EP020: Jeff Moore & The Strategy of Discipleship

Hey there, welcome to the Church Digital podcast. My name is Jeff, and I'm glad you've decided to join us for episode 20. This is episode 20, and we are excited about it. We've got a great episode for you. We're going out to Austin Ridge Bible Church in Austin, Texas. Now, disclaimer: I used to work for Austin Ridge. I was their communications director, and I loved my time at that church. And even from afar now, seeing what that church is doing and how they're growing people is awesome. And so I love seeing it from a distance. But we wanted to have a detailed conversation with their discipleship pastor and actually one of their worship leaders. His name's Jeff Moore.

Now, if the first thing that jumped into your head is songs like "Good Ol' Ranger and Tonto," "Laurel and Hardy," "Batman and Robin," and "Snoopy and Charlie," I got to disappoint you. It's not that Jeff Moore. I know I'm disappointed as well. I've always wanted that friendship and that relationship because, you know, we all need friends like you. But at the end of the day, it's a different Jeff Moore. If you got no idea what I'm talking about, about Jeff Moore and Laurel and Hardy, Google it. Jeff Moore, 1990s CCM, Christian contemporary music. And prepare to be enlightened and/or disappointed.

But we want to talk about discipleship in context of church online and even the church now. Austin Ridge Bible Church doesn't have a strong church online. They do broadcast services on Facebook each week, but when it comes to creating biblical community, when it comes to discipleship, when it comes to fostering those online relationships, honestly, they really just haven't gone in that direction. Not saying that's good, not saying that's bad. It's just the direction the church has chosen. And so as a result of that, I don't necessarily want to have this conversation with Jeff talking about how to do church online discipleship. But even just as a general rule, how to do discipleship in your church. And so that may be two different things, but one needs to be grounded in the other.

And so what I do know about Austin Ridge is they're a very, like many of you, they are a very busy, event-driven church. They do lots of things with women's ministry, with men's ministry, for parenting, for life groups. There's always something going on. As a communications director, I can tell you there is always something going on in the life of Austin Ridge. But they've managed to make D groups. They've managed to make discipleship groups. They managed to make discipleship stand out in context of those things. And even now, we're pushing towards a larger churchwide campaign driving people towards a deeper discipleship understanding. So how does that tension work in the midst of everything else? What's the strategy that funnels people towards discipleship? We may not have all the answers, but you know what I do know and love about Austin Ridge? They're willing to experiment and try it out.

And so we've had conversations about discipleship recently. Episode 19, we talked to Jared Kirkwood from Mariners Church and also over the rooted material, which is a nine to ten-week study on creating a disciple. Austin Ridge took a different approach where they actually wrote personally within the church a 350-page book that's tied to the mission and vision of their church. By the way, if you want a copy of that, we've got a couple chapters of it available online. Check out the show notes where you can download and see some of what that material looks like.

So Austin Ridge spent some intentionality. Why? What did that look like, Jeff Moore? What lessons did you learn from this process? It's questions like this and more that I really want to unpack here as I bring to the table Rady Armas, co-host and of course online pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami, bring Jeff Moore, discipleship pastor from Austin Ridge Bible Church, myself Jeff, read the Church Digital, in a conversation focusing on the strategies of discipleship groups.

Hey, everybody, here you go. It's funny. The first week, the JD and I backed the first meeting, I think JD and I had one-on-one. Remember what we were talking about? But he says some of the effective, you're the first worship leader I've ever actually understood what you're talking about, huh?

Yeah, I could see that. This is true perspective, just in general. Like, what are we, what are we saying here?

No, it was, you know, was how do I say this? The lack of diva-ness. I mean, in grand scheme of things, like he was very grounded.

You mean Jeff didn't go for the gravitas voice where he starts speaking really airy and weird pauses? I don't know how to do that well. They told me for four weeks, "Hey, we're interviewing Jeff Moore to come in and lead worship." So how in the distance, I was totally excited for it. Me some home run or a friend like you. The bearded, bald guy shows up, and I'm like, "It's amazing what Photoshop can do." And I wait, no, that's not you. Dang it. Had like albums ready to get autographed. But no, no such luck. Like a logically rounded guy coming in to lead worship. It was just such a disappointment.

No, good God. CCM has failed us again.

That still happen, Jamie? Seriously, like, like two people don't remember what it was, but it was literally like somebody having lunch with me, and they were kind of in their own mind convinced that I was that guy. And I just like, time to get the best of me, Kenneth. Right? Exactly.

Nah, I see. And I mean, there's an any bad way or form. It's just six ignitions genre. Did you know who Jeff Moore and the distance were before folks started calling you that? Or like, what happened?

I'll be 47 in September, so I definitely knew that Jeff was. So I traveled toward the whole thing for about six years. I actually went under my middle name, Jeff Wade, because that was like '95 to 2000. And yeah, if more the distance were in their heyday, right? That's when he was going around with Stephen Paradis and all that stuff. So we actually did a couple of camps together. Rishabh leader, he was the concert artist they brought in. His real name is Jeff Fenwick, huh?

Yeah, Jeff Moore is not his real name.

Yeah, I actually asked. I was like, "Dude, of all the names you could screw, Jeff Moore was the sexiest thing for CCM radio you can come up with?" You know, everybody pretty much identity that exactly. Nobody ever thinks about like the people who were born with those names, right?

Oh yeah, Chet Barbie. Great chef.

Oh yeah, that's awesome. Wise guy.

But how does Austin Ridge define a cycle? Sure, sample ship is. And I kind of borrowed this from a guy named Daniel him here at his book, "No Silver Bullets." Fantastic. He defines it as, you know, it said it's that lifelong trajectory direction towards Jesus. Is what a disciple is? Somebody that's on that journey. So when we're making disciples, we're helping people make that next step in that journey. So it's not something that you arrive at. That's why we like to refer to it as disciple making, a set of discipleship, because discipleship seems to just, because it's a term that we're so familiar with, it's a something that you've done or something that you do, something you complete, versus disciple making is just that ongoing progress where you're bringing others with you as you were moving towards Christ.

That's awesome. So for you and I, like this idea of the long-term, and so it's an interesting that the switch between like a discipleship and disciple making are contextually the word discipleship's lost a lot of its value. And that you probably get ten people in a room together and ask them what discipleship page you'll get 15 answers back, just the varying levels of that. But it's very clear in context of disciple making. Know a lot of people, and we had episode 19, the last episode we had Jared Jared Kirkwood on, and he's with rooted material, which is out of Mariners Church. Don't know if you're familiar with that? It's a really great content.

Oh yeah, I was really enjoyed digging into that.

But you know, he need to find discipleship and interest many different ways, and I agree with that. But it was disciples are people who make disciples. And so there's like a repetitive process for that. At Austin Ridge, what is that? What does that look like?

I think the reality is that everybody's making disciples whether they realize it or not. So if you're gonna, if you're gonna be doing it anyway, you might as well do it well. So we've created that curriculum to help people, you know what I mean? They don't start because we find is I think most people, whether they, I don't think most people want to be disobedient on purpose. Well, I think if scripture tells us that we're to go make disciples, you know, teaching them all I command you, baptizing, you know, so on and so forth, I think most people once they realize that, or they want to do it. Now, whether or not they have the courage to step out, personality-wise, whether it's insecurity, whatever it is, they want to be obedient. So if we can help them be obedient by giving them kind of a toolkit that they can work with, then at least we'll help some people get started in that process.

So we created that curriculum, or I had to expand what we call instead of curricular, Gus kind of connotation to it, obviously. But you know what we encourage them to do? Well, you take, you know, three to five other people through this handbook over the next nine to twelve months. And when you're done, they will have been equipped to do what you just did with them. So there is no pressure for you to be great at it. You were, you were one among equals, right? You know, you're all trying to pursue, move towards Jesus. You're not supposed to be an expert teacher, an expert at anything. You're supposed to disciple. You should be someone who loves Jesus, wants to see other people love Jesus and understand Jesus and then live for Jesus. So if you can do that, if you're willing to risk doing that, here's a toolkit. Now, the next time you take somebody through this, you know, shape it a little bit, you know what I mean? So if they haven't done it before, like here's some guardrails. And you know, each subsequent time, kind of make it your own. Work over time, this is just one tool among many that you have.

So that's one way to do it. I think, you know, through the teaching on Sunday morning, I think there's a way we do it. I think one of the things we're doing now, we started, totally quit, you know, category of things around here. There you've seen the roundtable videos online. So we have this equip department now. We're offering two-week classes on knowing Jesus, on how to study the Bible, and how to share your faith, rolling out some other class environments on science, on apologetics, on some other aspects of stating God's Word, things like that. So we're trying to provide some things that are very unstructured with some with some tools to use in the unstructured environment, the more decentralized, so it'd be like a D group. These classes, obviously, more centralized, master teacher-oriented. So we're trying to stay away from saying, you know, one is better than the other, but here are various options to take advantage of as you grow as a disciple and make other disciples.

So that was a really long answer to like a one-sentence question, but it's kind of somewhere and all that is kind of what we're doing right now.

Sure. Well, and the one thing I know just even from from working at Austin Ridge is you guys, you have a lot of, let's call them discipleship options that not bein up. You have a lot of grow options. Let me use your language available with that. So you've got, you know, you've got the men's ministry, you got women's ministry, you've got small groups. Discipleship was was kind of an outshoot of that. What what is the, what is the relationship? Because what I see now from the outside is discipleship has seemed to have gotten more, I'm using the word structured.

Not as has gotten more value and importance maybe over the past several years. So like, how is that tension of, okay, do I need to be in a men's ministry and discipleship or discipleship? What's how does somebody who is in your church, how do they navigate that to find the right place?

One of the things that we're learning right now is honestly how to do that. So the D groups ministry, which is what I'm overseeing with this handbook and everything, we're really just going public with that for the first time. You know, I lead pastor Brad talking about it, things like that. We've had, you know, 50-plus groups going with that without people really even knowing about it. Really? Yeah, it's kind of like, let's prepare for whatever might happen once it really goes public.

So with that now, we've got kind of four buckets. So we got D group, so we got life groups, we got men's and women's discipleship, disciple-making, equipping, all those things kind of run through all those environments. But what makes these distinctive is obviously men's and women's are very gender specific, but they're going to be more kind of step one for a lot of people. You know, it's going to be something that's kind of given to you. You're kind of going to feed your own soul, to build some relationships, kind of in that order. Life group will be more build relationships, feed your own soul, right? And then in the D groups, we're giving you the tools to train up others so they can train up others. So they cannot all have the same things, but just in different orders of priority. Right?

I know it's difficult to gauge, but our folks who are looking at D groups, are they looking at it as, hey, I'm being trained to be sent out, or are they looking at it for the sense of, hey, let me get grounded as a Christian and let me gain more knowledge than that kind of thing?

It's messaged over and over and over again that you're being equipped to equip. Now what they hear and how they process that over nine to twelve months, obviously a lot of people are just going to do what they want to with it and they're going to more model study. That's what it's going to turn into for them. That next step may not be equipping other people. So we kind of have to just, you know, trust the Spirit's work in that over a really long process, and not just that twelve-month process we would like to do. Great, hey, you know, in our database. But you know, one thing we have seen is a lot of people, and we do this on purpose even with the people that have been in it so far, is this is something that you can do alongside what you're already doing. This shouldn't pull you out of serving, being in a community you're already in. And like, for you to be discipled to make disciples, it's going to make you better at what you already do. So don't stop doing that. Have to, you know, maybe take it on the chin a little bit and do a little more the next nine to twelve months, but this will make you better, more effective, more grounded, more able to do the things that you're already doing.

You guys, do you guys promote that to the church at large, or is this for like folks that you're like, you're eyeballing and you're like, this is the right kind of person that we're looking at for this?

But it allows to be more the eyeballing and really like me working through our men and leaders to define the right people, not only to lead, but to actually be in the groups. Like, who are the best candidates for this kind of thing? Starting though, I guess this next month, but it'll be promoted alongside all our other environments. So we'll see if that waters it down, it makes it better or worse. If it makes it harder, I so know right now, even with fifty-ish groups across three campuses, you know, you can see that out of that, probably half of those are really like at the point of the spear that we want them to be. The rest of, we're constantly trying to bring them back. You know, so if you, you know, triple that to one hundred fifty, I would, you're probably still seeing about a third that are very on point and focusing. You're having to constantly bring those others back. But the worst thing that's going to happen is somebody's going to be equipped with some basic theological understanding, you know, basic tools of how to study the Bible on their own, and some basic, hopefully, outlooks of how to better live for Christ. And say they are, and that's the worst that happens. That's not a terrible thing. Acceptable loss.

Is it tough to resist the temptation to take a new believer through this? Because obviously they're like the most excited about their faith. They're the most like for this.

I think that's one step too few for sure. Of course, a lot of people there's naturally bent towards evangelism. I'd love to take months, maybe neighbor through this. I'm like, if they're willing to sign up for this commitment, Matt, Godspeed. But there's no way they're going to finish this thing because it's just going to be so much unfamiliar territory. But I think a new believer that is unformed spiritually, you know, there's still no Spirit appointment process. I think that's perfect. Because what you find is the people that honestly have the hardest time staying on track with something like the whole D group experience is somebody who's been through, you know, fifteen different women's studies or men's studies or life group studies, and their natural gravitational pull is back to what they've already done. So you've got to constantly retrain them of, you know, this is different, this is good. Use what you've learned, but don't try to make this that, right?

Yes, accounts that I've seen is so, for instance, my dad is a teacher at Bible Study Fellowship. I'm sure they got some of that. We're and so, you know, almost I would almost rather send a new believer from our church to undergo something like that, where it's like, now you're going to be in the Word and you're going to be accountable for like what you're learning there. And there's going to be, yeah, there's going to be some homework, but there's going to be a lot of challenge. As opposed to, hey, let's fix you in your group where it's going to be, and this isn't to mean to demean anything, because I'm honored based off a video-based curriculum or anything like that, where it's going to be more consumption as opposed to more challenge. And it's going to help the believer over the longer haul of their life, you know, like we're equipping them to go do the things that Jesus called them to do, not just to absorb content, right?

Yeah, the biggest website, one of the biggest tweaks we've made to this handbook is taking a lot of questions at the end of the chapter out of it. And the goal of the group time when they meet each week is that each person in the group is supposed to bring observations and questions they have to the table. So week one, the job of each person in the group is to bring themselves to it, you know, versus said, okay, question one is X. Well, that's what every group does. We have plenty of environments that go through question one is X. But you know, hey, Steve, what are you thinking about? Like, what did this draw on? What didn't you understand? You know, just those kind of things to where it's more heartfelt now.

The call for the leader then is to really be light on their feet. You know, they got to be able to kind of go to their left and right, so to speak, in that. But you know, to really let the group drive the conversation so that they learn how to articulate not only what they're learning, what they don't understand. That's a bigger part of being a disciple is anything is being able to just honestly say, I don't know, understand this. Can you help me? You know, so if we can equip people to just be more comfortable with that, that's a huge win.

As a communications director when I was at Austin Ridge, I struggled with this D group mentality because it was, and I'm going to confess right here, I've had a brain shift and I understand it probably better than I did when I was there. But what I struggled with is actually the same things that I see a lot of other churches struggle with is, okay, so this is another thing. Do we want somebody being at an immense or small group? Like, is this another thing that we want them at one of them a week? Or if I had to choose between a men's, women's small group or a D group, like, what's the why would I choose? Or what is the option that I should choose there?

When you talk with people who have that tension, who feel that, like, what's your response to something like that?

Biggest thing I try to do is really spell out what each environment offers, kind of go the same long ago, and then just give them the freedom to choose what they want to do. I mean, the other day, it's up to them. They own their faith. I actually got an event coming up in August. Your faith. It's an equip of it. It will have hundreds of people there. And at the end of the night, their assignment before the night's over is to spell out the next three months, six months, twelve months. What are your steps that you're going to take in your faith? And whether that's, and we've kind of created a tool for them to assess where they are, like where they're weakest point is right now based on our core values. And you know, is that something that you really want to see change the next twelve months? Okay, in the next three months, here your options. Six months, here your options. I'm going to now pick one race. There's plenty of freedom there, you know. This is a long, this is a long road mindset that we're trying to take here. You know, you're not going to fix yourself the next twelve months, but what's something you can grow? You know, you're still human, but you're still made in the image of God and your soul with Christ Spirit and in Christ you're being sanctified. All these things. So what does that sanctification process? How can we come alongside you as a church in the next three months, six months, twelve months? But you got to do it. We can't do it for you.

So that's good. Try to take step back to answer your think answer your question is, you know, if a men's group does it for you, best and get after it. Now get after it, you know. But if it's a D group or a life group or if it's a, you know, maybe you're in all these things already and you're not serving anywhere. You don't know how to share your faith. You know what? Take this to week class on how to share your faith and a conversation setting. Do that. That's huge. Serving in a men's group, but you're still scared to share your faith. You got to call time out here and let's talk about that, you know what I mean? So it's not a priority necessarily. It's like, it's all these things, you know? It's the, yeah, and that's what makes it fun, I think. The more we can help people understand what we offer them, why we offer it to them, and that there's freedom for them to choose among those things and then just get after it, we hope that more and more people will take us up on that.

So okay, so let me add, let me ask this. Because you've, what you've got is a three hundred fifty-page book for nine to twelve months. Like, that's a huge commitment. A lot of the other curriculums that I've looked at, you know, we last week or recently we talked with Rooted and Rooted. It's like a ten-week thing. I've got experience with Timothy Initiative, David Nelms. It's roughly attended, I think it's a sixteen-week, but we would chop it in half and do it in eight weeks. That's a huge commitment timewise of nine to twelve months. I'm guessing there was intentionality on making it that long. Why did you choose to be a little more aggressive on the time to stretch it out that big?

Sure, well, I mean, you could almost break it up into four studies, you know, because we built it around our model of a disciple, which is a lifelong learner and follower of Jesus who knows who God is. At section one, does love Christ, section two, knows who they are in Christ.

Section three and then us how to live for Christ section four. So if you look at it that way, it kind of is for you know series kind of, but you know we tried to build it to where what kind of took the, let's say we, this was a large group of people going back about four years when all this started. So I didn't do this thing handily by any stretch. I had some fingerprints on it, but me, TJ Morelli, a few other guys on staff started working on this concept about four years ago and basically just decided, okay, what are some theological tenants that we want a disciple who comes out of Austin Ridge to know? You know, we want to be able to, as best as we can understand, you know, what the Trinity is, what God's character attributes are, how God's reveal themselves, you know, those types of things. But then connect that back to real life. You know, why do these things matter? Where do they matter? When did they matter? And how do I articulate this stuff? Moving on from that, you know, what Christ has done, really understanding sin, really understanding faith, really understanding these things that we kind of take for granted, but really being able to articulate that stuff and find it in Scripture and be able to walk through passages on their own. For that, you know, who we are in Christ, the fact that we are forgiven, the fact that we are just, you know, we are justified, sanctified, we will be glorified, those types of things. Where does that show up in Scripture? How do I study that for myself? And then based on all that, you know, if you go there, all this stuff, you don't have a desire to live differently for Jesus, then you should start. So assuming that once you get through those three sections, you just have something that you feel like you got to do now, okay? Let's end with how we live for Christ. And then looking at that, you know, then actually starts with abiding, that looks at the example he gave us, that moves on into the Great Commission and unpacking that in many different ways, that's sort of things.

So we decided instead of kind of, and even doing that, I mean, not unless you're still skimming the surface of a lot of that stuff. If you're not, dude, dive on the Trinity a week, you know what I mean? You might be going through, then they typically gone, but I had a seminary prof tell me it's like, well, since we can't spend six months on this, an extra twenty minutes we'll be fine, you know? So we gotta had to take that approach like you can't cover any of the stuff exhaustively. You can hopefully do it enough to at least give some language, give some terms, give some connective tissue from teaching to being able to find it in the word for yourself, to being able to teach somebody else how to find it in the word and then teach somebody else, that sort of thing, you know? And all along the way also developing spiritual disciplines. So the only time in prayer, specifically for lost people you regularly encounter, looking for opportunities to have spiritual conversations, praying for a specific missionary or country, and then praying for workers for the harvest. So we call it what we call the mission, a big three here, you know? So when you talk, when, so that's when you start looking at trying to develop habits and spiritual disciplines that takes longer than ten weeks. And it's then the job of the leader is you start every group meeting with, okay, have you been in the word daily for yourselves? What are you learning? What did you see? Have you been praying the missional big three? Okay, before we go any further, let's do that together. Who we praying for? You know, who of you has spiritual conversations with, et cetera? So that's that's why we decided to make the all that as much as we could structure it happen for somebody over nine to twelve months. You got some groups that want to spend four weeks on the Trinity. I discourage them from doing that, but grown adults are going to do it. Grown adults are going to do what they want to do. That's fine, but you're going to be in this thing for about two years. That's a long time. Yeah, and so another thing we did, to me, JD, I'm talking on time, sorry, but you know, Brad's led these groups for twenty years and his typically go twelve to fifteen months. And that doesn't know, they kind of gave us freedom to not try to do a thousand a week study. It's like, the Brad does a discipleship group for twelve to fifteen months. Let's write something that they can do nine to twelve months, yeah, kind of batteries included.

So did you ever consider like not writing your own, or was the vision towards, man, we want to so tightly integrate this into our strategy, we just we need to do it ourselves? That's why we did that. Yeah, we wanted to sound like us, feel like us. So somebody goes through partnership and here's this thing, you know, about what a disciple is at Austin Ridge, and they go through our disciple making materials, that it all lines up. So because we look at my Greg God and stuff, I come to basics, whatever that was called, we look at some stuff the Watermark had, we look at stuff the Village had, I'm, this is all great stuff, but we'd have to tweak it so much to feel like us, just start from scratch. And it really was a neat experience because at the end of the day, man, you probably saw the credits page at the end of that, yes, but there's you know, twenty different writers, the staff and volunteers, there's eight different editors, staff and volunteers, you know? So it really is a collective effort that, you know, right now it's great, you know, three to five years from now we'll probably go, that was a dumb idea, and we'll be onto something else, because it's a church and we we learn and grow, that sort of things. So we're not telling people this is the Bible. If anything, but you know, it's anything but that. This is just a tool to come alongside God's Word, come alongside the spirit of working you to come alongside the commune that you you need to be. But as you're in community in God's Word as Spirit works in you, this is a tool to use in this season.

Well, you know, and I love the thing that I've always loved about Austin Ridge is their ability to to do these astronomical, these these huge projects without even like blinking an eye. Just, okay, this is what we need to see infrastructure. Like I'm even just thinking back, I don't even know if you guys do it anymore, but Time with God, there was this like daily devotional that was essentially volunteer produced. I think there was like one person who was an editor who was like part-time staff and put it together, but essentially it was volunteering staff written for years like that that went on. You guys still do that? I'm just curious, just pull the plug on that back in the spring? Yeah, yeah, and it's just, I mean, what, but what I loved about it was, yeah, hey, let's let's do this, and and maybe it wasn't the best place to pour the resources into, but I love the church's vision towards, hey, this is a great idea that is a resource list that's created, you know? I look at, I look at the book that you guys have created, it's three hundred fifty pages like that's no small feat even with twenty writers and putting that together, keeping everybody singular focused on this and and generating that and getting it done. And this is what I think I saw somewhere, this is like Version three? Yeah, we didn't start off with a three hundred fifty page book in mind. What it started off as is a more of a typical, that's a bad word, but you know, I mean, more of a traditional kind of small group thing where here's a topic, here's some passages, what do you see? What does it mean? What do I do? Kind of stuff. And they never select five or six days of that for each topic. So the idea was somebody will do this in fifteen to twenty minutes a day in addition to their normal problem is you're assuming a lot of the leader actually going to get to the right place with nothing but a little explanatory note and some verses, you know? That's a lot. That's a lot to add. So we fleshed it out a little bit more, and we flesh it out one more time, and that's how we guess where we are now. So really, if you look through most of the weeks now, there's about four to six headings. So we still kind of kept those same base headings from that original version. We just added a little more meat in there so that it kind of walks somebody through it. Doesn't give them all the answers, but it kind of walks on towards the answer, you know?

I'm not a numbers guy, and we talk, nah, we talk a lot about how I don't like numbers, but this is just the numbers you told me. We got fifty groups, three to five people, so bad math, one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty people going through this. When you look at discipleship and you're rolling out new campaign, we're fall two thousand nineteen, you're going to be pushing discipleship instead of a, hey, let's pull some people aside, maybe this is more like beta underground, but you're making discipleship more of a public presence out in front of the people, getting them on board. When you look at discipleship, is it, hey, we're just gonna see where this thing goes? Do you internally have goals or things that you want to drive to and say, okay, the goal is to get this many people in discipleship? As you've talked about discipleship growth in your church, like how do you guys treat that? I mean, the kind of the soft goal is, but I think it's reasonable to look for a hundred, one hundred fifty groups this next year. And out of that, you know, a third to a half of those will probably finish really well. A lot of days kind of leaving the tracks a little bit, we'll have to get them back on, but it's kind of those things of, you know, I won't, we won't really know if this is successful till we get down the road three to five years, because it don't see groups multiplying. If we don't see groups ending in nine to twelve months and then, you know, at least one of the four to six people to the four to six people going on to lead others, whether it's in a D group or some sort of format, then then in my opinion we haven't been successful. At least was the stated goal of disciples making disciples. But it's really, you know, kind of asking two to three to four years if it's working or not, because it's just going to take time, you know? And yeah, I mean, that's the that's the unfortunate answer, you know? At the same time, it's the only Holy Spirit can change of heart. Only the Holy Spirit can really guide us into truth, you know? The Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit does what he's going to do, which I believe he will. Then next step is, will people be obedient to what the Spirit's didn't in their heart? We can't control that. So that's good.

I've talked with with churches, and actually, you know what, Long Hollow Ray, I'm blanking on the guy's name, Lee Possibility? Yeah, so listen to Robbie, Robbie Galatea's podcasts on this, and actually I credit him because he's the first guy that really put this on my radar, you know? There there's a there's a tension between like a one-on-one discipleship and a one that multiple, one to three, one to five. I think you guys are three to five you said. Robbie actually leans towards in his podcast, I'm a Lincoln in the show notes, he leans towards one to three model. I just was wondering what life lessons have have you learned as you've been developing this? Why have you landed on that three to five range? Have you experienced anything one way or the other? Uh, this personality during, I mean, personally, I'm more kind of going to one or more. I'd rather just get, you know, roll up our sleeves with with one other guy and just get after it. I think we will place for that. I think there's a place for the kind of the four to six person group that's more, I think you get the accountability piece is different in each. I think, well, just that formation piece is different in each. I don't know that we like right now I can think of three groups that are one-on-one that you know a particular individual one to lead just one other guy because he had just made a great relationship. He's already to Saipan this guy and he's just wanted to use this to what great. There's no

Rules, no rules against that kind of thing, you know? It's almost the duplication ratio. You know, if you have four to six people go through it, if one or two of those, you know, go on to do it again, you're just getting more people through the system. Practically speaking, I think that's honestly why it's just a basic number. Saying if we can get three hundred people to go through it and we get, you know, 75 to 100 of them to take a next step versus if we get fifty people to go through it, we get ten of them to take a next step.

So you mentioned a couple times—because I don't know discipleship and what I've seen from the outside, by the way, what I've seen, I love—you mentioned equip a couple times. And what equipped? Why don't you define what equip is in context of Austin Ridge? Let's park on that for a little bit.

Yes. A joy writer, who's our life person, equipment and clipping pastor, he kind of threw this out. It was probably a couple years ago now. And what it started off as was kind of event-based, targeted to the things that we just don't cover in a Sunday more typically, you know, that felt neat-oriented things. You know, we're not going to do six weeks on marriage, money, and finance. It's like a lot of churches—those are good, it's just not us. But we need an environment to do that, you know? We realized that certain ministers, like their care ministry, was doing these great marriage classes or marriage events or parenting events, things like that, and they'd have, you know, 60 people show up. That's great, unless you're the church of 4,000 people, and 60 people have drop in the bucket of what would have come had they known about it. And so Joey kind of created this engine to come alongside environments or events like that. And like the first marriage event they did, they had like 300 people show up versus 60. So it was like, "Oh wow, this works." So we did marriage, we did parenting with an apologetics time. We brought in Robbie's group, one of these guys from Houston, came in, did a couple of things. One of these, you know, we're having hundreds of people show up versus, you know, dozens. And so since that was working, now we're offering some classes again, do the same thing. It offers environments for things that we don't either cover in messages, we don't have another environment to do it.

So I mentioned earlier we have the kind of the knowing Jesus, so just basically intro to Christianity 101 kind of stuff. I'm leading a class on how to study the Bible, and again, very intro-oriented. We're gonna have another one on how to share your faith. Those are going to be sending more in from cap them in two weeks. So that's where those are. So now we have like the one or two, you know, big event, you know, Sunday night type things. We have the two-week Sunday morning classes. We're going to offer starting in the fall this Tuesday night longer format, like four to six-week classes, where, you know, somebody comes off like a Sunday morning parenting class, but they really need more. We're going to offer a six-week that's more in-depth. It's more kind of triage-oriented for the families that really need that. Your marriage, fine, Athens science, those kind of things. So starting this fall, we'll have connect through that three-pronged approach of the events that are going to be a little more infrequent now because we have some class environments to do some of that, right? Against the two-week class and the four to six-week class. And again, they're not targeted to everybody. They're targeted at a subset by their very nature. But what we're finding is that subset is, for a lot of those things, a lot larger than I said. We wish it was that many people's marriages didn't need that kind of help, but they just do. And that sort of thing.

So offering that, we hope that those become really feeder systems because people get either excited, they get, you know, some tools, or they get some help and some healing, and they want to step into, "Okay, well, where can I get back? Well, you know what? D groups or live group leadership or men's or women's and those kind of things." So we hope that all these things kind of feed each other. And ask me two or three years if they are. Now, that's cool. I like that. Just because, you know, Jeff, every time I reflect back on the way that many of us were brought up, I feel like there's an aspect that the church is missing in the absence of Sunday school. And I feel like what you're doing there brings a lot of that back because, you know, folks sometimes just need some time to sit in a classroom setting to kind of digest some of the things that we're talking about. A small group isn't always the best environment for that. Sometimes they just need that teacher kind of aspect to receive kind of information that you're talking about.

You know, some when many churches just think of that in terms of like, "We just got done talking in a past episode with somebody from Dave Ramsey with Ken Shafer from they've arranged the organization." You know, that's one aspect of that. But in marriage and raising kids and so many different areas, I think folks need that kind of environment to just absorb the information, you know? That's gonna run out at some point. Some people are going to need even more than that. But you think about if a four to six-week intensive can sufficiently meet the needs, a small group leader, lay leader, with an hour and a half each week, and with, you know, a meal included, didn't have time to dive into that, nor do they have the skill set, right? Laws in the play to their strengths, which is relation. You know, it allows a digger to play their strengths, which is, you know, biblical, theological, and relational. Men's, women's groups, those sorts of things. So supposed to one or two environments having to be everything to everybody, hopefully we can just create more opportunities. They give the challenge is not to let each of these things try to do everything because that's the natural pull of everything will stop, man. You know what? If this marriage group just became a small group, it'd be all fixed. Now we already have those over here. They need to jump out of this, you know, felt-need-based saying into this more general community where they're, you know, just going to be with people and not with my situation, you know? That sort of thing. So we're gonna bump our heads into some stuff, but it's neat that we're in a season right now we've got the freedom to kind of experiment with some of those things and see what works and then keep those things and push off the stuff that doesn't work and then make those things that are working better.

Yeah, I love how there's strategy that's intentionally in place for this, working on your strengths. A small group, a biblical community, cannot be the catch-all for this because you don't have the opportunity to dive in into a smaller, more deeper relationship. A group leader may or may not be capable of that, even getting into the nuances of a divorce recovery, of a single parenting, of a, you know, the issues that will come up with their. And having the separate classes to hone in on that, looking at what Austin Ridge has developed and the intentionality towards this growth department, this area that now they're saying, "Here's this option of groups. Here's this option if you're looking for something deeper. Here's this issue if you just need help equipping or working through felt needs." Like, it's really starting to see, "Okay, there's a path here that people can work through." While on that path, you're not hindering the growth of that as well.

The last thing, and it's one of the things that I love that we heard from Jarod Kirkwood, is you don't want your small group to become a therapy session where you're continually stuck in a circle. We've all had these groups where they just continually move on and they're their stuff because of a certain person that's going through a certain issue. And those issues are important to get solved, but as a result of it, you don't always have the opportunity to take the entire group forward because of the issues that are stuck with the individual person. So setting up a model like this, they can dive into the felt need is so good and so like that's such an awesome option.

Now I want to totally ask you about the church online implications of that and how you're utilizing this, but I know you guys aren't there yet with Austin Ridge. I love you anyway. But what I do love that you're doing online with this is the idea of this podcast that you've set up where you're, your height, you know what? Instead of me like talking about it, Jeff, just tell us a little bit about how you're using the round tables, the podcasts, like what that looks like for your church.

The round table? Well, okay. So the equip, they had a podcast already, and it was creating follow-up resources for the events. So they already had the podcast channel established. The round table thing was a second idea that Nathan Jennings, actually one of the guys in our communications department, video guy and the jack-of-all-trades, came up with this. Like, "We need something where we can talk about the stuff that we don't talk about anywhere else, like whether it's behind-the-scenes stuff or addressing a particular issue or, you know, theology 101 kind of stuff." He's like, "Would you guys be interested in doing that?" Of course, Joey Ryder and I were both like, "Yeah, absolutely." So they got us working together on that. And what we've done is created, I think we did 20 episodes kind of season alone, which is way too many episodes, obviously. But it's kind of got on our rolls, we kept going with it. But what we did, we did some theology, we did some, you know, kind of the behind the scenes of how ministries function, why they do what they do, kind of what they're going for. Talk to, you know, some different leaders from different campuses, trying to ball some lay leaders. I just kind of experiment with experimented with some different things. And we're getting, you know, mixed reviews on like, you know, format so to speak. So for instance, we've learned that we get far fewer views on online videos, media, social media, then we get podcasts. Like, we get, you know, 60 views, we'll get 300 listens, okay? We're gonna put our energies more into making sure we talk about or we talk about these things in such a way that just the audio makes sense without having to watch. Just little things like that that we're going to do for this next season.

But yeah, I mean, it's been neat because it's given a great outlet for a lot of ministry leaders to talk about, you know, whether it's a particular issue it's important to them or a particular thing in their ministry that, you know, unless your own staff, you're never going to notice of this stuff. So it's been kind of good to do some of that stuff. When byproduct of that is it created a kind of a collaborative energy between not only me and Joy, but then other staff as well. So but the first one we did was me and her missions guide on Ellsworth talking about your missions and disciple-making and/or the two sides of the same coin or the different coins, these things like that. That, you know, to have that conversation, you got to have a conversation, right? And that's what most church staffs don't have the luxury or the opportunity to sit down and do for a long enough time to really start peeling back some layers. And so that's given us an opportunity to do some of that, which is really leading to some neat conversations kind of in the hallway or around some other things. So it's been neat.

That's cool. Well, in by the way, we're gonna link to that podcast with you and Dawn. I love Dawn. I love, I like you. I don't necessarily love you. But no, I look, but the wrestling with that was cool. But the thing that I really like about this and audience is what I want to kind of focus on.

Here is the cleaned transcript:

The podcast gives your ministry leaders a voice in a realm that isn't necessarily utilized well. Now, all sorts of people will listen to a sermon podcast, but transparently, there's dozens of different places to listen to the same sermon podcast—everything from multiple services any given weekend at multiple campuses, there's probably a church online broadcasters, probably a Facebook broadcast, there's probably something that's eventually uploaded on YouTube. And so a lot of energy in the average church in America, in a technologically savvy average church in America, goes towards launching the podcast for the sermon. But what we're seeing here is you're utilizing the podcast as an opportunity to highlight ministry opportunities and other things happening in the church to pull people in and creating it as shareable content, linking to it on Facebook. And all of a sudden now the people who are listening have ways to have shareable content that will pull people into the ministry of your church, not just through Sunday services. With that, and so you're trying to get somebody involved in a group—here's a podcast on parenting, which I know is one that I've heard recently. And so you've got somebody who's struggling with that, and maybe it's a single mom that you want to share. You share that resource in an audio format. That's a front door that gives the person sharing an opportunity to pull them into the church. That gives the church an opportunity to receive somebody into the ministry. And so I love the idea of talking about the ministries and utilizing podcasts. You know, put the podcast on a blog post. All of a sudden now you've got an easily web-based shareable format that's got podcast audio on it that can pull people from the outside into specific areas of your church's ministry. So when I saw that, Jeff, I got to tell you, and I got to—I think I did—I tagged some of my videos. Like, this is incredible, well done. But definitely want to see more from that.

Well, man, this has been a great podcast. I'm just excited about seeing what God's doing at Austin Ridge, and even this shift of discipleship that even within the past, you know, so many years—I'm not saying it happened because I left, but conveniently I think I left and then there was this shift that happened. But as a result, we're seeing more of this and more intentionality with that. So man, this has been great, Ray. As we're landing the plane, any questions or thoughts here?

Yeah, I just love that you guys are treating discipleship more like art than science. You know, it seems like you guys are really just taking a look at this and saying, no, people have different pathways to get to discipleship, and we're gonna help them find their best path. But we're not going to tell them which path to take. We're gonna help guide along the way. In the grand scheme of creating a single path or creating multiple paths that will get people to the same destination, I think the one thing that Austin Ridge does well is they've figured out how to create multiple paths that funnel people eventually to the same destination. And so that's been really exciting to see that develop in recent years.

Jeff, man, any closing thoughts as we're wrapping up?

No, I mean, I'm excited about what you guys are doing. I'm curious to see where the church online platform, platforming all those things, kind of where it goes. You know, I'd love to have another conversation online or offline, you know, just about all that stuff, because I'm sure that as we get into year two, year three, month three—who knows—with just this whole D group idea, our disciple-making efforts, there's gonna be an itch for how else, yeah, then fill in the blank. And it's good.

Yeah, so I'll just be curious to see where that goes. I'm excited to be a part of this with you guys. That's family. It's fun to still be in ministry together even though you're in Florida and I'm still in Austin, man. I love it. And I've got to figure out a time when I'm flying back out to Austin to stop by there. There was a business thing I thought I was gonna be out there all the time, and you know, it just didn't work out. But no, we're definitely excited about what's happening.

I had to, Rich—it's interesting. And then I'm gonna put this bug in your ear for online, and then I'm gonna say this: a lot of churches will look at church online as, oh, this is somebody who's abandoning community, and so I'm an isolationist. I don't want to be around people. Church online is my opportunity to escape the world around me and just isolate myself and do church on a couch in my underwear. And while that may be an option, and once again, you can't force people down any given direction, I'd challenge churches to look at it not as the abandonment of community but potentially as a disciple into the place that they birth a new community. And so it's kind of looking through it—maybe it's looking through rose-colored stained glass glasses. I don't know if that's the right thing.

Yeah, it's a song somewhere about that, or maybe it's just the reality of, hey, this is what could be. This is the pipe dream down the road. But that's more of the challenge I think before us. And we've blogged about it and talked about it, but the challenge before the church is new discipleship online. Because I mean, you and I, Jeff, were in two different time zones, and Ray and I live in the same city, but I'll be honest, I see Ray once a month in the physical space. And so, you know, even in that context, it's learning how to utilize this not as a replacement of community but as an opportunity to empower and to create new communities where our people are. That's the dream anyway. So we could—I would love to offline have a conversation about that, and I'm sure we could probably make another podcast out of that too.

So, hey, man, yeah, I wrote down disciple-making without—somebody buy that domain right now. Disciple-making without. I might buy that and redirect. I think I will do that. Let's go ahead and do it in the show notes. It says me too written all over, bro. Disciple—that's awesome, man. That's why I miss Jeff more.

So, hey, for a—for Jeff, hey, this has been Jeffrey with the Church Digital. It's been a great podcast. Looking forward to what—hey, we've got Elevation coming up next. I'll go and plug that next podcast. We've got Elevation. We've got Danny Danielle Hicks, who's the pastor of watch parties. I thought that was her title, right? Was watch parties the old asked her in America who's got parties? Her job title? I got a little envious of that. But we're gonna be talking about how Elevation uses church online to create—to cluster these people together to create discipleship physical discipleship groups scattered across the country. So it's a great conversation, especially tied to church anywhere.

Jeff, thank you. Ray, thank you. Audience, thank you very much. We'll catch you next time here on the Church Digital Podcast. Y'all have a good day.