EP304 - Why Discord?

Like Discord gives us that kind of flexibility that we don't have. And at the same time, we're going to where people are. So people are in Facebook, people are in Discord, and Discord gives us flexibility.

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church. But more than tech for tech's sake, we'll address deeper questions. Is discipleship making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? Oh, 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.

Hey, everybody. Quick editorial note here on the Church Digital Podcast before we get into episode 304. Jeff here. Okay, so we're in this season called "Wait, That's a Church," and we did a great live podcast recording. Joey Santos and I, we had Dr. John Harris. Dr. John talking about Hearts, like his digital discipleship community, S Digital Church that he's doing, and maybe minimal ecclesiology. What we're talking about, looking at being a church in digital space and even reimagining what that looks like. It was, in Dr. John's standards, once again, an incredible conversation that was totally screwed up because I gave bad advice at the very beginning dealing with some tech issues. Well, if you were in the audience watching the live podcast recording on Discord, you had a heck of a show. But no one else is going to get to be able to experience that because it didn't record. Or at least the genius of Dr. John Harris did not, because I told him to mute the mic accidentally when we were getting started. And so that's on me. But it was an incredible show, by the way. This is why you all should be part of the Church Digital's online community on Discord. Go open up a web browser, go to discord.church.digital, come hang out with us in Discord. You get, you know, fresh stuff like Dr. John Harris. Literally five or six people only got to hear that, and no one else will because we will never have that conversation again. We'll go back to Dr. John as a part of "Wait, That's a Church" in a later episode. We'll get them on. Believe me, there is a lot for Dr. John here in the Church Digital.

Here's what we're doing instead. Episode 304. I'm gonna set it up and then we're gonna just hand it over and go with it. We have recently moved to Discord. Like I literally just said. And as a part of Discord, why are we moving away from Mighty Networks? What's the motivation behind Discord? How is Discord working for the Church Digital? Where are we going? What are we doing? What was the purpose for that? Was it successful? Is it working the way that we wanted it to? I have gotten so many questions centered around the Discord platform, technology, the community aspects of it. Why churches should be exploring that. And so I did a stream a couple weeks ago and brought in the TCD leadership team to get their perspective. And to my knowledge, this is the first time all of us have gotten together in a physical environment, digitally or physically. Like none of us have all been in a public environment, even digitally, at the same time except for this broadcast in this VOD. And so for the conversation, I'm bringing in myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, and Andy Mage with the Church Digital, and Jason Morris, the Church Digital, Barbara Canero with the Church Digital, Leighton Flatcap himself with the Church Digital. It's a whole bunch of the Church Digital people coming in for episode 304: Why the Church Digital Went to Discord.

Okay, everybody, here's the actual episode. Here you go.

So hey, I want to publicly say this. This is the first time that we have actually had all of TCD leadership in at the same time. This is, they're kind of all over the place. Jason, um, is no longer in the room. J-Mo, you gotta have both open at the same time, Discord and Riverside. I don't know if you can hear me currently.

Yeah, now Jos. Okay, he's giving me the thumbs up. He didn't get the memo. Everybody else got the memo to go ahead of time, and J did not get the memo. And so he went like this. We all went like this, and he missed the onboarding. So all, so now J-Mo, let me bring you up, and this is gonna be good. Sorry about the TCD bot there, Michelle. He's a little, he's a little bit of a jerk.

What did TCD bot do now? He strikes down Michelle constantly. I've actually toned the TCD bot down, and he still is a little bit finicky.

Yeah, apparently four claps as mass emojis. Four? Yeah, will only one. Only one smiley face there. Will no more than that.

Oh, this is so good. Man, I'm looking forward to this conversation. This is the first time publicly all five of us have been together, even digitally, physically, you know, completely remote organization. Not all been together. And, you know, I figured out the other day that this is the first time that we've actually digitally been able to do this. So, hey, welcome to TCD Discord.

Actually, I was just on with our Mighty Networks friends a couple minutes ago. El Michelle was in there and a couple others. We are swan-songing our Mighty Networks community. Semisonic is singing "Closing Time," and not everybody has to go home, but they can't stay here. So I'm glad hopefully we're moving everybody over here into the Discord world. Um, I know we've got, but everybody should know everybody, maybe not, but we've got at least on my screen I see Flatcap on the left, Leighton, the relationships guy. Andy Mage, Chino, um, is our, um, a community, um, myself, of course, Jeff, founder, um, loudmouth. Hill me is Barbara Canero, who's our connections and communications person. And J-Mo, Jason Morris, is in Dallas, which is irrelevant, or no, Austin. Closer. But is our discipleship director. And so, man, really excited to be here with y'all today in the stream.

So the reason for this stream, now I stream every Tuesday at one, but I wanted to bring everybody together because I get this question all the time. Like, if I had a dollar for every time I was asked this question, well, I'd have a lot of dollars. But the question I get asked is, um, why Discord? Why did you move to Discord? What was the reason for Discord? Um, what's wrong with Mighty Networks? Why do you hate Facebook so much? Like, you know, basically all of this kind of noise. And so I'm like, listen, I can tell you what my motivation was behind it, but I can tell you my motivation is different than, and it's different than what Leighton thinks, and it's different than what Jos. And so I was like, hey, if we really want to have this conversation, let's have it cohesively and actually get the crowd together in a public environment for the first time ever and start to wrestle with this idea of what Discord actually means and the benefit of it and how we're utilizing it, what the experience has been so far for us. And so, hey, if you're in the room chatting, you know, I know Andy kind of welcomed everybody while I was figuring out some tech issues, and I got plenty of issues. Feel free to throw questions in chat and would love to be dialoguing here. I know we're also streaming this out into the interwebs, and so feel free to join us. You can join our Discord server at discord.church.digital. Open a new web browser, discord.church.digital, will get you into where we are. And if you're watching on demand, same thing too. We'd love to have you join in here.

Um, and so like I, and I told the group earlier, I like, I don't have a lot of questions. I'm just going to open this up. Like, why Discord? And since you know Andy is actually the director of community and Discord is a community, I guess that means he should go first, right? So Andy, why Discord?

Heavy is the head that wears the ball cap on that one.

Uh, yeah, hello, everybody. Uh, so here's why Discord. Uh, Whitebeard just said it better than I probably can, because it's better than everything else. There we go. Question answered. Asked and answered. Um, hey, thanks everybody for coming. Have a great night. Shut it down, boys. Shut it down.

Um, here's the thing. We're actually doing something really unique right now, not even necessarily in Discord. So I'm live on three different platforms right now. I am live on Riverside as we record this and send things out to all the interwebs. I am live on Discord, and I am also live on a platform called Zoom. And the reason I am live on Zoom is because we are actually going to be holding in about five minutes, we're going to be starting our asynchronous learning community. Actually, a number of people in here are from our asynchronous learning community. Raise your hand in the chat if you are from the from my learning community that's going to be starting today. Just throw it in the chat. Throw a gift in the chat. Oh, Michael, yes, is, I guess, maybe the raise the hand thing as an invite to speak. I can't invite everybody to speak. Sorry, we just we can't do that. That's gonna get kind of weird.

Here's the reason why Discord. It's because we can do crazy things like that. We can be live on a number of different platforms. We have this advantage of being live, and we can do all those, but also asynchronously. The amount of things that happen on Discord is just, it's outstanding. It is the best platform out there for everything that we want to do. We can be nimble. We can be agile. We can stream out to hundreds of people. We can do, behind, you know, Leighton is running, and I'm sure he's going to talk about some of the community groups he's doing. We can do all of those things. We can have events. Hy and her team can take care of events. J and I have been slowly but surely working on some sort of like discipleship pathway platform thing that's been happening behind the scenes there that's all happening in Discord. That's all happening right within this app, whether you're watching it on a browser or on your phone or on your tablet or on your actual downloaded app. That's all happening right here, and it's outstanding that we get to do things like that. That's why.

Awesome. That was a very kind of short approach. And by the way, nice plug on the learning community that's happening right now. And so to me, um, it's an opportunity. Like, when I look at what digital community is and how we're utilizing and engaging with it, um, it was just, it's so hard to get that engagement from a technical standpoint on Mighty Networks or even on Facebook at this point. And you know, battling the algorithms of Facebook compared to the energy that comes in here with what we're feeling in Discord. And so, you know, I love the fact that we've got a learning community that's literally starting today. Right? Today's the first day.

Andy, yeah, like in four minutes I'm saying, hey, everybody, we're going over to Zoom. Yep. It's, you know, literally starting today, talking about the power of asynchronous and how to utilize asynchronous to the highest capacity. And even as we're looking at holding a synchronous community, digital community to a higher standard, you know, and looking and seeing, okay, man, Discord from a feature set is really giving us that power. Um, so, you know, Andy, I know you've got to leave like in three minutes. And so, you know, I want to give opportunities for you, man. Any other thoughts before we move on?

No, that's it. I am going to direct everybody from my learning community. Hey, let's go ahead over to Zoom. If you don't have the Zoom link, it's going to be in another thing that we get to do. I get to shut off areas of the Discord server. We have an...

Entirely async learning community area where most of you can't see, haha, you need to join my learning community to go see the fun that's going to be happening there. Um, you can hit the link in that async learning community. We're heading over to Zoom right now. I love you guys. Thanks for hanging out for a little bit. You know, you kind of feel a little bit like this is the time where the children's church gets dismissed from the main building and everybody kind of goes in their separate directions and like the adults are left. I'm kidding. I'm not directly implying that. Are you gonna sing Jesus loves me right now? No, I was going to ask if Lon was going to if he was preaching the children's sermon or when he was done, but no. I think that's, that's, uh, that's I grew up Methodist. We, I, that's like hardcoded into my body. This is what we have to do. Okay, goodbye. I've got people showing up in Zoom. Goodbye, everybody. Bye. See you. Um, and uh, so hey, um, where did it go? Or he just left my screen and so I kind of wigged out there for a second. It went black. Um, I mean, let's open it up, flat cap. You're next. And I would say probably, I'm saying something I don't mean to be judgmental um about anybody that's on the screen, but I would say that Andy and Leighton were probably more comfortable in the Discord environments over myself, Barbara, and Jason. Like, I mean, I had a Discord account, but to be honest, I'm more, I was more of a Slack person just in my context than than it. Uh, Jason shaking said yes, and I know Jason spends a ton of time with Slack uh in his work. Barbara probably would agree to that. She's a metaverse gal, but she, you know, just we didn't have a lot of Discord experience. And so, you know, flat cap, as we were looking at Discord and talking about this, like what have been some, what's some of the why for you and some of the wins for you moving over to Discord?

I think some of it is as I've been in other places like on Facebook, something will be in my feed and then suddenly people are no longer in my feed. They disappear. The algorithm changes and suddenly I don't have people. Uh, when we were on Mighty Networks, uh, we would have really good engagement over a two-week period of time and then people would disappear for two months because it wasn't a place they were already on, already engaged in. It was one more place they had to open up and go check. And when you got notifications, you didn't always open the app. You didn't always check the email. You just kind of went, yeah, okay, uh, I'll get to it when I can. Uh, and in Discord, like, I'll be honest, all of those who are new to Discord, I was there three years ago learning this and I hung around for about a year just kind of going, I don't know what I'm doing. Uh, I set one up. I don't know how to do these things. But it is so integrated with all kinds of things. Like we can go live in here, like Andy was mentioning. We can have a private group over here so we're not in another location. But if you think about a small group within a church, you have a small group, but you're still in the community with the whole of the church. You can have whole gatherings with everybody. Like, I have not found a limit yet of what you can do in Discord and to be connected. And the other thing is, I can quickly give a thumbs up to something when I do not have time to take and make comments, but I'm still engaged in the community on a level I can be. And when I have time to be more engaged, I can be more engaged. But I don't lose the, I'm out over here, don't have any idea, any clue what's going on. Uh, so there's a whole bunch of stuff like that that I think is just really neat that Discord allows, uh, that it's like a combination of every other platform out there all in one place. And we kind of own our own server. We are the ones in control of it. We establish what's acceptable, what's not acceptable. I know we've got the bots helping us do those kinds of things and welcome people, but it's really about the people who are engaged on and on and on as things happen in there. So I guess that's kind of my big picture overview of it.

Yeah, um, Mighty Networks we struggled, and the deal, the deal with Mighty Networks is, um, you know, Facebook, you're battling the algorithm. And so as trying to get in front of people, and so, you know, move to Mighty Networks actually took us out of um battling the algorithm. And so the idea was, well, are community, our content, our connection needs to be strong enough to get people to check another inbox. Um, and, you know, I'm not saying we failed at that, uh, but at some point, you know, muting uh push notifications, um, filtering, you know, away from that, and even the even the wall uh structure of like uh Facebook and networks of how there's a post and then the dialogue with it, um, it just felt, I'm using the word archaic, I don't mean it that way, but it felt us-centric. Um, you know, it's interesting. I've been wrestling with this and I'll write a blog on this at some point or do a stream or something. Uh, and actually, I would love to maybe sit around Jason one day and have this conversation. But the difference between digital community and social media, because digital social media like Facebook, posting on Facebook or like a Facebook uh page or or a personal profile or Instagram, having an Instagram, like it's very organizational-centric. Let me, the organization, let me the individual tell you the audience what to think, and then you can thumbs up, emoji, or you can comment on it. But it's very centric around the individual, the organization. Um, now digital community, like what we're able to achieve with this Discord, man, it's not very organizational-centric. It it empowers the individuals to to speak. It's not us respond. It's not the organization telling the individual what to think. It's the organization speaking and us, the uh, the organization responding. Like, I mean, the great example of this is literally happening right now in in chat. Um, Whitebeard throws a a chat right now from Pastor Coco. Uh, please pray for everyone in Texas, including me, who went through Barrel are without power under heat advisory of 105, etc., etc. There are many who have lost refrigerator food and can't work because of the power outages. That's the hurricane that that hit down there in Texas, right? And or up there where I am in Texas. And so um, I mean, listen, I've lived in Texas for five, 110 um summers. And so yeah, yeah, we we need to we need to be praying for them. J, you're not, that's far, that's further away from you. You're not, that's not impacting you where you are, is it? I assume no. We just got a good rain. That's all.

Yeah, that's that's the thing with hurricanes. Some people get devastated and some people are like, he knock down a branch. Um, but um, man, taking, thank you uh Whitebeard for that, and taking the, you know, that's his uh initiative to to speak into this, not, oh, I need to wait for somebody to do this and I don't have the permissions, authority, whatever. It's it's a digital community. It's open to that. And that's where I think a lot of digital community is different than social media, which is actually why I think a lot of churches are negative on digital community because they look at digital community as social media. Well, of course you can't have real digital community on an Instagram profile or a or a Facebook page because, well, Jeff, it depends. It depends on what you're trying to do. So I think I think one of the things that uh I'm getting from all of you there is a mirror to what happens architecturally in the physical space. So a lot of times churches will say, okay, we're not going to go to your thing. We're asking you to come to ours. Um, that would be like Mighty Networks, where you come to our building. You know, I'm not going to go to your building. I'm not going to go to your bar. I'm not going to go to the the your golf course. I'm not going to go to your gym. I'm gonna ask you, and we have whole systems around this. I'm gonna ask you to come to my thing where I'm in this controlled environment physically, you know, for a Sunday service. That would be like what Mighty Networks does, and it can do things in that closed environment that uh eliminate distractions and other environments. But now you're talking about, okay, the basic philosophical idea of, are we going to ask you to be the missionary or are we going to go to you, right? That's one of the differences. If we're going to you, we need to be aware of the cultural context and the environments in which we're dropping into.

Yeah, so when I drop into a building that has a bunch of rows and a stage and a podium, the building signals to me what kind of of activities I can do and what kind of activities are not appreciated. Whereas if I go into another building and there's a bunch of tables with row tables with uh round tables with and they're all facing each other, right? Or and there is no central place. When I walk into that building architecturally, I know already what types of activities are um are wanted and what types of activities are not wanted. And in the digital space, it's very similar. When you drop into Facebook, there's a certain kind of media feed, um, doom scrolling, media blasting, sort of thing that that particular architect, that digital architecture is looking for. And in Discord, it's a different architecture that is expecting a different type of interaction with people. And I think where churches get stuck is in the physical space, we're very used to a particular type of interacting with people in a broadcast form because there's a stage and there's rows and you know all the things. So we're used to broadcast in the physical space, and so we just mirror that in the digital space. And of course Discord doesn't job with that because that's not what Discord is about. Discord is about conversations like these.

Yeah, but what is interesting is Discord is also very flexible in that you can have live streams that broadcast, and you can have more um intimate conversations like we're having right now, and those intimate conversations can be public too. So what Discord does is it unlocks a lot of possibilities for the types of differing interactions that a church should be doing anyway. A church should not just have a Sunday service broadcast message and you're done. If that's all churches do, well, then there is no real reason for us to gather because a podcast could do that or a TV show could do that much better, right? There's really no reason. However, if church is the one-anothers, if church is a community, a gathering of people that love one another, care for one another, pray for one another, all of these other things that occur, well, all right, maybe we should pick a digital space that allows for both types of human interactions in the digital form like we hope occur in the physical form. And I feel like Discord gives us that kind of flexibility that we don't have. And at the same time, like Discord gives us that kind of flexibility that we don't have. And at the same time, we're going to where people are. So people are in Facebook. People are in Discord. And Discord gives us flexibility. So in my mind, it's like, okay, when done, let's do this. Let's figure it out. And we discovered in that flexibility that we could have conversations like this and we could do all kinds of things that we weren't able to do before because the architecture didn't allow it. I just did a lot of talking. Okay, no, that that was good. So good. I mean, there there's a lot there. Um, oh my gosh, J, J, Mo, like you and I, we just, I could sit around all day having a conversation. But um, the church is not good at social space, you know, talking about large gatherings. They do well at a small gatherings, like, you know, a large Sunday morning service, even like 50 plus people, the church does that very well. Um, small groups, for the...

For the most part, church does that very well one-on-one conversations. Church does that well. They've never really figured out that social space, that 25 people, that 30 people kind of thing. And it's, you know, Daniel M's done a lot of research in this talking about like the fun kind of the environment. And this social space is really where you break down mistrust and where you build trust with people. And when I look at what digital community is, the engagement, the dialoguing, it's really that social space. But Barbara, I know you were talking. I cut you off. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Oh no, I was not. I was actually just applauding Jason. That was awesome. I learn new language now. You just gave me new language to describe some things that I, you know, it was pretty awesome. What came to my mind and I remember our initial conversations about like which platforms to keep, and there was even a desire to like, let's keep them all, you know. But that is your traditional, you know, pastor conversation saying we serve everybody and everybody's welcome. And that is a reality of a desire of our hearts to serve everybody. And I think TCD is prepared to serve many, but deep inside we can only serve some well. And so when it comes to the ability to serve, equip, disciple, train, and be present, really there's only so much we can do. And I'm not even talking about, you know, financial resources. I'm talking about the depth and the time that is spent. And you know, because we can multiply all we want, but then if we're not getting to that level of depth, you're basically just going to have a very superficial thing. And so what we've noticed is that whatever would be driving people towards TCD will remain. So if somebody's finding us through a podcast, if someone is finding us through a blog post or because they met you at a conference, those paths towards TCD would still exist. And so it doesn't matter who that person is. But deep inside there's a specific design that God has given TCD to serve and to equip and to disciple. And we needed to figure out who that person was. And that person was in Discord. And so yeah, we had to come to the conclusion that many can come to us at slow paces, but we can only go in one direction fast. And so to gain that momentum and to go in a way that is not accelerated because we're rushing, but because we want to multiply, right, we have to pick one direction. And it was, you know, I go back to the Bible. Like for me, there's a very deep meaning towards the moment when Jesus said I had to go through Samaria. He had to go through it. And that decision to say he had to was actually because of one person. It was one person. And that was what created such a strong direction for him. And we have to, hey, this is me, okay? Like that's one question I get. I ask God often, or maybe he asked me the question off like, would you do it for just one? And my answer to him is always the same. God, no, I would not do it for just one. That's just a waste of my time, waste of my effort. But deep inside it's like, oh man, I know exactly what he's trying to tell me, you know? And are we willing to create something like TCD just for one individual? And I know that's a hard question, but we have to.

Well, it's not. I don't know that that's the question though. I mean, I get what you're saying, but it wasn't just one. It was one. Exactly. It was one key person that was going to unlock the whole village. So and his, and this is something that you're, I love the way that you framed it. Is if you're just thinking about one in a mindset of addition, I don't know that it's worth it. If you're thinking of one with a mindset of multiplication, all day long, yes, absolutely.

Yeah, and we realize that there is an individual that is praying for something like TCD to exist, and that person is in Discord. And so for us it was a matter of simply saying, hey, can we put together a communication structure, a discipleship plan, content strategy, like all of these things that could speak to that person in a way that would feel so intimate in the sense of like, man, they know me, they understand me, they see me, they heard me, they know me to the same level that Jesus taught, you know, said to the woman like, I know you, you had five, right? There was a level of intimacy and known like she felt known yet with no judgment, right? So it's a matter of, because let's be honest, I believe there's a lot of people out there with a great desire to start something digitally, and wherever they turn, everywhere they look, everybody's kind of pointing a finger saying that's just crazy or that's not how things go, that's not how it should be done, you know? So they, and Barbara, I love that particular story that you told because what Jesus didn't say was, hey, you need to come to the temple, even though that's what the woman at the well thought he was going to say, right? And that kind of ties into this whole Discord conversation because if we're going to be reaching people to reach people, we need to reach people where they are in the context of their relational network, not ours. So that's why Jesus went to Samaria to that Samaritan village so that she could run to the village quickly and tell all the village around her, look, you know, listen to this prophet who told me everything that I did. So if we try to create our own platform, we in essence are creating a separation between us and that person's network that we're trying to reach. And the nice thing about Discord is you can have multiple servers going on at the same time. So if they're already in Discord, well, we are too, and they, it's more slippery, it's less friction for them to then tell their friends because it's all using the same platform that they're already in anyway, instead of having them tell their friends, hey, come join me on this other web page that you've never heard of before, right? That's never gonna happen.

And one of the other things I think about too is, and I got to get this one little thing out, it's gonna sound a little bit tangential, but I feel like there is a whole group of people that are used to doing online digital church in the traditional way, which is kind of odd that I'm even saying that because we've been doing this now for what, almost 15 years? There are already digital traditions in church, okay? So we need to think through like, you know, I got nothing bad to say about Chop except that it's not a church online platform. It's a church service online platform. That's the problem because it limits you to the Sunday only experience. What if, right, we were to, here's a transitional life form that I think is going to take us into the future. What if instead of using a Chop web page, we still have the live stream, we still do that on Sunday, but instead of the Chop chat, we have an embedded Discord chat of a channel, right? So that two things happen. One is it crosses over these worlds that we have between the Discord audience and the normal Sunday person who's just supplementing. They get access to the people who are doing community 24/7. And at the same time, we are giving those people, we're exposing both groups of people to each other, and both groups to an expression of church that perhaps they haven't been exposed to yet because there is the big, you know, temple courts experience, but there's also the house-to-house experience that both need to be aware of each other for the synergy to occur.

Yeah, there's actually churches right now, Jason, that are streaming from Resi into Discord. Like I don't know if, but that's what they're like. Churches, there are a couple. I'm actually trying to find one. They're trying to get me a name to have a conversation. The guy's like, oh yeah, so and so does that, but they haven't been able to tell me who yet. But there are several I've been told that are doing it because there are a couple churches that are starting to recognize that Discord does have that community aspect beyond, you know, Chop's experience for the one hour. And you get all the moderation tools on the Discord side that you know you wouldn't normally have with just an average open chat. You can have your private volunteer stuff and other Discord channels and still manage it much like Chop would manage things.

Yeah, I think there's real potential there because you have a platform that can be so flexible. You can use it in a lot of different ways to bridge into your other environments.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, I, oh go ahead, go ahead.

I was just gonna say, speaking of bridging, we are bridging right now already outside of the United States, which a lot of the other platforms don't necessarily do. They will segregate you in some level into your continent within those platforms. Discord does not do that at all. Barbara is not even on the same continent with the rest of us right now. There are people from other continents who are watching us, who are in the chat, who are on Discord right now. And when you have a community that can be growing globally, not just geographically but globally, you have a lot of other things going on and excitement. And like, I can get off and go to bed at 10 o'clock my time, and somebody might be getting up and joining the conversation when I'm going to bed. The conversation doesn't stop based on my time frame. It doesn't stop based on here are the business hours of the church. It is global community can happen simultaneously even if I'm not involved in all the different places. It can be happening with and without me.

Yeah, so let's nerd out a little bit. I'm going to take you down a path of like, you know, the geeks follow along. But these are the places where my brain kind of goes. Yeah, and so, you know, we have this idea of time. Let's just go back to the very beginning. And I actually shared this on Discord a while ago when we first started the channel. One of the things that God had me like literally stuck on Genesis 1:1 for a long time, and it was like I couldn't read anything else and I couldn't even get to verse number two. Yeah, it was like, okay, in the beginning God created. I was like, I know he's trying to show me something, and I cannot figure out what it is because I couldn't read anything else. And then at some point in time it dawned on me. I was like, what was the first thing that he created? It was not the heavens or the earth. It was time. Because he says in the beginning, beginning. So he was like, time was the first thing he created. And so it was fascinating to me that God was showing me that there was a moment where time didn't exist, and then the timeline started, and all that kind of stuff. Well, we've been living on one timeline for a long time. Yeah, so that one timeline, you know, time keeps going and you know days and hours and whatever and weeks and years and all of that. Now we have access to two timelines. One in real life and one digitally. Oh, these are happening simultaneously. And what is interesting is that there's a whole generation like Gen Z and potentially Gen Alpha. For them, life happens digitally. IRL is just the things you get to, you have to do. So when, and not, it's not for everybody, but there's definitely a shift you're going to see. That there's two parallel timelines.

And you will have, I want to double click on that. What do you mean? Because right now I feel like I'm in one. Are you saying that there's a sync timeline and an async timeline? Is that what you're saying? We're like totally meta. It's multiverse. It's multiverse.

Loki season two, totally, totally, but think about it from this angle. Video games a few years ago, you turn on the game, you play, you leave the game, the game stays where it was. It doesn't happen that way anymore. You go in the game, the game will continue if you leave the game. Like there's a parallel timeline that's happening just digitally in the metaverse and video games and all of these things. And so this board is basically giving you access to a completely different life that is happening just digitally. And you're going to see like groups of people in Gen Z and down where life happens digitally. That's where life happens for them. IRL is just for the things they have to do, like hygiene and eat, and you know, but life, community, conversations, engagement, like all of these things for them are happening online. And that timeline is happening simultaneously with real life, just digitally. So yeah, anyway, that's the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night, you know, crazy thoughts like that.

So that's one of the reasons, you know, when I used to—we used to talk a lot. I wrote a book on virtual reality churches. And actually in the church, when the first draft of the book is, I was writing, I would write like "in the metaverse and in the real world." And I was convicted when I was writing. I was like, "I can't keep calling IRL 'in real life' because the metaverse is real. If I call one real, it's implying that the other is not. It's I'm actually slamming the metaverse." And so like, I actually went back and I struck all the IRL references because the other is real now. It's asynchronous. It's outside of time. It does operate in a, you know, Jason's giving the weird look right now. It's a tangential approach kind of thing.

Um, if with that, I'm still trying—I'm still trying to wrap my brain around IRL. IPLs, I must be missing something because in my mind I'm thinking, okay, my brain can only be in one place at one time, whether that is doing a digital function and or physical function. Like right now I am physically in Georgetown. I'm also digitally in this space at the same time. I get that. But when it comes to time, I can't be in two times at the same time, right? Unless, unless, unless we're talking about async where things happen whether or not I'm engaged with them or not. A conversation I can jump into and then jump out of and time flip the conversation in a way where it's the conversation is on demand in an async form. I kind of get that. But it doesn't change the fact that I only have 24 hours in a day. Does that make sense?

Yeah, and I agree with you. I don't think we're bending time by any means. But according to Whitebeard, you're just old. So I'm going to go with that because I don't know how to explain it to you.

No, I'm just kidding. But yeah, I'm just kidding. So it's just an interesting idea how I think we created a different place to live in the same timeline that we have in real life.

Okay, that I get. Yes. And that place has its own timeline in a way. It's own community, its own engagement, its own life. It's the metaverse community is living outside of the physical community time. And so we're listening, J. Mo is realist trying to unpack everything here, and Hillme is the ultimate dreamer, you know? And so it's like this is what staff meetings are like, people. I just I want you to understand. Um, and I'm like, look, I only got you guys for 60 minutes. And so, and so's leaving in four. We gotta like, let's go, let's go, let's go.

All right, um, let's so let's clean things up a little bit. Uh, Flatcap, I want to throw it back to you. There was a question I forget who asked it. Vernett, I think asked it, man, maybe like half an hour ago. Um, Discord, like how using Zoom and some of the other software, like it's talk to us a little bit with what groups is Discord, uh, within Discord, Flatcap, and kind of like what model you have. We're talking a lot about sitting down at the coffee tables in conversations. How does that happen in Discord from a practical standpoint?

Well, one of the things limitations I think that Zoom and Google Meets have is is I am the host. I have to be present for everyone else to show up. Now maybe Google, you have a little more if your inner community you have some, there's other people with permissions. But if I'm trying to have a public gathering of people coming and I have the week off, I'm on vacation, I'm sick, I can't make it, nobody can meet. It's all interdependent upon me.

Um, if you're not in these groups, this is this is a side thing, but it was also connected. Like it's overwhelming at some level how do you help people coming in to not be overwhelmed? You allow permissions to not see everything so you don't expose them to everything at once. It'd be like, you know, taking a five-year-old to Disney World and saying you get to go to every single place and you have one hour. You're overwhelmed. Like you can't go to every single ride in every single place. So you just say we're doing two rides. You give them a limitation of what they have exposure to, kind of thing. So that's just a tangent piece, but I wanted to preface what I'm going to say.

So there are peer groups you can see that there's a peer group that exists, but you get invited into a private group where things are confidential where you join together and every single person that's in that group can make comments. We have meetings that take place at certain scheduled time frames. I'm going to be on vacation in two weeks. Those meetings will happen with or without me. I don't have to be there for those to go on. They're just set. Reminders go out. People show up. We engage along the way. And since we have that set up in a way that is private, there is confidentiality. There is security. There is those things. So if it's really, really personal things going on in a prayer requests, they're there. I can still have public ones. Like we had a prayer for, hey, you know, the hurricane went through and we need prayer for that. That goes in the public sphere.

Um, Pastor Coco is in one of those groups. So you might not even see her much around the server because she's engaged in that group and that's where we share the more intimate things going on. So that's what I like about Discord over Zoom, over other platforms, is just that level of things that are going on that you can have everyone open to. Like we're in Discord right now and the four of us right now are up on the stage and there's an audience who can come in, which is different than Zoom as well. You can have this is everyone in the meeting and everyone has a voice. We do that. I mean, there are so many different levels that seem like it's limitless of the possibilities. It's limited on your ability to think of a new way to meet people, a new way to engage people.

Uh, the other thing too, I'm in a lot of other servers. I'm constantly learning how to be better at Discord by participating outside of TCD, outside of my own server, of being in communities with other people. There is a limit I believe. Um, J Live was telling me you can only be in 99 or 100 servers and he had to leave one in order to join us. But he did. He came over and joined us because he wanted to be connected here. Shout out J. If you don't know J Live, if you don't know Jay Live, you're missing life. I'm just saying. That's awesome.

Yeah, J Jay's fun. And uh, I love the fact that he blew off somebody else to join us. That's so, that's so good.

Um, with that, and so if you're interested in joining some of these groups, uh, feel free to get connected with Flatcap on the server and get connected to it. You know, it's interesting. Um, and I want to draw attention and just first pet. I'm going to pick you out right here for a second. First Pet says in the chat, "I like the thinking and I'm learning here." Um, and I love the fact that First Pet is in this chat right now is that I met First Pet Saturday morning on YouTube. And so uh, he actually made a comment. I'm assuming he forgive me if I'm not, I'm pretty sure I got to that point. He um, made a made a comment on a YouTube video with Dave Ferguson. I mean, I'm going back maybe two years. Like this was not a new video that we did with Dave. It wasn't one of our new ones. And um, and so commented on it and I started a conversation. I replied and he replied and I replied. And one of the comments was, hey, like to continue this conversation, come join the community. Like there's only so far that we can get in YouTube, that we can get in TikTok, that we can get on a story or a real. Like there's only so far the conversation goes that we need to get the person involved in into a community. That's one of the reasons why, you know, when I talk about the framework, the people work connected to digitally, we really need to invite them in a community in order to get to a place where we're equipping them or discipling them. Like there's only so far that content can get without the community piece and being able to effectively route people. There's only so far social can take you.

El Michelle, oh my gosh, yes. Which is why digital community is different than social media. Like the social media layer is important, but what we're doing in community is vital in order to get to the discipleship piece.

I'd love to address Tsin K Kiri's question or comment here in the meantime while we get anybody set up. Uh, and so one of the questions that he constantly asks himself is um, uh, let's see. "Con ask myself how doing church online will impact IRL church. And I think getting used to having constant conversation and chat with each other during our events will make it seem weird to shut up and be silent during an IRL sermon."

Um, and I think what the churches or digital communities are creating, they're actually answering a need of what is already starting to happen in the education system, which is one person talks, 30 people sit down and listen. The education system is going through the exact same challenges that the church is going through because that is a very outdated way to teach and multiply and grow. And it wasn't even how, um, how Jesus kind of, you know, like there's so much that happened in ministry that was beyond just one person speaking and everybody else just listening.

Um, and I think this is actually the result of humans saying, "I don't know about this. Maybe there's a different way of doing things or maybe I'm craving something different." Uh, I mean, just to give you like an interesting example is what Francis Chan did, like having this huge church that he was pastoring and when going down to like a home church model with just like 20 people or 15 people. Uh, I think naturally uh, we're going to shift away from one person presents a sermon and people watch it. I think that's just where we're going. Uh, and so I don't know if it's going to take the shape of a micro church where there's little, you know, like smaller congregations or if it's going to be more, I don't know how it's going to express itself. But I think that desire is actually what's creating such a need for digital churches that are more on the, you know, circle table than the auditorium, you know?

There was an interesting—that's so good, Barbara. There was a comment that actually popped up in our general chat um, yesterday, last night, this morning. Uh, I think Paul said it. Paul would had just come back from a trip to the Philippines. Um, then he was over there with like um, Kansas. Well, no, it was Tampa Underground over there. And Paul was like commenting off of somebody had said something. I think Matt said something about Kansas City or...

About some micro church material out there and Paul's like was just talking about you know the church digital's philosophy towards micro and and um you know the underground philosophy and exponential philosophy and and to be honest like I love the fact that that I don't even know who Paul is like I may have a casual relationship with him I could pick him out of a lineup but I love the fact that that he's looking at the church digital and recognizing some of the the micro the intentional micro underpinnings of what we're doing we're not a we're not a micro church organization by any stretch like there's you know giga church people there there's in chat right now there's people that are working at thousand person churches and and Ian at like a church with like thirty people physically and that's not even digital so like we're we're serving all sorts um but the relational aspects the discipleship aspects of of what we're we're doing I know J's been working really hard to bake that in and so like from a relational context the what we're pulling from Tampa underground Casey underground exponential new things stadia like there's been so many influences that have really been been helping the church digital actually I said this in the response to Paul is like man we're we're the new kid on the block compared to all these other organizations that been around for decades but we're really like standing on their shoulders really proclaiming hey you know you all are used to like broadcasting in front of millions of people and being excited because you got people to view this video like three seconds yay yay for you now there's this opportunity to be relational with these people to get them into community to actually disciple them digitally and it's this new thinking that you know in the US is a challenge but globally oh my gosh there's so much open to this idea in in international spaces and so it's it's exciting to to be on this front wave coming into it.

Well Jeff you and I had talked about this before so I'm going to steal another minute um uh you know socially as a society we we were introduced to the um information age um you know not too long ago if you think about it um and uh when we were you know in that age of information everything is coming towards us the the social currency was time like I spend time reading information finding information and for those of us old enough surfing the web right uh youngers don't even know what that means like to surf the web I actually remember surfing you know you go from one page to the next no search engines that kind of stuff so like you know that was the information age and the currency that we were spending socially was time then we moved to engagement age that's like social media you post you comment you share you create your YouTube whatever and that is when we shifted to a different currency which was attention you'll hear a bunch of marketers talk about that kind of stuff so you know everybody wants your attention uh and we shifted we already in a in a in a different uh age right now which is the age of curation uh and I mean just look at many of the YouTubers out there they're curating a path for somebody right what what should I unbox next yeah how many of you watch those videos where somebody's telling you what what products to buy and how and where I mean even my kids will look at the unboxing of toys they prefer to watch somebody play with them than actually get them and so that I did unboxing of the TCD swag there you go you see so like these the the curation age where that we are right now uh the currency is trust and so we're creating is circles of trust and that those circles of trust is what society will naturally pursue and honestly uh Discord is a perfect tool to adjust exactly that not just curation but but with trust being the currency that we're now spending socially.

So well with with curation it's also here are all the people doing all of these things and so there's a whole bunch of adding to knowledge of there's not just one way to do it there's not just two ways to do it there's not just three ways to do it there is experimentation happening when we're talking digital you're throwing VR in there you're throwing Twitch gaming streaming in there you're throwing Facebook groups in there you're throw like it is unlimited the number of ways that that people are are doing it and so I just want to tag back on and and Andy can probably add this too of the the interaction between things I've I've been a pastor for over twenty years before I was a pastor I was trained to be a teacher so the I stand in front I disseminate information was the way I was trained I am totally addicted to being interrupted as I'm reading the Bible I read two hours a day Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday and sometimes longer and I get five minutes into something and we get a side conversation for about five to ten minutes about a question that was engaged going on is what do you think about this or what about that like it was so hard over the last couple of years for me to give sermons um because nobody was interrupting me nobody was asking questions I did not know if I was connecting and resonating with people because there's no chat for me to read to know I connected and and I'm also with churches that are struggling and and dying that I've been working with so they're not even used to amens and Hallelujah and let their face know that they're in agreement or nod their head I'm like oh my goodness I mean I'm at the two extreme of I know that people are getting it and we're having a conversation and they're going to walk away with something and I gave something to them and all I'm going to get at the end is great message pastor and I have no idea if I really even connected with somebody.

So good I you know I I this is a confession hour here and this this drives my wife nuts in church so a lot of you know like if you've been around the church digital for a long time the name Ra the Armis he was used to be a digital pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami he actually replaced me when I quit as a digital pastor when I resigned just call it healthy um so we go to the same church okay Ray and I go to the same church and so I will it's a small church one hundred fifty people in a service two hundred fifty on a weekend uh church plant and I always sit on the left-hand side and Rey always sits on the right hand side so we're like opposite from each other and during the sermon we've got a text thread open between us now Carlos Lett's the pastor of this church we are great friends like we went we used to work with Carlos and I'll just I'm literally I'm just blowing up Ray all during the sermon thoughts questions ideas like you know second screen like you would normally do like in in in Discord and and Ray's texted me back and so like we're we're laughing I'm I'm joking kind of you know and and so I'll smirk sometimes every once in a while and my wife is like elbowing me next to like put the phone away you're making a scene stop it and I but I'm just you know still doing it because that's that's how I engage right but the the traditional teacher the masters of education I'm doing this my wife's freaking brilliant but she's struggles with new ways of of thinking like she's very traditionalist in in her her style and so she's seeing me do this engaging you're like you're being completely disrespectful to to Carlos and to everybody else in the room meanwhile Carlos is like what are the highlights give me give me the updates what are you guys thinking we're so we're even talking with Carlos and bringing him in and and so it's it's really um it's interesting to see that that paradigm shift I've been saying this and I've told J Mo previously like for me platforms like PushPay and Resi should be incorporating in asynchronous community into the into the live aspects of it like I would love to see talking about Church Online Platform how can I live uh chat in the live room with Church Online Platform and have the online people see it in the same time like can we time slip so that it it makes sense so virtual and physical can can't can't connect Andy's given me the peace sign I don't know what that means are you seconding you got to go peace out cool all right hey I want to be respectful of time but I'm having fun so um Andy Hill me or Andy Andy left uh flat cap Hill me do you have time to hang around for a while or do you have to go too I gotta run so I thank you guys for this time it's been amazing so I'll see you guys around awesome hey uh y'all jumping on the stream that was a very abrupt end but we got to go so thanks for hanging out with us I I lost track of time I was so excited by my async comment uh we're good but um feel free to I we stream every Tuesday doing this and would love to see you all on here and uh get connected into church on what we're doing here I sorry say Church Online Platform get connected to what we're doing to church digital we love it hey thanks y'all for being here um see you soon.