EP290 - Jeff Talks New Website, Discord, and a New Online Era

The world, the church, they're already judging us. They're already just this, this hurts. This is the therapist too. Um, they're already judging us based off of what we're doing. And if you've not experienced that, good for you. You're one in the few at this point. Um, be people of action.

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovation within the church. But more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. Is discipleship 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 and artificial intelligence fit into all of this? Whether you're a big or small church, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, episode 290. 290. That's 29. That is, I'm going to do this on the fly. See if it works. CC, uh, 90 would be L. No, it would be CC. I. Is that right? No, CCXC. All, hey, here's what I need you to do. I need you to text me. Is the Roman numeral for 290 CCXC? Go ahead and text me 48432 48724. I'm not kidding. 48432 48724. Text me right now.

Episode 290, CCXC, of the Church Digital podcast, brought to you by Riverside. Hey, so we did something really cool this week with Riverside. Episode 290. We talked about a little bit last time in episode 289, where last time 289 was me streaming into Mighty Networks into our the Church Digital fam, our online community, um, which is hosted by Mighty Networks and which is a cloud-based stream. And at the same time, we had Riverside running in the background recording at a much higher quality video and audio image. And it was awesome. It made the end product for on-demand incredible, like Riverside always does.

And so what are we going to do for episode 290 to make it better? Well, uh, we're going to stream into Mighty Networks again, and we're going to stream into, I don't know, the Church Digital's new Discord channel. Uh, we'll talk about that here in a second. But we did, we streamed into Discord, we streamed into Mighty Networks, and we recorded it on Riverside. And once again, the audio and video quality was incredible. The only thing that I noticed, um, just a typical from the typical experience that I've got here at the studio working with Riverside, is because we had so many streams open at the same time, the actual speed that was uploaded to Riverside was a little slower because, you know, I was running two different live streams at, you know, 1080, and then I was doing Riverside capture. Uh, so it's just to make actually three because there's 720s, the buffer for Riverside anyway. Yay, Riverside. Go to thechurchdigital.com/Riverside for more information on how. Listen, churches, if you're not doing shorts, if you're not doing manuscripts, if you're not doing, um, if you're not doing images and social, if you're not utilizing AI and social media in your sermons on how to create shorter, easier-to-process elements that are going to get eyeballs in front of your sermons and get people attached to your website and your digital process and get you connected into some sort of a digital community, like you need to be on Riverside. Thechurchdigital.com/Riverside. Go check it out.

Okay, 290. I took last week off. I was a little under the weather. Um, we put a lot of work. Uh, I publicly want to thank Barbara Canero and Word Revolution. Barbara Canero, director of connection for the Church Digital. Um, because, guys, um, the new website launched. Yes, I did not say the new website launched as in breakfast or dinner. I said launched as in, hey, that website that Jeff built in 2018 for the Church Digital on a weekend before anything launched, that is no longer valid and is no longer on the internet. Well, it's probably on some internet archive, but we've got a new website for the Church Digital. You can go check it out at thechurchdigital.com. Uh, it has been an awesome joy to already see feedback from it, to already see productivity come from it. We're already connecting with people. The website is converting, not converting people to Jesus, but converting what it's supposed to be doing. What is a website supposed to be doing? It's supposed to be driving people to our new Discord server.

Hey, the Church Digital, did you know the Church Digital's on Discord? Hey, did you know the Church Digital is on Discord? Hey, had you heard the Church Digital is on Discord? Hey, the Church Digital, it's on Discord. Thechurchdigital.com is on Discord. You can get there at, open up a web browser, discord.thechurchdigital.com, or you can go to thechurchdigital.com and click on one of the 47 different links on the landing page. That's good. I'm exaggerating, but it's there's a lot of links there to drive you to get to Discord. Um, we had an awesome time really celebrating the Church Digital. I did a stream on Tuesday. I don't even know what today is. I don't even know that it matters what is today? April 9th. Uh, when I'm doing this recording in the stream, but we did a stream on Tuesday the 9th celebrating the uh, the launch of the website, the Discord, um, uh, some of the other community changes that are happening within the Church Digital, celebrating our leadership. There's some changes that are coming to social media. We started talking about some of the framework things. Like, really, this was a circle the wagon kind of conversation, a circle the wagon kind of podcast. Um, and so with love for you all to, um, check it out, it's episode 290. Really, uh, it's, let's, you know what, we're just going to call this part two of the new the Church Digital.

All right, hey, Stacy, how you doing? Hopefully you can hear me. Hey, it's Jeff with the Church Digital. Uh, we are streaming this on Mighty Networks right now, and in about ten seconds I'm going to click the button to start the stream over on Discord. And so let me go ahead and start the stage there celebrating TCD new website. Hey, Barbara Canero, Tope, how you doing? It's fun doing this here on Mighty Networks, um, but I am opening up a new world. We are now streaming for the first time over on Discord. And, and hopefully my Discord friends can see me. I got Octopus and Sarah, uh, Val, I'm probably mispronouncing that over there on Discord. So I got five people in two different communities simultaneously streaming at the same time. Hopefully everyone can hear me. It looks like you can hear me on Discord. And, um, you know, I can't really tell anything. Somebody say in chat if they can hear me. Hey, Tope, can you hear me? H, maybe I should jump over to Discord. I mean, I'm not saying Discord's a better experience, but actually Discord upped its streaming game literally today's the first time that I've seen it. Thank you, Tope, for that. Literally on a different continent, the dude soundchecking me from Africa. I love that. Um, but, um, if you're over in Discord, it looks like old school, um, oh my gosh, I forgot what it was called. Clubhouse. Like, you remember Clubhouse? For like the sixty seconds that it was popular during COVID, and everybody was like, Clubhouse, Clubhouse, Clubhouse, and I was like all over Clubhouse, and it was great. Um, yeah, so now that's what that's how Discord looks. And now I've got people in there and I in the audience, and I can bring him up to the speaker platform, or I can be like, you know, we're done with you, and send you back down. And so, hey, this is the new streaming world. Yeah, Tope, did Tope use Clubhouse for a while? Did they ever do Clubhouse for, um, for Android? Like, did Android ever, because honestly, like, if it was, if it was, yeah, they did, okay, good. Because that was to me that was the problem. Clubhouse never got, like, launched. Well, maybe because also it was audio only, but you know, that's the whole other thing. But the fact that it was only iOS, like I almost felt like it had to be a Clubhouse apologetic anytime I recommended or said, oh no, jump on Clubhouse. Who have an Android phone? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Why? I mean, that was always the follow-up I wanted to ask, but I always wasn't bold enough to ask the heavy questions like, why in the world would you have an Android phone? I feel sorry for you, green bubble people. Um, I have I have an Android account. It's okay. Okay, hey, Ian Kirk's jumping on. This is this is so weird. Uh, I got uh, I got six people in uh, Discord. I got five people in uh, Mighty Networks, and my head's going to like spin back and forth all day here. Maybe four in Mighty Networks. No, actually, Barbara is double dipping. She's in both, which that's how much Barbara Canero loves the Church Digital. She is attending virtually in two different communities at the same time. Like she can't just be in one. She's got to be in both to make sure things are going well.

Ian C, Ian, I haven't, man, talked to you in a long time. It is so good uh, to see you. Hey, I just found out something today. This is a voice from the past. Uh, Ian, Ethan Connelly, now Ethan has been a guest on the Church Digital podcast. Digital pastor. Oh my gosh, I'm blanking on the church's name up in, um, uh, Washington DC area, Virginia. Dude, dude has is is one of our top five right now of podcast listens. He he did a podcast on chat that blew up during COVID. And, um, yeah, man, listen, he's he's a digital pastor. The funny thing, the interesting thing is he he was he was an IT director, but funny thing before that he was like a volunteer IT guy at his church. He was a volunteer IT guy for his church five years ago, and they they brought him on to be an IT director, part-time, then full-time, and then they bumped him up to, um, uh, to staff full-time. And then he cast vision for a digital ministry. Uh, an IT nerd for a church volunteer grown up in the system, and the church agreed to do it, let him do it. And so he launched his digital ministry right as COVID was really starting. Actually, it was in early months. He launched his digital ministry. The reason I bring this up, this past weekend, Ethan Connelly just got ordained. It is now the Reverend Ethan Connelly. And, and so really excited uh, for that, Evan Connelly. I've been saying Ethan, and I'm like, that's not his name. It's not Ethan, but I couldn't think. It's not Ian. Ian made me think of it, but it's it's Evan. Super excited uh, for Evan. Congratulations. And this, that would this, um, would mean a whole lot more had I got his first name right the entire time, which I did not, which is embarrassing on my part.

Hey, listen, those of you that are in, um, Mighty Networks, feel free to come over to the Discord world. I I mean, I'm not saying it's better in the Discord world, but it's closer to the camera, and so when I look at that screen, you're more likely to be seen. Uh, it is, oh, it is better according to the guy that looks like, um, um, you know, Gandalf. Uh, Gandalf is telling me that it's better, so there must be. But hey, it's, uh, go to Discord, discord.thechurchdigital.com. That'll get you to our Discord server. Create an account if you don't have one. Uh, but we're going to get more into Discord and Mighty Networks and all that here in a little bit.

So hey, I I do want to, Ian, good to see you, man. Uh, Ian making the move to Discord. I saw that. Hey, I want to know right now in chat, we launched a new website, right? Is that kind of a thing? This new website, h, h, h, how do we like this? What what do we think? Tell me in chat. Give me some feedback. I would love to know what you all thought. It's it's it's been a really interesting morning. I had a full morning planned. I was supposed to be doing a lot of writing talking about the future of worship in a hybrid environment. And, um, my Discord kept blowing up as more and more people started traversing through the website into Discord.

Or people started filling out our digital discipleship assessment form that we've got on the website, and it was just an incredible experience. Like, it was really—I was texting Barbara Canero by the way. Barbara Canero, Word Revolution, designed the website in Discord. It's Hilme, H-I-L-M-E. But it was very cool to see all that come in. But I literally was in the middle of doing this work and I texted Barbara. I was like, "Hey, yeah, good to know your website's converted a whole lot better than the old one was," because the old one didn't necessarily have those movements of conversion. Like, really, we didn't even like broadcast, you know? Just I put it on my personal socials. So we're really excited. Barbara, you really did a great job. J-Mo saying over in Mighty Networks, but yeah, we need to take Sumi Beats—you do need to take a closer look at the website. There's a hidden, not so hidden, Easter egg underneath the hamburger, specifically for you, Sumi Beats. So I am looking forward to you seeing that and then laughing hysterically once you get there. But it is, man, it's something we're really proud of. The old website—I mean, I'm not going to—yeah, you should be intrigued. The old website is something I designed on a weekend, over a weekend in 2018. I mean, this—I don't know how to like sugarcoat this—like, it was a very old website that was literally built. I had just quit my job and was like, "Okay, I'm going to do this thing called The Church Digital. I'm going to go and do it. I got to tell people what I'm doing because everybody's asking me what am I doing now that I quit my job, and I'm sick of people like talking to me. So I got to build this website and like post it on social media." And so I literally worked over the weekend to do it. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. Like, if you were to—hey, Jeff, what was your—what was your the hamburger? What was the outline? What was the plan? What was the hamburger? By the way, it's the three lines in the upper—I guess it's the—well, actually, they're both in the upper left-hand corner, whatever your left is. It's usually the menu. And it was really—I have no clue what it was and what I was doing. And so I threw a bunch of stuff down. Somehow Google found me because evidently I was the only idiot in 2018 that was talking about planting digital churches. And well, Google just has loved me ever since, and it's been awesome to see. Really, more than the website, really, these ideas flourish. Like, even the amount of people that are jumping on the stream to check this out—Daniel Heron saying howdy in Mighty Networks. My gosh, Daniel, Daniel, I miss you. We need to catch up. Even, you know, meeting guys like Daniel Heron, a kid who planted a church in Roblox when he was eleven or twelve years old. Just so many incredible stories of people thinking outside of the box. And it occurred to me somewhere around meeting Daniel that, you know, actually it was Jake—Jakay was on a podcast with me. And after the podcast, Jake got like ripped apart, got ripped by like church people for some of Jake's beliefs centered around digital evangelism and digital discipleship because he was being very evangelical in digital space. And evidently God doesn't believe in virtual reality or in Discord. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe somebody should tell God that. Another pioneer filled out the assessment, so we're up to four now within hours of launch. So cool. And it was interesting. Like, I really—some of those early conversations—like, my heart just broke. Some of the stuff that DJ Stoto was going through, and this is 2017, 2018. Angela Craig with Pursuit Church Live, some of the stories that she was going through where her own denomination would not support her even though because her church did not have a physical mailing address because her church was digital. Like, it was honestly just ridiculous. And you know, some of you heard me tell my story where it's like, "Man, I really—God, is this my time to plant a church?" And every time, every time I ask that question, I cannot tell you how loud God is screaming from the rooftops, "No." I've even had people offer to give me money to go towards my first church, and instead, God unequivocally says, "Your job is to help." And so stepping in, creating The Church Digital, which was initially physical church, we spun off Digital Church Network, which was a mistake. I said it. I own it. It was my mistake. Not what we were doing, but the marketing of it, splitting it up into two things. Solidifying it now into The Church Digital and getting some of our branding figured out now, surrounding myself with this awesome leadership team of Andy Mage, Barbara Canero, J-Mo, the J-Mo, Jason Morris, Flat Cap Leighton, oh my gosh, Tom is in the mix on that, and so many others. Gosh, I could sit here naming off like the movement leaders and the network, the podcast network, and it's really—it's really incredible. White Beard, I'm sad that you're the fourth as well. I would rather—no, I mean, the first guy was nice, but you're nice as well. That's good. It's been a really awesome experience, and I am so humbled, honestly humbled, to be here, to be on the stream talking to you people watching this, even get blasted out. Now, there's going to be some changes with The Church Digital. Oh my gosh, Jeff said changes. There's so many changes. There's always changes. Yeah, so if you roll with me, you know, there's always changes. That's one of the reasons why the website hasn't been updated since 2018 was because there's always changes. And why are we going to change the website? We're going to change it again in two months anyway. And yeah, hey, we haven't worked with that organization in months, but hey, keep it on the website because it's just too much work to get it off. Yeah, it's digital. I mean, it's supposed to be. Listen, the website that you see it in now, it'll—well, I mean, it's already changed today a couple times. It'll probably get changed again, you know, within the next week or so. And there's always already stuff that we're talking about adding to it and adjustments that need to be made. It's why digital—we don't have to pay for printing costs. It's much cheaper. Evidently, it's scalable. Digital is scalable. I don't know if you knew that. But man, we're really excited. I mean, I just—I feel like I keep saying that. Some of these changes—so Barbara Canero, Word Revolution, by the way, who's now our connections director here with The Church Digital, asked her to come on our leadership team, and very excited to have her on. I met Barbara for the first time a year ago at Exponential. I mean, we met digitally, whatever that means, but really sitting down having a heart-to-heart a year ago. And you know, it's interesting. I talk about how I meet people where it's like, "It's like you are me. We're the same people. It's like Kismet." Kismet was like Yatzy before Yatzy was Yatzy. Kismet. Actually, I think Kismet's a Russian word for I don't know, maybe something. But like, there was this connection because we really saw things, you know, eye to eye. We saw the same way. And you know, it's interesting. It was in God's timing. It was like, "Okay, we got to figure out how to work with Barbara, how to get with Word Revolution." We had worked with a couple different, several different kind of communications, branding specialists. And no ill will against any of them, just none of them were able to really capture the ideas of The Church Digital. They really didn't understand it. And Barbara—shoot, I don't honestly feel like I even needed to explain it to her. At some point, she was telling it to me. And so she came out with this website. But when we're putting together this website and trying to make it all happen, she's like, "And this is very hard for me. This is why I am no longer a communications director because I want to make everybody happy and I want to do everything. And in communications, you cannot do everything and you cannot make everyone happy." And so, you know, Barbara is like, "Well, okay, what's the call to action? Like, what are what's the point of the website? What are we trying to do?" I don't know if you remember the old Church Digital website, but there were like on the landing page alone there were twenty-seven different call to actions. Everything from connect to DCN connect to fam, give, get consulting, you know, check out our online courses. There's a cohort. There's something with leadership network. Like, I mean, we were renting—no, we were literally renting space, but we were giving it away as free as possible. Yeah, some codependent. You've been talking to my therapist. That's awesome. Stacy, oh my gosh, okay, so I'm back. Yeah, so but yeah, so there was something—the Mighty Networks there was White Beard. It was called Digital Church Network, which was that branding failure. It was a branding failure. We should not have been Digital Church Networks. We should have been The Church Digital all the way through. It's my fault. I own it. So we get to this point: well, what's the call to point going to be? And it was like, "Well, we want to get them in community." And I'm going to be honest, like, I love—I mean, we really, at this point right now, we have three different communities. The Church Digital is pushing three different communities right now. Now, obviously, Discord, which is all over the new website, which by the way is the new call to action. There's our Facebook group. We've got over two thousand people that are over in our Facebook group, which I built up during COVID through Stadia and some other organizations. And then there's Mighty Networks, which is I don't know, last I checked, somewhere around a thousand, plus or minus. And which is, you know, God—God says don't speak ill will of—actually, I don't know if that's biblical, but my mom says don't speak ill will of people. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. And yeah, yes, so Mighty Networks, everybody, thank you very much. Listen, we're not—we're not going to be. Mighty Networks is not long for The Church Digital. It's great in a lot of things and it's lacking in a lot of things. And for the price, for what we're paying for it, for what money we do have with everything else, we decided as an organization—and I've said this, I think publicly—but we decided to move to Discord. And Facebook will continue to exist. We will support it. As a matter of fact, I've already had conversations with our leadership, and even specifically with some of our leadership, about being the voice of Facebook, about staying on. You know, Ian over here on Discord is saying, "Yay, I way prefer Discord." Well, Ian is a very technological person, and it doesn't surprise me that Ian would want Discord. You know, some of our other—you know, I have said this a dozen times in my life: show me a soccer mom on Discord. Just one. I want to see one soccer mom who's excited about this. It doesn't exist. Soccer moms don't want Discord. And that's the reality. It's that like there is a type of person, a gamer, a techie, who's excited about Discord. And that's why we want to be there. Show me a soccer mom kid on Discord. That's awesome, J. That's the line of the day today. There are plenty of soccer moms' kids on Discord, which is why I want to be on Discord, Tope. Right now from Africa, Discord is new to me, but I'll learn how to use it. That's it right there. That's what I want to hear. That's what I want to see, man. Excited about that, Tope. It is. You can go to the—

Website and click follow the 27 now call to actions on the homepage to drive you to the Discord server or you can go to discord.the church.digital discord.the church.digital and that's going to get you to one of our many, or one of our, that'll get you to our Discord server. I should have said that up front, sorry. I got literally laughing out loud. I'm a gamer stuck in the body of a soccer mom.

Oh, Barbara Carrero for the win. Okay, awesome. Tope, yeah, Tope, we've talked on Discord I think at least once, um, maybe we've interacted if not. But by the way, I am dear Fedge on Discord. I think I'm dear Fedge on Discord. Am I dear Fedge on Discord? Yes, I'm dear Fedge, D-E-R-F-F-E-J, and so feel free to friend me directly, find me on the server. Um, you're already in here, so let's do this thing. Um, yeah, so evidently there's this new website and there's new Discord server to go with it. Uh, Facebook, we'll stick around. Now we're going to be streaming the events, the stuff that we do, our movement system, and instead of that being housed all in Mighty Networks, we're going to move all that to Discord. So Jason Morris, the J-Mo, right now is dealing with how to move our movement system over to Discord, and I'm glad he's doing that because that's not something I want to do. And so he and Andy are working on that. By the way, Andy is now overseeing our community. I think I've said that before. So Andy will be overseeing Discord and be working with Facebook. Um, and then Jason J is overseeing our discipleship, and then I'm overseeing multiplication. Now some of you might be saying, "Wow, uh, Barbara's connections, community, discipleship, multiplication. Isn't that Jeff, isn't that your digital church framework?" Why yes, yes it is. That's exactly what it is. We developed a leadership team to line up with this framework because it's our desire to create the model for what a digital church should look like as we're equipping others, discipling people, and equipping future planters. We want to show them what a successful model looks like in hopes that they'll emulate and be successful moving forward.

Be patient on this next round of cohorts. Yes. Um, hey, you know what, uh, Jason, you'll appreciate this. You may actually know this better than I do. Google's Gmail was in beta for eight years. Eleven years? Do you, do you, does anyone actually know how long Google's Gmail was in beta? I mean, it was longer than five, that I know.

Um, anybody? Sumi beats, sui beats, sui beats you? Maybe not have it. Um, five years? Okay, good. So I said it was longer than five years. Five years and a day is longer than five years. Um, TCD's movement system powered by new thing will hopefully be in beta shorter than five years. A kid? No, J-Mo's actually been working really hard on it, and we're actually making really good time. We just wasted several years earlier to that. Once again, I owned my crap. It was my fault. Um, by the way, I have a filter on my screen, and so when I said crap, a crap emoji kind of popped up on my screen here when I'm looking at, um, uh, Whitebeard Punk. Mock, you worked at Ezekiel? Wait, as in the clothing store or the, uh, the tech Christian tech company Ezekiel? Streaming is not good for me because I keep wanting to get pulled into these individual conversations. You worked for Ezekiel? I had no idea. Oh man, we got a lot, we got even more mutual friends than I realized. I don't think we talked about that when we talked. Dude, I was one of the, um, uh, man, I had a monk outfit from Ezekiel. BK was the name of the, um, the platform, right? Am I getting my Christian tech companies confused? Um, Monk 360? That came, Ezekiel 360, which was based on Monk. Monk was a reseller of Ezekiel 360. As, okay, now it's all coming back. Oh yeah, man, we have to jump on another once we talk about your assessment. We'll do that. Um, but we really built this, modeled this whole thing around the model for hopefully what a digital church can look like and how we can have healthy connections and how those connections can get driven into a community where there's relationship building that leads toward discipleship, and there's understanding within that discipleship towards multiplication and even mobilization of that moving forward. And this is really what we're all centered around as we're wanting to get into the movement system, which is the, um, which is this, this, uh, man, Barbara, you need to give me a better word than funnel. This circle of trust. This cycle. Cycle, let's go with cycle. Um, with this cycle, and J's talking about it now in Discord, the Reproducing Church Catalyst, uh, starting in June, where we want to get these digital churches multiplying, mobilizing people, and getting them out there into these digital communities. We have such a huge opportunity, and I would dare say, and the people that know me know my heart, know this to be true. I believe that we have a responsibility. You know, the rest of the church world looks at us really like we're a square peg in a round hole. What are we supposed to do with these dorks, these nerds, these island of misfit toys? And you know what, I really do believe that there are people out there in the world that we're going to reach digitally that cannot be reached in physical space by a church building. And so I want to challenge us, man. It's time to get equipped. It's time to do the experiment. It's time to surround myself with some volunteers and some leaders and some people that can make us be better. It's time to try something different. So we'll be posting information here within Discord and everywhere towards, um, oh, J-Mo's fighting for final Luke 6:47 process. No, you're not fighting for final. I see it now. Um, the Luke 6:47, somebody's got to copy paste that. You know, I'm not going to like stop streaming till, okay, I'm gonna stop streaming to look up Luke 6:47 because I just called myself out. If I will not look up the word of God because I'm on a stream, I have my Bible right here at my desk, conveniently placed. I opened straight up to Daniel 1. But, uh, hey, Daniel, uh, your book, Daniel, do you know you have a book in here? The horrible thing is I don't have my glasses. Oh, my glasses are over there. So I will be able to read Luke 8, Luke 7, Luke 5, Luke 6:20. So of course I skipped two pages and now they're stuck together. Oh, look, Octopus has got it on here. "As for everyone who comes to me and hears my word and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like." Okay, if you're curious, that is Bible.com. One looking up old fashioned zero. But if you can zoom in on the screen, I did find the right page. It just, well, there's no way my eyes would be able to read that. Ty F, "I will show you what it's like when someone comes to me, listens to my teaching, and then follows it. It is like a person building a house who digs deep and lays the foundation on solid rock." It's a three-part process. J-Mo, you can you jump on the screen and like preach? If I like bring you up, can you come up? Well, no, no, I can't. Oh, you know what, I can't do this. Okay, maybe you can. J-Mo, come on. My problem is that we, well, we're kind of good because I just realized I brought you up to the speaker, but I'm also streaming in the background over to Mighty Networks, and Mighty Networks can't hear you. So I'm going to like repeat what you say over to the Mighty Networks people. But J-Mo, you're looking really snazzy in the jacket. How's that for branding? Luke 6:47 process. So if you're in Mighty Networks and not in Discord, I am not going to repeat everything he just said because, um, yeah, it's the smartest in digital church, man. I can't, I can't eloquently describe what this guy says. Like, there's no way. Um, but we'll, uh, Paul Steinbeck, how you doing? Scott Carpenter, haven't, man, haven't seen you in a while. Good to catch up with you. Um, so we're really excited about our discipleship process, which we are ramping up here, our movement system, our movement system, and you're going to see that happen in a big way in the coming, in the coming weeks and months as we're continuing through here. This will be our first RCC, Reproducing Church's Catalyst, and so we're looking for some people to be guinea pigs with us on that. Jump on here. Um, you know what's interesting? I wrote this for the website this morning. Um, you know, new thing, who we, we take, it's our discipleship partner, who we take the movement system from. New thing is, um, I mean, they've tens of thousands of people have gone through the movement system. Um, like literally every continent except for Antarctica has new, has movement system disciples on it. And so whether or not this stuff works isn't up for question. It does work. Um, we are the organization, we're the people that get to take it to a new culture, to new environments, into digital, into virtual, into the metaverse. And it's like, man, such an incredible honor, such an incredible opportunity, such an incredible mandate. Man, listen, I'm fired up. I'm excited about the road ahead of us, and I hope you are too. With that, come, listen, follow, obey. Hill me, can you wordsmith? Yes, there you go. Uh, J-Mo and Barbara. Um, hey, good news is we got a leadership meeting tomorrow, so we can talk about that. It'll be good. Um, hey, another change. Because, you know, we're not done yet. Uh, social media. All right, I screwed up. I feel like this is uh, apologetic Jeff day. Uh, who's Miss Dalalala? Wasn't that the thing in, uh, I don't want, I don't know if it's okay to make fun of names when I see it, but when I see M-dalalala, um, who remembers the Cobra TV movie? Uh, the GI Joe TV movie that came out in the 80s, the animated one or early 90s, um, with Serpentor? Oh yeah, you know, Serpentor? The Cobra? Sorry, I'm, we're back. Malala, great, glad to have you here. Cobra La. Yeah, Ian's got me. He knows. Um, I don't even know where it was. I screwed up. This is the Jeff re-apologizes for living day. Uh, I breathe, I, but I made a mistake. Um, Sarah, that's so good. Um, so, um, you know, when new social media platforms come out, um, I'm really good at like buying the or registering the domain, registering the social media handles for the church digital. I register for the dear Fedge as well, dear Fedge everywhere. Um, I mean, I own 100 or some domains. And, um, so Barbara is coming on. She's helping with connections and communications and some of that. And she's like, "Hey, okay, um, do you have a TikTok account?" Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I got a TikTok account. You don't use it? No, no, no, we don't. Nobody wants to see me dance. We get into that. Um, I don't need to dance, but we do have a TikTok account. And, uh, she's like, "Well, give me the give me the login information." And so I went digging and I went digging and I went digging, and I could not find the church digital information for the account. No, I found dear Fedge, dear Fedge. I set up the account, and evidently some other guy's using the church digital on TikTok. I don't know what he's doing, but he's not me and he's not us and he's not the church digital. He's not affiliated with us in any way. I'm not accusing the guy of stealing my handle, um, but I think we should totally all just go like raid them. Do we do raids in TikTok? I don't, I don't think that's really, it's probably more of a Twitch thing. Um, no, I, we didn't get to the church digital, and so I was the church digital everywhere. Organizationally, it was church digital everywhere. We should call fired down from, we don't need to go all Jezebel on this guy. Okay, let's not go there. Oh my gosh, J.

Oh my goodness, um, but I, I just I screwed up. I didn't get it. And so, um, we ended up getting a new, we ended up getting a new, uh, handle. And, um, we just decided to move everything to the new handle. And so on social media now the church digital, we are now officially, even YouTube, be the church digital. And, you know what, I, I like that because it, there's action. It's a, it's a verb. It's okay, we're, we're not consuming digital. We are being the church in digital. We're doing the Great Commission but digital. It's there's, there's action. There's activity. There's purpose. There's directive. There's mandate. Man, listen, guys, it's, it's up to us on this. Not consuming but being. Did I say that? I'll, I'll let you say that. Uh, oh yes, no, no, I didn't say that. You said that. You, Barbara, said that. Good. I didn't think I said that because that, that was, that's a heavy sledgehammer swinging there. Um, I love it. But that's for us in social. And especially social, my gosh, it's so easy to consume content. It's so easy to get stuck up and in playing the game and in the rigmarole. And, um, but it's, it's very important, uh, for us as leaders to be people of action. The world, the church, they're already judging us. They're already just, this, this hurts. This is the, this is the therapist too. Um, they're already judging us based off of what we're doing. And if you've not experienced that, good for you. You're one in the few at this point. Um, be people of action. You know what's interesting? Over the past several years, uh, it was funny. We were talking about Jade earlier, man. I went to, and Daniel Heron, I don't know if you're still around, Daniel. I can't, uh, I can't see. Is Daniel octopus? Yeah, okay. Um, Daniel, I didn't know you were octopus. Um, Daniel, man, I have fought so many battles on your behalf. You, I don't even think I've told you how many times I've, I've dressed down people who were, you know, being typical Christians badmouthing bad new ideas. Yeah, they can deal with it. I get you. But that's, that's what we should be, right? You know, it's interesting. You know, I started saying, because once I got tired of all these, actually, it was after John MacArthur took his shots at, at us. John MacArthur, um, publicly slammed, um, actually Chesley and I. This is back during the Digital Church Network days. And so, um, I don't, I don't talk about it too much anymore. But it, but it was in that moment where it was like, I, um, they're going to judge us from our mission field. Our battlefield is the mission field. Our battlefield is discipleship. Our battlefield is missional activity. Our battlefield is out there. Uh, you can judge us by our fruit, um, and by our character. That's it. And if MacArthur wants to take shots, he can. It's interesting. I, it was actually, I sent, he, he ripped me. He didn't know it, but he ripped me like the literal day that my virtual reality book came out. So we sent him a free copy. He never said thank you, by the way. I always thought that was kind of rude.

I have too much kingdom. I'm not to do even pay attention to those people. That's funny. I, you know what's funny? I, um, I will finish the story. So when the MacArthur thing hit, I was so angry, to be honest. Chesley took it better than I did. Um, but I, I, I, I received it. I was in the middle of things. I was really tired. And, and I just, I, I didn't have, I didn't have a sounding board to kind of bent on. And, um, I, um, I texted three or four people or DM'd three or four people kind of that were in my circle of influence just fuming about it. And it was funny. My wife's a school teacher. And so I texted her. And this was during the school day. And my wife will never text me back because I, um, because she won't step out of her class because, like, she just as a school teacher, she won't. She doesn't want to be interrupted. And, uh, my wife called me immediately. She stepped out of her class because she didn't want me to do something stupid. And I, I love, I love her for this. And so she calls me. And she, and she says, we talked for like thirty seconds. And, uh, and she says, okay, Jeff, think about it. Um, John MacArthur knows who you are. And, and I just, I kept spewing anger. And she says, no, Jeff, you, you're not hearing me. John MacArthur knows who you are. And I was like, oh, I see what you're saying. So basically, John MacArthur is now the highest ranking old white man I've managed to take off. And, uh, I, I wear that as with a badge of honor, actually. He should wear that with a badge of honor. Uh, yeah, that's exactly. Hey, that's exactly who I'm talking about. Born Again Gamer. Hey, Born Again Gamer, nice to meet you. Uh, yeah, Drama Mathur from Grace from you. Uh, I love John MacArthur. I, I actually, I've got in my library, I've got a bunch of his books. Uh, I've got, um, uh, his study Bible. I used, I used to run a Christian bookstore. John MacArthur is a major part of my life. Um, he's just not a fan of digital church. Let's just, let's just land it that way. I, maybe I'm speaking to ill will here on the stream. There's an exciting thing. Um, well, hey, let me say one thing before I get to the exciting thing. Um, I'm going to share it as a prayer request. I'm gonna, and I haven't actually done this before. I'm actually thinking through right now. I don't know that I've ever done this. I'm going to ask you guys to pray for me. Not like right now in chat. Like, I'm, I mean, that's nice if you want to. But, um, the circle around me keeps getting bigger and bigger as I tell these stories. And, and, um, more and more get brought in. Um, but my, my health in recent months, uh, has, has taken a nose dive. I'm not dying. And no, to pull a, a, a Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's not a tumor. Um, is that how he said it? It's not a tumor, man. I butchered the line. That was a last minute throw in. I didn't think I was going to do this. Um, it's not a tumor. It's not cancer. It's, it's, it's at least they don't think it's cancer. They thought it was cancer for a little bit. And then it went away. Um, but my body is just not, not reacting very well. Um, I, I have talked about the diabetes. Um, it's, I've, I've actually, you know, you never beat the diabetes. But I'm out of the diabetic range. Uh, I've lost one hundred five, one hundred ten pounds probably in the past six months. I've lost as much as sixty. Um, and so I'm a shell of the man that I was kind of before this. Um, but my, my health has been, um, worse, not better. Neuropathy. I have no feeling below beneath my calves. Um, that's actually spreading. Um, I've started losing feeling and senses, um, in my stomach, which is a weird place, in my back, in my knees. Uh, I'm actually getting a lot of, uh, knee pain and back pain as well in other places. Uh, some internal pain, um, in the stomach and abdomen area. Um, they don't think it's diabetic related. But they're trying to figure out what else is wrong with me, which, which is a scary place to be when the doctors are like, we don't know. But take this medicine and see what happens. When I'm already swallowing like twenty pills a day. And so it's kind of messed up right now. Um, and so I am, um, constantly exhausted. I am, um, like, I probably work two, maybe three hours a day at best. I, um, like, after the stream, I'll probably stop and probably have to take like a thirty minute to an hour nap just to recoup. I got to pick my kids up at three, so I can't go too long here beyond two. Um, but it's interesting. Like, for the guy that was a, um, a workaholic, a get it done guy, uh, a producer, a guy that built the church digital what it is, uh, I mean, virtually on his own with volunteer support. Um, it's been really hard in recent months because I just, I haven't been able to do it. You know, I've, I've feel like I've, I've been the Jeff Reed apologist to, hey, I, I got to cancel this meeting. I'm sorry. Um, I'm not going to tell you this, but I'm literally vomiting in a toilet right now. Hey, I'm sorry. Um, I, I cancel this meeting. Uh, I'm in bed on my mobile phone texting you. But I, I don't have the strength even to stand up today. Um, man, it's been, it's been hard on my, my wife. It's been hard on my family. Um, my, my, my, my daughter, um, actually asked me the other day. She's like, well, Daddy, if you get better, and then ask me a question. Like, in her mind, that's like, I'm not going to get better. My, my wife told me the other day. She says, even if they have to chop your legs off, I'll still love you. Uh, what father wants to, what husband wants to hear that? Like, but this, this is, this is the reality of, of, because it's just, it's been so weird. Hadn't been to a doctor in two decades. And all of a sudden, I've got seven on speed dial. And I have, I have to manage prescriptions and shots. And it's just, it's, it's been surreal. Um, and it, and it's funny. You know, there was a season in my life where I thought, this is, this is like two months ago, where it's like, okay, God's in control. I know God's in control. I'm not questioning God. I've seen enough in my life to know that God's real and God's in control of this. Which means God wants me to have, um, neuropathy. God wants me to walk with a cane. God wants me to be in pain. God wants me to feel this. That messed with my head. You want to be like, okay, why is that messing with your head? Well, God, I've done all this for you. And this is how you treat me. And this is, this is my response back. This is what I deserve. But even after all I've done, I deserve worse than this. And it took a good friend to show me that. To be honest, all of this and the limitation of Jeff, you know, it's Paul talks about the thorn in his side, right? The thorn of the flesh. Most people think that he, Paul, was handicapped, uh, at some level. Um, I think that this cane that I walk with and this position that I am in, I think that's God's desire to put me in the place where I need to be. Normally, you've seen me be a very strong leader. Um, a very outward spoken, very public facing leader. And over the past six to nine months, I've learned how to be a secondary leader. You know, following behind people like Andy Mage, people like Andy, people like J. And, um, in this next season of the church digital, you're going to see that continue even more so. Yeah, I'm still going to be around. I'm going to do these treats Tuesday at one p.m. this time every week. I will stream, um, in Discord and Mighty Networks as long as we have Mighty Networks. So I'm going to continue on with that. Um, you know, as long as I'm not like head in a toilet, I'll be streaming. And if my head is in a toilet, you don't want to see me stream. I'm trying to figure out now if I, no, I'm not, I'm not even going to go there. Um, but the church digital is going to be group led. It's going to be team led. Those leaders that I mentioned earlier, um, flat cap Tom, um, Leighton, flat cap Tom, Andy, Barbara, Carero, uh, Jason Morris. Um, these are, are the, these are the people I trust. These are the people I listen to. You know, in my experience, there's two different types of leaders. Uh, there's leaders that surround themselves, thank you, Ian. Distributed leadership is the future. There's two different types of leaders. There's leaders that surround themselves with yes men. And then there's leaders with surround themselves with smart people. Um, and I, um, I wanted this organization to be led by smart people. I wanted to be led by smart people. Uh, because smart people make me better. And, uh, already, I mean, I can think of multiple situations within the past month where the smart people that are around me have changed my mind. Um, to be honest, the move to Discord was one of them. I was not sure on the timing. And, uh, when literally a hundred percent vote of senior leadership said we need to move to Discord, and I was the only person saying, ah, we need to think about it, there's not much to think about, is there? And so, hey, we're in Discord. That's awesome. I just totally screamed and busted somebody's headphones. Distributed leadership is the future. That is a, is a conversation we need to have soon. Hey.

Guys, this has been a lot of fun. Oh, there was going to be a surprise that I was going to share with you on this leadership and everybody else that's on here. Guys, thanks for jumping on here. There's a bunch of people in both platforms and I'm excited to see what God does with all of this moving forward because all of us, we're all just servants for him, regardless of the context. This is not about brand, but it's interesting in that brand. I'm already starting to see God move.

When you look at the Church Digital website, you're going to see on the landing page there's an animation up at the top and it's this square and it's kind of animated and it's doing some different effects on it. Actually, there's a bunch of squares. They all got some different effects happening. And the first version of that was one square. This is maybe three weeks ago, two weeks ago. Like, this conversation is not that long ago. Andy and I took a look at the first animation. I'm not really feeling it. Had that conversation with Barbara Canero and her team. In front of her team, I was like, "Hey, you know, I'm kind of surprised here. You know, normally we're so technological as an organization. We're already in Digital Church. Like, I don't want people to forget that it's about people. And so instead of this animation, you know, do the animation somewhere else. We can bury it. It's, I mean, I like the effect, but I don't, it doesn't really serve our purpose. Why don't we put it down? Why don't we put it down? I don't know, like put as a background or something. And like, you know, give us photos of kids like playing video games or kids on iPhones or, you know, Gen A or Gen Z and, you know, trying to young up the audience because there's a bunch of bald, bearded Buffalo. I don't know why it's stuck in my head. And Barbara shook her head yes. I think quietly in her mind she's thinking, "No, that's a horrible idea." But she says, "Give my team a little while. Let us work on some things."

And Daniel, you are one of the kids playing video games. Shut up, Daniel. Speak for yourself. I have a head full of hair. You're like 22, man. 24? Are you even 25? Conversation for a different day. So 24. So I, um, so we come back around and she shows version two. Well, instead of one square cube, there's now, it's the version you see now. It's like four or five different effects kind of splattered around. And I'm like, "Okay, I mean, I guess I see what's happening here. I see multiplication, which I like. I like the effect. I'm good with it."

And a couple days ago, it was like 3 in the morning. I couldn't sleep. Back pain was horrible. And it was funny. I didn't even have, I don't even think I could see the animation. I couldn't see the website because I didn't have like the dedicated URL for the temp server that I was on. Just I didn't have it easily accessible. But I'm staring at the TV watching, I don't know, probably X-Men 97, episode 3, for like the 47th time, because that show is freaking incredible. Another time. But the idea of the cube kind of popped in my head. And I literally, I went and grabbed my iPad real quick and started sketching squares because in my mind it's like, "Hey, that framework. Hey, man, I love the boosted. I have no idea what the boosted even means in Discord. Somebody have to educate me later. But thank you, thank you, Whitebeard. Thank you, Octopus, for boosting the server."

The square just popped in. And literally, I started talking about, okay, squares are four. There's my framework for church planting: connection, community, discipleship, multiplication. That's four. That's like the four corners of the square. And if we talk about multiplication, multiplication drives us to apprentice. So now we're apprenticing to create new examples of church. And that can be the vertical line that's going back to create that the second group of the cube. And so really, what we're looking at with each cube is this is what a network is within the Church Digital. On how we're challenging all of us to create our own movements, our own networks, not of our own work and not of our own efforts, but something that God can do, that God can use to create disciples in digital spaces via digital tools to reach people that are more comfortable in these environments.

And then I started thinking about, "Oh my gosh, on the website there's these 8-bit characters. 8-bits are squares. That's like totally who we are." And then I started thinking of the Church Digital and how the Church Digital in the new brand is a square. And then I started thinking about, "Wait, the cross itself in the Church Digital is a bunch of squares, just gridded together. Off-grid together, I guess." And it was really interesting to me. And I don't, I don't know if God works in this way or Barbara's really smart or maybe I'm just grasping for straws. And let's maybe say that it's a little bit of all three.

But I am excited about the clarity, the purpose, and the direction and the team that we have moving forward. And I'm excited that all of you took a freaking hour out of your day to jump into Discord at Mighty Networks to listen to this old man rant sitting in a chair into this microphone. So hey, I am going to pray us out of Discord. This will be the first, this is the first live stream in Discord on the Church Digital server. And oh yeah, square is perfect. She did. She's pretty smart. But let me pray us out and then I'm going to figure out how to hang up because I actually have no idea how to hang this thing up.

Heavenly Father, God, thank you for these men, these women, these people. Thank you for this community. Thank you for how much, honestly, God, thank you for how much they mean to me. Thank you for their encouragement during a day at the beginning of a hard week. Thank you for their prayers. Thank you for their laughter. Thank you for the smile that they put on my face today. God, we have an exciting opportunity ahead to disciple people in digital space, to train them on leadership, and to help them plant and start unique expressions of church in digital and virtual space. God, many will not be with us on this journey. That's on them, God. We ask, we beg, we plead for you to be with us on this journey. And we are thankful that you've been with us this far in the process, and we look forward to what you have for all of us very soon. In your name we pray, amen.

Thank you all. Stream, I'll be on next Tuesday, 1 p.m. Eastern in Discord and probably Mighty Networks. Thanks, y'all. Bye.