EP070: Ray Hudson & Church Planting, Digital First

All right, we got episode 70 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning. Jeff here once again. We got a great episode set up for you. By the way, this dovetails so well into what episode 69 was. We didn't catch episode 69? Phenomenal conversation talking about being digital first in this mid-COVID, going to post-COVID season. As we're coming out of this, what lessons did we learn in this COVID season? How should we be thinking and moving in the way forward? What role do buildings play? What role does digital play? And this idea of digital first came to the forefront.

So go back, listen to episode 69. Matt Welty from Crossroads Church, Jason Moras from Westside Family. Phenomenal conversation. But this sets up episode 70 so well because in this conversation we've actually got a church planter, Ray—don't call me Raymond—Hudson. Okay, that's not his name. Ray Hudson. He's a church planter at Our City Center out over in California. And the guy wasn't even supposed to plant a physical church until September 2020. And when this COVID thing happened, he didn't wait. He jumped. He didn't regret. He didn't, you know, kick a can and say, "Okay, what am I supposed to do now?" He jumped and launched early. And I love the fact that he said he's going in and impacting a community. He's trying to reach an area, and he's utilizing digital tools and digital technology to impact the physical location of Berkeley, California in a great way. And I'm excited about the stuff that he's doing.

In this season, but the thing that I love most, and even just in my mind as I'm wrapping around these two podcasts, 69 and 70 back to back, is we've got a guy here with Ray who's thinking digital first. Episode 69, we talked about how it was so important that we, the church, start to think digital first. And when I look at Ray Hudson, episode 70, Our City Center, here's a guy that is thinking digital first with his church plant.

Now, what that looks like, some of the stuff that Ray's talking about is crazy exciting. Some of it's just crazy. I'm not sure if it's executable, you know what I mean? And that's the deal because you gotta think different. And what Ray is showing here, even in his youngness as being a church planter that's just launching and just getting out there, is that this stuff is possible. It just takes a different perspective.

So churches of any size, large to small, the importance here of this podcast, the importance of this conversation is simple: listen to what it is to think different and get a taste of what thinking different looks like because you need to take thinking different, you need to take digital first to your churches. And what you're gonna hear Ray Hudson doing here in a second is a beautiful expression of how to think digital first in context of what your church is.

So for this conversation, we are bringing in Ray Hudson, Our City Center, church planter out in Berkeley, California, Emily Diaz, whose project manager at Stadia Church Planning, works with Ray, and she's gonna serve as co-host of course, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning in a conversation that I'm calling "Church Planting Digital First." Okay, everybody, here you go.

Yeah, Raymond Hanson from the East Coast. So I am, but the East Coast, and first church I ever was a part of that was a church plant was when I was 17. So one of my mentors, Dave Crosby, planted Community Church Poconos, and so I was on that launch team. I think I was age 17, snot-nosed kid. He was my youth pastor for a while. Stories of me turning out lights in the middle of service, you know, all that fun stuff that you do when you're a young kid. But yeah, so my story started really at 13 though. I got saved, filled, and called and commissioned to ministry. I was a basketball player, so I loved basketball, and I put it down at 13. I gave it up because I felt like God told me that he's calling me to be in ministry.

So that story leads me from the East Coast to Springfield, Missouri when I went to Central Bible College and got called to youth ministry. And so then just through all of that, got my master's degree, working on my doctorate right now. And they're all different ministry led me to the West Coast where I was executive pastor at New Life Church. One of my main roles was overseeing church planting and multi-site strategy. I enjoy strategy, but I'm not no one special, just the heart to go wherever God tells me. I think that's kind of where we're at, where I just go where God wants me to go. If I got friends and mentors that tell me, "Hey, here's some things that you should look at doing," I do that. Even Stadia, I didn't really know Stadia until a friend of mine, Dan, you know, Dan up in Washington, who said, "Hey, you should go through Stadia," and I was already like partway through my process already. So it's just, I really just try to go where God tells me to go and listen to good wisdom. Like Emily, Emily's great. So whatever she says to do, I do in most cases. Not true. You had your own vision, your own plan.

So talk to us a little bit about your church plant and your place and kind of why Berkeley and what's the vision of City Center Church.

Yeah, the reason for Berkeley, I think, would even stem back to like when I was younger in ministry. And I had someone ask me to do Chi Alpha ministry. Do you guys know what Chi Alpha is? It's like a college ministry. So the Chi Alpha would go to campus. And so they asked me about doing it in Manhattan. And so at that time, and I still don't think there is, but there wasn't a Chi Alpha on NYU campus because just how expensive it is, you know, in that area. So I remember talking to my wife about it. We're like, "I wouldn't really want to do that." And at that point in my mind, I thought, "Man, it would be way better to work at the university and plant a church or ministry off of that because now you're kind of integrated in that culture."

And so I've always joked around with my wife, and so I say joke, and she always says, "It's not serious. Stop talking about it." Even the planting journey of just saying, "Man, how cool would it be to work at a university and then plant a church out of it?" And so I would say, even you know, prior to age 24, when you know we were asked about that, even then I was like, "Man, how cool would it be to be in like a college town and work at a university and plant a thriving church that's in partnership with the university instead of not, you know, instead of separate?"

So yeah, so the call of Berkeley is, you know, just an interesting one. So I've been at, I was at New Life Church for, you know, a little over four years. And so year one, so probably like a year into being there, there was a guy who planted a church in Berkeley. And so he had been there for like seven years, and the church was getting ready to really be done, and they were moving on to their next season of ministry. So he's moving on to a different season in ministry. And so he actually asked our church to take over his church in Berkeley. And so I remember sitting down with my pastor, and I wasn't talking about it. I was overseeing kind of our multi-site model of what we were doing, but we just felt like at this time it wasn't, you know, the season to go into Berkeley. So we just said, "Hey, you know, that's not, you know, for us." And so then, you know, kind of the progression from that is like two and a half years ago, almost three, I was sitting at Pete's Coffee, which is the best coffee shop. So hopefully I get some like marketing dollars for marketing Pete's Coffee on your podcast. I said, "Yeah, Pete, if you're interested, call me directly. Numbers listed on the show. I'll give you 10% commission off that rate." Nice, nice, generous.

And yeah, and so it's at Pete's Coffee about, you know, almost three years ago, and I felt like God said, "You're gonna be a part of City Center Church." And so I remember as I'm sitting out thinking about that, I'm like, "God, you know what? Do you say?" So, you know, God speaks and then we all act, right? So we think God speaks, and so then that must, you know, that means, okay, you know, I'm into New Life two years. I guess it's time for me to leave, you know, or go on. And it wasn't that, but I remember at that moment was kind of where the first seed of just like, you know, some type of a church. And so fast forward, March last year, me and my wife went to something called a CMN conference, which is a Church Multiplication Network. And so at that conference, we felt God say, "Hey, I'm calling you to plant." We have been praying. I have been praying really for the last two years like, "God, what is what's next in this season? Is it me and New Life for the next ten years or, you know?" So I've been praying that. I mean, my wife even started to feel like God was saying, "Hey, at some point you guys are a pastor." But March last year, and that, you know, a month ago, but March a year ago, we really went to the conference, and a few of our mentors really confirmed it. We felt like God was saying, "You know, hey, I'm calling you to pastor a church." We didn't know planting. Go to pastor. And so literally I'm at the conference, and I had texted my boss, and I said, "Hey, Pastor Doug, I don't know what this means, but I'd like to talk to you if God is stirring something in my heart." And so then two days later, you know, I'm back meeting, but I say, "Hey, I feel like God is calling us to pastor at some point, but I don't know what this looks like, you know?" I say all the things so that I don't, you know, I got family, so I'm like, "Hey, I'm not searching for a job right now. I'm not, no one's called me. We just feel this, you know, this God call." And so then two days later from that, I get a call from a church in Richmond where the pastor says, "Hey, I've called around to six different people all around the country, and they all sent me back to you to say, 'Man, you might be a great fit for Berkeley.'" And so there was a church in need there, you know? So that partnership with that church didn't necessarily work out, but what I did do is I let them know, "Hey, if God's calling me to the city, just like you guys tell planters all the time, I need to know that God's calling me here. And if there's a community that he's calling me to, there was a church that was there that needed revitalization. I said, 'Man, I don't want to be called to a church. God's calling me to a city. I want to make sure that, you know, I know it. God's calling me to a city, and wherever, if it's a church or the people that God's calling me to, that it's about reaching lost people. Like, I don't want to have to go to a church and then for, you know, for years try to get them on mission to impact the city. Like, I want to know that God's calling me to a city.'" And then if he's calling me there, where is he telling me to go from there?

Then April, I literally go there every day. So I lived in Danville, which is about 35 minutes without traffic to Berkeley. And so I just went and drove the streets of Berkeley every day. So there's a different Pete's Coffee in Berkeley. So I literally drove to every Pete's Coffee. So I found out every Pete's Coffee, you know, again, like I worked with planters. We help fund planters. So I just knew, man, if God's calling me to do anything in the city, I need to know the community, know, get to meet people. And then, you know, like we're in the city, like a lot of people come to the Bay Area and they try to, they say, "Hey, I'm called to San Francisco." San Francisco is a huge beast. So it can't be just be that you're called to San Francisco. So even from Berkeley...

You know, I was like, am I committing like career suicide to try to go plant a church in the city of Berkeley? And so yeah, but just praying, like literally every spot I went. So going back to the vision question, like every Pete's Coffee I went to, I felt like God gave me a heart for the different communities, you know? So I started. There's a famous area called People's Park in the city of Berkeley. So there's a Pete's Coffee right at the corner. So I went there. Great. I felt like God said, "Man, there's a homelessness crisis," and you know, really the big area, but in Berkeley, you know, I want your church to be a resource for that. And so, you know, so I wrote that. I put that in our plan. And then I went to downtown Berkeley where the school is. And you know, and so I remember driving around where the students hang out and just feeling like a burden for the students that are there. But really, build on God saying, "I'm not calling you to be a church for the campus," which a lot of churches that come into Berkeley, their church for the campus. And I really feel like God said, "I want you to be a church for the community, and you will impact the campus, but I won't need to be a church for the campus." So then someone from there, and then to North Berkeley, which you don't know that area, but North Berkeley or maybe Solano Fourth Street, like I just went all around Berkeley. And I felt like every spot I went, God kept giving vision for the community.

So City Center Church, I kind of vision, I was kind of two parts. I was at Tilden Park area, Tilden Forest, which is at the top of Berkeley. And I was driving up there and there's a really foggy day. So it gets foggy in the city of Berkeley. And so as I'm driving up there, I feel like God really, before this, I kept feeling like God saying, "I'm calling you to be a beacon of hope, a beacon of hope, we can hope." And so I'm driving up there and it's super foggy. And I felt like God say, "Remember when I kept saying I'm calling you to be a beacon? I'm like, yes, no, obviously, right? I'm responding." And I felt like God stopped me. So I stopped my car and I look over and he said, "What I'm asking you to do is easier than you think." Now, let's be honest, like to plant a church anywhere and then in the city of Berkeley and really anywhere is super difficult. But I felt like God say, "It's easier than what you think." He said, "Think of it as people are just in a fog and they just can't see me. So all I'm asking you to do is show people me through their fog."

And so that's where kind of our vision of just, man, we want to impact the Bay Area and starting in Berkeley, just one community, one family, and one person at a time. And yeah, so that's kind of where our vision came in. Even, you know, part of our vision of loving and serving, we've just seen like that. Literally before this podcast, I got off the call, just got off the phone with Aaron, who's the director of the Brooklyn School Funds. And we've just been doing tons of partnerships with them. We help them build out. It's like over 2,800 school kits for needy families and students in the city of Berkeley. And all the walls that you think would be up or down right now, like they're reaching out to us. They just reached out to us. We're going to be partnering with Echo Church to help out homeless families right now. Where we can't help out all families, but our church is gonna help out one homeless family, and we're gonna try to partner with a few other churches to help out the rest.

And so it just seemed like, what's fascinating here with Ray, with even this language is, and forgive me, I want to say the word "launch," and every time I say the word "launch," somebody corrects me and says, "Jeff, we don't launch churches. You're starting this thing. You're making a difference in the community of where you are. You're already impacting, working with organizations. Is 2,800 meals, eight homeless? Like you're throwing out a bunch of stats and numbers here. But you, you, you're not even supposed to start your actual physical location, campus gathering stuff until the fall. So like, how are you a church now when you're not even, like in this COVID season, when you're not even doing the gatherings? What, you started early? You'd launch digital? Walk me through some of that mentality. Like, what was the need that you saw, and why did you think you can solve that utilizing cloud services and social media? Like, talk to me about that.

Well, I think, to like, for us, like what I've told our team multiple times is we actually launched back in August for the official community launch that we're doing with, I think, what Stadia through their partnership and see them in and just our different partners. Yes, we had a large state of September, but I actually never even wanted to put our launch date on it. So I took it off, and then some said put it on and some said take it off. So you know, that's all funny. But like, so back in August, we, I said one of our visions was we wanted, we felt like the start of our church was when we started partnering, loving and serving. Like, that was part of the vision of saying, "How do we make it in a city like Berkeley? Well, they're about causes. They're about serving." And so we wanted to be a church that loved and served before we launched. And so even before the, you know, the whole digital launch per se, we were already doing things. You know, we were already, I felt like we were already being the church. It's just there was a title that we were putting on it. And to launch successfully, we were going through the right steps in order to accomplish what God was calling us to accomplish, which was a sustainable church.

But so the digital church was, you know, and I've been in the reason why we were able to launch digitally was I had already enacted its own Emily. This, I had already been dealing in my mind of really not being okay. And so I always say this, and so it's always in love, but not okay with the AM rhythm. But the in rhythm is great. So not okay because it's not good, but not okay because what I didn't want, and my heart was to put on events just to get people's information because we had already been a church of serving. You know, we had, I think, you know, from August to January, we had served thousands of people already without anyone for anything.

And so when we launched digital, when everything happened with COVID, it's so weird. I actually was excited over nervous. And I don't mean excited for all the difficulties. I was excited because one of the things that I pray all the time is like, "God, help me to innovate the expression of the gospel." I mean, and I want to be at the forefront of stuff, not at the backend. You know, my wife is always stopping because I'm an entrepreneur. I, if you look at my phone, I've got like tons of business ideas. My wife always rains me in and says, "You're called a pastor, not business idea." So I say that to say, I feel like my heart is always, "God, wherever you want me to go, I'll go." And so one of the things that God said to me at the beginning of this process was, "Be adaptable." That's why even being with Stadia was being adaptable. I could have just stuck with my plan, and I had it already lined out. Emily will tell you, I came with a plan lined out. But I felt, but I knew that in order to accomplish what God pulled on it, I had to expand my partnerships and be adaptable. That's what God says.

So when this happened, literally the week of it happening, I thought I felt like God say, "This is exactly why I called you to plant a church, because I don't want you to, I didn't, I don't want you to shrink back. I actually want you to run forward in this season and to pastor people who are in need, so your team, and to continue to love and serve those who are not on your team." And so, so yeah, I feel like it was just a moment of just feeling like God saying, "Run forward." You know, as I prayed and thought through, man, I was feeling uneasy about like what the rhythm was gonna look like already. And then Stroup strategy saying, "If this goes on through September, what is it gonna look like to launch right now?" So it was both strategy. It was, you know, started with prayer, then strategy. And so yeah, it's just I launched digitally because I ask people first, you know? It's just, you know, smart. And some said don't do it. Some said do it. Some said, you know, just be smart and how you do it. But I just felt like, man, I love to preach. I felt like we were, we were set team-wise. Like we had, we had a great team that had already, even going together, we were already joking about, yeah, maybe we'll do an Easter pop-up service, you know? Already been talking about that. So it was literally just a heart, you know? We already are in the community. Our team's already said it's just adapting all of our plans. And I was like, alright, great. And yeah, so we just prayed the process of that was prayer, and then I talked to our board. Then I talked to some. I had a meeting with Emily that it was like a Thursday or something. I talked to our leadership team that night. We had a launch team meeting on March 15th, which is like the week that everything got shut down. So we were online with our launch team meeting. And then literally in a week, so from March 15th to the March 22nd, we started an online church. And we did our first team meeting on Zoom, which was the 15th. And then we started services on the 22nd, just to do our preview. So we did three weekends of previews, and then, you know, launched the Easter weekend.

I love what you said about how God has called you to be an innovator of expressions of the gospel. That's such a beautiful way of expressing that, and also a high calling, right? Of man, being on the forefront, like you said. So tell us a little bit of how you starting this digital campus, a digital church, how that is an expression of the gospel for your community.

Yeah, I think, I think, I think for us, the beginning of the expression is not looking at our digital service as our service. I would say, or our church, and more looking at it as an awareness, like bringing hope to people who are listening in. And the reason why that's, I think, is different is because I think what we're seeing right now, and again, I'm, I hate, you know, this is my opinion, right? And so I'm still trying this, but what we're seeing right now as churches are duplicating what they do on Sunday, right? So a bunch of churches are duplicating what they do on Sunday, which is not a bad thing. But they're duplicating what they do on Sunday, and so they're trying to get people to watch for an hour or hour and 15 minutes or have long worship sets and messages that are very, not very long, that are long. Oh no, you can't say very long. It's very, very long. And so, and not that that's a bad thing, but I feel like, you know, for a church that's been going there, just trying to push through until, you know, everything changes. And so I think on our is the innovation that we're trying to do, and we're still adapting and all of that is to create a space that's easy for an unbeliever to show up to online that is just a first step and not the last step. Like I feel like a lot of times it's like, okay, we've done church because we have a service online. And for us, it's more saying, how do we create a message that both offers hope and then points us to the gospel?

So like, if you were to watch one of our services, I preached for 15 minutes the first three weeks, and I went 20 or a little bit less than 22 the last two weeks. But my goal is 15 to 16 minutes. And so, you know, just a practical, like testimony, we had a few non-believers who jumped on, a few of my ones who I texted, say, "Hey, just watch our service," who said, "Man, I wish, you know, we never hear this in church. I wish the message..."

Was longer, that's from an unbeliever who said that, right? And so for us, like even worship, like we're not, we don't do a worship set. We have like a song potentially that's enhancing the message. So the question we're asking as a team is like, is there a song that enhances the topic that we're talking about? And so yeah, so I think we're trying to debate in that way.

We do a leaders meeting, meaning pre-service, and we do an after party after our service. So we actually have leaders meeting that's an hour before our service where we're building our launch team because I want to be able to tell Emily, hey, we're continuing to build our launch team. And we're not building our launch team per se through a service outside of the troops or helping them, but we're creating an environment for them to invite friends. But we do a leaders meeting for an hour in a set hour. It's an hour before service. It goes for like thirty-five minutes where we're talking engagement online, we're talking about what our week was like, we're getting prepped for the service. But you know, so that's happening and an after service, which is one of the innovative things that we want to do in church, is that we want to create a space. Like, so I guess I would say what I don't want to do is take what we're doing now and say, okay, now we're gonna do church like it's always been done when we go in person. One of our biggest things is always then, how do we rethink church? And so I'm actually, we're actually looking at how we're doing church right now and saying, how can we take what we're doing now and duplicate that, or at least take what we're doing now into an in-person gathering?

So part of that is, you know, maybe not even calling ourselves a church, but we are church. So this is so random, but not it, but I'm saying where we create an environment like in Berkeley where it's like we're having conversations around faith. And so because it's a conversation, you know, I may, there may be a video teaching of me and or a message or conversation that I have for fifteen minutes or twenty minutes, and that our leaders, and this is I'm still working through this, but our leaders are then actually leading a group discussion group afterwards. And it's not after, but during the service site. So it's just everything. Like, sure, it's even our worship still doesn't look like we're having a full worship set. It looks like we are having a song or two that's engaging the topic that we're talking about, and maybe there's smaller spaces that we're looking at, you know. I hate just go all into it, but you know, those are things that we're thinking about.

So I think in the innovating of what's happening online, I think it's further than that where we're saying, like, can we create a church that actually looks different? I think a lot of times when we innovate what happens in church, we move a few songs around or we add a video and sand whatever, but like, is there really a church that looks different than any other church outside of how it's done, you know? And so I think that's something that we're looking at. Like our after party, we see, you know, as one of our most engaging times where people actually can have conversations around what was just discussed.

So I've been talking to some psychologists and stuff and thinking like, how do people learn? Like, people learn from doing. Like, they hear something and then they do something with it. And I think a lot of times that doing happens later in the week, which is fine, but we're like, hey, what does it look like? Like, another thing, like midweek, like right now we do a midweek small group gathering. So we call it our city groups. We don't see that changing. So moving forward, we may continue to do midweek digitally, you know. We probably will still have a digital campus that is not just a play of what's happening during Sunday, but it's specific to what that digital campus is. We may have a campus pastor that doesn't even live in Berkeley but knows how to facilitate digitally a church, you know? So anyway, I'm rambling right now, but those are all things that we're thinking about and talking through.

I love, I mean, I love all of this. The idea of doing the post-service, tying it into a Bible study of sorts, you have everyone just curious to people jump on. Zero, stay viable. I'm sorry, that's a mercy. But your after-party, keeping it on brand, my fault. So your after-party, but your tying into the message, reinforcing that, it's interesting. Like, and I'm even pulling a thread a little bit on that. So the average TED Talk is eighteen minutes. So like organizations like TED think it takes eighteen minutes to convey something, to get into your head, to get information into your head. It's a lot of the pastors and speakers that I'm working with in this season are like, hey, we're cutting our messages to eighteen minutes, and then a seven-minute move the head to the heart in Philly. So it's like having that extra seven minutes for the invitation, for the application. You're building off that concept even a little bit here with your message because you're saying, hey, let's do that in group. We're together. We're processing through that and feeding off of each other. Your eighteen-minute TED Talk, your informational message up at the front, suddenly gets application in real-time through your after-parties where they're starting to figure out as a group, how do you apply this stuff to their lives in real time? Like, I love that. And that's this is an example of, I mean, to your point, you can't do that in a physical church, or at least it's hard to do that, especially in a larger physical church. But a digital church has different rules. And if we don't, to borrow words from DJ Soto, VR church lead pastor, if we don't just try to recreate what we're doing in physical space and instead we try to reimagine it digitally, there's an opportunity for us to do far more effective things in the digital world than in physical, not to replace the physical, but to reach a different person in a different way with that. And I think what you're talking about here, right, is a great example of it.

You said earlier that the church wasn't about the one hour on Sunday. By the way, that was a hugely controversial statement pre-COVID. I think during COVID, I think we're understanding more of that now. But pre-COVID, like, I'm not saying I got yelled at, but it's it was a lot of hard conversations with not just pastors, church people, like, because so much of it was defined by that one hour on Sunday. But you said it's not. It's not the service. It's not even the broadcast of the service. What is church in the season you're a digital church? You planted a digital thing. I'm asking you, how are you defining church today?

Yeah, and you know, and I hate to clarify because but I, you know, clarify. I think for me, I think for me, I'm a digital church right now with tentacles in a physical community, right? So like our digital, sure, we're a digital church, but our focus community is Berkeley, you know? And I think I said one of the things you sent, like, just be like, just because someone wakes up some one day and says, hey, I want to start a church, I think if you're just gonna, if you're just going to start a church with a microphone and a video screen, you're missing out on what the church is doing, right? It's hands and feet. So I think that that's the beginning portion of that. And then I also would just clarify to say, I think digital church, I think that there are things in digital church that can help you to reimagine what's happening in physical church. And I think that that's what I'm working on in my mind, which is how do I take what's happening digitally and point that to a physical space, and even if that's a smaller physical space, but multiple small, you know?

So so I would say that for that. But so then to your question of, sorry to go off on a tangent, but to your question then about the church law, right? Like, so the question about, you know, what is the church, you know, I've said this for a while. I think Stadia has helped me so much on this, which is the one. Like, I feel like the conversations around like your one has been probably the most defining one for me, and it led me to one of our vision things, right? So our vision is one community, one family, one person at a time. And so what I told our team was our one community right now is Berkeley. Feel like right now God's calling us to Berkeley. Our one family right now is the type of person God's calling us to. So for us, it's unreached families, middle to upper-class business leaders, and then also church people who are who we can activate to be the church that God's called us to be. And then one person. And so what I told them about one person, and this gives you a question about the church, is why are we here? So I'm posing this question but giving the answer. Why are we really here? And I think that there are things that people can say, multiple reasons of why we're here, but I think the only reason why we're on this planet is to love God and to help and to love and serve people so much that they experience God and then fall in love with him also, right?

So then in the midst of that, when I look at what the church is all about, it's about helping people to utilize their influence to build God's kingdom. And that does not happen in just one hour on Sunday, right? Because every person that's listening in now or around our world, or every believer, let's just say for right now, has forty hours of the week somewhere, right? And so if God made them only to impact his kingdom in one hour space, which is the church building physical, we're missing it, right? Because if you look at all the miracles that happen in Scripture, most miracles happened in the marketplace, right? Most miracles. And so I just think for me, when I even think about what we're doing online, it's it's once, it's one piece of what we're doing, but it's more for awareness, you know? And then you can't even really gauge church online right now anyway. Everything I feel like that's happening around it. So like, what church to us right now is three things we're doing: city gathering, city groups, and city cares.

So how we love and serve our community is church for us because we have lost people who are serving with us. Like right now, I'm here at podcast. I've got one of my ones that went with our team to serve at the school to finish handing out the bags. So I think that it's the loving and caring. I think it's the groups, right? Like transforming in relationships. So for us, those transforming and relationships are happening outside of our service because right now you can't have it digitally unless you utilize other tools. So for us, free service Zoom for, you know, forty-five minutes before our service, and then our after-party for people who are not on our team that want to engage with us. Like, we feel like those conversations and relationships are for us what the church is, you know?

I, you know, I've encouraged our team, and so we have a leadership team of twenty people, and I say, hey, throughout the week, I want you to go through and text and check in with people on our launch team. And I'm gonna example, I'm gonna show you how to do that. So I do it for our leadership team. It's like today I was on mine, you know? I was, I think it was like an hour-and-a-half walk, and I literally tried to text through everyone on our team, not just the twenty members, but everyone, and specifically spoke to what their needs were, so their things, you know? So not just sending a generic text, you know, but really trying to reach out. And so I just think the church is loving God and helping, you know, loving and serving people so much that they fall in love with God also. And so yeah, I think the service, they'll, you know, the thing that we've held up as being the most important thing, trying to get hundreds of people into a building, which is not that I don't want to do that, but actual church, you know, may look a little bit different than I think COVID helps us with that. And so, you know, for me, I'm working on a model right now.

Now, which you know I need more conversation around, but to where you know, where maybe we are in small spaces around our city that don't fit tons of people. But we've got, you know, the other thing that we're looking at is my leadership team, part of the church is activating them to lead, right? And they're all great. I think a lot of times in church we just use people to accomplish what we want to accomplish instead of empowering them to really lead. And so what if, you know, we're always looking for a leadership pipeline. I think I have a great leadership pipeline, I think, because I've got 20 leaders right now who are on our leadership team and then our launch team. Who, imagine if they were campus pastors over a service, right? And so each of our little services, let's say it's 15 member services, and they pastored the fifty at our in net and got them to invite their friends. And if we had three or four 50 member services, you know what I mean? So we're just looking at, you know, so we're, I'm going pre, like I'm still working this out in my head, but the church is not just one service, you know, to your point. I feel like love, and by the way, like there's there's a misnomer now I want to speak to it a little bit, and it's actually the thing that I love about your story, Ray. How are you usually utilizing a digital church to impact a physical area? You know, I think a lot of times a misconception, and maybe it's like that, it's the DJ Soto's fault, where hey, I'm doing this VR church thing and I've got people from all over the globe coming in. As a matter of fact, he's got three campuses on three different continents—Asia Pacific, Europe, and America—that is engaging with hundreds of people in virtual reality doing discipleship with them. In that, that's awesome, and we need more of that. But I love what you're specifically doing, because you're like, dude, I want to use this technology to engage with people in my location. Even things like new Patrick, Patrick Holden, what Patrick's doing about how awesome. I said I did apologize area a couple weeks ago, and I'm like, dude, do you want my job? Patrick, why won't you do my job? On you become Stadia director of digital dress planning, and I just want to learn from you in this situation because the stuff that he's doing with Facebook Messenger connecting with people, gold calling, and the results that he's getting. I made, I took stories. He's one of them, one of our fastest growing podcasts right now because everybody I talk to him like, you got to listen to this because he's doing something that we all need to figure out how to do effectively. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. But it's what we're seeing as a digital church interact physically, and you're making a difference in physical where you're trying to love. What I think I heard you say is that you want to love God so much to your church that other people experience this physically. And I think that is a great challenge for a church like yours, whether digital or physical, to get through, to break through a consumerism mentality, whether it's through a digital expression or a physical expression. Just some guy that's in the board back row, fallen asleep, disconnected, to get them to a place where they're loving God, where they're so on mission for them that they're expressing this stuff out physically.

I just want to challenge you real quick with an idea because there's a church. It's a digital church. It's literally just spinning up. It's existed for a while as a ministry of a church. It's called Church Anywhere, First Capitol Christian Church in Cord, Indiana. This one church, less than a thousand people regular attendance, has spun up 18 micro locations around their city. They've discipled, they've grown leaders to be essentially the campus pastors in the areas where they're unleashing these micro locations—hunting disease rehab centers, prisons, orphanages, after-school daycare centers. These are not like people who are opening up their homes, although that's an awesome challenge, but what they've intentionally said is we want to be very missional with our approach. And so they, in addition to the thousand people who come in the building when there was a building, they see an additional seven hundred people engaging in these micro locations scattered around the surrounding area, which by the way are chosen by the volunteers that are leading it. They ask the questions of the volunteers, what areas are you passionate about? And then unleashing them either to play back video teaching, to do live teaching, maybe it's live worship, maybe it's canned worship. It doesn't matter. But this is an example of a, and this sits there spinning it off into a completely separate digital church because they're recognizing that even the physical church is a limitation, is a lid of it, and so they're spinning it off separately to allow it to grow even more in this COVID and post-COVID season.

You've got an opportunity because you've got a foundation and you understand digital better than most. You've got this huge potential to turn that and explode that into small viral locations where you can impact the city of Berkeley, man, like never before. And as you're utilizing that leadership pipeline, that discipleship pipeline, whatever the language is, as you grow those people and empower them on mission, man, that's gonna be a really cool thing.

I think one of the exciting things about quarantine, right, and in the midst of being under cloud of COVID, is that it challenges all of us to enter into the mentality that you already have, Ray, is this innovation, right? For most of us, it's just out of desperation of like, this thing that we're used to doing each week is now gone, so we have to come up with something new. What would you say, Ray, to you know, you have opened your mind of saying, what is the different ways and strategies and models that I can utilize for the same purpose of just spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ? What would you say to those that are struggling with letting go of what they're used to, of maybe a little stuck in the way the traditional way of church, of how to enter in to being excited about the opportunity for innovation?

Yeah, well, I think I would first say, because I've got friends who have churches and buildings and staff and facilities and healthcare costs, you know, all of those things. And I think, you know, and that's why I say I think it's a great opportunity that we're in right now. And I feel like God's called us to it because, you know, we don't have all those things. And I think one of the things that's a hindrance in this season for some churches is you're just trying to make sure you can pay your salaries. And so my heart goes out to those churches because that's really hard and really difficult. And so I think that it's hard to be innovative when you got those types of pressures that are going on. But I also would say, I think that those are the moments you lean in even harder, right? Like, I think there's a lot of great things that come out of faith. And so I think it's, you know, so I think I would give encouragement first to just say, man, still, God, God's not surprised, you know? Like, he's still on the throne. And I think in the midst of our trials and difficulties, he tells us not to worry, right? Like, Matthew 6, where he's saying, hey, don't worry. Like, I've gotten, so I think to those pastors, start says, hey, God's God. He's with you. He knows what's going on. He's not surprised. Then I think the other side of it is, you know, aloud, like, knowing God makes new things. I feel like we think that God changes things, and he does, but I think God's a God who makes new things. And I think in this season, let's be honest, like, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results, right? Like, there's many churches and Christianity in general in our nation. We've been doing trips the same exact way forever, and we have had some adaptations, but it's really adaptations to style of music, its adaptation to how you preach, instead that adaptation to size a building or lighting, like those types of things. But to the core of like what church is, that's why you have some people that do come church, right? You know, and then you have some go mega micro, like all those things. But what about the actual, like what you're saying, and the consideration of like what people think? Like, I just feel like God wants to do something new. This is not a surprise to God. And so I think it's just tapping into, man, like, being okay with adapting, being of asking the question of like, what are we doing right now that we've been doing this, not hasn't reached the results that we want? But I don't think everyone hasn't a mind to innovate. I think there's, you know, people have, you know, they want to. They change is hard for anyone. I think change is super hard. And so I think it's, you know, getting in right circles, I think it's talking with people, reading more, maybe, you know, I don't know. I don't, I guess I don't know how to answer because sometimes like to change, I just feel like I got over word a specific word from God, which was be willing to adapt. And I think everything I do, I'm always making, adapting. And then literally my prayer, so on my list, it says, God, help me to innovate a new expression of the gospel. I've been praying that for the last like two years. And so I know, you know, and I don't, people just need to spend a little bit of time of year, and I'll rub off. No, I just, I just think it's just, man, be open to something new. I think that's the thing, like, be open to it, not looking in the same deal. Start with, don't preach for 40 minutes. I think, you know, I don't know, it may sound bad, like, yeah, I think, you know, yeah, I think it's, I think it's a little things like change. Start with little things, you know? I think that's what I'm saying. I feel like there's so many, like, I don't know, people circumstance, there's so many things that people are dealing with. So I can't answer. I think, you know, I, I'm pretty tough person where I'm like, I don't want to make a blanket statement that affects thousands of pastors. I would say in their area influence that they're in, look at things that they can change small, you know? I don't know, maybe that's a better. I'm sorry.

No, it's great. Let me ask this. So I want you to talk to somebody that's currently planting and is overwhelmed and overloaded and has no idea how to engage in this COVID season, is afraid of what life is gonna look like post-COVID, or maybe even a guy that is thinking about planting, is thinking about starting and doing something new, but it's not sure what even church looks like in this in this new reality and what we're gonna be walking into. I want you to talk to them. You tell them right now.

Yeah, for someone that's new, I think, because this is a little bit easier for someone who's new who hasn't decided to plant yet, plan well. I think in this season, you know, for us, like we had a, we had a plan. I had a plan that I felt like God gave me. It, in the midst of adapting it. So for someone who's wanting to plant right now, know that if you feel the call from God to plant a church, don't rush it. I would say number one, like, there's no need to rush it. But know that if God's calling you to plant a church, he's not gonna leave you out and drive. Like, that's kind of what we start with in our families, man. Like, God knew he's called us now. But then on the other side of your, if you're really getting ready and you haven't started yet, man, like, what better time than now if you are ready? If you have trained, if you've had experience, I think the experience is good. If you've got great mentors, if you have an organization that you're going through, like, now, why not now? Like, God's God's in it. If he's calling you to that, if you've been affirmed by four.

By organizations to go do it. Don't be fearful because of what's going on right now. Like God's called you for a reason. If you stepped out of an executive role or if you stepped out of a church role to do this, he's not surprised that you did that. And so I just think that I would move forward.

I think for those who are already planting who are wondering if they should shrink back or not, I think it's a good question to ask. If you're not prepared, you know, if you don't have the funding for it, maybe right now. If you haven't built the right team, you know, but the opposite side of that would be don't shrink back. I think that sometimes we are making decisions based off of fear, and it's really showing us where our faith is. You know, it's like when Peter was on the water and you know he asked Jesus, "Should I walk out?" Planting is like that, you know. Go, that's crazy to walk on a sea, that's crazy, but he walks out. And I think the decision to stop is because we're taking our eyes off of Jesus. And so I think for the planters who are out there who are like, "Man, did I make a wrong choice?" I mean, if God called you to something, it just may be that you have to adapt what you're doing. You know, it may look different, you know, but you know, so yeah, I think we're gonna see a season where things are looking different. So I think you have to keep your eyes on Jesus. You got to pray every day. I know I started our cast with that, but literally I try to pray every morning at the same time because I need my marching orders in order to live on purpose. I need God to tell me, "Am I making the wrong choice? Am I going the right direction? What do I need to adapt or do I need to change?" And so I think even back to the question of like churches that need to do is I think it's just asking the question of how do I adapt in this season? Like we just have to continue to adapt and not get comfortable. I remember, you know, different churches that I worked for where I felt like people are just comfortable. We're comfortable. I remember even when I decided to plant, you know, for about a year I felt like we were comfortable. I remember just talking to our teams and saying, "Man, like, if we want people to invite friends, we need to be doing that. We need to be at the coffee shops and we need," you know, I mean, so it's just I think it's just like allowing God to get you uncomfortable. It's not a bad thing.

Well, it's clear, Ray, that you have not shrunk back. You're stepping in and you're moving forward and you're innovating, and then we love partnering with you and we love learning from you. You are on the forefront of the innovation for the cause of the gospel. We love that. So what does the future look like for your current digital church? Where are you going? What's the plan?

Yeah, well, I think number one, we will never have a service like we will never look like for digital. We will never livestream an in-person service for a digital context. That's just us. I feel like in person is completely different than digital, and I just don't feel like it works well if you're trying to reach both people in person and people online. So for me, I know for us, hey, we want to make sure that for us it looks like, hey, we're gonna have a digital campus. So we're always gonna have a digital campus of City Center Church.

I think number two, you know, with the future for us is I gotta get approval for my management team and different partners as I'm thinking through vision, and I'll give you a peek into it. So here's a peek into my vision. With realizing that this is just thought right now and just a couple million people listen, I don't, okay, number one, and I did this with Emily, I did an off-the-cuff interview with a person, and I've asked multiple now non-Christian people in Berkeley, "Do you think church that we're gonna be able to gather in large groups even after they release it?" And Emily, you were there. What does she say? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because one, it's the Bay Area, then it's Berkeley, and even in Berkeley it's like, "Hey, we're gonna be doing things how we do it." And because I love the city, because I'm in it, I want to make sure that I'm creating a church that my ones will show up to and they realize we don't want to just be your stereotypical church. We want to rethink what church looks like.

So what if there was a church, you know, mind you, here this is just my thought, but imagine if I create, if we can create a church that there were that only gathered fifty to sixty people? This is just random thinking, but fifty to sixty people, and our desires of use at the city centers of different communities. And we wouldn't create city center hubs. That's kind of what the future vision is. But in our area, every building is small, right? So Berkeley, you've got small shops, and so what if we could create a church that meets in like a storefront, fits, you know, maybe could fit a hundred people, but for social distancing reasons we do fifty people that show up to it, and we just have multiple services in different parts of our city at storefront areas? What if we could do that? And what if it wasn't more, you know, twenty-minute worship set and some announcements and a guy preaches at you for thirty minutes and then you do worship at the end, but what if it was really an environment that facilitated conversation over a normal service? You know, I think for me that's what we're looking at. And so what if it was, you know, maybe it's almost like a party in the beginning? We're all just hanging out. It's a social. It's almost like a family gathering a little bit. You can invite your friends to it. "Hey, we're gonna have food. We're gonna hang out here for a little bit, and then there's gonna be this guy who's gonna talk a little bit about a truth that we believe is applicable to your life." And we want to answer the question every week: "How does Jesus help in the midst of what we're going through? Is Jesus applicable for our daily life?" Can have a short conversation about that and then move into groups where people can in a group of three to four or five engage around this topic. And what if there was a church that looked like that? And because I like multi, you know, what if it became a model where, you know, during the week though, the partner we're partnering with some type of organization or we become, you know, like a lessor, and we've got different community resources and/or businesses that use our space through the week, which could be sustainable because it's a smaller space and they're really paying enough for the lease. And then we're just, we just happen to be a gathering of people, you know, Sunday night or Saturday morning, you know. So I don't know, I'm rambling, but that's what we're working through, that type of a thought of church, and we just have multiple of those little hubs around the Berkeley community, and it's led by our leadership team over me so far. I'm speaking, so you've got all these ideas, your entrepreneurial ideas, and your wife's telling you to stop thinking that way. You actually get your wife on here. We need to cut that out because I mean, what's your sell in here? More people need to buy conversational approach, never stream a live service for a digital audience. Like these are radical concepts that, shoot, I'm not even crazy enough to talk that way now, and I'm the guy who's been talking crazy for twenty years. And finally now the world's catching up in COVID. But yours, you're a couple years ahead, which is awesome. It means that you're gonna get people that are gonna tell you no, it doesn't work that way, and then you're gonna prove them wrong. And you're gonna be able to celebrate some stories of what's happening, and slowly people are gonna start look at you as a church planter and realize, "Hey, wait, there's some validity here. The way this is happening. What if we did something similar?" You know, and so it's where we use this language. We just did a podcast on this, and you know, I made a mistake and it is just funny. I reached out to Crossroads in Cincinnati. It's a mega church, huge, twenty thousand-plus church up there, and I reached out to the pastor of technology and I was like, "Hey, come on a podcast. I want to talk about how we get back to the building." And I'm the cutting edge guy. He's the director of technology, and Matt Welch, and he's like, "Jeff, your approach right from the get-go is completely wrong. We're not going back to the building. We're implementing physical locations as our new foundational digital strategy that's mapping out towards the future." You know, I was like, "Oh, you're right. All the preconceived norms are off the table." And so the way that you're reimagining this, even as you're starting it, others need to do that as well. And the more that radical ideas like some of the stuff you just kind of throw away is, "Hey, these are some things we're thinking about." Oh my gosh, I could talk about that for another hour just digging some of that apart. Don't tell my wife that I'm on this podcast.

Well, evidently like I need to like do some intervention here. We need Emily to do something like counseling. We need to take courage. This is more awesome. Hey, so this has been a great podcast, Ray. I am so excited just even when I'm here and here with the church and how you are looking at it. You've rushed into the fire. You're looking at it with fresh eyes and reimagining it instead of recreating in this season. So well done, sir. Well done.

And Emily, as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts? We just love partnering with you, Ray, from the Stadia perspective. It's so fun to get to come alongside to support you, also just to learn from you and your innovation and your ideas and be able to bless up, write, and share those with other church planters who are alongside of you planting churches and who are coming behind you as well. So we are for you and we are praying for City Center Church there in Berkeley. That's awesome.

I'm so excited about what's happening here. This is awesome. This is happening yet, right? So just to clarify, this is all thought. So we are encouraging thoughts, and if you've been, we're praying for it, for the thought to be caught by God, that it's part of him, and as your disciple, he is bringing people into your path to help that thought become execution. It's always great, you know, anyone hears something they like, you know, with citycenter.com, you know, it wouldn't be a planting podcast without a financial way to do church. No, awesome. Hey, so besides the plea for money from Ray, Ray, any closing thoughts? I stand in the planter. Yeah, no, I just think, man, like we just can't, we can't just think things are gonna go back to normal. And so I just think if we're thinking that way, that doesn't mean that we have to change all of our ideas or our strategies, but I do think we just can't think, you know, and I think the good thing for me is I'm not going back to normal. I'm starting. So for me it's a little bit easier because I'm starting something. And I think for those who have been going for a while, you know, you just have to think things can't go exactly. They're not going to go exactly back to the way they were. And so why not ask God for something crazy and new, you know, for their areas? So when we can all do it, it's fun.

Come on, what a bet. Like we are the church. Do we not serve an innovative God? Does he not, is he not powerful? Is he not extreme in thought? If that's so, then we shouldn't just be doing stuff the same way. Like he doesn't do.

Things the same way. He's a new guy. He does fresh things. He's consistent, right? He's the same guy as he was yesterday, but he does new things. So new wineskins.

What? Well said. Well done. They're very good.

Hey, so Ray, if people want to follow up with you, if they've got questions, if they're interested in the church and what you're doing, how can people get in touch with you or find out more about the church?

So my email is raymond at our city center dot com. Raymond at our city center dot com. We can start there.

Awesome. Sounds great. Hey, so Ray, thanks for jumping on this. Emily, thanks for co-hosting and helping the conversation. For Ray and Emily, this is Jeff at the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time here at the podcast. You have a good day.