EP 326 - TOWN HALL MEETING 2025 - Why Do I Need theChurch.digital?

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

All right, hey, I think this is actually working. My mic is up. Hey, you know what, we're going to go ahead and get started because I totally, I totally fat-fingered that. Jason Morris jumped in the countdown. I clicked the wrong button. I, you know, I use Ecamm a lot. Yeah, Jason's Jason's now laughing at me because I can hear him because I brought him on. Unmute your mic. Let me, I can mute you over here, bro. I brought him on. I was trying to make sure I knew what button, but you know, I use Ecamm a lot, but I don't use Ecamm to interview that much. It's been it's been a minute since, uh, Giving Tuesday, I think actually was last time. And so, dude, totally like brought him up on the scene, brought him up, and he's like, you know, thankfully wasn't picking his nose or something.

Hey, what a great start to the event here. Hey, we're doing the town hall, the first town hall that the Church Digital is doing in 2025. We do one of these probably every quarter or so, really trying to, hey, we want to listen to you first off, but more than that, we want to learn what's working, what's not working, and but then also we want to talk about how we can help you do better ministry, be more effective in what you're doing. And so there's a really fascinating conversation happening right now in chat. Steve, uh, my brother from another mother, what genre of music would you call this? Uh, Steve, this is lo-fi. I think someone is educating him in the process. I'm seeing Simon Durk is checking in. Hey there, greetings from the other continent, the continent of Europe. Uh, glad to see this. Andy Mage, uh, jumping in. Uh, we call this lo-fi. Thank you, Andy. Lo-fi, um, is, uh, I named my new car, uh, lo-fi. Lola, as a matter of fact. I love lo-fi. My daughter loves lo-fi. Uh, my wife hates it with the intensity of a thousand suns. Um, she actually banned lo-fi for the holidays. True story. Uh, we were not allowed to listen to lo-fi music. We actually had a lo-fi Christmas list playlist that was just cycling over and over on iTunes. My wife's like, no, that's enough. We're good. Uh, and so yeah, Melanie saying hi, which is a lot of fun there too. Uh, Steve coming back in. Lo-fi music is a genre of music that deliberately incorporates elements of imperfection. Yeah, yeah, listen, it's it's interesting. That's a really interesting philosophy there. It's, um, perfection is a limit or perfection is a lid. Um, you know, it's it's a GMO, good enough to move on. Micah Bales jumping on here, uh, AKA chills beats, uh, to study to. Definitely. I I would have done better in college had I had this, by the way. Star Wars lo-fi is pretty legit. That's news to me. Uh, I'll have, I'll have to look into that. I mean, and to be honest, it's not that far away from the Cantina music anyway, right? That's kind of it's kind of there. Tom jumping on, what's up, family? Tall, skinny Kiwi from New Zealand saying, uh, hi from New Zealand. That background music is really loud, man. Everybody's telling me to turn it down. Bible with the battles, uh, doing it too. You know, fine. I I'll, uh, I'll just like take it almost out. Okay, we happy? I'm not happy because I like I like my music, but that's fine. That's fine. Whatever I need to do for you people is where we are. So hey, listen, we're going to pivot and dive into this. Stacy is saying let's do this, and she's right. So let's let's go and get started here with the town hall. Now I'm I'm going to be honest. Um, I, this is an interactive show. If you all don't talk to me, it's going to be a long, boring couple hours. Anesh coming in from the West Coast, hi all. Love that, and that's great to see you. Here's what I need you to do. Zap that QR code with your phone. Open up a new web browser. Go to Minty.com and type in the numbers, whatever it is. I need you to engage with me here because I want to ask some questions. I want to get some interactions from you. This is a town hall meeting. This is a dialogue. This is a two-way conversation, and I want to hear from you on the screen as we're going through this. Minty, you can type in the number there or use the QR code that's on the screen, and that would be great. Uh, by the way, um, Melanie, maybe this is why YouTube sends me to coffeehouse jazz. Uh, when you, maybe I could totally see that that being the logic of this. You all should right now be frantically typing on those keyboards to get logged into Minty. And so if you're not logging into Minty at this moment, yo, let's go, get logged into Minty because here's the first question that I want to hear from you. Where are you from? We've already talked about Europe. We've already talked about New Zealand. Um, I want to see on the screen. Go ahead. If you're logged into Minty, uh, you should see the map on there. Select on there where you're from, and uh, we should start seeing any minute now some of these opportunities start to pop up. Uh, yeah, we're seeing some of that come in. Excited to see that. Yes, it's a weird-looking map. Uh, the copyrights are a little unique. So around maps, like you can't like put a map of the world on there, but you can do a photo of the map of the world. Crazy, right? Photo of a map is a good thing. So got a little creative. Uh, let's start to see some of my Minty friends, uh, jump on here. Where are you from? I I love that we're even across just America. I know we're bigger than just America, but I love to see that happen. By the way, uh, you know, Jason Morris here, it's a digital map. TCD it up. Yeah, you're right. I I actually, one of the things that that we're going to talk about in here, you know, somebody suggested to me the other day that, um, that the, uh, the metaverse is the eighth continent. I I kind of, I kind of like that. I like the idea of the continent of the metaverse. Yes, the metaverse is over everything. Uh, maybe the metaverse. Some people would actually consider the metaverse another planet, like it's like a Mars floating around almost above, superseding everything. Um, I know we've got some global friends on here, by the way. Global friends, you need to get on Minty as well. In fairness, this is a US broadcast time zone just because of the times of it, and I'm sure our global friends will engage here on demand. By the way, we're going to leave Minty open on demand, so so uh, feel free to engage and dive into it. By the way, uh, uh, oh my gosh, Sunny, Sunny, I sent you an email earlier today. I hope things are well. Uh, snow, where's that lo-fi? Uh, maybe secretly notch one volume up at some point. Sunny, Sunny likes her lo-fi. That's good. Sunny, I I'll be subtle here as we're running into this. Let's get into some more questions. We got, we gotta, we gotta go. We got to go. Biggest challenge in digital missionary work today. Biggest challenge. What's facing you right now? Please don't give me an essay. Keep it short. Keep it simple. Uh, want to hear from you. What's the biggest challenges you're facing in digital missionary, in digital missions, in uh, in digital ministry, in digital church, whatever your context is, virtual, like what is it? I want to start to see some of that pop up on the screen. You know, there's there's like eight seconds delay here, and so it's funny. I'm watching actually Jason Morris on the screen, and he looks deep in thought. He's very pensive about how to answer that question. But some of it's starting to come up. And oh my gosh, that is tiny print. I did not plan this well. Um, I I seriously, I can't read that right now. Hold on, hold on, hold on. There we go. Uh, finances. Uh, mentoring and developing leaders. Training and environment. Uh, schedule. Uh, when global, yeah, how to schedule stuff in global. Uh, reaching ladies, uh, to join online. It's interesting. There's not a lot of women in uh, in in digital ministry. We're going to be talking about that on the Church Digital Podcast soon. Like that's, um, I mean, I don't want to say that's a crying shame, but we've got to figure out how to overcome that. What else do we have here on the screen? Um, time for relationship building. Uh, oh my gosh, that one's covered up. I can't read it. Let me see if I can figure out how to make that go away. Show joining instruction QR code. Yes. Uh, broadcast versus community. Good call. The the tension between broadcast and community. Um, branding and marketing. Help with the the top of the funnel. How to connect and how to community. We're going to get more into that here in a little bit. Content creation and analytics. How are you being successful? We talk about, actually we're talking about that right now with equipping digital missionaries. How do we measure success? My cohort's actually in two hours, in an hour and a half, so coming up here right around the corner. We don't understand IRL ecclesiology. Oh no, comments, no comments. It's different strategies to reach different types of people IRL and and uh, online. By the way, it was funny. I actually I made this comment. I made this comment to Sunny. She's doing a research project, um, and and was wrestling with, um, uh, um, like the the buildings in virtual reality. She's doing a research project on virtual reality churches, and and and I told her I was like, yeah, I I don't say IRL anymore. I can't because IRL implies that physical reality is is real, but it also implies that virtual reality is is not real. Virtual reality is real, and so to say that one is real implies that one is not. Uh, and so IRL is no longer in my vernacular. Actually, I think I talked about it in my book, and and you don't actually find it in references since then. Okay. Uh, finding unique ways to engage, uh, your time, uh, on online. Let's let's pivot on. Let's go to the next question. What does the Church Digital do well? What do the Church Digital do well? Let me, I'm excited to see this. Um, hopefully nobody says nothing, uh, because we we want to essentially do do something. I hope we're doing something good. Um, uh, when we going to do a town hall in in VR? That coming in right now from Micah. Stay tuned. Did you see my slide deck? Did did my slide deck leak on this? No, I'm kidding. I may I may be kidding. I'm not sure if I'm kidding. Hang around, Micah. You you won't be surprised. Bringing together the world. It's exciting to me that that we've got, you know, even just across US, that's a win. Uniting a country together and now starting to bring in some of the other countries, uh, to their influence. Communicating, hopefully training. Yeah, I I know that Sunny's giving a thumbs up. Welcome one-on-one's connecting. Yeah, we I think we do do a good job connecting up top, and the challenge is maybe to not just be at the connection level and but to dig down deeper. Bringing together the world. Networking. It is, it is so exciting to me. I had another conversation today with, um, potential ministry partner that we're looking, thinking about bringing on, and uh, they're in, they're in South Africa, like it's it's not a US-based organization. South African organization entirely. And uh, I mean, within, I told my story, and then they started talking and and about three minutes into them talking, it was like it was a match made in heaven. It was, it was, it was like it was perfect. It was, it was Kismet. I don't know if you know what Kismet is. It it was like there was lo-fi music playing in the sky, like it it was just this this beautiful moment. It's was like, oh yeah, we're going to work together, and and

There's just so much possibility and that's what's exciting to me. You know, at least I feel this tension in the US. I feel it's tension in the US where it's like nothing works together, but there's an opportunity to do something different, to reach someone different.

What's happening right now is that people are recognizing that exposure is good with that too. Onboarding, hopefully we're that's even going to get better. That touching base is so good. Jason Moore is saying right here, "When we have Jesus we have more in common than all our other differences combined." That's a line from an Bosar, almost, you know. When in doubt, preach Jesus. Jesus multiplies. Jesus is scalable. You know, the theological and the practical differences, no, it's all about Jesus. That's so good.

I pray that what the church digital well is is Jesus. Well, let's do this. By the way, keep on Minty. I'm going to come back to Minty here in a little bit as we get more into this. Let's talk about this. What is the church digital? What the church digital does not do well? And this is going to be open confession hour from Jeff Reed, founder of the church digital. What the church digital does not do well?

Well, I'll give you a hint. This TV show is from Community, a USB TV show, hilarious by the way. But I feel like we do community well. That's not what I'm hinting at by doing this. I would say that prayer has been a struggle. No, I'm going to be like this is completely open, honest, transparent. Jeff in this moment right now. I'm a strategy guy. I'm a get it done guy. I'm a doer. I'm an explorer. I'm a driver. I'm an experimenter. And often times when crap pops up, prayer is not my default. Prayer is not my first step. And so as a result of that, you know, honestly, and I've been challenged by that. You know, even this year, I'm leading out of this place of drive and not out of brokenness, not out of prayer, not out of prayer-centric or even gospel-centered. And so as a leader in the organization, we're actually stepping back and I want to invite you at a global scale. You're right, Steve says here, "Begin with prayer." Steve's been reading the book. You know, "Sharing Jesus Online," begin with prayer up front. Melanie is doing the hands. Like, that's crucial for where we're going, which is why we're leaning towards Luke 10:2. "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send out his workers into the harvest field." The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send out workers to send out workers into his harvest field.

Now let's just apply this verse into our digital ministry, into what we're doing. I cannot think of a better story, a better line for digital than "the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few." Like, we've talked about this in digital and metaverse. We said this at L Laon. It was one of the largest unreached people groups. And Jason and I were in Korea having conversations with hundreds of missionaries who were all grinning ear to ear. Literally, I watched men cry at the idea of being trained to be a digital missionary because people are recognizing the harvest, the potential harvest in the digital and in the virtual, in the metaverse spaces. The harvest is plentiful, right? But the workers are few. And that's what we're trying to do with the church digital is to challenge people like you to do the ministry that you're doing. And so it's up to us to ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send out workers into his harvest field.

So this is what we're doing and I want to invite you all to be a part of this. We're starting a 10:02 campaign with the church digital. It's I've actually been doing this for a couple weeks now just in building up for it. I've got on my phone right here, but I've got on my phone an alarm that goes off at 10:02 a.m. 10:02 a.m. every day. Embarrassingly I'll say this, it's MC Hammer's "Pray" is the ringtone that comes up when 10:02 comes around and it just reminds me in that moment, yes, MC Hammer's "Pray," you can at me, go ahead. But it reminds me in that moment to stop and to pray. Number one, there's the challenge to pray for the mission field, pray for those that can be reached in digital, in metaverse and virtual spaces. 10:02, Luke 10:2, calls us to pray for the mission field. But more than that, it calls us to pray for the workers that are managing the harvest. And so I want to challenge all of you to set an alarm on your phones and at 10:02 a.m. to stop and to pray for the digital mission field and the harvest. That's and those that are working the harvest. Pray for the harvest field and pray for those that are working the harvest.

Here's what I want you to do. And by the way, like you can see it right here, 10:02, excited about that. Stop and pray. Stop. Listen, I've done it where I've literally stopped meetings when my phone goes off and have said, "Hey, can we stop and pray for that? Is that okay?" Like you're walking, stop and pray. Listening to your iPhones, you're in a meeting, invite people to come in. You're driving, okay? Don't close your eyes if you're driving at 10:02. Keep them open unless you got, you know, the AI Tesla thing, but still engage in prayer. It's a cause to stop and invite all of us to pray intentionally towards the digital mission field and the workers that are in place.

By the way, all this is, and let me ask, go ahead and do this now with love. You know, as we're talking about praying for the mission field, you all are on the front lines. You are the missionaries that we want to pray for. You and your friends and your compatriots and your, you know, whatever the term is, the people in the space, y'all need prayer. So how can we, how can the church digital, how can our prayer team, how can we as an organization, how can we as individuals pray for you right now? Go ahead and hit that in. Minty would love to hear from you. If you are now jumping on for the first time, go ahead and click on the QR code or you know, zap the QR code with your phone or there's instructions up at the top to join on. Would love to continue to hear from you as we're doing this. There's some other interaction points. But how can we be praying for you? It's a hard question, right? Tell you, I was kind of hoping for a little more interaction than this. I'll give about thirty more seconds.

Finances. It's funny, finances blows up big on the screen. Money's hard. God's bigger than money. Ministry is bigger than money. I said recently in a video, money is this, the is, is not an excuse to do the ministry. May we do the will of God. Ears to hear. Discernment. Patience. Discernment. Patience. Endurance. Patience coming up a couple times. Job security. Wisdom. Yeah, discernment seems to be a pattern here. Pray for your digital community. Marriage challenges. Digital mission work is hard. And let me tell you from someone who, like, honestly, I'll say this, almost lost his marriage as a result of the work and some of the things. God's not happy if you lose your marriage as a result of ministry. That is not the idea of ministry, to affect your marriage. So I feel the pain of that.

By the way, we've got some new people coming on. Greetings from Lva, awesome, love that. And so, and also we've got our friend Yopee coming on from Nigeria. So we're extending out that global reach. It's great to see you guys. Thanks for jumping in.

So let's dig in. Hey, here's what we're doing with this prayer initiative. If you're signing up, if you're interested in making a commitment to pray at 10:02 a.m. every day, okay, listen, I skip Sundays. That's embarrassing, but I'm in church 10:02 and I don't want MC Hammer's like, you know, anthem "Pray" playing out my phone in the middle of like a church service. But you know, I stop and pray as when I can that day. But if you want to make a commitment to pray with us daily towards us and maybe even start to interact with prayer requests that are coming in from the mission field, the church.digital/pray. There's resources that will send you via email. Yeah, you don't remember what email is. There's platforms that we want to get you connected with called Seedling, where we're getting a bunch of our prayer requests. There's even an opportunity at the church digital pray. Maybe you don't want to make the commitment to pray, but you want to share prayer requests. There's a link to our Seedling platform at the church.digital/pray. And so this is a great opportunity to connect with people and to pray for them and to engage in even answering the prayer requests that come in.

So the church.digital/pray. But you know what, we're not done with that. That was one of the announcements, but that's just one of them that's coming up. And so we've got more prayer coming up. And so to do this, I'm going to bring on my friend Stacy. And hopefully, hopefully I'm going to push the right button here. Stacy. Stacy, hey, hey, how you doing, Stacy? Good to see you. Yeah, Stacy is some of you may not know. Stacy, we just came up with her title today. She is the chaplain of the church digital. And so we're excited to have Stacy on board. She's been doing a lot of work with us in mental health and in trying to make sure that our missionaries are healthy and stable. And so it's been, honestly, it's been a pleasure working with her a little bit as the kid just kind of weighs back and forth in the background there. I've always loved this GIF, and so let's move on. Hey, you know what, I don't have time for that one, unfortunately. Stacy, let's talk a little bit about guided prayer because I know this is something that you're passionate about. So maybe share a little bit of your story here.

Yeah, I've always really thoroughly, not just enjoyed, but connecting prayer, not just myself but in a community of prayer. And I think that is vital when we establish, when we especially at the foundation of our community now with TCD. So I'm excited it's guided prayer that we will be hosting. I'll be hosting every other Wednesday starting tomorrow at 7:30 Pacific Time. 7:30 Pacific Time. So yeah, flat cap, love it, love it. Guided prayer. You know what that means is when we talk about guided prayer, it is bringing a topic, subject, or even a liturgy or a written out prayer. And then all of us individually who are in there will have a time of silence and then perhaps, you know, God's leading you to pray out loud in agreement of what we're talking about, what the theme is. This is not the time for you know, preaching ten-minute sermons because this is only a half hour. It's not long. If anything, you know, if you can only make fifteen minutes, please join us for the first fifteen minutes. But this is a time for us to be in community, building each other up if that's the topic, or it could be specifically for a location, maybe a platform. We've talked about that. Platform is place. And it could be Twitch. It could be praying for people in Twitch, in the metaverse, or any specific area. And then also geographical too. We have Outpost. Maybe you've heard Jeff talk about our Outpost and the leaders within TCD. And so we want to make sure and be clear that we are grounded in prayer. This is not about, oh, I have something, I have a fifteen-minute lesson to give or sermon to give, but it is in agreement, all of us together to pray in agreement of what God is doing. And we get to be part of that movement by joining in this community of prayer.

Any questions? Jeff, awesome. No, I love it. Excited about guided prayer. It's going to be every other week on Wednesdays, and then also the well. If you've not seen or experienced the well, which is every Tuesday at like 10 Eastern, I think, um, it is both of these are incredible spiritual experiences. I don't know what the right word is, but it's a beautiful opportunity to maybe come together, get refreshed, and gain focus and perspective. You know, I've been, um, Alex is in my EDM group and really excited about some of the work that she's doing with the well. And so both of these are opportunities in TCD. I would strongly invite you to lean into both of these. You can see times for these on the church.digital calendar. It's a great way to get connected into that. So, but Stacy, thanks for jumping on and digging in. We're going to have to pivot, so I'm going to kick you off this. And so, yeah, she's here and she's gone. Okay, okay, thanks. It's great to be here as well. Another Nigerian swinging in here. And so yes, Stacy is the best. Excited for that. I'm going to rush into this next one because I've got Jason Morris on. And so, want to, did I still have sound? Do people hear me? Annie's back. Okay, good. Jeff, sound's back. That's I misclicked a button for two seconds, and so that was me over here. Thank you. I appreciate that, Joshua. Easter, great to see you too, sir. All right, let's get going here. We've talked about the idea of a digital missionary framework: connect, community, equip, mobilize. It's interesting. I had my kids program a little square here with a cube. Connect, community, equip, mobilize. It's the four gold squares, but then multiplication. You can see where it starts to rotate around 3D printing. Incredible, right? And but this is what we talk about all the time. It's this framework to do this. So let me ask this. As I'm bringing Jason Morris on the screen, using a digital missionary framework: connect, community, equip, mobilize. Connecting with people at a, oh, connecting with people at a digital level. Hit the wrong button, J. Sorry. Connecting with people digitally, inviting them into a community, equipping them to be a digital missionary, and then mobilizing and sending them out. What are your strengths and what are your weaknesses? Go ahead and give me some thoughts on that real quick. Connect, community, equip, mobilize. Hey, Jason, as they're doing that and as they're thinking, I know your time's short. You've got to run here like in 30 seconds or so. Yeah, sorry, my friend. I don't know. Getting well, um, talk to me a little bit about the experience of EDM so far. We wrote Equipping Digital Missionaries. We ran the first beta. 70 applied. We probably graduate 35 or so. Um, what, you know, how's it been for your group? What are you seeing? Like, what's the excitement level of this?

Well, what I love about our group, and it sounds to me like a lot of the other cohorts are experiencing the same thing, is that there seems to have taken a turn around week eight or nine where we're starting to become friends. And that to me is the biggest indicator ever, because one of the big problems that digital doesn't do well, oddly, is deep friendships. Like, we go broad really easily. Going deep is harder. And that's true not just of digital. It's true of physical too. But it seems to be magnified because the differential is so great. And so one of the things that has been super encouraging to me is for us to share some of the things that we're struggling with. Um, and it came out of that mental health week that we did as a cohort together. Yeah, and just sharing how the struggles actually manifest themselves, not only in the people that we're ministering to, but also in us as wounded warriors out there getting the job done. We're all broken people, and being able to share what's going on and get help and support. Wow, that changed the dynamic of us working together as a team of friends on mission. And so for me, I felt like, wow, this feels completely different now in the second half of the cohort than in the first half of the cohort. And when we're talking about things like metrics and logistics and all of that, there is a whole other layer of friendship on top of those topics that completely changes the way that it feels, because we know that we've got each other's backs on this stuff and we're not alone. And so for me, that's been the most encouraging.

Yeah, Stacy's adding to that idea, and you said it: we're all broken people. And operating that way digitally is so comforting and reassuring, and it's honestly the exact opposite of what is the culture of digital, which is one of the reasons why we coach it and stand separate from that. Yeah, and so like, it's been beautiful. You know, it's interesting, Jason, as we're even looking at, you know, we've a lot of people are good at the community and the connect piece, but the equipping and the mobilizing, that is a weakness right now. And honestly, with the church digital, it's taken us kind of years to get the community and the connection in place to be able to really now get down and build out equipping and mobilization. And the heart of what we're trying to offer with EDM is to create this opportunity to focus on the equipping piece and the mobilization. And so Jason, you'll appreciate this GIF. You know, it's the Elmo working out, building those muscles. I so love this GIF, man, but this is the beauty of what we're doing with equipping digital missionaries. Like, we've had, and this is including even the beta two that we're running, we've had over 120 people sign up for EDM, like globally. There's a, I would say in six months, and to be honest, we didn't even really broadcast that we're doing this. We're having conversations with organizations that want to empower thousands of people to be digital missionaries. Like, there's a huge interest in exploring and empowering the space. And so I'm going to let you in, and this is, this has a dated, this is a dated announcement because EDM beta two, we're going to close registration. Today's Tuesday the 11th. We're going to close it Wednesday the 12th because we got to launch this thing. February 24th is when we're starting the next EDM beta. It was a 13-week cohort. We're making some changes, getting it down to a 10-week cohort. We're connecting together a global community. We've got at this point, I can tell you, we've got Oceania. We've got Nigeria. We've got America. The Americas. That's three or four continents right there, coming together to do this. Some really interesting things. And we're also rolling out some electives towards this, assessments from APEST as well as TR Center. Like, we're really building into EDM in the heart of equipping digital missionaries. So you two can be like Elmo lifting the weights and being able to be all muscular. Like, we all know Tickle Me Elmo is. Jason, did you have a Tickle Me Elmo?

No, no, you never had a Tickle Me Elmo?

I had a Tickle Me Elmo. I'll make that confession. Um, I loved it too. I got it when I was like a high school kid.

Jason, you must be a lot older than I am.

I, I, maybe that's maybe. Oh, did he just say that? Can he say that?

Hey, if you want more information, it's the church.digital/EDM. The church.digital/EDM. Seriously, beta two, we're going to close in 24 hours, so sign up for that. Jason, my friend, I know you need to go. I appreciate you sticking around a little bit today and doing that, but I'm going to let you go, and we're going to pivot to the next model here, which is mobilize. Stacy's a beast. Love her heart. I have no idea why that popped up. I'm not saying that Stacy is not a beast. Stacy is a beast, but I think that got stuck in the programming. Nicole Howard, so glad to be here. Definitely. Um, Simon says nice. I'm Simon. I'm not sure what you're nicing, but I love the fact. Listen, if Simon Dirks is happy, all things go well with the world. And so actually, Simon, we're right up your alley here with the mobilized section. By the way, this is not even the fun part of the show. There's, there's, um, well, we're going to get there, but stick around. Like, you don't want to go anywhere with this. But let's talk about mobilize. Um, finding a GIF on mobilization was hard. Um, time to go mobile. I don't know if you can relate to this. Is this Bane from the Batman series? Like, I really don't do DC. I'm much more of a Marvel guy, but I mean, it's Bane. He's kind of bad looking. So, and evidently he's going to go mobile. I think this is right before he jumps on the motorcycle and terrorizes Gotham. Different story for a different day. But really, for us, it's not about mobilization like going mobile, bye Tom. Good to see you, my friend. It's much more about multiplication. Um, thank you, Fred Flintstone. It's all about taking these ideas, investing the idea of sharing Christ, the idea of discipleship, relational evangelism, relational discipleship, utilizing digital community as a community worthy of Christ, of gospel, and of the church. It's all about seeing these ideas multiply out, which is the heart of what we're trying to do with the church digital in this mobilizing stage. Um, which gets me to where it's ironic that Simon Dirks was on here because Simon's a big part of this, which gets us to our outposts. Outposts are these decentralized networks, regional networks that we've got in place that are designed to encourage digital missionaries to experiment, to explore, and to be empowered to do ministry. Outposts will encourage digital missionaries to explore and experiment, essentially empowering them to do ministry. And so we're very excited about these outposts. Now we've got, I don't know, maybe five or six at least popping up right now. I know Simon is in, um, Simon's in Germany, but he's working Europe at this point. And Yopee is working southern Africa. Um, we've got, um, Ebenezer, who's working South Asia. Yeah, South Asia. Um, Josh, we're getting ready to launch into the Oceania. We're having some conversations with some people that are in the Middle East area. And so like, we're building out these regional networks in such a way that if you are connected or if you're in those areas and you're interested in learning how to do ministry in those contexts, listen, I have no idea how digital works in Africa. Like, forgive me. I'm not even going to try to pretend. Yopee does. And so far be it from me to tell Yopee what to do. I want to get you connected with Yopee. Like, it's so funny. So the idea here is, you know, how do we connect? That's my point. Is that we want these people to connect with people in their context to learn how to do that. And that's really what we're trying to do with our outposts, or start to create these regional networks within WhatsApp or Discord, where relevant, and trying to get people connected to the source. Like, hey, let's get people in Europe, get them connected to Simon, and so Simon can help them. And we can work through Simon and Simon can help contextualize some of our training so it works in that context. And the same thing goes out with the other regions. And so that's the heart behind what we're trying to do with our outposts. Now let me ask this question: as a digital missionary, what do you need help with? And this is where I'm curious. You know, is it the equipping? Um, I'm curious.

Is it the what, what are the numbers there? Uh, finding encouragement within your ministry, exploring new platforms and new ideas, experimenting with new techniques or um resources to empower you to do ministry as digital missionaries. What do you need help with? Experimenting with new techniques, finding encouragement in your ministry, exploring new platforms and resources to empower you to do ministry. This actually surprises me. Experimenting with new techniques is in the lead. I would not have said that. That's good. I mean, I love the fact that we are an adventurous sort and the ability to utilize um the Outpost to do experiments with, to maybe talk through ideas of how better to experiment, the idea of how to read the results that come in from that. Um, resources uh to empower you to do ministry. I did kind of feel like that one was going to be strong. Um, you know, it's well, just to be honest, digital ministry, digital mission work can be alone. There's not a lot of organizations that are doing it yet. And and to be honest, as a result of that, we the church digital are stepping into that space and to be able to help uh digital missionaries and people like you. Um, now what's what's funny is there's lots of organizations that I don't think I've had an organization yet tell me that I've approached, tell me they wouldn't help. Now most of them don't know how to help and don't know how to contextualize and don't know what it means and some of them think I'm crazy, but they're willing to, you know, throw down and help, you know, crazy Jeff, do whatever Jeff's crazy wanting to do. And so this is the opportunity, right? As as digital missionaries, we want to get you connected into an outpost to be able to provide you those resources uh to empower your ministry or to help you experiment with new techniques, exploring new platforms and new ideas. Um, uh, and so love that uh, finding encouragement in in your ministry. Like we said, oh, I clicked the wrong button. Boom, boom. Uh, our digital outposts. I think I said this. Europe is Simon. It's South Africa, Yopee. Uh, South Asia, Eonia. Ebenezer, Ebe. Uh, Oceania, Asia Pacific, Josh. We have a lot of the Pacific Islands over over there. There's a lot of interest in that. The Americas, to be honest, I'm looking for a leader. This is embarrassing in my own country. I don't have a leader for an outpost. But uh, if you're interested in in helping in in the Americas uh north as as well as south, or we can break it up south and north, we're open to that. We're looking for somebody that can step in and fill in that gap as an outpost leader in the Americas. And so feel free to connect with me. Uh, and so um, I just realized that page is not launched yet. I have, I was supposed to record a video and and I didn't make my deadline. So never mind on going to that web page. You can, if you want, no, actually, you know what? Don't do it. Don't do it. I refuse. Don't go to the web page. Don't go to the web page. I just realized there's some stuff on there that's that's not quite ready. By the way, if you go to the web page, if you go to the web page, you will not get the secret. Like, your your computer will automatically crash. Don't go to that web page. Uh, Jeff, digital minister, utop is asking, oh my gosh, how can one connect to our TCD WhatsApp group? That's a great question. It's WhatsApp spelled correctly. W-H-A-T-S-A-P-P dot the church dot digital. What's up dot the church dot digital. I'm so mad I put that link on that page. Now people are going to like that page is getting more hits now than anything else on the website because people are like, I wonder what's so secret over over there. No, it's it's kidding. Um, all right, but hey, I've got a secret and and and I haven't, I don't know that I've said this publicly yet. Um, this one's been killing me. Uh, I've really wanted to talk about this and I haven't been able to. So I'm I'm excited to roll this one out. Normally I I would like get people to uh give me a drum roll. And so here, I know, I know I can't hear you. Uh, but wherever you are, I want you to to do the drum roll like, go, go to your desk and and give me a a drum roll. Hey, um, Pastor D, hey, I couldn't make it earlier, but I want you to check in. It's Pastor D. Hey, Pastor D, stick around two minutes. Uh, this this drum roll is uh for you, kind of sort of. I want you to be a part of this though. Hey, drum roll. Okay, what what are we drum rolling? What's what's the secret? Secret, secret. Here we go. You ready? Oh, that just said wrong button pushed. You ready for this? Boom. The church digital is doing a digital missionary conference. I I repeat, the church digital is going to be doing a digital missionary conference. And the crowd celebrate. Yes, even Morgan Freeman is excited about the announcement in place. Um, we, the church digital, are are going to be doing a uh digital missionary conference on line. And we'll get to that in a second. Let's let's walk through it. Um, the digital missionary conference. Why? Uh, we are equipping anyone to do digital ministry. By the way, uh, House of His Glory, Pastor D, yes, I came in just in time. Yes, you did. You can watch all of this, of course, on demand on YouTube and get caught up with the stuff that you missed. But this is this is a big announcement. This is a big part of it. We're doing an online conference. Why? Because we want to equip anyone to do digital missionary work. We want to equip anybody to do digital ministry. Simon on another continent is doing the celebration. Uh, Yopee on another continent is doing the hand clap. Uh, everybody is is happy right now because we're doing a digital missionary conference. It is Wednesday, April 2nd, 2 a.m. Excuse me, April 2nd, 2025, 11 a.m. Eastern. Um, that is uh Eastern New York. And so figure out the time zones towards that. Um, what we're going to do, keynote talks as well as breakout sessions where we're going to be doing a digital broadcast. And we're also going to be doing the conference in virtual reality. So here's the plan, all right? And and I'm going to need some of your help to pull this off. We are doing a conference complete with keynote speakers in alter live, YouTube cameras, webcam, all of this. Now, now some of the speakers we've lined up in in for the for the broadcast campus, I mean, some of these I'm going to tell show you here in a little bit. It's an ANC lineup, and I'm excited even about the ones we haven't firmed up yet. But we know that that virtual is different than than physical than digital. If you're really doing virtual reality ministry, it's an avatar. It's completely different bird. And so as a result of that, we're wanting to produce uh some of the broadcast conference will go into virtual reality. And then we're looking for specific speakers to speak just to virtual reality ministry. So there will literally be exclusive content from the conference specifically designed for virtual reality. It's not like coming to virtual reality and watch this video. There's going to be a little bit of that from some some qualified talks, but a lot of it's going to be original and authentic to virtual reality. How much are you talking to? I mean, I I give, I give stuff away. All this is going to be free uh for participants. Um, here is, I keep clicking the wrong button. Uh, speakers include David Nelms, founder of the Timothy Initiative. By the way, the Timothy Initiative, this year, David Nelms told me their goal is to train 180,000 people globally on uh missionary work. Talk about starting a movement. 180,000 people to uh to share the gospel globally. Jakay Kanda, online campus pastor at Saddleback. By the way, on the down low, you know, I talk about J Mo being one of the smartest people in digital ministry. Uh, Jak Cras in in the top four. Um, and uh, some of the stuff that he's doing in closed areas is ridiculous. And so looking forward to him sharing a little bit about that. Matthew Nman, uh, one of the leaders of Laon organization, Billy Graham's missions organization, and director of research, uh, is is coming on. Matthew Nman shared the uh the gospel, what was it called? The uh uh the, oh my gosh, uh, the gospel report. Somebody's going to yell at me when they figure this out. Um, uh, literally was a 200 page report on on the Great Commission report. And um, it's a maybe had 50, 60 pages on digital ministry. Matthew Nman is is one of the strong reasons why the uh Laon has such a calling in love for digital ministry. Josh Packard, author of Church Refugees, is is coming on the show. By the way, Dr. John Harris and Josh. Dr. John Harris, Dr. John is going to interview Josh Packard. Really excited, really excited about this one. Like, this is going to be a great, a great interview. Um, Dr. John has been quoting Josh Packard on my podcast for years. I'm not kidding. And uh, one day I was, I told Dr. John, I was like, hey, if if I if I did a podcast uh and I brought in Josh Packard, would you want to interview him? I don't know who Josh Packard is, but I'll go find out. And sure enough, I was able to find out, find him, and uh, he's coming to speak at the conference with Dr. John. And this is just scratching the surface. Uh, these are all the broadcasts. We're still sealing up virtual reality speakers now. We've got a couple of broadcast speakers, I think we're bringing on as well. So listen, more information on the conference uh you want to go to missionary dot digital. Missionary dot digital. There's not much to see now. In typical fashion uh with the church digital, we're building the plane while it's flying. And so a lot of the details are are are getting rushed and and put together right now. Um, I will uh, so missionary dot digital, you can get on a mailing list. We'll keep you up to date with what's going on with the conference. And um, we'll, as soon as registrations, official registrations open up, we'll get the word out. By the way, uh, one thing I feel like I need to say in this moment. Um, this conference is very, I'm going to put pressure on myself by saying this. This conference is very um us centric based in on time zones and delivery methods and and some of that. Um, that will not be that way in the future. And so as as I'm putting this one together, I don't know, um, we ran into some hurdles because of deadlines and things. But as I look at our outpost, as I look at our global relationships that we're building, it is very important for us to develop a um a global approach to missionary equipping, which includes how we're doing our our conferences. As a matter of fact, it was, it was really, we, I started talking about this with with Barbara Carrero uh in a in a meeting. I don't know a week or so ago. And I started casting vision for what I want to do with um you know, conferences in the future. And uh and she said, Jeff, for you to be able to successfully do that, you're going to have to break the model of online conference, of digital conferences. Like, you're just going to break the model and and do it a whole new way. And she's not wrong. So we're going to figure that out. Add that to the list of things to do for late 25. Oh wait, did he imply there's going to be a second digital missionary conference in late 25? Congratulations, you got the inside scoop. Okay, so that was that was the big announcement. Okay, but you know, in typical fashion, oh, there's one more thing that that I want to get into. And uh and so I um I, you know, I searched everywhere for a Steve Jobs GIF saying one more thing. They don't make a GIF of Steve Jobs with one more thing. Like, I almost want to pull up old Apple footage and create it just so I can have it for myself. Like, I cannot believe no one has this thing. Like, like, no, I love this guy, but this guy ain't Steve Jobs saying one more thing. All right, so I'm going to put on a hint here. Uh, and um, and I'm going to leave this open for for a while. And I'm going to bring on uh my next guest uh who I want you to to speak into into this. Now, I I don't know what this means. Actually, I know what this means. You don't know what this means. But let's go ahead and uh and bring a on. I'm gonna push my my magic.

Button here and hopefully this works. Hey there, he is. There's flat cap. How you doing?

Flat cap doing well. Enjoying it so far. Yeah, so um, is that a new flat cap? Flat cap, I don't think I've seen that flat cap.

Flat cap, no, I've got plenty back there. I just picked a different one today.

All right, I um, that one, yeah, is not the one that I normally see in. So it kind of, it's throwing me for a loop. And now I'm suddenly realizing I'm not wearing a hat myself. And the brightness of the blue is now washing me out where I look like I'm a Smurf. And so it's a, I guess a good problem to be. So I tell you what, why don't we go ahead and let the cat out of the bag. What are we announcing here with um, this animated gif? Uh, it looks like gaming to me.

So we uh, we've got a few people in uh the TCD sphere that uh spend a lot of time in gaming. Uh, some of us are on Twitch, some in other places. And so we're going to be opening up the one of the outposts is going to be gaming specific outpost. So going to be doing EDMs, the uh, equipping digital missionaries, and targeting those who have decided that uh the gaming industry, the gamers, those who spend, well, the motif is like these two guys sitting in your mom's basement playing video games all day and not connected with the real world. Uh, but they need Christ. And there are a lot of Christians out there that have had the call to those gamers because they love them and they know them. And so that's what uh we're going to be doing. Andy's going to be helping me along with that. Andy's over in gaming sphere as well. So bunch of my friends on Twitch going to be reaching out to them, bringing them in. We're going to be launching some new things in the Discord. Sorry, those that are in WhatsApp, the gaming realm is connected with Discord. So if you're in gaming, you'll you'll be connected in Discord at some point. So we're just going to be building that outpost connection for community inside of the already existing TCD Discord server. So that's where we're gonna, we're going to play around there. And the Twitch channel, we're going to be launching some new things back on the Twitch channel. So I don't have any dates specific of when those will be or time schedules, but it'll be the last week of February is when all of this will hopefully be going live. That is our target deadline. Andy'll probably hold me to that and make sure that we get all of that going. So uh, any questions on that, Jeff?

No, that beautiful. So gaming outpost, TCD's gaming outpost uh is is launching right around the corner. Um, Stacy, flat cap, all right, gaming outpost uh, Demarcus is uh, let's go uh with uh gaming emoji. Uh, real Andy Mage is saying yes, I will. And so yeah, that's, he's he's not singing the that popular song. He's uh, he's holding him accountable. I'm going to be honest with you, at at this moment I'm, I've said this publicly, I'm not a gamer. And so the idea of gaming, I kind of feel like the um uh, the the papa chasing the children around trying to do this. I I just, I love this. CHF, this presentation was more about what gifs do I want to post and then building the building what I was actually going to talk around it. Uh, but I will put this in public writing right here to give Andy Mage uh ammunition. And so Leighton, you can go ahead and screen cap this because sucker, it's going to happen. The gaming outpost will launch this month in TCD Discord. The the gaming outpost is going to launch this month in TCD Discord. If you're interested in more information, go see uh my friend flat cap and uh and get connected. That is going to be in Discord and Twitch because those are the gaming platforms. And and we're specifically going after that uh niche audience with this. There's really, I don't, I don't think I said this earlier, but there there's Jason Morris would say two. I would say there's probably three because I've haven't convinced him yet on the third yet. I don't know that I told him three yet. But there's three different types of areas that we would that we're going after with our outposts. One is, and Stacy mentioned it earlier, it's it's the the platforms in places. Platforms, looking at like like Facebook, looking at at the different platforms that exist. And then there's like places that are like, you know, countries, Europe, uh, southern Africa, et cetera. And then the third one is is more of people groups. Is not the right word, but it's more, it's more of that where, you know, I'm even thinking like um, children or arguing, maybe even gaming at some of that. So some of these terms are kind of loose. But the the purpose is is that we are focused on on specifically um, helping people within these subcultures understand more cultures and sub cultures, okay, understand the gospel uh and understand the what God has in their life and seeing that multiplied in in digital and physical space. And so Leon's been a a um, I'm trying to figure out the right word. Um, Leon's been a um a place of strength. Um, well, you know what, dude, you, when crap hits the fan for me, you're the guy I go to. Like, and so I'm I'm trying to say something. A statue isn't the right word, but you've been, I would say you're a place of strength, man. And so I I appreciate you of of how you're engaging in this and um want to when I'm looking forward to seeing how uh the gaming outpost is going to succeed moving forward. So man, thanks for jumping on this.

Okay, any any closing thoughts before you leave the show?

Uh, I think on some level like the whole outlook of what outposts are supposed to be of experimenting, exploring, and encouraging uh, that's I think really the the heart of what we want to do with this is exploring and finding other people out there that are isolated and alone that don't know yet about other people doing anything digital in ministry. Finding them, bringing them into community, and uh learning from one another, encouraging one another. So and I love the idea of experimenting. So that'll be a bunch of what'll be happening in the next six months.

Awesome, love, love that. So looking forward to it. And Andy says uh from the peanut gallery, I would also agree that with Jeff uh, flat cap is a place of strength for us. And so flat cap, my friend, thanks for thanks for jumping on here. But I'm going to press my magic button and kick you off. See you later.

All right, and then it was down to me. So this has been a lot of fun to put together. Uh, Stacy says uh comments, uh, Jeff will be launching a gif outpost soon. Uh, you get it? GIF, you get a gif, you get an outpost, you get an outpost. We got something that through the church digital that we want to do to help all of you uh take clear next steps in your digital ministry. Whether your weaknesses, connect community, equip uh, mobilize, our heart is to get you connected um with people that can help you with a process, with steps, with training, with equipping um, with with a group, with others that you can be encouraged to explore, to experiment, and be empowered to do the ministry uh that you're doing. And so here's what I'm going to do. Uh, we're going to land the plane at uh, 62 minutes. Actually, I started two minutes late. And so um, maybe that's um, okay. But I'm going to go ahead and open up uh Q&A. Uh, and so you can zap the QR code if you need to go. Go, if you want to stick around and listen to me ramble, uh, go ahead and throw comments and questions in YouTube or you can throw them in um, uh, what do you call it here? And um, uh, mint, minty, mintim meter. And uh, we'll go ahead and address questions. This is officially the afterparty. Thank you, Leighton. You know what, I'll do, I'll go ahead and kick the get the music going again. Um, so thank you, Leighton. Uh, thank you, J. Thank you, um, Andy was not on, but and and thank you, Stacy, for for being on here. Andy was was around. Andy's the guy that helps me figure out all this stuff. And so um, yeah, the tech of it. By the way, House of His Glory, Pastor D. Um, love it. You know, talking about, I believe that was about the gaming outpost. I think is when I saw that come in. Um, uh, you know, I always, I'm always thankful when Pastor D's around. And and yeah, uh, Leighton is a a strong tower. Uh, in that he is strong tower. Uh, um, yeah, what's what's that song? Oh my gosh, the righteous fall into him and they are saved. Anyway, there it's a Psalm, right? I'm pulling that from, man, that's that's a deep cut for me. And so yeah, I'm looking for questions. Anybody on EDM uh, any any of the topics, the conference, anything, throw it at me. Otherwise, um, I may just like hang out here and and jam out for a while with my Loi music. Loi, I bought a, I mentioned this earlier or some of it, I'll I'll put it on the podcast. It'll be, it'll be the bonus content. So um, we bought a new car. Some of you have been in some of my open offices and meetings where I um, oh, that's much more interesting than my new car. Uh, will we be notified soon about EDM? Um, yes, yes. Tomorrow, emails will go out. Um, several things happened. I apologize. Uh, we will be launching the next EDM uh, the week of February 24th, 10 days away. We'll sign up times and get everything set in the next 10 days uh to launch into that. So April 24th is going to be good for that. Thank you uh for that question. Um, very good. Let me um, dig into here. Uh, do outposts meet via Discord? Um, that is a platform specific question. Um, or a you know, a place specific question. Uh, outposts are decentralized. And so there's there's freedom for them to pick. Now I I'll tell you that the gaming outpost will be meeting in Discord because it makes 100% sense for that to happen. Uh, since all gamers are on Discord now. What we're finding, Pastor D, in context, is that our um, like for example, um, Utop down in uh, southern Africa, south, southern Africa, he um, the technology, the bandwidth that absorbs into running Discord really makes it very hard to get much engagement in um, some of the technological bandwidth limited areas down there. And so the the asynchronous community that honestly seems to be picking up a lot globally for us is WhatsApp. Um, honestly, across the planet, 25% of the world's population already have WhatsApp installed on their phones and are active users. And so rather than trying to introduce a new platform to a bunch of people, we've been leaning strong into WhatsApp globally. Uh, realizing that Discord does work for some people. As a matter of fact, our new EDM, uh, the ones and I'm going to be leading this next batch, um, they will be a 100% WhatsApp. Um, the Americas, the Oceania, and the other, we're all going to be together in um, for EDM. As a matter of fact, we're doing something different. I'm actually going to combine all three of those continents together. All three of the the groups and the one WhatsApp group. Uh, so instead of isolating the Americas in Africa and ocean, uh, it's going to be all combined together. And so there'll be you know, a point where we can interact and and uh learn from each other globally. Like, I I just think that's a that's a great place to be. Keith is coming up to save the day. Proverbs, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into, not fall into it, and uh and uh is safe. Um, I wrote a blog about this a while back. Um, I need to pull that out. Who'd I write that for? That's a good question, Jeff. I may have wrote that for Leadership Network. I'd have to, I'd have to fall back. Um, I equated the the strong tower to the steeple. Um, which is a another conversation about buildings. Um, cool. Uh, Pastor D, yeah, cool. Uh, what's up? Makes sense, totally, totally does in their context. Um, Steve Reed, Kumbaya. Oh, that'll be the next song I sing. Kumbaya, my Lord. All right, I think that's the first time I've seen Kumbaya in a decade. Thanks for that, Steve. I appreciate the uh, I am not related to Steve. Um, oh, I just exited out. Well, I was almost, I was done with that aspect. Um, I am not related to Steve, although I've actually had people ask me that a couple times. Steve, people think we're related. We talk too much on on WhatsApp and and and Discord, I guess. What else we got, people?

After show, nothing. I'll hang out for five more minutes. I've got my EDM group coming up here. Um, America's, we're on week 11, and so I've got a rehash. Um, I've got to make sure I'm all caught up on the material. Uh, this orchestra, tall skinny kiwi, this orchestra has a reed section.

Yes, it does. Um, uh, tall skinny, is it 5 a.m. where you are right now? 5 a.m.? Like, I'm trying to reflect back here, man. That is OD dark early for you, my friend. 15 hours away from where we are now. Um, thanks for being here. Steve Reed makes a comment that we have the same name, Dad. Okay, well played. Um, I am corrected. Uh, it is 8 a.m. It's little tall skinny. Um, enjoy your coffee. I got decaf right here. Uh, been drinking that. May be my third or fourth cup. I'm not sure today. Um, I've been, you know, I used to make fun of people who drank decaf coffee, but I've been leaning more into it as of late. Uh, I just, I need coffee in my life, man. Water, dirty water with ground up mud. I mean, who would not want to drink that? Cool, messaging us from the future. Yeah, that happens to me all the time, Micah. Um, when I talk to our friends down in New Zealand, I am constantly in the other country that's down there, Australia. I'm constantly like, hey, how was, how was, how's tomorrow working for you? Is it good? I made that. It was funny. I made that joke this morning with South Africa. Um, yeah, Micah, I'm, man, I'm, I'm excited you're hanging out with us. I'm really excited to see what's coming up. You asked a question yesterday. I'm having a conversation like right after this to dig into it, so I'll get back to you on that right around the corner. Um, tall skinny kiwi, I'm a little disappointed in you. I have black tea with milk. Is that like a chai? Isn't chai tea black tea? I think chai tea is black tea, but he didn't say chai tea, did you? Have you the joke from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? It's like, "Chai, chai, tea." You don't say "tea." "Tea." Chai is tea, so why would you say "chai tea" instead of just "chai"? Don't say nobody says "tea." I love that line. That's so good. So was maybe one of my favorite movies. I would argue Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the best sequel of any movie ever. And actually, I do have a degree in radio, TV, film. So I am not just ignorant when I say crap like that. I have a college degree that would back me up. Yeah, my degree was in radio, TV, film. I had a professor tell me once, "Jeff, it is very clear to me that you don't watch enough TV, and you're going to fail out of this course unless you watch more TV." I never checked out a book out of the college library the entire five years. And no kidding, it's four and a half, but the entire four and a half years it took me to get, never once, never once checked out a book. True story. Um, okay, so some other people are drinking black tea with milk. Um, I'm very disappointed. I don't put milk in black tea, so this is surprising to me. Black tea with milk. Uh, okay, that's good to know. Thank you for sharing, Micah. Earl Grey hot. Okay, I've had some Earl Grey, by the way. John L. Peard, his favorite tea is Earl Grey. Hat, hat, hat tip to flat cap for that reference. Um, English breakfast. That's what I've started drinking recently, and I wasn't that impressed. So maybe I got to add milk to, like, I normally like, I mean, I drink, I don't put cream or sugar in any of my coffee, but I just have not been that impressed with the English tea. Strong, so maybe I got to break it down. Um, Lion, Witch in the Wardrobe. I'm sure that's a reference to a book. I just, and I know it's a book. I'm lost in that. Uh, straight up green tea. Stacy's from Stacy. You said today, are you from Japan, somewhere in Asia? I feel bad. I should know this. You said it today, and I was like, I think that's the first time you told me that. I'm pretty sure it was Japan. Uh, green tea. Uh, so stereotypes aside, Stacy likes green tea. Um, I will do green tea with um sushi, and I do sushi on a regular, regular basis. Yes, she is. Uh, Japanese. That's what I thought. Excited we've got um Japanese represented on staff with us. Uh, yes. So um, Pastor D got the Peard reference. What did he say to um, number two? Make it so. Isn't that what he always said? The Riker, make it so. I had a um, yeah, I don't know that I want to tell that story. I just started to go down the road, and I was like, that story does not end well. Maybe too embarrassing for this crowd, for me in front of this crowd. So never. I don't think I've ever stopped a story intentionally, but I'm not going there for that one. Uh, you need to do loose leaf. Uh, quick bags. Uh, uh, tea dust. Okay, all right. Listen, I told Stacy today I'll do anything once. Um, I'm all about that. Uh, Bigelow. I do Bigelow. Like my daughter does Bigelow. My daughter loves tea. Uh, not so much for me. So that's good. Um, this is the after show with the town hall meeting sitting around discussing tea. Uh, tea. Uh, Stacy uh has been uh really uh getting into uh, I will mispronounce that. What is that? Jama? Okay. Melanie is more my style, drinking coffee with creamer, but I like tea too. Black teas uh with milk, green tea straight. Um, and wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Stacy, you don't do sushi? I'm confused. Like, what do you, isn't that like being Italian and not liking pizza or American and not eating junk food? Like, I don't, I don't understand. I'm lost right now. Although evidently, whatever that word Micah said is legit, and so I'm happy there. Um, I totally couldn't have hung around for the after normally, but I'm home sick with my little girl who is vomiting. Oh, thanks for sharing. So I have the free time. Um, yeah, we normally don't do an after show. As a matter of fact, the stream's on Tuesday. I'm trying to get them to like 45 minutes, trying to shorten. Uh, just had a lot to pack in today, and I got slowed down a little bit at the beginning. Um, ramping up was just, it takes a little bit of time. Oh, sorry to hear about your daughter. I had that a couple weeks ago. Between my daughter, my son, and I, we were like constantly sick for like four weeks, I think five weeks almost, just rotated back and forth. My wife teaches at the school where my kids go to school, and so, and then I'm basically a hermit, you know? I really don't leave the house. Um, and I don't do crowds. And so it just, it just, like, you know, replicates whenever sickness, one gets it, one comes home, they get better, another one gets it just in time to come home when the other one goes back. And somewhere along the way, I work it. And so, yeah, definitely, definitely can relate to constant sick. Um, in USA, but English tea like PG Tips and Yorkshire Gold. Uh, I don't like Bigelow or Lipton. What do you got against Lipton? I don't know. I don't like Lipton. I feel like it's strong. My dad drinks Lipton. You know, I always feel like I'm about to say this as I'm drinking out of a Starbucks mug, but I always feel like the commercialized product that is like everywhere is not as good as some of the lower ones. And so, like, you know, Lipton, the ones that everybody's heard of, you know, I'm more like the, you know, the stuff nobody's ever heard of. Yeah, sure, maybe they lace it with like cocaine or something, but you know, you only live once, right? Like I said, I'll do anything at least once. So I'm kidding. I won't do that. Uh, yeah, thanks for sharing. I don't know that I feel that, but no, I'm kidding, Micah. It's good. Uh, it's green tea and roasted grain. Oh, okay. That's roasted grain. Okay, all right. I'll buy. Send me a link. I'll buy some and try it. I'd be interested in that. By the way, I'm drinking Dunkin' Donuts decaf coffee that I got out of my Keurig. So uh, when I'm talking about commercialized, yeah, I'm really lazy too. And so I want stuff easy. Um, in a work environment. And then unknown story, I may have told this here in the church digital. I had, you know, I'm going to turn the screen off here for a minute. I got nothing better to do today. Um, when we launched the church, when we launched eeliver.com right out of college, um, it was actually a toss-up between us doing um eeliver.com, the first online community, 40,000 digital. We were doing Facebook before Facebook was doing Facebook. Like, it was either that, which is what I wanted to do, which I felt God calling us to do. My wife wanted to start her entrepreneur business as well. And uh, we decided that we couldn't do two. It was too much of a risk to do two entrepreneur businesses at the same time. My wife wanted to open a coffee house at uh, where we were at Texas Christian University, TCU, in Fort Worth, Texas. There was no college, university, anywhere. There's no um coffee house anywhere around the university. And this is before Starbucks. And um, it was funny. Like, we, that was the fight. That was the kind of the tradeoff back and forth between um what we're going to do. And I won. I don't know. Starbucks, I have a feeling, would have put us out of business. So I told that story, and somebody's like, "Well, gee, you could have been Starbucks before Starbucks is Starbucks." No, I don't think it would have played that way. Um, okay, so let's get an education here. There are a few types of sushi that aren't raw. Inari, football shape, shrimp, California roll, royal tempura roll. So you'll eat non-raw sushi. Uh, California roll, tempura, that's fine. But anything that's got raw, you want Inari. I'm trying to think what Inari is. That I don't know. Okay, I do a lot of sushi. We eat sushi maybe two or three times a month. That's my, that's my wife's and I quick, I say quick, nice, a date place. We know the um, we know the owner of the sushi, the big sushi chain in Miami. It's called Sushi Maki in South Florida. They've got I don't know, 12, 15 locations. And so, like, we just, we've got a lot of friends there. Uh, you know, it's the low file. So true. We got four kids, and we were collectively sick for two months. Yes. Oh my gosh. It just goes and goes and goes. Uh, so much, guys. I have to go. Um, all right. So let's do this. Uh, sorry to offend, uh, but I had a lady ask me if Pure Leaf tea was real tea like Snapple. Oh, even I know that. I don't want to touch that one. Oh, man. Not that there's anything wrong with Snapple. So yeah, I, that's, I think there's more sugar than tea in Snapple. Once again, you know, it's not the stuff you buy in mass. I'm a food snob. I'm a coffee, I'm a liquid, I'm not a food snob. I take it back. I'm a liquid snob. Um, unless I'm lazy, and then, you know, just drink whatever. All right, y'all. It has been really fun. It has, I've enjoyed this. We're going to do the town halls three or four times a year. Um, Snapple takes me back to the 90s. Uh, yeah, with Joe Cola. We were talking about my Joe Cola the other day. Uh, that came up in one of the streams. And so, yeah, man. Hey, Micah, it's, it's, I mean, it's always great to hang out with you. Uh, and the rest of you, Pastor D, uh, Melanie, Stacy, uh, there is way too many flat cap Steve. Um, I mean, I feel like kiwi, I feel like I could just keep scrolling here and figure it out. And there's more even watching silently in the background. But honestly, I got to shut up because there's other stuff I got to do. I got to actually have a couple conversations um uh with the board, and then I got my co-ord. I got to lead in 30 minutes. But I'm going to go. And so I hope this was good. Looking forward to the conference, looking forward to EDM, looking forward to pray, looking forward to um prayer, uh, guided prayer, looking forward to gaming Outpost and more. But for everybody else that's been hanging out with me today, this is Jeff from the Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out with us on this stream, and we'll see you next time on the show. And the music fades out. Have a good one.