EP314 - Online Ministry, Vulnerability and Punk Rock Jesus with Ian Simkins

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 multiplayer church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Well, welcome in to the Church Digital podcast. This is episode 314, and I obviously am not the man, the myth, the legend Jeff. You know him and you love him. He is actually off in Korea doing things with the Lausanne Movement, and it's been totally awesome and wonderful and exciting. But he asked me and my pal Ashley from the Hybrid Disciple to take over a couple of these episodes and really bring you kind of the other side of what we've been working on in TCD. And man, we have an incredible episode for you today.

Now, if you've never listened to the Hybrid Disciple, what we are is essentially a show that is all about bridging the gap between digital and physical discipleship. I think a lot of the times when we start talking about the digital environment, we lose the forest for the trees a little bit and forget that there is an actual incarnational, in-person thing that happens when we get face to face with each other. But at the same time, there's also this digital component that we need to remember is highly influential in our lives right now. And so what we're doing with the Hybrid Disciple is we're trying to bridge that gap.

And Ashley, if you've never met Ashley Lagos, she is amazing. An amazing teacher, an amazing preacher, an amazing influencer on TikTok and also on Instagram. But she's also one of the founders of 12 Church Online. Man, all her stuff is going to be located in the show notes or the doodle below me, and if you're listening to this on audio, it's going to be in the actual show notes of this. Go check her out. Go check everything that she does, because I cannot begin to tell you how influential she has been in my life and in my discipleship.

So Ashley, if you are listening, which I know you are, thank you so much. And this is kind of a resurrection of Hybrid Disciple. We have taken a little bit of an extended break. We've both had some life change experiences, things happening, and we're in talks, or we were in talks, and hopefully we'll be back into doing season three. But this episode you're going to hear is actually our interview with Ian Simpkins.

Now, we're going to talk about Ian just a few minutes, actually in the episode, but Ian is during this episode you're going to hear me kind of fangirling all over Ian, and that is because I have been following this dude on Instagram for I don't know three or four years, and he has the best way of being a pastoral heart in the midst of extremely, extremely trying circumstances. And he's also got this real sort of gentle way of putting everything. He's one of those pastors that you can just imagine lives an unhurried lifestyle almost that Jesus called us to. And I'm thrilled that we got the chance to interview him.

Now, this is again a couple of months old, but the fact that he was able to spend an hour with us was just so precious. And I was kind of going back through this episode before I recorded this intro and just remembered how awesome it was to talk to him. So Ian, as well, thank you. I know you're listening to this. Thank you again for this episode. I'd love to connect with you again on season three. That's my little plug there. I'll be reaching out to you, brother. But hey, enough about all of that. I'd love for you to get into this episode, episode 314, with myself, Ashley Lagos, and Ian Simpkins.

Welcome back to the Hybrid Disciple. I'm Andy. I'm one of the hosts here. We're going to be joined by Ashley in just a short second, and man, do we have a doozy to kick off, really what is our first real episode of season two. Yeah, I know we did an intro last week and all those fun things, but this is the start of season two, and man, we get off to a flyer as the English like to say. We kick this one off with a bang. This is our good friend Ian Simpkins.

Now, if you know nothing about Ian, Ashley kind of gives this advice a little bit like right as soon as she starts to intro him, but you need to pause this podcast or pause this YouTube video. You need to go to his social media stuff, which will be in the description of this video or in the show notes or whatever. Go to his socials and just click follow. Trust me, it is going to be the best follow that you have on any social media platform. Ian is a humble dude. He's funny. He's irreverent when he needs to be irreverent. He's amazingly disciple-oriented, and most importantly, he loves Jesus fiercely, and he's showing that in all of his social media presences and all of his posts.

And the thing that we get into in this conversation is really where digital and physical branch into something like social media in particular, and this is something that both Ashley and I are super, super passionate about. So you don't need to hear me talking anymore. Let's get to the interview with Ian Simpkins right now.

Well, we were just remarking on our names here on the Hybrid Disciples. Now, a little peel back behind the curtain: we use a program called Riverside. We love Riverside. Riverside is kind of one of those remote recording things, and Ashley and I have been doing Riverside for I feel like six years now. It's probably been a year or so. And it's kind of like Zoom where you have to title yourself, you have to name yourself. So my name is Andy, and that's Ashley, and our special guest today we're going to let him introduce himself with his Christian name, but his online name right now that I see is Admiral Soggy Bottoms. So without further ado, let me welcome Admiral Soggy Bottoms to the program.

Admiral, yes, how long you been in the service and where did you get your rank from, boy?

Best intro I've ever experienced. My goodness. You're welcome. You're welcome. We have Ian Simpkins joining us today on Hybrid Disciple. Now Ashley, if you could kind of walk me through where you found out about Ian and then how you recommended him to me.

Yeah, so you know, I am constantly as a content creator in the Christian space. The algorithm puts people in front of me, and one of the people that popped up was Ian. And if you do not follow him, first off, you must stop what you're doing. Pause this. Get out of this completely. Yes, go directly to Instagram and find him. Because I am a very sharp shooter, as you all are learning as you listen to the podcast. I like things to be very direct. I don't want a bunch of fluff. I just want you to tell me whatever it is that you want me to learn or know. And so the, I don't remember what the very first Instagram post of yours that I saw, Ian, but it was like a one-liner, and I was like, screw this guy. He's offending me. Not going to even pay any attention to this. And I say that with absolute honor and respect because one of my mentors that I follow very closely since I was eighteen, nineteen years old, he has always said that if you sit in a church consistently week after week and you are never offended, you never feel uncomfortable, you never feel that twinge of like, uh, then you are in the wrong church. Because the person, anyone that is speaking to you from a spiritual perspective, should have things that they say that kind of make you like twinge just a little bit. And not in, not because they're overtly off. Now, I mean, I have sat in churches before where somebody will say something and I'm like, oh, that is not biblical. That is like, that's clearly not theologically sound. But to be able, but the stuff that you put out consistently challenges me in the best possible way, and it's done in such a direct, no-frills way. Like, his content, guys, if you haven't seen it, it's like single-line white text on a black screen, and it's beautiful. But every single post there's something there that just makes me pause and think and reflect. And then I am a TikTok person, so I will have on more than one occasion, we'll be like, I read this thing on his page, and I always try to tag you, but like, your TikTok, what's up with TikTok, man? Like, even if you just repurpose it, but we can go into that later. But like, I've tagged you multiple times on TikTok just because I'm like, this I really wish this was my thought. It's not my thought, it's his thought, but it's so good, and it's not on TikTok that I'm going to repurpose it and credit him. But anyway, I was telling them whenever I hit up Ian to ask him if he'd be on the Hybrid Disciple and he responded that he would, I was so excited about it. Through my phone I was like having a total content creator like fangirl moment. So yes, that's the summation of that.

Am I blushing? I feel like I'm blushing. So I'm gonna, I'll color correct. I'll color correct this edit just a little bit to make sure that there's no red.

So Ian, first off, thanks after that glowing compliment sandwich that you just got there. Thanks so much for joining us here. And like, I guess like, let's start off a little bit. First off, what is the philosophy behind your ministry? And give us a little background on how you actually got to what you're doing right now.

Yeah, even asking about the philosophy is probably giving me more credit than you should. I honestly feel like I fell backwards into all of it, and that's the honest to God truth. It was June 2020. It was during George Floyd, and everyone was doing these black boxes, right? And no one knew which way was up. Everyone was trying to figure it out. Everyone had kind of their entrenched positions and their sort of tribal certainties, which you know hasn't gone away.

I didn't really know what to do. I had a radio show at the time, and so I said to my co-host, I said, I think we need to spend the next week or two doing a whole lot more listening than talking. And so we had just a bunch of men and women of color in our city to kind of help us understand some of what was going on. That I, as a white male pastor, there's probably all sorts of subtext and background that I just wasn't going to get. So I just did a lot of listening, and I felt really convicted. I was like, I don't think the world needs my words right now.

And it was after a couple weeks of these really honest, candid, beautiful, sometimes heart-wrenching conversations, I distilled some of that down to a sentence or two. And I have a real allergy to just adding to the noise. I think I grew up in a really loud Irish Catholic family, you know, where everyone's kind of talking over each other. Like, I feel like I got those words out of the way early on, and I just don't feel this itch to like, oh, I should also be contributing. So I was okay with just sort of sitting silently for a couple weeks, and had one or two thoughts I was like, ah, this might be helpful to someone else. And I'm like, so design-impaired and technologically inept, I just opened up Apple Notes and typed a thought. I was like, ah, we'll see if this is helpful. And I was so blown away, not only just by people's kindness, but the amount of people are like, that is a very helpful way to think this through. Where that has given me language to a thing that I've been feeling but didn't know how to articulate. Please keep going. Like, I remember that being really surprising because I had no intentions, which is funny.

Now because you know, years later people will ask me questions like, "Hey, do you mind if I steal your aesthetic?" And I'm like, "You're going to have to ask Steve Jobs because it's just the Notes app on my iPhone. Like, I don't own the aesthetic. Like, it's purely out of laziness or a lack of knowledge or creativity." And people have told me like, "Well, the black square, white text actually kind of stops you in the doom scroll with everything else kind of popping and bouncing and screaming and whatever." But it really was birthed out of a—I don't think I have the bandwidth to be going into Canva and trying to figure something out. And I knew that I would sink more time than would be helpful. So the notes, they're just like a reflection of like what I'm actually processing with real people, you know? I'm a pastor and practitioner first. So it's like, it's either like, uh, I'm working on a sermon and want to see if this idea lands, or it's following a sermon and something resonated that I wasn't anticipating. So I try to distill it down. So they're all birthed out of like a very real place with real people in real time. And that's what's kept me going, I think.

So what are you doing right now? You said you're a pastor. Like, what's your nine to five right now?

Yeah, my nine to five is a pastor at a really beautiful church just south of Nashville. And, um, we have a co-lead pastor model that we're sort of experimenting with here. So I'm a lead pastor of teaching, and then we also have a lead pastor of strategy. And, uh, and we have a lead team, and there's a whole lot of other layers to that that I'm sure I could put all of your listeners to sleep talking about. But, um, that's sort of the dynamic that we—and I would, you know, we moved down from Chicago. So I still feel pretty new to the South and the Bible Belt in Nashville. And so in any kind of communication's role, you're kind of learning the landmines as you step on them. You're like, "Ah, got it. I can't quote him just yet. Got it," or whatever, you know? And but by and large, this community has just been so gracious, not only to me but to my family. And it's just been a blast getting to know this new context with my wife and kids.

I think one of the things that intrigues me—because I comment often on your, you know, on your things, but also I spend a lot of time reading through them—and, um, one of the things that I noticed consistently is you have the ability in such a short amount of time to really get people to connect with you. And whenever we're speaking specifically about the hybrid nature between online presence within a ministry or within a body of a church body or whatever, and then brick and mortar, um, one of the things that I hear over and over, and I have pastors comment to me—because, you know, all of our content is so short—people are like, "How do you do that? Like, how do you get people to be engaged and like bought in just so quickly to where they're really, um, they're genuinely engaged and they're genuinely processing?" So from that perspective, what would you say that your thoughts are whenever it comes to, you know, ministries across the country or people who are wanting to step into the digital space? But they're like, "I don't really understand how I'm supposed to actually put anything out that's meaningful that is so short," because we live in such a verbose society, really, you know?

Gosh, I first off, that is very kind. Thank you. Uh, I'll start with the irreverent and then hopefully move towards something that's more helpful. I'm really easily bored. Like, I'm very easily distracted. So like, the short and concise is honestly almost more for me. Like, I had a mentor, and he was this—he was talking about preaching, but this translated, uh, years ago. He had asked me about an upcoming sermon. He's like, "Hey, what are you preaching on the Sunday?" And I like riffed for twenty minutes and rabbit-trailed. And he's like, "You're not done." And he said, "Until you can describe your sermon in one sentence to a ten-year-old, you're not done writing it yet." And for whatever reason, he's like, "It's not just that it's concise. It needs to also be simple." And I've held that as a rubric for twenty years now. We're like, "Oh, it's a little bit about this, and we're talking about a theology of that." He's like, "I don't think you actually know what the sermon is about yet." He forced in me a discipline early on: can you actually distill this down to where you actually know what you're talking about?

So a lot of it came from me. I'm prone to distraction and rabbit-trailing and trying to fit way more into a shorter amount of time than I probably should. That's always been my MO. The other piece, though, that I've learned with online—and you guys can speak to this a thousand times more intelligently than I can—when you're meeting with someone in person, there's all these non-verbal cues. And I'm like reading that your brow is furrowed or that you're hunched over. There's all these data points, even if they're like subconscious, that are tempering how I talk to you and how we connect and how we're kind of building equity. And if it's just white text, black square, you don't really have any of that. So you have to work extra hard at meaningful vulnerability and humanity. And I try, uh, very hard to—I'm not ever the hero in any of the stories that I tell. And trying to go honestly a little beyond the breaker of my comfort level, like, "Here's a really embarrassing thing that I did, but this is how I feel like God taught me in this moment." Or here's where even sometimes is a one or two sentence thing somewhere in the slide deck where you're like, "Hey, just so you know, I've been there too." Like, I think that the temptation to appear as an expert on digital platforms—like, let me bestow upon you this conclusion that I've drawn as someone who's arrived—I want to make sure that it's painfully clear, even if they disagree with me, to know that like, "Oh, Ian is recognizing he hasn't fully arrived. He's in process, and he's learning this in real time with us. But he's not like, 'Hey, I'm from an Ivory Tower. Let me bestow upon you these ten slides on Instagram.'" I'm always trying to actively kind of work against that and make sure that my humanity and brokenness comes through without being totally self-deprecating, because that can also be—you can, the pendulum can swing too far the other way. But trying to hold that intention has been a helpful discipline for me.

You're the pastor at The Bridge Church?

The Bridge Church, uh, I'm—yeah. And, uh, I was perusing your—so the digital pastor in me always goes directly to the online portion of any church. I don't care about the rest of it. I just—whatever, everybody to me—like, church websites are a dime a dozen, unfortunately. Uh, two things struck me about your website when I was doing a little bit of research. One, number one, I love your staff page. And I know that's probably a quirk that you guys don't get to hear a lot. And whoever your designer is, if you have a creative team or whomever—A-plus on the fact that your staff page actually has animated GIFs of people like doing funny things. I think you're playing like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots and like some drinking coffee and flexing, you know? That's all good stuff. Um, but the second thing I always gravitate towards is the online area. Uh, what is the Bridge's philosophy of digital church right now as it sits?

Boy, that is—that's a super real-time question. We're in the midst of figuring that out, you know? When I moved here, uh, I think that was right around the same time that Life Church was talking about going meta, and obviously during COVID everyone was having video venue conversations: "Is this a church? Is this a ministry?" Um, we just made some strategic, sort of, camera upgrades that we're trying to figure out like, "Okay, to what degree are we thinking about in the room versus online?" We just launched our first ever all-online small group. And even—and even that, there was some disagreement about: "Is that a true small group? Is that, uh, will that be the best experience or the best foot forward? Do we want to make that available?" So truly, honestly, we are kind of in the throes of all of that.

For me, uh, I think about online as—I just talked about this last week, actually. We're in a series on the table and how Jesus specifically uses the table and meals. And it's just blowing my mind how central it is and how long it's taking me to see this. But I also talk about online as like an extension of our table. And how we actually are like setting the table for people, for whatever reason—whether they're not local or they've been hurt by churches or they physically can't get out—how do we see that as a viable extension of the church, uh, and as a ministry to serve those? And that's really tricky because my natural bent in preaching is not to look at the camera. Uh, it's really not intuitive for me to speak to our online audience. Are the people that we have hosting online are such beautiful souls, and they're dialed in, and they're thinking about questions and ways to phrase things. And, and honestly, one of the things that has kind of bumped this up for me—this isn't really what you asked, but I think it's helpful—uh, we sort of accidentally stumbled into a prison ministry in the last year. Some guy that just started attending here who's the local chaplain started showing our services. And then that service got filled, so we added a second, and that got filled, so he added a third, and that got filled, so he added a fourth. And he's having five services at our local prison. And we didn't even know about it. We didn't put any money toward it. Literally, the guy told me as he was leaving on a Sunday. And then I started getting letters from prisoners like with just the most remarkable—so now I'm like thinking about, "Oh, this isn't just someone logging in online because they're on vacation this week. Like, this is a ministry to people ten miles down the road from us. They're in a very different circumstance." So it has really rattled a lot of my categories, to be honest, and how we think about the digital and video space. And, uh, yeah, I wouldn't say we fully landed the plane there yet.

I'm a church kid. Like, Southern Baptist, um, and was in church like five, if not seven days a week, but for sure five, um, physically in church. And, and so, but I professionally am a digital marketing analyst and strategist and content creator. And so like, I eat, sleep, and breathe the digital space. And like, Andy, I have older kids. I have a twenty-year-old and an—and assume to be eighteen-year-old. And so I have, I very much live online, right? Like, so much of what I do is online, and so many of the relationships that I've built is online. And so I was actually on staff at a brick and mortar church whenever the idea to have a digital church—like, that God presented that to me. And Andy knows, and our audience, a lot of them will know—I was like, "I'm not doing that. Like, that is not what I'm doing. Like, in fact, God, I have zero desire to do that. And so I think you should just talk to someone else because I'm busy. I'm not gonna do it." Um, and then, you know, I talk to my dad, who's like the most levelheaded person, knows my temperament really well. Um, he's like, "I think you should pray about it." And I'm not praying about it either. Like, I'm not doing that. Um, and then I prayed about it, and now it's almost three years old. So, you know, like, God always gets you there eventually. But through that process, I think that you're absolutely right. A lot of people have a disconnect between understanding that relationships that people build online and the necessity that people have to need like to have access to online ministry and to online spiritual food. Food is absolutely real, and it's imperative because especially as you step into—

Gen Z, so many relationships. My daughter's boyfriend, who she's been with now for four years, they met in an Instagram DMs. Like, their relationship was built online first. Um, and I think that we, the church, has a tendency to be reactive and not pro, and we get so tied to like these ideologies that are rooted in, well, this is just what we do, this is what we've always done, that we end up missing an entire section of humanity because we're just married to a concept that worked really well at one time, still works presently, but definitely needs to shift in order to be relevant.

Um, and we, earlier, we last week we interviewed a young lady who, um, named Jay, who is a Gen Z, you know, she's in multimedia communications, works with Univision. And one of the things that she said in response to some data that we got from Barna is just the mass exodus of young people from the church. We have to recognize that traditional brick and mortar may not be working, but if you have a way to get them, so for instance, like I, this is the first time you and I have ever had a conversation, you know, outside DMs, to ask you to come on. But I feel like because of your content, I feel connected to you. Like, I read your content all the time. If somebody were to say something like snarky in your comments, I would probably be like, like, I would have to let Jesus take over and not let me clap back, because I, the clap back queen lives inside of me. Um, but I don't even know you, but I feel enough of a connection to you that if somebody were to come at you sideways, then the not saved version of me might step into your comments and I would have to rein it in because I would feel the need to like protect you or go to bat for you. That's a very real connection for me, and I have that with a myriad of people. And so with that in mind, whenever you're talking about it being an extension of the table, what are your thoughts whenever it comes to just people and the way we connect? And how do we, with maturity and grace, essentially not only encourage relationship building between churches and people that never potentially come inside of the church, um, and then also people that they just wouldn't usually have access to? For instance, like the prisoners that you're, yeah, yeah.

Um, that's such a good question. Probably to a fault, I think through a formation lens first. So for me, and I've been getting this question, you know, for a long time, people will ask us, is social media good or bad? And I would say I don't actually think it's good or bad, but it's not neutral. And I think the, like, so the example I'll give is like a shovel. You can use a shovel to dig wells or to run around beating people over the head with it, right? Like, that you can do both things, but do either long enough and you're going to end up with on your hands, like, it's a tool. So whether you're using it for ill or for service, uh, there's a formational piece to it. So I'm always trying to like, one of the things, one of the kind of principles that we encourage people to in the morning is a simple axiom: scripture before screens. We're all in, and data with screens. I'm not knocking screens. A lot of us, a lot of my life is on a screen. Um, a lot of us read our Bible on the screen. Scripture before screens as a formational practice, sort of a rule of life. What does it look like for us to ground ourselves in the morning first in God's word in whatever way they do it? I mean, I even say it in Sundays like, hey, we're going to be in Luke chapter 14. You can turn or swipe there right now. I want people to know, man, if you're reading on your phone, you're welcome here. This is not a you need to get off your dusty KJV that's the only version that you know the Lord likes. Um, so it is a real tension for me because like I just read Johan Hari's Stolen Focus. I don't know if you've read this or not.

Yes.

And, uh, first off, it's a masterpiece.

Yep.

And a lot of it I already knew, but there's a lot there that I was like, some of this is more nefarious than I think I realized. And trying to be mindful and not just dig my, bury my head in the sand. But I was chatting with another guy on staff. I also just turned 40 this last year. And I remember proposing at the first church I worked at the possibility of online giving. And you would have thought I proposed that we sacrifice our firstborn. Like, it was no giving that the Lord honors is physical. It's writing it. It was like very convictional. And now 20 years later, that feels, you know, passe. I, that's always top of mind for me, like, okay, Ian, you're 40 now. What are the areas that you're tempted to bury your head in the sand and say, this is the only way that we do church? And some 21-year-old on staff is like, I think we're potentially missing out on a whole demographic of people by your unwillingness to move. I feel some of that kind of inner cringing already, you know? Like, Wendell Berry is one of my favorite writers, and he still writes books on a typewriter. Like, that's, that's, I have a lot of that kind of in me. And, uh, so it, a lot of it comes down to trust, you know? I was talking about a shared model of leadership. We have to be very, very clear about what decisions are ultimately mine and what are the ones that I need to relinquish and say, I don't think I agree with this, um, but ultimately we are empowering the people that are thinking that through prayerfully, not just intellect, but also like spirit sensitivity, um, and actually letting them lead in those areas. And so that does sometimes come with, is that how we want our reels to look? Or is this the right use of our resources? Or what is an online host versus an in-person host? Like, those are honestly, secretly, don't tell anybody, I like those conversations because they're like, they're new and inventive, and there's not a lot of tip of the spear. Like, we just, I feel like we get to sandbox that. I like playing in. Um, but it can create a fair amount of conflict, especially if you're, you know, died in the wool, this is how it's always been, or I think the other pendulum is innovation just for innovation's sake. I don't think that's helpful either. And I think some people are so drawn to new that will hop on whatever the newest air trend thing is and assume that's the next big thing for the church. And I'm like, I don't know that that's wise either. So trying to find that middle space without becoming, yeah, bent or complacent, uh, has been really tricky because, Tim, you know, and I'm the primary communicator, I don't want the voice of the bridge to just mimic me either. Like, we work really, really hard at dismantling any kind of celebrity-ism or it's about one person on a stage. So that requires a lot of, uh, open-handedness at every level. And in the digital space, that gets really tricky because, you know, there's a competence bar and there's a design aesthetic and there's a, well, that doesn't really feel like us. And someone might ask, well, what does that mean? Like, I don't really know. I can't give you hard, you know, I mean, like, I can't give you hard and fast, oh, because we don't use this font. It's like, I don't know how to put it. It's like, it's liking or not liking a certain genre of music. And I think, uh, the digital conversation is sort of opening all of that up in a way that's very exciting but can also feel very, uh, very wide. It can feel very expansive.

There's a thing that happens when you start to put the quote-unquote digital label on, uh, especially in the church world, something that I've noticed in the last, really since COVID, uh, what started, and then just go with me on this analogy real quick, and then tell me I'm stupid about it. Uh, about 20 years ago, uh, maybe 25 years ago, a band called DC Talk released an album called Jesus Freak, right?

Yes, sir. Like, yes, sir, yeah.

And like, in my head, in my like teenage head, I was rebelling from church, but I had liked this girl, and so I started going to church because of this girl. And then I kind of went through a path of like addiction and cocaine and drugs and all those other things. But anytime I would hear the word Christian attached to music, I thought DC Talk's Jesus Freak. And then, you know, the wheel started spinning, and Christian music became Matthew West, and it became Chris Tomlin, it became Steven Curtis Chapman. You know, it was the thing. And so 25, 30 years later, you think Christian music, and you automatically have a style in your head. For better or for worse. Uh, and I did a lot of ministry in the Atlanta area. That's where my wife's from. She was born and raised Atlanta, Georgia. Uh, you talk about Bible Belt, like, you're Tennessee, Tennessee to Atlanta is like essentially like the buckle of the Bible Belt, um, yeah. And so there was this hard and fast rule of like, well, no, it's Sunday, so we listen to Christian, not not from me, from my let's say my in-laws. Uh, we listen to Christian music and we do Christian things on Sunday, and this is what we do. And there's been, and now that I'm in Tampa, Tampa surprisingly is the second most dechurched city in the nation behind Portland, which you would never think of that. Um, but according to like Barna research back in 2020 and 2021, the most dechurched. And so Sunday is not that. And the translation in my head, at least in the past like three or four years, is you attach Christian or church to digital, and it's that, has to feel and look and sound and taste and all, you know, it has to have that flavor, you know? And one of the things I really like about what you guys are doing, especially your church, but you in particular, is you're not allowing that flavor to be in your posting. And I, you know, I know you said you stumbled into that, but do you have a revolutionary bone in your body? Do you have a confrontational bone? Like, is that your Enneagram number? Like, you want to fight things all the time? Like, is that how it is? Or is it one of those things like you really felt the Lord leading you to do something? Because I do believe you are discipling and influencing people. I told you the story off camera, but like, you are discipling and influencing me from afar. And so I guess that's my big question: is that part of your personality, or is that literally something that just kind of has happened?

Gosh, what a question, man. I, this is a whole other part of my story that maybe isn't totally relevant, but, uh, let me go there. So I, as a teenager, discovered drums and punk music in particular. Let's go. And after I was, uh, I was pulled out of public school, and I was, you know, I was getting a lot of fights and stuff. I had a lot of anger issues. Uh, music, and particularly punk music and the punk community, kind of became my people. And to the point where I thought, I'm gonna, I'm gonna study music. I'm gonna move to California, learn to surf, and then live out my days. That's that's really where I thought I was going to go, be part of No Effects, I'm going to be part of Strung Out. Like, oh, you're speaking my language. I know. I like, those are my bands. Those are the bands that I grew up playing and emulating.

Yes.

And people, um, who didn't, it, it is harder to understand because I think it is the punk ethos, at least from my experience, is more than just a middle finger to establishment. That was part of it, and that was maybe the most outspoken part of it, but there was sort of this like challenge, uh, upside down. So when I really started to fall in love with Jesus, uh, there was so many things that were like lightning bolts for me. I was like, this is a pretty punk rock thing for Jesus to say. I'd never heard it said that way because I was hearing it in this like really stuffy church tone. And I even, I sometimes accidentally say in sermons, I said it last Sunday, this thing that Jesus did, and I was like, y'all, I don't think we realize.

How punk rock this is. To me, it probably means something different than the average listener, but that's part of why. And I got to give credit to my parents, man. They, I went to church not because I wanted to, but because my dad was big and scary and said you're going. So I never had this like huge disdain for the church. I just didn't really see the point. So I went and I was like, this is fine. I don't hate it, I don't love it. It's benign. But I just, there was no, I don't know, it was kind of like soon as I don't have to, I'm not going to. That was sort of my understanding. So the fact that I'm in ministry is hilarious. Any of us on this screen or in, but the thing that I really, really appreciate more and more every year is that the way that my parents homeschooled us, I think contributed to a lot of that punk rock. They were like, listen, this is how you think critically. This is how you push back, but with respect. This is how you think for yourself. This is how, like, I didn't realize how unique those things were to learn at twelve, thirteen, fourteen that have kind of shaped the way that I am. And so I bring that into preaching. So we did, you know, a series on mental health. We just went there. And we did a series, a whole series on doubt. And then, you know, people will tell us like, I've never heard a series on doubt. Thank you for going there because that's my lived experience. It's not us trying to be disruptive or edgy. It's sort of like, these are the things that the people I care most about are wrestling with. And it feels like the satisfaction with pithy truisms is just no longer satisfying. People are like seeing through the veneer. So maybe it's time to actually lean into it a little bit more.

And I think some of what we could diagnose this, if you want to, but I had a buddy years ago. He made this comment to me. Not a Christian. He said, you Christians treat online like it's Vegas. Like, what happens here stays here. And the amount of stuff that I've seen people, I'll like, I know that they're in church on Sunday, and then I look at how they post on Monday. And as an outsider, as an atheist, they're like, that doesn't seem to correlate at all. I had enough friends from these other kind of circles and spheres make those observations that, like, deeply convicted me. Like, oh, they're paying attention to. Wow, you say this about your Jesus, and then I watched the way I saw you in the comment section. That seems so disintegrated. That's what it came down to for me. For me, it was okay, it's not me. It's not about me being raw or vulnerable or even edgy. It's about authenticity. And the authentic Ian is that sometimes he reads verses and wonders to himself, what am I supposed to do with this? Turns out when you send me stuff like that, eighty percent of the room goes, yeah, me too. Like, that's also how I feel. And it's been such a beautiful, that C.S. Lewis defines friendship that way. When you share something vulnerable and somebody else, another soul, says me too, like, that's such a gift. That I wish I had, I wish I had leaned into earlier in my ministry because it's like, it's one of the things that I just enjoy most about being a pastor now.

With that in mind, and something that I consistently tell people, you have to be careful what you say in comments because, first off, and I tell my teenagers this all the time, once you have put it on the internet, it is forever on the internet. You can't take it down. You might think you took it down, but you didn't. Somebody probably screenshotted or saved it or whatever. So you navigate that. But then, in addition to that, that whole authenticity piece, I think as believers, I think sometimes we miss that because we try really hard online to put up this facade of holiness and perfection. And first off, people that know us in real life will be on our page and be like, what are you talking about? Like, that is not in general. So you automatically lose, you know, your relevance and your voice into their life. But additionally, I think we are so saturated with production and produced content that people can immediately identify whenever somebody is being real and authentic and genuine. And there's just such a huge, on TikTok, so I, I don't, I was an escort for five years. And God radically pulled me out of that. And I went through copious amounts of therapy and major, major deep healing. And through that process, now I speak at women's conferences and I work with sex trafficking victims and et cetera, et cetera. But if you listen to me on TikTok, I am very transparent about the sanctification process that has happened from the time that I actually gave my life to Christ to where I am now. Even the parts where, even now, I mean, with a theology degree and preaching and running a church and like all of the things, there's still things that I'm like, I still struggle with this. Like, this is still something that I desire. This is still a headspace that I kind of, like, that I'll find myself slipping into. And so whenever we're talking about ministering to people online or discipling people online, what do you think the line is between being authentic and allowing people to really walk with you through the process of your day-to-day journey with Christ and then just doing the most and like sharing the most? And people are, you know, and people are like, oh, like, I don't know if I need that.

Yeah, yeah, that's, we were talking about humility on Sunday. And there's a columnist named David Brooks, and he said, in a lot of ways, humility has become the new pride. Like, we're boastful about how humble we are. And I think you also apply vulnerability or transparency into that same category. And I've heard a number of pastors over the years say things like, oh, my preaching is my therapy. I'm like, oh, I have seven problems with that. That is, I think, unwise. I do think that there is, like, my wife is such a gift for so many reasons, not the least of which is she's just not easily impressed. So like, if I ever feel like, you know, I'm getting a big head or that was kind of impressive or whatever, but she also, like, it's a real gift. If I'm gonna preach on rest and she's in the front row giving me that look like, really? You're going to tell them about rest? Like, weren't you? Isn't that live in the same house? Like, we know. Like, that is a very, so there's another thing that I think has happened in the last fifteen years that's sort of like a controlled vulnerability. Where what we're discovering, and what I've discovered even with close friends, is like, I'm gonna give a little bit of controlled transparency here in a sermon to distract you from like the very real thing that's going on that I'm actually trying to keep secret. Like, using it as a diversion tactic is, turns out, more common than any of us thought. And I think that's really dangerous.

But I had a mentor, and I'll probably bring up mentors ten more times, but he told me really, really early on because I think he saw the inevitable train wreck that I would be if I didn't make some really important corrections. He said, Ian, you need to find people who love you who aren't cowards. He's like, there's plenty of people that love you, but they're not going to tell you the hard truth about yourself. They're not going to tell you you have spinach in your teeth. And there's plenty of people that will tell you the hard truth about yourself, but if you don't know that they love you and afford you, you're not going to, you're not going to receive their correction very well. He's like, you need to find those people. And not a lot of them. You need a few people, kind of ride or die, that will keep you accountable to those things. And I, by God's grace, have found them in different seasons of the light. You know, that's, we've moved and some of that has shifted. But having that is a helpful barometer for me so that I'm not like just spilling all of my guts inappropriately on a Sunday or online. Like, I have, and we even here have a teaching team three weeks before any sermon is preached. You know, we got five to seven people in a room that I deliver a first draft to, and they pick it apart. And they're like, this might be a little too vulnerable, or like, actually, don't think you're being vulnerable enough. And we have men and women, old and young, that are kind of helping keep me accountable to those things so that it isn't like, whoa, that is oversharing to a distracting degree, or, hey, you just read a bunch of words. I don't feel like we know anything more about you at all, though. Like, you didn't actually. And they kind of help correct both extremes. And the sermons end up reflecting much more the actual collective community of the bridge rather than just, I went into, you know, on top of a mountain for a week and came back with this message.

So I try to place a lot of trust in people to kind of help me navigate that in preaching. And with online, I know that my inclination is stoicism. My inclination, my proclivity, is never let them see a sweat. Pretend like you have an answer even if you don't. I know that's my bent. So anytime that I like am attempting vulnerability, it's so counterintuitive for me to overshare that I know it's less likely that, you know, a post will be too vulnerable. And then, you know, now that I have a family and kids, there's like an additional level of accountability. Like, hey, maybe don't share this embarrassing story about our son because that, like you said, that's on the internet forever, and he's eventually gonna need a job or whatever. That has kind of added a new layer to it. And my wife has just, like, such a, such a, she's so wise and such a good sensitivity on, you know, maybe that one doesn't need to go online. Maybe that's just for us. And being teachable and receptive to that has been, has been really helpful.

Last question for me, and then I'm gonna kick it back to Ashley. The family dynamic that you talk about, has that, has that helped? Has it insulated? Has it, how has it pushed your focus in terms of discipleship and in terms of training? And where I'm coming from, that is again, three kids. We talked about this pre-show, but my kids, they weave their social profile into their lives seemingly without thinking about it. They are who they are online, and they are who they are in person. And for us on this call, it's easy for us to get digital beer muscles and go keyboard commando and just crush somebody because we know that there was a life before that, and there's an anonymity factor. And my job as a dad has been to show them, A, that again, everything on the internet lasts forever. It's not going away, even if you hit delete. Number one. Number two, these are formative relationships that you are having on your profiles online in your conversations in your DMs. These are formative conversations. These are things that, that, as a person there, you are to treat them as one of God's children. How has that kind of affected what you are doing? Has it affected it? Has it been negative, positive? Go for it.

Gosh, yeah, so my kids are a different stage. So they're six, five, and eighteen months. So you got a ways. You got a ways, my friend. I got a little ways. But I will say this, though. There's a certain beauty to a six-year-old who hasn't learned social norms yet. That if I'm answering him but also scrolling on my phone, he's climbed up on a chair and grabbed my face and been like, Papa, look at me. Like, he will. I'm so grateful for that because he has snapped me out of, like, that's, and that's led to some conviction for me. So, like, part of my evening liturgy is that when I pull into the driveway, I just turn my phone completely off until they go to bed. That's just my commitment to them.

Because I don't ever want them to hear my voice and not see the whites of my eyes, you know, and so that's the beginning stages of like trying to model for them parameters and boundaries. You know, we practice a Sabbath once a week where I turn it off for 24 hours.

And they now associate Sabbath not with like this diligent rule fall. You're like, "Oh man, we get all of dad and mom." Like, that is it. It is all hands on deck and it's fun. And we, that's, you know, by design. So at some level I'm trying to already model some of that restraint so that they're not just seeing me doom scroll and walk like a zombie throughout the house.

But there are things that you're mentioning that I assume that my kids will always be more tech savvy than me. Like when I meet with parents and they're like, "Oh, we have this app that like protects," I'm like, "Your kid definitely knows the workaround for that. There's no way they don't." Like, that does give me a little bit of anxiety.

So to your formation question, I have to put more stock in what Eugene Peterson calls a long obedience in the same direction over my capacity to adequately police your environments. I know that that's about to go away in a handful of years. I know it. So formation is more Crock-Pot than microwave. I want to be making small deposits every day so that when they're thinking through, "Hey, how much do I share in what environments and what does digital permanence look like?" And how do I—it's less about me creating a 600-page book of bylaws about what they will or won't do and more thinking about like, "Oh man, how do I bring the kingdom to earth in this environment or in this conversation?" Or what does it look like? It's cheesy, but it's like WWJD—what would Jesus do if he were me in this context or this environment?

And I'm sure if we were to hop on this call ten years from now I'd be like, "I couldn't have even anticipated the technology that they would be battling against or wanting to integrate or hoping to use." Like, I can't even fathom it because I'm already mostly an 85-year-old anyway. And so I'm very aware of that, and that used to give me a lot of anxiety. And more so for me, it's like, "All right, how do we? Yeah, how do we think more Crock-Pot than microwave?" And for them, as best we can, a healthy digital appetite. We watch documentaries, we watch movies. We're not Amish, you know, as much as I'd like to be every once in a while. But I have conviction around when you do the iPad thing or is a smartwatch a good idea? You know, I mean, like, there's—it's that's how I feel. But I also want to go move to the mountains every 30 days or so and just raise cattle.

So I'm trying to do the best I can with what I have for now and recognizing that there's a lot that I could worry about that may not ever actualize. If you asked me five years ago, "How will you help your kids navigate Facebook?" I'd be like, "Oh, I do this." Now I'm like, "They're not going to be on Facebook." Like, that's—I would have spent half a decade freaking out about a platform they're not even gonna log into. It's gonna be something different.

So I have to trust the—you know, Annie Dillard says, "How we live our days is how we live our lives." I want to live Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday as someone who's thinking about the kingdom of heaven here and now and modeling that for them so that whatever tools and resources are available to them ten years from now, they're thinking through the same thing.

So last question because we're up to the end of time: something that Andy and I talk a lot about is if Paul specifically had had the internet, what do you think? I guess the status of Christianity or evangelism or just global impact would have been? And what could it be if churches were to stop being fearful of it, stop trying to morph it into traditional methodology, and were to use it as a very strategic tool to basically impact the world with the gospel?

I forget where it's at. I think it's in Second John. He says something—I'm gonna butcher it, forgive me—he says something like, "I have much more I could write to you, but for this I'd actually rather tell you face to face." That to me is such a beautiful tension of he's using the technology of his time. He's writing, writing letters. He's not saying, "Letters of the devil and the Greeks use the letters, so we're not going to use them at all." But he also recognized, "I could keep writing here, but I actually think what I have left to say would be better for me to say in person."

That to me is such a beautiful modeling of, yeah, both of these have their place and they require a winsome processing, and it's not one-size-fits-all, you know? So Marshall McLuhan talks about how we have a low information-to-action ratio, and part of his reasoning for that was we're now taking in so much data all the time from all the world's tragedies worldwide that we're like, "I don't know what to do about any of this."

There is a part of me that feels like we've lost some of the locality of man. I'm worried about this thing that's happening, and sometimes that's appropriate, but it's thousands of miles away, but I don't even know my next-door neighbor's name. I wonder if maybe there's a time for a return to some of that.

And yet I think we've seen so many beautiful, unique connections of people because you can be so specified in a digital space, you know? Like, your communities used to be very geographically driven, and now they're much more interest-driven. You can find a group chat or a page or a club for literally anything. And I think that is in a really beautiful way dismantling some of what was maybe entrenched tribalism, you know, where it's like, "No, we're from this area and we're against people from that area," or "This denomination or this church versus that church."

I think exposure to that—much like traveling or reading—you're like, "Oh, there's other ways of seeing the world." I saw a TED Talk years ago. It was from one of the daughters of the Westborough Baptist Church, and it is such a beautiful TED Talk because she talks about technology. Actually, the reason that I was able to see another worldview outside of this really toxic one that I was born into—she says, "Listen, I know not everyone's using it this way, but I point to Twitter as the thing that helped unlock for me and see just how cancerous this context was."

And she doesn't work for a social media firm or anything, wasn't advocating or selling anything, but it's like, "Hey, you might be inclined to knock it. It kind of saved my life." And I think we're seeing—I think we will continue to see more of that.

And for I just keep coming back to the word winsome and wise, you know? Jesus said, "Be shrewd as serpents and gentle as a dove." I think he offers both of those intentionally. Sometimes personally, as Ian, I'm way too gentle and I just love sandwich everything and I don't say the hard thing, and I need a little more serpent sometimes. I'm way too serpent and I'm like suspicious and I'm like picking everything apart, and it's like, "Hey, I think you need a little more gentleness of a dove here."

For Jesus to say those two things, I think is a helpful rubric we're thinking through: how do we actually step into whatever this next era looks like with wisdom but also ultimately trusting—they're like, God is not caught off guard by this either. He's not like, "Wait, what? We have iPhone goggles now? Oh boy, didn't see that one coming."

You know, I mean, like, there's an element of that we can also rest and say, "Okay, we can step more faithfully into this," and I think trusting the next generation, I think raising up next-generation leaders, teaching them to be pastoral and wise but also trusting them when the time comes, even though, you know, old farts like me might not really fully understand it yet.

And I think it's more of a tension to manage than a problem to solve.

Thank you so much for hopping on with us, and this conversation, and really truly for watching you, because I know I speak for myself, but I think I speak for Andy too. Whenever you're in ministry, like having the nuggets of just discipleship that you bring is very, very valuable. And I think that you keep a lot of people like us going on a much grander scale than you probably realize. So for that, I honor you and I thank you for that, because the work that you do is really, really important.

Thank you likewise. So grateful for you guys and what you're doing.