EP239: Global Research Surrounding Digital Discipleship

Well, part of our surprise honestly in the metaverse churches is that many of them are replicating what could happen in a physical space. Not all of them, but many of them are, and it looks like going to church with your avatar and many of them are auditorium-based. You break out into small groups, you're around a round table, you baptize in the pond outside, you whatever, but it feels like the liturgy of the physical space church.

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within a church, but more than tech per se, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciple making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? And where does the metaverse fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church or a startup church plant, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. Our heart is that churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, hey, you got the Church Digital podcast. This is episode 329. Love this conversation coming up. This is one of the top five conversations we had in 2021, coming back around and revisiting it in 2022, 2023 once again as well. And so definitely excited about getting into this conversation. But before we get there, real quick, I want to throw this out on the podcast. We've talked about this. There's an incredible opportunity for digital churches, for digital ministry, for metaverse churches to connect with new people, different types of people in the digital space. People, by the way, who are hungry spiritually, seeking, who are looking to literally have a conversation about Jesus digitally. Is this not a great opportunity?

Here's what we're doing. We've partnered with He Gets Us. It's a He Gets Us. Maybe you've seen the ads on the NFL, on Major League Baseball, live events. They've been all over. I've seen billboards, I've seen social media stuff. It's been a really interesting opportunity. Our friends over at Glue and a couple other ministry partners have started a national ad campaign. He Gets Us. He, Jesus, literally gets you. He understands you. He's been through the pain, he's been through the judging, he's been through the humiliation, he's been through the hard parts of life that you are struggling with. So quite literally, he gets us. That's the idea of the ad campaign.

What happens with this ad campaign? It drives to a landing page which connects spiritually exploring explorers. It connects these people to churches like yours. And there is a massive need for churches that are comfortable in digital ministry, who can engage with people digitally, who can have digital conversations, who can disciple people, and maybe even share Jesus without having to say the words, "Hey, would you like to come to our physical building?" There's an incredible opportunity for churches like yours to reach people that are spiritually seeking. Like, you wanted to do ministry digitally, you wanted to prove, "Hey, there's an opportunity to do this digitally." This is literally your opportunity. And oh, by the way, it's free. Through the Church Digital, through our partnership with Glue and the donors there, we've been able to offer twelve months for free of He Gets Us. That's twelve months of literally people that are spiritually seeking showing up in your inbox for you to have a conversation with through your church.

I tell you, we'll get into it maybe later, but the church.digital slash he gets us. Twelve months for free. Click that link. The church.digital slash he gets us. More information, questions on any of that, hit me up directly. You know where to find me. Awesome. I'll give you my cell: 484-324-8724. Okay, commercial was over. That took three minutes, which hopefully was actually trying to get a little shorter, but I don't know. I never know when to shut up.

So hey, I'm really excited about this conversation. We're gonna bring Jared and Ann Roth into the stream now. Jared and Ann, I don't want to oversell this, but these may be like, if I had band boys and fan girls scattered around the country, it may be these people. I honestly don't know of any larger, better, more excited people about what's happening in digital ministry than these two right here. And so Jared and Ann, once again, thank you for being on the show here.

Our pleasure.

Yes. So we did a podcast, you know, maybe it was October, November of 2021. We'll throw the link in the show notes, but it was centered around the research of digital church and digital ministry. And Jared and Ann were on Sprout Digital, which has been doing a five-year research plan, or a research study, centered around the idea of church in digital space. So many of you have actually gotten connected to them and many of you have had conversations over the years towards this and have contributed to the study. And so we talked last year about obviously part one of the study. And I wasn't kidding, like that was one of the top five most listened to podcasts here with the Church Digital within the past year. And so I'm very excited. I got my hands on part two of the study last night and had an opportunity to dig into it before this interview, and there's all sorts of goodness there. There's all sorts of questions. There's a couple surprises even for me in this. And so I cannot wait to dig into this.

So Jared and Ann, once again, thanks for jumping on here. Hey, let me just ask this question. Um, to kick it off, you guys, maybe if you're watching on YouTube you can see this, but it's a lovely looking elderly couple on here. Okay, like this is not the type of audience that I would expect to have a conversation centered around digital church. As a matter of fact, they retired recently, and so they're literally retired. They bought an adventure van, traveling the country, which is my dream. That's my dream retirement job. So you're living the dream for me. But you're a retired couple who's running a five-year study on digital church. Why? What was the drive for you guys to go digital and to have this emphasis in ministry? What's the story here?

Well, I think for Jared and I, we're both futurists. And if you're familiar with StrengthsFinder 2.0, and um, that's dangerous when both sides of a couple are that way. And so to be involved, what's got up to now? What's he? Where's the future moving? And um, we asked the question, what's the ends of the earth look like now? And the ends of the earth right now is digital. It's expanded. It's the new frontier, if you will, to reach people, help them find and follow Jesus, which is our lifelong passion through church multiplication. And this just happens to be the new space for church multiplication to happen in. And yes, those churches, those communities of people, um, happen in a different way, but they are just as fully churched as well.

The other thing is we love seeing who digital churches are reaching. Um, because those who find their social community online are more comfortable associating with, putting, dipping their toe in the water of checking out a faith community online. And then those who are physically unable to be part of some brick and mortar, travel there with my physical body, and that group as well. And then let's just mention gospel-closed countries. I mean, we would want to use every means at our disposal to reach more people for Jesus. And in gospel-closed countries, it's just having a phenomenal impact. And so um, we wanted to do something to help, but we knew it wasn't our space because we're not. We're the furthest thing from digital natives. You know, we're those Boomers. So we thought, what could we do? We could do research um, to help evaluate the early experiences of these really pioneers in the space and and look at their experiments and learn from that. And then along the lines of answering that question, given a planter's platform and audience, um, what parts of the discipleship pathway are being effectively done? And what could we learn from that to help the next round of people who continue to penetrate this digital space with communities of faith? So that's our passion in it. Always reaching people, the ends of the earth.

That was beautiful. And your heart for recognizing that the people—I think you think you find—you said the words, the people that find social community online and how they operate differently, how they function differently. You know, we talk through Digital Church Network and the church. We talk a lot about um, a different type of person we're reaching via these digital churches. And Jared and your research actually validates a lot of the stuff that we've been saying about there being a different function of these people where they're looking for different things and they're responding in different ways. And so it was beautiful. By the way, I should have said this earlier. Uh, the report is available for download through the Church Digital right now. Go ahead and go to thechurch.digital slash Sprout, S-P-R-O-U-T. We'll put the link in the show notes of course, but you can grab that report, download it, look at it. It's twenty-five pages of goodness. And so would love for you to go and check that out at thechurch.digital slash Sprout.

So okay, we're gonna go through some highlights. I made some notes on my side. There's some questions that I want to ask and dig into here a little bit. First and foremost, right off the bat, um, you have four categories of churches. Now I've always said three categories of churches, so I'm struck. You've stretched me a little bit here in this. So you've got metaverse churches, obviously virtual reality in that, which is the bleeding edge tip of the spear right now. Uh, you've got churches that are existing digital churches where the church exists primarily as an online entity. You know, we're on the same page there. Um, you've got online churches. I've been credited with saying the word "digital" a lot. Physical churches that are doing digital ministry, the combination of that, you know, I actually don't say digital that much anymore, but people still make fun of me even years after I've said it for saying that word. Um, but you've got a fourth category that was a surprise, and would love to get into this a little bit: gaming churches. Like, you know, I knew it was a thing, but I didn't—it didn't seem to me to be the scope maybe that you're starting to recognize and dig into. So right off the bat, let's talk a little bit here. Uh, gaming churches. What are gaming churches? What are you seeing?

Yeah, so we thought that probably uh, metaverse churches and gaming churches were probably uh, under one large umbrella. Well, the distinctives among the two in this study became so obvious that they needed to have separate categories. In fact, uh, we'll talk a little bit more later, likely, about metaverse churches, but they have far more in common with digital churches many times than they do with gaming churches. Gaming churches tend to be either on a streaming platform um, or and then using a community-based platform like Discord for their uh, their conversation and community, uh, or they're actually gamers that are participating in the gaming process and engaging people in that process. Both of those are significantly distinct from the metaverse church experience. And uh, the people who are there may have some overlap, but the experience uh, and the techniques and the strategy of gaming churches or churches that are using gaming platforms uh, are really quite distinct.

From what we're discovering in the metaverse, maybe could you draw out maybe one or two examples or characteristics that would maybe highlight some of that difference? Well, part of our surprise, honestly, in the metaverse churches is that many of them are replicating what could happen in a physical space. Not all of them, but many of them are, and it looks like going to church with your avatar. And many of them are auditorium-based. You break out into small groups. You're around a round table. You baptize in the pond outside, you whatever. But it feels like the liturgy of the physical space church. There's almost nothing that we have found in the gaming community that follows the liturgy of the physically based church. It's experimental. It's different. It doesn't have the service kind of format to it. They're trying to figure out how to do ordinances. It's the wild west more than we anticipated, where we anticipated that the wild west was more in the metaverse.

Yeah, that was a very good observation right there. I agree with you. You know, it's funny. People are so the most controversial thing I feel like I've ever said is the idea of church in virtual reality. Like, I get ten times hate comments on YouTube anytime I talk about anything with the church in virtual reality, and the theology backing some of those statements is crazy. But the heart of it is, when you look at it at what the way that Jason Polling, the way that Lakeland, the way that these churches are utilizing it, one hope, it's I mean, it's a physical church doing church in virtual reality. Like, the only difference is you're not literally breathing air molecules together. Like, there's no difference in the way this is. And yes, it's an edgy environment, but it's arguably a very grounded ecclesiology because of the physical operation at least interpreted.

One of the things that brought this obviously to light was the worship experience. So we're talking to people in the metaverse space and they're saying, yeah, worship works pretty well for us. You know, and we're going, what? Worship doesn't work well for anybody in the digital space. Well, it's working fine for us in the metaverse space. If you talk to people in the gaming spaces, they don't even want to talk about music. I mean, that's a non-starter. There's no place to go with that, right? That's totally unexplored territory, and you're having to work really hard to map out, you know, a biblical ecclesiology in Roblox or in Minecraft or in Black Desert Online or Final Fantasy. And you know, some of these games like Roblox, for example, unless it's been added recently, like it's all text-based communication. And so you're literally operating in these video games where you can't even communicate audibly. It's you're interacting with a keyboard. And yet there are people that are being that missionary that are operating a church in that space. And so this is beautiful, very, very good.

Let's shift a little bit here. So we talked about gaming, we've talked about metaverse, digital churches, physical churches doing digital ministry. Did you see any, was there more of one type or another type, or were they equally spread? Any characteristics overall, maybe looking at all four of them? Did anyone stand out more than another?

Well, I think one of the great differences that it was revealed in the first study, where we intentionally had about half of the churches digital and half digital, but it was absolutely reinforced again in this study. There's a huge difference of opinion about whether or not a fully formed disciple can happen in exclusively digital space. That was obvious the first study. It was one hundred percent. Digital folks said you have to meet face to face at some point to become a fully formed disciple. One hundred percent of the people in the digital spaces said absolutely, it's not a requirement. So there's really a theological issue there. It comes out of, I suppose, our bias comes out of our practice. But there's a theological issue about the omnipresence of God and the work of the Holy Spirit that was confirmed in this study. Where we didn't really intend to have many physical digital churches, we did have some. The real expansion of this study was to move globally and outside of North America. But this study again confirmed, so let me just say that everyone in the digital space says you do not have to ever meet face to face to become a fully formed disciple. But we would all agree that if you do meet face to face, there's no downside. So it's like it's not essential, but it probably won't hurt you.

No, this is a very different point of view than the digital folks. Something interesting, one of the planters in this study from another country, she got saved in an Eastern Bloc country when it was gospel closed. And she got saved and discipled through a series of letters that were sent to her. Very intentionally, an organization was doing this. So she got saved and discipled through snail mail. And so she's, of course, a digital church planter because she said, hey, Paul was the original discipler by mail, the remote discipler. And he managed to do this with a lot of churches that he planted by sending letters via couriers of various kinds. She said, my story is I was fully discipled by them. That's how she grew in Christ and became a leader and is now deployed as a church planter. So she just found it outrageous to not think that you could disciple remotely.

Yeah, I mean, the Holy Spirit can use letters. The Holy Spirit uses the Bible. Maybe the Holy Spirit can use a digital funnel and some emails and some interactions. I mean, we're laughing about this, but what's funny is, you know, you say this to some Boomers, and I have, and you know, I've taken some bullets as a result of it. You say this to some Millennials and some Gen Z's, and if they're like, well, of course, why wouldn't they? Because they're more comfortable in that space and they recognize more opportunities within that. And the controversy of digital versus physical, digital only versus digital complementing eventually physical, blah blah blah, like even the people that are in these spaces, they're constantly having this argument. I can tell you constant conversations about, am I a pastor running a digital church? Am I a missionary on a digital or metaverse movement? Like, they don't, it's funny. Some of them are like, I've actually had this conversation a couple times where people are like, I don't even care anymore. I'm just gonna do what God called me to do, and some theologian can tell me ten years later what I actually am. But right now I'm just a guy doing, walking down the road that God has me. And so love the heart behind that. That's funny because the people in the study, they did not want to be referred to as pastors.

Yeah, and they wanted it a community. They formed a community, not a church. And that keeps them out of controversy sway on that one point. But that had much to do with it, not because they don't believe they are, but because they found it to be a more agreeable terminology to use. They're making this research very, very difficult, Jeff. They won't agree with our taxonomy. They won't agree with basic categories. They won't limit themselves to ideas that are represented by historic words. So many of these folks don't want to own that they've started a church, but they don't mind if they have. But they don't care to call it that. And then we talk about the discipleship pathway. That's not a foreign concept to them, but it has not been their focus. Their being themselves led by the spirit in their space, experimenting, often pretty comfortable doing a slice of the discipleship pathway that comes out of their giftedness rather than, you know, what do we do with these people once we get them saved? Don't have well-developed ecclesiology. What's the nature of a church? You guys can fight that out. I'm just doing my thing here, helping people find and follow Jesus. So it's messing with the research because they won't play in our categories. But it is very exciting to see the creativity that comes out of not only being relieved from physical structures but even the language that we've used to describe how church is done. That they tend not to be very enthusiastic about adopting and identifying with.

You know, it's interesting what you're describing right there. Actually, there's a pull-out quote from the report I wanted to dig into. People are always trying to fit something in a box. This is a quote from a planter. People are always trying to fit something into a box, and the Holy Spirit doesn't quite fit into a box sometimes. I love that actually. I could within three guesses I'm willing to bet I can say who said that because I've heard that. I've heard that idea so many times. And what just brings me to this idea, you know, often, and I'm guilty of this, where you know when we talk strategy, when we talk mission, oftentimes the Holy Spirit isn't in our vernacular. Not to say that he's not referenced or he's not there, but oftentimes I'm guilty of this. I get so focused on the strategy to forget the supernatural aspects of what we're doing. How much does the Holy Spirit, was it referenced, what was it a part of as you were interviewing these, as you were reading some of the results from this? Is the Holy Spirit found in this from a practical standpoint?

Yeah, in fact, everybody is talking about the Holy Spirit in the sense of the Holy Spirit led us and to do such and such. They're working off of a Holy Spirit experimental, kind of fluid approach to what they're doing versus a historical, let's tweak what has been, let's reform what has been. They're not thinking that way or talking that way. They're talking, this is how the Holy Spirit's leading us. I know it hasn't been done this way before, but we're just following Jesus, you know, and doing what the Holy Spirit shows us to do. That's the way the Holy Spirit is spoken of in the conversational interviews.

It's so interesting, and related to that as well, the kingdom is talked about probably more than the church. The Holy Spirit is talked about more than the models. Community has talked about more than hierarchy. Roles are described, if at all, only in functional terms. She does that. So it really is an interesting, and you know, I won't get on the soapbox, but I think that this is truly a reformation of the church, and I think it's being reformed in ways that are true to the theology of the great Reformation of the priesthood of the believer. And it's flat, and it's participatory, and it's community, and it is responsibility, and it is gift-based. And even the language is following those practices.

Yeah, and you know, it's interesting. A lot of what you're describing are cultural shifts that are brought about by metaverse or that are being influenced by the metaverse. But it's interesting like you have that conversation with Rob Wagner over at Kansas City Underground, and he's talking about that as well from the micro church you know perspective about that being a new reformation coming in. I've had the conversation recently about there being a relational reformation about how the relationships, the relational approach of Christianity and in the heart, that's this re-engaging that's covering all the metaverse and digital and micro, and it's so interesting to see how there's a shift coming within the church overall and maybe even some of the common ecclesiology, the methodology that's been around for so long that's been established.

At least here in the West for hundreds of years is forcibly getting reimagined and we're boiling away maybe some of the extra biblical type of things and really trying to get down to the heart of what God's calling us to through the Bible, which kind of leads me into the next question actually, talking about you know, we got sermons, you've got musical worship, now metaverse, right? Metaverse physical, not that different, but you're talking digital churches that are trying to do this in a Facebook group or do this on Zoom, or you're talking video game churches that are trying to do this in, you know, like I was talking about Roblox or Minecraft or Final Fantasy. Like you're much more limited with some of that technology on how to replicate some of this stuff. So there may be some examples that stand out about how people were reimagining some of the ecclesiology type things, some of the things that are really quote unquote common in churches today.

Well, I'm going to let and probably a little later in our conversation talk about kids and youth, which is a demographic issue which is just monster in the study as well. But talking about the elements that we do in community together, absolutely right. Physical church, metaverse church, there can be a whole lot of commonality there. Once you move into the other two platforms, using worship as the art form to express worship is a non-starter except in other regions of the world where music is a regular part of home life. So for example, we discovered in many African cultures, any digital effort to engage people in homes or individually in a corporate worship service is fantastically successful because the culture has within it this regular practice of being engaged in singing and movement. I think American culture, the only place that you know we stand and sing is maybe we stand for the national anthem at a sports event and maybe we sing Happy Birthday in an embarrassed tone at a restaurant, but we have no cultural overflow for this kind of experience.

And so what we've discovered in the study, at least the seeds of it, it'll be fun to pursue in the future, is that if the culture is a singing culture or if they have some other art form that is regularly done by individuals in small groups, tap into that in a digital format and very likely people will enthusiastically participate. When it comes to Western culture, at this point we don't have a clue of how to engage people because we've pretty much since the Reformation and the Evangelical or in the Protestant Church, we've limited ourselves to music as the art form that we use to express worship. Before the Reformation, there were many art forms that expressed worship. And what we may be finding in these digital spaces is the experimentation with other art forms, other than music, that allow people to participate together in worship.

Okay, so I'm going to follow that up and I'm going to ask you to put on your former lead pastor hat, okay? You're a retired lead pastor among other things, Jared. What do we gain by exploring other opportunities for worship as a, maybe you can take physical church, digital church context, you tell me, but what do we gain by exploring other options, other modes and methods of worship beyond musical? Do you have an opinion on that?

Well, just my thought was if you go back prior to the Reformation, where people were illiterate and everything was used to tell the gospel, so building architecture, their windows in the building, icons if that was the tradition or some other art forms that were in the building, statuary, smells, incense, tastes, physical postures, all lent themselves to engage the five physical senses in this worship experience. And the Reformation emphasized the preaching and the teaching of scripture supported with singing as the singular art form for our corporate worship. And I think that in the digital spaces we're going to discover some cultural expressions that are broader than music to express worship that could well be brought back into any other form of churches, including physical, and restore the engagement of the whole person through the five physical senses instead of what we have now, which is primarily visual and auditory.

Well said, well said. And it's, I love that we're getting back maybe in worship to the heart, the purpose, where everything is telling the story, where we're moving beyond just one method and mode. We're reaching maybe a different type of person who's wired in different ways to hearing something. You know, I'm more visual with my learning, and so for me, even in sermons, reading and connecting with it with a written word is far more effective than listening to a sermon. And so even a forty-minute sermon from me is a hard thing for me to stay engaged in connecting with. But moving, you know, being able to receive teaching, reading a book, reading a blog post, reading something like that is far more intuitive and helpful for me. And so as we're starting to maybe engage different types of people in different ways with different methods, it'll be really interesting to see where the church is going to end up here as it's starting to explore different modes that are forcibly going to have to do different methods to be effective.

So two months ago we were in Switzerland and in Zurich we went to Zwingli's church building, which of course was a Catholic cathedral before he messed with it. And then we visited a Catholic cathedral. So was Zwingli, Luther and others did, of course, was they stripped those cathedrals, including in most cases destroying the stained glass. And today those Protestant cathedrals, former Roman Catholic cathedrals of the Reformation, are now, you know, as ugly as a mud fence, and that's almost literal because it's just the stark, cold stone. What was changed, of course, was the altar area where the Eucharist had been celebrated was stripped down, so now it's this ugly, vacant space. But there is a massive, massive raised podium three-fourths the way up and on the left-hand side of the building. So the Reformation, you know, the pendulum swung from all of the other stuff back to the preaching of the word. And my hope is that in this next Reformation, the pendulum will swing back and we'll re-engage in gospel-oriented, righteous, pure practices, other worship forms.

Well said. That was beautiful. That really brings up the other piece that you mentioned in your earlier question, which is sermons and how that's been delivered and the different approaches that people have, because gaming is much different than metaverse, but the beauty in metaverse is it can be a more immersive experience than in person because they can do, if they're teaching on the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt and they want to do the parting of the Red Sea, they can create all that in the metaverse and everybody can join them there. And you have this, or Joshua and the children of Israel marching around Jericho, or you know, you name it. You take all those amazing historical accounts of God's people, you can take people into that setting in the metaverse so that's a very immersive experience of God's word. And then into that, follow that with discussion, et cetera. So that's an exciting piece. But over on the gaming side, they're breaking up the lecture on the podium, that practice, right? That's their breakthrough, if you will, or are there different approaches? Is to instead start with discussion, interaction, very unstructured interaction, then when they move over to Discord or one of those platforms, then they begin to talk more, maybe a little bit more structure to it, but they still keep it very interactive, just like gaming is, you know? So it makes sense. But that's also people learn in different ways. So I like seeing how the sermon is going to be delivered because of digital means, all the digital means we can deliver God's word in different ways that help different people grab hold of it. And so the sermon has definitely changed and will continue to, I think, mark the delivery of it for people.

Yeah, I mean, just even last week I was on, I was having a conversation with a globally recognized evangelical organization, evangelism organization, that's doing excellent work digitally. And I was pitching to them this idea of doing it a little differently, to move away from the physical church mindset of how people are processing and starting to move towards digital community and being able to reinterpret, release, modify some of these practices to start to engage with these different people than you would typically get in physical environments. And it's going to really be interesting. I believe that, oh, I believe the pendulum we're talking about, the pendulum, I believe the pendulum is going to swing that way. It will be interesting to see how quickly organizations understand, how quickly big C church, how quickly individual churches, how many are going to be on that tip of the spear and how many laggards are going to be on the back end of the innovation curve. But we are definitely moving this way, and your research here is spot on showing that.

Well, you know, most of what I hear when I talk about digital churches, gaming churches, metaverse churches, you know, we talk about how you try to reach everybody. You're not going to reach anybody if you try to reach all of Facebook. If you take everyone who lives in China and India, you still don't have the total number of active Facebook users on the planet. So it's kind of a lot of people. We try to narrow it down, develop personas, develop a target audience. And some digital churches are very comfortable with that idea. Some, you know, churches, I've digital churches I've seen, struggle because the idea of persona, even with physical churches, is a very difficult thing. But obviously gamers, you know, you've all almost already have a gaming category that are very much recognizing that persona. Do you think the idea of personas in general are, are the churches that you that are in this research, are they seeing it? Did some stand out? Were some against that? What is the idea of the persona? How does that fit within the research you found?

First of all, yes, we see it in this study. And I think that of the leaders of the church events are beginning to recognize patterns are beginning to emerge and who is attracted to these different digital spaces. So one is introverts. That would be one aspect. Secondly, is people who find their social community, their social space is online already. So this isn't like I'm stepping into something new to them. This is like, wow, look who's in the neighborhood, my neighborhood, my space. Yeah. So social space. And then gospel-closed countries. I mean, this one probably moves people more than any, but I mean, that's very intentional because they've proven amazingly effective. It's given them another means to reach into the homes in a safe space to reach people in gospel-closed countries. And then people with physical limitations. But I think going beyond physical limitations, let's talk about people who are on the autism spectrum, for instance. That's another group of people that are being really well served online. They're already spending a lot of time online. That's a comfortable space for them. And we've seen this, even by exposing our church to the digital space, churches we showed just a Christmas thank you video from one of the churches that we supported that's all digital. And one of the students who's on the autism spectrum immediately went over and became part of that church. And he still comes. He came to our physical space, but hanging out youth group and stuff, not so easy for him.

him but that church fits for him so I think those are the persona. Um, it's broader than that too, but those are the four patterns of course that we see emerging of who's attracted to it.

Jared, I think one of the, you know, interesting things is that, uh, even strategically oriented church planters in these spaces are surprised about who shows up. So they thought they were shooting for a target. So for example, uh, the largest U.S. based digital only church that we're aware of uses Facebook as a platform and the founder recently told us that about a third of that 17,500 weekly attendance population comes from Western Africa. Wow, that was never anticipated and they're 19 to 29 years old. Interesting. And Facebook, yeah, so that's amazing. Started by, um, probably she's a young Boomer. So again, you could not have put that together in a strategic plan at a boot camp that you just, you don't know.

I think uh one of the huge surprises too, just my mentioned internationally, and again this research that the excitement for us was to move this globally, uh where we got to engage churches on all the continents in the study, very different models, churches that are absolutely massive but they don't know whether or not to call themselves a church. The largest one we encountered and we got to physically be with the founder of it last week in Minneapolis, uh, services weekly, 1.6 million former Muslims who have primarily come to faith in Jesus online are discipled online and then spontaneously churches are being planted out of that and now those pastors of those churches are being resourced. Um, it won't tell much more of the story but he's currently based now in Jordan because that's an appropriate national platform for him to conduct this ministry. But you know, you hear about a church of 1.6, it's actually a movement of churches, 1.6 million uh former Muslims. It's just mind-boggling. Uh, and other similar stories in this space, people started with these visions, had no idea they thought they were going to resource a few people and had no idea how God was going to just blow it up with uh with significance.

So they look for homes. That's where these, where people have gotten saved and that's where these churches are, home churches again, a safe environment and they have so far out of that 1.6 million, that's where they move people in when they get enough people in an area that know Jesus and they have 65 of those home churches now. It's it's incredible to see what's happening globally.

Jared, do you have something else? I'm sorry, I mean to cut you off or just a fun little story. I mean, stories are so powerful. But um, an older pastor in uh in Oslo, Norway, as a young man worked for seven years in a refugee camp in Sudan serving Ethiopian refugees who are coming across the border. In the course of the seven years he became fluent in three of the 17 Ethiopian languages. And when he went back to Oslo to pastor what we would consider a relatively small church, he thought God's made me a steward of this language ability. I should probably do something about it. And he started putting out some resources in the three languages and the diaspora from Ethiopia now has reached literally every nation in the world, possibly with the exception of North Korea. And um, and so I asked him, so how many people access these weekly resources that you're putting out? And he said, well, I really don't uh know what the reach is, but we do know that there are 3,300 daily users. And I said, what has happened now out of this movement? And he said, well, churches are popping up globally. And again, what happens spontaneously is as they find a critical mass of people, they they say, hey, did you know that in the suburb of Toronto there are uh you know 40 of you that are engaged daily? Why don't you find each other and start meeting together? And so I said, would you mention some of the churches? And you just started in Canada and worked his way down through the U.S. and he just fired off um you know multiples of churches that are actually now physically meeting that have come out of this movement. People finding Christ one at a time and then finding each other in the community and then forming a gospel community.

It's it's beautiful when you hear stories like this where God is doing things digitally, globally, um, and and it's and it makes me wonder what would actually happen here in the U.S. if people, if church leaders weren't saying but it doesn't work that way. I mean, like God's just doing incredible stuff globally and and just some of these stories, 1.4 million, you know, getting getting connected, seeing digital church movements or even movements coming out of that regardless of the format. Digital's reinforcing and resourcing it. It's just it's beautiful. Uh, and and so just plenty of opportunities for for those of us out there with missional imagination. How can we utilize these digital tools? How can we how can we reach these digital communities, these metaverse communities? Um, how can we think different to effectively reach a different type of person?

Well, let's do this. Let's let's pivot here a little bit. Let's get into uh discipleship. I know discipleship and it's what I love about your report. So it's a major component. I mean, it's a, I mean, looking at your page count, probably half the thing is is built into discipleship. Uh, and from from the research and some of the different takes on it and so let me ask this because obviously we're talking digital, we're talking metaverse, we're talking gaming, we're talking physical. Uh, discipleship can mean a lot of different things. There's lots of different spins and takes, I'm sure, on that. Were there constants where there was, was there a thread that united all the different takes together?

For laughing, because you know, naive us, right? We're researchers. So you have to start out with with some major topic, discipleship pathway, some major point of view, the whole discipleship pathway, some major outcome. Let's find models that are effective, right? That's our that's our research question. So we started out with let's talk about discipleship, but nobody wants to talk about discipleship. Everyone agrees with it, everyone's about it, unit unanimity around this is the mission and not much interest in just defining it.

So really in this you know pioneer space what we've discovered is that in most cases people are being themselves. I am gifted this way. I'm going to present myself and my gifts this way in this space. So these churches are either really good at evangelism or they're really good at care or they're really good at healing or they're really good at maturity or they're really good at developing Bible literacy or they're really good at leader development. But again, our big research question across the five years is to see if there's if we can find best practices, stitch them together into prototypes, hopefully have those prototypes tested so that in the future others can have the benefit that we had when we were church planters at 23. What we had was the benefit of others that had made mistakes and they came back and said if you want to really help somebody far from God become a fully devoted, mature, multiplying Christian, then you might want to think bigger than your own gifts and your own experience and you might want to have a team that is multi-gifted and a strategy that allows you to build on a platform across the whole pathway.

And at this point there are very few. There's a couple of churches that believe that they're doing in it and they may, so we'll grant that, but we can say at this point in our research it is very rare to find a church that is coming close to the whole discipleship pathway. Everyone supports it, believes in it, isn't very interested in defining it, is doing their part, but we have a lot, a lot of learning to do to help intentional strategic church planners in this space have models that they might consider.

Is is let me follow up on that. Is is the lack of, is the lack of vision there? Is it a lack of resourcing where it's too big and right now a lot of these churches are by vocationally driven, funding low, and it's not a priority? Like maybe your research shows something. Maybe I'm asking you to read between the lines. Like what are you thinking is really the why behind that?

I think there's a couple of journals here. One that I would mention is just that there's a group within study subjects that felt that discipleship happens naturally without intentional uh process, that it unfolds if you are a follower of Jesus and you start following him, that's discipleship. So in that group, they're not to the point where you know the intentional process that they need to implement.

Jared, you can speak to some of the other, and you know, they may be right and we may learn something from them that if you follow Jesus in community that's authentic and sustained and yes, um, and it's refreshing, that may be an organic context for discipleship, which really challenges where at least we have been in our thinking, which is you create a discipleship pathway, you resource it, you motivate people to go through it, they get processed through it, we hope for good outcomes. So um, we're happy to watch some of these organic, casual folks with the philosophy of if you follow Jesus as an authentic community, it's it's going to happen to you. Um, and so you know, we're interested in that.

So one of their comments, it's an everyday experience that happens at our table. That's what they like to say. That are that are intentional and and they will either create in-house resources or in many cases they're going to third-party resources and going ahead and stitching together a resource-based process that would be common in many of our uh physical and digital churches.

When you do look at the Bible, I look, I'll admit, Acts, you do see an organic, organic, authentic uh model. Uh, but you also see God strike down the two people that were not authentic uh truly uh in that moment. And so look, if we want to go there, maybe we should go there. But it was funny. A friend, a friend of mine tweeted that there was there was more um a friend of mine literally tweeted this week, off topic completely, I'm sorry, but he tweeted that uh there's more directive in Acts for the church business meeting than the church sermon. My comments was actually, well, if you look at Acts, like two people got struck down at one of those business meetings. So like if you want to go back to that, then maybe that is where you should head. But God, hope you, God bless you, you need to stay on this side of the equation and not on the any authentic side.

Hey, um, it's interesting, the the organic, you know, I I work so much towards the intentional uh discipleship side and and creating the funnels and the intentional processes um towards that. And so the idea of the organic is like you know nails on a chalkboard for me. And and maybe that's God needs to do something into me and I need to be more Holy Spirit driven and less um uh of the other. I get it. I'm open to that conversation. Uh, would would you say that there was it on the organic, were there any um what's the word I'm looking for, uh characteristics or traits or similarities among like those churches that are thinking that way as opposed to the more intentionally driven? Is there like another focus or characteristic that would unite them? Or was it pretty equally distributed around?

Well, I wish we could do more psychographics with this group, but by definition these are innovators. Most of them don't even know other people are doing this. You know, the research project itself is helping people go, oh, you mean there's enough people to do research on? Tell me about some of these other folks. And Jeff, you uh and your network really are giving leadership to helping these people discover each other. By and large, they are out there as independent agents led by the spirit. They are entrepreneurial uh by uh by makeup and

They, uh, by the way, we've stopped telling them that we're looking for models because they are so far from being the kind of personality that's interested in a model. They don't even want to help develop models for other people. But we know how things work on the diffusion of innovation scale. You've had the innovators. Somebody has to be an early adopter, and the early adopters then work with the prototypes of the innovators and actually create the models so that the, uh, the later adopters actually have something that they can adopt. So we look at it through that, and these folks are innovators. These are odd people by definition, you know? They're just wired different. And because of that, uh, I think there's that independence. There's that lack of interest in models. There's a lack of common language, and there's not all that much interest about, uh, doing the whole thing right. Uh, it's rather about I'm going to do what I'm called to do, and I'm going to do it as well as I can.

That there's really two things that we see them share in common in terms of as a whole group. One is that they determine their content based on who their audience is. So their content is shaped by that, not by some program or somebody else. So whether it's structured or unstructured, whether it's formal or informal, all of the content is shaped by who they're trying to reach. And secondly, they all agree that discipleship is a group process, not an individualistic process. I would all share that. So community process, you could say instead of group, but meaning that. Interesting with that with the idea of group with discipleship, uh, you know, sometimes I worry about, and worry may not be the right word, but the self-directed, the, you know, the automated process. But I love, I love that they're seeing a group dynamic or a community dynamic with it at the discipleship.

Well, hey, we teased it earlier, and so we'd love to spend just a little time on it. Uh, kids, uh, students, um, generational, like, uh, is, did we see anything? Did we learn anything about kids online or a focus towards maybe even a generational model of worship? What were some takeaways maybe as you were digging into that?

Well, this is probably like I'm gonna address this one first because this is probably the most like disturbing element of digital ministry is that right now it doesn't accomplish youth or children in any of these group expressions. Um, Roblox, um, is being utilized by kids, and there have been some all-kids churches led by kids. That's awesome. That reaches a child. Since the reason it's disturbing is because children, the four to fourteen window is still true. Between the ages of four and fourteen is when most people make their decisions for Christ. So getting the gospel to them, and what most of them are saying is youth. This is in our study. They said youth do not want to do online group. They want to be face to face. I don't know how they ascertain this, but this is what they believe. I believe that nobody's created anything that youth want to do online. That's what I believe about that. And I'm out looking for the first person who'll dive into that and make something happen. And then children, same thing. We haven't, other than Roblox, and that's an amazing effort that some, you know, that a young man made when he was just a kid and turned it over to four kids, and they've reached a lot of children. But right now the strategy, and I've talked face to face with some of these people, is just to do, um, have their online church and equip parents to reach kids. But that doesn't reach a lot of kids because that depends on the parent coming to Christ, and that's a whole journey too. And I mean, I would have never made it in that journey with my dad taking thirty some years to get saved after I got saved. I always think about that when I look at these kids. So to me, this is like the big deal that we have to solve, and we need to get more creative about it. So I'm looking for that personal creative a place. And I know metaverse, they're experimenting a little by creating these side rooms with kids. I don't know why that wouldn't work more. But all that to say that everybody agrees that they're not doing kids and youth in any effective way. It's a systemic issue, uh, in addition to cultural.

Uh, what we've done, uh, my theory about the physical church is that we've used the educational model. So we feel like the whole family in this perfect world is going to church, but they go to the same building, and then we separate people. We graduate them out by age. And so we use the educa, public education model to educate people at church. And by the way, as long as public education is in a building and graduate students out by classroom, physical churches will still have a huge cultural place. It's one reason they're going to be around for decades and decades because we use the educational model for the church model. But when you move into digital spaces, the family is by definition divided up across different digital platforms. So no digital platform attracts the entire family. And as a result of that, to try to do church in a digital platform for a family simply systemically does is a non-starter. So it's going to require amazing creativity in multiple platforms to, uh, integrate a family of two or three generations into a full orb, uh, expression of church. And experiments at this point haven't been all that promising.

Yeah, there's definitely an opportunity to solve this problem, um, you know, in Ann. I agree with you. I, I, I think the lack of, uh, an answer is we just, we haven't had enough creativity in the space yet. And I know when I've had these conversations, people are trying to take their physical kids church service and do it digitally. And like the paradigm is that. And well, Jeff, nobody likes to watch, uh, nobody likes, uh, you know, uh, church online. It's like nobody likes Zoom. And you're trying to get these kids into Zoom, and Zoom for them is school in COVID season. You don't want to go to school. You're just, you're not, you're putting yourself in a box. And evidently, according to somebody, the Holy Spirit's bigger than the box. And so we need to be thinking bigger with this. And so I definitely, um, I definitely would encourage some more. And there are some people I will, I don't want to get into it, but there's some people pulling some interesting threads right now. And I hope somebody comes up with, uh, some solutions because, you know, we need more Ands in the world. And evidently, And wouldn't have gotten, wouldn't have accepted Christ, uh, if not for, uh, what had happened in her life. And so we need more people to reach more and more. And so let's, uh, let's do that.

Um, I'll tell you what, this has been a great conversation and a great time. I just, I mean, I love you guys, love hanging out with you. Can I tell you what we're going to do next, Jeff, before we go?

I want to hear it.

Oh, it's so exciting because this month, this research, starts project number three, starts this month. It is very different. Uh, to this point we've been using grounded theory. It's been interview based. Uh, we've coded transcripts. We've let themes emerge. We are entirely shifting. This third project is back to US-based. It is primarily about Gen Z. It is, uh, going to be survey based. We're going to professionally interview one thousand Gen Zers, thirteen to twenty. Then we're going to take representative but smaller population groups of the three older generations, Millennial, X, and Boomers, so that we can compress and compare the four generations. But what we want to ask the Gen Z are two questions really. We want to get to how do you currently use and want to use digital? And what are your faith aspirations? And we hope to infer what kind of churches might be planted in the future for Gen Z and how that contrasts with the other three generations. That will be done by the end of January. So stay tuned, man. That's crazy. If it, from an outside, if somebody wanted to get involved or wanted more information on that, is anything public on that yet, or is it stay tuned?

Uh, nothing's public yet, but if anyone reached out to us, we would certainly engage a conversation.

Very cool. So we'll include link in the show notes obviously for Jared and Anne. And that was an inside scoop, and you got to hear it here first on the Church Digital podcast. And so, um, definitely have loved this conversation. Remember, you can get download, uh, the, uh, the report, twenty twenty-two, uh, from the church dot digital slash Sprout. We'll have it on the website there, thechurch.digital slash Sprout. Jared and Ann, uh, the ultimate supporters of the church digital and digital churches out there, thank you for doing what you're doing for the kingdom. And, uh, enjoy retirement life as I'm sure you will continue to do. Check out the links in the show notes as we're landing the plane. Jared, any closing thoughts?

I just want to tell a story from yesterday. I was with an eighteen-year-old. He is the son of one of the people we sent out from our church. And, um, we were getting an update on his life, and he's an incredible gamer, and he is getting a scholarship from a Christian college university. I should say, um, because of his gaming. That's how he's winning the scholarship. And he wants to be a nurse. But this is a gaming scholarship because the university is trying to connect with males. Well, um, we didn't say that to him, but we knew that would be part of their strategy. But, um, here's the deal. I found out how much he does gaming, and I said, you could be a digital missionary. Have you ever heard of that? And I told him about gaming, and I connected him to a gaming church planter. And, um, he says, I'm going to check that out. He says, I never imagined I could do that because they're not, that church isn't as, uh, in touch with digital.

Yeah, so, um, in touch, yeah, yeah. So he's, he's gonna go check it out, and I'm gonna follow up with him. Who knows? He could be one of those breakthroughs for our students.

Yeah, there's, there's so much opportunity out there, and we need, we need more people thinking outside the box. And so Jared and Ann, thank you very much for what you've done for the kingdom and continue to do, supporting and championing the idea of digital, metaverse, gaming, and even digital, sorry, digital churches. But we're gonna land the plane. And so Jared and Ann, thanks for the time here. Uh, for Jared and Anne, this is Jeff with Church Digital, Digital Church Network, and so much other, so much other fun stuff. Thanks for joining, uh, me and the podcast here. We'll see you next time on this show. You have a good day.