EP090: Greg Nettle & Digital Lessons Learned in this Global Pandemic

Episode 90 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning. Jeff here. All right, this podcast episode is a little special, special place in my heart. By the way, I make a big deal. My birthday is coming up. I'm going to be 43.

This is my second birthday podcast. My first birthday podcast, I like the birthday podcast. I consider them to be a special type of person. I'm inviting them in for my birthday podcast. It's not just a run-of-the-mill person. Like, this has to have value. My first birthday podcast is the fact was my mother, my mother Linda Reed. She leads two small groups. Actually, I think she's getting ready to launch a third online small group. Hey, that's like my mommy. Go back and listen. We'll throw the link in the show notes. You've got it there. But for this one, episode 90 here, yeah, we're pulling somebody who's kind of special near and dear to my heart. Greg Nettle, president of Stadia Church Planning. Yeah, just this small little organization you may have heard me talk about it a time or two. Greg is visionary. Greg is a genius. Well, I call Greg a genius because he agrees with me on the digital thing, therefore he has to be a genius. Okay, maybe some ego issues there. But seriously, it's rare in my life when I find myself surrounded by people who have a vision along the same line that I am. I'm used to being the guy that has to sell vision, not the guy who hears vision from others. And Greg, I have just this honor of saying Greg and I have been on the same page since the first day that I met him some eight or nine months ago. And Greg and the Stadia team has been phenomenal in this COVID experience to work with and to try to help churches, physical churches, digital churches, help them thrive, grow, multiply in this season. And so Greg has been doing a church planning podcast that has been focused on digital churches. Greg has been very outspoken in this COVID season when it comes to thinking digital, being digital first. And so has really championed this idea and enabled us with Stadia to come alongside and champion as well. And so I thought, hey, you know what, let's actually get Greg on the podcast for my birthday. It's kind of a big deal. And let's learn what he's learning in this COVID season. We talk everything from digital approach, physical and digital working together. We talk digital only church planning. We're talking digital first planting, digital launch that eventually will grow into a physical campus. We're talking micro. That's the thing that I love about Greg is he is so broad in his understanding and knowledge of the different types of church that, man, it's just something that you're gonna learn. You're gonna have to run. You're gonna have to keep up with him because he's going a million miles an hour. But the conversation is rich along the way. So for the conversation, for my birthday conversation, for episode 90, here I'm bringing myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, and of course Greg Nettle, president of Stadia Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm calling Digital Lessons That I've Learned in This Global Pandemic. Okay, everybody, there you go. Hey, just even to get started a little bit here because the audience may not know you, you're new to the podcast here. Um, just Greg, tell us your ministry story.

Jeff, my first real ministry, it's kind of crazy. I was 23 years old and I planted a church in Dublin, Ireland. And what I did, I would never allow someone to do today, right? If they were planting with Stadia. I led a team of college students over for the summer, and then at the end of the summer they all flew home and I stayed by myself to launch this new church. And it was a wild experience and one that kind of set the trajectory of my life about reaching people who are far from God, how to exegete a culture, but most importantly my own dependence on God. Man, it was rugged and rough. It was wildly successful, you know. After two years we had about 10 people involved in the church. So it was a really challenging time, but I learned tons about myself, about my relationship with God, and really about church planting. After that, I ran out of money at the end of two years. And you know, back in those days I had, you know, grandma supporting there for 15 a month and the biggest church I had supporting me was 100, you know, 100 a month. And I just didn't have the heart to come back and re-raise all my support for another couple years. And so this tiny church in northern Ohio called me to be their senior pastor. I was 26 years old and single, and they were desperate, about 100 people. And little did I know that I would spend the next 25 years at what's become the River Tree Church movement in northern Ohio. And you know, by God's grace, over that time we had a great run, grew from about 100 people to more than 3,000 with four campuses. And then Stadia called me, much to my surprise. I finished, thought I'd finish off my next 20 years at Rivertree. And Stadia and God called me to become president of Stadia Church Planting. And so that's kind of it in a nutshell.

Wow, so like from the international church, struggling to growing it domestically here in the U.S., to Stadia now, where some of the lessons and the things that you've learned, you're now helping others kind of process through so they don't make the same mistakes that you made?

Yeah, I didn't, you know, you look back over your life at what God's doing and His plan for your life, and you obviously don't know it until it's revealed. But certainly, you know, the church planting that I did in Ireland and then at Rivertree, the way I even got to know Stadia was God gave me a vision to plant churches throughout Ohio. Our vision in Ohio was to make it hard to go to hell in Ohio. And you know, we were just blatant about Michigan can go to hell because we just don't care about them. But in Ohio we wanted it, you know, we're going to make it hard to go to hell for them. And Stadia came alongside of us. I had had enough credibility in Ohio to gather churches all over the state. And you know, over the next 10 years of kingdom synergy partnerships there in partnership with Stadia, we planted close to 50 churches throughout the state of Ohio and South America together. And so that was an incredible church planting experience, little you know knowing then again that I was going to become the president of Stadia. But it is all those lessons that we learn along the way that I really believe that if we're faithful in those things that God entrusts us with, be it ten people in Ireland or a hundred people in northern Ohio, or a vision for church planting that started with six of us in a basement of a church, you know, in Ohio and ended up being nearly 50 church plants, that God just keeps entrusting us with more along the way.

That's awesome. I tell you, Greg, you've been influential in my life just in the eight months, probably, that I've known you. I can remember waking up one morning at like, well, whatever time it was, but literally in the middle of the night you had booked an appointment to meet with me like via Zoom. And I don't know who Greg Nettle is. I barely know who Stadia is. And I can just remember jumping on the Zoom call with the invite to come out to Colorado to have the conversation, talk about digital only planting. And just the thing that stuck with me was it's rare in my life when I have conversations with people who have the same vision that I have, just in my life as God has led me towards, hey, let's champion digital. Let's help churches figure out how to do digital. Honestly, pre-COVID, digital was like a bad word in some sectors. And you, um, it resonated very strong with me where it was like, hey, this guy's on the same page as you were, as you are, as I am. So I don't know what the language that was kind of weird, but how did you get to this place of digital? What was your path to realize that, hey, digital's an opportunity, even pre-COVID? Digital is the opportunity that we, the church, need to jump on? What were you saying?

Well, I think it's an attitude we all have to look at, Jeff, in our lives. You know, I think, you know, we at Stadia and I personally value being continuous, continual learners. And you know what God, what's God up to? And listening enough and watching enough, um, what God's doing throughout the United States and ultimately around the world, and learning from others, learning from the business world, Jeff. You know, this idea of scaling and digital, um, businesses have been doing this for decades and the church was just way behind on that. And I'm thinking to myself, my goodness, why aren't we thinking in those terms of scalability and using the internet as a tool for good for sharing the gospel and so forth? And so, you know, when I get to talk with you, it was just as fun for me because I think none of us knew. You know, we're all starting to connect and going, what if, you know, what could be? And so that was really fun when a group of us got together in a room and actually started dialoguing about that, which is what I was calling you about. But you know, it really just was birthed out of saying, what could be? And is this a possibility? And really for me, talking to some of my business, really close friends, and saying, tell me about how you're using digital and more importantly, talk to me about the future of digital. What do you see over the next two years, five years, ten years with digital capability and where's everything headed? And when I started hearing what was coming in the digital realm, that's when I said, we've got to start exploring, exploring this. And that's what brought you and I together.

I love that. And it's interesting, even pre-COVID, as we were having the conversations, I can remember I came on staff. We, I met you physically. I want to say October, probably September, October of 2019, came on staff working with Stadia in January, six weeks before COVID hit. And those six weeks were interesting, you know, because we literally having conversations. My title is Director of Digital Church Planting. My job is to literally plant digital only expressions of church. And pre-COVID, like that was digital only. What do you mean digital only? Like no building? You're not going to meet in physical space? You know, and literally I've had pastors tell me like, Jeff, you're sinning. You're taking people out of the bride of Christ by doing this. And now interestingly, a couple of those same pastors were the ones who called me after COVID asking them to help them broadcast because they could no longer get people into the building. So I'm not really sure how much of that was like opinion versus maybe theological concerns at the end of the day. But it's been really interesting to see how COVID has maybe made people more aware of the opinions and how there's an opportunity to overcome those opinions with thought. And so I know for you, Greg, you've been doing some phenomenal podcasts through the church planning, church planners podcast of what you're doing and really focusing on this idea of church planting in digital space. So you know, as you've had a lot of these conversations, and we'll link to the link in the show notes, oh, what are you learning in this COVID season when it comes to digital planting?

Well, guys, there's so much to unpack here, Jeff. And again, you're kind of the guru on this. But one of the delights of being president of Stadia that I have is having the privilege of interacting with megachurches across the country and around the world, with smaller churches across the country and around the world with digital and VR and just all these, you know, micro and prison churches. And it's that's one of my favorite things is just learning from everybody and networking.

Together and then saying, "Okay, well where do we head with this?" And one of the challenges in the United States that when I became president of Stadia, that you know, if we absolutely have to plant, we got to get to the point where we're planting at least 10,000 churches a year in the United States, which will then, you know, play out in planting tens of thousands of churches globally. At the same time, well, the challenge with that is to scale our church planting efforts in the United States in the traditional model of church planting where it's gonna cost anywhere from four hundred thousand dollars to plant a church in Cleveland, Ohio to two million dollars per church in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's not scalable, right? And so constantly I've been thinking and praying about how do we drive the price point down? How do we multiply disciple making? And so of course we've been involved with micro churches and the house church movement and all, you know, R&D and all of that stuff. But man, when I started thinking about digital and how that could multiply out and the price point of digital, and certainly you can spend as much as you want doing digital, but you can also spend as little as you want. Seriously, in what I'm learning, you know, I look at Jade Earhart who's doing his gamification church plant. And when I first met with, you know, Jade again last October, I think they had, you know, maybe 80 people involved in their gaming church. And I just had Jade on our podcast and they now have 800 people, you know, involved in their church. And I was talking to Jade about, you know, how much have you spent? And you know, what did it cost you? And he's like, "Gosh, I think we've now spent about four hundred dollars on equipment." You know, and he's not taking a salary and he's done that intentionally because he's bivocational. But here's a guy, you know, that in our traditional model of church planting probably wouldn't even have passed assessment. And I said that to Jade, right? That's what I love about him. You know, he's this young guy who's in the gaming world and God is using profoundly to build His church and reach people. And one of the ways Jade's doing it is he's multiplying leaders and training them in his disciple-making movement, and that's allowing them to grow rapidly. And so I think one of the drivers in this that we have to look at is just simply this way, manner of church planting is going to make church planting available to a whole generation of leaders that may not have, you know, wanted to go out and raise a million dollars to plant a church, felt called to do that, or maybe didn't even have a different skill set than the traditional church planter has, has certainly has a different vision than, you know, I was meeting with a church planter yesterday for a couple hours who's just crushing it, Patrick Holden, and planting in Columbus, Ohio, but all online right now. And I just loved it when he said, "You know, has anybody ever thought about reaching a million people with their church?" And I said, "Man, I said it's just all about dreaming and God's vision. There's no reason for us not to think in those terms these days when it comes to digital and no boundaries."

One of the things that drives me most crazy right now, Jeff, is when I hear someone say, "Yeah, but I'm stuck in a little church in Shelby, Ohio in this little town." And I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. One is stuck anywhere anymore. The digital boundaries take you everywhere that God wants you to be." And so you might be based out of Shelby, Ohio in some small town, but my goodness, you can be reaching into China and Africa and California and Detroit. It's your imagination, which are God's. A creative God and a God of imagination, right?

That's so true. And even, you know, Tyler Sansom, who I know was on your podcast, he's in court in Indiana, which is, you know, a small town as well, and he's getting, you know, reach as well as engagement around the country. And so really what we're doing in this season is we're redefining what church is.

Now, Jeff, let's be clear too though. We're not anti-anti-physical location. You know, the whole digital term, you know, the Stadia uses now, that's the combination of physical and digital. And I love that. Now we have a cohort of church planters getting ready to start together that are going to be purely digital, and I love that.

So you're asking me what I'm learning? Here's one of the things that I think God revealed to me recently, or I just ate bad pizza, but I think it was God. And I think God said, "Greg, I am not just the God, the tangible presence of God in the physical location. I am also the tangible God in the digital space, and My kingdom doesn't know boundaries." And I think we have to recognize that as we listen to a podcast together, as we're on a Zoom call together, the tangible presence of God is with us. It's wherever there are believers gathered, that's where Jesus is. And so it be it in a physical location, but certainly also in a digital. And I think theologically we have to recognize that and take advantage of that.

And so when we think about moving forward and the opportunities, I think we have to look at both of those spaces. If our digital expression of God doesn't play out in our real-time lives every day, then I would say we're not making disciples, right? We all agree on that. But if our digital expression is playing out in that in our real lives, and I'd say we're absolutely making disciples. And conversely, if my real life isn't reflecting Jesus in my digital presence, then I'd say we're not making disciples, right? And so this is really important. It's all wrapped up in one because, you know, the boundaries between digital and physical are going to become blurrier and blurrier over the next several years.

Yeah, and so you're right. It goes two ways towards that. We have, you know, I use the phrase passport. We've got a digital passport. We have a physical passport. We have to show that in both ways. And it's one of the things I love about Stadia towards, "Hey, let's help churches, physical churches, understand digital, understand the strengths of physical, the strengths of digital, and how they work together towards that." And it's been awesome working with churches in this season towards that, even to the point of digital church planting like you're talking about with Patrick and Jade and some of these others.

Starting people ask me all the time, "Hey, how's Stadia doing this year in the midst of this pandemic and so forth?" And you know, by God's grace and with all of you who are listening, your partnership, we're having our best year in the history of the organization. You know, we'll plant more than 400 churches this year. And that's largely because we're watching church planters who have the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship and tenacity, and they're saying, "God's called us to plant a church. We're going to figure it out." And I love seeing them with their ideas and the creativity they're using via YouTube and Zoom and social media and all of these different avenues to plant churches, launch churches that may have a physical presence, may not have a physical presence. You know, but the idea is they believe in advancing the gospel. And so, you know, I think back, okay, when we think about the necessity of the church moving forward, I'll never forget when I was at Rivertree. So I don't remember at the time we're running 2,000 people or whatever. We have one building. It's a big building. We've done the big building, you know, campaign, 10 million dollars, whatever. But we're out of space. And so we're thinking, you know, okay, we're gonna put up the 70 million dollar campus. True story, right? And we have Visioneering come out and they do the charette and all the stuff, you know, and we spend the money with them to. We have the farm. We're gonna buy a hundred acres and so forth. And I remember having one of those God experiences as I'm praying and saying, "Man, at the end of my days, do I want to be able to look back on my ministry legacy and say, 'God, look at this amazing campus we built, 70 million dollar campus when it's all built out, 10,000 people are in attendance, they're being discipled. Man, this is great stuff, right? Phenomenal children's ministry, teen ministry. I love all that.' Or do I want to look back on my legacy and see the divorce rate drop in the communities? Do I want to see the adoption, you know, the foster care system empty because we've adopted all the children out of foster care? Do we want to see the prison rate go down because we are actually working with troubled youth and teens and all of those things?"

And it suddenly struck me. I wanted the latter. I wanted to hear God say, "Well done," for life transformation, not for a bunch of buildings. No, I'm not again anti-building at all. We were in a big building. But that led us to multi-site. Okay, and we were one of the first churches that went multi-site. And so it's just innovating in a time. And thank God, because that was right before the economy crashed. And so thank God we didn't, you know, go down that path. In retrospect, but I'll never forget standing in front of Rivertree at all of our gatherings, weekend gatherings, and saying, "Hey, we are not going to buy the farm. We're going to pour our resources into the community. We're going to move multi-site, reach out." And in every gathering, people stood up and they cheered God and applauded at that decision.

I think we're at one of those times again where we're gonna look at this and say, "Okay, how can we further advance the gospel, transform lives in an even more effective way?" And so, you know, if I were still in a physical location, I wouldn't stop that physical location. I would just say, "How can digital be used now to help us as a tool to make better disciples? To use micro gatherings, you know, so that we don't have to bring everybody into one location every week, but now we can have a thousand micro gatherings of eight to twenty people in homes going on at the same time who are part of our, you know, the local church and serve together and transform the community." And I think that opportunity is a game changer for the future of the church.

Yeah, there's definitely a drawing. We see it where the it's online, offline. The gospel that we learned in our online world has to influence, has to affect our offline relationships. And so, you know, we talked about this two-way, the physical and the digital. As we're processing and doing things digitally, it's going to exude itself in the real world. And so things like micro locations definitely play a part of it. Similarly, a church in this season, a physical church utilizing digital to connect to the community, man, what an incredible opportunity we have now to think outside of the building and find more creative ways to get into the community.

Carrie Newhoff just wrote an article about this this week. I'll put it in the show notes. It was like eight reasons why churches of today are gonna church of tomorrow are gonna fail. Whatever, he's so good at creating those lists, right? But one of them was centered around the idea of locus of the locus of ministry. The focus of your ministry cannot be in the physical building. Like, even setting aside the digital step, like there was a season, actually a church up in your neighborhoods who gave me the idea, Crossroads over in Cincinnati. "Hey, we're not calling them campus pastors anymore. You're community pastors. You're not pastor of the people in this building. You're pastor of everybody out there. Go meet people. Go engage people and get out of the building." Having that missional approach even in the physical realm to start to engage and pastor people physically.

Yeah, I think, Jeff, one of the most important things that we've been learning and one of the light bulbs that went off.

Off for me personally and I think for all of Stadia and that I'm trying to share with as many church leaders as I possibly can is we've got to quit thinking of church as location and to start thinking of it as platform, right? And so, you know, historically we've looked at a church as a location and people come to us. When we start thinking of church as platform, you can have a location, but I would start thinking of it as multiple locations and communities that you're engaging. So, you know, so that's multi-site. But then I'm thinking, let me make it very personal.

So my mom's 81 years old. Her health—she'd been in great health up until recently, but at the beginning of this pandemic her health started failing, okay? So she's been in and out of the hospital and out of rehabilitation centers over the last five months. In fact, she's in a new rehabilitation center today.

Here's the deal: my mom cannot go to church, okay? Number one, she's highly at risk for COVID, so even if the church is regathering, she can't go. But number two, she's not in the physical locale to do that. However, if our local church looked at themselves further—even, you know, dreaming about platform—there are rehabilitation centers all over our community here in Northern Ohio. What if they were, you know, broadcasting in the weekly gatherings into those rehabilitation centers for all those patients during COVID but and beyond? And so those people could gather and, you know, be the church together in those centers.

And so I think it's: how do we think creatively? How do we take our gatherings and into prisons and start prison gatherings, which, you know, we're watching, you know, churches do even now? How do we think about the church's platform? How do we think to ourselves, "Oh my gosh, we have ten people, you know, meeting in India. It's crazy." But how do we disciple that leader?

I was talking to a church planter recently, and they now have people listening, joining their weekend broadcast gatherings from like seven different states. And he said, "You know, would you wait or would you start to try to build community there?" And I said, "Look, when I was pastor at Rivertree, one of the things I did in the early—all through the ministry there—is I was always discipling, you know, six, eight, ten men and women leaders to multiply leadership throughout the church. I said, and we don't—we meet one hour a week or two hours a week, and we do that discipleship. So at the end of the year, they'd be ready to do the same. Now, online, you can do the same thing. Find those people in those states right now, right? You're gonna be my leader. I'm gonna be discipling. Pick five or six of them. Meet with them once a week online on Zoom to disciple them so that they can become—to use your term, in Brian Tomson's terms—community pastors in that state. There's no reason not to multiply out right now everywhere."

Yeah, there is so much power if the church would embrace—if we would really take on this idea of discipleship online and realize that through reach, through engagement, we can really create disciple makers through these virtual spaces. And the internet becomes a distribution network for the gospel where we are now creating and birthing new things in the physical or in the digital-only realm.

I love this idea of church's platform and have spent so much time through the podcasts and blogs really talking about it. But it really comes down to this idea: church, we have to give up this idea of doing ministry, of doing services, of being, of doing church, and instead start to empower others to be the church. You know, I even fall back on Airbnb, and we've—I've wrote a blog about this. We'll link in the show notes. But Airbnb essentially makes more than the top five hotel chains combined. Airbnb does not have any hotel property. They do not have any cleaning crews. They have little to no employee structures on staff. Airbnb crowdsources a platform that enables other people to rent out their homes, their spaces, whatever. And that's how Airbnb makes money—not off providing the service, but providing an opportunity for others to provide the service.

And I just get stuck on this idea: what if the church took that approach? What if instead of building these mega buildings, or even in the season as we're trying to put all the energy towards going back into the buildings, what if we learned something and started to break the church up into smaller, more personal ways and get connected into communities, get connected into areas that maybe your church wouldn't even be able to reach into? But if we did it by discipling and training others and unleashing them to go, I mean, what a huge potential the church would have if we would look at church differently in this season.

Well, I think, Jeff, too—I think for me it's very appealing. My wife and I have talked about this throughout COVID. But you know what? What if we, rather than going to the big auditorium of our of the local church that we're part of for the weekend, what if we invited three or four or five other families and said, "Let's be the church," and we just met in one another's homes, rotate it, you know, every weekend? And we gather and we actually have brunch together, and then we engage with the digital church online—our local church's presence online. But then the thing that I love is now the local church could actually set up even serving projects for, you know, a hundred micro churches like us, and we all gather to serve together.

And here's the thing: I was thinking about my neighbor who just isn't interested in coming to the big auditorium with me at a weekend gathering. I actually think he'd be very interested if I'd invite him over to brunch and say, "And by the way, we're going to be, you know, doing this church thing online, just watching, you know, an hour together, and then discussing what was taught," and so forth. I think he'd be very open to that.

So I think we have to think in those terms of how can we, you know, do outreach and discipleship? But back to your point, it's empowering people to be those leaders. And I actually think, you know, theologically again, the oikos—the house church movement in the New Testament—I mean, it's very biblical that was how the church multiplied.

So true. There it's fascinating. And even shifting a little bit here, one of the things that I love about Stadia, and actually I was talking with a planter yesterday—and he was starting asking me—it's not a Stadia planter. It's a planter with another organization. And he was asking me digital-type questions, like digital-first. "Hey, I'm trying to plant, and..." And I just asked them, I was like, "Hey, the organization that you're working with, are they coaching you? Are they talking? Like, what are they telling you?" And the guy—the guy says to me—this is unfortunate—but the guy says, "Honestly, Jeff, that organization's been AWOL. It's been absent. It's been dark. They haven't—they haven't said anything towards this."

And so I kind of give them some coaching advice, and we're trying to figure out how to help—how we can in the position, you know, that we're in. Of course. But it's one of these things where it's got to be hard in a season like this to lead an organization like where you are. Stadia is uniquely positioned, and we're already having conversations about multiple platform, multiple types of church—everything from, you know, the normal church, whatever normal is, to the micro. I know this coach for that digital. There's cohorts like we've been very experimental towards that. But really, like, you don't see that often in other—as I talk with other planting organizations, it's kind of rare.

Well, and obviously, Jeff, you know, I love all church planting and the organizations that God's privileged us to partner with. And I just think back, you know, to last year because it was so recent. But again, by God's grace, you know, because I really think that when we brought ten leaders from the tech industry—and you were part of it—the church world, and you know, Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of VMware, one of the largest software companies in the world, and Scott Beck, who's a serial entrepreneur and involved in digital platforms, and you know, we all gathered together in a room for thirty-six hours and started dreaming about digital church. And I think as church planters we have to constantly be innovating and saying, "What's God up to? And how do we advance the gospel in a way that is meaningful and effective?"

You know, here's the deal. I think that people are looking. I think here's my word to the existing church that's existing in the physical realm right now: I don't believe church will ever be the same again. You can try to do church like you've always done it, and so forth, and some of you will do that and you'll have a modicum of success. But the reality is, once people have tasted digital and they get the—you know, they can see that God's real in that—I have to go, "Okay, why are people? Why are we gathering physically?"

And I preached at a church physically this past weekend, and I have to tell you, it was good to be back together. And even though we were social distanced and had masks on, you know, before I preached and everything, it was still good to be in the tangible presence of God and in the tangible presence of people in a physical space, okay? I think that's important.

But here's what I think for the future with digital: I think you also can experience the tangible presence of God in the digital space, and you can also experience the tangible presence of people in the physical space. So what I would encourage churches to do is, if you're going to be in a physical location and it's a both-and—physical and digital—in the physical realm, ask yourself, "What can we deliver in the tangible presence of God, in the tangible presence of people, that we can't deliver online?"

And so as I'm looking at it, well, gosh, I think what I would want is more time before the gathering began or more time after the gathering finished so that we could hug physically when this is all over, and that we can converse, and maybe have the food trucks. And I know a lot of churches are doing that kind of stuff now. So think through that even more: what can we deliver in those two areas that would make, you know, go, "Man, I need to be part of that physical gathering"?

But then on the flip side, digitally, I think we need to be asking, "How can we deliver the tangible presence of God, in the tangible presence of people, in ways that they can't do it in a physical location?" And there are lots of things to do that. I, man, I'll tell you what, I've done a lot of teaching online for different churches, you know, recorded sermon, weekend gathering sermons for them. I've had a ball being creative in my teaching. You know, I'm teaching out of Jonah, and I'm recording with just in a pitch-black room with a candle under my chin like I'm in the belly of the whale right now. And then I'm going and I'm standing in front of a stone wall because now I'm Paul in prison teaching. And then I'm out in the woods somewhere because I'm now Adam in the garden of Eden. And I'm doing all that in one teaching setting with my iPhone. You know, and it's—and it's amazingly—it's low cost, but man, it is cool to watch. And not that I'm some great communicator, but you can be really creative with your communication in the digital space. I can't pull that off in the physical location, okay? I can maybe do the candle with Jonah, but the other things are a lot tougher to create—all those spaces in a thirty-minute teaching time or twenty-minute, whatever you do. So start thinking in terms of what can I...

Do in the digital, what opportunities do I have in that digital space? Um, to actually bring about the tangible presence of God and people in a more creative way than we can even do it in a physical way. But in the physical space, what can I do to do those same things that they can't do in digital realm? Take advantage of both is what I'm encouraging churches to do.

No, I love that. Hey, and I want to pull on that thread just a little bit because um, we've had that conversation. Not literally the guy in the whale, Jonah, but let me use that as an example here. So the content that you created, the engaging the environment, it's you know, dark candle, it's like you're in the whale. So the idea of doing that on church online, I think is phenomenal. Um, what if imparted by thinking digital first, scalable? We've had conversations like, hey, that teaching, do it digitally, but instead of preaching it real, maybe show it physically in the physical building as well. Talk to me, cause I'm just curious. The Jonah video in the room instead of preaching, what are you thinking?

I'm thinking that our people in this COVID season, if they're engaging online with digital church, they're going to be used to that when we come back to regathering. And I think it's going to give you more opportunity. Now, maybe you don't even have to do it every, you know, time you gather, but maybe you do it fifty percent of the time where you're doing a really cool creative teaching. Now, as someone who, you know, did multiple weekend gathering teachings a weekend for twenty-five years, Jeff, I'll tell you what, the idea of me being able to record a really cool teaching ahead of time at the beach or out in my front yard or wherever, and then not having even to be at the gathering on the weekend, that's going to keep us healthier as church leaders a lot longer than trying to be at four weekend gatherings or five or three or two, whatever you're doing, or even if it's just one. And you know, there's leaders out there who are preaching, you know, forty-eight weekends a year, and they're frying. They're burning out.

You take advantage of the digital that people have gotten used to. The key is it has to be something different. It has to. If you're if you're just going to stand at a podium and teach, don't put that on video. Do that live in your auditorium. I mean, nobody wants to watch. But if you're going to do something creative, do that on video in your auditorium and take advantage of that.

Love, love that. That's a great idea, really. That was the heart behind, you know, in talking about forty-eight sermons a week, uh, three, four, you know, services a week, and that that adds up over time. But if if we can, if we can scale the teaching digitally, you know, now you you can send that out to uh, to micro campuses. You you can send that out to different. We're already doing that essentially with multi-site campuses anyway. Um, going that approach, but adding that creative element, something that you can you cannot get in the physical realm. It would be very hard to block out an entire room, um, have a candle over and do something like that in the physical space for an entire message. But you can do that digitally so well, and now it can scale and really become a powerful influence, whether digitally or or physically.

Yeah, no, I I was saying this this young guy yesterday is I believe our God is a very creative God theologically, right? And so I think we need to be a reflection of that creativity um, I would say both in our weekend gatherings in physical space as well as our our digital gatherings, whatever that is. Creativity is key, and people in our society right now, they are just yearning for that, and they're used to that. If they're binging Netflix or whatever, they're you know, sports, sporting events, um, and and not to say, well, we've got to placate to the culture. That's not it. It's just a matter of how do we reach as many people as possible in the most effective way possible with the good news of Jesus Christ? And how do we multiply them as disciples? And for me, it's a lot more engaging and enjoyable if someone is doing it in a creative way rather than just sitting and talking to me for an hour.

That's that's so true right there. Well, hey, I I got you. Like, you're in this conversation, so and it would be this of me to not ask about leadership. So let's let's shift over to leadership. Let's let's talk about some stuff. You're you're leading a major national organization, church planting, thousand churches, scaling, hockey sticking up. Um, like, what's it like in this season? Uh, there's there's turmoil all over the place. COVID, race, like it's it's a very difficult season. What what's it like leading an organization um like this for the season?

Well, so again, Jeff, I think it's going to come back onto how do we look at times like this, but it's really all times, and saying, okay, we can kind of slumber and just kind of sit on our laurels during this time or even retreat a bit. Um, but I think the better way is saying, what opportunities does this provide? So for instance, Stadia, you know, we do tons of global church planting. Um, and one of the ways we do that is we take leaders on vision trips and and show them the church plants in India or South America or Africa or Thailand, and we take trips there and show them. Well, we can't, you know, all of our global travel has been canceled for the entire year. And so what do we do? Well, something we should have done two years ago, quite frankly. Um, we should have been developing virtual vision trips two years ago, but everything was going so well we weren't thinking about it. Well, now I'm so excited because, you know, in this year we'll be starting our first virtual vision trips. Man, this is going to be so fun.

So think about this. So, you know, normally the cost of going to India and the amount of time, uh, it's brutal. Um, and I've done that and it's great. There's nothing, nothing takes the place, don't get me wrong, of the physical trip and so forth. But you know what? There's tons of people that can't, can't make that trip, and or they don't, they're not going to make it. But give me three hours now, and and we'll take you on a virtual vision trip to plant a church in India, and you will be astonished.

You know what? What if you send somebody a package ahead of time, and you say, okay, open package number one now, and um, light that incense that's in that package, and that's going to give you the smell of the streets that we're on in India? And um, later on, we're going to take communion together in India, and we're all online, and we're actually seeing the streets of, you know, Calcutta, or we're in Nepal together, and and we're going to take communion, but we're going to use non-bread and juice, you know, and it's going to be something local that they would use as communion, and that's in our packet we sent out in advance.

You know, and so I'm just saying, man, the opportunities to be creative. As you watch, some organizations are dying during this time, and some are flourishing. And that's the way it's always been church. We have to flourish. We have to flourish. And so think in terms of the opportunities that are available to us, not in terms of the negatives and the challenges, and the opportunities to engage people in new and different ways.

And so one of the best ways to do that, Jeff, man, I'm just going to shamelessly plug, you know, we have these digital cohorts at Stadia right now, where I, it's one of the most fun things that I I think I think you you would, you know, shout this out because you're leading them. But you know, it's where cohorts are of people together. They're they're they're learning about, they're being coached by you and others on how to do digital and physical and make the transition. And I think we have, I don't know, close to one hundred fifty churches in those right now, and they're, it's growing like crazy right now.

But here's why I brought that up. The coolest thing is is that you're in a cohort of, let's say, eight people, eight leaders from eight different churches, and with your peers, and you're hearing their ideas, and and you're here, and you're able to bounce your ideas off, and sometimes people will go, man, that's a stupid idea, or man, that is cool, and I want to try that here. Here's an idea that so we've got this this this church planter I met with yesterday, and I um, he's telling me that, you know, they're because they're crushing it with social media and all their online stuff, and I said, who's doing all that stuff for you? And he said, well, I am, and my wife is, and then this other staff person, you know, on their brand new church plant, they you know, they haven't even launched physically and stuff. And so they're stretched to the limits.

And then I know of a church, one of our church partners at Stadia, that's a mega church, and they have a myriad of resources. They have multiple people on their tech team and all kinds of admins and social media people, and and they're using that stuff, but they're not being fully utilized in a digital realm. And I said to this guy, hey, what if I could get this church over here to partner with you guys? And it's really not even a financial investment for this big church. It's them saying we're willing to give five hours a week of three of our staff people to actually help you do your digital stuff so you can do other stuff. And so now this big church can say we're helping in this pandemic plant this church in Columbus, Ohio, and and that revs up that church because they can show about this Columbus church. And then, Jeff, I started thinking, what if we could do that with all of our new church plants in the digital realm? What if we could attach them to a mega church, just to get, you know, or two? I don't care if it's mega. If it's church of six hundred, whoever we, there are so many digital resource people out there in our churches that these church planters don't have yet. And what if we could partner them somehow? I I just think it's a really cool opportunity, Jeff.

Yeah, that you're what what you're doing is you're thinking outside the box, right? And instead of looking at at obstacles and hindrances and and woe is me, I I can't, I can't do this. Why why did God curse me in this? No, it's an opportunity. This is an opportunity to think different, to even redefine what what ministry looks like and how we can reach people in the middle of this COVID season. I love this idea of churches helping churches and helping plant churches and really starting to to grow together, not not for brand, um, not not for namesake, but but for the kingdom. That that's so good.

Okay, so here's here's another thing about leading during this time, Jeff. Um, I know I want I want people to hear this correctly because, you know, I am passionate about the church. But during this time, I think as leaders of churches, we need to be learning from business leaders, and it's not even necessarily about the business. I'm not talking about the financial side. I'm talking about businesses that have had online presence way ahead of the local church, right? I mean, you look at Amazon and Google. I mean, and you name it. Um, look at how how is the local business? How are they, you know, how are they making? If the if the screen door that people are looking at on their screen isn't appealing, I'm not going to that business. I mean, I I check out every restaurant, just about every new restaurant that I would go to, I would look at their web page before I would go to it. And if it's not appealing, I'm not going.

And so what can we learn from those local businesses and restaurants about how we design our front door on the screen, on our digital presence, right? And so I guess I would just say, really broaden who you whom you're going to learn from, and and don't think that you just have to be learning from other local churches and what they're doing. Look outside that scope in other realms because God's at work there as well.

So so good right there. Yeah, there's a lot a lot in the business realm, and they, you know, to use that, who is it? I'm even blanking.

On the guy's name who said it, oh man, anyway, someone has said, you know, the business world looks at obstacles as opportunities, um, and for them to take and to tackle. The church looks at obstacles as a threat and doesn't want to, and wants to attack it or run from it. And so for us to learn in this business season, in this COVID season, of how to take that business approach to experiment, to beta, to try things out, to be willing to partner for the kingdom's sake, not just for an individual's sake or for your own church's brand, is so good.

Hey, this has been an awesome conversation. Like, I could just sit here and literally just continue having this, and because I'm learning, I'm soaking. I love your approach to tackling this season of being aggressive in it and not backing off, not shying, even to pivot even in the digital realm. In this season, you know, there were plans we had pre-COVID, and we were very quickly pivoting and adjusting in early March to adjust. And now to see four or five months later, is this thing stretched out? The influence that we've been able to have, the churches that we've been able to impact, both within Stadia's network and outside, has been phenomenal. So man, thank you. You know, it's funny. I feel like I need to say this. Hey, thanks for the invite to be part of the team. Like, I just, the first time you and I talked, I remember this conversation, and it basically went like this: "Jeff, I think we need you here at Stadia, and I think you need us as well." So yeah, let's keep talking. And it's been phenomenal for me at a personal level to connect with the organization, to work as part of a team, to learn in this process, but to also be able to influence so many others in it. So sir, thank you for the invite. Thank you for the way that you lead here at Stadia. It's a phenomenal thing to be a part of.

Hey, Jeff, happy birthday, my friend, and let's do this for lots and lots more years together. And we won't stop until every child has a church. That's gonna be awesome.

Hey, so for Greg, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for jumping on the podcast. We'll see you next time here at the show. You all have a good day.