EP101: Jim Tomberlin & The Goal of Physical Church

All right, we've got episode 101 of the Church Digital Podcast powered once again by Stadia Church Planting. It's kind of nice—we're in three figures now, 101.

We celebrated episode 100 last week, phenomenal episode, packed guest list, and so lots of content there to process and celebrations to be a part of. Listening audience, thank you. But let's move on to what's ahead. Hey, we launched a new show here at the Church Digital. It's called Beta. The Beta Show.

And so we are answering your questions. The show debuts on social media Wednesday. We put it on podcast Thursday. And so check it out. The Beta Show. There's information at thechurch.digital on it. Or really, what I love what you can do right now for me, listening audience out there: text me questions. What do you have on social media? What do you have? What questions do you have right now in your church, in online ministry? What are you struggling with? What's the biggest challenge to overcome? Let me know. Text us 484-324-8724. If you speak telephone alphabet, that's number four, the church. Those questions, and we 484-324-8724 even answer them here on the Beta Show. One of the episodes we have coming up in the coming weeks.

Let's segue. Let's get back to 101 here. I love this episode. I love this man. I'm not ashamed to say it. Jim Tomberlin, chief of staff, Christ Fellowship Miami, multi-site solutions, Unstuck Group. Jim Tomberlin impacted my life before I even like breathed the same air molecules, before I even was in the same room with him. As one of the early pioneers of multi-site solutions, of multi-site church, one of these OG guys in the multi-site movement, Jim was really pioneering in some areas and really experimenting with this new idea of multi-site church maybe twenty years ago, even previous to that.

And from afar, I loved watching some of his mind space that he was sharing back in the day on Twitter, before Twitter was like the minefield it is now. When he was blogging back when like blogging was cool, like when he was generating all of this content helping churches go multi-site and another level. I got to tell you, as I've shifted into this new role here with Stadia and even the Church Digital before then, helping churches go fiddle, helping churches go online, it's been a phenomenal relationship. And just to have, honestly, a mentor like Jim—we're not engaging all the time, but when we do talk, it's phenomenal. The insight that we get out of it. So of course, 101, I'm like, "Hey, let's get Jim back in the show here and let's talk about some things: multi-site church, mergers, digital church, fidget church. Where are we going with all this thing?" Jim, what are you thinking?

And so we're bringing into this conversation we're bringing in Jim Tomberlin, multi-site solutions, multi-site guys, chief of staff with Christ Fellowship Miami, Unstuck Group, so many hats. We're bringing in Raid the Armist, digital pastor, Christ Fellowship Miami, co-host here, of course, bringing to myself Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting in an episode here, 101, that I'm really simply calling "The Key to the Next Digital Church Frontier."

Okay, everybody, here you go.

Hey, what's great to be back with you, Jeff, and Ray. Appreciate how you're leading in this whole digital church movement, and it's not new to you. It's been what, five plus seven years, maybe, that you really led Christ Fellowship into the digital space? And we've been building on that ever since. So and your podcasts are riveting, and you guys are becoming the voice, one of the key voices in this digital church movement. But my background, hey, I'm in my fourth plus decade of being in pastoral church work, and still loving it. And I get the chance now to help other churches. Half the last fifteen years as a consultant in the multi-site merger movements, and that's what led me here to Christ Fellowship as a consultant, and now serving as a chief of staff for the last three years. I was supposed to be six months, but three months, three years later, plus still in this game here at Christ Fellowship, and following behind you guys in terms of the work you've been doing in the digital church space.

That's awesome. Let's just even back up. You're in your fourth plus decade. What's the secret to that? Like, I don't know. I look around. I see people getting burned out. I see people getting alienated with ministry. Four decades. So that's like what, since the eighties? Like, what's the secret to that, even a little before that?

So, but I don't know. I think I've never fully recovered from the redemption that I experienced in Christ as a teenager. And I'm just so grateful to get to do what I do. Feel real strong sense of calling. I have an incredible wife who has that same sense of calling as well. And we've just been able to love the church in spite of all of its humanity. And of course, that's what the Bible teaches us: that humanity is broken and in need of forgiveness and redemption. And so churches are full of broken people who need forgiveness and redemption. And I'm just glad to be a part of that process in my own life and helping others in their journey as well. And I still believe the local church is the hope of the world. And I have given my life to the greatest message and purpose that I think a person can give their life to. So I'm still grateful to be serving and being able to bring hopefully some help to some folks along the way in the work of the church.

Man, hopefully that's inspirational, just even for me, a guy who's done fifteen years of church staff, and I joke here on the show like I've never stayed at any one location longer than five years before. It's like, "Okay, it's time to go," and just kind of move on, move on, move on. Somebody like you, yeah, you've had different roles in different parts, but for forty years on physical church staffs, outside through your organizations, supporting church staffs from within, consulting, being part of that. Honestly, just me looking from the outside, that's inspirational to see somebody who's dedicated forty years of their life to the church. So you know, even up front, hey, thanks for the service of that. Thanks for contributing. Thanks for helping the bride of Christ in this season. And thanks for investing. Even Jim, like you were influential in my life before you and I even met, through multi-site guy, through multi-site solutions blogs back in the day, and just really being one of those loud voices. I want to thank you. And we've had this conversation before because even before I knew you, I felt like I knew you, and you were having ministry influence on my life. So thanks for that.

You know, even up front, which is why I love having conversations like this because, you know, I'm listening to you on a Carey Nieuwhof podcast, and you say the word "fidget," and I'm screaming up and down, "Yes, yes, yes! Like, he's got it, and he said it on Carey Nieuwhof!" And we're getting it out there, and I'm understanding more of like this, you know, COVID is a thing. And as much as we as the church want to go back to February 2020 and pretend like, you know, nothing happened, hey, I don't think we're actually going to be able to go back because I don't think February 2020 exists anymore in culture. And B, I kind of find it funny that churches want to go back to February 2020 because February 2020 was not a great time in context of ministry. So you're the multi-site guy. You're the merger guy. You know, and there's books that you've written on this, and I want to have some of those conversations. But I'm just curious, like, from a multi-site perspective, what are we learning? What is the church learning mid-COVID, coming out of this post-COVID? I'm hearing some rumors that maybe multi-site's dead. I'm seeing some churches that are kind of struggling with this. Like, what's the multi-site perspective now, mid-post-COVID?

It's a great question, Jeff. When this COVID hit us, I went back in and reviewed an article I published with Outreach Magazine back in the fall of 2019. And they had asked me to write an article about where the multi-site movement was then and where was it going in the future. So I named a half a dozen trends that I was seeing that churches that are really getting and effectively doing multi-site, this is what they're doing, and this is where this movement is going. So I went back to see if that was still valid in light of COVID, and as I read it, I thought absolutely, even more so. And as I've been said in several different places, and others have said as well, that COVID really hasn't changed anything. It's just accelerated the good, the bad, and the ugly in all dimensions, you know, inside and outside the church. Certainly in the multi-site movement, the trends that we were seeing of effective churches doing multi-site, those have only been accelerated and intensified and magnified through this COVID season.

So I can tell you the multi-site movement is not dead or dying or the idea or the model of it. Just was like a few weeks ago with a church that's in one location, it's about two thousand, and said, "Hey, we're ready to multi-site. Can you come and talk to us?" Up in Tennessee. So I mean, it's not going away. Now, for a lot of churches, and I said this in my article back in the fall, and I just published a new article with Rezzy—you know, our good friends that living as one now, Rezzy—about they asked me, "What could you write an article about multi-site reopenings in multi-site churches?" But so I expressed several of the things that we're seeing there in the multi-site church movement. But we, as we said back in the fall, small is the new big. That smaller facilities is clearly the truth, was the trend then, and this continues to be that way. The churches that dabbled in multi-site, you know, with one or two locations, and they saw that as quoted like a satellite campus, they still had a main campus mindset. They didn't really make the multi-site paradigm shift. We're going to see a lot of those churches shedding their campuses, getting out of the multi-site movement. But those churches that really embraced the multi-site model, the paradigm of one church, multiple locations, and you know, shifted in that paradigm before COVID, they're going to do fine in this season. Those who have a big box model are going to struggle. That is where every campus is a huge space facility. It's just not needed with a multi-site model. Those with a big campus, main campus that they had before all they got into the movement, they're going to struggle more about filling those campuses up. But small is the new big. And for those who are nimble and who can embrace the paradigm shift, multi-site's still going to be around and it's growing.

Thinking small as a consistent challenge for a lot of churches, right? Just in terms of expectations, how are you encouraging churches to kind of temper those expectations as they move forward?

Well, again, I think before the multi-site movement, the mantra was "as big as we can," and the mega church movement started around the seventies, eighties in America. But then as we realize you can get so big in one location, you can become unsustainable. And so we clearly came to that conclusion: we're not going to see, and there's been a definite decline in building larger buildings even before COVID. We just don't need them if you have a multi-site mindset. I was in a church the week of COVID, the week that it hit the country, you know, that mid-March, that Tuesday, I was in a church in Colorado that had moved into a building that they had built and purchased the land and built a building for six million.

Dollars and it's, uh, they were meeting in five services in a building of 350 seats. Five services on Sunday. And when they moved into that building out of a school, they were about 500. Three years ago, and they'd grown to 2,000 people in a building with 350 seats. And they, it was all Sunday. After, you know, Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon meetings, get services. And they were almost apologizing for how small the building was. And I said, "Why did you build it with only 350 seats?" And they said, "That's all the county would allow us to build." And so I said, "But let me just say this: this is the new normal." This is before COVID hit. I mean, the week of it. What you've done here, it proves you can have, you can be a mega-sized church in a small facility. And, um, and so they said, "Well, we've maximized our space here and we want to multi-site."

And so I was just in that church about a month ago when they had reopened. And, you know, they're back in the in business. And, uh, looking down the road for more sites as well as they get, uh, regain their congregation back. But, um, but I think that is the normal. Uh, you don't, you don't have to be big facilities to be a big, have a big impact. It's not getting as big as you can. It's getting big enough where you can birth healthy, uh, congregations, right?

Jim, is there a benefit to that? Because as I look to getting back, not everybody's ready to meet with large crowds. And so is there a benefit to thinking small as opposed to thinking large because of it?

Well, that is one of the benefits. We know across the country that the larger churches with larger campuses, uh, are having a hard time returning, uh, you know, the mega church facilities, um, are not filling up. The smaller churches were able to reopen sooner and get back to pretty much business for them. So, um, we saw that here at Christ Fellowship when we reopened two weeks ago. Our smaller facilities locations, uh, were, you know, 50 at our capacity of what's allowed for us with, uh, social distancing. Where our, our two larger campuses, uh, weren't, uh, hitting that even that 25 percent or barely hitting the 25, uh, category for us. And so, uh, smaller is, uh, more nimble and more, uh, the other other benefit is it, it costs a whole lot less to maintain and, uh, take care of facilities. Smaller facilities.

I love this line. And Jim, you like, you last time you were on the podcast, the line from you was, "The not everybody has to buy into it, but enough have to to make it worthwhile." That was, that was the thing. I have said that hundreds of times since you were on the, on the podcast. And this line right here is going to become my next line: "It's not get as big as you can. It's get big enough to multiply healthily."

Let's, let's unpack that because in, in physical church, in digital church, you know, there's there's reach versus engagement. Like, that there's a lot kind of in this one phrase. And so I guess I would kind of say, how do churches do churches see this? Do churches struggle with this? Like, unpack that statement, uh, and maybe give some advice or, or shaping in context of how that applies to the church today.

Well, Jeff, I believe that, uh, it's, it's in the DNA of every living thing God has breathed into every living organism. And I think of the church as a living organism. Uh, the breath of life is to, to be a blessing, uh, to be fruitful. That is to reproduce and to multiply. That was the commandment given to Adam and Eve. You know, he said the Bible says in Genesis that God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply." What that means is, uh, for the local church is it's in our DNA to be fruitful, to be a blessing first of all to a community, into people's lives. But not just to be a blessing so we can enjoy the blessing, but also to reproduce. That's being fruitful. And then to not only be reproduction but multiplication.

Now, that being said, I use the analogy of a human. Of a human. Humanity. A 16-year-old can have a baby. A 16-year-old young woman can have a, can have a child physically. But is it healthy? Is that, is that wise? Uh, 20-plus-year-old woman is in a better place, a healthier place to have a healthy baby and survive the delivery. So I think the same is true for a local church. Our goal is to make disciples. It's not just to do church, but, uh, we're the point of the spear of the disciple-making. The local church is. And, uh, so the goal ought to be as churches are birth is, let's, let's reach people. Let's make disciples. Let's grow. Um, healthy things grow. And so when we get strong enough and healthy enough, we need to reproduce. And, uh, and then when the, uh, when we birth out other congregations, true multiplication is when those congregations or campuses give birth to campuses. And so that's just in our DNA. And, uh, but there is just like in, in the human body, there is a, uh, a healthy time to do that and a premature time for that to happen.

So, so we're seeing multi-sites in bar. And I love this evaluation that you say if you're going to measure health, don't just measure the Sunday. Measure groups. Measure multiple levels because that's going to tell you the health, uh, it's more than just that reach of the Sunday morning nickels and noses, uh, the butts and seeds approach. And so kind of have that. And, and hopefully physical established churches, even mapping that out onto the digital side, don't just map out, uh, and celebrate the number of Facebook viewers you have for two seconds, uh, but how many, how much of that's getting connected into your next step, your membership class?

I was gonna say that. It's not just the followers. It's how many are taking a next step. That's the key. If they're, if nobody's taking the next step, or if you're not even giving them an invitation to take a next step, but even if you are, that's to me is the real evidence that you're connecting with people, that people are really engaging with you. They're not just flipping through the, through the websites.

Yeah, the challenge is to move beyond consumer. And so because we don't want our, our church online, we don't want our churches to be filled with consumers. We want to get to that, that next level. And so put metrics on that, measure that, gauge the success of those next steps. Don't just be, don't just be celebrating the reach number. You can write a check to Facebook or to Google to boost that reach number. You got to figure out how to get them to that next level.

Jeff, I think the churches are going to be effective in this, uh, COVID era and beyond are those that really are going to move away from focusing on the weekend experience but more to what's our content this week that we're going to put online, that we're going to deliver a week at our physical campuses, that we're going to funnel through our small groups. And, uh, that really, it's, it's less about an event. The weekend is just, is a vehicle now, uh, one of, in a very powerful one, but one of several. And I think the focus moves there. What can we put? What's our content for this week or for this three months or whatever? And then how do we get that out, out in different ways on, uh, digitally? How do we deliver that on the weekends? And so that we start with, you know, the past ray is the idea was, "Hey, we have our weekend experience. How do we make it digital?" Now I think the shift needs to be, "We have content that we, uh, start digitally, and then how do we, how do we deliver that, contextualize that in a physical location?"

Yeah, the idea of previous to COVID, I could see where a lot of ministries were operating siloed. Like, the weekend experience maybe doing one thing, small groups may or may not be connected to that. Kids and students were often kind of doing their own thing. In this COVID season with digital kind of rising in influence, I can see where digital becomes this thing that connects all of it together because we're experiencing those services digital and we're experiencing our small groups digital. So our, our people are now getting drinking from the same faucet. And there's an opportunity for us as the church to seamlessly connect those together.

I love that, Jim. Create one, one experience, one direction, one track. And whether it's social media that's prepping for the service or the service that's prepping for a deeper conversation in social media, you're moving people so solidified in one direction instead of micro-fractional pulling them in all sorts of different places. That, that's beautiful. I had, I don't think I'd really ever put that together until just now. It's a great opportunity.

Well, let's, let's do. I want to talk about, um, I want to talk about mergers a little bit because you just came out with this book. Actually, it's, it's a re-release, uh, and, and what a timely re-release where you've got, uh, churches that were, we're trying to hear in this COVID season, we're shutting down. Like, was it Barna? Uh, David Kinnaman comes out, uh, 30 percent of Christians have left the church. Mathematically, an act of God or radical disciple-making, but mathematically they're gone. We're not going to get them back. 20 percent of churches, uh, Kinnaman's saying, are going to shut down in the next 18 months. Um, you know, we've talked about digital strategy being, being a possibility, but mergers are definitely going to be a thing in the future. And you guys were already re-releasing this book and working towards this, this book coming out to help churches figure out how to do this merger thing.

Jim, tell me about it.

Yeah, it's, it's an incredibly, the timing of this was amazing. Last fall, the publishers came to my co-author and I, Warren Bird, and said, "Your book has been a steady-selling book, but it's in hardback. Could we have your permission to release that in paperback? Because we think it's a growing trend and we'd like to make it even more accessible to more people." And we said we would be willing to, uh, do that if you would allow us to update it. And, uh, and so we did a survey last fall of nearly a thousand churches who had gone through a merger in the last five to ten years, uh, and, uh, we added three more chapters. We, everything we wrote in the first book, we, uh, uh, we didn't have to repent of anything we wrote. Uh, everything we said there that we published eight and a half years ago where we really gave some language to the merger, um, conversation and some categories and some tools about how this has gone from a lose-lose to a win-win option for churches. And that was more these are more mission-driven versus survival-driven kind of mergers that we were seeing ten years ago. And so, uh, that trend has continued to grow. Uh, more and more mergers are happening. You know, eight, ten years ago, thirty percent of all multi-site churches were, uh, a result of a merger or acquisition of a church building through a merger. Uh, in Christ Fellowship, as you know, Ray, we've had three, uh, mergers here locally and four globally that, uh, that you know, became our campuses, congregations through mergers. We, we certainly experienced that. Now in our latest survey, over 40 percent of multi-site churches are experiencing, you know, facilities through a merger. But we also saw church planters, 20 percent of church planters are acquiring a facility through a merger. And we also see that many more churches are seeing who are looking for a pasture or succession strategy as a merger is becoming more a, a tool, an option for those kind of churches as well.

But the publisher said, "We, we see there's that, this is a growing trend and we'd like to release it next fall." That was a year ago in the fall of 2020. And so we, we added three more chapters, added a bunch more tools to more stories, updated some of our stories from our first book. And, uh, we submitted our final manuscript the month before COVID hit. And, um, once it hit, we asked the publisher, "Could we have that back?" And, uh, address the COVID issue. And, and also we wanted to...

To review is code would change anything we wrote and it didn't again. It only accelerated what we were already we're seeing. There's more churches merging because more churches are just struggling. And the they said well we're gonna, they get, they allowed us to have the book, the manuscript back. We updated some things related to COVID and they said we're only going to release one book this fall and that's your book because it's so timely. So we, it's Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work, expanded and updated. That's awesome. We'll include a link in the show notes for that. But it's, it was a great book beforehand, you know. I read version one, however many years ago, but having it come back out to help churches, I'll be honest, like I've already had some of these hard conversations with churches of, hey, I've lost my space. I was set up and tear down at a school that's not going to happen. We're not going to go back to the school. Have no idea. We're already disconnected. We've tried the digital thing and we're really not able. We were barely grasping, you know, financially being able to hold on. And I guess my question kind of walking into this is at what point is it? If I'm a church like this that's struggling today, I've got several different options. I've got the merger route. I've got the digital strategy, become a digital only church for a season until I can get my feet back underneath me. You know, I've got just to hang it up and close it down. Don't worry, like just move on to the next thing. So I've really got like three different approaches. It's interesting you're kind of talking about all three at different levels. So what, how do I know as a lead pastor of a church that's struggling, how do I know what path to go on?

It's a good question. I, one of the things that we tell churches, how do you know if you're a struggling church or stuck church or strong church? Those are our three categories, right? Strong churches are merging because they're acquiring facilities and congregations, adopting them because they're growing, they're expanding, they're needing for facilities. Stuck churches, many times are stuck because they don't know they're stuck. They think because they're meeting their bills and you know everything's okay, they're not in trouble financially, but they're not reaching people, they're not growing. And some churches are fine with that. They like being, they don't, they're okay being stuck. Others aren't happy with it and are dissatisfied with that. Then there are those who are struggling. We know that in our work at the Unstuck Group, about we have a category of there's seven stages of a life cycle of a church and the downside is about sixty percent are in maintenance mode, stuck. About fifteen percent are in life preservation. And then the about ten percent are in life support. Those, that's about twenty-five percent of those churches that COVID is only going to accelerate their closing.

Now, if you're a church that's not, whatever you measure as a church, whether it's attendance, finances, baptisms, whatever your measure, if that's, if those things have been on the downside for more than two plus years, you're in trouble. You need to turn around or you may not, you may be too far gone to turn around. You need to close down. Or the nice thing is with a merger, you have a chance to have a second life, a new chapter, a rebirth.

How do I know what path to choose? The first thing church leaders need to do is the first thing leaders do is define reality. Where are we now? Where do we want to go? And how do we get there? And so one of the things we do on the Unstuck website, we have a self-assessment tool that churches can take. We've had over fifteen thousand churches take the self-assessment tool of their health. And we, and that's where we get our statistics about how many churches are struggling, how many are thriving, et cetera. But so first of all is facts are our friends. Are we, do we, are we going to make it? Do we, even if we can make it financially, and many of the churches that merge are not in trouble financially, but they, they're not, they're stuck. They're not reaching people. They're not making disciples. And we all know that the church should be a prevailing church and that we exist to make disciples. If we're not making disciples, then we're stuck.

Now, but us, so a good self-assessment is the first step. What are, what are the metrics? What are the things that measure health in your world that will tell you we need to do something here?

It's a great start, really. I mean, honestly, humbly evaluate where you are in the path. Is it worth getting connected to somebody else or even just being broken enough to recognize where you are and that you even need that help? So we'll link to the self-assessment in the show notes. You can get access to that and go through. And the Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan and those guys are doing a great work right now trying to help, obviously, as many churches in this COVID season. I think all the organizations that we're trying to help churches, they're all working overdrive right now trying to help through that.

So, you know, Jim, one of the things that I've loved about you is you're the forward-thinking guy. You're, yeah, I don't want to say like you're old, but you've been working for four decades. That's awesome. We talked about that earlier, so we'll just pay homage to that. But by thinking, by being the age that you are, you've always been kind of pushing the limits on things. One of the leaders of the multi-site movement, championing this idea of mergers, you've been forward thinking in context of your ministry life. And this is what I think is interesting in this season now is we've got an opportunity to do something different. You know, some of the things that I've been championing is this idea of a digital only church, a church that doesn't have a physical footprint necessarily. And we've, you know, we've talked with digital only planters like DJ Soto, who's got, I don't know, reaching hundreds of people in virtual reality on multiple campuses. Angela Craig is doing a Facebook church that's in forty countries, forty-three languages, something like that. Jade Earhart's reaching video gamers and discipling them and creating a discipleship movement, growing it into a church digitally using tools like Twitch and Discord. And so it's a forward-thinking thing. And so as I talk with people about this idea of a digital only church, I get one of two responses. One is that is the greatest thing that I've ever heard. It's about time. How can I help? Or the second is that's borderline heresy. You're going to hell just for the idea. And literally, even in COVID season, it's a true dichotomy. It's either one of those two.

I'm just curious, kind of your perspective at this idea of a digital only church, a church without a physical footprint existing in digital space held to biblical standards. What's your take? What's your opinion? When you look at the future, what role do you see like a digital only church playing?

This conversation is a lot like people were having before COVID, where can you even do a digital campus, digital church experience? You know, there's a lot of debate about that. It's not biblical. It's not, it's not meets the requirements of biblical community, et cetera. Nobody's saying that these last six months about can it work online. Of course, we've demonstrated it's been demonstrated. You can be a fully functioning church online.

The question about digital only, I think first of all, I, that is the only option in parts of the world where it's illegal to meet as Christians, where there's persecution. So for many of those, that is the only way they can do church is digitally. And we know that people perhaps in prisons as well, you know, I mean, they can't go to a church service and all that sort of thing, although there are ways to even have a church service in a prison. But I think is it possible? Yes. And is it only? I think that we, I think we will see some experiences of church, individuals who are going to be digital only. That's just going to be their strategy. And I want to just say go for it.

The, I think that if I was a church planter today and if I was starting all over, if I was going to start as a church, I would start digitally. And this is basically so fun because that's what you're working with Stadia. That's what they hired you to do is to help church planters start churches beginning digitally first, at least, and I think mostly with the idea of a physical launch eventually.

I think if though, if I was doing, I would do digital church and then I would get people into small groups. And then maybe once a quarter we'd rent a facility and come together and have a church experience. The, I think that would be the way I would go. It reminds me a lot of the first century, the first three centuries, where the most part it was illegal to meet as Christians, to certainly build buildings and all, but they all met somewhere. There was a meeting place somewhere, but it was homes, it was by a riverside, it was in a jail. It was, the idea of being of a building-centric faith, you know, that's something that's happened over the last hundreds of years, maybe in the West. But we know today that where the church is growing the fastest is in places like Iran, Afghanistan, et cetera. But I'm getting off track.

Digital only, I, I am, I think the jury's still out on that. I think that the, no, it's not just about biblical community. I think it's just human, humanity in general has a need for physical connection. So I think we'll figure out ways to come together, but it won't, but I think it'll be different venues to doing that. But I do think if I was starting church today, I would start digital first for sure, and then figure out how do we deliver digital experience in a physical location? How do we adapt that?

Yeah, I love that challenge. The idea of planting a church digital first and then growing in physical. Stadia, we're doing that a lot. I can already tell you, you know, success stories of guys. I loved your podcast with the Nouveau Church. Oh yeah, doing a great job with that. And it was funny. There was one of the other guys that was on here, Ray Hudson, who's with, um, oh Ray, forgive me, I'm blanking on your church name right now. But he just launched. He'd been digital. He'd launched early in the middle of the COVID season, and he just coming out of out of COVID, he just had his first physical services, I think this past week. He did, and it was at a micro location. It was not in the location it was planning on, but they could have twenty people in the service because of restrictions. And so he launched his first service with six, first weekend with six services, two Saturday, four Sunday. Preached fifteen minutes, you know, shorter worship, was a much more condensed environment. It was basically some of the same content that was done digitally with his online service, just done physically. And so planters are trying to figure out how to mold that. Honestly, he's trying to figure out if he could do ten services. Ten services as a planter, it's just phenomenal cause some of the dedication heading into that.

But here's what I know, and Jim, you know, maybe you see this, maybe not. But when I look into the, into now coming out of COVID, I really see where all the models have been jumbled up. I think that people, maybe this isn't a new thing, but I think that the lines between what is a church plant, what is a church merger, what is a digital only church, what is a multi-site church, I think all those lines have been blurred in this season.

Long term thing, but at least short term I think churches are trying to fit into whatever mold they can, and maybe the established model of what any given church was. Because of COVID, I think all the playbooks are kind of jumbled and everybody's just grasping to try to find whatever straw they can to work with, which I think opens up opportunities for things like digital-only churches to work and to kind of get defined. Because I've got micro churches, I've got digital, I've got digital-only, I've got digital-first where I'm having to do this before I've got digital next, where I'm on the verge of shutting down, I'm trying to find somebody to merge with, and digital next really seems to be the solution for me for a season until I can get my legs back under me as a church. It just really seems like as these models get jumbled up, I think there's an opportunity for another model to open up with this idea of let me recognize digital community as a community that's worthy of a church. So are you, what challenges do you see even as we're looking at all of these different models of what church looks like and how can digital play a part?

Well, I think this is an exciting era. This allows us, we've gotten in some ways COVID has given us permission to do a lot of experimenting and a lot of trying. I would say right now, Jeff, nobody has definitively can say this is the way forward, this is the best model, this is the best practices. We're all learning that right now, and so it's, but I think this is a great shake-up for the church because we were stuck and declining. Generally speaking, twenty percent of the churches in America are thriving. We're thriving, and I celebrate that, and many of those are churches that are very innovative and pioneering and willing to try new things. The, but I think this season gives us the permission to do that. And ask me a year from now, what's the new normal? What's the new best practices? Again, I think a lot of how you predict the future is what's working now and kind of follow that, the implications, project that forward. But right now COVID has turned everything upside down, but it gives us a huge opportunity and permission to try new models, new methods, new ideas, and those many of those are going to stick and become the new normal.

Yeah, and even to quote you from last time you're on, not everybody has to buy into it, but enough have to to make it worthwhile. So you know, in this season, experiment, try something new, change the way that you're evaluating to a fuller picture beyond just the reach. Start to get into that engagement. Engagement is the new, you know, stat to celebrate, and do that across your entire church, your entire discipleship pathway, engagement pathway, and change the way that you're evaluating your church. This is all, it's all beautiful, it all works together. So Jeff, I'm thinking it was you that coined the phrase "fidget church," right? You know what's interesting is we could actually probably have that conversation. It's either myself or James Emery White. It was, I stole it from a bit from business. Like business is using it, right? It was Forbes, I think, was the first place that I saw it. And it was funny the other day I was actually trying to scrape back through blog posts to try to find where mine was, and because I know James Emery White's been using it a lot over out of his church and in his movement with Church and Culture. And so I'm not sure honestly who predates it, but we were early on in that, and I love, I love that it's now becoming like normal talk. I was watching a sermon of a church of a friend of mine, and some sixty-five-year-old pastor on stage preaching online talking about how are we as a church, we need to think more fidgeting, and I'm like, I just got a sixty-five-year-old dude to say fidget in a sermon. Like my work here is done. Like this is great. So it has definitely been a great run, and we're not slowing down. I know you, four years, four decades ongoing, you're not slowing down either as well, and you've been a little inspirational for me even just saying, hey, I want to be able to keep pressing on in ministry and doing this, and for me to keep up pace with you, I guess that means I'll have to be working in 2040. And Lord knows what the church is going to look like in a couple decades. So that might be an interesting challenge in itself. But hey, Jim, it's been great hanging out with you today, as always. Any as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts? You commented about just being forward-thinking for four or four decades. I appreciate, thank you for that compliment. I do have a, I've always had this. I wake up every day thinking, how can we do this better? How can we reach more people? How can we make more disciples, better and more and better disciples? That has been a driving force for me, a conviction. And how do we do this better? I never get bored when it's routine, even if it's routine successful, because success sometimes can be the greatest inhibitor of greater impact because we get comfortable with our current success. And so I think all down through the centuries there have always been innovative church leaders who are willing to experiment, to embrace the latest technology, and leverage it and use it for making more disciples and extending God's kingdom on earth. And so that's fun being in this space, and I'm still loving it, and want to keep doing this until I can.

Awesome, love it. So hey, check out Better Together. The links in the show notes on the merger. You know, check out if you're not following Jim on social media through Multi-Site Guy and Merger Guru, and you know what, whatever the next thing is, Jim will figure it out and find ways to jump on that. So love the influence, Jim, once again, that you've had on my life. So thank you for that. Ray had to step out to go actually do Christ Fellowship work, as is known to happen, so Ray's not even on here, but it was great having him on too. For Ray, for Jim, this is Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadium Church Planning. Thanks for joining us on the podcast again, and we'll see you next time here at the show. Y'all have a good day.