EP079: Dave Ferguson - Multiplication, Micro-locations, & TCD's 10,000th Play

Episode 79 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning. Jeff here. Got a great, fun episode for you. Dave Ferguson's gonna be coming up down the road, so if you really want to fast forward and skip the fun part—okay, Dave's fun, but the fun part of this where we're giving away stuff—you want to fast forward maybe to minute fourteen or so and get caught up. But before then, listen to this: we are celebrating the Church Digital Podcast. We are celebrating our 10,000th play. Over 10,000 podcast episodes have been listened to by you, audience, that's out there, and we are crazy excited about that. So we're bringing Ray in. We're gonna be talking about just celebrating what's been happening through the Church Digital over the past year or so. Celebrating by giving stuff away, giving you, audience out there, the listeners out there, an opportunity to engage with us, because we want to hear from you. And then, oh, by the way, Dave Ferguson. So it's gonna be a packed hour here with this podcast. So if you're looking for Dave, fast forward to minute fourteen, check out the show notes, and engage with us and maybe even win something in the process. Man, is that not a podcast episode or what? This is awesome.

Hey, hear you go. Hey, we're bringing Ray in for the opening. Say hey, Ray.

Hey, everybody. Ten K. So excited. Thank you so much for all your help to get there.

Yeah, I didn't think we'd make one K. I wasn't even sure what would make one hundred. Some of those early podcasts listen like—I think episode four with Tyler, which was like the first podcast we ever recorded, and it was a little embarrassing. It was a lot of editing to kind of make that thing happen. But here we are in thousands. So yeah, luckily, luckily, our audience, you guys, have been so forgiving with us as we've moved through this over time. And probably because all of you are embarrassed about your early church online videos. I know I'm still embarrassed about mine. That's the glory of church online, is that we can always go back and live through our embarrassments, isn't it?

Yeah, and the challenge that I would even throw to the audience out there is I was kicking around the idea of doing a podcast for a year, and I just—I kept trying to make the thing perfect right out of the gate. I gotta have the background music. I gotta have the right up, the perfect intro. I was trying to create this perfect scenario. And you know, it's funny. I keep hearing this phrase: "Version one's better than version none." And so instead of just sitting on it and waiting—Gary Vee, thank you for that, by the way—instead of just sitting on your hands trying to get it to be perfect, just get started.

It's true. And you know, Jeff, I was wrong because initially, like, I thought we should skip out one episode a month, you know what I'm saying? And you were pushing early on, and you were right about doing one a week. And I was just nervous that we couldn't turn out that kind of content on the onset. And then the moment we started getting discussions with leaders and with different folks, number one, it just became a lot of fun, you know? It just became a lot of fun and real easy to do. But then number two, I was surprised at how many of the people we just kept getting referred to that we're in this space. I mean, a lot of this stems out of—and the audience doesn't know this. They'll hear about this in a future episode—a conversation that Jeff, myself, Noah Smith, Jake Randa, and Greg Atkinson had over a cup of coffee at a Starbucks in Disneyland. And but even back then we thought we were alone in this. We didn't think that there were many players in this space because either we were full of ourselves or just, you know, feeling like we were Don Quixote, tilting at windmills in some cases. But you know, if you're out and you're thinking, "Man, I can't make more content," let me encourage you: there are plenty of leaders, there are plenty of people that are out there around you. And invite them into the conversation. Invite them into the meeting, the conversation, because you just might be surprised at the new world that you're gonna open up. I definitely have been pleasantly surprised by this. And here we are at 10,000 listens in only 79 episodes. Hate to say it like that, like it's pretty incredible beyond what we had originally thought.

Well, yeah, and this is a super niche, you know, audience, right? Pre-COVID, the number of people who were interested in doing church online—I mean, like, it was a very small audience. Now it's increased, you know? Thank you, global pandemic, for being on our side, by the way. If you're ever interested in launching a podcast, global pandemic centered around a global pandemic will definitely help your cause. And watching future podcasts, so remember that. Write that down. That'll be helpful down the road. But in this season, it's been awesome having conversations. And one of the things with people who are by far experienced—have been doing this for a decade—all the way down to like the guy who's just starting out. Big churches and small churches are like, "Hey, how do you do this thing? What's involved? How do I even start in this conversation?" And the fun thing in all this is there's no silver bullet. Yeah, church A, church B, church C—everything looks different and how it is. And so what I love about the conversations that we're having, or even the conversations with the people that we're interviewing, we have them talking with, or even honest to the point of saying, "Hey, we're just experimenting. We have no idea. Three months from now, we may still be doing this. Three months from now, maybe it'll look completely different." But rather than not trusting, not being willing to try, we're rather leaning in, we're leaning forward, and trying to figure out how to work through this season.

Yeah, that's so true. And even kind of moving into the future, and I think what a lot of people are looking for is they're looking for definitive answers with church online. And what we kept trying to say through this podcast—and we hope that you take this lovingly, those of you who are listening out there, maybe for the first time on this episode, maybe for different reasons—but there are no definitive answers. It's going to continue to evolve and change, just as church planting methods of reaching people for Christ, all these things are constantly changing. And we cannot be afraid of that change. Instead, what we must do is we must put on our faith lens and say, "Okay, so how does the gospel move through these mediums? Move through these avenues?" Because the gates of Hell aren't going to prevail against it. I'm sure that in the future, Jeff, we're probably gonna be talking more VR. We're probably gonna be talking more online small groups and how some of that's working out as more and more church small groups have gone completely online and are even afraid to go back together in physical spaces because they just don't want to get sick.

Oh, yeah. Wait till 5G technology comes out and the church is gonna be revolutionized. Even support on that, though. I mean, the world's gonna be revolutionized even around that. You're gonna see more of these revolutions coming quicker and quicker as technology grows and expands. But even as much as we—and this is what I love about the church online circles and the people that have been doing ministry in this area for a while—even as much as we love the technology, even as much as we love the new toy, the new fandangled gadget, the new Apple version of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, EarPods, the Apple goggle glasses that better be coming sometime soon—wait, not—um, wait. I'm saying, yeah, it's not about the technology. It's about the relationship aspect. And that's—and if you hear one thing, that's a constant theme throughout all of this: it's the relational component of church online, not broadcasting a single message for the world to hear, but engaging in a conversation, a relational conversation, that's going to help you connect with people.

We—it was funny. Ray and I have been talking. A tweet doesn't change the world. No, it's impossible to get a one-way communication blasted out to the masses. You've been—if you're on Twitter, you understand that an individual conversation with another person, relating to and listening to, is how we church online can move forward in the coming years. And that's the culture, really, that I believe we church online, we church, we need to shift. What technology does allow us to do is to connect with you listeners that are out there. And so here's what we want to do: we want to give away stuff because why not celebrate 10K by giving away Starbucks coffee? So assuming your Starbucks is still open—but majority of them still are. Some of them may be shutting down. Some of them may be moving to a mobile-only delivery kind of system. But either way, you've probably got a Starbucks somewhere near you. So here's what we're doing: we want to give away three ten-dollar Starbucks gift cards to our listening audience that's out there. Well, we'll do delivery digitally. We'll text, email, whatever it is. Here's what I need you to do to register for this, to register for the giveaway: I want to hear from you how the Church Digital Podcast has helped your church grow and expand its ministry. How listening to this podcast, how interacting with your leaders, sharing some of these ideas—how the Church Digital Podcast has helped change your church in this COVID season, before this COVID season, whatever. Just let us know. There's a system we're using. It's called Video Appeal that's to help us collect the information from you. But here's what I need you to do: go to the church digital slash 10K. The number 10, letter K. Yeah, 10 with the K. That's not a K, but you get the idea. Maybe that's okay. It's just weird now. I'm embarrassed. The church digital slash 10K. Let us know how we've helped you, your church. All submissions will be registered. We will be contacting the winners within a week of the broadcast of this. So that's gonna be Monday, June 22nd, 2020. And hopefully you get some coffee. Listen, we have a niche audience, okay? Like, let's just be honest. Like, we're not carrying you off worth a million people listening every week. So we're consistent to our loyal listeners. So this is your opportunity to register, to submit some stuff, to engage with us, that start a conversation with us. And by the way, maybe win some coffee off it.

That's right. You know, and think about that because it's not such a huge field. Your odds of winning are that much greater. I mean, if you're just looking for a free coffee, why not take advantage of this? So send us your video. Doesn't have to be a long sermon about it. Doesn't have to be a whole spiel. Maybe you want to point to a particular episode and you want to point to a conversation we had or a particular takeaway that you said, "Man, you know what? This came off of this, and I decided to make this decision, and this is how it panned out for us." So no matter what it is, doesn't have to be that long, doesn't have to be that short. Just send us how God used our show in your life, and we'll celebrate it together.

That's awesome. By the way, I want to give a special shout out, and as we get into our episode here too, one of our listeners in Canada. Her name is Tanis. Now, this is crazy because, you know, Twitter's Twitter. A single tweet doesn't change the world, but it can help you get connected to somebody. So Dave Ferguson, leader of the Exponential Conference, lead pastor at Community Christian Church in Chicago, author of Hero Maker, and just all sorts of—I mean, a guy that I look up to in Christian circles. So Dave Ferguson is on Twitter, and he's writing, and he's doing this post, this thread of posts, talking about how digital discipleship can feed into house churches and micro locations, and this is going to revolutionize the church. And so one of our listeners out there—my dog barks in celebration—one of our listeners out there, Tanis, so she tweets Dave Ferguson.

off of this and says, "Hey, you really need to talk to Jeff." Read tags me in it and says, "About this because he talks about this stuff all the time." And so meekly I look at this tweet and it's like, okay, Dave Ferguson, this listener named Tanis who lives in Canada who got connected to me through like the Church Online Summit, which was produced by somebody by Steve Fogg who lives in Australia. Like, this is an international thing. Australia song worship leader before my eyes. This is incredible. Respect, man. But it's funny like, "Hey Dave, would you like to be on my podcast?" And Dave replies, "Yes." It's all, "Holy cow, we got Dave Ferguson on the podcast for the ten-thousandth play." So we're bringing it. By the way, Tanis, thank you very much. Tanis, I'm gonna send you a Starbucks gift card just for the reference because there's no other way I would have gotten Dave Ferguson to be on the podcast without that side note. All the other listeners start tagging people too and throwing on my way. Yes, maybe there's a little selfish ego involved in that, but yeah, we'll roll with it. It's okay. If any of you know Mark Zuckerberg or anybody like that that you want to tag on one of our deals, I mean, I'm just saying, just do it. Yes, do suck on the podcast. I don't even know where to start with that one.

All right, so it starts with a tweet. That's how we know it starts. It starts with a tweet. So here's where we are. We're bringing in episode seventy-nine of the Church Digital Podcast. Here's Dave Ferguson. Like we said, Exponential lead pastor—excuse me—Exponential lead director of the Exponential Conference and other things, Community Christian Church lead pastor of communication in Chicago. Seriously, we just had a solid conversation on multiplication and apprenticeship and talking about how to do this in this new COVID season, post-COVID season, coming in, coming out, wherever we are. But where we are today, solid conversation. Once again, he doesn't have all the answers. He says that up front. "I'm learning from this. I wanted to explore and to understand it." But this idea of—and he uses the word apprenticeship instead of multiplication or disciple-making, discipleship—but the idea of apprentice ingrown them to unleash them on ministry is at the heart of what he's done pre-COVID. He was doing it pre-COVID in the physical realm, but now in mid-COVID, man, we gotta figure out how to do this digitally. And did do it digitally effectively. And that's really the challenge of this podcast.

Yeah, we've got Dave Ferguson, a leader of the Exponential Conference, in a comedy myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning in a conversation centered around multiplication and apprenticeship. Okay, everybody, here you go.

Well, hello, how are you doing? What's up, Jeff? How you doing, buddy?

Doing, doing very good. Hey, thank you for just even being willing to jump on this podcast with me. I really appreciate it.

Well, actually, I was looking for an excuse to meet you, so I mean, talk to you. Even, even, yeah, I appreciate ya. I'm Jeff. Basically, I think some of the stuff that some of the stuff you're talking about and we're talking about now is just like mission-critical. Sort of more connections I can make, the better for me.

Yeah, I had—and even just just background for me—I resigned a church. I've been in church staff fifteen, twenty years, megachurch, giga church, multi-site kind of those environments. And God, God put this model—this online discipleship, micro locations—just on my heart. I executed it at the church. The church wasn't interested in doing it. And ultimately I stepped out of a church that job in 2018 because literally God told me to do this. And it's not—I don't know—don't do two years for everybody else, you know? And it's, and it's been a lot of kind of paving the way, having hard conversations, you know, looking at having pastors tell me I'm crazy. And then, you know, COVID happens, and all of a sudden, you know, that crazy guy over there is right. And so, you know, even seeing kind of the comment that came up like other people were thinking about this, I'm like, "Look at him, look at him, look what he said, this is awesome." Like, he'd keep tracking with it because I'm not—I may be the crazy guy, but I'm not the only crazy guy saying this stuff.

Well, if you're crazy, I want to be crazy. Awesome. Are you, are you getting a place you know, the place to implement this stuff you're talking about, you're dreaming about now?

Yes. So in addition to the Church Digital stuff, I'm on staff with Stadia as their director of digital church planting. And so we're pre-COVID always designing a digital-only expression of church that was more like a micro hub, Casey underground, Tampa, on the ground with a digital footprint as well—either digital or physical. And I think that's still the truck that we run. COVID kind of caused us to pivot a little bit. We're doing a lot of digital church, helping larger churches go digital. But in that same vein, while we're taking them digital, we're teaching them some of the practices of the micro of the house church. And so I did a podcast the other day with a church in Kansas City—there are, excuse me, in Kentucky—you know, they in this COVID season they launched a hundred micro locations. They weren't even doing online small groups pre-COVID. And being the direction they launched online small groups and launched with a hundred micro locations with another hundred coming as things ease up.

So which what church was that?

That was Northeastern Community Church. I can get you information on that one, but they're tracking well with it. Within Stadia, the desire is to—and even ramping up—was just emailing my boss is Craig Whitney—working with them and starting to strategize, "Okay, this is what we're doing physical. What are we doing digital? How do we preach? And how do we get churches to understand a disciple-making movement, one that's not grounded in church services, one that's grounded at individuals and kind of growing in expanding from there, giving it time for the flywheel to activate and then allowing it to go?" And that's, you know, even as I cast that vision out at churches, you know, I had a pastor recently tell me, "He's like, Jeff, we've got fifteen hundred people coming on a weekend, and you're telling me that you would rather me do this relational thing? That it's better for the three staff people to be relational instead of doing the fifteen hundred?" And I was like, "Well, I think it's better that you empower people to reach people. And if you want to compare the fifteen hundred versus the hundred people that are probably already active in your church that could be unleashed on mission, yeah, I think a hundred people unleashed, they're going to be more effective than your fifteen hundred persons or service online." And that's a—it's a hard, hard truth. The service plays a role. The queen has its place, but sometimes it's not—I don't think it's at the power that it should be, that it currently is now.

Well, I'm still trying to figure it out. I'm fascinated. We're gonna be chip sin, but I'm still trying to figure it out.

Yeah, I wear three hats primarily. I'm the lead pastor at Community Christian Church, which is a multi-site church in this in Chicago. We have location the city and the suburbs. And my brother John and I and a handful of friends started that back in the day. And by God's kindness, that gave birth the new thing. And I get to play the role the visionary leader for New Thing. We have—last time I talked to Patrick Mobile, leader last week, I think one hundred eighty some networks globally and over three thousand churches that are committed to reproducing and planted. I don't have the exact number between eight and nine hundred churches last year. And I also get to serve as the president Exponential Conference, which my buddy Todd Wilson, a conference we kind of just took over. Kennedy's enemy took—oh, we just kind of said, "Hey, we'll leave it this year," and we've been doing it ever since for like last thirteen, fourteen years. Fact, earlier today I just got off a soon call with our Exponential Europe board, and so we're gonna be launching that this year in Europe. So I love all things church planting, all things multiplication, and I think that feeds right into what our topic is today. So I'm excited about talking.

I love that. I almost would love to have a side conversation about the nuances between like a multiplication and exponential Europe versus like even here in America and what some of those nuances are. But oh well, we can do it. Maybe that's another conversation. We'll put a stick on that and call you know episode two.

Hey, so this is—it's really, it's really fat. I love the internet. I feel like I just want to say that up front because it's fascinating to me that you and I are having this conversation. And so I connected to Dave essentially through Twitter. You know, most people are kind of abandoning Twitter, moving on. I love Twitter because it's where you get to really engage and have solid conversations with like real-life people.

Yeah, I mean, the others yelling on Twitter and whatever, but somehow Dave, you were not talking about online discipleship and the ability to launch micro occasions. And evidently someone who I've never met who ironically lives in Canada tagged me because she saw me speak at a conference in to this thing. And lo and behold, you're on my podcast. So so first off, you know, I just I want to continue to give thanks to to listeners and the people out there who are like, "Hey, this stuff is awesome. You need to like connect and do this." So I kind of did a little homework and realize who you were and what you're up to. I'm go like, "Okay, this would be this time a good person for me to get connected with." Is I'm trying to grow and my understanding of this. So thank you.

Yeah, oh no, this is—it's it's a whole new world where a lot of these things even pre-COVID it was coming on the horizon like the swinging of church online, the acceptance of a digital model of discipleship. We knew this was coming, you know, in my mind honestly I was tracking with it more twenty at the beginning of 5G technology. I think would have been a swing. Even like AI is becomes more apparent later this decade. You know, I don't think anybody really saw COVID coming, but the influence of that and the gasoline of the flame of, "Okay, now culture just fast-tracked." We just got out of DeLorean and now like it's like a dam that just broke and now like there's like a tidal wave you got coming now.

Yeah, and so how the shift—how the church shifts out coming out of this and how we adjust and maybe some lessons, you know, we talk a lot about lessons with the new normal and the next normal and all that. And you know, there's definitely some things that we the church need to understand and work through. So but let's let's even just open up with this because I think we're gonna be talking a lot about discipleship, about disciple-making, a lot of those those those types of words, which by the way is nothing new to the podcast. We talk about it all the time. But one of the things that's that's intriguing to me is that people define the word differently. I think if you get like ten pastors in the room and ask them what discipleship means, I think you'd get twenty different answers. So maybe even just in your context as a guy who's done multiplication around the world, what does discipleship, what does that mean, what does that look like for you?

Um, I in our context, and actually it's fascinating because we we seldom use the word disciple because it feels like that word's kind of been co-opted to mean cramming a lot of content someone's brain, going through a course, they're gonna take in a certain class, that kind of stuff. But knowing the spirit what you're talking about, I encourage leaders when I'm working with them like it—because discipleship is really about growing as an apprentice with Jesus. And it's a relational term. You can't fully define it or fully measure it, but do yourself a favor and do the best you can.

And then start trying to measure that. So in the spirit of that, we've done at Community Christian Church, the church I lead. It's what we try to do to try to develop. We call three C Christ followers, and the three C's are celebrate, connect, and contribute. And those are three different dimensions of the relationship and an apprentice of Jesus. You have a relationship with God, which is celebrate. Your relationship with the church doing the community together, and that's connect. And then you have a relationship with the world, and that's where you contribute to make Juvia to God's dream to make it everything God meant for.

To me, so we talked about celebrate, connect, and contribute. Fully understand that isn't, you can't really fully measure those, but we found some ways to really develop some metrics around those. And that helps us at least go like, okay, here's the direction we're headed and do a better job of going like, okay, how are we doing in growing three C Christ followers or disciples?

Yeah, I understand the coop. I love, love the three C's. I understand the co-opting of the word. I'm just curious what, what is your natural language? What, what are you? What's the phrase you use to talk about? I'm apprenticeship. I've pretty seen the ways in Jesus. Yeah, so not unlike Dallas Willard or you, if you've listened a lot of John Mark Homer stuff, he uses that too. Okay, but that, yeah, that that works for us. And the idea of disciple making, discipleship, apprenticeship, the idea of doing this in in digital circles, pre-COVID, and I'll just be the one like, it's hugely controversial. Pre-COVID 2019, majority of churches we're not doing anything online. Maybe ten percent were broadcasting a service. But when it came time to building relationships, disciple making, online small groups, even caring about people who were outside of the physical circle of influence of any one campus, the church was really kind of dispersed and hands-off from that. Now COVID were understanding, and we're gonna beginning to kind of see how we can start to engage in this discipleship in this relationship aspect from it from a digital standpoint.

What, what lessons, just even maybe from from the outside, forty-thousand-foot high level, what are you learning in in this season when it comes to apprenticeship, when it comes to multiplication in context of doing it digitally?

Yeah, I think not quite as advanced as yourself, but pre-COVID, I mean I had the opportunity to, there are some people that influenced me. I was already plugged into a lot of stuff that Glue was doing. So I got to know Scott. Back of course, you've spent any time with Scott, who's the founder there? I mean, Scott makes the point which that all human growth happens by relationships. All human growth happens relationships. And I think and that totally fit the way we do church and totally that our understanding of who God is in our theology. And the more we began to talk and he introduced me to a guy named Paul Sangguk Chode Roy, who I don't think that chance to read his book called The Platform Revolution. He's an MIT prof, a brilliant guy. And basically he began to lay out what it looked like to be a platform organization. And the more that I heard Scott talk about, you know, all human growth is worth relationships, and read through Dr. Leroy stuff, and then also got a chance to kind of interact with him just a little bit as well, you put those two together, you're going like, holy smokes. I mean, for someone like me who's who has a chronic preoccupation with movement and multiplication, you're going, ah, this, that, here's the deal. This, this is how you scale something. And and I think so we were starting down that path and I can go more into that. But you're like you just said though, I mean COVID kind of, I think it's the crisis that forced all this kind of shoved us out the door said, what do you like or not, here we go.

Yeah, I think we're not one of the big lessons, you know, that I think we're still learning is this idea of scale versus reach. Like we have, we have the churches would look at pre-COVID, you know, I had a pastor tell me, hey Jeff, literally this was the conversation. Hey Jeff, I want to see people around the world get saved listening to my messages. I literally like I want to see somebody in Ethiopia get baptized. But the area around my church where I want to do ministry, want to do discipleship, I don't want them to hear my services online. I want them to come to the building where I can build relationships with them. The guy in Ethiopia, let's be missional, let's let's be outward facing. I want to reach that far, but I don't want to engage with them. I don't want to build that relationship. That's that's someone else's problem.

And and I think what's what's fascinating is is even the strength of online isn't that, isn't the reach. Yeah, it's cool somebody on the other side of the planet can have can listen to a one-way conversation. You're in Chicago right now, I'm in Miami, it's far cooler that the two of I are having the two of us are having an open conversation right here online. And in the fact that we can engage with people, by the way, I just met this guy the other day. His name's Talk Tomei. He's from Nigeria. He is the Nigerian version of Jeff Reed for church staff guy doing all sorts of digital church online stuff in Nigeria. You know, I'm literally having an hour-long conversation with this guy via Zoom, and we're swapping stories, we're encouraging each other towards that. And so like, there's maybe not at the spiritual level, but there's almost like there's this apprentice level conversation where I'm learning from him, he's learning from us. And now we're able to go off and do things. And what you're describing, I mean, I think it is a form of discipleship. I mean, is he a believer? Yes. Yeah, so I mean, you're basically you're you're mentoring each other. And what has become the platform for making that possible, that relationship possible, is the Internet. I think we're just, we're a paradigm shift, which is a big deal, but we're a paradigm shift or a mental block away from seeing that and how we can do that over and over and over and over again.

What digital allows us to do is break away from this model of being in the church to have this disciple making, to have this apprentice level relationships. Digital allows us to to scale out much broader, much wider, much more effective where I can have this conversation with this guy in Nigeria. A church attender can reach out to their their high school, you know, people that graduated high school from, re-engage with a college roommate or gather together people who are have a similar attribute, a club or a hobby or something, and and start to build and relationships that way. I think with which are beginning to see is is this idea of breaking apart that the church out of a physical location and doing it more neighborhood-based, reaching out to you know circle of influence within the neighborhood or even doing some things digitally where we start to examine and dig into relationships and communities that already exists digitally as a as a pastor, as somebody who's you know you're dealing with the multiplication, you're understanding the physical aspects, you know what, what challenges do you feel? What does that make you excited? Does that make you scared? Does that make you like, tell me your temperature when we're talking about, okay, I want to break up the building and instead of it being a location, I want to disseminate it and and spread it across multiple locations.

Is adrenaline rush a temperature? I mean, that's I mean, that's what I mean. That's how it makes me feel. No, I mean, because I mean, I was, you know, I don't want two weeks, I was telling my executive pastor one, no, these buildings are like an albatross now. That's probably an over-exaggeration because I think there's something, some good things that come come out of it. But and this and I'm and in certainly community isn't the only only case, but I mean like this weekend our engagement was probably more than double what it was pre-COVID. So I mean, and we're get, we have more people in small groups, we have more people serving, and even financially we're in a better spot that we were before. So it's kind of like there's there's not anything at least so far to be afraid of except the ignorance of like, when we finally do leverage this platform for its fullest extent, I mean, wow, what what could happen?

Yeah, one of the things that I love with with like a dispersed model, and I can play the card, I can totally have the conversation right now and maybe we'll get to it later, but the idea of a digital only church, a church that only exists, sure, which is still controversial even when you talk with like online pastors who live in online space and that's their job to minister. Even like JC Tran the Saddleback, he and I have conversations on the time where we talk about the necessity of the physical space as well, which to me is one of the reasons why we want to have the house church location or some sort of a physical like, the biggest why does he think, why does he think what's the necessity of it?

Well, he and here's the challenge. Like, let's let's talk about it. If I am a, if I'm a Christian on Facebook, but I'm a jerk to my wife and I'm an a-hole to my kids, right, what am I, am I really a Christian? Or or is it, it's one thing I would be that that happens all the time in our churches, right? Isn't that you think the guy who did the deacon who shows up, you know, you know, with the smile on his face, but then you know two years later we find out he's been beating his wife? I mean, that happens. That doesn't just happen in digital spaces, right? That happens in physical spaces. And and that's that the challenge though would be, let's figure out how the goal would be online to offline. The gospel that we hear in our online world has to affect our offline relationships. So it's it's one thing for him, the challenge is stay away from consumerism. Don't just be the guy listening. Don't just be the guy listening to the podcast, but create environments so that it has to impact your real world. A sermon in on a podcast or a sermon watched on Facebook Live is one thing, but if it's to the level that it creates a reaction that influences the real world, that that's the win.

Yeah, but I mean, I I think you've said the same thing about the online world. In fact, I think you might gonna make the case that in an online world your engagement with predict like a sermon is even more more serious because they they because when they show up at my website, they can actually pick which sermon they want to watch and they get to pick which one that they engage with, which probably is kind of, because there's something going on in their life, which so there's probably a deeper engagement then. And they show up at my one of our ten locations because they have to listen to whatever comes on my mouth then. And they may and just because they're there doesn't mean their case, right? Thank you for being honest right there and appreciating that.

Well, it's a brutal facts, but it's it's true. We're with with a digital environment, you're able to craft and create something that that's more tailor suited for for an individual in its interest. And Carrie Newhoff, I love Carrie. He does those listings that are so well, you know, and he talks about how there's the, he did an analog and digital comparison. Analog, the old-school way, listed out seven things. Digital then he listed off seven things on that side. And in one of the things that was fascinating to me and actually a bunch of people who are like, that's wrong, was analog. He had the word global underneath analog. And under digital, he had local. And it was funny like a people pastors were like, that's that's backwards. That's that's wrong, you know? You have you have global reach on the analog side. And and so Carrie, Carrie at a typo, Carrie did a mistake. And I was like, no, you're you're missing the point. Digital gives you the opportunity to customize things for the individual. An analog way, you're

Blasting a single message everywhere and it's not about that. And even to the point of in a disciple-making relationship, it's not blasting a single message. Analog, it's connecting and unleashing in a more mobilizing individuals with the message to go out and do things within their circle of influence. The relational aspects of church online, of discipleship online, of all of these things allow for a much more individualized approach. In appearance, automation is awesome, but if we've made so much out of disciple-making, us out of that apprentice-style relationship, man, we've really lost the value of the human touch from that. And that's really the thing that we're looking for in this day and age. It's that relational aspect.

Do you feel tension? You even talked about it. You're on stage, you're preaching the sermon, everybody's hearing that in the room. Though they may need more personalization, they may need more of a different approach. Like, do you feel the tension to try to feel that? Do you meet those needs in other ways? Like, how do you see digital kind of helping your church kind of automate through that? Do you have any practical insights on that?

I think in that one in particular, I think the big aha for me is there's like well, at least three different opportunities. So, you know, you have the content you're creating this week for them to engage with. So like this Sunday, you know, we're doing we're going through a series called Pray Like This, and we're going, you know, cycle set how we should we prayed, you said predicted. So we got that you can gauge with. But then you also, let me let me back in. Let's say in a, I think your terms vigil, so in the physical world, okay, and in our physical buildings they can come and experience that. But then you can also experience that online. But the third part, and I think the third one there, that big a hug to me, that's vastly being underestimated right now, is all of your, all of your previous content. Because most of us in the church world, we only think about the big idea I'm creating for this weekend, and that's what we advertise on our website. That's whatever they ask to engage with. That's what we measure. We only measure kind of what they gave you this week. But all of a sudden, like, so for example, I was fortunate enough I got to write up called Finding Your Way Back to God or a book called Starting Over. Well, once we did that series back in the day, it's done. But now guess what? If someone in through Google AdWords or whatever else, however else we want to advertise, if someone's going through a loss of a job or a loss of relationship or some other kind of lost, they're like, "Man, if I can only start over," they don't have to go to Pray Like This. They can go to our Starting Over series and engage with that. And so I think we have the opportunity to create this whole smorgasbord of opportunities. So because like for us, we'd create content, then it goes to our big idea resource, which we'd sell to a handful of churches that they could use some other time. But now all of a sudden, no, it's like you open up your whole library of content that makes sense.

Yeah, and it becomes, you know, the phrase in digital world is evergreen. It's content that same term and publisher, right? And so all of a sudden you're able to customize things, content, and then with accountability, with follow-up, with relationship, start to walk people through that and get them to process it. It's a beautiful thing. And as that creates people that are that are comfortable with being through that apprentice stage.

Well, let me let me shift gears. So that I'm even fascinated with this word, word apprentice. So an apprentice eventually becomes the guy who's doing the doing the work. The master, right? Master and apprentice. That's that's kind of the two tiers. So in in a in your church and multiplication kind of environments, when does when does an apprentice become the master? When is the person done in in that process?

Yeah, well, I mean, part of the reason, like you said, we'd like the term still has to do with both, both the knowing and the doing. So both you know, and for us it's pretty fairly simple. Whatever the person who is apprentice aim thinks the apprentice is ready, and they produce thinks they're ready, then they're ready. And some outside, okay, now you do the whole thing. A little bit, no, you don't overcomplicate. I mean, it's fairly simple. That when you think you're ready and the person to cycling you, so to speak, thinks you're ready, then you're ready. Go starting to cycle someone else. We use the same thing at a leadership level. When you're as an apprentice leader, when you think you're ready and as the leader, when you think your apprentice is ready, send them out to start another group or another team or whatever is that you're pressing them to do. And so within the church, you're looking at small groups, you're looking at serving opportunities, championing a team, you know, another. And so those are those are kind of the areas where your apprentice and growing.

In the middle of this COVID is even, even coming out of it, like the watch parties, the micro locations, that house churches, you know, that's starting to to grow in popularity. Have you guys looked and explored doing anything in that in that situation? Like, what's what's Community Christian doing right now towards that?

A little weird, a little bit of unique situation because we're in Chicago and we're also Illinois, which will be one of the last states to open up. So we're currently in still in Phase Three of a five-phase plan, which allows us to meet and groups no larger than ten. So but what we have in the queue, and this is probably more than you want to know, we've kind of designed a playbook we're calling it. And so we have four different plays we could run into. Play and play number two. Play number one is just community online. Everything's online. Play number two is what we're calling 3C communities. And our 3C communities based on like we talked about: celebrate, connectivity, our micro churches. And so what we'll do is whoever leads that, whoever leads that 3C community, there'll be the person who's responsible for bringing people together to celebrate, have that experience, to connect, do life together, and also contribute, make a difference in the world. And those can happen, of course, anywhere in Chicago, but also anywhere we're in like, last I heard, 1,500 cities around the world. And so that happened in those 1,500 cities where there's someone who says, "Yeah, I wanted, I want to, I want to lead one of these."

So I'm just curious, what what is one of those? And it's a playbook like you've not even executed this. The the, you know, obviously Illinois's a little more strict in the grand scheme of things. What what does leading one of these three-sea house church communities, what does this look like?

Yeah, I think I think what it is, it's it's just a small expression of the church where you, it can be where you live, where you work, or where you play. And and probably a lot of them are around affinity or maybe geography. It's where you where you live. And it could be, and sometimes I think it could be as small as, you know, a dozen people. Sometimes it could be upwards of maybe, you know, maybe 40 people or so that you didn't break up into smaller groups that meet throughout the week. But essentially what it is, it's exactly what you've been talking about. It's it's a micro church, a smaller expression of the church that I put on my church planning hat for a second. I mean, that we've been dying for for you know, four decades now, because the way we plant churches and the way we start new sites is so expensive in most cases. And so and it's definitely not a move mental form. And suddenly now we're in a season where people's interest in spiritual things is higher than ever, and also what they want is that. A lot of them anyway, not all, but a lot of them want smaller expressions because it's safer. And you put those two things together, just like this ripe environment, suddenly in the Western world to do micro churches like we've seen in the east.

Yeah, we had Daniel him on the podcast, spree COVID or like right when it happened. And you know, he was talking a lot about his, I don't know that he came up with the terminology, but the social space that like twenty to fifty person thing that is is really missing. It's like you either got the ten person or you got like the the church setting, the purge plant that's fifty and up, and then the the mega and the gig and all that. But that that really kind of that that safer environment of the twenty and fifty that kind of connect with is is gone. And so utilizing a house church or a micro movement just to kind of be that that sort of starting point, you know, at the Stadio, we talked about that. We we don't want to get to the place of where we're planting a single house church. Like that, the the endgame for us would not be planted single house church. It would be let's figure out how to plant a hub, a network of house churches, similar like Casey Underground or you know, Rob Wagner, there Brian Sanders and the stuff that he's doing over at Tampa Underground as well. But start to establish a multiplying network of these these house churches or micro that that allows for a a different expression at the 20 versus 50.

I'm just curious, like, is it watching the worship? Is it watching the the teaching? Is it give freedom for the church sent there, centralized, decentralized? Jump, just curious, kind of, you know, how will we do that way?

Yeah, that what we'll do to the same way we do church planting. So like if you came to Community Church and you're a church planter, you can either plant a church with new thing and we can great, you could be a part of us and here's the four R's that we follow, or you can go do your own thing and we will bless you and send you. Have to do that. So the same thing with a micro church expression. If you want to be a three-seed community, then yeah, you'll use our big idea content and you'll use our small group stuff, and we will provide coaching. We'll provide a leadership community. In fact, I'll tell you what, anybody's listening, I'll give them my email address: Dave Ferguson at Community Christian dot org. They first increase network. We'd love to talk to you about this. You gonna do it? We will give you a personal coach. We will give you a monthly leadership community. We will give you a relational connection, and we'll also give you all the equipment we possibly can. And then also all of our big idea content. The commitment we'd make from them, those that they use that and they develop people as three-see Christ followers.

What what attributes, what are you looking for for someone? What what characteristics are you looking for for somebody to lead like like a house location, something like this?

I think one of the great things about this too is some of the people that you may not have in the past go like, "I don't know if I want to apply to church because you're about to invest you know a hundred thousand dollars or half a million dollars in which puts a really kind of an exceptional kind of leader." This opens you up to a lot of folks. There's a lot of folks that can you know have a job and lead a micro expression of the church. And so I would say probably a lot of people, probably they probably have a gift of evangelism. They may have a gift of apostleship. They have a passion for those kind of things. And what we're playing with the idea now is that we would actually come in it with them for 18 months, and they'd be willing to accompany with us for 18 months. We can invest in them for 18 months. They can invest us. We'd ask them to get an apprentice where they would sort of have a multiplier in it. And of 12 months, we'd kind of hopefully would multiply. We'd also reevaluate. Do you want to go on for another?

Year and a half, and or is this next six months gonna kind of bring it to a close? But right now I'm looking for people who are willing to experiment. That's awesome. I mean, post-COVID, like life, if nothing else is a big giant experiment in this. Every, oh my goodness, yeah.

Or to try, let's just try it now, do it and see. And the fun stuff on the digital side is like it's cost negligible in the grand scheme of things. You know, I've got a friend that is planting a Jade Earhart. You may know him through Exponential, but he does social media for Exponential at the conferences or something, at some video work. But he's doing a digital-only churching and growing into that. And I think he spent five dollars on a font. Like, he's getting his salary from somewhere else. He's contracting with other people. By the way, if you're looking for video work, Jade Earhart, include a link in the show notes. He's awesome. But what he's ultimately, I would, what he's doing is he's like, yeah, I'm using a platform called Discord that's free. I'm connecting with like almost a thousand video gamers at this point. And he's taking them through Four Fields, which is a free discipleship material. And he's reshaping it. And it's like, yeah, this is effective. He's got a hundred probably disciple makers, apprentices out there.

I attended one of his, what would he call a small group? It was they were playing a game called Terraria, a video game. And so literally I'm watching them play video games and then I'm listening to them dialogue and talk about the Bible and literally quoting scripture while playing video games. And I'm like, this is crazy. I could never do this. But then I look down and I see that he's got like thirty-some kids watching this, like in real time. And I'm like, it's a new freakin' world, man. It's just, that's awesome. Your father. So also do it. And so it really does come down to this level of let's find ways to experiment for the kingdom. The gasoline that was spewed on the COVID situation that brought about the explosion, let's figure out the new thing to do to kind of work through that, which really gets us into this idea of a digital church. And so that's some of what you know, Jade as an example is working on.

There's definitely other guys, guys like DJ Soto, who's doing some incredible stuff in virtual reality where he's got hundreds of people at this point. I think he's got three different, maybe four different church expressions in virtual reality on different continents and even on different platforms at this point. He just opened up one in PlayStation VR. So he's doing these works as a pastor. Though sometimes we look at like the Acts two, the ecclesiology of what a church is, and rather than looking at the biblical model of, well, you know, how do you do communion in virtual? Actually, DJ Soto as an example, he actually got made fun of. BBC did a news show on him. Fox, CNN, The Daily Show ran a skit on him because he was baptizing people in virtual reality. People, I was in village, I mean literally like an avatar.

Let's have the conversation. Yeah, literally someone would baptize an avatar in virtual reality. Yeah. And he was calling it baptism. BBC picked up the news story and it just blew up. Now, you know, and I don't want to speak for DJ, but we've talked about it on this podcast. It's an outward symbol. People were seeing it. He did not, the person who got baptized, the water molecules did not actually like touch skin. But we're also saying, you know, there's no power in the water molecules. It's a symbolism. It's a symbolic act done in front of people. There were other people in the room watching the virtual reality avatars and on screen. So it counts.

What tensions do you feel? I'm just curious, you know, why not? What tensions do you feel with conversations like that as you look at what a traditional church's ecclesiology would be executing some of those things in digital-only?

You're probably asking the wrong guy. Yeah, I don't. High, mostly I don't really see. I don't really feel the tensions as much as more it's more I just see lots of opportunity. And it's more a curiosity. So like when you said he's baptizing, I'm like, how do you baptize people online? So for me, just even physically doesn't show up as tension, social. But like curiosity, like, oh, how could I do that? That's partly personality.

Yeah, well, you're leaning into it as opposed to, you're, oh, by nature of who you are, you're gonna be more apt to, hey, let's lean in and try to figure this out as opposed to, you know, I hate to say the analogy, but I'm an old guy, get off my lawn kind of thing. Somebody quoted that to me recently. Sorry, was a bad pun. But you, there's that, there's an opportunity if nothing else, right, to look at church in a new way, whether it's through micro locations, whether it's through a digital-only. The real power comes down to individuals being able to do this. From a church planting side, we need digital church planters. From a micro location side, we need people to be the apprentice to the level that they're on mission and then unleashed out to go and create these relationships, work through their circle of influence to grow and disciple someone to that point.

Now, there may be some people listening, and I've worked on their staffs, I've had conversations with these people, that leadership doesn't lean in like you do. They lean back. I had a conversation with a, I want to say he was a youth guy, but in this season he's been operating as an online pastor. And the church had never done it before. He loves this idea of being an online pastor, online ministry, discipleship, online. These things. This is just one story of many. But the church coming out of this COVID season, they're reverting back to normal. So rather than leaning in, we're leaning out.

Give some advice to this guy. How would you? Does he try to convince? Does he try to leave? Does he just stay put and where he's at? Like, how do you handle that tension right now at a church?

Well, I was talking to our staff. We had our all-staff meeting this morning. And basically we just gone through and we've repurposed and kind of refocused everyone's role. And a whole huge number of people who weren't before now part of our online team and part of our communications team and all that. And part of it I said is, if our mission has stayed the same, and our mission statement is to help people find the way back to God, and the way we do that, it's like we've already talked about three-seat Christ Fox. I said, in order to do that though, I think in the future, on time, yeah, right now and going forward for the foreseeable future, there's three, there's three different customers out there. There's three different kinds of people we're trying to reach. I call them stop people, yield people, and go people.

The go people are gonna, our folks are going like, I can't wait to get out of this house. You open up anything, I'll show up. The yield people are, I'll leave, but I'm gonna be cautious because I wanna make sure it's safe. And stop people are people I'm not leaving unless I have to. And I think what we're seeing is we're seeing maybe beyond that because who knows when COVID-20 shows up or whatever else is next. And if you really are serious about, like in our language, help people find the way back to God, or reaching people who are far from God, you have to figure out ways to reach all three of those people. And the only way you're gonna reach a whole bunch of those yield people and all those stop people is going to be online.

And it's already evidenced. I mean, some of the churches that are now opening up, most of them that aren't opening up, I mean, they're seeing, you know, sometimes as low as twelve percent, but nobody's bumping past thirty or forty percent of their normal attendance before. Well, where are those people? Right? They're yield or they're stop. They're staying at home. And so to not have an online presence, so I mean, first, I think if I was coaching this guy and say, hey, I take this back to your lead pastor, your senior pastor. Say, hey, I think the future kind of looks like this. And if we're serious about reaching people and paying our staff, we better reach these, we better do these things. And at that point, if the answer's still no, then you probably find another job.

It's interesting with your stop, yield, and go. Uh-huh. There may be another category. I don't know. It doesn't fit neatly. And so maybe you don't consider it. But you got me thinking. Those are all people that fit within the physical model of church, right? So stop, yielding, go assumes that they're attending a physical building. And in the stop, you know, they used to. Yeah, right, right. What about? And I'm just curious because you're nationally known. And so you've got a potentially a broad reach. Do you see traction outside of the Chicago area? Or are there people who engage with your church online as a result, but maybe live in different cities or states, even? Like, what's your footprint look like?

Yes, I mean, I don't, I haven't got the updated stats on the last three weeks, probably on these particular numbers. But as of the first seven or eight weeks into just being just online, yeah, we were in fifteen hundred cities and forty countries.

Oh, you mentioned that you did say, yeah. So yes, I mean, it's definitely happening. And some of the folks, I mean, they're there. We do six different services on Sunday. And some are there the same service. It's like they're sitting the same queue. They're the same service guy from Australia. He's Mike McGarity. Hey, he's there. Hey, checking in, you know? Dude from India checking in. Talk to me about the responsibility you feel towards dude in India.

I love that. I don't want to make the, okay, let's make that the example. So like the endgame with discipleship is to get that dude in India for you would be to make him an apprentice to launch out. Like, do you look at dude in India the same way?

Yeah, yeah. In fact, in fact, when we talk about what we're gonna do, these micro jerseys, three-C communities, I mean, it's not so much my friend and then the other guy, but it's the guy in Australia. I'll use Mike. Hey, you know, Mike's been there every week. He would, I think, I think if we launched this thing, I think Mike would be the kind of guy going, hey, I would love to do one of these in my neighborhood. Can I, can I be it? Kindly, the three-seek community. And we would say yes. And we would build a relationship with him. And we would equip him and we'd coach him. We'd have a leadership team he'd be a part of. And off we'd be off and running.

Talk to me. I think that's the thing that's awesome about this whole thing. So you're used to multiplication. And I love this. It's built into your DNA. You're already a church planter. You're talking about this. You know, there's a level of, okay, this guy's in Australia. I want to empower him to do this. But I really, he's in Australia. I can't control him. I've got to create a culture and then unleash him. Like, what's quality control? What does that look like when you actually let go? What does letting go look like in a situation like this?

Well, I mean, again, I think first of all, I think control's a little bit of an illusion, you know? So you don't really have control. You only have whatever people give you. And so I would want to come in there with him like, okay, hey, how we gonna do this thing? And like we talked about before, it'd be like, let's try this for eighteen months. And he would make a commitment to us. And we may include it to him that we would try to just trust each other. I like to lead with a yes on that kind of thing.

Of stuff we trust each other and we go forward and then we reevaluate somewhere around the 12 month mark. If I had Scott Beck said that to me, which was fascinating, that the most important quality online is trust. And that's why I, and I thought that was more, I thought that boy, if your church can become a trusted brand, I mean then you have tremendous opportunity. If they, if they're not, if they're skeptical or people are, you know, how are you, you know what kind of a leader are you or what are you doing with your money or why you trying to influence me this way, then you don't have it. Then this thing doesn't scale. But if people trust you and you're, it's well-placed, sky's the limit.

This has been a great podcast, man. Dave, I want to thank you for your time. You're doing, I think what you're up to is really, really important and I'm glad you're kind of spreading the good news and the opportunity about this awesome. Hey, just maybe even as we're landing the plane, any any closing thoughts?

One of the things that was passed to me and that I've been passing along to our church is a really simple slogan. It's kind of based on that, based on that verse, you know, where says I didn't give you a spirit of fear or timidity but of power and love and self-discipline. And I think it's, I've been kind of trying to operate this way where fear sees a crisis, faith sees opportunity. For fear seeds of crisis, faith sees opportunity. And I think if we will begin to look at the situation then the lens that God and the Spirit wants to give us, I think there are tremendous opportunities and particularly what you're championing for the church and church planting and multiplication and discipleship. So I'm grateful for it. You're doing awesome.

Yeah, super, super appreciative of that. And let us not live in a spirit of fear but let's grab it and pull whole circle and with God's help work through it. So thank you very much, sir, for the time. For Dave, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Hey, everybody, thanks for jumping on the podcast with us and we'll see you next time here at the show. Y'all have a good day.