EP297 - Jeff talks about hybrid microsites

And so the idea of a micro site is that you're empowering people with the digital resources of a church service to open up their home, their workplace, or even to go into missional areas to create a church service. And through the creation of that church service, connect with people, invite them into a community, build relationships with them to the point of, within the physical micro location, to the point to where you're capable of having a relationship strong enough to get into discipleship.

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 discipleship 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 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 multiply the church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Jeff Reed here. I have been hanging out here on Discord with my friends Whitebeard, Andy Mage, a rock, y'all, Trizzle, my new friend Trizzle from Eastern Europe coming by to say hey, coming on with us, and DK stopped by for a little bit. DK was in a podcast with us not that long ago talking about African-American churches. And so we had an interesting conversation already about race here in Discord, and before the podcast even started, before I pressed record. And so right up front, we're recording this live in Discord. We typically do this Tuesdays at 1 PM Eastern, and so keep an eye on that if you have not joined our Discord yet. What's wrong with you? Like, come on. The Church No. It's Discord. Open up a web browser. Discord.thechurch.digital.

Now, some pastor actually told me they said, "Jeff, well, I don't believe in Discord because we're called to be in one accord. We should be friends. We should not be in Discord together." Now, if your church, or as you and an individual, are taking the label Discord of the platform to mean that we are at war and animosity with one another, then I want to challenge you up front that you should hang out with us in the Church Digital Discord account, because it is the server, because it is so much fun. I'll just be honest up here at the front of the podcast. This is not what I want to talk about. We're going to talk about learning communities, micro churches coming up right around the corner. I'm looking at Riverside right now, reading the script. I'm ignoring the script that's in Riverside Credible software, the church.digital ride, but I'm ignoring the script because I want to talk about this thing with Discord.

You know what? I'm kind of, I don't know that I'm officially saying this publicly. I'm kind of giving up on social media. Like, the percentage of time that I spent on social media this time last year compared to the amount of time that I'm spending on it this year, I am spending much. Hey, Mala, coming in from Nigeria. I am Trizzle, Eastern Europe. You guys should connect together. You're probably in the closer time zones, Trizzle and Mala. Here's the truth. I don't spend much time in social media anymore. It's official. I am saying this. I don't, I mean, it's true. I don't spend much time on social media. I spend time in digital community because I find the digital community, like, people are engaging. People can dialogue. You can build relationships. And I would rather build relationships with people like Whitebeard and a rock and Mala and Trizzle. Trizzle already friended me on Discord. I met him today, and I'm looking forward to having a one-on-one conversation with them coming up soon. Like, that's the thing. You know, it's funny. For the life of me, I'm trying to figure out why the church has so much discomfort centered around the idea of digital community.

Now, yes, the physical community, the church building, the refuge, we don't want to give that away. We don't want to lose our buildings. There is better. There is power in meeting together. Whether it's better or worse, it's not for me to say, but there is an opportunity to do things in one accord under the brick building roof that's there, and the Sunday morning service is important. Yes, all this is true. But there's something that can be said about coming together in digital community and building relationships digitally with people literally around the planet, in empowering leadership, empowering discipleship, empowering ministry, empowering evangelism.

You know what? I hope when I die, which according to the doctor is not going to be anytime soon—I'm actually getting healthier. A lot of the tests are coming back very positive, which is a good thing. I hope when I die, I have the opportunity to look face to face with Paul and ask Paul how he would have used digital community. Because I believe what we're doing through the Church Digital, creating this network, empowering ministry around the world globally, like, this is how Paul would be doing ministry in 2024. You can't convince me otherwise. Dude was on the road, in jail. Get, you know, put me in prison, give me a tablet. Let me connect. Let me write letters. I'm sorry, I can't be there in person. I'll be there when I can. I'm sending this guy along, Timothy. Yes, okay, a Discord lover, but it's okay. Things go on. Telling you good stuff, good stuff here.

Hey, listen, we got a great podcast coming up here. We are wrapping up season seven, the season with no name. Today, the season has been five episodes. This is the fifth. So we talked Andy Mage opened it up. Now the heart of this, the Church Digital is doing learning communities where we are helping churches like yours, physical churches, digital churches, ask better questions and experiment with new things like digital community. Andy Mage is doing a learning community on asynchronous community. It's going to be a great opportunity for a church to spend eight weeks this summer and experiment with how to do Discord and build Discord or Slack or Facebook groups or WhatsApp, whatever the platform that makes sense for you, to build it into the ministry of your church. Because through the connections that we have through social media, we drive them into the community, and through that community, we disciple them and lead them to Christ. Oh, so good, so good. You should be taking advantage of the digital community learning community.

We talked to Barbara Canero on digital communications, branding, focus, narrow target audience, figuring out who you're reaching. You can never niche small enough. No one is ever upset for niching too small. That's so true, man. I am so glad we had a conversation today with this woman in England, and she was praising our website. Barbara, the website design and the focus, because she's like, "You went for your target audience and you nailed it." And we did. So proud of it. And so Barbara is doing a learning community on global digital communications.

Now we're talking virtual reality. Trizzle, you should check out this one with virtual reality. Have you met Andy? No, excuse me. Tsunami, Stuart McPherson, Tsunami, joined us, and we actually had a conversation with Peyton Jones talking about planting church in virtual reality. Tsunami's goal—he's lead pastor at Vector Church, an online church planter—and his goal is to plant 100 churches in virtuality in the next ten years.

Then last week, we brought on Megan Carter. Megan Carter has a desire and a passion to start ministries for mental health, literally mental health ministry at your church. You want to figure out how to be healthy with volunteers and create a healthy culture? Be part of this learning community for Megan Carter. With Megan Carter, eight weeks. All these are eight weeks this summer. The asynchronous, the digital communications, the virtual reality, the mental health, and mine, the idea of hybrid micro sites. All of this is going to be eight weeks. Individual, you speak like mine, as people in my learning community are only working with me. We'll get into what a micro site is and hybrid micro sites here in a minute. But all of this is going to be $797. And for more information, $797, eight weeks, 100 bucks a week. You get the sessions all online. You get a community to talk through in Discord. More information at thechurch.digital/lc. The church.digital/lc.

Hey, guys, that was pretty commercialized for that. And so as we're wrapping up season seven, the season never to be named, because all the names that we could come up with were garbage, I am so excited about season eight and season nine. So guys, it's going to be an incredible month or so coming up. $99.63 a month, Whitebeard is telling me. Whitebeard, so that's $797 divided by eight. Good call. I am so excited. So episode 300, we scheduled it. It's going to happen here in Discord. And you know what? Let me just say it. I'll just say it. Like, we teased what this idea was going to be on this, on the episode with Tsunami, at the end of the episode, kind of like post-credit scenes Marvel. We were just hanging out, and we came up with the idea for what we wanted episode 300 to be. And oh my gosh, it happened. And so I'm going to make you, I'm not going to tell you what's going to happen with 300. You're going to have to go back, but oh my gosh, everything we dreamed came true. And so episode 300, as scripted in that Tsunami episode, is happening in a couple weeks, and we're going to do it in Discord. And I'm so excited to see episode 300 happen right around the corner. I think we're, this is 297, right? So we got two episodes coming up, and then episode 300, and they were going to kick off season eight.

I'm just, I'm not even going to talk about it. I'm not because it is so good. The next four months of this podcast, of this stream, of Discord, doing this on Discord, has been life-giving to me, having the audience in here, the chat coming in, the conversations. It's so good. And if you are not doing anything in Discord, if you are not utilizing digital community, if you're not utilizing streaming for content creation, oh my gosh, you should be looking at this and doing this. What's wrong? Take some steps and get into that. Okay, I'm preaching. Let's get into it here today.

We're going to talk about hybrid micro sites. And, well, to be honest, I thought about who to bring in to the conversation, and I just decided, you know what? I'm just going to like do myself. That sounded weird. I'm just going to like interview myself. Well, that sounds even worse. I'm just going to talk straight through for like, you know, an hour, because that's what I do. I just talk a lot. Like, I've already been talking for, know, for ten minutes. I do ten minutes of a pre-show, but I do a lot of talking. And it seems like with this hybrid, I've actually been talking a lot on other channels and platforms with hybrid micro sites. And I thought, man, I don't want to tag any more of these people because I'm already tagging them so often in other spaces. So I thought, man, I just would develop a script. You know, sometimes I ignore my script. Well, today I'm not going to ignore it. I'm going to try to stick with it and actually go through and talk about what a hybrid micro site is.

So let's just even back up. What's a micro site? You know, listen, because I've had, I've say that to people and they're like, "Well, Jeff, we don't even know what a micro site is. Like, you, um, what, what, what are you talking about?" Okay, so the idea is that a micro church site, or a micro church, or a watch party, like, these are things that happen in a displaced location.

Area outside of the church building where you are engaging or being the church, um, possibly complemented by digital. So for example, a watch party. Life Church actually started the idea of the watch parties. They would broadcast their services online and would challenge people to watch them at home, which is great, but invite their friends and neighbors and others over to the house to experience it with them. And so then when Life Church was doing this, I believe they were the first. Life Church was literally opening up their, up people's homes to be the watch party. Now Elevation actually has done this. Elevation has had at one point they had a watch party pastor. Hey, RF, TJ, how you doing? My buddy from Miami, how you doing, man? Man, I haven't seen you in a long time. Great, thanks for coming by. But the idea of the watch party in Life Church—excuse me, Elevation Church—actually had somebody on staff. I think I said that that was a watch party pastor where that person was responsible for even starting some of these watch parties. And but the goal of the watch party is it's very easy and simple to do. It's basically figure out how to get the church service from your phone or the Apple TV to the TV and stream the service in. And so like that's the very easy end of what's happening, you know? The Elevation Church, by the way, we get into this. Elevation started campuses. Life Church used to watch parties to birth campuses as well. And so there, that's a very simple approach. And then that the other extreme is let's call them micro churches. So you got what Elevation does. And hey, you know what, man? Listen, if you're—if I joke about this with small groups—like if you can break out the seven-layer bean dip and press play on your Apple TV remote, you can do a watch party. And then the other extreme, you know, it's what the church, the micro church. They don't have the digital resources that are complimenting it. Like let's take, you know, stuff that Rob Wagner is doing with Kansas City Underground or Tampa Underground. Everything that they're doing up, and this is the area where, um, where Whitebear's at, you know, they're not complimenting anything with what's happening digitally. Like the person is leading the conversation. The person's dialoguing. There's no sermon on video. There's no worship on video. Anything that's happening in that micro church is at the full. And so it's a much—Rob with Kansas City Underground, he has a much higher expectation of what's happening at the micro church. And so you've got seven-layer bean dip guy. I mean, all I gotta do is press play and hope the video connects. And then you've got the guy that's or gal that's doing everything. And really the question isn't even just about like, are you capable of creating a church service on your own? But it really starts to get into questions of discipleship. Like, who's responsible for the discipleship of the person? Now at the watch party, it's very easy to say, oh, you know what? Hey, the video's going to do that, and we'll try to get these people connected into a small group, and everything will be great. And that the micro church has a much more hands-on approach towards discipleship where it's not just, hey, I'm going to route them into a small group, and we're not going to just like watch this video, but we want to actually have have the people that are investing in the lives of others. And so now listen, whether it's a watch party or a micro church doesn't matter. Different ways reach different people. But there's this middle ground that's very effective, and that's what we're calling a micro site. The idea is to take the ease of the church service and the responsibility for discipleship and merge that into here. And so the idea of a micro site is that you're empowering people with the digital resources of a church service to open up their home, their workplace, or even to go into missional areas to create a church service. And through the creation of that church service, connect with people, invite them into a community, build relationships with them to the point of, within the physical microloc, to the point to where you're capable of having relationship strong enough to get into discipleship, to the point where people trust you strong enough to get into discipleship. And so once again, it's not really about how, where you are at a watch party or a micro church or the mid version of a micro site that I'm such a fan of, but it really does come down to what works best for your church. Does your church have, um, you know, a very loose policy where they're really not tracking what's happening? Is your church very control-centric? Or very empowering of others where they want people to disciple and lead on their own? Or is it more of a safe ground to kind of start out? Um, that's what I really see with the micro site. It's really a great place to test the waters, test some people, or even grow from a watch party into a micro center.

So hey, listen, there's what you really need to ask yourself in looking at is to make your decision about what you want to go, which direction to go. It really does come down to the discipleship capacity of your volunteer leaders. By the way, I may have said this like all these are volunteer leaders. Like I don't know any church right now, and there's lots of churches that are experimenting with the idea of micro sites. Hey, Zach, um, like I would even throw out, um, First Capital Christian, Tyler Sansom. It's a good friend of course. And so he is, um, he's doing the, um, he's doing the micro sites, and his approach to micro sites is much more based on, um—sorry, my doorbell literally just rang, and I realized I didn't do something today, but I'm not going to break stream. So my son's going to come in a minute and say because he's home from school. He's like, Dad, what am I going to do? I was like, just figure it out, CJ. Tell, tell them all call. But the idea is that with Tyler does is he's got volunteers that are doing this now. He goes for more of the micro site type of model because they utilize the church service broadcast to come in there, but you've got a strong discipleship-centric leader at each of the micro locations, at each of the micro sites, that's capable of leading conversations, that's capable of discipling an individual, of building the relationships that understands the aspect of church.

Now remember, all this follows the pattern we talked about this a lot. The people we connect with are in a community. Connection leads to community. Our community allows us to build relationships that takes us to the place of discipleship. Now remember, we said this. We've talked about this before. Our connections, the people we're connecting with digitally, we should invite them into a digital community. As this is the model for a digital church, the people we connect with digitally, social media, email, even a physical space, invite them into a digital community. Since it's a digital church, and through the digital church, we build relationships that lead towards discipleship. And our discipleship should lead towards multiplication. That's just a model for a digital church. That model works as a physical church as well. The people that we connect with in our neighborhoods, you know, your pastors want you to invite them into a physical church community. They want you to invite them in this Sunday morning. Hopefully that Sunday morning service connects them into what small group or however that church is doing discipleship. And hopefully through there you're learning how to invite other people into the community. That's not really a church multiplication strategy, but it's something. And so like that's the model. And by the way, that's a micro church model as well. You know, Tyler's got holes as a micro church. So the idea is people in your neighborhoods, invite them in to be a part of the micro site. Um, your friends are coworkers. Maybe you're doing it. It's easier if you really want to target your coworkers. Maybe you're doing it at the workplace. Hey, every Tuesday at lunch, we're going to go into the conference room. I'll bring in food, and we're going to do a church service right in here. And you watch the church service together on a Tuesday. Maybe it's, you know, I've even seen, uh, retired RNs, registered nurses. Um, RN, say, is it registered nurses? I don't think I said that right. But I've seen retired RNs, um, start micro sites in, uh, hospitals and, um, rehab centers. I've seen former prisoners go back and start micro sites in prisons. I mean, literally going back to rehabilitate those that have left. So there's lots of opportunities to use this model. But once again, the model is the same. The people that we're connecting with at the hospital, at the orphanage, at the after-school daycare center, whether it's employees or whether it's kids at the prison, the people we're connecting with at prison, we invite them into the community. And this would be with the micro, um, and that for to experience the service, into the community aspects of the service. And with that relationship that we're building, we invite them into a disciple-making relationship that's external from that. That disciple-making relationship can't exist digitally. You can do something in Discord. It can exist physically if you want to compliment on that. And this is where the idea of hybrid really comes in because you're using hybrid church service to build, develop physical relationships, and then you have the opportunity to do physical or digital discipleship to complement that.

Well, you're asking me what's the difference between this and a small group? What's the difference between a micro site and a small group? You know, I would challenge you, and it's funny like I was actually as a pastor, I was doing micro sites back in 2016. I mean, we had, as the digital pastor here in Miami, we had micro sites in the Key West, in the Keys, in New York. We had a network in New York. We had, um, Carolina, a couple in the Carolina, one in Georgia. Like we were, um, we were extending pretty rapidly. We were seeing lots of growth internationally as well down in Latin and South America because we had lots of resources down there. And as leadership was, I've told the story where I built this thing without leadership even really knowing it existed. Like they just said, run, Jeff, you know? And I ran and I built everything. And then just as the story goes, I needed budget to increase to support where we were going. And so, hey, loser Josh—that's an awkward thing to say in the middle of the podcast—but as you know, I needed budget, right? And so when I asked for budget, they were like, wait, what are you actually doing? And I had to pump the brakes, and for six months I had to like answer all their questions and sit down with them once a week and literally get drilled about what we were doing and what it looked like and why and how. And also of questions that I assume they knew, um, but to be honest, I didn't take the time to tell them. And that's on me. I'm not mad at them for that. But one of the questions that I got from leadership that we spent a month talking about this: what's the difference between a small group and a micro site? If a small group has done well, maybe nothing. If a small group is done poorly, a whole bunch. You see, the deals with small groups, and maybe it depends upon how your church does small groups, there are small groups where, um, it's very rich, um, very meaningful relationships where people are invested and involved in each other's lives and speak truth and pray for one another. And I'm not

Just talking about the one hour on Wednesday, I'm talking about 24/7, 365, like you're engaged in dialogue with that. Um, where your small group isn't about the material you're discussing, but the conversations that are happening throughout. Now, there are churches that do that, and I've been on staff with churches I've been on churches that have incredible discipleship strategies. The funny thing is the church that was incredible with the discipleship strategy had a horrible evangelism strategy, and the church that had an incredible evangelism strategy, to be honest, didn't have a really good discipleship strategy. There may be something to that. Maybe we can drill into that later.

But the other model of small groups is, you know, say what I was talking about, like a very high standard of discipleship that's like the micro church. And the other standard's more like the watch party. Listen, all I need you to do is be capable of pressing play on the DVD. Open up right now media, and this is the Bible studies that you can choose from. You choose which one you want to, or hey, you know what, we're all going to do this one together, and here's the dialogue questions for you. We've already got it figured out, and here's the Bible verse you can talk about when it's time to pray, and just write down the prayer request and pray for them.

Now, mind you, there's nothing wrong with that. But what you're doing with the watch party model with this model of small group is you're basically shelling out discipleship responsibilities to a video. The challenge of that is, well, who's at what point do you get off the spiritual milk and get on solid food? At what point do you feed yourself? At what point do you start to work towards not your own concerns in feeding yourself, but what point do you start feeding others and start being the—this is the multiplication aspect that's often lost.

Because what we try to do, especially in evangelism-centric churches, I believe, is you really try to push a lot of groups because you need a lot of groups because you want a lot of community because this is where growth and discipleship happens. You need more community, need more space, you need bigger TVs and people with more chairs in front of those TVs. And so listen, like, we'll video all the discipleship. You don't have to do anything other than press play and bring out the seven-layer dip.

And there's an opportunity for to complement through video content, and then there's an opportunity to also have a leader capable. And that's in this middle. And so I would say the difference between a small group and a micro site is that the micro site itself is more centric on discipleship, on empowering a leader to build relationships because there's a stronger understanding of what discipleship or disciple-making looks like for them and it looks like for the people they're working on.

You know what Tyler's been doing? I keep dropping Tyler's name, but I think it's a great example. Tyler's been doing this for a while. Five years, I think he's up to twenty micro sites. He's got—he told me it's funny—he's got micro sites from Indiana because that's where he's at, Cordon, Indiana. He's got micro sites from Indiana to India, literally globally as well. Bunch, bunch in the area, maybe seventy-five percent, you know, within thirty-mile radius of his church in small-town Cordon, Indiana, and then he's got several in America and several overseas. They're even doing like a film thing in Africa, film school. Like, it's really exciting to see some of the stuff that he's doing and how he's utilizing that connection, people he's connecting with digitally, starting to help them create communities globally and am helping them do discipleship in there.

And maybe that's really the difference between a small group and a micro site because a small group is basically, hey, you're going to watch this material and you're going to talk about it. Uh, you're going to read this book and you're going to talk about it, and you're going to pray for each other. A micro site is, I mean, yeah, you could cheapen it by saying, oh, you're just going to watch this church service and you're going to talk about it, but the standard is higher than that. The standard is much more about how do we empower the leader to be the disciple in that situation.

All right, so here, let me ask some questions. Why should your church, why should you invest time and resources into the micro sites? Number one, I believe this is a natural extension of online. I wrote a book pre-COVID. I joke, uh, I want to do a new version of this, version two, because post-COVID everything's changed. And my book pre-COVID, I'm not sure it's still valid anymore, but it was "What Happens When Church Online Grows Up." Hey, in charge, uh, what happens when church online grows up? I wrote it, um, you know what, I don't even think you can find it right now because I don't think it's on the new website. I think we took it off. But the fact is is that we want, um, we want to see our relationships digitally extend physically. We want to see our discipleship digitally extend physically. You've heard me talk about this: online to offline. The gospel that we hear in our online world has to influence our offline relationships. Otherwise, all we're doing is creating consumers. If all we're doing is hearing and we're not actually doing anything physically or doing anything digitally in response to that, are we really disciple-makers, or are we just consuming a product digitally?

James 1:22, I misquote this all the time, but as I'm paraphrasing here, do not just be hearers of the word online and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says in the physical world or in the virtual world or in the insert to whatever world you want there because the fact is is that we need to be living the act, the life that we're learning. Otherwise, we're just consuming a product that's not really influencing us. And that's where I believe uh micro sites is an incredible opportunity to extend that ministry beyond just hearing. It gives people the opportunity for doing.

Could you just imagine if your church had a network of twenty-five, thirty, fifty, one hundred jacked-up disciples digitally around the planet that were utilizing your church's resources and ways to reach the kingdom? That's what I did in New York. We had a guy in New York who was—we were like, I said, I was a digital pastor in Miami. Uh, one of the one of my friends moved up to New York who was still connected to the church, and um, he was so on fire for God. I don't remember why he wanted to move up to New York, uh, but he he was up near family and friends, and he he just—he was my pilot guy and and on doing this whole micro church thing. In 2016, there were not—I think it was us and Sele back, man. It was not a lot of micro church, micro sites.

And um, and so you know, had conversations with this guy, prepped him, gave him all the resources in advance, ask him questions all the time. Um, and he was actually our—my second one. My first one that we launched was in the Florida Keys, but I could drive down to the Keys and get face to face with the guy in the Keys anytime. The guy in New York, that's a plane flight. So I had to do everything via—I was on Blue Jeans at the time. We didn't use to do Zoom. And uh, but what we did was we had we had the ability to get face-to-face via Blue Jeans and coached them and discipled them and prepped him. And so he did a couple meetings. This is crazy. He did a couple meetings, and um, of his one location, he met at a Barnes & Noble, I believe, for the first couple. And and what he actually found out at the Barnes & Noble was the people were so displaced around the city of New York, there were so many different boroughs—is that the right word?—so many different regions of New York City. He decided at the second meeting he was going to start a network, and he took it on himself to disperse everybody. And my man here, by meeting three, had five different locations spread across New York City. He's a volunteer, not a staff guy, not even breathing the same air. He's in the same time zone, but how many states away from Florida to New York? Dude, he was crushing it. Like, he was training the people. The people were excited. Uh, they were utilizing our resources. Sometimes, sometimes they was preaching on their own. And we, you know, for him, I took—we'll get into accountability—but I took a very hands-off approach to let him grow uh the ministry that he was doing with his network because what we were seeing and what he was setting the standard for was not just being a hearer of the word and deceiving himself. He was doing what he was hearing.

You also have to realize, you know, another reason to do micro um is that it's a safe front door to the building. Now listen, there are people. The average person, the average first-time guest watches your church service four to six times before they come uh into the physical church building. That's LifeWay. That's a proven fact. Lifeway.com, Southern Baptist Convention. What I think is another way to engage with dechurched and people that have been burned by the church is utilizing micro locations as a bridge to the physical building because you got to remember, micro locations is all about the relationship of the leader. And the leader, yes, can bring people straight to the physical church building, or the micro uh leader can bridge people by inviting them into the home.

You know, it's interesting. Uh, okay, Francis Chan does a lot with micro church. Okay, so maybe this is a—I don't want to say the word jaded, but this is a biased statement. Evangelical uh, Francis Chan evangelism. The future is not going to happen in cathedrals or temples, but it'll happen in living rooms and couches, living rooms and homes, homes and couches, homes and living rooms, something like that. You can Google it right now. Whitebeard is Googling Francis Chan trying to find that quote. Um, and hopefully he does find it because I don't think I butchered it that bad. Actually, I know I know I had it. I referenced it. I did a podcast with Daniel Ims a while back. I am—this is three or four years ago. This is back when I wrote the first book, um, pre-COVID, um, "What Happens When Church Online Grows Up." Daniel Ims talked about social space. You know, you got like your large church buildings, you got your small home gatherings, you got your one-on-one conversations. There's different levels. Um, Daniel Ims talked about social space, which is twenty-five people. And Daniel Ims talked about how the church is horrible at doing social space. Like, think about it. What what gathering right now do you have that's ten? I mean, let's—you you can get one-on-one with a pastor or a campus pastor. You can get, you know, one on three with your close group of friends that you have at the church. You can join a small group, which is most likely, you know, ten plus or minus. And then you've got the mega building, mega attendance, which maybe you're at a church service of fifty, one hundred, five hundred, five thousand, doesn't matter. Um, but you really don't have a social space of that twenty-five. And that that's where there's comfort. It's intimidating. It's easy to get lost um in in the large gathering. There's not a relational connection at the large gathering. Just be honest. I mean, unless you're at a small church with fifty people. Well, and and I'll even say it this way. Like, my small, my church, Reality Church, I think there two hundred fifty people there. There's probably seventy-five to one hundred people attending each service. If I want to walk in, sit in a chair, listen to the sermon, worship, walk out, not talk to anybody, I can do that even at a small church. So you don't get that relational connection at the large gathering. That may hurt some of your pastors, but the reality is you don't have social space. Twenty-five gives you a safe space to have conversations and dialogue where people can be seen and heard and understood without the intimidation of of one to ten or one to three or one to one. You know, it's funny. People, people, pastors think, oh, I should get one-on-one with as many people as—

Possible first off, not everybody wants to get one-on-one with you. Um, that's intimidating. What would what would I talk about with the past? That past? Like, it's they're honored that you want to offer. So I'm saying don't like offer, but don't build the thing around you. Build it around others. So the idea of a super group, a safe space, a micro site for 25, to give people an opportunity to get exposed to some new ideas without the pressure. Think about it. Another reason you're going to reach a different type of person using micro locations then you will with the building. Yes, you can bridge people from the micro locations to the building. You can also do something different to reach someone different. Like, let's just think about it. The giga churches: Life Church, uh, Mariners out in California, Geer's a friend of mine, um, Sea Coast. I mean, crap, even Christ Fellowship Miami, where I'm at down here. Church giga church, you know, 5,000, 7,000, 10,000 people. VGA churches, 10, 1,000, 2,000. Um, medium-sized churches, 500, 700. Small churches, 150, 200. A micro church, micro location, 25, 15. Online, hundreds, thousands. These are all different types of churches, right? What's the best one? I mean, I know what I'm biased to. Your bias may be different than mine. I don't have to be right. Maybe, maybe you're right. What we need to recognize is that each the one God called you to. Whitebeard? Well, well said. What we need to recognize is that each of us are called to something different. Some of the largest churches on the planet operate in Korea. Tens to hundreds of thousands of people will gather in in in in a worship environment um in in in Korea. Some of the smallest churches on the planet are in India. We're talking three people underneath a palm tree or a mud hut. What's better? You're going to, you do different things to reach different people.

Now here's another fact for you to Google and look up. Whether you're on the podcast or or in the live room, you can hear me talk about this more and more. I love this. Bloomberg, uh, back in January of 2024, January of this year, to my knowledge, was the first uh company, the first publication to state the words "introvert economy." Introvert economy. What Bloomberg is stating is is that um, whether it's as a result of COVID or whatever the reason, there is a section of people that are not interested, that are no longer longer interested in physical um interaction with people. The idea of attending a mass gathering, a sporting event, a movie, a church service is not something they're interested in because they don't want the social pressure. And what introvert economy is, according to Bloomberg, is this massive shift of businesses moving away from the physical and instead trying to figure out how to get to people's homes or operate in a more distributed idea, distributed model.

So the challenge here for churches would be to recognize that our buildings are going to be really good at reaching the people that the buildings are going to reach. Not questioning that. But the idea of doing digital or the idea of doing micro or the idea of doing virtual or the idea of doing gaming, all of these give us an opportunity to reach someone different that the buildings will not reach. And that's what we're going to get with micro. That's what you're going to get with M, like Rob's doing, uh, Lucas Pulley. What Lucas is doing up in Tampa, underground. What um Jason Stewart is uh doing oh my in um Texas at church project. Oh my gosh, it's not Jason Stewart. I can't think of Jason's last name. Jason Shephard at at uh at Texas in uh church project. Oh my gosh, I want to tell you so badly. I want to tell you so badly what's coming up season eight. This is the perfect opportunity. I could just, you know what, no, not going to. We're gonna tease it, gonna sit on it. I don't, I don't leak. I don't, I I leak like a sieve, okay, um, but I'm I'm gonna hold on to this because I'm just so excited about it.

Here's the reality too. If you tie it in micro sites, if you tie that into your church's micro uh, you know, church's multiplication strategy, maybe a series of a micro site or a couple, two or three micro sites, that becomes your next church plan, becomes the next campus for you to launch, or it becomes a network of micro sites. That's actually what happened to the New York Network. The New York Network actually broke off uh from the church at at the time, and so we actually planted. I can tell you off that off that work that we did up there in New York, two churches were planted in the city of New York. Actually, I keep up with one of the guys on a regular basis now. And so there's, you can tie micro locations and micro sites, micro churches, even watch parties, you can tie that into the micro church strat into your church's strategy. But there has to be awareness of what's happening and support for it.

Historically, that's the one thing I did not do. And I I wrote several blogs about this um for Resi. Like, I was horrible at communicating what I was actually doing um with leadership. I ran um, when I when I should have walked and I should have brought others along. And so that's actually a lessons that I learned at a personal level with the church digital. That's why Andy and uh flat cap, like flat cap man, thanks for jumping in here, um, you know, even uh even white people here coming on board and looking forward to getting to know him more and and involving him in the process and and even seeing how he's going to grow his ministry through through the church digital.

I, historically, I made ministry about me. When I look at Paul's ministry, I don't, I never get the idea that Paul's ministry was about Paul. Paul wanted to preach to the Gentiles. Others didn't. He fought for that. But I don't think he when on the attack on it. I just think he corrected wrong when he saw it. When he saw unholy actions, when he saw things that needed to be addressed in the church, he addressed it. But I don't think he attacked it. I think Paul, you know, was he a church planter? Maybe, because he planted churches all over the place. But he was also a networker. And he used us, the Roman roads, his letters, he used his trips, he used it all to spread.

When I, when I even just like literally Trizzle, I'm I'm drilling a little bit here, man, at the idea of of where you are in check. How can we help you? What do you need? How can, how can we fan the flame of what's happening to see ministry extend digitally in in in uh in uh Eastern Europe? Not for the glory of the church digital, not for the glory of myself, not for the glory of Trizzle, whoever that is, but for the glory of God.

It's all about control. I've learned this now. If you knew me ten years ago, if you knew me five years ago, 2018, is that six years ago? No, I guess that's six years ago. I'm a I'm a different person now than I was six years ago. Six years ago, I was I was broken, not in the way I'm broken now. It's funny, God keeps breaking me new ways. I keep putting myself back together, and God finds another way to break me. Maybe I just need to stay broken. Wow, that's a thought. Oh, come back to that one, Jeff.

But the reality was six years ago, I was a control freak. Seven years ago, I was a control freak. And I so it was me leading uh digital ministry, very strong direction, drive. And if you know me, you know I'm very strong direction drive. Now, there's a reason my hands a fist right now. If you're watching this on YouTube or video, because I was very controlling, very domineering. Uh, my friends from back then know that is true. And my friends are very few back then because that was true. Um, and and I went, I went toe-to-toe um with churches, with leadership, um with my leadership uh because they didn't agree or they didn't see or they didn't support um a lot of lot of these ideas. But I've learned it's not about controlling the situation. I've really, I've I've learned to take a step back.

It's funny. I wrote this, I wrote this blog recently for Presi. The best advice I was ever given was Eric Guyer. Second time mentioned this podcast. His name on this podcast. We I was literally I was talking digital with Eric Guyer. This is 20, let me say it this way. This is before, this is 2005, 2004. I'm literally talking to Eric Guyer, executive pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami, about doing digital ministry. He had hired me to be a digital pastor um in 2005. I would have been, if we had actually had done it, I'm not calling myself this because I wasn't, but I would have been one of the first ten easy back then. I other in Life Church, I don't know anybody else, maybe another two church or two, 2005. Um, but what what Guyer told me was, "Jeff, if if you're trying to convince me of something, I don't understand anything you're saying. I literally don't understand the words that are coming out of your mouth. If you're going to convince me, learn to use my language." That 2005, twenty years ago, nineteen years ago, human words. I don't know of any other word that any other statement, any other sentence that had more uh effect on me than that right there.

I had to learn how to speak Guyer. For a couple years now, I don't know that I was really good at speaking Guyer, and I didn't always agree with Guyer, and Guyer didn't always agree with me. Um, but I learned how to communicate with him because I learned what was important to him, and I had to figure out how to align digital to meet his once desires, needs, goals, standards, missions, vision, drive. Plug in the word. The idea of a micro location, the idea of digital community, the idea of a um mental health ministry, the idea of targeted digital communications, the idea of a virtual reality church, all of these are great ideas. Dr. John's nickname for me is "idea guy." When we're writing the uh the book uh "Sharing Jesus Online" together, he literally, I just, I'd come up with crazy ideas, crazy ideas, crazy ideas, crazy ideas. I I was throwing ideas at him all day long um. He's like, "Jeff, you're the idea guy." It's funny. He even told me too. He's like, "You need to not be the idea guy. You need to like find the thing that you want to do and do it." And so I can be idea guy for other people. The church digital, empowering those ideas to happen, others to do it, that's what I get to do. I get to work with the Trizzle and the flat caps and the Andys and and the loser Joshes and the whitebeards and the inch charges and and help them do the ministry they're doing.

You know, it is kind of frustrating. I I'll just be honest here on as we're wrapping up this podcast um, trying to put a time on this. 2017, in the year 2017, I had somebody hand me a check in my name written to me, four figures, um, and in the memo line, signed and in the memo line said, "Only deposit if you're planting a church." Literally, I'd received a check, seven years ago, go to start a church. Somebody saw that vision in me. The ICU conversation, this pastor saw in me the opportunity to do something and challenged me to do that and wrote a decent sized check, all things all things considered, to supporting me and getting started towards it. For seven years, I prayed. I still pray. God is in my time. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm shaking my head no for a reason. For whatever reason, God says no. God says help. I agree with him. I mean, I'm not saying this fighting. I'm not saying this arguing. I'm not negative about that idea. Like I said, I'm drilling over the idea of helping Trizzle. I love seeing what Whitebeard's doing, what flat, Whitebeard, yeah, Whitebeard. I open up my email and I get a church today, and you know, clicking through, I I spend like two minutes a day looking at my uh in Google in Gmail at the updates folder because that's basically all the newsletters and um I see, you know, I do a lot of work with churchproduction.com, and so when I see their emails and they send a lot of emails, I open up theirs and um I see this guy named Tom and Thom and I see the last name and I'm like, I know Tom. I think that's Tom. And so I click on this.

Video and start watching this video they're talking about PTZ remotes and sure enough I see Tom, I see Whitebeard, I see Tom on this video. It's like, oh man, that's so awesome. I love that he's getting out there in that space and is creating assets for church production. You know, a little bit of me kind of felt like he was cheating on me a little bit. Like I felt like a jilted lover, but uh, I got over that quickly. I was able to like, hey, good for you Tom, because it's not about Jeff. It's not even about Tom. It's about, you know, resourcing and helping people in ministry. I love what Flaps is doing with his um, with his prayer booth. He gives up updates on that every weekend. Excited to see some of that stuff coming together. I love the ministry that you all are doing, and that's where I'm so excited about Discord because it gives us the opportunity to do it together, to celebrate, to pray for one another, to talk about how we can help. Because dude, that's my mandate from God. What has God called you to do? Whitebeard asked earlier. Do whatever God calls you to. My job's to help. I mean, literally, that might be the tattoo on my body. Help God. God help. Close quote. God. You got to figure out how to say that better, but that's the challenge that I want to invite you to step up, step into this thing and roll.

The learning communities are a great opportunity to do that. Hey, here, just real quick, let me roll through this. Just for, I don't know why, but um, with this micro church learning community, the eight sessions. Why are we doing micro churches? Number one. Number two, control, accountability, and reporting. What are the options there? What does that look like? Recruiting, equipping, and empowering the leader is going to be option three. Number four, location, location, location. Where are you doing this thing? And it doesn't make sense. How do you be missional with where you're putting these things where it makes sense with the people you're working with? Number five, technology and non-technology solutions for micro church. Some really interesting things coming up there. Number six, budgets, tithes, and voting. How are you going to handle that? Number seven, scaling and reproducing. What does it look like to scale and reproduce these micro churches? Each where we even get a micro church or micro site creating and birthing its own micro sites, and you start to see generations happen. And then number eight, experimenting, failing, and iterating. I guess maybe that should be fail, experiment, and iterate, but we can talk about that. Those are the eight sessions that we're going to get into here with the learning community, uh, with the micro sites, and I'm excited. I'm excited to see um, what God's going to do through this and the others.

So for more information on the micro church learning community, check out the church.digital. The church.digital for learning community. Um, and then we'll continue to send some emails out promoting it and getting the word out. Um, and hey, we're going to, I think land the plane. Episode 29, 28 is coming up next week, hanging out with Tom Pounder. We're doing a stream with Tom, uh, here, um. It's a different time and I think we're going to change it, so I'm not going to advertise when we're doing it, but check, uh, check the Discord calendar for Tom, and uh, know it's coming up. We're talking YouTube. Tom's doing some phenomenal stuff with YouTube. Excited to get that out there. 298. And we're actually going to start. Tom, I believe, is going to start streaming here on Discord as well. I'm doing some, doing some live shows like I am, and so excited to get more shows and more guys in here streaming and engaging in there and more guys as well. Just guys, but excited to see Tom come do that. And uh, hey, we're going to land the plane. So appreciate it. It's been a great podcast. I have talked for 57 minutes straight through, uh, with only a couple Diet Coke breaks, and so it's good to do that. One edit in the live stream, and of course, uh, everybody was great. Whitebeard, thanks for your help and fact-checking. Chi-Fi just walked in at the last minute. Flat cap and Trizzle. Uh, nice to meet you all and hang with you as well. If you got any questions, feel free to hit me up on the Discord. Uh, and if you're not in Discord, what the garbage is wrong with you? Uh, Discord and open up a web browser. Go to Discord, D-I-S-C-O-R-D, discord.church.digital. That'll get you in. Create an account, jump in, uh, say hey to somebody, and uh, all sorts of fun stuff happening there in Discord. So more questions, feel free to ask. See me there. Talk with you all later.