EP233: Patrick O'Connell, Missional Imagination & The Digital Church

Number two is prayer. And I'm not hyper spiritualizing this, I'm gonna get to this, but you really need to submit yourself to the lordship of Christ. He doesn't give us missional imagination so that we can be great. He provides the spirit and the power of missional imagination so that we can make him and his mission great. And so you just gotta approach it in that posture.

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech for tech itself will 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 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 the Church Digital Podcast. This is Jeff, once again, co-founder of Digital Church Network, founder of the Church Digital, and purveyor of oh so much fun in digital and metaverse space. And I am looking forward to this conversation. I love this topic and I love this organization and the people that I get to work with within it.

So many of you know that through Digital Church Network we have a very strong partnership with an organization called New Thing. New Thing is really the foundation behind Digital Church Network, partially with our movement system that we've talked a lot about here—growing disciples, maturing them into leaders that are planting churches, that are multiplying churches into networks, and then multiplying networks even into starting movements. And so this is a lot of the genius behind New Thing, and as well as the heart behind Digital Church Network, starting to champion in this new disciple-making pathway, this new movement-starting pathway in digital embedded space. And there's so much other wisdom and guidance that I'm honestly getting right now from New Thing. And so it's an honor and a privilege right now to bring in the global director of New Thing into the conversation. Patrick, so Patrick O'Connell, thank you for jumping on the podcast here with us.

So glad to be here, Jeff. Love you, brother. Love what you're up to and want to serve you well. Thanks for the invite.

Oh, awesome. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. It was interesting when we were sitting down with Patrick, you know, months ago, talking about different ideas for podcasts and roundtables and trainings. He said these two words and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I need to know more about that," because like, I've never put these two words together, but even just hearing them in the same sentence resonated with me at a very strong level. And so I'm looking forward to this conversation here, sitting around the two words. Now, now this is awkward. Like, I've not said the two words yet. Yes, yet again, I'm still drawing it out. Drum roll, please. I wish my little effects box was working down here, but I don't have a word. All right, look, we're talking about missional imagination. And the idea of—well, shoot, Patrick, why don't you set up missional imagination? What do you mean by that?

Yeah, I think in the movemental world, if we're really trying to lean into the church as movement, what missional imagination helps leaders do is very simply dream big, dream bigger than they could ever imagine. It really is this embrace of Ephesians 3:20, right, that God can do immeasurably more than what we have. And we have found, certainly post-COVID, but even pre-COVID, we found that leaders tended to only imagine what they could do and what they could maybe do in the next two or three years—whether that was starting a location, launching a new service, raising up a leadership resident—all good things, by the way. But what we continually found was that when we helped unlock that missional imagination, and the cool thing is this works cross-culturally, right? This works in Thailand and it works in Texas, because it's all about what the Holy Spirit's doing in and through us. But when we can help leaders unlock their missional imagination—this is not our missional imagination, it's your missional imagination—then beautiful things start to happen. So, man, at the heart of it, that's what it is for me.

Interesting. Yeah, so we've had other conversations about missional imagination. I want to—I am sticking to this—you were the first person that I heard use the phrase missional imagination, although we have had other podcasts talking about missional imagination as well. And so we'll put some of those and link to them in the show notes where I think we've seen others kind of adopt this idea and run with it about doing things, you know, imaginative, and even leaning into—you know, it's interesting when we talk about that Ephesians verse—um, you know, just to be transparent, even in my own life, I have literally said that churches are where dreams go to die. Like, that was a phrase that I used in my church staffing career, because there were lots of dreams that I had, and I'm not using the word visions, but there were ideas that came to mind and opportunities, and it just never fit within the infrastructure within the churches, within the organizations. It didn't fit within their vision. And so oftentimes those dreams—majority of the time—those dreams were cast aside. But I think as we're leaning into the post-COVID era, I think the opportunity to do something different, to dream, to innovate—um, there's no better time than now towards that.

All right, we're going to get back to this podcast in just one second, but I wanted to give you a heads up for something that's coming up. We were talking about missional imagination here with Patrick from New Thing. It's a great conversation, but we want to hear what your missional imagination is. We want to hear what you are imagining. And so we are doing a roundtable dedicated for you so that we can talk about this topic. So we are gathering together Tuesday, October 4th, 7 p.m. Eastern. We're going to be on a Zoom, and we're going to want to hear from you. We're going to talk about it. Patrick's going to be there, I'm going to be there, others are going to be there, and let's hear from you what your missional imagination is. As you're listening to this podcast, you may have ideas, and we want to hear from you. So plan on that. Go to thechurch.digital/imagination for more information. The Church Dot Digital slash imagination. More information on missional imagination right there. The Church Dot Digital slash imagination. See you October 4th at the Missional Imagination Roundtable.

All right, let's get back to the podcast. So, Patrick, let me—let's just bring it back here a little bit. Um, when you talk about missional imagination, what does that look like? You're New Thing global director. You're literally talking to people across the planet. What is missional imagination look like in these contexts? Like, what are people meaning? What are people saying and seeing when they're talking about this?

Yeah, Jeff, it's really good. And I don't know why God has allowed me to sit in this chair and talk to great people like you and your audience and hear their stories, but what I'm convinced of is God created imagination, and He has tasked and given us the opportunity to leverage that for His glory. And, of course, we work exclusively through church planting. We want to see disciples and leaders and churches and networks and movements all reproduced. So I specifically am coming at it that way. But I also celebrate imagination. I celebrate creativity because I truly believe these are gifts from God. I'm a lover of music, I'm a lover of painting, so I look at it almost in the same kind of vein as that.

And then the other thing that at least has been true of my conversations with leaders throughout the world—I mean, I've been in this chair, not literally this chair, but the New Thing global director chair for a little over eight years, and got to travel around a little bit—and what was clear to me as a student of missiology was that paradigms were so powerful, and they locked us into these constructs that were very unimaginative. It's kind of what we all know is like, "Hey, this is how we do things. This is how we are taught to do things, and this is how we're going to do things then." And what I think we've all learned, certainly post-COVID, is that that is no longer true. Where the church and the very foundational paradigms—ecclesiological paradigms, missiological paradigms—have been challenged in some pretty remarkable ways. And so imagination for me becomes this opportunity to kind of tune to a different frequency of the Holy Spirit, if you can go there with me. Because I've watched God use women and men all over the world who allow themselves this imagination, this opportunity to reimagine or imagine for the first time something great.

You know, our brother Dave Ferguson talks about this idea of the big dream, and he, if you were here, he'd tell you a story about how the thing that had unleashed him to envision a big, bold future through Exponential, through New Thing, et cetera, was this idea of having permission to dream big, to use missional imagination. And the reason I like missional imagination—imagination together—imagination is wonderful in a lot of scenarios, but you and I, Jeff, were talking about the kingdom. We're talking about evangelism. We're talking about discipleship. We're talking about church planting in the digital space. And the missional component reminds us that we are imaginative in the context of the mission. And that's really what is powerful for me. And I think that's where it started.

Yeah, I can tell you so many of the conversations that I have had with digital church planters and metaverse people—it's giving them permission. Like, yes, they have this crazy idea. I mean, honest to God, I've had this conversation. I'm not exaggerating. Hundreds of times, Jeff. I found you on Google. You're the only person that seems to be thinking this way. But I have this crazy idea. My pastor does not understand what I'm talking about. My denomination does not care. Even my spouse and my friends, because they've never seen it before, they don't know how to be supportive. Am I actually being crazy?

You know, it's funny. Like, and I started having those conversations back in 2019, 2020. And back in 2020, I was like, "Maybe you are a little crazy, but give it a shot. See what happens." But by this point now—we're doing this recording in 2022—like, when I have those conversations, usually it's very rare that I find a crazy idea that I've never heard of, or at least that isn't similar to what somebody else is doing. And so it's not—you're not crazy. As a matter of fact, there's two other people that are doing a different spin on what you're talking about. Would you like to meet them? Could I introduce you to them so you can start to maybe even collaborate and start to learn from each other and share some of these experiences? And what's fascinating is that as they start to talk together and as they even start to do different things with these imaginative ideas in digital and metaverse, man, we're finding they're

Reaching different types of people than what the buildings are, and it's so fascinating to me the perception that the physical buildings have, that the idea of the digital church is in competition and that that is trying to pull people away from the building, the ecclesia, the physical community. When in fact it's just reaching a completely different type of person than what the building is reaching, and it's completing the great commission. It's not competing over the great commission. Sorry, soapbox is over, but you know that's really the heart of this is giving people permission to do something and not viewing it as competition.

And when you can get it, it's well said. And what has been fun working with you, brother, is that the group of people that you're connecting with in the digital space, and I'm a learner here. I'm learning, I'm listening, I'm trying to celebrate all that you're doing, that you and your peers are doing. But it's a new space. It's like a new art scene. It's like a new skunk works. And I think, Jeff, you don't know where this is going, right? You're pretty smart guy. You're pretty engaged. You're learning as fast as you can. You're talking to the right people. But that's what makes it fun. And what's going to, how we get to a place where this actually becomes fruit for the kingdom in the digital space, I'm suggesting is going to require a bunch of leaders, men and women just like you, who are listening to this, who are willing to take the risk and imagine a preferred future and then to begin to build that preferred future now.

We, of course, as we follow Jesus, we are convinced that and confess that the Holy Spirit empowers that. And so this is right in line with how God's always done things. I think about Abram, right? You know, go. He didn't have anything but an imagination of what could be. God was, go back and read Genesis. God was not very specific about the details. And I can imagine myself in Abram's shoes, imagining the journey and then what's going to happen, and listening to God and going with him on it. So it's wonderful when it's individual. Here's where it gets really good though, Jeff. When you can build a culture in your church, in your organization, here we're talking about church, of course, whether it's digital or whether it's not, when you can build a missional culture that is full of missional imagination, of people who are missional imaginative, it's awesome. It's awesome.

And so that's what I'd love to help you and your audience kind of understand and maybe can just submit to you today is that, you know, I feel like God's given me an imagination. He's given you a dream. He's given me a dream. You know, we need to, that's sacred. But man, when we can get together, and when, whether you're leading a digital church or whether you're leading a micro, or whether you're in India or whether you're in Bangladesh or you're in Chicago, when you can get a group of people who are imaginative, on fire, missional, that's where you're going to see fruit for the kingdom. And that's, I guess, why I keep coming back to it.

Let's unpack an idea. I literally want you to give me an example. An imaginative idea with missional implication, like something that's new, that's different, but it's serving purpose for the kingdom. Like I've got plenty of crazy ideas. I've got plenty of ideas that probably can serve the kingdom. What does it look like when we actually position and package both of these together?

That's a great question. Here's how I want to answer it in two parts, if I may. First, I just want to give you a little vignette. I'm in Thailand with a group of leaders who I don't speak their language. They're young men and women, Thai people who are on fire for Jesus, who are mostly biblically trained theologians. They're very remarkable and smart people. And I'm there to help them in this room. It's blistering hot, you know, I'm hungry, missing home a little bit, but there to serve them. And you know, in their culture things are a little bit structured, and even just the way the room was set up, it was almost set up like a classroom environment.

And you know, new things all about helping leaders collaborate together. But what happened there in the course of those couple of days with those leaders in Thailand was what we kind of refer to now as the unlocking of missional imagination. Because once they didn't need permission from me, I think they needed permission from some of their established leaders, but once those leaders said it's okay for you to imagine a new preferred future for the church in Thailand, Jeff, I tell you it was like somebody opened the windows, the sunlight poured in, the breeze came in, the birds started singing, there was laughter, there were smiles. We helped them collaborate around tables. They're drawing. And I'm getting goosebumps about it right now because it was like one of those moments. We didn't do anything but help them do what God wanted to do in and through them and for them.

Then the idea that was a game changer was that they could plan church, they could make disciples and plant churches in networks. And that was a new paradigm for them because it used, you know, the kind of the older paradigm is like I go to Bible college, I try to raise funds, I try to start something on my own. Of course I'll have a team. But this day, and we've seen this happen all over the world, on this day it was like that aha moment. Wait, wait, we can imagine a preferred future where we all benefit, we all grow, and we most importantly achieve greater things for the kingdom. That's why I'm also a big fan of collaboration, so passionate about it. But that's certainly one idea.

I think the other one has been the shift, and this is more in your expertise, but I think where missional imagination is now, where I see it being used the most often is with a group of people who we might call them microchurch leaders. And these leaders, and this is happening quickly post-COVID, again just from my chair, these leaders are quickly realizing God's called them to make disciples and to plant churches, but it's going to look different. And so having the opportunity to work with a young couple in Aurora who has missional imagination to create a safe place for women and men who are struggling with gender identity issues, don't know where you stand or not theologically, it's not important, right? Missionally it's critical. And so you have a couple here, and they're talking about where to meet these folks, how to connect, how to build community with them. And the only thing that's driving them at the moment, because there aren't many paradigms about this, is their missional imagination. So that's what I love about it.

Yeah, there's lots of fresh expressions, unique takes, reimagining, you know. I remember I heard DJ Soto, lead pastor, bishop probably at this point of VR Church, you know, he was like, it's not time to recreate the church, it's time to reimagine the church. And it's not changing the ecclesiology, but it's imagining, reimagining what that ecclesiology needs to look like in digital spaces. That's bringing, you know, gosh, I got so many different expressions. Obviously what DJ's doing in virtual reality. You know, it's funny, we're actually a podcast that's recently coming up about here, I think just the week before when this airs. We're working with a church right now that's actually opening a virtual reality bar. Patrick, I don't think I've told you the story. We're in the process of opening a bar in virtuality, in VR Chat, and looking to use it relationally to connect with people, to build relationships, to talk, to engage with people in conversation. And so like, is that a full church? Probably not. Can that be the front door relationally to a shared experience to get people connected into something deeper? Certainly.

And so you know, I think even realizing the thing with collaboration, and this is something that I don't think we realized twenty years ago or even two years ago, is that I don't have to be the turnkey solution to everything. You know, I know in my church staff years I felt the burden with my imaginative ideas to complete the whole ecclesiology, to find ways to do it all entirely on myself. But if we're working in networks, if we're partnering with others, if we're collaborating, if we're operating in our weaknesses, now we have the opportunity to do our part and then start to connect and hand off to somebody else for that next part. You know, we're even seeing that with like streamers who are very excited about the kingdom, like Twitch streamers, but they're not that interested or not even fully aware of what the disciple making could be and looks like. But they can partner with somebody that's very strong in digital discipleship that can take those leads in that relationship from the streamer and engage them and put them into a digital discipleship process. And so now we're starting to see where instead of all of us carrying the burden entirely on our own, we can start to work and collaborate with others.

I'm curious, because I see that very much in digital space, Patrick, because of the collaborative nature of digital and metaverse right now, does that exist physically where you're seeing like organizations or people taking part of the process but not the whole process and then working within the networks? Is that prevalent?

Yeah, you know, it's a great question, Jeff. I think, you know, it's easy to see the new imagination that is being brought to bear around digital, and that's number one why I'm so excited. I think the other thing that I'm seeing is, you know, you brought up collaboration, and collaboration as we talk about it, and you, Jeff, you're part of those conversations of course, but it's way beyond just, you know, let's work together and sing Kumbaya. It's something holy and spiritual. And what our friend Alan Hirsch talks about, he borrowed this term from the art world called "genius," and genius is the genius of the scene. You know, and if you think about, like, Jeff, you know, this, I'm an old punk rock guy, right? It's the old scene. You know, they called it a scene for a reason because every artist was riffing off of other artists. You know, you see this if you're a fan of American literature, for instance, that in Paris all these American authors lived in this one neighborhood in Paris. Well, they worked off of each other. They ripped off of each other. That's what I'm starting to see, Jeff.

And so a specific example is, especially in the Western context, I'm tending to see this in convictions around city movements, around gospel saturation. So you know, and that's changed significantly post-COVID, where there's a where leaders are much more inclined, maybe they're being forced to work together, but they're also seeing missional imagination as the way to their collaboration now. I know it's a little fuzzy there, but bear with me a second because what they're realizing is that, hey, if we're really serious about changing the spiritual landscape of the city or the region or whatever, you know, whatever the target is, then we're going to need to dream big. We're going to need to

To build cultures of missional imagination in our churches, and we're going to have to get behind new expressions and new styles of evangelism, new ecclesiological models, etc. So the good news is I'm seeing a much better willingness to do that, and that's again back to this term missional imagination. Missional implying we're going. So it used to be like, "Hey, let's decorate the church a little bit differently and get a different crowd in here, or let's do different services and put on Hawaiian shirts—no offense—and another new crowd will come in." But that paradigm has shifted. It's not "they come to us." We use our imagination to make it easier for them to come to us. We use our imagination to go to them.

So I've, you know, there's a story of a pastor in Chicagoland, Pastor Shine. He'd be great on your show, Jeff. But he is from India, and in Chicagoland there's a massive Indian diaspora community. And he lives in an area of the city that is full of immigrants from Central Asia. And Pastor Shine is involving his church, which meets in a little tiny storefront right in the heart, in the thick of this neighborhood. There's Muslims, there's Buddhists, there's non-believers. They're all in this kind of neighborhood-ish area. And Pastor Shine and his team are using missional imagination to engage people in new and bold ways through neighborhood events, through outreach events. They have—he was telling me a couple weeks ago, and I'm probably getting all the details wrong, but drinking tea in this culture is very important if you want to build friendship. You offer tea to one another. So they have teas for people to come and learn about Jesus. And he's telling me that it's imagination through his team that is helping them engage all of this community that God has called them to. So that's one quick story that comes to mind.

Awesome, and that actually kind of segues into the next question I wanted to ask. So let's say I don't have imagination. Like, that's not—that's not what you're saying excites me, and to be honest, there are times where, you know, I as a person, you know, I'm a very creative individual, and if you know me, I'm also a very "get it done" individual. And sometimes the "get it done" hat is on for a longer period of time than the creative hat. And you know, there are seasons where my imagination has dried up. It's just go, go, go. So like, if someone is wired either in that way or, you know, I'm really not—I'm just not the creative guy. Like, I just don't have really imaginative dreams. How am I part of this missional imagination without the imagination piece?

Yeah, um, yeah, I think in all due respect, all of us have imagination. I completely understand the context and the character of your question. It's just not cultivated. It's a gift that's not as cultivated, and some of our systems and structures in church have squashed it, frankly, right? And this happens in places outside of the church. I was in business. You have a good idea and I think it could change everything, and nobody cares, right? Because the systems and the structures are in place and this is what we do and this is how we do it.

You know, this is a highly spiritual kind of endeavor. At first, what all I can do, Jeff, is describe to you my own journey, and then, you know, maybe what I hear and see and have experienced anecdotally. And I think, you know, I do want to call on Ephesians 4—the apostolic, if not in the spooky way—but this is a gift that some of us have that we can't help ourselves but think about what could be. That doesn't mean that we're better or anything like that. It's how God collects into the body these gifts and empowers each and every one of us as necessary elements of the body. But if you feel like, "Hey, you know what, I am a dreamer or I'm going, but I'm going through a dry spell or I used to have some really great ideas and dreams about what could be for the church and I just haven't been there," it's probably a sign you need to push away from the desk for a short season, whether that's an afternoon, whether that's a couple of days at a retreat center, going for a walk, or whatever ways that you can hear from the Lord. But what I think I want to answer the question with, Jeff, is create space so that you can hear from God. Create space, and you might just have to say, "Doing the same things over and over, as we all know, is insanity," right? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is insanity. And so how do we stop doing things over and over for a short space? And, gosh, I've known guys and women who have gone, "You know what, I went away for an afternoon. I had a picnic, and the Lord spoke to me. That's what I know is what we're doing." You know, this is my imaginative imagination.

Um, Dave Ferguson, our friend, you know, he—we kind of poke fun of it as a team, but it's remarkably effective. Um, he really insists that you need a dream on a napkin or a serviette, whatever you use in your culture, right? But like, get away and let go of the responsibility, break out of the paradigms as best as you can. And so what I'm arguing for is space. There's no checklist, there's no time. Um, myself personally, I needed that, brother. You know, I needed to get a little—I need to get away. In July I got to celebrate my anniversary and all, but I needed to push back because I found myself running out of imagination, you know? And by the way, Jeff, I'll just say this, and then I'll quiet on this question: creativity and imagination will drain you. And so you have to bring, you know, your best time. My best time is the morning. I'm most creative in the mornings. I get up early, I do my runs, and then I'm most creative. So if you want—if I'm going to be creative, I don't know what it looks like at five o'clock in the afternoon, you know? So I don't know what this looks like for you and every one of your listeners, but I think it's important: create that space, hear from God, and allow yourself the permission. You have permission to allow God to create this wonderful official imagination in you.

Love that. To take the time, get some space, and be aware that that creativity, it does drain you. That was really well said. How do I know if an idea is of God or if I'm just crazy? I'm going to be honest, I'm just going to be completely blunt. The year 2005 to 2018, 2020, I was asking those questions because a lot of the people around me—you were talking about taking permission—nobody around me was even giving myself permission for that. And so it was a very hard season.

How do you know it's of God? Yeah, um, I'm writing it down just to remind myself, and again, Jeff, speaking from my own personal story because that's really it. I think number one, and this is wisdom that other leaders have given me, and if I can pass a little along to your listeners: number one is I need to create daily space for God. I need to make sure that that's built into the rhythms of Patrick's life. So that's number one. If that's not happening, start there. For me, it's fifteen, twenty minutes on the chair—on that blue chair behind me that some of your people can see sitting there—quietly waiting on the Lord. That's number one, and that's taking me a long, long time. And some days I do it better, other days it's a mess, but that's number one.

Number two is prayer. And I'm not hyper-spiritualizing this. I'm going to get to this, but you really need to submit yourself to the Lordship of Christ. He doesn't give us missional imagination so that we can be great. He provides the Spirit and the power of missional imagination so that we can make Him and His mission great. And so you just got to approach it in that posture. Read Scripture, because if you're not reading and internalizing and meditating the Word, then you run the risk of kind of making it up.

And then here's the last bit for me, Jeff, that I think is kind of the clincher: What does the community of Jesus followers around you say and think? So I've had—I can be an idea machine. I don't know what it is. I can create ten ideas around one topic, and most of them are always bad. But what I've learned, especially as an organizational leader, especially as a church planter, is that I am not authorized to just take the community anywhere I want because I've got an idea. That's not the way this works. The way this works is I submit myself, I create space, I listen well, and then I check in with the community of people that I'm connected with—my local church or whatever. "Hey, here's what I feel God's telling me. What do you think?" And this has been good counsel for me personally. I've passed along this kind of counsel to others, and it seems to help. So that's what I can offer you today in terms of how do I know a good or a bad idea.

There's other metrics, of course, you can bring. Is this going to—one of the metrics that I always use for an idea: Does it help or hurt what God's trying to do? Does it help or hurt? And then the other one that I always run through my head is: Will this empower others as much as it empowers me? Or I think it's a good idea. So if it's not good for Jeff, it's probably not good for me at the same time. And so I always kind of wrestle through those filters a little bit. It's a little sketchy, but I hope I give you a little bit of a sense of where this comes from.

No, I appreciate that. By the way, the "look at the community around you and get a vibe for them"—transparently, that's the reason why we started Digital Church Network. That's why I left Stadia to create that. Because after helping, you know, a couple dozen planters or whatever we're able to work through with Stadia, actually planting the church, getting them through their exhaustive process, we really started seeing that the problem wasn't at the plant or at the cohort, but we were losing a lot of people because they didn't have the sending organization, the sending denomination, the spouse support, the community to lean on. There wasn't awareness before they even got to Stadia to plant it. And you know, quickly it just became obvious: "Hey, there's a need. If we're really going to make a difference in this, we can't do it within the planter at that point in the process, within the cohort. We've really got to go create that community," which is now DCN's FAM. We got to create that community and invite others in and encourage them through the community. And that's something that as leaders at DCN, I mean, we in a leadership meeting yesterday were talking about how to be more effective and how to utilize the networks that we're creating within DCN, how to encourage dreaming, and even bringing others into that.

So like, it's the desire. I didn't, Patrick, I didn't know you were going to say that, but that right there is the summarization of why DCN is DCN. I love your heart for community, and even what you've helped me understand, Jeff, is even in the digital space, you know, we're still embodied individuals and we still need community. And God uses that, and that's where it happens, you know? Imagination happens in the context of that community. You know, the business world and other parts of the world, that's like, "I got an idea and I'm going to go make money off of that." We don't do that. We dream these missional dreams and we submit them to the community, and the community does it. And so I love, love, love that you have made this a real point in your family, and it's why we are so passionate at New Thing about starting.

New things, but we're equally committed to sustaining things, and that's our network. And so Jeff, I just affirm it, love it. Can't encourage any of your listeners who are trying to do this alone, especially in the digital space. Hook up with this family. Like, seriously, don't do this alone. God's not called you to do it alone. And go on this journey together. You'll have much more fun and it will be much more fruitful. I guarantee you that.

That's awesome. Well, let me ask this. So, you know, oftentimes when I hear this is what I tell people. So I'm kind of asking the head of New Thing Network here: is this a good next step, or what would you do better here? So when I hear a crazy idea that just might work, my next step, my next challenge to these people is usually, "Who's bought into this vision? Have you tried casting it?" You know, and sometimes the vision is so scattered I'm like, "You're not going to be able to convince anybody of this. You're going to have to simplify it and solidify it down." Sometimes it's so small it's like, "You're going to need to beef it up." But you know, start to kind of crowdsource some of that information you're talking about, the community around you as well. But there's also a part of, "Hey, this vision needs to be bigger than you." So start to see how you can recruit or bring people into this idea of missional imagination. What do you recommend on that? Is that a good angle, or what's a better step?

No, no, no. You've got it, brother. Because it's also a safeguard. It's a speed bump. Because here's the thing: for those of us in the Western context, and I just want to be culturally sensitive here a minute. We're the minority church. The majority church is in places like Asia and Africa. In the Western context, you know, again, no criticism, no defeatism here. We tend to be the folks who will say, "I'll do it. I'll go first." Not that our African brothers or Indian brothers don't. What they do is probably a little bit more wiser: to sit around and talk about it a bit more and say, "How are we going to do this?"

So one of the great proverbs from Africa that I always use is: "If you want to go fast, you go alone. But if you want to go far, you got to go together." And that's what I would hope that all of us learn to do.

The other thing, Jeff, that I'd say is in being part of a community like this, especially for a missional imagination, is that you get to hear what God's doing in other contexts. So very recently we went through Dream Week, and Dream Week at a New Thing is just this opportunity for us to listen, learn, and celebrate the global church. So for one week we just did that, and I have a notebook full of ideas, insights, shared learning, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, because that is where the true nature of partnership comes to play.

Partnership, at its base definition, is we're going to do something together that neither of us can do alone, and that has to be negotiated out. So I hope that gives some of your listeners kind of a filter or a lens. It's not, "I got an idea. I'm going to go solo and do it." It's having some of those speed bumps. I'm going to submit myself—not in an authoritative way, but, "Hey, this is my tribe. This is my community. We're on mission together, and I've got an idea that I think can help make it better for all of us and increase fruit for the kingdom."

That's a good idea. And so those are just some of the ways that, because this is all about relationships for us. You know, Jeff, it is all about relationships. Yes, I hope we have great content. Yes, I hope we help churches reproduce at all levels, whether it's micro, digital, macro—I don't care. Yes, I hope we create some collaborative spaces. But it is about building community, and it is about people, and that's how Jesus postures himself in this world. And so I want to just stay there.

Hey, awesome. This has been great. So what else? Beyond missional imagination, what else do we need to talk about here? What else do we need to be considering?

Yeah, I think making the connection from missional imagination to missional culture. So Jeff, you've asked some really good questions on the kind of the my dream and the vivid vision and all the stuff that we've covered. But I think it's equally important. What we're really doing here is leaders in particular—whether it's in the digital space, whether it's in micro, whether it's in virtual, and really doesn't matter culturally—our job as leaders of these communities is to create a culture where mission is a priority. And the only way you do that is by giving people permission, equipping them for the mission that God's called them to do, and sending them well. And if you could do those things consistently over time, we've seen that you're going to plant new things, you're going to make disciples, you're going to do all the things that we all want to see happen for the kingdom of God.

So as a leader, and I'm specifically thinking of those of you who are listening to this who are asking themselves, "Am I the leader of this community? Am I the chaperone of this community? Am I the pastor of this community?" Probably all the above. And what my hope is is that this will inspire you to think of your own missional imagination but help others unleash their initial imagination, and that's through permission giving. I know it sounds almost too easy, but as human beings we don't necessarily like change. And when we try to change things, we often don't have the answers of what a preferred future should look like.

Think about some of the circumstances of your own life. If you could be a culture that creates this missional space that makes the Jesus mission the primary thing, and then everything else is really the strategy and tactics, that is going to unleash and unlock this missional imagination in each and every woman and man that is a part of your community. God is going to see it. He's going to bless it, and there's going to be great fruit for the kingdom. So that's what I would say there.

Awesome. That was beautiful. By the way, like I said, this is the first part of the conversation. Yeah, we talked about missional imagination. We talked about building a culture, and the culture is not an easy thing to build, but it's simple in focus of what it can be. And so we want to hear from you, and we want to take the second part of this. We want to make it far more practical.

All right, we talked about this earlier. Quick interruption here with the podcast: the Missional Imagination Roundtable is going to be Tuesday, October 4th, 7 p.m. Eastern. We'd love to get more information to you. Check out the website: thechurch.digital/imagination. And let's get you connected into this roundtable. Tuesday, October 4th, 7 p.m. Eastern. More information: check out thechurch.digital/imagination.

Patrick, man, thanks for jumping on the podcast. As we're landing the plane here, man, any closing thoughts?

No, I would say don't forget the outcome of all this is movement. We like to say a New Thing: missional people multiplying churches and collaborative networks lead us to movement. So if you're wondering how do we really change the game in a big way for Jesus, that's the way we do it. Love this conversation, Jeff, and thanks for the opportunity to chat with you.

All right, as we're landing the plane on the podcast and wrapping things up, quick reminder of the Missional Imagination Roundtable. We are doing Tuesday, October 4th, 7 p.m. Eastern. For more information on the Missional Imagination Roundtable, check out thechurch.digital/imagination. Patrick will be there, myself, and others. It'll be 7 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, October 4th. Go ahead and RSVP, get the link, get a reminder for your calendar. Tuesday, October 4th, 7 p.m. We're going to land the plane. Thank you, Patrick, for being on the show, and we'll see you next time here on the Church Digital Podcast. You have a good day.