EP341 - Jeff & Lucas Pulley from Tampa Underground talk Data, Reporting

All right. Hey, it's episode 341. I think I've been on vacation. I was fly fishing on a creek like 48 hours ago.

So I'm not actually sure where I am right now. Monday was a 17-hour travel day. I didn't think—I think it was quicker for me to fly to Korea than it was for me to get to Billings, Montana and back. Actually, it was no, Billings, Montana is where I landed. And then we drove to Hyattville, Wyoming. Population 78.

Okay. Like, I'm all about small town America. Not wanting to be like negative towards that at all. I want to get lost in a town as well at some point in my life and just, you know, disappear. I need a little more. I need a little more than 78 population in that town.

What was interesting—fascinating story—you don't care—this small town of 78 people, literally population 78, had four different restaurants. Four different restaurants in a small town of 78. If there's only 78 people, why do you need four different restaurants? Like, how often do people go out to eat? I would think that would be a conflict. I'm just saying.

But we really had an awesome time. A couple of the TCD board members, Jesse Carbo, a lot of you know Charlie Barum as well, they kidnapped me. I have not been fishing in 30 years and they grabbed me and took me up literally upstream. It was a great time of just talking and hanging out and getting to meet some other pastors and some other people in life and it was just really incredible. So appreciative for that.

But hey, it's good to be back, sleeping in my own bed, taking a nice warm shower and loving life. Although it is rainy and dreary outside in Miami today, which is a whole other thing. My pool—this is not something I wanted to broadcast, but hey, you know what? My pool is black. Like, it is so dirty, whatever. We have like a leak and there's a problem with the pump and whatever. And the sun will not pierce. There's so much crap in there. The sun will not pierce the water to get what was inside. So what are you gonna do? Welcome to Miami. Hey, it's welcome to come down anytime you want.

But hey, listen. 341. I've been vamping enough. Some really cool stuff coming up here with the Church Digital. Some exciting things coming very soon. But stay tuned. But today we're kicking off a new podcast season. I've lost track of the podcast seasons. Maybe this is podcast season 12, 13, 29. Who really knows? But the heart of this is we want to get into starting to talk about maybe some of the partners, some of the opportunities that are willing to come alongside, some of the tools that are wanting to help you in your digital missionary work. And so we're talking about these tools. We're talking about these equipping partners and these empowering tools to help you take some intentional steps towards this.

And for the conversation today, we're bringing into the call Lucas Pulley, my friend Lucas Pulley from here in Florida. It feels like there's a lot of Florida people that do like unconventional work. Lucas, we have to get here in a little bit. But Lucas is with Underground Network. Now, Lucas, I lied. Like, you're not going to be with us here in Florida anymore. So like your friendship has an expiration date. I'm afraid because, you know, once you're out of Florida, you're dead to me, right?

I'm dead to you. Yes. Yes. Yes. When are you moving? When are you leaving? End of July. I am moving up to the southern half of the state of Illinois, not terribly far from St. Louis. We're going to—I'm still going to have my same role with Underground. And I'm still going to be, you know, sitting on the executive team with Underground Network. And most of what I've been doing over the last, you know, 12 to 15 months has been stuff outside of Tampa. It's been coaching, training, consulting, immersion visits with Underground friends and sister movements around the world, including this round table of getting close to 30 sister movements of the Underground in country and out of country. And if I can park right in the middle of the southern half of the state of Illinois, I'll be within a three and a half to four hour drive radius of emerging underground networks, you know, networks of microchurches that are friends of ours in St. Louis, Champaign, Chicago, Indianapolis, Evansville, Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, you know, all over the place.

So it's just a sort of strategic place for us to land to be practitioners in a small town and to still serve the Underground. But I'm going to be what you just came back from on vacation. I'm going to be in like a small town on the set of a Hallmark movie. I'm going to be trying to save a bakery from becoming a parking lot and Santa's probably going to be working it, you know, somehow. It's what you just came back from on vacation. So I'm glad you made it back from the set of a Hallmark movie and I'm trading—I'm trading places with you. I'm heading there.

Man, it really was a fun place to be. In my particular situation, I was on a dude ranch where there were 57 stairs. 57 stairs separating my bed from the toilet. I don't know, in the grand scheme of things, your Apple Watch fitness tracker was just going nuts for three. I got used to be a change in your flights of stairs count.

Oh man, we could talk about that all day. I want to ask this. I did. We're going to get into something, but you just hearing you talk about this. So there's 30-some. You're calling them sister movements. Now, let's get back in the way back machine. I want you to tell me how far back we go, but like at some point you, Tampa Underground—like it was you and Rob with Casey Underground. Like there were not a lot of these microchurch movements, at least here in the US, and now we're seeing a resurgence, a little bit. We're seeing it explode. But you know, walk me maybe through some of that transition a little bit.

Yeah. So the Tampa Underground community, the roots of that community started in the late 90s. And so our community is almost 30 years old in Tampa. And it became like a formal entity, like launched as a formal entity in 2006, 2007, around then. And at that time I was actually up in Illinois. I was part of the origin story of the Tampa network but up in Illinois I had stumbled into leading a network of microchurches up there. And around 2010, we were asking—we needed help. I mean, we needed learning, we needed mentorship. And so I got connected with the Tampa Underground crew around 2010. And our community and I stayed in Illinois until 2016, but our network of microchurches up in Illinois became one of the earliest sister movements of Underground Network.

And at the time there was a sister movement in Haiti. There was one in Hamburg, Germany. There was one in Manila, Philippines. And then there was what we were doing. And there was one in Birmingham, Alabama. And yeah, over time, you know, fast forward now, we've got getting close to 30 sister networks.

For us, for the Tampa community, growing a network of sister movements has never really been the goal. It's—we've never felt like that's the mandate or the assignment from the Lord for us. So our mandate is to just come alongside leaders and teams that are trying to see a decentralized network of the priesthood of all believers activated in their city regardless of how close they want to be with us. So we're just—that's the goal. That's the bullseye.

So we've got 2,500 leaders and teams that we have walked with in training and coaching and consulting environments. They visit us, we visit them, we just sort of react to their level of need. And that's the bullseye for us. And the network of sister movements is a group of people who have basically said what we need is like a close fellowship of the ring. You know, we need like a crew of people who are really trying to go after this in a way that overlaps quite a bit in terms of values and principles. And so that's the network of sister movements—is sort of a thing that is offered. It's available for people that really, really want to get close. But we don't see it. We're not trying to push people toward it. We're not trying to sell people toward it. We're not trying to recruit people toward it.

And so, sorry, somebody's trying to make me laugh and they're succeeding. Somebody in the office. So yeah, the sister movements are all called different things. Us and KC are the only ones that have the Underground name, right? But most of the other ones are like Wildfire Network in San Antonio, Table Network Indianapolis, Undercurrent Network Chicago, Catalyst Network Portland, and then we've still got some around the world too.

And we connect with each other on some Zoom calls throughout the year. We try to see each other in person and we try to be—there's no—it's important to say there's no sort of broad like international organization that contains that. The Underground Network is still just in Tampa. We haven't created like an international scope network to sort of contain all that. Nobody leads it. Nobody runs it. Nobody works for it.

I just happen to coordinate it, but I'm just one of the network directors in peer-to-peer fellowship with the others.

So yeah, this is—we're going to get into some digital stuff here in a little bit, but decentralized, distributed, digital, micro. Yes. Like there, and even at the network level.

So you've got these close to 30, you know, you're relocating away from Tampa, maybe closer to home, Illinois. You're rattling off a bunch of these names and even outside of your circle of 30, there is definitely a coming back to the micro, the home church like idea. How does that, like as you're watching this, how do you feel knowing that you're part of a larger movement or a re-engaging, you know, people recognizing different ways to reach different people and discipleship looks differently than just in the big buildings? How is that? How do you sleep at night?

Yeah, I mean we sleep really good. I think it's really humbling. That apart from any one of these networks or tribes having like a dominant amount of influence or trying to like push or sell or strive or influence—it's not like nobody's really trying to like push or dominate the market. It's actually like the winds of the spirit are blowing and people everywhere across the country, across continents, globally, in every type of context, every type of people group are all sort of waking up to a thing that God is saying and doing and we're just finding each other. So I think that's the thing that's like really encouraging is that his yoke is easy, his burdens light. It's not like nobody's trying to like persuade the church to change, you know? It's like we're not anxious. We're just sort of trying to put our head into the ground in our own incarnational neighborhood and city and just try to make disciples and see the church emerge and serve networks.

But we're finding people in cities all over the country that are like we're using the same frameworks or language or we're wrestling with the same principles without knowing each other. And it's just happening all over the place. And so that's what makes us feel like God, this is just something that God is doing and he's been doing it for quite a while.

And it's not new. None of this stuff is new. Like you said, it's not discovery. It's not innovative. It's not a discovery of something new. It's like a recovery of something old, something ancient. Um, and you know, it's just been a really a thrill ride for us to just find friends all over the place.

I have, uh, I've, you know, Lucas, you and I have had this conversation, but I've always, I'm like a microchurch pastor in a digital pastor body, you know, it's just the similarities. And we've really tried to run the church digital now as we're setting up the outposts and, and you know, even more of the equipping like we're trying to do to set up these networks and hubs empowering people to do the ministry God's calling them to do. And I'll be honest, like part of me looks at what you guys are going through now and I hope I pray that that's what TCD looks like in ten years, in five years, in fifteen years, whatever.

You know, I mean, sure, in the nineteen seventies may have been the pinnacle of like the house movement with the Jesus movement, Jesus people. Yeah, Jesus people and all that. Um, and then it and then it was weird. And then they were like the ones that were like the rebels and trying to take down the church by doing their own thing. I'm paraphrasing. Don't judge. Don't at me. Um, but what, you know, what came out of that, I think, is a pure idea that's now operating cleanly and moving forward.

And, um, you know, we're still a little controversial over here on the digital side in some ways, but hopefully, but I think in fifteen years Netflix will do like a live action telling movie, you know, made for made for TV event telling the story of digital churches, you know, the Jesus revolution play me. I think that's the obvious choice. I mean, it was the first thing that came to my mind.

So, so I'm on this retreat. Listen, I'm forty seven. Okay, I'll add my age here. I'm forty seven. Jesse Carbo is fifty. You know Jesse, don't you? I just talked to him last week. I just talked to Jesse last week. Yeah. So Luke, Jesse was with me. He's fifty. And Charlie, who's the chair, is sixty two. And of the three of us, uh, the everyone else on the retreat was convinced I was the oldest. And I'm like, I'm fifteen years younger than the old guy. And you think because they're like, "Oh, it's all it's the white and the beard." It's the wisdom, Jeff. It's the wisdom that you deliver. It's the wisdom. I hope. And not the decrepit way this old guy walks up the stairs or flames. It's got nothing to do. It's got nothing to do with the tripping up the stairs. It's the wisdom. It's the wisdom. Oh my gosh.

All right. So, hey, listen. Uh, Lucas, I follow him on Facebook and every once in a while, um, he just does a shout out. Hey, I'm fixing to do a webinar if you're curious on how Underground Network uh does data and collects data. Like we would love to just do a training and talk with you and just share some of our learnings.

And as I'm looking on the outside, it's almost like you guys are doing a series of webinars and learnings, which I love. We'll get to that here in a little bit. But, um, you know, I think it's so funny. I was Luke telling Lucas earlier, um, data is something that as digital people we should really have easy understanding and access to. But for whatever reason, I think a lot of our ministries are so new and so green that we really haven't gotten to the place of understanding what we're tracking or how we're tracking or the importance of it.

It was funny and no, there's no judgment here, people, slight judgment, but I threw in one of the communities I was like, hey, how do you guys track data? And the number one answer of the people when I was like, how do you track data? The number one answer was, oh, on my phone. And I was like, oh, we got to do something better than just like, you know, it's, oh, I just I pull an email address out of my phone book or, um, you know, because that puts you as the lid. It puts you as the limit and now other people don't have your learnings. And so data is going to be so important. Yes.

Oh my gosh. Yes. And so the desire to maybe to learn a little bit from our microchurch brothers. Okay, what, what exactly, like, what are you tracking? What are you looking at? How are you tracking? You know, the one thing that I've always loved about Tampa Underground is that they are of all of the microchurch networks that I've seen, they are doing the most bang with the littlest buck. Like these guys know how to stretch it. And you know, I don't want to say it's a point of pride for you, but man, like I've seen some incredible things on like, you know, ball of twine and duct tape.

And so, you know, when he was telling me some of the ways that he's collecting data and some of the systems, I was like, "Oh my gosh, we've got to talk about this at a larger level." And so, Lucas, let me just like open it up. When I say, when you say tracking data, like what, what metrics are you looking at? How are you collecting it? Like, what are some maybe numbers that as we're doing ministry we should start to think, as digital people we should start to be tracing, that as well. Yeah. So I think over time there's probably been, um, I don't know, three or four categories of data that we've learned that we need to track.

And a lot of times you figure out you need to track it at a moment when you need it and you don't have it, and then you're behind the ball because you can't actually operationalize the thing you need to do because you've got to do all the forward work of trying to collect the data you need. So I would just say generally the domains that we track, it's not just, it's we do track some numbers, which is just sort of like health of the network, state of the network.

Um, and so I think there's probably four main numbers that we track, uh, that are averages per microchurch. We collect that information through an annual or semiannual survey that we send to all the microchurches. Um, four of those main numbers that help us get a sense of like the averages per microchurch that we can project out across the city and have a little bit of the state of the movement.

Um, is, uh, we do a average amount of people. We ask every microchurch how many people are participating in the life of your microchurch greater than fifty percent of the time. Uh, because most microchurches don't have an event-based paradigm of being the church. They usually have what's called something like a rule of life where they actually see each other a few times a week for different reasons and different purposes.

So it's sort of like it's not just who showed up at your dinner, it's like who's involved in the life of the community. Um, greater than fifty percent of the time. Uh, and then we ask how many people are part of your core team. Um, so that's usually like people who are bought in, they're committed to the rule of life, uh, they volunteer, they serve, they might be leaders, they might help make decisions. Um, so we have a way that our community use the language of core team that most people understand what we mean by that.

Um, and then a third number we ask is how many people surrendered their life to the lordship of Jesus in a meaningful way this year in and around your microchurch. Um, and the fourth thing we ask is how many people are you engaging missionally, um, that are involved in the life of the community less than fifty percent of the time. So that's like the general like impact, that's like missional impact number. How many people are like you're reaching? How many people are the is your community reaching?

Um, so those would be four numbers that we care about, um, at the microchurch level. Now, it would be important to say there's probably a thousand other numbers that you could track and systems people usually have a tendency to try to track too much and you have an appetite for too much data and too much reporting and that needs to be toned down. And apostolic people usually have a tendency to track too little. Like they just don't care. They don't think about systems. So you got to find some happy medium where it's like you need some systems. You need to track some things, but you don't want to hand the keys to the systems thinkers because the first thing you can do to collapse a decentralized entity into centralization is data collection.

It's like one of the first little, you know, canaries in the coal mine that collapses, like kills what God is doing just by trying to do data collection. Because if you want movement, you want something that's out of control. That's what movement is. Yeah. And the and if you try to actually collect an enormous amount of data to totally understand what God is doing, that is a mechanism of control. Being able to totally understand it is a first step to control it. It's a way to control it. So you got, we so we do try to have to, we do try to resist how much data collection we do because you actually can't, you shouldn't want to fully understand it because you want movement. You want something outside of your control.

Um, so a few other domains of data that we collect is like names and contact information. I cannot overstate that. Like we, the reason we even started talking about this two years ago, we never used to talk about this, Jeff. Like we never used to talk about like data systems or web solutions or app support, anything like that. But it was over the last five or six years talking with so many simple church networks, microchurch networks, decentralized networks around the country and around the world that one weren't thinking about this stuff at all and it actually hurt them badly later in the game, or two, um, they were thinking about it and they were trying to do it but they were landing on solutions that were imperfect, that were either too expensive or too rigid or required coding proficiency and they were landing on options that like weren't actually great for them.

So us just being able to have open conversation with people about what we do internally, which we would say we're not experts and what we've designed probably isn't the best solution but it's at least something we've been using for ten or fifteen years and it seemed to meet our needs. Um, we just started realizing some people actually need us to talk about that. So that's why we've just started talking about it last couple years.

So collecting people's names, contact information, names of their kids, like general ages or something like that, it's just a way to actually help people feel included and like they belong to a citywide movement of microchurches or to some decentralized tribe. If you care at all about people feeling like they belong, that requires a communication strategy. Mhm. That helps them feel like they belong. And a communication strategy requires contact information, right?

So being able to collect that intentionally and store it somewhere, I don't know, not in your phone, but like in a place where a few people have access to it where you have a way to sort of like have drip communication with people.

That helps them feel invited to things that they're invited to, included in things that they're included in. So number, like stats, numbers, contact information.

Maybe the last thing that we, that the last two things we collect is like some diagnostic things around like the state of a microchurch beyond numbers, like phase of development. Like what phase is a in, a in like a four-phase grid. What phase is a microchurch in, or what type is the microchurch? Mission specific or distributive? These things matter to us, but they're not numeric.

But it's like we need to know what type of context they're reaching. Are they a neighborhood house church? Are they involved in homelessness, incarceration, human trafficking, reentry, foster care and adoption? So that matters to us. Like what's the mission they're engaged in? What phase of development are they in? So we collect all that.

And the last thing that we collect is being able to get a pulse on the needs of the microchurch. So we do survey needs. That's data. You know, data is not just numbers. Data is like user experience. It's like, how is the trellis that we've built, the platform of services which exists to help the microchurches? Being able to ask them, is it helping? Is the trellis of services that we've built helping you be the church? And how? What are the things that are the most helpful that you use regularly? What are needs that you have that we're not actually meeting right now?

And so being able to collect that data and then dashboard it and to be able to see this service is being used really highly, let's keep, let's actually give a good allocation of the budget to that to reflect that's the needs of the microchurches. We need to grow that service. But this service over here that has a huge allocation of the budget, nobody's using and nobody's saying they need it anymore. So let's tear that back a little bit.

And then we've got 27 microchurches that all said they have this need that we don't have. We don't have a service for. We don't, we're not actively helping. Coaches aren't engaged in it. We don't have curriculum for. Well, suddenly we know we need to build something.

So I, you know, so I, it's a little bit of like survey assessing needs of the priesthood of all believers and how we're meeting those needs, how we're helping people be the church. It's diagnostic. It's numeric. It's contact information.

So we have the system that we use behind the scenes to track all that, which again, I'm not going to do a tutorial or share my screen on this. If there's anybody that sees this and wants to know about that, feel free to reach out to me and I can show you a tutorial. We can show you behind the hood, behind the scenes, of how it all works. But we use a web-based tool called Airtable.

We've been using it for 14 years probably at this point. I didn't even know Airtable was around 14 years ago when you told me that we started. Surprised. I know we started using that early and I think a lot of people would maybe resonate with the, you know, in the early days of us being a microchurch network, we just had Excel spreadsheets.

We didn't even have Google Sheets. We had Excel spreadsheets and we had one Excel spreadsheet that was tracking microchurch leaders and then we had a different Excel spreadsheet that was tracking microchurches because those are two different types of records to track. Like, you can't track those in the same list. Those are two different things. So it was hard for those Excel spreadsheets to be linked to each other, like to link leaders to the microchurches they're leading.

And if you change information in one, you got to go back and change information in the other. And then you've got a different spreadsheet for donors. If you have some kind of economic model that actually requires like private donors to you, you've got to be able to track those people, maintain, upkeep, look at prospects, all that kind of stuff is data. It's a separate data sheet.

And we, I think we realized like, oh, updating these and then attaching them and sending them back to each other and having version 37, you know, that's the most updated, like, this isn't great. So then we started using Google Sheets because it was more collaborative, but it didn't fix the problem of having 15 different data sets that need to be able to interact with each other, but they don't, and it gets unwieldy. And so it was more collaborative, but it didn't fix any of the other problems.

And so we felt like, gosh, we need one data solution that helps us track all this stuff in a way that it's integrated, it interacts with each other. And there's a few of those, right? And I, there's things like HubSpot and Salesforce and Hive and Big Contacts and like there's a lot of tools like that out there.

I think the reason we landed on, yeah, that is exactly right. I'm not kidding. We started, I don't know if you know, like we were a HubSpot shop for many years and it was year after year, it was the most expensive thing in the tech stack, huge. And yeah, it's like, yeah, we leaned on it a lot, but not. And the one thing, you know, HubSpot, Salesforce, they're great at getting your money. You know, you're paying X and then like, and no disrespect, six months later you're paying Y, 12 months later you're paying Z. That thing just keeps going up to the right. It's, you know, cable all over again.

That's exactly right. We needed that. We were trying to find a solution that was in the balance of three restricting variables. One, we needed a web solution that was affordable and not many of them were at the time, and still a lot of them that meet all of our needs, we can't afford them.

Now, the second restriction which is you find the ones that are affordable but they're too rigid. They don't allow for a lot. They don't allow for the level of customization that we need. They, you have to use it in a particular way and that particular way usually makes sense for prevailing model, legacy model churches, organizations or nonprofits. It doesn't quite fit the data that needs to be collected in the and the user experience of a decentralized network of microchurches like what we're doing, and it didn't allow for the customization.

So it was either too expensive or too rigid, or we would find solutions that were affordable and had customization but they required coding. So you're having to basically hardwire into your organization that you're going to have to be able to afford. You're going to have to pay staff that know how to code forever. If you sign up for that thing, you have to have a coding gift set, proficiency, competency in your organization at all times. And if you lose it, if you lose that person that runs it or manages it or built it, you're screwed until you find another person that can come in.

So we were hesitant about that too. But we didn't want to like rely heavily on a coding proficiency because it bottlenecks and it kills scale. So like, can we find something that's cheap, it's fully customizable and it doesn't have coding? And we found Airtable. And there might be others out there. I don't know. But Airtable was the one we found at the time and it's been great. It still meets all of our needs now and we're continuing to be impressed with it.

And yeah, Andy Mage, the community director for TCD, loves Airtable and is constantly working, and there was a season of TCD where we were using Airtable for a number of projects. So that's really intriguing.

Now, how do you like, who has access? So your entire database is now a giant Airtable and who has access to it? Like, what, because that almost feels like a little bit of an administrative nightmare. But you figured out a simplified system for that.

Yeah. So we have one Airtable base. And inside that base we have one table for microchurch leader that tracks people, microchurch leaders, missionaries, volunteers, donors, any person is tracked in one table. And then there's a separate table in the same base that tracks microchurches, which again, that's a different record.

But then inside those tables you can link those to each other. So the people are always synced with the microchurches they're a part of and the microchurches are always synced with the leaders and people that are involved with them. And you can sort of open up all the records and see the integration.

And the other nice thing is that in order to add records, add people to the database, add microchurches to the database, how do you do that? Well, a big way to help track and collect new data is through forms, right? So Typeform, Ninja Form, Jot Form, like these form solutions where you're collecting the data. Well, Airtable has built-in forms. So you don't need Typeform, you don't need Ninja Form, you don't need Jot Form. You can create Airtable forms that add people directly to your existing tables collecting the data that you're already tracking.

And then automations that Airtable inside those bases have native action trigger automation features where we, we don't, we used to rely heavily on Zapier. We don't have to use Zapier anymore and every automation that we needed from Zapier is handled inside Airtable natively.

Yeah. So basically like, and Zapier would break all the time, man. Like they, so and you wouldn't catch it sometimes until like you went six months without an automation working. You didn't know it. So built-in automations that do automatic, you know, custom emailing or automatic record adjustment. And then Airtable, and then the next question becomes, well, how do you take that data and make it viewable by outsiders in a way that makes sense?

So that's dashboarding, that's interpretive data sets, that's showing people the records that affect them for their job, like coaches. So if there's coaches in the network that have sign that are assigned five or six microchurches, well, how do you make sure that those coaches have access to all the information they need about the leaders and the microchurches?

Well, we can create custom views that show those coaches who they're assigned to and gives them access to all the information they need to be a coach without giving them access to the underlying base where they can't break anything in the database.

So who has access? So that's all contained in one base. The forms that collect data, the lists that actually filter, group, sort, or create custom views of that data, the automations where you operationalize that data, the interfaces where you actually can create public interaction on that data and dashboard that data. It's all in one base and it's fully customizable.

Who has access to that core data? Three or four people on our team. There's only three or four folks like in the, and you can make that as broad or as tight as you want. And so there's just a handful of people on our team that have access to the raw data on the back end. But we can, because of the customization, automation, interface features, we can actually turn that data to the outside world in ways that are functional and helpful for people without giving them access to break it or get access to too much information, security issues.

So that's generally how we operate. Now, that's just our one, that's just our one like main leaders and microchurch's directory base. But Airtable is a no-code app builder.

That's what it is. And so almost all of our departments have built five or six of their own bases to hack their work, you know.

So, um, you can use Airtable as a task management system where the records aren't people, the records aren't microchurches, the records are tasks. And then you're assigning them to people and you give them a due date and you show them in an interface. So it's just an app builder.

You using it for directories is just one use case. Mhm. Um so we probably have like 40 or 50 bases in our underground account that are like apps that are helping our even even microchurches. There's probably 10 or 15 microchurches that the network has built an Airtable base for them to do volunteer management for outreaches, project management on some kind of like initiative that they're running.

Um, so we use it for all kinds of things. I mean, but the leaders and microchurches directory is the main one that a lot of people are interested in how we do that.

Now like I'm assuming as you're talking about you know designing creating Airtables there has to be some level okay maybe you're not a coder you know it's code free but there has to be some understanding of like database structure. Totally. You know, and and so understanding permissions of who needs to have what. Like do but now you're talking about each department is building their own and and so do you have like a database champion, somebody who kind of works alongside and and helps as you see that scaled down to the different ministries, the different. I I think the best the closest thing we have to that is me. So, are you are you the database cheerleader? Do you have like little. I'm the Zar.

I'm the Zar. That's a lot more fancy. That's good. That's good. But I think I think um the nice thing about it, you're totally right. There there's always a learning curve on any web solution. There's always a learning curve. So there is a learning curve with Airtable on how it works and its functionality, but the learning curve is a bit shorter than a lot of the other ones.

And so that's the nice thing about like so many folks in our in our on our team and in our community that are using it because the usability of it has actually made it a bit more decent champion to either help them use it or give them permission to use it.

And so there's a lot of folks that are using it to build stuff that helps them that I don't know anything about. And it and you know each individual staff or some of a lot of those microchurch leaders, they just have their own Airtable user account. They have their own workspace. They're building stuff and then they can share those bases with us if they need help. But I think a lot of people have just sort of gotten used to like if they get stuck or if they need to like map it out on a whiteboard like the functionality like if they need to do a logic flowchart of like what how how do they need it to work? How do they what do they need?

Mhm. And then how do we build that? Like I think people have gotten used to like they can always ask me um and I can help them I can help them build it. I can help them sort of get over a hurdle or a barrier, you know, because the customization is so expansive that if you're trying to do one, you're trying to build a base to accomplish one outcome, there's a hundred ways you could build that. Some of them are more complex and some of them are super simple. And so, um, you know, so I I do I do sort of come alongside and help, but they don't need me, you know, they they that they're building stuff on their own all over the place.

So, do you find that that people within the org um they're more like they're open to tracking? They understand reporting. Is there is there hesitancy or, you know, invasiveness that's too much? Is there push back against that? Yeah, I think we're always we're always trying to be conscious of that, you know. So that's why we only do we only send the survey to all the microchurch leaders once a year at most, you know.

So it's not like we're sending this quarterly thing or monthly thing where it can sort of feel like gosh, you guys are it's it's taking half my ministry time to do these reports, you know, or whatever.

So we're trying to be really conscious that like these people are practitioners. They don't have an enormous amount of time to be telling us what's going on.

But then we always whenever we send those surveys, we always frame it as like this isn't like a past fail. We're not evaluating the success or failure of your microchurch. We're not so like we're trying to like and you filling out this survey is not actually just about us helping you better like now or in the future by understanding what's going on.

It is partly that. It's partly like help us help you. You know, that's part of it. But it's also like everybody that fills this out, it's it's giving us a bigger picture of what God is doing across the city that we can we can share that picture back to you because every microchurch is in isolation and they don't often get a glimpse of like what God's up to in the whole citywide network. But they need that picture.

And who and that being able to get a glimpse of that picture not just in numbers but in like stories in like being able to say how many leaders or people are involved in different sort of kingdom contour social causes, homelessness, hunger, joblessness, incarceration. Being able to sort of like share a broad picture of all that God is doing through a through a tribe of missionary people who are embedding their life in the soil of the city in quiet, humble, sacrificial ways.

Being able to share that story requires data collection, like being able to ask everybody what's going on so that we can tell you back, look at what God's doing. Uh and because people around the world are asking those questions of the Tampa community and we want to be able to have accurate answers to tell back to them.

So we always frame the data collection with those with a little bit of vision for why it matters. We would never just send a survey and just be like hey answer these questions please you know.

So, I think people do need I think people do need a little framing to understand like why we're asking this, why it would be super helpful for you to fill it out, not just to you, but for like the city and for the world, why it's like actually mission critical for you to do this and to not not to assume that because people are constantly inundated by data collection from non-kingdom entities and initiatives. Yeah. And people have had their frameworks around data collection, their like mental paradigm around data collection formed by that stuff.

Mhm. And we're so we're trying to do data collection, but we're not trying to do it in the way of the world. We're trying to do it a different way. We're trying to use it for different purposes. We're not trying to commoditize that data. We're not trying to self aggrandize that data. We're trying to use it for the sake of love and the glory of God.

But people have been baked to be either frustrated or ignore that that kind of stuff or to feel controlled by it. So I think acknowledging that that's the case and trying to sort of frame it better for people is really important.

Do you that being said, you know, you're you're trying to do something different. They're they're they're reporting adverse or at least the culture. You're you're creating a new culture. You're establishing something. So, let me ask this because this is a pain point for me. The church digital. Yeah. Do you okay, I know where I I know what we need to collect and it's going to put some people in shock.

Do we go ahead and just rip the band-aid off and work hard to establish that new culture? Do you boil the frog slowly and and and get there over time? How do you get from zero to where you want to be? Yeah. Like are you saying there's like if you were to try to do some base digit some base like data collection from like I don't know a particular subset of an audience or influencer or a community. Are you saying like they would be really hesitant to do that? and yeah or just not uh you know collecting data is is the hardest the hardest thing getting people to remember getting people to get on the radar and so now you're reminding monthly to do something you only want quarterly and now you're like you know the annoying voice um and you you don't want to do that people you and and one of the things you know we talk about there's recruiters there's uh there's owners and there's renters like the people that that own the vision are all about it.

People that are renting the vision, there's push back. Well, they're they're not an owner and and so it's it's kind of that okay, we're not tracking anything till we need to start to actually track and and get involved in that. But that's that's a culture shock because for years you haven't tracked anything. Totally. Totally. Yeah. So I I would say just a few a few pieces on that.

One is the reason why we only dashboard outward on the like just take the numbers of like the microchurch number questions. We never we never necessarily try to project outward some total numbers. We always do averages. The reason why we send out averages is because there's only 40 or 50 or 60% of the microchurches that actually do the survey.

So we don't actually have some total numbers. Like it we would have some we would we would feel pretty confident about some total numbers if like 90% of the microchurches or more actually did the survey but we only get about 50 to 60% compliance on the survey.

So then we actually take the averages of those numbers and we project them out across the network. So we're used to having like 50 to 60% survey compliance as like a home run. That's great. Like so we don't you know I think it would cause us problems if we had the expectations that we're going to get like 100% compliance on those surveys.

Uh so we only get you know 50 60% annual survey compliance. We know that and we don't give people consequences for not filling out the survey. It's just it's very like open relational. It's like, hey, we're creating some vision and some values around why this would be helpful for you to fill out, helpful for us, helpful for the city, helpful for the world, but if you don't want to do it, we're not going to like excommunicate you.

We're not going to like we're not going to pull away services. We're not going to we're not going to disaffiliate with your microchurch. We're still going to help you be the church just like yesterday. It's going to have like no effect. Um, so I think I think people still feel that we're being true to our values.

Even in even in like the delivery of the survey, it's almost like if you don't do it, we're still open-handed. We're trying to create nontransactional relationships with each other and we're trying to like serve each other freely.

But to your point like the sort of me owners operators we do yeah we do have we do have like a core community and we have a friends network and we would definitely have a higher expectation that people that people who say like I want to be core to the underground. I want to be like an owner. I want to be like bought in. I got skin in the game. Not just at the microchurch level but in the network level.

Those people we'd be like, "Yeah, I you basically told us you would do this. Like you you you want to help at this level." Um, and people who are in the more friends network, we'd be like, "Yeah, it's okay." Like we it'd be helpful.

Um, so we have those sort of levels of relationship too. But the the we don't put people we don't select people into those relational expectations or categories.

They choose, like, how you know, they, what the expectations that they want to have or don't want to have, you know, at the network level, and we just honor what they told us.

So, um, yeah, I think that I think those two things have been helpful. I think the other thing is just like there's a lot of times where when we're, when we've built a survey and we're going to send out the survey, a lot of times we won't do that through like a random Mailchimp or like just a broadcast or a BCC email that's just going to land in people's trash. We distribute that survey out relationally, like through, like through, um, core leaders, governing elders, coaches, where it's like you're actually being invited to fill out that survey, not through an email, but through like a phone call or a text message from a friend.

Yeah, there's relational understanding. Totally. Yeah. So it's like we trickle it through that way to be like, "Hey, I'm going to text you this survey link. It'd be so great if you filled it out." And there's fifteen, twenty people who are taking responsibility for diffusing out that survey across the network so that if people do feel weird about it, they can at least vocalize that because they're talking with a friend, you know, and they can. A lot of times people don't really have concerns anymore, but back in the day when we first started doing this, because we had to rip the band-aid too, like the cultural band-aid.

And so even just being able to create space for people to say, "What's this being used for? And how long's it going to take?" And, um, or "This question makes me feel weird," or, you know, whatever. Like, I think it was, it's always been a good flow to do it that way. Um, it takes more time, or it takes some additional, uh, communication hacks, you know, to figure out how to send a text message to one hundred fifty people from your phone to them where they feel like they just received a text message from you directly that you just worked on, but you actually clicked a button and it sent it one hundred fifty times, you know? So it does take some scalability hacks to do it that way, but I actually do have an app for that. But, um, that may be, it's on the, uh, on the iOS. It's Hit Them Up. H-I-T-M-U-P. Oh, really? Are you familiar with that one?

Yeah, I've never heard of it. We, we use the Shortcuts app on iPhone, and we built a shortcut to text at mass audiences individually using Airtable as the backend with via API because Airtable has API functionality. So, yeah, um, Hit Them Up would do something similar to that. Um, one of the things that I like about it is, um, Hit Them Up's like the shortcut where it copies and pastes the email into the, um, the message app. Um, but it pauses so that I can like write a, um, a personalized note at the top.

Perfect. Yes. And so they're not just getting like an automated thing. I've got the ability to quite obviously, what, yeah, something that they can tell right away was that it's not, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And so, but it is, it's funny. I tell the story. I was on a Giving Tuesday stream, and I was at, while I was on Giving Tuesday, I had my phone underneath the desk here, and literally I just was like, I was spamming the send, rifling it off, just going through, trying to text people while I was staring right at the camera trying to keep conversations going. And it was funny. I messed up. I told the story to, and we had a conversation with a lady. There's this old, there was a while I was texting all these people. One of the ladies was, I'm not going to date her, but seventy something, you know, old, older side of the equation. And, um, I miss, I mispushed, and instead I pushed microphone on hers, and so Siri recorded, I don't know, three, five minutes of me talking, and then I pressed send and sent this massively long text of Siri just recording whatever I was saying at the moment. And it was like, "Hey, I'm sorry, I was totally screwed up. That was my fault." But I think she laughed at my behalf.

Um, man, this was so good. Um, you are doing other like webinars and things that you're for microchurch. We've got some microchurch digital microchurch people hanging out with us. Like, if they're interested in more resources, what are you guys doing through, uh, through your network?

Yeah, we do, we do, uh, a monthly webinar. It's usually the first week of the month. I think starting in the fall in August. We're doing one tomorrow, uh, because we're in the first week of June. So tomorrow is the first week of the month. We'll do one tomorrow. Uh, tomorrow afternoon at two o'clock. Um, and that one's going to be on economic models for microchurch networks. Um, so some people sort of just feel like tithing doesn't feel right, nonprofit fundraising model doesn't feel right, missionary personal support doesn't quite feel right. We're not sure what to do. Um, so, uh, we'll talk about that tomorrow, like exploring pre-inherited and, you know, future thinking alternative economic models that can work for decentralized networks.

Um, uh, we'll skip July, and then, uh, throughout the fall, um, it'll be every first Thursday of every month, and we usually, we have some webinars that are at the microchurch level, and then some webinars that are at the network level, you know. So, um, so I think in August we're going to, the, the, what, the webinar is on how to start a microchurch, and I think September is how to activate people in mission in your microchurch, you know, um, if people aren't really active in mission, how do you get people activated? But then later that, later that year, like I think in November, we're going to be talking about governance in a microchurch network, you know, like church discipline, um, moral failure, theological questioning, like how does all that work in a microchurch network.

And, um, so yeah, we'll do one every month. And then, uh, we also have the, uh, a seven-week underground intensive that we do twice a year. The next time we do it is it starts the last week of August. It'll go through September. It's four weeks of core content and then three optional weeks if people want to go the whole seven weeks. Um, it's once a week on Zoom. Uh, but that's basically like getting really under the hood in the underground sort of frameworks, principles. Um, along with it's cohort-based, so you, it's usually along with ten, fifteen other folks around the country, around the world, that are sort of exploring it.

Um, so we'll do that in August and September. Um, all that stuff is free. All of our training environments are based on a donate-what-you-can model. So a lot of people just do it free. We don't want cost to be a barrier for folks. Some people chip in after the fact. Um, uh, but you can find all that at undergroundnetwork.org.

Awesome. So we'll take a look at that. Undergroundnetwork.org. I want to get you connected with Micah, uh, Micah Bales. Uh, Micah is our outpost leader. So he kind of collects together all the people that are, um, running what I would call a digital micro, um, a microchurch strategy with a strong digital component. And so he's actually planting, uh, a series of microchurches, and, and, uh, some others that we're starting to collect. Be worth the two of you, you, you talking just to kind of be aware. And there's, there's pro, the, uh, there's lots of resources that you guys are doing that that would benefit, like, even as you're talking about like pastoral care and and how to like discipline, discipline is probably a better word.

Yeah, like how you would do that in a digital micro could very easily be contextualized into digital space. Uh, I'm sorry. How you're doing that in incarnational micro would totally be contextualized digitally. And so there's there's lots of opportunities I think for learning there.

Cool. Uh, man, this has been great. As we're wrapping up today, uh, any closing thoughts?

No, man. Appreciate, appreciate you. Always have. Appreciate Church Digital. Um, I'm telling you, man, fifteen years from now, starring Brad Pitt, it's going to be a movie on Netflix talking about how the church figured out how to invade and engage people living in digital environments. And there was a little Jesus revolution in VR environments, Decentraland environments, leveraging blockchain. It's coming. And I don't, I can't think of any other actor to play you.

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's Brad, Brad Pitt or Brad Pitt. Uh, and if somebody says whoever, whoever the George Costanza guy, that guy should play Jeff, I don't like you. But everybody else is good. It's good.

Oh my gosh. All right. Hey, we're going to wrap. This has been so cool. Well, hey Lucas, thanks for hanging out with us. Lucas Pulley, what, Lucas, what are you, director of Tampa of Underground Network? What's the actual title? I feel like it changes.

I am one, I am one of the executive directors of Underground Network. There's one of the team and executive director, but my business card, my business card says that I am a transdimensional architect paradigm, uh, thinker, you know, that's my printed title. Um, and not just transdimensional, trans-timeline. Metaverse. I'm a metaverse global multiverse pastor. I actually, I'm not sure if he's serious or not right now.

Um, I'm not going to lie. He said trans, and I was like, where is this conversation going? You just took me in a whole other realm, man. Where did we go? Where did we go? We're great with titles. We always joke about titles, man. We're always joking about titles, but I, I'm one of three executive directors of Underground Network. We try to have a plurality of leadership at every level of the organization.

So, love it. Um, yeah, yeah. Awesome. For that guy, plurality of leadership. One of the executive directors who, uh, serves the Underground Network but does not live in Tampa. I, you know what, I, I told, I'll end on this. I told Jesse, and man, I really, and I still do. I would love to move to Tampa. Like, I kind of like the vibe on Tampa. West Coast, best coast in Florida. I understand. I always love the Gulf Coast. There's been some hurricane issues. Like, I want to get past, but I, I like want to move to Tampa, get a spot on the beach, and, and like, dude, I would love to work with you guys and help out what you're doing. I just, I've loved that. Now, come on. None of my family agrees with me. There's so there's some barriers. There's some barriers to kind of get that to happen. Maybe we should be praying through those barriers, but my, my son's got to graduate. My son's a freshman coming up in September. And so, you know, if you want to pray that he could like graduate four years in one year, so we could leave Miami, that would be awesome. But I don't, I don't, he's smart, but he's not that smart. I'm just saying. So we're going to, and the best part is it's summer. So they're totally around here listening to me have this conversation because I'm loud when I do this. So that's good.

Hey, we're going to wrap for, uh, for Lucas with, uh, Underground Network. This is Jeff, uh, with the Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out with us today, and, uh, we'll see you all next time. Have a good one.