EP339 - TCD's Summer Town Hall Meeting

All right. Hey, welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Jeff here, founder of the Church Digital. We're doing a podcast recording, a live stream.

And today, May 20th, is our summer town hall meeting. I'm excited. I love the town hall. You see, look, we even got our little signage right there in the background. Town hall. It's going to be really cool. So we do this thing. We do it every, you know, three, four times a year, maybe once a quarter. Really is a chance to listen to you, to get out there and to directly interface with digital missionaries and people like you that are out in the field.

And so I sent a survey around earlier, um, trying to collect information from you. And many of you contributed. We had over 50 people, 50, 60 people globally contribute to this thing. But some of you did not get a chance to, and so during the presentation I want to ask you to go ahead and present.

By the way, we've got a lot of chat and some things are happening. So I'm going to do like two things at the same time. First off, here is a little QR code and go ahead and zap that QR code with your phone and get set up. I'm using Mentimeter. It's a great platform. I use it for presentations like this. And so the survey, the questions, you'll be able to interact with it in real time.

If you already voted earlier, great. Thank you. Go ahead and zap it again because there's questions I didn't ask you because, shh, there's some things that we're secretly going to announce in today's stream that I hadn't announced earlier. And so I want your feedback on that. So if you did the survey, go ahead and fill it out. If you didn't do the survey, go ahead and fill, you know, jump on this thing and we'll go through it.

Chat is blowing up. Always excited about that. Our friend Flat Cap. I still have no idea what these emojis mean. I don't speak this. J Mo, excited. J Mo's excited. There's a reason J Mo's excited. We'll get into that here a little bit. Melanie, the great Melanie. Without Melanie, the entire Church Digital ecosystem would crash and burn. I'm not even exaggerating about that. Simon is making me jealous from Poland. He and I were WhatsApping earlier today. I want to go to Poland. Simon, is it always warm in Poland? He's at a conference right now and he's convincing me to go to Poland. So I'm excited about exploring Poland and evidently Tom is jealous of Simon in Poland.

Like, let's just establish right now. Meh. That is number one. Speak for I'm jealous. Shelter in. I guess that means it's cold in Poland or I'm not sure what that's about. We still got Sanitizer. I don't even know. Flat Cap. Um, I wish the software that I was using spoke your language, Flat Cap, but you're in a different world.

Silvin logging in from Willows, California. Hey, Silvin, how you doing? Judy as well, coming in from Southern SoCal. Very, very cool there. Simon, Tariq, you know, from Pakistan, the Middle East. So excited. Tariq is, well, I mean, shoot, he launched equipping digital missionaries in Pakistan in the middle of like war-torn Pakistan as it's in the middle of a war with India or maybe it's being settled. I'm not sure the political situation, but man, so excited. Tariq, thanks for jumping on here. Excited about that. Emule, Joel coming on as well. The real Andy Mage. So many coming in. May want to bring down the music just a slight bit. We're still too loud.

We're still too loud, Buler. Buer. Of course. Right when I said that, it faded it out. Okay. All right, Andy. I'll go ahead and do it. Thank you for the feedback. I appreciate it. You know, if it's too loud, you're if you're too old. If it's too loud, you're too old. What's the saying? How's that go? I'm Andy. I'm not applying that to you. I wouldn't dare apply that to you. That's they're talking about somebody else.

Ian checking in. Paul, Micah, man, this is so good. You and your secrets, man. I always got secrets. I like it better when we can't hear Jeff. Thank you, Whitebeard. I missed you, my friend. I'm glad Whitebeard's coming back around. You know, we started to have the new job and kind of got a little hectic. Multi-site director for multiple campuses. New guy in town trying to elevate the game, get some standards. He's a little busy. Oh my gosh, so many people. Scott coming on. Micah, Kiwi from New Zealand. Tom. I don't even know what shots were fired. What shots? Andy, I like it better when I can't hear Jeff. Okay, that was, you know, I Andy, should I send Tom to his room? You know, Whitebeard, I'm just going to tell you like, unless you behave, I'm going to make sure you're on Santa's naughty list. I mean, technically, aren't you Santa? So would you just go ahead, wipe your, put your own name on your own list? Like I think that's best in this moment.

Yeah, 900 leaders, uh, Simon from all over Europe right now. 900 church leaders excited about the European leadership summit or something. Um, sounds like an incredible opportunity for the future. And it's warm. Not Miami warm. It was so funny. I walked into, I had breakfast this morning with Jesse Carbo because Jesse may be on here, but um, I literally I was walking into a hotel. There's a Starbucks in the hotel lobby and that's just where Jesse and I meet. And um, and this guy was walking out with a suitcase, walking out of the hotel, and literally like he is soaking wet, 15 feet away from the door, just sweat drenching, bald guy, clean shave, white shirt, you can already see through it. And he walks past me and he literally says, "I'm outside 15 seconds and I'm already on fire. Just drenched." It was so funny. This poor guy. Welcome to Miami. Brian Fipps in the house. Brian, Kansas City. Great to see you, man. Brian texted me this morning and just an encouraging note. Hey, man, I'm praying for you. And it was the right text at the right moment. And so Brian, so good to see you, man. Sly coming in. We got Nigeria coming in. Utope. Oh, Jesse Vez. Jesse, I was talking about you actually with Jesse Carbo earlier today. We still got to get together. Looking forward to doing that at some point. Keegan, the QR code seems to just go to a way to ask you questions, not a form. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I will get to you. You're faster than me, Keegan. Just keep that web page open. I didn't properly set it up. My fault. Thank you, Keegan, for making me aware of my issues. So we're going to get to a second here after I, you know, stall and give you an opportunity to answer the questions.

Man, there's so much chat. We just got to roll through some of this stuff. So, you know what? Let's just go ahead and get started.

So here's what we did. The first question: where are you from? And so the survey, 56 people surveyed, hey, about 27 of them, half of the people surveyed were in the United States. Now we also got a bunch in Europe. We got some down in Asia, Australia, some in Africa, none in South America. I want to call attention to that. We still have yet to actually crack South America. But I want to bring my mouse right over here. Dude, we got a digital missionary in Antarctica. I don't know who you are or what penguins you're using to share Jesus over down in South, uh, in Antarctica. No, maybe somebody misclicked. I don't know if you're really from Antarctica and doing digital missions. Talk about remote. I told Jesse Carbo this morning, I was like, "Dude, I want to like move to freaking Puerto Rico where it's like, you know, five bucks to live and go be a digital missionary just remotely from Puerto Rico." I'm actually not kidding when I say that. But could you imagine like living in a tent in a camp, a base camp down in like Antarctica doing digital missions work?

If you are, if you have not contributed to the survey, zap the QR code and go ahead and contribute to the survey. I want to legitimately tell you here. All right, we use this material. We use this survey to feed what the Church Digital is doing in the future. This is a major part of us discovering and praying through and figuring out what the direction is. The digital missionary conference is directly related to this stuff that happened fall of, to the town hall meeting we did fall of '24, I guess somewhere around there. And so, you know, contribute to it, zap it in, and let us know where you're at.

Um, man, there's so much stuff. Uh, EDA coming in. Good to see you, my friend. Um, Antarctica is a great location to pick with your VPN. Maybe that's it. Maybe somebody, no, no, no. But like, you know, they actually had to click the thing. Not automated on this one. But that's good. That's good. That's good. That's good.

All right. Number two. Kind of hyped up, man. I'm excited about this stuff. We're going to get into favorite platform or community. Favorite platform or community. Number one is WhatsApp. Not really that surprised by that. I was expecting WhatsApp in there. Number two, Facebook. Really, y'all? Facebook. Facebook. Facebook. Like I keep trying to like get this platform killed and you can see like new stuff's coming in in the time and it's adjusting. But Facebook. All right. So if you're out there watching us right now, I'm going to call you out publicly. If Facebook is your favorite platform, here's what I need you to do. I need you to go to facebook.com/bethechurchdigital. facebook.com/bethechurchdigital and go follow us on Facebook. We get, I'm not exaggerating here, we get crickets on Facebook, which is why we pour all our energy into WhatsApp and Discord.

So if you really like Facebook, you got to engage with us on Facebook. And if you're really passionate about Facebook, hit me up directly. I may give you the keys to Facebook. Um, I like it. I saw this come up. I was expecting WhatsApp. I was expecting Discord. I was expecting social media. And there's another smattering of different platforms that came in. All of that is big screen. Of course, Mr. Pete is coming in. Mr. Pete, I just see this, you know, big screen. Of course, Mr. Pete's passionate about big screen. Love you, sir.

Uh, don't worry. Facebook is trying to kill Facebook. They keep making it worse. All right, we're going to move on. But seriously, if you are passionate about Facebook, you are missing your call. We, the Church Digital, are missing your calling. Come let us know and we'll get you a place.

You are question number three. You are a digital missionary. You are a church staff employee. You are a missions organization employee. You are a normie. You're a normal person. Or other. I don't know what other could be. I guess other could be alien. I guess other could be a penguin from Antarctica. I don't know what other is, but figure it out.

And so you're seeing here we've got 40, 40 percent. By far the majority claim to be quote unquote digital missionaries. Now there's opportunity to do both. So a digital missionary that also works for a church staff, a digital missionary that also works for a missions organization. It's interesting. 14 percent of people surveyed in this thing are like, yeah, I'm just I'm just some guy. I'm just some gal. I love that. I mean, that really is this normie language. We used to, you know, previously in past years, I want to bring back the normie language. We used to have normies all of the time and talk about that. I used to, you know, joke on that. We were like the, yeah.

What was it? The the uh oh my gosh, Rudolph Reno's reindeer, the the island of misfit toys from the show. Uh yeah, I used to joke like that was us, you know, Micah.

Micah coming in from the outside saying he is all of the above and Yeah. Well, Micah, I don't know how normal. No, I'm kidding.

I'm not going to do that to you. All right. I like you, Micah, unlike Whitebeard who's giving me crap. Uh, so next up, this is interesting.

Recent missionary success stories. Recent missionary success stories. Now, let me uh let me work some magic here. Oh, that was the wrong button.

Um, shoot. That was not what I wanted to do. Close Q&A. All right. Recent missionary success story. Oh, I think I'm supposed to press space bar.

Hit the wrong button. All right, here you go. That was my fault. Uh, online outreach. So, let's click this and and drill in. Here are some success stories that you all are sharing.

Trained 16,000 people at a young person's conference to take a step of faith to share their faith in the digital world. Someone who engaged primarily online visited a physical location to be baptized.

I love mission. I love the mission work, but I really appreciate the effort on using Facebook group to share the gospel with people. My team went on a village outreach during Good Friday in April in uh yeah, in Nigeria, uh daily text and email devotions working on a YouTube channel.

We successfully connected a small new association of Christian video game creators and streamers with an international mission focused on evangelizing, discipling, and inspiring youth.

Man, it's cool. Like I I almost I want to maybe as a maybe as a blog I want to post some of these stories but excited about what's happening at the outreach level at the uh online outreach level success stories I'm seeing Jesus transforms lives personal transformation through his calling and blessing in

a biblical peacemaking uh whether the controversies are large or small hearts soften with paths to peace lives are being transformed connected uh online with something talking about life not living.

Uh I'm guessing that's not something but someone talked texted over weeks eventually came to church and got baptized. Uh I'm going around Asia for my farewell tour of all my missions work there in in mission trips.

I made plenty of friends over the years and this is my last time they see uh my face in person. But you'll get to see them digitally uh and and engage with them digitally.

Hey Cindy. Cindy just coming in. Uh, how you doing, Cindy? Good to see you. So excited about some of those stories. Oh, I gotta Sorry, I'm clicking on the wrong screen.

Um, let's do uh let's do virtual reality. Uh, I am very active in virtual reality uh in a program called Big Screen. Oh, I'm screwing with that.

Don't do that. That was bad. Uh, in in uh in Big Screen. Hey, hey, it's uh it's it's Mr. Beat. Uh last week I held a team of missionaries uh through Lison.

Um I led a team of through the Lison virtual loungers. They were avatars for the first time and would like to implement a virtual world for for their mission talking about expo explore exposing and exploring new ideas.

We got some new ones coming here. Um I'm new to the digital missionary initiative. Uh doing some hybrid missions with a former believer by sharing our testimony.

uh launching his digital missionaries. Another couple that feels called wants to meet and discuss how they might be able to do the same. Like it's it's beautiful.

First off, it's beautiful to see life change happen and be able to make those connections uh where you're able to have those conversations. You see people get baptized or or take some steps of faith or or grow closer to God, closer to Christ in in some level.

it. But it's also as beautiful to help someone that maybe knows Jesus have a better understanding of what it means to to disciple someone, not just to conversion, but to develop them to a to a closer place in Christ so that they're living a life of obedience as well.

And so, if you haven't shared your stories yet, feel free to zip the zap the QR code and and share your story in that.

I've got like 25 screens open windows on my It is so confusing right now. Let me I'm going to get this one out of the way.

That's going to help me move forward here a little bit. All right. Next up, your biggest challenge today. Right up off the top of the bat, feel free to to, you know, share uh what you what you have in there.

Two biggest challenges, time and money. Now, it's interesting, you know, the way this is actually set up is you actually have to type the word and and all of you typed different words and so it is what it is.

Like you can see uh fundraising. You you can see not enough hands for time, fundraising for money. Uh you can see all sorts of different uh objects that are centered around uh move to connect to community, needing a mentor or group training.

There is a lot of that in there as well. And so we're going to talk here some about maybe some equipping things that that that are coming up.

But definitely uh excited for the feedback there. on that. Let's get into this. Equipping digital missionaries. Speaking of our online digital missionary course, Equipping Digital Missionary.

So creatively named is number one awesome. I love it and it uh it was great. I took it and it was awesome. Number two, I think it's awesome.

Uh we'll take it soon. Number three, me wasn't that interested in it. And number four, what you talking about, Willis? Maybe not that that aggressive, but uh here, that's the scores.

A lot of people seem to think it was awesome. A lot of people are awesome, like interested in taking it. Uh for what it's worth, we've had maybe 75 people graduate through Equipping Digital Missionaries.

I haven't done the country count yet on it, but I would speculate it's probably 30 to 40 countries that that have taken EDM successfully.

A lot of global representation coming in. We've had close to 300 people uh register for more information and and are wanting to do it when schedules in line and things like that.

So, there is a huge interest in in digital missionaries. And so, those of you that are thinking it's awesome, we need to flip the switch and get you connected into it.

I don't know. We've got four or five cohorts going right now. A couple in Americas, uh, one in um, Africa, one in the Middle East, uh, one up in Germany.

Europe is launching, I think, in a couple weeks as well. So excited to see what's coming out of EDM. Here's a good one for me.

I wish the church digital would, and this is where we are are, you know, looking, how can we help you? How can we help you?

Now, there's a bunch of I'm I'm new. Uh I'll reserve judgment for later. Uh I'm I'm really new and so far it looks good.

Really new. Don't have advice, no suggestions. I love it. And and so there's Can Can I see Can I see it in the Google Play Store?

Um sure. With a web browser. Uh you know, we'll Yeah, this is great. I wish the church digital will spread like wildfire.

Wildfire. Is that the name of like a superhero or a transformer or something? Will spread like wildfire. I hope you're right, my friend.

Um I I don't know who said that, but that's that's really good. By the way, I don't have any names on on any of these.

All these are um you know, private. It's uh it's it's clean data coming in. Uh some of you want a technology training. Uh train me on modern Oh, that's why that's not working.

train me on modern technology of doing digital missions. Uh uh um in mobilization I have two channels blah blah blah. Help me help the digital missionaries with more training and encouraging people to reach out to the unreached people groups using Facebook or WhatsApp.

Uh would really uh would expand more into virtual reality. It's a good one. uh will expose uh me to modern technology of doing digital missions in social media platforms.

Uh be a completely I'm guessing this one's about the digital missionary conference. Be a completely understandable course uh with great breakouts. Um depending upon who you are, I don't know what um completely understandable is but but I get this.

This is a good one. Uh I wish the church digital and and it gives some content uh diversity. We're going to make content. Content's important.

It's not the endgame, but content is important. Uh work and make content based on the age differences like teenagers, adults, and youth. Different content for different people from the church digital.

All right. Slow golf club. That is really good to be honest. That's that's one of the things that's my heart right now. Like I'm a I'm an old bald I'm not as old as Steve Reed.

Let's set that aside. But I'm an old bald man. And hey Steve, I know you're watching on demand. Just thought I'd throw that at you.

Uh I'm an old bald man with a beard. Like this is not the face of a Gen A and Gen Z movement. And so we need to find we need to connect with and we need to empower some of these people to to grab the range men and women.

It's one of the reasons we're so passionate about leaning into nationalities to lean into their cultures to give Simon to give you top to give Tariq to give them a platform to reach into their spaces.

But in addition to that, you know, women age differences as well, different cultures based on on age like like we the church digital need to be leaning into that, helping others and platforming others towards that.

Another one, make uh teams in different areas to produce content in their local language and and have a strong follow-up plan to measure progress and consistency.

Target-based work uh will be efficient and uh results driven. Yeah, that's that we are we're in the early stages of that. As a matter of fact, equipping digital missionaries EDM for the first time was taught in German.

Simon would literally just did that. He's wrapping up that first cohort this week, next week where we used AI to translate the uh subtitles into German.

Now, to be honest, that's a short-term solution for me. the long-term solution and Simon knows this is I want Simon to you know recruit a team and let's actually record it in German like I I don't think it's a win for 40 50 videos to be in English taught by a bunch of

American you know guys I I I would love to see better representation subtitles may work well but globally I would love to see better representation on some of these uh there should be different genres as well with different presentations like uh whiteboard animation uh with voice over vlogs, short films.

Um but there should be a hierarchy to to lead projects. I it's not a bad idea. Uh some of that's budget and some of that's uh um an issue right now.

But yeah, I I love the way you're thinking. It it should be good to categorize what you offer, how the church digital digital missionaries can help various different areas of of ministry.

That's feedback, too. We're going to come back come back. I'm going to come back to that one here in in a second. Let me see.

Was there anything else I wanted to cover on this slide as we're 30 minutes in uh international u not so American centric like I want to publicly acknowledge that one.

Yeah, we need to move away from that. Be sustainable. We need stability. I want to represent that one. I would love that. That was actually one of the the topics of of breakfast this morning.

Connect with other networks to see the opportunities and gaps and collaborate to get the world done. help visualize and organize digital mission partnerships in international movements.

I that's my heart is is to see not the church digital brand and global space. Actually I told that to leadership today. Um you know uh we don't I I want to help empower others to connect into into digital environments and physical and digital space globally.

Like it's not, you know, if Jeff had an opportunity to speak globally, I would love to empower somebody else to speak globally.

It's not, you know, God didn't ask me to launch jeffreed.com. He asked me to launch the church digital. And so I think that was it.

Um, hey, there's going to be some questions from the audience at the end of this thing. We're going to do a Q&A. And so let's go ahead.

You can click the Q&A button, I believe, on the screen. It's this little, um, over here on the side. I think that's it.

Like the little chat bubbles if you've got questions as we're going through this. We'll address everything at the end as we have time.

But I do want to do this. I want to talk a little bit because not only do we want to hear from you and this, there was some really good things that came out of these conversations today and the stuff that you shared and we'll share.

But there's some things that we've heard in the past and that we've seen in the past that we've been working on developing and that we're wanting to roll out here very soon, including four digital missionary conferences.

Not one, not two, not three, but four digital missionary conferences coming up here in a little bit. And so I, but to get to there, we're going to roll into it.

So you got to stick around for the missionary conferences. We're going to talk about the framework for the church digital: connect, community, mobilize.

If you've been listening to us, if you've been checking into EDM, if you've been hanging out with us for any length of time, you've heard me talk about this. You know, uh, deep cut is going to be, you've seen my friend, uh, Funko Pop Da Vinci, and talk about the flywheel.

Connect, community, equip, mobilize, and how that works in digital missions. You're, we're connecting via content, via social media, via YouTube community. You know, we tend to lean towards asynchronous community, but synchronous and asynchronous work together.

WhatsApp, Discord. Community for us is building relationships, establishing trust. To be honest, the outpost is what you're going to start to see really community start to foster.

We're going to talk more about outpost here in a little bit. Equipping, you know, you've seen the equipping digital missionary cohorts come up here within the past six months or so.

And then mobilization. And this is where we encourage, we experiment, we empower ministry to happen at a global level, helping you find what you're called to and then mobilizing you, holding you accountable, reaching, uh, releasing you and helping you do what God is calling you to do in digital space.

And that's a beautiful challenge. Now, 2024 was the year of connection and community. This is where we made leaps and bounds and leaps and jumps, whatever the saying is, on connection and community on that social media on the brand.

Barbara's team Word Revolution came in and really grabbed the ball and ran with it on that connection on the top level, and Barbara's team, Ingred, and everybody else involved in that has done and will continue to do an incredible job towards that.

If you're looking for that type of stuff, Word Revolution is absolutely unbelievable. Wordrevolution.com. At the same time, Andy Mage shifted from connection to community.

Community is Andy's sweet spot. And he really, we launched, you know, we launched Discord last year. We launched, um, WhatsApp last year. Discord's floating around 700.

WhatsApp is 515, 525, I think. And so like we've gotten community going very fast digitally and 2024 was really the building of that.

Now 2025 looks a little different. This is where my friend Jason Morris starts to sweat a little bit because 25 is the year of equipping.

We launched, really we graduated the first class of equipping digital missionaries. Our cohort in 25, we did beta 1 in 24, 25 we did beta 2, entirely in 25 we're working on beta 3 right now in 25, and like I said, 75 people probably graduated from this thing from across the planet.

And so excited about it, but it's so interesting to me where the first EDM1 was 13 weeks and the 13-week cohort dragged a little bit. Like if we're honest, it was a little slow, it was a little long. Um, it got hurt by some holidays in there too.

But we came out with the 10-week one and we said, "Okay, let's streamline it. Let's cut it down to like 10 weeks." This, and I taught the 10-week one to like four or five cohorts at the same time, which was awesome.

And but as we were going through it, here's an observation that I will give you direct from the people who were in beta 2 with me.

The, um, Gen, uh, the Gen Z and the younger millennials. This is way too long, Jeff. Like this thing needs to get down to like four to five weeks.

The boomers and the Gen Xers, dude, Jeff, man, 10 weeks is perfect. We need longer. Like it was so funny to hear the different perspectives, mostly centered around age.

And so this is what we're doing. We're actually launching an EDM core. We're in the process. Jason Morris is working on this. This is some of the stuff that's coming soon.

Uh, but we're going to be launching a four to five week core group of, uh, cohort for equipping digital missionaries. Now, like you're what you're seeing on this slide was actually our 13-week.

Last time we did a town hall meeting, like I don't know, three, six months ago. Maybe I showed this in the spring. I think I showed this in January.

It was this 13-week and we're boiling this down. Yeah, Jason Morris, no pressure at all, dude. I'm literally burning the ship by saying this, Jason Morris, on you publicly.

So you got it. He's going to nail us. But we're going to boil it down. We're going to shrink it down to the limited time.

Now I'm just going to pick out here number seven on this little sheet here. Digital imperialism. This is my favorite, by far my favorite, um, course.

Digital imperialism is going to get cut. It's not going to make it into a five-week, and you know, fundraising, it's probably going to get cut just because of the length of it. But by cutting it, now it's the number one issue that you have as digital missionaries.

So we're cutting it to make it smaller and simpler, but by cutting it, we're not actually helping you with the stuff that you're interested in or need or like in digital imperial, the stuff that you need to know in order to be effective at a global level.

And so how are we going to handle this situation? How do we shrink EDM, Equipping Digital Missionaries, the only course, the only cohort that we're providing in equipping, yet still effectively equip you to handle these issues that you're facing?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you the TCD equipping library. Well, this is actually a University of Florida GIF. Do I say GIF or is it GIF?

I think I should say, I want to say GIF, but everybody's going to get mad at me and say GIF. Um, but the heart of this is, GIF for GIF aside, we are going to create an equipping library.

Uh, aside from equipping digital missionaries, where our outposts will be able to provide equipping and training on a number of resources on a number of topics. Like, for example, the course, my favorite section, that digital imperialism will be available as a course, um, and talking about how digital culture is stronger than physical culture when you're doing digital mission work.

Really interesting stuff. And so like that is, uh, that'll be available, not probably as part of EDM, but available after the fact for people to go through on the side. And like in topics with fundraising, we're actually in the process of talking with our friends over at, um, Reliant about them, Reliant actually creating an online course as part of our equipping library so that you can get trainings to help you be better at fundraising.

And so like some of the stuff that we're going to do is we're really going to look at, hey, what are equipping digital missionaries struggling with, and help develop trainings to solve those problems?

And if we don't have the answer, there's this really, um, eclectic group of missions organizations and ministry partners that would love to help digital missionaries.

And so we are going to start to lean into equipping digital missionaries, not just through the cohort, but through our outpost overall on a broad range of topics.

So look for equipping digital missionaries. I'm once again, Jason, no pressure, my friend. You're, we're going to see more of the TCD equipping library sometime this fall.

Now to do that, this is just a fun little tidbit. To do that, we are, um, we're exploring an LMS, a full learning, um, uh, learning management system. LMS, learning module system, learning module system, I think.

And so, uh, we're exploring, uh, Nobi. Was this, is like a, this, uh, town hall was paid for you in part by the fun people over at Nobi. No, but this is a somewhat of a commercial. The Nobi, they're friends, and so we're exploring that platform. You can check them out at nobi.com.

Um, I'm not sure they're going to work, but it's the best guess walking in to the town hall today. So enjoy that slide right there.

Now here's what I want from you. Grab your phones, open up web browsers, zap the QR code. Hopefully you still got it open. I wish I had more training in. I wish I had more training in. I want to see what you wish you had more training in.

Would love to see some things pop up. Now there is probably some sort of a delay, uh, between, um, uh, where I'm broadcasting this, not, so it's going to take time.

So I'm going to stall here for a second. Um, okay, I just saw this pop up in chat. Uh, Vader Luke, you don't know the power of the digital side. Digital imperialism.

I totally get the joke. I've been watching, I've been watching. I have not watched Andor season 2 yet. No, no spoilers. I was waiting for my wife to get out of, she's a school teacher.

This is her last week of school, and so she would have been mad at me if I watched it without her. She really liked it, and uh, and so I haven't caught up with it, but I appreciate that. Methos and then Evangel, the Republic will be reorganized in the first digital empire.

Oh, so good. All right, some feedback is coming in. I wish I had more training in microchurch. I wish I had, uh, more training in discipling people in my network, in my neighborhood.

I'm going to just assume something there. Uh, Andy Mage says, "Andor season 2 is a masterpiece." I caught, I caught part of a conversation online.

Does this make Andor one of the top five most important people in the Star Wars universe? When that was said, I was like, "Oh my," like that.

That's a whole level of importance. And so I'm excited for it. By the way, drinking out of my, um, uh, Starbucks Mustafar, Mustafar, excuse me, coffee mug as I'm doing this is decaf.

It's way past my, uh, my coffee timeline date, but so good. All right, so hey, listen. I can't stall too much longer.

Got to keep moving. But, um, the, we'll make these, um, I'm trying to figure out. We will make these slides available again after EDM is over, after the town hall is over.

And so we'll post the link where you'll be able to vote again. Uh, the link will be thechurch.digital/poll, but you'll have access to the presentation, all of this, and you'll be able to go in there and vote through it.

So check the communities. We'll continue the conversation. Um, uh, hey, uh, can somebody paste the URL for the questions? Um, I'm tuning in from my phone, so can't scan the code.

Yeah, it's uh the church.digital/poll. Somebody can type that in. I guess I can. I mean, no reason I can't. Um, but seriously, what is digital imperialism?

All right, I'll tell you. You know what? Well, I was about to say you'd have to go take uh equipping digital missionaries. Imperialism. You know what?

Cultural differences just popped up on my screen. Scott, cultural differences is the reason. Imperialism is a term in history where um you know Rome takes over the world and and all of a sudden Rome forces its culture on everybody else.

Uh England takes over our friends in uh Australia and and or India. India is a better example. England takes over India and forces its culture on the Indian people.

Uh England culture because it is the dominant culture globally uh strikes out the other cultures in place. So digital imperialism would look like this where we are um dig now I'm going to I'm going to call out Americans right here but it's not exclusively an American problem where we America are are being digital missionaries and are consciously or unconsciously pushing our national culture our national agenda our own cultural agenda instead of recognizing there are cultural differences and and and giving people an opportunity to to lean into their cultural difference.

To me, it's one of the reasons why I don't want my face on a bunch of videos in Africa training African digital missionaries. This is not the face of of I I joke all the time.

This is not the face of an Indian digital movement. You know, we need to find people in these cultures, Ebenezer and others that that can represent the the movement globally.

This is why it's not Jeffreed.com. This is why it's the church digital and and it's more about empowering others. It's very selfless, humble things that Christ called us to be.

Act that's digital imperialism. Digital culture is stronger than physical culture. How you act in different countries doesn't matter compared to how you act within the culture of a platform.

Tik Tok is always Tik Tok regardless of whether you're in the Middle East or you're in uh America. Maybe some slight nuances within the platform, but the platform culture supersedes physical platform.

That was a very long answer. Scott, thank you for being the guinea pig there. Um or actually that wasn't Scott, that was Methos. Methos, thank you for being the guinea pig there asking that question.

Scott, I I apologize. Uh, Facebook is exporting digital imperialism. Yeah, you're not wrong. All right. Hey, let's move on. We got we got other things I I I want to cover here.

So, uh, the Equipping Library is next up. By the way, the Church Digital um, I'm starting in in a couple weeks. Podcast season 12.

I've done 12 seasons. I I actually I'm on episode 33. I think this is 338, 339. I'm I'm I'm getting old, yo. Um, but the next season is going to be equipping partners and empowering tools.

We're going to highlight a lot of ministries and and and partners that want to empower you to be digital missionaries and and and are providing tools and solutions and trainings and networking and and we the people that we're working with and bringing into the conversation.

I'm personally vetting towards this. And so Tuesdays starting June 3rd, Tuesdays 1:00 p.m. Eastern right here on the Church Digital's YouTube channel.

We're going to be talking more about this and digging into it. So stay tuned there. But let's do this. We're going to talk about ambassadors.

So we talked about equipping and I want to I want to help you become digital missionaries. But I I need your help. I need your help with something.

I I I I need your help to help us translate the idea of the church digital out globally. Um because a cultural differences, a lot of people don't understand who who we are at the physical level and and many of you are already doing that naturally, starting to uh help us uh multiply these ideas out globally. You know, Mr. Pete's chiming in here. Alabama. I there's a lot that I don't understand about Alabama. Like I I am not I'm not I live in Miami, which is the one of the southernmost points in America, I think, but I I am not from the south at all.

And and so like culturally, we need people to to help us, you know, represent some of these ideas out physically. But in addition to that, I'm asking for some help for some people to help us stand before God and and and and help us spiritually represent, pray for, and come alongside the work that that we're doing with the church digital. And so, we're calling this group the the ambassadors. Now, here's the reality of of what we are we're looking for.

We're looking for people. We're basing this on Matthew 6. We're asking people to do three things. We're asking for uh a group of you to come alongside the church digital and pray for uh digital missionaries, a digital mission field.

Uh the church digital, we're asking for you to pray daily for this. We're already doing this, by the way. Uh if you've been part of the the the 102 movement, uh Matthew was it no Luke 10:2 for the harvest is plentiful, the workers are few.

And so the church.digital/pray has more information on this. But you know, Matthew 6, but when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret.

Your father who sees in secret will reward you. It's a big part of of the ambassador. We're asking for people once a month to fast.

We're we're looking at Matthew 6:18. That your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your father, who once again is in secret.

And your father who sees in secret will reward you. I'm pretty sure I copied and pasted that's for the repetitive nature. I just caught that.

It kind of repeated there. And so we're asking now look, we're not regulating what day or when or how. uh we'll pro we'll send out some resources through the prayer but also we'll send send out some resources on the fasting but our hope is to create the opportunity to ask for people to come alongside and and be intercessory prayer for us through the church digital and to fast for us uh for for the digital missionary movement at a global level and and and then the third thing that I'm asking for and and listen I Jeff Reed I'm asking this humbly As as humble as I can be in this moment, I am going to stop the music because I want to make sure I'm being humble when I'm saying this.

I am asking 50 of you to give monthly to the church digital. To be honest, I don't care if it's 50 cents. Whatever the minimum transaction that the website will will transact is what I'm looking for.

Some of you globally, you know, you may have a nickel uh a US 5-cent piece that you contribute. Like to me, it is it is not about the money value of what's coming out of this.

I've actually told my leadership team by doing this, I'm okay losing money, but but the reality is is, you know, look at uh the scripture here, Matthew 6 20:21, lay your your your up lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, for where your treasure is, there your heart is also.

And and and I'm asking some of you, it's it's a serious moment here, and it's a little painfully awkward because I just killed the music, and I'll bring it back in a second, but with this serious moment, I'm I'm asking some of you um to own the vision of of what we're doing, to contribute to see it happen, not only investing yourself into the community like you've already been doing, investing yourself by equipping and training in others and and doing the ministry that you're doing globally, but to be honest, investing some of yourself financially into this.

And and I I am asking, and this isn't an ask, I'm asking for you to do it monthly. On the website, the giving forms, there's there's a monthly tab.

You can switch it over. It's five bucks a month. Thank you for giving five bucks a month towards this. A cup of coffee at Starbucks if if you're here in America.

And whatever that translates into at at the global level, here's where we're at. As ambassadors, your prayer is going to cover the work of what we're doing.

The the fasting that you're doing is going to sharpen the the mission of what we're doing and and help to make it more effective and the giving what you're doing is it's going to fuel the future uh literally fuel the future of what the the church digital is offering.

That's a rather uh serious thing for us. We're going to have some fun here in a second. But if you're interested in the ambassador program uh being a part of this, like I said, we're we're we're recruiting.

We want to see 50 people. This is serious, y'all. 50 people coming alongside us, praying daily for digital missionaries, the digital missionary field in the church digital, fasting once a month towards the mission that God has called us to do digitally and and and contributing something to the the church digital. If you tell me, hey, you know what, Jeff, I'm already giving to XYZ. I'm giving money to a missionary or a church planter, so that's what I'm doing instead of the church digital.

Awesome. Fill it out. Let us know. That's great. Contribute something to a digital process. And if you're not doing anything or if your ministry is greatly benefiting as a result of the church digital, help us out.

We uh we desperately need it. So, more information at the church.digital/ambassadors. Okay, let's get the music going again. Oh man, that's kind of a downer.

What have I got? Okay, a little bit. Let's talk about the fun stuff. So, there's this little thing. Maybe you've heard of it. It's called the digital missionary conference.

Just a small little conference hosted online. 1100 people showed up day of from 80 some countries. 1500 people globally registered for this thing. An incredible conference held by all.

Uh it was exhausting. It was incredible. It was rewarding. It was frustrating. We literally broke the internet twice. Um, but we heard you loud and clear.

A lot of you had literally we did we talked about it. We we took feedback. We listened to what you were saying in the in the communities.

Um, some of you uh vocally, you know, talking about it. Um, lots of wins, things to improve on. What what I heard was you wanted more interaction.

You wanted more more time to connect with each other and you wanted more poignant is the word that's coming to mind, more focused topics.

So, here's what we're doing moving forward. I've teased this on the p on my show a couple times, but we're going to be rolling out uh there's we're going to do conference seasons two times a year.

Spring spring 26, we will do a conference. I'm telling you right now, we're going to do a conference and and that conference is going to feel like the spring 25.

Maybe it's a two-day conference. We'll spread it out. We give some breathing room, but we're going to do the big global everybody together type of conference.

But what we're doing fall 25, it's it's it's going to look a little different. Oh, I'm moving ahead of myself, man. My my camera is is uh is too quick to focus on my finger.

I'm moving ahead of myself. We broke the internet. Right. Alter Live, God bless it, could not sustain and they are not going to be able to sustain where this organization, where this conference is going.

And so we're moving on. No, no, no, no, no, no. Hey, hey, hey. Goodbye. All right, Alter Live. It was nice, but uh we we we got to we got to go with something bigger.

And so, welcome to the new TCD platform, Hubalo. And so, Hubalo is um our online conference, our online event platform that we're going to be using for our online conferences.

Uh we'll actually the next town hall we're going to do in Hubalo to let some people get some exposure to it and to do a rough draft.

We're going to probably do it, uh, week in August or early September heading into that. But, uh, so hey, those of you who are like Jeff, your conference platform didn't make it. Alter Live is fixing the situation. That being said, some of the feature set I actually have produced an event in Hubalo in the past and, um, it's a much better experience than Ultralive.

I don't want to be critical of Ultralive necessarily in this situation, but Hubalo offers a lot more, um, depth of features, uh, a lot more interaction, a lot more connection. It's a, it's a, it's a pricey tool. Like I, I, I'm not going to lie, Hubalo will be the most expensive tool in our tech deck, in our tech stack.

And, and so, um, I did not want to roll the dice on, uh, Hubalo without going through Alter Live first to make sure there was demand. And y'all told me there was demand. 1,100 people showed up day of. We freaking had people hacking our conference and watching it on YouTube directly or, you know, some crazy old guy showed it on big screen. I'm, I'm kidding, Mr. Pete. Love you for that. But so the deal is is that we're going to invest money into it and Hubalo is going to be an incredible day of experience for our online conferences moving forward.

And so that's coming up. But like I said, four. Not one, not two, not three. Ow, that hurts a lot more than I thought it would. Not there are going to be four conferences we are doing. And, uh, here you've been waiting for this, right? Can I get, can I get like a drum roll?

Do I have the drum roll? Crap. Where'd I put my sound effects? I thought I had the sound effects somewhere on my screen. I can't see it. I have, I had my drum roll sound effects and I can, dang it. Boom, boom. All right, all right. Good. Let's move on. I suddenly felt like, uh, Letterman there. Hey, here are the conferences we've got lined up.

Wednesday, September 24th, European Digital Missionary Conference featuring digital ministry opportunities that's currently happening in Europe. We're working with Simon, uh, Durks, uh, Germany, uh, German U and European Outpost Mission Alliance, uh, towards that as well, and we will be doing that on TCD's Hubalo, time to be determined. September 24th, Wednesday. October 1st, Gaming Digital Missionary Conference, uh, featuring gaming streaming ministry opportunities globally. Leighton and Andy are working on that at this point, and we're going to be hosting that not on TBD, TCD's, uh, Hubalo account. Going to be hosting it in Discord. I don't know that I've ever, I've never been a part of a digital conference in Discord. So it'll, it'll be interesting to see what the guys come up with on that one. But they're heading up the conference and, uh, looking forward to seeing that.

Wednesday, October 1st. And, um, Wednesday, October 8th, Platforms as Places, discussing and applying missiology to different platforms, um, across. Jason Morris and I are heading up that one. Jason's actually going to be speaking at that, headline or opening up the conference, y'all, just because that's the one that, just because that's the one that I've spent the most time getting my fingernails dirty on, getting my fingers on, getting dirt under my fingernails. I am so excited about the October 8th Platforms as Places. I, I invited all the speakers yesterday and so I'm already starting to hear some conversations and some questions back, but I'm going to really be excited to see that Wednesday, October 8th conference come together about that. We'll be doing that one on the blog. But, you know, I said that we're going to do four and there's only three listed there.

Some wise person is probably making that observation right now. The fourth one to be determined there. We're having a conversation right now with a ministry partner that we want to come on board with and, and we're working through the details right now. Let's just say that, um, we will announce that one more thing in, in, in, in the weeks to come, maybe a couple weeks out, but we are having. It's called a season, a conference season coming up here in fall 2025 where we will, the goal is to have four sequential conferences online.

Now, you know, it's funny. I was using the term micro conferences a little bit as I was talking about this. Not to describe them as small in attendance because actually I think they're going to be largely attended across the board, but in, but what we're aiming to do is to create very targeted content, very targeted trainings, very targeted breakouts, very targeted, um, equippings in the time. As a matter of fact, some of these conferences like I, I know I, I was listening to some of the stuff that Andy and Leighton were working on for the gaming conference and, and it actually challenged me to like scratch what I was thinking and, and almost pivot towards how we were doing things because they were creating this, this really incredible thread that's that's going to help, um, gaming missionaries and gaming churches really develop a focus.

And they were so fine-tuned with what they were doing, they made me kind of want to raise my standard and, and, and elevate that digitally and so towards what we're doing at Platforms and Places. So really, uh, really excited about offering what will be, we'll announce the fourth one soon, but what will be four digital missionary conferences in the course of that. The conferences will be roughly four or five hours. There'll be plenty of, and the other thing, like I said, we're going to open it up and let there be all sorts of conversation time.

Hey, you know what? I just checked the time. I got one more thing. Oh, by the way, real quick, rank your excitement levels for this. Of the four conferences, I should have did that while I was stalling. Of the four conferences, there's only three listed there. Um, of the three conferences, which are the ones, which is the one you're most excited about? Go ahead and rank that. Let us know. We've got the Gaming Digital Missionary Summit. We've got the European Digital Missionary Summit. And then we've got the Platforms as Places.

This is an unbiased ranking and, uh, we will, uh, we'll have it open like I said on the flip side for people to vote on. So excited to see that Platforms as Places. The other ones like I, I don't want to demean the other ones. Uh, the Platforms as Places will be the one that's the most generic in this season. Um, European is going to lean into the European culture. It's going to make a lot of sense for people not connected to digital to European culture to attend it, but you're going to have to contextualize it into your culture, not just, you know, at the same level somebody in Europe's contextualizing an American conference towards that. But Platforms as Places will be the most, um, unique one there. All right. Hey, I, I know I'm going a little long. I appreciate that. Let me click through. Fourth digital missionary, talked about that. I got one more thing. Some of you old enough to remember Steve Jobs. One more thing. Yo, I got one more thing. You ready for this?

Um, I love the Silven. I'm going to call this out because it just popped up on my screen out of the corner of my eye. Um, I think they are all hitting trending needs befitting for me. It's what we tried to do, man. We, we tried to find the trends. We tried to find the needs towards that. Silven, that warms my heart, man. Thanks for, thanks for saying that and, and for seeing that. Uh, so I appreciate it. We got one more thing. You ready for this? This I didn't hear in, in the, you know, conversations, cuz a lot of the stuff that we're doing like you could feel it, you could see it cuz people were talking about it. This one I'm going to be honest coming in. There's a little stigma. There's a little, you know, we don't, we don't, we don't talk about this and, and this is something that I, Jeff, founder of the Church Digital, I, I want to, I want to install and I want to change in our culture. I'm, I'm, I'm okay if we lean into this. Are you ready? Here we go. The Church Digital is launching recovery groups. The Church Digital is launching Christ-centered recovery groups.

This is a, this is a, this is a big deal for me of somebody at a personal level who is who has gone through recovery, who is currently going through recovery, and, and I'm willing to share my story with anyone individually. I'm not going to do it right now. I don't have time. But as, as I look at a lot of the challenges and the, the ways that I have been personally taxed and struggled in doing mission, uh, digital missions work, uh, with the opportunities of, of, you know, I talk about this all the time. We're doing ministry in addictive spaces. We are recruiting volunteers to do ministry in addictive spaces and we're dealing with people with a high level of addictiveness.

If we are going to shine the light in the darkness that is digital space, we've got to be prepared to shine that light a little bit on ourselves and be transparent, be humble, be open to work through this. There's such a need as, as I look across the board. There is such a, there was a guy yesterday that just out of nowhere said something in a Discord or WhatsApp and I'm DMing after the fact and, and he's just a broken individual, um, who's doing ministry in digital spaces and he's just bankrupt. It doesn't have to be about addictive, but there's this, there's this need that we as a people, we as a network, we as a culture, we as missionaries in the space that we have to be comfortable addressing.

We're launching, we, the Church Digital are launching Christ-centered recovery groups, uh, because recovery isn't just for addicts. It's for the anxious, overwhelmed, and silently struggling. Digital missionaries and leaders often carry hidden wounds from isolation, burnout, and dysfunction. Ministry in digital spaces demand emotionally healthy disciples. We're partnering with an organization called Project Exodus. They're based out of South Africa. If you've heard of Project Exodus before, bad one, that's not these people. It's not these. There's multiple Project Exoduses. We're partnering with Project Exodus that gives us powerful tools, uh, that provide healing and transformation. This is not about, uh, restoration. This is about restoration, not labels. It's about freedom and providing that for, for everyone that's in this space.

This is, I think, the biggest thing that we're going to do. Um, I, I love the equipping library. I love Core. I love, you know, let's do 25 digital missionary conferences. That's great. This right here, this is an incredible opportunity for us to be real with ourselves in, in a safe and, and protected space like these conversations. This is the reason we brought Stacy on. This is the reason we're working with Elm Michelle and, and others at, at the chaplain level because we want to create safe spaces for people like you to work through, um, some of the, the baggage that you're carrying on, um, for me, 25, 30 years on some of this stuff. Once again, I'll tell you my story if, if you want. I'm happy to separately.

We're betaing these groups. Uh, we're working with Project Exodus. We're adapting their framework. We're bringing it into the Church Digital. We're contextualizing it for digital and virtual. To be honest, I'm looking for guinea pigs. I'm looking for people that are willing to beta this group. I actually have no idea if this link works. Um, I'm going to put this link up and if somebody can go into chat and test it real quick. The church.digital/recovery. Uh, I am not sure that that link got created. So I'm going to like type real quick. Yes, it did get redirected. Good. So the church.digital/recovery. I'm telling you, Barbara's team's good. Even with the last minute stuff, I forgot to get a confirmation. Um, the Church Digital, this form, this information, uh, just goes to myself and Stacy.

And so as me as founder, Stacy as chaplain, we're the project Exodus certifies the trainers. We're looking for people that are interested in facilitating these conversations as well as for people that are looking to lead these conversations.

If you're struggling with some of these things, you don't have to. If you're burning yourself out, if you're running on empty, if you're starting to question your faith, if you're struggling with addictive sin and you don't have a safe space, a private space to go to, it's why we're here. And so for more information, feel free to hit me up directly. Go through the church.digital/recovery. Let us know your information. And these groups will be of the utmost privacy. Going through this is not therapy. This is recovery and there's two completely different things. Going through that and so hey, that's um, I think that's what we're going to land on questions.

Okay. Hey, look, so here's what you can do. Well, here's what I'm going to do. I went a little long, seven minutes. The beginning took a while to kind of get through all those slides. Had a lot of good stuff up in there. So if you got to go, I appreciate it. Go. If you want to stick around, keep involved in the conversation, I'm going to roll through some of these questions and if you have other questions, feel free to dump them in chat or dump them through the QR code. I'll throw the QR code on the screen as well and so you can dig into it there.

How can we make EDM even better? That is a great question. Um, I would say let's, you know, shorter I think is key. Um, to by the way when we go to the shorter we're also going to go not just shorter but shorter and longer and the ten week. So basically your outpost leader has the option of a five week or a ten week depending upon his or her audience and their context.

Um, because what we really want to do is create resources that can be contextualized. But there's no way we can create a five week or a ten week or even a thirteen week that covers all of the contextualizations that covers all of the different ways to do it digitally. And rather than trying to boil it down and simplify it down, um, that's why the library is so important. Um, we're going to get more into this here in a little bit. I'm going to go to the next slide because that's um, that's going to be good.

Next question. How can I help? Um, oh my gosh, there's so many different ways. I lost uh, you lost my question, Michael. What was your question? Was it the YouTube?

Okay, hold on. I did. I'm sorry, my friend. Um, show question. I did, I answer, I clicked answered accidentally. I see it now.

What is our strategy with TCD's YouTube channel? How do we measure success? Yeah, thank you, Micah. That's a great question.

Um, the strategy is constantly evolving. Um, right now the strategy was uh, a lot of me and um, at well the strategy was multiple things but then we pivoted to missionary equipping and mobilizing missionaries. It was a lot of me, um, like I said, I and so we're now platforming Leighton on the gaming space and so he's coming on and doing some stuff in Twitch and gaming.

Um, it is my goal to get other voices in there. Um, from a uh, I am like one of my side hustles right now. Uh, I'm working on a women's show. Like, you know, we've got a lot of really qualified, very talented, very gifted women that are hanging around the church digital. Like I could just rattle off seven or eight names right now of people that are digital missionaries in this space um, that are very talented communicators and I've often thought about oh my gosh what if we did like a digital missionary panel like you know the View or something like that, get a bunch of women, feisty women on a panel show every two weeks or whatever just you know going off and stuff. At the end we want to get to the place where we're platforming more voices. Now, um, even at a global level, like I would love to see Simon start to do stuff and Utope and, you know, Tariq to start to platform. This is some of where we're going, so we can start to platform global culture within our YouTube channel.

Um, I um, for us, YouTube is part of that connection level that feeds into community. And so we want to make sure that and a lot of people I've met on YouTube or found us on YouTube and have joined us in community. Um, Steve Reed's actually example of that recently. A lot of you know Steve, Steve found us maybe two months ago in YouTube and you know has hung around with us a lot in the community level and so that's how that is. Um, with anything at the connection level, I mean look I've got we got what, 1,200 subscribers. I'm really excited about that. Um, I wish we had more, but I don't really celebrate anything at the connection level. I celebrate it at the community. I'm far, far more excited. We got 500 in YouTube, pretty active community. We've got almost 700 in WhatsApp or I'm sorry, I said 500 in WhatsApp, pretty active community. And we got almost 700 in Discord. Um, I'm far more excited about that than I am YouTube subscribers or Facebook followers or things like that.

Connection is vanity metrics. Connection has to feed to community, whether it's physical community or digital community. If you're doing a physical church and you've got 1.5 million Facebook followers and you get 100 people showing up at your church on Sunday and you're not discipling people digitally, you're not creating digital community for them to engage in, there's a problem. Like that's a very extreme level, but it's not connection metrics don't mean crap. It's however you get people into community that that next level that is what you really start to celebrate on.

Oh, wrong button. Um, sorry about the confusion there. I marked that as answered.

How are the strategy teams organized and who is responsible for those who are not very familiar with the church digital? Yeah, it's a long question. Um, connect, community, quit, mobilize. We've got a connection director, Barb. So I'm founder. I answer to a board. Um, but with the framework, Barbara is our connections director. So she's responsible for social media. She's responsible for communication. She's responsible for the top funnel. Community is Andy. Uh, Jason is equipping and mobilization is me at this point. We don't really have a mobilization director at this point. Um, and so but that's the structure. We've got outposts. Outposts are decentralized networks that operate alongside the church digital but independent. So we've got like Leighton and Gaming and Simon in Germany and Utope in um, Africa and uh, sub-Saharan South Africa and then we've got uh, Tariq in Middle East and some others and so I say they're decentralized because and we work alongside them because they don't answer to me. You know, Simon says, "Hey, you know what? I'm going to start an EDM this month." Awesome. Simon says, "Hey, you know what? I'm going to skip this round of EDM. Awesome. Simon says, "Hey, I'm going to Simon says, I'm getting kind of a joke here." Uh, but like he's got freedom to do what he wants with it.

For me, the win is, "How can I help Simon do what he wants to do?" And Simon, as an example, Simon says to me, "Jeff, I want to do a digital missionary conference. Can the church digital help?" Yes, please. Here comes the European digital missionary conference. Simon's like, "Hey, I'm doing this conference and uh, it might make sense for you to come out. I'd love to go to Poland in 2026. Let's do it. How does it make sense? And you know, can you slap my name around and get you the ability to speak at the conference since you're connected with the church digital? How can we help? How can we magnify that?" Many of you are interested in expanding your reach, not just to be missionaries, but to start to help change the digital culture in your context. We would call those outpost leaders. That's what Simon and Utope and some of that is. And so we would love, I would love to explore that with you as we're walking through it.

How can we make EDM even better? Um, right now it's all about contextualizing it and adapting it in those languages. Um, and seeing it replicated in different cultures. That's what I'm hoping to do. By the way, the outposts, they have freedom. Um, you know, if they're like, "Hey, I want to cut this section. I want to add this stuff. This doesn't work in our region. Instead, we're going to I want to create this video myself." Like it's you know uh, it's open source. I would the closest thing to it, Jason Morris's language, EDM is open sourced and so the outpost leaders, we make the church digital makes recommendations and then the outpost leaders have freedom to adjust that as they want to. All that we ask is that if they create content uh, if for their context that content is then available to the church digital to give to others.

For example, Simon um, gets his uh, EDM translated into uh, German subtitles. And so we have that resource. It's on the church digital channel. And if I don't know, somebody else in Germany wants to lead an EDM but doesn't want to do it through Simon for whatever reason, the resources available for that person to do that. And so, you know, I don't know if you know, somebody came in from like I don't have a good example in German towards that, but you know, if somebody wanted the French version to do something in down in uh, French Ghana or that range, but not uh, Europe and was a separate deal, if we had actually we're talking about French soon, but that would be an example of using the resource that's available.

Cool. All right. Good. There. Uh, how can I help? Uh, we don't have a clear way. We need your help uh, in a big way. We don't have um, a clear front door. It's maybe one of the things we need to work on uh, for volunteering. I think now in 2025, I think there's more clarity on the positions and the roles and the needs. So we may make that clear. What I would say is if you want to help, if you want to uh, serve, if you want to volunteer, you need to connect with me directly. And the best way to do that is to schedule a call with me. And so I'm going to go ahead and put this up on the screen.

Deerfed.com. That is my name, Jeffrey Backwards. That's my social media handle. Uh, if you've ever seen that, be like, "What's that guy smoking?" It's just Jeff Reed backwards. And uh, and so feel free to go to that link. It links to my calendar. You can grab time with me and let's have a conversation.

Um, I will learn what you're doing and try to help you connect with the right person, whether it's Barbara, Andy, Leighton, Stacy, uh, myself, J Mo, like Ian. It's it's we move very fast and it's a very agile group. And so right now it's kind of weaves in and out in some different areas. So go through me and I'll help you get connected. DM me directly. You know how to reach me on the communities or dearf.com to book time with me.

Cool. All right. How can I help? That one is done. Uh, listen, we need, we need, we have um, my gut is that we probably have 35 active volunteers that are contributing at some level of the church digital and even the people that are not volunteers that are paid, to be honest, they might as well be volunteers. We're paying them so little. Um, it's at some point I haven't told leadership this but I want this is a conversation but at some point soon I think I want to like uh, actually publicly announce what everybody's making. Like it is, it is so ridiculously small how much money people are making off the church digital. It is amazing how effective we are as an organization at the global level off the and this is not a reason to give.

That's not why I'm going down this road, but it's phenomenal. You know, people are like, "I need a million dollars to be effective digital missionary. I need to build that studio. I need that new camera. I need, I need, I need." You don't need jack. It is, it is so easy to, to, it's hard work, but it can totally be done with pennies.

I remember like there were seasons with the Church Digital that we were on a budget freeze. I think all our expenses were less than Andy would know, $1,500 a month was all we were spending. Amazing. Like it's just you can reach be global very quickly. Okay. How can I help?

Thank you for asking. I always love when people ask that question. I know the focus has shifted. This is a good one. It was so I saw this one. This came in today and I actually I copied Andy, um, copied and pasted Andy on it and I was like, this is a problem. This we have, we we walked away from this and this is this is a valid issue. I know the focus has shifted to missions. However, there are still resources for digital churches. So first off in my mind a digital church planter is not that different than a digital missionary.

We talk about digital missionary like, nor most for the most part, digital missionaries, the framework connect, community, equip, mobilize. A digital missionary typically is is only going to handle one or two of those on their own and then we'll partner with people for the rest. A digital church planter, I would say that you need to be to all four. And so a digital planter usually has a large team whereas a digital missionary may just have a smaller team or is an individual that's working closely with a network of other people outside.

So there's some similarities maybe in the model of that, which I appreciate. Um, the importance for this is that we really lost that voice. I mean, pre-digital missionary, we were pre-COVID. I was maybe the voice, the only voice for digital church planting. Pre-COVID, I mean, this is before Mark was, I'm I'm even just trying to think, Mark hadn't even launched because I helped Mark launch through Stadia. I mean, there was like Angela, Craig, Pursuit Church, live, DJ, Sodto, VR Church, Pastor D was doing her thing, House of His Glory. Um, Roblox, Robbian Christians, Daniel Aaron. Um, is that it?

I'm not counting like Second Life, Life Church. That's a physical church doing digital, but digital only planting. I, you probably on one hand you count the number of churches that that were doing that pre-COVID.

And um, we need to get back to the place where we're we're providing some support for that. Now, what I would call that in the Church Digital language and and I want to invite people to do this, we're going to do this more formally in the fall. Barbara, if you're watching, thank you. Sorry. But in the fall, we're we're or in the spring, in the summer, I'm going to use right language. Sometime this summer, we're going to run a campaign and and we want to we want to start to collect some information because there are holes in the Church Digital.

There are small pockets of people that are passionate about an idea and and we almost want to do like a matchmaker of sorts and try to connect people together like this. I've got a guy that's interested. No, I'm member directory. Judy, I don't know that I want to go there, but maybe, uh, maybe we need to update our database a little better. Actually, that's not a bad idea, Judy. Thank you for saying that. Um, there are people that are that are planted a church digitally and and we want to formally get them together and and create a digital outpost for them where they can encourage each other where they can talk about exploring different techniques, experimenting with different ideas, um, explore different ideas, experiment with different techniques, and uh, and be uh, empowered to do ministry by what's happening there.

It's uh, uh, these are peer-to-peer supports and and and the ability to create the ability to to funnel resources uh happen through the outpost. A lot of our equipping happens through the outpost and it's that that peer-to-peer community that exists and and we the Church Digital we need to create one for uh church planners.

I'm actually doing that. I'm creating an outpost for physical churches that want to create a digital missionary framework in in their church. That's just an example of like a subgroup that I'm creating as an outpost. And we need to find somebody that's wanting to do that uh for digital churches. So, if you are interested in um planting a digital church or you've planted a digital church and and you're interested in connecting together uh with other digital church planters, reach out to me. We'll we'll make some formal informal introductions and see if we can't get a a network, a peer-to-peer group created out of that. Um, this is Paul.

Maybe this is something our microchurches podcast can work on organizing resources for digital churches church planting. Yeah. Uh, Paul, I would launching a microchurches um network uh outpost with um Micah Bales is actually leading it. If that's what you're talking about, I I don't the similarity between um I don't know. We'd have to talk about it. See who who actually shows up.

If it's digital churches that are operating the micro model, well, we need to get you connected with Micah. If it's digital churches that are doing anything other than the microchurch model, which there's plenty of other models. Um, if it's gaming, get you connected to Leighton. If it's micro, get you connected to um Micah. If it's something else, that's where I think there's a a a temporary hole. Maybe we need to isolate and start to create some others. Yeah, it's a great question. I want to thank whoever said this because what it literally did was it exposed, hey, there's a problem. There's something that you have not thought of and um not dealt with and we wanted to do that. Feedback's important. Um, I I really do. I can close this.

Feedback's important. If you are not, if you're not listening to the people around you, you're going to find that eventually they don't have anything to say. And um, I never wanted to be accused of being that type of person. Um, leadership, the people around me, this community is is has made us better.

I mean, you all have heard me say we were not, you know, at some level we were not planning on being a digital missionary sending agency. It wasn't until we actually looked around and um we were not surrounded by church planters, we're surrounded by missionaries. It's like, well crap, we got to we got to pivot.

And so, and when you're doing digital mission work, it's it's one thing to to Henry Blackaby says there's four or five different ways that the Holy Spirit can speak. Holy Spirit speaks through um you know audibly speaks through he speaks through scripture he speaks through um uh through through prayer uh the Holy Spirit speaks through um the voice of others and it's one thing to say oh I'm really called to do X and all the people around you aren't interested in that but they're interested in something completely different. Maybe maybe you're called to X, but maybe God wants you to explore why. And uh so be sensitive to to who your audience is cuz it's hard to build an audience.

And if you have an audience that's doing a different direction, that's, you know, worth looking into to. I'm just going to be sensitive here. I mean, to me, this is one of the reasons that it was so hard for me to pivot towards digital missionaries because at the time it was probably fifty fifty digital missionaries and and physical churches doing digital ministry and and I fought Barbara. I thought it's the right word. You can ask any of them. I fought Barbara for months against this idea. Years actually before even came on board going all the way back to twenty twenty three.

I can remember sitting in a in a in a bar in Orlando with Barbara and a handful of other people. Uh yeah, twenty twenty three talk at at the Expo conference and and she was challenging me to simplify and I'm like no, I want to have my cake and eat it too. Like I I can't I can't choose. It's it's it's both sides. And um we I will just tell you uh choosing and changing for us I not one regret not one regret the the hole that we left was the digital church planter which was exposed today digital churches phys digital churches planting yeah we need to step into that physical churches if you are serious about it's so funny I've uh I had I had a call this week I don't I don't remember the guy's name and so you may be on watching this.

If you are, I'm sorry, but um I had a call with a guy who was interested in um you know, I put a thing in Discord and WhatsApp. Hey, if you're a physical church doing digital and you're interested in launching a digital missionary, whatever, let me know. And um you know, right off the bat when I get like a I'm going to be very judgmental when I say this, but when I get a social media manager conversation or you know, somebody that's a uh a media director, I'm like, this is this this is not going to go the way because the church is not staffing the right is not staffing a person in that role. They're not going to they're not going to see it. And this one guy that I was talking to, he was very excited. He was very excited about what I was talking about towards being a, you know, creating a digital missionary outpost and really installing a framework in the church.

But I asked him, I was like, "Okay, well, you're excited. Is your leadership excited? Would you, would your lead pastor be excited?" And he's like, "Oh, absolutely not. There is no way we would ever do anything like this here." Okay. You know what? What do you feel called to do? Are you in in the right place? Are you an obstacle? Is there something God is calling you to do? I can't answer these questions. You you can. So, there's there's tensions there, which I get.

I have no idea how I got on that tangent. Hey, you know what? It's been a whopping ninety minutes, and this has been a lot of fun. I have appreciated hanging out with you and anybody else that's left after the ninety uh minute roll here. Um, but yeah, we're going to wrap up here.

Anybody else got anything they want to say? Buler. Ber. Ber. I think we're good. I'm tired. It's been a long day. I'm going to wrap.

So, hey, thanks everybody for coming out. Um, next week I'll do a tease. Next week, I I got confirmation this morning and lined it up here at uh the what is it? May twenty seventh, one p.m. Eastern. I'm doing an interview uh with Jose. Oh my gosh, Jose, how do I pronounce your last name? Um, De Kitty De Kitty. Uh, Jose Diddy. Is Who's Jose Kitty? He's the guy that has been working with the Vatican with uh the old pope and now the new pope on on defining what uh digital missionaries looks like in in the Catholic denomination.

And so very excited to have this conversation. Jose and I have been talking on the side through some things, but looking forward to getting a conversation with Jose the Kitty next week and talking about uh his new boss at the Vatican uh an American and exploring and redefining even what digital missionaries looks like within the Catholic denomination. And so until next week, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Swing by the Church Digital/Poll. I'll open it up here in a couple questions.

If anybody else wants to contribute stories or ideas, uh, we would love that. But, uh, we'll see you next time here with the Church Digital Podcast. Y'all have a good one.