EP346 - From App to Impact: Jeff Talks How GodTools Equips Digital Missionaries

All right. Hey everybody, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast episode 346. 3:46. We got Mr. Pete hanging out with us. Alabama here. Pumpkin Center is where he's at.

Mister Pete, if you don't know, is one of our virtual reality guys. He hangs out. He does a lot of our streams on the big screen.

And so, yeah, we're broadcasting streaming live on YouTube right now. Mondays at 2:00 p.m. And we're also in virtual reality. Thank you, Mr. Pete, for getting us in the big screen.

Jonah is coming in. Well, yay, Justin. Yeah, we've got Justin right around the corner. Excited for Justin Sudter. Going to intro him officially.

Oh, well, Jonah's listening in from the Philippines. So, hey, we got somebody literally on the opposite side of the planet from me. Man, it's what is it, like 1:00 a.m. in the Philippines, somewhere around there. Jonah, thanks for staying up late. You know what? If it's a smart world, there are a lot of smart people in the world. And I know the earth is not flat. Okay, I know this. But if somebody can figure out how to solve the time zone issue so that we can be on like the same time zone, that'd be nice. I'm just saying like the whole time zones, continents, you know, it just it's starting to get annoying. I just in my feelings. I don't know. Maybe you agree with me, maybe not.

Hey, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. I'm excited. We're continuing on this season of equipping tools, empowering partners. My gosh, I every time I do the title of the season, it's something new. It's something about empowering, equipping tools and partners. Mesh all those words together and you got what we're doing here. Peasant says that the time zone struggle is real. Feels like time travel. That's it. It does. It really, really, really, really, really does.

By the way, you may hear some excited yelping in the background. My mother-in-law just showed up at the house, which is awesome. We knew she was coming to stay with us for a couple days. And my dog, well, let's just be honest. My dog loves my mother-in-law more than anyone else. Period. My mother-in-law doesn't feed the dog, walk the dog, or, you know, pay for the vet bills, but the dog loves the mother-in-law more than anyone else in the family. So that is happening right as we speak right around the corner.

Hey, listen. With this empowering season, we're highlighting some different tools that are out there to help people like you, digital missionaries like you, be more effective in your ministry. And it's interesting, there are some really incredible tools and resources out there that, to be honest, we were—I was talking about this with Justin offline—that a lot of us don't even know exist. And rather than just forgetting about it and letting all this work go to waste, this season we're highlighting some of what's out there and drawing attention to it.

Speaking of things that are out there that we should be drawing attention to, let's not forget the Digital Missionary Summits are back. So we did a Digital Missionary Conference. We had 1,100 people day of from 80 countries around the world. Even Philippines was represented. Jonah was proud. Actually, we actually have a strong presence in the Philippines for whatever reason that is. But we had that back in April and we're doing another series of summits this fall starting September 17th. We're doing a Digital Neighborhoods Conference. September 24th on Digital Christ-centered Recovery. October 1st, we're doing a European Digital Missionary Conference highlighting ministry that's happening on the continent of Europe. And then October 8th, we're highlighting gaming—what it is to be a digital missionary and resources for missionaries in the digital gaming space. Digital gaming is implied. I don't know if anybody really wants to be a missionary using like the board game Monopoly. I'm sure somebody does. That was presumptuous on my part. I apologize to all the missionaries out there that are Monopoly addicts. I totally schooled my family the other day on Monopoly. It was bad. Like I just took them to town. It was, you know, it was so bad. It was like I'm never playing Monopoly again. It was that good. But it's like I'm going to go out on a high because there's no way I would ever be able to recreate what I just did in that moment just mere days ago.

All right. So, hey, listen, with the Digital Missionary Conference, it's a free conference that's out there allowing people like you to engage in the resources, meet people, be encouraged, be inspired, maybe find some accountability, some camaraderie in what's out there, and even find ways to take next steps in your digital missionary life. We want to provide tools and resources to help you do that, to help you get connected and stay connected and get equipped to do the work that God's calling you to do. So more information on that, swing over to missionary.digital, www.missionary.digital. We'll have more on that in the days to come.

Yeah, Jonah, Jonas, I am on your tomorrow now. How crazy is that? Yeah, I can appreciate that. So what you're telling me, Jonah, is the end of the world did not happen on Tuesday. I'm holding you to this. We at least make it to Tuesday, so we're good. After that, it's up in the air. We'll see what happens.

Cool. Hey, so let's get into this. We have—I'm trying to think in recent weeks—we've had CRM databases, CRM, we've had databases come on, tools, software tools that are running like a CRM database. We've had artificial intelligence tools. We've had reporting tools using Airtable and things like just a number of different tools. We've had websites that do a lot of evangelism, that are evangelism resources that are very effective. And this week we're going to highlight a witnessing and evangelism tool, mobile app, that you all can use, that people can use to share Jesus digitally.

And so let me go and bring into the conversation Justin Sudter. Hey, Justin.

Hey. Hey, how are you, Jeff? Thanks for having me.

Doing great. Thanks for coming on. So Justin is one of the product owners over at Crew. I'm curious. I'm going to talk a little bit about Crew here in a little bit. But he oversees, is the product leader of God Tools as well as some other resources. And so, Justin, before we get into the God Tools aspect, I'm just curious. Let's just open up with this. Talk to me a little bit about the culture of Crew as we've been talking about equipping tools and empowering ministry missions work digitally. Honestly, I just find myself having a lot of conversations with Crew people. Like, y'all get it in a big way, which is kind of impressive to me. What's the culture like over there working? Are you in Florida over at those offices or where you based out at, ye old headquarters here in Orlando, Florida?

Yeah. I mean, so I guess if it's helpful, I always feel like I have an outside perspective because I didn't come up through campus ministry. I was not on a college campus participating in Crew. I worked in advertising as an art director and innovation spaces. And then I was just kind of at a point in my life where I was thinking, you know, I'd love to work somewhere on something that I really care about. And so I sort of fell into Crew and I was like, you know what, if this stinks, I'll just quit. I'll just leave. I'll go back to freelancing. It'll be awesome. And I have not quit. I've been here for about eight years now. And I mean, our culture of—the more I get out there, the more conferences I go to, the more other ministries that I work with, the more that I'm like, "Wow, Crew actually is really unique." It's a group of people who are just sold out for Christ and are willing to do everything possible to get his name out there. And that is pretty unique—to get a big collection of doers in one place who are willing to go do the thing. That's hard to find actually.

Yeah, it's funny. Like I find myself stumbling into Crew people without even realizing they're Crew people and it's like, "Oh, tell me this thing you're doing." "Oh, yeah. Oh, you work with Crew? Oh, you're with Crew, too." Like, it's just this never-ending list. I'm sure it has an end, but it's really cool to see that. And they're all—I'm sure somebody's a jerk on the list, but for the most part they're all good people. At least they seem to be.

Well, hey, listen, now that I made it awkward to kick off the show, so tell us a little bit about your story and how you ended up on God Tools.

Yeah, well, like I said, working in advertising, doing a lot of web design, a lot of branding work. You know, down here in Orlando, we have the parks. There's a lot of big industries and stuff, so lots of stuff to keep us busy. But yeah, I was very much just at a point where I was not as though you're duping clients into work in advertising, but there's a side where, you know, you want to work on something you really care about. And when you're churning through, you know, 20 or 30 branding projects a year and that many websites and campaigns and you're also looking to win awards and also move up the pecking order, you know, it's a lot. It's just a lot. And so, very kind of ready to step out, try something different. So Crew at the time was hiring a user experience designer. And so I stepped into the role and it was—I mean, I was very relieved to find people who had been working at Microsoft and Airbnb and doing all kinds of stuff who were now working at Crew as designers, developers, strategists, all in the digital space who really cared about helping fulfill the Great Commission through using digital. And so, pretty quickly, I began working on God Tools, which really only had a product manager on it and that was kind of it. Like one lead developer and one product manager. And so I was like, hey, you know, let's go do some research. Let's get out there, talk to people. So we sort of reset the vision for the product. And about that time, I actually ended up being asked to take over the product. And since then, we've grown the team. Now there's about 13—depending on how you count it up—13 people who regularly work on it doing everything from design, copywriting, translation, marketing, development. And yeah, I mean, we threw a party in like 2019 when we hit like a couple thousand users in one day and now we're like we haven't had less than like 8,000 users in a few years. So it's been really cool to see and God's just been—I mean, you go through seasons where you just do things faithfully and then you go through seasons where God just rewards it. And like this has been a really rewarding season just seeing—I mean, for a little while it was like, all right, what countries are more active than the US? And there was a very small list. And now I mean 96 or 97% of our usage is outside of the US, most of it in the global south. It's been crazy just watching the way God's been using this thing.

So 96 to 97% of your usage is outside of the United States.

Yes. I never would have guessed that. I mean, we see with us, we're probably 60% outside of the US, but it still is a US strong presence.

I man, that's almost a show into itself. Like why, why, why does the United States hate evangelism so much? I'm not, I'm not actually asking you that.

I don't know if you have an opinion. It's a fair question. I have a lot of opinions, Jeff, so don't worry.

You're not going to offend me. So, oh my gosh. Okay. So you're creating this tool. What, uh, how many, how many languages? You mentioned translation. Did I, how many languages do you have this thing in?

Yeah. So we've switched a little bit of the way that we do translations. Um, there are about 120, 125 languages that they can access content from inside of the tool, but right now there's like 21 languages that it's entirely available in.

Okay. So, um, kind of thinking about it as the bookstore is in one language, but then there's books in many other languages too. So, um, you know, like actually a really cool kind of success story in that is that like we've been working a lot with the team in South Africa, um, the crew team down there, and you know, we had seen like a small spike in usage, and so we said, "Hey guys, would you be okay if we put some time and budget towards, you know, increasing some of the translations available?" Because they just had one tool available, the Four Spiritual Laws, available in Zulu and Afrikaans. And so we said, "Uh, hey, could we work together? You know, happy to support that." And now it's an app language, which means everything's available.

And we've seen them go from like number 74 on our most active countries to like 18 in like a few months. So it's just like stories like that are like they keep me going. They keep me up in the middle of the night and early in the morning to do what I do.

Yeah. It's fascinating, the engagement culture around technology in Africa. Um, much, much, much higher than I was anticipating with that. You're giving testimonies to that right there.

Um, well, what do, what is this, what does the app do? Like, how do you, how does somebody use it to witness or to share, like, you know, give the audience here a little taste of what the experience is?

Yeah. Well, I'd say that it's best described as, um, really personifying a lot of what Crew cares about, which is winning, building, and sending, making, multiplying disciples, helping average Christians find that they are capable of sharing their faith.

There's a, it sort of started as a joke and now it's kind of a thing we do where we have promotional stickers, and one of the early stickers we did just said "Designed to Share."

And um, the big idea behind that is that yes, God Tools is us designed to share, but actually all of us are designed to share. God made us that way. Um, and that also means that you're designed to share in your own unique way with unique people that only you can reach.

And uh, so for every app language, we have that phrase "Designed to Share" in that language. So it's kind of cool to see like, you know, I think we're at like 15 now because it's hard to, you know, hard to make Russian and translations of this thing.

But um, you know, it's cool to have "Designed to Share" in all these different languages. But the app fundamentally is, there's two big sort of buckets there.

One is called Tools, which the name's God Tools, and tools are just really simple ways to talk about Jesus. Everything from presenting the gospel in four short points down to, um, conversation starter questions.

Um, so whatever you want to choose on that range, um, there's an option for it. Uh, the other side of the house in the app is called Lessons, and lessons are kind of these bite-size microlearning experiences.

Okay, so really, really simple ways, um, to sort of do the soft side of evangelism, right? Like, how do I move my conversations to a deeper level? How do I share my testimony? You know, how do I listen well? Um, and one of the big things that we really tried to do with lessons was that if we can't help you kind of get a good idea of how to do some of those things in like five, six minutes, then I think we've actually kind of failed you because there's a lot of spaces out there where people are, um, you know, if you want to learn to share your testimony, I know there's a 12-week course out there that you can jump on to do, but I'm designing for the person who's sitting at a coffee shop, their friend's about to show up, they've got two minutes. How can I put one good idea into their brain for that next evangelistic conversation?

And so that's what I'm really looking to do with God Tools. But um, yeah, I mean, we've just been delighted to see people use it in ways we did not design it for. And uh, they're sharing their faith. They're making disciples, and they're seeing their disciples make disciples, which is really, that's, I love seeing that happen.

I didn't realize there was the lessons aspect where they, you're also providing training. I knew the tools aspect, for lack of a better term, content like some of the, uh, I saw the Four Spiritual Laws. I chuckled. That's when you know something's a Crew product because it's got the Four Spiritual Laws on there. It's like the, it's Bill Brightite, right? Am I remembering right?

Yeah. Um, throwback. I used to own a Christian bookstore, and um, uh, back when you know, Christian bookstores were valid, brick and mortar stores were valid, maybe even. But uh, we had one guy, one person, a guy would always come in and buy the Four Spiritual Laws little tract booklet, whatever they're called.

Yeah, that was the only person, you know, there just this one guy would buy them in bulks of like 50 at a time. I guess he was giving them out. Good for him. Totally.

We also, do you remember Chick Tracts since we're talking evangelism? I haven't had experience with them, but I know what they are.

Oh my gosh, yes. Yeah, yeah. We also, we were big Chick Tracts being in, it was a Christian bookstore in Miami, and um, Chicks were not related to, um, like girl chicks or nor chicken chicks. I'm not actually sure why it was Chicks, but um, yeah, it was, it was like not your mother's typical, um, uh, Google it. You'll get there.

Oh my gosh, I should have ChatGPT create some Chick Tracts. I wonder if ChatGPT could do that.

Um, all right, let's get back. Sorry, I'm down a rabbit trail I didn't need to go down. Um, so like, you're, we're providing just quick trainings on evangelism. Uh, like, have you been getting any feedback or stories from people in and how they're using it and life change that's happening as a result?

Oh, I mean, that is one of the biggest privileges of my role is, uh, you know, Crew operates in almost every country on the planet, um, formally or informally, and um, there's a lot of stuff going on, and I mean, we sometimes just get like little glimpses of it, which is really cool. Um, you know, from the, sometimes I feel like there's a wall with analytics, you know, you can only see so much. Um, like we like to, you know, kind of share as a team like, "Oh, we just got our first new believer in this country. We've never seen that," you know, and so like one of them was outside of, um, small island outside of Madagascar called Mayotte, um, had went from zero users to eight users to one believer.

And you know, it was a delight to be able to like say, "Oh, like that's a huge thing, like we've never seen a believer there." We end up finding like the Crew team there and they're just crushing it left and right like in a hard place. It's a Muslim majority, um, very small micro nation. Um, but on the more person-to-person side, um, there's a friend of ours in Vietnam who, um, I think she did a study abroad in Germany, and um, while she was there, she met this guy, and you know, they talked about faith kind of on and off, but at the end of her sort of, I don't remember if it was an internship or study abroad, but she had to go home, and so they were WhatsApping one evening and uh, you know, having kind of discussion around faith, and she was able to jump on God Tools and be like, "Hey, actually, can I send you this link and we can just screen share and look at this presentation of the gospel together?" And you know, he became Christian from that.

I mean, like from Vietnam to Germany, talk about time zones, as you mentioned earlier. Um, that's a painful one. That's quite a distance. But um, you know, I mean, that's what I'm getting at with the tool is just we are designed to share.

And so, you know, if we can, if we can allow ourselves to hold on to one idea or know the gospel in a nice bite-sized chunk or just have a different approach to reaching everyday people in our lives, God's going to open up doors. God's going to meet you in that. The Holy Spirit's, I mean, full of power. Um, so you're not doing it alone. But yeah, that's a story I super love.

I mean, from a big number standpoint, uh, I mean, as I mentioned, the global south, I mean Africa alone is like 55% of all my usage. Um, West Africa, East Africa, I mean the country of South Africa are just booming right now like people out there sharing the gospel, getting trained, um, equipping others. I mean, they're doing it as churches, as student movements. Um, it's been, I mean, seriously, this is a major privilege to just be able to sit back and be like, "Whoa, I see you, God. Like, I see what you're doing. Okay, this is big."

Okay, this is big. So very cool. Let's drill in a little bit into the weeds here. Now, uh, we've got a handful of people watching live. By the way, if there's any questions, throw them in chat. Would love to pull them up and talk through them as well. So feel free to put anything in chat. And if you're watching on demand, throw it in chat too. I'll, uh, most likely be the one replying to you.

I tend to try to keep my eye on the YouTube chat and, um, uh, comments and engage in real time over there. But let's, um, let me ask now, uh, to help you, Justin. The majority of our audiences are our digital missionaries. Like we've got people that are actively using cloud services, social media, digital tools, apps, virtual reality. Uh, you know, they know their way around technology, and so you know, they're having conversations. Mr. Pete talks, Pete host here, talks in Big Screen about Jesus regularly. He actually uses, um, Microsoft Flight Simulator in virtual reality to build relationships with people in Big Screen and then shares Jesus through that, really like fascinating stuff now.

Um, which is why I like your tool to be sitting around Starbucks and, "Oh hey, you know, look at my phone, let me, you know, let's talk about this thing together," at the same time, like that's cool. Uh, a lot of our missionaries though would maybe drill into the screen sharing that I'm understanding is in the app where you can walk multiple people through that.

Uh, and so like maybe get into the weeds a little bit of how that works technology-wise and somebody like, do they need Google Meet? Is this like or Zoom to complement, like what technology can it integrate in? And just kind of give us the 360 perspective.

Yeah. Well, I think as you mentioned, a lot of the use case that we're sitting in is people being face to face at one time or another to have that faith conversation, and that's good and fine, but we also know obviously people aren't together physically all the time.

So a couple big ways that we encourage people to use God Tools, uh, digitally, virtually. One is you as an individual Christian knowing the gospel, knowing how to get into spiritual conversations, knowing just how to express your faith through more than a four-point gospel presentation.

Though, I mean, I'm sitting at Crew headquarters, so we're obviously not against that. But, you know, like sometimes I think that there are a lot of doors open to us to have faith conversations, but people are, you know, they're like, "Well, what if this doesn't go well?" You know, we've got a lesson on that. Or like, "I just don't know what question to ask." We have a lesson and tools on that. Um, so, you know, if we can just help people overcome a few obstacles to get in personally, whether that's over WhatsApp, maybe you're having a FaceTime conversation, all that's great and good.

Um, the screen sharing feature, uh, funny enough, we actually didn't design it to be this way, but a lot of people have been using it with groups of people because, uh, the way it's set up is that it's not just a one-to-one experience. It's actually a one-to-many. So in most of the tools, you can jump in there, click the top little—uh, I found out, I didn't know if you knew this, but the three dots is called a sushi icon.

And I—that has made my life just so much better knowing that.

No kidding. I—I've never—I know the hamburger is the three lines, but I did not hear the three dots.

It's the three sushi rolls.

Okay. Yeah. All right. I'll buy that. That is—my team loves. We're like, "Let's put a sushi here. Let's do a sushi."

But, um, so you click the sushi and go down and you press, uh, screen share, and from there it'll give you a little three-second tutorial. You can share a link via WhatsApp, via, you know, email, whatever. But you could send that actually to multiple people. Um, so you could drop it in your WhatsApp channel with—I mean, I'm told not to recommend over forty people because it might start to get laggy. But, um, if you don't want, you know, do as you will. Um, but I've heard of people sharing it with like twenty people, everyone can click the link. If they have God Tools on their phone, it'll open God Tools. So obviously for training purposes, very helpful. Um, if they don't have God Tools, it takes them to a web-based experience.

So we're not, you know, we're not asking non-Christians to download this tool about evangelism.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. So it just takes them to the web, and, uh, whatever you can see on your screen, it will mirror that content, um, from within the tool. So it's not going to show the rest of your phone. It's not going to show the rest of the app. It's just showing that tool page by page, card by card as you go along.

And, um, yeah, that's that's just been a really—like, my friend from Vietnam. I mean, ultimately it's that idea of like, "Hey, if we really want to like dig into talking about the gospel and like having some big ideas right in front of us, it's doable. Like, it's a real option." And, um, that's why we doubled down on that feature, and that was actually something that came out of COVID where, you know, people were obviously not together, and, uh, you know, to see people transitioning into using it online, using it remotely, was just really—I mean, like I said, it's a fun vantage point to be in.

Have—I know you said you were at Crew for about eight years. Um, did you start God Tools? Was God Tools—I did not. No. Was it already in existence before you came in?

Okay. Yeah. So it, uh, 2010 is technically the birth year of the app. Um, God was clearly doing something because there was a guy in Australia and a guy in the US who were both kind of—I think they were like on their way to becoming staff, kind of interning, and they both began developing an app to do the same thing, ended up finding each other and started working together, and they built this thing. And, um, so since 2010 to, I'd say, 2015, it basically was kind of the digital version of the Four Spiritual Laws, which is fine and good.

Yeah. But right around 2016 or so, it became very apparent like, "Hey, we could do a lot more with this, and there's a lot more meat on the bone for us to jump into." And, um, yeah, so we've kind of been expanding that, and, um, yeah, it's just like I said, God's just been meeting us in it, and it's been really, really cool.

And the global nature of our organization is sort of one of that—is just used so widely. Um, and they're using it in different ways, too. Like, um, I mean, in Africa, they are just out there sharing the gospel because it's also culturally—you're able to walk up to someone on the street and say like, "Hey, have you ever heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?" Um, but, you know, teams in Europe, they're also using it. Um, I can say like I personally, um, in my context, in my community, that the tool Openers, um, is just a giant collection of conversation starters, questions. Um, and so either at my Bible study or maybe even with someone I just met, um, you know, we're sitting on a train together, I can say, "Hey, you know, nice to meet you. Like, I've got this like conversation starter tool. I'm so bad with conversations because I actually am. Uh, I have to extrovert for work, but I'm actually an introvert." And, um, I can relate.

You know, you sort of bounce back and forth, and these questions, you know, there might be twenty in a category about sports or television or relationships, and it goes from being light and external, sort of stuff, to get deeper and deeper into stuff that's pointing more and more towards, um, our eternal life. So, um, yeah, you know, there's there's no there's no one way to do evangelism. There's no one way to, um, approach starting faith conversations. And we're here for all of it. We're here to support it in one way or another.

You mentioned something, um, back earlier in the interview, uh, when you were talking about, you know, uniquely created, um, you know, this uniquely designed the app design. Um, I think you said something to the extent is, "We're we're each uniquely created to create—reach someone," or "We're we're uniquely created to reach someone for for Christ." Could you—that that sounds like there's a, um, uh, some rich thought that went in into that statement. Would would love to hear kind of what you're thinking specifically on that.

Yeah. Well, um, I'll have to not—it was a throwaway line.

You didn't mean anything by it. It was a freaking good throwaway line. I put you on the spot and you blank. That's awesome.

No, no, no, no. It's it's very—the disclosure is is like I am a big believer in the like providence of God in this sense of everything is connected. Um, there's a actually a John Piper book that I have read a couple of times and just wept through called Providence, and it has like fundamentally changed some of the way that I see my work, the way I see my, um, role, and, and just, you know, the way you kind of see life. But, you know, we we see sunrises and sunsets all the time, and we think, "Wow, that's beautiful." Um, but do we ever think that, you know what, God never stops making those? As the planets going around, he's always making a sunrise or a sunset, and he chooses to make them beautiful. And how much more painful of a thought is this: that he made that knowing that I would see it?

And so, in one way or another, there are people that I'm going to share my faith with. There are people that, um, I've shared my faith with, and it hasn't worked out. Um, but trusting and knowing that God set that situation up, that God set me up for a reason in order to reach somebody, is a really powerful thought. Um, and it's it's a—I like to say like a big God thought. Like, God is way bigger than we actually think he is.

Um, but, you know, Jeff, I think what we've just been seeing more and more through the app and through conversations and through, you know, just getting out there and talking to our partners and stakeholders around the world, um, people are way more open to having spiritual conversations than we think they are. They're more aware of their need for them than ever before. And like, don't get me wrong, I'm offering a resource to help you do that. But I'm also on another side saying, "You have everything you need because you have the Holy Spirit, and God built you for this." Um, and that's—yeah, I mean, you know, we're talking at conceptual levels, you know, but, uh, yeah, it's something I I firmly believe.

And so if one thing that God Tools can do is offer you that little bit of confidence—like, "If I just overcome this obstacle, I think I could tell this person about my faith." Um, and so a lot of times, who we are, uh, as you know, internally as a team, when we're designing this, when we're adding a new feature, the person that we're designing for, um, is not necessarily Crew staff. I mean, certainly we want to help them, you know, if they share their faith thirty times a year, I of course want to help them share it fifty times a year. That's wonderful. Um, but we're really thinking about the person who's going from zero to one. Not the person who's thinking, "I want to go fulfill the Great Commission and, you know, become a missionary." Like, that's good stuff. But what about the person who's just like, "I want to tell my mom that I've been going to church and my life has been changed, and I know it's going to be hard because she's been hurt by the church in her past." You know, those those are the kinds of conversations that, uh, people—there are real people out there who need help. Um, and if we can offer them something super tangible like that, is worth every dime, worth every hour and minute of my time to help more people go from zero to one.

Even just pulling the thread on that a little bit, you're, um—so your tool users—4% of user base is in is in America. Um, you're a global organization, but you're based in America. Um, I I think the global headquarters is in America, but it's a it's a strong US organization that works globally. It's a global organization based in the US, however you want to flip it. How do you—how do you keep, uh, a non-US mindset? How do you, um, create tools that can be flexible to the Africans versus somebody in Europe versus somebody in the Middle East or or Oceania? Like, you know, there's, um, there's a lot to be, uh, open-handed with things. Um, but how how do you still have it be effective? Or how do you take feedback given all the different—and you said 100-some languages, 20-some primary? Like, you know, you're you're obviously getting into a lot of different cultures. How do how do you manage this?

Yeah, great question. Um, I'd say it's a lot of what I do personally. Um, but you actually said it there in being open-handed. A lot of it's just a posture of our team, um, who many of them have international experience. I mean, our teams—it's hard for us to have a lot of team meetings because I mean, like, the guy I work with the most, my product manager, lives in Ethiopia, you know, so it's it's like we've got a couple hours before one of us has to wake up early or stay up late. So, uh, but a lot of it just comes down to being like open-handed and being like, "Hey, God has given us an open environment in the US where we have free speech, we have resources. How can I just come alongside and honor what God is doing in Vietnam?" And, you know, it's not my story, it's your story. How do I come alongside what God's already doing through you all?

Um, but the other side of that is just ultimately like relationship. Um, I'm constantly WhatsApping with people from all over the world at odd times. Um, you know, just, "Hey, this thing's broken," or "Hey, can we amend this translation?" or or whatever, you know, and, um, so they all have my personal WhatsApp, and I I don't mind that. It's it's honestly a privilege to, um, be alongside serving them in that way. Um, but yeah, it's—I I wouldn't say there's like, aside from those two two sorts of things, there's no there's no single answer other than like, you got to grind to make that happen.

Because I think that we're in a really cool, in let's even just say in Crew, we're in a really cool season where things are becoming way more grassroots. Um, there's a lot more space for, you know, the team in the DRC or the team in Ethiopia or Albania to say, "Hey, we're going to go try to do this." And that's because we know our audience. We know what needs to happen here. We know what evangelism and discipleship looks like here, and as the sort of cultural experts and curator of what works, how can I come alongside what God's doing there and be a force multiplier and not get in the way?

So, um, yeah, that's a lot of what we're doing. I would say one of the big updates that's coming to the app soon is when you come in through the onboarding, you actually won't just say, you know, "Hey, I want to use this app in English." You'll actually say, you know, "Hey, my name's Jeff. I live in the US and I speak English." And based on that, you're actually going to be getting recommendations and a whole sort of personalized view of the app, okay? Um, because we don't want to put—I mean, I think what works in the US is great. I think that's awesome. But who am I to say that they should use that in Singapore? Yeah, I don't know what works in Singapore, but you know what? This big wild organization I'm part of, they have people in Singapore and the Philippines and Vietnam and all sorts of places. Um, so I can lean on those local experts to actually choose the thing, choose what their actual users would see, and even create custom tools and lessons.

So if I'm, you know, what it looks like to share my faith and testimony in the US, I think we've probably both got a good idea of what that looks like. What does that look like in Colombia or the UK or Belarus? Goodness, I have no idea, but we have teams who know that. And so creating more of a platform for that. I don't want to always say "right information," but more "right information" to be available is really important. Yeah. Do you, um, so with Crew, you've got access to their entire network of users like that, that's just at your fingertips to be able to disperse around. So if you need translation or if you need insight, like it's just an email or a ping away. Totally. Well, I mean, incredible. But let me also say where I sit in the organization is this like odd little nub over here where I have zero power to be able to do anything. Like I can't say, you know, "Hey, I need this translation on Tuesday." It's like, "If it serves your national ministry, I would love for this translation to be available." So I mean, that open-handed posture is there. There's a pragmatic side, but also I mean it's also just the posture I believe we should have.

Um, so I'm 100% if it serves them, if they want it, because there are countries where they say, you know, "We don't use God Tools. People don't trust you if you walk up with a phone." Yeah. Um, and so you know, for their face-to-face evangelism they don't use it, and like if they do use it, praise God. If they don't use it, praise God also. You know, I like that. That's also okay. Um, they know what works there, and I'm just trusting that God's going to use it or not use it appropriately. That's good. Which kind of begs the question: there's been some findings recently in the US. You mentioned earlier there's a re-engagement to spirituality. Um, people have a desire to know God, but maybe not necessarily the church, and, you know, for whatever reason, there's many reasons I'm sure, at least here in the US. Um, for that. Do you, and that's where like, uh, and in our context, digital missionaries doing something different to reach someone different, uh, relational evangelism seems to be very effective. Relational discipleship, even done via digital tools, has been effective as well.

Um, as you're looking at things globally, are you seeing, uh, you know, you've talked a lot about the global South? The South is borderline revival at this point. That's what's on fire spiritually, so to speak, is in the Southern, but the disenchantment with the church, um, a re-engagement of spirituality, looking for it in different ways. Are you seeing that in different global contexts as well? Definitely. Definitely. I mean, I think, um, we all love to use the word "revival," you know, and, uh, obviously there's a historical precedent for that. Um, I think the idea that it has to look a certain way is something that we might actually need to—and this is, this is not the opinion of Crew or anything, but way to put the disclaimer on that. That it's going to be good when the disclaimer comes out. When you're speaking for tens of thousands of people, you know, I always like to make sure I'm putting that out there. But, you know, I think when we can take the opportunity to say, you know what, God's going to use revival as he wants to use it. Um, and it might not look like church attendance is the first thing that swells. Um, so I think ultimately, as us as designers, developers, digital practitioners, how do we take what God's doing and come alongside it? Um, and so, you know, is it to get people in pews? I mean, eventually, I think so, right? Like, God, I believe in the church. I'm certainly not abandoning that. Um, I think that there's just a side of like, how do we not bring a prescribed shape to how this thing should go? Um, and just meet people where they are.

Um, one of the tools that I speak into, but I'm not the owner of, is something called the Audience Map. And, uh, it's a research-based tool. It's actually just an internal tool that we've sort of made available, um, where, you know, thousands of interviews from people all over the world have created this sort of thing that shows, you know, what for someone who is uninterested in the gospel. If we just keep sharing the four laws with them, something might happen, but our research doesn't say that that happens. It actually says that it pushes them further away from being open to hearing the gospel. But you know what does make them open to hearing the gospel is um being free to ask questions and not being judged, or building trust and relationships with Christians. Um, and I think we all know those sorts of things, but to have the data to say like, "This is our best contribution is to actually push in this way," you know?

So there's like a great story I heard of a team who, uh, rather than, like, you know, in Eastern Europe, looking at these college-age students who are just not interested in the gospel and you're trying to invite them to church but they're not interested. You know what they did? They started a cooking class. And this cooking class was—I thought you said cocaine class. And I was—no, no, sorry. No, that's an interesting take. Cooking, cooking, cooking, vegetable oil. Okay, I'm with you. All right. So teaching these like new students who are first time living away from their families to cook for themselves and engaging them in Christian community. I mean, that was like their most successful evangelism strategy. Like, that's actually kind of crazy. So I think, you know, even thinking about things like Discord and WhatsApp groups and all sorts of online presence, things sometimes like you're doing something else. And I think a lot of the gaming community knows this. It's like, you know, church folks, they're like, "Oh, you're just playing games together." And it's like, "No, you're not. You're doing life alongside them." And God's going to use that in really meaningful ways. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot behind the heart of the digital missionary is using the, uh, you know, affinity is the new proximity instead of creating community because it's, uh, you know, I live next door to someone. Create community because I'm doing things similar to what they're doing or we're connected together via, um, you know, those characteristics instead. And so love, um, love the idea of being relational in that.

It's funny you mentioned the Audience Map. Um, Wes Brooks, I'm blanking on Wes's wife's name, but Wes is active in our community, Leah. Uh, I met Leah, um, I met Leah in Korea at Lison. Uh, and so Leah invented Audience Map, I guess, years ago, and actually she was one of the beginners of it. Yeah. Yeah. And Cheryl, uh, is actually speaking at our conference on Audience Map. I love the context of Audience Map, and, um, I, you know, when Wes was talking to me about it and then, you know, some of the conversations I've had with Cheryl since then, it was like, "Oh, yeah, the carryovers to this in digital context are huge." Um, for sure. It just needs to be explored, and we've not really done that up until this point. So, and she'll be, she'll be on one of these streams. Cheryl will, I'm sure, at some point, but we'll do the conference with her. She's in the—we're doing one of the conferences for her is Digital Neighborhoods, and it's her, uh, Jason Morris, Jeff Vanderstout. Oh, and, uh, and Bella Shenko, um, front. So we got a couple Crew coming in for that one. Like I was saying, like I sat down, I was like, "Who am I going to get to speak at this stuff?" Oh, look, they're Crew people. You know, you guys are all over the place. So that's a lot of fun. Cool. Um, all right. Hey, if somebody wanted to grab the app, how do they find you? Yeah. Well, you can go to the App Store, Play Store. Um, just type in God Tools, or alternatively, if you want the extra step, you can go to godtoolsapp.com and download it there. Like I said, uh, it's in over 120 languages. Um, I think it's 21 or 22 languages the app's 100% available in, which already covers most of the world in second, first, second, or third languages, which is great.

Um, but yeah, I mean, and like also I would say anyone that downloads it who's like, you know, "I really wish this thing was here or I wish you guys did more of this," please feel free to write in because, you know, who gets those emails is me, and I love getting feedback. Um, the good, the bad, and the ugly is better than nothing. So, um, very appreciative of anyone who writes in. I'm guessing, uh, I hate getting emails, so I'll just start forwarding you mine and you can just check mine too.

Um, I'm guessing like ASL, hard of hearing, deaf, that's a separate app entirely. You've not delved into that. So we have not officially delved into it, but it is very much on our radar. Um, what we've been learning is, I, which I really am actually quite daunted by, is there are nearly as many sign language versions as there are languages. Yes. And so, um, yeah, how do we offer a really great experience for someone who is not just American Sign Language, but Nigerian versus British Sign Language? Because all of them, all those people right now would just say, "Oh, I speak English." And, uh, so yeah, we, in the vein of simplicity, we would rather not put some things in the app in order to make sure that like it is a good experience. Yeah. No, that's very fair. Um, there are, there are, we're, I've started talking to some ministries that are carrying the light, the torch on that. So I was just curious. Um, IMB Create is working on a, on a base, I forget what they call this. It's a base sign language that is like 80% accurate across the majority of, um, sign languages. Cool. And, and like, it takes the, if you generalize down basic moves, there's a consistent theme across continuity across the majority of them. And so they're trying to develop a new language based off of that. I don't know. Somebody from IMB can correct me, but last I heard from them a year or so ago.

Yeah, that'd be fun. Um, what is—are you doing anything with AI with this? I'm just curious. Your translation sounds like you're doing it.

Um, for sure, for sure. You're using AI to translate or human? Well, what—so AI translation is part of our process, but the way that—because I have this sort of rolodex in my WhatsApp of local experts. Um, you know, I'm not just going to go translate something into Thai and then just put it out there. You know, I have a local expert who I can say, "Hey, can you double check this?" Um, either what we do is we use AI to get it to like what we call like the 80% level where it's like mostly done and then they come clean it up or sometimes AI is good enough and they're just like, "Yeah, I just had to, you know, cross a couple T's and that's it." You know, which is really cool.

Um, we actually just had an intern who did some experiments on offering like hyper contextualized recommendations of tools and lessons because like I said, we're going to be moving to this sort of localized version of the app. So, you know, if you're accessing this in Central Asia, it's going to be a different app. It's going to look a little different, different content. You know, how you share your testimony there is different than how you share it in San Francisco. Um, and so part of that is going to be a little bit AI powered.

Yeah. Okay. It's cool. It's interesting to me some of the—um, I started to say fear, not the right word, trepidation, not the right word, cautiousness centered around that um AI. And so it's always interesting, you know, some of your mission organization compartment uh you know camaraderie uh whatever some of some of your other friends are are like um you know nobody gets hired unless we're using AI 100% first and others are like you know kick AI to the curb and and and so it's interesting from perspective everything in between.

Yeah. Love it. Um, if nothing else, it makes for a good conversation while we while we wait for our uh our robotic overlords to eventually take us over.

Uh, cool. All right. Hey, listen, man. This has been a great conversation. I'm excited to get the word out on God Tools. It is available on Android and um and iOS. So, so thank you for that. If Jesus were among us today, he would be having an iPhone or an Android. What would Jesus use? You know, I think Jesus is a man of the people and he would probably have an Android.

Wow. I'm okay with the answer. I'm a little hurt with the line of the man of the people. Like, what, am I an elitist now because I've got a very big iPhone? I mean, brother, I've got the same but you know everywhere I go I get to travel and meet partners and you know all over the world and they are all Android users and uh I don't think Jesus would be uh shaming us with blue text bubbles. You know what I mean?

That's true. That's true. That's true. Let's—what is non-negotiable? If Jesus were alive today and had a smartphone, he would be using WhatsApp that you can take to the bank. I promise you on that for sure. Discord, I love my Discord friends, but uh you know, I I I I he'd be he'd be he'd be green bubbling over in WhatsApp.

Oh, all right. For sure. Hey, listen. Check out God Tools. Uh godtoolsapp.com. Find it on the App Store uh and iOS or Android. Uh Justin, man, thanks for hanging out with us today as we're wrapping up here. Any closing thoughts?

No, it was a pleasure. Let me—I think like as you said, it's available in the app store totally free. Um, I think our organization sometimes does a bad job of this. We have tons of things available for digital missionaries, strategists, on the ground, field missionaries to use that people just don't know about. Um, so I'm more than happy to make this available. And I think even please feel free to write in and say like, "Hey, you know, if you did this a little more, it would be way more usable in my church in Ecuador." Like, praise God. I'd be happy to add that kind of stuff. So, um, yeah, we're just happy to have it be available and let you all know about it.

Yeah, we've got a rather vocal crowd and so you just opened Pandora's box. They're going to hunt you down.

Yeah, you're going to love it.

Okay. All right. So, hey, we're going to wrap up. Uh check out God Tools, godtoolsapp.com, uh on the app stores as well. Free download and use that uh to connect with people physically and digitally to share the love of Christ. Uh Justin, thanks for jumping on, but we're going to wrap for Justin. Uh I'm Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out with us on this show and uh we'll see you next time on the stream. Y'all have a good day. And I'm looking for the stop button and I can't find it. Well, this is embarrassing. Oh, there it is. Yeah, I'm blind. Getting old is horrible, man. All right, see you later. Bye.