EP324 - Teaching People to Fish Takes on New Meaning, Digitally

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

All right, hey, that music faded out almost like in perfect timing. It's like I designed it that way. That was so good. Hey, welcome to the Church Digital podcast, episode 324. I've done 324 of these things. Well, you know, I had some people cover here or there, but 324 is a lot of me talking. And so you're going to get a lot more of me talking in the episodes to come. We're going to get back. We're doing a season here on the flywheel of digital ministry—the digital mission flywheel. We're going to get into that here in a little bit. And a surprise guest once again joining us: Funko Pop Da Vinci. We'll get into Funko Pop Da Vinci here in a second. But for today, I wanted to hit a couple things just up here at the front.

We're going to get the next season. We're going to be talking about questions in digital mission work, really getting into some deep theological, deep systematic, deep but practical steps—deep theological and deep practical at the same time. Like, how do those fit together? I don't know. We're going to figure it out. It'll be fun. So check that in the weeks to come as we're wrapping up the flywheel.

But write this down: February 11th, Tuesday, 1 p.m. Eastern, we're going to do our second town hall meeting. Some of you may remember through the Church Digital we did a town hall meeting back in August of last year. That was when we announced, "Hey, we're switching over to this digital missionary sending agency model," which was a pretty massive shift. And it was well received, and it was a lot of fun having some of those conversations. And we want to bring everybody together again because, hey, we've got—I don't know that I would say it's massive shifts. I don't know that it's as groundbreaking or revolutionary as a digital missionary sending agency. Like, I cannot promise every town hall meeting we're going to be like groundbreaking like the digital missionaries in the agency. But I will say this: we're announcing a couple things coming up at that town hall meeting that are freaking awesome. Like, I'm really excited about this. I cannot wait to get the word out on this and to see what's going to happen in the weeks and months ahead because of it.

So if you're hanging out with us and you're kind of on the outside—you're lurking on the outside, you're not in the community but not engaging—man, this is a great time. Come hang out with us Tuesday, February 11th, 1 p.m. Eastern. It's during this time we'll make it the podcast, and we'll get the word out via VOD, but it's so much more fun if you're hanging out with us in synchronous, in the stream here live. As a matter of fact, I got some people hanging out with me today. Journey fan Jeff, great to see you, bud. Zuko, doing that. We got Steve Reed, my brother from another mother. You are tough. I'm going to assume that's the best and not "I'm a jerk." No, Steve wouldn't call me a jerk. Steve doesn't know me well enough to call me a jerk yet. I love that ukulele hand, pink waving. It's good to know I'm always good for the emoji in YouTube. To be honest, I kind of miss Twitch a little bit. You know, I enjoy the YouTube. I'm not really the Twitch. This is not the face of a Twitcher. And so I don't fit the Twitch model. So that's why I'm kind of hanging out more here in YouTube. But looking forward—oh my gosh, there's so much. Oh my gosh, there's so much. Oh my gosh, there's so much, man. As I'm even thinking about sitting here in this chair, I'm just—man, there's three, four things I would want to drop at that town hall meeting. And so listen, if you're not coming to that town hall meeting Tuesday, February 11th, yeah, what's wrong with you? Music keyed perfectly with that. I'm loving this soundtrack. It's much more my jam. And so come hang out with us Tuesday the 11th at 1 p.m. Eastern.

Okay, commercial over. We're going to get into it. Hey, so here with the stream today, we have been talking about this idea of a digital missionary. Now, we've been using the language framework—the digital missionary framework. But to be honest, it's the same strategy we play here at the Church Digital. Like, you know, it's not—I'm not only the president, I'm also a client. Those of you that remember the Hair Club for Men, we will get that nod. But it's true. Like, we use the same strategy for the Church Digital. We've seen it really be effective in digital missionary work outside. And you've heard me say this time and time again: the people we connect with at the digital level—social media, blogs, content, relationships, virtual reality meeting and world—the people that we connect with, we want to invite them into a community to establish trust, to build relationships. Evangelism, discipleship, all that works best at the community level. But through that discipleship and through that community, we want to get to the place where we are equipping people to do ministry, where they're discovering what their calling is. And not only helping them find their calling but mobilizing them, sending them out to do what God is calling them to do, and resourcing and caring for them on that journey.

Connect, community, equip, mobilize. And so through the past couple weeks, we've not only been talking about that as a framework for you all to contextualize and for you to adapt into your ministry, but we've also been talking about it as a flywheel. Now, this is where my good friend here, Funko Pop, comes into play. Leonardo Da Vinci. You may understand he was an artist. It's funny—he's got little paint brushes there, and he's got a sketchbook he's holding there in his hand. The Vinci does, isn't that nice? Funko Pop Da Vinci. You know, I really wanted Funko Pop Albert Einstein because, you know, I'm kind of a dork, and it's too expensive. Like, it's rare at this point, so I marked up the price. Boo, Albert Einstein. I love Albert Einstein. But Da Vinci invented this device. He's a famous inventor historically. And actually, like, I've seen displays with hundreds of his inventions and exhibits and things. And so he's this huge inventor back in the day. And one of the things that he invented was this idea of the flywheel.

Now, I'll actually—you know, I've got videos of like the original flywheel and photos and what he created for it. But it was this crank device up at, and had a handle that you would crank. And when you cranked it, there were four blocks of wood that were held up by chains. And as you cranked it, the centripetal force—I think I'm saying that right—centripetal force. This is physics, y'all. Put on your thinking hats. As I'm wearing Georgia Tech, the engineering woo. So the force of the circle of going in a circular motion caused those wood blocks to go out. And the physics of what was involved in that, those four wood blocks continued to go on and on and on. And as you let go of the crank, once it got motion, it continued on for a long amount of time.

What I'm describing here is the physics of "once in motion, stays in motion." And the four things together continually kept itself in motion because of the centripetal force. All right, thinking caps off. Let's talk digital mission work. No, I'm kidding. Keep your thinking caps on. I think that there is a little bit of application here as we talk about equipping—excuse me—as we talk about connection, community, equipping, mobilization.

Like, if all we're doing is connecting, and we're not getting people into the digital community, well, connection without that community, you really have no power. You have people up at the connection level that are shallow and superficial. And I don't mean to be judgmental, and please don't read too much into this. But you're not able—it's really hard to get into rich, deep discipleship making conversations because discipleship happens via two-way conversations. Digitally, we see evangelism have much better in community. And so the ability to get these people down to community is so important.

Really, I can tell you stories of connection-level ministries that have really fizzled out within months because they were not effective in building community. It basically became an advocacy group for Christ without actually having tangible stories of life change because all they were doing was creating content and creating noise. And so, but community without having that equipping—well, why are you doing community? What's the purpose of community without having some level of helping people find what God is calling them to do? This is something we're going to get into today. Like, you know, the scripture says, you know, "You're eating, you're drinking spiritual milk. You should be on solid food by now." Helping people not only discover who Christ is, which is important in community, but helping them discover what God is calling them to do, what is their purpose in being here, and helping get them to the point of multiplying into them where they can go out. A multiplication strategy in digital context is an unbelievable opportunity. We'll talk more about that here in a little bit.

But if you're doing community without having some sort of equipping level, why are you doing the community in the first place? To help people find Christ, which is an incredible opportunity, but that is a wasted opportunity if you're stopping with the salvation. You're on spiritual milk, and by now you should be on solid food. Like, that's the thing of nightmares for me—it's not stopping at salvation. It's continuing on through discipleship to help them figure out what's next.

And if you're doing equipping without some sort of mobilization piece, well, you know, that's reckless. You're equipping people with understanding their calling, and you're like, "Okay, see you later," and you send them out. I mean, it's like the mom kicking the bird out of the nest, and the bird tanks and crashes down. Okay, yeah, tough love happens. Yeah, you're going to learn things by doing it. That's parenting 101. But that's almost the point. Apprenticing 101. You're still checking in there. There's accountability. There's relationship.

It was interesting. I was just doing some scripture reading, and I'm going to misquote the scripture. I believe it was 1 Timothy or 2 Timothy 2:2. And Paul, you know, Paul's talking about training Timothy in front of an audience of others so that the people that Timothy would train had the ability to train others. In 2 Timothy 2:2, it's literally five generations of people involved in the conversation. Paul teaching Timothy in an audience of others so that the lessons that Timothy was teaching to others could be multiplied into others. The verse there's accountability. Paul was teaching Timothy in the audience of others so that Timothy could teach others who would teach others with Timothy's oversight. Like, it's a mobilization strategy in place.

By the way, you know how did church exist 2,000 years later? How do we...

We get to this point. Holy Spirit, yes. Prayer, yes. God, yes. Divine intervention, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Could you imagine if Paul was like, "Hey, it's been fun, y'all have a nice life, see you later"? Paul wrote First Corinthians, was like, "Screw you all, I'm done." Second Corinthians? No, it doesn't matter. You'll do what you want, you know? Even that, at some level, the church in Revelation, Acts, Revelation 2, Revelation 3, you know, there, yeah, it was there. There were bad letters. It was, yeah, I'm angry with you. You are failing, which even shows the accountability in that moment to be able to say, to slap on the wrist and say, "You've lost your first love." So it's important for us to not stop at the equipping. It's important for us to not stop at the community, but to understand the full picture of yes, we want to create connections, and through those connections digitally, get them into community. Through community, help them find Christ, evangelism, discipleship, build trust, build relationships that allow us the opportunity to help them find their calling so that we can be used by God to speak biblical truth in their life, and then mobilize them and help send them out to what God is calling them to do.

Now, here's yes, that's a framework. That is a framework, and you can use that in your context right now, and it's effective, and we've seen it be effective. But I want to challenge you even beyond the framework to start to look at it as a flywheel. As you get more and more people going through that system, flywheels. It was funny. I was talking with a digital church. I'm not going to say what church it is. I was talking with a digital church pastor. She's been doing this a while, and she's, you know, we came alongside her. We're doing some consulting and kind of helping her turn the corner in her ministry. And she is, I would say, that she's incredible at the equipping and the mobilization phase. Like, some of the strategies, some of the resources that she's been implementing, she is very good at the bottom of the funnel. And the reality is that she has struggled at the top of the funnel. So she has these beautiful strategies and tools to equip and mobilize people, but she's been ineffective in getting people connected into the connection, into the community. So they get to that, and so like, she's putting in all this resources at the bottom without having people to send through, you know, and seeing that, we came alongside, had a meeting with her this week, and you know, basically was like, "We, you know, we want church is want to come along and help." And as we started to explore what some of these problems were, it became obvious that, you know, she needs coaching on the top half. She needs some guidance on the top half, or maybe even she needs to connect with some people that are strong on the top half, that are good at connection and community, but may not be fully, you know, capable or may not have time for equipping and mobilization.

This is where it's really interesting. We're going to get more into this in a little bit, but if you're like, "This is overwhelming for me, Jeff, listening to you talk," it doesn't mean I'm wrong. It means there's opportunities for partnership or there's opportunities to bring people inside. Because whether or not you, I mean, let's talk, connect, community, equip, mobilization at a physical, at a physical space. You need some sort of a community in a physical space. Now, that community can be at a small group, a Starbucks. That community can be a, you know, I tend, 100 person venue church, maybe 150. That can be a 5,000 person venue. Like, it can look differently, but that doesn't null and void the importance of community in physical. And you need that in digital.

Without connection, without community, then the ministry you're doing is powerless. There's no roots at the connection level. Community without equipping is pointless because why are you even bothering with community if you're not doing anything with the people when they're in the community? And equipping without mobilization, that's just reckless because you're giving people the gospel and you're kicking them out of the nest and you're not caring about what they do in the long run. But once you get all this going, once you get those four blocks of wood spinning, it carries on because the community is feeding into equipping, equipping is feeding into mobilization, mobilization is sending out, and they're connecting with new people that are feeding into community or into their community. And so you're either multiplying within your own community, in your own church and your own missions work, or you're sending out and creating new opportunities where that flywheel is working on its own.

This is what multiplication looks like in the digital mission work, in the digital church context. There is power in what I'm describing here. I think it's important for us to realize there's power in the idea of giving this away, all right? So let's lean into some things here. You know, as we talk about digital missionary, even the idea of equipping, you know, there's the opportunity, and I would love that. I would love to ask this question. Those of you that are watching right now, as you do digital missionary work, do you see more value in technology or in relationships? Are you the type of person? Let's ask those that are hanging out in the stream. Are you the type of person that is jacked up about new technology, new platforms, new opportunities for ministry? I don't, by the way, I think there's a wrong answer. Are you excited about the opportunity? Are you an explorer? Or are you more of a relationships? Are you more of the type of person that can connect with people in the community that exists in digital space? Throw that in chat. Let me know.

I see somebody right now. Trustees Asberry. How you doing, man? We actually, I haven't talked to you in a while. We need to catch up. This is all so true. Community should be moving. I think it's this is why people don't stay plugged into a local church anymore. Community stopped moving. I mean, that's an interesting. Are you doing your grant? Yeah, you got to catch up with me, bro. I need to figure out where you are and how I can help. Let's do that.

Yeah, so the challenge is, as a digital missionary, you know, and I'm not even talking about APEST. I'm not even talking about motivations, and there's other assessments and things that we do through the church digital to help people understand their calling, their giftings, and their skill set. But I think it's important for us to understand our motivations walking into this. Are we? It's funny. I did, we just did it. We're partnering with a new organization called True Center, and anybody who does EDM is going to get access to this True Center. And I did the assessment myself, and I did a walkthrough with the founder, the CEO of the assessment, and I am an explorer. I think two of my five motivations were like explore and motivator and innovator and empowerer. Like, it was basically what I do. Like, it was the most accurate assessment of who I am.

What was funny, it was like looking at that skill set. I always am, you know, drop me off on the island with a machete and I'll carve my own way so that other people come behind me, and I'm great at recruiting other people to come jump on the boat and get bit by mosquitoes. So like, that's me. That's the motivation aspect behind me. The weakness aspect of me is funny on the flip side of that is you give me a menial task, you tell me to do something for six months. I don't, I don't, I don't do that. I barely do anything for two weeks. Like, you know, I'm always looking for something new. I'm always looking for a challenge to be overcome. And so like, that's my motivation.

It's interesting. My brother from another mother, Steve Reed, saying here, like his motivation from the tech side to the relationships, he's more interested in the relationship aspect. And Steve, I can, you know what, I know of you, I can see that in you. Like, I think that's a very good idea. I think that's a great place to be, and that makes sense for you. And that's once again, that's not bad. To understand how to use those relationships and use that gifting to connect with people in digital space, that's good. But it's also important to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of that. Steve, you're really good at relationship. Steve, you're learning about the technology. And so to be able to connect with someone either in the network or partner with another missionary, someone that can lean into the technological aspects of what you want to do, it's going to be very important.

We've talked about some of that in some of our open offices, by the way. Steve's great at jumping in an open office. You know, I do open offices two or three times a week. Our other leadership does open offices periodically as well. And you know, as I talk with everybody on leadership, "How'd the open office go?" It's so funny. One of the opening, oh, I met Steve, you know? Steve's been diving in and really asking some great questions. And that's what we're here for with the open offices and the streams and all this is to really give opportunities to learn.

And Steve, what's interesting in Steve's context, like the people Steve's going to reach are not the type of people that I'm going to reach. Steve is, Steve, I'm going to tell just a fraction of your story here, guessing it's okay. Steve's, you know, retiree in South Florida. He's over on the west coast of Florida. I'm on the east coast of Florida. I actually drove through Steve's town over the weekend, just real quick, had a quick road trip with the fam, with my wife. But you know, Steve's retiring age, and I look like I should be retiring but I'm significantly younger. And so Steve's circle of influence is quite different than mine. And so Steve's ability as a digital missionary to reach, engage, share, and disciple with people in digital space is a huge win. Steve's ability to create community, invite them, create connections with digital people, with people digitally, invite them into a community, build relationships, establish trust, share Jesus, digital discipleship, he's already, he's already doing it. It's so funny in Steve's story. He already had access to some of that, didn't even realize what he was sitting on. He just had to open his eyes to maybe a new way of looking at some of the social media assets he had available for him. And now he's being aggressive on evangelizing and discipling in some of those connection points and inviting them into the community and even getting to the place of starting to grow them in the community to the place of some sort of equipping.

You know, I remember Steve's like, you know, as he's relatively new in this, maybe two or three months into this mindset, you know, Steve was like, "Hey, Jeff, I understand the top two, connection to community, equipping and mobilization. I ain't there yet. Don't worry about it, bro. You keep working on the top, connect, community, connect, community. And what's going to happen is you'll see it. You'll see it happen naturally, almost in equipping and mobilization, or we'll come around and talk to you as part of what we're doing with the church digital. We're creating these series of networks we're calling them outposts to allow for accountability, for relationships to develop even within our network. And so we want to connect Steve with...

The other digital and metaverse church planters that would fit in similar context of who he's trying to reach so they can be friends on mission together, whether that's, you know, exploring or experimenting, getting encouragement, exploring new platforms or ideas, experimenting with new techniques, being encouraged in ministry or being empowered, being released to do things instead of being afraid to jump. So many people are afraid to jump. It's so interesting. They literally just need to be told "do it" and they go. But it's like nobody ever says "go" in digital missions. It's all "I don't know about that."

You know, it's been fun to be the guy that's always saying "go" and so empowering and releasing people. It's very important, and I see that in some of what Steve's doing. But Steve's context is different than mine. Steve's context is so very different from mine, and that doesn't make it bad. It just makes it different. Steve's commenting here. Of course it is. Of course it's different. You know, why would it be the same even though we're in the same local? Like, Steve's maybe ninety minutes away from my house. Um, there it's a significant jump between the two.

This is some of the stuff, the contextual adaptation. This is really what we're teaching through Equipping Digital Missionaries. Now, you've heard me talk about this. The Church Digited. You can pull up the website for more information. The Church Digited. This is our equipping phase. This is where we take the time to intentionally equip people to be digital missionaries. Now, we, whereas the people we work with are, you know, worried about digital evangelism, which is rightfully so, as missionaries we're not. We don't consider ourselves directly missionaries. We're an ascending agent, and so we deal more with discipleship and empowerment and equipping in those aspects than evangelism. But we do coach evangelism. There's, you know, interesting in EDM, somebody, one of our participants going through it's like, "Hey, you never really talk about prayer digitally." And I was like, "It's a bait." I was like, "Oh my gosh, it's a huge miss. We need to talk about prayer and, you know, Christ-centered in that and what it looks like to be gospel-centric." And so, yeah, it was a good call. But we typically we don't coach that aspect. But I think now that we're getting into like normal people without the seminary training, without the, who are trying to understand the missionary calling, I think we need to get more aware of that.

But through our EDM course, we're helping people understand how to be a digital missionary through some of the videos that we're sending out. We are instructing them on, you know, philosophy and techniques behind the why of what they're doing. We're giving them in asynchronous community a WhatsApp or Discord, giving them the opportunity to process that information with a group of peers. And then we meet in a huddle, a gathering of, you know, people in a Google Meet call or WhatsApp or something to let people apply this information to their ministry and start to take accountability on practical next steps in front of others. And so the ability to instruct, to process, and to apply—IPA, not affiliated, but IPA—is key behind what we're doing in the asynchronous in our EDM and our equipping process.

And so we were, I was to be honest, I was supposed to be teaching a cohort right now in this slot as I'm doing this live. I was scheduled to launch, I think, three or four cohorts in this week in January. And as we're wrapping up the first round of EDM in my mind, it was, "Okay, we're just going to copy and paste that into version two." And as we were in the middle of wrapping up version one of the beta, B1, it was, "We're not. It's we got to make some adjustments. We got to make a lot of adjustments." It was a great first stab, and I'm really happy with what we did. I am a firm believer in this, and you'll hear me say this a thousand times: version one is better than version none. I would rather get started and learn from it than sit around in a room and talk about what we could have done and never do anything.

I was actually in a meeting with one of my teammates today, Stacy, talking about some of the changes we want to do with EDM, and I just was constantly reminding her, "It's beta. It's beta. It's beta. It's beta. It's beta. Let's not sit around and theorize. Let's just try it and learn from it." You got to crack some eggs to make an omelet. Insert Iron Man joke there. It's just important for us to do that.

And so EDM is starting on February 12th, and through Equipping Digital Missionaries through this course, this is our desire to equip people like you to be digital missionaries in your context, not to adapt to our mindset and our way of thinking. This is not digital imperialism where it's "our way or the highway." In fact, we want to give to you the trainings so that you can contextualize it, so that you can adapt it. We're white-labeling this in such a way so that you can distribute this in your context to others. We want to see a movement of digital missionaries happen at the global scale, not only in locations across the planet. We're already seeing it. We want to see it even multiply more. We want to start to create some of these outposts, these networks, even in platforms. We want to see gaming space. We want to see virtual reality. We want to see in other platforms.

I was talking to somebody about doing an outpost, starting a network in Blue Sky. What's funny was I didn't even realize Blue Sky was still around. Like, Blue Sky is not on my radar at all, and he's like, "Oh yeah, I'm in Blue Sky all the time." And I was like, "Really? Why don't you start and do a digital missionary and start to recruit and develop some digital missionaries to go into Blue Sky?" It's this way of thinking. And as we, you know, I say this, I was actually talking this morning to a group of a global missions organization that was doing a conference in Turkey. And instead of flying me out to Turkey to speak to them, they asked me to speak via Zoom. I told them next time I was more than happy to take the plane ticket to Turkey because I wouldn't mind hanging out in Turkey. But this morning, you know, I just shared with them what we're doing through Equipping Digital Missionaries and the ground level of what I want to do is this has nothing to do with Jeffrey.com.

My desire is not to. This is not out of ego. This is not out of pride. Um, pride is my weakness. Ego is the crack in the armor that allows Satan to come in. And so I am trying so hard to keep myself humble when I say this. I'm even said publicly, you've heard me say this: the face of a global digital missionary movement, it's not a white bald man with a beard like this. This is not the face of the future of the church digital today. It's the face as we try to see these ideas multiply and grow at the global level.

I got, um, you, Good News Live, talking in here. So pumped. I'm currently got two Asbury University students. I'm doing a digital missionary independent study with. We all enrolled for EDM, and I'm so pumped to coordinate this with our classroom. That's awesome. I didn't know that. That's cool. I want to catch up with you on that. Um, I'm trying to think, did I see your registrations come in? I'll double check. I don't know if I told you, like, it starts, you should have got an email from us. It's going to start in February, but we'll make that happen. I'm excited to see that, man. That is very cool.

To see that contexts are different, and that's really what we work through with EDM. We teach you a framework. It's a, what is it, it's not a blueprint. It's not a blueprint. It's a framework. And so we don't tell you what to do. We give you a framework, and our desire is to get you to shape it, to adapt it to your context. What Good News Life here is doing, training a couple college kids, once again, couple college kids are gonna reach people much differently than a forty-seven-year-old bald man with a beard is gonna reach. And so the ability to train those people and equip them and mobilize them, send out, that's the desire as we see this happen at a global scale.

You know, at some level, and even, he needs to understand here with Good News Life, as he's working with college kids, which is a beautiful story, man, I and we just need to catch up. Um, it's understanding the digital calling, helping those kids, helping those students. I say kids, they're adults. Helping those college students understand what their digital calling is, what are you called to do? And to be honest, once again, who are you going to partner with to fill in the gaps? Connect, community, equip, mobilize. Connect, community, equip, mobilize.

So many stories of people that just want to do connection, and they fizzle out because they have no community. So many stories of people that are interested in developing digital community and really interested in discipleship and evangelism via digital community, but they're not good at creating content. And so their community fizzles out because they don't have people to feed down into the community level. My friend that I was telling you about, the planter, she's really good at the, you know, equipping and mobilization level, and she wants to do incredible stuff, but she's not had success at the top to funnel in. And it's like, "Oh my gosh, if I could connect you with you and you and like almost Frankenstein some sort of a network and turn it into a church, there could be an incredible opportunity, incredible movement."

As we get valid connection points feeding into a tangible digital community, which is getting into feeding into a place where there's wisdom and strategy behind equipping, empowerment, mobilization. And so as I'm saying all these things, it's not as important for you to think, "Oh my gosh, I have no idea how to equip people." Some of you will understand that. Some of you won't. Some of you don't need to. But there needs to be understanding. My role, I'm responsible for, and if I can't do it, I got to come alongside somebody who can do it with me. And sometimes, you know, that person's going to be somebody who's on your team, and sometimes that's going to be, "Hey, let me partner with somebody that's outside of me," and they working within their ecosystem.

You know, Jason Morris has, um, always, no, I don't say always. I don't mean it that way. But J-Mo has is our equipping and mobilization director, and I don't know, he's been with us a couple years maybe. And so like, he is representing and helping us build out our outposts and our decentralized networks and what we're hoping to build out at a global level to resource digital missionary growth and movement. Um, we want to see twenty thousand gospel conversations through our church digital missionaries in 2025. We want to see twenty thousand gospel conversations in 2025. It's very aggressive stats, and I'm excited about the opportunities there and how God's going to use our obedience. But this really it comes down to like that's what we're doing within the church digital.

If I don't have access to Jason Morris and in some of the intentionality that he's bringing in, that doesn't let me off the ability to not create a multiplication strategy. To be honest, I'd probably be calling up that planter that I was talking about just a minute ago who's really good at the bottom of the funnel and asking her, "Hey, why..."

Don't you come on board and do something with us, or can I take the influence that I have and send it over to you and do that? And like, you know, you've seen me through the church digital. I bring plenty of people in and give them influence. I have no problem with that. But just because you're not called to it doesn't release you from the responsibility. That's what I'm saying. Just because you're called to do only a part of it doesn't release you from the responsibility of the whole. God's given you these resources. God's given you these people. Are you doing something with the talent, so to speak, or are you burying it in the sand? Are you able to multiply the gifts that he's given you, or are you struggling to do anything with it for fear of losing it? That's the big difference.

And really, I think maybe what I want to wrap with here today is the understanding of growing versus multiplying. Growing versus multiplying. Like, we can grow a digital ministry. We can connect with people via content, pay ads, drive new people in, utilize Google SEO. I'm not speaking bad of search engine marketing, social media marketing. I've got friends that do that very well. It's a necessary part of digital ministry. But if that's the only thing that's bringing people in, that's interesting. So you've got people at the top level, and then you're feeding them into a community for evangelism and discipleship. That's growth.

Now, the more checks you write to Google, into Facebook, the more money that you spend on getting new people to come into the funnel, well, that's the more your digital ministry is going to grow. And that is an effective way to grow the ministry at the global level. Millions of US dollars are spent in areas like MENA, the Middle East and North Africa region. Millions of dollars are spent in India to drive and get attention for people in those regions, to get them connected to an organization and eventually get those fed into community or call centers with one-on-one people to have a conversation. That playbook is happening, and it's effective. But that's growth.

As we're discipling these people, and this is what makes us unique, this is the thing that when I talk with other organizations, to be honest, I don't hear it. And maybe it's there. Maybe it's implied. Because sometimes I'm not clear on some things, and even some people question me. So like, I'm no judgment in this, but I'm not hearing this idea of helping people find their calling, equipping them to fill that calling, and then mobilizing them, sending them out. To me, that's the power and the purpose behind what we're doing compared to some of the others.

Seth Godin. You've heard me tell the story many, many times. Somebody, it was funny actually. I told this story this morning to the group I was speaking with in Turkey, which is ironic. I'll tell you there in a second. So I was speaking with a group in Turkey about this, and Seth Godin, you know, was talking. Seth Godin, if you don't know, I've said his name a lot already. He is a thought leader in communications and marketing here in the US. New York Times bestseller. He's written forty-some books. Like, incredible, well-known, well-versed on the US and global scale.

And so somebody asked Seth Godin. Ironically, the guy that asked Seth Godin this question was in Turkey. It was part of Seth Godin's podcast, 2019, 2020. Somebody asked Seth Godin, "Hey, how do I get my message heard around the world?" I say all this is ironic because the guy was in Turkey talking to Seth Godin, not a Christian who's in New York City. So the fact that, you know, he asked that question, got this message heard around the world. That wasn't what Seth answered, though. Seth answered the question, "How do I get my message heard around the world?" And Seth's response was, "A billion people don't care about anything you have to say. If you want to get your message heard, it's not talking to a billion people. You need to think much smaller, okay? It's not a billion. So what? I got to talk to a hundred million, ten million, one million, a hundred thousand, ten thousand, one thousand?" Seth, how much smaller do I need to think?

This is the marketing thought leader in the US, if not global. If you want to get your message heard around the world, this is it. It's literally a Kimbo podcast, 2019. Email me, DM me directly, text me 484-324-8724. I'll send you the link specifically where it says this. You want to get your message heard around the world? You craft a message specifically for someone, for an individual. Get that person to see it, hear it, understand it. Get that person to tell someone else. And when that person sees it, hears it, understands it, and tells someone else, then they are driven to tell someone else and tell someone else. And all of a sudden, now you've got a multiplication strategy and effect because you've got all these ones talking to their ones and fives and tens.

This is the opportunity of the church digital. This is the opportunity of a digital missionary. This is the opportunity of a digital church planter. Not to amass these giant followers. We've talked about this in recent weeks. Not to get a large number of subscribers of nameless people we don't know, but to invest directly into people, to build relationships, to establish trust, to help people find Jesus and discover who Jesus is and what he would have for their lives, and mobilize them for that calling.

That is how we multiply. And to multiply, there has to be a reason why that community exists. There has to be intentionality to push those people into an equipping. Push may be the wrong word. To invite those people into an equipping so that you can personally, or someone within your org, your chain, someone you're partnering with, is responsible for equipping them to do what God is calling them to do. Because if we're not intentional about taking the resources that God is giving us and equipping them to do what God is calling them to do, what's the point? And if we're equipping people without knowing what they're doing and walking with them, well, then aren't we being a little reckless?

As we're wrapping up, that's the flywheel. The people we're connecting with digitally, we want to invite them into a community to establish trust, build relationships, evangelism, discipleship in that context. We want to, through discipleship, start to engage them on and equip them, help them understand their calling, and release them and mobilize them to do what God is calling them to do. Sounds easy, huh? Maybe it is.

If you're interested in more of the questions on this, feel free to hit me up. You guys know where to find me. If you're watching on YouTube, put the comments here in YouTube. I answer every comment on YouTube personally. You'll often see, you almost always see that JR. That is me, Jeff Reed. And I'm happy to engage with you on YouTube. Or you can find me in Discord or Slack. Excuse me, Discord or WhatsApp. Discord.thechurch.digital. Take your web browser there. WhatsApp.thechurch.digital. Find me there. Or you can go ahead and give me my cell phone number: plus one, 484-324-8724.

And once again, the music just kind of panned out perfectly right there at the end. That was nice. So we're going to land the plane today. I hope this was helpful. Next week, we're going to do a deep dive in mobilization and start to paint a picture of, okay, once we get people off spiritual milk and we get them on solid food, what's our responsibility? And how do we immobilize them? How do we apprentice them? How do we get them out of the nest? How do we kick them out without, you know, destroying or burning them in the process? And what is our responsibility long term? And more than that, how can the church digital help you do this?

All right, so that's going to wrap up. Don't forget about February 12th. Is February 11th the town hall meeting? That was really weird. I don't know what I was thinking when I did that. So nobody turned that into a clip. I would really appreciate it. But we're going to wrap. So for Jeff, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out with us with this podcast. We'll see you next time on this show. Y'all have a good one.