BETA31: Digital Broadcast, Digital Discipleship, Digital Campus, Digital-Only Church

All right, welcome to the Beta Show, episode 31. Hey, this is Jeff with the Church Digital podcast once again. It's powered by Stadia Church Planting. Hey, this is the vacation edition of the Beta Show. I'm actually on vacation right now. Through the magic of pre-recording and sim live, I am joining you guys sim live off from the internet right now. I'm actually sitting back on this Thursday afternoon, probably sitting on the beach somewhere around central Florida. My family and I were going to go check out NASA the launch center up there, and it's going to be a great time. But before I went away on vacation, I was like, "Hey, let me at least record this session and we can send live it so that the people at home, wherever they are, can enjoy the greatness of talking about digital church here in this season."

Remember, with the Beta Show, we are answering your digital ministry questions. So text them in: 484-324-8724. Yes, that is actually my cell phone number. And so if you really want to call me on vacation, guess what? I literally just gave you my cell phone number and I'm taking it with me on vacation: 484-324-8724.

The Beta Show was broadcast live, as you know, if you're watching this on social media, every Thursday at noon Eastern. It's on Facebook: facebook.com/thechurchdigital, and of course it's on YouTube as well: youtube.com/thechurchdigital. Normally I would invite you guys to chat with us live, and actually, you know what? I will go and throw your questions and comments in on the social media platform you're currently watching in. Hey, this is sim live, so this is simulated live. I am not actually answering these things in real time. That being said, I'll be glad to engage with the stuff when I get back from vacation and happily answer any questions or comment on any thoughts you guys throw in on social media.

Next week we are talking about four examples—that's one, two, three, four—different examples of digital-only churches and so share some examples of that and give some testimonies to what's happening. But for this week, we're Beta 31: the differences between a digital broadcast, digital discipleship, digital campus, and digital church.

So often, and this—yes, okay, look, I'll confess here, there may be a little bit of nuancing here, maybe a fine line of difference between it, but within those nuances comes a lot of intentionality that really gets us to the heart of being effective in digital space. So this is the heart of what we're trying to do here.

Let's recognize—I would challenge you churches that are out here listening to this conversation—let's recognize who you are and who you are not, and maybe there's some next steps that we need to take in this season to help your church progress digitally, even as we're going back to the building, even as that emphasis is happening in physical space. I still think there's bonuses, there's benefits, there's purposes to doing this stuff digitally as well.

Well, here we go. The four: we've got number one here, digital broadcast. So essentially, a digital broadcast is the broadcasting of the church experience online. Essentially, it's if you're the typical church, it's that one hour on Sunday you're doing that in physical space, and you're broadcasting that service online digitally. Now, in this season, there are churches that are considering shutting down the physical broadcast—the digital broadcast—because they want more emphasis. They don't want people being lazy. They want people to come back to the building. Listen, and that may be a strategy. That may be a good strategy. That may be a bad strategy. For the majority of you, maybe it's too soon to tell. But at the heart of this, broadcasting those services is a great step. It's the first part of something.

Now, for many of you, you stop there, and that's where this gets dangerous. Because if the only thing you're doing is broadcasting services and you're not doing any digital discipleship, or you're not using—people are not coming back to the building to get discipled—this is where digital broadcasting of church services gets to this place of being a con. It's content that's being consumed. We're creating consumers. We're not creating disciple makers. And so the ecclesiology of a church, Acts 2, is not just grounded in our weekly experiences. If you read Acts 2:36-47, you're not getting this experience of haze machines and lights. By the way, I'm a production guy. I'm totally making fun of myself here. But what we consider church is more than that.

So if you're doing the digital broadcast and that's all you're doing, ask yourself this question: What happens next? Are you trying to drive people back to the physical building? And if you are, great. Is it effective? If you are not trying to drive them back to the building, this kind of gets into what I want to talk about next. I think you should consider exploring this idea of digital discipleship.

So like we said earlier, Matthew 28: "Go and make disciples of all nations." Well, what does it look like for your church, for your existing physical church, to make disciples? Is that happening in the digital space? Is it happening in the physical space? Is it small groups? Is it one-on-one or individual disciple making? Like, where do we teach evangelism? Multiplication? Where do we really get into the depth so that people have the capacity to multiply? And is that multiplication really happening? Once again, through our digital discipleship, are we just creating opportunities for people to consume content? Are we creating opportunities for knowledge to be learned? And are we larger than that? Are we even giving them opportunities and challenging them and encouraging them to go out and multiply and reproduce and share with somebody else, to put that knowledge to work—not just for the benefit of oneself, but to help and have conversations as people are having spiritual questions in other opportunities?

This is the heart of what we wanted to talk about here with this conversation. Look, the strength of digital, believe it or not, really does lean towards this idea of digital discipleship. The strength of digital is equipping. We're creating learning opportunities, and there's community opportunities as well that gives us a chance to encourage others to have those conversations. This works in digital space. Honestly, the equipping portion is the strength compared to even the idea of creating the content and the reach, because there's so much content. It's really the community. It's that engagement piece. It's really this equipping piece that gives churches an opportunity to stand out digitally because it's working relationally.

Yet the majority of churches—it seems, because for whatever reason—are not interested in using digital for disciple making. They want to broadcast the services, but when it comes towards creating communities, creating small groups, unleashing people in digital space, there's this weird aura, this weird reaction of, "No, that's only reserved for physically. We can't do that digitally."

And so, whatever your opinion is, what I would suggest: if digital church, you should consider integrating digital into your disciple making. You're not really a big fan of broadcasting the services online? That's great. I've been quoted recently as saying, "Hey, churches, we should stop broadcasting our church services entirely. If you only do one thing digitally, focus on discipleship. Broadcasting services creates consumers. It leans that way. Relationships that are developed digitally, those stick, and through those relationships we see disciples being made." That's the challenge I want to give to you today.

All right, look here, number three here. So first was a digital experience, a digital broadcast. Number two here, digital discipleship. Number three, this idea of a digital campus. So essentially, here's what I'm saying: if you're combining the church experience and you're combining digital discipleship and putting it together, well, now your church is operating more like a church in digital space. It's operating more like that campus. Digital is becoming more of like a fully functioning church because if you're able to do discipleship and experience in the physical space and you're calling that a church, well then arguably now that you're doing those things digitally, it's starting to operate more like a church or at least more like a campus would.

Here's the challenge I would throw at you: don't call yourself a digital campus if your goal is to drive people to a building. So often I hear this phrase of, you know, "We're a digital campus. We're a digital church," or "a digital church," when really what you're trying to do is drive people back to the physical building. If you're not doing discipleship, if you're not helping people develop spiritually in digital space, recognize that you're really a digital front door. You're not a digital campus. You're not a digital church. And this isn't bad, but don't set up the illusion that you are creating a church experience digitally, a fully functioning church digitally. All you're giving people, if you're not doing the discipleship, is an experience. You're setting up that camera in the back so people can stay tapped into the message, so they can enjoy the musical worship, maybe so even that they can do church at home with their kids. And this may not be a bad thing, but it's not a fully functioning church according to the ecclesiology, according to the biblical functions of what we see that God calls the church to be.

So understand that you're a front door, and the front door may be the right strategy for you, but don't oversell what you're doing by trying to set yourself up to be something else. There's validity in both models. Both lean on the broadcast. The broadcast is important, but that discipleship is key. It is crucial for where we want to go if we are being that fully functioning digital campus.

All right, and once again, that's leaning on the stream. It's leaning on that broadcast piece.

Number four here: digital-only church. Who needs a building? Who needs to broadcast that live service on Sunday morning? Who's got—we don't have that in a digital church. A digital-only expression of church—now I'm kind of adding the word "only" here to get it to stand out—is essentially a church without a physical footprint. I don't have a worship center for 300 people and a stage with five awesome Panasonic Varicams to broadcast the service. I don't have those resources. And what's fortunate with digital-only churches is they don't need those resources. There's ways to be a digital-only expression of church without having the resources of a building or a massive stage or massive financial resources, AVL things like that, because at the heart of it, what a digital-only church is, is it looks at the ecclesiology, the biblical functions. It looks at starting with Acts 2 and it reimagines it contextually.

This is not throwing away the Bible and doing something radical. This is reinterpreting the Bible in context with the digital communities that we're going in. So why we're talking about virtual reality and video games and Twitch, maybe even contextualizing it for our communities, for the people that we're trying to reach, and shaping the message for them, trying to get them to own it, to replicate it, to tell others. And so there's strengths and there's weaknesses. Let's call it what it is. There's strengths and there's weaknesses towards this idea of doing a digital-only expression of church. But the idea here is that it's not moving away from the Bible. It's reimagining it in digital space.

And rather than building everything around what is happening in a physical building and then trying to cram that square peg into a round hole of the digital space, what it is doing—it's not limited. It doesn't have the roof, the ceiling. It is trying to create that round peg that's going to fit.

Go in that round hole that is digital. So it's not a limitation, it's actually an opportunity to recognize, "Hey, we can do something different digitally. We're not limited to what's happening in the physical space."

By the way, you know, talking crazy here, Stadia is looking to work with digital-only church planters. Uh, just in a couple weeks I am starting a cohort with a number of digital-only church planters exploring this space. And so if you're interested in having a conversation about what digital-only church planting could look like, starting and running a church in digital space completely from scratch, go to stadiachurchplanting.org/digital.

By the way, throwing on that same vein, that Stadia is looking for established churches that are wanting to go multimodal. I'm looking for physical churches here that are wanting to plant a digital-only church. Uh, once again, like, out of completely separate, this is not broadcasting services. This is reimagining what church can be digitally. Believe it or not, there are churches that are wanting to do this that are excited about being a part of this. I've got an experiment running with a number of churches here in the fall. If you're wanting to be a part, you want more information, we can talk about it. Stadiachurchplanning.org/digital.

Well, hey, you're wanting to do something from scratch or maybe you're one, you're an established church that's wanting to experiment a little bit and do something different. Stadiachurchplanning.org/digital.

Well, hey, we're going to keep building on this digital theme next Thursday, noon Eastern. Four examples of digital-only churches. I'm going to tell some stories. We're going to celebrate some things that are happening digitally. Going to encourage you guys to be a part of it.

So hey, that is going to wrap episode 31 of the Beta Show vacation edition. Hey, this is Jeff with the Church Digital and with Stadia Church Planning. Thanks for jumping here on the Beta Show. We'll see you next time here at the show, y'all. Good day.