EP066: The Stuff We Didn't Do When COVID-19 Hit, or Biblical Functions of a Digital Church, Part 3

Hey, it's Jeff and you got episode 66 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning. We're gonna wrap up a series we're doing here in this episode and it's a long episode, so I'm just gonna get right to it. We're exploring the idea of what a digital church looks like.

For several episodes here, this is the third part. We've been doing a deep dive into the biblical ecclesiology, into the biblical functions of what a digital church should be. So check out the show notes. Episode 65 we talked about fellowship. Episode, well I think it was way back, was like episode 50 maybe. We actually talked in greater detail about worship, about teaching, about giving, and about some of those things that really contextually make church church. At least that's the perception of what makes church church.

What's interesting in this conversation today, this third part, we really start to get into the granular details of things that don't often come up in conversation. Justice, compassion, local missions, being on mission at a personal level while we're in the season of being digital-only church. It's really interesting how much of this granular level detail are we seeing? Are we used to church expressing compassion in this season? Yes or no? Are we expressing justice? Yes or no? Are we expressing how are we serving the communities that we're in locally? Yes or no? What does it look like? And it's fascinating how maybe, maybe even today as we've thrown digital church together as quick as we could, thank you very much COVID-19, maybe we're still missing some of what this looks like digitally.

And as we're landing the plane here on this series, we're gonna bring in a bunch of online pastors again talking about this idea, landing the plane on the biblical functions of a digital church. So we're bringing in Ian Kirk, generations community church online pastor. Jason Morris, global innovations pastor of Westside Family. Joey Santos, Christ Church. We're bringing in JT R Heart, digital pastor over at Love Clan. Myself, Jeff, in the church digital, in a conversation that I'm calling, yeah, this is all the stuff that we forgot to do when COVID came, or otherwise known as biblical functions of a digital church, part three.

Okay, everybody, here you go. Number six on this list: disciple making.

Disciple making. Yeah, I mean I define it a disciple as somebody that hears and follows God, and the disciple maker, somebody that helps somebody else hear and follow God. You know, just to put it as plainly as possible. And so if in an online setting, what is that again? What does that look like?

I can't help but think of Paul as an example. And I like that you mentioned earlier, you know, that Paul said I wish I could be with you, but I'm there in spirit. And you know, how does he communicate that? How do they know that he's that he wants to be there in spirit? How do they know that? They know that because he wrote them a letter and he sent it non-physically while he was in jail to them. You know what I'm saying? It's like it's crazy because even at the very beginning stages of this, if Paul had the ability to send an email, do you think he would have done it instead of writing that letter? Do you think that Paul would have zoomed those people and said, "Man, I really wish I could be with you. Too bad I only have pen and paper." I could zoom, but I don't think that's a good way for me to meet with you. You know, I think I'll just use pen and paper because this is better spiritually. It's crazy to me like the thinking that must go on to come to the conclusion to use something that Paul wrote with pen and paper and then handed to somebody else to deliver and then use that as an excuse for why people can't do some of these things or can't encourage other people without being there physically. It's like, do you not see the like how much that doesn't make sense? You know, it's crazy to me.

But Matthew 28:19-20: "Go therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, and behold, I'm with you always until the end of the age."

Okay, so if that is our Great Commission, and we said, even you know, whatever expose as the keywords and as how can we do that together as a church, there are things that are very specific and they're about disciples. You baptize them, okay? So how do you baptize in exclusion online? Exclusively, I think there's reasons for physical. Like, I think that there is something important about baptizing somebody physically, only because I see also the laying on of hands and the receiving of the Holy Spirit. There's something which says they're baptized in the name of Jesus and that they didn't receive the spirit. You know, and so I don't, you know, that's something to wrestle with. And so I do actually like the idea of physically baptizing somebody. But even that, I think I would still say we have to figure out if that's something that there's a why of why we do this or if it's something we've been commanded. I'll land more on the commanded side for that one.

But the specific there on, you know, go into all nations, when have we had a better opportunity to do that, guys? You know, then right now where I can just call somebody up? I have somebody from India sending me Facebook messages asking because he's just overwhelmed that there's so many people that he's discipled and he's just like, "Give me any resources. I'll take anything. Just zoom me anytime. Call me." You know, and it's like that's crazy. You know, well, I can't go to, I mean I could, I don't have the money, but I can't just fly over to India and go. You know, but in ten seconds I could. We connected with this guy and a lot of our excuses fly out the window. Where if somebody's saying, you know, why are you doing this in a virtual space? It's almost like, I mean, you better be just slamming in your physical space then, because there's no longer any excuses. Like if you're not, you don't have a flight every day. I don't know how you're getting to all nations. So anyway, I'll end it up there.

But the one thing that I think I want to highlight here and then we'll hand off to Ian. Sorry for cutting you off. It's the priesthood of all believers, right? Like there's an implication here, and this may be something that a digital church even does better than the physical church would. A digital church, I believe the strength of a digital church is empowering an individual with that priesthood of all believers. It is your job to go make disciples within your circle of influence. It's not your job to hand them an invite card and invite them to come sit in a service. It's your job to have those hard conversations. And I think that's really that generational aspect I was trying to communicate through earlier. The core of that is, man, I am empowering you as the leader of a digital church. I'm empowering you to go out there and have that circle of influence, have those conversations. That's then that's the heart of like the online, the offline model, which permeates through healthy church online. Thank you very much, Jake Randa. But essentially it's this idea that the gospel that we learn in the offline, online world, the gospel that we learn in the online world affects our offline world. And if the only Christian that we are is in virtual spaces, then really we're no better at generating Christians and disciple makers than that one service on Sunday. We're the only Christ they see is the one where they're sitting in the pew in the back of the room.

And so if we're really trying to get to that 24/7, then the people who are involved in this digital church need to be showing their Christ. They need to be representing Christ in that physical space as well as in the virtual space.

It's kind of interesting. We're going through those conversations and the fellowship. I was digging in and just listening to all you guys are saying because it was so good, and I was like, me and I really have nothing to offer there. And I think it was so interesting to me is that even for us who have this incredible opportunity to be in the envision environment all the time, that's what we do. We end up back towards you trying to almost explain or justify how this can be in a way better or more efficient than the physical church today. And I and I really think I agree with Jeff because the best way for this to work has to look different. It has to, because some of those things are already happening.

I think I understand what I'm saying. I'm not so concerned about the impact that is gonna have in a local church because the local church has its purpose. Because that's what the name is: local. And I think you local pastors need to understand their role as a pastor of a local church. I think one of the things that digital church is going to be able to help is help pastors to have more of a local mindset instead of a global mindset and allow the digital church to make that impact. Because the reality is when we go digital, we're automatically a global church. So the discipleship definitely going to look different because I'm allowed to disciple somebody from India, in Pakistan, in the US, and there's a chance these people all may be in the same room when we talk about fellowship. It's kind of interesting because we're fellowshipping with the global community right at times. And I think there'll be times where we're gonna be fellowshipping on everybody from us. That's great.

But as I look at this discussion, so I'm thinking, I think we need to one, help local churches, the physical church, to really redefine the importance of being local because the local community needs their local church. And allow the digital church to fulfill this global calling that the church has. But now we can do this in a much faster way to fulfill that. And that's gonna look different. That's gonna shake some people up in terms of, "I don't feel good about how this is." That's okay. That's but that's the reason why we have the word innovation. It's gonna shake you up a little bit. It's gonna get you there.

So I think that's a big part of it for us. I think both fellowship and discipleship, owe me, and that's already happening. Happy so many ions. Absolutely right. This has been happening for decades. But the reality is today we have this conversation here because the video never had, never put the local church in check. And today the digital church, it creates this thing with local church councils like me. And gonna take people out of my church? People wouldn't step away from my from my PSP far away from my chairs if you implement this thing. The videos that I'm watching at home, that's great. They are not taking my people away from my church. And I think that is this environment that we are in.

And I think we have the opportunity. I think we in this conversation as we talk about the digital churches, what discipleship looks like in a local church for the people they're local and they're there and also need Jesus. And what's the job of the digital church that actually can take that and explode to your global environment?

Let's not jump too far ahead because that's ten, eleven, twelve yet. Let's locate any. Sorry, because I want to hand off. But yeah, let's shift this up because I'm looking at nine, ten, and eleven. Nine is mission. Ten, I would assume, is being on mission. Ten is global missions. Eleven is body ministry, which I'm considering you know, ministry within the church body. When you look at this breakdown of what discipleship in fact, what the fellowship looks like, well in a local church we look at the specific meeting that we call fellowship and then we...

Go to your Bible class, that's what we call discipleship, and that in a digital church, all these eleven items happen in one setting, you know, one meeting. You could have all eleven of those.

Yeah, I think that what Joey is touching on, and I think Jade and they were touching on this, is that I think as I think about it would be helpful to just take a little bit of a step back where we're looking at and trying to force this whole thing into a digital only expression. When the truth of the matter is, there is not any church that I know of that is physical only either. So when we're talking about like the prevailing model of church, show me an example that doesn't use a telephone, a cell phone, a PA system, electricity, that only meets without any TVs or anything that exclusively is face-to-face physical proximity ministry. I don't know of one. The truth of the matter is that there's a spectrum here, and it's not really a matter of is it digital only or physical only, because those things honestly I think are kind of straw man arguments because they don't really exist. Most of us live in physical and digital at the same time, and I think the question is where on that continuum is the most healthy for certain things or the most evangelistic for certain things. And I think when we get into like these other expressions of church like nine, ten, and eleven, you might find that on the spectrum the digital expressions of church do a much better job, whereas maybe they're weak in other areas of the spectrum. Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah. Let me speak to that a little bit. At least this is what's in my head as I've heard that type of question and wrestle with it. The difference between like a physical church having a website, so therefore they have a digital strategy, when I talk about a digital church, I think what's in my head is looking at digital as a community. And so to me, that, you know, Jade, what he's doing, he's looking at video gamers and reaching into a digital community of video gamers. Obviously DJ SoDo, and so for me, that's kind of the difference. Not, yeah, listen, dude, I could give you this feel right now. Why every church should have a digital strategy, one that works physically and one that works digitally and how it aligns together. And so like that is a completely separate conversation, and one that I don't want to actually get into with this because I'm with this particular conversation. I really want to target into this idea of digital community.

Now, what's interesting, going all the way back to like Joey's point where it all kind of meshes into one, yeah, I kind of feel that as well. And if I'm looking at, you know, being on mission, serving in global missions, and then serving body ministry, which taking contextually to mean serving the church, you know, and I don't mean to speak ill will, maybe I'm out of context and you guys can speak up, but a lot of times, you know, serving in that body ministry is what I hear a lot of within the physical churches because it takes, you know, two hundred greeters at a mega church to greet everybody that's walking in. And you got to have the praise team, and in the building itself, you know, Joey, you were talking last time about how we've just constructed these massive properties and it takes so much to maintain them and keep them up. And as nonprofits, we need those people to speak into that. Jason's kind of looking at me weird, so I'll definitely want to give him a chance to speak, but it feels like the physical church needs a lot of those people who are doing the body ministry, serving within the church, but maybe not tasking people to be on mission. Oftentimes that disciple-making gets lost among serving within the church itself.

One of the things that you mentioned, Jeff, that for me it kind of makes me turn my head sideways is when you define body ministry as only being fulfilled within the context of a church service. And I think that's where digital, how many divine it, yeah, I think that's where digital maybe has some challenges but also some unique opportunities. Because when I think of body ministry, I'm thinking about somebody that would be willing to help me move, or somebody that would be willing to, you know, if I throw my back out, to mow my lawn. That in my mind is body ministry, where we're serving one another. Or perhaps, you know, like we were talking before, share a meal or, you know, talk with somebody if they're feeling down or pray with someone. That in my mind is body ministry. And unfortunately, sometimes the church service can take away from the focus of that real body ministry that could be happening when we think, oh, I serve today because I greeted at the door, and I don't really know anybody's name, and I haven't really sat down and, you know, done a hospital visit or something like that.

You know, I've done hospital visits from people that beforehand I admit exclusively online, and then I met up the very first time I saw them was in the hospital. That is body ministry. Now it's not digital, but it was catalyzed by digital for that body ministry to occur. And if you take out the church service, how much more time do we have now to be freed up to do real body ministry in ways that are more innovative and more personal than we did before? And that almost gets back to the place of personal ministry. Like, it's funny, like the whole thing of helping somebody move or whatever, by the way, I'm the guy driven a truck twenty years of his life. I'm like on speed dial with dozens of people now. I drive a Jeep, but I still get two calls. Here's the thing though. Like, if you're not doing the service, man, how much more able you to connect within your community around you? And that's part of that online to offline philosophy where the gospel, yeah, helping somebody move can be an opportunity to share the gospel or to speak in or show, share, or a show, I'm not sure what word I was trying to say, share or show the love of Christ.

So man, I love that. Thank you very much. Jason Morris, any other thoughts in context of here, body ministry? What would global missions look like? What would global missions look like in a digital church?

I mean, I got wanting to my head. We had an order, and now we're just kind of like, we go to ten, we have an eight on seven, we're good, we're hanging out. Nine, ten, eleven. Global mission, global mission, body ministry. Let's look at that as a group. If I go one by one, we will never finish this podcast. We'll be back for like episode four of it. Alright, so global missions, what would that look like? Like it already does, right now. I mean, it's brilliant. It's global already. It's kind of, I guess I would say moot. It's already international. There's nothing we can do about it.

I still remember the thing. It was our second or third streaming service that I ever led. I had somebody from India streaming with me, watching it. And it was amazing. All of a sudden, go, wait a minute, I am not just talking about my local context. I am now digital. I am now international, whether I like it or not, whether I view it that way or not, whether I set my keywords for my SEO correctly or not. I'm still international.

As a missionary in Paraguay, I was there for almost nine years, and it used to frustrate me to death when I would read the Great Commission and it says go into all the world, because at that point I'd only hit, you know, a couple, maybe three countries, and I felt frustrated because I really wanted to do what Jesus said, go into all the world. And one of the big benefits I have right now through online ministry is I get to do that. I feel like I am able to now actually do what Jesus said better than I was when I was a missionary in Paraguay.

And I just got back from a trip to Laos and Thailand with all of our partners, and we're empowering at this point somewhere in the neighborhood of around two thousand churches, and they're all around the world, and we're using digital tools to make that happen. And I feel like that is a greater opportunity in the digital space because we're already international anyway. Because it removes digital, like technology tends to be a force multiplier that removes obstacles. And one of the main things that online ministry, that technology removes, is space. Geography doesn't matter anymore. We could literally go into all the world, and I think that is a benefit that digital ministry has over physical, and that is something that we should be leveraging more and more.

You really also, like you're saying, in it, it's already happening in our group. We would actively love to see more people from other nations just because it gives us a rounder perspective of what's going on in the world. But we do have that even in our core group. We've just people have come up. We haven't specifically looked for somebody that was from another nation, but just because of who's active, we have active team members that are like our core group from Australia. One person was from America, and he just moved to Korea. So we've that there's a, yeah, interesting time to move. Some of this is coronavirus is going on. Yeah, we have there's people from Thailand. There's a guy from UK. Like that just kind of naturally, that's what happens. But what I really see a huge, huge extra component to that is if we look at like in Acts, they notice that, well, Agatha says there's going to be a famine, and we should collect and distribute to other churches. And today, man, it's so interesting when the church down the street, we're like, well, but if that church, what if they take all of our people, you know, and just that complete, you know, whatever. But that's just something we have to deal with physically that we need to get past. But in a digital, even that there is that opportunity for seeing other people that you know, who is your neighbor? Is kind of the question. Like, is my neighbor also this person in the UK? Is this person that's streaming in from India and from Africa and whatever? And your context in a digital really turns into where's the need of the church? And if who your neighbor, who is my neighbor, means also the person from Africa that's in your group, you can just imagine what the thinking changes into. And instead of whatever it is here, where it's like, well, well, what kind of, you know, video screen would best reach our viewing audience, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know, are they gonna think that we're too cheap if we do like ten eighty p instead of seven twenty p, you know, like, or like, what is our, what is our thing here? And your context just changes when like half of your members are in a totally different nation where the government may be abusive. And even your preaching and stuff will change because you just see the verses completely differently. And I think there's a lot of things that are even thought about about what actually happens when you see, when you seek global mission as your mission. And like Jason saying, you know, when he's in another nation, his thinking is, yeah, for other nations, but he's also thinking about just differently than he would if he's only trying to reach the person there.

And I think a lot of people, that's one of the things they really dive into when they see like we're trying to do a video game ministry. Is this like, you're just not thinking about all these other things because you know that's only gonna reach gamers. And what about what about that person on the street? What about the homeless guy or whatever? Well, I've been given a calling. This is my specific thing. And if your calling is for the homeless, absolutely do that. But don't think that that means we're not diverse, that we're not thinking about other things.

Nations because there's people and other nations that are dealing with these things. So anyway, I know it's in there somewhere, but just it's worth mentioning. One of the things—thanks for that, Jake—one of the things that Ray and I are a part of right now, we're working with a nonprofit organization that is basically doing telehealth medicine to impoverished third-world countries. And so we'll have American doctors, sometimes bilingual, reaching out via appropriate Zoom, but like Zoom for telemedicine where it matches all the, you know, the legal requirements. But basically working with nurses and organizations like INCH, even work partnering with churches down in like Latin and South America. And so we're getting volunteers, doctors to volunteer their time to serve and to see patients via Zoom through it like a nurse practitioner or something in these countries. That's just a small way of where I think global missions can change in context. We used to say, "Let's go and let's take you know all these doctors down, all this medical, and let's you know get everybody on a plane to go down there." And listen, I've done those mission trips. Those mission trips are awesome. But it's always one, two weeks, you know? You got to jump all the hurdles, and sometimes you can't get everybody to contribute and catch that vision. The doctors who are serving and who are seeing these patients in these third-world situations, impoverished nations, man, they're getting—they're getting a feel of that trip now. It'd be great if maybe this is an intermediary step towards them going, or maybe it's a replacement and then a growth of something later to come. But I think it's interesting that even telemedicine is opening up ways to do global mission in ways that maybe we hadn't anticipated before.

Oh, one of the—we learned that meeting we were in Colorado—that one of the top world crisis or need is education. And I look at the capacity of the online church. Should actually take education to other countries because Internet is so spread wide, like it's everywhere. And I, it's kind of funny. I look at this in looking in other countries in need and the capacity that we have through the online church expanding local churches in other countries by raising pastors, by raising leaders through the online environment where they can actually go to their local neighborhood and then start a church. So I think, yes, I think there's so much capacity that needs to be explored through the online, the digital church that can actually address these facets. I don't know in your church, but it's—I don't know a church where ninety percent of the people go on mission trips. And the reason for that, one of there is cost. It just costs a lot of money to go on a mission trip. It costs $2,000, $3,000. So a family of five, it's a very expensive mission trip. But what would it look like, right? What would it look like for that family to be able to participate in some kind of influence, to be able to be online with a family that's overseas and doing that? And it's kind of interesting because it's already happening. So we have some group of ladies in our church that actually teach English to students in China and in do this online. And they're in contact with the parents. So they actually now exercise some kind of influence because they develop a relationship there. In China, where they're very restrictive, they actually start to develop some relationships. So there's conversations happening between these two parents with never many person where they start asking cultural questions. One of the interesting ones was one mom from China asked this mom from us what Christmas looks like, because she has no idea in China what Christmas in America looks like. So there's relationships that are happening there. It's all happened in digital. And we're having the conversation like she said, "I'm in a mission field right now." And their experience led her now to sign up to just serve in our chat room because she's having so much fun doing that. She wants to do much more. So I'm saying that's so many—we're on our back actually happened that digital church can make a much bigger impact globally if we, if we head on, really if we intentionally go for it, like really, like let's make it happen with all these spaces that we have.

One of the things I love, and this is gonna go back to Jake's comment a little earlier—even though, even the phrase "global mission trip," global is important because it indicates it's a different worldview than what you may have. Maybe, and I'm just hypothesizing here, maybe if the digital church had that global worldview built into the DNA, maybe it's not a global mission trip. Maybe it's just being on mission with a guy or a gal in another country. Like it's not the special thing that requires the $2,000 and pick up, you know, flight and fly over there to do that. It's just I'm connecting with people because they're who they are in Christ, and I have this similar worldview, and I'm engaging through the platform that way. And we're doing ministry together. And maybe it's more pie in the sky, but I definitely see where the physical and the digital starts to blur together. But by creating this digital church idea, you are bringing in the domestic as well as the international ministry, and it's quickly becoming one. It's not that you got to isolate or separate it, but you're bridging that together.

Jake, just curious, what's percentage of people that are outside of us that connect? I used to term regularly. You define it regularly with would love Klan instead of love Clement. I don't, I don't know. I haven't really like quantified it or thought about it. I would say, yeah, I mean, it's I'd say it's definitely more than ten percent. Probably it's probably more than ten percent. But it's, I don't know. I wouldn't say it's fifty percent, but I honestly don't know because like chat goes so fast sometimes, and it can even go at like midnight here. But even that's weird because midnight here, that's like let's say what am I doing math-wise? And you know, you're looking at like ten or nine in the States depending. So it, even time zones is a thing. But yeah, if the chat's just going all the time, it's not like I'm asking everybody like, "Oh hey, you know, your English is kind of weird. You know what's your native language?" But because usually it's just it just seems like a normal thing, especially when it's text. Yeah, but it's enough. It's enough that I think if somebody has an English accent in a physical church, the first thing everybody asks is like, "Oh, where you from?" You know, it's like so different. So like that's so crazy, you know? And even we kind of make the joke. We have somebody that has a really great accent, and man, we like use that. We use that so much in the physical church for like, "Hey, can you read this Bible verse for our Sunday morning?" Because if a normal American just reads this verse, it's not going to hit the same as if you do it with your, you know, your accent. Your accent is just really, it's got the spirit in there. And we went and it, but like, it's just kind of regular. Yeah, this is a regular, yeah, it's kind of a regular thing to see international people and to bring up international topics and views. That coronavirus, that people are praying with, that absolutely good people should be praying about, that people right now kind of freaking out about it in the US. And it's interesting because like we've, there are people from in China that are in this chat that have talked about this for a while, you know? There are big topics that happen. Like when a volcano explodes, you know, in the Philippines, like we know that happens very, very fast to pray about it because our friends that are three miles away are like, "I am evacuating right now. I think something's about to happen. Taking a photo that this just exploded and it's gone now. We don't know what's happening. You know, be praying for us." Like that, the just proximity allows for how quickly you can respond in prayer. And I bet there's a lot of other things, but I don't know. It's just there is something different. Your mindset changes to a global mission when your context is global. So I mean, that sounds really obvious and basic, but it doesn't really happen if your physical setting doesn't allow for any interaction with international. And then it, you know, you could get into if that's really living out Matthew 28 or not. If that's the case, if you're only physical and you haven't thought at all about going to other things, especially if that's—we're talking once a week for churches on Sundays being not very effective. I mean, then are you gonna say that you're once every three years when you go on a missions trip to Peru, you know, and like that's it? Is that you're being effective now? You know, I don't know that. Now, yeah, I said now. You see where I get the hate mail? Alright, so that is Jake. A dump. Jeff, send them to Jeff freed set up the podcast calm. Let's wrap up. I'm gonna combine the last two timewise, and maybe there's a reason to keep them separated. I'll let you guys tell me as we're going through. In book order, seven and eight, in whatever order we are in, ten and eleven: compassion and justice. So compassion and justice—we're segwaying probably for more practical biblical functions to two more non-practical here. Compassion and justice, what do you all think about that in a digital church?

Well, honestly, you think about it. In many respects, compassion is already kind of happening. You have the GoFundMe sites that are, you know, left and right, that is kind of a compassion and kind of experience is the same kind of deceit that physical compassion often experiences. And honestly, in many respects, I'm wondering if, as we've been talking about this whole international thing and the digital church, I'm actually wondering if digital may be the most effective mode for justice because at that cost, because communication happens so quickly. This morning we had a prayer service at our church, and one of our—I shouldn't say Luddite. I might be using the wrong term, folks that don't use technology very much. We just say boomer, but you can use whatever. Okay, boomer. Wow, Scott's been very heavy in here because a little humor. I was just joking, but boomer. I mean, that's awesome. He was talking about how quick communication was happening, and it struck me how quick miscommunication happens. And I realized, and that he was, as he was praying about, you know, how quickly you noted, Jake, that we're learning about all these things instantaneously happening around the world. How quickly we can miscommunicate everything too. And I think that's why, and I'm starting to have to process this like as we're doing this, is how important we are. It's going to be to think how digital will affect doing justice as we talk about, you know, the Me Too movement or Black Lives Matter movements or any of the other justice movements that are quote-unquote local to the United States. We're not just talking about that. We're talking about international injustices that are happening, whether it be our martyred brothers and sisters in Christ or other things. We, I'm kind of actually at a loss for words just being blown away by the thought of how critical digital will be and is to the pursuit of justice from a Christ-centered point of view.

There's definitely a place where we feel looking at digital that justice is in the hands of the Twitter account, justice is in the hands of the individual for that. And that may be, you know, maybe a small justice, but I mean, I chose funny. My daughter said the other day, she's like, "I want to be President of the United States of America." And I was like, "God, I hope she's not actually."

Successful. I just, I fear anyone having that sort of power honestly at this point. And I'm not even getting political, but by saying that, much as there's no way anybody can be successful in that position given this day and age with everybody kind of sharing and having their own opinions and driving that on social media and fake news and everything surrounding that. You know, whatever way that you believe, there's always an opportunity for you to scream very loud at that, and through social media and news there's always somebody who's listening to that.

How do we utilize some of these tools that are good for that, that are providing justice? How do we utilize them for Christ-like? And that's my fear in the midst of the noise of everything else that's happening, the cries for justice and the fear of, I do not want to get political. It's funny, I just saw Jake Randa kind of post a thing like that, of why would anybody in this day and age say anything political on social media because it just opens up attacks and whatever he said that recently on Twitter. Like, how do we utilize digital for justice for Christ without it getting lost? Go ahead.

Yeah, so I am classically, I have like I pick my battles. I know it doesn't feel like I do, but as far as like the political side of things go, I usually I'm pretty like, whatever. I mean, I'm gonna worry about the things that are in the church because that's enough for me right now and the world's gonna do what the world is going to do. But there are some things that I get very hot about, and justice for me, I think about abortion. I think about the way that our society has decided that it is okay, that it is a thing that we can do at levels six or seven times the Holocaust, and that just, we can act like it's nothing.

So without getting into it, I mean, when I think about justice, that's just the thing that I think. And that you have an opportunity to really speak on behalf of people who will literally never have an opportunity to speak. So thinking on justice, I only preface that because I think it's already been spoken. And Ian, like what you were talking about, I think is very true. But I put that hand-in-hand with compassion because of Ephesians 4:32, that be kind to one another, tender-hearted or compassionate, depending, strong compassion, forgiving one another as Christ forgave you.

And when compassion is mentioned in the Bible, it's almost always in conjunction with forgiveness. You know, and those two things, justice and forgiveness, allow for us to explain grace. You know, and when we're talking about people online that have viewpoints that may be very different than ours, we can have a strong stance in justice and at the same time. But the difference I think for a lot of people is that the idea, you know, even the word justice online, usually is in the context of social justice warrior, is like what the thought is there, right? When I think of social justice warrior, I'm very rarely thinking compassion. Does that make sense?

So as a church, we have an opportunity as Christ believers. We have a chance to actually have a strong viewpoint on justice, but the difference that we would have against the world, that element of compassion, is not something that's usually seen. That's where it's kind of weird, if that makes sense. That I can have compassion on somebody who goes beyond what I see is just, and why, you know, because usually the viewpoint is, well, I need to be heard, and if I'm not, if somebody isn't hearing me, I can't love that person until I'm heard. If that makes sense.

And you can hear somebody. You can say, this is what's just, but at the same time, I have compassion on that person. I'm gonna forgive, you know? It doesn't mean you become somebody's punching bag. You know, that's something else I see happen often, and there's a whole bunch of things we get into that. But the idea that, you know, I think Matthew 18, the parable of the two debtors, and that forgiveness and compassion is a one-person job. Compassion, forgiveness, what takes one person? It's not, I wait for this person to do something and then I do something. Does that make sense?

So it's like the parable of the two debtors. That God forgave us so much, right? That the debtor there's somebody that has a debt that could not be paid, billions of dollars, and then it's forgiven. And then he goes to the person that owes him a thousand dollars, you know, whatever, and he's like, you know, pay me all that you owe. And the idea is that if God is forgiving us so much, he's shown us so much compassion, then why would we not show other people that same compassion, right?

I'm not even talking digital at this point, but so it's one. It's just one. It's what takes one person. This isn't, I wait for you to do something and then if you pay everything back then I forgive you. You know, I forgive you. I forgive you because God has forgiven me so much. And the opportunity to show that online happens very regularly. If you're doing life together with people, you will have excuses. Doesn't matter if it's physical or digital at this point. You will have an opportunity to forgive somebody because they have opportunities to hurt you and they'll take it. They're human, you know?

And so I think with compassion, it's even less of an, is it possible in digital, and more like, is it possible for you as a person in general? Do you forgive people in your regular day life? You know, because if you do it in your physical location, you do it probably digital, and vice versa.

And so for both of these things, for justice and for compassion, I think people, they're both like very deep concepts, but they're very internally deep, you know? And justice is looking at justice for the rest of the world, but even then, compassion is just totally internal, you know? Your ability to forgive people or not.

Yeah, I think there's an opportunity to be split-minded here where you could see someone be very compassionate in a physical environment but to be very judgmental and unforgiving and virtual. It's funny, I'm actually reminded of the two memes or a meme, a video meme of the two dogs, and they're just little yappy dogs, and they're just yapping at each other through the fence, not realizing that the fence is a gate that's opening. And the gate just slowly starts to shift to the right, and all of a sudden these dogs that are yapping at each other, just yelling at each other through the fence, are face-to-face, and there's nothing preventing them from tearing them apart except their own fear of what it would be like. And then they just kind of walk away without saying anything because now, like, they don't have the freedom to yell at each other without reciprocating that.

I can totally see where you would have a situation in a digital-only or digital-first expression of church where the church or an individual is maybe leaning one side in a virtual environment and then another in real life, just like I could see somebody being one way on a Sunday morning sitting in the pew and that's not affecting them kind of Monday through Saturday, so to speak. And so there's an opportunity here I would suggest for the church, just like digital, physical, whatever. I think this is a problem, Jake. You alluded to it that goes across all medium. Is like, we need to show that compassion. We need to understand the grace that allows us the opportunity to have the voice of justice without that forgiveness, without understanding that, without the humility of just as Christ forgave us so we should forgive others.

I don't know. I look at the world today and I just see a whole bunch of, man, these people need some humility. These people need some Christ in their life and need to start to exude that first, you know? The Beatitudes: blessed are the meek, blessed are the humble, blessed are the poor in spirit. I don't see a lot of blessed are the outraged across the Bible, yet strangely it seems like that's all we see in the world today. And I'm not just talking secular. I'm talking churches.

Well, well, that's awesome. Hey, man, Jake, thanks for that. What other thoughts? What are the feedbacks we got on this before we wrap up?

Um, one of the things that I was thinking about was that digital tools for whatever reason tend to be a little bit more polarized where you have the megaphone and the telephone. And when you're talking about justice and compassion, I think that for whatever reason, when you start leaning toward the megaphone side of that equation, whether that be physical or digital, it tends to be more destructive.

When you see Scripture, like when whenever you're talking about justice or compassion, it always brings me back to that passage in Scripture in the Old Testament that says, do justice, which is different than speaking justice. Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly. That feels like to me more of a telephone expression rather than a megaphone expression of what justice and compassion can look like.

And when you see the vast majority of the times where even Jesus was doing justice and showing compassion, in the vast majority it was more on the individual side of the expression rather than the megaphone side of the expression. If you understand what I'm saying, so I think that in the physical space, the pulpit is used in the same destructive ways that Twitter can be used as a megaphone, whereas when you're talking to people one-on-one or you're talking using the digital tools like telephone or one-on-one conversations, a lot of those things don't even matter because it's kind of like taking away the gate and it's like, oh, I'm talking with a regular person now. I can do justice, I can love mercy, I can walk humbly in the digital space or in the physical space.

I think getting one-on-one with people really helps to share the love of Jesus and to do justice and to show compassion. And I think what you pointed out, Jason, was one of the pitfalls of digital, is it has a tendency to be megaphone-oriented, at least the way we're currently using it. But that's also in many ways its strength because we can have the power to drown out the negativity and the fear, which honestly the church digitally is not doing a very good job at. And that, you know, so there's that.

But I think one of the things that you pointed out, Jason, that I think is very important that the church needs to work on as a discipleship standpoint, especially digitally, is there somebody else on the other side of that screen? Amen. And that is, I think that is going to be, and that is currently the biggest weakness of the digital expression, is that we are for many people, I think especially for those of us, I'm about to say this, that are older, you know, Jade, you know, having been more digital than the rest of us, but there is that we really do have a disconnect. A lot of us do have that disconnect. There's somebody else on the other side of the screen who is hurt and broken, and we really need to work on our own personal one-on-one compassion.

I know this is gonna sound strange, but people such as you know, a more corporeal, hurt people, treat the screen as a human being, not in a creepy way, and love them because that way the love of Christ will go through the screen. Amen.

I got to tell you, like just from my vantage point as we've been Stadia, as we've been dreaming about what a digital church could be and praying through some different things, honestly like I'm taking a lot of my lessons from the micro-church level, like the KC Underground, Tampa Underground, and really even like the co-vocational ministers, the guys who have a full-time job and really look at their workplace as the opportunity to do ministry there. Seth Godin, I was listening to his podcast a couple weeks ago. We'll link to it in.

The show notes, but he did, and I think I wrote a blog on it. Somebody asked him a question. It's 2020. What platforms would you utilize to get a message out to the world? And in a typical Seth Godin fashion, he didn't answer the question he was asked. Instead, he answered another question: how would you get a message out to the world? And it wasn't, and me, and I'm gonna challenge you a little bit here. The strength of technology of the internet today is not broadcasting a message out to a billion people. There's so much noise on that line. Nobody's listening in.

To Seth Godin's point, he's like, you don't create a message for a billion people or a hundred million or even ten million people. Even though, even a million, you want to get your message to the smallest number of people possible and then duplicate it from there. And so like when I look at digital church, I see an opportunity to reach a small amount of people, to help multiple people find their audience, and to help them get started to reach that audience in as small as possible because I think the smaller you are, the more that you realize there's a person on the other end of that webcam or the other end of that computer monitor, and that enables the message to be received well and hopefully repeated.

Disciple-making is key in this because the idea can't just go one generation, but it has to multiply after that. And so our hope in doing this digital church initiative is to really find ways to not broadcast. I truly, I would rather not, honestly. I would rather, and we were actually Jake, Joey, we were part of this conversation. I would rather not have a billion person church. Not really. Not really interested in that. I would rather have a hundred million churches of ten that are multiplying and growing from there because I think that's where you're going to get the disciple-making capacity. I think that's where you're going to truly understand fellowship. I think you're understanding community, and you're also understanding the compassion capacity to do things even in operating at body ministry.

So much of this is easily reproduced in the smaller amounts, and in a smaller body of Christ, the larger we get, the more unwieldy some of these things get, unfortunately. And that, I feel, is some of the tension that we, the church today, is feeling. The physical church and even the physical church feeling its judgments towards the virtual church conversation. I had with Ed last week. You go back and listen to it. It's episode fifty, fifty-one with the podcast man. It was awesome because at some point he's like, he's like, I don't agree with church online, but Jeff, tell me your vantage point. How would you answer this question? I'm not gonna give away the question. Go listen to the podcast. But I answered the question, and he's like, wow, I totally affirm everything you just said. That was incredible. Every church needs to do exactly what Jeffrey just said.

At the heart of it all, I said was, hey, we need to start using online to make the disciple makers. If we can get people to stop being consumers and start being disciple makers, not only our digital churches will start to be able to replicate, but our physical church is gonna find themselves getting closer to this biblical ecclesiology, biblical standard. The functions that we have in place. So this has been great. I really value y'all's insight working through this and the amount of time that she's been digging into, you know, the biblical functions of worship, teaching, prayer, sacraments, fellowship, disciple-making, compassion, justice, mission, global missions, and body ministry. Definitely a lot for us to think about and work through.

So for Jade, for Ian, for Joey, for Jason, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you next time here at the podcast. Y'all have a good day.