EP071: Nils Smith & A Futurist's View of an Innovative, Entrepreneurial Church

Hey everybody, welcome to episode 71 of the Church of Digital podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning. Jeff here. I am excited about this conversation about this episode, really because of how chill this conversation is. It's almost like I'm sitting outside of a Starbucks because, really, the first time that I met this person, Neil Smith, was outside of a Starbucks. We—it was actually a very influential day for myself in the Church Digital because we were in Disneyland. Yeah, it's crazy. All magic happens at Disneyland. Everything starts at Disney. If you know, I'm a Disney guy. But in this situation, there was a very influential day in my life, probably January, February 2018, that involved Neil Smith, who's the guest here in the podcast, Jake Krindle, online pastor with Saddleback, Greg Atkinson—you'll hear from soon—and Raid the Armas, who is the digital pastor of Christ Fellowship Miami. Honestly, the five of us were sitting outside of a Starbucks and we just spent hours, literally hours, talking about what church online could be and how it could make a difference in church and in culture, had it been given a chance. And what's ironic is that it took a global pandemic to swing through here to actually get the church to pivot, to adopt some of these church online principles. And it's so exciting to see how the church is evolving in this season through church online.

So for months, literally for months, I've been trying to get Neil Smith on a podcast here. Neil is really kind of like this futurist type of guy, innovative by his own disclaimer. He's not a technology guy. He's really more of just a guy who really is very good at reading culture, looking into the future, anticipating some of the things that are happening. It's one of the reasons why he's a phenomenal conversationalist. So I've been trying to get him on the podcast because he does a lot of podcasts himself, and I personally have been wanting to do a podcast on church podcasts because I want to see church podcasts get beyond just a sermon. So for months, just between Neil and I, we've really had a hard time aligning our schedules to have this podcast conversation. And finally, finally, things lined up and I was able to get Neil to come in to do this podcast. Lo and behold, we didn't actually talk about the stuff that we're supposed to talk about with church podcasts. Instead, we spent the entire episode talking about COVID, about innovation, about how the church needs to be entrepreneurial in this season to redefine who it is—not from a biblical standpoint, because that stays true, of course—but how we operate and the models with which we work. This is a lot of what we ended up talking about in this episode, not at all what I wanted to. But such a deep, rich, thick conversation that I'm sure you're gonna get a benefit from it.

So here's where we are. We're bringing in Neil Smith, who is Dunham and Company Chief Strategist for Social Media and Innovation, as well as one of the OGs, one of the early pioneers when it comes to church online. At some point, guys, he actually uses the word MySpace in this podcast. Literally, like, he was doing church online in MySpace. Just let that sit on you for a while. MySpace. We're bringing in, once again, Raid Armas, of course, co-host here with the Church Digital, digital pastor over at Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital as well as Stadia Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm calling "A Futurist View of Innovative Entrepreneurial Church."

Okay, everybody, here you go.

Well, awesome, man. Hey, thanks for jumping on this. I know it's a crazy season and life and things like this. I know we've been trying, and I'm curious to hear—I mean, Jeff, your world has to have blown up and exploded. I mean, I think it's the timing of you kind of going all in on this and this happening. It's such a time as this moment for you. It feels like.

Yup. Yeah, I get that a lot. So traffic on my website literally shot up a thousand percent from February to like that first second week of March, and it was just crazy. I mean, I'm still getting—and obviously, like, it's tapered down. The initial thrust was, "How do we stream? We have no idea what we were doing," and just jumping from webinar to webinar to webinar, webinar, saying the same thing over and over again with that. And so a lot of content driven towards that. I had—we were—I was already doing the same with Stadia, like, going to be the Director of Digital Church Planning. Yeah, and like the goal was to do this like three-year ecclesiology or this three-year research and development project towards creating a digital-only church. And I've been in—I've always been the controversial guy. Like, I am not afraid of like hard statements and having people react strongly. I've never seen anything as two-sided, it is bifurcated, as a digital-only church because there are either people who are like, "I have been wanting to do this for a long time. I'm in. How can I be a part of this?" And I've had pastors look at me and say, "You are—what you are doing is a sin. You are theologically wrong." And it's like, you know, and so there's two sides of this. And there's this one guy, and this is this is a local pastor. This is a friend of mine, okay? This is a guy who he's known me for years. It's like, "Jeff, yeah, I hear what you're doing with like all this broadcasting services and things. I think it's a sin. I think it's wrong. I think you're taking people away from the Bride of Christ. You're taking them out of the church, and we will never—we will never broadcast the service out of this church."

Wow.

Hey, bro, no problem. Love you. However I can help your church, you know, let me know. That was November of 2019. March of 2020: "Hey, yeah, we need some help streaming. Can you come over? Can you help us with this?" I would love to. Let me come over. You know, I'm hoping—I don't think, as I'm watching the news, like, COVID doesn't change the Bible. So like, all the theological concerns that the Bible hasn't changed, so your theology shouldn't be shifting now, you know? Maybe your opinions have changed or cultural opinions have shifted as a result of this. I'm hoping that's the answer. But I think the reality is it's just forced people to do it, and then when they do it, they realize how real it can actually be. And I think that's the big miss from a contextual standpoint of how they—yeah, forgive me, guys, and for jumping into this, but you know, this all comes back to everybody keeps questioning with the definition of what it means to gather together, right? Like, like, this is kind of the whole thing of why people keep questioning it. And now it's funny—Jeff and I had a long private conversation about how a lot of theological shifts were going to happen as a result of this in terms of what it means to gather because we can't truly physically be in the same spaces but at the same time. And folks like folks like your Neil, but Jeff, myself, we've been talking about how, man, it's very easy to gather physically but still feel completely alone. Yes, in a room filled with thousands of people in a church service, still feel completely isolated, feel completely by yourself, as if nobody knows you. And every church says that, well, our answer to that is small groups. And for some reason, when it comes to online, they're still antagonistic towards it, like, "Well, you know, in person, that's where you're gathering, but small groups online? I don't know if you can truly be known." It's like, "Oh, yes, you can. Yes, yes." And I would say personally in my life, you know, we go to a physical connect group at Hillsong, and that's our community, our small group community. But I'll tell you, there are people that I've never met personally that I'm way closer with than the people in my physical small group at church because there's a reality when you lean into relationships this way. And I think there's a resistance, of course. If you don't use it, you're never going to experience it, and you can't have a legitimate opinion on it either. It's just different, though. I mean, it's just never—it's never been around. This is history, and people are just, you know, it's hard to contextualize what this is because it didn't exist two thousand years ago. But yeah, it's just—it's such an exciting, crazy day, and I love—I mean, now think about what if Facebook didn't exist right now? What if Church Online form hadn't been built? Where would the church be without a few people that dealt with the "you're the crazy nut," you know, and prepared, was prepared, and set a model for how churches can do this? That's—yeah, if this—no, go ahead, Rick.

You know, I've been telling my dad because my dad's, you know, an entrepreneur, much like you guys, like a lifelong arch entrepreneur. And I told my dad we've got to be in the middle of the modern industrial revolution right now, like that. Even and we can get into futurist stuff, I'm sure, either in this episode or another episode down the road. But so many jobs just either aren't gonna be there or aren't gonna be the same when people return to the workforce coming out of this because this whole thing has advanced us, in my opinion, about ten years in terms of where we were headed. Yeah, just kind of coming out of it, both in the church and outside of the church. Like, everybody is saying, "Oh, man, we're not gonna be the same coming back into this," in the sense of now we've got new digital avenues, we've got new ways of doing this. But even for me, an economic standpoint, like, things are gonna be done way more efficiently coming back because AI is just gonna be that much more available. You know, it's—it's really interesting. Like, you know, I've talked to some online pastors in this season, and they're—and honestly, they're like, "Man, we're just gonna go back to the way that it was." And even online pastors, you're thinking—even even online. And it's—and they're discouraged. And I've had conversations with churches. There's a church, several churches I've talked with recently, honestly, that have said the thing like, "Yeah, I just can't wait to get back to normal." Like, I do hear that. And so like, I kind of understand where the online pastors are coming from or maybe they're feeling that tension, like, within the offices, within the virtual offices at this point because we're not meeting physically. But it's—for me, for some reason, like, I'm very bullish in this season where I think that this is actually the catalyst that's gonna cause change.

Ray, I was actually just recently—for some reason, the Ed Stetzer podcast was playing back through. I think I was trying to get a quote or something. Did a podcast with Ed. It was literally like the week before COVID hit. It was funny in the podcast. Ray actually mentioned, you know, the entire world could have changed once this COVID thing hit. And Ray and I were like blowing it off, like, "Yeah, he's just, you know, blowin' smoke." And holy cow, it really did happen. But even in that, Ray, in that conversation, we were talking about, man, every year we talk about how the church needs to change. We say we're stuck. We know what we need to do, but there's no gonna listen in our life in the world to actually cause the change. And then God brings the change. We're literally in the midst of this. We live this hectic lifestyle. We're on lockdown. The church lives in this one hour on Sunday, and now it's forced into a position where it has to engage with people seven days a week. Like, it's amazing to see God move in the midst of all of the chaos centered around this COVID season, right? And like so many shifts in modern history, right? Like, whether it was the invention of the printing press and you know the Renaissance that comes out of it, and so—

Many different things like I either you can embrace it or you can resist it but either way changes coming for you. I mean news, I mean you're probably a bigger futurist in this area like what are your thoughts on that? Because to me that's just the way that it's coming.

Yeah man, I'm with you. I think it's and I think some a lot of us saw this already but this is to your point it's just it's created speed. I think the other thing it's doing is its speeding up new opportunities but it's also speeding up the death of I think there's a lot of churches that look, they won't come back. You know like they're waiting hoping to survive this season and they won't survive it because they chose that. And I think I mean I was talking to a guy who works for Lifetime Fitness and runs kind of this northeast area. They're there, they're having it, I mean obviously a tough time, everything is about physical gatherings but the opportunity that they see is commercial real estate is about to get ridiculously cheap not because people are gonna start working remotely. People, a lot of storefront businesses are going to not survive this. And so there's opportunity across the board and Lifetime's well-positioned. And so while this is a short-term hurt, this is going to be a long-term opportunity. And I think when you can just pull back and just look ahead, there are so many opportunities on it. You know, and I don't know this, I can't you know kid state this publicly but I was talking to a friend who is friends with Louie Giglio saying that they they are realizing they were so focused on their physical gatherings that they don't plan on going back to the way it was. That doesn't mean they're gonna not do physical gatherings in the future but now this is forced them to think differently about church in the future. And I think that's good. That's happening for a ton of people. But I and I think as an entrepreneur I see it from a business context. It's I just I've just bought a bunch of domains and because I just see, I mean I'm thinking of new opportunities every hour that it's like oh what is this gonna do for work, you know, an online work and what is this going to do for the financial industry which is good. I mean I'm a part of a healthcare startup that does like Uber for doctors. Well people are no longer going to want to go to doctor offices in a waiting room where there's a bunch of germs. No way. Do tell telehealth is going to explode and then it's are it's exploding right now but it will continue. This is the launch pad for telehealth. This is the launch. But my mom is a psychologist. She thinks she might never have a physical office again. She's this is launched her into because even in psychology you couldn't do that. The telehealth restrictions were so great. Well now they've had to open that up because people are depressed and they can't go to a psychologist. Said they had to free up psychologist and psychiatrist and everybody to do remote. So yeah, everything is is going to be different and there's a business opportunity, there's a ministry opportunity. But I think the sad thing is is I do think about and I think it's real, you know, those people that are in their sixties, seventies and have resisted change and they just kind of thought was I'm gonna ride this out and then now they're hitting a point where they're whatever they were gonna ride out no longer exist. That's a tough thing to you know. And I think there's there's got to be a sensitivity to that. And there's a side of me that's like sorry you weren't paying attention. We've been talking about this. But but there is a side to where it's like man, this is this is going to be tough. I mean you think about truck drivers and trucks driving themselves. You know, and there's just so many innovations that that are happening and we can see where a lot of it's going. You just it's it's getting there a lot faster than I think people thought. Money is not going to be worth the same thing as it was before. I think this is going to I'm into crypto. I think this is gonna expedite. And so there's just so much man. Selfishly this has been great because I gotta live on airplanes. I think my clients are learning that you know what, we can actually do a whole lot more through Zoom and we don't have to pay for your travel. So I don't have to leave my family and I could do more ministry work as a consultant. And so yeah man, I just there's so many things I could just go on and on but I'm just having a hard time sleeping because I'm so fired up about this season that is so devastating simultaneously.

Yeah, yeah, we definitely, you know, it's gasoline on a flame in this COVID season. We were actually talking with mutual friend Jim Towelson a podcast, you know, mid late last year and he was talking about the progression of like comparing it to the multi-site movement of how it was like the cutting-edge thing and then it was the cool thing and then it was the common thing. It was basically over a progression of about twenty years it was a cutting-edge thing and then ten years later was cool and then ten years later it was common. And we were relaying that out to how that would move across church online where you know Life Church I think started around two thousand. Really when it became a cool concept was about ten, twelve years ago. So we're somewhere right now in the middle of from cutting edge to now the cool idea where the cool churches are really doing it. But it's not a common thing. As we were talking about how twenty twenty-nine is the year we've talked about in podcast where like the AI ten years from now taken away you know X number of percentage of jobs. Like twenty twenty-nine was gonna be this this like catapulting cultural shift year where it's gonna catalyze the church to really shift into some of these things. And like COVID wasn't on anybody's radar at all. And now you know we're seeing this happen. It's like oh hey, it's common now. You know, was it sixty? I think I saw Life Way that sixty-one percent of churches at this point are broadcasting something online. It's it's funny. Twenty-nine percent of churches, it was a Life Way add up. I'll link to it in the show notes. But and I think this was like Barna. Twenty-nine percent of churches are not growing in the season or reporting they're not growing in this COVID season. Ironically, Barna also reports that twenty-nine percent of churches refused to do communion online. I don't know that those two are related. And what is this really? It's it's a fascinating connection that you know, even some churches aren't willing to embrace the full model or have like blocks that oh no, we're not able to do these things. But these blocks are really the thing that allows us as a church I think to engage in online circles.

Yeah, one of my newest church clients is Crossroads Church in countless Southern California and gotten to know their pastor Chuck. I can say his last name right. But he I love him. I've been listening to him for years but I've just gotta know him personally. And he said he's always gonna it's been an afterthought but it's become so real to him. And they had planned for almost a year of this huge baptism service with connected to Easter. And then he was like oh we got to scrap that. And then after two weeks of doing online he's like no, we're doing that and we're doing it online. And that's gonna be very real. So they're they're doing tons of online baptisms. It's just fun to see pastors who have leaned in and have allowed themselves to think ecclesiology about how they do church differently in it.

Yeah, it's just it's just because it's exciting and it's not. Yeah, it's just I'm really eager to see where the Lance and even like Crossroads. I'm curious to see when things are back to whatever note that our future normal will be what does that look like, you know? And yeah, it's it's net things will never, there will never be normal the way it was. Yeah, but but I think there will be. We're not going to be in isolation the rest of our lives either. And so yeah, it's just told that everything's gonna be so interesting. There will be, there will be digital churches that will come out of this. Like and to me this is this is the new term that that we're using in state Diaz running with it and we're we're helping churches move to this idea of digital. Yeah, we want to go back to the buildings and in as much as I push this digital only model, the buildings have of a place. Interestingly, I was on with Mark Venti yesterday. We were catching up on some things. Mark's the executive pastor, number two guy over at Home. And Mark said this line. He's like Jeff, the buildings work for us. We don't work for the buildings. And it was this this fascinating concept where they've even like restricted, they've sold buildings in this season. They still believe in the model of physical buildings but they're also you know going all-in on a on a digital only model. But he was very quick to point out in the conversation. Jeff, we're a fidgets old church. It's this mixture of physical and digital. You can't really go exclusively one way or the other. And I believe that. I think there's an option to do things in a digital church to reach people in a digital way that you may not in a physical realm. And so some of the conversations you know that we're even having right now are churches that exist in a physical space that are learning lessons from this season and realizing hey, more than just doing our physical ministry online, what if we planted and did things differently in the digital space? Actually talked with the church yesterday and the executive pastor told me we asked them, you know, with do state is like hey, what are your goals? What do you want to do in the next two years? The executive pastor says our lead pastor's vision in two years is to plant a church in VR. And I can't, I looked at, I looked at the, you'd have almost with tears in my eyes. I was wait, like wait, you're telling me your lead pastor knows how to spell VR? Like stop right there. That's a fascinating concept. And the lead pastor of an organization has a vision to realize there is community in virtual reality. There's an opportunity for me to engage with people differently. DJ Soto like let's recreate, let's replicate, let's reimagine these things. It's a phenomenal opportunity that the church is. If we can just capture that vision and keep it going, we the church would look phenomenal if we're learning lessons today that are gonna help us for tomorrow. When I think it's it's a digital spacing person to a physical space. And so I you know, one of the one of the conception like I'm working with Transformation Church in Tulsa and they're they're considering they consider themselves first a digital church that happens to have a location in Tulsa. And this is a new mindset shift that they've made that that Mike Todd has had for years but the church are at you know that everybody else never really got until until now. But but they see the really defining Facebook as a campus, YouTube as a campus. And and we're looking at Twitch right now, you know, so Twitch would be in what we're trying to say, what is that community like as we go into the Twitch community? We don't want to just do it our way. We want to we want to be a part of the Twitch community and create a community that's native to their platform and the way they form community. And so it's fascinating to think about their multi-site strategy is platforms not necessarily the internet, you know? Right. And then they come together in just like a multi-site church you might have gatherings where you're three or four physical campuses come together for special events or has unified pastoral leadership and things like that. But yeah, it's it's it's we have no idea what that church home is fascinating. Mark is not a.

Technology guy Mark's a pastor who is, and I think the less he knows about technology the better, because he thinks about it from a pastoral mindset, right? And he asked the technology people to align the technology to the church's vision, and it serves them. The technology serves them just like the buildings serve them as just a tool to accomplish the purposes of the church. Okay, Niels, why do you think it is that businesses, and granted entrepreneurs, tend to be ahead in this kind of thing? But a lot of businesses like Home Depot and others have embraced the fact that, hey, look, the buildings serve us, so we're gonna invest a lot more in this online space because we want things to be completely cohesive. But we recognize that, hey, if it's not profitable or if it's not really moving us in the right direction, then we're okay with cutting our losses and moving on. Why do you think it's so hard for the church to do that?

I think people actually misperceive how far ahead the business community is because a few, a handful of businesses are very innovative. The reality is, I've gotten more and more into consulting on the corporate side as well, and the corporate moves slow. A lot of corporate moves slow. And we saw Toys R Us go out of business because they moved slow and they leaned into it. Amazon put their business out of business. And I think, and you're saying that happens so much to folks, that in, I mean, I think in the early days of Amazon, they were a digital bookstore that everybody laughed at, you know? And they put all those companies out of business. And so a handful of innovative leaders and companies have thrived in this changing landscape, but ten times that in the companies that said that, that laughed at it and blew it off. And so the church isn't the only entity to move slow. I think people's nature is to lean into comfort. People's nature is to lean into what they know and what they've known. And I think there's there are some of us that just are wired differently. And I think I've learned, like, there's a side where my wife has had to tell me, like, other people aren't lazy, you're just a workaholic. Does that make sense? Like, I'm wired differently. And I think it's normal. And that's where I think this is a moment for innovative leaders to stand out and lead their organizations differently. And those that, and there are leaders that want to just settle, design, and I say settle like in lower, and that's healthy to a point, but that worked in a season. But we're moving into a season where change is more necessary at a rapid state.

Yeah, I even think about, like, I've done some parenting webinars this last year or even some live speaking events where people are asking about social media and their families, and they're like, oh, it's gonna be okay because they said radio was gonna ruin kids and television was going to ruin kids, and none of that ruined kids. But the reality is the Internet has moved way faster than television ever did. And we could monitor that way easier now. They're actually, believe it or not, you can monitor the internet more than you could monitor those things if you're smart. But most parents aren't smart enough to be able to monitor it like you can. And people have access to more than they've ever had. So I think the rate of innovation, and it's not like we're gonna get here and it's gonna stop, it's only going to get faster and faster and faster. And I say AI is, I mean, AI is going to build things themselves. It's as you get in the future of AI, it is a scary thing, I think people make it out to be in their minds. And I think that's where the government's got to get ahead of it too, of like, how do we govern this new world that's being created around us? And I think then the reality is life is going to get easier. Houses are going to build themselves. Cars are going to drive themselves. Groceries are going to be delivered. You know, our lives, and then that brings down the cost of everything. And so people can actually then just function as things that only people can do in creativity and in creative thought and in relational connection. But our minds, it's hard. There's a long tangent on, you know, how, why churches move slow. But I think the bottom line is it's in nature to move slow. And it's the rest of us that think everybody's moving slower. Just workaholics and people that see that we're the weird ones at the end of the day. But I'm glad to be a weird one, you know, especially in this moment.

There's a tension with that though, right? Because like, I've even heard, I would say Craig Groeschel is by far one of the most innovative pastors in America today. I put them in a room of three. I don't want to discredit some of the other guys, but LifeChurch obviously is doing some incredible things. Bobby Grunwald and the team, awesome, phenomenal. By the way, thank you. You are not listening to this podcast, but if you were, thank you very much. Not for listening, for doing what you're doing. I'm not that much of an ego guy, but here's the thing. Like, I've even heard Groeschel talk, you know, at the most recent, what is the Willow Creek, the leadership, what do they call that? The Summit. The Summit, yeah, the Leadership Summit. Thank you. Coronavirus brain. Global Leadership Summit. Thank you. He used the phrase GITMO. He literally is talking about at some point it just has to be good enough to move on. And so like the detention of, okay, I want to change the world, but at some point the perfectionist is actually gonna stop me from being able to do the thing that I'm really trying to accomplish. And so get it done at the point that you can let it go. It's good enough to move on. And for me as a, and I heard that, and when COVID hit, that was when GITMO triggered for me in a new way. Because for me, I'm looking at, holy cow, my website just increased a thousand percent. I'm gonna have to make some changes because I have to. There's just so much more impact potential. I have to let go of things. I have to ask others to come on board with me. We went from like, well, I went from one writer in 2019 December to probably twenty-five, thirty different writers writing content for me in the COVID season. We are on board at 2025 people easy. I can't even like count. I can go back, but I don't know what the number is. Like, I'm literally like, hey, nice to meet you, you want to write a blog? This would be great. Come on. It's just, it was a phenomenal opportunity. Yeah, but part of that is because I realized that the lid of the church digital in that season was me. And I could control it. I could regulate it. I could make sure my hands were on every piece of it. But to do that, I would become literally the flesh, the lid of this thing. But if I were to step back, if I were to let others be involved in the process, the thing would grow much faster because it wasn't dependent upon me. And so I think that the church has an opportunity. I think maybe even to release a little bit. Like, I would, this is the conversation I would love to have with the Groeschels and the Grunwalds. What's your relationship like over the past decade? You know, when Bobby comes in with some crazy idea, what's the response? What's that cover look like? What's the pushback and forth? How have you figured out, because you're both strong leaders, you're both driven, somehow they've managed to figure out how to release the tension, figure out how to work, and as a result that organization has skyrocketed in ways that churches maybe haven't. So there's an opportunity, I think, to learn here.

Go ahead. Go ahead, Niels.

I think the bottom line, and there's an, and I think they're such a great case study for an organization that leaned into innovation and have seen the fruits of doing, leaning in early to innovation. And they're so well positioned to where things are going because of that. They're, you know, they're not capped. You know, they just literally took the lid off ten years ago. And I think it happens for a couple of reasons. And I think some of the mistakes I see is there's such a high level of trust between Bobby and Craig that that's essential, you know? I think there's also, I've yet to see an organization thrive, especially in the online space, without a senior pastor or senior leader, lead pastor, who at least has a vision for it. It doesn't mean they've got to be technology minded in it. And I don't think Craig, I don't, I've not even met Craig. I've been in some rooms with him, but I don't think that he's a technology guy. I think he is an incredible visionary that is kind of just like, whatever pushes the gospel forward, I'm gonna lean in. And Bobby has been his guy that he's like, I trust that guy. And so I'll drive it and lead it from a vision standpoint, but I need you to create the structure for it. And when I see, I see some pastors who are like, yeah, I want to go reach the world online, and I'm gonna go get my twenty-five-year-old youth pastor because he seems techy to figure out how to do it. And then that guy creates a mess. Or the twenty-five-year-old, I think about me when I was twenty-five and I knew everything, you know? And I'm like, why won't my senior pastor just give me the keys to everything? And the reality is, if you throw the keys to that twenty-five-year-old, he might be smart, but he or she is twenty-five, you know? Like, there is there's just natural immaturity that just comes, or maturity that comes with age. And so I think you've got to have trust. And trust is built over years, and it's lost in a moment. And so I think any organization that is going to thrive, it has to have, it has to have multiple people driving innovation. It cannot be just one person. The top person has to be bought in, and they have to have people they deeply trust that will go along for the journey. But I'm, the organization's them, and this is a leadership conversation outside of a technology conversation. When I've been a part of enough work to organizations where the senior pastor doesn't trust the people around them and he feels the need to, or she feels the need to do everything themselves, you're capped. You're immediately capped. When you don't have a core leadership team that you trust, yeah.

Can you speak into, Niels, the cost of innovation too? Just because, you know, there was tremendous time cost. There's tremendous, like you're saying, trust costs to do things like what LifeChurch did that we're talking about, like the Open Network, for instance, or even NewSpring, like offering that for free from the get-go. Yes, you know, they embrace the Internet as free early on. Like, I remember reading about that in Wired, like back in 2007, like, man, the Internet of free, how that's gonna become a thing? And I was like, wow, like, and here it is, a church was embracing that early on to the point where they're giving away a church online platform for free. Like, yes, for immense cost, tremendous hours, all that in the background. Thoughts on that?

Yeah, you know, Mike Todd has become one of my favorite people in the world. My wife is like, your man crush on Pastor Mike. And I, you know, I met him probably six months ago, and in my, that's where my crush began. My crush maybe began from a distance before that. But he, you know, he shared with me his story of where, you know, it's so transparently, but five years ago they were a church plant. They had about a hundred and fifty people and they met in a storefront. And he said God gave me a vision that we need to buy cameras and lean into our video and social media. And so he's like, I want, you know, the anyways, they made an investment at eighty thousand dollars as a church.

Plant to buy these nice cameras because he was thinking about what is this, you know, it was because he felt like God called him, you know, to do that. He had about 50 people leave his church. That's like 30 percent of his congregation because they felt like he was immature and was not being a good steward of the church resources by making that decision.

Well, today their church—and I, you know, as I was with the Easter services—they just literally bought a new building, cash, a four thousand seat auditorium, and they moved in and now they can't meet there but at Easter. And I was texting with Pastor Mike, and at Easter they had 40 times the people gathered online in their live stream they could fit in their room. And so you talk about a good investment. Five years ago, financially, their giving is up, you know, almost twenty percent since the COVID crisis started because they leaned in early.

There is a cost with innovation, and the cost is sometimes financial. That cost is sometimes people. The cost is people calling you crazy, Jeff. You know, like, you know, that. And so I don't, you know, I still remember when I was at Community Bible Church, early days of like, "Are you really encouraging people to get on Facebook? Like, why do you want people to get a divorce?" And it was like, "How did you correlate me encouraging our church to use Facebook to I want people to get a divorce?" Now, he did because somebody in his small group had gotten a divorce because they connected with an old spouse there. There are dangers there. There are things that as we lead new things. So the cost is generally way more than money. It's often a lot of time, and then it's also just leadership equity that you have to earn. You cannot just say I've got this title and I'm going to guide, and that comes with casting a clear vision and then taking some risks. And you, if you, you know, there was say if you don't fail, you haven't—you're not innovating fast enough. You have to have freedom to fail and expectation that that failure is a part of leading into innovation.

And I think for some churches, you don't have to lean into innovation. Sometimes you can be the second person there. Life Church is already led, and it doesn't mean you need to copy Life Church, but learn from it. And Bobby would be the first person to tell you that they've made a lot of mistakes along the way, and that's where they so transparently put stuff out there to like say, "Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do that because we learned, and we don't want you to make those mistakes." You know, we'll let you catch up faster because you came second. And so some want to get there first. There's a huge cost of going first, but I think there's a huge expense at going third. I think going second is probably one of the best places for most leaders to be leading when it comes to innovation.

I love that because, yeah, absolutely. Because so often, this is when I worked in Apple retail, I kept telling people. They were like, "Man, isn't it so great? Apple's leading the way." I was like, "No, not first to market with anything." Yeah, I was like, "The first to market with a smartphone? They weren't first to market with a media player. They weren't first to market with a laptop." They're just—they're better. That's all it is. They're better than the people who first to market. So other people may walk through that door first, and every Android user in the universe is probably saying amen right now. They're like, "They're like The Simpsons did it." It's like they're the people are like, "We did it first. We did it first." But Apple just has this way of, "Okay, cool, you did something great. We're gonna try and just take that innovation and work it in our system and make it better." And that's that's kind of where they've made their—where they made their fame in the last few years, huh?

That's so good. And I think do it well too. I mean, I think leaning into excellence is one of the keys there, and I think too many churches have tried to copy Life Church online, and it's like, "Be you and learn from their core principles." And I think Apple is very clear on who they are. They don't put up bad products. They don't put out. I mean, even when Steve Jobs—like, "Syrup put everything and everything used to fit on one table" is what he used to say. And so they're like, "We're gonna do these things really well." And so I just left Apple because I'm bored with how second they are. But I, at the end of the day, I'm frustrated because my Android stuff and like my Chromebook stuff is buggy because they're kind of going first in different areas, and Apple is gonna do it right.

And I think that there's a winning strategy in going second. But there's a fun strategy for some to go first. And Mike Todd is going first, and he's gonna have some scars by going first, but he's gonna see some incredible fruit. Jeff Bezos went first. He's got some scars, I guarantee you. There's fruits there, but there are plenty of other people that just watched Amazon and kind of rode those coattails too. Like, look, I can just watch what Bezos is doing right now and just do that in two years and be good. And that's what Walmart is essentially doing. Walmart is riding Amazon's coattails, just copying their business model with the infrastructure they had in place. And so, and I think Walmart is—they're probably the perfect example for churches to say, "We are traditional business that was very successful that has looked at where things are going, and we have just—we have adapted and adjusted without completely abandoning our old." But I'd be willing to bet that in the next five years you're gonna see half the Walmarts that you see today, but their business is thriving more than it ever has.

So this has been a fascinating conversation on the innovative, entrepreneurial church. This is not at all what I had to talk about, but that's what makes this so much better.

Well, we'll bring you back to half of the podcast conversation by the way. I love the fact that you've abandoned Apple or at least are thinking about abandoning Apple. I've taken a lot of heat because I'm an Apple fanboy who, as I hold my Apple pencil in my finger writing on an iPad here, I myself am frustrated because the luster is gone. But similar to you, the other stuff's just not good enough for me to actually like and endorse and run with a hundred percent. So I'm silly, but it does. I'm not a green bubble person. Like, relax. I'm not there yet. But I'm to this point where I'm like, I'm not really feeling the blue bubble anymore. So that's another conversation. We'll bring me back to that. I really want to focus on this, yeah, because you've used the word—because there's a small church out there who has heard you use the word has here's innovation, who here's excellence, who here's Life Church, who here's all of these big words. Dude, I'm a 250 person church. My camera is maybe a Mevo. What's—how am I supposed to compete with that? It's like, let's drill on that. How does a small church compete? That's their mindset. How do I compete with Life Church?

And that's why I think that the Transformation Church story is so powerful in that they were five years ago a 200 member, you know, church plant. And my cast a vision for this camera equipment and in prioritizing online because that's going to be their front door. And then that also expanded into their kind of multi-site strategy, all kinds of other things. But they saw that as their front door from a giving standpoint. And Transformation has been unbelievably transparent in their first year that they had like 1.5 million dollar budget, so that, which is great for a church plant. And they grew very fast early on. Then after they bought those cameras, their budget dropped like 1.2 million, I think, because people left. And then the next year was about 3 million. And then the next year was about 8 million. And then the next year was, I think, this last year was like over 20 million giving. They bought a building cash. This was a five year old church now that came with Mike. Listen to God. Mike led with a clear vision, and he continued to push. And I mean, I think I give so much credit to God blessing. That's a unique situation and in the movement of God. But I also Mike listened to God, you know, and leaned in, and God moved. That doesn't mean every church is going to be, and you shouldn't just follow the Transformation model. But I think it starts with having a vision.

And I think this is—I just did a Facebook live, your live streamer before this, of a friend of mine. Just they've been speaking the word exponential into me. And honestly, I have, you know, I've gone charismatic since I would start going to Hillsong. And so there's a guy who just got spoke a prophetic word over me, and that word exponential has kind of been the word I've leaned into this year. And somebody spoke it to me yesterday, and it kind of restart of—we're in a moment where everyone can be rethinking everything. And if you're in this assembly line of just feeling stuck or what do we do next, this is the perfect moment to say we're gonna do things different. And it doesn't mean you need to go to online campus. But I think a lot of pastors and administrators have stopped listening to God, and they've just said, "I'm gonna do church, and I'm going to pray." But praying means I'm gonna pray for my congregation. Praying means I'm going to just pray for you to bless my efforts with the church in the church the way I do church in the way that Saddleback does church because I followed the Purpose Driven model. I think these models are—but where is God calling your church? And it might be to lead it and be stable and just die over the next 20 years. That that might be your calling. I don't know. But I believe that there is a ministry opportunity that exists online, and it might be to, you know, I hope the church recently planted church in Iran exclusively on the internet. They can't plant it. I mean, there are house churches and things that you can't plant. But they literally, it's a digital church in Iran, and they do digital small groups and they do digital worship gatherings through Stream Yard. And there are literally people in Iran that are a part of the service and people outside of Iran that are part of the service. There are opportunities that didn't exist. You couldn't have done that a couple years ago. The internet wasn't fast enough there in Iran a couple years ago. And so you, they're just—there are so many opportunities for a leader to just pull back right now and pray, you know, and just say, "What in—" And I think what Mike said, my kind of vision to reach the world, I had—I, you know, tell you this is—I'll get personal here. When I started on my church at CBC with online church dot com, I had a very clear vision that I believe was from God of a worship gathering that's going to—and I've never shared this publicly, I don't think—but that's—that there will be people from every country and territory around the world in a worship gathering and at the same time. And I don't think that's ever happened. And I believe that in the next year to two years we will actually see that moment happening, happen. And it seemed so impossible to me ten years ago. Today it seems so possible. And that's a vision because I in that moment I was listening to God in worth in. And I've been kind of like, even a lot of things in the leaders I've invested into, the more I hear somebody casting a vision for that, that's where I line as a consultant of like, "I want to get next to you and help guide you towards that vision." But there are other people that have a different vision from God and in a different calling from God, and it might be a different direction. I just think a lot of people haven't leaned into the internet because, honestly—

They're not leaning into God, and it doesn't mean God's gonna call everyone to the Internet. I think though, we just put God in a box of "this is the box of a church, in a church building, and we do worship and we..." And I'm a Saddleback guy. I went to Rockford Seminary, and so it's like we do worship, we do small groups, we do missions, and we do it in this way. Well, the reality is if you take the five purposes of Saddleback and Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Church, it all fits into the Internet. It fits. You can do worship online, you can do small groups online, you can fellowship online, you can do discipleship online, you can do missions online. The Internet is just another tool. So I think there's just so many opportunities, and I think pastors are not leaning into the opportunity. And I might be overstating it to say the pastors aren't listening to God, but I believe that there's so much opportunity there. And I think there are some digital missionaries out there that don't yet have, or are scared to take that leap that God might be pushing on them. And I think this moment that we're all sitting in is probably stirring a lot of those people, and I hope that they will. It's going to get hard. Does that make sense? It might be fun right now, but as you lean in, and if people aren't calling you crazy, I don't think you're leaning hard enough, right? And so I just want to see some pastors, and it doesn't mean they have to have a physical. I'd rather see some just say, "I'm gonna plant a digital church, and if we end up having physical gatherings, cool. If we don't, we're gonna start on Twitch, and Twitch is going to be our first campus. Or we're gonna start on Facebook." You know, whatever it might be. But yeah, I just think there's so many, and we just haven't even thought of it. When I started online church, Facebook—I don't think video was even possible yet on Facebook back then. And then Facebook Live came. I mean, I get an iPhone and anybody can start a church tomorrow. The core is just people gathering, you know? It's people in community. You don't have to have a license to start a church.

Well, from one crazy guy to another crazy guy, thanks for being crazy. It's been a crazy run. By the way, I'm gonna do a little commercial here. If you are interested in planting a digital church or any of the stuff that Nils was just talking about, I do apologize for the commercial, but Stadia—we're literally recruiting digital church planters to do exactly what my man's talking about. So you know, looking at your circle of influence and what you're passionate about, figuring out how to utilize that passion to reach, disciple, and grow. Yeah, and please, the optical model of church in a digital space is possible. You can do it. Nils, tell me how Stadia comes alongside a pastor to do that.

I am glad you asked. Thank you for that. Right now we're actually in the process of developing some digital learning communities where we're literally taking and developing a lineup of pastors to be part of this—of innovators, a lot of the people that I've been on this podcast and others—to come in here and speak as part of this learning community for about six months. We're looking at taking people through hitting things like how to be fidget or how to staff the digital pastor. I mean, how do you get the entire staff to be invested and engaged in a fidgets whole mindset, digital and physical? What does it mean to work with digital community? How do you create a small group that's reproducing itself? What does discipleship making mean digitally? What are the challenges? How do you overcome the coldness of technology with Christ? How do you create a disciple maker in the space? All sorts, man. The speakers we've got coming in, I'm just gonna tell you this: go to stadiachurchplanting.org/digital. I totally appreciate the nod there, Nils. It wasn't necessary, but any time I get to talk about Stadia, I love doing that, and I'm excited about what's happening there. So if you're wrestling with this space, we'd love to have you in there.

And aside from even churches, because as part of helping churches understand how to be fidgetal, understanding churches how to plant digital-only, that's part of the process that we're doing. Another part that we're doing really is working with individuals, people who are not connected with churches who are saying, "I have a passion about an area." You know, a guy's like, "Man, I'm really into alt VR, and I'm thinking about what would it be like to be another DJ Soto doing a VR church?" Well, we want to come alongside you and help in that. And so a lot of this is not just "let's help on the church side," because I think the churches need to understand this to resource individuals, but part of what we're also doing is resourcing individuals, helping them understand what that is, and helping them grow. And even more than the phrases "thrive, grow, and multiply," we want to help churches understand how to thrive, grow, and multiply. We also want to help individuals who are interested in planting their own thing thrive, grow, and multiply through that. So either way, hit me up. My information's in the show notes, and at Stadia, we would love to have a conversation with you on that.

I totally was not anticipating going in commercial the way digital. Yeah, thank you for that. It's funny. I'm actually trying to remember where it came from. It's a business phrase, like it's one of those things that I think the business world's a little ahead of us on the church side. Maybe not as far as we think they are, but they are. And so the combination of physical and digital merging together—we're fidgetal. Especially coming out of this COVID season, we are gonna be very digital people. And so utilizing churches understanding how to—it's not about the services, but about how to utilize the digital to disciple someone, to be involved in their life seven days a week, to help them grow deeper, to empower them to utilize the digital technology to connect with others, to disciple more people, to get them connected in God in a new way.

I said we just said we had this, and this is a podcast we did recently with Tyler Sansom. And I have never—I had never thought of this. Tyler is like, "Hey, so one of the things we do between services and small groups that just gets people connected, kind of in a welcoming area, you know, the feature on Netflix where it's like the watch party where you can like watch the same Netflix video all at the same time?" So they opened it up to like people: "Hey, if we're doing family movies, if you want to jump on Netflix through the watch party thing, come in." He had twenty families sign up to watch movies together. And so they're building relationships, they're talking. Some of them might be Christian, some of them might not be. It doesn't matter. They're building relationships. And then when it's time to actually, you know, one of the weeks, "Hey, maybe we're not gonna show a movie this week. Maybe we'll jump on Zoom and talk about what God is doing in our lives." And some of them may have stories, some of them may not, but it's an opportunity to relationally invest in people to get to that point. And it's like, if Netflix doesn't exist, try to get twenty people in a room like that to build relationships. You really can't. Forty, sixty—like there's no limit on that unless Netflix has got limitations. I don't know. But at the end of the day, like you're utilizing technology not to compete with the weekend service, but to complement it, to do something that only the technology can do. And to me, this is where it is. And we're not even as a church, we're not even utilizing technology in this way yet. We haven't figured it out. We're so afraid of it because it's competing with the one hour on Sunday that we don't want to actually take advantage of the power to relationally connect with it. It's incredible.

When you think about it, and I think I'll offer this: the vigil where you can interact. But you think of the complexity and what next transformation is dealing with—having a four thousand seat auditorium, getting people in and out of a physical service is really complicated. And the funny thing, in Robert Emmet, you saw us say this one with onlinechurch.com. He's like, "Look, I don't—we don't have security guards. We don't kind of have digital security guards that ban people, but it's not so complex. But we don't run out of parking. We don't have to figure out how we get thirty minutes for people to leave a service and then new people to come in. And we don't care if people doubled up on the online services like we do in the physical services. And there's just so much opportunity. And I think, you know, I get excited too. If there's not a locked-in model, I might—one of the visions I really have for churches that I don't see happening much yet is house churches coming out of it. I think that's where church home was going in a lot of ways, but we kind of lost it. These micro gatherings that start—you have a cluster in Ohio and you have a cluster in Pakistan, you know, and a cluster in Sydney, and you have a cluster, you know, fifty miles away from your church building where people just don't want to drive, but they want to gather. Or people that don't want to go into a big auditorium anymore because of COVID, and they'd rather just be in a living room and watch church on a television and then eat lunch together and be in a different kind of community. Yet they want it from a teaching standpoint. I still believe the pulpit drives the church, and I think online church allows that pastor to be able to speak into those homes. And I think in many ways, we, you know, I think even back to the Rabbinical days, you choose a rabbi to follow. You know, and I think we still do that. We choose a pastor. This is the person that I want to speak into my life spiritually, and I want to follow from a teaching standpoint as a primary person speaking into my life spiritually. And now that's no longer limited by geography. And you as a pastor are no longer limited by geography. And me as an individual, I'm no longer limited by geography of who I choose to speak into my life spiritually. And these are the new opportunities that are not a limitation to church, are not a distraction from church, but are only an enhancement. And it doesn't mean you have to reach the world. It doesn't mean you can reach the people within twenty miles even more than you could before and be even more connected there. There's, man, there's just so many things. I love fidgetal. I tried to go buy fidgetal.church, so you don't buy my domain. I'm already there. That I was gonna sell it back to you. I just looking for a nice—the funny thing was I bought that. So funny. I bought that like three months like 2019. Yeah, because I'm like, you know, I just buy domains randomly. Come back around, whatever. And so 2019 I bought that domain. And I'm talking with Stadia, you know, February, March—March it was in this COVID season, 2020. We're talking about digital. It's like, "Hey, let's push all in on this term." And I went to buy fidgetal.church, and I remember I already bought it. And so I went to buy it on GoDaddy, and it came back and said I already bought it. And I'm like, "Well, crap. Who's smart enough to actually be planning ahead?" And so I go into who is, looking at it, and it was like, "Oh, I bought it four months ago and didn't even—forgot that you bought it." I forgot I bought it. So gets that smoke of the book into my COVID life. Are you willing to admit how many domains that you have in your GoDaddy? Guy, who do you use?

Domains, yeah, so I'm a GoDaddy guy. I'm three figures. I'm not four figures. Oh, I am, I am three figures. I keep it in context, honestly. I like my mic, my industry, bad word, my zone, but the area of influence is church. So I don't, I don't really even let myself go outside of that, you know, in the three figures. Yeah, I am lots and lots of buzzwords, lots of keywords, lots of things coming up. A couple clients I do stuff for, but you know, that's, that's it. It's on a minimal. I don't want the resource fear is I forget to renew a domain for a client that looks like they're in it. So like, I just, um, as much as possible, hey, let me set you up with an account. Oh, I'll do the initial purchase for you so you get the discounts and then I'll just hand it to you anyway. That's, this is an Asana spin. It's great conversation, man. I love, I love you. We got together. I was actually always reminded of this and we're gonna we're gonna talk about this later because I've, I'm actually we're doing a podcast with Craig Atkinson, yeah, later this afternoon, side of Starbucks, maybe three, four years ago, yeah, Disneyland with with Nils, Jake Randa, Ray was there, and in Greg Atkinson just talking crazy. And to see three, four years later, whatever the math was, how crazy's become a reality and how churches are are now wrestling with this in in real time. I'm trying to figure out how to adjust, man. Thanks for thanks for what you're doing. One of the question we do want to bring you back, one of the questions that I wanted to ask even was I mean you were one of the like pioneers in this and so like ten, twenty years ago, did you just real briefly, did you see this coming or was it, was it, was it of like, did you realize that the church would be in the season where this would become a reality or were you pushing vision just hoping to get close to it?

Uh, and I'm gonna give you a longer answer because I think it's, I think it, my story, I think might even is fire some someone else. I'm, I'm an accidental in all of this. I'm not a technology guy. I went in 1999. I was a youth pastor. My first youth ministry gig, I was introduced to AOL Instant Messenger, and that's where my online ministry began. That was my first day of youth ministry. Seventh grade girl introduced me to AOL Messenger. And so from my first day of ministry, all I knew is digital and physical, and and my most successful ministry came out of digital relationships that I then merged into physical relationships. And and that just went into my space and then that went into Facebook. And I, and then, but you know, about twelve years ago, I was doing leading a college service and we had about seventy-five college students who gathered and somebody introduced me to this platform called Modulus where you can plug in your handycam to your computer. And now it's livestream.com, which is now owned by Vimeo. But it it was like, I can do this and I can livestream this service anywhere. We literally had a thousand people that night watch our service on Modulus because if we, somebody told me to plug in a camera and I was willing to try it. And we told everybody update your Facebook and your MySpace with this link. And then we started reaching the world. And then so so I would just, I was willing to try things. And when I would see something, I've been like, oh, I'm gonna lean into this. And then I got in the newspaper in San Antonio, which is where Robert Emmett heard about me. And Robert Emmett took me to lunch and he's like, do you think, I mean, we've planted ten churches and I'm just tired of the headache of planting new churches. Do you think we could do a church on the Internet? And I said, I'd love to try to figure it out. So yeah, so I would say he had a vision. I I was fascinated by Life Church. And we literally just figured out how to do church like, well, what about small groups? Well, what about prayer? Or what about baptism? What about? And and we just figured it out one step at a time. So I would say I didn't have a vision for this. I had a willingness to try new things. And and God gave me vision along the way. And God gave Robert Emmett vision as our lead pastor. And and I helped help him accomplish his vision. And me, and now as a consultant, that's what I choose clients who have a vision. I want to align to and help them create structure to to accomplish their vision.

Yeah, so that's that's my journey into this. I'm but I didn't have a clear vision and I don't have a clear vision for the future, but I want to continue to be a part of willing to try new things to see. And I think I love Craig's ourselves line, anything anything short of sin to accomplish the gospel or further the gospel, you know, I don't know exactly the thing, but anything. And and for me, it has, it has been the fruits have been when I've linked in to technology innovation that was awesome. Thank you for that, man. What, well said. I love the fact that you used the word AOL in MySpace in a conversation like Nils. Byx, by the way, Byx. Nils Byx was my a while. I am named brothers under Christ. Yep, brother in Christ. I'm with you. So yeah, wow, that's a throwback. Yeah, what's cool? You were in Texas. Yeah, I was it was Southwest Texas, Texas State University. I think I've got my shirt on. Yes, you. Okay, all right, well done. Okay, yeah, so I was I was browsing the Christ at TCU. Oh, where'd you graduate? Listen, I'm gonna cut all this out. List or maybe I'll leave it in. I don't know. But what you did you graduate? Mm, okay, I was ninety-nine. All right, very cool. I didn't want that. What I really liked all, really, oh my gosh, I can't, in one spirit in one voice we sing our Earth's Heights. Big twenty years as I try to remember next time we see each other physically. Very good. I'll definitely get you in and raised like this. Budget old guys are freaky right now. So you guys are part of like an Elks Club or like a Stonehenge, you know, the group that I don't know about, man, some kind of. Oh, so evidently if you're if you're if you're a Byx, you are a shaved head and have a goatee because evidently that's that's what we're establishing here in this podcast. Well, and it's built into your AOL screen name. It's built in. I almost got a Byx tattoo. I'm kind of glad I didn't, but I almost went that far. Yeah, I was not that radical. Well done. Awesome. Hey, Ray, I don't know how you're gonna make sense of this, but as we're landing the plane, any closing thoughts? No, I'm so glad, Jeff, you got to throw a pipe organ in the background of what Nils was preaching in there because I was about to get rolling with him. And it's for so long we prayed for Acts to write like, I heard church is over and over again, praying for revival and talking about, man, we want to see her revival happen. And just maybe, just maybe, what if we're living in it now? Like, would we actually open our eyes to like look at the fields like Jesus said and say, hey, meant the harvest is here and it's not in a way that we expected? Maybe a lot of it's gonna come digitally. And maybe if we would embrace like what Neil said so eloquently, and I love this, the vision that God has for us instead of trying to copy somebody else, like what if Paul had the ability to say, hey, Jesus, I can't physically get to Macedonia, but you gave me this camera and you gave me this computer and every other way I keep coming up to walls, but through this way I can get into that ten-forty window. I can preach the gospel. I can get it to people. There's a relevant method here if we would just embrace this time for what it is. Sorrows, heartaches, but also the positive things that come with it. There's so much beauty that can come from this, man. Well said, well said. Yeah, and we'll have to get the sound effect of the pipe organ in here. That's a good idea. You're totally listening to the pipe organ right now because I'm going on faith right about at this point. Okay, Nils, thank you. Right, Neil's landing the plane. Any any closing thoughts on your side? I just would say I love you guys. I loved the relationship we've had through the years online and and and the work you're doing right now and leading this conversation. It's it's special and it's important and it's critical. And I appreciate you letting me be a part of the conversation. So the podcast I wanted to have was, man, the church needs to figure out how to utilize long-form audio better because we want to hear something other than a sermon. So and this is according to Gary Vee, twenty twenty is the year of long-form audio. So church, let's get a clue and figure out how to create long-form audio. I hope you enjoyed the conversation we did not have. Instead, we delve into this innovative entrepreneurial church model, which or just what a church would look like if it was innovative and entrepreneurial. So thank you for this conversation. We'll have to bring you back another time and actually get into the audio piece because I would love your angle on that. And so we'll get there. For Ray, for Nils, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Once again, thanks for jumping on the podcast and we'll see you next time here on the show. You all have a good day.