EP287 - Innovating for Impact: Jeff Talks Digital Church Movements

I don't know where you are in your church journey or your ability, your leadership responsibility. Love you, Hector. Um, I wonder how much of that we need to be aware of and we need to be thinking about. How much of our desires for legacy, our desires for impact, um, how much of what even we're doing digitally is long-term versus to be short-term?

Seats, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciplemaking possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? And where does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all of this? Whether you're a big or small church, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Hey, TCD family. Jeff Reed here doing a stream here, but excited to jump on here and talk a little bit here to the TCD fam. Now, we'll put this out on YouTube as well, put it on demand over there. I may put it on the podcast and just really try to get this out on a regular basis because, you know, I'm excited to talk to the family here at the Church Digital. So waiting to see some people come in, but looking forward to connecting here with the Church Digital fam.

Now, a lot has been going on here with TCD over the past couple weeks. Last week, well, last week was Expo, and so a lot of you were in Expo Orlando there at First Baptist Orlando as Exponential Global Conference was happening. It's such an incredible, awesome time. I know within our leadership, Jason Morris was there, was speaking with Jim Tomberlin and his crew, multisite group through Resi, and Andy Mage was doing a lot of work last week at Expo for Lux. And I know Mark spoke over there with something. I believe um, Leighton was Leon was definitely around as well and was doing a lot. And so Exponential was a really great time to connect and really start to see, honestly, some digital get a little more fruition now.

I was actually not at this year. I took this year off. I'd been there maybe I don't know five or six years in a row, and so I took the year off. I was actually speaking at a PushPay event in Dallas that I was contracted to be at, and so I missed the Exponential family, but was excited about it.

Hey, El, Michelle, Spencer, Deborah, it's good to see you all. Glad you can jump here on the stream. But what was really interesting coming out of Expo that I am hearing and seeing more and more of—it's actually PushPay. We talked about it with their CTO a couple weeks ago on the podcast. Um, the acceptance of digital, or the perceived acceptance of digital, what people are thinking is digital, is becoming far more regular. It was funny. Jason Morris was telling me about his talk. It's funny I've actually spoken in that track that he did. I spoke in that track that was actually the first place that I spoke, maybe five or six years ago at Exponential. And um, it's it was uh, Jim Tomberlin, who's a digital supporter, but it's a multisite track. And to be honest, historically, you know, there hasn't been a lot of support for like the people in the room have not been excited about digital ministry. And so like there were times, maybe five or six years ago, that when I would speak at that talk for Jim, it was really a hostile audience because they weren't wanting digital. They weren't wanting to talk digital.

And uh, so when I touched base with J-Mo this morning—hey, what's going on? How was your Expo? How'd that talk go? I know that's typically a tough room for you to speak in. And um, Jason laughed and he's like, "Man, there wasn't anything tough about it. I was building up my defense within the first five, ten minutes, and everybody kept shaking their head yes, like they agreed with me. And I realized I was wasting my time." And so I skipped like a couple slides and went just into the rest of my talk where I started actually talking about how digital would work. And really, that's what we're seeing.

Uh, Aaron S talked about that CTO of PushPay. Um, ninety—I'm going to get my stats confused, forgive me—but something like 91% of churches consider themselves hybrid now. What hybrid is, we can have that conversation, but 91% of churches today, physical churches mostly interviewed—I don't think any digital churches were represented in that interview—but 91% consider their ministry hybrid, having physical and having digital aspects. Ninety percent of those interviewed, 90%, stream their services at some point at some level. Now, maybe they understand why. Maybe they need to be reminded of why. Maybe there needs to be better definition centered around that, or maybe helping them have more purpose behind it. But there is a huge opportunity, I would suggest. I mean, really, we talk about hostility around digital, and I'm curious. Yeah, so we through the Church Digital, we talk a lot about digital discipleship. That's still a battleground, I would argue, um, you know, because of the digital context of discipleship, but then also our view of discipleship is a little different than the, you know, the established church is. So there's still a lot of controversy in at least in some of our arguments. But I would suggest that it's the pendulum is shifting a little bit here, and I'm personally feeling that and seeing that.

It's interesting in my talk with PushPay, um, I did a modified talk and I've done this maybe three or four times for PushPay and for different churches that are—it's really a boutique kind of conference, it's six, eight, ten churches, very small kind of crowd, very intimate setting. And I've done the same talk four times, modified slightly, but same general gist. And for whatever reason, this time it didn't land. Last time I did this talk was September, and it was a freaking slam dunk. And you know, I don't know if it was just different churches in the room, different places. I don't know if I was just in a bad mood. Um, to be honest, it was actually last time I did it was probably June, so it's been maybe eight or nine months since I had talked publicly. It was the first time I talked with the can and kind of gone through that. And so maybe some of it was that. But like, the defensive posture of my talk did not resonate well with the audience. And so like, I found myself agreeing with J-Mo, man, and some of the stuff that Mark and Andy are hearing through Lux. It's the same thing. It's like, man, we didn't have to fight. Like, people are agreeing. There's some that are interested. It's like we didn't have to sell. Like, people were coming to us. And so I'm curious if you're out there listening in chat here.

Hector, hey man, Hector, how you doing? We should catch up. Great to see you, Hector. Um, I would love to hear what you're all experiencing with your churches. Are you feeling physical and digital? Like, are you feeling that hesitation towards digital anymore? Are people open to the conversation? Are they just not understanding what it is that they're wanting to connect with, but they're open to it? Like, what is the feeling? What's the temperature that you guys and gals? What are you feeling in your churches? Go ahead and do this. And you know, we're doing this on demand. It's not put it in chat if you want. Um, but on demand, you know, I'm going to give you my cell phone number: 484-324-8724. 484-324-8724. It's number four of the Church. Um, so text me and let me know your opinion on that. I would love to hear from you on it.

It's interesting. I've been, um, oh my gosh, so much to talk about today. Uh, couple weeks ago I did a stream, shared from the heart, and um, got emotional, cried a little bit on camera. I think that was the first time I cried on camera publicly. And uh, so you go back—well, it's somewhere in our YouTubes. You can find it. Um, but uh, would definitely love for you to go back and experience that and just even get a feel where people literally around the planet are praying for the digital church and what we're seeing and what we're championing and what we're wanting to do in digital space.

And so El Michelle is saying here, well, um, what? Bird Pink Mink? I have no idea who you are, bro. Uh, that's awesome though. Hopefully I pronounced all of that accurately. Uh, the brick and mortar church has had to change how they do ministry because people didn't come back. You know, that's interesting. White Beard Punk Monk, thank you. That makes more sense. Um, though Pink Mink would have been interesting, especially given your avatar photo there. Um, the brick and mortar church has had to change how they do ministry. You know what? Interesting. I agree with you, but at the same time, I'm actually seeing that's not true. Um, what? There are some churches that are in decline. There are many churches that are going up and to the right now. In my opinion, the hangers-on—I have stories. I don't have stats to back up what I'm about to say. Um, I've had several churches report to me that the loose hangers-on, not the typical engaged person, but the crowd, not the community, not the loyal people, the hangers-on, didn't come back. And so a lot of churches took a hit. Um, and there was a season where they tried to re-engage with the old hangers-on. The churches that have been successful have said, "Forget those people. We're just going to start from scratch and have re-engaged, have built up a new audience, a new crowd, leading into a new community." And so those seem to be the ones that have transitioned in this season.

El Michelle's emphatically doing a yes with about seven different—uh, you almost have to treat the church as a replant. You know what? Pro Postco, I agree with you there. Uh, Hector, that's very true. Um, people, El Michelle, people are open, but some push back on going live at time of service, saying people may not come to the building as a result. You know what I mean? In the grand scheme of things, El Michelle, I'm okay with that. I'm okay if somebody doesn't come back to the building. If you don't stream your service live, we don't stream our service live. Um, I mean, we're—let me context. I'm a—we're a 200, 250 person church plant. Like, we've been open two years. Um, we have no ability to produce. We have high quality worship, I would suggest. Singer-songwriter, like very classy, professional feel. Um, we're all megachurch guys doing a church plant. Um, and I'm actually not involved too much in leadership at this point. I kind of stepped back with some of the health stuff. And um, but I would say that like we can't produce the musical portion well at all. And so we put that sermon online, you know, post. And I mean, we get—like I said, there's 200 people in the room and 100 people are watching on YouTube. I mean, there's value to that, whether that's shareability, whether that's spread. I don't know if we really have 300 people or if it's, you know, 100 of the 200 are watching it on YouTube again. Um, there's on-demand. We'll all reach more than live. And so really, like, I would suggest, you know, El Michelle, you're smarter in this. I'm not teaching you anything you don't know, but pick your battles, right? As you're walking into this stuff, if somebody doesn't want—it's funny. Um, Erwin McManus, Erwin McManus said this: if everything you value about your church happens on Sunday morning...

Nine o'clock, then why the garbage would you want to stream that on Sunday morning? Streaming that on Sunday morning, what cheapens what you're doing physically. And so if you really value Sunday morning, like it's the ultimate of what your church is, which maybe it shouldn't be, but that's another conversation. But if it is, then don't stream it. Like, make it happen in the physical space. Now do something else. Put it on demand after the fact. Get more views anyway. Um, stream other things. Like, there's other ways to do that.

Definitely would encourage moving beyond that. You see that on Michelle, which is great. People are open with some pushback. Yeah, of which I disagree. Whoever plans to come inside a building will, and vice versa. You're right. And but you pick that, El Michelle. You pick that battle like when you can. It's better to move the ball forward. It's better to be progressive. It's better to be adopting. It's better to be friendly than antagonistic.

Um, I've actually been doing some writing for Resi, and that was actually one of the blogs I can't wait for it to publish. Actually, I went. They were like, "Hey, write 1,200 words," and I wrote 2,500. And I was like, "I got another five. I got another 500 words easy. I could turn this into two blogs." And instead, they were like, "No, no, no. We like what you did. Just keep it together as one." But I told my story. I gave advice on how a physical church can work with the lead pastor, work with leadership to install digital ministry. I said, "Here's eight tips on how to make that happen." And then after I gave those eight tips, I said, "Here's the story of what I did where I literally violated every one of those eight tips and practically got myself fired. I got worked myself out of a job. They did not want to continue me on because I didn't do anything that I'm now suggesting that digital pastors do. That's actually how I learned it. I was like, 'Where did I go wrong? Here's the eight things I screwed up in that job,' and how I basically was like, 'Jeff, you need to leave.' Um, and how I postured things. And so there's ways to do it wrong. Definitely. And but you know, with anything in life, learn from those mistakes.

Um, Hector, if people don't come to the building but are engaged online, it changes strategy dramatically. If you engage online differently than just a window into the room. Oh, oh, more than just the window into. I'm gonna, I'm going to come back now. You see, you, Hector, you just pulled the thread. Actually, what I wanted to get into in this conversation. So we'll get there in a little bit.

Um, Whitebeard, I'm at a black gospel church in Orlando, Florida, as a tech director. We stream. We have 900 in person and 1,300 online. We also do all of our small groups online now. You said all, Whitebeard? Do you mean 100% all? Um, and I would love to know what the online context is for that. If you're holding classes, parent and youth. Yeah, very, very good one, Whitebeard. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, you're my hero, bro. Like, how many groups? Don't, don't be. You better not be lying to me right now, man. Like, this is serious stuff. Um, let me know. I'm really, that's really interesting. Uh, I want to, I want to explore this more actually. May want to dig in. Six day groups. Okay, so it's a starting strategy, but your culture is online, um, which is good towards that. And uh, um, yeah, very, very cool. I do want to dig into that. Uh, so I'll hit you up via, um, fam messenger here in a little bit. I want it. Does I do want to pull the thread here, um, of moving beyond the online stream being a window to the physical space. Um, that was very well said, Hector.

I have a strategy that I've been kind of working through over the past year or so. In context, it's really a framework of how digital churches operate. And uh, you know, I would love y'all's feedback as I'm kind of, you know, trying to get these to come through. I've got a slide. I'm not going to put a slide up because it's just, it kind of distracts from the moment. So let me just kind of walk through the four steps. And it says, so the first step, you know, to is what I'm calling connection. So through our connections, uh, we drive people. We engage with people, people, and drive them into community. Within the community, we build and develop relationships that lead towards discipleship. And within our discipleship, we teach and we train people towards multiplication.

Connection, community, discipleship, multiplication. Show the slide so I can screenshot it. Is that the correct way? Is it screens shoot it? What's the correct way to say that? No, I'm not happy with it, um, to be honest with it. I shared the idea with uh, with some of my, my Resi, PushPay friends. And um, this is, um, they were excited about it. And so like, they're like, they're graphic artists. They want to, um, to take a look at it to be honest. El Michelle, I've been talking about this for so long. Some of the slide decks I probably gave you way back in the day to for you to use. You probably have access to the slide already. But it's really, and at the time it was content. I, you say content leads the community. Our online church services have to lead the community. Our social media has to lead to community. Our TikTok posts, reels, everything we do has to drive people to a community because we cannot do discipleship on TikTok. Like, I, I will, I mean, I'm not gonna, yeah, no, I will die on that hill. We cannot because the TikTok platform is not rich enough relationally for us to create a system of discipleship. Maybe one-off individual people, okay? Maybe. But a system of discipleship existing in digital in TikTok? It's not resilient enough of a platform for that to happen.

Okay, hot lead there. You know, send your hate mail to me, Jeff at the church digital. Um, so but what we're really doing is more than content, right? Um, and so it's really like social media, our influence. So it really starts to become our connections, our connections, which includes content, which includes social media, which like all of this. Our connections have to lead people into community where we can build relationships with them. Where I can know what's going on with El Michelle and be excited for what's going on with Whitebeard and be praying for Hector in his transitions and be able to be aware of what's going on in these spaces. Um, hey, Scott, Scott, Scott's a guy I haven't seen in a while show up on this thing. So Scott, great to see you kind of pop on here today as well.

Hey, and so once again, it's that community aspect where we build relationships. Now, the biggest problem with the church online, the hybrid church, the church that's doing a broadcast of a window to seeing what's happening in the physical building is they're trying to get organized or they're trying to get their visitors either to come into a physical building, which they may or may not want to do, or to join a small group, which there's not enough trust to really do that. You see this process of connection leading people to community, building relationships towards discipleship, and getting to the place of multiplying and empowering others towards their creating their own process. This entire process is really about trust. It's really about how much trust does that person on TikTok have? Do I have enough trust with this person to get them at least into a Discord community? If the answer is yeah, oh my gosh, uh, Hector, you're quoting Isaac. Let me get to that in a little bit. I love Isaac. Isaac's a bud. Isaac actually started his stuff down here in Miami. Good stuff. Um, so um, where we are is that our, um, sorry, I just got distracted. But our, it's all about trust, right? And how we're utilizing engagement in our connections to build that trust to drive them into a community.

Now, I mean, this even works in physical space, right? The connections that we have within a church service, you're able to drive that into community in physical space. And so getting somebody connected into a small group physically, relatively easy to happen because discipleship happens within that physical small group. But is physicality? It's a lot easier to trust. I think I said this a couple weeks ago. Like, if I'm a visitor at a physical church building, uh, I actually don't really have a problem leaving you my baby, my newborn child, and giving you all of my contact information with that child. I don't know what it is about physicality, but physicality, there's a higher level of trust in that environment. Online, I, man, I'm not even going to give you my email address. Like, I'm going to check you out several times before, or I build that in. And so it's really a hard jump digitally to build that trust. But once you can get that trust into community, man, that's where I think we're really able to see relationships develop quickly. And now through that growing trust and the relationships, that's where we're able to get into relational evangelism, relational discipleship.

Like, you know, you know, we've talked many stories in some of my virtual reality friends can tell a story of this. Alice in the Palace, formerly Alice Queen of Hell. You know, she's a great example of this. Is this a woman, neopagan Satanist, who found Christ in virtual reality as a result of relationships that developed over eight months. And we say J-Mo, Jason Morris on our leadership team, is famous for saying digitally people find community before they find Christ. That's different than the physical church. Physical church, people find Christ and then join the community. I mean, literally, it's like, "Raise my hand, pray this prayer, come forward, and get introduced to the church," or you know, whatever the process is. I'm Baptist. That's the way I was growing up. Digitally, it's not that way. Um, digitally, it's join the community. Like, Alice, get invited into the community, get pulled into the community. Alice actually showed up to troll the church in virtual reality and ended up, um, being invited in. Two weeks later, after trying to troll it, she was actually managing the tech point for virtual reality. And six to eight months later, she found Jesus, accepted Christ, uh, through conversations. So good.

Uh, Isaac, uh, so Hector is saying it's hard. Isaac, uh, Petite Forier, uh, did it, but it was a one-off, and it was really from folks who enjoyed him reading the Bible and thoughts. They ended up asking him, and then doing the work to help, uh, build a podcast. Uh, you know what, Isaac? Uh, I worked with Isaac in the COVID season. Um, it was part of, uh, it's a church United South Florida Network called Church United. Um, he, I think Isaac's now out on the west coast of Florida. Isaac was quoted as me as saying, "Jeff, we only, he had a building, he had a warehouse, maybe, you know, in an art district down here in South Florida. Isaac was quoted as saying, 'Jeff, the building slows us down. The building's a lid. We don't want a building. Uh, we want to be digital.'" And it was so beautiful of a concept. And to see the stuff he's doing, um, he's done a lot of work with Alpha. Like, if you look at Alpha USA, like, they did, I don't know if it's a student track or a young track, but he adopted Alpha towards that. And his church, last I heard, is doing great. He's not working with Church United anymore, so I don't necessarily have as much access as I did at one point. But I know he's, uh, I get texts from him every once in a while, encouragement text. And so that's good to see.

Um, but this process, connections, which leads us to community, and through the community we build relationships towards discipleship that take us to the point of multiplying disciples out and releasing and empowering them.

To do the same thing over again, it's that cycle that I think we, uh, the church digital, we, the metaverse church, we digital and physical churches that are out there, we've got to start championing these ideas. It's interesting, yesterday, uh, yeah I do have it, yesterday, um, I drove up to West Palm Beach. Uh, I was hanging out with some friends, uh, where I got to meet a borderline hero of mine, Steve Addison. He is Australian as well. We had a story of Australian last week, Australian of this week, story of Australian. Uh, Steve Addison here, new book, um, Acts, uh, in the movement of God. Steve is a, uh, a myologist. She went to college at West Palm Beach there at, uh, Palm Beach Atlantic. Um, their Whitebeard, he was, yeah, so I was, I was right there. I was at, at Family Christian, Christian family, uh, there at the heart of, um, uh, PBA. I actually was walking around the library. I was having coffee with, uh, with Steve Addison and some of the no place left people. Um, and, uh, it was funny. The, the Starbucks that I was at had a sign over, over in, in the corner that it was the John MacArthur, um, whatever, whatever, whatever Cafe. Like I guess John MacArthur had paid for this Starbucks cafe in the library and blah, blah, blah. And so actually I was talking with Steve Addison and I was like, hey, look, we're sitting in John MacArthur's Cafe. Steve laughs and he's, I was like, yeah, that guy hates me. John MacArthur hates you? Yeah, John MacArthur hates me. Like he, he, uh, he's ripped the church digital. Uh, he ripped, uh, Chesley and I, uh, some, maybe it's twenty-two, twenty-three, in some, some articles. He and his organization actually went very much against the idea of of virtual church. Actually, I think, um, digital church is what we would call it. He kind of uses some old language. Um, but Chesley, I think, really alienated him, um, by saying the church needed it a disruption, and it does. Um, and the disruption's coming. The disruption happens everywhere else on the planet. Why would it not come to America? Uh, but that's not for us to say right now. It's, it's let's do what we can for the kingdom with the, uh, opportunities available.

So I'm hanging out with my friend Steve Addison. No, about Steve Addison. Um, he's a, he's a myologist. He's a, he's a huge guy. Um, he's written a number of books talking about movements, talking about movements that changed the world, and and about how, uh, people started, um, um, people have started movements, evangelical movements, the disciplemaking movements, um, that have impacted cities, states, regions, countries, nations, continents. Um, and, and what does that look like in, in biblical context when we look at the book of Acts, the Church of Acts, when we look at that, at the early church, what do we see in context of, of movements? How did they operate? You know, and, and, and if we're fair, how does that, how does that compare to the, to the Church of today, to the American Church? Let's take John MacArthur out of the conversation. And so like he started dropping some, some bombs. And even like the historical church, like what has movements looked like historically? And what, what do we, what do we need to learn from this for the future? We give you a couple tidbits that, that Steve Addison shared. I was just so blown away. I was so encouraged, um, by it. Um, he started talking about the church in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Church, gen zero, like this is where the church started. J.M., these are the, was it sixty some, eighty some people that are up in the room with the tongues of fire and, and all that. Oh, you're killing me, Whitebeard. It's a different MacArthur man that kills my story. I was so excited to be able to say that guy hates me. That guy doesn't know me. Never mind, hey, you know what, I'm a Whitebeard, you just killed everything for me. Like I can't, I, I don't even know what to do right now, man. Like that, no, I'm kidding. That's, that's it. It was irrelevant. It was a very small point. What I was actually trying to say, um, the church in Jerusalem. But thank you for that. I do appreciate the, the correction. I, I'll, uh, I will adopt, I will adapt my stories moving forward. Okay, so, um, the church in Jerusalem, the sixty some, eighty some people, tongues of fire coming down, three thousand people saved. Um, where is the, where the Jerusalem building? I mean, initially there is no, like church buildings anywhere. If, if you looked at like the, the, the church, um, the biblical church, my mom actually did this. My mom asked me the other day. I think she's going through a study of Acts, um, with some people online. My mom teaches two online groups by the way, which is awesome. She's like old and she's, she's still doing. She like she loves online. But she asked me, she's like, how many of, of the early churches were house churches? I was like, one hundred percent, ninety-nine percent. Like there wasn't a lot of other opportunities. You don't see church buildings from that era. Like it, the majority of them, if not all of them, met in homes or, or living spaces or, or things like that. It's not like there was building campaigns, uh, in the time of Christ, uh, towards that. And my mom kind of laughed at the irony of, of just how much things have changed. Um, but the Church of True Church of Jerusalem, it literally gave itself away. Like the, the persecution that came with, with Saul, um, with Stephen in the story of Saul, uh, I mean the scripture literally says then they told, they shared the gospel as they went. The, the church dissipated. The first church was not a, a legacy church. It was not an eternal church. They were not trying to build an entity for, for forever. It was specifically designed and it up through God's wisdom to be a distributed church, to be sent out. Um, it was not an ekklesia forever. It was a diaspora. It was, it was a distributed church that was meant to be the seeds for others. And, and it's interesting. I wonder how much of that, I don't know where you are in your church journey or your ability, your leadership responsibility. Love you, Hector. Um, I, I wonder how much of that we need to be aware of and we need to be thinking about. How much of our, our desires for, for legacy, our desires for, for impact, um, how much of what even we're doing digitally is long-term versus to be short-term seeds? You know, last, last time I did a stream, we talked about the ability to, uh, connect with others, to mentor. Let's have Pauls that are mentoring us and let's have Timothys that we're mentoring. And, and, and, um, in discipleship and multiplication. And who are we empowering? Who are we apprenticing to for this next generation of planters? Like that, I think is, is so important. And I don't think digitally, like if I were to look at us as digital churches, um, what I know and I don't know everything, but I don't know that we're really understanding that multiplication. I don't think we're really taking advantage of empowering that next generation yet. Part of us wants to be, and I get it, I'm, I'm guilty of it. Part of it is, you know, I led the church digital for a season where it's like, I don't want to bring on more leaders until I get the model figured out. Then when I get the model figured out, we, we'll bring out more leaders. The thing is, the model is constantly evolving. It's constantly changing. We're, I mean, we're even bringing out some new changes. Like there is stuff I've brought out, Monday, major impacts within the organization, and we're, we're going to roll this out and communicate it out in a, in a weeks. But there, there's just, there's always, there's always change, right? It's almost like we're going to wait to have a baby. Just have the baby. You're never ready for, for the baby. Um, you're never ready for the apprentice, by the way. The apprentice can help you develop those next systems. Like they can give you the feedback. They give you direction. They can be eyes on the field. And so like there, there's this challenge to, to give it away. The church in Jerusalem didn't wait. Now arguably they had, you know, persecution. There was guns to the head, literally speaking, to get them to that place. But I think that's the opportunity for us, maybe to start to apprentice, to train, to find someone that can walk along with us, carry some of our burden, that we can eventually release to do their own. And whether that's an offshoot of what you're doing as, as like a, a sub-brand or, uh, whether that's a completely separate thing, I mean doesn't matter. Um, but the fact is is that man, there's so much potential in life if we start to multiply ourselves into others. And it's interesting. Steve Addison, he, he told me a story, uh, yesterday. And, um, uh, Whitebeard, you're more, and some of you others on here probably a little more theological, um, especially church history, more grounded than I am. And so I'm probably going to butcher the story. Uh, I'm going to look it up, but I just wanted to share rough version of it right now. And, uh, it's William Carey. Uh, William Carey is, uh, was a, my understanding was an Anglican pastor around seventeen fifty, in the seventeen hundreds. And, um, William Carey, my understanding, um, was really an, an early movement leader, much more about multiplication and discipleship. And that was really kind of his approach on, on how he was, was managing church a couple hundred years ago. Um, and that was, I mean, you think it was controversial in twenty twenty, um, some of the stuff we're doing. That his ideology was controversial to the Anglican Church in the seventeen hundreds, so much so that the church literally changed his church. Literally changed the locks on the guy, locked him out of the church building, and forbid him from, uh, speaking. Now William Carey was, was a young person at the time. Um, but he, he did not give up on his disciplemaking approach, on the way that he viewed God and, and viewed ministry, even as controversial as it was in the seventeen hundreds. And so he pulled twenty individuals as a young adult, as a young man, um, and met with them regularly in a pub. In a pub. William Carey, twenty individuals. And over the course of the year, discipled those twenty individuals and then sent them out. Year two came around. William Carey didn't have any funding. Doesn't have a job. He got locked out. He literally got fired. They, they, they removed. They changed the locks on the guy. So he's not getting funding. But he found another twenty guys, invested twelve months into them, and sent those twenty guys out. Now my understanding is that William Carey did that fifty times over fifty years. And that William Carey, over the span of fifty years, without funding, without a church job, um, truly bivocational here, I don't know how. I don't know what he was doing for a living at the time. But William Carey is, is historically, um, had rejuvenated, uh, evangelism within the Anglican Church by investing in twenty guys at a time in an English pub. You know, last time I talked here on the stream, we talked a lot about how, um, finances are hard. Money's hard. And we don't know, you know, it's, it's struggle, right? And we literally, I was talking about how pioneers get shot, settlers get rich. William Carey was a pioneer and dud got shot. I mean, he didn't literally get shot. I, I don't even know what bullets looked like in seventeen, I guess they had cannonballs, right? So they had that, have some sort of gun thing. Yeah, I mean, the seventeen seventy-six, they had the bayonets. So there is bullets. But he didn't literally get shot. I don't know. I don't think. But he got criticized. He got ostracized. He got kicked out of his church for his beliefs. And instead of running away and crying and hiding, he spent fifty years investing in a thousand people that I'm sure multiplied into many others. And the dude is credited with restoring what's happening within the church. And so I would suggest maybe that's our opportunities for today. For some of us that are in physical churches, you are championing the idea of digital ministry. And, uh, while they may have see an opportunity for hybrid, they may not understand the opportunity of digital discipleship. And it's your job to be the bridge to.

Connect that physical church to understand that we need to be more than just a window into the building. There's an opportunity for discipleship to be more than just a window into the building, that discipleship can happen digitally as well as physically. And oh my gosh, if a church can understand that and invest into that ministry, will explode.

So the physical church minister has a challenge ahead of them. I would follow up with this: that the digital church pastor, the digital church planter, has an opportunity as well because we are the pioneers that are getting shot. We are the ones that are struggling with funding. We are the ones that are struggling with approval, and we can cry about that or we can William carry the situation and realize they may lock us out of the building, but who needs a building? The buildings are the lid that's going to hold us back. And let's go find the British pub to go invest in twenty guys a year and multiply the crap out of this idea. And that's the challenge.

I've spent too many of my years trying to get approval. I'm a—I don't know what this is on Instagram. I'm not really an Instagram person, but one of the Enneagrams is an approval addict, right? And in many ways I've lived my life as an approval addict. I'm looking for people to thumbs up, and that's a challenge because I'm also incredibly disruptive. I'm incredibly change-oriented. And so like, I live in this vicious cycle where I want people to approve the change, but I always want to be bleeding edge, and I need people to approve. Like, don't live yourself in that cycle. But what we as digital pastors really need to be are the screw-it people. And let's just find the pub, find twenty people, and change the world. That's the mentality that we're looking for. That's the mentality I think that's going to be successful today in digital ministry and digital discipleship.

The world will see what we're doing. They already are. Some of the conversations that Mark was experiencing at Expo as a result of planting, and Andy and Leighton was very encouraged by some of even some of the feedback towards the church digital. Like, we are—it's an incredible opportunity. But rather than being discouraged in this situation, I would encourage you to keep pressing on. They lock us out of buildings. Realize that those buildings are lids and limitations to what we can do, and let's keep pressing forward with this idea of digital and how we can reach the people successfully and disciple the people and mobilize and multiply and release people digitally and physically. We can impact people that the physical buildings are not reaching, impacting. That's it. That's the time for today.

I hope this has been good. I have really enjoyed hanging out with the eight of you that stuck around this long. El Michelle, Scott, you know, Hector, Gerald, Spencer, Deborah, Whitebeard—let's hang out, man. I want to learn more about you. You've hit my radar a couple times, and to be honest, the pink mink kind of scared me off a little bit, but understanding you a little bit better in this conversation is good.

But hey, listen, if you've got thoughts on this, if you're in chat, great. If you are hanging out with us in other space, my cell number is 484-324-8724. Once again, that's number four. The church would love to hang out with you guys. But feel free to text me any thoughts, challenges, questions, prayer requests. Let's be praying for the church digital once ahead. There is some just started a community to curate content talks like this on X. I love that you're in X, El Michelle. So awesome. Check out that link. But let's continue the conversation. There's going to be some big announcements coming out of church digital in the next week or so. Really excited about some things coming up very soon that's going to impact ministry through the church digital as we know it. So stay tuned.

I can't—I, man, listen, I am a guy who loves leaking stuff before it's supposed to, and I really want to leak this. I really want to tell you. I can't, though. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. El Michelle, I can't do it. Don't make me do it. I really—I just—Barbara Carrero somewhere is drilling into me right now. Leon says it's okay. Leon is currently on a cruise ship. Leon isn't talking to anybody. Okay, tiny leak. The website. So we, TCD, will have a new website. We're gonna—I think I've been teasing the website since January, first week of January, but April 5th, I've told the team, hell or high water, the church digital is going to relaunch the website April 5th. And so that is going to snowball into a whole bunch of other things. And so I'm excited about some of the organizational shifts, some of our shifts in community. Really, it's structured around that, right? This connection, which leads to community, where discipleship happens and leads our people towards multiplication and mobilization. And our job to mobilize them—that right there. You want the leak? That's the leak. That right there. Hey, we created a model for what digital church could be. And oh, by the way, that's how we're going to structure the church digital moving forward.

It's, you know, I've said this: the church digital is not about me organizationally. Even the leading of this is not about me. It's we're led by a team, and I'm really excited to see what this team's got in store for us in the days, in the weeks, the weeks, the weeks to come. Stay tuned. April 5th, my head will either explode like the emoji or it's going to be an awesome day. Hopefully my head explodes like the emoji, although somebody would say clean up on aisle four, and then that would get weird.

Awesome. All right, so hey, I'm gonna stall for maybe thirty more seconds, but as we're landing the plane, I feel like I'm on the church digital podcast as we're landing the plane. Jeff, any closing thoughts?

No, listen, it's been awesome hanging with you all, and we're going to do this more often here in Fam or maybe some other community platform yet to be publicly announced. I don't know. Are we—are we moving? I'm not allowed to say that. Don't make me say it. Oh, Michelle. All right, I'm out. Hey, love you all. Have a good one.