EP301 - Wait! That's A Church? - What, Why & How?

Is there anything that actually the traditional church can look at these expressions, not just the bar but any others, and say hold on, is there something that can help us engage people where they are in our buildings, in our church? Because this is not exclusive.

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's sake, 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 be a multiplying church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Church Digital podcast, episode 301. Three-zero-one here of the Church Digital. We have, uh, we survived episode 300, which is the Allen Hirs takeover of the digital church. It was beautiful. We had Alan Hirs on and a whole bunch of other people, whole bunch of planters in digital and virtual, and even a micro church, church at a bar, was on having a conversation with Allen Hirs. So go back and if you hadn't listened to it, check out your mobile app or find it on YouTube on the Church Digital's YouTube channel. Incredible episode, really loved Allan and the time that he spent coming to be a part of episode 300. But we can celebrate 300 at a different day because we got to move on to episode 301, which is kicking off season eight of the Church Digital podcast.

We're going to do something new here. We're toying with the idea of a new show. Um, if it works, great. If it doesn't work, well, that was a stupid idea. We'll, you know, chalk it up to somebody else's fault. But we're bringing on Joey Santos into the conversation. You want to say hey, Joey?

Hey, hey Jeff, how you doing?

Well, this I don't think there'll be a stupid idea, number one, right? I think you're, don't be stupid idea. I mean, we're gonna go for it. Go stupid or no stupid, either way we're gonna go down with the ship. No, I'm kidding. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

So Joey is a former digital pastor and so spent his time in physical church doing digital ministry. And it was interesting, you know, there's actually a trend of people that launched a digital church or digital ministry in context of a physical church, but then basically grew it out of the physical church. Like it became bigger, it became different, it became separate than what the physical church was. And so Anos Sarge is a great example of that with the stuff she's doing with the Chapel Online and digital discipleship. And Joey has started this with Church at a Bar.

So I want to get into this here in a second with Joey getting info on Church at a Bar, but really with season eight, Joey and I are kicking off this concept centered around "Wait, That's a Church." And so we're literally gonna highlight here through the Church Digital podcast for a season, and maybe eventually spin this off into a separate show, this idea of you're gonna love this: unique expressions of church, whether that be a micro church or a digital church or a virtual reality church or a church that meets in a pub or a strip club or, yeah, I know some strip club, cigar bars, homes, workplaces. Like people that are doing church in unique places and spaces.

And so, you know, that has always, to be honest, as a guy that has seen over a hundred people come to Christ in a brick-and-mortar mall in Wellington Green, Florida, through a business I ran down there, the idea of being the church in unique spaces has been in my heart for decades. And I'm seeing that in real time with my friend Joey here with Church at a Bar. And that's why, man, I want to dig in and kind of learn and highlight and celebrate some of these unique ways.

So man, Joey, thanks for jumping on here.

Oh man, Jeff, thanks for inviting me to be part of this opportunity. I think there's so much to be discussed. There's so much to be learned. And I think, you know, I don't think that what we're doing is unique. I just, we don't just don't talk about it enough. We just don't get out there and just discuss, open up to other church expressions, to show that church can happen in different ways and formats than what we usually know on a Sunday morning, you know, in the same kind of style of a church building in America. And there's nothing wrong with that, but now there's some other expressions of church, and I think it's important for people to know right off the bat though, like when we talk different expressions, we're not changing the basic biblical concept of church, right? And I think like we got to start talking about that first. Like, what's a church? You know, and what is not a church? Right? What's not the definition of a biblical church?

And when you go back to the first church and see how they did their gatherings and what they did to spend time together, right, to break bread together there, and they met in the temple courts and they, like, all these different ways of doing it. And then you fast forward just not much, just a little bit, and Paul writes in his letters where he starts greeting this church and those ones, they're meeting at homes, right?

So I think the very definition of church is that it is the gathering of people. They gathered in the name of Jesus to be in fellowship, to worship him, to grow together spiritually, to be there for each other, to have a community, a life in community where they share life together. I think all these aspects of biblical definition of church, that's what we're talking about when we say different expressions. Meaning the expression of church doesn't change in essence, but what comes to be different is the format. We're talking about a format that's not necessarily, you know, in a building, everybody sitting and looking in the same direction, and, um, or, you know, singing together. Many times singing together. The church at the bar, we don't have music. We worship in different ways, but not through music, because we don't have the infrastructure to do it. And then that's okay.

So I think that aspect of it, having that healthy conversation about what exactly are the opportunities that we have to gather together as the body of Christ, and can that actually happen outside the Sunday morning traditional format that we know? Yeah, and the second part is what kind of impact that can create in people's lives when they are introduced to different ways of doing the very thing that we wanted them to do, that's get to know Christ, have a life with him, accept him, and have communion with each other.

So I think that's really the arc we're trying to pursue here.

That's so good. You know, and so you're using a term, you know, oftentimes I've heard Alan Hirs talk on this and others, that minimal ecclesiology. Like, what is the base level of what makes a church a church? Now, you and I both worked in mega, giga churches, thousands of people attending on a Sunday, and it is an expression of worship and it's a valid expression of worship. But if we're honest, yeah, you know, the haze machine is not biblical. Like, that is something that would be extra-biblical. It's outside of the mandate of scripture for what the church is.

And so as we look at, yes, Acts 2:36-47, you know, we start to see examples of what the church is defined to be in biblical spaces. And so as we start to establish, okay, what's the core foundational level for what makes a church a church, you know, I can tell you on the Church Digital side, like I have a minimal ecclesiology of what I want to see. And sometimes, you know, other people have varying opinions on things like that, but it's always an interesting challenge to reimagine, not what scripture says, but applying the standard of scripture to a workplace environment like what you're doing at the bar.

And I know that barely scratches the surface of Church at a Bar or, you know, somebody who's doing church in virtual reality or somebody who's doing church in a home in a house church environment. And honestly, you know, I've always said this: some of the largest churches on the planet right now in Korea, like literally tens of thousands, almost a hundred thousand of people are attending church on a regular basis. Some of the smallest churches on the planet are in India where it's like two or three people huddled around a palm tree. Like literally, as two or more people are gathered together, that's literally what's happening in India and some of these micro locations.

And so to say that one version is better than the other or it's more effective or God only uses one model versus another, that's really not ours to say. It's much more about how can we reach the people that we're reaching with our method? And at least here in America, I feel like we've lost sight of that, and we are not receptive, as much as we were. Now, COVID, I think, changed a lot of that, but pre-COVID, we were not receptive to ideas that weren't everybody wanted to be, you know, the Hillsong. Everybody wanted to be the mega-gig. It was all about, you know, nickels and noses and getting the budgets bigger and hiring more people and growing the buildings. And you know, it's nice to have the big buildings, but then you start asking questions like, is that effective in making disciples? Or can we be more effective in different ways?

And to be honest, you know, my experience, we can reach people digitally in different ways than we can reach physically. A micro church like what you're doing at the bar is going to reach a different type of person.

So talk to me about that. Is it, and I think it's so valid to look from that perspective though. What he just described reminds me when I was doing more like a digital ministry, and the cause to start the Church at a Bar because the Church at a Bar was one of the house campuses that we had as a result of the digital ministry. But one of the places that we had house campuses was in Ghana, Africa. So you have these groups meeting, they're meeting in people's houses. Um, I need to find a photo to show you, but they would send us pictures of them gathering, and there's this group of like ten people in his backyard, you know, dirt ground, looking at an iPad Mini watching the service with us. And that's their church. Like, that's how church happens to them.

And it was so interesting because they put the iPad Mini on top of the thumb of the drum kit because they would do their live music, you know, they have their own live music with their own style for that culture, the way they express the worship, you know, in Ghana, Africa. But then they would stop to join us for the live worship online, and they were part of our church, which it really started telling me the story about how they would go to all the extent they could go to be in fellowship and to worship together, to together the word.

I think sometimes we get lost in that. And they, you know, how many times they did, you know, communion? We had communion on a Friday afternoon. Like, they would gather together in the house, we would get online, and like, let's just have communion together, right? So you have all these different ways. They're not following the same format. They're not doing exactly the way we would do in a church building in America, but they did what they had.

To do, and it brings me back to Acts chapter 2. So, you know, the very first meeting—when you look from that perspective, when the disciples walked back from Jerusalem, Jesus, you know, he just went to heaven, and then they walk back into Jerusalem and to the upper side of the city, and they gathered together in a room to pray. But, you know, and Luke described that the women and Mary was there with them praying. And the thing I think is so interesting about that—why I make the parallel between what we do at the church at the bar—is because for that culture, the women should never be in that room praying with these guys. You know, the culture would dictate that the women should be separated from the man when they're praying. And here's how Jesus establishes this new way of people, like when it comes to their faith, how they should behave and how they should relate to each other. And the very first prayer gathering they have, they break the culture. And who dictated that should be that way was actually the church at that time. The church dictated that the women should never be together to pray. But here, the disciples—and I think that alone really shows us a little bit about what the gospel is really about, right? Like, we're going to get together, and we're going to get together with people that don't see it the way we see it many times. And so the idea of, you know, we went from a digital church that started online, a house campus at the bar, and they were like, "Okay, let's what would this look like to really turn into a micro church?" Because at this point, we're no longer just a house campus with ten people. Now some services we have thirty, forty people. So we moved from a house campus now to a micro church. And as we jump into that format, we're like—and Jeff, this is very interesting—at the beginning of the church at the bar, the main church that we're connected with, they made very clear that everything in the Church at the Bar should replicate what happened in a main church. And as we start doing that, we were like, "Okay, let's do it this way." But as soon as we started, we realized people were not connecting because the format would not fit the environment. So it was hard for people to connect if they didn't have, you know, the infrastructure you have in a big church is not the same when you walk in the bar. So you cannot give the same feeling, the same touch that you have. So it has to be different. And that's one of the first things we learned. We fail a lot when we started. We fail a lot because we had to experience a few things to learn that when you go to an environment like the bar and inviting people to healthy conversations about the Bible, you cannot just replicate what you do in a building it was built for just that.

So when we get to the bar, we learned that we up adjusting in the second that we start making few adjustments here and there. We realize people are not just coming to check it out. They start staying. They will come back. They will start plugging in and start connecting with us more. So I think there's so much in there, and I'm very excited about us having these conversations now more regularly about church expressions because I think people are going to discover so many other expressions out there, not just a bar. You know, they're going to discover so many other expressions what people are doing and how they're doing and why they're doing it, with the objective to really go and make. And that's one of the greatest things about this—like, you have a real sense of what it looks like to do what Jesus told us to do: to go and make.

So I like that, you know. It was David? I'm trying to think. Who was the king before David of Old Testament history? My weakness right here. It was David, and then it went—yeah, yeah. So that's we are showing our biblical—Saul. That's what I thought I was in my mind. It was Saul, but then I was like, "Saul and Paul?" No, that's New Testament. Like, no, no, no, but it's Saul. Thank you, Ian is chiming in from the outside. But you know, when David was going to fight Goliath and they tried to put Saul's armor on David, and, you know, David's a little kid, and wasn't it like this—the armor was too big? It was enormous, you know. And in many ways, that's what a lot of times the physical churches are trying to do. "Oh, well, church has to look like this. You have to do these elements." And I can remember early on, Joey, like, this was my favorite story of church at the bar. It was when you told me we tried to reach church people in a bar, and no church people would come to the bar. And no people—no bar people wanted to come to the church. So instead, what we did was we tried to reach the bar people in the bar, and the bar people wanted to come to church, but they didn't want to go to the church building. And so like, you recognized your strengths and opportunities, and you put on the appropriate armor for that situation. And so you were able to connect with the people at the bar in ways that the physical church building never would.

Yeah, and the conversation that sometimes we don't want to have, but it's necessary to have, is there's people that really get hurt in a current church format. They get hurt for whatever reason, you know, even if it's not the church's fault or leadership's fault. People end up getting hurt, and they step away from the format. But they still want to pursue understanding what this relationship with God looks like. So we usually say that church at the bar, this kind of expression, is for people that gave up on the church but did not give up on God. And that's exactly kind of the profile that we see walking in. And people are like, "Man, I've been walking, you know, I've been in church for a long, long time." I remember we have somebody who tends the church at the bar now every Sunday that until last year he was out of the church for twenty years. I mean, twenty years. And always looking for answers, always looking for what's going on, understanding, you know, "I want to pursue this relationship with God, but what happened to me in church twenty years ago just, you know." And I know sometimes we like, "Oh, you're just using it as an excuse to not being church," but here twenty years later, that person was still pursuing, and they come to church at the bar for much for a conversation that they feel they could not have in the church format.

And honestly, because of the way we do the service, I think that's the biggest contrast that we found is that our format of service is conducive for people to build relationship, which I think that's what the church, the traditional church, pursued—that by trying to get people to get engaged into small groups, right? And these small groups say, "We're going to build relationships. You're going to get close to each other. You're going to hold each other accountable." Well, we do that in a church format, like in a church gathering on Sunday. That's exactly what we do. So when I prepare the message, I get the exact same message you preach, and the search for you know, twenty-five minutes, and I break that up into four parts, and I ask questions. But all the questions have to be completely life, real life related. Meaning, whatever teaching we're doing from the Bible, then that question had to like, "How do I relate that in my real life?" Yeah, so that's how we craft those questions. And it's interesting because that's when conversations really start. Sometimes these conversations, you know, we put a five-minute timer on the clock on the screen, but sometimes go longer because people are like, "Okay, here's really what's going on." They feel that they can be somewhat vulnerable. Here's one mark that's one hundred percent church at the bar. It's every person who comes for the first time, even if they never came back, but they come one time, and the very first time they came, they always engage in a conversation somehow. And by question two or three, they felt comfortable enough to like, "I want to offer my input here. Here's what I think." And I think that's such a good mark to have—that you make an environment that's so comfortable that a first-timer feels incredibly, you know, relaxed to actually engage.

And I think looking for that perspective, I think, "Man, what? How can we actually expand that? How can we, you know, is there anything that actually the traditional church can look at these expressions—not just the bar, but any others—that say, 'Hold on, is there something that can help us engage people where they are in our buildings, in our church?' Because this is not exclusive for the church expressions that we're going to be talking about. This is something that we want the entire church to engage in these conversations and see like, 'Can we actually talk about something that helps everybody that's in ministry to like go and make?' Because that's the mission." Yeah, the mission that we're assigned to, like, to go and make. So I think this conversation can be incredibly healthy on all sides and for everybody.

Yeah, I love it. And Joey, you know, think about it like you're doing church in an environment in a bar that's meant to get people comfortable, relaxed, building trust with one another and talking. Like, the literal environment is designed to get people talking to one another, spending time, drinking more drinks, talking with a bartender, a waitress, like, you know, that's what your environment is set up to do. And you, quote unquote, taking advantage of that environment, of that opportunity, and use it to get people talking to one another about God and using that environment to forge spiritual relationships. You know, some would say that's a controversial idea. You know, I've got some Southern Baptist pastor friends that might be having a heart attack right now thinking about the concept. No offense to our Southern Baptist friends out there. I am Southern Baptist. But the heart of it is that, you know, I always say this, and people are like, "You know, I've actually had people tell me I don't think that's true," and I was like, "Well, what do you mean?" I say this all the time. It's like, if we want to reach someone different, we have to do something different. The building right now in America, twenty-five percent of people, Americans, are active in their church, in a Christian church. Yeah, that's it. And so that leaves a whole—at least seventy-five percent of people who are not active. And you know what? We can try the buildings harder, and that may move the needle a little bit, but it's not—you're not going to get another twenty-five percent by getting the buildings to work harder. And so we need to do something different to reach these people. And even church at a bar, or you know, I've got friends that are—oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this series, you know, we're going to do. Like, I've got friends that are doing outdoor church out in like Germany, up in the Alpine mountains, where they'll go mountain climbing. Or, you know, in the next week they go white water rafting, and then they'll go hiking, and the next month week they're going to go do like an ultra ten-mile or twenty-mile, fifty-mile run. And it's like they do all these outdoor activities, and then they always do a church service afterwards. And they're trying to spin up this network of churches that's all centered around physical activity. You know, I walk with a cane, so it's not like I'm going to do any of this stuff, but oh my gosh, it's so cool to think about it. But Jeff, I think actually when you look from that perspective, there are a lot, a lot of these church expressions I think are already happening inside the traditional church. But the problem is the traditional church fails.

To recognize that as the church expression, they recognize this is a small group, this is like an affinity group. Let's not call it a church because, you know what I mean, because instead of, hey hold on, no, is this really reaching people? Are you actually bringing people to the kingdom because of these meetings?

I remember you and I, you and I were in a meeting years ago in Colorado. We're that in a very small group of people in the mountains having this meeting about digital ministry, the expansion of the ministry, and very important people there to this day. I hit myself in the like, what I was doing there because I don't know, I don't understand in this room that was so much fun. I mean, so I, but I remember, um, I forgot his last name. Uh, back is his last name. Um, yeah, Scott back, CEO of Glue. We were up at his house in the mountains. Exactly, Scott Back. We're at his house, but he brought up an incredible illustration of how the church sometimes missed the point, and he's talking about a matrix system that they put in a church to test the waters. And we realized one thing was, you know, the pastor's fighting with the couples ministry too because they're doing a weekend to remember. The weekend to remember goes until Sunday, meaning those couples that sign out for weekend to remember would miss Sunday. They would not be in church on Sunday, and the pastor is not crazy about that. But they said, well, let's try to use this as a way to analyze some data. And actually, what they did was all the couples that signed out, they made a major campaign, a lot of couples in the church. But one thing they realized is this: thirty percent of the couples who signed up for that event did not attend the church regularly. They did not. Some of them did not attend at all. Then after these couples went to a weekend to remember all together as one group, what they realized is that thirty percent, that thirty percent, they start connecting with the church through small groups and giving. They still not fully committed to a Sunday morning experience, but they value being in that small group with couples at a weekend to remember. Um, and then they start actually participating in different ministries in the church because of that experience that didn't happen in the building but happened in an environment that they had something in common.

And I think that's kind of like, I think that's the part of the church that is missing. I think there's already possibly different church expressions already happening underneath the church ministry that we just failed to empower these leaders to say, man, go ahead. Let's, what do I need to give you? Like, it would be great for church leaders to say, let's empower you to grow this thing, to really connect with people the way you are connecting. I think sports ministry will be huge on that. I think we miss a ton on that. Like, man, I cannot bring my buddies from my company to come to my church. I'm sure I can get my buddies to come to a golf outing, and then the golf outing can turn into a group environment where we can have biblical discussions. But at the end, the church has a special request. The special request is make sure they come in on Sunday morning, right? Yeah, make sure they're here on Sunday morning because that's the key. And I think if the church can see that attending Sunday service is one thing, but making disciples, it's a whole other dimension of the conversation. Then, like, let's talk about that, you know, what that looks like to make disciples that may not look like being there at church every Sunday, but actually the Sunday is being used someplace else where they're actually making disciples. They're not taking the Sunday off. I think there's an opportunity to definitely be discussed there.

So I mean, that begs the question. So you were part of a physical church, um, and you transitioned in the past eighteen months or so, twelve to eighteen months, I feel like, right, to your, you now you're an independent church at a bar. Um, what freedom, what, why did you make that move as opposed to staying under the church being a small group or something like that? What, yeah, what freedom do you gain? You know, a lot of churches right now, they operate more as growth. Okay, let's have this be another small group and count another thirty people in that. But you opted to go more of a planting with independence. That's a bold, brave move. What, uh, what did you benefit from becoming independent?

I don't, it was interesting. I think for the people watching this, listening to this podcast, um, one thing that made it very clear to me was, um, on the bar, the establishment that we have, the church at the bar is a pretty big one. So we, you know, weekends there's live music. This summer we have a big patio. It's by the river. By the way, the river by the bar, that's where we do baptisms. And the patio is big, you've been there, big building, just the patio alone on a Friday nights I can have eight hundred people at once. So it is a big space, right?

Um, and we started this church at the bar there four and a half years ago. As soon as most people realize that we actually, because we have signage all over the bar, "Church at the Bar, Sundays ten a.m., Wednesday seven p.m." And as we start doing this and people realize what I do, and I start spending more time with the staff doing leadership training, leadership culture, the staff, the owners asked me if I would do that. So I start actually spending more time developing relationship with the bar staff and also the people that go to the bar. They attend the bar, but as soon as the word got out, one thing that was becoming common is people walk up to me and say, "Hey, you're the pastor at Church at the Bar. I heard the, yeah, uh, man, I'm going through this. Would you mind pray for me?" And all of a sudden, like, I found myself just praying for people in the middle of the bar on a Saturday night, on a Friday night. Yeah, and no judgment. Like, people are like, "Oh, no, that's okay because they have church here." And it really kind of, to me at first was like this kind of weird because you don't expect to be accepted as a pastor in that environment like that. And I realized there's a huge acceptance in that space. I've started experiencing ministry one-on-one with people like I never experienced before because in reality, you know, inside the church office you don't have as many opportunities to connect with people. And as I started experiencing all that, I was like, you know what, I felt like I got to see something that can really happen here, and I felt really inclined to dedicate my time to it. But the problem is, you know, I've been in church as a full-time pastor for over twenty years. So it was a bold move last beginning of last year that I, you know, we decided I just going to quit my job at the church. And the interesting thing about that is that I, because I started the church at the bar through that church, I went to the owners first. I say, "Hey, I just want to let you know, um, I just want to let you know because you guys have been very gracious to allow us to meet here to do these gatherings. I was the one who came to you and asked for it, so I want to make sure I'm honest with you guys. I'm about to quit my job at the church because I want to just move on and I want to start exploring this ministry, what it looks like." And they like, "Man, uh, that's great, but what are you going to do for living?" I like, "I don't know yet. We're going to, we have to figure it out." And then they're like, "Okay." And then literally a week later they call and say, "Hey, can we sit down and talk?" And they're like, "Sure." They said, "Jerry, you're way to get along with our staff. You're ready to help us with some stuff on the business side. Why don't you come work for us and do the church?" Yeah. And so all of a sudden I got a job offer at the bar as operations manager for the whole company. And during that, they're like, "You do the church." And the first thing, uh, Jeff, the first thing I want to tell you, the first thing that really shocked me, of the relief, is doing ministry and not getting paid for it. And I'm not saying that's wrong at all. I admire people that do their job. I know a lot of pastors that deserve the money they earn. They really do. They work hard. They go after people. They're making disciples. So I don't want people to understand that in my story. Doing ministry the way I'm doing and being able to say, you know, I don't got paid to do this, I'm just a volunteer, I'm a pastor who's a volunteer doing a ministry in the church in this location. And the better side of it is, you know, conversations that I have with the people that attend the church regularly, saying, you know, "Hey, we're all on the same boat here." So when somebody gets sick, they don't just wait for the pastor to go visit them. Anybody can go visit them. We're in the same boat. We're all minister to each other, right? We're learning that. And so there's all these aspects in having the freedom, you know, outside the advantage of, you know, we're running a church where I don't pay mortgage, I don't pay rent, I don't pay utility, I don't pay staff. I don't have expenses. So one of the things we talk about at the church at the bar is like, people give money, they donate, but one hundred percent of the money that comes in is one hundred percent of money goes out and goes out to ministry. So it is some things there that I was like, I love for pastors just like, let's look into this. Let's look into these opportunities. How can established church actually come alongside these different expressions and then start new ones? And it was like, let's just use this as opportunity to expand the ministry and set our people there inside this building, you're going and make, because I think there's a great opportunity there.

Yeah, that's so good. And we're looking forward to more of these conversations, digging into, you know, first off, you, the first couple weeks we're going to do a unique deep dive into a church at a bar and some of the unique applications. You know, Joey, in his story, it's we talk about bivocational ministry all the time. You know, in digital we see a lot of this where the pastor does not work, does not make money off the church, and instead has a nine-to-five job completely separate. You know, in Joey's situation, it's actually we use the term co-location because Joey has a job at the place where he's doing ministry. You know, it's equivalent would be, you know, somebody that's running a coffee house or is working as a barista at Starbucks and then does church services out of that location during the week or ministry there. And so Joey's a co-location minister, which is awesome, you know, that he's the operations manager at a bar. It's like, oh my gosh, what a unique job. And to be able to not only be like, you know, HR representative and to talk with the employees and build relationships, but to be pastor to many of them and people in the customers and to build relationships. And you know, you're a bourbon guy, right? Like, I don't want to mix up my drinks here. I'm not much like, this, that's a good point.

Like, this past Tuesday we had this incredible, I mean, incredible bourbon tasting. Just so you have an idea, six hundred dollars a person. And it was a very unique bourbon tasting. And I usually I run all the bourbon tastings. Like, we have a bourbon club. I run the bourbon club. We have, but it was, you got thirty people in the room who pay high money for this bourbon tasting, which by the way, all the proceeds of this bourbon tasting is going to the foundation that the church at the bar runs. And that, you know, we raised one hundred seventy-seven thousand dollars in one night through that. Wow. But it's, and we...

Have this for the people, probably the people here that may or may not know bourbon. But if you know bourbon and you know Buffalo Trace, you probably heard the name Freddy Johnson. Freddy Johnson, who's a legendary at Buffalo Trace—he's the one who came in person and gave us. He led the tasting side of it, anyways. He did such a great job talking, making it personal, and gave me the perfect hook to go after him and said, "Man, he closed his thing so well and I'm a pastor and you know pastors just want to preach right after a great, great word like that." But I'm not doing it, and everybody cracking up, and that was the perfect hook because as soon as the tasting was over, I'm with like literally fifty to eighty people that came to say, "So tell me about this church. About you, really, pastor? You do this thing here, man?" This and then they gave the conversation. So we're not ashamed. Like, we're not embarrassed to say that we're a pastor, we have a church, we believe in God. That, you know, I tell people, "People like, how does the church work?" I said, "The Bible is the authority." You know, I said, "I don't have no—I have no authority at the church to bar. I'm just a mall cop. All I have is a flashlight, and that's all I use for it. That's all I do, because the authority is only the Bible." And we have these conversations in the middle of a bar with people having the bourbon. Yeah, and I think there's something to that. That we're like, "Hold on, I think we got to value this thing and see, like, are there more opportunities like that that we can talk about it where people are, meet people where they are?" That's powerful. Okay, true or false, Joey. I want you—I want your honest to God answer here, okay? Right hand up, Scouts Honor. Uh, you jumped out of my live podcast recording with Alan Hiers to go drink a six-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch of bourbon. Exactly. Actually, no. Now I'm gonna brag since you took me there. I'm gonna brag. Um, actually, I drank from a bottle that cost one hundred ninety-nine thousand dollars.

Oh my God. One bottle?

Okay, you stood up Allan freaking Hiers for a one-ninety-nine? I don't blame you. I would do it too. Oh my gosh. I don't even know that I like bourbon, but a one-ninety-nine-thousand-dollar bottle would—that would be an interesting experience going in and out. I don't—I don't think I've ever held one-ninety-nine-thousand-dollar anything in my hands. Um, but, uh, well, well played.

Hey, listen, y'all. Um, we're going to be doing more here inside—wait, that's a church. And so, uh, expect that we're going to be broadcasting and doing live recordings inside the church. Digitals Discord Channel every Wednesday at, uh, two p.m. Eastern. And so look for that Wednesday, two p.m. Eastern inside the Church Digitals Discord. And, um, if you like it, give us a holler in the Church Digital. Let us know that you like it. Tell us what you think, uh, because we are kicking around the idea of doing this as a standalone show featuring more unique. Obviously, we're going to do "Church at the Bar." We're already talking with micro church leaders and some out-of-the-box thinkers and minimal ecclesiology. Like, that was the thing I really wanted Alan Hiers to get into—minimal ecclesiology. So we may try to get him again at some point. But there's so many conversations that we can have in this space, highlighting and celebrating some of the innovation that's happening in the church space at the digital, at the micro, at the workplace, at so many different levels. And so, hey, Joey, thanks for thanks for the time and jumping here on this. But as we're landing the plane here today, man, any closing thoughts?

That's the quietest Joey's been all day. I think Joey's internet bottomed out on him. Joey's—we're landing the plane. Any closing thoughts? Looking forward to it. I'll have the closing thought for Joey, who can't hear me, evidently, which is totally ironic because we made it all the way to the end of the podcast and that's where Joey's Bluetooth headphones decided to die.

Hey, I think he's great. Good. All right, there you go. He caught up for just for that. So we're gonna land the plane. Hey, for Joey, uh, this is Jeff wrapping up season—no, starting, kicking off season eight of "Wait, That's a Church" on the Church Digital podcast. Stick around. We will see you next time at the show. You have a good one. Talk to you later.