EP333 - Jeff Revisits the Digital Missionary Conference

All right. Hey everybody, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast episode 333. We've done 333 conversations centered around digital ministry. I think we launched this thing 2018, 2019, maybe.

I'd have to really go back and look, but it's been five or six years, over 300 conversations. It's been a lot of fun over the years doing some of this.

If you want to, you want to go back, you want to listen to bad audio, go back and listen to like episode one. The first conversation I ever had was with a guy, Tyler Sansom.

I love Tyler. Tyler was actually probably one of the most interviewed people on the show here. Some of the stuff he's doing with Church Anywhere is incredible.

Physical churches that really understand digital mission work. Tyler was really a pioneer and just happened to fall into a church that really backed them and ran with it.

And so it's really cool to see that. But it was arguably one of the worst interviews I've ever done in the history of time.

It's funny actually to go back and listen. You know, I say ums and ahs and you know a lot. I'm not a really polished speaker and so I do use transition words to help my brain kind of catch up with my mouth, or my mouth catch up with my brain, probably is a better way to say that. And for those first, I don't know, maybe 20 or 30 interviews, like I would literally scrape each um and ah and like out. I would cut it. The post-work was like hours.

The idea of doing a conversation live like this where people are hearing it in real time? No, no way I could do that.

And you know, it's amazing what 300 plus interviews will do. All of a sudden people like, "You're really a good interviewer. You really make people feel at home." It's like, well, I guess that's fine. After doing 300 of them, what is that? Two hundred and forty hours a day. So that would be ten plus days. That would be 240. Uh, so 25% of 10 would be 12. That's almost two weeks worth of talking straight.

Nothing about digital mission. I listen, I challenge you, uh, listening audience out there. Binge the Church Digital Podcast. All 240 episodes for it. If you want more than just audio, I'm pretty sure we've got video for at least 250 of those episodes on YouTube.

Go for it. Binge. I challenge you. You don't need that much Jeff Reed in your life. So maybe that's a bad idea.

Hey, you know, we've got some people hanging out with us on YouTube. Grateful for that. Uh, Methos, uh, from Ohio says, "Hello. It's been fun." He's been hanging out with us a lot. Uh, Whitebeard Tom McGuire jumps in. Came in early. He was part of it. He was the first one here and I started a little late because I was making my coffee.

I want to hat tip my coffee mug here. You see this? The little uh, block head from Lego. And so I just spilled my coffee all over my table and I wrote notes on my table and I spilled coffee on it.

So now it's all weird, but at least it's fragrant in the room. Uh, very good. Uh, Steve, Steve's in there saying, "Hey." Life Capture is saying, "Hey," as well.

How's it going, man? Always good to see Life Capture. Enjoy that. I can see the ums and ahs in waveform. Uh, so I didn't have to listen to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can do that. And now listen, AI, man, they do all sorts of stuff. Uh, and with the plugins and cut that.

Back in the day, like we had to do it manually, and now AI just does all that. You click a button and it mutes everything. It's technology.

I tell you, like I'm really excited. Methos is Phantom Methos and yeah, definitely it's good to see you, sir. Um, you know, I tell my kids like the stuff that my kids are doing. My daughter's 16, my son's 14, and the stuff that they're doing in engineering and programming and coding, uh, and the abilities they have to do stuff like, and we're intentionally training them not to use AI, but at the same time also understanding what AI can do and the power of that.

Oh my gosh, this next generation, there's going to be untold capacities of that. And then of course someone will weaponize AI and then it'll all be over.

But at least we will enjoy it until that point. You know, it's just, know it's going to happen, but until the point that it does happen, rock and roll, baby.

Let's uh, let's go. Yeah. Hey, uh, so we got a meeting happening in real time. Uh, Simeinsky is catching up with Phantom Methos. And so fun to see this happening right here in YouTube.

You know, once again, the Church Digital bringing people together, which we did in a big way last week. You know, we did a little thing called the Digital Missionary Conference.

I got to tell you, in my in the grand scheme of what I thought the Digital Missionary Conference was going to be and what had actually happened, it was freaking ridiculous.

I am so excited to see what happened uh on uh what was it? April 2nd. You know, actually the day we wanted to do the conference, I'll just give you the sneak peek.

We wanted to do it Tuesday instead of a Wednesday. And so I was looking at April 1st and I was like, "No, I cannot do a Digital Missionary Conference April 1st." Like there is no way. I people will think it's a joke and won't show up. And so, okay, we'll do it April 2nd. That's fine. It was so good. We had, you know, as nearest as we can tell stat-wise, we had 1,400 people register for the conference.

We had uh a thousand, over a thousand active uh viewers, unique viewers for the conference. Um, it was really interesting like we had people were watching through Alter Live and we did, we had some problems with Alter Live.

We may get into that a little bit, but when we were doing it in virtual reality, which I loved, and we had we built a world in Spatial VR. VR Tiger built a world exclusive for us.

So thankful for that. Um, yeah. Methos says, "Uh, I could not attend April 1st, so I'm glad it wasn't." Yeah, definitely. And we would, we would do Wednesdays. A better day for us anyway, moving forward.

I think Wednesday is going to be the rhythm. But um, you know, it was interesting. We actually had some bootleg conferences happening.

It was really like, yeah, I made, I think we screwed up permissions on YouTube and people were actually watching not in Alter Live, but they were watching straight on YouTube and engaging with us and commenting on the YouTube feed, which we had wanted to drive all traffic through Alter Live, but they were going straight to YouTube. We even had, and if this was you, I want to know. Like I'm not upset. I actually, I love that this happened.

Somebody was doing a bootleg conference in Big Screen in virtual reality. They created, they put the feed, the YouTube feed up on a big screen and created a completely separate conference in virtual reality based on what we were doing in Big Screen.

Seriously, if that was you, um, I want to know. Yeah, we're talking Live Capture. Somebody also streamed it to Big Screen. I want to know who that was.

And you know, Stacy saying, "I love the bootleg conference." Look, we created something that we could not control. I mean, that's the endgame with this.

There's so much, and praise God. Can I just say that there was so much excitement around what we were doing that people wanted to do it in their own way.

I literally, like, you can see I have goosebumps right here just talking about this. And if it was, I don't know who Mr. Pete is. If it was Mr. Pete, I would love to get connected with Mr. Pete on Discord because Mr. Pete is my hero. And by the way, I would love for Mr. Pete to do that next time. The idea of taking the conference into multiple worlds, why not? The idea of championing this in different ways, why not?

And so, you know, let's continue. Seriously, if one of you guys could connect me to Mr. Pete, that would be fun. I don't think I've met him along the way, but am very excited to see that the conference expanded beyond their wildest dreams.

I, you know, I would love this as we're talking in here. I want to ask some questions because we've got some audience that's active.

What was your favorite part of the Digital Missionary Conference? Was it speakers? Was it the groups? Was it the tables?

Like what really stood out to you uh through the conference? Oh my gosh. Methos is saying here, um, Mr. Pete, you should definitely know who he is sometimes.

He's awesome. 80 plus years old doing metaverse ministry. Seriously, Methos, like now, like, friend me. Like, you're we're already friends on Discord. Please make that connection.

I want to meet the guy that's 80 years old doing metaverse ministry. I want to bring him on the show. I want to have a conversation.

I want to know this guy's story. That's freaking phenomenal. There are, it's been surprising to me over the years. Uh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, please.

You, uh, 80 years old. You definitely need to meet him. I will, I will seem young. Yeah. So, yes, he is. Tom, I'm no longer the old guy.

Let's get the 80-year-old guy on here, man. We all look like babies, pups compared to him. Yeah, that's so funny. Seriously though, what is what was your favorite moments?

Um, somebody get Mr. Pete on here right now. No, don't do that. I guess you can, but I don't care. What was your favorite moment uh from the conference, breakouts, speakers, what was the what was the mic drop moment for you?

The oh crap, just got real moment. What was the line? What was the takeaway? What was the action step? I'd love to know.

Give, throw it in chat here and give some insight. For me, there were a couple things that hit the fan, and when I was booking it, I knew when I was scheduling the things out, David Nelms. Um, Dave, I and I said in the conference, David Nelms blew my mind. I don't know, 10, 12 years ago. He said a couple things to me back in like 2011.

Actually, no, let me get the year right. 2015, maybe 2016, so like eight or nine years ago. The if your disciple is not making a disciple, are they really making, are they really a disciple?

Like that was a powerful thing. Um, but for me it was the idea that he was, and he said this like he was reaching as a lead pastor of a church, he was reaching thousands of people.

Like he did the math. It was like his church over the years, over multiple years had reached 2, 3, 4,000 people, whatever the number was.

And he walked away from that model and started a discipleship, an evangelism model. He shifted the approach away from growth to multiplication.

And at the end of 16 years of multiplication, his organization, now the Timothy Initiative, reaches more people in a day than he had done in multiple years of growth ministry.

Like they're training 180,000 missionaries this year. Let's stop and let's think about this. Over a 16-year career, he engaged in the idea of multiplication and of investing in people and then asking them, who you look, let me tell you, Timothy Initiative at the base level.

Uh, and they're friends. I can say this, nothing but respect for the Nelms father and son and the group that's running TTI.

But day one, you know, bring somebody to Christ. Day two, hey, who are the 10 people in your life that need to know this?

Let's pray for them. Day three, hey, how can you share Jesus with those 10 people? What would that look like? And then basically the days to come, the eight or nine weeks of the cohort is all centered around multiplying, having, holding them accountable to reach out.

So it's very evangelical in a very relational but a very evangelical relational model. And by investing in that, he went from David Nelms in the course of 15, 16 years, David Elms investing in people to now 180,000 people invested in this year. 100,000 churches planted globally this year. Can you imagine what that would look like? I mean, it's confession hour for me. I'm 40, I'm 47 years old. Sure, I'm not as old as Mr. Pete, but I'm up there. The idea that by the time I retire at 65, we could be part the church digital could be part of a movement that's training a 100,000 people to be digital missionaries utilizing digital and metaverse and virtual and using, I mean, let's 15 years from now all that's going to be stale. It's going to be innovation. What's next to be at the tip of the spear? Could you imagine what it would be like to be part of an organization that was the tip of the spear innovation and missional purposes? I, you know, I feel like I got a real taste of that and got to just a vision for what we can be with the church digital. And so for me, David Elms really brought that home in a big way. I'm seeing a lot of feedback coming in. So let me come up here. Steve Reid wasn't one thing. It was seeing so many people getting excited about taking this to the next level. I agree with that, Steve. I man, I was I had thought it was funny. I, Barbara and Andy, they'll tell you this. We were talking about the conference and this is months ago when we pitched it and I said, "You know what? We can get if we can get 200 people to show up for a digital missionary conference, it's a win." And Barbara's like, "Come on, Jeff. You got to think bigger than that." And I was like, "What? 500? 500? Okay, 500." She's like, "Jeff, you still got to think bigger." And I was like, "Are you telling me you think you can get a 1,000 people to register for a digital missionary conference? Okay, fine. That's on you. Let's get a 1,000 people to do it." We had 1,400 people register. We had and the fact that we had a 1,000 people show up of that 1,400. The fact that it went beyond that, so many people are excited and are curious about this and are looking for it. And I love the fact that we get to be a voice for it here. Methos breakouts and tables afterwards were my favorite. Not that the speakers weren't good. Also, no, I totally get that. The idea of connecting with people relationally, that's actually what I loved about Alter Live. I hated that we had the problems with the platforms as much as we did. But the ability to be relational, to connect. I told you all this isn't a webinar. This is not where you sit back and consume. This is where you lean in and dialogue. And so many people were excited about that. Hey, we got Simon jumping in from Namibia. I'm blessed. Hey, Simon. Thanks for thanks for coming on and being a part of that. We've got live capture. I like the quickfire breakouts even though they're kind of unplanned. Give a good overview on what's going on without taking too much time away from exchanging on the topics. That was like the micro TED talks thing we did at the end. Um that was a takeaway from me. I will be trying to work that in again for future conferences. I had I've never done it like that. You know, I've seen like the full TED talks where every breakout gets 15 minutes, but the five minutes, the machine gun, everybody gets exposure, and then you know who to go talk to in the breakout sessions for more information. That was a takeaway. I think we're going to see something like that in the future. And so, listen, the keynotes, we're good. Um, for me like I like learning from the keynotes. I personally engage more in the breakouts and the tables like I love networking. I love connecting. I love relationally talking with people and the ability to hang out at those tables and to talk and meet people. The highlight for my entire conference. Listen, the keynotes were great. The conversations, the being able to host and dialogue, see a thousand people were so good. The highlight for me was when I looked at the screen and I was looking at the seats and I literally saw OJ from Metaurch, who's the world builder for Metaurch, sitting next to Pastor D, who's been a digital pastor for a decade plus and has been looking for a virtual reality world builder. And they're literally sitting next to each other in the aisle in the auditorium in Alter Live. They can see each other. I don't know if their cameras are on. I don't think they had talked to each other before that. And saying literally in the moment, Pastor D, you're sitting next to OJ, the two of you need to have a conversation because Pastor D, OJ can solve your problems and OJ, Pastor D need your help. You see, that's the ability when we network, when we connect together with some of these things like the conference. It's this idea that we are not alone and as pioneers and as innovators and as doing something different to reach someone different. There's this ideology that we are alone. We're stuck in this place of isolation because nobody really identifies with us outside of the people that we're working with. And over time that gets hard. And so to do the conference, to do the communities like we're doing at the church digital, we're going to continue to do with the church digital. Um that we are going to continue to push the bar on getting people connected. It's what we're doing with the outposts and equipping digital missionaries and everything we're doing is centered on the it was funny. I was just talking with Jason Morris. We're working on some things. We're talking about some things at the equipping level. I don't want to get too deep into it right now, but um you know, one of Jason's pain points, he's very passionate about this, very passionate about this, is all of our equipping, all of our learning, it needs to be done in community like right now there's a pain point within the church digital really centered around the idea of even having teaching like on demand where we would have trainings that are available to binge on demand in isolation because in isolation training that really leans more towards consuming not towards execution. What we're actually seeing is that for execution to happen it's not training in isolation but it's training in community. And so even creating a community center around the conference like we did which feeds into the communities of Facebook and WhatsApp for the church digital that that's the goal is to try to move everybody from the community of the conference into that's why we pushed EDM so much steeper down. Maybe we should have pushed TCD and WhatsApp more. That's on me. There's some other things I would probably structure differently overall. But like I love the fact that we're educating in these communities. We're training in these communities and we're holding accountable in the communities. If you're going through the training, we want you to see the training be executed. So, how is that working? Why is it not working? And what do we need to do to help you do it better? Um, here I've got Steve's coming in. I was surprised that even though it was digital, some people felt they needed to sit in the back. Confession hour with the church digital. Steve, I haven't showered this morning. And so I slept in, which was nice. I had an early meeting, so jumped out of bed, threw on t-shirt and jeans. And so I myself haven't even showered today. I'm going out with a date with my wife tonight. And so I'll be completely online until about, you know, date night, date time, about 6:00 p.m. Figured I might as well, you know, shower for my wife because I don't want to stink too bad. But I can relate to that. Um, but, you know, the backseat baptisty even in Alter Life. I do, I was so proud. I was so proud of the number of people that leaned into those conversations that sat in there. The more that you're known is the more that you're loved. And the fact that I mean, sure, we did have spectators on the outside, but the culture of the event was to lean in. So many people leaned in. They sat in those seats. They had those conversations. They hung out at the tables. When the platform broke like it did, there was like I there was urgency. I got to be in that breakout room right now. Why is this platform not working? It was beautiful. Yeah. Okay, Tom. I always sit in the back even at the conference. I've been a tech too long. Yeah, I get that, Tom. But, you know, in Alter Live, you don't have to sit in the back like there you can be a tech and sit in the front row, too. You know, that's okay. Um, you know, Tom, I just want to make sure you're alive, man. You may not be the old guy, but you're the closest guy that's on the fringe. So it's good to even see you here on the stream today, my friend. Cool. Uh, what do I want to talk about? What's next? Okay. So, here's what we're doing. We announced a digital missionary conference, the second one. And so we're going to do a digital missionary conference again on Wednesday, October 8th. Right now, if you go to missionary.digital, www.missionary.digital, you can pre-register, and we've had 6,575 people pre-register for this upcoming digital missionary conference. Conference is going to be free once again. Um, and so we're going to do something in that space. I say something. Here's what I want to know if you're watching right now. Um, what are we doing? So, I'm kicking around some ideas. This conference did not one we just did. You know, like I said, at the last minute, I came up with this idea of the new wine skin. It was kind of an intro idea, but it was a very general broad conference. I would love to know, but yeah, Steve's already registered for the conference and excited about that. Like I said, 6,575 already have. But here's what I want to know. Um, do I need to pick a theme? Do you like the conferences being broad or do I narrow down and do we like pick on a theme for the conference overall? Like, I don't know, mental health or prayer or evangelism or discipleship like is there is there a necessity to fine-tune on a theme? And if you think that is, what is a theme you would want to see or, you know, should we keep it broad kind of with that? Would love some feedback. Put it in chat. Let me know. This is something that I've been wrestling with. I love the idea of themes and think they're important to it, but dedicating an entire conference to something like that, I'm not sure. Uh to be honest, I've even kicked around the ideas and Barbara, like I told her this today and she had the look of I don't know if I don't know how I feel about this, but the idea of even doing like micro conferences that are like more finely tuned on different topics and different themes overall. Um and so that's what that's interesting. We've got some feedback here. Let's kind of work through this. Methos, I love what's coming in. Uh, depends. Is there going to be a third and a fourth conference? Okay. Yes, the church digital will commit to doing two conferences a year for the foreseeable future. Um, I one I love the ministry that happened. Two, I'll just be honest, we with the sponsors that are there, we were able to fund the organization for probably five months.

And and so from an operational standpoint it's a win on multiple fronts. And so we will be doing more of the conferences in the days to come.

One of the challenges that we ran into was, um, so we were talking like, okay, here in America I just produced a conference where I put a bunch of the majority of people were Americans and it was a conference on an American time zone and one of the biggest problems we had was the time zone issue. And it was also a bunch of people who look like me were on camera doing this.

And and to be honest, I don't want to produce a conference with a bunch of people who look like me. Contextualization being what it is.

And so, like, I would love to empower Simon to do a digital missions conference that's reaching Europeans. I would love to do conference with Utop, with Ebie, with Josh, with the, you know, the different regions that we're really reaching into and building relationships with and starting to do digital missionary conferences within those regions that are more contextualized for the people that are there. And so we're already narrowing down a little bit in the vision because I don't think it's always going to be one conference.

Just my opinion and this is we're getting into the uncut, the raw Jeff Reed in this. This is not official. This is like half-baked ideas in my head. I want to do the mega conference once a year with the church digital.

And so like what we did with the digital missionary conference last week, I would love to do that every spring till, you know, Jesus comes back. I think that's a great idea. What I'm kicking around the idea in the fall is doing more regional takes where we, you know, we help Simon produce a conference in Europe and some of the outpost leaders, we equip them and start doing some of these regional conferences that may or may not be based on October 8th. You know, it may not be aligned globally, but because I don't think we'll ever be able to get everybody to agree on a date globally, but we can resource them and do and help them do some things in their regions. Even branding or not branding, it doesn't matter to me. I just want the ideas to get out there. The flip side of that though is that we will produce some conference at some level. That's where I'm like, is it going to be open or not? I don't know. Life Capture is saying, "Keep it open." Steve Reid actually has a great idea: reinforcing, bless, begin with prayer, listen, shared experiences, serve, and share your Jesus story there. Um, with the key to how to listen digitally. If there's one one of the things that I would redo on the keynotes, Elm Michelle did an incredible presentation on active listening in digital space in virtual reality. Um, the next conference I'm gonna ask her to do that at the global level because it really was a phenomenal conference. It was a phenomenal thing that needs to get revisited. Simon is saying mobilizing the church. Yeah. I mean, mobilization is the area that we are, uh, stuck's not the right word. It's the area that needs the most attention for us. Uh, Simon, you may be relatively new with us, which is awesome. Our framework is connect, community, equip, mobilize. We want to connect with people digitally and with that with our digital influence, we want to invite these people into a community, digital community, WhatsApp, Discord, you know, things like that, Facebook groups because we see digital evangelism, digital discipleship happening best at the community level because of the relational equity that's happening there. And with that relationship, once they find Jesus, we want to help them find their calling and equip them to do what God's calling them to do and then mobilize them and send them out.

And so organizationally, confession hour, we've done a really good job of connect, community, equip. We've done a really good job of connecting community. We're just now within the past three or four months really getting into equipping. And now that we're getting some of our digital missionaries out of equipping digital missionaries and building out more resources at the equipping level, you're going to find in the next six months we're really going to be more focused on mobilization.

And so mobilization may not be the theme for fall twenty-five. I would, I could see it really being the theme of twenty-six if we did. Um, if there's a series, then you can have a narrow theme and make sense. Then that's, I mean, that's what I'm wrestling with. It's interesting because I want, I want a narrow, I want to make everybody happy, but I also know that if I try to make everybody happy, I don't make anybody happy. And if I make somebody happy, then I make a lot of them happy. And so I'm really kind of bifurcated right now.

I do this, like this is my mind space where I want to make everybody happy but I know if I make everybody happy I'm not going to make anybody happy and I constantly just fight with myself on how to do that.

Uh, you can make a poll on Discord or WhatsApp and ask people what to have a special topic. Yeah, I mean, that's it. This is really a lot of that for right now is I'm digging in and starting to talk with people and listen. I'm a listener. I like to hear what people are saying. And so, yeah, if you're watching the stream, I've said this time and time again, if you're watching the stream live, you are getting the unfiltered, the raw Jeff Reed. If you're listening to this on demand, I mean, you can hit me up on WhatsApp and Discord and share your opinion. That's nice. But if I click on like show add to broadcast on my screen and the chat comes up, like this is where it really is influencing me at a high level. Stacy, yes, we all need to learn. Yeah, Elm Michelle was equipping was incredible. That was when I scheduled her for virtual reality because I needed to fill the slot and took her out of where I was thinking on the digital broadcast.

There were two regrets I have for the conference overall and that was one of the two. That was like, I hate that I have to, and I told her that I was like, I hate that I have to do this but I need you to do this.

Um, the other thing, if you're curious, was and people had told me the conference was way too packed, way too packed. There was no breathing point. I started out producing a four-hour conference that ended up being a five-hour conference that ended up being a six-hour conference that ended up being a seven-hour conference. And but I built it on the framework of a four-hour conference and it just kept growing and growing and growing and I probably should have restructured it at some point. Um, so hey, we got Steve donate but worrying them here. Go ye digital. The great commission in a digital, in a connected world. The great commission, the great commission in a connected world.

Yeah, we've done the great commission, but digital. Like that's a theme that I think I was the guy who said that. I don't think I stole that from anybody, but that's been a theme that we've used a lot. Steve, uh, light in the feed, sharing Christ in digital space. Man, Steve's like really throwing them down here. Click, share, disciple. Uh, from Wi-Fi to worldwide, spreading the gospel without borders. That's good. Um, yeah, Methos is saying it right here. Three days in one day is packed. If I do another, I told leader, I told my team today, um, if I do another seven-hour conference, uh, if I'm in a place where I'm doing a seven-hour conference, I will make it an eight-hour conference, which I will then make two day four-hour conferences. I would break it up into two days and do a Wednesday and Thursday. That was another miss. And that just became as this thing grew and grew and grew, um, it just exploded.

Which to me is so exciting. Like I didn't walk away feeling, oh my gosh, I had to twist the arm of these people to speak. Oh my gosh, all these breakout people, um, like they didn't want to be there. They were doing me a favor. It was like nobody in the past I had to do that. In the past it was like, "Hey, come speak at this and do me a favor." Um, people see what's happening. They're getting outside of us. They're getting a glimpse of it and they want to support. They want to be a part. They want to understand. They want to help you doing what you're doing.

Like the one guy, I don't know that I've told who the one guy is. There was one guy I really wanted to speak and because of scheduling timing, uh, it was a late ask and it just we couldn't we couldn't get the schedule worked out, but he was legitimately upset that he could not speak at this conference. He's not a digital guy. He's a pastor. He's well known. I want to save the bullet. I'll probably do him for the next conference because it'll fit in, he'll fit into what we're doing in the future.

But this is the larger point: is that people want to support what we're doing digitally. That to me is the big takeaway is we're not alone. There are different ecosystems. There are different people that want to partner with us that want to work with us. I just literally I just had a meeting uh with a guy, um, somebody from the church digital, uh, like an hour ago where it's pretty much like, hey, I almost want to bring you on as a partner development guy because we've got a ton of people that want to partner with us that want to share resources and knowledge base. I just I need somebody to like be accountable to help us process it and work through that. And so we're like, there's I've got not spilled with coffee, but I got a bunch of names written on my white desk right here of people that want to take the next step, partners that want to dive in and resource our missionaries at a higher level. It's oh my gosh, it's so exciting. Like I'm getting I'm getting a glimpse of what the future looks like at the equipping and even at the mobilization level and um, God willing, man, we're at the verge of something really really great for you all. And so, hey, we're going to do, we're I'm committing to, uh, yeah, three days, that's been up there a long time.

Uh, it wasn't just the length, but the number of things within it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was packed in the ability to, uh, you know, Steve says time to share, time to digest, time to breathe. Um, yeah, we didn't, we didn't get it. That's a fair assessment. Um, and I'm taking that. I did not, I'm trying to think. So I produced physical conferences, the physical conferences that I produced, you know, I doing what we did at that speed, you'd have walk time, you'd have lunchtime and things like that. Um, you know, physical, I think I've done full day, I've done full day conferences digitally that may have been the longest conference I've ever produced. It was much longer. Uh, like I said, it just kept growing. More and more sponsors wanted to come in, more and more breakouts were needed. I kept asking speakers and honest to God, it was a four-hour conference that just kept growing and growing and uh I lost I lost control.

I, with grace when I say this, I'm actually glad I lost control. I mean, from a control freak that I am, I love the fact that this thing evolved on its own. I think that God moves when we lose control. I guess God can work through us, but God can also move through some of the recklessness that's in place.

And so I, yeah, you know what? And actually, Stacy, in planning, in the planning, our enthusiasm snowballed, which yielded rich content squeezed in a short amount of time.

I mean, yeah, that's my point. And so, love that. Um, Ian's, Ian's lol. Awesome, Ian. I'm not, I'm not used to that account for you, but but good deal.

I'm assuming that's you. All right. Sipping away at my Diet Coke. Um, what time is it? Oh, man. It's been a good, been a good stream.

I just, I lost track and time hanging out with you all. Um, yeah, it's really time to share, time to digest, time to time to learn, time to digest.

It's taking it from ideation, uh, processing it and uh applying it. Uh, so, you know, you're learning new concepts, you're processing, and and you're applying.

That's some of what we probably need to build in more the table, Alter Live. I mean, I love Alter Live. If we could get Alter Live to to function, you know, be a little more stable, I think it's a great environment.

If not, we need to figure out. We love the love the auditorium, love the the tables. Um, we we overstretched some of the server stuff uh for the breakouts.

That was where the the obvious problem was. But the idea of using the tables to apply that, to process what we're talking about, to sit at a table, maybe even have a one-on-one conversation with somebody, invite your team to come in together at at sit at a conference table together or to sit down with a partner and have a a long conversation. Like they're the underutilized asset was the tables. Some of some of the feedback that I've gotten was the best part of the show, the best part of the conference was actually hanging out at the tables as people were leaving and just having the the one-on-one, the free conversations throughout the entire thing. And so, um, we will definitely lean into uh more of that in the in the in the future.

Some other feedback coming in. Uh, if it was a blunder, uh, it was magnificent. Uh, won 400,000 in attendance. 80, 85 countries, hundreds uh if not a thousand left extremely excited uh and pumped.

God did move. Yeah. Uh, there are worse things that can happen in life than getting a thousand people to to log on and learn how to be a missional using digital and virtual technology.

And it was it was V1. I I've always, if you learn, it's built in and Stacy can tell you, it's built into our culture.

V1 is version one's better than version none. I'm stealing that from um, crap. Who says version one's better than version none? The guy that's uh uh the the podcaster Gary Vee.

Version one's better than version none. Um, get out there and do something. If you if you succeed, you succeed. If you fail, you learn what not to do next time.

And uh and and and try again. Ideation is is and what we're doing digitally, it's it's so important. Experiment, try. Fail. Fail is not stop.

Fail is learn and and iterate and try again. And so we definitely succeeded. It was a huge success. So excited about what happened. Definitely learning opportunities.

Um, if anything, I wish we would have done a conference. We had talked about doing a conference um through the church digital in uh fall of 24.

Um, and I I kind of I I kabashed it. I killed it. We had just transitioned to digital missions like August of maybe July.

August we announced it publicly. In September, you know, Jason and I invested a ton in energy into Lison and the team invested a ton of it and and we really as an organization, we really didn't know what digital missionaries was.

Like we we we were we were just starting to define it and meet and engage with people. And so uh on our goals we wanted to do a con one conference in 24.

But because of our of the transition I was like no let's not let's let's pause. It's not time. In hindsight maybe maybe that experiment would have been worthwhile.

But what we did and where I feel like the doors are opening for us in the future organizationally is very exciting. And um I tell you one of the one of the other wins for me I I'd put this top five was was the fact that we had so many people um volunteering

like I mean I sent an email maybe a couple days out was like hey we're looking for for volunteers to help with tech support to help with running the prayer table and and to help with capturing video.

What um you know if you've got anything uh if you're interested you know reach out maybe 15 people probably in total came in and served at some level uh that was it was interesting like some some of our leadership had no idea that was happening till day of and I was like oh

my gosh like all you you got all these people yeah I mean just I just asked and and they they they said they were interested and and to me actually um one of the board members who was involved, one of the board members of the Church Digital reached out and he's he's like

it's him. He said he's like that's the most exciting thing for me about the conference because now you've got people that you're not paying that are buying into the the and owning the strategy and and they're they're they're investing themselves into it into making something like this happen.

That was a big deal getting people to to give of their time. And a lot of people volunteered to lead breakouts. A lot of people dealt with tech issues.

A lot of people um like just invested of of themselves and shared themselves uh through through the conference and and seeing that ownership of of the vision of the church digital and the idea of helping digital missionaries across 85 countries like that was a beautiful thing.

Beautiful thing. Selfishly, I would love to hit 100 countries. I can't believe we hit 85. Um, I I don't know. Somebody like I' I've been internally asking myself, is there a goal for the next conference?

I don't know yet. I've I've I've we've got to figure out, I think, the model. Is it going to be targeted and focused or is it going to be broad?

How many regional conferences are we going to do? Um, I think we're still a little undefined yet to really say a number we're aiming for, but um I would say that we as an organization I don't we're not down there's no downtime on conferences.

We're already we're like literally this morning I'm already leaning into, you know, the next one and starting to strategize and talk about where we're going uh w with the conferences and and so no rest for the weary.

October 8th is looming. I probably need to set up a countdown on one of my monitors here just counting down uh to the to the day and and the projected time.

But um we want to see more of these conferences in digital and virtual space. And and I tell you like I've I've had through this conference and other relationships like I've had very um influential people from multiple denominations, large denominations that want to be a part of what we're doing in the future.

Like it will be very interesting to see if if we can partner with some of these organizations. Um, I don't want to get too much into it because it's still kind of fluid.

Um, we're not alone and and and if there's if there's one thing that I I want to champion, maybe that's the theme of of of the next one is we're not alone in this.

There are there are more people that are digital missionaries that are out there in this space that are experimenting that are trying um and we this is an opportunity for us to to validate what they're doing and and to reach out and start to extend community in different ways.

Methos is asking are there hundred English-speaking countries? Yeah, there are. English is a primary language across the board. That being said, I'm actually very much in one of the reasons I want to do regional conferences is I don't want this to be the face of the guy that's doing a digital missionary conference

in South America. I I would rather and I've said this publicly, I would rather equip somebody else to do that. Like, you know, the digital missionary conference in in Europe that we want to do in the fall, I I it's not going to be English-speaking like it German, French, Spanish.

I I'll let Simon figure that out. But I I definitely want to get to the place where we're contextualizing this out globally. And that even means I may not be the face.

There needs to be somebody else. If we're going to do a conference for Gen Z uh on on this probably not going to be me, but I I want to I want to help get somebody else that can speak that language uh out there.

Same jet, etc. Like um English is a lid. English is a connector, but at some point it's a lid. And so we need to get beyond English.

We need to get beyond ourselves and and start to platform at a global level regardless of the context. And yes, yes, I you can create an AI version of me speaking Portuguese and it is excellent.

My my Korean, my Mandarin Chinese has faked out and via AI. Hey Jen, my Mandarin Chinese has faked out one of my really good friends who is Mandarin Chinese.

And so like it is possible to do it. In my opinion, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And and instead of being the the English guy that's talking about American digital ministry, I'd rather find people Mandarin China is a hard example, but I'd rather find people that can speak of digital

in their context. And so I would rather grow and train relationships and help them contextualize it and then figure out how to communicate it.

Um, yeah. Well, there's no language barrier between young and seniors, at least mostly. Um, oh. Oh, that's because uh Steve says, "I'll host the ones for senior uh senior citizens, I guess." Uh, unless you can get Mr.

Pete. I know. I I I can appreciate that. Yeah, I appreciate that, too. But, um, I I there's not a language barrier, but I think there's a contextualization barrier u when it comes to platforms.

Um, oh, it's interesting. There's some good Metaverse church stuff happening in Brazil. Methos who I'd love I'd love a connection there. I've got a um one of the people we're bringing on the board of the church digital is very connected in Portuguese in um Latin in the Portuguese side of Latin and South

America and so looking to expand some relationships over there. But I would, you know, on my side I'm looking to partner with anybody, everybody.

I want to learn what people are doing. My my mission in in life and everybody that's watching this hopefully knows this. I I wanna I want to discover where the issues are and um how to solve them.

A for the people that are stuck and then b so that the future generations don't get stuck there. And I want to start to be provide training and resources that can that can help streamline and and and help digital missionaries be more effective so they don't even have the issues of getting stuck.

And so I want to be the gasoline that gets poured on the flame uh the spark that uh that the Holy Spirit has given many of you and what God has called you to do, which is a fun place to be for me.

Um but it is um challenging as well, but I love what I'm doing. I love the fact that many of you are bought in and excited about the church digital and the digital missionary conference and what's ahead.

I would I would say this. If you're interested in more information on the digital missionary conference, including uh the October 8th uh registration, uh go ahead and hang out.

You can go over to the website that's on the screen over here. ww Hey, I did my finger the right direction. Kind of sort of.

How do I That's weird. I can't There it is. www.mmissionary.digital digital. Well, um, hey, this has been the wrap-up uh for for the conference.

Thank you for the conference. Uh, we took a we took a week off. We were doing a season through the church digital podcast talking about questions.

We're going to get back into that with questions, some of the questions and issues that digital missionaries are getting stuck with. I have no idea who we're going to bring on next week because I have no idea we're bringing on next week.

So we'll have a guest on diving back into the topic of that. We'll have probably a couple others that we're going to get into.

We've already started talking about what's next for the show with the stream here. Looking forward to the future seasons, but we're going to wrap up some of the questions here and move forward.

There's a couple people I want to highlight. Greg coming on from France, my friend. Hi, Greg. Bye, Greg. Uh, Greg, appreciate you.

Thanks for—hey, Greg served during the conference. So appreciate what you did handling some of the tech with that. And Simon's talking to me about some of the stuff Greg he's thinking about with you.

So excited to see how things develop on that side, France and beyond. But hey, I've got to go because I got to meet a really cool guy that I've never had a conversation with before.

And I'm excited about what this one could open up. I'm excited about a lot of stuff, but always excited here. But I got to land a plane because I got to be in a Google chat room in about four minutes.

And so for Jeff with the Church Digital, this is Jeff with the Church Digital talking about himself in third person today. That's awesome.

Thanks for hanging out with us today here on the stream and we'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good one.

Bye.