EP050: Biblical Function of a Digital-Only Church, Part 1

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. I'm gonna love saying this next part for a long time: becoming ready for this, powered by Stadia Church Planting. That's right, the Church Digital, the Church Digital podcast is now powered by Stadia Church Planting. In case you didn't hear through the podcast and through the blogs that we put up, I, Jeff Reed, I've taken a job with Stadia Church Planting where I am now their director of digital church planting. What's a digital church? Awesome, put a pin in that. We'll come back to it in a second. By the way, this is our 50th episode, 5-0, here of the Church Digital podcast. I didn't think I'd make it past episode 5, honestly. I didn't think I'd make it past episode 5, and here we are with episode 50. And I've loved the content, I've loved the guests, I've loved the conversations that we've been having here on this podcast. So you, listening audience, I want to thank you for joining me in this ride, in this journey, as we're discovering more about what church online really can be, what it should be, and what digital church will be. So thank you for that. And I want to publicly thank Raid the Armas, guest host here with the Church Digital podcast, for joining me on this ride. Honestly, I didn't think either of us would make it to episode 50, and here we are.

So the conversation here that we're going to bring in is: what is a digital church? And that's a great question to ask. There are all sorts of models of church here in the world today. You got your megachurch, you got your gigachurch, you got your multisite church, you got your small church, you got your big church, you got your high church, you got your low church, you got your cowboy church. Yeah, there's a cowboy church. I actually attended a cowboy church in Texas. It does exist. It's for cowboys. It's a thing. All of these different models of church are just—it, there are models of the gathering. They're models of the biblical ekklesia. But the important thing to realize is they are models. There's really not one out there today that is the perfect example, the perfect mirror image of what we as a church are called to be biblically. They're just models. They're attempts to get there. Now, some are better than others, but all of them have strengths, all of them have weaknesses, all of them have different characteristics that are towards the direction of biblical ekklesia. They all have strengths in their ecclesiology, but all of them fall short and are limited in some area. I hate to tell you this, but none of them are a perfect match. And so to that end, we're gonna create another model of church. Not that it's the perfect model, because I don't think the perfect model exists this side of heaven, but it's another model. It's another opportunity. It's another way to connect people to the saving grace of Christ. Because I think there are people out there in the world today that will not be reached by the current models, and we as the church need to do something different. And to that end, ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk to you about this idea of digital church. What's a digital church?

Well, let me share you our definition of digital church. And the awesome thing is nobody's really talking about digital church. So we, Stadia Church Planting and the Church Digital, we get to define what this digital church is. So here's what we're thinking: a digital church is a church that exists digitally before it exists physically, or maybe it doesn't even exist physically. Now, that may just explode somebody's brains. How can you do church without it being physical? Here's the deal: I think you can. I think if we really look at the ecclesiology of what a church is, I think if you look at the biblical functions of how the church existed years ago, I believe that the digital expression of church can match the biblical functions that are in place. I believe that we can create an ecclesiology of a church that very much matches what the biblical model of church is, operating in a digital environment. And so that's the challenge. And honestly, that's the challenge of this podcast.

I grabbed a list from well-known sources, and we are starting to talk through this list of biblical functions. When we look at what the church is, how it functions biblically, can we even do that in a digital environment? Is it possible to start to operate and to have this ecclesiology that operates in these functions that operate in a digital format? Could you even operate as a biblical church in a virtual environment only? Not a physical environment, a virtual environment only. And to that end, we brought in experts from all over the country to be on a panel to start this conversation.

Yeah, we grabbed a bunch of online pastors and said, "Hey, come over here. Let's have this crazy conversation." You know, the best part of the conversation? Straight up, at least four times in this podcast, somebody made the stomp comment. I hope I'm not gonna get fired because of this, but because there's this fascinating conversation where all these online guys are like, "This is a great thing, but it's a completely separate thing. It's a new thing." And that's the beauty of a digital church, because it's not tied to a physical church model where you're trying to recreate what's happening physical in a virtual space. You get to just wipe the slate clean and start over and create a model of church that just operates virtually the way that virtual is supposed to function. And that is a beautiful thing.

So here's who's involved in this panel. We're bringing in Ian Kirk, generations community, past online pastor. We're bringing in Jason Morris, Westside Family, no stranger to the podcast there, of course, global innovations pastor. We're bringing in Joey Santos, online pastor with Christ Church, as well as Raid the Armas, of course, guest host regularly here on the podcast, as well as, excuse me, digital pastor out of Christ Fellowship in Miami, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, in a conversation that I'm calling "Biblical Functions in a Digital Only Church." Episode 50, everybody, here you go.

Jason, what years are you? Those are interesting to me. These are like some knockoff Chinese brand that Panasonic or something like that. They work. I got it for Christmas actually. I gave them to my son for Christmas, and it was somehow he—it was beneath him. And so I'm like, "Okay, I'll use them."

We were going to do a conversation centered around language, and I think somewhat it'll still maybe fill that way, because part of language is really at the core of the philosophy of church online. I was—so I've taken a new job, and this is like grounded in fact. Joey and I spent, I don't know, two or three days, couple days back in November out in Colorado with an organization called Stadia Church Planting. And they actually just launched, just planted their 1,000th church. It's taken them 17 years to launch a thousand churches, but they celebrated that. What's interesting is with the current growth trends that the organization is going through and how they've been accelerating, they're gonna hit the next 1,000 churches in three years. So they'll go to 2,000 churches in three years and are very quickly escalating along. And so the reason Joey and I got pulled into this conversation is they were really trying to wrestle with what a digital church is. And what's interesting is like, we started the conversation, they got really excited about some of the stuff we were talking about. I've really got excited about some of the stuff that we were talking about. And it did to this like two-day think tank, blue sky thing we were doing, we just kept the conversation going between Stadia and I, and ineffectiveness this week or late January. I'm like, director of digital church planting for Stadia, which is like awesome and scary and everything in between. And if people are like, "So what's a digital church?" my response back is, "What do you think a digital church is?" because we're literally getting to define some of those things right now.

So here's what I want to do. I want to like be very particular with some terms here up front. So what's a digital church for me? I'm wrestling with three things. I'm wrestling with a church planter that wants to plant a church digitally that will eventually turn into a physical location. So that's one model. I'm talking about a church planter that's planting a church in a digital realm that may stay digital. And so like, I'm referencing here a DJ Soda with the Archer Through. I'm referencing a Jair Hart with what he's doing with Love Plan, where the end game of it is not for it to grow into a physical, but to keep it in that virtual, in that digital, digital community. Now there's challenges. Some of these things that I'm going to go through, like I was reading a book here today. I was reading the—what is this called? The Flywheel. What is this called? The Movement Flywheel. I'll put it in the show notes, but it's a free ebook from Leadership Network and an Exponential conference. And some of the things that even when they're talking about this stuff, I'm like, "I don't really know how to do this digitally. Maybe it's not possible. Maybe it's possible. Maybe we just need to kind of think about it." But it's not like in this podcast, in this one hour podcast, we're gonna solve all the world's problems. As much as, "Hey, there's some challenges here that we really need to pour more into." So let's do this. Let's take a moment. If belts are on the podcast, Ian, let's start up with you, and I'll just copy it. Just maybe 15-20 seconds. Who you are, your ministry, what's your tie to what the heart is of church online, and that for you.

So I'm at Mary Generations Community Church in Marysville, Washington. I am the online campus pastor, and we've been doing this for about a year. In fact, I got the official title about the anniversary is just about now. And basically taking us from zero to broadcast, and now we're starting to expand to online groups and figuring out how that's gonna work for us. And I also write daily devotionals for the entire church, which sort of fits into this, I hope, for our online groups. But we're right now we're really starting to wrestle with how online groups are going to fit into the church context because in our area where we have Boeing and other organizations that work seven days a week, 24 hours a day, church on Sunday doesn't fit in a lot of schedules. And so we want to expand that from just worship, you know, just broadcasting worship, to having small groups and discipleship online so that people feel connected to the body.

Tillie, cool. Montego Nest. Well, I mean, Mason, Ohio, Christ Church, and here for two and a half years now. And we start from ground zero also with the online church. They have nothing before I got there. And we really are our main purpose was how we create an online environment that provides full engagement. And so the idea was literally, if our next-door neighbor from our church doesn't want to come to your building, but they engage online, we're okay with that. So and that really opened the door for many possibilities. So we are experiencing the full engagement. We call a campus because it's really treated as a campus, it's a separate campus even from financially. So the giving that comes through the online campus is treated separately from the physical church. And we're expanding that now. Like, we're talk more about it, but we've—it has been really fun experience to be able to have this presence at a bar and have a church there.

The churches, yeah, where Springs. Yeah, I'm sure will tie into the church in a bar. By the way, episode 45 on the Church Digital podcast, we spent significant amount of time. Joey's no stranger to the podcast here. He was on that one, and I've got to into that. And we've got the OG down here, Jason Morris from Westside Family. So going all the way back to my—what I don't have an in.

Front of me, but it's probably like episode 7 or 8, 6 maybe. Was it? It was in the top 10. Yeah, yeah, I felt like it was right there, made 5 or 6. I'll look up while you're talking. But Jason, man, West Side family, what's the heart of Church online? What's the heart of digital? What's your heart? What's what's going on down over there?

Well, what we do is we help people. Our mission statement at Westside is loving Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and sharing Jesus. And what we do online is help people do that exact same thing using online tools. And then leveraging part of the thing that I do is we leverage that digital expression of Westside to catalyze global church planting movements. And so, like, for example, tomorrow I'm gonna be headed out to Thailand and Laos where we're going to be meeting up with a bunch of church planters and church leaders that we're bringing in from South Africa and India. And at last count, we've had the honor to participate with some really good partners that at last count is like over twelve hundred churches. Something like that. Well, not in the same way that one would think of as a church here in the States with a building, paid staff, that sort of thing. It is a different expression of church. But what we're doing is we are leveraging the digital resources that we're creating and allowing that to give people on the ground the tools that they need to create contextualized versions of Jesus' church wherever they happen to be.

So our heart is to make that happen because the way I see it, Jesus said go into all the world, and we're just giving it a shot. So that's what we do.

So you're literally getting on a plane tomorrow?

Yep, to travel over that. That's gonna preach it. Preach. Get everybody taking the time to jump in on this. Hey, Ray, you want to give us a thirty-second on? You don't get to talk about CF much. Like, just really the heart of what you guys are doing over there at Monchristi?

No, I mean, really, it's continually changing. And you know, God's allowed us to see visual tools as a way to reach people and how to disciple them and even on into the future. And eventually, definitely, I'll talk about this because Jeff and I both sit on the board and work with different organizations and how a lot of this is kind of taking shape. You know, but everything from we believe small groups online, we have community online, we have, we do services online, and expanded even now into missions and how we can do missions online. And pretty excited to talk about that in the future. But God has really used this in a great way. And it's been great to be grateful to be here all the way up through episode fifty. It was really cool to be part of the podcast residual. But really, at Christ Fellowship, it's been quite a ride and quite an experience to allow digital tools and my role is expanded. I'm not just online campus pastor anymore. Like, I'm basically a digital strategist overall now and kind of helping find a way to allow all those tools to work together to help us reach people in a digital world. But also recognizing, and we've used this word here on the podcast, in the digital world where the people who attend our campuses and the people who attend online are in many cases one and the same. And I'm sure we'll get into some of that discussion today as we talk about what it means to be the ecclesia or the gathered online.

Yeah, it was funny. I got called out on Twitter. I can't even remember who did it to me at this point, but a couple and get its Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. And it was all nice, but Jake Rand over at Saddleback tagged Ray and I. Evidently, he's got somebody from his church that's moving down to Naples, Florida. And he was asking, you know, Ray and I via Twitter, hey, do you know any churches in any? He said anybody who's doing anything in Naples. And you know, Jay being the online pastor over there, I just replied back, are you looking for online or physical church? And somebody, somebody else, tell me who will Pope, will link to it in the show notes. But somebody, I mean, they were like, does it matter? It was like, okay, touché. Well done. I appreciate the shot, you know?

Yeah, it does in this context. I want to know who to recommend to. But anyway, yes, physical or virtual doesn't matter. We're all, we're all the same church.

I want to hone in because part of me is like, I love that, and the fact that we are all the one church in the different parts and things that come from that. What I want to propose though is that there's different models. And so I may want to like segue the conversation a little different here because, like, for example, you know, Jason talked to me about what what's going on at the church. It's like, what does a church look like where you are, where you're heading to literally tomorrow?

Well, that varies a lot depending upon the location. It could be a gathering of, you know, two to three hundred in a storefront somewhere, or it could be, you know, three to five believers meeting in a bamboo hut or under a tree. So it takes lots of different forms, and much of that has to do with the context that they're in. In some cases, they're in persecuted places where they have to function underground, which causes them to be forced to be small and reproducing, which we found actually works better from a gospel saturation standpoint and a leadership development standpoint than amassing large gatherings that are more difficult to replicate and tend to, I mean, they all have all the different expressions have their own strengths and weaknesses. But one of the weaknesses of a larger gathering is the leadership development pipeline tends to weaken, and the gospel saturation in a given area tends to weaken versus other expressions or other forms because you're talking about different forms of church, right? So like, megachurch is different than house church, but they're both church, right? It's a different expression of what the church is. And when you're talking about digital church, I think it's another thing. It's another expression of church. And one can't say, oh, megachurch is bad or house church is bad. Well, a lot of it depends on the context and who you're trying to reach.

Just like I was, you know, listening to Joey, you know, talk about the vast majority of people that are in his digital expression of church are within the geographic reach of his physical campuses. And that tells you something. That there is a demographic or a group of people that could possibly only be reached in more of a digital context or in a more hyperlocal context than what we're thinking because they're thinking, no, I don't want to be in a building. And if you hear that person, like, if the customers that we're supposed to be or the people that we're supposed to be reaching, if those people are saying I don't want to be in a building, we need to listen to that because our job, you know, according to Jesus, is to go into all the world and make disciples, right? Teaching them to observe everything we've commanded you. And if those people tell us that they don't want to be in a building and yet we're forcing them into a model that requires one, maybe we need to rethink our approach. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, and the idea of different models certainly comes into play. Korea is seeing borderline revival as a result of a megachurch movement. Some of the largest churches on the planet are coming out of Korea, whereas India and China are seeing a movement on a much more house church level. We've had Micah Christian on the podcast. Micah's literally launched four hundred churches, four hundred minor churches, house churches, so much so that he was removed from India. That government literally kicked him out of the country because he was a threat to national security. He was so effective in implanting these reproducing churches. And to say, well, no, the megachurches is better or less or more powerful or not, I mean, that's an irrelevant conversation because in the end, we're not judging how any buds and seeds or how much revenues coming in or what the money is. You're judging how we are at fulfilling the Great Commission of empowering disciples.

Thank you very much, Jason Morris, for that. And so what it's there is like there's a facet that I think maybe should be considered. And that is, in the same way where the primary expression of church in the first century that you find in the book of Acts was not in large gatherings, that happened later. That's not to say that large gatherings aren't effective. They can be an effective tool, and we have seen them as effective tools even in regions where the primary expression of church might be a house church or a smaller gathering. The interesting thing that I see about the digital church though is that it is in some ways neither mega nor micro in that it is a networked church where you could have smaller or asynchronous exposures to the church, not a church service, but perhaps done in a networked fashion where the net effect is greater than the sum of its parts.

Yeah, you know, but something that I see, and this is something that we're all struggling through when we talk about the age that we're coming into in terms of digital churches. You know, for some time, for quite some time, you know, we validated Sunday morning because it was something that we can count. It was something that we could kind of control. With digital tools, we have less and less of an ability to control that. It's more virally spread. We can spread out content further and faster than ever, and it can reach people of all sorts of different means, different economic statuses, different neighborhoods, et cetera. And people can access content from different pastors who aren't even in their own city. And so in that way, it gives them the ability to be shepherded by people that they may never meet, never see, which is something that the megachurch movement was already kind of doing because even though I could see my pastor on the stage, the odds of us having a relationship in a two thousand, three thousand, four thousand member church, slim to none, you know?

And now when we start talking about churches, how we know it now, we got to get down to some of the nitty-gritty stuff, which is digital in my opinion can actually do better. And I'll get to that in a second in the sense of accountability, actually being in relationship, being in somebody's life. And here's why. With digital landscapes and with digital tools, I can be in somebody's life every day. We can stay in communication every single day, and we can keep accountability. And that person can keep me accountable to things like Scripture readings or prayer. That person can be in my life and the praises, you know, and the good, the bad, the ugly, all that stuff. A lot of that can happen on digital landscapes where face-to-face interaction can't happen as much.

And so, you know, the example, and I've used this before in the podcast, that kind of launched me in this direction, seeing how this could be real. My wife's been part of the same text thread with other Christian mommies for about ten years. And they've been there through the good and the bad, holding each other accountable through the birth of babies, through some of their divorces, through remarriages, all sorts of stuff, praying for each other, keeping each other accountable, encouraging one another, doing all the things that we would expect the people sitting in our pews to do, and doing it more effectively than I had seen in some face-to-face small groups where it was like shallow relationship, but hey, they're meeting together every week.

So I've got a question on that, right? Because I think you're touching on something that is overlooked too many times. The question is...

I have in that environment where I think one could actually do more ministry because it's more constant. In that texting group that you described, do they ever, or do the members ever get together physically?

They do, but it's not as often as you think. It's maybe once a year, maybe once every two years, because now they're spread out. You know, some of them, one of them's living in Canada, one a couple of them are living in the Carolinas, and so they've spread out on this scale. But they're very much in each other's lives every day.

It was kind of funny because at some point, like I was in what I've considered accountability groups, and I would be sitting down with my wife and I would just hear business like her phone would be going off ever. What for? Not just the girls, and I'm like, well man, what's going on? Hey, so-and-so is going through this thing and we're all praying for her. And I'm like, man, you guys are in, and I mean some of this is just me being a guy and her being a woman and just them being better at communication in general, you know. But I was like, man, you guys are in each other's lives much more than I am with my own men's accountability group. Like, yeah, we'll talk about like some sinners are so different stuff that you guys bring in like the day-to-day to each other and not the big deal.

The trend that you mentioned and the way that that texting group has expressed itself as the church is a growing trend that I see happening. We're on site, face to face conversations happen less frequently but are more meaningful because of the gaps that are being filled on a more constant basis through a digital means. And perhaps it could be that that trend can be seen not only in church world but in every other sector of society.

So that being said, perhaps our ministry model could adapt to that cadence where, who knows, we could have an on-site gathering, you know, once every quarter or something of that nature that's really big, really awesome, highly excellent, and not able to be repeatable every single Sunday because that's too much of a grind and would suck too much resource and energy from the actual ministry that's happening in a digital means on a more frequent basis. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that actually kind of aligns with, do you guys read the book? And Daniel M talks about it. And no silver bullets though, it's called Flip to Flip the Classroom. Are you guys familiar with that term? Where essentially it was two chemistry teachers, but instead the book and the philosophies out there, what sintering I'll talk about my wife later in the context of this. But as my wife said, masters in education, and when I said flip the classroom, she got really upset, which was funny to it. But what flip the classroom is is these two chemistry teachers instead of being focused on lecturing in the classroom, they flipped it so they would let your like pre-recorded, upload it to a video server somewhere, and the homework was watching the lectures.

Instead of the teachers feeling like they had to perform four or five classes a week, their word perform four to five classes a day, excuse me, they would do it once for online and the students would watch it once. If there were questions, they back it up, they pause it, repeat it over and over again, and then that was the homework. The actual like application point where they do the homework, where they ask the questions, where they're going through the labs, like that's done in the classroom. Teachers are able to then engage with the students without having to worry about the performance, without having to worry about that, but more of person-to-person building that community. Students scores skyrocketed as a result of that. Also, the teachers felt they better understood who the students were and what their needs were because instead of them performing their work over and over and over to them, they got to listen and understand who the students were.

No, my wife has a Masters of Education and it was funny. I just, I asked, I read the book on the airplane recently and I got home and I was like, hey, if you heard you ever heard of this, you ever like, you know, heard these guys, this book? And she's like, no, but I hate flip the classroom. And I was like, really? You know, just tell me why. And she's like, oh, well, the teachers are just being lazy. Was my wife's response. And I was like, oh, that's that's interesting. And I saw because I really, I'm interested in context of church and discipleship and maybe even changing how we're recreating disciples, what that process looks like. And she says, oh no, I totally think you should do it from the church level. I think it would be awesome at the church level. I just think teachers are being lazy. So I don't know what that does for my wife if somebody wants to speak into that. I can give you my wife's email address and you directly because lord knows I was like, cool, I'm gonna let that one go and we're gonna move on.

Your wife's reticence to that approach is fascinating to me. At the end of the day, my question is, what is the point of education? Is it so that the teachers can have meaningful activity or is it so that the students can learn something? And if test scores are going up, who cares? Yeah, if the teachers are more lazy, even if that's the real reason, if it's more effective, who cares? So in my mind, that really kind of parallels some of the other things that I feel like people are struggling with when it comes to new ways of doing church. You need to know what your goal actually is. Is it activity? Is it programs? Is it events? Or is it results? What are those results? And if you're driving towards those kinds of goals, then who cares what kind of methodology you're using? Just do whatever is effective, you know?

That same criticism that Amy would give the teachers, and I would never go against a great hymn you read, I'm a big fan of Jeff's why she does such awesome stuff as a teacher. I'm not getting your trouble, Jeff. Don't work. But as you for that, I appreciate it. Keep going.

Yeah, but here's the deal. That's the same criticism I've heard of pastors who have even gone to video teaching or churches that have gone multi-site, that have gone to videos, thinking, oh, that's so lazy, that's something that churches should not want to do. And it's like, well, hold on. And this is like, I was the campus pastor at a physical location before I became the online campus pastor. I did a lot more ministry, like actual ministry, on the weeks that I was not teaching because we were rolling the video. I got to be in somebody's life. I got to go do hospital visits. I went and did funerals. I went and did a bunch of stuff on the weeks that I was teaching. I spent thirty to thirty-five hours in books and working on a message and doing that because that's what was needed of me that week. And I felt like I was more in ministry when we were leveraging the technology properly.

Joey, you've been quiet so far, man. What are you thinking? And then disperse maybe? And I received that because I, I know this is gonna sound cheesy, but man, I cannot believe I'm the same podcast with Jason because I made them for the first time at a very small online pastors conference in Dallas a few years ago. And I mean, he was incredible. He shared information we got. We were sharing meals and, um, he has been a great like, I follow his church. I think he's his Twitter account and see, you know, he shared that what's going on online and I'm like, I'm here in the podcast with Jason right now. That's pretty incredible. So yeah, and I pray for you, brother. I appreciate what you do, your leadership. I really do.

That's great. I really believe that the future of the online church is gonna be away from the what, the online streaming of the Sunday service, and because that to replicate what happened on a stage, it's still not, it still that's to me not the identity of the real digital church. And I really think that because all we are talking about online, we're talking about a content distribution with the only difference is with a relational aspect of it. And we have the ability to really broadcast content twenty-four seven and connect with people anytime today.

I agree with Ray. I experienced more ministry in the last two years than the ten years prior in a physical church, literally. You know, when when you got a guy from California who never walked in a church before, he never walked in a church, and he found our church through a Google search. And he, and he, and he just go through all the steps of, you know, I want to know what's next. And we go through foundations class. That I want to know what's next. And we go through online Bible study one-on-one. I was there just one a why I said we don't have to join a group. We're gonna be me and you doing this all the way. I want to get baptized. And he fights all the way from California to Mason to get baptized. That was a very first time every day he stepped foot in the church.

Wow, wow. And if you don't understand, like, people don't understand the power of that moment, you really don't understand the power of just, here's the deal about it. The first time he watches services on Tuesday morning in California was not a sin if you watch a pre-recorded service. So I really think that one and I gonna run the risk, you really get myself in trouble here. It's my podcast. You'll be fine. I know. And I just gonna repeat what I said the last podcast. I think church, the physical churches, are a little lost in a sense of, you know, we we gotta this big building and we've got to have people come in and we have to have enough programming that people are happy enough to give the money so we can now pay the bills. So churches are becoming this big real estate business instead of being a place where we can just distribute content and facilitate relationships.

So in our church, we we shift the conversation because we're seeing people come in. And I'm a big data guy, so I I can look at data all day long. And the reality is people are not coming into church because the preaching. They're not kind of the church because the music. There comes church trying to find relationships, meaningful relationships with the community. I visualize, I don't know if this is off the subject, but I visualizing the physical church is going through a season of adjustments of trying to rediscover its identity in today's culture. And the digital church is just the same place to be able to fill that gap.

So I think for pastors listening to this, the digital church is not here to compete with your church. The actually the digital church here to actually support what you offer now. You've got to just look in the way more objectively how that engagement happens so you able to distribute content with the relational piece involved. It's like if you can add their relational piece to it, it makes a complete experience for the people participating in it.

Yeah, and there's a there's an awesome opportunity for church online, the online broadcast, the online community of a physical church to the compliment that Ray mentioned, this idea of digital, a combination of physical and digital within within one. Like theirs, believe me, I could go off that. We all could go off that pitch and and help pastors understand that. And we've all have enjoyed the joys and sorrows of trying to convince someone of the other way on that.

Here's I truly do believe this. The the physical church growth model or whatever we want to call this, the mega church, gigot church, multi-site, the the typical church that you see today and in the physical space, I think they're going to get bigger and I think they're going to get smaller. The the model of the large church is going to continue to grow. I don't think that it's going to crash and burn. I don't think it's it's set for doom. If anything, and I do think that it's serving its purpose for the kingdom. There are people that do connect to that, just like it.

Would be ill of me to rip a giga church in Korea or a house church in India, those physical models that exist or the purpose that they do now. There may need to be something complementary to help get beyond what they do or to reach the type of person that those buildings are not set to reach.

We've all have experienced, and Joey, you know, you've alluded to some of them with your church online, where you know there are people who don't want to set foot in the building as of right now. Life rates that 63% of people aren't interested in going to your church building. Eighty percent, seventy-nine percent are interested in having conversation about faith with their friends as long as faith is important to their friends and they see that faith is important to your friends.

So there's an opportunity I would suggest for a new model, which we talked about this, and this digital church model that's driven more towards a discipleship-oriented type structure is what I'm suggesting, where we are disciple to engage within a community, whether that's a physical community, maybe it's a neighborhood or a couple blocks around somebody's house, maybe it's a historical neighborhood, meaning it's the circle of friends that I have in context of what Rayce's wife's doing with everything that she's got with people all the way up in another country still engaging in several states represented in that, or maybe it's something like what Jade's doing, Jade Earhart, where dude, that God just loves video games and once that utilized his passion to try to reach people for Christ, and to say, "Oh man, that that's not a church." Well, I think there's some biblical some standards and some mandates that we need to look at and to say, "Okay, this is when we look at what churches on the ecclesiology of church, these are functions that a church is supposed to do." And you know, do we see this? And it's just in some great examples, do we see this with Jay? Do we see this with the WhatsApp group, honestly, that all of us are in? We are all in some sort of a WhatsApp group similar to that. I've got a guy in California that's been blowing me up today. I swear he typed something and I almost went to crack him a joke back. I'm like, "Are your thumbs tired? Because that's like 2,000 words right there, bro." And that's, and I know you don't have like a computer WhatsApp thing. Like this is the actual like on a keyboard, that's a lot of work, man. But you know, God bless him and God bless the groups that are doing that. But does that hold up to the ecclesiology? Does it hold up to the functions of biblically what, you know, out on what Exponential Conference and what Leadership Network says? "Hey, this is the minimum ecclesiology of what a church should be." So let's just roll through this. Let's have some fun and can kind of see where we land with some of this stuff. All right, so there's probably ten or eleven on this list. Number one: worship.

So in a digital expression of worship, church, how do you worship? Arguably a better question would be, "What is worship?" I mean, I guess the traditional way for many of you who broadcast your services, the first thing you're gonna say, "Hey, we know we broadcast the song that on Sunday morning." But you know, just question of what is worship is kind of an expensive thing that every worship leader loves to discuss, but everybody just kind of takes a pause. You know, we kind of identify the worship as primarily the singing portion of church and the fact that we're singing and engage together. But the reality is this: whenever we think that worship is a lifestyle, for some reason that tends to take a dive once we try to talk about church in the context of all a lot online, because we want people still together in physical spaces and sing together. Truth is, doesn't matter if they're singing privately, you know, in a room, doesn't matter if they're singing amongst a group of other believers, they're still engaged with God and worship can take on so many different forms within that.

Now that being said, we're looking for our traditional form of singing. Yeah, you know what? They're watching the broadcast and they're singing along. Like, that is happening in a lot of cases, man. Folks have even engaged in the chat that came in my hands are raised, right? We're on that, and that's a powerful thing when God can do that no matter where they're located. You know, and I love the idea of the weekly gathering. And Jason, you've alluded to this in a past podcast, and actually you connected me with Neil Cole's Church 3.0. We talked about that the last time that you were on. And that book, along with some others, really started to reshape kind of how I was viewing church.

Answer this question for me: when did church become a weekly expression? Do you know historically? Or is anybody know? Like, I mean, obviously we're seeing God speed Jesus speak to large crowds, feeding of the thousands, the Beatitudes, so he's doing this. We see it in the letters to the church, so we know that smaller works. But when did it shift to like every Sunday we're doing this thing?

One of the things that you find in Acts is that daily they were doing all these things. So that actually falls into more of a frequency that most of us experience in the digital church where daily we are, you know, breaking bread, dedicating ourselves to the Apostles' teaching, to prayer and to the word. Those sorts of things. We don't, I think if I remember correctly, and I might be wrong, but I think around 300 AD is when you start seeing the more traditional or temple-based expression of Christianity that was kind of centered around the Nicean Council. Get historical here. Can I see and create all that was kind of in that? Okay, so like there's this idea of where it shifted to a periodical tentpole as opposed to moving away from this lifestyle thing.

I would suggest, man, even like pop it in the earpods here, jamming out to it to a Hillsong, yes, it's not corporate worship, but it's worship to God. But we're losing in the digital church environment, we are probably losing a little bit of that corporate. What do you guys think? How can we overcome that corporate loss that we're feeling there?

So but I actually, I think something like this, like what we're doing now on Zoom would be effective where you can see one another and respond to one another corporately and still be in a digital expression. I'm on a number of different Facebook groups and we all discuss liturgy, you know, old-school hymn services, modern worship, not, you know, and the struggle that, and I'm traditional, that's what I pull into this, is I'm bringing into that liturgy mindset is that liturgy means the work of the people gathered together. That's its actual definition. And I think we are going to have to struggle with that. I think like the Zoom calls where people become more comfortable with that, or Skype or hangouts or whatever other thing you want to do, I don't know that we're going to be able to get to that full corporate mentality. Not that we should either, but I think the microsites where you have three or four people gathered together is sufficient to meet that corporate need rather than have this huge expression of these huge buildings. Hope my senior pastor is not listening to me, where you, that is what needs to be done, is this huge building, this huge gathering, which is not sustainable in the current cultural environments.

I just want to edit attitude because they, he made a point, and Jason pointed out something there from Acts that I think seals the deal for me, right? The Bible said they add to the members daily. And I think it's interesting about that is when you ask the question, "What worship looks like in the online campus," you're trying to translate what happens in the corporate building and the corporate worship in the building into your online. And to me, it's like they have, there's no connection there. Like, I don't want to wrap the cake. That's the thing. I really don't want to replicate in the digital church. I want the digital church should be this very personal, intimate opportunity that I have to have with God and with others that wanted to be with me in that moment. And that's not gonna look like a man-made worship service experience. If I just lost half of your audience right there, so I write, I was losing them anyway. Don't worry about it. Let him go.

Do you know, to me, like, so I think the tradition, the traditional way of looking at the weekend service is not gonna translate into the digital church. Yes, I really firmly believe that. So sure, I can get my worship team, put in a studio a week long, and we can record all kinds of songs that we want to put together just for digital church and have the library available on that on my online chair to say, "Hey, if you want to set aside some time to listen to some songs and praying," and I mean, I can create a, I can create my own programming online. Well, and there's how much assets now available. Exactly. I mean, if get a ten-dollar Spotify account, there's how much, I mean, it's ridiculous of the amount of resources that are out there.

We were outside having the conversation. I think what happened to like normal Christian music that wasn't like praise and worship? They used to be like there's like DC Talk and Audio Journal and that would do like just music and everything. And I'm not ripping it. It's not necessarily bad, but it's like there is no more like general genre. It's all, it's all Christian praising and worship, which is just a of more resources and assets that we can do now. There's a business model why they do that because it's cheaper, though. Anyway, so we're not in the community, right? Well, that's, that's the battle pastors in local churches. They firmly believe that what we're trying to discuss here's a way to eliminate community. Here's a problem with that because they're their mindset is not the way we're talking. I can just, I don't need anybody around me. I'll just gonna go online, listen to my music, listen to my message and not talk to anybody about it. That's not what we're talking about. We're just talking about take the content where people are, asked which their mobile devices, because that's where they are at now. We open up opportunities for them to connect with you, go through it. That's the point.

And I think, I think the better, the resistance that we're not facing with many churches is that, no, it's not. I mean, I literally heard a pastor say there's just the end of last year when he opened them, he's starting the message. He's like, "You know, I love that we can broadcast online, but here's the deal. If you in your house right now, you could be here, you should be here, because you're not in church if you're not here." And he just said that on camera. Another thing it was people that post on social media talking about their online insurance. They say, "If you cannot be in church today, watch online." And to me is like, "How that doesn't make sense." But because the perception is not there, right? Because you are the church where you are. That's why our house camp since we have this big t-shirt, it was really big. "I am the church." Awesome. Because of that, because you're the church where you are.

I think the concept of worship in the model that the physical church produces might not be what worship is going to look like in a digital church. That's me. That's really the bottom line.

Let's segue. We got, I want, I want to get through some more of this list. And we thought worship was controversial. Wait for the next one. And I'm going in there order. This isn't me choosing this order. Teaching. So what would teaching, what could teaching, what should teaching look like?

In a digital expression or a digital expression of church, now here's whatever we assume it is in the physical, we have an opportunity to start from scratch. This is not a physical church doing a church online, doing their ministry in a virtual space. This is a digital church that's planted just for the purpose of growing and multiplying digitally or physically. But what should teaching look like in a digital church?

He's got something. Whenever I try to answer that question, I try to go back to the most primal expression of church that we know of, and that's found in Scripture. So I feel like if the Apostle Paul felt it was okay to teach via his letters, in other words via text, then it's okay for us to teach that way too.

You don't have to have, and you have like, I just finished up the book of Romans, right? In the last chapter talks, it's fascinating because he sends greetings from afar, right? So he's disintermediated already, but yet he's sending greetings trying to maintain the connection of community after having taught for fifteen chapters. So the way I see it, and the Apostle Paul never saw the church in Rome. It was a group of five house churches, but he was teaching that church without actually being physically present, even though he wanted to be. I mean, that was his desire to be, but he wasn't. And so I think that tells us a lot of what could be done when it comes in the digital space because it's already been done. So we should just go with that.

All right, well, so here's what I would say. You know, in Joel chapter two, it's like all of this is being forecasted in terms of what the future church would look like. It was a lot about how they would beat each other because the Spirit of God was moving in them. And so once again, in the context of community, there's something so powerful about the fact of, hey, listen, we can all watch good sound teaching, good sound content, whether it's coming from the outside or whether it's somebody delivering it from the inside. And then we can actually discuss something that we can't do on a Sunday morning in a physical space. We can discuss how it's applicable to our lives and discuss and confront, learn another about, read seriously. Like, you can, we live this outlook is that, you know, let's go to the simple and yet tough to follow a command of Christ. You know, something like loving my neighbor as myself, all right? So it's one thing for one person to teach us on the stage. It's another thing for me to talk about in practicality about how it's supposed to be lived out and to discuss about how I don't do it all the time and how there are times where it's hard to love my neighbor or to ask the question, well, who is my neighbor? Just like it was asked to Jesus. And to unpack that with one another, those are the kinds of things that can be done in digital spaces that can be done powerfully where I can learn from other people's experiences, where I can, you know, rethink and have some reshaping of my own mind and my own thoughts by the impact about how the Spirit of God is moving in other people's lives and not just my own. That's something that can happen in digital community very quickly.

I think one of the things about message, I think really it has to do with when you talk to online audience, you're talking with a global audience. I think one of the advantages that pastors have from the stage is that makes your preaching to the local church and the local audience right there. And to make the shift, it's not easy. It's not easy. I mean, put them in a really bad spot. So it's interesting because if you've got to do a Bible study online, online group, the book of Romans, you're pretty much just talking with people in your church or Christians that know what book of Romans is. Whereas if I'm gonna do a Bible study or a group, I want to do a group on leadership, leadership and principles of leadership, every base in the book of Romans, but I'm gonna tell you exactly why you should do this Bible study by introducing a title and a theme and a reason that is not the language that the church, the local church, is used to. And I think that's a big challenge. That's one of the things it was very clear to us when we started church at the bar because we started church at the bar in the worst possible sermon series that we can start, rather look of Revelations. So there is not much practical thing that you're getting here. Let's help you, but go to work tomorrow and live this out, right? So it was just incredible. And out of that, I mean, I'm at the bar and I'm watching people watching the service, and it was like, I don't know. And immediately, you know, one of the things I'm considering soon is I'm saying, let's record the message. They actually speak a language of the people that go to the bar. That's incredible practical. It's incredibly life living. While you can do so, if you break down on the way in the language that when people listen to it, they can actually turn the TV, the computer off and do something with this. Listen with them when I'm sitting in a chair, my church, yes, I want to learn the Bible. I want to learn. I mean, it's just, it's just that's a part of a ghost church, write it fast. You're gonna teach, you're gonna keep developing in discipleship in the church. That's part of it. But online, the audience is so global that church language doesn't fit. I lost the other half of audience right now.

Let me ask this because Ghazali to bring it back, or I'll chase him all the way. Is there a model in, and this is legitimately me asking, I am wrestling with this right now. Is there a model of a digital church where there is no sermon? What do you guys think of that? In other words, so group-based, it's so relational based that you don't even have, and maybe we need to watch the message sermon label, but the person lecture style is not even a part of it?

So yes, I think that's possible. The key here is that Scripture still needs to be a foundational piece, whether it's discussion or whether it's something else that's happening there. I do think that an element of Scripture needs to be a foundational piece. And so whether it's not somebody from the traditional lectern or pulpit delivering it or even from video teaching, as long as there's Scripture at the center of a discussion or whatever else, I think that can take place for shaping what can happen.

Now, you know, and this is where, you know, many of us have been part of prayer services and this kind of thing where there wasn't like a formalized service, okay, that's cool. But I guarantee you somewhere woven in there, there were scriptural elements and part of those gatherings as well. So I would say, hey, Scripture is somewhere in there. I think we'd be good to go.

And did you know something? No, I don't think that there is a model that we should bind ourselves to in digital church. I think that's actually one of our problems because we do. When we ask these questions, we keep looking back to the methods that we're accustomed to, going back to how you opened up the question. How should the church teach? And it's more of what are the essentials that need to be done to teach, and let it go from there. Because let flipping the classroom would be a key point. What are the essentials? You know, and Ray cover two, the Scriptures are the essentials. But why do we continue to bind people to a method or even multiple methods? Because each digital group cohort is going to have a different way of connecting with one another.

Let's keep moving, number it's, let's call it number three. And I hear this one. I do this. This is one that hurts. This is one where physical is not required or mandated, but it's gonna be a challenge. The sacraments, baptism, communion, child dedication is not one of them. But those things that were hella think you think it probably is, but it's not. It's not only about yes. So, you know, this sprinkling, whatever, not doing that. I'm Southern Baptist at heart. It's called moving on, maybe a little bit liberal Southern Baptist. But for us today, baptism, communion, what does that look like in a digital church?

All right, since this is a digital podcast, I can't have everybody raise hands, but how many people here give it, and I have baptized somebody as a result of online church? I, two, three. All right, so the answer is three or four, seventy-five percent. All right, men. So it is possible. And I granted, and Jeff, we've talked through some of the different ways and challenges of this kind of things happen. Everything from folks finding a method in their household and doing it via video chat into a bathtub to Joey, you reference somebody flying across four states to get baptized or, you know, or whatever it was that the country. I mean, that's that's a big deal. And so as far as that sacrament, I think we can kind of give a solid checkmark to that.

Lord's Supper, and this is this is an idea that I stole from Crandall and Saddleback Church, encouraging our folks to prepare in advance with all the materials and to take it at home alongside of us. Check. Now we've done it. Yeah, it's a great, and that's actually one of my biggest struggles. And that's where our the Church of the Nazarene, which is my denomination, struggles because we have a more sacramental aspect of it. And in our case, by rule, an ordained elder has to officiate the sacraments.

Now, what was interesting is, gosh, now I feel really sad because I can't remember their names, but there's a group that does the PTX account, PTZ cameras, and they did a worship thing last Friday or something like that. And after, there's a Lutheran church in preparation for their communion. They send it out via mail so that people take communion, but they bathe their rules so that everyone can partake together. Just to bury God was an element that was eye-opening to me, that it's okay with in church. I'm gonna use red bylaws theory practice. If the church mails the grape, the little shot glass worth of cracker and grape, as long as they mail it postmark it from them, that is crazy. It was surreal. I have to acknowledge that it was surreal too. It was, it kind of broke my paradigm there, you know? That's the challenging thing. And I'm grateful that they were at least willing to take it to that step. And here's why they were so willing to help somebody take part in the sacrament. They're willing to jump over the hurdles to get there. You know what I'm saying? And that's what to me, and that's very much the center at the heart of what it is that we're doing. Well, and they jump through and break through a lot of barriers just to bring somebody to Christ, right? And I think in order to connect them with the body of Christ, and so that lies there. And I think that's a powerful example of, hey, so you know what, man, maybe we'll find a way. We'll find a way. We may not have it, but we're gonna find it.

Very cool. I will say this. I've had I've had more interest from some of that higher ecclesiology church, some of the higher church in doing church online previous previous years. It's been more, you know, more contemporary, less traditional. But more traditional starting to get wrestling with those and trying to figure out how to get past that whole male your communion juice. Like, that's that's a thing. It has to be grape juice because you can't mail alcohol. Oh, first eight bow borders. I know this because of, well, I'm not going to tell you that story now. We'll visit that. It is interesting, Jeff, that there is something I think that needs to be thought through. If there are denominational obstacles, sure, is to figure is to get those defined because, you know, Ian, you were talking about that an ordained minister has to administer the elements, right? Well, it would be helpful, I think, for you guys to define.

At what distance does that officer assign stop? Is it ten feet, thirty feet, a hundred feet, you know, or a thousand miles? In which case, if you're doing a live stream of it, they could be officiating at a distance, right? Exactly. Those are the types of things that that's what Ray was talking about. Is once you establish what the obstacle actually is, other than we've just never done it that way, then you can figure out what kind of workarounds you can employ. Because if your obstacle happens to be it has to be blessed by an ordained minister in the moment, he's got to physically touch it and see it with it, fine. Let him do that ahead of time and then mail him out. You just got to figure out what the real minimal ecclesiology is and then create your workaround so that you don't eliminate people in the process.

Jason's here. He actually brought up exactly something I was thinking of, even before I was hearing the Lutheran's. This Lutheran church doing that. Was it makes some sense if we are actually watching in real time, why that's not officiating? And of course, I'm sure someone will ask for my credentials after that, because I just said that. But the reality is, what is real time? What is gathering? That's the whole question of what is digital church. I think we're gonna entitle this podcast, "Yeah, we're all crazy. Just might work." It's yes, we're all like recycling. You're all for two. It's just, you know, talking Bible hearings in church, and anyway, it's really fascinating. And I hope you guys don't keep your jobs.

Hey, yeah, so this has been a great podcast. And honestly, I've got probably another seven or eight things to like go over here. We're gonna have to get the guru back together and do this because I want to continue this conversation. I know Jason's getting ready to go off to Laos. Where you going, Jason? Yeah, yeah, he's muted, but he's shaking his head yes. Yes. Oh, that's fine. So yeah, we will. When he gets back, what we'll do is part two of this. Bring the group back together and then finish the dialogue through this. And so I wanna, I'm gonna kind of stick in the order here, cuz part two is gonna be a lot more like this. Is really, I'll just read through it. Fellowship, disciple making, compassion. How does the church digital? How's a digital church show compassion? It's interesting. Justice. How does the church, a digital church, show justice? Mission. People being on mission, literally doing a global mission. There's a fascinating conversation surrounding that. Body ministry, which I'm assuming is like the body serving in a context. And so we can we can unpack all of those. I think on part two of the podcast. But I want to land on this, the last one that we will talk about today, is prayer. So what is a digital church, a digital only expression of church model? How is that driven, celebrating, showing, empowering prayer? What do you all think?

Oh, I think that I think's already happening, right? I mean, there's several apps that you can do prayer. You can be a prayer community. But even the simple thing is text messages. Like Ray just exemplified. I think is happening more. That is the I think that is the beauty of this digital environment. There will today, I think there's a lot of prayer already happening. I think we have enough formalized there yet, like in the major space, as a way of like locating in the digital church, here's how we pray. I think we have, I think maybe we have not done that yet. I think in a very like official matter. I think it's just there's a very word that you use a lot, organic way that things are happening. The people are texting each other. They're sending emails with prayer. Or today, I just got a message early this morning, a text message from somebody from our church that was taken to the hospital. She's in ICU. She had a kidney transplant. Well, I don't need to wait until tomorrow morning. She let everybody know. I was able to just send an email to a hundred forty volunteers to have them all pray for her immediately. It's happening. And people reply back. The email. I listened. I heard a lot of things, good things in the podcast today. But Jason Landon on a whole thing about Paul in writing the letters and in Romans, and you're just like, if you don't get online church after that, I don't know what you do, man. Because they didn't mean like that. That's it. Like we're living in a house. So I think if prayer is happening, I really think, I think is we're having Night to Shine next week. And that, what we do for their online church, you participated in Night to Shine? We asked, we asked them to pray at six o'clock when it starts and at eight forty-five when you do the crowning moments. We go like, so they can see what they pray for. Oh, it's awesome. So I mean, we push prayer a lot. Prayer online. We talked a lot about it. But I think it's just it continue, continue to push the idea that you can, you don't need a specific platform to do it. It's in your hands already. It's that phone you have in your hand. Find somebody to pray with.

I would totally agree with Joey there. And most people who would push back on digital prayer, like Joey said, are already doing it anyway. I don't know of a pastor who doesn't pray over the phone with somebody when they can't be there. That's digital prayer. I don't know what you do about that. It's just, it's just using in some cases a different tool, or in some cases the exact same tool as any other pastor would use to call someone up and pray for them.

Yeah, I'll be texting with somebody and just like a want one-off conversation, and I see they're going through a hard time or Facebook Messenger, and just instead of the I pray for you, you know, let me pray for you or I'll be praying for you, just just type the prayer. And it's amazing just even though the reaction from that person. I've had people come up to me days later, thank you for praying for me. And it's just, I've never had anybody pray for me via text before it. And how you're able to utilize that that piece. By the way, the coolest feature that I've seen in the digital scope and context of prayer, Crossroads out of Cincinnati is doing right now. We did a podcast with them a couple episodes back. And so good. Tied into their mobile app, they've got the ability for people to post prayer requests, either you know, anonymous or you know, stating their name next to it. But then they also have the option for it to be public or private. And if it's public, other people see the prayer requests and can tag that prayer request and say, I'm praying for you. The person gets a push notification every time that prayer request is tagged. And so there's this immediate, you know, the feeling, the physical feeling across a digital medium, that wow, people are praying for me right now, a part of a larger community now. That's cool. But here's the cool thing. Down the road, once that prayer request gets answered, yes, no, whatever the answer is, the person who has the prayer request can go back in and mark it answered and then say how it was answered. And when they do that, that's pushed out to every person that ever I did say that they were praying for it. There's this option of within the within the church app, within there, they are creating community. My gosh, centered around prayer. What better thing should we build our community around than prayer? Eighteen months ago, I prayed for this thing, and now God's brought it to be. I'm part of that. That church sees a hundred and fifteen thousand prayer requests a month through this system. Because they're in, it's a big church, but still, it's not that much larger. Dopson in context, a mobile app. Not everybody's on it. So there is that much people identifying, connecting with prayer because there's a communal feel around it, and they're getting that physical interaction across a digital medium.

One of the things that as I was listening to you guys, it's fascinating how we tend to think about a church meeting, a gathering, an assembly, only in ways that we have experienced it, instead of looking at the way that scripture kind of defines it in a more looser form. And maybe this could be a springboard to be thinking about the next time we get together. But I'm looking at First Corinthians fourteen twenty-six, and it says, well, my brothers and sisters, let's summarize. When you meet together, doesn't say how. Like, I think we're in a meeting together right now. When you meet together, one will sing. That's interesting. Just one. One will sing. Another will teach. Another will tell some special revelation that God has given. One will speak in tongues, and another will interpret what is said. But everything that is done must strengthen all of you. And I think if we concentrate on that and do whatever we need to do to make that happen, I think that's probably a pretty good church service regardless of the size, place, or form.

That's awesome. Well said, sir. We're gonna wrap up here. Episode fifty of the Church Digital podcast. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of fifty and looking forward to the next fifty and everything that happens there as we continue to talk through digital church, church online, and everything in between. So for Ian, for Joey, for Jason, for Ray, this is Jeff. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time on the podcast. Y'all have a good day.