EP192: Research Findings on Digital Church

I got to tell you, I am so excited. I'm so passionate about this idea of a digital-only expression of church, a church that exists in digital space, a church that meets the biblical standard digitally without a physical footprint. That honestly, whenever I meet somebody who's as excited as I am about this topic, it's a big deal. And I got to tell you, here with the Roths, they are that type of person. So Jared and Ann have been friends—I would call them family—here with the Church Digital. Like, they are as close as it gets. Jared and Ann are co-pastors of a church up in the Pacific Northwest, but the conversation really isn't about that. You see, this couple, closer to retiring age than not, have launched and have created a research company, a research project centered around this idea of a digital expression of church. Now it's a five-year project. They started this initiative here in 2021. We, myself, the Church Digital, State Interest Planning as well, have been very involved in the creation of this project, or at least in resourcing them with churches to start this conversation. And I'm excited to tell you, after 2021, after the first year of this project, we're starting to get some of the findings in, and the findings are really exciting. Some of this stuff I knew, some of this stuff I've been saying for a while—that hey, this is the way it is—and it's great to get that validation. And some of this stuff, honestly, was a little bit of a surprise. We'll talk about it here in the podcast, but if you are wrestling with what does digital discipleship look like across the country, what is a digital-only expression of church, how can we really look at a physical mindset, physical and digital working together, what are some other churches doing in this space, you're gonna love this podcast because it really digs deep into that understanding of what churches—physical churches as well as digital-only expression of churches—what are they doing in this digital space?

So for the conversation, I'm bringing in Jared and Ann Roth, co-founders of this organization called Sprout Digital, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadium Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm calling Research and Findings on Digital Churches. Okay, everybody, here you go.

Jared, and I love the stuff that's coming out of Sprout Digital. Why did you get involved in research? Why digital church planting? What problems were you seeing that you're trying to solve here?

Well, first of all, the digital church planting—the real decision behind that was that we have a lifelong passion for church multiplication, church planting. And digital plants are the front wave. They are the new frontier. They're the new front door, if you will, into people's lives, wherever they're at. And so we thought, what contribution could we make—these two high-mileage units—that would really help them? They are making the map for others. They're not using a map in these digital plantings. And so we thought, well, they're building a bridge while they're walking on it. And that means there's going to be wrong turns and dead ends. And why don't we learn from their experience? That's something we could do—is do research to evaluate their experiences and see what the full discipleship pathway looked like.

Yeah, one of the—it's not a unique contribution, but it's unusual in this space of leading-edge church planting and being passionate about that—is that we have some research skills and expertise, experience with that. We really have a high regard for well-done research that can stand up under the rigors of people that really care about that stuff, looking at it in terms of its rigor and the results that are trustworthy. So we thought, well, if we meant our passion and our experience and our love for the future and research skills all together, well, it just kind of emerged out of the middle of that. We said, you know, we want to do research in digital church planting. And we asked the question in a five-year run: what's a big five-year question that probably will take that long to answer and that probably needs to be answered in five years? And so this is the one we came up with. This is what Sprout Digital is solely about. And the question that we want to answer is: given a digital planter's platform and target, what model or models has God already demonstrated He effectively uses to fulfill a whole discipleship pathway in that platform? We think that as God calls more and more people to plant churches, they will hugely benefit from some, at least rough maps drawn by people that have gone before. We want to be the folks gathering that information and sketching out that map.

Well, I got to tell you, I don't know that you could have picked a more controversial subject within the church realm today. I mean, just within the time of this recording, within the past week, championing the idea of digital expressions of church, I've been called the bringer of the antichrist, seed of Satan has also been used in context of me. YouTube is not a nice place. I just want to tell you. And anyway, it's been fascinating to me, especially in the Western church, how controversial this idea is and how people are so—I don't want to be judgmental—but so stuck on the building and see importance on that as opposed to maybe some of the other things that are highlighted more biblically. No judgment here, but it just feels like we're kind of forgetting some of that stuff.

Did you, as you've—I know we'll get into the research and talking to digital pastors, and that's like lobbing a softball, I would imagine. Like, that's probably a more safer audience. But as you're talking to people that are interested in funding or other church leaders or even like at a conference, just casually talking with people, like have you had much people on board with this? Has there been tension where people aren't seeing that, maybe what's some of that experience been like for you?

It's so funny, Jeff, but of course it's your experience. Let me just give this fun little story. I met last week with one of our major funders. And he not only made a commitment early to fund, he put up matching funds. He fulfilled the commitment. He has also already committed into next year, into the second project. He has also said that after the first degree, after he makes that significant contribution, there's likely another one in next year. Obviously, he is all in in terms of his support. He's been listening to us for a year and finally last week over coffee he said, "Now I think I get what you're talking about. It's gonna be a five-year research project. It's gonna take five years to make it happen." And that's evidence right there. That's beautiful.

So frankly, we have been rather discreet about the people that we have bothered with this idea. We know that we are studying innovators, and on the distribution of innovation curve, there aren't even early adopters in view yet, let alone the late adopters. But the laggards are out in force. And so you only have two groups of people to talk to. You've got the innovators and you've got the laggards. There's no way to bridge that gap. Maybe in five years we'll get closer, but in the meantime, this is highly controversial.

In part, because I think it is as transformational as the Reformation. God has always used technology that's been controversial. First century, the gospel exploded through the Roman Empire in sixty years using impart technology—unprecedented Roman road system, unprecedented international, for them, language of commerce, Greek. The Reformation, of course, was associated directly with the new technology, the printing press. I believe that this is a season of the reformation of the church, and it is primarily not a theological or ecclesiastical issue. It is primarily a technology issue. And the technology is the disruption, and it's going to be a wonderful disruption in terms of the gospel and the mission being accomplished.

And honestly, it's really a matter there's vision casting going on because it is about the future. It isn't all here yet. The map isn't made. There's not a track record that you can point to, which is one of the beauties of doing the research—is to get the word out more broadly. So I call it being sweetly relentless when it comes to the vision. And I think the two parts—one, resource the research provides data, and that moves some people. And the research also is providing narratives, and narratives help people put flesh and blood on what we're talking about, something that's really unimaginable to a lot of people, particularly after having gone through COVID and the forced use of technology for connection. Some people thrived on that, but some people reacted and are now pushing back at the idea of digital church.

But just in our own churches, we shared the vision. We found both that having data helps some people get on board and having a narrative or two, being able to flesh that out—real human beings are behind this, real people's lives are being changed and transformed by Jesus. So I think the more research we can do will help those who are forging that path, writing the map, drawing the map.

Yeah, and the ability to use that data to tell some of those narratives, to try to sway—you know, oftentimes I say, and it's a Henry Black could be quote back from experiencing guided before I was born—look and see where God is moving and pray about joining Him in His work. And you guys have literally become the mouthpiece, at least step one of a five-year plan, towards championing the idea, hopefully championing, assuming the data holds up, of digital expressions of church.

So hey, let's get into it here. What was this process like? So who did you talk to? How did you talk to them? Like, how did you gather this data, at least for step one here?

Excellent. And you know, this is going to be brief, but it's really important. And from our point of view, because again, we wanted to produce a product that was credible enough—for example, for doctoral students that are right now beginning to do their research in this space, for them to have some kind of literature to report to—we did not make this an academically designed project in terms of its presentation, but it is academic, has academic rigor in terms of how we put it together.

So just briefly on that, for some of your listeners, they're going to really appreciate this. With Jeff's help, thank you, we identified forty-nine churches to invite to participate in the project. Many of those were fidget churches—physical and digital—and some of those, as many as we could identify, were digital-only church planters. So we'll talk about fidget and digital-only.

Each participant that chose to participate—and by the way, these folks are hungry for friends. We had a sixty-five percent return rate of invitations to participants. If you're doing research with pastors and you get twenty, you thank God many times over. Pastors do not participate in these kinds of projects. It was an astounding response, and it required a significant commitment. Each of the participants was interviewed by Zoom for an hour across a wide range of personal contacts, ministry topics, asked about the personal life, church background, their perceptions of church and leadership and digital church, evangelism and discipleship and benefits and risks and church oversight and management. Sounds like a mess. It was intended to be a mess because all of

These questions we're not testing a hypothesis. We're not smart enough to have hypothesis to test. There was no null hypothesis. We are smart enough to know that God is doing something new and innovative, and if we ask enough questions and stimulate enough conversation, that good stuff will emerge out of it.

And that is an approach of research called grounded theory. When you don't know what questions you're asking, you just stir up the ground and see what emerges. And out of those interviews, all of them then were transcribed. All of the phrases were coded. Then those phrases were analyzed statistically, and we saw what emerged out of it.

And the discoveries that we have in this first of five projects is what emerged to the surface out of these conversations with Fidel and digital pastors. And what we were really after in this first one, Ron, was: can we discover some new models of digital church? Can we discover some new discipleship pathways in digital spaces? Can we find, begin to find, some best practices? And then, because of our interest in emotional intelligence and how that's so directly affected to a leader's effectiveness, beginning to establish an EI database for both digital pastors and digital planters.

Yeah, and I want to get into the EI. Just for clarification, because the audience, EI, explain what that is. Emotional intelligence. And probably most of your viewers are familiar with that. There's three major streams, all of them are legitimate and credible. The one we use is called the EQI, the Emotional Quotient Inventory, comes from Bar-On's theory and work. We use that tool because it's the one that is most highly associated with effective professional occupational life. And other areas of ministry have been profiled in terms of EI profiles to those roles. We hope to establish that eventually with planters in the digital space.

Audience, in case you haven't figured this out, you will be smarter listening to this podcast episode. We are elevating the notch of academia and educational understanding in here. Just talking about EI and EQI, I'm in love with this. Okay, hey, look, so you mentioned digital, digital only. I'll be honest, digital only has a special place in my heart just because of the sheer disruptive nature of these types of people and the backlash that they get within some of the church community. I don't want to overstate, but there are some people that are against the idea. But fidgeting, you know, obviously so many churches took a hard left in this COVID season and are trying to figure out the balance of that. So maybe just even looking at those two digital pastors, digital only pastors, is this like a really apples to apples comparison? Are there differences between a digital pastor in an existing physical church versus a planter that's going completely separate? What were some of the similarities and differences that you ran into?

Yeah, I think that we see it as apples to oranges, really. Both are fruits that you harvest a little differently, you know? They're both committed to digital connection and engagement, and they're passionate about making disciples as the mission of the church. They even have similar views about what defines the church. They pretty much agreed that a church could take many forms and many structures, but it had to meet the activity criteria that you see in Acts 2:42-47. They're equally committed to a biblical discipleship pathway, and all of them believe that different skills are required for digital ministry. They actually agree about that, even though they're in two different realms.

So if we had them all in the same room and we were discussing those topics, they would all love each other in hugs and kisses. If we brought up these following differences, we're probably going to have an ecclesiastical war.

For example, as persons, digital planters have a broader range of emotional intelligence profiles. We don't know enough about that to say a lot about it, but I cannot wait for three or four or five years when we have a larger data set. What we do know is we know what effective lead pastors, senior pastors, profile out as. We have a lot of information about staff members, and most, not all, but most of the Fidel pastors are in a church context with multiple staff, and they serve out of that context on the digital side.

Just briefly, in this first round, those pastors tended to have a fairly common emotional intelligence profile. And in contrast, the digital only pastors have extremely different profiles. And we can't wait to flesh that out because we think that probably those profiles are not so much going to be associated with success in general, but success particularly within the platform and the target audience that God has called them to serve.

So we're going to put that on the shelf for now. But these folks from an EI perspective are falling out into very different distributions in terms of EI profile. We thought that might be the case. It's frankly fun for me to see emerge because the implications are many. More people can be engaged in starting and leading churches and may have been able to be engaged in our platform-driven kind of church that we've done in the physical setting in the past.

Another difference is digital planters. They believe to their core that the entire discipleship pathway can be accomplished online. And almost to the person on the Fidel side, there is disagreement with that notion. And the belief on the Fidel side is that at some point in the discipleship pathway, individuals must connect face to face in some kind of form of physical community.

Similarly, the physical pastors tend to be part of physical church staff, and so they're associated with the relational and institutional support of that context. In contrast, our digital pastors, we found some highly independent, somewhat isolated, generally not very encouraged by other church leaders in their venue. No wonder they responded to the research project. They got to have a conversation with someone that was nice for an hour.

That's one of the other observations just on their differences: a personality measure, extrovert, introvert. And again, we haven't studied enough a larger sample base to know for certain, but the percentage of introverts that are in the digital space is much higher than it is in the in-person space. And it's a mix in the in-person. We know that. But the digital planners tend toward introversion. That has been something that I've noticed. You know, and I have an unscientific, I just as people approach me, you know, I'm able to meet them or even approach Stadia, and I'm able to engage with them. But by and far, it's been far more of an introvert or than not, you know?

Stadia uses the term catalytic leader, the man or woman, excuse me, who's capable of standing literally on a physical platform, behind the podium, and communicate and lead hundreds and thousands of people. The typical digital planter is not that type of person. And it I love the fact that you found that because I get to say I was right, and it's very rare in life that I can say those words, and I'm saying them right now because I've got Sprout Digital backing me up. That's saying I was right. So well done. All the effort paid off just in that one little factoid right there.

Well, anything else to look at at this point? I just might mention this, Jeff. As it relates to that profile, if it emerges, just like the great work that Stadia does in the assessment discovery process, now the experience of many, many others that have gone before has allowed these data sets and these indicators to emerge so that now Stadia and that environment can provide an excellent assessment process because they know a whole group of criteria that they are assessing against.

And it's very possible that we're going to discover that same kind of knowledge on the digital side. And again, that's why we are platform and target specific. It's down to that granular level because obviously there are many platforms and there are many target audiences. But we want to be a great thing for selection, training, and coaching of digital church planters for the future. If we can say God tends to use this kind of person in this kind of space, and if you use this kind of idea or model, it might increase the likelihood that your church will actually accomplish the entire discipleship pathway. That'll be such an interesting conversation.

And just as we're examining into the future, well, let's dig in a little bit here. I mean, we said discipleship pathway a little bit. You're going to love this. I love this question. You interviewed dozens of pastors, and so you probably have dozens of different perspectives of what discipleship, of what disciple-making is really about. Was there a common theme or standard like on this engagement pathway, this discipleship pathway? What were elements that really stood out? Digital, digital only. Come, what were some of those perspectives?

Well, one of the things is that it favors, it doesn't favor high control. It favors a democratized delivery. But because of that, so you've got to be okay with that, not having to have the one, but the many putting in content and interacting with your material in the moment. And as we know, everybody's not used to that. They're not Jeff Reed.

And then, secondly, being comfortable in the digital space. That's different than being highly skilled in the digital space. And that distinctive is important because it's about being comfortable. Because when you share, you don't want to evoke anxiety. That's not the thing in speaking and sharing and asking questions. So that's what I mean by being comfortable in the digital space. They do not have to be an expert on all things digital. You can get a team for that. You can put the people around you to do that, just like an in-person pastor does with a different set of skills.

The third is communicating in digital formats is different in that there's, you don't get the immediate feedback of an audience other than the posting that you get. But you don't get the facial expressions. There's a whole lot that you're not going to see in the digital format, particularly maybe on these gaming platforms and some of that. So communicating in digital formats, being able to stand and deliver without a lot of extra things around you, and then the interaction, responding quickly to interaction. Not everybody. Some people are more reflective, and other people are very immediate. And being able to give feedback, it favors the person who can be more immediate and giving feedback, who's not, I have to stew on that for a while, of course. You, everybody has some issues like that, but in general, there are people who are more reflective versus the more immediate. And this favors the more immediate person who can, doesn't mind just, you know, throwing out that piece again, that little less controlled, you know?

I think one of the common themes continuing on with some of your ideas there and have to do with what we often call teaching. That again, this is a very blunt overgeneralization, but generally speaking, the folks in the Fidget spinner have a narrower view of or a set of problems that they were dealing with in terms of the different skill set and teaching. So ideas like you have to look at the camera, you're going to rely less on physical gestures, you can't move around as much, you're not getting immediate audience impact feedback. Those are obvious, important skill sets to learn. But when you move over into the digital only space, a whole new set of issues arise. And of course, communicating effectively in different platforms is changing, you know, almost weekly. So...

You know, just days or weeks ago, TikTok changed from its one-minute format to three-minute format. But in the research that's done, if you want to have maximum impact on TikTok, it needs to be nine to fifteen seconds. You can stream for multiple hours on Facebook. You can upload video for two hours, but the most effective, optimal Facebook videos are thirteen seconds to three minutes. So the platform is shaping in terms of the kind and the manner and the length of the content, how that content is delivered, how it's going to be accepted. And again, when it comes to delivering information, communication is two-way. It has to be received. And this, probably in my opinion from the research, is going to be a major issue that has been under-appreciated. What does teaching look like? What does the delivery of biblical content and life wisdom look like in these various platforms?

Yeah, and that makes for a season of awkwardness a little bit, because the church that's used to controlling all of their environments and physical space is now forced to say, "Hey, we're going to have to release some control here." And I really want to preach that forty-minute sermon, but that is not going to be effective if I'm streaming it on Facebook. And so now organizations like Meta and TikTok are really starting to define what discipleship looks like on their platforms. And are we, the church, are we comfortable reshaping some of what are our—and let's not call it a biblical directive. A forty-minute sermon is not biblical. But are we comfortable reshaping that? And so it's, yeah, I mean, this is why people are happy to talk about this stuff. Because when I was a digital pastor, and if I brought that up in a staff meeting, I would either get laughed at, I would get stared at, or I would be told, "Stick around after the meeting. I want to talk with you directly." And I've had enough of those conversations in my life that I know it's hard to be innovative, bleeding edge, an innovator in this season, especially when everyone else that you're working with—not to speak out of turn, but maybe a little bit on the laggard side. And so, you know, guys that are out there that are championing this, I love what you're doing. Keep doing it and then figure out how to do it.

Let's talk here. I mean, even to pivot a little bit and take a step back. So, you know, discipleship—we talked about the missiology of this, the digital as a mission field. It's funny. Like, even in conversations with digital pastors I know, the digital-only guys—I would suspect this—the digital-only guys are far more aggressive on the mission field of digital than maybe some of the hybrid guys that are used to people coming to them instead of going after. What did you find just overall within evangelism, within digital as a mission field approach?

So the mission's the same for the physical or digital. They all agree on that, right? The Great Commission, Matthew 28. And talking about that, but in terms of practices, yes, I think that what the research showed is that there's more initiative, more work done on the evangelism side. So, for instance, studying Twitter and looking for what's trending on Twitter and then developing provocative questions, literally to pull people out of the woodwork, if you will, out of cyberspace and get them to start talking. And that being an initial link. Or being on a gaming platform and solely for the purpose of playing the game with other gamers, and then in that to start talking about your life, just sharing a line or two here or there. But at the end, to say, "Hey, anybody want to just talk about their story? You need someone to listen to you? Here's my contact info." And that's starting conversations. Or offering to pray at the very end of the whole gaming time together, just saying, "Hey, if I can pray for any of you, just let me know. Here's my contact info." And literally, that beginning conversation after conversation with people who are willing—because they go on with anonymity in that regard—to that person. And so that's wonderful that way.

The missiology and ecclesiology were similar amongst our participants. And that we expressed that earlier when he said the criteria in Acts 2:42-47. They all really agree that it's not the form or the structure of the church. It is the activity, what they do, what they accomplish together. And if you can do what they did in Acts 2:42-47, then that's a great church. The physical and digital pastors generally believe that the ends of the earth includes all communities, right? Geographic, linguistic, generational, cultural, ethnicities—all of that. And now in those digital spaces, digital spaces are the new ends of the earth. I'm not sure everybody was convinced in the study. The hybrid pastor struggled to believe that. They think evangelism can be accomplished, but they struggle to believe that you can disciple in a digital space. You can evangelize, but discipline was harder for them to grasp because of the in-person nature of what they do. So digital pastors had no trouble believing that the incarnation includes that God can transcend, for the sake of his kingdom, he could transcend our cyberspace, any space that's put in front of him. And new social formations can happen in any of those spaces because of that, for the gospel.

So yeah, that's pretty much what the studies showed. It'll be—I mean, I'm so glad you're doing a five-year study because it's going to take a while. I cannot wait for you to open up globally and start to bring in some insight, some of the stories, some of the conversations of what—and once again, non-scientific, just casual research, if even that, just Zoom calls—tell me what's going on. Some of the stories that I hear of how God is using digital in a global space is almost embarrassing, that we in the US are asking. I actually had a global missiologist tell me once, "Jeff, your view of digital is too small." Honest to God, that was his quote. And I'm like, "Do you not understand what I fight here in the US? And you're telling me I'm thinking too small? Really?" And it's so I cannot wait as this expands and we look at more globally what's happening and how digital is influencing and how some of those influences, you know, heaven forbid, could even come in and influence us here in the West. It's going to be an exciting time.

Well, hey, man, what other—we talked about some specifics here with discipleship and digital's mission field and some things there. But what are some other findings? Like, what's something interesting that maybe you guys ran across here when doing the study?

You know, one of the digital plants—I mean, when we first talked about the digital, I mean, I'm an extrovert. I was one of those people thinking, "How are you going to accomplish the whole mission, the whole discipleship pathway?" And this personal care issue—how are you going to take care of somebody who's had somebody die? And how are you going to get close? And I mean, one of the digital plants, they had somebody who needed help moving. I mean, that's a pretty hands-on thing, right? That's as physical as you get. And they actually found somebody else who's part of the church in that region of the country. And this was across the country, from Arizona to the East Coast. And they found somebody else who was participating in the online plant, the digital plant, and they drove there, rented a U-Haul truck, and helped this person move the hundred miles or so that they were going to move. And where the, you know, basically the hands of Jesus and the rest of the church gave money to help with the cost of the move. Again, just a very caring thing. And they figured out a way to do it.

Another one had a lot of people mention, "What about in grieving?" And they had a small group in their digital plant that was meeting in a city that was, you know, five hundred miles north of them. And that group was in the same town as this person that they came into contact with that needed someone to be by them in their loss. And they went to them and surrounded them, loved them. And I mean, that woman became a part of the digital plant because of it, because this was somebody just in their community who went online looking for help. So I think that it's interesting to see the stories emerging of how you can bridge the gap in different ways. And it'll be fun to see more of those.

Yeah, love that. Let's talk findings. Excited about that. Everyone says that they're committed to making disciples, but very few of them are comfortable yet with their actionable definition of that. So the discipleship pathway is still—the digital planters have their own, not doubts, but they are humble. They acknowledge, "We haven't arrived yet there. We still don't know all the parts. Basically, we're making the map and we're still figuring this out." So them being able to say, "This is how it will all work out," they don't have that yet. But they are working on it, and that's totally their intention. And then as we listen, we usually hear some variation on Jesus's call to Peter to be a fisher of men, to follow Jesus, to be transformed by Jesus, and to join Jesus on his mission. So there's that common theme of, you know, a disciple and what a disciple is. But the project did identify three major differences in perspective between the hybrid and the digital.

Well, let me just highlight some things that emerge that are real concerns. There's significant uncertainty about what to measure and how to measure, and a conversation about metrics that might be helpful for the future. But frankly, I had hoped that more would emerge in this study. So this is obviously an area that people are really thinking about, working on, and needing some help with. What is it that we measure and how do we measure, and what does that mean?

I think what it's disclosed is that probably many of our metrics that we've been comfortable using in the physical church up until two years ago probably weren't very good KPIs, but we were comfortable using them. We developed norms around them. Probably didn't indicate for many of our churches—we'll speak about our own, for example—that really helped us know if people, if disciples were being made. So frankly, I think the whole church is revisiting the metric issue.

A second thing that we discovered was nobody's cracked the code on serving children and youth and adults, the family as a unit in the church in a digital space. It's just there's experiments. It's early, early in the process. And particularly when it comes to children, there's the possibility of creating some great programming for children. In fact, you know, wonderful church in Roblox that is for kids. But having said that, that's mono-generational. The real issue with creating stuff in children's space is safety and how do you monitor that? How do you vet people? You're twenty-four seven in that environment. And so some real challenges there.

Music is so tough that people almost laugh when you ask them about it. It's not difficult to provide the production of music, but it is certainly difficult to engage people on the other side of the screen in participating, using the art form of music to express worship to God. And who knows where we'll go with this one, but maybe we'll revert back a few hundred years ago where music was a part, but not necessarily the primary art form that churches used collectively in worship. And we're excited to see what other kinds of art forms and practices will emerge in the digital space that will actually engage people in a spirit and in a soul, in an emotional and even physical way.

Way in ways that music apparently is not going to translate as it does in the large physical space. That's really good, that's really obvious. That is maybe the major pain point, I think, with digital church and physical. Because at least in broadcasting the services, so much of worship has been, you know, limited, restricted back to that physical, that you know, musical expression. And yes, coming from a guy who's literally produced tens of thousands of worship services in his life, you know, give me a haze machine, give me some, give me some moving lights, give me a couple subs on the floor. Yeah, I can get the spirit of God. And whether he's actually there or it's just a well-produced service, that's not me, that's not mine to say. I don't know. I'm just running the show here. But yes, there is an opportunity to, and this is really why we talk about how digital is different. We can just keep doing what we're doing physically digitally and maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But there's certainly some issues that will pop up. But maybe, and this is I'll be honest, and Roth, I've, you know, I've had this conversation with you, man. Like when we talk about digital-only church, I mean the possibilities of what this is, the organic nature of what it can be. I think biblically it aligns maybe a little closer if we're really looking at that Acts 2 church. Maybe I think we're actually able to do some of that better in digital space than even what the physical church has evolved to. And this is why a lot of people call me the son of Satan and seed of Satan and all that, because, because, oh my gosh, I just, you know, said something, you know, negative and disrupting. But part of this is I almost wonder if we're using, like, I wish we could come up with another word. I make up words all the time. But like, I hesitate to call digital church "church" sometimes because at least here in the Western sphere, there's so much perception, there's so much preconceived notions of what church is, and it's not based on Bible. It's based on opinions and tens and hundreds and even a thousand years of, well, that's just the way that it's been. But that's not the way that it was. And so I don't know what I'm, I'm rambling on to a bunch of researchers, so I don't know what I'm looking for question-wise. But man, I feel that tension right now when I'm looking at what the digital church could be and some of that tension of how do we even start to swing the pendulum that way, maybe away from what a physical model is, to at least a different expression of that. You know, I think it's so easy for us to sanctify the model, and then when you talk about the model as this neutral thing that may or may not be of service, that it feels like you're attacking something that's sacred. My view is probably not the prevailing view about much of anything, including this. But I have always viewed the incarnation of Jesus extending into not just the human form of the body of Jesus, but into human forms. So my belief is that the incarnation has come to dwell in us and among us for transformation. And so I believe that Jesus, even coming as a Jew in that Christmas story environment, is coming into human forms and using those human forms for kingdom transformation. He used the synagogue service for kingdom transformation, et cetera. So we, for many years now in the West at least, have used the small business model to the medium business model as the structure of our form. And we're organized legally and organizationally around the small business model. I think that that's brilliant. I don't think that that is disparaging anything. The church is not the small business model, but if that's the predominant form and how people connect and collect in culture around business and education, we use those forms for kingdom purposes. God comes in those forms. He meets us there. He meets us and redeems us and transforms us personally. He also comes into other human forms and does transformation within the culture. So the question is, how is the small business model changing? Well, it's changing into our purchasing practices and our commerce into digital spaces. So to me, it is a neutral observation that as culture shifts how it connects and collects, that the church will flow with those new forms incarnationally, and the gospel will flow through and into those forms for kingdom purposes. So again, it's highly disruptive. It disrupts our norms. It disrupts our economies of scale. It disrupts our budget. It disrupts how people are chosen and prepared for vocational ministry. The economics at this point are not encouraging on the physical side. Fewer people give. People that give give less. It means significant economic issues for what new forms are going to be emerging. Co-vocationality is probably going to be the norm. And then again, some would look at that and say, thank God that we're actually looking more like things did. Maybe we've been praying to be like the New Testament church, and maybe this is a pathway that's actually disturbing and disrupting us toward that freshness. That's beautiful. There's so much, so much change that's opening up if we just give it fresh eyes. And I really do believe that. I mean, the church that you described, I mean, really starts to lay the foundation for the church of the future, you know, within Stadia, probably within established churches planting established churches. Twenty-five percent of the conversations we're having right now are with people that are thinking co-vocational, bivocational, in digital environments. It's probably closer to seventy-five percent. A large majority are bivocational. I mean, just today I talked with a guy. He's like, yeah, I've got a job on the side. I'm making great money. I'm not trying to change it, but I would love to figure out how to do ministry in digital space. And for him, like, he's not looking for discovery and assessment and project management and like a lot of the typical model that Stadia and planting organizations would give. He's like, I'm already doing it. I just need to talk to some people. He's like, I'm all alone. I don't really know what I'm doing. Can you connect me with some people that are already doing this? And so like, this bivocational model is much more like, hey, let's get you to plant a church in two months because it's digital. It's so experimental and things move so fast, and they're trying to be as agile as they can to learn, but also being ready to pivot and shift, as opposed to a lot of the, you know, the launch large models and things like that, where it's so difficult to get going. And so the tension I would imagine between the physical and the digital-only crowd, like, I think you've just scratched the surface. And the more that I think the digital-onlys start to expand and the chasm between the physical digital and the digital gets wider and wider, I think you're going to see more differences come up. Even in my own life, I mean, I just, I see, I'll start to have a conversation with somebody, and some of my friends will say in the digital audience crowd. Like, some say they still say one thing. It's like, I actually don't agree with you there. And we can put a pin in talking at that later. But you know, I do think that you can do this in digital space and you don't have to have the physical. But what do I know? I'm the seed of Satan, so it probably won't work well for me. So what does the future look like? What is the church as we're spinning and heading towards next? Do you have any other insight? You know, look into the future. What are you, have you gotten to the place where you have an expectation of what you're going to find in five years, or is it still nebulous and you're new? Have you hypothesized on this thing yet?

You know, when we look at the future, we think churches will function more seamlessly between physical and digital worlds. And that the gospel is going to go viral, quite literally, not just figuratively, but is going to go viral to the ends of the earth. It's going to be able to go into not just gospel-closed countries, not places, but available. You can anonymously go in and hear the gospel in a place where you might never hear it before. So gospel-closed families as well. I think that we're going to be able to invade those places. The church will be faithful to its mission of making disciples because we believe Jesus is building his church and the gates of hell won't prevail against it. And that means that there's going to be that faithful, ongoing mission of making disciples, and they'll be committed to pathways of transformation that for people to take place, for individuals and for whole communities of people. And when we think of communities, we won't just be thinking physical spaces. We'll start thinking digitally more and more. People think of the gaming platforms as a whole community that they're influencing for Christ. It will be more natural for us, more a way of thinking, versus now people look at you like you're crazy when you mention that God's really changing lives and people are getting saved in these digital churches and stuff. You really have to start telling stories right away to help them believe that, with real names attached. And that the church is going to expand, particularly, as I said, gospel-hostile. That's said, I'd like to know because that's a lot more than just closed countries. There are so many gospel-hostile places on planet earth, including in the US, where you can invade those anonymously and provide safety for people to actually hear the gospel. I think when we looked at the future, we're very hopeful. I'm going to leave the negative predictions to some folks on YouTube. We looked at the future and we see this as a scattering, similar to the Reformation. There's some downsides. It's called Protestants because they were protesting. And fortunately or unfortunately, much of the movement forward in the kingdom through the gospel in the last five hundred years has been by people splintering. But we probably shouldn't be surprised because in Acts chapter eight, that's exactly what it took for the gospel to get out of Jerusalem and finally to Judea and Samaria. Now we're truly going to the ends of the earth. And as Ann mentioned, this democratization of the gospel, when it is not bound by physical structures or ecclesiastical structures or requirements or licensure or profession, all of those things serve us, and by the way, we participate personally in those. We're not iconoclasts in that regard. But technology is bringing us to reform the church because it is simply not going to those places to ask for permission. It is a scattering that is going to benefit the kingdom. The gospel is going to flow into every nook and cranny. The gospel is the power. I'm preaching the gospel is the power of God for salvation. As the gospel flows and shares through all kinds of platforms and voices and streams, it is going to be effective in those places. And truly, for those who anticipate that the return of the Lord will happen after the gospel has been heard in every person in every place, this has to be an exciting possibility that that eventuality could actually happen quickly for us. So we see Jesus doing a beautiful thing in the church. He's not afraid of technology. He has used it. We are using it. We are seeing people called to do that. We want to learn from them. We want to share that information with.

Others that might benefit, and we expect that churches are going to meet physically for a long, long time. I hope so. I plan to be there frequently. But we also know that the blending between physical and digital, as Ann mentioned, is going to become almost difficult to describe for future generations.

This is my little story. Our grandkids are seven to twelve years of age, and when I watch them with iPhones, I notice that these Gen Alphas don't differentiate between the conversation we're having and the technology that they're engaging. There's a reason that there's no frame around the iPhone face. It is to give the impression of seamlessness. Ann and I are boomers. Trust me, there is a seam between technology and physicality for us. But as this generation is emerging that in twenty years will be our leaders, they will have grown up in an environment that doesn't even think to ask the question, "What's the difference between physical and digital space?" It is the world that they live in. And as older members of the church in the kingdom, for us to be opening doors for what they are already experiencing in their enculturation, so that as they grow in the next few years and receive callings and giftings from God, that some doors will already be opened for them to naturally move into instead of being door keepers that close the doors on cultural norms, to be door openers that say, "Why don't you express yourself and the gifts God's given you and the environment that He chose for you to be born into?" The church has a bright future.

Love that. And as then as the metaverse, augmented reality, virtual reality, you know, continues to blur that, I do agree with you. I think it's going to be hard to separate physical IRL and meta and digital and all this. I think it's just going to all get blurred into one thing. And for many people, that's a very, very scary idea. They just can't reconcile that for whatever reason. And so hopefully time will tell. To your point though, I do think the pendulum is shifting, and I think the future generations are not going to have the issues and the hang-ups that maybe some of our current ones have.

Well, hey, let's land the plane. Well, tell me what's next. Like, where's Sprout heading to? What's next? So you're on a five-year plan. What does year two look like as you're doing the research?

So year two, we want to do a global study of digital-only church planters and their best practices across the discipleship pathway. And just behind the scenes, we want to be the biggest cheerleaders in digital space as well, because that's one of the biggest challenges is just what you faced before we had our conversation today, of people discouraging and saying negative things to you. We want to be those people in these digital planters' lives that are cheering them upward and onward. And one of the things we can do to help that happen is connect them together in a global network, and that will be one of the goals out of these research projects: building a digital community of planters. Because talking to each other, they find they just like planters in the hard coffee space, I mean the in-person space, you find you have similar things going on, similar struggles. But there's also you want to be those external cheerleaders, and that's what we want to be. Champions, as you said, because that's more than cheerleading. We want that's where we want to invest. That's where we want to give our attention to encouraging them. So that's year two.

Twenty twenty-two, twenty twenty-three is prototypes for digital plants that incorporate best practices that were identified in the various platforms. Just an initial results of that, because obviously after five years we'll have a lot more, but you don't want to wait for five years to reveal what you've learned in each step of the way. So if those prototypes, we're differentiating prototypes from what's currently being done, what we're hoping to do is to find the best practices across the discipleship pathway. So let's use an angle scale from a negative thirteen to a positive five to describe one of those models. So there's in his model, there's all these points along the way. So we're finding the best practices at points along the way, and the theory is that if we can kind of knit those together, that you can create a prototype and you can say, "You know, in this space, if you do this that she's doing and that that he's doing and this that they're doing and put those together, you might think about actually launching a digital church with this prototype in mind and see if God actually uses your church to find people far, far from God and produces these mature, reproducing Christians." So that would be a prototype.

Those prototypes then in the fourth year are tested. Our hope is then in the fifth year that we're actually able to see out of those prototypes some models emerge, so that now ultimately we can answer this question that compels us: given a digital planter's platform and target, what model or models has God effectively used to fulfill the whole discipleship pathway?

Four years away. I love it. I cannot wait, literally cannot wait. Well, I'm just trying to think all the things that are going to happen by twenty twenty-four. We get to go through another election, but your research is going to be the bright spot of what's going to be a very interesting year, I'm sure.

Hey, so we're going to wrap this. This has been great. These are two of my favorite people, who said it earlier in the podcast, but love the research they're doing and what they're contributing in this digital space. And you know, we'll put some links in the show notes to get connected with them and some of the research that they're doing, so be sure to check that out. But we're going to call it and we're going to wrap. So for Jared, for Ann, this is Jeff at the Church Digital and with State of Church Planting. Thanks for jumping on the podcast. We'll see you next time here on the show. You have a good day.