EP106: Liberty University & the Academia of Online Ministry

Hey, we got episode 106 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by State of Church Planning. Jeff here. Hey, I'm on vacation. I don't know if you can tell. I'm literally sitting here in Disney Hollywood Studios, people walking by. It's awesome, great great time. Rise of Resistance, Star Wars, best Disney experience I've ever been on. Phenomenal stuff.

Hey, listen, let's talk about episode 106 here. Great conversation, really starting to get into some of the theological implications of church online. Brought in Professor Steve Lowe into the conversation. Now, Professor Steve, Professor Lowe, excuse me, um, Liberty is starting up an online track where you can get eventually a your master's, your M.Div with an emphasis in online ministries. Really fascinating. They don't have a lot of seminaries out there that are doing that. So we talk about it here for Professor Lowe on the podcast. What? Why don't schools see this? And what is Liberty doing to really get into that space, into the conversation as well? We're bringing Dan Tebow. Dan is a seminary student, one of the seminary students that are on this track to do online ministry. And so we have this conversation, bring Ray the Armist of course into the conversation. Phenomenal, phenomenal show. So episode 106, digging into the future of the theology of church online.

Okay, everybody, here you go. Tell me what's happening at Liberty. Let's start there. Tell me what's happening at Liberty and how you guys are um creating now training online ministers.

You would think that the pandemic would have put the kibosh on enrollments, but it really hasn't. Our enrollments have gone up during this time period. We're at our largest enrollment for online students in the history of the institution. We're at a hundred and five thousand online students and we have fifteen thousand students on campus. So the online portion of the university has continued to grow and expand, which includes the School of Divinity. We probably have um, if not the largest, maybe the second largest footprint in terms of student enrollment for online than any of the other colleges or schools in the university. We have about eighteen total of those. So we've been doing this for quite a while. We have gotten into the online portion probably within the last ten years or so. We have been using the Blackboard platform as our learning management system. We are in the process of migrating to Canvas, which is a lot of work for everybody in the institution that's involved in online learning.

Um, I'm a combination of jobs there. I have administrative responsibilities. I have teaching responsibilities. I have dissertation guidance responsibilities and course creation, including the cognate that we have for digital church ministry. So it's a hybrid kind of environment where most of us are working both on campus and online. I teach this semester. I have four courses on campus and four courses online. So that's kind of typical of how things go. And the combination of those keeps us kind of agile as we go through the semester, keep us on our toes.

We've learned over the years doing online education that it's easy to do it poorly. It takes a lot of work and dedication and money to do it well. And you have to have an ongoing professional development piece where you're constantly working with your faculty, with your subject matter experts, uh, with the staff that helps create the online environments and get, make them look nice and pretty and attractive and easy to use. All of that takes a great team effort to be able to pull that off. And one of the great things about Liberty is that they dedicate a great deal of their resources to that. In fact, I just had today at noon. I spent thirty minutes in a webinar for online faculty where we were kind of given some best practices in regard to grading and feedback and how to do that better. So we get those at least once a month. And so we're constantly trying to improve what we're doing.

When I tell you even that ratio, it's not the conversation I wanted to have, but fifteen thousand students physically and a hundred and five thousand students online, you know, is in online church we we talk about how digital scales, how you're uh have an opportunity to reach and engage and develop people spiritually. And at least in academic circles, Liberty's showing that where you're reaching, I'm guessing, the people are across the country and around the world that you're now doing this with in in digital space. How how long have you guys been running this program or any sort of online courses there at Liberty?

Well, right from the beginning in nineteen seventy-one when Dr. Falwell started, they had the online. In nineteen seventy-one, well, they didn't have online, but they had distance education. They did correspondence education. So they were doing it right off the bat. In fact, they were using um cassette tapes. I think it was their first foray. And then um VCH tapes, videotapes, and then eventually CD-ROMs. And then when the internet got up and running and things became more technologically available and workable, then they went online about uh probably ten or fifteen years ago.

Very cool. I I will say this. Uh, Liberty was one of the few schools that that actually offered me financial aid to come to the school. I was not a good football player, but I was a football player. And Liberty was was like the only school. Well, Florida State, which I would never be a null, but Liberty was like one of the few schools. It was like, hey, here's a bunch of money to come play football for us. And of course I said no. Uh, but well, looking at us today, eight and no, right there you go. Pretty high. Yeah, I mean, uh, my Horned Frogs are normally better than this year, but honestly, they've had a bad decade. So it's uh, they're the twenty twenties. Hopefully we'll be looking better for them down the road. And of course, Canes. I'm in Miami. I have to say that.

Well, hey, like, and I cannot wait to have this conversation uh because my my experience with seminary, you know, coming out of two thousand, um, I graduated in nineteen ninety-nine uh from TCU as I mentioned. And it just, I was in Fort Worth, Texas uh, and there was there was a seminary down the road, Southern Baptist uh, you know, uh, as um Southwestern's right there in the town. And a lot of my friends were going that way. And I've always been this like technological guide. The first online Bible study I taught was in the year two thousand. And the more that I just back then that I looked at what seminaries were doing, the more that I was like, you know, I can't. I don't. What I feel called to do, I'm not seeing the seminaries doing. And so I don't. I don't know that it's it's like worth me doing this and going into these these schools. And and which is why I'm so excited twenty years later when in in the course of all of these webinars and speaking and all the stuff that that I've been doing as a result of COVID uh, I I get an invitation from from Liberty University to speak to uh for online ministry. And there's a there's a cognate that I don't even know that I really understand what a cognate is, but there's there's now education that's that's happening here. And so you know, love the fact that that we get to to bring you on, sir. And we're bringing on Dan Tebow as well, one of one of the students uh of Liberty University that that's that's in the in the middle of this. So man, Danny, even just to open up with you, tell me your story of how how you chose Liberty, how you got involved in this online ministry. Was this like a what's your online ministry story? How did you get started into this?

So for for me, um, Liberty was one of those schools that I'd always heard about when I was in the military as being military friendly. And that's kind of what turned me on to Liberty. And uh, when I got out of the active duty Air Force back in two thousand sixteen, I had the Post 9/11 GI Bill sitting there. And I was fortunate enough when I was active duty to get my first master's degree through tuition assistance. But I had these benefits. I'm like, these, they're just sitting here. I can't transfer my family because I'm already out of out of the service. So what am I going to do with them? And it it been on my heart for a while to pursue some type of Bible college or seminary just to enrich in my own walk with God. And as I started praying about it, Liberty popped up one day. I think it was in a Facebook feed of all things and you know, advertising. And uh, so I clicked on it and and from there just started looking through. And out of all the seminaries I looked at online, they just made it the easiest to understand the process and to apply. And and honestly, just the benefits for not just military but then also first responders. I work in law enforcement. And so those those things right there were you know, no-brainers for me. And uh, so I went ahead and applied and uh was able to get uh selected and approved to go to the Master of Divinity program. And there are a lot of cognates, which are basically concentrations uh within the degree program. Um, I mean, there's there's several different ones. The first is I'll do apologetics. And after you know, taking the uh Apologetics five hundred, I don't want to go that route for the long run. And I checked out a couple others and looked at uh biblical languages, which was a ninety hour program. And uh, literally over the summer, Liberty pushed out this you know, this section on the website of new programs like what new programs we got? And sure enough, there was you know, church ministry for the digital age. I'm like, no way, like that's that's awesome because the fact with me being a military guy, um, I value you know, the the face-to-face communication, whether it's Zoom or FaceTime or whatever it is, being traveling a lot and understanding the importance of using technology to stay connected. And just seeing that, and then I could I could go on a long story. My best friend is actually in South Carolina, Charleston area. And we have only met in person twice, but we've been best friends for over a decade. And it was just through the grace of God meeting on a Fellowship of Christian Athletes forum through the endurance we did ultra running. And uh, I met him there in two thousand eleven. And it just started a you know, kind of like a pen pal almost, but it was through email and forums. And he's become my greatest mentor. And so it's just for me personally, I've seen the value of technology and using it to build intentional relationships. And so when Liberty pushed out the cognate, I was like, that's that's a no-brainer for me. I signed up. And um, you know, it was funny when I signed up and got started with Dr. Lowe. I looked at the class roster and I was like, I'm the only one in here right now. What's going on with that? But just because it's so new, and I'm hoping and praying that through this podcast that just gets the word out that you know, Liberty has something out there that no other seminary has. And this is the time to jump on it because it's the leading edge of what God's able to do with the kingdom through technology.

Yeah, so well, let's let's talk a little bit about that. Like, there's um, there's not a lot of other seminaries that are doing this. I don't know that I've heard anybody, honestly. There may be one one or two. But how did Liberty get to this place? Online, digital, pre-COVID, very controversial idea. Even mid-COVID, you know, there are still people that want to get back to February two thousand twenty. Let's just reset and go back to the way that we were as quick as possible. And so Liberty, you know, was kind of being a little bleeding edge here and saying, hey, we want to we want to acknowledge this whole online ministry thing. We want to start to train our our our people. We want to help reproduce that. Uh, Steve, sir, what was that process? What what did that look like for Liberty to come to this um realization?

Well, you have to be ready for an endurance run when you do these at Liberty because it is a really um protracted process. They have a lot

Of hoops that you have to jump through. So we started working on this a year ago, and what prompted it was my thinking that really got carved out for me when I was at Michigan State University as a student studying under Ted Ward there, who served at that institution for thirty years as a Christian, cranked out a lot of students over the years. And one of the things he taught us in curriculum courses was curriculum is not something that you're doing now. A good curriculum is one that's forward-facing. It's preparing students for the future, not for the present. And as I looked at the landscape of what we were doing in the School of Divinity, everything that we were doing was geared towards preparing students for brick-and-mortar church ministry of one form or another, either in an existing church or church planting or something of that sort. And nothing at all was offered in regard to preparing students for digital church ministry, which I knew was out there and a vibrant part of many institutions, many churches, but wasn't on our radar screen at all.

So I began with my wife Mary putting this program together, going through the process of getting it approved and creating a cognate that we hope will eventually enlarge over the years and become an entire degree program itself. So we've kind of built into the way in which we have structured it around four kind of skills that we want students to develop an opportunity for those to grow. We have four courses now, one each for each of those skill areas, and eventually we hope to expand those into other areas including areas of digital discipleship, digital evangelism, and things of that nature.

Awesome. Uh, first Dan, thank you for serving in our military. Just, oh, especially wanted to highlight that and just grateful for you, man. Thank you, Dr. Lowe. Those four areas, man, can you please share with us what those are? Because I think this is fascinating. Can you dive in a little bit deeper and share those with us?

Yeah, digital theology is one area that we have, digital formation, and then digital community, and then finally digital strategies. So we have a course for each one of those right now. The course that Dan took last term was the foundational course. It's a course on the theology of networks, having students think through the biblical and theological basis for doing online digital ministry. And then the course he's taking now from my wife Mary Lowe is on spiritual formation, and then he's also, I think, taking another one from me on ministry practice that is kind of the basic skills of how you set up a digital ministry. So they're designed to give students basic skills so that once they graduate from us, they could step into a ministry somewhere and not have to be brought up to speed by the church. They would already have some skills in place. Most importantly, they would have a good biblical theological reason, rationale for doing this kind of ministry and be able to defend that if they need to from both scripture and from theology, the history of the church.

That's wonderful. Dan, what kind of books does Dr. Lowe have you read in digital theology, man? I'm curious, man. Seminary guys, we're book collectors, bro.

That's right. Here, right? Should I start with the one that both Dr. Lowes wrote together?

No, I would. Yeah, that's "Ecologies of Faith," um, which I actually, I sent him an email yesterday. I was like, "Man, chapter five is where it's all at," you know? Because, you know, the argument for digital ministries, you know, so many folks, as we know, are like, "Well, we have to have face-to-face interaction," which to an extent, yes, we do. Digital ministry is not going to replace physical gatherings and connections. Um, but why not bridge the gap, especially with 2020 teaching us the impact of, you know, a global pandemic and everything else that's been going on in our country? Um, and so to get back to the rest of the books, um, you know, there's some other ones out there. The "Social Media Gospel," um, the "Ecologies of Faith," I mentioned that one. Uh, what's the other one? Um, the "Virtual Body of Christ." Yep, that was last, uh, last course, if I'm right. Um, so I mean, it's just there's a wealth of knowledge out there of independent folks that have, um, dug into the topic, but nobody's spearheaded it yet. And that's what I'm thankful for Liberty doing with this program is we have structure to it, to where now we can, how, what does this look like as a program? How do we actually take these ideas and these experiences people are having amidst, you know, global pandemic again, and how do we leverage those things for moving ahead? And I mean, there's just so many opportunities with that. Um, you know, just taking the simple basis of understanding that, uh, when we look at the early disciples, they were scattered, and in that, in a, in and of itself, you know, they were immediately starting ministry, going out and getting the job done through the Great Commission. And we as a church, as a, as especially a Western church, have become so comfortable with our traditions of, you know, meeting in a building and having small groups and programs within that, to where we miss the opportunities to go out. And so digital ministry is kind of holding our feet to the fire as a church of, "Hey, there's a job to do. Let's go be, you know, proactive in that instead of reactive," and trying to get folks to come to us. We need to go to them. And so I mean, there's all kinds of avenues we could go with that. But, um, there's just so far, you know, I finish one course of the cognate. I'm in the other two. I'll take the next one after Christmas. And I've been beyond motivated in the past, you know, eight weeks, ten weeks at this point. Um, I'm four semesters into my Master of Divinity. I'll have two semesters left. But this chunk has been golden because of the fact that, like I said, for my own story, having traveled so much and been to different areas and having to leverage technology to stay connected with people, and then the relationships I built with my buddy Adam and stuff like that, it's one of those things that I'm now being given tools that I can build a community that's decentralized, and they have basically a base camp to come to, get trained, get equipped, um, have fellowship, and then replicate, you know, basic discipleship, replicate it in their own networks where they're at. And it's really a launching arm for the church. And so that's just kind of some basic thoughts on it. But I don't know how far you want to go with that.

I don't want to take the whole conversation. Beautiful, Dan. Just tell me, even coming out of this, like, so you got one year left. What's next? What does ministry look like? You're doing that digital cognate. Like, what, how are you going to apply this when you're walking away with a degree?

Certainly. So for me, I've been very fortunate to kind of, um, experienced two different realms of digital ministry. Um, I served my local church here at B Hope Church in Beaver Creek, Ohio, and you know, they have, you know, they're basic, they're very well-rounded church for the local community. But they've been streaming their service now for, I want to say, four or five years. And so within the past two years, the online campus pastor came up to me and goes, "Hey, I think you'll be really good at the social media thing. You're gonna help me build this thing." And it was about the same time that I started at Liberty. And so as I'm trying to figure this out, how do we build a Facebook group? How do we, you know, leverage that to, uh, meet the needs of the congregation? How do we go beyond a Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon? And you know, I think it's VJ's, our campus pastor. He always says, I think it's 167 or 176 hours of the week. What are you going to do with that outside of Sunday? And so that's where, when it comes to taking a physical church and launching into digital ministry, we have such an opportunity to continue to grow and to invest in the people throughout the week. Where it's too easy just to, you know, get into our routines and become lukewarm through the week, which is the worst thing we can do in our walk. And so having that opportunity to build that Facebook group and go from literally two people to, I think we're at 560 now, just two years later. And there's meaningful conversation that happens in there throughout the week. We get people sharing their testimonies, sharing prayer requests, praise reports, reaching out for extra help in the community. And I mean, that, that in itself, you know, especially when we got social distancing, everything going on, we have, we still have that connection. We have those meaningful interactions. And that's just something in a group. You're still having folks that are now communicating one-on-one, whether it's FaceTime or Zoom or anything like that. So there's so many different tenets that you can use digital ministry to completely bolster up and reinforce your physical church. And there's so many things that I would tell a traditional physical campus or pastor of, "Hey, take this and let it, let it, um, grow what you're doing." You know, it's not going to replace it. Don't be afraid of it. It's there for you. And so that's kind of my one exposure to digital ministry. But then the other part of it is something I've been starting called Servant Warrior. Um, and that's, that's basically a digital ministry more or less that I've decided to finally take the leap of faith and jump into. And that's where I'm fortunate to have, um, Professor, you know, Lowe and his wife to go through and, um, encourage me to step out into that.

And what I've done basically is, for me, I'm a guy who works in law enforcement, and guys don't like to talk one-on-one in the first place. They're always the hardest to get to, to open up to each other. But then you add into that type-A personality of military law enforcement, it's even worse, you know? Everyone wants to joke and have fun, but nobody wants to be real with one another. It's so, it's an interesting group of individuals to really start to crack that egg and drain it out and be real and transparent and support one another in the walk of life, especially this year for law enforcement. It's been very, um, unique. And so, um, what I've done with that is it started on Facebook, just reaching out to guys that I knew personally of, "Hey, I know you're, you're, you know, either one, have faith and are trying to, um, strengthen that through this year, or you are questioning faith. Let me start a conversation with you and work through that." Um, or just people that are looking for the answer of where they find rest and restoration and peace. And so there's a lot of different opportunities to evangelize and discipleship in that. And so I started with a small group, and through that small group, we've now grown to about thirty-four guys that are pretty active and talking. Um, and actually, within the past couple weeks, kind of shifted my model a little bit. And you know, I'm basically testing it out as I go, to where it started as a small, small group on Facebook. I had the basic Instagram, the Facebook page, you know, kind of the run-of-the-mill basic, you know, tenants that you would have in a digital brand. Um, but as I was looking at that, you get this push, especially in the podcasting world, to try to reach out and get everybody. You want to impact everybody. You want to influence everybody, which is good for a podcast. But if you're trying to build community and you're trying to build intentionality that's going to be transformational, you need something a little bit more focused and in depth. And so I decided to shut down the Instagram and migrate the Facebook page and actually, by your recommendation, after talking to different different platforms that were out there, I moved...

them over to Discord and Discord has been an amazing platform for this group of guys. Um, it is basically I call it a chat room on steroids and it reminds me of the old AOL type messenger environment where you know you can get in there and just have direct conversations. But they've went through and being a gamer community that started it, they had a lot of video and audio and so we've had just uh last week I had a video voice call with four guys in the group. One of them was in Peru, one was in Japan, one was in South Carolina and I'm here in Ohio and we got to have an actual conversation and talk about their walks and what they're struggling with and it just it blew my mind when I hung up. I'm like, here I am literally talking to someone in the other world and you know the other side of the world, someone south of the equator and then someone here in the states. But we're developing relationships that there's just general conversation going on and you can't have that when you're confined to a brick and mortar building. You know, if someone, the guy that's in Japan is actually a former ROTC cadet that I trained. He's working and doing some really cool things overseas and you know being able to take that relationship that I had in person and invest time into it through digital media and digital ministry, he still has that connection and it's it's just been very awesome to see. So that's just kind of my exposure to how things are going for uh the opportunities in digital ministry.

And for me when I finish this program, this degree, I was actually talking to Mary Lowe yesterday evening about opportunities and basically she turned my attention to the Doctor of Education for Christian Leadership and looking at my background and everything, it's something we'd be praying over for the next few months to see if that's the route to go. And basically it's you know taking leadership principles, applying to the Christian walk, but then also doing research dedicated to what do we do to lead the digital church. And so there's there's a lot of opportunities there that honestly I'm getting pretty excited about thinking about. So that that's something that I think I will pursue after this. Um, and then definitely whether the Lord says before I retire from law enforcement or after I do foresee some type of full-time ministry in my future for sure.

Dr. Lowe, you've done a very good job training him. Um, you know, just even listening to him talk, uh, you know, so often you get a young guy, new guy, he's he's touting all this money I need, all this gear I need, all the structure, you know, give me the studio, everything he just said was free. Um, you know, maybe you're you're paying five bucks a month for Discord if you want like all the features that you you probably don't even need. Uh, and so you know, even what I, what I love here and even Dan, just to hear you say yeah I was doing this and we pivoted, we changed. Um, I started exploring some other ideas and we went we went a different direction. We learned something and we adjusted from it. And so like this is this is beautiful. I just had a gentleman reach out to me yesterday that he was like, hey, I'm glad we made the move from Facebook because Facebook, he just didn't, he didn't feel safe and if you don't feel safe having a conversation then why are we going to stay there? And he was like, Discord, I feel like he's private and he works in law enforcement and he was like, you know, I feel like I can connect here. And I mean, he was he was sharing some photos from from his job and you know telling me what he did and you know me having a law enforcement background it was a nice mutual connection. But just hearing that he didn't feel safe and having in a good spot in Facebook just for different reasons, it's to me as a leader in any type of environment, especially in ministry, we need to reach people where they are, which many folks will think okay well that means cast big net, you know, go for the whole ocean. But at the same time it's not about just fishing, it's about then investing in that time. And so it's just one of those things that you've gotta you gotta target it right and don't be afraid to change.

Dr. Lowe, what does strategy look like? One of your four classes is strategy. How are you training people towards having a digital strategy? That's not an easy thing to do, especially you know they may have understanding or they may come in completely cold. So how do we educate future pastors to have a digital strategy?

Well, one of the things we try to help students do, especially in that first course but really throughout the entire uh cognate itself, and I would say throughout the entire degree program that we put students in, but especially in this area that we're talking about, we kind of zoom out and then we zoom in to give them perspective. So in the zooming out phase of things, we're trying to give them the big picture overview of how God has created the world. It is an interconnected world that's part of the creational design that's there from the very beginning and that uh feature of interconnectedness touches all levels of our existence as human beings. It's at a quantum level, physical level, uh creational level, social level, certainly physical, and we would argue spiritually as well. And so part of what it means from the wisdom literature of the Old Testament to have the fear of the Lord is to recognize that order and that uh arrangement and that intelligence that's organizing the world in which God has made and cooperating with the way in which God has designed that world to function.

And part of that has to do with this reality that God has made things to uh function and to grow in a certain kind of way that's consistent with that. And that's kind of where our discussion of spiritual formation comes into play because we recognize that what we see in the spiritual realm in terms of how we grow as Christians is really part of a larger reality of how things grow and everything that God has made. That's the reason why in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, especially in the parables of Jesus and in the writings of the Apostle Paul, they always point us back to nature and have us look at some feature of natural growth to illustrate a feature of spiritual growth in the kingdom or in the church or in the individual Christian. And all of that we argue is part of the way in which God has designed things to function. It's an ecological reality. It's where we get that language. And so we try to bring that to bear in terms of how we teach students to read the scriptures, that there is um this pattern that's there in the Word of God that where it all hangs together and makes sense and there's cogency there, there's a beauty to its unity. And so we try to help students see that from Genesis to Revelation, to see the the missional movement of God from the opening chapters of Genesis to the closing chapter of the Book of Revelation.

And if there is purpose and design in all of this, and what we have to do as God's people, especially as we're preparing for ministry, is to understand that reality and figure out where we plug into it. And part of that reality that we see from Scripture is that when the New Testament talks about the church, it always talks about it in the combination of the church gathered and the church scattered. The Book of Acts is built that way. The first seven chapters of the Book of Acts describes the church gathered in Jerusalem. The beginning in chapter eight through twenty-eight, there the focus changes and we see the church scattered around the globe. And that combination of the church gathered and scattered is the true nature of the church. We've only emphasized one half of it up to this point in history. But now because of realities that confront us, we're being forced to think more deeply about this and to go back to our biblical roots and to examine things a little more closely and to recognize that we missed something all these years because we are so focused on one idea of what the church is like or where church took place. But now we're beginning to see a more global perspective. And I think it's that that we help our students see and to understand.

Dr. Lowe, I couldn't agree more. Um, this is fascinating because for a long time the church has focused more on the church gathered. This degree does much to legitimize from a global church perspective our views on digital and online ministry. Talk to me about, because you know obviously in order to pursue this, you're thinking about down the road too in terms of what this is going to do, how do you see something like this having an impact on Western church, how we view online ministry, its legitimacy? Because this opens up to me a lot of doors for this. And so how do you foresee this making an impact?

Well, there's a kind of an ancient future connection to it. I think when you go back to the Book of Genesis and you look at the way in which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob carried out their understanding of the mission of God that was established in Genesis chapter twelve, what you see them doing is building altars at strategic locations in the land of promise. In fact, all the altars that the patriarchs built are on one single north-south roadway that had the potential of not only reaching the inhabitants of the land but the inhabitants of the world because all the nations of the world who wanted to do commerce around the world with Egypt and Assyria, they all passed through there. So Israel was strategically located by God purposely so that she could carry out her mission to the nations of the world. Well, I think we have today a technological altar that we can plant anywhere and through those building of altars on the internet, we have the potential of reaching the same audience, the nations of the world. That mission hasn't changed. It hasn't been rescinded. We're just using new methodologies for doing it. They built physical altars. We're going to build digital altars. But we're really doing the very same kind of thing. We're being consistent with what God has called us to do.

That was beautiful. Can people audit your class? Could I just like hang out, be like the Zoom, like fly on the wall? Like that was, oh my gosh, that, where were you twenty years ago? I I would totally would have done this. This this is this is great. Let me ask this question. I I I I don't even know if I can ask that question. That that was just incredible.

Um, all right, so I did a webinar. I think it was one of the times that I spoke at Liberty. Honestly, I I don't mean this ego like I've spoken so many times in the past eight months I don't even like remember half the time if I've done it or not. But I I spoke at a at a seminary university and there was a there was a student, seminary student in in the thing, and one of the questions that that popped up and honestly it kind of stuck with me. The question was basically, yeah, I'm almost done with my degree and like all this digital stuff is now happening, covered to reality. Do I need to just like start over? Do I need to just give up all this physical training and shift over to a digital mindset now? I'm curious kind of what your response is because what I hear is not digital for digital, but I really feel what I'm hearing it sounds like it's more of a a dispersed mindset, not necessarily digital technology, but more disciple making and an empowering and priesthood of all believers. Like what what is this tension that that we're living in and of doing digital ministry versus maybe just doing the biblical ministry that God called us to in digital space? Like talk to me a little bit about this here, Dr. Lowe.

Well, uh, last spring I did an interview with Christianity Today, uh Mark Galli, their editor-in-chief at the time, and one of the things I said in the interview was that we're doing a church ministry in a digital age but we're using an analog model to do it. And what I meant by that was...

Was that in many cases our theology has not caught up with the technology we have? Theological and biblical ideas and concepts of the church—let's say, for instance—are, whether we realize it or not, tied to place. When in reality, when Paul talks about the church, he talks about being tied to a person. Places irrelevant for him. It was relevant for Judaism. It was relevant for Second Temple Judaism, out of which he came. But he had a revolutionary encounter with the Lord on the road to Damascus, and that encounter with the Lord changed his perspective from wanting to inherit a place in the land to wanting to inherit a relationship in Christ. And so that relationship in Christ became the dominant thinking that Paul had, and the core of that was his understanding of the church as the body of Christ. And his idea of the church was global, cosmic in its thinking and in its perception. He saw the body of Christ as the basis for the interconnectedness of all the beautiful members that make up that body. We are all connected to Christ as the head, and all of our spiritual nutrients flow from him, but they flow through other members of the body of Christ. And it's the combination of flowing from and flowing through that makes possible the growth of the body, regardless of where you have it manifested—physically or digitally doesn't make any difference—because in the spirit, Christians are always present and never absent. And that theological truth needs to govern how we look at digital and physical church ministry.

Dr. Dr. Lowe, just out of curiosity, because I know that Jeff talked a little bit about the digital strategy—for me, one of the weaknesses coming out of seminary was so much strategy was weighed in terms of times past, what had succeeded in times past. How are you guys keeping an eye on pushing your students towards looking towards the future and staying adaptable within a digital strategy?

Well, we don't have to do much, I think. You got a good example of it here in Dan, in terms of what he is like coming into our program. We don't have to do a whole lot of retooling there because the Lord has already been working in his heart. He's already been shaped in terms of his current ministry, and all we have to do is kind of do some nudging here and there, and that's basically it. Because we have a different student clientele today than we've had in the past. I see the difference dramatically before me every day, either on campus or online. It's a different group of students than what we've had in the past, and they're aware of these digital realities. They live a blended existence already, and they understand the relationship between the two. And so it's a lot easier with the contemporary audiences that we have in most of our classes at the university to be able to make the case for that, because they're already doing those kinds of things.

It's not every day that you have a student like Dan who's taking your class and he actually takes what you're teaching them and uses that to build an online ministry. So those are the kinds of things that happen when you have the ability to work with students who are already in the process of being formed. That's the reason why we have this ecological frame of reference. We recognize that we are not the only place where students are going to be impacted and transformed through the educational experience they have with us. We recognize that they're connected and interconnected to a variety of ecological environments that are all having an impact and influence on their thinking, on their behavior, on their ministry skills, and all of that. So we're a part of it, but we're not the whole thing.

Is the average student—and Dan, Dan may be the unicorn, I don't know. I mean that in a good way, Dan. Not that you're pink and have a horn on your head. Um, does the average student walk in 2020? COVID screwed everything up. Like, the typical model of church has exploded, at least what I'm seeing from Stadia Church Planting. People now want to launch. They want to launch big churches. They want to launch microsite churches. They want to launch digital churches. Like, the model, which means some of the strategy really that you want to coach through, has changed. Because at this point, there are so many bifurcated ideas of what church is that I could see where it'd be hard to train people, because how you do things digitally or how you do things in micro or how you do things in launch large or how you become a physical missionary or a digital missionary—like, there's a lot of different specialties in these areas.

Do seminary students, when they come in cold—like, freshman year, first year, I should say—do they know what they want to do? Do they not know? Like, is there a strong calling, or is it more like, on average, what are you feeling? Maybe for both you guys, what are you seeing coming out? What are the seminary students looking to do, or do they even know yet?

I'll talk from a professor perspective, and what I have seen, especially over the last five years, is that most of the students who are coming in have a pretty clear idea of what it is they're going to get out of the seminary experience. They already have a pretty clear picture of where they're going to head after they graduate, and they're actually involved in doing things right now. I had a student the other day who got up and gave a report in class talking about her online youth ministry that she's conducting. So that she meets twice a week with this group of young people, and she has a whole design in place that she created herself that she goes through. She has certain things she does in one session, certain things she does in another, and she has a really clear idea of what she's trying to accomplish and how to do it. So what we're doing for her is tweaking all of this and giving her some additional tools and insights to kind of enlarge her already present toolkit, doing something she was already doing when she came to us. So that's kind of the rule these days rather than the exception, as it was in the past.

What are you seeing, Dan?

So, I mean, for me, when I started, I didn't necessarily know where it was going to go. I actually switched to probably three or four different cognates before this one came up. I mean, clearly God knew it was coming, and it was all part of the plan, but me, I'm trying to figure it out along the way, right? As we all do. Um, but it was just one of those things that I knew—I knew for me God was pulling me towards seminary. I had been something before I got out of the military. You know, this is something that started to really work on me, and there's a lot of questions. And I remember having conversations with friends that were in ministry and never felt the definite call yet. But with the start of everything, it's been a no-brainer that yes, there's a call there, and how that's going to manifest is still to be determined. But I'm definitely along for the ride and whatnot.

I'm going back earlier to a couple questions that were asked, really for the student during the webinar, and I was nodding my head yes when you mentioned—because I remember watching that webinar and that question coming in, and you're like, "Well, how do I answer that?" Because so many folks are, you know, they're like, "Well, do I leave physical to go to digital?" But really, I would almost be of the argument that, you know, physical has its place. I mentioned that earlier. It's not going to be replaced. But instead of what I would challenge folks to do is instead of starting with physical—because we already know what that looks like—instead of starting with physical, start with digital and see how digital can create physical. And that's where we go from that scattered mindset to going out and building the church. Because before you know it, if you invest in digital, you're gonna find physical growing.

And something that I had the exposure of experiencing—I was part of the CrossFit community and functional fitness when I was in the military. And there's a ministry out there called Faith RX. The RX's prescription, you know, doing a workout as prescribed. So they use the Faith RX method, and Jim Konselman and Becky Konselman—she passed recently—they started this ministry up where, you know, they were basically putting more or less house churches inside CrossFit gyms, and they were just serving folks where they were at and building community. And it's turned into a digital community where they have basically chapters or cells all over the United States that meet in gyms. And they have local ministry leaders, but they all come back to the website for devotional content and networking and forums and social media. And it's just one of those things that by launching through digital, you extend your reach. You allow yourself to have different base camps started up in different areas.

And it goes back to my second point to go back earlier: if we focus training and methodology to the spiritual disciplines found in Acts 2:42, and just get the church back to what the church was created to be in unity, we can then at that point go through and start equipping folks to move. And that's just kind of my thought process. And through that, you see that digital ministry—I wrote this in an assignment this week—is, in essence, the spiritual body. It's a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. You know, by going through and letting the spirit move within us individually and then moving through digital platforms, you're seeing God show up and make a way. I mean, you know, then we go back to, you know, the printing press did that when we started having print Bibles. Well, this is now the new printing press. And for me, it's like, I want on this train. I want to see where it's going, you know? And that's just one of those things that I would encourage anyone listening to this: if there's questions, reach out, ask the questions, but don't hesitate to take that step of faith. Because digital ministry is clearly where God is leading his church into the current age.

So we're going to go ahead and call the ushers forward. Organist, if you would like—that was beautiful, Dan. You got a solid head on your shoulders. You're going to do fine in this online ministry thing. Dr. Lowe, you can take full credit. I'm sure I've got "Ecologies of Faith in a Digital Age" open in Amazon. I will click the little Kindle link here in a minute and type in my credit card information. If only to be able to read—maybe I can't attend a Liberty class, but at least I can expound on the digital theological challenges that we have today in book form. So thank you very much for that.

Hey, Ray, as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts on your side?

Yeah, I love this on so many different levels. You know, to Judge's point, I do wish that there was an aspect of this that existed, you know, even as I was going through seminary. Because in times past—and this is kind of the unfortunate thing—it seemed like the church was, and it even in this case, you know, was a little bit behind in terms of, "Man, we could have been here already." But sometimes, like, we get in our own way in thinking, "Oh, man, but not yet, because we want to hold on to our traditions." And got to give a lot of credit to you, Dr. Lowe, and to you, Dan, for really just kind of plowing through and saying, "No, there is complete legitimacy to this, and this is how we're going to reach the future of the church."

And so for those folks out there who are still wondering, "Well, do I need to build a good base theology? Do I need the education?" The answer is yes, you still do. I was talking to somebody today. We got their seminary education recently, but they went through the route of working for our church first, and they wished that they had gotten the education first. And so there is still validity with seminary education, with getting that.

First as a ground basis for why you do what you do, and in this case understanding why you're doing online church from a spiritual perspective, helping to nurse some of those things we'll serve you over the long haul. You can hear it, and Dan, you can hear how it's firing up his fuel. As to man, I see God's called me to this. I understand it from a scriptural perspective, and now I'm being released to do ministry. There is complete validity to this, and so go for it. Awesome. Hey Ray, I went ahead and bought you a copy too. You're going to get an email from Amazon about that. I saved my credit card. Who knew? You're two copies. You're good.

Hey Dan, just as we're wrapping up the plane here, briefly any closing thoughts? To reiterate what I just said, you know, it's one of those things that it's the time to embrace the change. I mean, God's moving in crazy ways within our country alone. I mean, there's so much that's going on that the ground is ripe for getting out there and exploring digital media and digital ministry and how you can use that to reach people. People are looking for an answer, and don't miss the opportunity to deliver it to them through their desktop, through their mobile device. Um, those are all tools, but you can't miss that. Amen. And you were very well spoken on the previous one, so well done.

Dr. Lowe, wrapping up the plane, um, what are you thinking about this? Well, I was struck by Dan's comments about comparing what we're going through now to the printing press and its impact on not just world culture but the church as well. And Martin Luther took advantage of that technology. He understood its potential. And so what we need today, I think, is again another reformational theological support for the technology we've got. We've got the technology now. Are we doing our biblical theological piece to go with it and combine it to be able to get this kind of results that Martin Luther got from his ministry back in the 1500s? So I think we're on the cusp here, maybe of a new reformation that's going to broaden out our thinking a little bit more and provide a new open door for the church. Um, we don't need to have 95 theses nailed to the Wittenberg church door, but we may need to have them nailed to the internet in some fashion so that we begin to recognize that this is a sacred space too that God has created, and we need to use it for his honor and for his glory.

Yeah, I've used that analogy with the theses nailed to the door before, and people have looked at me like I was crazy. So the fact that I now have a theologically trained person with doctor in front of him saying the same thing, I have never been happier than I am. Okay, maybe not that much, but it's a very comforting day here. So gentlemen, doctor, we're less crazy. We are less crazy today. There's credibility here, or at least this guy's as crazy as we are, but it's awesome. Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you very much for jumping on the show. There's a lot of people on the screen here for Ray, for Dr. Lowe, for Dan. By the way, we'll put information on Liberty. We'll get some information from these guys. Links in the show notes about how to get connected into the Cognate social media or their contact information will be on there as well. We'll include some links to the book here, Ecclesia: Ecclesiologies of Faith in the Digital Age. I just invested in two copies, so looking forward to reading that. But we're gonna wrap. So for Ray, for Dr. Lowe, for Dan, this is Jeff with The Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting. Thanks for joining us again here at the podcast, and we'll see you next time. Y'all have a good day.