EP246: Leonard Sweet talks Digital Church

Sometimes I wonder if maybe we haven't done better at claiming this new world, this new metaverse for Jesus, because some of us have been willing to be martyrs. Um, the church moves forward sometimes by the willingness of people to give their lives. And uh, so I think we're all called to the edge.

What level edge will vary in our life and will vary what level edge we can take will change, but we're all called to the edge.

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than that, protect itself. 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 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, welcome to episode 246 of the Church Digital podcast. Uh, you know, every week I say I'm excited about the guests, but this week I am literally very, very excited about this conversation. You see, for many of you out there that are planting and that are trying digital church, digital ministry, that are being missional with the digital and the virtual reality, the metaverse technologies, for many of you I've given you permission to do this. Somehow Google has connected you to me and we've had face-to-face conversations by the hundreds, and it's been my pleasure to have conversations, to dream with you, to talk about what possibly can be. And literally, when the rest of the world is saying no, you can't do church in digital space, to be the guy that's like, hey, what happens if we give it a shot? Let's see what happens with this and let's learn along the way.

Now, what you don't realize is that 22 years ago, 23 years ago, someone gave me permission to do this crazy stuff, to actually think different about digital technology. And we are fortunate enough to have him do a podcast with right now. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce to you Leonard Sweet. Uh, into the podcast. Leonard, thank you for jumping on the show with us.

Great to be with you, Jeff. It's uh, been looking forward to talking to you.

I'm gonna learn a lot today too.

Yeah, it's this is going to be interesting. Now, you see, Leonard Sweet, if you don't know, this guy's written 60-some books. I think I saw somewhere. And this book right here, Soul Tsunami. I picked the look, look at the thickness of this book. Like, this is not a light read. This is not the type of books that Jeff Reed would write. But this is what I've read years ago. Like, literally as a college senior, I picked up that book. I can remember seeing it. I was in Fort Worth, Texas. It was out of Mardel on an end cap, probably 1998, 1999, somewhere in there. And it was my senior year in college. And I, I started reading it. And honestly, Leonard, the stuff that was in my head, you were the first person that was in my head. Like, the stuff that I was wanting to do, the view of digital, the experience, participle, Prince of Roy. I remember there was one quote that you said in the book. I remember it 20-some years later. There was more technology in the Casio Iron Man wrist watch than in the entire Apollo 11 space mission, yet we, the church, have not changed anything different in decades. And that that stuck with me. And as I started to dream crazy dreams about what the church could be, about how the church could engage in this technology, and now years later in these communities that exist in digital and in many of our spaces, um, your book really capitalized that for me. It gave me permission to dream crazy, to think big. And we started actually an online community, a.com, months later, ebeliever.com. February, no, April 2020, we started our first business. Um, really pioneered off of some of the mindsets and philosophies right out of Soul Tsunami. So first off, you know, thank you for being so um diligent in your work, even years later. I can just honestly tell you I'm a byproduct of your efforts for the kingdom over the years.

Well, maybe I wrote that book just for you. You never know why God calls you to write a book, and it sounds like you may have been the reason why God called me to write that book.

Yeah, I followed it a year later where I kind of, it's called Postmodern Pilgrims, where I really developed the epic theme. You know, and I had a chapter on experiential and a p. There you go. Yeah, and then um, then a few years after that, I I wanted to show how you could actually, how companies were using this now. So I wrote a, I did the Robert Short thing. Remember You, The Gospel According to Peanuts? And it spawned a whole genre of books. So I did The Gospel According to Starbucks, where I showed how Starbucks was, it's all about the coffee experience and you participate in and in the coffee uh that you want. You designed it, in other words. And the whole impact of the uh the image. And so I I played with that. So um, that was yeah, early 2000s. Yeah, those three books were kind of my attempt to get the church to move into an interface that works with a digital culture because all of our interfaces were working with a print culture, and we hadn't yet developed an interface to work with a digital culture. And that's what I was trying to do with this whole epic acronym.

So epic, by the way, the Starbucks book, I read it. I I ca, I think I loaned it to somebody. Like, I know I've had a paperback copy of it. Um, it was, it was the book, you know, back in the years you used to put like the tabs in instead of bookmarks for like important stuff. And and it just, it was my wife, we were joking about it that particular book because there were so many tabs it was like all red on the sides. Just so so influential to this. But you know, we're talking epic here. Experiential, we're talking participatory, image driven and connected. And this is really the philosophy that was baked into your books 20-some years ago. And as we're looking at, you know, church in the metaverse and web three and creating these experiences, participatory and getting people to engage, um, obviously image driven being incredible, visible and connected, engaging. Like, this is this was the road map for what digital church and what churches should be. Uh, and I mean, you were talking about this a couple decades ago. And so it's it's a beautiful conversation.

Let me ask this. How did you get started in this? Like, what what was what was Leonard Sweet version 1.0 like? What what was the genesis of all this?

Well, I started out as a total academic. I just, I was part of uh, I was a church historian. Um, I had a special interest in American religious history. So I started writing uh books in that field. They were meant for other scholars. And uh, and then what, one of the first things that happened was um, one of my academic friends who was also a church historian, he was a Presbyterian. And they were doing a series for laity. And they couldn't find any. It was a Presbyterian series for laity called Life in the Spirit. And and he, no, I mean, that was my book, but it was a series of how do you live as a disciple if you're out of a Presbyterian orbit? And they needed to do one on the spirit. So they couldn't find any Presbyterian willing to write on the Holy Spirit. So he called me on the phone and he said, I know you're Wesleyan, and but um, maybe you're the only one that I can call that can come up with this book really quick because we're almost done with the series and we just, I haven't found anybody to do something on the Holy Spirit. And do you think you could do something on the Holy Spirit that would be reformed friendly? And uh, I said, well, you know, I haven't really written for laity much. And he said, well, now's your time. So I did. And I had a lot of fun doing it. And uh, so I wrote this book called New Life in the Spirit. And um, and then I just kind of started. The Lord kind of began to lead me in a direction where I was pioneering, I think, a new kind of academics, a new kind of academic writing that wasn't just for the guild but was also for the church. And so then then I did a really controversial book which showed how to do evangelism in this. I that that's when I was using the word postmodern. So I called it a post-modern apologetic. And I don't use the word anymore. But the book was called Quantum Spirituality, where I actually showed how you could read these, you could lift up Jesus and do evangelism with postmoderns like new agers and that kind of thing. And uh, the fact that in a book showing how you could evangelize people like who were new age and others and part of this new new culture, I I actually quoted some of them. That that uh was a no-no for the church. So I I got all sorts of hate mail and hate sites. And uh, well, you can't talk about reaching somebody without talking to them. And you know, and quoting them. And you know, look what Paul did at Athens. You know, he he quoted them. And and uh, any rate. So and then uh, you know, after I took all that kind of attack, I decided uh, I was going to continue to write scholarly books and continue right for the church. So that's where I am now. And the field is that brings the two together is called semiotics, Jeff. It's a it's a field of of um, based on the tribe of Issachar, which were the semiotic tribe. And in First Chronicles 12:32, to David, they said, we are the tribe that knows the times and knows what to do. That's the essence of semiotics. How do you read the times? And then as a result of that reading, how do you know what to do? How do you read the scripture the story as story, not as text? The Bible was not written as text. And so how do you read it a story? And then know what to do? Um, and trust the story and live out that story. So that's my particular niche is that right there.

I've had the pleasure of listening to him speak on this just recently. We were at a conference together in in Arizona. It's that's where I met Leonard for the first time and uh physically. And um, like, it was, it's incredible to hear you speak on the semiotics. Um, and and what that looks like. You're you're opening up parallels of the Bible that that I have not even, didn't even cross my mind. Like, would you, would like, and we could literally do an entire podcast episode on this. So like, I'm hesitant that by asking this question I'm poking the bear and I'm losing control of the entire episode. But would you maybe just share one or two briefly? Notice briefly, but briefly, to dig into this? Because the ideology behind this is is incredible of these parallels that that we don't even realize because we're we're not looking with a big enough scope into the the attic stuff. So share with us maybe a couple?

Well, just this time of year, we got the you know, the birth story of Jesus. And and uh, basically, semiotics is just just receiving it as a story and asking questions you would ask of a story, not asking questions that you'd ask of a text. But asking questions you'd ask of a story. So you know, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Well, then the question is, why Bethlehem and not Nazareth? Um, well, then, so then if you say, well, it's a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, then you just, you know, you just shut me down. There's nothing more to be said. But uh, you're given the theological, you know, trump card. So but if you're approaching a story, you know, why was, what is Mary doing traveling, you know, 80, 90 miles on some of the most treacherous roads as nine months pregnant when she didn't have to be in Bethlehem? She didn't have to be there. Only Joseph had to be there. And so what?

Is she doing there in Bethlehem? Why wasn't Jesus born in Nazareth? So you just start, you know, pulling the strands, and then you realize, well, does Nazareth? Is when does anything good? Can anything good come out of Nazareth? It's not about the place so much as the people. The people were known as hardcore Jews, I mean fundamentalists about the law, the Torah. And, um, that's why none of Jesus's brothers or his friends from Nazareth are part of his disciples. I mean, I said, why? Why did he not choose anybody from his first thirty years? You know, well, there's a reason for that. And so you just start pulling these strands, and you realize, well, this is a time when they still did honor's killings. And if you brought shame and disrespect to the family, it was up to the father to redress that and to bring back the honor and the glory to the family. And they would kill children. And they would. So Joseph had a, you know, well, Mary's family would never do that. Well, yeah, they tried. When Jesus preached his first sermon as he came back to his hometown, what did they try to do to him? Throw him off a cliff. This is his family. They try to do an honor's killing on him because he claimed to be the Messiah. So this is a family that had it in their history and in their very tradition to do this kind of thing. So Joseph is protecting Mary. She's safer with him on this treacherous journey to Bethlehem than he thought. Then she would be if he left her with her own family. And who knows whether he'd have a baby or not? So the semiotics is, you don't explain the story like the story explains itself. You don't try and theologically trump it, and then you can't talk anymore. You just keep treating it as a story. You trust the story, and then you live the story.

And so definitely, what you know, I know that semiotics are becoming part of your like modern philosophy. You're like, I've heard you speak on this a lot and write on it, and you're teaching at seminaries and things like that. But if somebody wanted to dig into more of the semiotics, like what's the entry level? Well, what I would do is I have a YouTube channel, and I have so far, I think, one hundred forty, one hundred forty-one weekly lend talks where I show how to do semiotic readings of the scripture based on the lectionary. So you get an introduction to semiotics from how I take these stories, these passages, these narratives, and unpack them. The basic thing about semiotics though, you connect the dots. You don't take it apart. And what we've done to the Bible in the chapter and verse, I mean, the Bible is not written in chapter and verses. That's what we did to it. You got how many verses? Thirty-seven thousand. So we have laid out on the table before us thirty-seven thousand pieces of a puzzle. But the puzzle is not there to be a puzzle. The puzzle is there to put together. And what we've been doing is we've been puzzling it out further and making further puzzles of the puzzle and making more, you know, verse A and verse B, A and B of the same version, rather than what semiotics does is, no, let's connect the dots. Let's see if we can't put the puzzle together and see the whole picture.

So yeah, check out Leonard Sweet's YouTube channel. We'll put it in the show notes. It's interesting. If I may want to pack you and YouTube here in a little bit, let's talk about T-Loss. So T-Loss is the new book. It's coming out any day now, right? And so yeah, it wasn't to come out today actually. You were, but they delayed it by a week for some reason. I don't know why. But it was supposed to come out on the sixth. I guess now it's coming out on the thirteenth. And so this is actually running on the twelfth is when this is debuting. So audience, tomorrow, go. We'll put the link in the show notes, and you can pre-order. But go to Amazon. Yeah, there you go. Buy the book. And so like, I'm looking, it's coming out of the hardback, paperback, and Kindle. So you got all three choices though. Yeah, great.

So I'm looking here. I was looking at a quote talking about the book. I think it was on Barnes and Noble's website looking at this last night. Sweet shows how many of the political problems plaguing modern Christianity are rooted in bad theology. Like, that's a really fascinating quote. And so how do we fix this? Maybe I don't want you to give away the end of the book here, but if we're really talking about the modern state of political in the U.S. church, we'll get into the digital stuff here in a second. But talk to me a little bit about that with your current book.

Well, it's a really good question, and that's really the reason why we wrote the book. And the American church, especially, has been fixated on eschatology, which is the return of Jesus. And that looks at the kind of Jesus coming back and the notion of the Rapture. And it features how he himself is returning and is a part of this coming back to rescue us. The whole point about T-Loss is that T-Loss is the end, the doctrine of the end. And it's the notion that Jesus has already, in a sense, come back. I mean, the Rapture, he is returning, but the end is already there and for us to enjoy now. And the word Maranatha is an Aramaic where it comes in three tenses. And we have it, you know, the one who was, the one who is, the one who is to come. But in Aramaic, it's all three together. It's one word. The one who was, the one who is, and the one who is to come. But the one who is to come is now and has been. So a T-Loss is a sense of the discovery. You don't begin with now and go to the future. You begin with the future and come now. It's a recognition that Jesus doesn't so much push us from the past and bring us into the future as he's already in this future pulling us towards him. And we have to. He's already there and calling us to join him in what he's already doing in this future. So that's the difference between eschatology, which is a push from the past looking forward to something that hasn't come yet, and T-Loss, which is teleology, not eschatology. And a teleology which starts recognizing that Jesus is already in his future. He's already the God of the future. He's already the Lord of the metaphors, and he is pulling us towards him to join him in what he's already doing. So it's a whole different orientation. And it's a warning. We spent six chapters warning about bad eschatologies. And one of the worst is this civil religion that identifies Christian faith, religion, and civil religion with this doctrine of nationalism. That somehow God is an American God, Jesus is an American Jesus, and you got all this mix-up of faith and patriotism. And I mean, I'm a patriot, but God is a God of all nations. God is God of all peoples. And how do we understand that and not kind of make America the ultimate eschaton and the drama and the scene of God's arena of activity?

So, you know, being a digital ministry guy, being a person that engages digitally, it's interesting. This is the second podcast I've recorded today where I've said this. Like, I'm actually fearful to have conversations about any sort of political nature in digital space. I mean, part of me actually feels that the political scene is a distraction that pulls away from ministry opportunity. And I would much rather have conversations talking and sharing about Jesus than my political agenda, my political beliefs, because there's so much animosity, hatred, discourse, bifurcation in these digital and metaverse spaces. And what's interesting is even there's a lot of that centered around some of the stuff to transition some of the stuff where we talk about doing this in church. I was literally just doing a podcast with somebody, and I did not have a relationship with this person in advance. And we started talking off air about some of what I wanted to talk about with you, the idea of churches existing in digital and metaverse space. And the guy got a little upset at the idea of that. He didn't realize that I had that belief, that I had that win against him, and it caused discourse a little bit. I'm like, hey, look, I'm not trying the bait and switch you here. We don't have to have that conversation on air. But there's a lot. When we look at church, at ecclesiology, we see that there's a lot of preconceptions or extra-biblical things that have come into the church that may or may not be in play even today.

Politics has become its own religion, and it's become its own God. And we live in a culture right now where politics is a religion, and most of our churches are more politically segregated than they are even racially segregated now. You've got churches just of Democrats, churches just of Republicans. And you got couples that would never conceive. When I was growing up, Jeff, I don't know if you remember this, but what tradition you came out of, but it was, can a Methodist marry a Presbyterian? You know, or can a Methodist marry a Baptist? Can you believe this? Now that's all gone, and rightfully so. But now it's, I would never. I'm a Democrat. I would never marry a Republican. Or I'm a Republican. I would never marry a Democrat. You know, we are so, you know, and we look to politics to save us. God did not. Jesus did not say, I'm going to send you politicians to save you. You know, no, the saving comes from Christ. And that's so that T-Loss is also making exactly this argument, that we ought to have churches where pacifists and generals consider the same pew side by side and worship God. We're Republicans and Democrats can be brought together out of a common identity in Christ. Our identity is not in our political religion, which has become a religion. Our identity is in Christ that brings us all together. And that's what's going to save us.

Well, I tell you what, you can check out T-Loss. The link is in the show notes. We'll be sure to include that as well for you all. And, Leonard, looking forward to reading. What number book is this? Is this like sixty-two? Where are you? Seventy-four? One ninety-seven? I think this is like seventy-one.

Seventy-one. Dang, that's a lot. I don't know. I've got book two publishing like next month, so seventy-one. I got a little bit to go to catch up to you, sir.

So, hey, well, let's do this. Let's pivot because I would love some insight from you now. I have a feeling that the world that we're operating in in digital ministry and digital church, you don't, you, I don't think you've got a lot of experience in that space, which is great. I actually would like the knee-jerk reactions, the obstacles, the challenges, the pros and the cons approach from here from you. And so a lot of our audience now, a lot of people that are listening, are your typical physical churches that are doing digital ministry. They're broadcasting church services. They're figuring out how to do small groups. They're maybe exploring with doing things and social media and Facebook groups. They're doing some discipleship, but they haven't really figured out what that looks like. And so there's a lot of that that we're working with. But in addition to that, there are people that are listening to this podcast in the audience that are planting churches in digital space or in virtual reality, that are running Facebook churches or video game churches or Twitch churches. And we're seeing almost different categories of churches rising up. What we're realizing is that.

By doing church, by being the church in these different environments, we're reaching a different type of person. We're empowering a different type of leader, and we're discipling in different ways. I can tell you stories of atheists and agnostics that are going to church for the first time in virtual reality, d-churched people that are coming back to the bride of Christ through a Facebook group, satanists and neo-pagans that are connecting in the metaverse for the first time. Like, there's some beautiful stories. What we're not seeing is, "Hey, you know what, I'm just going to stay at home on my couch this week, stay in my underwear and watch virtual reality church." Like, that's not the stuff that's happening in the metaverse. It's we're reaching people that aren't going to the building. So, um, I don't know, like, have you, do you have any awareness or any traction of church in that space? Or as I talk about that as the academia that you are, like, what are the pros? What are the cons? What are the challenges, obstacles? What would you see as you're looking at that type of opportunity?

Well, I mean, I was the first person to have an educational degree offered in Second Life, right after Second Life came online. I created a campus in Second Life, and each one of my doctoral students—this was my doctor of ministry students—had an avatar, and we did all of our classes. We had three different campuses: a water ocean campus, a mountain campus, and a desert campus. And I'd let the students know which campus they're going to be at that week, and so we'd come together. And this was back, I mean, this is like fifteen years ago, right after Second Life started. So I do have some experience here of connecting. And you could actually order the textbooks for my courses there in the metaverse and have Amazon deliver them. I mean, it was that integrated, so there was a bridge between the two worlds already. And I'd still be doing that, Jeff, if it weren't for Second Life suddenly increasing costs. I was paying for this because, you know, none of the schools I taught at understood it and thought it was worth it. The investigators, I was paying basically my whole honorarium was going to pay for this experience. And then they tripled the rates, and I could not afford to continue to pay that. So I'd still be in there probably if it hadn't been for that cost factor.

I do think that we need both to build and to plant churches in physical space, but we need to do church planting in the metaverse. And they call them—yourself—and the challenge though is that the kind of churches you plant in the metaverse can't be like the churches that have been planted in the previous print culture. And the kind of churches that we're doing is this is contextual intelligence. You have to let the context determine what kind of church that will be, what kind of ministry that will be. And to impose standards other than letting that context emerge organically is colonialism. I mean, it's a form of colonialism. We colonize, and that's how that was our first use of digital culture. We used digital culture as we used print culture, and we try to do print on the screen. You all know the story, and then we're still doing that in some ways. We're still trying. When we think of church, we think of one way of church, the church that we're used to, and we've got to let this metaverse tell us and teach us how to do church given that context. And I think it's going to be a very different kind of experience—excuse me—a very different kind of experience of church than the one that we have.

You know, there's kind of in China they have the above-ground church and the underground church. And we have both going on here. We got the above-ground church and the metaverse church. And to be a part of both, to see both as valid, to be very different experiences and to be contextually driven, and that's what I'm missing. I'm missing that contextual richness that incarnates the gospel in this new space in a whole new way rather than tries to force into this new space the ways in which we've done it before, other ways in which we're familiar.

Yeah, that's actually probably the biggest challenge that our planters face, that the people that are doing church and in virtual reality, in digital churches. Every time I have the initial conversation—I just don't want to say every time, but the majority of the time—I meet these people within the first couple months of their doing ministry or dreaming about doing ministry or wanting to start a church in these spaces, they all sound like a physical church. You know, and yeah, more often than not, I'm challenging them: "Hey, you are being very limited in your scope. You are only trying to replicate what you've seen, and you're not—have you—you're not trying to imagine what could be." And unfortunately, a lot of the imagination, a lot of those that are imagining, like the imagination is incredible. Mission imagination, God is doing some incredible things in these spaces, and there's a lot of pioneers and there's a lot of innovators that are doing some really creative space, creative things for the kingdom in these spaces. The unfortunate reality is it's taken their lumps. You know, I don't even talk about this publicly. I don't think I've said this before, but actually I got called out by John MacArthur's organization just recently, within the past couple months. Chesley Lundy, who was a co-founder with me of Digital Church Network—this is an organization that helps plant digital metaverse churches—Chesley actually got called out by name because of the idea of church operating in digital space. And we're purported experts. And I'll just be honest, Leonard, like for the first twenty minutes, I was really upset. And then I kind of calmed down and I realized, "Oh my gosh, this is the highest-ranking person that I've actually managed to alienate as a result of doing digital church. I'm actually taking a step in the right direction or getting more attention. Like, this is a win, this isn't a loss. Who else can I take off today?" It was not my first hate site, but it was the high-ranking hate site. Like, I'm more of like a B-level, minor league hate site, and so this was the first one that was upper level. Like, "Hey, listen, you can scroll through my YouTube comments if you want to see hate. Go, I can send you some videos. I got plenty of hate over there." But oh well, listen, I got—we all got them. I feel sorry. Nobody's got more than Rick Warren though. Rick Warren has the most hate sites of anybody. I just feel so sorry for him, but he's the king of hate sites. But yeah, we, it's kind of a badge of distinction, how many hate sites do you have, you know, and who's hating you? Because then you know you're doing something for Jesus, for the gospel. I mean, beware when I'll speak well of you, Jesus said. So if you don't have some people that are really coming after you, you're not making enough of a difference for God and the gospel. So I congratulate you. Thank you for that, Leonard. Tweet says congratulations. Because when I have these conversations, when I talk with people about planting a digital church, the people who think this is a horrendous idea will quote, "Don't abandon, don't forsake the gathering," Bible verse. And when I talk to the people that are doing it in this space, that are meeting in virtual reality, that are meeting in digital church, they're quoting at me the "don't forsake the gathering" scripture. So the same scripture is being quoted in favor of and against the idea of church and virtual reality. Like, from an ecclesiological standpoint, and realizing that you are far more educated than I am in this, can this happen? Is this stable? Like, what is your view of the ecclesiology? Or should we be looking at it from a different perspective?

No, I think part of the problem is that we're used to that word "church." When you immediately say "church," people, it's hard to get rid of all the preconceptions that come with that word. So I just talk about planting a ministry, planting a mission. I mean, come up with some other phrase than planting a church. This is planting a body of Christ. I mean, that's what really, what the church is. It's a new body of Christ. The body of Christ is the temple, and so what does it mean to, where are the temples? And the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, is the temple. So use them. I think part of it is just using some new language. And that's why I love the word "adventurer." I mean, you're digital. The people listening to this podcast, they, the word "adventure" comes, the word "advent"—advent means, you know, ambushed by an arrival of something special and fresh and God-anointed and appointed. It's not in an adventure. An adventure is somebody who lives out that advent, who sees life as an adventure, as an advent. And what you're talking about in digital space here are advents. I don't like the word "invent." Invent is something we create, but an advent is something that God creates and surprises us with. And how do we then in this digital universe be true adventurers, people who are seeking advents, new arrivals of God's presence and power in this new realm? And what forms can it take? And what new temples can be built in this new metaverse? And so I just, I think part of our language gives us some trouble, the metaphors that we use, and this word "church," even in church planting, I try to stay away from it. You're not church planting, you're ministry planning, you're mission planning, you're "adventing." What does it mean to advent in this new universe? That's the advent. I've not heard that perspective before. That's fascinating.

You know what's funny is even like in the space, the digital planters, the metaverse planters, we've all struggled with, "Are we a church? Are we not a church?" I can tell you like, um, Dr. John Harris, who I wrote the second book with on digital evangelism, he actually runs a Facebook church, but he has such a large percentage of d-churched people in his ministry. He doesn't use the word "church." He's a discipleship ministry, similar to what you're saying. Jade Earhart's another one who's gotten so much, and he's so, um, he's actually a very probably of all the digital planters I know, Jade's actually one of the brightest when it comes to biblical knowledge and awareness of scripture. And so he believes he's a church, but he's gotten so much negative conversation centered around what he's doing, whether it's a church or not, that he's adopted the mindset of a missionary. Instead, "Hey, I'm just missionally living," um, within, just kind of sidestepping. And then you got some of the other guys that want to grab the bull by the horns and don't mind the controversy and want to shake up the system and cause a disruption. And you know, we try to coach them on a humble disrupter, let's kind of like, you know, let's not screw the world in the process of doing it. And so yeah, lots of, man, it's a fascinating season trying to help. It's funny, like even your idea of the adventurer, um, we, the language we've used, and this is not the best example I'll tell you right now, but it's if we, I think Chesley came up with this one of the guys that I work with, um, it the saying is that, um, "Pioneers get shot, settlers get rich," and so it's like we're kind of that first wave right now doing this thing, trying something new.

We're kind of in that getting shot period where some people are supportive, some people not so much, and there's bullets flying by us, whether intentional or unintentional. I like that. I mean, I don't like that pioneer settler imagery, but I do think that we need to understand we are people of the edge. We are not a people of the center. The center is the past. The center is the status quo. And that whole metaphor of the center—when people say, "Well, Jesus is my center," I say, "Well, what's your circumference then?" You know, isn't Jesus supposed to be everything? Is he supposed to be everything that there is?

But where you find Jesus most forming in the future is not at the center. It's at the edges. Jesus did not choose the disciples from the center. He didn't choose the movers and shakers. He chose his disciples from the edges, from the periphery. And so there's different levels of edge, I think. So you've got the leading edge, you got the cutting edge, you got the bleeding edge, and then you got the place of martyrs, which I call it the ledge edge. And I think at various times we're called to be different at different places in that edge, but we're always called to the edge.

So we are all edge people. We're edgy people just by definition if we're truly a follower of Jesus. We're not playing it safe in the center. We're out on the edges. But there are various edges. There's the leading edge, the cutting edge, and the bleeding edge. And you're on the bleeding edge, and a lot of your people out here are either on a cutting edge or the bleeding edge. And then, you know, the church has moved forward because some people were willing to say this is worth my life.

We read the Bible in English today because William Tyndale translated the Bible in English, and for it he didn't get royalty payments. He didn't get the praise for literature. He got martyred. I mean, you and I can read the Bible in English today because he was on the ledge edge. He said, "I'm going to—you can't stop me. I'm going to translate the Bible so the poor boy behind the plow," that was his metaphor, "can read it in English." And he got martyred for it.

So sometimes I wonder if maybe we haven't done better at claiming this new world, this new metaverse for Jesus, because some of us have been willing to be martyrs. The church moves forward sometimes by the willingness of people to give their lives. And so I think we're all called to the edge. What level edge will vary in our life, and what level edge we can take will change, but we're all called to the edge.

That's such a rich imagery. Let me ask—hey, Garrett, I'm hearing a delay. If you can clean that up, if you get there, that's great. Thank you. All right, so let me ask this question. What I'm seeing as I'm talking to these people—these people that are living on the edge, probably bleeding edge—I don't think we've got many martyrs or ledge edge people, although we've got some that are on the tip of the spear going in. I do believe that I'm actually seeing a different model of pastor, of planter, coming out of this.

I was working with church planters for a while and helping plant digital churches through Stadia, and I would tell them, "Hey, I've got like 75 percent of the people that want to plant a digital expression of a church are bivocational. Like, these are not seminary-trained people that I'm now talking with. It's a completely new model." And it was funny—Stadia would tell me back, like, for physical church it's like 12 to 20 percent. It's not as aggressive as what you're seeing. And now it's like for me it's past 75 percent. It's even more. And actually, the average planter now is almost 50 percent bivocational. Are you in other spaces seeing maybe a change in the model coming from an academia world that you are? I mean, what does that mean that we now have—I don't want to say uneducated, but unseminary-trained people actively pastoring and doing ministry?

Yeah, and I think it's a good thing. It's a good sign. I do think we need to find new ways of academically forming these people, but yeah, I think in the future there will be—the idea of this being a paid profession and even seeing it as a quote profession will become increasingly problematic. I don't like the metaphor of bivocational. I don't like the word. There's only one vocation, Jeff. I mean, there's only one calling. That calling will have multiple expressions and multiple manifestations, but you don't—it's not bifurcated. You know, it's not something that's bi. It is one calling. We all have received this one calling. That one calling at various times in our life will have different ways of expressing itself and manifesting itself. And you know, sometimes we will need, depending on where we're in our life, to receive more income for that—for that outfitting and outcropping of that calling—and other times we've been able to receive less. But it's one calling. Let's get this clear. One calling.

So do you—what do you call somebody who, like, it's just—what's the term you use instead of bivocational? How do you describe a person that's in ministry?

There is no label. Yeah, we're all ministers. We're all called into ministry. And some of us, you know, some get paid for doing more of it than others, but we're all called into ministry. We are all, by virtue of our baptism, we are all ministers. We've been ordained into ministry, and our baptismal certificate is our commissioning into mission. So we're all in—we have a ministry to the body and a mission in the world. So there's that double thing here. We're ministers by virtue of our baptism, but also we are missionaries by virtue of our baptism. So we have a ministry again to the body and the mission of the world.

And so it's not some are hypocations and some don't. I think there's this calling for each of us that will express itself differently at different times in your life. And we need to do so. The question becomes then: What's your ministry to the body and what's your mission in the world? And everybody ought to have one. That's why we have a missionary family. I have a missionary marriage. I have missionary kids. I don't go on a mission trip. All of life is a mission trip. Let's be clear here about what this is.

So everybody needs a ministry to the body. Everybody needs to identify and name and claim: What's your mission in the world? And sometimes you get paid for it. Sometimes you don't.

I love what you just said, and let's build on it. So in a world where everybody has a calling, what's the role of the church?

It's not the church's mission. It's God's mission. So be a part of God's mission in the world. And this is the problem a lot of the church has made—a mission for itself apart from God's mission, okay? And has gone off on its own missions. And that's when you got Jesus. You know, God's saying, "Okay, if you don't want to be a part of my mission, it's called choice and consequences. But I will not be without a witness." So literally, what happens is God goes to that pagan Persian king Cyrus and says, "I'll use you." God goes to that prostitute Rahab. "I'll use you." So sometimes God's more active in the world than in the church because the church is off on its own mission.

So it's not the church's mission. It's God's mission. And the question is: Is God's mission going to have a church?

One more question, and we're running short on time. But looking forward to this—you're a futurist. In 1990 you were dreaming, talking about EPIC, which is setting the stage for where the church is today. What's the church in 2040 look like? Where are we going in the next 18 years?

All right, I want to do a little—let me end with this little challenge to you. That's not a big enough. Okay, go big.

A child born between 1990 and 2000 has a greater—a female has a greater than 50 percent chance of living well into the 22nd century. A male born between 2000 and 2010, or female, has a greater than 50 percent chance of living well into the 22nd century. These are 22nd century kids. We are norming and forming faith in 22nd century kids. How are we doing? We think we've seen changes the past 10, 20 years. What they're going to see in their lifetime is unbelievable.

And so I really think it's not so much what is the church going to look like, but how can we navigate this stampede, this avalanche of change that is coming, driven by what I call a GRAINY future—G-R-A-I-N: genetic engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, information technology, and nanotechnology. And these technologies are going to create a whole future that we can't even imagine right now.

So what we need are the navigational skills to move into this future. And the most important one, of course, is Jesus. He's the lodestar. He's the North Star. And so part of our challenge as a church is helping people to follow him better, to know him better, to love him more. And so that he becomes the lodestar of our life. He becomes the star that we are following in this whole new multiverse that's forming out there in this metaverse.

So for me, that's the big issue. So it focuses again. It comes down to: How do I know Jesus better? How do I love him more deeply? And serve him more faithfully and trust him? And how do I know the Jesus story better so that I can move into this future and trust the story?

The more GRAINY the future becomes, the more we need to know our origin story, because we are humans. We are made by God to be humans. And all the genetic technology is showing us how to be other than human, transhuman, and all sorts of other ways. So how do we then faithfully move into this future using this technology without losing our humanity? And that's the challenge for me: Do we really know our origin story so that we can—the true original means origin, the return to origin. So do we, as we become original, how do we become original knowing our origins, of being faithful to our origins? Because we're going to see—I mean, think of it. 22nd century. My best friend—she was born in 1897. She died in 2003. She lived in three centuries. That's our kids. And how do we prepare them for the changes they're going to come? Because we're not going to know what the changes are. They're going to be surprising. They're black swans and wild cards everywhere.

So that's the importance for me of focusing on Christ.

You said GRAINY. I heard—I caught the end of it. What was the G?

And they are: genetic engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, information technology, and nanotechnology.

I was not expecting you may be the first person I've ever talked with that has said nanotechnology in a church podcast. Like, we don't often get to that, at least I don't. So that was a pretty deep cut. But that's fascinating. I've got my son—I mean, both my kids are in the windows that you're describing, and it never occurred to me that these are 22nd century kids. Like, that just has not—that didn't ring the bell. And so, man, that's a scary idea. And how is the church—how are we as parents—how are we training these kids, protecting, discipling, guiding them today so that they can be living the life of Christ in the 22nd century?

Oh my gosh. I just got really tired thinking about that.

Entirely well, Jeff. It's been great to be with you. Sorry I dumped that on you at the end. Oh my gosh, that was horrible, but this has been a great conversation. So Leonard, Leonard, tweet. Thank you for the time, and we're gonna land the plane for Leonard. This is Jeff with the Church Digital and Digital Tricks Network. Thanks for jumping on the podcast. We'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good day.