EP125: Planting a Digital Church through Stadia

All right, you got the Church Digital Podcast here once again, powered by Stadia Church Planting. By the way, this is our two-year anniversary for the podcast here. We've been doing the Church Digital Podcast for two years. That's 104 weeks. I don't want to do the math, maybe 730 days, plus or minus a leap year day somewhere in the middle. We've done 150-some episodes here on the Church Digital Podcast. Beta throw in some cray—like, it's been a lot of fun in this season. And I want to thank Stadia Church Planting for continuing to help me get the word out, talking fidget church, talking digital-only church. It has been awesome every step of the way with my Stadia family. Good times, good times.

Okay, for this episode, we actually want to stay focused on the Stadia planting side of this because today here in this podcast, we're going to be talking about planting a digital-only expression of church. Now, pre-COVID, I got to tell you, a digital-only expression of church—a church with no physical footprint, a church with no building, a church that exists entirely in cloud services and social media and digital space—yeah, it's a very, very controversial idea. You know, like people say, "Hey, Jeff, you're sinning by helping churches plant digitally. You're taking the people out of the bride of Christ, the physical building. You should repent of your ways." These are some of the conversations I've had in my lifetime talking about a digital-only expression of church. And now, thank you, COVID, there seems to be a little more acceptance of this. Not that COVID maybe loosened up what the Bible says—I don't think COVID changed the Bible—but I think that we're seeing a better understanding of what digital ministry can look like and what a digital church can look like, and understanding that maybe the strengths and weaknesses of digital play well in context of doing a church in that space—a biblically-functioned, ecclesiologically-solid church, but it's not what we think. Let's even get into it a little bit here in this conversation.

We're bringing in three digital-only church planters into the conversation. You see, Stadia, my family over at Stadia, we have been doing cohorts towards planting digital-only expressions of church. We've got two or three cohorts running right now. Honestly, I'll be starting two more cohorts probably within the next couple months. And so we're constantly helping planters achieve their vision of planting physical churches or even digital expressions of church. And so we're bringing in three planters who have gone through cohort with us. They've gone through the training, the project management, the evaluations, and at this point, one of them's launched and the other two are gearing up to launch in the fall.

And for us, this is an opportunity to present to you, the listening audience out there: hey, here are some guys that are doing digital-only planting. They are literally planting a church that will not have a physical building. What are the challenges? What are the obstacles? What are the celebrations? What are the God stories that are coming out of this? And this is the thing that we hope you hear: that God can do things in digital space through a digital church. God has already done things through digital churches in digital spaces. And we want to encourage you—maybe this is your opportunity. Maybe you or somebody you know may be interested in planting a digital-only expression of church. And I, Jeff Reed, literal job title director of digital church planting for Stadia Church Planting, I would love to talk with you.

So here's who we're bringing into the conversation right off the bat: Mark Lutz. Now, Mark is a digital-only church planter, of course. He is planting Lux Digital Church. It is a church for video gamers. Excuse me, it's a church of video gamers. And Mark will dig into that here in a little bit in the broadcast, talking about his Twitch and his Discord relationship that he's doing with his church. We're also bringing in Chris Monroe. Chris is with Relate Church, which is a church that focuses primarily on Facebook in his targeted region. It's more of the Kentucky, Tennessee kind of areas, up in the kind of the Midwest. I'll let Chris explain to you his why and why he's doing Relate Church. And we're also bringing in Chesley Lundy. And Chesley is launching King City Church in the fall. And he has this ridiculous vision for what a digital church can be. And I'm not even going to start to explain it as much as to recognize: hey, you need to listen to this podcast. You've got three guys with three different strategies that they're wanting to implement in a digital church, reaching completely different people. None of them are trying to steal from the physical building as much as it is create a different church for a different type of people, disciple them in different ways, contextually, to the end of creating disciple makers.

Now, there's powerful stories in here. Majestic purple buffalo—you need to stick around and wait for that story. So if you don't know, you'll know when you hear it. Majestic purple buffalo. You'll understand. Stick around and wait and hear the story of majestic purple buffalo. Either way, this is going to be a phenomenal conversation that I hope is going to challenge some of you out there to maybe change the way that you're looking at church, or maybe encourage you to be part of a movement of digital-only church plants that Stadia is trying to start up here to reach the world that our buildings are not reaching.

So for the conversation: Mark Lutz, Chris Monroe, Chesley Lundy, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm really simply calling "The Planters of Digital-Only Churches."

Okay, everybody, here you go.

So my ministry story starts—well, I've been in ministry for probably about twelve years. You know, ten years of that has been serving the same church. It'll be eleven years here, probably by the time this episode is out, actually. And I have been serving kind of like a physical church. And so part of our ministry story has to do with being inside of the physical church and watching, serving in youth ministry, serving in discipleship ministry, and watching a lot of kids who came out of the ministry of our church. And we were really faithful and did our best to be faithful to those kids. And we reached into the community. We had a strong missional emphasis. You know, we read all the books, we went to all the conferences. And our church is an amazing church still—the church that my family attends on the weekends. But I watched as kids just left. And they didn't go anywhere in particular. They just didn't come back. They weren't away at school. They didn't go to the military. They were in their parents' basements, and most of them were playing video games. Mostly because I was a gamer, I knew that I was still gaming with them on and off. They had come to church a couple of times, and it just really wasn't for them. And the world swept them up in a wide variety of beliefs. And that wasn't because they went to a college classroom like I had typically thought. It's mostly because they were educated by social media more than they were educated by the church.

And so I remember saying about five years ago to my wife, "If the church does not change radically, we're not going to reach the next generation." And so Lux is inherently sort of born out of that. I've been a gamer my entire life in some capacity, and Lux is built to reach gamers. It's to reach gamers where they are instead of saying, "God wants to reach you exactly where you are, so please come to our church and sit in our seats and sit through our sermons." Saying, let's take the church to where they are.

And so when God began to move and call us into something new, it started out of a podcast. It was just a podcast that I had started without really a lot of intention. I planned for it to last maybe a month or two. It was covering a digital card game that I already enjoyed, so it was video-game-centric. And I just started beginning to use it for ministry and to pray for people. And that's really where Lux began. And God began to open doors and answer prayers. And we began to say, "Okay, if God's at work here and we're seeing the Holy Spirit answer our prayers, even though we're not physically touching anybody, we don't know these people very well"—and that's when relationships really started to develop. And it was like, "Okay, what is a relationship? What constitutes a relationship?" I've always thought that to have a relationship, I had to be physically with people. But here I am with three guys on a call, all of which I would consider to be friends, and I've never met any of them. I've never hugged any of them. I've never shook any of their hands. Yet I would say, because of the time I've spent with them, they are closer to me right now than the majority of people who I haven't been able to see for a year because of COVID-19.

And so it was in the end of 2019, beginning of 2020, that God really moved and said, "Mark, I crafted you not only as a pastor but also as a gamer. And my heart broke for the gaming community because I saw what type of a dark place they were in. And I had known that, but I had never even considered God wanting to interact with that." And so I was like, "Well, I have a heart for church planting. I have a heart for gamers. But we can't plant a church and ask them all to come unless we don't have a building. I need a church that's not contained within walls. I need a church that's not held back by brick and mortar or steel and timber. We needed a church that could reach people literally wherever it was that they were." And that's what, you know, brought about Lux.

And so we began dreaming about that, and God began answering a lot of those prayers. I came with a ton of reservation about it. I'm a physical church person, not a digital church person at heart. I wanted to plant a physical church. I didn't really have any desire to do things digitally. I was off social media for four years. I had no presence online with the exception of Discord. And I saw the power of community tools. And it was just like, "Okay, like, this is going to be so..." In March of 2021, we started Lux Digital Church online. We live stream on Twitch because we wanted to put a church where gamers are. I make an important point that we're not a church for gamers—not that I mean—but we're a church where gamers are, okay? And I think there's an important difference between those two things. Because a church for gamers means that everything has to be gaming-centric, and in our church, everything isn't gaming-centric. It's gospel-centric. And so we just happen to have planted our church where gamers exist already. And so our heart is then to be able to reach them because I can connect with gamers in a way that people who don't game just can't. And there's nothing against them. It's the same if you were really into sailboating—you could connect with sailboaters in a way that I can't because I don't know anything about sailboating. And so, but I do know a lot about gaming and in the gaming community. And so that's really where Lux is. That's where we got started. And God's been incredibly faithful to us sort of through all of that. It's been a while, but a really cool ride.

That you don't consider yourself a disrupter?

I don't. I mean, I don't know. I don't gladly take that title. I'm not like eager for it. I mean, I know that Jeff is. He loves the title. It's like one of his favorite things that he has. He puts it on the shelf at home and he dusts it every day. But like, I don't naturally consider myself a disrupter. I think this is a natural extension of where the church is going, and this is the direction that the Holy Spirit is sending the church. I think He's made that...

Very clear. So I, I hope that instead of being an intentional disrupter, um, we're, I oftentimes kind of view it as the worship wars that we went through in the 90s in the church where we wanted to bring in contemporary worship and other people didn't want contemporary worship. And right, the church at the end of the street that I live on, like right there, they're still in it. Right? They have a blended service, a contemporary service, and a regular service, and all of them probably have 15 people who show up to them, right? Because they can't get along and have one worship service.

Right. And, uh, and I, I think that this is the sort of like the worship war of our generation. And I'm hoping it's not a war. Is the thing? Like, I'm not going, I don't want to go into it as intentionally a disrupter because I have no desire whatsoever to start a war with the physical church. I want to partner with the physical church. If that makes sense.

Well said. Well said. Um, and yeah, I do have disruptor on my shelf. I only dust it twice a month though, not every day. My bad. Take lessons here. Can you remember that, please? Chesley, uh, in, I just, I know Chesley considers himself a disrupter, and maybe he's one of those guys that finds a little too much joy in that space, although publicly he's probably going to correct me now. But Chesley, won't you tell me a little bit of your ministry story? Uh, talk about King City too. How you got started with that?

Yeah, that's only because I'm an eight on the Enneagram. I gotta challenge everything. Yeah, so I'm naturally a disrupter whether I like it or not, so it just happens. Um, I was leading a small church in Omaha, Nebraska, about five and a half years ago, and I was in a room with, uh, there's probably about 25 of us pastors in the denomination I was a part of at the time, and they're trying to figure out how to reach the next generation. And I was the youngest pastor in the room by 25 to 30 years. And so all ultimately they looked at me and said, "What do you think?" And I'm like, "Well, the question I keep asking myself at this moment is, what if the church didn't have a building?" They laughed at me. They said that was crazy, and they disregarded what I said and went back to the, "How are they going to reach, you know, the next generation?" And I realized I had always not felt at home and felt like I had a good place for my skills and abilities in the church. Um, obviously church planting seems to be the most, uh, the most congruent to my gifts. Um, I'm very entrepreneurial. I love business. I love starting things, but it still didn't quite jive with the way I was thinking, way outside the box. And, uh, I went, ended up becoming a youth and young adult pastor at a church in Phoenix, Arizona. I was here for about two years and realized my kids are on digital, and I am not. And so, um, how do I help small churches build a youth group, a student group that has good resources that could also help mentor their students? And we came up with the idea: we have to have a digital community. We have to have a safe space that a student would be able to have a conversation with the mentor, and you can't, you don't have many of those safe spaces online, even on social. Um, it was a success, and then COVID hit, and my hats changed because I'm on church staff. I became the digital guy because, you know, he's doing that digital thing with students, and I love marketing and business, and so they're like, "Hey, yeah, this is a natural extension." But I started realizing this question that I had in my heart some five years ago. Like, this is real now. There's proof of concept, and everybody has to do it. And so I started looking online for the specific, um, a specific phrase: digital church planting. And I went to page 14 of Google, and this guy named Jeff Reed was there. And, uh, he's not on the 14th page of Google anymore. And I got an appointment with Jeff, and the first thing I think I said to you was, "I'm not crazy. Who knew?" And, uh, we had conversations. I had no idea that I would be here, you know, what, seven, eight months later, looking to plant a digital church, but I am. And so, uh, obviously as I went down this road, it was, I believe it's a God thing. Um, God has been very gracious. Um, I'm in an organization that is super supportive and loves me and my family. And so, a lot like Mark, we still go to the church that we were on staff at. I'm not paid, but like, I speak once a month there, so there's still relational ties. I do believe that there's some real superpower if the digital church and the physical church partner together because at the end of the day, church is not a building. It's a people. And so I'm excited about that. We're really cool. Glad you found me on Google, and most people give up around page 14. I am too, but you, you went that extra mile out of 14.

And you're right, I'm not on page 14 anymore. No, not anymore. Not anymore. Hey, Chris, uh, man, let's talk about what you're doing. So talk to me about this digital church that you're doing on Facebook. How did you get started with your ministry story, and how did you end up doing what you're doing now on Facebook?

Well, uh, let's see. I mean, I grew up in church and, uh, was very active in ministry as a teenager, was doing little service, you know, being active in ministry at age 11, 12, 13. Just has been part of who I am. I knew that God had designed me for ministry. Uh, when we were right before Christy and I got married, we just jumped into youth ministry. We have been over the last 18 years been youth pastors, associate pastors, worship pastors. Uh, we've been lead pastors a couple times. And, uh, in 2018, uh, we were serving as associate pastors and worship pastors. Um, and, uh, God began to stir something up in me, and I knew it was to plant a church. And I fought him for it for about almost two years. Um, well, not a year and a half. Let's go a year and a half. I fought God with this. Um, the end of 2019, we stepped down from our positions and actually started attending a different church just to kind of get some space to clarity. And beginning of 2020, we had finally agreed together with God that he was wanting us to plant a church, and then the world went crazy. And, uh, this is just, uh, I mean, everybody was in that predicament. Uh, what was going on at the same time is we had actually been loaned out to another church to help them while they were in the middle of worship leaders. And so our first Sunday at that church was the first Sunday that we could not meet together physically here in Kentucky. And so I went from being the fill-in worship leader to being the guy who was responsible for getting the church online just overnight. And, uh, began to, we began to ask ourselves the questions. First of all, did we misunderstand God? Because we were thinking planting a physical church, it's probably not a good idea to try to plant a physical church in the middle of a pandemic, you know, these kind of questions. And at the same time, I'm also looking to see how I can improve what I was doing with Central City Church. And, uh, through this, I came across a couple of, um, interviews, um, with Myron Pierce. Is it, um, I came across the interview. Somebody, I forget. It wasn't Jeff. It was somebody else that was interviewing him, and he was talking about the digital church. And then Jeff, I came across the interview with you, uh, was interviewing somebody out California way who went ahead and decided to plant a church early and did it all digitally on Easter. And so this kind of started my head rolling. And then I attended this church online summit, and it was there that somebody said, I was going to look this up, but somebody, somebody said one of the speakers said that, and it was a pivotal moment for us. He said this. He drew a circle. He's like, "This is, uh, you know, the church and its physical presence and everything that we do in-house." He's like, "In this little circle down here, he said, this is the church's online presence." And he said that the shift that he saw coming that was accelerated by COVID was that that was going to flip-flop, and the church was going to have a bigger online presence and a smaller in-house, in-person presence. And that just got my mind thinking about what we could do. And, um, I don't say stuff because I say a lot of things. Sometimes I will drive down the road, and I'm mad at the local ice cream shop down here because they opened one before I could. Um, and I don't, you know, because I'm just that kind of guy. I want to open this and that, and I just constantly have these thoughts. And Christy's like, "Yeah, just go for it." But we was talking, and she came and she said, "Hey, why don't we plant this church digitally?" And so I'm a guy who's full of crazy ideas, but when she says something like that, I trust her judgment a lot more than I trust mine a lot of times. And so I realized it was God that was speaking to both of us. And so I filled out a church planting survey from Stadia the next day. I was sitting on a Zoom call with Jeff Reed, and one month later, we was going through CPAC. And it was a whirlwind of a time. And, uh, we've been getting to do ministry on Facebook, the Relay Church. And, uh, I've seen a lot of things happen. We do a morning Monday through Friday morning Bible study, 8:30 Central Time. Every Sunday night at five o'clock, we do a time of worship, and we've actually had a few services thrown in in the mix. And we're looking to launch full-time this September.

Well, listen, like you had, you know, I would normally say you had lots of different options out there towards planting a digital church. I don't know that there were lots of options. I don't. I don't know if there's a lot of people like doing digital church planting or supporting digital church planting the way that Stadia is, maybe more and more coming up now in 2021 as a result of COVID. But there's not a lot. I do see a lot of planters though that are wanting to do their own thing. Uh, they're kind of wanting to work on their own and develop their own systems as opposed to working with an organization like Stadia. So I'm curious: why Stadia? Why did you come along to be part of the cohort? Why not do your own thing? Why not work with somebody else? Uh, surely it's not because of something that Google said on page 14. So like, what was it that kind of brought you in that led you to this place of working together with an organization like Stadia?

Yeah, for me, um, twofold. I had already had a conversation with you, and then I am a part of a legacy denomination, um, and they already had a partnership with Stadia. So obviously, though, being in the church planting game, um, previously, Stadia is a big name. And, um, if they can put their stamp of approval on you, it's like a bank's, uh, bank system of a credit score. And so, um, if they say yes, or you have a high score, like when you're looking at investment dollars and you're looking at, uh, support raising, or even just, um, "Can you do this?" Stadia saying yes, we believe you can, matters. And it's not just a "Well, I think I can, and I'm going to try." Obviously, I believe there's those of us out there that can, and I can tell you I failed two church plant assessments, um, before, uh, God brought me into this piece, you know, back, I think I knew that. Well, I never really talked about it.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We won't call them out publicly, but we're glad you're here. Definitely want to endorse you moving forward. Okay?

Yeah, there you go. So no, I did. I failed two church plant assessments. Um, one of them was because I was Reformed in a non-Reformed denomination, and the other one was because I was a young kid that had no clue what he was talking about. He just knew he needed to like, like, start something. And so they're like, "You're not old enough yet." And so, um, I had been through this, this was my third time going through this system. So I was well aware of what I was getting myself into. Uh, and so my wife's like, "We're doing this again? Really?" So, but, um, this time, you know, super prepared.

Uh knew somewhat of what was gonna happen. I tried to explain, you know, to my friends like it's like Shark Tank. You go in, you are grueled for like two days, and uh, they want to see how you handle pressure. Um, and it just, it meant something because when they saw it in you and then they can see that you're, you have uh, the ability to do this, we want to help train and coach you to make it even better. I think having that support system behind you and not doing it alone is so important, and that's why I went with Stadia.

That's awesome, Chris. Uh, how about you? What was, was your developing Relate Church? Why work with Stadia? Why work with an organization like us as opposed to doing it on your own? Well, in 2007 was the first time that I ever felt the call to plant a church, and uh, I'm a part of an organization, denomination, that has state overseers or administrative bishops. I think that's what they call them. And I called the guy up and I said, "Hey, I want to plant a church," and he he gave me the green light. Go ahead. Um, and uh, we went six months into it, and then he called me back and he's like, "Either you're gonna have to move so far away that you're gonna have to start over, um, or you're to shut down." And uh, in a short period of time, you know, it was, it was a learning experience. I realized very, very first off, I knew nothing about church planting. Uh, and I knew that if I ever wanted to plant a church again, that I was going to have to have somebody that was going to come along with us and walk with us through that process, because it's not an easy, it's not an easy task, and there's a lot of stuff I don't know. And uh, and so when, when just stumbling on to, um, looking at all the different organizations that was out there, um, like you said, you know, there wasn't a whole lot that was offering for the digital. And uh, and so when we we had talked in our first interview, um, it just everything just kind of fell into place. And uh, and we went that route.

You know, hey, so so let me let me ask, like, um, you're doing a different thing. You're doing a digital church. There are similarities between digital and physical. Physical, there are things that that poured over from physical to digital. There are some things that you've had to relearn and experiment and do differently. So I would love to maybe explore. Obviously, the audience as a general rule understands how physical ministry works. As you're doing your digital churches, as you know, Chris, even you with the previewing and Chessley, all the stuff that you're doing, kind of laying down this foundation uh for ministry to come, what are the differences in doing a digital church compared to physical only ministry? What are the things that you're you're wrestling with? Whoever wants to go first?

Yeah, I'll start. I mean, like, there the differences are, it's so strange because there's so much of the core of ministry between the digital, the physical, that is the same. Um, you know, for me, physical ministry was always relationships. And um, and then, you know, there's ebbs and flows with that. There's good and bad, and you're closer to some people than you are others. But in the end of the day, right, it's relationships. It's like, how do you develop relationships? How do you invest in people? How do you um, how do you help equip people? Um, how do you, how do you really, you know, make friends? And you know, for me, like, my ministry teams and things, they were always my closest friends. Like, I went to battle with these people. Like, this was for me, this was spiritual warfare, and and I needed comrades alongside of me. So whenever I dive into ministry at a church, almost all of my relationships outside of my teens suffered because those were the people that were at my house eating meals. Those were the people that I was up late with. Those were the people that, you know, if we went, if youth group went really bad and we had to go get a beer afterwards, those are the people that I was out grabbing a beer with afterwards, you know, like that was, those were my, that was my tribe and my people. And so, um, really, digital ministry is no different than that for me anyway. Um, digital ministry is about relationships. You know, it's about spending time with people. It's about investing in people. It's about equipping people. It's about serving people well and relationally. You can do all of those things. Um, there are some aspects that are super challenging that I wish we could do better. You know, um, but like this weekend, you know, one of the members of our teams, he and his fiancée got married, and I was on the Zoom call watching the wedding, um, you know, from six and a half or seven hours south of me. I got, I got to attend his wedding this weekend. And into him, I was there. I mean, it was shoddy. It was done on an iPad. It was kind of blurry and everything, but I got to be there. I got to watch he and his now wife get married. And like, and that's incredible. And I got to participate in in that in that way. And there are a lot of people who, you know, I would consider friends that I've developed relationships with. But our church is, you know, a month old as well. And so, you know, a lot of my relationships are a month old. Some of them are longer. Some of those relationships I've been able to develop over the last year or two because they they came from another digital community that I was already a part of, and I had established some relationships there.

What is different? It's like, it's not hard to tell what's different. Like, there's a, it has to be scalable and it has to be global from like the very moment. Like, the other day we had someone join our community. He was in one of our streams. He came into it. He's a believer. He's a 63-year-old retired police officer from uh, from Australia. And so I just got to hang out with him for like 30 minutes uh, because he stopped in our welcome center. I saw him in there, and so I popped in and said hello. You know, your building's always open digitally, and there's great parts about that, and there's there's challenges about that. Most of your church exists on people's phones. So it's not hard to gather together daily, and there's beauty in that. But one of my favorite things to do for ministry was eat. And we don't really get the opportunity to do that at Lux. I can't prepare. I mean, I used to love it, prepare a big meal for 30 people that would be my job for the day, and I would serve the meal to 30 people that I had cooked myself. And I'm not a good cook, but it meant something to them that I had prepared food for them. And with Lux, I can't do that. And so there's so many differences, and it doesn't take anyone who's been in ministry any, you know, for any length of time, a while to like determine like, "Oh yeah, I wouldn't be able to do this," and "We could do that. I wouldn't be able to do that. We could do that." It's the hurdle for most people to get over of, "I prefer to do ministry this way. I prefer to do ministry physically versus digitally, and I don't like what social media brings to the table. When I don't like what the digital world has to offer, and I don't like any of those things either, but that's where people are, and so that's where the church needs to be."

Yeah, I think um, digital is a tool. Uh, it's it's a means to the end. It's not the end itself. So I don't think anyone here uh, would be on digital if uh, there was a better means. So um, I think it's it's a component, and if there's a better way to reach people, that's what we want to do. We'll we'll do anything short of sin to reach people for Jesus.

Thank you, Craig Rochelle. Um, but for for what we're trying to do, um, there's there's a book called "The Innovation Stack" by Jim McKelvey, uh, who is the co-founder of Square with Jack Dorsey. And he talks about these uh, these little innovative ideas and stacking them on on top of each other. So he talks about Southwest. He talks about their fight with Amazon and how they beat Amazon as a small company. But it was a lot of these little pieces that they had said, "Hey, we have to do this differently. We have to do this differently, and we have to do this differently." All innovation is an undercutting of the legacy model that comes before them. And so for us, it was like, "Okay, you have this digital uh, influencer marketing piece. You have the social media piece. You have crowdsourcing, like crowdfunding, and uh, you could crowdsource anything you want nowadays too." So there's there's these three pieces that digital has given us that if you put them and you put them in the context of church, they could change the way we operate for the good of the church, I believe. And so we wanted to do, uh, we wanted to take those three component pieces and say, "What, how would that work in a church setting?" And then ultimately, at the end of the day, our job as a church is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry until we all come to the unity of faith, right? And so for us, it's like, "Well, this, to make disciples, I don't want to say discipleship, that's wrong, but to make disciples is the goal of our church." And so uh, the operating system underneath that has to be development, and it can't be for volunteerism. It has to be for mission in their context because we don't have a building. We have, we have very little infrastructure that needs uh, a lot of care. So we have a few things that we'll need volunteers for, but we could do an HQ team of like 10 people and have, you know, serve thousands because of the scalability of this model. And so uh, for us, it was like, "Hey, here are these three or four pieces that are unique to digital that we can take, stack them on each other, and you can create a whole new way of doing church that I think is effective." And and I have, you know, I could I could talk a lot more about it, but that's essentially what it is for the most part.

You guys seem to have like stable background and support from that. So um, maybe share some stories there because you don't, you're not having these horror stories. Is that as a result of COVID? Is it just kind of forward-thinking people that that you're now working with at the denomination or at the sending church? Like, how have you managed to have healthy support coming in here with this like very radical concept idea?

Yeah, I mean, COVID 19 helps. Um, because it suddenly makes everyone say, "Oh, maybe we should do online stuff," or like, you know, previous people were like, "Hey, I hate online stuff," and then they had to go to church online. They're like, "Actually, kind of like it. Kind of kind of actually like it more than going to church." Kind of nicer. Um, and they're like, you know, people, you know, Boomers and later who are kind of like, "Yeah, like, I'm kind of cool." Um, so that that didn't hurt us. We've really only made one ask, one direct ask, for the most part. You know, it's very interesting because one of the one of our supporters came to us and kind of said like, "Hey, relate, resources flow along the lines of relationship." And so we've just gone to people that we've had relationship with. And for me, ministering in the same community for 10 years is really helpful. I come from a non-denominational church in a rural area of Western Pennsylvania that has little to no network, but the network that we do have has been supportive of us, and that has been incredible. Um, it also didn't hurt. I mean, you know, in our very unique situation, right, we had um, I just had the opportunity to build a relationship with somebody who ended up being very wealthy. Um, and that's like, that's my unique scenario. Like, it just came into being that like, before this individual was very wealthy, we developed a really great relationship. Then this person became very wealthy, and then this person wants to do, wants to help us and wants to see churches flourish. And and they like the idea. And so that made all of the resourcing sort of like, that was easy for.

Us now our home church is very supportive of us. Obviously we still worship there. They're financially behind us. They're behind us and what they say is prayer, presence, and payment. And so they're three P's. We are a network church of New Life Christian Ministries and we've signed a network agreement with them.

But you know, I would be remiss to not mention Victory Family Church, Open Door Church in North Carolina, and our friends at Southeast Asia Prayer Center because they're also all been incredibly supportive. And we've told them the same thing across the board. It's not really about your finances. Every physical church leader who gets on board and says that what we're doing and applauds us and says, "Hey, we're praying for you. We love what you're doing," is a source of encouragement to us. Because as somebody who had a lot of times second-guessed what we were doing, it was the physical church planters that came along with us who had planted church, you know, fifteen years before, and said, "What you're doing is the right thing." And that made all the difference. It was encouragement. It was enormous. God takes care of money. He paves his streets with gold. I'm not worried about money. But their encouragement and getting behind us spiritually was huge. I mean, it was so big. I got to remember that God paves his road with money. He's got it figured out. Like, you just worry about the other stuff. That's really good.

So Chris, like, you're interesting in this equation. These other guys, like, they're making money off the church. The in-game is their full-time employee, kind of heading that way, and that may be for you one day. We've had the conversation. But you're an entrepreneur. You own your own business, or at least at this point now you've partnered, merged with another business kind of doing concrete pouring in Kentucky. So you're like, if you ever need a foundation poured, like Chris is the guy. We'll put a link in the show notes. You can obviously connect up afterwards. Chris, I don't know if I can help you get any business in Kentucky, but you're trying to do like a—so we use the term co-vocational, where you're doing ministry digitally, but your full-time job is something else. And one of the observations I've learned talking with digital planters is there's a lot of people like you who are doing a business and, oh, by the way, they want to do a church on the side. Just, you know, just recently I had a conversation with the IT director for a systems manager for a Fortune 500 company, and basically he's like, "Jeff, no church is going to be able to afford my salary. I want to keep my job. I just want to do kind of the ministry thing on the side." So I'm wondering, Chris, like, what's that tension for you being co-vocational where it's not full-time, but you're still doing ministry? You're still being very effective in onboarding and starting this church. It was what support looked like. What's long-term look like being co-vocational working versus not? Like, kind of what's your heart here towards the church?

Yeah, so early in 2018, God opened the door for us to start a business. I've been pouring concrete my whole life. We had talked about going into business for ourselves a lot, but it was in 2018 it just literally fell in my lap. Like, I could not have planned this the way it happened. I was unprepared. I'm struggling to find insurance and all the tax stuff before I can start my first job because they want me to start, and I'm scrambling just trying to get everything caught up. God worked that out. And so during the time of me praying in 2018, one of the things that I was praying was that this is what you have for me. Like, if you want this business to work, then you have to do it. There are some other things that we were praying for. God, if this is where—if you want us in Beaver Dam, Kentucky, because I really like to come down there where you are, Jeff. You know, maybe not Miami exactly, but you know, down that direction. God, if this is where, then you're gonna have to let this stuff fall into place. And I'm secretly praying that it doesn't. Like, I don't want the business to go, you know, take off. I don't want some other things to fall in place because I want God to—I know a state overseer in Florida. Let me go down there and pastor a church. But God, this is where he had me. So I realized that this is—I'm here for a purpose. I'm here for a reason. All this stuff happened. And at the end of 2020, we really began to look at planting a church, going full-time in the church or closing the business or continuing the business and doing both. And God worked it out that we were able to partner with another business. We actually merged four companies, and he has been so gracious to really keep me out of the field and more in the office. And that allows me to be able to split my time between doing stuff for the church and doing stuff for the business. And then our ascending church has been wonderful. He has just gotten behind us. And like everybody else, we still attend. In fact, we still lead worship for them. And they have—it's we don't even look at it kind of like them sending it. Just as they're a partner church for us. We help them. They help us. And we have been in this in ministry, and the pastor—I know from the very first time I met him, he did not know me. He just really opened his arms and welcomed me in there. And he has been truly behind us and for us from day one. And so on the denominational scale, I talked to our denominational leader in the state, and he said that they are going to have a meeting about digital church to see if that's a real thing or not. And I still haven't heard the result of that meeting.

So what is a challenge? What's something that you weren't expecting? What was the hurdle? The surprise? The gotcha? In this entire process, whether attached to Steady or not, I'd love to know what's the thing that took you by surprise through this experience?

You know, for us, we launched a couple of weeks ago. And so, you know, we've processed, and I say that loosely because I look at honestly what Chesley and Chris are doing, and I'm like, they launched. They're just not telling anybody yet, right? Like, Chris has been doing live. He's been doing all my church for a year. So he keeps saying, "I'm going to launch in September," but really he launched a year before I did. And Chesley's already building the infrastructure in the ministry and the teams. And if that—if it's about equipping the saints for the work of ministry, Chesley's already doing it. So I would argue that they've launched even if they don't want to officially say that they have.

But we have officially said that we have, and I think the one challenge that I didn't expect was that the church remains full of people. Just because you started a new thing doesn't mean that you sort of summoned perfect saints out of nowhere who are as driven as you are and share the same exact vision for the church at the same moment that you have shared it, right? Like, they're still like they're still attending. You know, people are still going to attend once a month even though you're doing it digital, even though you're doing this new thing. And you feel like this is revolutionary. It's going to change the shape of the church and the future is going to be different because of a product of what we're doing. And we're fighting back evil in sort of the online world, and we're bringing hope to people who don't know Jesus. And like, I'm about all of those things. And I would have expected it physically for people to be like, "Yeah, I'm all in." And I have a hundred percent of people. Like, I thought I'd have a hundred percent, a hundred percent of people. And that's just not the case.

So the same things that you deal with in the physical church, like you're gonna deal with here. If you're trying to escape lukewarm believers, like there is a plethora of them that are online. They all have a Facebook account just the same as they can show up to your church. And so, you know, I think that was a little shocking to me. Like, I was a little taken aback. And I was like, "Oh, okay. Like, this just takes longer, right?" Like, we have to cast vision. We have to invest in people's lives. We have to build a base. We have to do all the things we would have done. And that's okay. Like, that's an okay thing. It was just at first it was somewhat surprising to me. You know, the same is going to be true. People who come to faith for the first time are you going to be most like zealous and passionate people who are also potentially the most reckless people for your church to put in leadership? That's going to be true physically. It's going to be true digitally. So actually, some of the stuff that was the same between the physical and the digital church was surprising to me. That's some of the stuff that's caught me off guard.

Other than that, there hasn't been a tremendous amount of things that have been like, "I didn't see that coming." Like, you kind of look and you know what questions you're going to get asked. You know kind of some of the problems that you're gonna have. I'll say this: don't do what we did. Do not open up a public forum for spiritual questions that allows anyone to answer because theological discussions are a dumpster fire in person. They're two times a dumpster fire online. That was a mistake. I will not make again.

That one also caught me. I was like, "Oh, people are genuine and incredible, and they're just going to come in here and they're going to give really great responses, and they're not going to be rude." And then my community was great, but the writing was on the wall. It was like, "Oh man, like, okay, we gotta shut this down early on."

That was the other point of surprise. Hey, I wanna have a conversation and actually let's do it now, Mark. Tell me the story of the guy you've sent me the feedback from the day of. I'm trying to remember his name, but honestly, I'm okay not saying it because I don't want to make it public. But talk to me a little bit about the individual with the comment that you shared with me.

Sure, I'll be quick with that. But basically, we had a gentleman who joined one of my online communities that revolves around the podcast that we do that we're using kind of missionally. He goes by the screen name Majestic Purple Buffalo. I won't give his real name. I'll call him Majestic. He had kind of lurked in the community, which in the online world, the gaming world, is kind of like, "I'm here. I'm reading stuff. I'm present, but I'm not posting, so you can't see me." We invited people to join our church. He was going through a really hard time in life. He was going through a divorce. He was going through a change in occupations. COVID screwed everything up. He was at a really desperate point, and he decided to click on the link to come join our church community. And through that, in week two, he came to faith. And this is a guy who'd never been to church in ten years. He grew up in the Catholic church and had kind of walked away from it. He had very big problems with the church in general. And yet he felt when he came to our online service, he said, "This is the first time I've been back in a church in ten years." Now, that doesn't justify digital church in and of itself. It just shows that when people who have not been to church in ten years show up to a digital service, they view themselves as attending church. They don't view themselves as watching your stream. They view themselves as, "I have now been to church," which is an important distinction.

Important thing to take note of if you're a physical church person: because the non-believing world views themselves as having attended church if they come to your online service. Then after coming to faith, you know, we had a meet-up. We talked about that. He told me he met, messaged me a couple days later, said he prayed for the first time. Literally just messaged me today and he said he had something exciting that was going on tonight and he said, "I just didn't have anybody to tell. I wanted to tell somebody." So there's a couple things that happened there. One, he viewed our church as a church. Two, he's returned to faith in Jesus and he wants to follow Jesus, which is incredible. Three, we've developed a relationship in the past four weeks that's deep enough that he would share something with me that he doesn't feel comfortable sharing with any physical relationship. All of those things paint a beautiful picture of why. And that's not the only story that Lux has. In the first three weeks of beautiful things happening, it just paints a picture of like, "Hey, this is why the digital stuff works well." And it's, if nothing else, it also paints the picture of, "Hey, we're not trying to compete with what's happening in the physical building. We're trying to reach a different person."

Uh, Majestic Purple Buffalo, let's call them Magi for short. Uh, evidently has not been in a church building for ten years because of something in his life. And so without doing a different, stated as multimodal, different types of churches for different types of people, discipleship even looks different contextually. And so doing that, reaching Majestic Purple Buffalo, I feel weird saying it, but reaching this guy in digital space, um, guess what? Probably wasn't happening in a physical space anytime soon. So by doing a different thing, literally this is an example of how we're reaching a different type of person.

Sorry, that was a tangent. It was a necessary tangent and something I definitely wanted to squeeze in. Chestley, Chris, uh, the question at the core here is, "Man, what was, what's the hurdle? What's the thing that surprised you?" Uh, with Mark, one of the examples was, "What's similar and what's different with physical and digital?" Like, for you guys, what's been the surprise for you in this process? Chris, why don't you go next?

Well, this has not been a bad surprise. We will go a good surprise in this, and she probably hate me for saying this, but I want to say Christy, Christie has really surprised me and stepped up. Um, now we've always been partners in ministry and we've always have worked together ever since, even before we were married, but she steps up, has stepped up and really has found her place in this and uh, her voice and uh, leads these studies if I'm out at work and so, and kind of go back to the whole, you know, support. How can I run a business and do do things well? I have to have great support at home too. Not that I never doubted her, but some of the things that she has has done and has has agreed to do, it's just kind of been been a good surprise, a great surprise, one that I'm thankful for that.

Um, hurdles, you know, just for me personally is just trying to find a balance between the work and the church and home. In fact, I had had a guy tell me the other day, he's like, "He's, I don't understand how you do it. He said we go to, go to Covenant, we leave worship there on Sunday mornings. We we do our worship relate on Sunday nights. We go back to Covenant on Sunday nights. We do all the," he said, "You lead a business, you um do your morning devotions and you still spend time with your families. Like I don't know how you do it all." And I'm like, "I don't know how I do it all either." Um, but just the the balance, just trying to find that balance and uh and realizing that sometimes it's okay to step away from everything and uh and just just relax. In fact, you know, not to be too long, but you know, just the other day like I just had I left the stage singing, you know, we were singing a song uh, "The more I see humanists, I just want to sit at your feet," and I just I left the stage and I just went down and knelt at the altar and prayed because I was tired and I was worn out and I just needed to sit and do what the song said. And so uh, but I know that was probably a little longer answer than you was expecting, but yeah, just challenge for me it's been shut up on the balance.

It's interesting what what does a spouse look like at a digital only, like a like a a pastor spouse or you know, uh, it's it's unwritten, you know, I mean, there's only a handful of them out there that that are active and so the responsibilities, the roles uh, the ministry opportunities to me, I think this is one of the um unwritten opportunities right now looking at a digital church, the role of the of the spouse to kind of compliment in there or to lead out.

So Chesley, kind of for you uh, what's what's been one of these hurdles or surprises for you? I think the biggest surprise for me is that people didn't just go and say, "Yeah, that's a good idea. I don't know why I didn't have that idea." My like, I don't know why I thought, "Hey, you know, this is where kids are at and shin see and millennials and young professionals," and then I'm like, "Obviously we need to do this," and it wasn't so obvious. So for me, I uh, I was taken aback when I uh, really, he's become a really support, like huge supporter of what we're doing, but the first conversation I had with this person, he's a pastor of a church uh in our organization, and he's like, "Well, should we do this? He's like, can you be the church in a digital space?" And I'm I'm like confused. I i'm like, "I don't I don't understand the question." Um, and one of my good friends was like, "He's thirty-seven, he's a pastor in a church of Ohio," like, "He's like, I don't I don't know, man," and then his uh, one of his leaders had to move two hours away. She couldn't be a part of his church, and I'm like, "But she can be a part of mine." So and now, you know, my friend's on the board, but he still doesn't quite understand digital, and one of the conversations I had was, "Is digital relationships real relationships?" And you know, I'm like, "Okay, hey, do you do you actually do like FaceTime or Zoom or any of this with your with your grandkids?" And they're like, "Yeah," I'm like, "Far be it for me to go tell your grandkids that what you're doing is not real relationship. I'm like, we need a better, we need a better construct and a better paradigm of what it means to be the church in a digital space." I just I was taken aback by it, and I could either get bitter by it or we could actually start helping churches get better. And so um, I think I think that was the biggest surprise, and I think people are starting to see it, but there's still a lot of questions out there. I just didn't, I wasn't aware. I just thought, "Hey, this is the best option," you know?

You you would think, well, let's let's look at it this way, and I think you guys phrased it earlier. It's gotten a lot easier and there is more support as as a result of the global pandemic uh, but I still think there are some questions out there. And honestly, what you guys are doing by paving that road, I, Mark, I've told the story of Majestic Purple Buffalo, man. If I said at least a hundred people that I'm not exaggerating, it's probably even more than that uh, because it it's the example of why we are doing digital church planting. It's the reason why it's, you're not stealing from, you're not taking lazy people and putting them in. You're reaching a different type of person that the building, that that strategy is is not able to reach uh, and and so like to celebrate that, to draw attention to that, and realize that that person thinks it's church. They're not looking at it anything a lost person at any different level then, "Hey, this is a church experience and my pastor actually gives a darn about me." And so some of that and seeing those relationships develop digitally and Twitch and Facebook and in the social media networks and and the things that that we're doing um, yeah, let's we need to do this more. We need to help others pick up this this mantle and and run with it.

So hey, let's let's do this as we're landing the plane. Um, I'd love to just maybe thoughts. I want an encouraging word from each of you. There's somebody out there who's thinking about planting uh a digital church. Maybe it's a co-vocational thing. They want to balance that work life. Maybe they're doing literally what Chesley's doing where it's it's a launch large uh massive kind of strategy up front. Mark being more of a a digital missionary ask kind of doing things on Twitch and Periscope, like each of you have your different nuances in your strategy, and there's different people out there. Um, just a closing word as we're wrapping up and landing the plane here, encouraging thought to somebody that's out there wanting to do what you're doing. Who wants to go first?

Jeff, do you still use Periscope? Did I say Periscope? You said Periscope. What was it that you were on the other day that was like, you were telling like, it's like the rotary phone of digital? Like back, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm honest to God, I said Periscope. I will call myself out publicly if I said that. Yeah, yeah. What can't do? What was this you're doing? Twitch and Periscope? Yeah, I meant Discord. I apologize. And Discord, just making sure you weren't using it still. You've been on so many platforms for so many years. Yeah, I can't seem to get anyone to read. I can't reach anybody on Periscope. You're the only one there. That's it. That's it. Yeah, touché. Much love. And then for the fi, actually, what's funny is I still do broadcasts on Periscope when I do everything else. The five people out there who are watching on Periscope, ignore what these guys are saying. Again, we're going to leave all this in the broadcast just just check it out. We won't cut that part out.

Hey, so I don't know who wants to go first. Uh, somebody say something encouraging. Yeah, Romans 10:14. "Who will hear if you don't preach?" Like, at the end of the day, don't worry about all the haters, you know? Haters gonna hate, and that's a great Taylor Swift song, but you need to go preach because God has wired you to do it. So go do it well.

I'll just say a word of encouragement to Chesley, and that is that Taylor Swift is also close to my heart. Um, and then my word of encouragement for others is that the digital church opens doors for a lot of people who never previous, who were given the burden by the Holy Spirit to plant but have it just felt like they don't have the particular gifting, personality, or skill set to do it. The digital church in so many ways can remove or emphasize the superstar personality, right? It, but I think the the the the challenge with it is that people think it's it's only that, right? Because they just think of people who've gone viral. They see online. They think viral videos. They think Charlie Bit My Finger. And what they don't realize is that the digital church is relational at its core, and you can actually do that in really powerful ways without being the best communicator, right? Without being the most charismatic leader, you can minister to people digitally and start digital small groups, Bible studies, and communities, even if you felt like you didn't really have the skill set that it was going to take to plant a traditional church. Because the traditional church says you have to draw draw a crowd. In in the digital church, you can kind of go to the crowd and uh and mingle with the crowd and and start conversations amongst the crowd, and there's so much of that that's really cool.

You know, for me, like my prayer, my primary and only gifting in ministry is communication. That's the only thing I got. I'm lucky that it's the Swiss Army knife of ministry because I can do a little bit of everything with it, but I'm not really good at anything else. So my church relies heavily on my gifting and communication, but that it doesn't need to.

Be the role, right? Like, Lux doesn't have to be the rule. There is way more to explore in the digital space. The fact that King City and Relate and Lux are all three digital expressions of the church, but they look so different. They look so different and they rely on completely different skill sets. I never would have dreamed of starting Relate or starting King City, and I have zero desire to start Relate or King City. And I'm so thankful that Chris and Chesley do have that desire because God has called out unique giftings in them. In the digital space, allows you to do that. The world is so much bigger, and you can find that niche so much easier. And that is a really, really big blessing. I think of the digital church. If I had an encouragement to people, like if you have felt called to ministry or felt called to plant but didn't feel like you had the particular gifting set of Craig Rochelle, you don't need it to be able to get into digital ministry. God will craft that around you, and that's an amazing thing.

Yes, so true, right there. So many different models, so many different strategies, even beyond these three. Like there are different strategies beyond what these guys are doing. And so it's one of the reasons why it's so fun, kind of taking the posture of, from these men, what are you doing? What makes it? I met a guy the other day and I didn't know he existed. He's been around three years. He essentially does micro church, micro locations using Zoom, and he does like it's like six, seven church services a week, daily, like a church service today. And he's basically creating micro locations using Zoom technology. Like this is phenomenal. Never would have thought of it. And it has, once again, that too. Yeah, and that has nothing to do with Periscope either. I just want to publicly say that, okay?

Chris, what? What? How about for you? What's an encouraging word from you?

Take the step. You don't have to know every step. When God told Abraham to go, he didn't tell him the whole step. He said just go where I will show you. When he was leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, they just followed the pillar of the cloud. When it went, they went. When it stopped, they stopped. Just go. As you begin to take the first step, God will show you the next step. And that's just from my personal life. I know that, you know, as soon as we said we was going to start a church and then a few months later it was no, we're going to start a digital church. And just watching how God has transformed, even from where we started doing ministry, unofficially launched ministry, to where we are now, and just taking the steps that God leads us, it's just step by step. So I'm one who will hesitate to start until I have everything laid out, but one thing I got in mind is just trusting God and just take this step. He will show you the way. Just take the step.

Love it. Hey, so we're going to land the plane. This has been a great conversation. Anytime I get around, talk digital only church planting, especially guys that have gone through this cohort, really excited about, excited to see the stuff Mark's doing. Honestly, Chris has probably already launched his church three times. Still got to fine-tune some things. We're working on that. But look, excited to see what both he and Chesley are going to be coming out with in the fall and beyond. So we're going to include contact information for them in the show notes. Feel free to dig in into that. But remember, like when we're doing this digital church planting, we're reaching a different type of person. And so for those of you out there who have this crazy idea that you're like, oh, this will never work, or you've been on a church staff where your lead pastor, your executive pastor, your denominational contact, somebody's looking at you and saying, hey, that's crazy, no, that's stupid, no, it doesn't work that way. I'm here to tell you it may. They may be right. Or let's talk about it and let's see what we can do. I literally have conversations with crazy people every day, and it's fascinating to me what was crazy maybe pre-COVID is no longer crazy today. So let's have some conversations. And Stadia, we would love to talk about innovation, to help others get aware of that innovation, and maybe find ways to help you plant a digital church. So let's wrap here. For Chesley, for Mark, for Chris, this is Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting. Thanks for joining us here at the show. We'll see you next time here at the pod. You have a good day.