EP316 Digital Missionary - Jeff & JMo Report on Lausanne's Fourth Congress in Korea

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? 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 multiplayer church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Connect streaming software to go live. Viewers be able to stream. Excellent connection. So I should be seeing people. Should be seeing me on YouTube. And Jason Morris is walking in the building. Let me let him in. Hey, hey, how you doing? By the way, I went ahead and pressed the button where broadcast live right now, just so you know. No pressure. We didn't actually—I sent Jason a text earlier today. I was like, hey, I think this is what I want to talk about. Do you agree with this? And he added a couple things. So we did not really debrief on this as much as it was, hey, we're just gonna like jump in and hit the ground running.

So what you drinking?

Jate. This is a katala blend. Free it. I forget the name, the brand, but it has katava in it. I don't know what that means in English. It's like one of the herb things.

I mean, I hear you talk and it literally feels like it's a different language, which I love and respect. Like, you are always drinking those, man. Every time I see you, how many of those do you drink a day?

Well, it is just one cup of tea that gets, you know, I keep throwing water on it. So it's like if you could have like one or two tea bags and then just drink that all day, that's kind of what it's like.

Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, I gotta learn more about the drinking habits of—I usually don't drink it after around two o'clock in the afternoon if I want to sleep that evening.

Very cool. All right, so I just blew up a bunch of notifications. I'm still—I mean, I'm frustrated, J-Mo. I gotta get with Andy. YouTube has been very problematic for me streaming. For whatever reason, Riverside to YouTube, like it's just not working for me. And so like, it'll—I literally it worked like thirty minutes ago because I was just working through issues and it worked fine. And then, you know, don't change any settings, don't change the stream key, don't change anything. Just turn on, press broadcast again, and it's not working. So hopefully, you know, what I was trying to—because we got a lot of our international friends are now catching up with us on WhatsApp. And so like, I'm really trying to get YouTube to be the deal. And we just gotta get figured out because it's not working.

But is there a way to do RTMP inside of—that's actually what's happening is my firewall is blocking YouTube from Riverside. And so I did RTMP, and RTMP is only working like once and it's off. And the guys at Riverside are like, no, it should be a persistent key and URL. You shouldn't have to change anything. If it works once, it'll work forever. And I'm like, it depends on how you have it set up.

Yeah, maybe it's something's wrong. But at this point, I'm completely willing to say, hey, I'm an idiot, because I just want to fix it. I don't care if I'm the blame for that.

Awesome. Well, you know, Jason knows how much of an idiot I am because—let me just say this. The day before Jason and I were going to Korea, we're on a call. Maybe it was a call about something or some sort of call, and Leon was in the room. Leon, give testimony to this. Leon, we were together. And Jason says, okay, hey, we're going to Korea together. I need to know, like, Jeff, what do you need from me on the trip? Like, how can I help you? And I looked at Jason and I was like, pretend that I'm a five-year-old little boy who has no idea what he's supposed to do in international airports. I don't like—really, it's like I travel all the time, send me in the US. International is one hundred percent different. Like, I listen, I felt so much better. Like, just the fact that my Uber app worked in Inchon, Korea—oh my gosh, it was like I could breathe because I was so lost without this stuff. And so Jason did a great job up until the last day, and the last day he ditched me, which was awesome because it was like, I've been carrying you around for like a week. I'm leaving you, sorry bum. That was awesome. I fell asleep at the table. I was like, face down at this table. We're both like, oh my God, exhausted. I don't know about you, but I was pretty wiped.

You're not a—do you qualify yourself as an introvert or extrovert? You're kind of like in the middle.

Yeah, it's weird. I can—I don't know. It's kind of—I'm an ambivert. I feel like if one of the things that I've discovered in a party scenario, I will find one or two people to have a deep conversation with instead of working the crowd. That tends to be my MO, which kind of lends me to believe I'm probably leaning more toward the introvert side than the extrovert side. But I can turn it on whenever I want. I just can't be for a long time.

So the brilliance of the Church Digital sent two borderline introverts right to a congress on the other side of the planet with five thousand people working a booth. What could possibly go wrong with that equation?

Oh my gosh, it was—man, I want to get into the conversation here a little bit. We're hanging out today and just share some of our experiences and our excitement for what happened as a result. And you know, people like, was it good? Was it good? I was like, oh my gosh, it was amazing. It was affirming. It was, you know, life-changing is too strong of a word, and I think we at the church level throw life change around maybe a little too much. But I know that we've been busting our hump for the Church Digital. We've been shifting a lot over the past couple months trying to get to a place without even really affirmation that the thing was going to work. And we get out there and start having some conversations, and it was just incredible. Like, I will tell the stories, but I literally saw grown men cry describing some of this shift to a digital missionary. And it was just so, so good.

So I do want to structure—well, let me, Jason. You know, just to kick it off, we're gonna get into the meat of this, so don't drive this. But give me initial reaction, initial take. Something other than, oh my God, it's going to be so great to collaborate together, because you've used that twice in different shorts with me. So you gotta come up with something better than collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. What's your like initial thought on Leon?

Well, what blows my mind is this was a collective gathering of the global church. Most of the time when—and it was a—all of the delegates were by invitation only. So it wasn't just random dudes, conference junkies, you know, that sort of thing. These were high-level people globally that actually get stuff done that are there to collaborate and partner. That was the goal. And it wasn't just a bunch of, you know, people like us, you know, old white guys. It was the global church everywhere, and intentionally so.

I don't know if you had a chance to work on the gap tables and that sort of thing, but at every table I sat at, there was a representation of every continent. And that's really different. Most of us are used to going to a conference, hearing some great talks, and being surrounded by people that are kind of like us, wherever that may be. In this particular case, it was intentionally diverse, and that actually created a few issues here and there, right?

So if you can imagine topics of discussion being the persecuted church, for example, and you have Palestinians and Jews in the same room around the same table talking about topics like that, what could possibly go wrong? You know, there were a few sparks here and there around different topics that are healthy, you know, healthy conflict around people that genuinely and deeply love Jesus, figuring out how to work together in spite of different perspectives. And the same would be true of talking around the topics of violence, and you have Russians and Ukrainians in the same room. What could possibly go right?

Yeah, so it's stuff like that where it's like, okay, these conversations we're having are at a completely different level and are primed and designed for reconciliation and cooperation at a level that I don't know that I've experienced before. So, you know, talking about difficult things, and there was even one moment where at one of my tables, you know, I was sitting down and they were talking about the persecuted church, and I didn't realize how that would even trigger some of the things that I had experienced on the mission field. And it was a lot, and I just lost it. I was just breaking down, bawling, snot running down my nose. I was just, you know, praying for the persecuted church, knowing that for the first time I saw this evenhanded approach around, yes, you know, we always hear about the blood and the martyrs, seed of church, and all these good things that come out of it. That is true. While at the same time, validating the pain and the suffering that our brothers and sisters go through at the same time, right?

And that particular tension, I've never been in an environment that would allow for both, because usually it's one or the other, right? But allowing for both to coexist, for Jesus to be present in the middle of pain on topics like that, was just—that was life-changing for me. Because, you know, I've gone through stuff, and I was able to pray for people who have gone through stuff too in ways that I felt, for the first time, there was actual value in some of the things that I've experienced that have been very hard. For the first time, I was able to pray for people with a level of empathy that we all needed, you know, and to suffer with the global church and to sit with Jesus and do that together. Man, that was like—to get an opportunity to do that was nuts.

And then being able to layer on top of that the opportunities that the Church Digital provides for the persecuted church in persecuted areas, and to meet with other partners who you're never going to be able to Google search and find because they're—but in environments like this where, okay, you can't take photos, you can't publish this on social media, and there were problems with that too. I mean, there were some people that were shooting photos and making friends and then putting people in danger. And we had to shut that down. And there were—to be able to be in the room to talk with the actual people who are getting things done, you know, we've never had a chance to do that.

Yeah, and then to offer tools that would help them and have them be boots on the ground to help us connect and collaborate. Dude, when do you get a chance to do that? I mean, come on. Incredible.

By the way, I asked him for a simple overview, and ten minutes later he's done. Like, that is such a Jason Morris moment right there. So good. Like, I was like, let's go for something light. Let's talk about kimchi. No, man, straight in. We're talking persecuted church, man. Oh, man, so good. But I—

I mean that's really like we we can tease this thing but that's I mean that's the heart of what what we dealt with. I had a, yeah I had a grandpa come up, uh somebody brought him over to my booth. I didn't see who the person was that brought him but I just saw a hand motion to me. I was talking with somebody else and um, dude's in a close, he's a he's a grandpa in a close country. He's just an older gentleman. When I say grandpa like his 80s and and he's like, "Can I take a moment to talk with you about what the future of our church needs to look like in in our country because we're trying to figure out how to prepare best for that?" And I was like, "I I will, I will give you the rest of the conference if for no other reason than to have this conversation with you. Like I will do nothing other than answer that question for you." It's unbelievable.

Um, like there are, there were people that would not, were not even comfortable joining our public WhatsApp group. Uh and so I've got like, like a list on on my on my device of of people that I need to speak with directly to keep them informed of what's going on because of the the secrecy of of the underground church and their environments. And I quickly realized, "Oh my gosh, I need to find somebody at cyber security that actually knows what they're talking about because you know if we're going to be advising people in closed areas, I don't need to be like making up crap. I actually need somebody that knows what they're doing." And so we're we're digging into that in a big way.

But uh, oh my gosh, so good. Now let's let's do this. Great, kimchi was great. Kim was yes, that whatever that noodle soup we had, that was not quite ramen. It was like a bigger than ramen ramen soup that was good. Chinese food was good. Yes, yeah, that was good. I mean honestly I don't think I had a bad meal um the entire time. I think I had kimchi two or three times a day. I had so much kimchi. If you know what kimchi is, it's spicy cabbage with other things um with like hot sauce mixed in it's really good. Um but that that suck ripped up my stomach for like the week after. Like I was, I I didn't realize but coming back like kimchi did not like me on the after post trip. So um yeah, you're welcome for that.

What, one of the surprises for me, like I knew uh by the way there's a bunch of people in chat, feel free to ask questions in there. I'm I'm trying to keep an eye on it. Uh Sumi beats uh ripped up your stomach. Yeah, totally did. Um but let's do this. Uh Laon digital culture like stands on stage night one day two. Yeah, there are, we need to be successful. Laon needs to be successful in three Ds for for the next 15 years for us to be successful for the next Congress. And it was really interesting. Discipl making, discipleship, discipl making multiplication generational. That's what he meant by discipl making and digital. Literally 2024, one of the top initiatives for the organization is to better understand digital. K parallel that to 2010 when they did not even say they were digital on stage the entire Congress. Um and seeing that not only represented in leadership but throughout the entire culture of the organization was was just a beautiful thing.

You got anything you want to share on that? Well, I mean they ran the whole thing on an app. More than one app actually. Um yeah, had the digital Discovery Center bringing together intentionally movers and shakers in the digital space for the digital church. That was really fun too. So yeah, whether that be indigenous or Global Switchboard or Faith AI, you know, the chosen, there's there's all of these different players that were coming together so that we could help each other. All bringing to bear at the table, okay, here's our superpower that we have. Let's put this on the table and let's help the global church together with the digital tools. And it was it was fascinating because there was no, there was no question that everybody understood the power of digital or finishing the Great Commission. So everybody was on the same page. It's like if Jesus and the Apostle Paul were alive today they would be doing everything digitally. Yeah, and we do too. And if we've got to think where the direction of society and our world is headed, there is a fascinating overlap between the world that is becoming connected with smartphones and the internet that happens to be, oh by the way, the same world that we have yet to reach with the gospel in a meaningful way, which by the way also happens to be the persecuted church. The vast majority, the overlap of all of those things is not coincidental.

So what the digital church provides is a way for both the missionary and the person exploring faith to explore Jesus and the gospel in a way that's a lot less risky than how it was done 50, 100 years ago when your head just got chopped off or whatever. So that the opportunities that are before us, let alone being able to spread the word and the hope of the gospel to an ever growing um population that we haven't really, I mean kept up with, that's that's part of our problem right now. We have to use different methods because while Christianity is growing, we're just the same percentage of the global population that, by the way, the growing parts of the global population are the ones that are getting connected to the internet and the ones that are getting smartphones now and the ones that are in the persecuted church. It all just comes together. So I feel like that God has prepared all of us, not just the church digital, but around the world, different digital partners with the persecuted church that is awakening to the possibilities the digital provides. All of these things are not by accident. Jesus is orchestrating this math um chess game so that the Great Commission can actually become the great completion through the great collaboration of all these partners together globally. So I'm just super excited to be a part of what Jas is doing. Great Commission, great completion, collaboration, collaboration completion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's uh, you're you're channeling your inner Dave Ferguson over at New Thing with that. That was that was good. A little bit. Um, hey, so yeah, I mean we've got to be honest like we're we're getting some some feedback right now with the closed church. I I know in chat right now in Twitch uh one of the individuals in there actually watched uh the service uh the the Congress online, which we had uh you know just with Resi. I know the stats. We Resi broadcasted it in seven languages simultaneous. English, Spanish, French, Russian uh Portuguese uh Mandarin Chinese and Korean. To get to seven. Um and then um we had a, they had actually and this was um uh Tall Skin Kiwi actually developed a virtual reality lounge for people to meet and connect with all over. And so it it's like really cool to see you know how interconnected TCD ended up becoming with with Laon and making this happen. It was so cool. But the individual, oh there's somebody in chat that's from a close country and uh he connected. He actually reached out to me uh book time with me during the Congress uh I think the first time it showed up. I I like the time zones were weird. I don't know how this worked but he scheduled a call with me at 2 AM Korean time and I was like, "I'm I'm not going to make that call bud, sorry." Um and so we rescheduled. But you know he's he's in a closed country and trying to figure out uh digital ministry. And so he's hanging out and talking with people in the chat and he's been on WhatsApp and Discord and and um you know that's that's the game right now where we want to create, we want to connect with people like our friends here through the Congress and other people. We want to invite them in a community to build relationships, establish trust and gain credibility essentially to get us to the point where we're going to start to talk about equipping and equipping digital missionaries. And we're going to get into that um for in in in a little bit. But you know, even let's you know as segue into this, as we're talking about you know digital missionaries, this was really the first time Jason that that we we publicly talked about you know digital missionaries and being a digital missionary sending agency. Like we've done language with our friends in Discord and you know everybody, everybody's going to love. I'm not going to stand in Discord and say anything that anybody's going to hate because they're like, "Oh yeah, this is awesome, blah blah blah." It's it's great, you know. Um you know, sell them land in the Everglades and they think it's incredible, especially with the storm coming. But um you know, if you try to to sell this idea to people that are cold to Christ and even not cold to Christ but cold to digital ministry, like it was um it was scary to me a little bit like how it would be received. Uh and it was it was encouraging to me to see how many people got on board with the idea of of being a digital missionary. Like we had I don't know, 400 plus conversations, four to 500. I we handed out 450 stickers with a QR code on it um and just all sorts of people were interested in the idea. It was interest. It just as a a kind of a, I didn't expect that coming. Maybe I should have but I didn't. Um you know, in in America and uh in um in the Discord community for the most part, the conversations we've had up to Laon were people that were somewhat aware of digital ministry. Like the average persona we talk to is somebody who actually is very comfortable with digital ministry, just has been told by their leadership it doesn't work that way and they're coming to us to get validation and permission to actually ministry outside of you know the church and the denomination and everybody being critical around them. Um that wasn't who we connected with in Korea. The people we connected with Korea actually for the most part had little to no grounding in in digital ministry or digital anything. Uh there were more typical missionaries, church planters. Like I don't hate to say normal people but really really really normal people doing ministry, not you know experts in in the digital. They were experts but for the most part it was just you know salt of the earth people trying to you know extend their ministry by by looking at digital and they were so excited about the idea of of digital.

Do you maybe you have a a story or anything you want to to throw on that? I think I think one one thing when you know they they're in the digital Discovery Center that that little expo area, all the digital tools, we got folks with VR headsets and NFTs and web 3 and dude, all the crazy stuff right? And they walk up to the booth and they're like, "Okay, what do you do?" And why would tell them we're a digital um mission sending agency and they'd be like, "Uh, what?" So sometimes they would say, "What is that?" Um because they're like, "Digital missionary?" That was a little bit of cognitive dissonance for them. Not that they close to it, they just didn't know. And then the other ones were like, "Oh, tell me more about that." Um I got both responses but neither were antagonistic. They just either didn't know or they did and wanted more. And the followup to that was always um, "Yes, we send digital missionaries making digital disciples, gathering in digital first churches that send digital missionaries to do the same." That's pretty much it. And that little simple explanation for a lot of people, especially those who are missionally minded, it just crystallized for them and it made sense. And for those who needed further explanation, they're like, "Well, what is a digital missionary?" And I'm like, "Well, you know what a missionary is? Yes. It's a person who tells people about Jesus using digital tools. That's it." And once they realized how simple it was, then they're like, "Wait, I use WhatsApp to do that already." I'm like, "Well, you're probably a digital missionary. You don't even realize it. Now the question is, are you leveraging it to its..."

Maximum potential or not, then now we can have a conversation. We can help you. We have a bunch of resources, ideas, a community that can share best practices, all those sorts of things. And then they would just light up and they're like, "Oh, I got to be a part of this." And that's basically how the conversations went.

It was really open because you're talking with people who just want to tell others about Jesus, period. You know, it's kind of, you know, when you're talking about just Great Commission work where Jesus is saying, you know, "Make Disciples of all Nations," how do you do that if you don't use digital? That's going to be a lot of work. If you don't use digital, so it's a lot harder without utilizing digital technology. It's a lot more expensive. You're killing yourself to mission, seriously. You got to really think that through.

Now, it's not to say that, you know, the theologians and the pastor types, they have a very necessary and vital part in this work that Jesus has given us. But the people that we were talking to at the Lausanne Congress—the Congress is like, was on Congress for World Evangelism, right? So it had a different spin to it. So when you're talking about world evangelism, it's just a different emphasis. Once you go out and share the gospel, somebody has to go behind that guy and actually start planting churches. It's like the difference between Paul and Barnabas, you know? You got the guy who's on the edge, always wanting to do the new thing, and then you got the guy that's behind who's a little bit more relational, wants to build up and edify the body of Christ now that it's established. You need both, right? But if you're talking to the Barnabas guy about digital ministry, then he's going to have all kinds of red flags all over the place. If you're talking to the Paul guy, um, he's like, "Let's just get the job done and worry about all the rest later, right? Let's just get the job done." And so it was really refreshing to talk to people who are just telling others about Jesus and trying to find the best tools to make that happen.

Yeah, so good. I know, um, one of the conversations I had, uh, this guy walks up to the booth. So many good—like I said, 400-some conversations. I, I just, I'll preface by saying I had two that went negative. Um, one guy's like, "What's a digital missionary?" And I handed him the sticker and kind of answered him, and he cut me off about halfway through my little elevator pitch and he's like, "Hey, I appreciate what you're doing. I'm not interested," and walked away. And actually, I was completely fine with that.

Uh, there was one guy who, um, I'm not going to say who he worked for, but he worked for a Christian book publishing company, and, uh, I think when he heard "digital" and "church" in the same sentence, he's like, "Yeah, I'm done," and, um, wanted to pick a fight. And that was like, yeah, I had like four people waiting to talk to me and Jason was nowhere to be found, and I kept trying to, like, diffuse this guy, move on. Jason—I say that Jason was talking with partners and doing things like connecting with, and not at the booth. And, uh, but it was, uh, I was like, by myself at the booth, and I was trying to move on because I had a line, and this guy just wanted to keep picking fights. And it was, it was a frustrating experience, but that was minimal.

But I had this one guy that came up to me, and he looks down at our banner. We had our logo on, like, a table, and it said, um, you know, "The Church Digital," and the guy says to me, he's like, "Okay, you've got 'church' and 'digital' in your title, in your company name. Um, those are two words that don't go together. So that already makes you interesting. What do you actually do?" And I was like, "Hey, I'm Jeff. The Church Digital. We are a digital missionary sending agency. We—" and he cuts me off. He's a sweet guy, and he's like, "All right, I'm sold. You don't even need to tell me anything else. What do I need to do to help? How can I help?" And, uh, dude, I, like, I met with him for twenty minutes, started talking about all the stuff, and, uh, it's just it was exciting to see the vision of, um, digital missionaries, people catching it and running with it.

No, they, they, the vision, crazily enough, is probably a little bit further than even some of our team. Like, they were talking about transhumanism. They were trying to figure that out, you know? Yeah, and of course, I, a little bit about that topic, but I feel like that's ten, twenty years from now, and they're thinking in their mind, "Well, we're not going to meet for another ten years. We need to talk about this now so that we can get ahead of it." And yeah, okay, they're talking about how AI and transhumanism and all that kind of stuff, you know, machine sentience and all that stuff. And to me, I feel like, "Well, let's just tell people about Jesus," but I mean, there was a forward-thinking and a breadth to the topics at hand on the digital side.

I was in a whole session that we spent days with representatives from every continent around my table talking about how our forms—not functions, but how our forms at church need to change in the digital age. That was a fun conversation. And then we had other sessions that were, um, in other, uh, other breakouts that were spending days talking about, "Okay, how does discipleship work in the digital age?"

Yeah, and so I'm really curious to hear what Simon is, what his discoveries were there. There was some really great, um, conversations and relationships around action. And this is another thing about this particular conference is that it wasn't just a data dump and a "rah rah rah" inspiration pep rally. It was, "No, we're going to sit down and, um, covenant to partner together for the next ten years to actually get something done together as the global church," which is very different. Because when you're just pontificating, that's one thing. But when you're sitting down and saying, "No, no, no, we're going to work together," I've got stuff where I'm interacting with folks this morning on actual work that is being done between, like, Alpha and the Middle East and digital and all these other things, um, as well as a whole other group of guys that are going to experiment with different liturgies with a digital layer on top of the hybrid kind of stuff and report back to the team what they find. I mean, that's not that's not a normal conference. This is, this is work groups. This is the global church working together. And yeah, I'm super excited to see what's going to come out.

Yeah, I'm, I'm really curious. I was funny. I tried—they tried to pull me into the transhumanism conversation a little bit too, and I was like, "Yeah, I'm not, I'm not ready to do that." Like, I'm not discrediting you. I think it's awesome. I want, I wanted to be in the room to listen. Like, it was funny when somebody told me they were in the transhumanism group. I was like, "Did they take it serious or was it a joke?" Like, they're serious? Good for them, you know? And that's what I heard. It was really serious. But, um, and it was funny. So I was like, "I'm going to go to the digital discipleship one," and that's the, what Simon did, go to that, right? Is that what you say?

Yeah, that's what I thought. And, uh, and so it's like that's the one I wanted to go to. And, um, at the last minute, somebody from another organization came, basically came up and was like, "Hey, everybody tells me you guys are really good at community, right?" And I was like, "I mean, yeah, it's the, it's the what we do, the community, huh?" Yeah, yeah, we're community of community. And, um, and so he's like, "Well, I'm, I'm leading one over here on community, digital community, and so I don't care what you're going to, you're coming to mine." This guy literally stole me, uh, to go to his breakout, like, in a completely different building on the forty-sixth floor. I'm like, hobbling around with a cane back and forth. How did I go? I never did get a chance to figure out what happened with all of that with the digital community or with the cane.

Yeah, the digital community one, um, we, so there were like four groups in there, and, um, the there were two of them. Basically, when we talk about these breakouts, it's not your typical breakout. This is like a, it's called a GAP. GAP, um, where it's basically like there's a, there's twenty-five major issues, and it's our job as a Congress to address the twenty-five issues. And one of the transhumanism was one of the gaps. Digital community was one of the gaps. And so there were four groups in the room, uh, that were meeting to try to figure out how to, um, solve this digital community gap.

Now, of the four subgroups within the room on digital community, two of them were like, "We're going to try better to do this, and we're going to do this, and it might church were going to do this," and it wasn't Big C church as much as them as an individual. Not discrediting that, but it wasn't, I don't feel like it was the focus. Um, there were two groups. There was the group that I ended up being at, and then the guy that stole me, his kind of subgroup, um, were like the two really big C church level things. And so I put together—I say this not me, but within the group that I was working with—there was a, uh, talking about continents. Uh, it was North America, it was Europe, it was Asia, and it was, um, Oceania. So there were, there were four people, probably five nationalities, five or six nationalities speaking into this thing, man. It, it was, it was unbelievable.

Um, we're all on WhatsApp, like, you know, no way to get us all together on a Zoom call because it's just time zones are so crazy as we're spread out all over. But, um, we designed a research project that I'm now working with Lausanne to try to figure out funding. Honestly, and I'm not saying this officially, like, one of the options on the table is taking it to Barna and letting Barna run with the project. And so, like, we're, that's on the table. Like, I'm, look, honestly, I'm looking at this thing and saying, "This research project is going to be my next book. My, I don't know if it's my next one, but I'm going to write a book on this." Like, the depth of digital community towards discipleship and how to manage that. We're wanting to test the, um, the effectiveness of evangelism, of discipleship, of building trust, mental health implications, best practices. A lot kind of, the superficial, superficial light words, but some, some of, like, the easy lessons to come from that.

Now, what the other group within digital community wants to do is they want those best practices to dig into, um, now a much larger theological and academic, uh, conversation, right? Like, "How do we address this at the Big C church level?" Like, my project's more of the prerequisite that gives people, you know, ammunition to fire in the larger conversations. And that's where it's like, "Digital community is how we open up into the conversation, and then we're going to get into anthropomorphism, which is going to get us into blah blah blah, and that's going to get us into," and so, like, they're figuring out how to, like, they're playing chess and we're like playing checkers on this, you know, much smaller thing in digital community.

And so they told me that's what they were doing. I was like, "I, I am not jumping into a conversation with academics on transhumanism. You all are crazy if you think that's going to be helpful." And they were like, "No, no, no, no, no, you just, you just do digital community. You give us the stuff that you're talking about, and we'll do the rest." And I'm like, "I can do that." And so we're, um, yeah, I'm literally bringing on a project manager now for that and, uh, trying to figure out funding and all sorts of fun stuff that you get to when you're doing research projects like this.

So I, um, you know, I went into Lausanne thinking, you know, um, no, I mean, it was going to be more work either way. Like, there's no way coming out of it's going to be less work. But the, the—

The Gap stuff I was like in my mind it was I'm totally just gonna phone this in and you know oh dude yeah I didn't get off my feet take a break and rest and all of a sudden like I'm back in the middle of everything and running point with this multi-national project involving you know ten of the top global organizations, missional organizations on the planet and it's like okay you know I'm glad to do that but we'll figure. I feel like in that sense that God was answering prayer because this community was praying for the two of us that God would orchestrate divine encounters and I'm telling you Jesus did that all week. Yeah, because there were a constellation of conversations that I could not have orchestrated that have been brought together to help the global church in meaningful ways from all around the world. And I'm super excited about what that will mean for outposts in the Middle East and how that affects you know the Jews for Jesus and Alpha for you know the Muslim nations and help with all that stuff. Yeah, all of those things together was like wait a minute, it's not, this cannot be by accident. And so thanks community for the ways that you prayed for us while we were there because Jesus was just like you need to talk to this person and this person, going to sit down at your table. Like there were random people that weren't even scheduled for the table that I was sitting at that or just like hey I'm just gonna pull in here if no one's at my table. And the coordinator for Alpha partnership just happen to be there. Yeah, okay, I've been trying to get in touch with you for months bro. It's so funny. The probably the most ironic conversation I had, it was the random people at a breakfast table or for me it was bus rides back and forth. And one morning I sat down next to this guy and his name was Jeffrey. And we kind of, older gentleman, I mean I'm old but he's older than me. And he's a white guy but he talked in an accent. He was basically from Canada. And I asked him you know we joked about each other's names on our lanyard, Jeff and Jeffrey. And I was like well what do you do? And he's like well my job's the simplest on the planet to describe. I forget what he said but it's basically he's like the president of a university in Canada, a Bible school in Canada. And I laughed and I was like well mine's not easy to describe. I'm founder of a digital missionary sending organization. And he's like what the garbage is that? Like his face, the look on his face was shocking. And literally I had like a twenty-five minute bus ride sitting next to this guy where basically I'm like hey why doesn't your school teach digital ministry? And what do we need to do to actually make that happen? Do you not actually think it's a valid ministry method or is there other, you know, nefarious forces that are keeping it from happening? Like what is the issue with digital ministry not being addressed in the average seminary and Bible college in Northern America? And it's just a very kind of frank conversation and it was really informative into some of the roadblocks and issues centered around Christian academics. And that's why I'm so glad kind of after the fact a couple days later these guys tell me yeah this is the plan of attack and you're the kind of the prerequisite for us to go attack over there. So you know keep going. It's kind of fun to see how we're going to be part of the solution in addressing digital ministry and digital discipleship and ultimately digital community in some of these circles. So so good. Do we want to talk about EDM? We can mix EDM here in a little bit. Let's talk about outposts. So you know we had conversations like I said four to five hundred digital people, missionaries, potential digital planters and digital missionaries. But there were a handful that kind of rose to the top quickly. You know maybe their vision or their experience or their understanding of multiplication kind of showed above the rest. The team that they had kind of backing them in that. Interestingly I met a guy who I did not realize, but a guy that's running a digital only church in Argentina. And it's using, I forget the name of the community, but it's something comm. It's like one of these cartoony like community town or something like that with the cartoony where you drag the icon around to the different people. Okay, and that's what he uses for a digital church. And I was like I've never heard anybody actually using that for a church. How many people? It's like oh we got like six hundred people every week. Holy crap. And it's I was like well is that just all watching services? Like no no no that's like small groups and community and engaging in discipleship. And you know was talking to him in South America. You know one or two conversations opened up in the Middle East. The Pacific Islands over there, Oceania, opened up to a relation, friend of a friend. Where else are we talking to? A lot of Africa, a lot of India. Probably the number one nationality we talked to was India. Africa, like the continent. I know Africa's a continent, don't judge. But Africa was probably number two. And maybe a mix of Pacific and Pacific Island was probably number three. With Middle East kind of mixed in as well. But there were a lot of outpost leaders you know that rose up. It was so funny and you could always tell the multipliers in the room because they would ask a question like how do I train others? You know whether they're thinking how do I train the people at my church, how do I train the people on my team? You know and it's oh yeah no we're training the trainers. We want you to go through our process and then you have the freedom to contextualize it however you want. You know we believe in the train the trainer approach. We want to train you. You know I don't know anything about India. There's eight, there's eleven hundred languages and you know that's you know dialects and I don't know any of them. And so I'm not, this is not the face of a man that's going to tell you how to do your ministry in India. You are. But how can I, you and how can I help you resource you to do this and connect you with other people in the community that are from there too? So we have outpost leaders that you know they're in India. So it's closer. And I feel like whatever we can do at this stage to you know get a little bit closer culturally to where people are feeling called and need resourcing we can kind of do that right now. Yeah, we've got folks in Africa. We've got folks in India. We didn't have until recently anyone in the Middle East. Well we've got contacts but not an outpost leader. And then in Latin America we've got some potential for stuff. And so the conversations we had and the connections I feel like are only going to grow in time and as we you know work this community thing, this global community that we have out together. So yeah I feel like we're just air traffic controller right now. Yeah, and by the way the pivot at the last second to launch the WhatsApp community was I mean I'm not saying that Simon and Nesh are like the voice of God speaking but oh my gosh of four to five hundred conversations we had I only had two people acknowledge that they actually knew what Discord was. Everybody else was WhatsApp, WhatsApp, WhatsApp, WhatsApp, WhatsApp. And so that was so good that we went that direction. Thank you guys for pushing that. And I know we've got close to a hundred, if not a hundred. I think I saw a number of a hundred on a dashboard somewhere. So man, without not even a month old with a hundred people in there. And as more and more people process through the congress and I'm excited to see that grow. I'm not officially saying this, you know Jason J Mo and I were talking about this several times in Korea. WhatsApp will be the future main community of the church digital. Like this thing will only scale globally. I don't mean only but it is going to scale globally. And the scalability of WhatsApp into those platforms, into those people groups, into those communities, into those areas, it will be the main one. Now we've got a lot invested into Discord and love Discord. We're gonna see both of them you know operate simultaneously. We're not going to shut one down until you know one of them goes. Mighty networks are out and just, but I'm confident that's not gonna be a problem. Well it kind of reminds me of the church in Jerusalem and the church in Antioch. So there was a shift in which the center of gravity moved to the church in Antioch from the church in Jerusalem. And it feels like Discord is awesome, don't get me wrong. And it just, it works really well for that cultural niche that it works with. You know like if you're a gamer, yeah do Discord. If you're not a gamer and you live in India, Discord is another world right? Yeah, but for whatever reason everybody understands WhatsApp and it just feels like that the center of gravity is pulling that direction. We're not there yet because you know once once it tips over, like we have to get like what probably five to six hundred ish into WhatsApp before it will, that center. I mean I don't even know when the center of gravity will shift. It's interesting. I don't know why this is relevant but there's a movie on Netflix currently or a TV show called Three Body Problem I think where it, I don't want to get, yeah Three Body Problem, yeah yeah yeah. And so when you get to the point where there's so many circles of gravity that it complicates and there's a level of decentralization into that that maybe we can operate to free it. But you know that's a I have a sticky on my, don't create anything until you really need it. Brian Johnson from Casey Underground, he said that in a meeting. And anytime somebody says something I like I write it on a sticky and put it on my monitor. I was like I gotta remember that because that's something I gotta remember. So that's not the problem for today. It'll be a problem soon but not today right? Yeah. Let's talk about you know some, I know we're running out of time. I'm sure you got to leave at the top of the hour. Some of the strategic partners you mentioned some of them. Alpha, we talked about Faith Tech a little bit. We talked about you know some others. But kind of like you know, and that was J Mo's thing. Like I spent the time at the booth and there would be you know times that he would just, which was fine as I told him like let's do that. He would disappear, walk around, find, have conversations with the partner, see what's going on because he's thinking how do I equip digital missionaries? How do we create resources and partnership? So what can you do to talk a little bit about that? Okay, so one of the things you know when I was like walking in the Discovery Center I was always thinking okay how can we partner for the benefit of the church, digital missionaries that will be you know training and sending out? What's what kind of tools could they use in their tool belt so that their ministry that God is calling them to is successful? And that was the mindset that I had. So those could be things all the way down to like AI tools that help people.

To you and you have gospel conversations as much as you could possibly stand. And then, you know, those types of services that are out there, there's probably about three or four of them. Um, and then one of the other things—let me pull this up for a minute.

Yeah, this right here, I'm gonna throw this in the chat: Disciple Tools. This out was great. Um, Disciple Tools is this really nice list of a lot of the tools that were being showcased at the Digital Discovery Center, um, either directly or indirectly, that I thought, "Wow, this is a great collection, a list of all the different ways that people like us—digital missionaries—sometimes we don't even know what's available." Um, and this has a nice—somebody made this list um and put it together while we were at the conference, and I thought, "Wow, that's genius," because I was making one on my own, but this is way better. So I just scrapped mine and just use that one. But um, those were the types of things that I felt like, "Wow, we there are tools at every stage of the discipleship process that could be um employed." So that wherever, whoever you want to reach, there's there's an app for that, and there's an app that can help you.

Um, and I feel like we as an organization didn't necessarily say, "Okay, this is the sanctioned tool or whatever." We should just say, "Okay, here's the list. Here's what, you know, so-and-so uses. Here's what somebody else uses. We think this is a good one to use, but experiment, because what God has called you to do and the people that he's called you to reach, there might be a better tool than the ones that we've been using." And the last thing we want to do as an organization is throw Saul's armor on you. So here's the list, you know? And so that was that was really cool to talk with people who um are developing new tools, ones that aren't even out yet. Like, yeah, stuff that's not on the list because it's not totally baked yet. Those were the fun conversations, because, you know, things like prayer and AI put together and different cocktails or tech stacks that, when combined, can create a force multiplier that people aren't thinking through in in the normal space. Um, but in the digital church space, we can use it in unique ways. So the combination of a lot of these tools, to me, was kind of sparking a lot of kingdom imagination. So those are the that were for me super great.

I I hesitate to use some names because I want to protect some of the NDAs that I had signed and some of the people in persecuted areas that I I don't know if I can talk about. But um, well, it was some of it's to come. Like, I remember my my favorite J-Mo conversation from the entire Congress. Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, you got to come see what this guy's doing. And he takes me over to this guy who's running AI. I'm not going to say the name of the company, but he's doing an AI thing. And uh, and so uh, somebody else has given that—he's given somebody else the spiel, so he's not talking to me directly. He's talking to somebody else, but I'm listening to what he's saying. And and honestly, in my mind, I'm like, "I'm really not that impressed, and I don't see how this fits in with the church digital at all. Like, I don't—why is Jason smart and he's wasting my time here?" And so, you know, I um, I so Jason, like, we step away to have a conversation at some point, and Jason's like, "So isn't that awesome?" And I I looked at Jason and I was like, "What do you see when you see this guy?" And he looks at me like a Jason does, uh, and he's like, "What do you mean?" And I was like, "What, what do you see from this?" And Jason describes this product that is unbelievable, is miraculous, it is incredible. It could revolutionize digital missionary and digital church church work as we know it. But it was not what this guy was talking about. It was, "This guy needs to add this thing to his product, which integrates with this thing to do this." And it's like, you know, two years down the road, it's going to be revolutionary, but everybody's got to work together to get to the finish line. And that's that's Jason Morris 101. Dude's got a freaking playbook of everybody and how everything interweaves together, and it's so much fun watching him work.

And the here's here's the other thing that was really cool about Congress was, while everybody was kind of pitching their thing, they were pitching the mission of the global church, and we're willing to partner. So it's like, one, there was no competition going on. It's just everybody coming together saying, "Oh, this is what I can bring to the table. Let's let's play. Let's collaborate," you know? Um, and when when you're in an environment like that, you can say, "Oh, if you over here use your tech with this stuff over here, SSO API style, now you've got something magic. Like peanut butter, you know? You got jelly. You got peanut butter, you know? On its own, but she's looking together, now you really got something." And then to watch that collaboration happen is just so fun, man.

Yeah, I'll say I'm I'm preferable to pet uh to uh grape jelly straight. Oh, like that straight out of the jar is um, I mean, that may be why I'm diabetic. I'm just going to be honest, like that too many shots of that in my life uh has has caused a lot of sugar issues. But uh, yeah, PB&J is what I actually miss the most is uh, having a good—cuz I don't get much of those anymore. But thank you for bringing that up. I need to I need some I need some kimchi in my life to kind of balance that out.

Um, do it. Yeah, and so man, listen, we've we've had some some great conversations. Digital tools, Disciple Tools—that's free right right now?

Yeah, I mean, the list is free. Some of the tools that are described aren't. Some are there's a list of open source ones. So one of the tags in there is open source, and there's a lot of stuff that's on a premium model that for a lot of the things that what we do, we could be in that level. So but what's great about it is that you're most likely going to see things you didn't know even existed. Yeah, and it could open up you the imagination of, "Oh, I could use this tool for like the devotional stuff with my digital church and the tribe that I'm ministering to, and then we could track discipleship this way using this tool," and you know, figure out what your cocktail is gonna look like, um, whether it's paid or not. It doesn't matter. And the open source stuff is a pretty nice list too.

Yeah, it's been it's been fascinating to me how even being at the Congress was a launching pad for conversations with people who were not at the Congress. Um, and uh, like the the phone has been very busy. Um, I say that, you know, email—not actually talk. Who talks on the phone anymore? But has been very busy. Lot of contacts with people who are not at the Congress.

Oh wait, I gave you the wrong link. Gave you the wrong link. It's not—is it not Disciple Tools? Disciple Tools is something else. Faith Tools. Here, let me get let me that link.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is way better. Sorry about that. Faith Tools. Yeah, that's way better. Okay, Disciple Tools is another organization, and you said it. I trusted you, but I was like, "That's I don't know if that's true unless he had a conversation that I didn't know about." Um, yeah, there you go. We're making it up as we go along. It's good. But Faith Tools, uh, check that out. And one thing that I'd say is through through the church digital, um, you know, since we're operating as a network, uh, you know, if there are tools that will help across the board, uh, negotiating a cheaper price or something like that is is always on the table. So you know, you guys, you know, this is one of the things we talk about with our movement leaders: "What do you need exactly? Like, what tool? What resource? What coaching? What material? What platform?" Um, like, because it's it's amazing the the influence—I say this humbly—the influence that we have walking into the table saying, "Hey, we represent, you know, digital missionaries across the planet, and how can we get this at ninety percent off?" Um, and because we're crazy, people are like, "Hey, we do want to do that. Let's do that." Um, so like, please uh, keep the conversations and and uh, open. I know that's actually one of the things Leon's so good at is like knowing what's going on and where people are at, and um, you know, helping figure out and connecting the dots with some others. So fall back on him or him or eyes. We getting into that, but awesome. Uh, how much time are do you have to go? You have any any closing thoughts or anything else before we wrap up here, man?

No, I don't have any closing thoughts. I gotta get, though, for sure.

Okay, sorry about that. Um, leave if you can. Don't hang up because I need to make sure Riverside updates everything on your end. So if you can leave but not um, go away, that would be good.

All right, thank you, man.

All right. Um, and so hey, appreciate it. Thanks for coming by. And as soon as he's here, he is gone.

Hey, y'all, seriously, I do want to thank you. Um, a lot of you that were praying for uh, for the Church Digital, for J-Mo and I while we were in Korea. Um, the um, my health was a train wreck over there for a number of reasons. Just legs swelled up on the airplane. Um, and honestly, didn't unswell until three days after the uh, we got back. Um, sleeping was hard. Um, just was a was was an exhausting trip. I was walking two to four miles, and that's two to four miles more than I'm used to walking. And two to four miles—big deal until you're walking around with a cane and swollen legs. And uh, it just was was hard. Uh, but your prayers really helped.

Um, it was funny—funny, not the right word—but um, Wednesday was probably the hardest day for me. I was uh, running the booth from noon to seven thirty, so like almost eight hours straight through all my feet the entire time, no chair, cane, and about six thirty, I was I was done. And so I literally—there's photos—I just sat down in the booth. Like, people were walking by. I was having conversations. I was shaking hands. I had like a pile of whatever. People would come down and um, had a you know, a handful of people were praying for me. Um, uh, one dude literally sat down next to me. Um, not because was interested in what we were doing—he told me—but he just like wanted to like talk with me cuz I think he felt sorry for me. But anyway, it was just it was this really sweet relational moment in the midst of the chaos of, you know, five thousand people in a convention center and another twenty-one thousand people watching online, one hundred sixty, one hundred seventy countries represented in total. Um, it was it was a just a beautiful thing.

So those of you who were praying and supporting us while we were over there, thank you. Those of you that, you know, a lot of you gave financially to help uh, J-Mo and I get there, that was so helpful and so meaningful. Um, TCD, um, the idea of digital missionaries, the idea of digital church, it went a very long way as a result of that Congress. And I, even with the health issues, even with being down a second week with recovery because of time zones—like, I still am not sleeping effectively now, even, you know, nine days later—like, um, God used that event on us, and so I'm appreciative of you all for for helping us get there and supporting us as as we were there.

There was some interesting feedback. I forget who it was—maybe sis pineapple in in uh, in chat—talking about actually, I don't know, was this pineapple? It was somebody. But you know, some frustrations with trying to get um, physical churches to understand digital ministry and digital disciple, digital missionary work. I think was the context of the conversation. Um, I can't say it yet. I can't. But I feel your pain. And um, the church digital, we will be addressing that very soon. Um, y'all pray for us.

Korea was um, this is what I was trying to say earlier. I was looking at Korea as the finish line. I just need to make it to Korea. We've got so much writing on Korea. We're just going to get to Korea, and that's going to be it. Korea was not the finish line. Korea was the launching pad. And I say

That not negatively, I say that incredibly. I say that with excitement. I see, I mean, I've got like goosebumps even saying it right now in between the yawn because I'm tired. I've been talking too much. That's the introvert, the yawn is the introvert of me saying it's time to stop streaming.

But I am very excited about the launching pad and the doors that God is opening up before us. There's still a lot of change coming to the church digital. There's, we've not, the team that I have around me is not one to shirk away from opportunities and is looking and seeing where God is moving around this. Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby. I think this is the second time I've mentioned Henry Blackaby today. Look and see where God is moving around you and join him in his purpose. Um, if everyone set aside their selfish ambition and vain pride and instead act humbly to the work of what God was doing, the world would be changed. I'm paraphrasing, it was something like that. Experiencing God, 1976. That quote is older than I am. Look and see what God is doing and join him in his work. If you Google that, you can see the entire thing. Henry Blackaby.

Guys, God's doing some incredible stuff in this space. Gals, God's doing some incredible stuff in this space through you, and we are merely fortunately, gracefully in a position where we can help equip and mobilize and encourage you. And so look for that, look for more of that. Whether you're a missionary, digital church, even some of the physical church people that are hanging around, there's going to be some really exciting stuff coming up very soon. So stay tuned, and that's all I'm gonna say because it's not time yet.

Um, I keep telling myself, I, I, I, I'm the guy who leaks news, like leaks stuff. Um, that's me. I'm the leaker. If that's a GIF leaker, it'll show up somewhere. GIF, who says I can't say GIF? I'm sorry, y'all.

Um, I'm the leaker in the situation, but love you all. Thank you very much. We're going to wrap up. This is episode 316 of the Church Digital Podcast live recording. We're done. I have no idea what's coming up next. I think it's Craig Whitney. I think he's next. If not, we'll figure it out very soon. But for Jeff, for Jason, thanks for jumping on the podcast. See you next time on the show. You have a good one.