EP245: Your Digital Church’s Local Missions Department

What I love about these initiatives is as, uh, because it's you've got it digitally, this knowledge can be distributed through to our digital churches, but it also can be distributed through our digital churches to the people that we're connecting with all over, um, America and the world. And so like we can have a church that's operating in Facebook and they can be encouraging their, um, attenders, their members, the people that are connected with the church, they can be encouraging them to help with foster families in their communities. Like it's almost like this idea is getting, um, distributed two times, multiple times, not just distributed to a digital church, but through a digital church into areas, um, that maybe even the church doesn't exist within in that zip code. So we're really kind of, um, breaking a paradigm here of what local ministry means through a digital church context.

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the 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? Oh, and where does the metaverse fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church or a startup church, 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 would discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Hey, alright, it's episode 245. Jeff here with the Church Digital Podcast, and excited about this conversation we're going to get into in just a little bit. I've been wanting to shed light, to have a conversation with these gentlemen talking about this topic for literally months. I found out about this idea and just through scheduling and issues, we're going to have a solid conversation that's going to open up a whole new paradigm of ministry for our digital churches and churches that are operating online. But before we get into that conversation, I just want to remind, as we're wrapping up 2022, there's an opportunity to engage with He Gets Us, CNC, with He Gets Us. It's this global ad campaign. You may have seen the ads on Major League Baseball, NFL games, NBA. Guess what? There's a couple ads coming with the Super Bowl. Like it's going to be this incredible opportunity to connect lost people, spiritual explorers, people that are asking spiritual questions, and get them connected to churches like yours. Now there's a phenomenal opportunity to get these people connected to the local church, churches that operate in physical buildings, but there's a problem. The demand of the people that have these spiritual questions are more than the supply of churches that exist. And we're looking for churches that can operate in digital space that can disciple somebody digitally to really deal with this mass of people that are asking spiritual questions. Literally there are people asking spiritual questions with nowhere a church to partner with, and that's where these digital churches like yours come into play. And so if you're interested, twelve months free, and you get to take advantage, you literally get inboxed to your account people with spiritual questions, people that you can do ministry with. So for more information, check out helpthechurch.digital/hegets us. The church.digital/hegets us. By the way, He Gets Us pairs so well with the conversation that we're about to have here with One More Child. And so I want to introduce to the conversation Robert Zirin and Panos. I, I promise this is not how you say his name, but I'm not gonna do it. So it's Pano. So I'm going to say Cortesis, but it's wrong.

Yeah, and so Panos, I've known for quite a while. Panos, like I'm trying to think, where did we used to work together? At Christ Fellowship Miami. And I mean, when did you start at Sia? How far back do we go?

Oh, I think almost nine years. I think nine years ago.

Wow. We would have some Starbucks brainstorming meetings. I remember those meetings. Uh, just we had great times. So yeah, I remember about nine years ago we started with our Starbucks meetings and then also being part of staff meetings, and you were always the, you were always the digital. You were always the go-to for digital, yeah, and for digital church and for what online look like. And so I'm so happy to see where what you're doing now in the Church Digital. It's absolutely incredible, the whole network and the nonprofit, everything that's incorporated. And we're looking forward to working with you guys, definitely. And so One More Child, well, you know what, I don't want to tell the story. Robert, would you tell the story? How we got, uh, for One More Child? What what it was, what it is now? Maybe even start to tease here about some of these initiatives that you're doing. Every child or every city. Talk about what, uh, One More Child, what we're doing in this conversation today.

Most definitely. And thank you, Jeff, so much for having us. Uh, we truly appreciate it. I love what you're doing, love your podcast. So One More Child started in 1904. It actually started in Arcadia, Florida as an orphanage. So since 1904, it's really expanded. Uh, we're not only in Florida anymore, but we're around the country and we're around the globe. So One More Child started off as an orphanage, but now we're doing so much more. We're doing work with foster care, with single moms, anti-trafficking victims, struggling families, and much more. And so it's been really fun, you know, to see One More Child. At least where I knew them, it was the Florida Baptist Children's Home. You know, and that's what it was in recent years. But there was a pivot to move, you see how I did the pivot? Like the friends that totally unconscious, did not mean the accent pivot. Pivot. Well, moving on. Um, but there was, there was this move to pivot away from meeting physical needs like in an orphanage and actually moving a lot of these services online. So Panos, maybe talk to us a little bit about what, uh, maybe what some of those pivots are and maybe what some of those services now are online.

Absolutely, yeah. So what I like to say is that over the decades we've always been as an organization on the forefront of providing the best, um, services for children and families at the time. And so our mission being to provide Christ-centered services to vulnerable children and struggling families, we've done that so well since the beginning as an orphanage and then for decades as children's homes. And so we have campuses scattered throughout the state of Florida where we had children's homes for decades, and that was the best standard of care for the time. And now looking at today, looking at the past few years, we've seen that there's been a change for the best standard of children and that best unit of care where we want to be able to wrap around children and families that are in need. And so it's not just children's homes. We're talking about looking at it preventatively, looking at upstream issues in terms of being proactive. Um, how do we wrap around a child and their guardians and their siblings all together? And so what we've done is we've evolved and we've actually somewhat outgrown the name. So we're no longer just, look, so Florida Baptist Children's Home. We're no longer just Florida. We're branching out into other states with our programming, both campus and specific programming, and then also with our online or our initiatives. But we're also outgrown Baptist. We still have strong relationships with our Baptist roots and family, but we are working with churches that are for Jesus and that are saying, hey, look, we want to provide Christ-centered services to children and families in our areas. And so, um, and no longer children's homes. And so we've outgrown that name. And so we are One More Child, which is much more appropriate to see the pillars in how we work to provide services to children and families. And so what we're excited to talk about today is something called One More Child Initiatives. And so what we've done is we have provided for many years really great on-site programming with our single moms programs where we have transition homes for moms to live on campus for twelve months. They save money in a savings account, and then through the twelve months they are paired with a spiritual mentor, financing classes, parenting classes. They receive additional aid, and then that's their one-year transition program for single moms. Our foster programs, we, what we do is we provide recruiting and licensing to recruit Christian families to enter into the foster community to take in children that are in need of a home. Anti-trafficking, we were known for being able to provide a safe home, and currently we have mobile response teams in which we have teams that go out and work with survivors of trafficking, and we specialize with working with children or anyone under the age of eighteen in terms of that. And so for years we were doing these things really great as an organization, but we realized that we do things great on our campuses and in our buildings and in our programs, but what we wanted to do is we wanted to shift and pluck best practices from what we've been doing for years and put those back in the church. And so that's what initiatives are. What we've done is we've taken best practices from each of our pillar programs and we've provided and we've created these initiatives. And so each of our initiatives are absolutely incredible that mobilizes churches to be able to serve their community in ways that we have been doing, but in a way that really takes it away out of our campuses and puts it back in the church in the community. And the church shines as the beacon of hope for their zip code in their neighborhoods. And I know Robert can share some more specifics in terms of each of our initiatives.

Yeah, so I want to drill in, and Robert, get to that in one second. But what I think is so, uh, genius about this, and I love the fact that you said beacon of hope, like that's such an uplifting term, uh, but you did this. You put these initiatives, you pluck this out of the campuses and you put it online. And so there's an opportunity for a physical church. Like we have, we have a, you know, a mutual friend that I know Dave Lopez, and Dave's been on the show years ago and done some stuff and talked with us. And Dave's like, you know, Panos, you gave us a local missions department. And Dave's physical church now utilizes some of those programs and some of that, not tied to your campus, but is now doing that within the physical church Cornerstone that's located here in Miami. What I love about these initiatives is as, uh, because it's you've got it digitally, this knowledge can be distributed through to our digital churches, but it also can be distributed through our digital churches to the people that we're connecting with all over, um, America and the world. And so like we can have a church that's operating in Facebook and they can be encouraging their, um, attenders, their members, the people that are connected with the church, they can be encouraging them to help with foster families in their communities. Like it's almost like this idea is getting, um, distributed two times, multiple times, not just distributed to a digital church, but through a digital church into areas, um, that maybe even the church doesn't exist within in that zip code. So we're really kind of, um, breaking a paradigm here of what local ministry means through a digital church context.

Um breaking a paradigm here of what local ministry means through a digital church context. So, you know, Robert, I would love to maybe unpack here a little bit what are these initiatives like? What are some of these areas that we're now talking about when we're talking about every child, every city?

Yeah, so exactly as Pano said, we wanted to take what the great work that we, our experts, were leading and excelling at in our programs and not to be cliche, but like figure out how can we even reach one more child? So that's what we always want to do is reach one more child or family they're not close to one of our campuses or to where one of our programs are offered. And so we do that in the areas of foster crew, single moms community program, a one-time anti-trafficking educational event, a backpack food program that can be one time or ongoing, and through our meal packing party. So these are the main ways that we're able to come in, partner with churches, no matter where you're located, whether that's here in Florida, any state across the country, whether you're a physical church or you're a church online. Um, we recently partnered with one church through our backpack program. This church operates primarily online. They have folks that attend all over the country. We just finished, I believe it was 338 events in 17 different states that we partner with them to make sure that kids had food as they were going back to school. So just amazing, just amazing to see that we can do this. And most of these events took place, Jeff. It was honestly something that was even new to us. So most of these events took place in people's homes, so in people's homes and coffee shops, different things like that. So it wasn't like we were having these backpack events with 200 or 300 people in a church in a gymnasium or something like that. It was literally most of these events were at someone's home and groups as small as four people, four people, ten people, twenty.

We had some bigger groups as well too, but it really just showed us the impact that you can make in your local community whether you're in a physical church or whether you're attending church online. We literally, Jeff, had families like a family of four that packed fifty backpacks to make sure that kids at local title one schools had food. So just some amazing opportunities.

Yeah, and this is some of the opportunity that I'm talking about where it, I think it's a new paradigm when we talk about, you know, digital churches and the reach, the potential reach that we're seeing as a result of this ministry. It's reaching different types of people. You know, we talk about this. It's reaching different people in different environments in different spaces. And so you're doing that by putting it online and really now we're seeing an opportunity for that to get distributed out in new ways and getting connected to new people. And somebody running champion in this idea for foster care in a coffee house, or somebody running a mentoring single moms program within their within their school or within their workplace. Well, now because of doing digital church and being at more distributed, more decentralized, we're able to see these ideas stretch far beyond maybe what a physical locale would look like. Now maybe the physical locale has more influence at the beginning because now these ideas are small and getting distributed among the people, but the opportunity for that to grow is really interesting. And so I love this. So you know, you've got the, and I know the church that's doing it, I, you know, maybe I say the name, maybe it's okay, we can keep it quiet, the one church that's doing this digitally that's doing it really well. Um, but my question is, are you seeing like our physical churches that are doing this, that are engaging? Like, what stories are you seeing? What stories are you hearing? Um, what good are we seeing this idea, these initiatives, happen? Like, what's happening as a result of it?

Absolutely. Uh, one church comes to mind. It's here in Florida. It's in Inverness, Florida. Uh, they've been doing our single moms community program. They're actually in their third semester of doing it. It's a ten-week program. So as the moms go through this, I just kind of give you a little backstory. We provide all the curriculum, a leader's guide, uh, the student's guide, materials that you can use to promote it. We do that training. We can go in in person and do the training to train the facilitators and the mentors. We can do that online via Zoom. And so we've seen at this church in Inverness that's in her third semester just some amazing changes in these single moms. So some of these single moms that were being mentored, that were part of this program in the first and second semester, are now coming back and they're mentors themselves. So we've seen them get mentored and then now as the church is continuing doing this, now they're coming in and they're mentoring you single moms. So we've seen moms that have accepted Christ through this. We've seen families restored. We've seen children that are involved in church for the first time, just so many stories. I remember a story from a different one that talked about that for the first time in the mom's life that she was reading the Bible, that she was trying to really see all God, and she felt like God was working in her life. And she said that for much of her life she struggled with alcohol. And so for the first time in her life through this single moms program, through the support that she has, she's sober, she's reading her Bible, she's really seeking the Lord. And so just some amazing stories like that, Jeff, are happening all over the country.

That's great. And the opportunities, we've talked about this. Thank you, Robert, for sharing that, by the way. But we've talked about these opportunities where online, the offline, you've heard me say this before. The gospel that we hear in our online world, it has to influence our offline world, our offline relationships. Otherwise, we're just creating consumers. And so many of our churches, we're great at creating consumers in digital space. Listen to this podcast, watch this online service, um, read this blog. But what if what if we actually challenged our listeners? What if we challenged our attenders to do something like this? To feed hungry children using one more child's programming, or speak into and challenge us the sex trafficking in their locale? Like, this is moving far beyond a consumer mindset and really challenging and stepping into some environments like this that are actually making a difference in the physical world. We often talk about this. Would our church, would our community miss us if our church shut down? And really, as digital churches, even stepping into some of the space and challenging our people to lead out in this, it's taking a big step towards, you know what, yes, our community would miss us if our people were engaged like they would through some of these things. These initiatives that one more child is leaning into. Panos, you look really excited, man. You're like jumping up and down here. What are you thinking as we're talking about this?

I'm gonna agree with everything. I think it's fantastic that we're having this conversation. I mean, considering that even three or four years ago, saying hey, we were going to take what we do really well and decentralize this to the point where other churches anywhere can access, have access to training so that anyone that's at the church can become a full advocate as well as just being an informed Christian in that space, knowing how they can work in the foster community, how they can work to combat trafficking, how they can feed hungry children, how they can support single moms. And um, so just knowing that on this side of things, looking at our digital strategy and also our initiatives being offered to churches everywhere, we want to be able to mobilize, equip, and resource churches as best as we possibly can to work in their communities. And so um, we just, we have these resources that are available. We offer all these trainings for free for all of our initiatives. That's because we believe in the church. We know the mission of the church. We stand alongside the church in doing this because we want the church to be able to be the hands and feet of Christ. And that's what we're looking to do. And so what does it look like? I mean, we have tools that we offer as well in addition to our training. I have one thing and you can either edit this or we can kind of talk a little bit more about this. This is a Church Answers report. We've partnered with Church Answers to be able to work with churches to be able to create a customized report of key stats in their area. And so we're talking about households that are low income or below the poverty level, houses that are on SNAP or food stamps, a number of single moms in the area, a number of households with, um, yes, single mothers, married with children, property crime, just different things, number of people that are involved in the church. So these are, this is a report that we work with churches as well to say, hey, look, if you're kind of wondering where we start with initiatives, let's generate a report and let's look. Because what we can do is we can say, hey, look, we'll pull up the stat within fifteen minutes of the ZIP code that you're looking to target and say, yeah, single moms is an issue in terms of the number of or the percentage that's there in terms of children or the households that are on SNAP. These are households that we can look at and acknowledge. It's saying, okay, these are households that are stretching the dollar and we know that there's a situation where some of these families are having to either pay the light bill or pay for food. And we want to be able to step in as the church to be able to resource our community to let these families know you don't have to pick between both. We'll come in and we'll support you on the food side. And so that's just an example of what we're looking to do. So we're really heavily investing in spreading um and creating as many advocates as we possibly can to be able to reach one more child. We spend enough time with Robert, myself, or anyone on staff with one more child, the question will always circle back to that very thing. How do we reach one more child in our space? The Lord has placed us here at this moment. And so how do we serve? And so I, I'm just, I'm energetic. I'm not in line with everything that I'm hearing. Because it's so exciting to see what's to come from offering this anywhere, everywhere, and our team is super excited to be able to do that. And one more child, through our initiatives, we want to come in and empower and equip your church or this digital, whether that's physical, school, whatever that is. So we want the community to see your church. So we come in behind the scenes, make sure you have all the resources you need, all the training you need, everything that you need so that you can be the ones that the community sees impacting. And so I just really think that that's important. It's not like that we want to come in and we don't want the community to see one more child. We just want to equip the church so that they can serve one more child.

That's fascinating. Now there's a pivot there. There's a pivot here where you used to be like the orphanage and instead of being the product giver, hey, we're doing the orphanages and we're doing it this way, your organization has shifted. I feel like within the past couple...

Years like this is a recent shift more towards empowering others. It's more of a decentralized movement where you're not owning the locale where the ministry is happening. Instead, you're now empowering others to do the ministry where they are, even double decentralized as we're talking about maybe empowering individuals to do this in homes and in workplaces.

Man, I would love, and we talk a lot about decentralization here on the podcast, I would love maybe to just talk about why, maybe some lessons that you've learned along the way here. What observations are you seeing as you're shifting through this? Like, tell me some of the decentralization story of one more job here.

Yeah, I can kind of kick us off and then pass it over to Panos. But I really see it as the mansion rather than a shifting because we're still doing our programs that we've done with excellence for so many years, kind of referencing foster care. We're still licensing foster homes here in Florida. We still have foster family homes here in Florida. So we no longer have homes, so that group home model is where we have paid staff that go in and they are there as the house parents of the group home. So now we have what's called a foster family home model. So a foster family home model is where we provide the housing and foster families get to live there for free, are very small, very small monthly payment that they make, but basically for free. They're just regular licensed foster parents that are in the community, but we provide the housing. And kind of that caveat is that they have to be licensed for five kids. So we're still keeping siblings together. We're still trying to make sure that we have homes available no matter the age of the child. So we do all that through our foster family home model. But through our initiatives, we're able to expand and do far more than that into our foster crew model. We're able to go in, train churches. We have a model that we've designed to train them to build a really just practical way shift that they can support foster families that are in their church or in their community. So that's simple things like dropping off meals or babysitting or doing yard work around the house or doing laundry, especially praying for those families. So it's just the way that we're able to expand from that traditional program model and reach more children for sure.

Are as you're looking at expanding more areas, I'm just curious, like you've got the five offerings now: foster families, mentor single moms, feed hungry children, stop sex trafficking, sponsor a child. Like, are there a wish list for six? Is it fine-tuned and master the five? Like, where are you going with this stuff?

Yeah, it's definitely a combination of both. I'm always trying to analyze our initiatives, see how we can make them better, see how we reach more people. Um, but yeah, one exciting thing that we're doing right now is we just translated our single moms community program into Spanish. So all of our training, our facilitators guide, our learner's guide, everything is now in Spanish. We have a church that has already launched that in Spanish, our first church, and so that's exciting that we're able to reach even more folks that speak a different language. And so the next step that we're doing as far as translation in Spanish, the next thing on the horizon is translating our foster crew curriculum into Spanish so we're able to reach even more foster families.

So kind of going back to the church answers report that Panos did, it's great for churches to be able to show churches that so they can see needs in their community and how we can partner with them. But honestly, it's also great for me to be able to see those needs to say, okay, what are we not offering that people really need? And so some things that, like here locally at our global headquarters in Lakeland, we have a family support program. And so I've seen the need of having that same family support program. It's similar to a single moms program, but you don't have to be a single mom. You could be, or you could be a couple, or you could be just a father. And it's really ways too that we can come in and wrap around those families and be able to training on finances and job skills and parenting and different things like that. And as they're coming to these weekly classes, we're able to help meet some of those tangible needs that they might have, whether that's diapers or baby products or food or whatever that might be. So that's kind of a little bit of a tease, Jeff, on some different ways that we're expanding in some different initiatives that I'm looking at.

Yeah, in terms of, and also kind of jumping on and on the tail of what Robert was saying in terms of these, the what we're looking at for the future, what we're looking to do with initiatives is we're largely looking to equip and empower the local church to respond to the local community. And what that is, is I want to say that for years, um, it almost seemed like it may seem like a ladder was being provided to churches or to communities where you either do, you're either all in or you're not involved at all. What we're trying to do is we're trying to allow the, to lay the groundwork to be able to offer the tools for churches to step into these communities into these areas. And so we're offering the training. We're not saying, hey, look, here's some ideas and go with it. We're actually offering robust training with people that have been doing this for decades with expertise. There's great expertise with the people that are working on staff at One More Child. And so these trainings are robust trainings that really equip people to be able to say, okay, I think I can be an advocate now for foster care with developing these foster crews. But then also what happens is, let's say, for example, for the foster crew, someone, there's a church that's equipped to be a foster career. They start learning more about the foster space in their area and they want to have a deeper conversation. Enter One More Child again. And we not, I'm sorry, One More Child stands with you the entire time. But the thing is, if you want to have a deeper conversation, we'll have that programmatically. So, hey, you started foster crews and you noticed that there were five families in your local zip code that needed help. Well, we wanted to have these foster crews because we know one of the number one things that we see in foster care is that families burn out from being in the foster community because they don't feel supported. Enter the church equipped with One More Child training to be able to start this foster group. And you notice we're serving five families, but we know there's another fifteen that are on our waiting list. Well, we've also noticed that, and we've also generated interest in our families in our church wanting to become foster families. One More Child can have a deeper conversation with you as a church, with you in the community, to be able to say, hey, look, these initiatives are great and we can expand this and we can also talk programmatically. Do we want to be able to work in this area to help recruit and license more foster families? If you have, let's say, your single moms program, you're doing it for a year or two and you realize, okay, we have a good hold in knowing what the single, like, how many single moms are in our community. We know that there are moms that simply need a place for one year for them to live. Well, if there's a church that has a space that wants to be activated, we can activate that space potentially as a single mom's transition home. That's where One More Child comes in for the deeper conversation.

So initiatives is really giving you the peace and comfort as a church to know, hey, I can enter into the space. We're seeing that church planters being so stretched in so many ways, looking for so many things and trying to, and not knowing really where to start. Our initiatives are being offered in a place where church planters can go, okay, I can learn to plant my church but then also learn the community at the same time and serve the community. And I don't need this robust training or college certificate. We're able to be able to provide that for you and for your team.

So does that make sense? It's almost like a spectrum or where we're going from initiatives to programmatic conversations to, again, what we say is that question is, how do we reach one more child in your community?

Yeah, it's just in-time training. You're walking along with them as they're growing and developing, and you're providing the resources when they need it. It's a beautiful plan. Now, um, how much does all this cost? Like the access to the initiatives, the training, the reporting that you're doing, some of the coaching that you're talking about, like is 2.4 million dollars? What's the financial outpouring on this?

The great thing, Jeff, is it's completely free. So our single moms community program is completely free. Our foster crew model and our program is completely free. Our one-time anti-trafficking education event is completely free. There is a small cost involved with our backpack program and our meal party events that we do, but that's the only cost that's involved is just those two, kind of covering the cost of the food. But it's very, very affordable. We're able to get some great rates and so make it where that's really realistic for the church. But outside of those two, it's completely free.

This is an incredible opportunity. I would suggest for it for a digital church that has is working with people that are looking for opportunities to connect within the community. Realize that, you know, as digital churches reach a different type of person, we're working with atheists, working with agnostics, where de-churched people, people that have walked away from the physical building and are engaging in church Facebook groups and are finding Christ after a decade of being away from the building. Like, we're finding, we're working with people that don't necessarily think like the physical church type person does. And a lot of times we're finding high levels of wanting to engage on mission, try to figure out what their purpose is, dealing with people that want to make a difference in the community and have high level of wanting to serve and wanting to engage but need an avenue to do that.

And really, one of the challenges of digital churches is they really didn't have a good answer for these service ideas. We just did a stream on this recently talking about this where, you know, if you're willing to serve in a digital church, you can serve as like a chat host or you can serve as a small group leader. And that's not to diminish either of those positions, but there, that's not, that's more internal focused as opposed to external within the community. Utilizing these tools, utilizing these initiatives, gives us an opportunity to create whole new expressions of physical ministry happening distributed via the internet and the ability for our digital churches to empower. I'm in Miami and in a digital church that I'm a part of can empower somebody on the other side of America. We can be empowering somebody in California to utilize these tools to make a difference within their physical community.

So much of what we're seeing in digital is this digital to micro model. And actually, we will have Justin and Janae Clatt on. The Clatts are great examples. You upon us, Robert, you would love these. This couple, they've been running a micro church on Zoom for like five years. And what's interesting is the micro church has grown into a network at this point. They, you know, the way that like Rob Wagner, Kansas City Underground, Tampa Underground, the way...

That they look at their respective cities, this is how the Clots look at Zoom, and so they empower individuals to reach out physically or digitally to own a church service and invite people in. And so they've got multiple church services a week. I think they're actually seven days a week. They're doing church service on Zoom. Somebody's doing a church service on Zoom, and they're inviting people in missionally.

Well, the ministry has grown so well. I just recently had breakfast with the Clots, or with Justin in Arizona. They've started micro locations. They've started getting into like physical micro locations. They've started getting into resource centers. People are actually giving them property and saying, "Do a church." Like, "No, no, we don't want to do a church, but we'll do a community center." And so we're seeing this start, this digital idea start to grow out into physical, into real space. And the resources that you're providing here is an awesome step in helping more churches start to realize what local ministry can be, even distributed around the country. So this is beautiful.

I would love to ask this. You talked about Spanish. I'm just going crazy here. Does the stuff that you're doing work in Latin and South America, or is it more aimed at United States Hispanic? What's the contextualization of some of these ideas?

Yeah, definitely. So we're actually, Jeff, we're on the horizon of launching some single moms community programs in Latin America. We have a staff member that's there that's actually in Costa Rica that shortly is going to start training different churches and equipping different churches with this single moms community program. So we know that that program fits well. We know that like foster care in Latin America, things like that, it's different. You know, they're, it's not necessarily a foster care system or foster children or things like that in other countries. But with our Foster Crew in Spanish, really the heart of that comes from involvement that we have with churches in Miami. So not that they're necessarily in Latin America, but we know that there's so many Spanish speakers in Miami. I know that you guys live in Miami. I used to live in Miami. I worked in case management and this whole child welfare dependency for many years in Miami, and I know there's a great need for that. So really, that's come. That's the heart of me seeing that we need to get this material translated in Spanish, starting from Miami. And honestly, it's starting from churches that Panos has partnered with in different areas of Miami that I know that if we can get it in Spanish, we can reach even more kids.

I love that. That's why I love Miami, right? I mean, there's so much multiculturalism in here. I, you know, I grew up Miami, met my wife Miami. Actually, my parents are all, both our parents are from Miami, both sets of parents, all of our grandparents are from Miami. We're like third, fourth generation Miamians, and it's rare to see that down here. Just the cultural aspect is beautiful. It's boring in other places, man. I always say you reach Miami, you reach the world. So if you look at Miami, it's almost like a time machine where if you want to see a lot of the nation in five years, it's going to look like Miami now. And so that, just with what Robert was saying in terms of reaching the churches and reaching key cities like Miami and other key cities, we're looking to reach the world with our trainings and our initiatives as well.

That's beautiful. This is a great opportunity. Digital churches, take advantage of this. And so let me ask the question. Robert, if somebody's wanting to sign up, if somebody's wanting to get connected, if somebody wants more information, where are they going? Where are we pointing them at to get connected with One More Child?

Yeah, they can go straight to our website to onemorechild.org. Every child. So you go to our website, onemorechild.org. Every child. It's a description of all of our different initiatives. You have the opportunity to click on there to learn more, to request an interest meeting. So if you want to request an interest meeting, then we will contact you and my team will conduct that via Zoom. We'll tell you more about all the initiatives or those that you're interested in and give you an opportunity to sign up and to get rolling with it. So it's just as simple as going to our website, requesting more information. I will contact you within two business days, set up an interest meeting via Zoom to get you plugged in.

Awesome. And so yeah, we'll put that link in the show notes. onemorechild.org. Every child. These are great initiatives. Panos, Wariga, if you also, if you're having an in-person meeting in your, someone who's leading a church network or you're having a community meeting and you need paper resources, we have postcards that looks like this. This is foster care. We have different postcard size flyers with a QR code on the back to make it as simple as possible that if you receive one of these at the meeting or you hand these out, you just simply tell people to scan the QR code. They fill out the form on the QR code and they'll have a meeting with one of our team members within forty-eight hours. They'll have something in terms of the communication via email to set up that meeting to ask all the questions you'd like about foster care or Foster Crew or single moms or anti-trafficking or any of the initiatives we offer.

So if you're looking to digitally, if you're looking to strengthen your digital church, your digital church, your micro church, whatever, if you're looking to strengthen and really start to look at how to meet local communities, physical communities, foster care, mental mentor, single moms, feed hungry children, stop sex trafficking, or sponsor a child, you're going to swing over to onemorechild.org. Every child and get connected with my friend Panos here, with Robert, or with somebody else on the team. And so this has been a great conversation. Thank you, gentlemen, for the time. As we're landing the plane here, upon us, let's go with you first. Any closing thoughts?

Let's see. There was one other thing I wanted to mention real quick, and I don't know if this goes into another part of what we're talking about. The child sponsorships that we were talking about as One More Child, yeah, we actually specialize in missions trips. And so let's say that you are a church or a digital church that, hey, you may have not met in person, you're scattered throughout the nation or in other parts of the world. We have mission trips that go to fifteen partner countries that we're working in: Dominican Republic, Uganda, Nicaragua, Colombia, Costa Rica, Latvia, Tanzania, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, South Africa, Romania, and Guatemala. And that can be found on our website. And so if you're a digital church that's looking to, let's say, sponsor a child, we specialize as an organization that if you sponsor a child in Guatemala and you have a missions trip to Guatemala to our partner site, you will meet your child, the child that you are sponsoring. You have a pen pal system that we provide that you can communicate. You'll receive pictures of the child that you sponsor. I think at least, I think once or twice a year, maybe possibly once a quarter, it depends on the child and the country. But just know that we offer that as well. So if you're looking to connect the child sponsorship and then go out internationally, we offer that. We provide that programming as well.

Rob, that's a great idea. Check that out. Is that link on Every Child, or is that another link to get more information on sponsorship?

It's on that same website, same webpage on Every Child.

Awesome. Robert, you know, as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts on your side?

Yeah, I'm just going to leave you guys with this: that our Every Child at Every City initiatives are really simple solutions to help you meet the needs in your community and to show the love of Christ. So that's what we're all about. Help partner with churches to meet the needs in their community, to share the love of Christ, and to reach more children.

Beautiful. And so reaching more children is the heart, and I love this pairing to help digital churches move physical, even distributed across their people, and challenge them to do some of these initiatives and to make a difference within the physical community. And so Panos, Robert, thank you for the time, jumping here on the podcast, doing this, and prayerfully hopefully we see some more partnerships and some engagement happen with digital churches reaching out and starting to intentionally focus on serving locally within their distributed communities. And so this is a great, hopefully start of the conversation here. But we're going to land the plane. And so for Panos, for Robert, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for jumping on the podcast here. We'll see you next time on the show. You have a good day.