EP277 - Dr Dan Tebo, and a Dissertation on Digital Church

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's sake, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciplemaking possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? And where does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all of 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 disciplemaking that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, episode 277 of the Church Digital Podcast. Once again, this is Jeff Reed, founder of the Church Digital. Jumping into this conversation, I love this conversation. It's very exciting for me to bring into the conversation Doctor—I said Doctor—Dr. Dan Bobo. Now some of you may remember, and Dan's no stranger to the Church Digital and formerly Digital Church Network. But Dan is a man of many talents, but one of the things that he does is he recently started a digital church called Servant Warriors, where he—well, I'll let him tell you about his church here in a little bit.

But I said, "Doctor Dr. Bobo," and to my knowledge—and maybe I'll learn in the podcast, maybe I'm not wrong, I got a fact check here and really dig into it before I say it officially—but Dan's got a doctorate with an emphasis in digital discipleship. Literally, he wrote a 150-page dissertation on digital discipleship. And I read this thing, and first off, I'm all over this thing. Thank you, Dan, for the credit. But beyond that, I'm also really excited because I'm starting to see other people pick up this idea of the strengths and the opportunities that are available for digital discipleship, for discipling people in digital spaces, and why digital churches and even digital churches, physical churches, need to address this idea of digital discipleship and do it well.

For it digitally, thank you, Stadia. So it is important for us as a church to better understand discipleship, which means, hey, maybe y'all need to download the 150-page academia report from our show notes that Dan Bobo—excuse me, Dr. Dan Bobo—wrote on it. Well, you know what? You can download it from the show notes if you want, or you can listen to the podcast here where we've got Dr. Dan Bobo unpacking his approach for digital discipleship.

So here's where we're at for the podcast. I've got myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, and I've got Dan Bobo of Servant Warriors tackling the idea of a dissertation on digital discipleship.

Okay, everybody, here you go. Right, I am really excited about this conversation. It's not that often we get doctors in the house, especially like in digital ministry. And we're going to go old school here, bringing back a friend, Dr. Dan Bobo of Liberty University, coming into this conversation.

Dan, doctor—how do I—how do I refer to you right now? Like, what is the respectful reference that I should like? How do I give you the homage, the awe that you deserve? Like, what do I need to do in this moment?

Well, if you want to be official, it is doctor, but Dan works just fine. I'll give you all kinds of nicknames my parents give me and everybody else, right? No, it's just an honor to be here, Jeff. You know, I think that we talked the first time probably two years ago, and I was in the middle of my M.Div., pursuing that, and it rolled into what I didn't know at the time would become a PhD program. So here we are.

Yeah, I love that. So we had Dan on a podcast—we'll put a link in the show notes. I can't remember the number right now. You do 275 of these, they all kind of run together. But we had Dan on with Steven Lowe talking about some of the program that Liberty was developing for its M.Div. You were working on your M.Div. at the time, I think, Dan, when you're working with Dr. Lowe, and that evolved into a PhD now at a doctorate level. And Dan's a graduate, so Dan's got a PhD in what? What is the actual PhD in out of Liberty?

Yep, so the actual degree will actually read PhD in Christian Leadership, but the key piece that makes it fun for us is underneath that, the focus is digital discipleship. And rumor has it I may be one of the first, or if not the first, to actually earn that from Liberty. So it's been really cool to ride that development. And honestly, a lot of that came through Dr. Steve and Mary Lowe, both husband and wife, professor combo there at Liberty, that had a passion for digital ministry. And they saw the need to put that into the academia setting. And they started what originated as the M.Div. cognate for Church Ministry in the Digital Age. And so that's what my M.Div. was focused on, and those courses actually carried over into the Christian Leadership PhD program where it's subtitled digital discipleship.

So that's been my focus for, I guess, four years total through seminary at Liberty University. So it's been fun. There's been a lot of rocks turned over and a lot of things looked at, and we'll get into all that. It's going to be good.

Totally. And to be—I mean, on my side, Dan, I don't—I'm not saying this is not like an official statement, but I don't know of anyone. I have not had a conversation with anyone from any school that has a doctorate level with an emphasis in digital ministry. Like, that is—there, I'm not saying that's official, but if you are, or if you know someone, I'd love to meet him too. But as of right now, dude, you may be the first person to walk away with this sort of emphasis. Like, this is really—and hats off, you know, the Lowes—the Lowes are friends. And you know, I probably speak at Liberty two or three times a year, you know, online for his classes and her curriculum and things. And so like, it's very, you know, hats off to them for the vision and the books, the resources that they're creating. It's phenomenal stuff.

And speaking of like practical books, yes, yeah. Now groundbreaking is the 150-page dissertation I read a little while ago, authored by Dr. Dan Bobo on digital discipleship. And really, so what I wanted to do is really start to unpack that because there is so much on digital discipleship. 150 pages on digital discipleship. I think my book on virtual reality, I think that was like 150 pages, but that was like five by eight size pages with like triple space with major margins on the side. Your like a 150-page academia, man, it's solid meat stuff. We'll get into that here in a second. Let me slow down, catch us up because I know like you're a man—you recently have launched the church. Like, tell us a little bit here. What's going on? Other than Dr. Dan Bobo, what's going on in your life, man, brother?

So it's a good life. I always joke with Steven and Mary that I'm the unicorn. You know, I am, as you said, I'm a deputy US Marshal. I'm coming up on this June it'll be 15 years in federal law enforcement. I was an Air Force Special Agent before that, before I came to the Marshal Service. But I've been in the Marshals now for just over seven years with the Marshals, and the past three and a half years of that I've been a team lead for one of our fugitive task forces here where I reside.

So, you know, I get to joke with an individual today in a house this morning. I said, "Yeah, I get to play hide-and-seek for a living." So I mean, granted, it's a dangerous version of the game, but you know, I get to go out there and hopefully keep folks safe. And I tell folks all the time, what's unique about being a Christian in law enforcement is I have the ability to go through and get these folks hopefully into an area where they can more clearly hear the voice of God. So it's really good to be able to make an impact to the community that way. And that's why I love doing what I do on that side of things.

But on the other side, the past four years, you know, I've been going through seminary. I definitely felt the Lord put that in my heart, and it's come to fruition. And with that, I know that graduation is just the start, really. It's just the start of everything. And I actually found myself early this year, January of 2023, ordained through the International Ministerial Fellowship. I was looking at potentially going back into the Air Force Reserves as a Chaplain, but God made it very clear that that's not where I need you. I need you to shift focus. And I'm trying to use that on the law enforcement side, but with that digital ministry and all that comes with that, I was able to go through and work with a couple brothers in Christ and found a digital church called Servant Warrior Church. And we meet online, and we can flush that out here in a while if you want.

But there's just different things that I've learned over this walk that are really kind of playing into it, and I'm seeing God move and the Holy Spirit transcends space and time in ways that we don't see in a brick and mortar church. So it's been a lot of fun. But that's, you know, so if I break it all down: law enforcement, family man, student now alumni, and then also a digital pastor. So that part's the mind-blowing part for me. But that's it in a nutshell.

Yeah, you may consider yourself a unicorn, but there's a lot more unicorn coming behind you. The movement of people that are doing ministry that primarily are not part of church staffs, that are blending their workplace and with their ministry, cocall bivocational mindsets. Yeah, this is the new future. I'm not saying that the current model is going away, the physical buildings, you know, and all that. We'll get into digital. I know. But like, that's not going to change. I should say it that way. But the idea of doing ministry different—Dan, here is a perfect example of what the new paradigm, what a new model is going to look like. And so it's one of the reasons I want to feature him and get into it because there's some things I'm going to—I'll just be honest here, Dan.

Like, as I read this, as I read this dissertation, did you stay awake the entire time you read it? No. Well, Dan, that's the thing. Like, I felt like this was my words. I felt like, like, if I were to write quite a bit, brother. Quite. And you know, I don't even think you realize how much you quoted me because like, all the hat credit to Stadia Church Planting was me. Like, that was uncredited writing for me. And so Stadia, I wrote several ebooks for Stadia Church Planting on planting digital and digital and that stuff. And so like, I'm freaking all over this thing, which was, you know, A, I'm honored. B, I'm flattered. But your mindset—I've always felt this, and we'll get sappy up front. You know, every couple months I get a text from Dan Bobo, and dude, you're always like two or three months behind some of the stuff that I was working on. Like, I remember Dan talking to me about like a network for individuals that would create and champion digital discipleship.

Towards starting and planting digital churches, and literally my response to him was, you know, keep watching my social media, we're launching it in two months. Um, like he just was always, you know, right there at the fringe, always asking really good questions, always digging in. And so when I'm reading this work, like it wasn't, you know, boring, putting me to sleep. I was like, my gosh, he is eloquently painted this picture of what it is actually going through in this. I'm looking at this like, how do we get this out of academia terms and into a book form where others can start to process and understand, you know, outside of the academia space?

And so we, I actually I don't even know if I can do this. We can put a link in the show notes where people can download the dissertation, right?

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yep. It's available in Liberty's Scholars Crossing and ProQuest, which is another academic research. It actually might have made it way into Google Scholar. Um, so it's out there. I mean, you can always email me and I'll send a copy out, but it's published. It's, you know, free game for anybody. Check out the link in the show notes. One hundred fifty pages, solid stuff. This Jeff Reed guy. Listen, anytime somebody like agrees with me or doesn't think I'm an idiot, I consider it a win. And um, I mean, really, when I'm reading this stuff, I'm like, hey, the idea, even, you know, as I was on vac, took a break recently from the church digital, and we last podcast we had some of the leaders on talking about, you know, some of the evolution—wrong word—some of the changes that came to the church digital as a result. And um, you know, even seeing how you've started championing some of these ideas and putting it into practice, what's been fun with it, Jeff, is being able to go through and take my background in criminal investigations and like the mindset that comes with, you know, like in Air Force I did criminal investigations, counter intelligence investigations, and then with the Marshalls, fugitive investigations. So like the way you build a case and the way that you lay out the facts and basically build the picture, I was able to take that skill set into the academia world and basically just investigate what's going on. And you know, especially digital church network, you know, like what's going on there, how's this look? And it was really cool that it's those aren't my ideas that were presented to the dissertation. It was people that are out there paving the road and breaking the ice, um, and really saying, hey, here's what we're doing and here's why it matters.

So for me, the whole process of finishing up my doctorate and dissertation of that was it was humbling to be an ambassador, you know, to go through and say, hey, here's what people are doing and they need a voice and you need to see what the Holy Spirit is doing through these people. And that's been the exciting part, um, to be able to put this in, in like you said, get it into academia, but now take it from academia and get it out to, you know, brick and mortar churches and rural areas that are disconnected. I mean, you know, we'll get into phygital, like you said, but we'll never replace physical, and we shouldn't, you know? It needs to be synergistic. It needs to be, um, you know, coincided. We hear hybrid all the time. Hybrid kind of is usually more accepted than phygital because people don't know what to do with a word they're not familiar with, or you know, whether they debate whether phygital is a real word, right? I try to make it one with the dissertation, but um, I digress. It's just a matter of realizing that we live in a technological world that is phygital. I mean, we're at work and we're texting our family. We go home, we're with them physically. We are phygital families, you know? We do the same thing work-wise. Just before we logged on for this call, I was texting another deputy down in actually Tampa, um, asking, hey, I need a lead for this individual. We got a fugitive, and I don't—I've never met him face to face, but we're brothers through what we do. We're connected, and through our digital connection, he's physically apprehending violent fugitives. So it's just the world we live in. But anyway, you got me preaching. I'll stop. I love it.

So, you know, let's get dirty here a little bit. Let's dive in. Um, so I mean, a couple things. One, you're championing the idea of digital discipleship, which makes people, makes church leaders uncomfortable. I mean, we don't need to sugar coat that. The idea of discipling people digitally has been a controversial idea post-COVID. Um, and number two, um, you're using and focusing on phygital. Thank you very much, Stadia, for letting us borrow the word phygital, which is a combination of physical and digital. Stadia literally owns the trademark on that. Some really smart guy told him to acquire the trademark on that, and then doesn't work for Stadia anymore. Great organization, but I just don't work there. So you've got, um, you've got this. You're championing digital discipleship, and you're championing what I'm understanding is physical churches to really utilize digital discipleship. Like, that's an unpopular idea in 2023, 2024. What? Why did you take that focus?

Reflecting on it, I think a lot of it is just my background, you know, having been in a career field in the military that was the redheaded stepchild. Nobody wanted to talk to me because I was an OSI agent, right? Office of Special Investigations. Um, and so we were always off in our own little islands. Which then with the job, I was deployed to the Middle East. I was working in either by myself or in pairs of different areas. I've been to multiple countries and continents and doing different stuff. And so to be rooted, I mean, yes, I had a home and I had a family, but I wasn't always there. And so to be rooted was something I didn't know. And I actually talk about it a little bit in my dissertation that um, I was actually digitally discipled as a young baby Christian. And the individual, Adam Fitzgerald, brother in Christ, um, who we still talk daily, um, and we've known each other for me to do the quick math, over a decade. Over a decade, and we've only met three times in person, but we talk daily. And it's because we use digital tools to connect, to share life, share stories. And so I've lived it and I've seen that it's impacted my life and it's guided me. But I've also seen in my own journey, in my own testimony, uh, when I didn't stay engaged through those digital tools with Adam and other brothers and sisters in Christ, that's when I fell away and I found myself isolated or backslid and stumbled. Um, and so it's just another testament, like, hey, this stuff has to be intentional. It's hard work. It takes a lot of time. Um, but when you do it right, these stories that come out at the end and the glory that goes to Christ is undeniable, and you can't argue that. And so that's where my passion came from for it. And I was like, hey, if that, you know, if I'm not out here by myself, who else is doing this? And then I had the chance through this platform, through the framework of school, to go and investigate and ask. And getting to talk to these leaders that are out here doing this stuff was just mind-blowing. And all I was able to do is synthesize it all together, put it together, like, here's a model, here's a way you can do this if you're up for the challenge and if you're up to actually take the time and effort and make a difference, you know?

I wasn't familiar with the Adam story. That's interesting to me. Let me pull the thread on that a little bit. How did you meet Adam? Like, how did you first get connected with him?

Yep. So I was a brand new second lieutenant in the Air Force Special Agent, and uh, I was getting into ultra running. I like to run when I was younger. Um, and I think the book Born to Run came out, and the running craze was big. This was like 2010, 2011. And uh, and so I read the book and I want to try this ultra running thing, which is anything over 26.2 miles. Uh, usually it's on a trail or you know, different terrain. And uh, so I was like, well, naturally, let's see what's out there. And I was also young in my faith, and I always wanted to know. Um, I wanted to know more about Jesus, right? And so I came across, I stumbled across, um, FCA, Fellowship of Christian Athletes. They had an endurance branch of FCA, and they had an online forum, the old school chat room forum. And I logged in and just started sharing, like, hey, you know, here's where I'm at, here's what I'm trying to learn. And Adam saw a post. I think he, uh, he said it was a prayer request. I don't—we've looked for it several times, but the forum since been down and everything else, so it's now out in the metaverse somewhere. But um, we've looked for it, but he says it was a prayer request that I posted, and he responded. Next thing you know, we're talking. And you know, we're like I said, we're brothers. You know, I go down and see him. I saw him recently. There was a death in the family, and you know, to be able to be there, he actually asked me to speak at the funeral for that person. I mean, it was just it was humbling that, you know, here is a brother who I've only met three times in person, but we were connected on that level that he would ask me to fill a role like that, you know? So um, yeah, that's the story.

It's interesting, the idea physical or phygital. Like, there is a physical component to that, and even as a digital pastor of a digital church utilizing physical when it's appropriate, is it—it's not that it's non-existent. It's actually, I would assume, incredibly powerful. What's it actually like, you know, the three times in ten years that you and Adam connect? What are those experiences like?

So I mean, naturally, the first time you go to meet someone face to face, you feel like, oh, this is going to be awkward. But it was like we had been together our entire lives because we had connected on such a personal level through text messaging, FaceTime, forums, email, whatever tools we used, right? And uh, so there was never any awkward. I mean, it there just wasn't. And he absolutely told me, he's like, hey, you're actually one of the closest individuals I have in day-to-day life. And that was just mind-blowing to me, you know? It was just a testimony to digital tools being useful, right? And a lot of folks have the premise that phygital means that you have a huge brick and mortar church and then you've got this huge online campus where you've got, you know, an online stream and laser light shows and all this other stuff. And that's not phygital. I mean, yes, let me take that back. It is phygital, but that's not the heartbeat of phygital. The heartbeat of phygital is the atoms of the world being able to connect on that type of level with someone and have intentional, intentional relationship. That's where God really makes an impact. I mean, just look at the ministry of Christ. Every time he encountered somebody, a story came to surface. Every time he encountered the one person, the one person went and told the story. That's ministry. That's discipleship. That's digital discipleship for us today. Imagine what Paul would have done if he had the digital tools at his fingertips that we have. I mean, he used letters because that's what he had, but imagine if he had Zoom or you know, or Riverside, right? The ability to connect like this. Like he would be in awe, you know? So we've got to be good stewards of the tools that are sitting at our fingertips.

Yeah, I imagine Paul would be, you know, handing some churches their butt on a sling digitally, you know, trying to figure out how to do that or utilizing social media to get out in.

Front of a larger amount of people, you know, it's interesting actually a great segue talking about Paul and the birth of the church and some of the evangelical movements that Paul started with his missionary journeys. You say, um, I forgot to write down the page number here, but the folk in your dissertation, I'm quoting you I think, the focus on missional evangelism is not the soul mission nor is it the end of digital ministry. On the contrary, it's just the beginning. Unpack here a little bit, start to expand a little bit on what you're saying here.

Yeah, um, so I made the reference just a minute ago about how many churches are creating the Sunday experience to be streamed online, which amen, have at that. There's nothing wrong with that. But there's too many churches, church leadership, church structures that are settling there and calling digital ministry, or heaven forbid, digital discipleship. And really my takeaway from the research is that's falling short. That's falling short. We're settling for an online stream being content that is getting the good news out there, which amen, we should be, but then we stop. We don't know how either we stop because we don't have the time, resources, or the know-how to continue forward, or we stop because we just want to continue focusing over here on another project. When in reality we need to have folks that are good stewards to lead that space and move into a digital discipleship, move from digital evangelism, digital content into discipleship, make this a process that is continually built upon for the individuals.

And in the research, one of the digital church leaders actually mentioned that look, you need to move from content, or you need to move from consumer to, um, oh why am I blanking? I should have wrote this down beforehand. Um, basically you need to move from consumer to creator. You know, you need to go through and move from consumer to creator, and you need to make sure that consumer to creator part is just from someone who is, I remember it now here it is. It's consumer, contributor, and creator. That's the pathway. One of the folks I interviewed, that's what was utilized. And so when you have an online stream, they're consuming what you're putting out there, which is good. But now let's be faithful to lead them to the next step, which should be contributing. When we get them to go through and comment or share or engage with an online chat host, that is the next step. But now ultimately we want to move them into creator, which is an individual that is now out there either leading their own ministry or they're going through and creating their own content and you know, replicating again, disciples who make disciples. And that's the pole you want to move them through that process. And ultimately what you're doing is you're creating obedience in that individual. You know, you're making them an obedient disciple that's going to follow the call on their life, and they're going to continue to create disciples that give them that battle rhythm of being a digital disciple. Taking that consumer, maturing them, growing them to a contributor where they're not just absorbing but they're speaking into it, and then growing them to the place where they're creating. I mean, there's a literal multiplication that's happening in digital. This pathway is one of the reasons why I think digital is actually a very healthy approach towards discipleship because it walks people towards not just being consumers for years, um, eating or drinking spiritual milk. It helps grow people to the place of the solid food of the spiritual steak that the Bible speaks of. And so there's this great opportunity to disciple people digitally and grow them to the place where they're not just absorbing this, but they're not just contributing to this, but they're creating it. And now they're responsible for discipling others in that. And for me, that's one of the awesome things that we've seen you do is really take this up with the digital church that you started and now challenging others within, I just blanked on the name of it. Servants, what's the name of your church?

Servants, uh, Servant Warrior.

Warrior, and um, Servant Warrior Church. Yeah, seeing you run with that now. Um, well let me ask, there's another quote I love this and I have no idea who this guy is. Um, Thomas Jain, um, and you credit him in 2014. Was he, uh, he said, um, he went one step further and utilized the five components of witnessing, spiritual formation, belonging, worship, and prayer, all found in Acts 2, as his criteria for his research. But continue to note there is still very little research done on the topic of online discipleship. He suggested qualitative studies. Who is Thomas? Um, who's this guy, Jain?

Thomas, yep. Um, if I were to pull it up, I believe if I recall correctly, he actually had a dissertation and that's where that came from. Said this in 2014. And um, to my knowledge, I didn't know any work was being done in 2014. And so like, he was doing a dissertation at, is under Liberty in 2014. And Thomas, that quote that you mentioned is actually the thing that really put the light bulb on for my focus. I mean, I was like, all right, like someone needs to do this. Let's give it a shot, right?

Okay, so here we go. So his James and Thomas, he did an analysis of discipleship in online environments, and that was a dissertation for a PhD, and that was through Dallas Baptist University in June of 2014. Um, interesting. I just, I didn't know anybody was in that space back in 2014. And so yep, I think 2010 was probably the earliest. Who was in 2010? You're quizzing me here. I got to go and look. I believe Angela's work was pretty early as well. Angela Craig, 2011. There's that one. So Jay Mullins had a doctoral dissertation titled "Online Church." That looks like that was at Liberty as well. And a lot of these are other divinity programs, you know. There was no digital discipleship program yet, but they were still starting to dig in. You know, so with that said, you know, a lot of these, a lot of the references that I use are basically 2010 until recent. And 20, I think 2007 was one of the earlier ones that was actually Dr. Mary Low. She was talking about online education, and that education piece which brings development bridges very quickly into discipleship. And that's when we see their book "Ecologies of Faith" come into play. Um, but they, you know, a lot of these were 2014, 2015. Folks were really starting to say, hey, the internet's here. What do we do with it? And then COVID happens, right? And then that changed everybody's attention to, hey, how do we really do this? And so there's been a huge resurgence in the past three years of trying to understand digital ministry as a whole.

Now, as I was reading your dissertation, it's interesting that, you know, sometimes key words kind of jump out off the page at me because it's words I don't often hear other people in church space talk about. And you kept, you know, you referenced several times and dug into it, the idea of church networks. Now, coming from a guy who started a network like, I know I'm very passionate about that idea. So maybe, um, you know, explain to me a little bit. When you're talking about the idea of church networks or networks, what are you envisioning? What do you think the future is going to look like here?

One thing that I've noticed through my research and talking to folks is there's almost a resurgence of the first century church in the twenty-first century world. And what I mean by that is the Holy Spirit is connecting and moving people through this digital space. And if we look back at the first century church and the way that the Spirit moved and grew the church, we're starting to see that now. You know, some of the Israel church leaders I spoke to, they have full-on church plants that are growing from a digital initiative in the United States now in various African countries. You couldn't have done that anywhere else, right? Except through digital space. And so that's a network. And my argument would be we go into scripture and we can look at, you know, the body of Christ, the church. What are we called to be? We are called to be a global unified body glorifying Christ. And, you know, we, especially in Western culture, and this could be a whole another doctoral study, right? Within Western culture, we've gotten so segmented. You know, we look at post-Reformation. We look at, you know, the rise of Protestant denominations and different councils and setups and everything else. We've gotten so fragmented where our tree now has so many branches on it that we need to come back to the root. And um, with that heart of knowing what it means to be the unified body of Christ, um, set up for the coming days, right? Um, that's where the church network comes into mind.

And so an example of what this could look like, and again, there's several contexts and it could look different for different church leaders, but within, for example, Servant Warrior Church, um, that is a group of, it started as a group of twelve guys that were, it's funny, it was twelve, um, started as a group of twelve guys that were first responders, military, and it was just an online discipleship group. We would talk. We had several. If you ask some of the Servant Warrior OGs, you know, have been around since the beginning, we've played with Discord. We've played with Marco Polo. We played with text groups, Facebook groups, you know, we tried them all to see what was working best for folks. But ultimately it led to the point where it's like, hey, let's turn this not just from a discipleship group, but let's be the physical or let's be the digital church physical spaces. And so we started Servant Warrior Church. And what's different about us is we're focused on that intentional, um, relationship, organic discipleship piece, um, where we meet daily through an online form. It's actually Circle Communities is our website. It's kind of like Mighty Networks but built differently. And um, we meet there and have a full platform. But then we also have three different times each week that we can get on Zoom. There's one time a week where I actually teach, you know, or preach. Um, and then the other two times are fellowship where we just hang out and we talk. And it's grown from twelve people to I believe thirty-five, thirty-six people in just a couple months. Um, and the thing is, is we're not worried about growth. We're not like, we're worried about the one. We want to have that intentional relationship. We purposely don't advertise. I mean, we have a website that's just a splash page that leads you to Circle, but I'm not posting content on Facebook, Instagram. I'm not trying to pull people in because the Spirit will do that. That's his job. His job is to go through and build the church and convert and transform hearts. Our job is just to steward the people that he brings to us. And so having that focus has changed the way we do church. Um, and so with that said, we're training, we're training disciples up and we're equipping them and showing them, hey, this Spirit-filled, spirit-led life that's talked about in the book of Acts is real and it can be done today just as it was back then if we do it correctly and we surrender to him through obedience every single day. And by doing that, we now are raising up leaders. And what's cool and what would be the vision here is going...

Through and having these leaders that are in me, we have Florida, we have Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, South Carolina, California, Nevada, and we also have a couple families that are doing something called overlanding where they're in their 4x4 vehicle and they're traveling the world. We have a family down in Argentina right now, another family getting ready to go back to Peru. They're in the states visiting family now. But we connect—actually one of the elders, he's going back to Peru here in just a couple months with his wife and son and continuing their global journey. And so it's just really cool to connect these folks where they have physical expressions that they can start to engage with their communities, their workplaces, and other folks that they know. And so they're creating that network organically.

And how cool would it be to take Servant Warrior Church and create a Servant Warrior Network one day where we're going through and we're connecting with, say, a rural church in the middle of, I don't know, you know, ten bucks to Nebraska that just doesn't have a connection to, you know, a bigger city or a bigger church? And we can say, "Hey, we have this online space where we can basically send you a digital missionary. We're going to go and create a space for your physical church, and we're going to send one of our digital members there into that space. They'll teach you how to run this, how to engage, build it up. And then at that point, we go through and spend three months with them and then launch them off on their own, and they create a network where we're not a denomination. We're not saying you have to do things our way. It's just that, hey, here's the tool and we're connected in Christ. Why don't we build each other up?" It's just a way of taking initial thought for a digital church and building it into a network that's physically located all over the place.

And the idea of a church network isn't a new concept. You know, Life Church has had the Open network for years. And, you know, I—you know, even going back to maybe 2015, um, you had the opportunity to sit down with some of the Life Church guys to talk specifically about that. And the idea is to be very open-handed. Like, you cannot—there's a difference between a network and like a series of multi-site churches. Multi-site churches, you usually are very centralized and very controlling of what's happening in that space. With the network, you have to be very open-handed and very loose with that. And so there's—and sometimes, you know, the physical church isn't comfortable being loose and open-handed with that because that mindset is just not necessarily there. And so it's a different mindset. But 2024, you know, maybe it pays off for ministry to look different, to be more open-handed than close-fisted, so to speak. Sorry for the analogy there.

And what's nice about that idea, Jeff, is you can go through—you can go through and take this network idea and you can remain open-handed because a lot of people that are taking these ideas in, like you said earlier, a bote coote, right? I get paid absolutely nothing, not one penny, for doing the Servant Warrior Church thing. My employment comes through, you know, Department of Justice. That's my main income and that's my focus. But within that, I'm also called to be a disciple. And so I can remain open-handed and not worried about budgets, keeping lights on, everything else. I mean, the only thing that costs us is it's $120 a month to keep our digital space open, which we have folks that are being faithful to help support that. So $120 a month versus, you know, thousands of dollars for rent and lights and everything else, right? Like, totally different thing to where our focus is different. We don't have to be tied to, you know, the traditional framework. You know, it's something that is a lot more free. So, you know, to those that are maybe thinking about trying it, like, give it a shot. You know, you'll be surprised what the Holy Spirit will do with it if you're just obedient to follow.

So let's dig into your research a little bit here. What did your research look like? What questions were you asking? What were your findings like? Give me a little bit here on the research you put together.

So quick nutshell on this: basically, it's called a qualitative grounded theory study. All right, fancy way of saying I'm not focused on numbers. I'm going to focus on the story behind it and the kind of the factual evidence. On top of going through and dialing into this thing that doesn't have much research into it yet—that's why it's called grounded theory—and so what that allows me to do is let the data that's collected go through and interpret itself and speak for itself.

And so through that process of how that worked, I was able to develop a basic questionnaire that's called the DQ—it's the Digital Church Leader Questionnaire. Extremely original. Within those ten questions though, it's three subsets. And the one subset is asking a research question about how are digital church leaders basically viewing digital discipleship and digital networks? And then the second section is what methods are they using? How are they already doing it or how have they seen it done? And then the third question is how are they making sure that this is effective? Not asking exactly their measurements, but how are they measuring? What are they judging their effectiveness by?

And so within those ten questions that were asked to all the digital church leaders, the data just started flowing in. And it was transcripts and everything that was able to upload and do the geek stuff and start looking, okay, what's the prevalent themes? Who says what? How many times? And really just kind of flush it out. And within my dissertation, there's three different charts that really break these down, and folks again can download it in the comments and in the links. And, you know, look into it. But ultimately, to keep it short, the first research question of what does digital discipleship really boil down to? Digital discipleship is just biblical discipleship with a new innovative twist of using different tools. That's all it was. And, you know, to go through and think that it's something that's just this oomba that you can't get your hands on is really a myth. It is nothing more than going through, sharing the good news, and building them up in Christ and using the tools that you have to make that happen.

Within that, dialing down though, the RQ1 findings basically found five main tenants that made digital discipleship what it is. And basically, digital discipleship has to be innovative. You have to be willing to try new things. It has to be immersive. I've talked a lot so far in our chats today that you have to be engaged every single day. You have to be immersed. I mean, think of the initial twelve. They lived and walked and, you know, had meals with Jesus every day. That's an immersive experience that a lot of—dare I say—physical churches don't have. You know, it kind of comes to, "We'll see you next week." Well, that's not the church.

Synergistic—you know, going through and having that connection of everything we've been talking about in the digital world and then making sure that it's relational and you're adapting. You've got to go through, and one of the guys that I interviewed—he'll probably listen to this—he talked about grace bridges. And he said, "Hey, we need to meet people where they're at," which is no different than traditional evangelism and discipleship. You got to meet folks where they're at. We do the same thing in digital space. And so that grace bridge actually takes us into that next main finding of the research question.

The second research question was looking at the methods. And I could sit here for a whole another hour on this section where, really, if you think of a digital tool, an app, a website, or any type of forum that's out there, it's all been tried and used, and they all work in their own ways at their own place and time. And so one of the things that really came out of that is don't allow yourself to choose a pet tool and then miss out on all the others that can actually help you out. You know, just like a toolbox in a garage, you've got different tools for different jobs. Make sure you're being faithful to use those tools at the right time.

And so within that, ultimately what you needed is you need to have committed leadership. You need to have a missional focus—again, synergistic—and then stay innovative and have that micro to macro approach. We talked a lot earlier about, you know, you got to worry about the one. Don't worry about, you know, the masses and bringing in, you know, a megachurch. If that's what's meant to happen, the Spirit will make that happen. Just focus on the one. And then the last research question there was looking at the measurement part.

And this, I know we'll probably dial into this just a little bit more, but the biggest thing there is we talked about vanity metrics a lot. And the vanity metrics were basically like, "Hey, we go through, we measure attendance, we measure likes, and we measure duration." But really, are they telling us anything about effectiveness? And all the digital church leaders that I interviewed are like, "Honestly, when it comes to vanity metrics, they're junk. All they are is an indicator that something's happening, but you don't know what's happening." And so you've got to drill in further and say, "Okay, how do we actually measure for effectiveness?"

And the things that this research found is that we have to figure out: Is there obedience? Is there steps of obedience happening within those individuals that are engaged in digital tools, in digital space? What are their testimonies? You know, one of the digital church leaders said, "Look, you can't argue a story." I'm like, "That's quotable." You know, like, you're exactly right. Like, again, look at the Gospels. Look at Jesus's ministry. Look at the parables. Story is powerful. We have to be chasing a story. And within that story, we can measure things, you know, and that's up to the church leader to figure out within their context what that looks like. But again, chase the story and focus on that growth. Focus on the daily fruit. You know, Galatians 5:22-23, what is the spiritual fruit? Do we see that? If it's happening, then okay, you're doing digital discipleship. If it's not, maybe we need to shift focus and figure out why.

And then, lastly, the global nexus. Again, we got to think—we got to think global church, big C church, whenever we touch digital because within that, I mean, digital gives us the ability to think big C church at all times, and we have to maintain that as we push out into this.

But ultimately, Jeff, when it came down to it, if you're going to go through and have a digital vision, tools, and a mission, you have to have all those things I talked about. The obedience is key. The synergistic approach is key. And then the innovative and the immersive focus in your relationships is absolutely key. So that's basically the dissertation in a nutshell. So hopefully you stayed awake and you don't have to go read fifteen pages.

Dr. Dan Tibo—literally doctorate in digital discipleship. Well, church leadership with an emphasis in digital discipleship. But very, very good words there. Check out the dissertation to get more information on that. So much—literally so much meat in there. I was very impressed reading it. So, man, thanks for the work that you did. It was interesting as I was reading.

It's um, and I'm not sure what page this was, but I kind of chuckled under my breath. Um, so you said at some point in your dissertation of note, uh, this literature review did not uncover specific fidal leaders at this concept had yet the uh leaders as this concept had not yet been flushed out within the digital church framework. Hence the intent of this research study was to better understand the fital church uh and its viable contributions to digital discipleship and effectiveness within, like, you know, chuckle, the physical, the physical church. The fital church, they haven't figured out this. Um, let me ask you, you know, you're, it's, you know, I just kind of like, I don't know, my seat, I'm like, thank you very much, Captain Obvious. But I, I know, I know what you were, I know you're writing to your audience in that. But what do you think the struggle is? I'm going to like, get why is this so controversial within within the physical church? What we got a lot of physical church people that, you know, they're listening, they're asking questions, they're interested, they're feeling tension from above. Um, how do they combat, maybe too strong, but how do they work through this? Um, and that's that's a loaded question, Jeff.

Um, it's actually one of the things that I recommended at the end of my dissertation. Like, hey, this needs to be explored. You need to ask these questions and take time to go talk to, uh, you know, just focus instead of going to a digital church leader, go to a physical church leader and start asking these questions and see, you know, delve in, what are the things holding them back? Um, you know, I I barely tapped the the tip of the iceberg when it came to that within this. And what I found so far was that usually it's it's fear of the unknown. It's different. Um, it's challenging. It's new. You know, all these things make someone uncomfortable because they're used to doing things a certain way. Um, and they don't know what to do with it. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is there's a lot of time requirement within making this work. You know, um, I two three months, about three months in with Servant Warrior Church, and you know, one of the one of the guys on the call the other night, he like, hey, there's only there's only about six, seven, eight folks that are actually intentional and being here every single day. I'm like, that's okay, because that's six, seven, eight people that are so intentional that are now going to replicate. And so you have to go through and be accepting of the way that discipleship can take form without seeing a big bang for your buck right off the bat. And I fear that too many physical church leaders are like, well, we're not really seeing growth. We're not seeing a a you know, influx and tithing or attendance or whatever metrics they are measuring by. And so they discard it. And it's like, man, if you just wait a little bit longer and be patient with what you have, you may see a garden emerge that you never knew was there. And so ultimately, again, it comes down to fear of the unknown. It comes down to not willing to actually till the soil as long as it needs to. And then the other part is they're just so focused on the other things that are directly in front of them. You know, this this is one of those things that if you don't know how to engage with digital tools, it can be completely daunting, right? I have coworkers that are a little bit older, and they're they're struggling in just a word processor. Right? If you don't know how to use the tool, you need someone to show them. And so I would love to see uh a rally of digital uh missionaries, for lack of a better term, that are willing to go out and start training people. Uh, you know, give them the ability to see that, hey, this isn't something to be scared of. Yes, it's new, but it can be utilized, and here's how you do that. You know, let me let me go with you, walk with you. And so that's that's something I think if we were to focus that going into the next year or two, we would start to see more obedient stories emerge that we never knew were coming.

Dr. Dan Tibo of of Servant Warriors uh Sharon here. And so man, hey, thanks, thanks for the time uh Dan. This is this has been, this has been really good. Moving beyond the metrics, re-evaluating uh what the church looks like, moving beyond the nickel and noses uh approach, and and and and understanding that that discipleship um is measured differently and it takes time. You know, it's interesting. I can remember um I can remember in my church staff career, I want to say the year was 20, maybe 2008, and uh I was in a church staff meeting uh at a church I was working at at the time and was was part of a conversation with the lead pastor and the senior leaders of the church about the approach towards uh what discipleship would look like. And um and discipleship as part of that, discipleship went the route for the church. This is 2008. It went small groups, you know, the the typical approach is what they decided. But there was there was even in 2008 there was a strong push toward towards more intentional uh discipleship and disciple making is what we probably would more call it. Uh, but it was was shot down at the church. And and and to be honest, I I I think to this day, I I ask the question all the time, what if 15 years ago this church had uh a change of heart and instead 15 years ago decided towards an approach of disciple making instead of discipleship? Um, how would it have affected differently? Would we have seen the exponential growth, not pun intended with exponential, but the exponential growth that happens with discipleship over time? Um, and so like wrestle with some of this with your church, with your leaders, ask some some great questions and download Dan's um uh dissertation on digital discipleship. Good stuff.

Hey, listen, Dan, as we're landing the plane here, uh man, any closing thoughts on your side?

No, Jeff. I just want to say thank you. You know, it's yes, I've referenced you a lot, and I hope you see how much of an impact you had on this work. I mean, this is, believe it or not, you were discipling me through the process. Every time we would text every couple months, and it was just one of those things that I'm thankful for. You know, it's um, that that is what digital discipleship looks like. It's just intentional communication designed at furthering for the glory of Christ. And that's that's what you're doing at DCN, and I couldn't be more thankful to be part of it. So thanks, brother.

Amen. Listen, I appreciate it. I'm I'm excited to see how uh things go with Servant Warriors, how things go with everything that you're working on, and uh believe me, we have a lot more conversations to go through. So uh you can, we we'll keep texting. I'm I'm sure on this. But hey, for now, we're going to land a plane and we're going to wrap it up. So for for Dan, this is Jeff Reed uh with the Church Digital because all of the digital church network and the church digital, it's all coming under the Church Digital. We talked about that before, but Dan wasn't aware of that, so that's okay. DCN uh God rest its heart, we're we're merging it under the Church Digital. So Jeff with the Church Digital wrapping things up. So thanks everybody for jumping on the pod. We'll see you next time. Y'all have a good day.