EP209: Jared Hughes & The Bi-vocational Approach to Digital Ministry

You want to do this, but you don't want to quit your job. You have a job full-time. I'm like, I'm feeling called to do this, but I don't know how to raise money. I don't want to be full-time in this. I love my career. You know, you're the perfect person. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church. But more than TED for Tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciple-making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? Oh, and where does the metaverse fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church, or a startup church plant, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church, digitally and physically.

Our heart? That churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple-making that will revolutionize your church. And now, here's your host, Jeff Reed. All right, hey, welcome to episode 209. Hey, this is Jeff with the Church Digital and the Church Digital Podcast, Digital Church Network, and a whole bunch of other things that involve church and technology, man. It is super great to be here with you today. I'm excited about this episode and this conversation as we're dealing, as we're digging into bivocational and co-vocational approaches in ministry. And so, I've got Jared Hughes in the conversation here. Jared Hughes is lead pastor of Hope City Church, and we're going to get into that here in just a minute.

As a quick tease, as a quick suggestion, if you are not part of Digital Church Network's family, our online community, I would love for you to get into that. So, you can go to famfam.digitalchurch.network. That's fam, F-A-M, as in the first three letters of family.digitalchurch.network. It's this great online community we've set up for digitally friendly people, digitally ministry friendly people. Can people be friendly in ministry? I think so. I think they can be. But we're all coming together. I hope so. Yeah, I hope so. If not, maybe we're not doing it right. But there's an opportunity for us to come together, learn from each other, be the Paul for somebody's Timothy, be the Timothy for somebody's Paul, and learn from each other along the way.

So, check it out at famfam.digitalchurch.network. Okay, cool. Hey, listen, I'm excited about bringing Jared into this conversation and learning along the way here. So, we're totally having this conversation centered around Bible Covo. But before we do that, Jared, man, let's dig in a little bit here. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing through Hope, what you and your wife, what you're doing together through Hope City Church. Yeah, my wife and I co-lead pastor Hope City Church Live. It's a multi-platform social media church community. Currently, we're on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, the faithful platform. My wife just launched a women's gathering on faithful network platform. Yeah. Anyways, on YouTube.

YouTube right now is pretty much, we probably have not been utilizing that to the best of our ability. It's mostly just hosting stuff there. And we'll be ramping that up. We will launch. We're looking at launching into the metaverse, the meta church. That's the plans. We're thinking maybe the fall of 2022 might be the beginning of 2023, as we're vetting and learning more about that particular space. We've been in full-time ministry together since 1997. Started off as youth pastors. And we have been church planters, multi-campus pastors. And we've pastored churches in the suburbs, in the rural community, in the urban community. From small churches, we pastored in and led to mega churches we've pastored on staffs with.

So we have a pretty wide background in church ministry. And we've been married for 30 years, together for 33 years. Two grandkids, two adult children who are married. And loving life out here in Des Moines, Iowa. Des Moines, Iowa. That's fascinating. I was just at the Exponential Conference. And I apologize for this example right here. But it was actually kind of funny. So I was leading this breakout room. And the guy who was talking was from a major urban area. And so he was talking about what church was like and what the community was like in the major urban areas. I don't remember where it was. Maybe it was like Dallas or something. And he's like, man, it's completely different than the people who live in Des Moines, Iowa.

And it kind of was like this awkward moment. Everybody was like, oh. And somebody in the room was like, what's wrong with Des Moines, Iowa? I live in Des Moines, Iowa. It was just all sorts of awkward. So, man, I don't want to call you out from Des Moines. But like you've had a couple stops here just recently. Used to be in Cali or the Pacific Northwest. Chris, where were you just maybe within the past year? Oh, well, geez, man. For the past, we were in Kirkland, Washington, Kirkland, Seattle, the Seattle suburb area. We had been there for three years. We planted it. We went on staff of a church. We actually, high-level view, we had a two-church location in a southwest Washington area. And we merged those two churches with a four-campus church out of Redmond, Washington.

Kind of merged together for like a, you know, more like a together, better is together type of thing to reach kind of the region area. We then took over one of their campuses as a campus pastor in Bothell, Washington, and then ended up taking that group of people and launching a new church called, at the time, Canvas Church in 2018 as a church plant. And then our feet started getting underneath us. And as we all have experienced the 2020 pandemic, and we lost our location, and that's when we had switched. We had actually started on Facebook, doing some stuff on Facebook. When we launched our church in 2018, our two sons are in the tech world and had encouraged us to start using more social media.

And I reluctantly started doing that in 2000, I think 2017, 2000, yeah, 2000, yeah, in 18, 17, when we launched. And we reluctantly like, okay, I guess. It wasn't, you know, Facebook to me was just something to connect with people. It wasn't a big thing. Yeah, thanks for what we did, because that was God's way of preparing us, as we deep dived into that in 2018, for the pandemic that happened. And then we relaunched and rebranded Canvas Church as a digital-only church in 2021. Yeah. Yeah, 2021. That's Hope City Church. So you've been doing digital-only a year or two here with Hope City. And any regrets, any, like, strengths, joys? Like, so you're a couple years into this digital-only church. There's a handful of them, realistically, maybe 50 legitimate, serious expressions of church.

What's been some of the early findings, lessons? How are you feeling about this thing? Yeah, I mean, we love it. You know, for us, we're part of the Free Methodist Church denomination. We're at the Pacific Northwest Conference. And right before, yeah, in October of 2020, we were offered a building, a debt-free location in Bothell, right downtown Bothell, Washington, from our conference. Beautiful property, beautiful building. I mean, the perfect thing. We gave away a building a few years ago to that church we merged with out of Castle Rock, Washington. We had a beautiful facility in there. We gave all the assets and gave away them when we merged. And it was almost like God returning that to us.

And at the time, our superintendent, Michael Forney, he asked, he said, hey, we're going to give you, you know, we think I'm 90% we're moving in that direction. And he asked a question. We were having lunch. And he said, my only hesitation is, do you feel that if we did this, it would stop what God is doing through, at the time, Canvas Church, which became Hope City Church, would it stop your momentum digitally? Because I want you to think about that and pray on that. And so my wife and I, we sat down, we prayed about it, we sat together with our team, and we all decided that, yeah, we wanted to stay digital. And so we turned down the, you know, multimillion-dollar facility and the land and the, you know, that.

And I think that was a big step for us, you know, to step away from, you know, just traditional, I mean, just how you do church, you know, for the most part, for many people. And I think that was the first big step, you know. And then when we rebranded as Hope City Church Live, I think that was for us. Yeah, we're going to go all in and see what happens. And we really believe God has opened that door. I think the biggest thing that we've learned over the last couple of years is the intentionality of those following is really heavy on them to follow, you know. And when people connect, like when people connect with us, they're connected, you know. They're, you know, so to speak, vetting us, vetting us for a long, long time or watching for a long time and not engaging.

You don't even, many times are on these social media, on our social media platforms, you know, the algorithms are the algorithms. The way it's set up is, you know, you don't know what, I mean, as we all know, all of us that are doing this, you know, you might say 3,000 views. But that doesn't really mean, I mean, it's great, I mean, it's views, but it's, but it may say 30 views. And we see 30 views and we feel bad. It's almost like back in the in-person church days, you know, if a lot of people were there, we're happy, nobody's there, we're sad. I think what we're finding is that, you know, you might only have 30 views. You might only have one like or one heart or something, these engagement tools that we look for.

But I tell you what, that's representing a heck of a lot more people than we realize. I mean, a lot more people than we realize. And I think that is for us when somebody connects with us and we're able to have a personal conversation and communicate with them. But we usually discover that they've been watching for not just weeks, usually it's months. And I think that's been the biggest eye-opener for us. So you turned down a building to focus on digital ministry. That is correct. You know, I got to tell you, I've heard that story a couple times now. And ironically, they're all up in the Pacific Northwest. And I'm wondering if it's like the same denomination that's doing it. I'll have to ask. I don't think into it now.

Could be. Yeah, it'd be interesting to find out. It would be interesting. It's the same freaking building they're trying to get rid of, but they can't get rid of it. Everybody wants to do digital ministry. Oh, my God. That would be really. I don't think that's true, but that would be so funny. Poor building. Nobody loves the building anymore. Oh, man. It's a great location, too. I tell you, it's nice. It's a great location. Right in the heart of downtown Bothell. Just right up from the downtown area. I mean, literally walking distance. And a great neighborhood. Great community. That's great. So by doing a digital church, a lot of times, and I've heard you talk about this, where a lot of the people that are engaging in the digital church are called to Christ.

They're disconnected. These are not Christians. And so, you know, you're teaching and you're educating at a very entry level position. Or even things like tithing is not commonly done in these digital and in these meta church spaces. And so, you know, paying the bills, paying the mortgage, even operating costs for the church a lot of times at a digital church is questionable. And even even the smaller expenses that are available. And so, like, you're an example of this. How are you, like, you know, we've said the phrase bivocational, co-vocational. You're getting a job outside of the established church to pay the personal bills and things like that. Do you want to maybe describe here a little bit what that looks like for you?

What are you doing to kind of pay the bills, the mortgage, to pay the life expenses for you and Angie? Yeah, that's a great question. Number one, I would like to encourage everybody to teach tithing in their digital church. Giving every week. We do it every single week. If you watch our gatherings that we record, we go live on Sundays. Every Sunday, we teach a portion on giving, tithing. Every Sunday, you get what you teach. And so, eventually, you might take, you know, we deal with a heart issue of people, as we all know. And so, it takes time to get the seed of the word in their heart. Then they can make decisions as that seed grows and then it's fruitful. So, I would encourage every pastor to teach tithing in their digital church.

Whether it's tithing, generosity, grace giving, whatever you want to call it, really giving, as we all know, is a matter, a condition of a heart. And it's highly, highly biblical. And I think it's very, very important. That's one aspect of it. So, we teach every Sunday. And we touch on it twice during the message. And we're unashamed in that. And we all should teach tithing because it's really a beautiful spiritual discipline, as many of us probably do. Hopefully, we're givers. Anyway, that's a whole other story. That. Okay. So, I think as far as, you know, how do we pay the bills? You know, how do we eat? You know, how do we do these things called life when the church doesn't bring in enough money to have a living wage, so to speak.

You know, or to pay for upgrades and cameras and lights and, you know, all the things behind the scenes that take just to do this. You know, nothing's free. The good stuff is, I mean, there's some good, let me say that. There's some good free things you can do to start off with. But you learn pretty fast that, I mean, that only goes so far. And so, yeah, my wife and I both work jobs in a bivocational way. My wife works with a remote accounting company. She's been an accountant, bookkeeper for the last of her whole working career. And she does that. She has her own side company doing social media and bookkeeping. So, she has a couple streams of income that she does, as well as Angie runs all. She really runs all the leadership development for Hope City Church.

All the implementation of vision and strategy. She oversees all the strategies. She oversees all the teams. As we're raising up leaders, we release out to other people to do as well. So, she's pretty busy. She's in her office right there working right now. And so, she does that. For me, I work in corporate executive protection in the private security field. And I do that. I actually just landed a new gig out here in Des Moines, which is pretty exciting. And so, I work in that. And then I'm an options trader, stock options trader on the side. So, we have multiple ways of making income, as well as a small salary from Hope City Church that comes in. What I love about it is it's really a representation of all the people that sit in our churches.

You know, we just become part of the big team. You know, I believe pastors should be paid, and pastors should be paid well, as the church can pay them. At the same time, that shouldn't stop us from being involved in ministry. That shouldn't stop us from fulfilling the call of God in our lives. And sometimes the call of God in our lives is not to just, you know, be a pastor in a church building 40, 50 hours a week. Why I have these other passions and desires to do. What I love about digital ministry is we can do this anywhere. You know, we were just in Destin, Florida on a little break. We did our Sunday gathering from there. I could sit on the beach, and I could, you know, interact with groups of people.

I can be at work, interacting at times when it's appropriate, interacting with people. But not only that, I can raise up teams of people to do the same thing. Not everybody wants to be in full-time, what we would call full-time vocational ministry, but we're all called to be in ministry. And we're all called to the Great Commission to go and make disciples. That's not for a certain part of a percentage of the church. It's called, Jesus has called every single believer to go and multiply themselves and make disciples. That is the ministry, I believe, ultimately we see in Ephesians chapter 4, where it says, you know, go and, you know, equip people to do their own works of ministry. And that has to be more than just, you know, which is beautiful, has to be more than just, you know, being a parking lot attendant at a church and waiting people in, which is fine and it's wonderful.

I'm not, I don't speak against that. It has to be more than just, you know, yeah, it has to be more than just that. I believe people are called ultimately to make a disciple who makes disciples, who makes disciples. And what I love about the digital church is we get to duplicate ourselves or multiply ourselves and our leaders to do exactly that. We just lost, we are launching Alpha right now. We're so thankful for Alpha and what Pastor Nicky Gumbel has done. They went, of course, they went virtual and online when everything happened and they didn't stop doing it. They actually increased it. They produced more content and they're keeping it online. And so we're right now doing a test, a test, 13-week test with people, just learning the ins and outs of it, how it's going to work digitally with their platform.

And then it is going to be our, we have decided as a team, the next step in Hope City Church Live is Alpha. When somebody asks us, what's the next, how do I, what do I, how I really want to say it, what's my next step in the community? What is the next thing you want me to do? How do I get involved? You go to Alpha. And we believe we can multiply that endeavor. We can use it as a great evangelistic tool because of Alpha has such a great network and a great platform in reaching people digitally already. We think, you know, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can just join whatever other people are doing. And again, we can multiply leaders that way as well. Yeah, it has been so fun in the season watching Alpha learn lessons publicly and make the shift, how they were nothing digital pre-COVID, but during the digital season, lean towards it.

You know, he went on Newhoff, openly had the conversation about the lessons that he learned and seeing them thrive in digital space. I've got church friends that have seen 700 plus people attend digital Alpha events. And so seeing, man, seeing it happen has been so cool. All right. Well, hey, let's pivot here. Let's come back a little bit. So you and your wife, Angie, like you're in private security. If you're watching this on YouTube, the guy's ripped and buff. And so like, I'm scared and he's like multiple states away, you know, and Angie's doing accounting and a number of other things. Like, were you intentional with the jobs? Was it just the jobs that were easily available for you? Do you do ministry in context of the jobs?

Like, I'm just curious why both of you are kind of doing the things that you're doing. What was the impetus of that? Well, I'd say it this way. You know, we worked at a very large megachurch in the Pacific Northwest, a beautiful church. We grew a lot. It's a great place. It's called City Church. It's now called Church Home. And we were on staff there almost a decade. And, you know, our joke with a lot of people is, you know, people just think, you know, you work at a church that big, where you guys just go do and like pray all day long or something. You know, you have a job there. You work there. And so we worked in different roles there, you know, helping to administrate, not administrate roles, but, you know, roles, structure roles for that organization.

It was like going to work, you know. The pastors had their things to do, but the rest of us, you know, we kept this place spinning, you know, we did work there. And so we've always been, I think, in a way, you know, but we were paid fully from the church. As the years progressed, you know, and it was really when we went to a small real community, we started seeing that, man, I mean, the pressure of finances is so big in churches. I think there's a number of reasons. I think sometimes, you know, we can overextend ourselves for vision. We, you know, we want to live by faith and not by, walk by faith and not by sight. And so sometimes we need to evict a little bit more wisdom in that, you know, and we can get overextended.

And, you know, we tend to forget at times that, you know, the giving in the church is based on the generosity, ultimately, however you want to talk about it, from the hearts of people. And as they do well, they give well, and as they're not, they don't, you know, and just the way it is. We can fight on that all we want and understand it, but at the same point in time, it's just how it is. And so as we left there and we ended up, you know, moving back up to Seattle to plant a church, you know, our eyes opened, really started opening when this, the idea of taking this video-only campus of another megachurch and turning that into a church plant. And it was a newer church campus already. And when that presented us, we looked at the finances, you know, and said, well, there's no way this is going, this money's not going to continue to come in because the majority of the people are going to leave and go back to the mothership, so to speak.

Which is fine. I mean, that's just, it's nothing wrong with that. They were helping to launch that campus and they're, you know, if it's going to change, they're going to go back. That was very upfront. So we started, you know, well, if we want to do this, we're going to have to get a job, you know. Now, over the years, over the years, we both kept certain skill sets up for those, you know, just having skill sets that are transferable. Because in 2000, yeah, it really started, I'd say this, in 2010, 2009, we were going to, we were going to do a parachute. We were going to move to Miami, Florida and plant a church. And I think that's where the seed thought started, started really happening in our lot, in our hearts.

But I have to think about it, was back then when we were, when we were going to first plant our first church in 2000 and it would have been in 2010. And we didn't know anybody in Miami. We didn't know, we just, we're feeling the Lord leading us to go that direction. And our plan was to go to Miami, get jobs and start connecting with people, reach people and plant a church. Seemed good to us in the Holy Spirit, that's what we're going to do. And so in saying that, we both had skill sets, me and the security field, my wife and the accounting, jobs would have been easy to get. The team of people that we were raising, all of them would have gotten jobs. This is kind of what you do. Everybody goes, works and plants, you know?

And I think, I think that's where it really started. So as we went through our ministry life, keeping certain skill sets sharp, helped us when we made that pivot. By the way, totally open to you. I live in Miami. Totally open to you coming down. Would love to help. I'm actually with a friend of mine planting a church right now. We're about six months old. And so love, love the idea of more churches in Miami. And so the more, the merrier. It's a huge mission field down here. All right. So you have a, you're a, you work in security. That's your, that's your primary job. That's the primary thing that I'm guessing. That's the primary thing that you spend your time doing. Do you feel the tension of not being a pastor 40 plus hours a week?

Like, how are you pastoring? How are you shepherding? How are you caring for people when you're clocking, clocking in as a security, whatever that is? Well, yeah, that's a great, that's a great, great question. I think, I'll just say it the way I say things. I have yet to met any pastor, including myself, who shepherds people 40 or 50 hours a week. Because that's usually, that's usually the question. The question is, how do you, how can you have a, a dual focus or multi-focus? What about your people? Well, hopefully my people are working in jobs and careers or, you know, some of them are not. If we're just thinking about shepherding people, um, uh, uh, if you look at your hours during a week at the pastor, maybe 50 hours, it's probably what the average pastor works.

And you look at that, how many of those 50 hours are you really hands on personally with a person? Now I have some wonderful pastor friends who are crazy people that are always with people. I don't know how they do it, but you know, how many hours are you really in the face with somebody, you know, at their house? They're at your house. You're at coffee with them. You're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're doing that type of thing. Um, it's not 40 hours. It's not 50 hours. I doubt if it's 30 hours, you know, because of all the other duties yet you're, you're responsible to do as a pastor. And then again, you have to define what, what is really your roles as that lead pastor or a pastor. And I guess let's say lead pastor, what's your chief responsibility?

My personal opinion is my chief responsibility. Number one, first and foremost, outside of my relationship with Jesus and my wife is, uh, teaching the church and equipping the church. And so I have my times of study and prayer and personal devotion side, but my times of study and preparing messages to teach, you know, which takes up probably the bulk of the time. And then from there you start breaking down and they're, you know, personal connection time with people, you know, and when do you do that? You know, and I, and I think for me, I'm actually discipling more people now than I would ever discipling personally prior to, prior to being digital. I'm way more involved in people's lives. I'm way more because I, I, especially guys, you know, um, I don't know too many guys that want to sit around and have a, you know, a two, two or three hours of talk every time you see them.

You know, um, not always, but you know, I, I think, yeah, I, I, I, I'm in, I'm involved in more people's lives and they're more involved in my life through a instant message, through a Facebook group, through a zoom call, through some type of communication like this. Um, way more, way more, way more, way more. Now I'm not saying that's good. Maybe it's bad. Maybe I was doing such a terrible job. I don't know, um, way more than, than now, because I don't think we've thought about this, this way. You know, can we truly have, uh, relationships? Can we have deep, meaningful relationships and never sit in the same room together? And, uh, I would a hundred percent say, I hope so. You know, cause most likely if, if you just sit in a group around a table at Starbucks, you know, uh, once, once a week for an hour and that's it.

Or the only type of discipling we're doing is for the platform and that's all we do. We're never really involved in people's lives or there's no accessibility. People are so accessible to us now that it's, uh, um, yeah, it's just different. Uh, uh, so for me, yeah, I, I am personally discipling way more people. Well, I mean, relationally way more people now than, than, uh, than ever before. And not only that, it's not just, it's not just in my city or in my church, in my, this location. It's, it's worldwide, you know, Francis who lives in Uganda. I'm as close to, close to the Francis as I am somebody that will come over to my house. We've never met. We'll be in person. We'll probably never be meeting in person.

You know, I know things about his life, you know, things about me. I have another friend that lives in the UK that I met on a video game six years ago. And we're very close. So I walk with him through the death of his mom, the death of his dad, uh, his, uh, his struggle, his, in his marriage as deep and as meaningful as if he was sitting in our church building on a Sunday morning every week. Um, and I can go down the long, the long list. I believe this, uh, the minute our, we shift, you know, the Bible calls it repentance. The minute we change the way we think, you know, transform the way we're doing life. And repentance is a beautiful thing. We are to repent all the time. It's a constant life is a repentant life.

And I think the more we begin to think and change the way we think about certain things, I think the, the, the, the gospel and is going to go forward at a, at a, at a more rapid rate. Um, we can be everywhere. Why we're sitting in Des Moines, Iowa. No, I, I love, I love all of that. Let me ask this. So you're, you have, I mean, digital has allowed you to reach. I'm trying to figure out how to say this. Digital has allowed you to be more efficient with your engagement. Um, you're able to reach. Yeah. Uh, you're able to reach further. I mean, you're talking about literally other continents. You're able to have, you know, very intimate conversations. You're talking about how you're engaging in, in being with, with, uh, with people at a deeper level quicker.

Um, how, with you being by vote, do you find yourself leaning on more volunteers? Like, are you pushing responsibility, pushing may not be the right word. Are you encouraging responsibilities and, and diversifying and spreading it out among more people so that you've got more volunteers that are efficiently doing this as well? Are you reproducing yourself into others or is digital just a really allowing you the opportunity to be much more efficient in what you're doing? Like which, which of those paths kind of best describes you? I'd say right now, um, more efficient than what we're doing. And now with a piece of, of multiplying ourselves to others as they catch it, you know, um, we have, we have one, two, three, three, four leaders right now.

They, they, they, they've, they've, they've caught it and, um, they're discipling, they're, they're, they're reproducing, they're talking, they're discipling. Um, again, it just takes time for people to, you know, to change the way they think. If the majority of people who go to church go 2.6 times a month or 1.8 or whatever statistic we find if, uh, if, if, if the whole, you know, don't get me wrong. I love the church. I love what we've been doing. I believe, I believe God has used this pandemic to bring a correction to the body of Christ. If churches, all I do is show up and sit on the seat. And I miss that. I miss that. How many times have we heard? I miss it so much. What do you miss? The people?

Well, are you having those people over to your house ever during the week? You know, are you, I mean, what do you miss about, you know, and I think the whole gathering of the church in person is beautiful. It's wonderful. Who doesn't like to do it, but it's not just fulfilling a spiritual thing. It's filling up an emotional thing. It's filling up maybe some relational stuff. It's, it's euphoric. It's not just, just, you know, I go to church because, you know, I want to see my friends. Well, do you have your friends over on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and most of the time in the 20, you see, I've been in full-time ministry since 1997, you know, so a couple of years, 25 years doing this.

When I talk to people, okay, all the people that you miss on a Sunday, do you ever see them? And the answer is pretty, for the most part, 98%, and it could be just where I'm at. No, no, no, no. So if we're changing the way people think from the, from the part of just, I go to church, we hear this all the time. You're not just go to church. You are the church. Well, what does that really mean? And that's what the question that we've been asking ourselves, what does it mean to be the church? You know, what does it mean to be, to equip you for the work of your ministry? Again, it has to be more that I show up and I volunteer on a serve team, which is beautiful and it's wonderful. Trust me, I'm not making fun of that.

But it has to be more because God did not call us to volunteer. There's no such thing as volunteering. We're not volunteers. You know, we're servants. We're called to serve the body. We're called to serve humanity. We're called to lay our lives down for the brothers and sisters of Christ. We're called to lay our lives down for humanity. We're called to go and make disciples. We're called to reproduce ourselves, to multiply ourselves, to extend the kingdom of God, because we believe our eternal lives actually, that eternity really is real, you know? And at some point in time, we have to expand the eternity that God has already placed in the hearts of people that the Holy Spirit's calling on that needs to be brought out of them, so to speak, right?

So I think as people begin to change the way they think from just being church attenders, right? I attend this church. I go, that's my church. Okay, what does that mean to you? These are the conversations we have with team members as they're coming in. Do I get involved? You know, you just want me to have a group of people and talk to people? Yes. What is the number one thing you can do at Hope City Church? The number one thing you can do at Hope City Church is be willing to talk to somebody that needs to be talked to, you know what I'm saying? That needs prayer. That needs to be prayed for. That needs to be cared for. That needs to be looked after. That needs to follow me as I follow Christ.

All the apostles says it. In the book of Ephesians, follow me as I follow Jesus, right? So we need those who will follow, and of course, we understand, we all follow Jesus. Yes, we got that. But we're to make disciples. So the disciple has to follow you, and that disciple follows that person. It's very easy, but it's very hard to do at the same time. So I think it's changing the way people think, again, from just going to church and attending and maybe volunteering on a Sunday to you are responsible for the soul of a person. You are responsible. God wants us responsible for the individual lives of people that he brings us in connection with. And so the more people we can get digitally to see that and see social media and see, you know, platforms and see the virtual world, people are there.

3.7 billion people are using social media on a monthly basis, and it's growing. It's not going to shrink. It's going to grow. It's actually expanding. You know, 3.7 billion people are actively engaging on social media. I would say that's where the church needs to be. And so that's where the church, that's where we're going. You know, there's a lot of questions behind that. But then it's making more leaders to think that way, more reproducing ourselves to think that way that, you know, you can do it as well. Yeah. Helping people find their personal mission and tying that into a mission field like social media where these 3.7 billion people are. I mean, there's huge opportunities to relationally engage.

And I always, I love that relational approach that you and other digital churches speak so highly of. And as you explore the metaverse and even start to explore some of those worlds, you're going to see, honestly, I think it's even more relational in the meta side than in the digital. I've been really encouraged by the stuff I've seen in that space. Well, let me ask this. You are, so you're bivocational. You and Angie both are. If the church could afford to pay you your full-time salary, would you do that? I would take the full-time salary and still be bivocational. Okay. So, but for you, like what's the win and what's the win in doing the work outside? Being around people, you know, you're in, you get to hear how people think and how they see things in life and what's important to them.

See, when you're in the marketplace, you get to be around people who can teach you a lot of things a heck of a lot faster than you can read them online, right? And so you get around people, you build relationships with people. And that's the beauty of it all. I think if somebody said, hey, we're going to give you, I hope to see the church $100,000 and we want you to use that for salary for you and your wife, we don't want you working. And I simply would ask, is that conditional? Like, what do you mean? Is it conditional that if I take the money, I have to stop working? And they say, yes. I say, no, no, no. I think there's a number of reasons to that. A couple of reasons. Number one, I don't want to be just tied to the salaries of the giving of people, right?

I believe that we should be in the marketplace if you have skill sets to do that. I also think it's – that's where the people are at. As a pastor, again, as a pastor who had pastored churches and was on staff of churches and you worked in the building and that's where you were. And you sat in your office and wrote your sermons. Or if you're a golfer, you're out on the golf course or whatever. You only get a certain amount of people around you at one time. But what if you worked at a job and you had an office building that you worked in? Or you're – whatever you would do. I don't know what people do. But you're around people, you know, and the flavor of Jesus can get off of you on other people.

So now that we have a duplicity of ministry, so we have digital ministry, and we have marketplace ministry going on where we're in person with many, many, many, many lost people. And I think if – though if somebody's listening and they want to send us money, we'll take it. Okay, so listen, there's somebody out here that's listening to this podcast, listening to this conversation. And this may be starting to make sense. You know, I'm seeing – I need to get more in the marketplace. I need to get more around people. I want to diversify my ministry so that it's not just me and try to multiply it into others. And to do that, I'm going to burn the ships and kind of take on a full-time job outside ministry that's going to force me to start to multiply into others.

And see the ministry expand that way. How do I get started in this? What's the first step? You know, I don't know. Quit the nine-to-five church job. Take a nine-to-five job elsewhere. Like, when you transitioned away from the city church and the church homes and went towards more of a bivocational approach, what were some of those early days for you? Get ready to battle the feeling of failure. I think this idea that if you're a bivocational pastor and it could – well, I've talked to a number of people and myself. Somehow, if you don't have enough money coming into your church, this is for people you're listening and you're watching and you're in-person church and you don't plan on – you're just foreign digital.

You know, maybe to add it as an online expression to your church, which is beautiful. Or you're a person that feels like, I want to step away. One of the hard things you're going to have to deal with is that feeling of, I failed. Especially if it's – because, you know, I would say this, a lot of people feel you cannot have a – well, I would say it this way. You know, your focus can't be in a church and in a job because then you're a divided focus. You know? But I think when – you have to get ready to fight that battle of, I failed somehow. I couldn't make it. I couldn't cut it as a full-time pastor. Or maybe, like I said, I started to say, like, enough money is not coming in, so I have to get a job.

You know? Well, I think you have to fight that battle. I think, what can I do? I know pastors who've never had a job. They've never had a job outside the church. You know? And, you know, they went to high school. They went to college, Bible college. Or maybe got a degree in communications. They went to Bible college or whatever. They went to the college route, seminary route, and they got hired in church. And they've only worked in the church. Get ready for an eye-opening experience. You know? And the eye-opening experience is, what would I do? You know? Would I go in sales? Would I go in this? I mean, what would I do? Which leads to number three. How much can they pay me to do what I do? Right?

Now, just because of the type of people that I've been blessed to be around, over the years, some people think, wow, such, such pastor here makes this X amount of money. I'm going to, like, when you go into the ministry, oh, man, that pastor makes, oh, gosh, that pastor makes that kind of money. I'm going to make that kind of money. You find out that's not true. But does it, if I make an X amount of money as a pastor, am I going to make that much money to replace that income, right? So that's another way to look at it. Some things you have to think about. Can I do both? You know? Well, I'd say as a digital pastor, you definitely should be able to do both. But can I do both? Can I take a cut and pay from the church?

And can I, or I would say cut and pay, but have a reduced salary from the church, I guess would be a cut and pay, a reduced salary from the church? Because I believe pastors biblically ought to be paid for the labor that they do. And they should be paid well for the labor that they do, according to what the church can afford. Can that be a stream of income, a stream of revenue, or I would say income, why I do another job, you know? And I think that's, those are things that you just have to begin to ask yourself, like, what are you passionate for? I'm passionate for private security work. I'm passionate for it. I've been passionate for it for years. I have had, I've helped set up security teams in churches.

I've done event security. I've done executive protection work. The job that I'm doing, that I just got hired for now, blows my mind. I can't believe I got hired for it. It's a blessing, you know, helping to be a part of a team. That's going to be setting up a new corporate security look for 300 locations in their stores. I'm on the ground floor of that. I saw an ad. I just saw an ad in the news. I saw a news article. And I felt like the Holy Spirit said apply. I'm like, I'm not qualified. I'll qualify you. Apply. I got hired after their two-month-long vetting process. I'm still shocked. And so, but I've also, though, I've kept my skill set up. I've gotten certifications. I've kept my skill sets up.

So those that are listening, how do I step away? What skill sets do you have? And those type of things. I think that's, those will be the things to think about, you know. As wonderful as I love pastors, we're all people. You're going to be looked at differently. You know, when you step from the full-time pastoral ministry, especially if you're a lead pastor, especially if you're, you know, executive pastor. And you decide, I'm going to go back into the marketplace or go to the marketplace. You know, people are going to push back on you, you know, for a number of reasons, which I've named a few. But for you, for me, it's, you know, I get to be around people. I get to be, you know, influential in that area.

So it's almost like having two churches. I have our digital church and I have a church that's in the marketplace where people are at, you see. And so that's the way I look at it. You know, I have digital church, the marketplace church. I have a game app that I'm on, been on for years. And I'm reaching, I have hundreds of people that I connect with. That was just by accident. I just started playing some goofy game online 60 or 70 years ago and it's continued. And so I see the stream of the Holy Spirit intertwining all this together. But I think for pastors who, and it's okay, it's okay to stay in your executive level job as a leader. It could be somebody listening or watching today and, you know, you want to be, you want to do this, but you don't want to quit your job.

I mean, you have a job full-time. And I'm like, I'm feeling called to do this, but I don't know how to raise money. I don't want to be full-time this. I love my career. You know, you're the perfect person. You're the perfect person. Don't feel like you have to quit your job to be in ministry. You're in ministry every time your feet hit the floor. And we all know this. But it's like, those are the people I'm excited for even more. Those who are, you know, who are exploring, hearing, who are just lovers of Jesus and lovers of people. Like, is it possible that I could actually, wow, I could actually be this influential in the people's lives and still keep my job? Well, that's what I want to do, 100%.

I think we're just, some of us are just reversing it. We're going back into the marketplace. No, I love it. I mean, talk about humble disruption. The idea of looking at your job, at the marketplace as the mission field. And, hey, I've got a digital church and I'm doing this job to pay the bills, to pay my mortgage. But the job is, the job is not the job. The job's not the paycheck. The job's a mission opportunity. The job is a mission field, a ministry opportunity to engage in. And so, love that. Man, this has been such a good conversation. I love your heart for Baibo Kobo. And when I follow you on social, you're good for a rant every couple months on Baibo. And it's always like, hey, there he is.

He's saying it. He's banging the drum, man. That's good to see. I love it. I really do, man. You're my go-to guy on this. So, love your heart for it. As we're landing the plane here, man, any closing thoughts today? Sure, I have a great closing thought, is this. Do what's in your heart. Do what's in your heart. God will supply all the people, all the money, all the needs, all the open doors. If it's in your heart to do it, do it, do it. If you're a pastor listening and, you know, the digital church space is freaking you out, ask yourself why. Why is it freaking me out? Is it theological? Is it doctrinal? Is it, well, what's the reason? I think, you and I talked about this before, Jeff, is like, you know, I can't remember who said it.

You probably, you'll remember, you know, we'll be, we'll probably be 10 years from now. We're still going to be talking about, is the digital church a true church, theologically, doctrinally, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. We won't know. I'm 51. I'll probably, they'll probably still be talking about it 20 years from now when I'm 71. You know, we're just still figuring out it's okay to hit drums in the church, you know. I was like, what the heck. I enjoyed that one. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right. I think just do what's in your heart. I think pastors who, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please don't stop doing your online churches, your online services, your online streaming.

Don't sell your equipment. If you do, let us know. We'll get it to the right, not to the right, but to a pastor that will use it. Donate your equipment. You don't need to sell it. Donate it to someone else. Use it as a seed into another digital church. I know a couple pastors that have sold their equipment or are selling their equipment. I'm encouraging them to don't sell it. Donate it. Matter of fact, if you don't even get off, just, you know, the online space is not, it's not going in, it's not going away. You know, the church, God has opened the door, a great and effective door for the church to go digital. And we're here to stay. We are the church. We're the church together. Traditional, in-person, online, whatever.

We're all brothers and sisters in Christ. We all want to reach people. We all believe the eternity of people's lives matter way more than if we're in a building or not in the building or what color the carpet is. I'm so happy I don't have carpet anymore. All that stuff. Let's go and make disciples. Let's go and make disciples. In the end of the day, we all will stand before Jesus, and we want to hear those words. Well done, my good and faithful servant. That's what we are. We're servants of Jesus. We're servants of people. And so let's work together, and we'll have all eternity to cry on each other's shoulders how bad it means we work to each other on earth. We'll get to repent for each other, I guess.

I don't know. But, yeah, do what's in your heart in saying that. Just do what's in your heart, and let's be the church together. Love it. I don't know any other better charge for humble disruption than what we just heard right there. Digital, physical, make those disciples. Follow what's in your heart and aim and strive after Jesus. And so, hey, man, as we're wrapping up episode 209 here in season three, man, that was beautiful. Jared, man, I just love hanging out with you. We've got to figure out ways to do this more. And if I can convince you to move a church, plant a church down here in Miami, maybe I need to start praying that way for you to do that. It's funny, Mark Venti, actually, I got a meeting with Mark Venti in a couple weeks.

I don't know if I'm allowed to mic drop this, but evidently there's a gathering of church home viewers down here in Miami. And so they're starting to kind of try to huddle them together. So it's like, come on, man. Let's make it. We've known Mark and Crystal for years, decades, two decades, probably. Yeah, they're great people. Excited to hang out with him in a little bit, but definitely, man, excited about you and what's happening. With your church and the ministry and everything that's associated with it. So we'll put links in the show notes to everything Hope City related and some other things in context of this and the other conversations that I've had with Jared here on the podcast. But we're going to land the plane.

So for Jared, this is Jeff with the Church Digital, Digital Church Network and a whole bunch of other fun stuff. Thanks for jumping on the show here. We'll see you next time at the podcast. Y'all have a good day.