BETA16: Differences Between Physical & Digital (Clubhouse Edition)

Hey, we're going to get you to that podcast in one second, but before we get there, I, Jeff Reed, the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planning, I wanted to have a conversation with you, churches that are out there. One of the greatest things I arguably think that I've done in my life, other than married and kids, okay, that aside, one of the greatest ministry things I've ever done is this idea of the fidgetal learning communities that we are offering through Stadia Church Planning. We want to help you, we want to help your church learn to thrive, grow, and multiply fidgetally, physically, as well as digitally. We've seen about 200 churches go through this already, and it's been a phenomenal result of it.

Culture is changing within these churches. They're understanding what it is to thrive. They're understanding how to grow people, how to grow their church, even in the midst of this COVID, not COVID, wherever we are in the season. And they're even starting to understand what it means to multiply in fidgetal space. There's no secret sauce to doing a digital strategy. There's no secret sauce to doing a fidgetal strategy. There's no secret sauce to making your church thrive, grow, and multiply. It takes work. I'm not going to lie. But through the framework, through the questions, through the learning communities, we connect you with churches. We give you some content. We coach you along the way to help you make the decisions that you need to make so that your church's strategy can thrive, grow, and multiply your church along the way.

This is a great opportunity for your church. We would love to have you be a part of it. For more information, check out stadiachurchplanning.org slash fidgetal. stadiachurchplanning.org slash fidgetal. P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L. All right. Hey, that's it. We're going to get you back to that episode right now. All right. We got beta episode 16 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stated Church Planting. Jeff here. By the way, this is Clubhouse edition. We're in the middle of an experiment. We've talked about this publicly, about how we're experimenting with the beta show, actually running the beta show on this new social media network called Clubhouse. By the way, I love it. By the way, if you don't have access to Clubhouse, reach out to me on social media.

Superfetch, the Church Digital, if you know me, you know where to find me, and I would love to get you access to Clubhouse. It's iOS. It is not Android friendly yet. Sorry. It's primarily in the United States and I think England. So even internationally, some people have had a hard time getting onto it. And yes, I hear you, Android users and people who don't want to get on Clubhouse. Yes, there is solid content that's happening on Clubhouse. And yes, FOMO, fear of missing out, is a thing. So, hey, we're going to be doing content on Clubhouse, but then we're also going to make it available through the Church Digital. We're doing this in an audio podcast. It's what you're listening to right now and working through video and trying to get video streams and even live streaming out of Clubhouse on the other social networks, kind of working through some technical aspects.

And I need to figure out, I need a preamp for audio. So maybe there's a production guy out there that wants to have a conversation. Reach out to me. Let's figure it out. All right. So here's where we are. In this conversation, the question, and this was posed by Liz Rios, one of a network church planter person down here in South Florida. One of my, I told in the broadcast, this is one of my favorite people on social media that I have yet to meet. Liz is asking great questions and sharing some great ideas when it comes towards digital church. And it was in one of these conversations that I had somewhere on Facebook. I forget where, but Liz basically made the comment about, hey, you know, there's lots of questions to ask on digital.

And I said, hey, what's the best topic? What is the biggest question for you right now that would help the churches that you're working with, with passion to plant and in that passion to plant network? And Liz replied back, what's the difference between digital and physical? And that is an incredible question. And so that's what we're bringing into this conversation here with the Church Digital Podcast. What is the difference between physical and digital? Physical ministry, digital ministry, they operate differently. And we brought in a great panelist of conversations and had incredible conversations, questions asked from the audience and thoughts. It was great. Hey, we're going to introduce these guys.

Matt Welty from Crossroads. Tyler Volkers from Ridge Church up in Minnesota. Stephen Smith from First Baptist Houston. Liz Rios jumped in. And there were other people who jumped in to ask questions from Clubhouse, which is why I love Clubhouse so much. The accessibility of people to share thoughts and ask questions is awesome. So this is a great conversation with Matt, Tyler, Stephen, and Liz centered around what's the difference between digital and physical. This is going to be beta episode 16 here, Clubhouse edition, how digital is different than physical. Okay, everybody, here you go. Hey, this is going to be a really interesting conversation. We're going to open it up. I want to introduce Liz Rios, Elizabeth Rios, my favorite Facebook friend here in Miami, who I've never actually physically met.

Elizabeth, we've not been in the same physical space, right? I don't want to be crazy here. We're awkward. But we've not physically met, right? Nope, we have not. Awesome. I love that. The greatness of technology. I love it. You can engage, help people. And just even in the same city. And we've never physically connected. Thank you, COVID, for that. Hey. So, like, I just wanted to ask up front, and part of this literally, Liz, is in answer to some of our conversations. If there are questions while we're dialoguing, if there's other people in the room that have questions and dialoguing, one of the options, the greatness parts of utilizing Clubhouse is that we get to hear each other talk. I look at it very much towards Q&A.

I look at it a lot towards engaging and sharing some thoughts. And so, I really want to utilize the hand-raising function here. If you guys have thoughts, even in the audience level, let's bring you up and let's dialogue and let's talk through this. I want this to be a constant flow of conversation. And on the panelist side, let's let others kind of speak in and dialogue through it as well, since we're all kind of wrestling and learning from this. And so, appreciate that. Looking forward to that. Also, I need to say, because Clubhouse is Clubhouse, we are recording this. I will turn this into a podcast at some point, I think probably within the next week or so, and put it out on the Church Digital Podcast.

There's a link in my bio if you want to subscribe to the podcast to have access to it. Or if you want to share this with others. But a lot of people have FOMO because we're doing this on, you know, here on Clubhouse where not everybody has access and all the Android users are all freaking out. So, we do make it available for them on that. But, you know, and let's even open it up towards practicality. If someone wants to share, you know, feel free to raise their hand seriously and let's get in there. But I'll just open it up for the panel and kind of see who wants to go first. In context of digital ministry, maybe what were some of the first lessons or the biggest lessons, the biggest aha moments that we've experienced in this COVID season when it comes to digital?

What's the big life lesson that it's like now I'm understanding why and how to communicate to these different shapes, to the circles and to the triangles? Anybody want to speak to that? I'd say this. I'd say we totally underestimated our congregation at the beginning. Wow. Jeff, you and I have talked about this before. We were very afraid, you know, the first day or two. I would say even the first week or two, we were like, how are we going to get people online to make this thing happen? And by the time that two weeks were up, you know, six billion people in the world. Well, that's an overstatement. The people in our church, most of them could understand Zoom. Most of them could get into a Bible study.

The, you know, the world was trained in digital communication overnight. So what we thought in the beginning would be the hardest, sorry, the tallest hurdle to overcome was actually something that was quite easy because there was a necessity of communication that happened. And I think that's something the Lord gave us, all of us, to be able to have training overnight for people to be able to connect in that way. Unbelievable. I think that that's the thing that happened. It was necessity. I think. Fear of technology because they themselves didn't really know how to navigate that. And so they transferred that to their people. And, yes, that was the big aha that, oh, my gosh, people know how to press a button and get into a Zoom and things like that.

But I think, too, though, honestly, from my perspective, there was a need for change even before the pandemic. And there were people that were, you know, already experimenting with digital and trying to see, you know, how that could work for church. I had actually interviewed Pastor Jay Kim, who he actually wrote a book and it came out like right in like two months into the pandemic. And I was just like, oh, my gosh, he wrote a book called Analog Church. I don't know if anyone's heard of it. And it was about why we need real people in places in this digital age. And the funny thing about it was that he was kind of advocating for, you know, that physical presence. But remember that you can still use the digital because he says that the digital informs, but the, you know, the physical presence transforms.

And I actually, you know, got back to him and I was like, OK, how do you feel now with everybody doing this, you know? And it was like, you know, I never meant it to be that I was against digital, but that it wouldn't be something that we would look to as the permanent place for us to stay. But I really believe that there's a lot of people itching to go back to normal. You know, let's let's can't wait to open up, open up, you know, and that's OK. You know, we still need the physical presence. That's why I believe in the digital. Thank you, Jeff, for for, you know, coining that. But I think there is a big place for digital going forward for a lot of different reasons. And I think that's why I thought this conversation would be interesting because it's it's it's not saying no because you're scared, but saying yes, with a different mindset, using different platforms to reach different kinds of people.

It's you know, I think it's about, you know, engagement. I think that's what another aha thing that people have learned during this time, that it's not just people jumping into the the you know, the stream, but it's actually how do you engage people? Well, I like someone just mentioned the digital pathway. That's awesome. You know, getting people involved in disciple, a digital discipleship method is still important. But guess what? Discipleship was important before the pandemic. It's just that people weren't paying attention to it. Now they're like, oh, my God, how are we going to get people engaged and how are we going to get people to understand the gospel? They're paying more attention to it because they have to.

Well said. And definitely the relational aspects of church online, doing digital church pre-COVID, that was missed by the majority of churches out there. There were a large percentage of churches in 2019 that were broadcasting church services online. But the number of churches that were doing digital discipleship, small groups, creating biblical community. I mean, honestly, you're probably looking at under 200 churches in 2019 that had made a commitment towards it. And 2020 started to swing. But, of course, it was gasoline on the flame in March 2020 as everything sped along. But that really has been the miss. And I've got horror stories similar to your analog church with Daniel Kim, I believe is the author there, talking about how pastors, they just didn't see that relational aspect until they were forced into that position as a result of COVID.

Hey, Russell, I know you came up and raised your hand. What were you thinking on this? I was just thinking, I started, I guess, you know, past several years, I've been looking at digital because I was a youth pastor. And we kind of were starting to get into those phases and things. And then, bam, like everybody else, it hit. And also, bam, I got changed. I got moved to a church in Houston, a Methodist pastor at a church in Houston. And I was a senior pastor all of a sudden at a church that had never done digital. And they just kind of figured it out with everybody else and kind of put together something. But what has surprised me, and I don't know why it surprised me, but I figured the youth would grab onto it.

I figured, you know, this would be a millennial thing and a Gen Z thing. But the number of, I figured I would have to come in and convince people that we need to keep doing digital. Like, you know, I was just thinking in my mind, you know, when we get back and vaccine comes and things settle down, everybody's just going to want to go back to physical in person. And it surprised me how many of my older congregation members have said, we need to keep doing this. We need to pour money into this. This is something because they've seen the value from, you know, they can participate with their grandkids are there. Or if they're gone somewhere else, they can participate. Or if they're sick, at home.

And so I thought it was going to be a huge challenge to convince the older generations that this was going to be something that was going to be positive. But I've been just surprised about that. And I wanted to see if that's the same with everybody else. And then also, I'm just here to listen to the ways that we continue to move beyond just streaming your services and, you know, trying to find more and more ways to keep engaged beyond just putting a camera in the back of the room or whatever. So thank you very much. Love it. Hey, thanks for jumping up, Russell. For me, like one of the takeaways is the fact that digital can be the tool that can help you reach a million people. Or it can be the tool that can help you do an individual one-on-one conversation.

Like it does not, it scales, it flexes depending upon the context of what you want to do. You want to get your message heard around the world. You can use digital in a way to do that. I'm not sure you'll be effective in doing it, but you could try to get it done, literally, so your message can be heard around the world. You want to build a relationship with someone individually into a rich individual disciple-making relationship one-on-one, one-on-three. Digital has that power to flex into it as well. And I think that's really the opportunity, even above and beyond what physical can do, is the context of how it can multiply, how it can scale, how it can shift into different contexts. And that's one of the things, Matt, honestly, that I've loved with what Crossroads has done, is how you've been able to utilize that technology piece to get that large reach, but then you're utilizing it through your guides and some of the other things that you're doing organizationally to really utilize the technology at an individual level, even some of the stuff with your mobile app.

I don't know if you'd be willing to share or speak to some of that. Yeah, sure. Anything that's helpful. I mean, I think that's, to your point, that the differences between physical and digital, which is a tricky thing to talk about, because actually, whichever model you pick, for it to be culturally current and effective today, both models have to be figital. They just show up figitally different. If it, you know, the online church model or the traditional multi-site or traditional church model, for either of them to be culturally current, they have to blend both, but each has their own strengths. So, you know, I think one of the strengths of the physical model is the captive attention we have with people.

There's something amazing. I used to design weekend services. When someone gives you 65 minutes and you can take them on an entire journey and create an environment where they can experience God and learn from you, like, it's just a really incredible thing. The attention span online is so much shorter. So, you know, where there's strength in one area, on the digital side, I feel like one of the strengths is you can give people radical access to key leaders. You know, so you can use these micro moments of connection, but they can be the kind of moments that, wow, I can't believe the senior pastor answered my question on Instagram. Or, you know, I can't believe that I can DM a prayer request and get an answer right away.

We, I mean, Jeff, to the app thing, you know, the, we try to do community at scale, which is like a really scary pioneering. We don't know if we're doing it right at all, but, you know, creating platforms where people can pray for each other, where people can, you know, read each other's reflections of today's daily scripture and be able to sort of co-disciple each other. You know, trying to figure out how can we take, you know, what, what digital does well is it can sometimes do a good job of removing the barriers of you have to be in a very specific time and a very specific place to get the goods. And instead, those platforms can make the goods available on demand and hopefully more and more, the people in the church, like the actual church, the people are able to create value for each other on those platforms.

And it doesn't all have to fall to the church staff team to do that. So I think it's one of the differences and strengths of digital as well. Well, I mean, that even gets into equipping, how are we digital? How is that enabling other people to do ministry as opposed to the paid professionals that kind of sometimes can, can trump within the, within the physical space, just empowering and releasing. I love that. Hey, Tom, you raised your hand a while back. Tom Pounder from New Life in DC, as well as, man, this guy's all over the place to create digital resources, some awesome stuff. Tom, what are you thinking? Hey, thanks, Jeff. First time caller, long time listener. I'm serious, man. This is like talk radio at its finest.

2021's version of talk radio. Well done. All right. What are you thinking? Hey, I want to just go off of what Russell was talking about, too, because I think we cannot forget the older generation. And I'll just use a personal example. My father, he's in his early 70s, and he's not the most tech savvy person out there. But during, like, he would go to different Bible studies in person before COVID, always looking for community since my mom passed away a few years ago. And then when COVID hit, he quickly learned how to do Zoom. He never had done Zoom before him. Then he would call me, constantly ask him for how to do it. But now he attends at least four or five different Bible studies from different churches around the area on Zoom.

And he is constantly learning things. And it is a source of community for him. And I think as we, again, everyone wants to get butts back in seats in the physical church building. But as we work towards that in some capacity, we cannot forget that this older generation can still pick up, you know, technology. And it has been a tremendous source of encouragement and hope and community for them. And I think a lot of them will stay on online well after we get back into the building, whatever that looks like for your church. Those were my thoughts, and I was very encouraged by that. Yeah, even just to build on that, and I've told the story of my mom a lot. And my mom is at Christ Fellowship Miami.

I see Rita Armas is in the room and publicly said this. I think my mom is the best small groups leader in all of Christ Fellowship. The hundreds of small groups, my mom's the best. And she leads two small groups online. My mom's 70-something years old. I'm not going to lie. She texted me this morning because she forgot how to print on her computer again. So she's not, you know, the most technologically advanced. It's public knowledge. I am adopted. And so, but seriously, and she's not the best when it comes to some of the tech piece. That being said, when I went to my mom five years ago and said, Hey, mom, would you consider leading an online small group? This is it. I've got two or three young professional women who are looking for mentorship.

And would you consider taking some time with them through a small group and just mentor, disciple them? It was, my mom was a professional down here in Miami. She worked for a mortgage company, was a VP, high-ranking officer within the company. And she retired and she thought her ministry career was over. I mean, she's literally using words like, it's time for a younger person to step up and do this. I think I'm done. And through this digital discipleship, she started discipling girls in other states. Like my mom's in Miami. She's working with people in Washington, D.C., in Houston. And it literally has kept growing into other countries. Literally like different countries where she's now doing discipleship, where she's doing small groups and building some of those relationships.

To the point that my mom's literally traveled the world meeting people who she's been doing small groups with. Collectively, they do trips together to different locations just to hang out together occasionally back when you could travel and hang out together for recreational purposes pre-COVID. And the type of people that my mom are getting together in a group, I mean, it ranges, yeah, there's some 70-year-old friends of my mom. But it ranges all the way down to 20-somethings. And the fact is, you can get that in physical and digital space. And it works because digital is an incredible equalizer. Sometimes I'm not sure you can really get those types of groups to effectively work in physical space.

I really think that there's such a level of acceptance and forgiveness because that lens on that camera provides that separation. I think you can do things digitally that you can't do physically. And in fact, one of the small groups my mom leads is actually three of her friends that are in like the 60s and 70-year-olds. And then it's their daughters that are, you know, 30 to 40-year-olds, but they're separated by distance. And so, for example, my mom lives in Miami, one of her friends lives in Miami, and the daughter of the friend lives in, I don't know, Arizona, I think. And the fact is, you'll never get those people in physical space together because of distance. But one of the few times a week that the mother and the daughter actually connect together relationally because of distance is when they're studying the Bible together.

And so she's been able to figure out how to take advantage of the benefit of digital, the fact that you can reach people in different places, and utilizing that strength with an online small group to build some of that relationship, to restore some of that relationship. It's beautiful. And my mom came up with that all on her own, and she's 73. And so if you're looking for an online small groups pastor, I can definitely connect you with her. She's incredible and well worth it. She doesn't know how to print sometimes, but beyond that, she's an incredible resource. I'm kidding. Don't hire my mom. That's awesome. But seriously, there's phenomenal opportunities there. So somebody else up here at the speaker level, if there are questions, raise your hand, come up.

We'd love to dialogue through here. But as we think about some of the similarities and some of the differences, how is digital, physical different? How is it similar? What are we thinking about? I'd just like to add another thing, too, about that, that one of the things that I know I've been thinking about, and I have a few of my friends in the room that I've been trying to convince them to join in on adventure, which is that not only are we doing digital discipleship differently and, you know, kind of doing different ways of Matthew 28, but also we get an opportunity to tap into some of the most amazing people that are doing ministry around the country. And they get to either, you know, come on as part of your team, or they are able to come and speak to your congregation without actually having to take a plane.

So not only are we expanding who we reach, but we're also able to bring in more people to teach. This is a great way to really be the distributed church. There's no walls. You can get an opportunity to not only expand your reach, you know, through the digital discipleship, because it is possible, but also that you can bring in some people that you would love to have in ministry with you, but can't, because everybody's in different geographical areas, and that makes it possible to have this digital community. And some people have had the local parish, whenever COVID-19 disappears, whenever that is, they can continue to have that physical presence, as Matt mentioned, because really a good church will have both expressions.

So I agree with that. But for the time being, it's a great opportunity to not only, you know, expand the reach, but also bring in people that you would love to work with you and teach your people. You know, our old models of church, I think sometimes unintentionally with no ill motives, they led us into this exclusivity mindset, where, like, the people in our church were our church people. And this new era that we're going in, I just wonder, as we let go of exclusivity, and as we embrace that people are going to do the weekend at this church and a weekend over here, and then they're going to do a small group study at this church, that we might discover more unity in the kingdom. And there's just something really exciting about that distributed church concept that you talked about.

And I would hope that it does bring more unity. Definitely, you know, we all know that we need that. But I think that, you know, it's just what we mentioned earlier. We just need to not come into this whole idea of the physical church with the same old mental maps that we had, because there are always going to be obstacles. And if we're right now in the middle of this, because of the crisis, thinking, I can't wait to hurry up and go back to normal, we already missed it. Yeah, that's right. Amen. So good. Okay, you're my new favorite person, Liz. It's awesome. Seriously, like, put her on the list. This is incredible. It's great. How funny. I think one of the tension points, and I would love to hear from maybe the group, Jeff, one of the tension points that we've found are the people who, you know, the circle people who really want butts in seats, who really are pushing for physical presence.

And then the people who are saying, you know, I am just not comfortable with that amount of people, one, and I'm getting my needs met in a discipleship pathway through digital. I'm just wondering maybe how people in the group maybe have tried to reconcile the two. Well, I tell you what, let me throw that question. I see John Howell's up here, at least if this is the John Howell that I'm thinking you are. John is actually one of these guys that's interested in planting a digital-only expression of church and is developing some platforms to do just that. And so I would be interested in John's take on that. Well, yeah, so I'd like to, if I can, I'll just share a little bit my experience. I am planting this church.

It's entirely digital, but I went home to see my parents a couple of weeks ago. You know, I've told them what I'm doing, and sure, they understand, and like any good parent, they're supportive. But I watched them on a Sunday morning, watched their church service online. Then I watched one down in Florida where they like to go visit when they get too cold. And then they watched another service online. And I just thought to myself, what I'm watching is the exact experience that I went through as a kid when I had to teach them how to program a VCR. And then later on when I taught them how to program their DVR. And what happened was they've learned to transition their time away from, hey, I could go to church at this point in time to now they're realizing, hey, we can watch church at any time we want to, which is really exciting for them.

In regards to the question you just asked, I think that this is really interesting because I think people are recognizing the value of the relationships in the local physical environment. But they're also recognizing the joy and the freedom to be able to be digital everywhere. And I think that that tension is really exciting because I think it's going to change the way we equip the people in the church and that sort of thing. I'm not sure that answers the question because I was thinking about the DVR stuff. I think that's a great answer to that question. I think for those of us who are proponents of digital, we've got to be able to develop language, almost an apologetic, that says here are benefits of this type of communication.

You know, one of the words that we've really come to over the last few months, we've gone back and forth, but one of the words that we've come to over the last three months is immersion. I think argument for people in the summertime, especially when we're in Europe, when we reopened, is there's just nothing like physical experience. And I think Matt said this, maybe Tyler, of the 65 minutes, it's an immersive experience where we're in control and we're completely setting the mood, setting the tone. It's a creative environment. So I think people in summer where we need to get people back because it's an immersive experience that is preferable to us. And I think what we really had to come to is the fact that digital can also be immersive in a different way.

It's given us some legs to stand on and say, okay, digital is not inferior. Digital is different. And that's the topic of our conversation. Digital is different in that it is a different type of immersive experience. I hate to use a Disney analogy, but Jeff, I'm on your show, so it works out. It's a difference between watching the parade on Main Street and watching it on TV on ABC. It's a different thing, definitely. And they're both valuable and they're both great. I'm not saying church is a parade. I'm not saying church is Disney. That's just a terrible analogy. But what I am saying is that there's an in-person value and there's a digital value. And we've got to develop language to communicate digital value.

What I think the attention towards digital brought is actually, and with losing the one hour on Sunday in the physical building in COVID, I think it brought more attention, I was alluded to earlier, towards your holistic entire process. You know, my parents, I'll talk about my dad here for a second. He's 70-something as well. And the church that they attend, it gets the campus they attend, it's kind of busy. It's packed. There's lots of people there. And my dad, God bless him, he's at the age that he's at. He doesn't like crowds. And so for him, they, I mean, I want to say maybe 90% of the church services they attend, they're attending digital only. They literally live half a mile away from the church campus.

But they still have decided that in physical space, they're going to do that digital only. Now, questions arise, hey, what about community? How are they serving? How are they? And the answer is, they do all that. They are regularly in small groups. My mom, as I said earlier, leads multiple small groups. My dad is very active in serving the community in context of homeless ministry and different things. And what's interesting is if you check off kind of the, and I'm making fun of the situation here, but check off all the boxes of what it actually means to be a disciple, at least if you're taking the assimilation standpoint of it. My parents are very active in doing all those things, even if they're not in physical space.

And so the opportunity and the understanding of, hey, there's more to just being a Christian than the small group. There's more to being an active member. There's more to being a disciple of Christ than just being a part of that gathering periodically. At this point, you know, pre-COVID, it was like 1.6 times a month. I think there's a better understanding of that now. But also at the same time, I think there's even a better standard that's in place now as we're seeing kind of the large services maybe lose some of their value in context of attendance, where now it's, hey, let's start to equip people to have spiritual conversations. Let's raise the standard of what we're calling a disciple and what we're going to challenge our church members to be.

And so I'm just curious, like, have you, any of you in the room or even raise your hand, if not, have you seen that or have you had any experience of, man, the physical is not as much of value now post-COVID as pre-COVID. So we're going to have to lean more on our people to go out there and share. What does that look like in context of your churches? Hey, Jeff, I'll jump in on that. That's great. I think to answer the first question, like, yeah, this is the opportunity to bust Christian consumerism for sure. Because what it's looked like for us is just equipping R99 to invest in their one, whether it's physically or digitally. And right now what we're discovering is most of our ones aren't interested in coming into a large gathering in a physical building.

The ones who want to are your Christians who want to come back and have that experience again. And so what's been really, really helpful as we've gone through this journey and we've taken all of our training to how to invest in your one, you know, online, some in person as well. Go through this process, have our entire digital, our discipleship strategy, rather. You can do it online or in person. Get in a group, serve on a team, you know, serve your community. And then invest in your one, that's what we would say as someone who's a fully engaged individual at the Ridge. And use whatever tools your one will receive so that you can invest in them. And that process, I think, has really allowed more people to be on mission.

And so we've actually just unveiled a new vision statement at the Ridge. And that is, hey, our vision is to bring the hope of Jesus into every home. And that's... That's so great, man. Yeah, it's fun. It's exciting. We're excited to roll it out. And so we know it's going to happen by multiplying disciples, multiplying leaders, and multiplying networks of churches. I mean, that's the only way that that could happen. And so, you know, using digital and physical tools to get that done. So it's really just... For us, the effort has been more on how do we equip our 99 to get them focused on their one and then give them the tools to go after it. And so let them be the heroes rather than the Ridge. Love that.

Any other thoughts or comments on that? Thanks for sharing that, Tyler. Well, I tell you what, Grant, you raised your hand a while back, brought you up. I don't remember if we actually ever got to you for you to share what you were thinking. So, man, what are you thinking about? Physical, digital, how they're different. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, actually, I got out of this group for a little bit. My wife texted me SOS. And I was like, oh, snap, what's happening? And it was just her wanting to say hi. So, you know, the work from home life, right? But yeah, I'm pretty curious just on like your guys' thoughts. I mean, I work for Subsplash. It's a Christian tech company, really helping churches. And I was curious on how are y'all defining engagement?

I feel like it's going to slowly become a buzzword as we continue to do both digital and physical. But we'd love to hear y'all's thoughts as pastors and y'all's communities. Like, how are y'all defining engagement? What does successful engagement look like for you guys? Yeah, it's been a buzzword for about a year now. It's already achieved mega buzzword. And I love having, you know, I saw Shannon in here also from Subsplash. I love having some Subsplash people out there. Hey, yeah, so open it up. Or even from the room, how do you guys evaluate or how do you define engagement? Raise your hand if you want to speak into that or I'll open it up for the panel. Grant, I would say this real quickly.

It's one of the most difficult things for us to unlock in last year because it's so subjective. What we're trying to do is get objective measures. And so in a practical sense, we're looking at not just how many people are attending digitally, it's for how long. You know, are they just driving by and they're off in a minute or do they stay after a minute? How long are they engaging with the content? So that's one. Two is, are obviously likes and subscribes. You know, that's, that's one that's obvious to everybody here. But then other, others are, have you, have you asked for prayer? You know, are you engaging in that way? Are you generous in your, in your giving? Have you gotten into a small group?

Those kinds of things. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's generally same church stuff, but, but the, I think the biggest one for us was the generosity and the length of time interacting in the thing. Well said, well said, anybody else? I think for us, when we look at our pathway of where they're at and levels of engagement, we measure there. For us, our needed database is a big step. If we're connecting with new people and they're trusting us with some level of information, that's a, that's a big deal. And then moving in all the way down to someone that we would say who is fully engaged, which is probably one of our smaller numbers, but we're tracking is someone who's doing the four facets of our discipleship model that I mentioned earlier.

Are they, you know, regularly attending weekly services? We don't really have a super great way of tracking that, but are they also, are they in a group? Are they serving on a team? Are they giving? And then have they gone through our, our huddles to be equipped to invest in their one. And if someone knocks on all four of those, we would call them fully engaged at the Ridge. And I would say that there's really two types of engagement. And I think it was Steven who said this, that it's really still the same kind of things that you would look at as a church. You know, how many people are engaged in the mission? How many people are taking, you know, their next steps into that whole process of discipleship instead of just, you know, funneling people to events, you know, pointing people to Jesus.

And how does that look like? How are they embodying that in this time when, when we can't do things the way we used to do them? So, you know, cause there's the people inside the church that are coming through that we already know when they are showing up on our streams, but also the people that are outside the church. You know, how are you engaging the people that just heard about you because maybe you promoted your service and, and are new to your website or your email list. You know, how are you getting those people to, you know, how are you getting those people to, you know, celebrate community that they're engaged in some kind of small group that you've done digitally. You know, so they, they never were in anything and, and now they are, you know, how are you providing, you know, help with, with, with what they're going through in life, you know?

So they never were a part of your church and now you, you helping them with something through this pandemic. So, so there's that type of engagement, but then what we've always looked at, which is, you know, how are you empowering people to live out their faith and, you know, things like that. So some things haven't changed, but I think at the end of the day, the thing that has changed the most is how much intentionality goes behind looking at engagement. I think before we were just too comfortable. People came to church on Sunday and we were happy with whatever showed up. And, and now people understand that just, you know, getting, you know, 500 people on a, on a service, on a, on a stream service doesn't mean that they were actually watching.

They could have been, you know, playing with their kids and some other stuff. So there needs to be another level of engagement other than looking at the metrics of who's showing up to your stream. It's so good. Yeah, that's, that's really good there, Liz. And so let me, let me speak a little bit to that. If you've got questions, feel free to raise your hand talking about physical digital. We'll address another question after I'm done here. For, for me, engagement, I look at it as, as a two-way conversation. Steven, you and I had a conversation with some other pastors, I don't know, maybe a couple weeks ago talking about what a successful church is. And, and one of the takeaways for me on that conversation, how we define success, it was the idea of we want to get to one, a one-on-one relationship.

Conversation as quick as possible. And for me, engagement is that engagement. I quite literally define it as a two-way conversation. And for me, I see this in biblical context. I mean, you can actually read John 6. You're probably pastors in this room who can preach this better than me, but it comes down towards, at the beginning of John 6, it's one of the feeding of the thousands. And Jesus had a large throng of people following him because he was meeting physical needs. They were, they were consumers literally of a product. He was healing, but he was also serving them dinner. And so as a result of, of the meal and this, Jesus had followers. He had established reach. He connected with people by reaching them, but he didn't dialogue with them.

He didn't talk about the spiritual things. He didn't, he was meeting their physical needs. And as a result of it, he had followers who were wanting more. Everybody goes to bed the next night. In the morning, Jesus and the disciples go somewhere else. And what happens is that the crowd, they want more. They want more of their physical needs met. They want brunch. And so they go off to find Jesus. Jesus is done at this point, meeting physical needs. He starts talking spiritual things. He starts saying some crazy stuff like eat my flesh, drink my blood. And what's fascinating is, is through that engagement, through the dialogue, people left. Jesus at one point actually says, I think 660, something to the extent of, am I offending you?

Because what he was saying was so drastic. People didn't understand it. To the point that the reach had been filtered away. And even to the point of some of the disciples left him at that point. And what Jesus was left with was a group that eventually would be the start of the church. It was the foundational piece that would go on and be the church of Acts. And so it was through the engagement, through that dialogue that Jesus created and eventually got to his disciples. So for me, I look at what we're doing online. And even just to reiterate some of the things that were said, it's not just about reach. It's not just about how many views I get on Facebook, which, by the way, is always going to inflate what you're getting.

It's more about those conversations. The likes, the thumbs up emojis. The thumbs up emojis. All that's nice. But build a relationship with every one of those people who do give you a thumbs up emoji. Give you a heart emoji. You have an excuse. You have it on Facebook. You've got their Facebook messenger ID. Message them directly. Ask what they need, how you can pray for them, and see what happens. You know, the worst thing that can happen is somebody can press the block key or the spam key or somebody can tell you to blow off. The best thing that can happen is you now are engaging in a conversation spiritually that maybe you didn't even have access to before. And so this is where this opportunity to dialogue on a one-on-one level and do ministry is so important to actually do a church digitally.

If you're not doing that, if you're not building relationships with people, you're not doing a digital church. You're doing a digital expression of a church service by broadcasting. You're the equivalent of a virtual VCR player on the Facebook TV. And, you know, maybe there's nothing wrong with that. You guys keep talking about VCRs. I'm not really sure what that is. Sorry. I'm just kidding. Is film, is that a better reference for you actually, Cutting? Nice. I mean, that's what I learned on in college. That's how old I am, man. It was like, you know, here's how you splice with a razor blade to cut film. That's awesome. Yeah, computers weren't so much. I'm old, bro. Sorry to derail the train.

No, it's awesome. I'm done. What other questions? Let's open it up. You know, some new people are coming in the room. Physical, digital, questions, observations. Anybody from the room want to contribute or ask anything? Okay. For the panel up top here, while we're waiting for more, what's another issue of a pain point? Where is digital hurting us? Let's not be all digital, being all, you know, candy canes and flowers. Where does digital hurt in context of physical? Where is physical ministry better? I'll toss one out there, Jeff. Yeah. Go for it. I think one of the things we've discovered in COVID is, you know, for all of the positives of digital ministry, how our people truly roast the occasion.

So many people are, and potentially more people than ever are a part of and engaged with the church. But fewer people than last year are actually attending the weekend with any kind of regularity. So I would say there was something about the habit and the social momentum of physical, of going to church. That's good. When at your time, at your weekend, the way that you planned it, the way you prepared your family to do it, the way you intended on doing it on Tuesday when you thought about what you were going to do that weekend, that we haven't solved for in the digital realm. And we're just seeing people's, like, they're having trouble doing what they want to do, be engaged with their church, in part because they can do it whenever they want to.

But oftentimes they don't end up doing it for any number of great reasons. So I think it's habit is one of those things that the digital church hasn't figured out yet how to be as strong as the physical church on. Yeah, that's good. Not having – it's the bad side of – you can do the 168 hours. You can see what they really value, how much they value that service. When it's not, I got to do this at 9 o'clock on Sunday morning, it's I can just work this in whenever. Whenever always gets moved on to the next day, the next day, there starts to become things that are more important towards it. What else? What's another negative, maybe a challenge, an obstacle towards doing digital ministry? Well, I think another thing that comes to mind is kind of like goes along with what Matt was saying, just the habits and the commitment level when it comes to your volunteers serving three hours plus on a Sunday to, hey, let me tune in for 30 minutes.

So I think that's going to be an adjustment. Like for me here in Austin, our church, we were able to meet back in person. And that's something that we're going through right now. It's just like, oh, people might have gotten a little accustomed to the hour, you know, Facebook live stream. Now it's like, okay, we need to have our setup team to be ready. We need to have parking ready. And like, you know, it really does go from an hour to three hours now. I agree with that. And I think another thing that I would add, and again, this existed even before everyone went digital, but it's that whole comparison, right, with other churches and other preachers. I mean, we had it before, but now that everybody has an opportunity to choose between, you know, what service they want to attend.

I mean, I think it's just three times worse than it was before, because now the pastors and, you know, preachers in general are just looking at each other, but are telling each other, of course, and trying to rate themselves as who's the superstar preacher that will gather the most people on a Sunday morning digital service. So I think that's definitely one thing. And also, and many of you have mentioned this before as well, that whole, excuse me, relationship part, I think it does encourage isolation. And, you know, it's easy for people, especially if your default is an introverted person, to just say, you know what, I actually like this. I don't have to talk to anybody. So that's why it's so important to look at the platforms that you use as well, because there are some new ones that have been created that are able to kind of mimic what it would feel like if you were in an actual physical place, you know, like actually traveling to a table and picking a table and things like that.

But again, if your default is introversion, then, you know, this is like heaven for you. So good. That's exactly right. It's so good. Yeah. Altered Live is one of those. And Liz, I don't know if that's specifically the one that you're referencing, but that's one that we've been doing a lot of work with at Stadia and are excited about. And actually, Tyler, who was just here, his church is doing an experiment with Altered Live, and we're helping some other churches kind of get facilitated, test the waters. And honestly, the hardest thing in all of church online, and I would call this a negative, is that you have people, it's easier for people to watch church in isolation. You can have, I had a church, I tell the story, had a church tell me Easter 2020, Monday, literally after Easter 2020, Jeff, you won't believe this, we had half a million people watching our church services online.

It's phenomenal. Super excited. This is great. Celebrating. It was a massive win of God. And so my follow-up question after congratulations was, hey, so how many people, Jeff, fill out connection cards? Like, what does the ongoing ministry look like? And his answer was 11. So we had half a million viewers, whatever the multiplier, I don't know. It was a whole buttload of people, but they only had 11 names of people to do tangible, physical ministry with afterwards. So that's the risk. That's the damage of church online, which is why we're really pushing relational aspects and did a podcast even last week for a clubhouse about thinking above the funnel, trying to understand how to connect with people even before that church service front door, physically or digitally, so that you can meet them, build that relationship, and give that, value towards it, and value towards it.

So that's so important to not let people be living a life of church in isolation, even if it means training people to have conversations with their friends about faith, and then utilizing their friends to reach into their networks to evangelize and to share towards that. So, hey, we've got Scott. Scott, if you want to come up more than willing to do that, there is that button. So Scott's got a question. We'll let him speak. Scott, as soon as you come up, what are you thinking? Yeah. Hey, I have loved the conversation. We are in the process in our church community of just kind of expanding our online ministry and just really dreaming about kind of what that looks like. But, you know, one of the opportunities that has been heavy on my heart that has really excited me is just the opportunity that exists, I guess, in bringing the physical and the digital church together.

And the opportunity that exists in really empowering our people to be digital missionaries. And I think there's just such a tremendous opportunity that exists there. Looking at some of the statistics, you know, and the dwindling numbers of people that are actually walking through the doors of church every week. And yet the growing number of people that are online. And I think you look at people's social circles and just the opportunity that exists for people in their own circle to begin to live the Great Commission and to do what Jesus called us to do in going and making disciples of all nations. And people that we as leaders of the church may never have contact with, but that our people have contact with in their social media circles, et cetera.

And the opportunity that we have to equip those people, again, to be digital missionaries and to share the love of Jesus in their circles. And so anyways, I'm just really excited about that opportunity and would love to hear you guys' thoughts on some of that as well. Yeah. Personally, I'm a huge fan of the digital missionary. Matt, I'm going to throw off to you in one second. I was actually going to call you. Like, I just, I think that digital discipleship is ripe for this possibility of starting to connect with people, build that relationship, and get them to understand who Christ is. But then also, at the same time, challenge them to share with others. And there's a whole discipleship system that's more driven towards obedience, where it's obedience-based discipleship, where it's more towards, let me train you with a simple system of how to share your faith so that you can share it with others who can share it with others.

And that's probably another conversation. But I know, Matt, like, you guys have done some work recently on this, especially in context of the guides, I think, right? Like, what would something like this look like over at Crossroads? Yeah. Well, one, I mean, I just, Scott, you're preaching. I mean, I just think there's something about that priesthood of all believers, where, like, the people who are in our church actually get to play. Like, what a crazy thing, what a sleeping giant we have in most of our churches where, you know, the average person at most is just coming to our events. And I think, man, what if we woke up all these people and we had equipped them, you know, to be the priesthood of all believers?

And I used to use the analogy of Uber, of all things. Like, Uber, to me, is, like, this marketplace version of the priesthood of all believers, because here, somehow, they have equipped millions of people to become drivers for their company. And now, like, current, maybe bad news about Uber aside, like, largely who weren't employees. But so, like, it's this perfect digital enterprise where it's a mixture of their own assets, like their car, or in our case, in churches, people's houses, dining room tables, jobs, whatever the case may be. And they leverage those to go provide value for other people and share the gospel of Uber, which is a little goofy. But they do it with such few rules. Like, the app makes it possible.

But then the basic idea is, you know, get this person from point A to point B. And I just think about how we could equip people to do discipleship at scale. Could we ever, as churches, get really specific about what the, just a couple of core actions there are that we want people to take and then equip them to do that? I think most people don't opt into this journey because we make it feel really overwhelming and we make it feel like you've got to have a master's degree in theology to make it work. And we all know that's not true. But I think that's sometimes how we talk about it. So we, Jeff, you asked about guides at Crossroads. Like, we launched this, I mean, it's not our concept, but we want everyone at Crossroads to have at least one person they know who they can ask a question of and find out how to take a next step.

And in fact, that one person would actually have that person's interest in mind and oftentimes even be, you know, offering options of the next step. So we try, you know, at our last leader summit, so whether you're a volunteer leader, a group leader, any kind of leader at Crossroads, we invited people to, in their own context, wherever they already currently serve, begin operating like a guide. And so we tried to boil that down for people to this acronym of LOC, like we want you to be welcoming, available, listening, and knowing, you know. And it's really no more than just being a good friend. But just to, like, put some definition around it gave people an opportunity to really be on the lookout for other people and feel like we were honoring that activity.

And if they were on the lookout for other people and they were helping people take a next step with God, I mean, that's way more meaningful and transformative than maybe the ways that they were volunteering before. So we're trying to adopt that into our culture. We just happened to name it guiding so that people had a thing they could grab hold of and created this WALK acronym just again so that we could try to make it sound like it's something you could do inside of your already existing lifestyle. But, by the way, what he described with Uber, there's an idea in church. It's called church's platform. And the idea is surrounded by the concept of companies like Airbnb and Uber. They didn't get to be successful by improving their product.

Airbnb, by default, they made more pre-COVID than the top five hotel chains combined. They don't own property. They don't have a concierge team. They don't have a cleaning service crew. They equip others to do what they want to do. You want to lease out your guest room. You go through Airbnb and Airbnb makes a cut of it. But then they equip you with the ability to do that. And there's a really fascinating concept. I've spent a lot of time blogging and podcasting and talking about church as a church as platform. Where if we as a church, if we didn't gauge our success off the one hour on Sunday, but instead what if we encouraged people to get out of the building, get into the community, and be the church on Sundays?

Maybe even doing their own expressions of church in a community format somewhere out and about whatever their circle of influence that they feel led to. You're right. It does get really into that priesthood of believers idea. And I love that concept because I think that we have a challenge to raise people up. Let's maybe – I feel bad saying this. Sometimes people take it the wrong way. Let's lower the standard of church, maybe not from an ecclesiological, from a biblical standpoint, but from what – how it operates and all the pricing that's involved in it. Let's lower that standard, but let's raise the level of disciple-making. And so there's a link in my bio. It's thechurch.digital.plash platform.

If you want more information on that, we'd love for you to click that and kind of explore the resources that are there. Stephen, you were asking something. What are you thinking? Just – I wanted to comment. We've got baseball here in just a second, but I wanted to say something dramatic and then leave. I'm just kidding. The thing that Matt said a second ago I think is so great with the analogy to Uber. I think it's right on. I think when you came back and you're able to say, okay, this is – this is it. The word democratization comes to mind. I think we see some reflection points in history. So this is a dramatic part that we could be living in some type of neo-Reformation moment or something analogous to the Reformation.

You know, you've got William Tyndale right after the printing press, right after Luther making portable Bibles. So he invented the handheld Bible. What a technological advance for the church. It literally put God's word in the hands of the people in plain English and in their tongue. I think what we're seeing with digital is maybe one step closer to an even more democratized personal type of church. I think it needs more study, of course. I think it needs more time. But some of the same notes in that song are being played, I think, through the last year. Well said. Hey, so we've got a couple more minutes or a couple more questions. So who's got a question? Anything else that we can address? Raise the hand and we'll bring you up.

Sorry to see Steven go, but baseball is what baseball is. Elizabeth, was this helpful? What else do we need to hit? Is there any other questions or thoughts that you want to add? No, I think this was helpful and I'm glad to see. Again, you know, I had invited some friends. Louis is on, which, you know, he's a pastor and I wanted him to, and Pastor David as well, to just hear a little bit more about this whole digital thing. And I think it's just something that is not going away. And I'm just grateful for the opportunity to share a little bit more about it and learn from other people. Awesome. Well, I'm definitely, you know, through Stadia, through the Church Digital, through being a guy in South Florida, would love to, you know, resource anybody towards this.

So questions on it, my personal infos in my bio, would love to connect up. Hey, Chris, I know just right as I was rapping, I saw you raise your hand. What are you thinking, sir? Hi, I just had a question for Matt. Could you repeat that WALK acronym again for me? I missed some of it. Yeah, Chris. So we, so it's, it's welcoming, available, listening, and knowing. And the quick unpack there is obviously, welcoming is just the friendly aspect of that. Like you want to be the person people want to be around. You encouraging, life-giving, all those things. Available is, as a Jesus follower, do you have any margin in your life? Have you built in any availability where you're actually available to other people?

Which we know is so rare in our culture today. And listening is just that. It's just, are you legit? Listening, not just the way people say, but the things behind it. So that you can use the knowing, the knowledge you have about Crossroads and Jesus to offer a next step to that person. So welcoming, available, listening, knowing. Thank you, thank you so much. Yeah, hey, if Chris, or Chris, yeah, if you didn't get that, hit me up through Crossroads. I wrote it down here. Don't die if you're driving. Just, that's probably a bad thing. But looking forward to hearing and helping you if I can. Hey, this has been a great time. Rather than just drawing it out, man, I'd love to land on a strong note.

See, what's interesting, sometimes with Clubhouse, I've seen these conversations go like two, three, four hours long. I actually started a room once that ended up going over four hours. And actually, I handed it over three or four times for other people to kind of dialogue through. But I'm not feeling it today with this one. I think we ended this one strong. Here with myself, at least anyway, I will always do a room at five o'clock Eastern on Thursday. So there'll be some sort of digital church, digital church topic that we will hit every Thursday. I'm actually trying to remember what I'm doing next week. Let me look real quick on that. Tuesday, I'm actually doing a conversation on the church and mental health.

And so that'll be Tuesday. That's great. Oh, yeah. Like that's what's interesting. We're doing a podcast on Monday. And the conversation was so rich when it'll release. We recorded the podcast already, but we're so rich on Monday. It was like, hey, let's get everybody together. And we'll do a panel and kind of once again, Q&A and dialogue on that. So it's going to be Mindy Caliguire, who's with Soul Care. It's a completely online biblical counseling kind of therapy thing. And some other people are speaking to it. Andrea Feldman, who's a digital pastor at a church in Kentucky, who just is very passionate about the church and mental health and exploring that space. So that's happening on Tuesday and Thursday.

We're talking about digital only expressions of church. We'll have some people on who are literally doing digital churches that have no physical footprints. DJ Soto and VR Church, Angela Craig, who does Pursuit Church Live on Facebook, Daniel Heron, who's done one in Roblox, and some others who kind of jump on. And we'll have that conversation. So more coming soon. Definitely excited about this. This conversation will be available on demand through the Church Digital Podcast at some point in the next week or so by the time we get that rolled out. But definitely looking forward to continuing to be a resource for you guys. If you have any questions that you want to see hit, would love to hear it.

My cell phone number is in the bio as well, but it's 484-324-8724. So feel free to text. I probably will not answer the phone. So text is nice. Or you can grab some time with me in there, my other information's in the bio. All right. Hey, for everybody that was part of this, for Stephen, who I had to leave, for Matt, for Elizabeth, for Scott, for Chris, and all the people who jumped up, thanks for jumping on this. Hey, you know what? Let me do this. And just Matt and Elizabeth, any closing thoughts here talking digital to physical as we're landing in the plane, anything you want to wrap up on? I would say, you know, don't be afraid. You know, every time that God allows something, something great comes about it.

You know, we just have to continuously just change our mindsets, be open and see what God will do. Amen. Matt, anything on your side, man? Yeah, I just pile on to that. Liz, I think you're spot on. We have to remember, we follow a God who's building the church. We know that's not our job. That's his job. We get to do it with him. So let's follow where he leads and let's expect that the God who's constantly doing something new is doing something new today, too. It doesn't mean we just stop doing anything that we consider old. It means we just keep going to him and figuring out what is he making his church look like and how can we get as many people into the family of God as possible. It's exciting to do this together, too.

And biblically, when we look at God, we see that God is on the move. All throughout scripture, God was never, he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But as he moved and as he developed his people, like there was constant movement. And sometimes I feel like within the church, we've lost that. We've lost that view. And in fact, as a result of it, we've limited what God can be and what God can do through us. And so the idea, once again, from both of you of trying something new, of experiment, of challenging established norms, I think as long as it's biblical, I think God is honored through that. And we would love to see us challenge our churches and challenge these norms and get out there and try some different things.

I'm not even making it about digital. I just think there's opportunities for us in the season as culture is accelerating our strategies to continue to connect with that culture needs to accelerate as well. And so thank you very much for Matt, for Elizabeth, for Tyler, for Stephen. This is Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning. Hey, thanks for joining us, jumping into conversation here today. And we'll see you around next time. Y'all have a good day.