BETA39: Digital Discipleship - AFFINITY is the new VICINITY

All right, hey, welcome to the Beta Show. It's episode 39. Well, once again, I'm Jeff with the Church Digital Podcast. All of this is powered by Stadia Church Planting. We're going to be talking a lot about Stadia and some of the things we're working on here in the Beta Show coming up.

But just to review, as if you don't know, here at the Beta Show we answer your digital ministry questions live. Go ahead and text us on the air: 484-324-8724. That's my cell phone. I usually hold up my cell phone and wave it around in the air. Right now I'm currently experimenting with it being my teleprompter. Thank you very much, Ben Stapley, for the recommendation. And so we're going to give it a shot, see if it works. Don't text me right now because I get notifications, I mean literally popping up, and it's a little weird on my phone. I gotta figure that out.

Hey, here with Beta 39, here's what we're doing: we're talking digital discipleship. Affinity is the new vicinity. I stole that quote from someone. We'll give credit in a little bit. But we're going to be talking about some digital discipleship stuff here with the Beta Show, here with 39.

If you are listening to this on demand, by the way, if you're live, thank you. Love having you on and feel free to interact in whatever platform you're watching in. And let's go ahead and talk this thing through. If you are watching on demand, hey, we want to do this live with you. We broadcast the Beta Show Thursdays at noon Eastern. Check out Facebook.com/thechurchdigital as well as YouTube.com/thechurchdigital and would love to see you in that live environment. Or of course, in digital ministry, you always reach more people on demand. Remember that: live is great for community, on demand is better when it comes to reaching and getting more people. That's just a free tip here.

Another free tip: I am going to be hanging out with some Exponential friends here in 2021 for the upcoming year. So go ahead and check out Exponential Regional Equipping Labs for the year, fall 2021. Exponential.org. Sign up for that. I'm going to be in Washington DC, San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California, SoCal, Houston, and Chicago. Go to exponential.org, sign up for one of those regional events. And in the pre-conference lab type stuff, I am going to be in—it's like physical and digital, some physical ministry and digital ministry, something like that. To sign up and get connected with mine, I would love to talk with you and learn more about what ministry looks like for you, maybe some of the challenges that you all are facing with physical and digital.

Hey, Beta next week, Beta 40. Give me a topic. Digital discipleship is a hot topic right now, and so I definitely want to like focus on that and talk about that more. But let me hear from you on that. What questions do you guys have on digital discipleship? Because we're definitely seeing spikes in interest when we talk digital, but want to kind of see what you're wrestling with so that we can dig into that. Give me that. Text me 484-324-8724. We're going to talk about digital discipleship in context of affinity being the next vicinity, and this is an interesting phrase. This actually came from Dan Hickling, who's pastor at Calvary Digital, pastor at Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale. And he's actually the brainchild of this. So I want to give him credit up front. I was hanging out with him at Nashville. I don't know, a couple weeks ago or last week. Time flies, man. We're hanging out last week in Nashville, and he dropped that line, and I was like, "Wait, who just said that? I want to write that down."

And there's rules when you speak and when you hear somebody else say something and you use it. So here's the rules, Dan. The first time that I use your quote publicly, I'm going to give you credit. The second time, I'm going to say it's been said or I've heard someone say, and I'm going to pretend like I don't remember, even though Dan, I know that it was you. And then the third time that I use that line, I'm gonna steal it as my own. So publicly, Dan, affinity is the next vicinity. I'm giving you credit for that right now. Next time, third time, you just, you know the routine. You know what to expect. Now, and that'll be good.

The reality is here in 2021, because of COVID, because of technology, because of everything, community lines are being redrawn in this season. We, the church, we, community—not even about the church—we're redefining what community means in real time now. Look, we can go Matthew 28. We can go biblical here. Love your neighbor as yourself has always meant more than the person that is physically living next door to you. Like, I mean, that's a fallacy. Jesus is not literally saying love the person who lives on the other side of you and the guy across the street and the guy that's behind the fence and the guy that's on this side, because when he speaks and when he says this, it's more. It's bigger.

What, so I'm not supposed to love the guy that's two doors down from me or three doors or five doors or in another city? You know, Dan, talking about him just earlier, he was the digital pastor at Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale. I'm in Miami. That's a city away. Hey, Dan, we're not neighbors because you live in another city. Ironically, Dan actually does his job not from Fort Lauderdale. He lives in Nashville. And so Dan, even though you're in another state, even though you're in another time zone, I'm sorry, bud, we're not neighbors. God calls us to love our neighbors as ourself, and you are not in close enough vicinity for me to love you. So you, sir, are on your own. That is a heart that doesn't make any sense.

Like, if we really get down to it, the idea that our neighbors are defined by the exact proximity, the closeness, or even that we are churches are only trying to reach and disciple people that are within physical vicinity of us, that that's an old idea. And really what it comes down to is we've got a physical mindset here when we're defining what a neighbor is, and we've got a digital idea when we're trying to define what a neighbor is. And so we need to wrestle with that. We need to work through this idea of physical and digital mindsets.

No, physical, yeah, it's the guy next door. Maybe it's the cop that lives two doors that way for me or the person over here behind the fence who really, really likes cats, whatever it is for you. You do have those physical neighbors, and you are to love them. But it doesn't stop there because there's a digital idea here. There's probably some other cultural ramifications of this that need to be unpacked. Would love to have that conversation. But what would it look like if we loved our digital neighbors with that as well?

If affinity is the new vicinity, we must number one: we must see that social media, that digital, is a mission field for us to engage in, for us to get out of our echo chamber. Now, so much of echo chamber is surrounded around us being connected with people just like us. So great, hey, you want to own a or you want to sign up for a Facebook group for, um, yeah, I'm a Marvel Cinematic guy. In case you haven't like seen any of the bobbleheads behind me, so you know, maybe you're in a club, a Facebook group where they're talking about Marvel Cinematic things or why the new Spider-Man trailer has yet to come out yet and like Spider-Man fanboys are freaking out or why Star Wars hasn't gotten a movie right since Episode Five. Or you know, maybe it's for you it's Lego, and I'm just being stupid because like kid stuff, Lego thing. Or I bought a grill recently, and that company has its own club. Or maybe you're in a Facebook group that talks about digital church. Or I mean, we can just keep going on and on about these affinities, these things that we connect with.

And what's interesting is for me, I connected a lot of those groups, and I've got friends in those groups. I've got friends within physical proximity that I also connect with, not because I'm in physical proximity to them, but because I have an affinity, a relationship with them, because they're similar. Now I can connect with and I can build relationships with those affinities. But when I start to judge them or criticize them because of different political feelings or different mask feelings or different opinions like that and not recognize them as a human being, this is when we start to get into this idea of echo chamber where we're just trying to surround ourselves with people who are just like us.

And at what point do we start shoving away people who need Jesus because, well, they're not a Christian, so I don't want to be affiliated with them. I don't want to talk with them. We are to be an island. I've had a pastor tell me that once, and honestly, I died a little bit inside because we Christians are not to be an island, especially in digital context. We're not to fight. Digital is a mission field, and we've got to stop with the echo chamber and recognize that digital has a lot more influence if we stop surrounding ourselves with people who are just like us politically, emotionally, spiritually, and we start recognizing the need to do ministry.

Digital affinity is the new vicinity. Number two here: if affinity is the new vicinity, we must relate to people who are similar to us yet different. This is the key. We need to recognize the ministry potential to engage in dialogue with people who are different to us yet similar. Let's listen. Let's have those conversations. What does it mean to be? How do you view an agnostic, sir? Like, what is your view of Christ, and how do you reconcile some of these things? Don't start from a platform of shoving down, but listen. Through those conversations, and maybe there's an opportunity even to dialogue through that listening and through that relationship, all of a sudden you see more coming in place where you have an opportunity to engage in their life at a deeper level because you didn't start by preaching at them. The first thing you did was listen.

Number three here: if affinity is the new vicinity, we must recognize that discipleship and disciple making can happen outside of the building. The fact that we are still having this conversation in 2021 blows my mind. The fact that there are churches that are still putting all their energy into getting back into the building, that's great, that's awesome. Can we learn a lesson here about digital discipleship? Can we notice here that digital is powerful when it comes to equipping and engaging with people? And so if we could get our attenders that have no spiritual purpose outside of the building, that are struggling when it comes to getting activated and being on mission with God, if we can equip them digitally through digital methods, if we can disciple them so that they can in turn disciple others in physical and or digital space, the world, the church, people's views of God would look very different. But instead, we're huddled up in these buildings with these temples with these—I forget, I'm trying to say silo. What's the pointy thing on the top? Silo is not steeple. Thank you very much. With the steeples, and when that's not, that's not where we should be looking.

Pastor, don't be upset your people have no purpose or they're not in your building. Be upset that they have no purpose when they're not in your building. Let's get them activated outside of that.

If affinity is the new vicinity, number four: we must be okay with seeds falling in thorny bush, in rocky soil. Now look, it's hard discipling digitally. It's hard being on mission and social media. Try the couple weeks ago, I got trolled, and it was like, hey, you know what, my knee-jerk response, and I did, I stepped away from the keyboard. My knee-jerk response was I want to roast this guy. I'm ticked. I'm angry. How dare he. But the step back.

Was to realize, "Hey, troll needs Jesus too." And so how we handle and how we work with these things—now, look, you can cast seeds out there. You can connect with people. You can pray for people, and their response could be "screw you" or worse. Their response could be "you know, talk to the hand" if you want to go back a decade. Their response could be something that isn't pleasant for you. And at the end of the day, if that's the case, it's all right. It's okay if it happens in that experience, in that moment, because God's going to use it, which is the funny thing about why we're so against physical—because if, or so against digital and wanting to only do physical—because if we believe that anything we can do, God can use this for the kingdom, then why aren't we more aggressive and taking advantage of every opportunity possible instead of just trying to limit it to a couple, maybe tested over time, methods that honestly haven't been very effective in the past couple decades? Why not experiment with digital? Why not take advantage of the technology that's placed? Why not look at affinity being that new vicinity? We've really got no reason, no excuse not to go down this road.

Number five here: if affinity is the new vicinity, we must remember that affinity does not replace vicinity. Oh, Jeff, you sound like a hypocrite here, Jeff. You're working both sides of the coin. Uh, yes, yes I am, because it's fidget. It's physical and digital. We do find ways for it to work together. Now, there are communities that do work in digital-only space, and I can have those conversations, and in 2021 the bleeding edge is that digital-only type of person. Now, they are out there and they are effective, but the majority of people need both. The majority of the people are going to recognize that they are living in physical and digital hemispheres. They operate in both worlds. And so we, church, we should be taking advantage of the physical and the digital. Give it twenty years as more and more digital natives come in—where it's not logging on to the internet, that's always just been on—and all of a sudden I think you're going to see culture change maybe sooner than we realized. But for today, it's operating in physical and digital.

Jesus spoke of loving your neighbor as yourself, and that relates to the cat guy. That relates to the cop two doors down. That relates to the new neighbor that just moved next door for me. And that relates to the person that I engage with on social media who needs Jesus. That relates to my college roommate who's in four states away from me and is going through a hard time. That relates to the person from insert story here. There's an opportunity to engage, to dialogue, to utilize digital, and that is the win for us—not just physical, digital, digital. Figure out how to make them work together. Crazy idea, of course it's a crazy idea. Is this the first time you've listened to the Beta Show? All we do is we talk crazy here. But that doesn't mean that I'm wrong. There's an opportunity here for you to revolutionize your church's disciplemaking process. Is it guaranteed? No. Is it probably a step forward from where you are right now? Yeah. Why not give it a shot? Why not experiment? Why not try with some of these things?

By the way, Stadia is doing fidget learning communities in fall of twenty-one, kicking them off right now in the next couple weeks. Stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital. Stadiachurchplanting.org fidget. Get plugged into a learning community. Walk alongside other churches that are wrestling with the same stuff. Understand how the digital discipleship can be more effective for your church and can help your church thrive, grow, and multiply. Check that out: stadiachurchplanting.org digital.

And hey, we're going to wrap. It's funny, my screen has been very glitchy, and so hopefully this is broadcast clean. If not, we're gonna figure it out. But uh, hey, technology—try something new, and sometimes it glitches. So for Stadia, for the Church Digital, I'm Jeff. It's been great to have you here. We got some cool stuff coming up here very soon with the Church Digital. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag. I hate cats. I'm actually very allergic to cats. But stay tuned. There's gonna be some real cool stuff coming up here in the next little bit. Hey, thanks for being here. We'll see you next time here at the Beta Show. Y'all have a good one.