. We're not anti that purpose. But the equipping leaders. No one can, if you can look at it at your church and with your one hour on Sunday, if you can tell me the vast majority of my people in my church are being equipped to do ministry and they're actually doing it on a regular basis, then I won't argue with anything that you're doing. But if they're not equipped and they're not doing it, then I'm going to ask, "How are you going to carry out that biblical function in your current model? You need to challenge at least what we're doing to make it more holistic."

So I think that's a lot of what's happening. Churches are now re-looking at, "I'm not getting the results." When they look at it, discipleship from the results perspective, I think COVID is screaming, "We are not getting the results we want. Therefore, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, right, and expecting a different result." I think for the first time, we're not first time, but we're re-looking at a larger level. Okay, maybe we need to change some of our systems and structures. Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I like it. But like you said, if 40 percent of Americans won't even walk into an existing church the way that it is, what are we gonna do to reach them, right? And people are not anti-Jesus per se. It's still an issue out there, but most people are still open to the spiritual conversation. They're just against the institution, you know, with the pain and hurts that it's caused.

Yeah, we've talked a lot about Barna, December 2020. Eighty percent of people called to Christ, they're not interested in a physical or even a digital church service. And so effectively, I mean, it's something I've suspected. It's something I've referenced. But I think that was like the first time there's actually like research backing this up where somebody asked the question and they got the hard answer back. And so, you know, realizing that evangelism, it's not moving forward. It's not happening in the building. And so if your primary strategy for evangelism is that weekend service, congratulations, you probably should shift. Really evaluate if it's working.

And it's funny. One of the conversations we're having, I'm working on talking with churches to have one of the future episodes we're having on Clubhouse. It's like, "How is God moving spiritually, digitally, physically? Like, how are we seeing God move today?" And so far, the churches that are having like 50 people baptized, 100 people baptized, it's not tied to the weekend service. I mean, there's some there, but it's really like the revival that's happening as people are moving outside of it. And so even just recognizing that's where it's happened, and hey, as we see God move, maybe we as churches we need to join in that and kind of understand the different mindset.

And so this has been a phenomenal time. So let me ask this. Even just moving forward, you know, we hear the audience. This is digital pastors, executive pastors, senior pastors. It's literally the church digital. And so we normally talk about digital. I, it's digital discipleship for me. Disciple making in digital space. This is the challenge of 2021. This is the thing. If the church can figure out how to do discipleship in 2021 in digital space, this is where I think we see revival. And even in context of the churches that I was just talking with, like a lot of this is done digitally where they're training, where they're empowering, and they're sending, not only in physical space but in the digital influence as well.

So TTI, Timothy Initiative, are there training? Are there obstacles? Are there challenges? Successes? What does it look like doing some of this stuff in digital space?

Yeah, so interestingly, Jeff, this past year, because of COVID, we're forced. Here's what I can tell you. I spend most of my times mentoring pastors, and I don't think I'm in any way breaking confidence or doing anything. We do groups of cohorts with pastors, and the fascinating thing about these pastors is they would just say, "I'm redoing discipleship in my journey. We literally are just disciples making disciples together. We're just brothers, ironing, sharpening iron, struggling through these basic stuff." And when we're teaching some of the most basic concepts, it's stunning to hear pastors just go, "Man, I haven't practiced this in years. You know, like I've never taught this. I've never changed."

So it's funny. We're doing it all through Zoom. All of it's through Zoom. And what I can tell you is for us, these groups of pastors that I'm doing cohorts with are my best friends in my community, all online, right? And we are equipping each other and challenging each other and pushing each other and encouraging one another. It flat out works. It's simple. And so what we're watching, a lot of these guys, most of them are doing it live with what they're doing, but a couple are adding online stuff. And we're now having a younger generation go into spaces like you that are going into specific venues, targeting those venues.

So here's what I found that with them. Here's the key with it all, Jeff. It's just this: What is it you're trying to get after and disciple? I'd like them to do this. And the question is, whatever space you go into, how are you going to accomplish it in that space? That's the big question. And then figure it out in that space, you know?

Like, like, um, we, you and I made a comment a couple months back. We were talking about prayer walking. So one of the things that, not that it's a skill, but one of the things we want to do is pray for people. And one of our guys said, "Hey, man, how do I just pray walk for my neighborhood?" Well, that's a great question. So let's just talk about how you could do a person to person and pray through your neighborhood.

So now I would just ask, "How do I do that on Roblox?" Right? Because again, my kids are always on Roblox. That's why it always jumps out to me. Or in this space. Or I made a mistake in my community. Somebody asked me like, "Hey, I'm on Nextdoor, right?" And so here's our community. I did not realize how much Nextdoor is the community of our community. Like, there's so much happening on there, and I didn't realize when I had signed up to do my one post that I am now being blitzed with 22 emails a day and text about what's occurring on my Nextdoor post, right? I'm like, "I got to get off of this."

But here would be the question: How do I prayer walk that Nextdoor? How do I learn what's happening? How do I engage what's happening? So just look at that digital space and then look at discipleship and go, "The same thing I would do if I was face to face here, how do I do that same concept? Is there a skill I could teach? Is there a practice I could do in that space which would have helped me to accomplish the same thing as if you and I were sitting here?"

Together, right? So I don't have an answer for what it is, but I have a process. The process is just to say, what is the result I want out of that person? You know, if I want them to pray, how do we figure out how to do prayer and grow them in prayer there and encourage them in that, right? How do we come back? By the way, encouragement's one of the number one things for discipleship. How do we figure out a system where we regularly gather and encourage one another if that's what it takes, right? So just look, again, here's what I want to accomplish. If I only had eighteen months, here's the top ten things I would want to see accomplished. And then when I go look at my digital space, whether, you know, in any capacity, how do I carry it out in that environment? Let's figure that out in that environment. That's going to be the secret to what we have to do.

So good. Yeah, we the idea of you you're discipling people differently in the different contexts. How you would do that at an established gig of church versus how you would do that at a two hundred person church versus what that looks like on Facebook or Nextdoor, Roblox. You know, I love you keep saying, you know, the the Robloxian church idea. Daniel Aaron, we're blocking Christians is a good friend of mine. And so the more the more that we can contextually look at these different areas, whether it's even if it's a house church, how you're able to do that, it's going to be different. All these different modes, all the different models, it allows for contextualization. It has to. And the more that we can do that, the more that we can engage and actually do things at this encouraging, not accountability, encouraging people towards, you know, the the disciple making it in that multiplication piece. That that's beautiful.

So hey, um, hey Kevin, we're gonna wrap, man. This has been a great conversation. Thanks for jumping in. I had Daniel Herron now in my head. That's all good, man. He's smarter than me. I know that. I mean, when he, Daniel Aaron, just he just transitioned out of the Robloxian Christians. This is he just had literally had his ten-year anniversary like yesterday. And already he's he's twenty-one and he's moving on to the next phase of his life. Twenty-one on transition. He's he's like, yeah, I mean, I've successfully connected with forty, fifty thousand people on Roblox. I'm trying to figure out what God's got for me next. And so it's already done the succession plan. I don't know any twenty-one-year-olds out there who who who can say, yeah, I've done a succession plan and now we're moving on to what's next. But um, that's a whole other conversation. But hey, Kevin, thank you for this. Love Timothy Initiative. Love this. And I will never say accountability again. Thank you for that lesson.

Well, hey, by the way, you're a word changer. You're worth. If you have a new word for it, do it. But encouragement is at least a biblical word, and that is the heartbeat behind it. Don't ever miss it. Anyone who wants to take accountability and put a negative spin on it, it's just encouragement. That's what that's all we want. I want to encourage one another. I want to spur one another on to love and good deeds. I I love that. I will I will adopt encouragement into my language. Um, and I'm going to spend some time. If listening audience out there, if anybody has ideas on a new word for discipleship, a new word, let's let's let's go ahead and make a new word. I don't need prayer for that one. Listen, and the great part about the audience, I pray that that word would just change America because there's so few. I mean, we are in such a desperate time for a need for encouragement in in our country. And literally, that is, if we could just encourage one another in their spiritual journeys, that that is made of Sunday. That by the way, that's what Sunday should be about also, isn't it? I never want to beat my sheep. I don't want to encourage them. So if we could just change our mentality, that value of encouragement, of challenge from an encouragement perspective, I think it would change so much. But you got to give a practice and a skill to go with it.

Yeah, and that's that even gets back to that. It's better to ask questions than make statements. Draw people into it. Get them talking rather than you telling them. Listening to them and creating a dialogue by listening as opposed to a monologue by lecturing. It totally pulls that same thread.

Yeah, and by the way, we want to keep it all biblical. Let's keep it biblical. Instead of practices like, you know, I'm not going to do it just because it's been my practice, but let's go back and look at the Bible and just, okay, let's make sure we got down with the Bible saying and how that implies what are the implications to what we're doing now, no matter what venue we're in, no matter what space that we're into. Love it. Hey, so we're going to land the plane. This has been beautiful, Kevin. Thank you for the time and join it in here. We'll have we'll have to do this again. I'm such a fan of TTI. We'll find ways to to work it in down the road. Thanks for the partnership. I'm so excited y'all approaching the gap in going out into the digital world ahead of what most ministries are willing to do. And I'm so glad you're finally, you know, set free to be able to do it, man. Thank you for for leading out in this area and helping us uh grow also. So blessed. Appreciate it.

Yeah, for Kevin, this is Jeff at the Church Digital and Stadium Church Planning. Thanks for joining us here on this episode. Catch you again on the next pod. Y'all have a good day.