EP295: Peyton Jones, Stunami, and Planting Churches in the Metaverse

I believe that the goal will ultimately be to get people face to face. It may not, and I don't think it's right to say if we can't get there it's not worth it because right now I'm training in 72 countries. I can't travel very much. I've got a special needs daughter, but thanks to Zoom, I'm catalyzing Ephesus training hubs all over the world right now. I thank God for this technology.

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech for tech itself, 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, 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, hey, it's episode 295, 295 of the Church Digital podcast. Jeff Reed here once again. I'm starting a podcast recording without wearing my hat. Awkwardly, I put on the hat. You know, I had, I was bald. I used to shave. I shaved my head, shaved my face, beard, everything. Just had a really long goatee. I never once was self-conscious about my baldness. And now that, you know, I have hair, um, like I have the beard and so it like goes to the back. If you're on YouTube, you're literally seeing this. But now that I have this, I am so self-conscious about this baldness right here at top of the head. If I'm shaved everything, it's not a problem. But I just a little bit of hair makes me like, oh my gosh, I've got to cover up the baldness. And so that's why I'm wearing my trusty yellow Austin is Weird baseball cap. So hey, trucker cap, welcome to Church Digital podcast episode 295.

We are the unfiltered Church Digital podcast. You know what, I've been saying that a lot, man. I really just, y'all are my people. I enjoy talking. I say stuff off the cuff. I really don't think before I speak, and it's a lot of fun doing podcasts with you all. By the way, this is powered by Riverside. Love what's happening with Riverside. Even today, opened up Riverside and was like, oh my gosh, there's a new feature. We now have the ability. We always had the ability to like livestream to Facebook and YouTube, but it was buried in a system setting and I'd always forget that it was there and it was out of the way. And now it's on the main screen on the studio where you can see you can check off a little dip switch back and forth whether or not you want to stream. Much easier to switch on to Facebook and YouTube. And now there's a way to stream to a Riverside embedded page, and it's even stylized where you can make the page look different. There's different branding techniques and upload a logo. And, um, Riverside, man, I just literally, I'm talking about this. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm literally taking my hat off. Yes, I am taking my hat off on an audio podcast recording for Riverside and the work that they're doing on this platform because literally each and every week it's like, oh my gosh, that's a new thing. Oh my gosh, that's a new thing. Oh, look at this, it's so great. If your church is not doing anything with Riverside, whether it's the shorts, whether it's the streams, whether it's the long-distance remotes, get your creative department, get your digital pastor, get them thinking digitally, give them Riverside, and watch what they do with it. Oh my goodness, so good.

All right, hey, episode 295. We're talking off the cuff here a little bit. We're diving this season, episode season seven. We're diving into the opportunity for your church to experiment, take steps to do something different. The season without a name. This is the third week of season seven, and I've hated the names that I come up with, so it's the unnamed season. Season seven basically, we're promoting a bunch of learning communities that we, the Church Digital, are doing. And this week we're promoting metaverse ministry, what it looks like in virtual reality church, maybe even what does it look like to plant a virtual reality church. And of course, anytime that we, the Church Digital, have a conversation about the metaverse, we're bringing in our friend Tsunami St. McPherson, Lakeland VR Pastor, as well as Stu, uh, planter, virtual reality planter of running a church called Vector Church. And so some really interesting things Stu is working on in virtual reality, as well as his desire to plant a hundred churches in virtual reality in the next ten years, helping churches like yours move into virtual reality. And that's actually the purpose of these learning communities we're doing this summer.

And if we're actually going to talk about church planting, well shoot, let's bring into the conversation Payton Jones, who is the, I don't know, the author of the modern church planting textbook, Plantology, and New Breed training, and so much that he is doing. And so this is an incredible, incredible conversation we did this live in Discord, and it was so good. The room was hopping. There was a question before we even started the podcast that just drove the entire podcast in a completely different direction. We talk about it in the podcast. I'm not going to drop any more secrets, but you're going to love this conversation.

Check out Payton Jones's book, Plantology. Check out Stu's book on virtual reality church planting. Check out my book, Virtual Reality Churches. You've literally got three people that have written three books on virtual reality or planting or planting in virtual reality in this conversation on virtual reality church planting. Like, this is a fun conversation, and it gets deep and heady right off the bat. So check it out. Tsunami, Payton Jones, the Church Ninja, and me, that Digital Church guy, in a conversation on virtual reality church planting.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

I, you know, I had the, you know, I had the Zesty top thing. Maybe not as bad as Whitebeard. Whitebeard's like 124 inches. Literally, you weren't Ster level. Ster, he was out of control. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a throwback right there. You know, and it was really like, um, he never had the width, like the breadth. It was always kind of like spindle-y. You know, when he gets long, um, you know, I'm not calling the man out publicly, but he really, it just, it looked, it didn't look good. Like, he needed it to be kind of thick. He cut it. He repented of it eventually. But, uh, I would love, and I can see with Tsunami, you know, he seems like you and I, Stu, like we could be Viking Raiders, right? I feel that. Yes, I did. I did find out a year ago I'm directly descended from Ragnar Lothbrok. So this is why I can't have nice things.

Yeah, it's definitely. We did that whole thing, you know, where you go back through the records and you find the genealogist and it went all the way back to Ragnar. So we're like, okay, my brother looks at me and goes, see, this is why we can't have nice things.

Well, I didn't realize until about five minutes ago that we're doing this podcast with three bald guys with beards and goatees. Like, I, you know, I try not to like type myself into a corner with different people, and you know, like getting some variety here on the Church Digital podcast, and I've got mirror image times three here as we're talking, hopefully about virtual reality and church planting and metaverse and all sorts of interesting stuff. And so, um, hey, you know, Payton, Stu, thanks for jumping on the show here. Neither of you are strangers here to the podcast. Um, Stu, we had on, uh, I don't know, maybe six months ago, eight months ago, sometime last summer, and then Payton, it's been a minute, but we had you on talking Plantology when it first came out a while back. So both of you, thanks for jumping on the show. Um, we are doing this live on Discord, and so we've got Megan, JP, Whitebeard, Allan Frost, and Melanie is in the audience now, and we'll see some others kind of come in and out towards this. But, um, y'all, if you have questions or thoughts, throw it in the chat. Would love to see that and engage.

How does APEST model work in VR, my man? Uh, is Whitebeard going at it right off? Um, and we love it. We've had that conversation, I feel like, in other contexts. Uh, I know we've talked about APEST and gaming quite a bit. Um, and so that'll be interesting in VR.

Why was I not invited to that one? APEST gaming, let's go.

Yeah, we did that with, um, um, Mark, uh, Mark Lutes. Yeah, so we did a full season, uh, last year, I think the beginning of last year, January, February, March, on Church video gaming, Church talking gaming, Church pastors, uh, Twitch guys, digital missionaries, people that are actually doing church in the game itself, like in Final Fantasy and Rust and Black Desert. Like, it was a pretty deep conversation centered around gaming. And, um, and really, if you look at all the different types of digital churches, and there's like five or six different examples and types, um, gaming is the fastest growing. And so like the Twitch streamers, they're multiplying quickly. Um, the churches that are operating in that space, they're, you know, coming together and uniting and multiplying. And so, um, and Mark and, and, uh, Bubba and the Love Thy Nerd crowd and, and like the crowd that's really working in that gaming space is doing an excellent job of, um, of reaching a different type of person. And so really, you know, Payton knows this, Payton, but like the reason we do virtual reality church and gaming church and social media church and all these churches without buildings is because what we find is that we can reach people that the buildings aren't reaching. You know, we hear stories of like, uh, a neopagan that finds Christ in virtual reality or a person that hasn't been to a church building in ten years finds Jesus through a gaming church. And what's interesting is these people that are finding Jesus in these unique methods, they don't realize there's anything unique about the digital church or the virtual church. It's just church to them, just like any normal expression. And so, um, missionally, like the implications of this thing are huge. And so that's really, I think, some of what I want to get into. Hey, Ian, that's some of what I want to get into. Hey, Victor, as well, in this conversation. Um, and so, you know, I'm going to ask a lot of questions of both of you guys, and, uh, and Stu, you know, I'm sure has some questions. And Payton, you know, hopefully we don't catch you too off guard with some of the metaverse VR stuff. But, uh, would love to get your take and opinion on some of the stuff moving forward.

Yeah, when I don't know something, if you guys don't mind me just saying, hey, I don't even know what that is. That sounds amazing, but, um, yeah, tell me more about that. I may need you to educate me on some of it.

Okay, so I have said, and you can educate us on this right now. All right, I'm going to throw you a softball. Open it up because I was on a stream telling people about how, you know, we were having this conversation with you, and I was excited about it, and I said, dude's got a freaking Snake Eyes GI Joe tattoo on his arm. Okay, like, I just, I want this to be publicly seen. Um, only Mountain right here with Smog to educate me with this because I know it's Snake Eyes, but I'm not deep enough in the GI Joe lore to actually know what it is. Like, what is it? Why did Snake Eyes have that on his arm as well?

Yeah, so that's actually ninja clan. That's the ninja clan tattoo. So, uh, he and his brother...

Storm Shadow who's part of Cobra, he has it, the ninja clan. I'm a serial church planter and I used to always make the joke that I was a ninja. You know, I don't need any credit, I don't need any glory. I just want to get in and out quickly, strike hard and disappear back into the shadows. And somebody just started calling me the church planning ninja. I think it might have been Allen Hirs, and it just kind of stuck. And then I started putting it on my stuff. Allan still calls me Ninja, the Ninja, whenever I talk to him.

So yeah, I mean, so I got Ninja Clan more just partially because of that, partially because I mean, there's nothing cooler than ninjas. I would say pirates, but oh, pirates versus ninjas? I don't think so. Like, I would take ninjas over pirates. You could take anything you want. I still choose pirates over ninjas. All right, I'm going to throw this in chat right now. Pirates over ninjas. Vikings? No, I'm ignoring that one. Yeah, you need a—when I joined this yesterday, oh, Vikings, there we go. All right, says pirates all the way. Megan, I'm disappointed in you. I was expecting Megan was going to make the decision in my mind, and pirates. Johnny Depp over who's a good ninja? Johnny Depp as a ninja? Who is there a—I mean, Johnny Depp is the epitome of pirates. I mean, pirates, do you know? Do you know there was a special years ago where they said we're going to get in touch, there's still ninjas out there today? And they said, look, a ninja is going to be able to infiltrate this place. And the guy's like, no way, no way. They had all this security, all this stuff. And then ninja who came in, they're like, there's no way a ninja gets in here. And it was a repair guy. He's like, hey, you know, he did something to jam their signal. And then he said, someone called me and said you guys are having an issue. It was him. It was a repair guy. He got in there and took them all out. And you know, the point of a ninja is just to be invisible. So we will never be able to name a famous ninja. It's interesting. Okay, so there is no—which I guess, don't, to me, adds the lure of the ninja. But that's okay. We can. If you know who they are, they failed. If you know who they are, they failed. They failed at their job. They had one job, and that was to stay invisible. And you know, so you don't get to know who the famous ninja is. Chris Farley, by the way. Farley? Yes, Farley. Is it? Just real quick, um, Whitebeard throws out the comment, Peyton. I was the guy who knew what movie you were talking about at Exponential. Five Fingers of Death. I don't know what that's referencing. Yes, okay, okay. All right, well done. All right, I remember you, sir. Thank you. That you changed my life with that. Yeah, once you meet Whitebeard, like, he, everyone, he changes everybody's life, dude. Like, is crazy. So all right, hey, so let's get into this. Um, enough of ninjas and pirates and Vikings. Um, let's talk about planting and other crazy ideas. So, you know, hey, just to kick us off here a little bit, Peyton, you wrote the book Plantology. Um, you know, I've heard it called the modern textbook of church planting. And you know, I know friends with Stadia, friends with New Thing. Like, I've seen it get pushed and promoted and celebrated in many circles. So man, what was maybe some of your mindset as you were writing the book Plantology? And maybe you could give a little description behind it?

Well, the first thing was when Zondervan approached me, I had written a previous book called Reaching the Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art. And you know, when they said, hey, we want you to write a church planting book that will go alongside Keller's book. Um, that's why it's the same size, yada yada. It is nowhere near worthy to sit alongside Center Church, but that was their idea. We need a nuts and bolts book on church planting. And I said no, I'm not. No. And they're like, why? You're like, you run the P—at that time I'd quit the podcast. And I said, you know, I don't know if I believe in church planting in America anymore. Um, and they said, why? And I said, well, let me tell you two things. If I write a book on church planting, it's going to piss everyone off right away. And number two, it's going to probably not sell very well. Would end up selling like, becoming a number one bestseller like almost overnight, like in pre-launch. Zondervan's like, this is already outsold all of our church planting books. So it somehow resonated with people. But the first thing it does is it tells you most of what you've heard of as church planting is church starting, right? Get a butt ton of cash, attain critical mass, run out of building, do a bunch of marketing. That's church starting. And the apostles didn't know how to do that. Um, but we also don't know how to do what the apostles did. So what if we could go back and relearn timeless principles? Things that could be applied anywhere, any time, with anyone, which hello, digital church, you know, digital church planting, there we go. If we can find a universal principle, it doesn't matter. You know, I called the Dr. Seuss philosophy of church planting: on a train, in the rain, in a box with a fox, right? I can plant them, Sam I Am, because these timeless principles are laid down in the New Testament. They're globally out in the world working today. And in periods of church history where you see kingdom advancement, these same principles are found. Like in the Wesleyan, the Moravians, you know, the Korean church, the Cane Street Revival, you can go and find these same principles at work. And so that was the mindset. But I figured if I'm going to do one thing, I'm either going to change the conversation or I'm going to kill my writing career. Well, either way, yeah, it's a win, right? You know, because either this thing's going to blow up. Was it saying go big or go home, right? And so yeah, you went radical, you wrote from the heart, and responded in a big way. You know, I loved it. I read it a couple years ago when we did the podcast first time around, and enjoyed it thoroughly. And you know, even seeing how it was impacting Tsunami with him just in recent weeks as he was diving into it. You know, Stu, as you were reading it, I know like a lot of people know Stewart's passion is to, a, he's a pastor at Vector Church, which is a virtual reality church plant. He also works with a physical church that's doing virtual reality, but he's planting one from scratch as well. And his heart's to see a hundred churches in virtual reality in the next ten years and wants to actively help churches get into this. And we'll talk about more about that here in a little bit. But you know, Stu, as you're reading the book and getting into some of this, like, what are you seeing in context of virtual reality planting? Like, how would some of these ideas that Peyton's talking about, how would it apply over into the virtual space?

I think what really interests me and intrigues me about what Peyton is writing, and so I'm coming into Plantology after reading Reaching the Unreached, right? So I'm reading those two back to back on each other right now. And so what was getting me in both books so far is just that concept of church starting versus church planting. I think one of the stories that really stood out to me that you wrote in the first one, Reaching the Unreached, was just the idea of you doing a book club in Starbucks, and the next thing you know, you've got this church that is all of a sudden going, right? Yeah. And so within virtual reality, the thing that has stood out to me is the majority of people in virtual reality are either hostile to the name of Jesus or they've never heard the name of Jesus before. And so you're bringing somebody in who's got an apostolic evangelistic bend to their nature, right? And just saying, here's a space where I can make Jesus famous to the best of my ability, and I'm going to win kingdom territory here. And for me, the beauty of it is it is this small gathering of people that maybe for the first time ever they're hearing the truth of the good news of Jesus, or they're hearing the name of Jesus for the first time. And because it's internet-based, globally, all of a sudden here's this light and these seeds of hope that are being presented to people maybe for the first time. They're then going back into their own physical context. Yes, that has the potential to change the world in that essence. So that to me, for what is happening in virtual reality and what I see for the church in virtual reality, the capital C global church, is just that concept of like, do we can start churches left and right, and I'm all for that, but the concept of actually reaching the lost and the hard-to-reach places? Yes, man. VR and digital spaces, they provide probably the fastest highway, avenue, in order to do that. Um, in fact, I've told people it's like you have Jesus who says to this small band of believers, go into the world and make disciples, right? But now in our digital age, it's here's the world funneling themselves down to small bands of believers that then goes back out into the world. It's this really cool system that when I look at it, I think of it through church history and historical concepts, right? Of just this idea of here comes the Greeks bringing in a common language, here comes the Romans bringing in a highway system in order for everybody to hear and know the good news as quickly as possible. And the internet's doing the same thing, especially with VR. So yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. I, you know, I think, and it took me, I'll be honest, like it took me a minute to get digital church at first. I'm like, no, because the missional movement so emphasized the incarnational nature of ministry that I had this mental block. And then I was having a conversation with Chesley Lundy, and he just mentioned to me, um, hey, you're apostolic. This should click for you, Peyton. You couldn't use, like, you start communities, right? Like, that's the apostolic thing. You have the ability to start communities. If there's an iron curtain between church and unchurch, um, the apostolic lives on that unchurch. You'll often hear an apostolic minister say, I have more in common and have better conversations with people who don't even believe in God than I do at a pastor's conference. That's how you've just told me you're apostolic without telling me apostolic, because you're wired for out there. So to me, this VR, the digital space, this is the apostolic frontier of today. Paul would be here first. The first thing Paul did is he went to where the people are at. That's like the first thing we got to know about apostolic ministry. You go to the marketplace, you go where the people are at. You don't sit in an upper room forever. You know, you don't just meet house to house. You get out in the temple courts. Temple courts now is digital. So you've got to get out there. So sorry, I know I'm going to keep my answer short because I know we got a lot of questions. Um, but that to me was a breakthrough for me. And to go a little bit into Whitebeard's question, the biggest mistake our movements always make is that whenever we get a hold of something, we make it all that. So for example, Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel, if those of you that saw the Jesus Revolution, I grew up in Calvary, not grew up, but when I got saved, fifteen years old, um, for a number of years became a pastor there, on and on. You have in that movie what was brilliantly portrayed was you had an apostolic, Lonnie Frisby, a teacher, Chuck Smith, and an evangelist, Greg Laurie. Three of them together, and you see this explosive growth.

That comes out, that's what God wired the early church for. That's why they saw what they saw. Um, but eventually, oh, and the prophetic started to rise up, but that quickly got squelched. So then that became Vineyard. So all meant to be together. Think of the power of these five dynamics all in one space. But it became a teacher movement. Um, Vineyard, and sorry, I'm going to step on all ten toes or at least five of your toes on one foot because nobody—all movements have usually gravitated towards one aspect of the APEST.

So for example, the prophetic, uh, leaders are over in Pentecostal charismatic, and I love Pentecostal charismatics, right? For all the power and presence of God they bring. But when you leave people alone on their own too long, they start to distort what Jesus looks like. Teachers—if you leave a teacher alone too long, if you leave an EV—I would say Mark Driscoll was an evangelist, and when he's, if he's not left alone too long, it's fine. He brings something fresh and dynamic, and then if you leave alone, it begins to distort. Because the evangel—here's the rub: the five need each other for balance. And in church plantology, I talk about that. If you put the apostolic and prophetic together, you got a power team. Put the shepherd and teacher together, you got a power team. The middle is the evangelist. We won't stick up the middle finger. He brings the message of offense, the gospel. But I do this "Five Fingers of Death" thank you, Whitebeard—uh, illustration where I talk about, you all fingers, you would never fight someone with your finger unless you're in that movie "Five Fingers of Death." He had a kung fu finger. But when you bring all five fingers together, you make a weapon that has kingdom impact, packs a punch.

So when you've got the apostle, the apostle brings them all together for planting. So this is my point, getting to the punchline now: the biggest mistake we're going to make—just like missional community was, I would say, a shepherd movement. Let's do life on life, let's get together, let's have dinner. Let's—even though it seemed apostolic, it actually ran into the rut of it became a shepherding movement, and everybody got stuck. And they just threw the best home studies the world has ever seen, but it got stuck because the APES—for the kingdom of God to advance, it we have to work together. We get stuck when we don't work together.

So what will happen in the digital space, if we don't address what Whitebeard brought up—how does the APEST work?—it's going to be like, I would call Mark Driscoll evangelist, Ron Wilde, right? Like, "In my defense, I was left unattended." John MacArthur, teacher. Um, left to himself too long, right? You get stale and stagnant. And you know, so not—it all starts to distort. We know Jesus doesn't look like that. Sorry, I'm going to offend people on your call, but the reality is you bring them all together, there's this freshness. That's what the early church had. The APEST, read Ephesians 4:12, it's all in there, right? With the golden age of the church, it's all represented. Um, but our danger in this apostolic frontier will be to leave it to the apostles only, and then it will start to lose its bearing. But if we can bring the other four into this movement, it will become something very beautiful and very needed. And it may actually—this would be my challenge to people in your space: I believe the greatest hope for seeing all five work together is in your camp. It is the digital space camp. I actually think this may be the one place people can truly find it if it's stewarded well.

Um, by the way, I wish that to John MacArthur, not because you're offending me or probably anybody else on this call. Um, John MacArthur is no friend of the church digital. Has actually called us out publicly. Um, actually it was at Desiring God. He mentioned Desiring God by name. Um, about, um, in a blog about the idea of—he was so offended by the virtual church. Uh, when he said "virtual," he meant digital, but it's, you know, some stale language. I think stale is a good word there. So, and it's honestly, it's interesting looking on this call. Um, you know, Whitebeard does street ministry in, um, uh, the art district in Tampa, New York City. Justin Nava is a digital micro church. Um, uh, Ian is a very small church up in the Pacific Northwest. Uh, Melanie and Sumi Bates are a, uh, a digital micro church that meets on Zoom. Megan's at probably a borderline megachurch that's doing digital incredibly. Victor's in Africa. And so like, you've got a very eclectic mix bag of people literally on this call that are just listening in. And, um, but what's really interesting to me is when you talk about like starting church and you're talking about the APEST is so necessary and going to where the people are and the digital marketplace and all of this, um, yet the idea of a micro church still gets heat. Maybe a little more accepted, but the average church, you know, they're actually viewing that as like the, uh, the disenfranchised real churches. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like the people like don't want to do real church or the digital. It's like you guys are just lazy people sitting at home, virtual reality, you know? Oh, there's only twenty-two million people using virtual reality actively every month. Who cares about them? Go to a building. Um, and so like, it's interesting to me how there's so much animosity towards more of the fringes, whereas I don't know, I see God moving in the fringes. Like biblically, he is not still. He's constantly moving. And so, um, I don't know, like what's your take on maybe some of the—I'm using the M word intentionally—the staleness that we see with starting churches or legacy churches compared to experimenting and doing something for the kingdom?

Couple of things. Um, number one, you mentioned God being on the fringe, um, and he is. The kingdom of God always outpaces the church. And I mentioned this in that chapter in plantology on culture because if you look like Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that letter, um, letter from a Birmingham Jail, and in that he's asking the white church leaders in Birmingham, Alabama, "Where are you? I'm in jail. Like, I need you in this fight with me." And he very succinctly, um, points out that the kingdom of God is always ahead of the established church. So God is out there moving beyond the boundaries of where the church is. Churches are always catching up to the kingdom. If your theology tells you the kingdom and the church are the same, you haven't been paying attention. Yes, the kingdom of God is the church, but the kingdom—if you look at Jesus, the kingdom is wherever the king is. God beat us to the digital space. He was the first person there, right? Satan might have been the second one there, but God was the first, right? God was the first one there. He always goes ahead of us.

And the more frontline ministry you do—kind of like Whitebeard—like, I'm sure he's got a million stories of where God was already moving in this person's life. Um, I'll never forget showing up at a house, uh, where, um, there was one of my neighbors, and I felt the presence of God in her living room. Now she was drunk, and her husband was stoned the first time, uh, I ever met him because we invited him to a barbecue, and they both—and they got in this huge fight and stormed off. And you know, we could hear him yelling as they walked down the road to their house. And we thought, "Oh, well, you, that was awkward. We'll never see them again." And then we called into their house, and I was hit by this wall of God. And as a missionary to this is Wales, UK, where I was for twelve years, I remember just being scandalized. Like, "I'm the missionary. I bring this, you know, like what's wrong with this picture?" And God was saying, "You're always late to the party. Have you not figured that out yet? I've been working in these people's lives way, like way before you. Uh, come on, big britches, you know? Like, you're a little too big for yourself right now. You don't bring this. I bring this, and you show up afterwards. I go before you. I come along behind you." And those are just lessons that you got to learn early on in ministry. And that's definitely been the case here.

But, um, going back to the idea of, um, the APEST, it's really interesting because these ministries—what happened for a number of years was the shepherd and teacher, and I would say particularly the teacher, was in vogue. And the evangelist still—nobody could work with it. Like, no church hires an evangelist, right? I'm sure Whitebeard—they might say, you know, if you have a church supporting your—Whitebeard, forgive me for this—but, um, probably what they do is they, oh yeah, go do, do that, go do that out there, right? Um, evangelists will come in, they will wreck everything in a good way, but they're going to wreck it. So just get ready, right? Like, I used to have a guy. He'd lead people on the streets to Christ every day, and every other pastor would be like, "Man, I give my left arm to have that guy." But how do you pastor him? Because every week he'd be out in the parking lot. "Jonesy, you reached the lost, or I will, right?" Like, he was taking no prisoners. He wasn't holding back, right? They're a live wire. And most pastors like, we just, you know, was kind of like Radiohead: "No alarms and no surprises, please. We want things nice and calm here. That's what we do."

But here's one thing to know: in the same way that the teacher and shepherd were reigning supreme for years and years and years in the church, and there was no place for the APES, um, it's starting to swing—at least in the missional movement and, you know, some of the spaces that you're in and I'm in—the shepherd and teacher are not in vogue anymore. And so we have to be aware of that because that's going to come back and bite us if we allow what's trendy or popular to rule and reign. Now, thank God in that APES division, there's a ratio of three to two. Your radicals are your apostles, prophets, evangelists. Your conservatives are your shepherds and teachers. The shepherds and teachers have been running the show for the last hundred years. But now if we start letting the APES run, that will lead to a lot of kingdom advancement. But in the book of Acts, after chronicling the activity of the APES, Acts is broken up by quality metrics—and this actually quantitative metrics—but they're put in shepherd and teacher terms. And the word of God spread, and the number of disciples grew. So there's your shepherd and teacher. They're not really mentioned very much at all during the whole thing. But when Luke wants to say, "Right, there was success," the Marines did their thing, the Army rolled in and held the fort down. So we need both.

So what's going to happen with digital space is if we don't, um, if we think, "Oh, teacher and shepherds, that's not very sexy anymore," then, uh, and we ignore them and don't let them come to the four, then our movement will not be sustainable. It will be flash in the pan, but it will not have that sustainability metric. So I wrote up maybe fifteen questions we were going to get into. I don't think I've touched one question on this, and no, no, I may not even go there because I mean, when I sat down, I was not thinking we'd cover APES, and this is just fascinating.

And so, um, now you said the word, and I want to hit both of you on this because both of you get your fingernails hopefully dirty on this or have lived in this world. You said the word "incarnate." You were uncomfortable, Peyton. You were uncomfortable with this because of, um, you know, the micro church. I hear it all the time, you know, incarnate being with someone is just so important. And Jeff, you just don't get that that digital. Um, to be honest, like the church digital, we really operate and we try to operate like in a micro church strategy, uh, but just in digital and virtual space. Like, that's really how we try to encourage our ministry to grow. And a lot of our, our micro church brothers and sisters, to be honest, some of them are

Not friends like they don't see what we're doing and they've got issues with that idea. And so Payton, you know, you saw the light. You had a conversation with Chesley. Stu, you used to mock virtual reality churches. You're like the Saul in this conversation leading to the conversion one day of Paul.

Like I would love to hear from both of you how you got over, like what was it internally that you had to reconcile to see a little bit of the story, a little bit of the theology, like whatever it is, like what helped you see the light so to speak or change your mind?

For me, obviously it was COVID. I mean, prior to COVID, an article comes out on VR church and I thought that was the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in my life. I was probably the loudest voice in the room. Got over here to Lakeland during the height of COVID and quickly heard that they're wanting to explore this idea of virtual reality church. And I was like, cool, you guys hired me to be a small group pastor, so I don't have to worry about it. I was like, I'm more than willing to focus on building small digital small groups because of COVID. I saw the need for it. Um, so I was ready to go first into that, but still the VR idea was still like way out of my league and something I still struggled with. But I got the invite into it, right? So the idea was let's start a church in virtual reality, let's bring Lakeland into it, and if we get nothing more than a small group out of it after a six-month trial, well, we'll call that good. And you know, three years later, here I still am as full-time VR campus pastor.

And really for me, what it was is just I was seeing people to Payton's point. This is like this is hardcore apes coming out, right? For sure. But I was seeing people be introduced to Jesus and I was seeing connection on a whole different level than what I see in person. And what I mean by that is I saw people getting really authentic and transparent right from the beginning because nobody's trying to save face. So here we are as this church in virtual reality and people think that it's a joke, so they're showing up or they're coming in to just completely trash the environment and the experience. But what they're coming in with is all these questions and biases and baggage. And they're going, are you actually a church? Are you actually a pastor in this space? I'm like, yeah. And they're like, here it is. Here's all the stuff that I'm carrying right now. Now fix it. And I'm sitting there going, I can't. I know who can. So if you're willing to go on this journey with me to understand who Jesus is, you know, I can almost guarantee that he'll make himself known to you. He's not an unknown God.

Um, and so for me, that's where it really started to unravel. Like I liken it to the confessional box for Catholics, right? It's like, here I come, here's all my baggage. I can't see you, you can't see me. The avatars act as that confessional screen in between, um, where people are just way more authentic and transparent with their struggles and their questions than we get in real life.

What is fascinating to me though, and a lot of pushback that I still get from people is, you know, it's not real. You know, people can show up, they can not be involved, they can just stand to the side, they can blip in for a second and blip out. And I always go back to the idea. It's like, how many first-time visitors or second or third or year-long visitors do you have showing up your physical church that they are coming in late, sitting in the back, and the first ones to leave because they're not wanting to be known or seen that they're there? It's just the same. We're just finding new areas to live that out.

But I mean, we, like many of us, get called into ministry because God has given us a heart for people and we want those people to be introduced to Jesus and we want to teach Jesus in the process. Like we want to preach the gospel. And sometimes we can do it in physical spaces where it's the same people showing up week after week and they're hearing the same message week after week. But in the VR space, I was like, dude, you're putting in the middle of people who they've never heard this before. It's like this is fun. Like this is smack dab in the middle of like who Jesus and the early apostles and disciples were reaching. Like this is completely different and a lot of fun. So the question for me became, how do we become the street corner church in the VR spaces? And that's what we ended up chasing after.

Beautiful. I want to get to the missional implications here with the next question, but Payton, um, incarnate like, how did you talk to me about some of your mindset of how you pivoted and maybe help us as we're trying to figure out how to converse with our church leaders and things like that? Uh, how can we help them maybe understand a different viewpoint?

Yeah, so this is going to be an incomplete analogy, but I see it a little bit like Wesley and Whitfield when the church was stuck and the Anglican Church wasn't bad in its time, but it was stuck. Um, I think we have to look back and the Anglican Church had a lot of strengths at that time. A lot of times we can read the narrative that the Anglican Church sucked, therefore, um, but Wesley died an Anglican and he wasn't trying to replace the Sunday service. He was trying to reach more people. So what he did is he went out to the highways and byways and he preached in the marketplace. That's our digital space, our catchall. Then he created the bands, which did not replace a Sunday gathering, but it fostered life change and discipleship groups like what people would call micro church now was band. Um, and it's the reason things exploded.

So we go back to the church plantology principle. Did these things work in the early church? I can point to what I just described in the book of Acts easily in multiple places. Then I can go to globally where does this still happen? And then I can go to church history, which I let out with. So there are timeless principles here. The problem that people are really getting hung up on is the technology.

And you know, one of the things, there's a couple things I'll say about technology and mission. Number one, uh, the golden age of Israel was when David came back from the Philistines. The reason the Philistines dominated the Jews was because the Philistines were an Iron Age people. The Jews were a Bronze Age people. David brought back Iron Age technology right from having been a mercenary in their armies. When he brings that back to Israel, they become the golden age. Now the question is, was it holy due to iron or was it due to the Lord or was it due to both? I would argue it was probably both, that the Lord moved through that technology and the Israelites, whooped up with the spirit of the Lord. David was a man of battle. He clearly knew you came down, Lord, where we get Ephesians 4:11 from, uh, Psalm 68. You came down onto the battlefield and you ascended back up into heaven, you know, giving gifts and leading captives. And like David felt God came down and fought. So that was supernatural, but he also had iron in his fist.

So then when we go to the modern mission movement, um, the modern mission movement happened because of William Carey, yes, um, but it really hit full steam, no pun intended, with the advent of the steam engine because now you could get all over the world quicker. So now we had this explosion of the modern mission movement um with the advent of the steam engine. Now we're entering into a new time. It's not in the Gutenberg Press, but it's literally a new part of technology. A few years from now we're going to be doing this in virtual. People don't realize it yet, but virtual everything is going towards virtual. There seems to have been some kind of effort to tamp that down, maybe that's an investor, employee, who knows what that is. I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat, but it is in a big way going to sneak up on all of us just like the iPhone. Just like that revolution happened, we all wish we'd been in on the ground floor. This is what's going to happen right now. People are pretending like it was just flash and pan. We tried it, didn't work. It is going there.

And as we get ready for that to happen, um, I guess the question that you asked to go back to that, it's my Wesleyan roots. Um, because I'm a Free Methodist these days, so to me I keep looking at John Wesley going, oh my gosh, he figured this stuff out hundreds of years ago. And that's what we're looking at is that wide gathering catchment space, the bands that brings them together for meaningful conversations and discipleship, and then gathering. So if you look at plantology as opposed to church starting, the three-step process of the apostles was sow the seeds of the gospel. That's that wide catchment space. Water through discipleship. That's your bands. That's those little communities. St's talking about. And then the last part, which is the incarnational part, that's your third stop. I'm a hybrid. I believe that the goal will ultimately be to get people face to face. It may not, and I don't think it's right to say if we can't get there, it's not worth it because right now I'm training in seventy-two countries. I can't travel very much. I've got a special needs daughter, but thanks to Zoom, I'm catalyzing Ephesus training hubs all over the world right now. I thank God for this technology. Incredible.

Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up. Even segue to the next question. Seventy-two countries is incredible. I didn't realize that with you, Payton. But we've got in Chuku um on the call now. He came in. He's in Nigeria. He actually works with The Navigators in Nigeria.

Oh, I love The Navigators.

Oh yeah, it's great. Or and so he's like asking questions about digital evangelism and how to really be effective utilizing digital to reach that person that is cold to Christ. And St, like you mentioned that a lot, and you're, and you're, you know, Payton, you're talking about Wesley and you know, there's so much potential on digital and meta as we're looking at what like role of in the future of evangelism, future of outreach, and what are these things going to look like? Would love maybe just to hear from both of you like what are some wins? What are some opportunities? What are some steps maybe that we can be taking now as we're looking at um what the future and maybe reaching people utilizing this metaverse and virtual reality technology?

St, maybe you want to share a little bit of some of the stuff you've been doing?

Yeah, I mean, it's still all so new, right? Like here I am sitting in the seat for three years and I feel like every single week I'm having to make subtle adjustments or big adjustments in order to really speak a language or a love language to the people that I'm coming across. You know, I think the common misconception and what a lot of people will ask for, like if you're a church leader, like well, how do I do what we're doing physically into the VR digital space? And most times I argue like you can, I don't know that I would. You know, when I started Vector ear this year, I walked into it with this mentality of like, okay, we're going to do one worship song, you know, that we brought in from YouTube, and then I was going to teach a twenty, thirty-minute message and then close out. So pretty much what you would experience at your local church. Um, and I think I did it for maybe two, three weeks. I was like, dude, this just is not cutting it. Like people have questions. They would much rather get in conversation. Which like when the service was done, I would leave the event open just to fellowship and hang out with people, and people were asking questions. And that's probably like the most fruitful, beneficial time of this VR service I was putting on. So about a month into it, I just told everybody like, we're scrapping what this originally was.

Looked like and we're going a completely different direction. I told was like, "I want to keep the worship aspect of it. I think it's a great way to set the table, but you guys have questions, so you bring me your questions. I will research and then I'm going to come back with questions and we'll chase after it together. And then I'll throw the cherry on top of here's the scriptural point of view on what it is that we're chasing after."

So what I'm like, what I'm experiencing is like there is such a huge—like people acknowledge that there's a void in their life and people acknowledge that the world just doesn't seem like it's very much in control right now. And so they want to know: why is the world the way it is? Why is there so much disaster? Why can I see church in virtual reality and expect them to tell me that there's something good in a not-so-good world? And I'm sitting there going, "Okay, like, let's dive into these hard topics that you might not experience on a Sunday in your local church context because they're chasing after their own series so it's felt-based needs." And then on top of that, the people who are coming in with me, like they're starting to hear these questions—like the hard questions—and they're learning firsthand how to address those questions. So then they're going back to their own friends and their own neighbors and their own family members in carnate and answering those questions and then leading them to Jesus at the same time. So we're—I'm seeing like this evangelistic muscle that's all of a sudden being flexed and strengthened that hasn't been there for quite some time, you know? To Payton's point, a shepherd-teacher movement. Um, and I think that's what people have been hungry for. I think you've got people outside of the church that have been hungry for the church to be the church then. And I think you got people inside the church that have been hungry for the church to be the church and be kingdom advancers. So yeah, I do. I think that there's just tons of different opportunity. It just really boils down to what do you want to do as a church? What do you want to do as a person? And more importantly, like, what is God calling you to do in that space? And why wouldn't you just do it? It's so easily accessible to you to just get going. It's beautiful.

Payton, as we pivot to you, I want to add an add-on here because I know your time is rare. We may continue the conversation on our side a little bit here once you leave, but as you're talking about, you know, opportunities for evangelism in virtual metaspace, you know, you're talking about the fourth industrial revolution, which is so appropriate. Um, maybe some advice to somebody that's wanting to plant a church in virtual reality. Um, what would be some takeaways or advice that you would give to someone with that? So let you take it from there.

Yeah, um, you know, I was going to say one of the kind of cool things—I'll answer the first part first and then the second part. Um, you know, the digital thing for us, the opportunity that it's given us, um, is let's put it this way: we started training people. I used to have to be physically on the ground and train people physically. And so the way our churches that we planted would multiply, we discovered micro church because you're always going to discover—much like what Stu said, I discovered all this interactive stuff. We never sat in rows because the first church that I planted, um, accidentally I might add, was in a Starbucks around discussion with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. Thirty Europeans turned up first week, forty second week, fifty third week, and they just wanted to read the real gospels after the first couple weeks. And so that became a church. And I'm like, "Oh, okay." So, um, you know, medium has always been an issue, right? The reason I was talking that technology—C.S. Lewis took to the radio. I mean, that was him, you know, World War II, using the technology available to him. We got Mere Christianity out of that because that was a radio broadcast to start. Um, because the church medium was not what he needed. Um, Tim Keller, right, doing the New York Times, right? And that would have been digital, right? We're not talking people getting literal newspapers. They're getting emails into their inbox. Tim Keller harnesses that. So I think for us, you know, we're training—we've been training over the last few years just, um, Church Plantology came out of that. But I've been training on the ground and been so limited. And we're getting ready to unleash all of our training for free to everybody because we've been doing this for the global world and we try to keep the light switched on. But we're like, you know, we just—this is a faith thing. Let's just flick a switch. It's for what people can afford. If they want to give, pay it forward to the next person. But we're not going to charge. So we tried the last six months just charging. We made some money. It was great. But we just don't feel right about it. And where we're headed, we need to reach the next generation. Like, the next generation is my big thing. Like, when we're talking about opportunities, so this is the reason—if we—I was in a think tank recently for denominations and they did a bunch of posted notes. Everybody, they broke us up into groups and all these different groups put on the walls, you know, "What are the top twenty things that you think we need to do to get the church unstuck?" So here's all these denominational leaders and someone in one of the groups had written "Youth." And my wife and I were there together and they told us, "You can circle on all these posts. It's probably, you know, one hundred twenty, one hundred forty different things represented here. Circle the top three you think we ought to focus on." And my wife circled "youth" three times and she said, "Because if we don't focus on that, nothing else we do matters."

Yeah, so the young people are here. Not—I'm not a young person. I'm never going to be cool on TikTok. But if I can be a Paul to their Timothy, you know, if I can be a Yoda to Obi-Wans that are training Lukes, I've done something, you know? I've really done something. So I think, you know, like, I'm the reason I have to jump is I'm getting ready to hop on to a webinar with Ralph Moore, who's recently come on with us and he's brought all of his training to us for free. And so all of our training is going free. Here's a guy that through discipleship, twenty-seven hundred churches came out of it, just through discipling people. He had it all. He had the ring of power. He had the big stuff. And he just gave it away and said, "You know what? I just want to make disciples." And I think if I were to—my next book will be called Dispy. And the way that we took apart the Book of Acts to explore church planting, we're taking apart the gospel to look at disciplemaking. And I am just blown away by the intentionality of Jesus. There is a pattern there. There are things he did that we've—nobody's talking about. And I just cannot wait to unpack that. That's actually my biggest motivation for just flicking that switch and saying, "Literally, I want every youth group to be taking this training." I want to release—there are four things Jesus trained the twelve to do in those three years to become disciples: make disciples, gather and scatter disciples. By the way, gathering and scattering, that's micro church. So, anyways, um, guys, thanks so much for having me. Um, really appreciate it. And thanks for asking about the book. Uh, hopefully those of you that are on here, they're like, "Hey, I'm never going to be a church planter." Hopefully Dispy will really appeal to you. I know I love it.

Thank you for jumping on this. Any time I have a conversation about APEST, I'm giving you a call. Like, we will—it was funny. I was actually trying to find like a resident APEST expert to pull into a podcast or two, and Payton, you're now going to be my guy. Thank you for contributing to this. And we'll let you off to the webinar. Say hi to Ralph. And thanks for coming on.

Hey, we're going to stick around and keep doing this interview. Payton, thank you very much. By the way, there was a question in, um, M.V. Um, read a book by Neil Cole called Church 2.0. I've done a podcast with Neil. Um, Church 2.0 was actually very influential. Payton would say the same thing. But Neil tells actually a really interesting story in the book about church in a coffee shop. They were actually in the process of starting a coffee shop, um, and to do church in. And then they realized, "We don't need to buy a coffee shop. We can just do church in a coffee shop." And so they actually pivoted that way. So do that. Um, here's the question I want to ask you as a wrapping up, Stu. Um, as you're looking at—because you're interesting. You're running a vector, which is a plant, and you're running a physical and virtual through Lakeland. What's a way that virtual reality can complement a physical church? Like, is there a way that the two can work together? What have you seen or what do you model through some of the things you're doing?

Yes, one hundred percent. The real question is: what does that church, that physical church, want to do? And what do they want to use virtual reality for? Like, if you're wanting to broadcast like what Lakeland does as like a video venue, multi-site campus, you can do that. And there's tons of different platforms—not tons, there's like two main platforms I can think of off the top of my head that you can do that. Um, but as I've been picking apart this more and more, like it really boils down to just that question: like, what is it that you want to accomplish? Like, do you want your people in your church to be stronger evangelists? Like, there's a use for that. Do you want to make the Bible come alive to people at your church and to people in virtual reality? There's a way to do that through world building. Um, which I would say even to the point that you were just saying with Church 2.0, Neil Cole—it was the same thing for us when we launched into it. We used what was already there. And then we decided to pay for somebody to build a world for us in Alt Space. Alt Space shut down. And now we're in Big Screen. And we're just again using what's already there. And it's just like, I look—people are going to show up to it. We don't have to do anything fancy. It's the beauty of the gospel is simple. Just show up someplace and start preaching it and let people know that there's a God who is for them and not against them. And there you go. Got something really amazing happening. Um, but really, like, the beauty of what VR does for the physical church is anything that you dream up, you can do. And so it's just like, this is where your creatives come into place. This is where your trailblazers and your futuristic-minded individuals come into place. And you just say, "Dude, run wild." Like, my XP here at Lakeland, he was telling me not too long ago that there's a whole team—I guess this would be the Disney Imagineers or whatever they're called—but like, that's their job. They just sit there and dream up the new things that they could do for Disney and movies and whatever else. And like, dude, if you have somebody on your team that can live in that head space, like, that's me, right? Like, I'm that dreamer. I'm always thinking of like, what's the next thing that we can do? I'm a great starter, not a great finisher. I'll be the first one to admit that. But I'm also really good—like, like, that APEST mentality that Payton was talking about—like, you really, really got to have all five if you're going to pack a punch. Like, I love that. I'm going to do this from now on. But like, even for like VR space, like, that's what you need in there is you need all five.

Five of those in order to do it well and I've acknowledged that for myself as like dude, I know that I'm a great starter but I need the other people around me to make the nuts and bolts come together in order for that dream and that vision to come to life. So anything that the physical church can dream up and wants to do, you can do it in the virtual space and that can be strengthening what you already have, broadcasting what you have, or taking over new territory that hasn't even been thought of yet. So I love that. By the way, my daughter's goal in life is to become a Disney Imagineer. I mean, that's—I'm not kidding, that's like the thing she's driving for. She wants to get her degree from MIT and then go get a job with Disney. So anyway, another conversation for a different day.

Hey, so so good. So we are, and we've talked about this through the podcast in the season—we're doing a series of learning communities here with the Church Digital, and one of them is going to be virtual reality. We're stewards leading a number of churches to start a ministry in virtual reality, whether it's a church, whether it's a small group, whether it's whatever. But it's more than just exploring. Like, we want to actually help churches get dirty and really start to understand and do what ministry looks like in virtual reality.

So Stud, maybe you want to share a little bit about what your learning community is going to look like?

Yeah, so just, you know, forty-five minutes to an hour long learning community once a week for about eight weeks. And really, it's just going to be the nuts and bolts of what it would look like to get started in virtual reality. And, you know, kicking Satan's butt and spreading Jesus' name. So we'll just go through like the nuts and bolts of it. Like, what is VR? Like, man, is this even a place that the church is supposed to be in at this point? We'll talk about what are the different platforms out there. You know, DJ Stoto and I hopped on a call three years ago when I was first getting started, and he was just like, "Dude, you got to look at each of the platforms. There are different countries around the world. So, you know, like your big screen is going to be like your United States, North America, and then your VR Chat's going to be your Middle East." I did that on purpose, by the way. And then, you know, so on and so forth. So each one has its own language. Each one speaks differently. It's got its own different culture, people. So it's understanding like, man, who are you geared towards? Like, I personally, I'm not a VR Chat person. I would love to be, but it's just not who I am. This is why Big Screen works really well for me—like the small niche community, like let's get into really good conversation. But we'll go through all that kind of stuff. And then my guarantee is, as long as you've got a headset, by the time that eight weeks is done, you'll be full on ready to be in virtual reality and kicking off a ministry.

So love it. So yeah, so that learning community is going to kick off mid-June. We're going to roll that for eight weeks—June, July, and land the plane sometime in August. And so for more information on Stu's learning community, and I'm doing one on hybrid micro churches—a physical church that's doing a hybrid version of a micro—there's one on asynchronous that Andy Mage is doing, digital communications is Barbara, and Megan, who's on the call, is also doing one on mental health and digital ministry. And so for information on those five learning communities, the church.digital/learning-communities. You know what, I'll get a short code made: the church.digital/c. I'll get Barbara to code that in. And yes, Whitebeard does 797 with a question mark. Yes, so the cost is 797. That's going to support the ministries of the people who are teaching the learning communities and the Church Digital. So for more information, check out the church.digital/c and get more information and sign up a form there. And the person that's facilitating can reach out and answer any questions and get it going.

So awesome. Hey, it's been a lot of fun today. Payton was so good, man. You know, I'm going to be honest—well, let me say, I will be—you know what, this is the uncut, this is the unfiltered. I always said with the podcast I'm just going to be real. So I'm going to be real. This week, earlier this week, I was in Dallas. I was offsite, and I was leading a round table or was helping with a round table for a bunch of church live production guys. And I didn't have a lot of time, and I realized like in the middle of one of the sessions, "Oh crap, I don't have questions set up for this thing for Payton and Stew." I got to do it. And so I reached out to Stu, and I'm like, "Hey, do you have any questions?" And Stu's like, "Man, I thought I was just calling in for commentary." So I was like, "Oh, I got to come up with questions for both." And so I opened up my ChatGPT and I said, "Hey, I'm doing an interview with a virtual reality pastor and the author of Plantology. Come up with ten questions." They came up with ten really good questions. So I was like, "Okay, let me push my luck. Let me do twenty questions." Came up with twenty really good questions. Like, analyzing Payton's book was so good. And so like, that was the framework that I had in place, and I only asked like two or three of those questions because I did not see Apes coming in. And when Apes went like this, I was like, "Oh, let's just stay on that road." That was so good, man. So good.

So yeah, Whitebeard, we're trying to get Whitebeard to do a hangout with us here on TCD. We just got to get through some of the details squared away, but hopefully we're going to see that in the next week or so. And that's going to be good.

I want to do a podcast that's called "Church Question Mark." That really, we're going to explore some like unique expressions of church—not just digital church, but micro and physical—and like the idea of some of the church 2.0 stuff, like getting that, you know, when we did that interview with Neil Cole last year with Jason Morris, J-Mo, and I, it was like, you know, almost, "Hey, you need to rewrite the book for Church 3.0 and start to open up some of this new expressions that are even beyond the micro."

So anyway, going to land the plane. Hey, we're wrapping up. Stu, any closing thoughts?

I just look—I will say this: I do love that Whitebeard did blow up the conversation with Apes. And I think I would have loved to have dove into that a little bit more, Payton, because there is a section in that VR Church Planting book that I wrote that is focused on, "So who's the right person to do VR ministry?" And I went pretty hard on the idea of like, "Well, anybody with the Apes giftings can do it." I would probably say the apostolic evangelist for sure. But now talking to Payton, I feel like he would blow me up on that one a little bit. But yeah, it was good. It was a good question.

Yeah, you know what, I'm actually going to try to do—I'll push my luck here. It's been a minute. I haven't talked to him since I got sick. But I wonder if I could get Alan Hirsch, the guy who is the author, like he is the guy who came up with Apes, and get Alan Hirsch to come on and talk through maybe some digital and virtual implications of Apes. Get a—you know what would be an interesting podcast? I'm just talking out loud here. But to get a guy like you in virtual and get a guy like, you know, a Mark Lutz or, um, yeah, get a more or a Dr. John to come on to represent like a digital—maybe both—and just let the four of you guys just like, I would shut up and I would just let the conversation happen. Mark Lutz, Dr. John, you, and Alan Hirsch talking Apes for an hour. Okay?

So hey, it's episode 295 of the Church Digital podcast. We are celebrating episode 300 in five weeks. And I, to be honest, like, I don't have a plan for episode 300. I was actually going to joke about this: that may be episode 300, man. Let me see if I can get on the phone. But Dr. John, Mark, you, and Alan Hirsch celebrating 300—that's something to aim for. We'll see. You need a micro expression in there. We'll offline it. That's interesting. It's true, you know. Get somebody, you know, Joey's doing the church in a bar. Don't know about that. You know, I'd rather not pull in a network guy. Find somebody a little raw. Anyway, let's talk about it. We can beat that up.

All right, all right. Hey, everybody, we're going to land the plane. This has been a great—Whitebeard's apologizing that he blew it up. Why you apologizing? You never apologize for anything in your life.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. But hey, thanks for—yeah, we'd have to do it. We'd have to do it at like three in the afternoon when it's nine a.m. his time. I've dealt with that. We did—you know what was interesting? Episode 299 is also with a guy in Australia. Episode 299 was Steve Addison. I had to look at his book. I blinked on his name. Episode 299 will be Steve Addison. We actually already did that interview. So it'd be Australian back-to-back, 299, 300.

All right, I'm putting too much pressure on myself. We're going to figure it out. Hey, but we're going to land the plane. For Tsunami, for Payton Jones—you know, I've been wanting to say Payton Manning all day—Payton Jones. This is Jeff Reeves with the Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out with us on the pod. We'll see you next time on the show.