EP273 - Tyler Sansom & Next Level Digital Discipleship

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech 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? 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, we got episode 273 of the Church Digital Podcast. I'm excited about this one. I'm bringing on the most guested person in the history of the Church Digital Podcast. We'll let you figure out who it is. By the way, we are celebrating our 100,000th play right now. Literally this past week, the Church Digital Podcast had over 100,000 total plays, total streams. And so thank you, listening audience out there, for being awesome, for being patient with us. And it's interesting—we'll get into it a little bit—but we've got this guest who has a special place in the Church Digital history, the podcast history. We'll get into it here in a little bit.

But remember, here with season five, we're getting into the idea of taking your church to the next level digitally or in the metaverse. And in this context, we want to take your church to the next level digitally. And we're celebrating some learning communities that Leadership Network is putting on this fall, this winter. We are doing a mix-up between physical and digital meetups for this learning community to help churches like yours go to the next level digitally. As a matter of fact, we're digging into the idea of digital discipleship and what discipleship looks like and the results of discipleship when done effectively in digital space.

Which actually brings me into the conversation here. Guess what? We're bringing in the most often guested person. I guess that's the right way to say it. The most person—the person who's been on this podcast in his most in the history of the Church Digital Podcast. The person who has been on the podcast more than anyone else in the history of the Church Digital Podcast—I think that one's grammatically correct. Let's go and welcome in Tyler Sansom into the conversation.

Tyler, what a surprise. It's great to see you here again, my friend.

I am doing well. I feel like a seasoned veteran at this point on this podcast.

Yeah, so there's a running joke about how many times you've been on the podcast. It seems like I—we just—we really have a deep relationship, but I just love talking to you on the podcast so much. And so actually, at one point I did count. I don't remember what the number is, but by far you've been on. The voice Jay Crand is number two, and we're actually trying to get Jay on here in a couple weeks to explore some things with him, but definitely glad to have you back.

That's it. Was by default, back when we first started doing online ministry, there wasn't a lot of options of other people to talk to.

So this is true. And really, if you want to go all the way back, you were, I think, episode five, but in actual order of recording, you were the first podcast I ever recorded.

Wow, I did not know that. The first interview I ever did was with you. And you go back and listen to episode five or six, and what you won't hear is the 97 cuts of ums and ahs that I did to make that sound like clean. It was brutal back then, and I've gotten a little better, maybe a little bit. I don't think we cut as much out as we used to way back with that first one. But hey, man, it's great to have you on as we're getting into season five here of next steps, how to take that next step, how to get your digital ministry, even your metaverse ministry, to the next level. This is what we're digging in here. And so we're bringing Tyler Sansom in for this conversation. You see, Tyler asked Tyler to be part of a learning community that Leadership Network is putting on in fall 2023, fall and winter '23.

And so I was like, hey, Tyler, let's do a podcast. Let's jump on. Let's talk about what we're learning, what we're digging into. But really, also, I wanted to talk about First Capital Church Anywhere and how First Capital, how Church Anywhere is taking their ministry to the next level utilizing digital technology. And oh my gosh, every time I turn around they're doing something different and something unique, and there's some news story, and it's just beautiful. But really, Tyler, just to kick off—well, first off, hey, you've been a lead pastor like eighteen months or so. I don't—we've probably had this conversation on this show like right at eighteen months. How does it feel eighteen months into this thing? Like, are you energized? Are you exhausted? What does it feel like for you?

Yeah, man, when I finally got past the realization that I'm probably not going to be the traditional style of lead pastor and then got into like kind of my own groove of what to do and fill my day with, it got really energizing for me. So I'm loving what I'm doing. Doesn't look like probably any other lead pastor in the country, but I'm loving it. The church is growing, and God is really moving like crazy here right now.

Yeah, I think it's safe to say you're not the typical lead pastor. Right before we jumped on the show, he was showing off his—what was it?—Christian film festival number two trophy. It's a big giant four-foot, thirty-pound deal. And yeah, so he, you know, your typical lead pastor isn't directing an award-winning Christian film like—is Ican—is this next one right?

Yeah, I can. Yeah, awesome. So just real quick disclaimer, when's that coming out? What, give me ten seconds spiel.

It will be out late summer, so likely end of July, early August will be the theatrical run. And right now, man, it's looking like it's going to be out in theaters all across the country from Palm Springs, Florida, all the way to Spokane, Washington. So really excited.

Very cool. So I've got to drive three hours north to get to Palm Springs, but that will be worth it. We'll try to—we'll try to get it there and in mind. I try to get it in Miami. I'll be—let me—I'll make some calls for you. See if we see if I can pull in a favor. I do, maybe to church. My church meets in a theater, so hopefully hopefully I got an inside track there. But probably not, because they're grumpy. I'd make them get up at like 7:30 on a Sunday morning. But that's that's another conversation.

So hey, let's get into this. As we're talking about a First Capital, about Church Anywhere, taking these next steps and getting their digital ministry to the next level. Now, Tyler, the heart—as we've had these conversations, the thing that I love about what you're doing and the heart of First Capital is really getting into the idea of the discipleship process, of your spiritual outfitters, of this outfitting that you've done. And man, give us an update. Maybe define a little bit what does discipleship look like for your church in digital space? And maybe some of the opportunities it opens up?

Yeah, the spiritual outfitting aspect of who we are is something that we implemented right around two years ago. It's something we've been talking about for a while. We finally like pulled the trigger on it a couple years ago, but it is a massive philosophical shift in ministry that moves away from the weekend service being king and shifts our focus to how do we get our people to feel equipped and outfitted to go out and share the gospel, to self-feed, to be in biblical community outside of the church. So that sounds great in theory, but in practicality, that is a massive shift in how American church does ministry. It required us to get our entire staff on board. It requires us to constantly keep ourselves in check. But what's happened is that we've started this focus that's more geared towards equipping the saints, and in return, we've seen more evangelism happen. So even though our target hasn't been let's go lead more people to Jesus through these programs, it's been hey, let's build up these people, and then those people go and lead people to Jesus. And since we've started this, we've like nearly tripled in the amount of baptisms that we've seen. It's truly incredible. I'm praising God every day to be a part of it.

That's great. So it's funny—churches talk about this all the time, right? We're not about the weekend. We're bigger than the weekend. The weekend's the front door. But yet when you really look at churches, it's so difficult to move beyond that weekend broadcast and to have there be more than the weekend service, more than the weekend broadcast. And because it's so centric to the idea of church, at least here in the west, but you know, some of the stats that I've heard, even just you talking about how baptisms have—would you say baptisms have tripled?

Almost tripled.

With the focus away from like—their churches are skeptical and they're fearful of doing something different might actually cause harm or harm than good in that. But yeah, Tyler, like some of the things that you're seeing and some of the other examples of how moving away from the weekend service has actually now—you still do it, but moving away from the emphasis and the focus on that has opened up more opportunities?

Yeah, even within the weekend service, the emphasis has been really moved away from seekers. So that's a huge shift as well. So I mean, we're literally taking like ancient liturgy right now and making it modern. So we're doing like group readings and we're reciting creeds and all these like things that you wouldn't think to do in modern seeker-friendly church. And people are going deeper with Christ, and that's causing them to go out of our building, out of our online experiences, and share the gospel with people.

But beyond that, the supplemental things—I mean, we're utilizing digital tools on a literal daily basis, whether that's in small groups, using like Slack or text messages or whatever we want to use for that. We're just relationally invested in our people, the people that we've been called to shepherd. We're relationally invested in them on a daily basis simply because we can now with digital tools. And we're not like going out and coding new types of software or anything. We're just using the things that are available to us to point people to Jesus on the 167 hours that are not the weekend service.

So we still do a weekend service. We still try to do it with excellence. We've shifted the focus more towards discipleship. But then we've recognized that once those people leave, they need to continue to be outfitted. They still have mental health struggles. They still need to learn how to read the Bible. They still need to learn how to have healthy marriages. And that's where a lot of our shift has taken place is in those kind of felt needs areas.

So like, let's back up to the service. Like, you're equipping people to be on mission. You're caring for individuals within the church service. The focus—I mean, your—would you say your focus is internal as opposed to external? But it's internal missional. Like, so it's strange. Our focus isn't about our people. We've really tried our best to shift our focus to worshiping God, period. Is that—I don't know if that makes any sense. But it's less about who's our target audience.

Being people and we've shifted to our target audience is God and that should be the only target audience that we have. And so that feels a lot older, like it feels like ancient, but it's also like weirdly fresh in today's society. Um, so we still do like modern music and things like that, but we've really just geared it towards how can we help our people? How can we outfit them to like fully worship God? And then the outpouring of that is a missional community that's unleashed into society.

That's incredible. I mean, by making it about God, you've actually done the thing that you wanted to do. But if you made it about the missional community and getting them activated, like it wouldn't have happened. Or at least traditionally we don't see that happen.

Yeah, it's kind of like whenever Peter walked on water. Um, like he did it. He was able to do something nobody else is able to do. He walked on waters as long as he was focused on Jesus. But the minute that he wasn't focused on Jesus and he was focused on like the storms around him and the wind and things like that, the things that weren't as powerful as Jesus, that's when he sank. And we're seeing this decline in modern Christianity where the less that we focus on the main thing and we started all these programs and all these things that we say are in Jesus' name and they probably are the best intentions, um, we're starting to see this massive decline. But I think the church is kind of calling us back to his lordship and the focus being back on Jesus. All everything else is just peripheral tools that we get to use to point people to Jesus.

Totally. So with the learning community that we're doing here with Leadership Network, we're going to be talking the digital discipleship learning community. We're going to be talking about the Outfitters and how churches like yours can make this pivot, make this shift away from focuses and processes that that aren't helpful and start to move maybe towards, hey, let's put our focus on Christ, on God, and see what happens as a result.

Now, what's interesting with First Capital Christian, with Church Anywhere by the way, do I call it First Capital or do I call it Church Anywhere? Like you guys have been, I don't know anything for him.

We just gave up on trying. You can call us whatever you want. It was one of those deals where it was a big deal for a while and then now we just don't care.

That's awesome. So as we're talking about this, we're seeing through First Capital and through Church Anywhere now that there is a discipleship focus and there's an understanding of who Christ is. They want to exude that and they want to share that. There's a missional opportunity that they're able to realize in digital space. They're leaning into digital communities. They're championing new ideas within the ministry. And so, man, Tyler, just maybe tell me about some of these outpourings, these outputs where we're now starting to see a missional church that's activated that's heading into digital communities as a way to reach people. Just tell me a couple stories.

Yeah, so one of the things that we have just pounded into the heads of our people over the last two years is that we want every Jesus follower to have a Jesus cause. Like, it's not enough that we're a church that wants to be missional. Like, we want every individual to also be on mission and we want them to do that in an area of passion. So one of the outpourings, specifically digitally, has been people coming to us and saying, hey, I have this area of passion. How do I not know how to get involved though? And our default answer is a micro site. Um, so it's sprouted up like I don't know, fifteen new micro sites or something over the last couple of years. But it's people ministering in their sweet spots. So we've got a micro site right now at a CrossFit gym. We've got a micro site um about an hour and a half away at an elementary school that's like an after school program. There's all these ones that have sprouted out simply from encouraging people to follow these passion areas. Um, and all of that is obviously digitally, um, that we're using digital content to infuse.

Yeah, um, so that's one of the ways. Another way is, um, with this shift on discipleship, we've seen a lot of baptisms. But we didn't want people to just be baptized and then kind of like figure out what's next on their own. So we've been intentional of trying to pair each person that's been baptized with a mentor for the first six weeks of their journey with Christ. Um, it's a very relational and it doesn't have to be in person or online. It can be either. We created six weeks worth of curriculum that is all done through like a, um, it's not an app, but it's like a mobile friendly web page. So every time someone gets baptized, they are paired with a guide who guides them through this daily curriculum using digital content. It's all asynchronous. We've seen tremendous discipleship happen from that. It turns out like people are excited whenever they first get baptized, but they don't really usually have quite the direction that they need. This provides them with the ability to have direction. We've seen digital small groups happen, digital leadership training things happen using asynchronous communication. I teach every month via Zoom to our micro site in India who found us through Facebook. Like, it's just been, feels like I'm in part of a circus and God's just like the circus master and I get to be a part of it. That's what it feels like over the last two years.

So that's what I love about First Capital is that they never say no. They say yes and they figure out how to make it happen. And the volunteer core, the number of volunteer missionaries, volunteer micro church leaders, like the passion they serve on, it's just beautiful to watch that from afar.

I'll add to that part. Like, one of the things we've noticed out of this outfitting is that people really want to serve. If they, they really do. They want to do it. But they don't always just want to like hold a baby on a weekend service or open the doors for people. There are untapped potential areas that people in churches all over the country have that simply they just need help finding their passion area. And we've got to realize that at First Capital, we've seen that happen both online and in person.

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit. You said async a couple times and that's always encouraging because I async, but I would love to get in a little bit more detail as we talk about, you know, what context are you using async? What platform? How does it look like? Like, put a little skin on the bones. Let's define that a little bit.

Uh, I'll do the one that I am most involved in right now because there's multiple ways that we do this. Um, the one that I'm most involved in is I'm taking a group of guys through a leadership training cohort. Um, these are not only in-person people. So this is potential future leadership of the church type people that I want to pour into. Um, I've got twelve of them, or eleven of them in a group right now. And every morning, um, we do a journey Bible study is what we call it, Journey Group, where I post a small chunk of scripture within a Slack channel. And then throughout the day we do observations and applications that come into our mind from that small portion of study. And then we pray together. So that sounds really simple, but it has really grown us closer together as a group of people because throughout the day if someone writes something that I didn't think about, then I usually respond and so do the other people. And so it ends up being a group of men who are constantly talking to each other even though we're several hours apart sometimes in response time and location. So that's one of the ways that recently we've seen a lot of success are these like small Journey groups that we use Slack for. That it's really just like obedience-based Bible study.

Hmm, and so how, I mean, I'm not a Slack fan. We were joking about that off air. I dedicated most of my life to Slack. No, no kidding. Like, I mean, you Slack for a decade and, um, anyway, I'm a Discord guy now. But that's okay. So it's like I still love you for it. Salesforce, not so much. But that's okay.

Um, but so like, how much, one of the things like churches I would suggest they've really struggled with with async, um, to make it really be effective. Now, what I've traditionally heard in the past is throwing a bunch of people into an async or like a Facebook group or like a Slack or a Discord and not really managing it well. But what I'm hearing from you is like you're working small groups into that.

Yeah, the smaller the better. Smaller the better. Pull that thread. Talk to me.

Yeah, I have eleven in mind. You have eleven in mind. Um, Matthew, one of our staff members, is in one. He's got six, or three couples, so six total people. Megan, um, who is like an online legend as well, um, she is in, she leads one for women and she had about seven other women in that one. Um, we're in like the pilot season of this right now. So we wanted to launch about um six or seven groups that are potential leaders. And in the fall we're gonna do this church-wide both in person and online. Um, but all of them have come out of it saying that this was the closest small group they've ever had. Um, just because they're constantly in communication. Um, it doesn't feel like a group. It doesn't feel like those annoying group chats. It feels like a very pointed one and it holds people accountable this way. So because it's asynchronous and like the notifications come all throughout the day, um, rather than at like one time, you can't really hide. Like, it's obvious whenever you miss a day. So there's an accountability that happens there. That's why I'm a proponent of making them smaller. If there's a hundred people in this one group, it would be really easy to hide. But like six or seven, if you're the only one not responding, like it's pretty obvious that you're not fully invested. And then at that point we probably would have a conversation with them and say like, hey, I don't think this is for you. This is for the people that want to go.

And so having that accountability, keeping it small. Now, I've seen groups that have big and small where there's a mix to that where you get critical mass and critical energy in the large. But having that accountability transparently in front of people, you know, I mean, they're when we talk about don't forsake the gathering of the believers, like the implication there is daily. There was a daily gathering um in the Acts context, in the early church context. And so utilizing async is a great way uh to relive that, to get to know people. And so like this is just one of many things that we're going to talk about within the learning community and try to coach up on how to utilize these digital tools and engage in digital communities missionally better.

Now, um, one of the things that I loved, you almost made me cry, Tyler. Like, we had like a ten minute conversation before we pressed record, and it just managed, he just warmed my heart. Um, Tyler said the words obedience-based groups and I just started to tear up. Um, and so Tyler, uh, while uh I'm off camera and dabbing my eyes a little bit here again, why don't you talk a little bit about what you're doing with the obedience-based groups?

Yeah, it goes directly into these asynchronous uh grooves. So that the asynchronous uh digital communities or the method that we're doing this, but essentially it's a scripture.

a day, like a portion of scripture where now we're working through the Gospel of Matthew. So it's like essentially each subsection. Um, so today we did like Matthew 16:1-7, so it's seven verses. And um, the goal is for people to look back—how has the scripture applied in the last week to their life? Look up um and pray that God would reveal what he wants from that scripture in their life. And then look forward and like we say out loud, "Here's how we're going to use this in the next day or week," which goes back to that accountability.

The problem is most small groups that I've ever been a part of have been like, "Hey, let's go meet at someone's house and we're going to spend 25 minutes listening to like an Andy Stanley sermon and then we're going to talk about it." And we might come out of that better because we have more knowledge, but we don't really talk about how we're going to put that into practice. We've kind of skipped the um lesson portion and went straight to God's word portion and have asked people, and in front of each other, asked God to use that in our lives and keep us accountable. So that's the obedience-based part of the asynchronous learning community that we have going on.

If churches today can figure out how to hold their people accountable, um, the church will be successful missionally. Um, churches struggle with accountability. Actually, I was coached um, maybe a year or so ago—it actually, not publicly say the word "accountable" because you can't, that you can't say that in 2023. But I'm not, you know, by the church holding someone accountable, the church isn't telling the person what to do. The church is saying, "What is God telling you to do?" And, "Hey, let's do that." Uh, and so there's actually a mild dose of humility. The church is releasing control in that situation, allowing the person to connect directly with God to find out what their—he said calling earlier—like what they're, what their calling is. And then the church is posturing themselves to say, "Okay, now that you know what their calling is, how can we, the church, humbly, humbly help?" Yeah, how can we outfit you to achieve that calling? Like, that's where the Outfitter came from. We're all on some kind of journey with Jesus, and each of us have a different rent. We call it GPS—so gifts, passion, and story. We all got a different GPS coordinate. Um, how can we outfit you as a church to get to your intended location that God wants you to get to? That's how we've pitched it to our people.

Yeah, that's that's so good. And and you're, we're gonna help you get there and do what God's led you to do. And that that opens it—it's funny, you know, you're talking before about being so widespread that gets you to, "Hey, what are we doing in India?" and "Hey, what are we doing with the movie?" and "Hey, what are we doing in worship?" and all of a sudden, you know, you're all over the map. Uh, because you're empowering others to do what God's calling them to do, and they're leading and you're supporting, as opposed to you leading and being overstretched or empowering others in that mission. So um, talk to me a little bit here. Uh, like you mentioned India real briefly, and I'm sure there's other outputs and things that that you're doing. Um, what exactly are you doing in India?

So we're doing two things in India right now. Um, I say two things like they're tiny, but they're both pretty big. Um, the first one is we have a micro site in India. Um, who—this is crazy story—but the guy connected with us on Facebook while he was in seminary. Uh, he had already given his life to Christ, but from I don't know how he found us on Facebook, but he connected, watched us for about a year before he ever even reached out. Um, and finally reached out and asked for a Zoom call. So Megan and I jumped on it, and we found out that he was listening to our Outfitter series about being on mission. He thought he needed to do something about it, so he started a house church um in his house using our material. And then he felt like he wasn't doing enough, so he decided to go out into one of the villages and start a second church. So he's pastoring two churches—um, got about 45 people in his house and probably another 30 to 40 people in his village, all through the church anywhere network. And so he wanted to connect to see if we could become partners, more than him just watching and doing what we say. And I said, "Yeah, what does that look like?" So we recently have helped them build it well, um, or like have some fresh water in in their area. But beyond that, I preach live for them once a month via Zoom. Um, so that's a crazy connection with with India right there. But it goes back to the um like Outfitters and figuring out how to disciple people. And we somehow like discipled and inspired this guy all the way in India through Facebook messenger. And now I have a personal relationship with him and his 45 people that meet in his um house. So I preach once a month and he translates every few words, so it's the slowest sermon of all time. Um, yeah, the second thing from India is we do digital missions in India. We do a thing called Perspectives in our area that's like a 10-week course on becoming a missionary. And the people that graduate that, many of them have like huge desires for for that type of ministry but no means to go overseas. So we partnered with CV Outreach, and we're doing felt needs ministry to India right now. And we're averaging somewhere around 170 to 180 people a week that we're connecting with, and the team's about 18 people.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. 170 to 180 people. Define connecting. Is that text? Is that email? Is that voice?

It's email, email and WhatsApp. So text, yeah. And what's really cool is that we've onboarded some natives. So like we have people who have come to Jesus through this ministry who are now on the team as digital missionaries to India, but they're in India, okay? So um, a small church and a medium-sized church in Corydon, Indiana—small town in Indiana—is currently um onboarding digital missionaries to reach people in India. Like you guys have misspelled the state Indiana to India. It doesn't matter. You're figuring out how to—yeah, we just we accidentally messed up. We figured it out. Typo. Forget that. Let's just go ahead and stick with the plan. That's that's awesome.

So like you've got, how did this start? You had people that were called to India?

Yeah, well no. We had people that were called to missions that couldn't go be missionaries due to financial or health or whatever. And uh, so I said, "Well, what about this? We've already been doing felt needs ministry for a long time um one-on-one like here in the states. Uh, started with our own website, then partnered with CV, and then now we've added on—he gets us in glue. What if we tried this in India? We have a Google ad grant. We could probably make that work." And they said, "Yeah, let's do it." Um, actually I just said we'll try to overseas. The team voted on India. That's the one that they all decided they wanted to go for first. So that's how that came about.

That that's incredible. And so it's it's a it's a course, uh, Perspectives. And just the output of that, you helped to activate people and help them find mission by doing it digitally to engage into a community literally on the other side of the planet. Um, which is correct, which is resulting in discipleship to level of knowledge. You're onboarding Indian natives to effectively reach India natives to your your system. Like this is a beautiful level of multiplication discipleship. I cannot wait, cannot wait to get to eternity future. And like I want, I just want to be there sometime when like one of our India team members from like Podunk, Indiana gets to meet someone from a village in India, and they're only there because this guy reached out in court. And they get to see each other for the first time. Like that that image just like it makes me tear up. The idea that that God's that big and and once again, like through the learning communities, we're trying to highlight different ways that through discipleship, digital discipleship, you can activate people and help them find a digital purpose in in ministry, a digital calling. And something here like a Perspectives course, which equals activating people on mission on the other side of the planet. Um, I mean, this is this is a beautiful story.

You know, one of the other stories that I just I know from a personal level with Tyler is the stuff that that First Capital's done with He Gets Us. And that, you know, that's been a campaign through Glue and a number of different other partners that that I've done a lot of work with, and we'll be ramping up even more in the near future—hint. Um, but but for now, Tyler, talk a little bit about uh, maybe some of your experiences, you and your church's experience with He Gets Us.

Yeah, we jumped on board really early on with them, actually through you. You onboarded us. Um, but like right at the beginning of this thing, and um, right now we're at we are averaging around 130-ish connections to people, um, to people that are engaging per month, which we didn't know. That's just like normal for us. We didn't realize that was like four or five times the amount that most churches are doing. So we've been like wearing ourselves out and building this team, but it's all, it's all for like a great purpose. Um, we've connected with man, story after story. Uh, the one, one of them that I'll highlight, um, that's not super happy, but was um pretty hard ministry was I connected with somebody around Thanksgiving last year who had um had their son had committed suicide. And she had found him. And I connected with her through Glue about two days after that happened. And we ended up talking on the phone for a while, ended up helping her get into some counseling. And she was about three and a half hours from me, so like not it wasn't like my neck of the woods. But these are real people that have real um and urgent needs. And it's just like an honor to be able to have a team that connects with those kind of people.

That's just one of the—you're right, that's not it's not a happy story. And there's a lot of unhappy stories. But one thing I love about He Gets Us and in the churches that are part of of Glue's Explorers program is that there are churches that are willing to have those hard conversations. And there's people and volunteers that are willing to to almost be digital missionaries engaging in a way with uh with spiritual explorers and people that are that are seeking answers.

Um, cut Tyler. I've never heard that that story too. Literally two days after uh there she found her her child um on suicide. Like you're you're that's front lines, man.

Yeah, none of none of these um like we watch the He Gets Us commercials and we don't realize how intense that some of these conversations are going to be. But I mean, that's that's what happens when you step into people's messes. Like Jesus came for the sick, not for the the healthy. Um, so his church is gonna step into those situations as well. And for some reason, online, at least in my experience over the last like decade, online people are more apt to open up about the hard stuff. Um, so this is I always tell our team like you're on one of the hardest teams that we have as a church because you're stepping into some serious mess. Um, and it's hard to sustain, but well worth it when you have conversations that end up in a positive light where you can actually help someone.

What's beautiful about this story is this woman was three and a half hours away from your church. Um, and so I'm willing to bet, knowing you, you weren't like, "Hey, you should come to our church building." Like you, you you took the time to minister to this person without

The direct benefit of having them be in the church building to go against some metric somewhere like you minister to her regardless of the fact of where she was located. Yeah, I will say this now more comfortably than I've said it in the past because my church is a lot more comfortable with me saying this now that I'm the lead guy. Um, I just, I just don't care if they come here. I want them to come here. I'll care about them and deeply care about them here. Um, but man, I'm gonna stand before God someday and it's not gonna be a, um, who had the most church attenders as a pastor contest. It's going to be who went out to the least of these, um, and helped them. And if my motive is only to get them to come to my church, I am like dramatically missing the point of this whole thing.

Right there, that's next level thinking. You know, if we can, if we can move beyond the butts and seats metric and start to recognize maybe what digital relationships are, what relationships are and with discipleship and what care for people needs to look like in digital and how that can help the church, uh, whether physical. This is this is a beautiful story and a beautiful example. And I'm sorry it costs the life of a person here to tell this story, but man, this is the potential that we have even through utilizing like Glue's Spiritual Explorers program to champion, uh, ministry to reach the people that our buildings are not going to reach.

Now Tyler, let me let me ask this. Um, 130 people a month, that's that's 33 people a week. That's that's five to seven conversations a day. Um, you're, you're like, I, I just, not to be facetious, but you're not having all those conversations yourself. You know, I know Megan's busy as well. You and Megan are not having all these conversations. You mentioned earlier a team. Like, how have you brought on volunteers to have some of these hard conversations? What does that look like?

Yeah, we've, we've, we've been really selective with this group simply because it really is kind of the front lines. Um, so this is more high level of people we trust. I think there's ten on our team right now. For, he gets us maybe eleven. I would have to go look. We've onboarded a couple people in the last couple weeks, but these are people that have either expressed interest in ministry or they're like higher level capacity types of people that haven't necessarily found their place in physical ministry yet, but like want to help the kingdom and people. That's the types of people that we have on a team.

Did they, did they approach you or you approached them? Because I'm thinking Outfitters, like, has somebody come out of the Outfitters program and said I want to do this? Or is this the one area where you're like self-selecting people and grabbing them out?

Well, this is kind of, um, a perfect example of Outfitters. It's, oh, you need a, you, this is your strength and you need a place to serve. Okay, well, here's what we can offer if this would be of interest to you. Um, so that's kind of how it worked. And, uh, so like once again through the Explorers program, Glue, he gets us in church cares and there's so many other, uh, Glue systems that are out there that just, before the Explorers program, so much opportunity. But you've got to disciple people. You've got to take them through a process to start to be able to handle some of these hard conversations. Like, could you imagine a volunteer engaging with someone who's, um, whose son had died two days earlier? That's a hard conversation for a pastor, much less a volunteer. That's happened. So that's happened to our volunteers, maybe not that exact scenario, but things equal to that level of intensity. And they know that it's okay to say I don't know. Let me pass it on to the person that can help you. Um, and we know that too. That's why we have counselors that are operating out of our building so that we can send them to those, you know, as much as I've, I've talked with like American Association of Christian Counselors, uh, doctor, uh, oh my gosh, I'm blanking on his name right now, Dr. Carl over there, uh, and and others, you know, the language has been around like volunteers handling these difficult situations. Here's the next level tip. You want to offload it to a volunteer? You want your volunteer to run with a ministry like the Spiritual Explorers, but there's a certain level that a volunteer can't do. And so the volunteers really expected to triage. Hey, if you engage with somebody at that level of a complex, difficult situation, a volunteer doesn't need to run away from it. The volunteer needs to become small enough to engage it. But just like Tyler said, be comfortable with, hey, you know what, I don't, I don't know the exact answer for that one. Can I, can I get you connected to somebody who's maybe a little better equipped to handle the situation? There's no shame in running away from something like that. As a matter of fact, there's courage that you're able to engage in that conversation and be sensitive enough to be aware that, hey, I'm not the, I can't take this one to the finish line. I've got to be able to hand it off. Uh, and so this is, this is a beautiful conversation.

Talk to me a little bit because I know that in the past that you've done things with, um, uh, and influencers like you did an influencer course, I believe, or something like that. And, uh, you know, I know Megan was doing a lot of interesting things with TikTok and you were exploring that with some other volunteers. What what happened as a result of all that? Is that, is that still going? What's what's up?

Yeah, so some of them are still going. Um, some of them didn't become influencers because, you know, the internet's hard. But, uh, yeah, it's still an effective ministry. Probably the biggest success story, um, for a person that went through Influencer 2.0, um, is a couple named the Guernseys who started a cooking show. Um, and they started this like Food Network style cooking show on YouTube because they like to cook and they share the gospel through that. They've got a Facebook group now like a thousand people and they share recipes and all kinds of stuff with them. Um, but a big win for us was we did a Seder meal asynchronously, um, on Passover week. So like on Holy Week, and, um, we had people meeting here in the church building. We had people meeting in homes. We had people meeting in Uganda, Africa, like all over the place. And the Guernseys used their cooking show to teach us how to prepare the Seder meal. Um, so it came full circle, um, in that area. So yeah, the influencer thing is still going. Um, those are sometimes fast builds and sometimes slow builds, but that's one way that we're using social media. At least, let me ask it. With your influencer program, is there, you know, often I've, I've thought about it. It's funny, right? When I started the Church Digital, I wrote a blog, uh, about how your great Aunt Ruth who's really good at, uh, pistachio pudding, uh, is has influence. And, and how like she should use that for social media. Actually, that was the heart behind us, us writing, Dr. John and I writing, um, oh my gosh, I just blanked on the name of the book. Sharing Jesus Online. Um, yes, I did on my podcast just admit that I've forgotten the name of the book that I wrote like three months ago. You can, you can flag that one and throw it at me later. Um, but you've got, you know, through Sharing Jesus Online, everybody's got influence. Uh, and so there's, there's that approach to influence. And then is it, are you, do you, looking at influence that way? Are you looking at more of this specialized kind of influencer track?

Yeah, both. Um, so we encourage, encourage people both in person and online to use whatever platform they have to share, um, Jesus. But the the exact language that we use is we want every person to keep their eyes open looking for every opportunity to show people Jesus through their actions. So that could be in person, could be online. But we say that at the end of every time we meet as a group of people. Um, but yeah, the the Influencer 2.0 training was more specialized around like a skill set or a platform.

So say that, say that plumb line again. Like, what, what do you, what do you?

Is it, yeah, we want every person to keep their eyes open looking for opportunities to show people Jesus through their actions. Can be in person, could be online, just through their actions.

Yeah, so show people. That's our definition of being a church that's on mission. And that, I mean, that I guess resonates with the audience, right? I mean, that's, that's one of the reasons why I think you've been able to activate them so well.

I think so. Yeah, we say that all the time. And then a cause. Jesus cause. We define that as a focused effort to help people find and follow Jesus through their area of passion. So everyone should be on mission always, but then we want everyone to have one lane that they're like all in and passionate about.

I, I tell you what, I hope you're writing this down. Or better yet, you can join us for the Learning Community. Um, leadnet.org/DLC. Digital Learning Community. This is what we're doing with Tyler Sansom here, um, in, uh, fall 2023. By the way, uh, coupon code Tyler. Leadnet.org/DLC. Get a hundred dollars off by using the coupon code Tyler. And this is, but what, what we want you to see here is that these are just incredible ways to, this is, this may work for your church. This may not work for your church. But these are just opportunities, examples of how we can onboard people missionally. But it starts with a discipleship process where you're training them and activating them and then releasing them physically or digitally, however you know they feel called by God. And, and being the church that is going to be activating them regardless of what direction they're being called to, whether it makes sense in context of the church or outside, you're part of that process to see them towards what their, what they're calling or what their cause is. For this, this is so good.

You know what, I don't know, Tyler, man. Listen, your church is doing all sorts of stuff artistically. It just did the Icahn movie. We talked about, I know, I know there's been some, some, uh, expanses musically with worship and we talked about some of the high church methodology before. But then you've got some new balances. And so kind of update me a little bit with what's going on with your church overall artistically.

Yeah, I mean, obviously people are watching content like in a bizarre amount, like six to eight hours a day on phones. They're consuming content. And so we, we just want to be part of that. Um, so we've taken like an entrepreneurial, um, route to what we call Creative Outfitting. Uh, the movie is one example of that. But like just the movie, social media, last last month reached 1.6 million people. Um, and then we're using the same funnel to get them into community that we would with any other digital ministry. Um, our worship team is, uh, committing to write one song a month with the goal of eventually being 60 to 70 percent all original songs written for our community. But they've recognized that that's an area that they could release these songs online, um, and use some digital marketing methods to share the gospel with people in a different way. Um, we're doing a lot of that stuff for jails and prisons. So we're making a mini series right now, a narrative miniseries that will be on every tablet of every offender in the state of Indiana. Um, so we're just taking pretty much anything that we can throw on a wall and if it sticks, we're gonna, we're gonna utilize, um, digital practices to get that out to as many people as possible in the creative space.

Yeah, so it didn't even occur to me that you were going to use Icahn the movie as a way to onboard people and get people connected to your church. That's the whole, that's the whole point of it.

Yeah, so we...

Partnered with the guys from The Chosen and right out at the front we just said, "Hey, we don't care if we make money or any of that off of this. The goal of this is to get as many eyeballs to hear on this project so that as many people can hear this message of redemption as possible." And then beside that, we wrote a small group curriculum, a 40-day devotional, and we're hosting all of that on our website. And so we would just funnel them down the same way we would through Church Anywhere. It's just a different avenue. That's beautiful. And just once again, it's all of these. I mean, anything artistically, digitally has an opportunity to connect up to the church where it's even, you know, the influence that the filmmakers, that the musicians, all of this funnels into some sort of a process that leads people back to Christ, that leads people back to the church, back to a better understanding.

Can I give you one quick story of that?

Sure.

So we had some screenings of I Can for select people because we wanted feedback and things like that. And one of them, I didn't know the guy. He was invited by one of our other producers. He's from Texas, drove ten hours to get here. Basically, he was just like, "I don't know why I'm here." Afterwards, he wrote us on Facebook and he said, "I didn't know why I came to Indiana, but as soon as I started watching the film, I realized that God brought me there to leave as a free man because their story in the movie mirrored my wife and I's story. And I've been struggling with this guilt for the last decade, and God spoke to me that evening and I'm never going to be the same." And I'm like crying as I'm reading this message. But that guy's worshiped with us through Church Anywhere every week since then. So all the way in Texas, we now have a family that we worship with simply through this creative means. So that's kind of what I meant by it's just a separate avenue, but it all funnels back into helping people find and follow Jesus and then how in turn can we outfit them to go do the same.

Man, what an incredible story. And prayerfully we'll see more come from the movie. By the way, the first movie ever made about softball, right?

Yeah, it's crazy. Crazy. Yeah, I never. You told me that. I was like, "There's got to be." And of course I went to A League of Their Own, but no, that was women playing baseball, not softball. So who knew anyway.

Church leader, pastor, what I want you to see here is that Tyler and through First Capital is taking the church to the next level utilizing digital. And do I want you to see your church make a movie? Well, actually, my church made a movie in 2013. It was called Genesis. It was kind of like a combination of the Book of Genesis and steampunk. I'm not kidding. Unfortunately, but you can go back and look at that if you want. No, I'm not suggesting that. Maybe I'm suggesting that. But no, it doesn't have to be. What I'm saying is their culture, yeah, sure, contextualized, definitely. Steampunk Genesis. Think about it. Give it a shot. But the fact is that we want your church to think differently and start to recognize that there's opportunities beyond what you're already doing. And truthfully, a lot of the time it's activating your volunteers that are looking for an opportunity to be challenged beyond, I don't know, serving coffee and changing a diaper. There are other things volunteers can do rather than just complimenting what's happening in the weekend service. And that's what I would love for us to recognize.

We're looking for churches that are willing to be challenged on this where through the learning community with Leadership Network, we're looking for churches that want to take it to the next level, that want to move beyond the metric of weekend, that want to see people disciple digitally. I want to see people empowered on mission, recognizing their cause and starting to be released out into it. That want to look at digital communities as a missional community. I want to go on mission trips, literally mission trips into digital community, into gaming and into all sorts of different spaces digitally, and be the light of Christ in the midst of social media, in the midst of Twitter, in the midst of Facebook groups, in the midst of Discord and the metaverse and the things like that.

And so this is what we're looking for here with the learning community. The digital discipleship learning community Tyler and I are putting together with Leadership Network. Once again, it's leadnet.org, L-E-A-D-N-E-T dot org slash DLC for digital learning community. Coupon code Tyler will save you a hundred bucks off of that.

And so Tyler Mana, are you excited about the learning community? Like, what are you most excited about as you're looking forward to this?

Yeah, sometimes you feel like you're on an island, especially as a lead pastor, because there's just not a lot of lead pastors, at least in my sphere, that are thinking in terms of the way that we're trying to think. And so I'm excited to connect with some other people that are ready to, I don't know, throw stuff against the wall and see if it sticks with us, and then maybe we can figure out how to make each other better.

Awesome. Yeah, that's the beauty of a learning community is that we learn from you, you learn from us. And after throwing a bunch of, what did you say? He's throwing a bunch of, just throw stuff. I started saying throw crap at the wall, but it's like that's not what you said. I don't want to throw crap. I mean, that's what I tell my kids, but that's not podcast language. Forgive me. Throw stuff against the wall, see what sticks. There's a little bit of that, and then there's some, "Hey, let's aim while we're throwing that at the wall and see what we can get from it." And so more information there at leadnet.org DLC. And then of course we've got leadnet.org MLC for the metaverse learning community.

Stuart McPherson was on last week and we were talking about the metaverse learning community. Maybe you're looking to get a little more edgy with some virtual reality and get into that. We've got mission trips and other opportunities there with the metaverse learning community, MLC.

And so, hey, awesome Tyler. Let's listen, it's always fun hanging out with you, man. I wish I could do a podcast with Tyler every week, and sadly I cannot. So maybe in another life. But hey, as we're wrapping up here, Tyler, any closing thoughts?

Yeah, just encourage you guys to think outside the box. Oh, first of all, encourage you to go to the leadnet website and sign up for our learning community because I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. But beyond that, start thinking outside the box because God's kingdom's a whole lot bigger than just one hour or two hours on a Sunday morning in a building together. And then I have seen firsthand him move in some crazy ways if you just allow him to do that. It's beautiful. Releasing control may be the hardest thing your church will have to do to go through this process, but releasing it and allowing God to move through you is beautiful when it happens. And you get to see the growth of the people underneath you who are taking leaps and bounds because you're pouring into them in the process and empowering and releasing them to do what God's called them to do, not what you're telling them to do, not what you've all told them to do. And I totally get the "all told" thing. I've been on a church staff. I know how it works. But there's an opportunity to watch God grow that individual far beyond what your abilities are, and you get to be the vehicle that platforms others and helps others on the journey. And that's at a personal level. I just believe that that's what God's called the church to be, especially here in 2023.

And on that note, we're gonna land the plane. So check out leadnet.org DLC, coupon code Tyler, or leadnet.org MLC if you're interested in metaverse. Go and do coupon code Tsunami Stu and Ami for that one. Either way, you get a hundred bucks off their respective learning communities. We'll get you going. Any questions, you can hit me up 484-324-8724. That's myself. Go ahead and text me. Don't call me. Don't be that guy. Copy that, girl. Text me, and we can have a conversation. But we're gonna land the plane and we gotta go. So for Tyler, this is Jeff, the Church Digital, Digital Church Network. Thanks for being on the podcast here. We'll see you next time on the show. You have a good day.