EP217: Chris Caputo, Internet Addiction & Digital Ministry

Paul talks about this in Romans. Like, we are creatures of worship. Are we going to worship the created, or are we going to worship the creator? And the creator that's in one another as we mediate grace to one another. We got to have healthy connections, Jeff. We got to have solid relationships, Jeff, that are not based on how good we are as ministers in these digital spaces, but who we are.

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than 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? 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 is that churches like yours would discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, hey, you've got the Church Digital podcast once again. It's Jeff here, excited to join you for this special—let's call it a special episode, special edition of the Church Digital podcast. That's right. If you've got little kids at home, you may want to consider not letting them listen to this podcast. We may be touching on some PG-13 issues within this episode, and I don't want to get hate mail. As a matter of fact, if you really want to send hate mail, go ahead and send it to Chesley at the church.digital. That'll be awesome. Chesley will really—Chesley's one of the co-founders of Digital Church Network. If you don't know Chesley, he's a good friend with today's guest, and so listen, I am excited about this podcast. I think it's something worth acknowledging, and even here with the Church Digital, we're going to—in Digital Church Network, we're really going to be touching over the next couple months on some sensitive subjects of digital ministry. And because there are challenges to this, rather than ignoring the challenges, let's just address it right up front.

And so let me introduce to the conversation here Chris Caputo. Chris is a spiritual director for Digital Church Network. He runs HasSaid Discipleship Network, and a number of other things. And really, once again, a spiritual director for an organization as well as, you know, almost a spiritual mentor for me, helping me manage, work through the intricacies and the hang-ups and the issues of Jeff Reed. It's been awesome to have Chris on the team. So hey, Chris, just maybe as an opening here, before we get into the meat of this conversation, tell us a little bit about HasSaid, kind of what you're doing, what that looks like, and where people can connect to HasSaid.

Yeah, thanks, Jeff. So glad to be here today. HasSaid Discipleship Network is designed to help create emotionally healthy communities. And who doesn't want that, especially today in today's internet world and the world that we live in with church life, regular life, everything in between? So HasSaidDiscipleshipNetwork.com—what we do is we have a disciple-making operating system where we train people, coach them, equip them, train them. We have hours of content if you want to go through that. We have live coaching experiences, and what we do is we invite you into our campfire, into our ecosystem, to learn how we do it. We actually show you how to do it from a digital space, how do we bring that to a physical and/or digital space so that you can learn to grow in emotional health? And what we say is it takes just a few months to create a culture of emotional health. That doesn't mean you may necessarily be fully emotionally healthy in a short amount of time, but your culture will help you grow up into those things. So we give you the minimum viable skill set that you'll need with as much encouragement and coaching and prayers we can give you. So there's a little two-minute speech there on that, Jeff. I'll turn that over back to you now as we continue our conversation.

That's great. And I can tell you, like, even just organizationally, some of the stuff that I've done with them—like that three months of culture—that may seem like forever, and it may sound like it's super fast, but when you're going through that process and just working through it and understanding it, it's such a beautiful thing. On the flip side, I don't know if we're technically on the flip side, but I feel closer to the finish line than maybe I did when we were getting started there and banging our heads against the wall repeatedly. And so definitely love what Chris is doing.

But let me set the stage here with the conversation we want to have today. Just over the course of the past couple months, I have really been digging into and through Digital Church Network, through the Church Digital, the mental health and some of the mental health challenges and implications centered around digital ministry. I'm talking to established churches that are doing digital ministry. I'm talking digital church planters. I'm talking metaverse. Like, it seems to be wherever I go, whoever I'm talking with that are on these front lines, it seems like we're having more and more conversations centered around either the mental health implications, the challenges people are facing, what this means long term, the health and viability of digital and metaverse churches, the challenges of operating in the dark spaces like metaverse and like social media is. And it was funny for a season, you know, I just kind of swept it under the rug. Let's not address it. Let's just keep focusing on what's in front of us. And long story short, several things happened in my life that it was like we can no longer really ignore this. We have to address it. And honestly, and I don't mean this egotistically, I don't know who is going to address it if not the Church Digital and Digital Church Network. So it's like, hey guys, we're going to grab this full steam ahead. And I've loved having some conversations with Chris, talking about, and others—Mindy Caliguire has been a guest on this podcast several times, Adrian Feldman, having conversations with her on it—but really starting to address the soul care aspects of us as individuals, starting to address maybe training. How do we train people? How do we, as Digital Church Network, train the people that are doing the digital ministry? How can we equip them to address going into these dark places like—what are they missing? What are they lacking in their training? And even starting to get into this has been a fun challenge lately, starting to talk with recovery organizations, recovery material, and many of them—many well-known organizations have been hesitant to walk into the metaverse and in digital spaces with their recovery. Like, so much so that it's been, I mean, really a challenge and a frustration as I've seen such a need in working with so many churches that have a need for recovery. They see people that need recovery from, you know, the addiction lifestyles or the things that people are facing in virtual reality and in within the other metaverse technologies.

But it all kind of culminated here because Chris and I have been working on some things and some others. We're starting to build out some teams and draw attention and try to really solve this problem, if it can be solved. And then Chris, it was funny—church Sunday—Chris forwards me this article, and it's literally—the title in big headlines is like "Internet Addiction," and it's like, this is what we need to talk about. And I was like, oh my gosh, this article is beautiful. And so literally in church, I'm scrolling through my phone when I should be focusing on technology. The worship coordinator actually came over to me because I was late firing a lighting cue, and I apologized. And I may have cussed underneath my breath because Chris distracted me in my moment of focus. I own my responsibility. I'm sorry. But as I'm looking at these internet addictions, like, I'm going to be honest here—a lot of this stuff, the majority of this stuff, is I'm probably guilty of sometime in my life. And so would love to maybe just start to unpack here just for awareness: hey guys, this internet, this realm that we're working on for kingdom purposes, has the potential to damage us, and we need to be aware of that. I don't think that it's "stay away from that space." I think we have to go in, but if nothing else, I think there's a cell phone awareness of that, which is really what I wanted to talk about.

And we're going to hit a pain point. Well, let me ask this right up the top, Chris. You know, just overview, as you're looking at this article, maybe even the challenge that we have to address—a lot of these mental health challenges centered around digital and metaverse ministry—man, do you have any thoughts just right off the top on this?

Yeah, Jeff, thanks. Um, first of all, I want to say thank you for watching this. This may not be easy. Some of the stuff we're going to share, but it is important. If not you, if not at some point, possibly or in the past or present or future, people you're going to come across may really have some challenges with this. And what is your plan? How are you going to address these issues, especially in a fully digital space if you're ministering there?

So, Jeff, thanks for the question. I think what we'll start with—two now we'll talk about substance abuse as an example, and then we'll move into internet. Okay, so I'll give you an example with alcohol and drugs. So there's two questions, okay? These two questions, as you lead into the article that you're going to share for a little bit, I'll start here and then I'll throw it back to you.

Number one—this is how you know if you're—to keep this really simple: can someone who is an alcoholic or not an alcoholic, or a drug addict, diagnose themselves? Can you safely predict the amount of drinks—let's say you're just drinking—can you absolutely predict how many drinks you're going to have once you have the first drink? Okay, so let's translate that into internet: can you safely predict the amount of time you spend online the minute you click on?

Okay, now here's the other—here's the second. I know there, then the pronouns might come in on that. That's okay. Here's the second question, even more important than that one, okay? Can you also control your thought life when you're not drinking, thinking about the next drink? So when you're sober, right, how is your thought life when you're thinking about the next drink? Is it like, "I can't wait," or you're thinking, "I can't think about this anymore. Stop thinking about it"? So if you're trying to control something in your mind, it's already out of control versus are you at ease with the thoughts about drinking?

Now with the internet, let me rephrase the question this way: can you control your thought life when you're offline and be at ease, not knowing when the next time you're going to be back online? Or can you take it or leave it? Or are you not at ease with those thoughts?

All right, so this—I'm going to set the table with that, Jeff. Those are the two. So once you click on, can you control brain-wise how much time and predict safely, you know, "I could just step away after an hour, or I'm going to spend two hours online today and walk away and do my work"? And then secondly, when you're offline, how's your thought life? Are you always trying to manage your thoughts around that?

So let that's kind of the appetizer as we lead into this addiction conversation. Yeah, we're less than ten minutes into the conversation and in my head already exploded. So what you're telling me is I don't need the control. What you're telling me right now is to effectively recover and overcome addiction is to stop fighting the addiction. Like, I don't want to nuance that, but well, are you at ease with it? That's you're in dis-ease. You're a disease. It's a disease. It's an addiction when you're not at ease.

So here's what we do. We're gonna go through this conversation. We're gonna talk through the five and we're gonna unpack some things. But so here's what I'm doing. I'm looking at this article. We'll put it in the show notes. It's from addictioncenter.com. Five types of internet addiction. And so right off the bat, once again, parents, you may want to pause it if your little kids are around because right off the top is a very sensitive subject: cyber sex addiction. It's obviously one of the more self-explanatory. Adult websites, sexual fantasy, adult chat rooms, webcam services. Don't even get me started on VR chat and a lot of the opportunities for cyber sex and virtual reality and in the metaverse. Like, the reality of cyber sex and that addiction is it's a reality. It's the world that we live in. And sex sells on the internet. It's funny. I've actually had somebody tell me that you know, a technology is going to succeed when pornography pervades it. Like, the ability for pornography to intersect itself into any technology basically validates that that technology is going to make it. If tech, if porn is not invading it, then that tech is actually questionable whether it's going to survive. We can talk about examples there later. But addressing this up front, there's susceptibility. There's like, okay, so Chris, you're talking about, you know, I was thinking control. You're thinking, how do we wrestle with, hey, you know what, like, there's this. This is out there. This is a challenge to us. I need to protect myself from getting exposed or getting pulled into. Like, how do we do ministry in spaces where cyber sex is really the challenge that it is?

Yeah, it's a great question, Jeff. So let me give you an overarching foundational concept. Okay? Wherever there's low joy environments, what that means is when you don't have that feeling that someone's glad to be with you, and you have to artificially stimulate that feeling of joy, of artificially, this is the breeding ground by which having faces that are not glad to be with us sets up the stage for heavy internet use and addictions to emerge. All right?

So another way of saying that is that there's a phrase called BEEPS: behaviors, experiences, events, people, and substances. Okay? We use those things, those BEEPS, to medicate ourselves to regulate our emotions. So what does that mean? Whenever we're too excited and amped up, we do one of those BEEPS to calm ourselves down. Or if we're too low in the dumps and we have very low joy, very low peace, we use these BEEPS to bring ourselves up. Where the design, God's design, is facial expressions, connections, relationships. Okay? People, God, and one another being glad to be with each other. That is the thing that's supposed to fire off the correct chemicals in the brain to make us learn how to regulate ourselves through relationships.

If you're a mother right now watching this, when your baby starts crying and they don't want the bottle, it's your face and your tone of voice that calms them down. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm so glad I'm locked in with you right now. I just love you so much." And the baby just, or if the baby's got those eyes, you know, they can't talk, but they're looking for joy. They're like, "I just want to lock in with somebody." They can't talk yet, right, Jeff? It's faces. Okay? So who are the glad faces in your life? If you don't have that in your life, you're going to be susceptible for internet addiction because these are artificial pseudo joys and pseudo peace ways of being able to regulate our brain.

So I'll just, I'll stop there. Maybe we can interact with that for a little bit and keep going down the list if you want of other addictions.

Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting, the idea of pseudo joy and the fact that I don't get graphic here, but pornography, you're connecting with the faces and the views of that. And, um, yeah, and that's, I just to be honest, I never realized the joy and that substitute value. And so that that's a really interesting takeaway that almost I feel like could be an entire conversation unto itself. And so, hey, you know what, you really want to dig into that? Swing over to Fam and we can unpack that. And we'll put Chris's info in the show notes as well. Um, but, uh, and I know that joy, just because I know has said that joy is really baked into a lot of what you're talking about through has said, right? So that's a repeating theme. By the way, I've, when if you actually know Chris, I've never seen anyone who shows joy as much on his face as he does. Like, his eyes pop out of his head. He's so joyous when he really gets excited on something. So, uh, definitely excited to continue on this.

So let's get off cyber sex and move on. So next up: net compulsions. Net compulsions concern interactive activities online that can be extremely harmful, such as online gambling, trading stocks online, auctions such as eBay, eBay, E-boy, and that's from the movie. If you're a boy, eBay, and compulsive online shopping. These habits can have a detrimental impact on one's financial stability and disrupt job-related duties. So compulsions on the internet, um, once again, you know, there, and even for me, it's stuff like iTunes. You know, there was a season of my life back when it was like ninety-nine cents per track, but you know, buy those things all day long. It was funny. I was just with my kids the other day and we were looking at movies on iTunes, and I don't know that I'm proud or disgusted to say I probably own, actually I own exactly three hundred thirty-three iTunes movies at this moment in several different online services.

And so even as, um, once again, I'm just a moment of transparency here, I'm looking at myself and I'm like, man, maybe in this desire to be a net savvy person, at what point is too far? At what point, Chris, am I taking this and it's becoming a not a joy, not a hobby, but a compulsion and something that I have to be sensitive to? I don't know what are you thinking at that?

Yeah, so this gentleman, Dr. Keith Beard, looks like in two thousand five he published an article when this was a new thing, a new trend of internet called Internet Use Disorder. He says he reads eight questions. He says number one: Are you preoccupied with the internet? You think about previous online activity or you anticipate the next online session? All right, that's box one. Box two: You need to use the internet with increasing amounts of time in order to achieve satisfaction. Number three: Have you made successful efforts to control, cut back, or stop your internet use? Number four: You've stayed online longer than you originally intended. Number five: You're restless, moody, depressed, or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop internet use. Number six: You've jeopardized or risked the loss of significant relationship, job, or educational opportunities because of the internet. Number seven: You've lied to family members, therapists, or others to conceal the extent of involvement with the internet. Or number eight: You use the internet as a way of escaping from problems or relieving a dysphoric mood, feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, guilt, or depression.

So basically, Jeff, when you find that first high, just like with anything else, when you taste it, you got to try and keep trying to catch that same high. The problem is with anything else besides Jesus and relationships with one another that are not codependently based, you know, it becomes addictive because we want to try and catch that first initial high, okay? And if we do it outside of a context of true relationship, it becomes a pseudo joy, pseudo BEEP. It's counterfeit. It is what's called a BEEP that I went over before. So did that help? Did that answer that question?

I think I think we've covered that by asking those questions. Totally. But there's a challenge here. I mean, it's twenty twenty-two. You know, I don't know about you, but like, I went to a grocery store for the first time in two years because at this point I buy all my groceries through Instacart. Um, I don't actually, between Instacart and Amazon.com, I really don't know the last time that I've bought something from a physical store. Like, maybe a hardware store to buy a nail, but like, it's been very because I've evolved into this digital life now. Is that how? How can I coexist if I am sensitive? If I'm realizing, hey, I may have an issue, but at this point everything leads towards Amazon anyway? So like, am I forced to go all the way back to like physical? Is there? How do I have my cake and eat it too? Like, how do I take the drink of alcohol realizing that I have to put it down and not get addicted to drinking it? Like, is cold turkey the way to kind of overcome some of this?

That's a great question, Jeff. I think we're really gonna have to take this step by step. I don't want anyone getting overwhelmed or beating yourself up or anything like that. Think of it also if you're watching this. If you have, we also could have ministry addiction. So that's like similar but different. The thought of like you being someone who helps people, there's something that goes off in the brain that feels so good. It's so pleasurable when people look at you and they go, "You're awesome." And that's a good thing. The thing is, you have to go home, right? And you have to leave the office behind. And then you have to like clock out and go back home to your fam, to like the real world almost. Um, and your identity is not about you being a minister. I want you to hear me on this, okay? And if that gives you pleasure, that's fantastic. But you know what? It's about having those relationships in your life where you're where you belong, you're seen, you're heard and understood simply for who you are, whether you're doing that action or not. You are loved in every single place for just the way you are, okay?

We long for belonging, Jeff. But here's the thing. When we come to internet stuff, this thing can also be equally as addicting. It can be a real rush to kind of go into the metaverse and kind of have all these amazing experiences. And at the end of the day, it's only a two-sensory experience, right? Sight and sound. You know, to really have, we got to have five-sensory belonging, five-sensory attachment, five-sensory experiences as well that will balance out the brain so we don't get hooked and sinkered into this, okay? Because if we're only two senses, that's not enough. We're designed to have five. So until this digital experience gives me all five, I'm still gonna lean into making sure how your physical life is going, how is your underground friendships going, how is your family life on the ground? Because that's the most important. That is the most important, Jeff. And sometimes if some of those areas are not working out too well, we can kind of dive into this because we have an identity in that. That's where it becomes addictive and a problem. So I'll take a pause right there.

No, really good with that. Thank you. All right, moving on to number three here. Number three we've got cyber or online relationship addiction. Reading from the article, cyber...

Or online relationship addicts are deeply involved with finding and maintaining relationships online often forgetting and neglecting real life family and friends. Typically online relationships are formed in chat rooms or different social networking sites but can occur anywhere one can interact with people online. Often people who pursue online relationships do so while concealing their real identity and appearance. This modern phenomena led to the creation of the term catfish.

Okay, so catfish is the extreme version of this, but to be honest, when I'm talking about an addiction to finding relationships online, I mean shoot, that's what we tell people to do in digital ministry—go and find relationships online and point that to Jesus. Where do we get into a level? I mean, obviously you don't catfish people. If you don't know what catfish is, Google it and figure it out. But if we don't want to catfish from it, but like, what is it? Are there lines where, man, we're too far gone into this? We need to be aware of some of our weaknesses. Where would a line like that? What would that look like?

Well, I would build in some healthy systems. If you're a male, I would not be. I would best practice have a woman with you, specifically hopefully your wife or ministry team members that are females as you're—I'm talking if you're developing longer term relational stuff, especially in ministry. To have that, I mean, that's just good practice. And be careful. Take a look at your joy buckets. I'll call them a joy bug. If your joy bucket is low and you're going into this, just be aware that if you fill up your bucket through all this stuff all the time—all these wonderful faces because they don't even know you, but yet you know you're like the greatest thing since sliced bread—make sure you have joy in other places that people know you. That's very important because this thing can get intoxicating, Jeff, right? I mean, digital ministry is fun, man. I mean, it is a lot of fun. But if we're doing ministry, remember folks, we're doing this out of an overflow. We're supposed to be doing it out of an overflowing place. We're supposed to be giving and laying our lives down for people. It's not supposed to fill us up in our identities and we get all our brain chemicals from this kind of stuff. That's just something I'm speaking from experience. I'm not here as a high horse guy talking down on all of you lesser folk or whatever. No, no, no. I was the number one offender of this. That was the chief of sinners of this, and it cost me a lot. Now I can't even imagine if I had this back then, this access to this online stuff the way we do right now. Oh my goodness, I don't know what would have happened. It may have been a lot worse for me. So just a bit of a caution, Jeff, right? Just as we're building guardrails into this, best practices, and you and I, buddy, we're working on creating systems so people can build real joy together, you know? Not pseudo joy, not pseudo peace and that identity that's based on something of somebody else that's not holy. It's not from the Lord.

So I was on the call. I mean, this is confession hour evidently, but I was on a Zoom call today, the day of us doing this recording, and it was with a missions pastor at a large church here in America. And you know, I know this guy, and so we were going to catch up on one of the digital pastors that he's supporting through his church. And I don't know what I did. It was completely like just seamless for me, but when I jumped on the call and you know when you're on Zoom and it takes forever for the audio to sync up, and so it's like the most awkward part of the day where you're staring at each other and but you're not really communicating anything. And so when the call, when the Zoom audio actually connected, he said I let out this loud exhaustive sigh. And so immediately he immediately went into, "Are you okay? What's going on?" And I was like, "I'm fine." And he's like, "Well, why did you just let out that big sigh right then?" And I was like, "You're the fourth call in a row and I just, I didn't, you know, I didn't have a moment to breathe." And so I think that's it. And he's like, "I don't know what you do, but like, you know, as soon as this call's over, go take a walk. Go walk around the house. Go grab the dog. Go outside. Like, you know, refresh." And it was funny. It's you know, my knee jerk thought—transparent confession hour here—I don't have time for that. I'm way too busy. But it's like, okay, you know what? I will. I do need to. And it's funny, actually, another guy I got another guy within the past week has called me out on some of that. And I was so, I was sending him an email today and I was like, "You know what? I've actually discovered has really helped my mental capacity. I take like fifteen minute naps a couple times a day. Like I'll just go sit down on the couch." It's funny, my dog who was just in here cuddles up next to me, and I'll just like, no phone, nothing. The watch has a fifteen minute alarm and it just, and it helps me, you know, recharge. And so sometimes I think we're so guilty of diving in—whether it's the ministry fix, whether it's the relationship fix, you know, I don't know what the challenge is—but separating from that and recharging from it, to your point, finding joy in other things beyond just that. Yeah, that is so important. And honestly, something that's been missing from my life in seasons. And so, man, this is really good.

You know, it makes me think. Let me give you guys a practical tool, Jeff. That's a really great example. Where we practice in Kansas City, think of you know, you have the resting heart rate when you take your pulse or you're measuring that, and there's a healthy heart rate for you. Well, we call that the Shalom Zone. And that means you act like yourself when you're in between. My hands are between my chin and my head right now, and you see my face and I'm looking at you guys and it's just like, "I'm so glad to be with you." And I'll sometimes when I'm really amped up, I'm going to drop my hands now. It's like, "Ah, my brain's going and I'm excited and all this kind of thing," and the mind is racing and running. Even though there's good stuff going on, remember to return to the resting heart rate of your heart, of your Shalom, of your peace. Listen to your body. That is a skill we practice that has a discipleship network. Listen to your body. If you're all amped up in an amped up, overwhelmed, excitable place all the time, we may want to ask some certain questions. Ministering out of that place, okay? Because Jesus didn't minister out of an excited, excitable place. He wasn't like, "Oh my God, here comes the next sign and wondering, Father, what are you going to do? Like, this is just amazing, guys, isn't it? Like all this high energy." Like, okay, if you're high energy, don't get upset at me. I'm a more low energy guy. That's okay. You could be high energy, but just what is your peace in your body telling you when you're stepping into this digital ministry? When you're ministering to people, if it's always like, "Ah," we have to learn how to quiet. We minister his strength and his rest comes from the quiet place. And whatever that is for you, Jeff took a walk. Whatever that is for you, what brings you life? What lights you up? Go talk to your kids. Pet your dog. Play with the cat. I don't know. Do something else that brings a lot of life to you. Connect with a friend over coffee and talk and just laugh. Whatever that is to get back to the resting heart rate of your Shalom Zone. Find it, okay? So listen to your body. I hope that that's one thing that'll interrupt the addiction cycle faster than anything else. So that's so good.

You know, and that's almost that's a little bit of, you know, not trying to control it, and what you were speaking of earlier, man, that's beautiful. Hey, let's shift gears to number four. And so just to review, five types of internet addiction: number one, cyber sex addiction. Number two, net compulsions. Number three, cyber online relationship addiction. Number four, the new one, compulsive information seeking. The article says here, "The internet provides users with a wealth of data and knowledge. For some, the opportunity to find information so easily has turned into an uncontrollable urge to gather and organize data. In some cases, information seeking is a manifestation of pre-existing obsessive compulsive tendencies. Compulsive information seeking can also reduce work productivity and potentially lead to job termination." There's other things obviously within the article. I don't know, Chris, as you're hearing this, man, do you have any thoughts? Anything you'd like to share?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I have, I'm not like this, but I know I have a number of friends that are very informationally like they will read all the books. Once the next book comes in, they read it, and they're very, and it's not a bad thing. God designed us with a left brain and a right brain, and there could be highly left-brained, and but sometimes when it gets a little bit extreme, we can read every book on the thing as a way of controlling. Because if we understand the problem, if we can get to like the solution of the problem by reading it and intellectualizing it, like there's a certain sense of control and peace that comes. So the internet is just taking this to like extreme levels now with a click of a button. You have to go, Jeff, use the owner book story. We don't have to go to your bookstore anymore to do this. It's all right there. The click of a mouse, boom, right? So I think that's what that's talking to. Or for those of you, for those of you listening to this right, that doesn't make you a bad person. We love you. We love your brain. We want your knowledge. And at the same time, we could just keep going and like three hours have passed and the family's like, "Where's daddy? Is he in the basement again reading more articles?" Like, that's hurtful. We gotta keep an eye on that, ladies and gentlemen. So that's my thoughts on that. That's interesting.

You know, in a digital ministry context, this may be a jump, but there's what we're doing is so disruptive. And in many ways, I think there's a challenge for us to read up as much as we can, to get exposed to the right answers, the content, to fight for, to get upset and to get agitated over the wrong articles, the articles that are naysayers and again against some of what we're doing. You know, I just would be, I've caught myself just to be honest in that doom scroll, in that, I'm either, you know, within my echo chamber that I was in, I'm either hugely supportive of the voices that I'm hearing or anti that and frustrated and angry because others aren't agreeing. And it became more about honestly became more about the content than really the people. You know, and I've even met planters that I've had conversations of, "Hey, like, you've talked to me for hours about your church and you've not told me once about any like life change or people that are actually attending it." And so you know, even as we're wrestling with some of this, with the information seeking, I would challenge this: let's remember to keep the people first and foremost at heart here. And as we're doing the ministry, recognizing that, like I said, maybe that's a stretch from compulsive information seeking, but I know that very often as disruptors you're trying to find people that agree.

with you and to be honest that's very hard to find in this space so I would challenge you to realize that and keep it and join the fam, you know, be part of what we're doing over at Digital Church Network and find some community there. So anyway, all right, hey, let's move on to number five.

Number five here: computer or gaming addiction. Computer addiction, sometimes referred to as computer gaming addiction, involves online and offline activities that can be done with a computer. Hey, no kidding. As computers become more widely available, games such as—oh my gosh, this is a dated article. It's gonna get ugly right here.

Yes, it is.

Games such as Solitaire, Tetris, and Minesweeper were programmed into their system. Researchers quickly found that obsessive computer games playing was becoming a problem in certain areas. That's awesome. I'm addicted to Minesweeper, okay? But let's say if I was addicted to a game, it was probably Minesweeper like twenty-five years ago. But really, I mean, let's just be realistic. The—I've got a headset right here on my desk. The addictivity, the ability for people to get lost in these worlds, to get lost in these games, to Fortnite, Roblox, the different worlds that we live in, whether it's computer or gaming addictions or platform addictions or whatever you want the adjective to be on the addiction, it's very easy for us to get lost in that space. And so the challenge for—listen, I—there's a—I don't know that I've said this on the podcast. There is a CEO of one of the top Christian tech companies in America, a good friend of mine. I'm having a conversation with him about virtual reality. He says to me, "Jeff, what are you going to tell the church and what is the church going to tell people when the world figures out that virtual reality is actually pleasurable, more pleasurable, is going to be better than physical reality? Like when the average person's perception of the virtual world is more pleasing to them than the physical, and so they just want to live in the virtual and ignore the physical realm?"

One hundred percent. He's like, "That's where this technology is taking us. How's the church going to respond in that situation?" We can have that conversation later, but that just really starts to scratch the surface of the addictive power of these headsets and of this technology, even in our mobile phones. And so, Chris, this gets back to this whole thing of like we have to be in the world but not of the world. And so how do we draw that line? I want to reach people in virtual reality. I don't want to become addicted to it. I want to play video games to connect with the mission field implications, but not at the level of losing my health. How do we distinguish between what's healthy and unhealthy?

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all things shall be given unto you, right? So first things first. It's the glad face, it's the peaceful, joyful face of God that loves you so much. We got to be steeped in that as an identity. Very critical, ladies and gentlemen. If we don't have that, we've lost the battle. And do we feel like an orphan? Like we don't belong to God and His family? Do we actually feel that way? Oh sure, we say the prayers, we sing the songs on Sundays, right? "God loves me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so." But do we actually feel that? Is that an experiential reality for us, right? And that's part one.

Part two is first commandment: love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. Second commandment: love your neighbors yourself. The great collaboration, the great secure attachment with one another in love. "You'll know my disciples by how you love one another." All this stuff with the virtual reality, we're seeking joy and peace. We're seeking belonging, joy and peace. That's what we want at our core. That never changes for humans, right? And if we don't have first things first, second thing second in our life, the Great Commission's gonna get all wonky. This whole—and it could be anything. It doesn't have to be digital. Could be anything. It'll get wonky.

So, Jeff, it's a big—it's a huge challenge. It's doable. It's very doable. But I think that we need to raise up disciples that are emotionally healthy that can help people when they get out of balance to call them back to themselves again. You're not a machine. You're not someone that's just this constant pleasure joy seeker all the time. That's pseudo-artificial. That's not who we are. We are people that are founded in Christ. We're loved by our Father. We're loved by one another. And we're going as missionaries to serve, to lay our lives down in these digital spaces. If we mess up, if we try to flip that equation, Jeff, we're going to get out of balance. And there will be costs to it. Which is what this addiction will happen because we're creatures of addiction, you know? Paul talks about this in Romans. Like, we are creatures of worship. Are we going to worship the created or are we going to worship the Creator? And the Creator that's in one another as we mediate grace to one another. We got to have healthy connections, Jeff. We got to have solid relationships, Jeff, that are not based on how good we are as ministers in these digital spaces, but who we are. We move from grace. We move from peace. We move from joy. We don't try to find joy and peace by doing this stuff. If that's the case, I mean, I'll see you in a couple years and I'll be there for you, you know, and pick up the pieces with your family and stuff, because I've been there. I've done it, buddy. I've been there and I've done it. And I don't want to see you go through that. If you're watching this right now, we love you guys. So, you know, have said, you know, let's go deeper into this, Jeff. Let's figure this out as a community together and belonging in love and peace, right? That's—I mean, that's a little bit where I mean accountability comes into play here as well, where it's being in an accountability group, a group of people that are holding you accountable, not just to execute the ministry that you feel like God's calling you to do, but to make sure that you're in a relationship with people that can keep you grounded, that can keep you secure, that can tell you when you're over-stretching and when you're walking that line that you should.

Yeah, remind you who you are. Remind you who you are, right? You know, that's what accountability would be. Healthy mirrors for one another. Chris, this is not who you are. You're like all wired out and you're just—you gotta unplug, bro. You're like, we miss you. You're fading on us or you're just so excitable all the time I can't even understand what—you know, it's like, wait a minute, where are you? Come back. We love you. It's okay.

So when we talk about accountability, I think sometimes that's gonna be a harsh word and we gotta get stuff done, we gotta execute, we gotta hit our goals. That's important. But if we're not from an identity place of loving people and calling them back to who they truly are, then we get into rewards, we get into things where Jesus had some pretty interesting words to say about that. But Lord, did we not do this? Did we not do this and we did not do this? And then what does He say to us, Jeff? He goes, "I did not know you." Did I even tell you to do some of this stuff? It's like, whoa, let that sink in a little bit, guys. And that's why we have friends that are close to us that can remind us when we get a little bit out of balance. I don't want perfection. We're not here for perfection. We're here for growth. We're here for shalom, reminding people who they are in their best selves in Christ.

We may need to come up with a new word because accountability has such a negative tone. Like, accountability has such—I mean, when you hear accountability, you hear micromanagement. But that's not—that's not at all what this is. And so, I mean, I'm not saying we need to make up a word, but maybe like, go on—you know, synonym or something, Synonym.com, Thesaurus.com, and try to find it, because like, there's so much more than micromanagement that we need in this. You need somebody who's got your back. You need somebody who can be honest with you. You need somebody who can call your bluff. You need somebody who can tell you to go home. You need somebody who can take your phone away. Like, you find those people in your lives.

I know, I know. It's even when we're doing this recording, Digital Church Network tonight's launching twelve different digital networks where we're providing that level of accountability for, I think, probably close to seventy different planters or pastors that are doing digital ministry. And so it's our desire, and it's funny like I say the word accountability and not realizing the negative because it doesn't necessarily mean that to me, or at least I can see other perspectives. But it's funny whenever I say accountability to a physical pastor or digital pastor at a physical church, like they scrunch up. Like they get worried. Like it's a negative. Like I just slapped their hand. And literally it's like, I don't—I don't mean that, you know? We don't—you don't need another executive pastor. You have one. You don't need another person telling you what to do. You have that. You need somebody who's got your six and can help you stay tapped into God when you get overloaded in those situations. And so we'd love to connect you with some networks to help you with that. Message me. You know, I don't know where we're gonna be with that by the time this airs, but we'd love to help people get connected into a group to find that accountability through DCN.

Well, man, listen, that was the five. And I'm probably guilty of three or four of them right off the bat. I'm not a gamer, so I'll let you come to your own conclusions there. But let's do this. What other implications? What are some other takeaways just as we were talking through this? What else is jumping out at you, Chris?

I'll tell you this. I love digital ministry. I was born for this. I really am. I wish I had this ten to fifteen years ago with the ministry I was doing back then because the Lord showed me it, but this had not existed at this point. Praise God we're here now. And I'm sad for COVID. I'm grateful for COVID and the opportunities are amazing. But I'm going to tell you something right now. It's the relationships that mean the most to me. I'm most excited about even being with you right now. I love this, Jeff. We're making a difference. We're talking to people and I love you guys. But you know what I love? I love my relationship with you, Jeff, more than I love doing DCN with you. Believe it or not. Like, I enjoy our friendship. And that's—you know, Jesus doesn't need us to. Kind of, He created the universe, ladies and gentlemen. He really needs us to go disciple. And like, He has a thought and stuff happens. He wants to partner with us. He wants the relationship. So we need to be relationally grounded. We need to be relationally strong, especially in the digital space, because the temptations and the traps are many. That's what I'm thinking, Jeff. I'm also thinking, you know, those—

That are in physical relationships where you have five sensory relationships with other people. Who are those people? How are those going? Always take a look at that. Always be your first ministry is your house and your good friends and those that are right around you. That's your first ministry, okay? Because what we're gonna—this is what—whatever we have there we overflow and we bring into the digital space. Keep that in mind. What we do in the small places that nobody sees, it flows out into the open spaces, okay? So let's steward the little things well. Let's steward the things that are actually not 2D screens but three-dimensional, four-dimensional right now in front of us. Let's do that really well too, because then we're gonna have an overflowing life. And no one to unplug, take the ears, your phones out, go take a walk, Jeff. Go enjoy your dog. That's like, you know, I hear that gets upset. He wants your—he or she, I don't know. It's a hero. She wants your attention. Pet the dog, man. Dog loves you. You know, dog nose love probably most of us can do better than most humans can. So I'm joking, but it's a serious, sober subject, and I'm glad that I hope this was helpful, Jeff, for people watching this today, that this is not a heavy-handed thing or everyone's got an addiction. But you know what? We all have addicted tendencies. You gotta keep an eye on them. That's what I'm thinking. That's where my head space is. The reality is is that we're doing ministry in a very addictive space. And I truly believe this. Um, because it's addictive, we can't—we can't not go in there. And so like to the person that says God doesn't belong in the metaverse, I think my God is big enough that he can handle the metaverse. And I think that—right, it's funny. I just wrote a blog on Psalms 139 that says God is the God even in the metaverse. And God being as powerful that he is, the metaverse doesn't scare him. It needs to scare us. But we, with God's authority, need to go into the metaverse. And so it's funny you quoted massive Matthew 6:33. 6 first, I can't talk today, sorry. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. 34, honestly, is one of my favorite verses. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow worry about itself. Each day is enough trouble of its own. Um, and as much as we need to keep our eyes focused on God and have him validate and strengthen, and to your point, Chris, be the joy that overflows into the ministry that we are, um, I think we need to prepare ourselves for it, but don't worry about it because our eyes are focused on God. I think there's things we need to do to be wise, but in the end we're trusting God to protect us in that season. And so I think that we're going to be walking this line here with digital church network and the church digital. We're going to be bringing in some some more voices that can speak to the mental health situation. We can bring in some people that can maybe provide ways that can strengthen us, that can be the armor of God for us in the metaverse and in digital space. I have no idea what the metaverse version of the armor of God is. We're gonna get it figured out, and we're gonna start to prepare people for that. But at the end of this, once we go in, I believe this. I believe we should not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow worry about itself. Right now we've got enough trouble of our own for today. And so in that we're going to trust God and run with a band, and at least run with the people that are trusting God and running with abandon.

Hey, Jeff, if I can—if I can see one more thing here, it's more of an encouragement and also maybe a little bit of a slight warning for all of us as we're heading into this. I think this would be—I would love it, okay? Because as our parents send us off into the world, they give us good counsel and good warnings because they've lived life for a bit, okay? So I want to share this all with you. I encourage you, if you watch this right now, do some studies on social media. The way this has all been designed—by the way, I believe everything's created by God. It's amazing the enemy can twist, right? With casinos, gambling machines, and all that stuff. Technology with a lot of the social media apps and all that stuff are very much have been designed and constructed similarly to casinos in the way slot machines work, okay? With the lights and the brights and the notifications and this that. Do a little bit—I encourage you to study that a little bit. Where you walk into a casino, usually the house wins. Well, here's the deal. The way the social media, they don't want your money. Well, maybe they do a little bit. Some of these companies, but they want your time, okay? And they want your thought life. They want to get in your head, okay? So as we're thinking about this, we're up against slot machines. I may be a little bit joking, but I'm not. This is actually very serious. We're up against slot machines where the house wins regularly, okay? We are in the house of the Lord. We have the Holy Spirit. We have one another. We can overcome this stuff, okay? But if you don't have those relationships with the Lord building and growing and getting strong, and with one another in healthy attachment, the house will win because it's too addictive, guys, okay? We're up against some high stakes poker here. Pardon the pun, but we really are. And the enemy wants to keep us out of here. Do not come here, okay? And if we go into his territory, he could come back towards us with some stuff. So we gotta be ready for that. We really gotta be ready. We're not going to send you off into battle without forewarned is forearmed. So do a study on slot machines, casinos, and social media. I encourage you to Google that. Look at it and just be like, "Huh, interesting. What's my strategy going to be?" Because my part of my heart, ladies and gentlemen, is to expose the plans of the enemy so that we are forewarned, okay? So we know we're not taken off guard because he's a roaring lion looking to devour. We don't want that. We don't want anybody devoured in the fam, DCN family. What? None of that, okay? And here's my encouragement, Jeff. We're gonna get through this. We're gonna do it together with glad faces, with joy and peace. We're gonna make a difference. We're gonna reach the most people that ever been reached upon earth because they have a watch or they have a machine where we can reach the gospel that has never been done before. We're about to step into the greatest time of the Great Commission ever in history. So be excited. Be encouraged. Love, love that. I'll be honest, I didn't see casinos and gambling and slot machines coming into the conversation today. So if anybody had that on their bingo card, congratulations, you won. I did not. So very, very cool. Where did you—got a blast off flying before? Did you get that? I just never, never occurred to me to go in that direction. But hey, listen, that a couple years ago, I've heard about with Facebook and stuff. They actually asked because they got consulted, and they asked, "How do we do this?" So anyway, there's a story behind it, but I'll turn it back to you, brother. We'll move on from the casinos from here.

Yeah, well, maybe we need to do an episode on that. How to turn our digital churches—what can the digital church learn from a casino right now? Somebody somewhere shooting me an angry glare right now, right? As you're talking, so cool. We're not going to do that. But we did talk about cybersex in this episode, so come on. It's like no holds barred. It's just anything goes right now. So I hope you enjoyed the very special episode here of the Church Digital podcast where we touched on some sensitive subjects. We'll get back to the more joyous stuff in the weeks to come, and definitely excited about the conversations ahead. This mental health stuff is serious, and rather than saying that there's it can't be helped, um, we are aggressively trying to find people that can help us develop answers to that and can protect our planters and protect our pastors who are in this space. And so that is the heart of what we are doing and where we want to go. And so thank you for being on that journey with us. But hey, we're going to land the plane. This has been beautiful, Chris. As we're wrapping up today, anything else you want to add?

No, man. I love you, brother. I'm honored to be walking with you as a friend in this, and let's keep going. Let's do it.

Definitely a checkout has said—discipleship. No, it's not. What's it? Has head discipleship network dot com. H-E-S-E-D. You can—we'll put the link in the show notes. You can definitely head over there. Chris is doing some phenomenal stuff. Shorts really helping teams find joy, churches, staffs, individuals find that joy. And so jump in, jump in a cohort, and work with him, and he'll be—you're going to see his fingers all over DCN in the coming months and in years as we start to really try to create that culture. That culture may take a little longer than three months. Maybe he can pull it in three months, but we'll certainly see where we get with that. But definitely excited. Chris, thank you for being on the journey with us. We're gonna land the plane. So for Chris, for Jeff, this has been the Church Digital podcast. Thanks for jumping on the show. We'll see you at the next episode. You have a good day.