BETA29: Five Reasons You Might Be A Digital Church Planter

Hey, all right, you got the Beta Show. I'm Jeff with the Church Digital Podcast, once again powered by Stadia Church Planting. Here at the Beta Show, we answer your digital ministry questions on the air. Text them in 484-324-8724. By the way, with the Beta Show, we do this live. We do put it on podcast. It is on archive on demand, but we do this live every Thursday at noon Eastern. So hey, if you're out there watching, feel free to throw some questions, throw some comments, throw some thoughts here into whatever platform you're on. If you're on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, wherever you're engaging and you're watching this, feel free to comment out there. Let us know that you're out there as we're talking through here. If you've got ideas, if you've got thoughts on what we're talking about, we would love to hear from you. And if you're out there and your sole purpose is to just distract me while I'm trying to talk and do this live, yes, I am talking to you, Raid the Armist. Don't do that. Don't be that guy. Don't try to distract me. Oh look, I'm getting a text literally right now. Okay, hey, so text the digital ministry questions 484-324-8724.

And what I want to talk about today specifically here with Beta Episode 29: Five Reasons You Might Be a Digital Church Planter. A pastor, a digital church planter. Five reasons you really should say pastor. Typo on the screen. That's awesome. Five reasons you might be a digital church planter.

So we've been talking a lot here about this idea of a digital-only expression of church, and this is not to challenge what's happening in the physical building as much as it is to acknowledge that there are other options or other opportunities. There are other ways to do that. And by launching, by planting, by starting a digital-only church, you've got an opportunity to do ministry in a different way. And so we're going to highlight some of those ways. Really going to highlight also some of the characteristics of maybe what some of these innovative, some of these pioneering, entrepreneurial-type people, what they're looking for and who they are. Who are these people that are getting out and trying to do something different here?

So here we go. Five reasons you might be a digital church planter in the making. Maybe you don't even realize it yet. Here you go. Number one: You're going to recognize that physical is a way, not the way. Physical is a way of doing ministry. Physical is a way of doing church. It's not the way. It's not the only way.

Now listen, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm talking so much here about "the way." I'm kind of hearkening back. Okay, listen, some of you out there might even be thinking like Star Wars, The Mandalorian. "This is the way." The Mandalorian. I am not that guy. I am not the guy right now that's going to bring attention to The Mandalorian. "This is the way." And that we have to, at least with our digital church context, say that this in a digital-only way or in a physical-only way, there is not a way. There's not "the way" of doing church. The way is actually biblical. Okay, I'm going to take off the Mandalorian little chip that was up on the screen.

And so there is multiple ways, models, strategies of church. What a digital-only planter is, is somebody who recognizes that there is a different way to do it other than what you see in the physical space.

Now it's interesting. I'm going to throw another GIF here on the screen. I actually had this graphic texted in to a group with a number of digital pastors in it. In the text, it may be hard to read on the screen, and I should say this actually because there's a podcast. People are listening in audio only. So there's a photo of a sofa here on the screen, and the words on the screen simply say this: "Church on a sofa will never be the same as church in a sanctuary."

So I had a digital pastor text this in to a number of digital guys, and it was funny in the moment when it came in. The digital pastors' reactions there was like a bunch of "boo" GIFs that were posted in the group and a bunch of thumbs-down emojis, and it just was like there was a negative context centered around this idea, centered around this comment of "church on a sofa will never be the same as church in the sanctuary." And it was funny. My response, and I would suggest the response of a digital-only planter, is going to look at that and say, "Oh, thank God. Thank God there's something other than the model of what's happening in the church in the sanctuary." I wholeheartedly agree. Church on a sofa will never be the same as what happens in church in the sanctuary, and it should not be, because we have an opportunity to do something different. Even though the majority of the world looks at what's going on and let's go back to the building, the majority of Christians, let's go back to the building. A digital-only planter, somebody's looking at this and saying, "There's another way. There's got to be another way," and it's going to highlight and draw attention to that.

All right, number two. Here, let's pump it up. We'll go a little quicker. A digital-only church planter is more interested in building relationships than putting on a show. You're far more interested in doing relationships, building relationships, connecting, engaging, dialoguing with people than building a show. By the way, surprisingly, digital planters, often at least the ones that I've met, they're not overly techy. Yes, they understand the technical aspects of what's going on, but we're not talking, forgive me, we're not talking like technological geeks here. Okay, maybe a couple of them are, but really they're normal people that understand how to build relationships utilizing digital tools in digital community. And you don't have to be a cutting-edge, bleeding-edge geek guy as much as you need to be somebody who understands relationships and how to build those in digital space, how to create disciple makers in digital context. So definitely some challenges there. Love it. We are more interested in building relationships than putting on a show.

Number three: Digital ministry lessons of COVID excite you more than going back to the building. So in this fifteen, sixteen, eighteen months, whatever it's been, where we've been learning how to do digital ministry as a result of COVID, now that we're seeing this pivot, now that we're heading back to the building to re-engage and to do this in physical space, a digital-only church planter, there's something gnawing away at the inside of you right now saying, "There's a better way. There's some, there's a voice, maybe it's the Holy Spirit, maybe it's, you know, bad tacos, but at the end of the day, there's something that's kind of urging inside of you. Maybe there's an opportunity to do this digitally, to stick with the digital plan, to maybe even explore a deeper understanding of digital ministry than what you're able to do within the established church model, which, let's be honest, maybe driving you back to the physical building."

The relational context here, connecting with people digitally, is at a higher value for you than for some churches managing the systems and processes like pastors do physically. And this is the challenge, really. Not all churches are this way, but a lot are, where a pastor in physical space is really managing systems and processes that allow the overarching system of physical ministry to happen. The challenge to that is in digital space, digital pastors bypass a lot of the systems and processes and really get a chance to engage with people at a digital level even more so than what happens at the physical level. This has been documented. We've talked about it so much here on the podcast where digital pastors have an opportunity to engage relationally, physically, digitally, even more than what physical pastors would in physical space.

A digital pastor is also going to recognize the potential reach of digital, and they want to step up to the challenge of not just reaching tens, hundreds, and thousands of people digitally, but they want to step up to the challenge of engaging, of dialoguing, of building those relationships digitally for the cause of Christ. Beautiful stuff that's happening there.

Number three: Digital ministry lessons of COVID excite you more than going back to the building.

Here you go, number four. You might be a digital church planter if you are a disrupter in the making. You're dreaming about doing things differently. Okay, you've watched the modern church struggle. Its methodology. Words like "disrupter," "innovator," "entrepreneur," these don't scare you in 2021. This is, I believe, this to be a fact. Weird is just a couple clicks away from being normalized, from being accepted. So much of what was weird in 2020, 2019, 2018, let's be honest here, in 2021, weird is normal. And so some of what we're experiencing and what a digital-only expression of church and how that, the perception of how that's weird, I think that you're going to see that get normalized very soon. As a matter of fact, it's probably getting normalized as it continues to reach some of these people that were defined as being weird, that were viewed as being weird. You're literally creating the weird method to reach the weird people for the cause of Christ.

And so being that disrupter, being that pioneer, being that cutting-edge person, not to the end of creating something new, extra-biblical, outside of the view of the church and context of the Bible, we'll get to that here in a little bit. But even speaking towards ecclesiology, like this needs to be grounded in the Bible. You know, maybe you're looking at the Book of Acts and seeing how the diaspora, the breaking up of the established Jerusalem church, and how it was the ecclesia was scattered, they preached the Bible as they went, they created new expressions, and the regathering in physical space. You're seeing how the church operated that way. Maybe you, as an innovator, you're asking questions: "What is the diaspora, the breaking up of the church, to create new ecclesias? Around how can that benefit the church today? What would it look like for a digital church to distribute, to recreate, or maybe you've read books like Francis Chan's Letters to the Church or Ed Silvoso's Ecclesia, and all of a sudden you're realizing here that there is room for a new model of church while still holding to that biblical ecclesiology, to the standards that are in place. Digital church does not turn its back on the Bible. The digital church embraces the Bible, and it's looking for pastors, we're looking for planters that want to plant ecclesiologically solid churches just in a digital community.

Which really gets us here to number five. You might be a digital church planter if number five: You respect that a digital community is a community worthy of a church. You might be a digital church planter if you respect that a digital community is a community worthy of a church.

Let's look at it. The largest nation on the planet right now is Facebook users. Okay, Facebook users are not a nation, but if you gather all Facebook users, active Facebook users, together, there's more than what's in China, more than what's in Russia, much more than what's here in America. Twenty-four million people are active in a video game called Final Fantasy Online. The game's been around a long time. It's not a new game. They're actually existing in community. The game is popular even today because it's a community. This is where people's friends are. It used to be, even things like Twitch, Discord, TikTok, we're seeing where younger generations, honestly, they're sprinting to some of these new platforms. I would even throw Roblox in there. Young people are sprinting to some of these new platforms. Why, you ask? They're ironically running away from the...

Platforms that their parents have come on board with. When's the last time you saw a 20-year-old on Facebook willingly on Facebook? It's been a minute. Even Instagram is losing value at this point as they're starting to get into the Snapchat chats and the TikToks and the things like this. But for a digital planter, you're not running away from the idea of a church on TikTok. You're not running away from Twitch. You're running towards it because you're recognizing that there's digital community in that space, and a digital community, a digital church is needed to be in that digital community.

All right, hey, so we've hit five reasons real quick. Five reasons you may be a digital church planter. Recognize that physical is a way, it's not the way. You're more interested in building relationships than putting on a show. You're recognizing that digital ministry lessons of COVID that excites you more than going, the idea of going back to the building. You're a disrupter in the making. You're dreaming about doing things different. And number five, you respect that a digital community is a community that's worthy of a church.

Well, you interested in doing this? Are you interested in planting a digital-only expression of church? I would love to have a conversation with you and explore these ideas together. Connect up with me. Swing over, connect up with Stadia as well. Swing over to the church.digital/planting. More resources there towards this idea of planting digital-only churches. At the church.digital/planting, schedule time to meet up with me, and looking forward to have a conversation with many out there, many like you who are interested in planting these digital-only churches. Awesome. Thanks, everybody. Y'all have a good day.