EP065: Fellowshipping Digitally, or Biblical Functions of a Digital Church, Part 2

Episode 65 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planting. One of my favorite podcasts this year was actually part of a three-part podcast series called "The Biblical Functions of a Digital-Only Church." And pre-COVID, pre-coronavirus, before every church in America was essentially a digital-only church, we were having a conversation with a lot of online pastors—several, four or five online pastors—talking about what a digital-only church model would be. So episode 50 was that introductory episode where we took a book, Larry Walker Meyer Todd Wilson's "The Multiplication Flywheel," and talked about the biblical functions of church as referenced in Acts, as referenced in the Bible, and talked about how these things could be executed in a virtual, in a digital-only space where it did not require a physical footprint. It would only require digital, virtual services. Can we do it? You know, it's interesting. We talked about worship. We talked about teaching. We talked about giving. We talked about some of those easy ones—what I would call easy ones—in the first episode. And that's episode 50. In this episode, episode 65, man, we really started digging into what I thought was gonna be a slam dunk, easy one. We'll blow into the parking lot for a long time. What is fellowship look like in a digital-only church? Now, what's interesting is the reality of where we are today in church. Like, we are understanding what church looks like, and we're actually feeling the tension because while the physical church is out there creating all of this content—and we are content beasts at this point. As churches are getting on five, six, seven times a week, multiple times a day, between devotionals and sermons and devotional thoughts, sermon—all this content, worship sets being generated online—what we're really seeing is that while this content is effective, well, we're missing in this coronavirus season is really communication. It's relationships. It's engaging with people in a digital way because there is no other way for us to communicate. And so what does it look like to fellowship? What you're gonna listen to is a conversation that happened way back in, but probably February, before the whole COVID thing exploded. This was before they even the Exponential Conference. We reference it in the podcasts before the Exponential Conference, early March. And so you're hearing language of what does it look like? And really, the themes that we're talking about are as relevant today to every church across America because we're all digital at this point, and we all need to figure out how to create fellowship digitally because there is no other way right now other than digitally. So here we are, episode 65 of the Church Digital Podcast, part two of the conversation of biblical functions of a digital church. We're bringing into the conversation Jason Morris, global innovations pastor, Westside Family. Joey Santos, Christ Church Online pastor. Ian Kirk, Generations Community Church, as an online pastor. We're bringing in somebody new, Jade Earhart, who is a videogame church, digital church, developing it into a church in a church planting system. Jade Earhart with Loved Clan. And myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital. An episode that we're just simply calling, as I said, "Biblical Functions of a Digital Church, Part Two," parentheses, of three. Episode three is coming soon. But right now, part two.

Hey, I'll go. Like, I interviewed Edie Stetzer on the podcast yesterday, and I was like, "Nothing's changed. Nothing ever changes, Edie. What do we have to do to actually like change?" We know, we know we need to change. We know that the stats are bad, but nothing. Like, there's no catalyst. We say yes, we need to change. We're at fault. We need to. But we never actually like get there. The big C church never never turns the corner. So anyway, awesome. Hey, I'm excited about the podcast. So Ray bolted on us. God bless them. Sorry, I appreciate you for forgiving up a Saturday for this. And you know, and I want to thank Jade for jumping in and filling in some of the holes here a little bit on the podcast. So just to kind of lay the groundwork and remind—by the way, the new podcast, the first interview that we did for like parts one through four or whatever, like that's out now. It actually did very well. I mean, I'm not surprised. Digital church is so novel of a concept at this point. I think I'm getting a lot of traffic just because people are like, "Ooh, something new." I don't know if they're for or against. I haven't gotten much hate mail on it, but it's a thing. Not as much as like, you know, Jade's podcast, man. That debt that still shooting. I still get entirely like a lot of listens. Jade, you're quickly becoming one of the top five. Off that one, by the way, it's probably do you pass that along to your guests? I mean, if I got—hey, I mean, if you got a mail on some of my podcasts, I would want to know so I can respond or something. No, I get them. I get the hate mail. They come. They come to me. They go find me and they give me the hate mail. And now you, the thing you said, you're dumb, big dumb, stupid. Just asking questions here. You can't fault me for asking questions. It's not my fault this guy wants to launch a digital church reaching video gamers for Christ. He's proud. What are you thinking? He's in there prodding. Hey, say something. Yeah, thanks, Jimmy Fallon. I got touched the first time of my life. Have been confused for Jimmy Fallon. It's the face. That's exactly. So remember, in context of this now, there's church online, but it's broadcasting the church services online. And that's physical church ministry that's happening in virtual or digital spaces. I really, maybe we can use examples of that, but the really the core of what I want this conversation isn't physical church doing virtual ministry. It's something more in line of what Jade's doing with the video game stuff where it's holistically aimed at virtual first, that may roll into physical. So questions like biblically, can a church do—and this will probably be the opening question—what does fellowship look like? What does disciplemaking look like? What does compassion look like? Justice? What are these things look like in a biblical context in a digital-only or digital-first expression of church? Because the exercise we're wrestling with is not can it be physical. We know it can be physical. But can a digital church kind of meet that expectation that the Bible puts forth? And a couple of these I'm like, I really don't know how that's gonna work. So this might be an interesting conversation. It will be interesting to see where we get. The last podcast was easy compared to this one, I think. So thanks, y'all for coming back. Any questions on anything else before we get started? But I do have one question because I think when you say church, you're not talking about a church service. You're talking about all of the facets of church, right? Correct. Okay, so let me define that. With a digital church, what I'm suggesting is we wipe the slate clean of expectations and go back to the biblical mandate and as building blocks, and then build a model of church. You know, last time we talked about twenty minutes of worship. You know, is that effective? Is that the only way of biblical worship? Is musical worship the only way? Bible talks about other things. We talked about the message. Is the forty-minute sermon the most effective? Do we even need a sermon? Is there even what good teaching look like? You say, "Oh yeah, we'd go back to like Paul does," and right, and then like everyone's and whoever listened to the podcast heads explode. But nobody. Jason, you know, hate mail because Jason's you know not twenty-six or twenty-seven. Oh shake, but whatever. Oh no, I just have you old enough nowadays like whatever, whatever. You know, it's like Jason says something entirely controversial, and the fact that he's like bald with the goatee and kids, everybody says that's awesome. Jade Earhart says something border like that reverberate. But it's a podcast. They can't. We can't even see him really. No, I could be that a young voice leg. That's life. Does that answer that question? Yeah, it does because there was a couple of moments in the last podcast where I was a little confused as to what we were referring to. And what I like what you're doing is basically the church service for millennia has been used as the primary tool to get the church work done. And what you're doing is you're dissecting it and you're saying, "Okay, what was used before as a church tool to do church work, the service? We're gonna take pieces of that out, and we're gonna see if those pieces can be done digitally." And by am I following you correct? You are. Whether that I don't, whether that means it that it ends up looking like a church service or not doesn't even matter if we are accomplishing the functions of a church—not a church service, of a church—then who cares? Well, I think you're also about because of the how the currently set up is for the church, the physical churches we've got the weekend service, nothing else exists. The church doesn't exist, right? So well, it shouldn't be that way. Exactly correct. But it's not sure this way. Well, like, if the weekend service doesn't happen, church doesn't exist. And how is perfectly set up, right? Right. You know, I was talking with DJ Soto a while back, and any, and he used this phrase. I was talking about, you know, how Stadia, how the Church Digital, how I can help them, you know, with doing some digital church and trying to figure out how to reproduce guys like him, guys like Jade, who are you, who are doing this. And this is what DJ's line was, and Anna, and I love this. It's it's time for us to stop recreating church in the virtual space, recreating physical church in the virtual space, and it's time for us to reinvent church for the virtual space. It's not, it's not I want to copy this thing. I want to shove this square peg into a round hole. It's more of, okay, let's go back to the drawing board. You know, let's look at it and figure it out. And now let's recreate it for virtual, held to the biblical standard, but looking different for virtual. Now, and there's pros and there's cons for this. I just did an interview with Ed Stetzer. We rolled it out last week. Ed is not a fan of digital church. Ed is not a fan of church online. And even in Ed's a fan of Jeff Reed, and I have a great long-standing relationship with the guy, and he was very gracious on the podcast. But even in context of some of the stuff that we're talking about now, like it was funny. Ed even drew the analogy, and I totally wouldn't do it, but he drew the analogy to the two Muppets that are up in like the upper balcony, you know, the old guys who are like, "Get off my lawn," and tied up guys, you know? That's how I'd painted himself that picture. That wasn't me. That was Ed. But he painted that picture of me. And there are people like that. The hey, before we go radically making changes, we need to consider all fronts. And into that end, Edie, I agree with you. And that's part of what this conversation is. As we're starting to question new ways to do church, evaluating how a digital-only expression of church is, let's start dialogue and conversations like this. Let's start pouring into scripture, finding ways to either agree with the path that we're on or maybe even to say, "Hey, you know what? This is. We're not going to make it because of this right here." I don't know that I found the thing that's like that we got to stop yet, but I'm definitely open to those conversations as we're rolling through this podcast as well as other conversations wrestling with ecclesiology of a digital church. And thank you, and I love you.

That we're good. Todd Wilson, when we talked, like it's the same thing. It's like I don't think I like digital exclusive church. That's different than what you were talking about earlier, and now I'm not sure if I like it. Was it the same type of thing? And I mean, once we started going through all these things, and specifically even what you're doing here with all of the list of things, and I mean the reason I brought up—I brought up this book, right? Activating the Flywheel, or use it—I don't know exactly what he uses. He uses the word "activating the flywheel," but yours, it's "mobilization of the flywheel." So yeah, the book was actually "The Mobilization Flywheel." Yeah, okay. So but in—but I was—that's what I was using to start the discussion. It's like, look, look at these things. This is the why, right? We're not putting any whats to these things. This is why we're doing this. Why church exists for these things that you've specifically mentioned. So are they possible to do in an exclusively online space or not? You know, and he was open to that because it's like the terminology that he's heard before that he understands. And so for a lot of this stuff, it's like breaking down the why of why something is. And when I just finished the huge study through Acts, right? Six, seven months. Like we did one once a week, one chapter. And as I went through it, really thinking about it, specifically about an exclusively online church, it really does come down to just the why. And that's like almost all of Acts. Every chapter you can see how they're getting into the why of church and the why of everything that they're doing. Even like when they're cleaning tables and they're like, "Why are we doing this? Like we should be out discipling." I mean, and they're like, "Oh, because it needs to happen." You know, we're not saying it doesn't need to happen. It's just a what thing. And here's what we need to do instead. And it's just how that's how most of church today feels. There's like, get back to that why and then focus on what. Do you know exactly why you want to do it in the first place? So yeah, if we could get the entire big C church to figure out their why, to go back to ask that question, we—the church would be in a far better place. And so a lot of that, and it's just really the reason why, you know, Stadia started talking to me about, "Hey, let's create a digital church model." Like to me, the ecclesiology, the biblical functions, this is first and paramount. It's the most important thing. Like let's not do something that's off axis. And if we are off axis, man, let's—God, I'm sorry—like, you know, let's stop that sooner than later and let's not drag people down the road they shouldn't go down. So let's go ahead and do this. Let's get started through here. We're continuing on the conversation we did last time with most of this panel, plus or minus—radio, Dharma Sand, Jade swapping and going through the Mobilization Flywheel. Now this is a PDF that's created by Larry Walker Meyer, Todd Wilson, hundred page, you know, ebook, pretty solid here. Exponential Conference Leadership Network both put this out. But what I love, and by the way, they're speaking on this at Expo—actually, Expo will have already happened, so I will edit that entire reference out because no one will get that or be able to execute on that. They can buy the digital pass, maybe. Yeah, you can maybe do the digital pass. So that's a thing we—okay, so we'll put the link to the show. Now, so here's where you just said is that I don't know if you realized it, but you were talking about editing what you were saying because they couldn't attend an event, but yeah, digital pass they could do. I think you're kind of embodying the very conversation we're having. Yeah, that's a good point. Had I known there was a digital pass, I would have—I'd put that in to get it. Yeah, out of ignorance I did not know. Therefore I don't feel bad. I wasn't making a judgment as much as highlighting my ignorance. So I'll go ahead all this thing because that'll be great. All right, here we go. Here's what we did. Here's what we covered last time. We covered worship, teaching, prayer, and sacraments—the communion, the baptism, things like that. And so you go, I don't want to rehash that because we got a lot to cover. Episode 50 covers a lot of that on the podcast. But let's go ahead and I'm going to go in there order here. So number five out of call it eleven—number five is fellowship. So the question in a digital only expression of worship, what would fellowship look like? Now fellowship were immediately thinking physical church and that they gathering together Sunday services, whatever, maybe fellowship with it in small group community in the conversation context of this. It's digital only, but let's utilize our knowledge of digital tools to be inventive. I'm not necessarily driving for any specific model or something as much as asking the question: How can one fellowship in the biblical context of what fellowship means here through a digital church utilizing digital tools? What do y'all think?

Well, the easiest one, of course, is Facebook. You know, we look at our certain digital expression at our church, and our prayer page is actually the most active thing we have, and people are interacting and praying for each other constantly. And yeah, you know, it's not as if digital fellowship has a new meaning. I'm sadly old enough to remember BBS and the bulletin board systems, and fellowship happening there. Honestly, fellowship is the easiest digitally, I think, of almost any of it.

That's really interesting because I agree with you. And in the whole BBS saying, hey, that you just struck a chord in my heart. Like I remember those days. Like the well, the 2400 baud modem, like before AOL was AOL, when it was purely dialing into some guy's system, and then you'd get the call waiting called it would click in and screw up the order. That was even before call waiting where it was just like busy for hours on end because you're, you know, downloading some game or talking to some guy in like Istanbul or whatever.

Yeah, I could feel that. But here's the thing. Like it's funny. We're probably the largest criticism we have, and I'll just take Ed's—Ed's thing of, you know, the Hebrews 10:25, 28, somewhere in there: "Do not abandon the gathering of meeting together, some as or in the habit of doing." You know, Ed's famous line—at least famous to me—it's not include electrons and avatars. You know, gathering together does not include that. So which is awesome, and I'm actually impressed that he utilized avatars in the right concept context right there. It was awesome.

Well, what does that mean for us? Like, how do we—how does community work? How does fellowship work virtually that maybe somebody like Eddie or maybe outsiders aren't understanding now? I would get to kind of the again—I'm going to say this for pretty much the whole thing. Like, what? Why fellowship? If you know why you're doing it, then you can look at what fills that role. Same thing with any of these things. Like, what? Why is that an important thing? Because even if you look at some of it, like what happens with Pharisees is that they'll take something that was given for their benefit, something that was given to be a benefit to them, and then they do it legalistically just for the purpose of fulfilling the law and not really thinking about why something is what it is. And that scene that seemed throughout the New Testament, and there's always this: "Well, why? Why are you not supposed to eat these things?" You know, and this was, "No, you're looking at this the wrong way." And that happens throughout the New Testament as Jesus is really deconstructing what they already know and asking if they've really thought about those things.

So for fellowship, like Acts 2:42, they continually devoting themselves to the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer. And Matthew 18:24 where two or three are gathered in my name, therefore I'm among them. So what is that? What does that look like for us to gather? Yeah, is it gathering in the physical location? If it's saying that they're devoting themselves to the Apostles' teaching and to fellowship and Jesus is saying that where two or three are gathered in my name there I'm among them, you know, that they're there—it gets a little hairy. But you really have to wonder what people are thinking if they say that you can't do this online, you can't gather online because that's what I get is people. I mean, people use these same verses for why you cannot do online. Yeah, you have to realize what people are saying when they say that. The why—the why behind that. What some of the certification was talking about last week where it's like when people have challenges, and I think Ian you were talking about our—we're talking about it with the communion, the people who are like mailing out the communion. And it's okay, it's okay to do communion long distance as long as the pastor or the church is the one who's doing the postmark to mail at the appropriate, and it's touch the pastor's touching it as he goes in the box, like it—which is crazy. Like, okay, I'm crazy. Maybe it's not crazy. It's unique. But in our context, like there are people who would say, "Yeah, there currently six people gathered on Zoom having a conversation about God and trying to do what's best for the church, but God, the Holy Spirit, per Matthew, you know, JH reference—God is not among them because they are not breathing the same air molecule. So they're not in a physical space and God doesn't—it doesn't work in this." And so even you know within those situations, you know, drilling in to rehash them as Jason was talking about, to get to the specific of what don't you agree with, like where is the exact challenge of it? I think that's a great line.

What's the most unique place where we've seen—because fellowship is the easy one, I think, really of this list—what's the most unique way that we're seeing fellowship expand? What's something that surprised you? Cutting edge, new idea, new concept. Who's doing something new?

Oh, I don't—I don't want it like, but I have to. It's like what you were talking about, DJ Soto. Like I mean, there you go. Like I love what he's doing. And I mean his Discord, a lot, just seeing the look annoyed at what's going on. And I joined him for one of the—he had a small group basically, and they were doing it in VR Chat. So you know, I walked up as my VR avatar to the robot that was teaching that night, you know, and I was standing next to a bird in a ramen noodle cup, and we, you know, went through a verse in Matthew. You know, I think it's a weird thing. Like I get that it's weird to a lot of people, but yeah, it really does kind of go deeper than just what am I physically in this location? And what is that? What? Why is that a thing? Like, why does that exist? Because if I can—if I can interact with somebody, it honestly does hit a certain point where you say, "Well, then what is considered gathering?" If somebody is—if somebody's deaf, are they being like taken out of that then because they can't hear you? You know, is it the physical location? Okay, so if somebody has a, you know, I don't—I don't want a straw man this, but you really do kind of start to limit things where it's like, "What is the actual thing that you're trying to do?" Is it better to hear somebody and not be able to sense their presence or—yeah, yeah, I'm just trying to get my mind around what you're actually saying when you say these things. That it's—yeah.

I'll stop it. I've got—there's here's a kind of a layer that I'm gonna get a little bit ethereal and spiritual for a second, but just hang with me, all right? There is a passage of scripture where the Apostle Paul talks about how he wishes he could be with some of the believers, but he can't. And being in prison, I mean, that's pretty obvious. And so he says that he will be with them in spirit. Now, what in the world does that mean, man? I don't know. But I do believe that God and the Holy Spirit transcends physical space. He created space. He created time. And anyone that has prayed with anyone else in a chat room feels what I'm talking about, where distance doesn't matter. You feel the prayers of people because there is something spiritual and transcendent going on.

And just hang with me for a little bit. If it is true that we are human spirits ministering to each other using a layer of abstraction—our physical bodies—to make that happen, if you're doing that in the VR space, it's just one more layer of abstraction. That's all it is at the end of the day. We have spirits that are ministering to spirits, and we have the Holy Spirit that's within us ministering and transcending and doing groanings that cannot be uttered. There is a mystical aspect of this that if you limit church to just a physical proximity, you're missing out on the mystery that is ministering in the spirit and even fellowship in the spirit.

And I think that there is—if we are really eternal souls having a physical experience right now, then it is not that different to have another type of virtual. And I hesitate to even use that word because at the end of the day, the spiritual realm is real. It's not virtual. But if you have real spirits ministering to real spirits, who cares what the intermedium is? Whether it's physical proximity or a VR chat, who cares? Yeah, because I am ministering to another person, another soul, another spirit, whether I'm using physical avatars or digital ones. I don't know that it really matters.

One of the interesting things that I do find about the scriptures that you shared, Jay, are two things. In the one scripture, Jesus says, "Anyone two or three are gathered in my name." The "in my name" part is what we forget. We get all fixated on the gathering. When could this be a gathering? What we're doing right now, I think so. "In my name"—it doesn't say who are gathered in physical proximity, are gathered in the same room. And then you get back to what I was talking about originally about being with someone in spirit. I think there's something to that. I don't know all of the theological ramifications of that, but if we limit ourselves to just physical proximity for ministry, we're gonna miss out on a lot of ministry that we could potentially do and using a lot of tools that we could be using now.

I say that, and I have a question that I want to pose to the group that is in the second passage that you referenced, Jay, in Acts 2. And that is the breaking of bread, which for a lot of churches, especially in a traditional type of atmosphere, fellowship and breaking of bread together are kind of what—in the same—where I don't think they really are. But there's something to be said there. When someone sits down and eats a meal with someone, it feels like, even in a spiritual sense, that something unlocks. And any of you that are familiar with like the Emmaus method, or even in the way that Jesus, in his transcended spiritual state after being resurrected from the dead, when she broke bread with the disciples, that's when their eyes were opened and they realized, "Oh, this is Jesus." There again, I think there's something to breaking bread with people and sharing a meal with people that is a little bit more difficult to achieve in the digital space.

And I'm not talking about fellowship. I'm talking about the breaking of bread piece that many times gets mixed in with fellowship and can unlock deeper forms of fellowship. And I don't really have the answer to this, and the breaking of bread piece is what I would love to pose to the group as: any of you guys shared a meal digitally? Because that seems to be part of the Christian experience too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, all of that—like, awesome. I think that's what you're saying is it's so good for people that don't think about, especially for people that don't use online regularly, who ever never thought about communicating with somebody in an online setting, that don't see it as spirits to spirits as an actual—because, yeah, a lot of people don't think about it that way. But people that are online that use their avatar as the way to communicate with people, I mean, for them that feels—that maybe they're more open in that setting than they would be even in a physical where they would just shut down. And it's not really, you know, I've seen that a time and time again.

Oh, yeah, me too.

So, Jason, yeah, I'd ask I ask kind of the same question. Gonna always ask. But like, what? Why? Like, what is it about breaking bread that there's a piece there? There's obviously something. Like you said, maybe it's going deeper with fellowship, or maybe it's that in sharing experiences that unlock something. Is it the actual food itself? Is, you know, like, is it the action of pulling bread apart that unlock, you know, what I mean? Like, I mean, I'm guessing not. But my point is there is a—like, you have to really wonder what it is before, because any time that we take something, we say this specific thing for this reason. But if we can't apply a reason to it, unless—unless it's—I mean, you know, God says do this thing, and then you don't ask me a reason why. Just do it. Then, okay, you just do it, you know? And so that there's that balance of: is this a command? He says pull bread apart when you're together. You know, this is a command? Or is it something that he's telling you, think about why? Why are you doing this? Why pull bread apart? You know, what is the reason for it? And maybe I'm reading this verse wrong, but my feeling is that there's a why. What is it? What are we actually doing when we do this? If that makes sense.

I think what I think there is something primal about sharing a meal with someone that you just don't—I mean, you just don't do that with people that you don't care about. And because of that primal nature, I don't know where it comes from. Maybe God put that within us. I mean, he could have made us—we're, you know, we could be like plants and we don't need to eat at all. But he made us on purpose to have to eat, and he made us with one mouth so that when we're stuffing our face, we can't really talk, and we have to listen to somebody. I mean, there's some very basic elemental things where I think God was very intentional in a way that he did it.

And I think one of the only ways that we could approximate that—and by the way, just a parenthesis, many of the expressions of the prevailing church don't do this either, right? We don't break bread together either. So I think one of the opportunities that we have in the digital space is to pioneer maybe a new expression of breaking bread. And I use that as just a metaphor for sharing a meal. But one of the ways that I've seen it done is to just set up a video chat while you're eating with someone else who's in a video chat while they're eating, and you're seeing their face and you're talking with them, and you're not physically sharing your own food. Yeah, like you're not physically sharing your own food. And I think there is something that is helpful when that as well. That if you were to dissect and say, okay, there is a spiritual discipline of sharing, of being generous with what you have, that is important. That in the digital space we need to be intentional about. But I think there's another aspect of just being able to talk to one another. And if we're eating together, even if it's over a video chat, it feels like something is different than when we're just talking.

Yeah. Well, when you're breaking bread, your defenses are down, right? I mean, it's like the whole thing culturally. Why would we shake hands? It's so that our right hands are busy not holding our guns or our knives. And so shaking hands is what breaks down the defenses. And Jay, if in the podcast audience has no idea, but Jay, if you could pass that box of cereal over here, that would be awesome.

He's eating Golden Grahams over there on his side. But there's a—there's a—you release those defense mechanisms. There's a lot of intimacy when it comes to sitting around drinking coffee, breaking bread together, sharing a meal with. That honestly, I feel that defense mechanism is down as a general rule over Zoom or virtual communications anyway, because for me, the webcam and the TV monitor, the computer monitor I'm literally looking at at this moment, is that—is allows for that intimacy of it. I don't—I don't have to have my defense mechanisms up talking to Jason Morris because I know Jason Morris is not gonna stab me with his knife. And so like, I can be relaxed in that scenario. Joey, a little sketchy, maybe something could happen there. In time, only time will tell. But I'm not face-to-face. We'll see. Once again, yeah, he knows people. We all know people, okay?

So there's this opportunity we have to embrace wholeheartedly with that. This is great. I love it. But that breaking the bread though, sharing that meal virtually—I've done that, for me it's been more out of—I'm so busy I haven't eaten. I think I did it this week. I literally was like eating leftover dinner from last night when I was in a meeting with somebody on Zoom. I don't know that I went into that moment, you know, thinking, hey, let me let this be a moment of intimacy. When the guy I was with probably would have appreciated the intimacy either. But maybe that's something that I, you know, need to consider in the future: how do we get more intimate online without being weird? Because that's not what I mean. But did you have something else?

Yeah, yeah. So like, okay, so my—the reason I ask is because I do—I think that's something. I think that's something that we should look at. Like, it is something we need to figure out is why for those things. And if my thought, my gut reaction is the things that you're saying are right, that there is a—you're talking a lot of it. I honestly, I think it's a cultural thing that at the time, the breaking bread would have been kind of the time to really talk about things, go throughout the week, have experiences. For me today, I've said it's difficult for me to imagine what my relationships with other people would be like if there wasn't video games, you know? Like, I can't—I don't admit I don't know how other people do it. I mean, maybe they watch Netflix together, maybe they go to the movies together, you know, and those are those are experiences. It's difficult at movies because you can't really talk to one another, right? So it's a cool experience. You think about like, remember that time we went to the movies together? Remember that time that we went to the mall together? Okay, cool. Like, we can talk at the mall and we can have shared experiences and so on. But I mean, man, video games are just so great for that because I'm in voice channel with a bunch of people. I see them, you know, and we're talking about life while we're running, you know, down into battle, you know, or whatever the heck it is. And that experience, I get to know people very, very well.

I just went to Japan with a bunch of my friends. There, nine friends went to Japan together. Four of them I had never met in person. We'd only played video games together. And I'll tell you what, those four I know better, have better connections than the other people that I just had physically, that I that were in my proximity, that I went to church with, we're in my small group, even, because man, I'm hanging out with these guys six days out of the week or—

Whatever and these guys physically hang out with, I only saw once or twice a week at small group, you know. So no, you touched on something, Jay, but I think is very important to highlight. It's just the amount of sheer time that you're spending with these people. Like if we were to limit fellowship to a one hour a week thing, we're missing out on so much opportunity. Where even if we had a one hour and a small group, okay, three or four hours max for the week, man, you're probably pulling that off in a day with some of your good friends online. Well, and that's how much closer is your relationships because of that? And that's actually one of the advantages I see to the digital world. Is, you know, we look at scriptures, it's gathering daily. Do not give up gathering daily. And I look at our world right now and it's like we're always so busy that digital, I think, is the way to really garner that fellowship, which is what Jake was talking about. I mean, it's like even those half-hour, forty-five-minute conversations make a big difference. However, you know, one of those statistics, you know, going back to Jade's why, is one of those statistics of, and at least for me as a father, this is kind of one of those paramount things. Is they showed children who eat meals around a table with their parents have better relational skills, have better interaction skills, have better connection with their family, which gives them greater stability in life. So that's one of Wes's work, kind of one of those big struggles that we're gonna have, I think, digitally with fellowship. And I, that's I think breaking the bread is an analogy or idiom of that exact scenario. And I don't, as much as I want it to, I don't think digital will get all the way there. But a lot of the barriers that keep us from being intimate will be removed digitally because, as Jade said, hey, I know these four guys really well. And I'm going to guess, Jade, you can, you know, chime in or not, but I'm gonna guess that when you ate with them and spent time with them, it was even deeper because you didn't have to go through all the surface garbage anymore.

Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely was a different. There's a different there. There's a, it's not, it's not fully the same. There is something different about meeting physically in a location with somebody. I don't want to, I don't want to diminish that because I think it's important, you know, like we have bodies for a reason. But I like the specific example that I think I got from Todd, but it might have been actually from that, but he said something like, could you get married online? Yes. Could you never meet your wife ever and you just only meet online and you're always online for the rest of your life? Yeah, and that might even be okay. But hey, there's probably something, you know, and I don't need to go very much further than that of why for some people that would be very not fulfilling for them. Everybody that's married is not their heads, all right, not me because I'm not married. But what, there is something, you know, there's something different about being in a physical location and being able to hug somebody and all that. So but the thing that I think that you're hitting on is not even just time, but if we're looking at physical church or they are, is the church daily meeting with people in the church to eat for lunch? Like no, maybe never. Some people after Sunday they will go after church too, meet and do that, you know. I have a group of friends that I go to do that with sometimes regularly, but it's not like, it's, that's why I ask what that, what the why is, because it's okay that that's something that we should put in there. Then if that, if meeting physically, I have relationships with people online that our relationships have gotten a lot better when we we met online, talked for like a couple months or whatever, and then we met, we met in person, and maybe, maybe that's a thing is that physical or online exclusive church could say, all right, if that's really actually important because there's something different that unlocks in our relationships online after that, well then maybe we do every six months there's a meetup and you break bread together. You get, it's a big dinner, everybody meets, and then after that you go back to online because you can do that daily, you know. But but every six months we're gonna do this thing. And I think that's, there's yeah, there's definitely something to be said for that. I totally agree.

Yeah, and that that meetup, actually, I, that's something that as I'm looking at designing digital churches and working with them, I actually think that meetups important, you know, and and I look at, you know, Saddleback, Jake Randa, J's looking at doing the meetups with their house churches. He's talking about doing them every six to eighteen months. I think he's wrestling with that, trying to encourage everybody coming together and then him coming in and doing that. Even as as I was producing house church to micro locations, there were there were times where we would fly everybody in who were doing the micro locations to Christ Fellowship Miami just to encourage, to cast vision, to work towards that. Because ultimately you're right, there is something that that can begin, can be gained, can be learned, can be experienced in it, in that physical space. And Jade, I will forever use the marriage analogy that is awesome. It was a little weird coming from a single guy, I gotta admit, but I think there is totally a lot of weight in that. So thank you, thank you for sharing that.

Hey, and this was the easy one. Like this was supposed to be the throwaway, let's just move on. We ended up spending a lot of time on the easy one. So that that's awesome. All right, so we're gonna wrap with fellowship. I want to thank these guys for jumping on the podcast. Jason Morris, Ian Kirk, Jones, Antos, Jade Earhart, man, you guys are great. By the way, they did this. They gave a couple hours for this conversation on a Saturday. They were so passionate about having this conversation about digital church. We've got two of the parts done. We are going to part three. We're gonna publish that here in a little bit. So episode sixty-six is actually gonna be biblical functions of a digital church, part three. Look for it here in a couple days. But for now we're gonna wrap. For the crowd, Jason, Ian, Joey, and Jade, this is Jeff for the Church Digital. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time here on the podcast.