Platforms as Places: Rethinking the Digital Map

Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. All right. Hey everybody. I hope you can hear me.

If you can hear me, go ahead and say in chat, Jeff is cool. I don't know something. Uh, give me a heads up. Well, Simeonski is saying, "Hi, Jeff." So, I know I'm visible out there.

I am excited about today in the conference. Uh, let me clear off that other thing. Welcome to the digital missionary conference, specifically digital neighborhoods.

My name is Jeff Reid, founder of The Church Digital. And, uh, I listen, I'm excited about today. We, the church digital, we've been doing we've been around for like I don't know, seven, eight years.

I founded this thing way back in the day precoid and um we are uh just pushing forward uh equipping a mobilizing digital missionaries uh to operate in digital virtual space.

Uh most people think we're crackpots, but you know what? Some people occasionally say things like, "Wow, you know what? This is the future." And and and it's interesting.

I would always argue it's not the future. It's actually happening today. We may be bleeding edge, but the people we're reaching digitally and virtually are not the people that are going to buildings.

It's a completely It was funny. My own pastor uh looked at me today uh on Sunday and he's like, "You know what, Jeff, you are really reaching a different people group." Now, that's that's an interesting concept.

The idea of people groups in in digital context. And that's a lot of what we're going to get into in this conference today. But hey, let's let's do this.

Grab your keyboards. I've been seeing a lot of this happening. I want to hear right now in chat. Where are you from? Give us an update.

Where are you from? And go ahead and tag what time it is. It's 11:00 a.m. here Eastern. Excited about that. Ocala. Oh, Jose, I see you now.

Jose is from Ocala. Uh Lima, Peru. Excited about that. Michigan, uh, Ohio, as long as you're not an Ohio State fan, I'm good there.

Indiana, uh, originally from South Korea, Albania, K Cadis, how you doing, my friend? Excited about Cadis. Glad he's he's jumping on. It's 5:00 PM there.

Uh, Cadence, stick around as long as you can before you you knock out sleep today. South Africa. Uh, Keegan there. Listen, it is so exciting to see how the idea of digital missionaries is going and growing at a global scale.

And we're really going to highlight a lot of that with with the conference today. Um, so with the Church Digital, let me just go ahead and give you a couple tidbits and heads up on on who we are and what we're doing.

Some of you may be new to the Church Digital and and and I love that with this conference. Let me give you a tip.

Lean in. Dig into the conversations. Engage in chat. Dialogue with people. When when we go to breakouts, attend a breakout. If if uh and after the breakouts, swing by a table, talk to a sponsor, talk to the you know, us with the church digital or just talk to random people.

Like I'm looking here and we've had hundreds of people register for this conference literally around the the globe. I'm seeing multiple continents represented. Uh Cala right now is in Stockholm, Sweden, Monterey, California.

I I guess that's Hawaii. I I can't even read that. 5:00 a.m. in in Hawaii. Uh that's that's that's early, my friend. Thank you for coming in uh for Hawaii, Ian.

And so my point is dig into some conversations. Uh lean in, meet some people, share what's going on in your life and maybe learn some things along the way about different ideas, different techniques, and different concepts centered around digital missionary work.

I I love creating this opportunity and this community of people to gather together. And so part of that with the church digital is you're if you're new is we want to give you more opportunities like this to connect with digital missionaries.

And so we do obviously a lot of streams, conferences and things like this. But hey, conferences are only what a couple times a year.

And so if you're looking for this time, uh, this type of feedback, we want you to join our fam, our digital community. So, Church Digital, we've got a community in WhatsApp in a in a a digital community in Discord.

Love what's happening in both of those spaces. If you click on that button, join the fam, it'll open up a separate web browser with links to get to our Discord and our WhatsApp communities.

If there's one thing you can do today to get connected into the church digital so that we can help you become a better digital missionary, it's clicking on that button right now and and finding the community where where you can best connect.

WhatsApp is uh more international for obvious reasons. Uh Discord's a little more of our bleeding edge gamer virtual reality type crowd. And so pick the community that's best for you or join both.

Test it out. Both of them are free. Almost everything we do at the church digital is is free. Hey, listen. We've got I think that's going to work.

And now we're back to normal. I hope did that button show up on the screen like it it should have. I'm I'm platform still new to me.

So hopefully it it showed up. Well, the other thing I I I want to prep. I I am so excited about Jason and J Mo his talk coming up platforms as places.

In that we highlight uh a um a survey and this is a survey that we've done recently in context of what a digital missionary is and what they're doing, how they're interacting, what's the successes, what's the failures, what's the challenges, what are the opportunities, how how are things working with with your spouse,

with your kids, are they part of what's happening? Are you to the point of planting a church? Is the idea of a digital church working?

One that's not having a building like we want stories and information. And so we did this survey um I don't know a month maybe a month ago as part of we do a town hall meeting once a quarter with the church digital.

We release the survey. Then Jason's going to be interacting with some of the stats here in a minute uh and going to build that into his presentation.

But I would love to open this up to a larger audience. And so if you're out there and you did not do the survey and you're active in digital missions work anywhere in the globe, we would love to hear from you.

Take a couple minutes here sometime today, click this. The link is at survey.thechurch.digital and interact with that. Give us your insight on that. If you already did the survey, don't that's that's great.

Good for you. Don't do it again. But if you have not yet, uh please do that. Let's let's lean in and get you connected.

By the way, I already see people join trying to join fam and WhatsApp. Love that. Very cool. WhatsApp's over here on my on my monitor.

So, thanks. All right. Hey, um Jason's going to come up in in a minute. But, uh there are a ton of sponsors that are very excited about the digital mission work that you all are doing.

Like, it's it's it's been interesting to me and it's and it's probably the the the biggest um what's the word I'm looking for? shift in digital missions that I've seen over the past year or so is the amount of sponsors that are passionate about what you're doing that are wanting to resource that

are wanting to help that are wanting to overcome some of those challenges and we're going to highlight today in the conference a lot of those sponsors and so to kick off the conference right off the top I'm gonna give you something literally a sponsor is like hey you know what F, we're going

to give it away for free. And so, let's go ahead and do this. Um, I'm Andy, I'm pretty sure you need to fire the video or I want you to fire the video.

So, if you can, hopefully you're there. Go ahead and fire that first video. Heat. Heat. All right. So, right off the bat, we're giving away Right Now Media accounts.

Like our our friends over at Right Now Media are hugely passionate about the work that you are doing as digital missionaries. And and and you know what the beautiful thing is is that Right Now Media is is the leading probably leading I think I can say this.

It if you don't know Right Now Media, it's the it's the Netflix of digital discipleship. There are tons of Bible studies of resources of discipleship material that all exists digitally and and and what they're doing is they're they're literally putting this online multiple languages available globally all sorts of stuff and and and

they're giving it away to you for free. And and so what to get that right now media account, what you need to do is you need to click on that get your free right now media account.

Let's go. Uh it's uh if you're on a web browser, you're typing it in separately. It's um the church.digital media. But if you click on that button, it'll take you to a page.

Fill it out. And and the church digital, anybody connected with the church digital, anybody watching this conference, anybody watching this on demand after the fact, anybody you want to give it away to somebody else that's not connected, whatever, we are giving digital discipleship resources to you to better resource your ministry and your

your spiritual level, your your depth in in digital uh and virtual space. And so, this is an incredible thing. Right Now Media, we're so thankful and appreciative of of what they're doing.

Now, I wanted to give you a little taste because you're like, "Hey, that that bumper was kind of cool, but what exactly is is right now media?

What does it look like?" Andy, go ahead and play that second video and let's get that going. Welcome to our study of the Gospel of Luke.

The longest and most detailed of all four of the Gospels. Luke tells us exactly why he wrote this gospel. Evidently, you see, there are a lot of stories out there floating around about Jesus.

And Luke wanted to present an accurate, orderly account where the details were exact. So Luke in a really scholarly fashion interviews a bunch of people who had seen and experienced all these things firsthand which is what makes Luke's gospel so good for people who are investigating Christianity.

Luke shows us right from the start that he is a miracle working prayer answering God and he wants to fill your life with many good things.

We're going to see Jesus do all kinds of miracles in this gospel. And Luke invites us come to Jesus with our needs and ask him to do miracles in our lives.

Luke makes clear right from the start the good news of the gospel. As though your life might feel hopelessly barren, nothing is impossible with Jesus.

Jesus came to take away your disgrace and give you the life you've always longed for. The joyfilled life, the fruitful life, the abundant life in Jesus name.

Amen. That's good, right? You know, you get JD Greer right off the bat doing a doing a a multiple week study uh multiple session study on Luke digitally and and that's just that's just scratching the surface.

Yes, somebody was asking yes, that was Tim Tibo. Timbo did a Bible study in there and and others. And so listen, multi multiple languages, espanol, uh, globally, like tons of material available at that, go and click that link.

I'll leave it up there for three seconds. Uh, more get your free right now media account. Uh, let's go. Thank you, Right Now Media, for for being a part of this and, uh, and supporting digital missionaries like you all globally.

Okay. All right. Hey, let's uh yeah, we're going to remove that from stream. There's a little popup when I click the close button. It's it's it's like it's it's like, are you sure you want to do that?

I wish it wouldn't do that because then I have to click twice to remove something. And if I click once, I don't want to click twice.

That's it, it's repetitive. It's redundant. Okay. Um, hey, listen, by the way, Hubalo, as I should do this, I should have did this earlier. Hubalo, our online platform that you're on right now, uh, is awesome.

It's been a pleasure so far working with uh Karan and the team at Hubalo and creating this online event. Actually, I did an online event years ago with Karan in this, and so it's exciting to re-engage with the Hubalo team with this.

I want to walk you all real quick through Hubalo and how it works. So, obviously right now you are watching our keynote and that's on the schedule. And so if you look at the top of your Hubalo menu right now, actually probably goes that way on the screen for you. Uh, there's a button that says schedule.

And so as you are interacting with us with the keynotes, you're going to go to the schedule and join the session. Right now we're in session one. Session two will come up, three, four, it'll flow through on the keynotes. But occasionally during, we'll get into this later, there are sessions where instead of a keynote, it's a breakout.

And we've got I don't know, 15, 20 different breakouts that are happening today. Excited about that. It's coming up later. And so there's one of the buttons next to sessions is breakout rooms. And so you can click on breakout rooms and that's where you can find the breakout, the schedule of the breakouts, find the room you're supposed to be in and we'll go to and join that breakout room.

Or if you want to go to a table, the table is really cool. Some of you connected in the tables before. We've got a lot of our sponsors. We got a lot of open tables. We got the church digital. We got people that want to pray for you. We got tech questions and resources.

You know, if you want to engage and talk with people, go sit at a table, sit down at a virtual couch, so to speak, hang out in the lounge and have a conversation with someone you don't know.

The best part of these conferences doesn't happen in the keynotes. I love Jason. I love Jeff. I love the people that are speaking. But Kelly is awesome. Cheryl is great. Keynotes are going to be really solid today. The best part is going to be you talking at the tables.

So don't just consume content. Lean in dialogue. Hang out at the tables in between the break. I promise you it's worth it. Um, then there's another button over there that's sponsors up at the top menu. And sponsors like right now media and some of the others that are coming along. They have virtual booths set up where you can access their material, see videos, see things, uh, download PDFs, interact with people towards that. It's beautiful.

On the right hand side, uh, there's a lot of you have already started uh commenting and chatting, and so there's a bubble up for that. You can direct message people, dialogue with people directly. You can even have a faith one-to-one conversation with somebody video cam through Hubalo. And so if you see somebody you want to talk with, you can connect with them. This Hubalo platform is incredible and we're so excited about it. Lean into the experience, Hubalo, and enjoy the conference today as you're not just consuming content, you're dialogue and engaging. You're being part of the community that we're creating here uh for digital missionaries.

The last thing I want to tell you, lower once again, I'm backwards, lower right hand side on the screen there is uh there's an orange bubble, an orange button, orange circle that's got two chat bubbles in it. If you for some reason get stuck, if you've got questions, if you've got tech issues, click that orange bubble and we've got volunteers in place right now uh that are ready to jump on and help answer those questions.

So click the chat bubble. It'll, you know, it's a chat wizard. It'll pop up and uh chat widget and then just let us know what the problem is. You're trying to find the breakout. You don't know what's going on. Your camera's not working. Uh, you're trying to figure out schedule. Whatever it is, if you got questions, we've got some people hanging out in there right now.

It's funny, I actually have my phone open to that right now and right in front of me and so we will help you get connected as you are going. Cool questions on that, let us know.

Hey, you know what? I've done a lot of talking right now. I want to bring on Jason Morris who is uh who's going to do the first keynote. He's going to be talking about platforms as places. We designed this conference. I designed this conference. I'm going to be a little ego here. I don't do this often, but when I designed this particular conference, I designed it with the people that are current in the keynotes and the topics and the themes that are currently blowing my mind.

When my mind gets blown, if you know me, you know I've been doing digital missions work for 25 years. I had a calling to be a digital pastor way back in 1992 and I've dedicated my life pretty much to that ever since I was 13, 14 years old. And so when me, a guy that's been doing this as long as I have, when my mind gets blown, I want to invite some people to share with others.

And over the course of this past year, I've been building up this incredible concept of what we're going to talk about today with. I got chills just thinking about this, thinking about digital neighborhoods and how we need to revisit what digital culture looks like, how it trumps physical culture and even beyond that, if culture is different digitally, what does the gospel look like in that space and how should we as digital missionaries engage differently digitally than a physical missionary would in a physical environment.

This is the topics we're going to get into today. So listen, Jason is an incredible technological person. We were talking offline about AI designing and vibe coding and like it, it just my mind blows just talking to JMO on a regular basis. Some of the other speakers are not as technically proficient, but the concepts, their work we're going to talk about today, tying it in to your digital mission work, I promise you, I promise you it's going to challenge you.

So right off the bat, I want to bring on J Mo, Jason Morris, to the Church Digital's equipping and mobilization director because I want him to share this idea of platforms as places as we're starting this idea, this theme centered around digital neighborhoods.

JMO, you good?

I'm good, man. Let's rock and roll.

Peace out. Have a good one.

All right. Uh, thanks everybody. So pumped to be here with you guys. Um, if we haven't met, my name is Jason Morris. I'm the equipping director here at the Church Digital. And over the years, got started back in '94 with a 9600 baud modem telling people about Jesus back in the day. Um, up until today been doing the same thing. My mission is to catalyze the digital collective might of Jesus' church and leverage that for global gospel saturation.

I love the fact of all the people from all around the world who are joining us and I am so grateful that I get to be a part of this global organization of the Church Digital going around the world and making a difference for Jesus.

Um, as we go through some of this material, this is some of the things that we talk about in our training. Um, and one of the principles, one of the pillars that we have in our digital neighborhoods conversation hearkens back to that basic pillar of platforms as places.

These may not be as different as one might think. When one thinks of a place, um, they normally don't think of a digital place except for this crew right here that's listening to me right now. A lot of times we do think of it as a place. A platform, a digital platform could actually be a place. In fact, um, this year about a month ago, um, the Bible Society put out a report and the name of the report was called the Digital Nations which um they've noticed some of the same things we here at the Church Digital have noticed, that um people spend a lot of time online. Um, and that particular, I'm going to share that link with you so that you can have it because there's a lot of really great insights in there. I'm going to pop that in the chat real quick. You should see that right there.

Um, back to this content. Um, what if place and time aren't as disconnected as we think? Um, because place, think about this for a minute, implies time. Why is it that missionaries have a sense of a calling to a place? It's because Jesus didn't come to save geography. He came to save people. And the Great Commission, go and make disciples of all nations. It's not countries, it's ethnic groups. The Greek word there is ethnos, um, the idea meaning because the United States of America, most of the countries that you're probably a part of didn't even exist when Jesus said that. Um, Jesus came to save people. Now what happens is he came to save the people, the save the lost. Um, what happens is where are the people? Right, normally we would think of them as people are in places, but today in today's digital world, where are the people? They're on their phones. You're, you might be on your phone right now. Um, and the idea of place is where people spend time. When you work at a spot, that is your place.

Um, when you spend enough time in one place, it starts to become your identity. Whether you spend a lot of time in Texas and then you consider yourself a Texan. It all goes back to time, though. Um, if you spend a lot of time playing games, you consider yourself a gamer. You might consider yourself a YouTuber because of all the time that you spend on YouTube or a TikTok influencer. Where you spend your time is where that becomes your identity. That becomes your place. And if you get enough people that have that same identity, then you have a subculture. You have yourself an ethnos.

So as we look at the average amount of time that people spend online, anywhere between six and eight hours a day in America, um, in the American, uh, you would think as an American you would spend more, but we're about average. The highest one where they spend the most of time online is actually in Africa, in South Africa. They spend the most amount of time online. Um, lots of really crazy places that spend an inordinate amount of time online. You spend enough time there, that becomes your place because that's where you're basically living your life. Your life is time more than it is place.

So as we think of platforms as places, we're looking at digital platforms as places. And particularly in this conference, we're talking about digital neighborhoods because it's not just big arenas. We're talking about the people that you can interact with, the people that you can have conversations with because if you can have a conversation, you can have a spiritual conversation. And if you can have a spiritual conversation, you can do discipleship. So what we're talking about is unifying these two ideas together of digital neighborhoods.

Now let's talk about the first of those two words in this conference. Let's talk about digital. I believe that Jesus is our CTO. He is the chief technology officer of our universe. He is Lord. He is King. And technology is a gift from God. The word technology comes from two Greek words. Um, one is techno, techn, which is craft. Think Minecraft, right? Crafted or like Jesus was, he was called a carpenter, a tecton, that is uh in Greek, he um is one that does craft with tools.

Now, think about that for a minute. Jesus did his craft with tools. All right. Technology, the second part of this word, loia, theory or science of something. Um, it should hearken back to you the idea that we find in John 1:1 where Jesus is called the word. In the beginning was the word.

The word was with God. The word was God. That is the same word logos there loia. The theory, the science of the craft, technology.

You can't even say the word technology without referring to Jesus twice. And when you think of Jesus as the tecton, the one who has created this universe that he leverages for his purposes, it sounds a lot like an engineer or a developer.

Jesus Christ is CTO of his universe. So let's follow his pattern on how he thinks about tools and how they can be leveraged for the gospel.

And I'm going to share a passage of scripture with you and I want you to see it through this lens that we just talked about.

Luke 5, verses 1-4. This is when Jesus is calling the first disciples. It says there, "One day Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Great crowds pressed on him, listening to the word of God, and he noticed two empty boats on the water's edge, for the fishermen had left them, and they were washing their nets." Jesus looked at the tools.

He looked at the creation in a different way. And stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, its owner, to push it out into the water. So he sat on the boat, taught the crowds from there. And when he had finished speaking, wait, before we get there, Jesus saw a place, Peter spoke, as a platform for the gospel, as a tool to expand his kingdom.

And that's what a tecton does. He thinks about his craft. He thinks about his tools. And that's exactly what Jesus was doing right here.

Now, when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Now go out where it's deeper and let down your nets to catch some fish." Now, here's this is a cool idea.

Well, we a lot of times feel like Jesus is not interested in what we do. He's not interested in the games we play. He's not interested in the streams we have and we broadcast.

Jesus probably knows more about it than we give him credit for. Because in this particular passage, he does a really big mind trick on Simon, on Peter.

And he says, "Master," Simon replied, "we worked so hard last night. Didn't catch a thing. But if you say so, I'll let the nets down again, you know, just to prove you wrong." And this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear and shout to help brought their partners in the other boat. And soon both boats were filled with fish on the verge of sinking.

Now there's a from the survey that we did at the town hall about a month ago. Here's all the platforms. Here's all the places that Jesus is leveraging you digital missionary for the gospel. Lots of times we tend to think that Jesus isn't about all of that.

But here's the question. If Jesus asked you to leverage what you know, what you have around you at your disposal, your place, your game, your stream, your feed. If Jesus asked you to leverage that, what could he do with it? Do you trust Jesus to bring you followers, subs, not just fish?

Allow Jesus in your spaces and start seeing the spaces that you have in the way that Jesus does. Even if it's counterintuitive, even if your training and experience tell you otherwise, Jesus is big enough and powerful enough to take care of you and what's around you.

And when you do, you'll see miracles happen. And you'll get a sense of, "Oh, Jason, I don't know if that's for me. I don't know if I'm good enough." Well, that is exactly how Peter felt.

When Simon Peter realized what had happened, he fell to his knees before Jesus said, "Oh Lord, please leave me. I'm such a sinful man. This doesn't make any sense. You just blew my mind. I don't even know what to do here." Um, for he was struck by the number of fish they caught, as were others with him.

Now, here's what I love about this passage. They Jesus was trying to teach Peter something that he is chief technology officer of the universe. He is the creator. He can use the tools in every way he wants to. And when the abundance came, when the blessing came, it was bigger than he could handle.

And he needed his friends. And that is what TCD provides for you. That's what this group provides for you is other boats, other friends that can help you, be with you, stream with you, um celebrate with you.

Now, his partners in uh verse 10, James and John, sons of Zebedee, were also amazed. Jesus replied to Simon, "Don't be afraid." That's what Jesus is telling you right now.

From now on, you'll be fishing for people. Jesus saw Peter's tools differently. Jesus wants to see your digital tools used to further his kingdom.

And then it says as soon as they landed, they left everything and followed Jesus. So what Peter saw as a boat, his place, Jesus saw as a platform for the gospel.

What Peter thought of as an identity, being a fisherman, Jesus saw as leverage for greater mission, bigger things. Jesus asked permission to use the place Peter had.

Just like Jesus is probably asking you to use the places, the WhatsApp groups, the games that you play and use it in ways that you have never imagined.

What if instead of thinking of it as a place, Jesus sees it as a platform for the gospel? So now we're back to platforms as places with digital neighborhoods.

We talked about digital. Now let's talk about neighborhoods. So when you talk about neighborhoods, you can't think of neighbor, the idea of neighbor without thinking of the idea of the good Samaritan.

And we find that in Luke chapter 10, couched in the greatest commandment. So don't disconnect those two ideas. It says in verse 25, one day an expert of religious law stood up before Jesus and asking him the question, teacher, what should I do and inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said, what does the law of Moses say? How do you read it? The man answered, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Interesting how he added that addition from other passages of scripture. This is what the man said and Jesus totally tracking with him said right do this and you'll live.

Now the man wanted to justify his actions and this is just reality. This is what all of us want to do right because the commission, the mission that Jesus has for us is a big one.

It feels overwhelming and so we want to make it easier. So this guy says the same thing. He asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" And now Jesus tells the story as we know famous parable, the good Samaritan.

But don't disconnect that from the greatest commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Don't disconnect those two ideas because here we go. Jesus replied with a story. A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho. was attacked by bandits.

They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, left him half dead beside the road. By chance, a priest came along. I don't think Jesus chose that particular person by accident in the story.

The priest was thinking that all of ministry happens in one particular place. He had his blinders on. That place of ministry was the temple, a physical place that had boundaries, putting a box around God.

By chance, a priest came along, but when he saw the man lying there, he crossed over in the other side of the road and passed him by.

We don't know why he did that. Maybe he had a lot of work to do. Maybe, you know, it was time for temple services and he didn't have time to deal with it.

I have been a pastor. I know what that feels like. Where sometimes the work of the ministry keeps me from the ministry itself when it comes to dealing with people that are all around me because I have a schedule to keep.

I have work to do. I have an agenda. So I don't necessarily blame the priest here, but Jesus is strategically selecting this particular mode of ministry, place-based, contained ministry, and calling it out.

Next verse, a temple assistant. In some other translations, you'll see that as a Levite. That's all it was. So you got the head honcho and you got his assistant, right?

Assistant walked over, looked at him lying there, but he also passed on the other side. Same thing. Then the despised Samaritan, and I I love I love how Jesus calls him despised Samaritan.

Samaritans were half Jew, half Gentile, having their foot, one foot in the Jewish tradition, the other foot in the Gentile world. And I feel like so many of us feel just like the Samaritan.

We feel despised. We feel if those of us who are in hybrid ministry especially, you have one foot in the digital world, another foot in the physical world.

You feel that tension all the time. Nobody seems to get you and you feel a little rejected because of it. In the survey that we took in the town hall, that's what you expressed to us.

And let me tell you, I know what that tension feels like. And you have just found your tribe because we are all a bunch of misfits.

One with one foot in the digital world, the other foot in the physical world. We feel that tension and sometimes we're despised because of it.

This is what Jesus tells about it. And when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. And then going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine.

Bandaged them and he put the man on his own donkey, took him to the inn where he took care of him. The next day, he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, "Take care of this man.

If the bill runs higher than this, I'll pay I'll pay you the next time I'm here." This guy, the despised one, the misfit, he was the one that saw the opportunities of ministry all around him instead of being locked in with his blinders on about place-based contained ministry.

The reality is in the digital spaces, it's you interact with people all around you that are hurting and you see them and you see them differently.

Um, and there I know that there are some of you that are paying your own money for your own platforms to bring the light of Jesus to others and you people don't understand and that's okay.

That's okay. You have just found your tribe because that's what all of us do together. Now, next verse. When which of these three Jesus says would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?

The man replied, "The one who showed him mercy." It's about compassion and it's about mercy. It's not about place. And Jesus says, "Yes, now go do the same."

The reality of this is that you can pass more digital neighbors in a 15-second scroll than you could walk past physically in a 15-minute stroll.

Now, I'm all about neighborhoods, but let's think about digital neighborhoods. The ones that need your compassion. The ones that need your mercy, especially now in the climate that we live in today.

It bugs me so badly that social media and the internet are being blamed for the hurt and the brokenness in our society today when all that is is an extension, a force multiplier of the tongue.

And the tongue is an overflow of the heart says Jesus. So what is the real problem here? The real problem is the brokenness in our hearts.

And the same force multiplier could be used for people whose heart is overflowing with compassion and mercy to have these tools before us. Be leveraged just like Jesus did to impact people with compassion and mercy.

It's right before us. Don't demonize digital. It's not about the tools. It's about your heart. It's about the eyes that Jesus is giving you to see the people that are already around you with the tools that are already in your hands to be leveraged for the gospel.

Digital neighborhoods is about going from doom scrolling to kingdom growing. Where chats can turn into church, where DMs are turning into discipleship, where winning games can be winning souls.

Now, when we talk about digital neighborhoods, did you know that there are 2.4 billion Christians in the world today? And only 5% of them have ever led anyone to Christ.

Think about that. Now, in the survey we did together about a month ago, of our TCD tribe, you know what that percentage is? 33.

Think about that for a little bit. Your average Christian, 95% of them, they don't talk to people about Jesus. That is a real problem.

Dude, we are never going to get the great commission to become the great completion if we don't change that somehow. And this tribe, this group of misfits are the ones that do that because the percentage for us is 33% of us are telling others about Jesus and have led someone to Jesus.

In other words, if you're a church digital missionary, you are six times more likely to lead someone to Jesus than if you're not. Now, we've got this whole plan going on for the rest of this conference together and giving you the tools and the resources and to have your tribe, whether it is in the next session of speaking the gospel into everyday life with fluent faith or tracking spiritual thresholds online, being able to detect where people are at with audience mapping or reproducing leaders for digital mission.

Because if you're not making disciples that make disciples that gather into churches that make more disciples, then you're doing it wrong and apprenticing in the wild.

We're giving you the resources. We're giving you the training. We're giving you the tribe. I hope that you take full advantage of this opportunity together with this conference, the digital neighborhoods conference, so that the world can be a different place. Can you imagine? I mean, we got 98 people here right now. Can you imagine what could happen if all of us work together to leverage our influence, our tools for the sake of the gospel, being empowered by his spirit, we're going to change the world. I'm telling you, it's going to happen. Can't wait to go on this journey with you. And we have a big wonderful lineup to give you the tribe, the tools, and the training.

I hope you take advantage of it. Let's pray. Jesus, right now as you see those who have gathered here, as those who are under the sound of my voice, whether it is right now live or watching it later, we know that you are here, that you are sharing your heart with us. May we be faithful just as Peter was, just as the good Samaritan was, to see the opportunities and the tools and the places and the platforms just like you do for your kingdom.

You are the creator. You are the chief technology officer. You are the one who has crafted this universe, and you are the one who programmed this universe for your kingdom glory.

May this moment be etched into our souls where you have empowered us and have changed us in ways that we could never imagine. May your vision be cast in our hearts and let us join you as you built your church for your glory.

May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And it is in Jesus' name that we all together say as your children. Type it in the chat. Say it with me. Amen.

Amen.

Thanks guys for giving me this opportunity.

Oh my gosh. I told you your brain would be blown by it. The idea of turning your Jason, man, thank you so much for this. You know, as you're transitioning, I don't know any closing thoughts or hey, let's do this. A tip, something practical advice, let's pull this from you for one or two more minutes. How do we go from doom scrolling to prayer walking through that? Like, what's a practical tip for somebody that's interested in doing this that's overwhelmed by the obsessiveness of social media? How do we turn that to an opportunity to prayer walk? Maybe two minutes on that, bro.

Yeah, yeah. Here's a tip. All you have to do, and it's not hard to do, there's a couple of ways you can do it. Just go on whatever social media of your choice, you know, whatever one you like the most, right? Start scrolling. You will see people's pain. Think of them in the way that Jesus sees them. And then use the thread to respond to them personally. If you can do it with video, if you can't do it with video, do it with audio. If you can't do it with audio, do it with text. But do the following: pray for them right there. And then after you pray for them, wait for their response. Wait for other people in that thread to respond. No joke. You do that and you will have probably you could pray for an hour online just responding to the responses with a personal prayer just like one would do doing a prayer walk. It's the same thing but you're doing it digitally. That's one tip. Another tip would be you can sometimes have these social media platforms geofence if you want to follow up with people long term.

You can geofence it to people that are within a ten mile radius or you know, twelve kilometer radius for those of you internationally around you. You could have it work in that way so that you can follow up with them in person and use that first digital connection be a way in which you can follow up with people where they are and do the same thing.

Yeah, you can encounter more digital neighbors in a fifteen second scroll than you can physically in a fifteen minute stroll.

You said that today and I, that that just was mind-blowing for me and that that is so true. J Mo, my friend, thank you for jumping on the stream and sharing this today. This has been so good.

Somebody should write a book on like sharing Jesus online and, oh, oh wait, no I did. And I already did that. Dr. John doing a breakout with Dr. John. Dr. John's going to be on later today. He and I co-wrote a book on this, maybe a year, a couple years ago. It's been a minute towards that.

But the idea was bless. You know, we took Dave Ferguson's blessed and his brother John, but it's begin with prayer and everything that you're talking about is centered around digital and social doing that prayer walk and engaging first spiritually and praying for the people, but not stopping at the spiritual, taking a moment. L is listen to them. Listen to their pain. I can tell you like it's so funny when people troll me. I love it because I get to have a conversation with somebody who's hurting spiritually in a public environment and the troll may not engage in that moment, but you know what? The people that saw me show grace to that troll, it changes them. And because I have that in a public environment, it's so good because the troll may or may not recognize the need. But every time I've done it, others around me have said, "I saw the grace that you had there. I don't have that. How do I get that? What do I need to do? Why? Why? Why did you not respond?" And it gives an opportunity to even dialogue in a better way.

And so, J Mo, man, I know you got to go. I appreciate you. Thanks for doing this great talk here as we're setting the stage for platforms as places. Appreciate you, my friend.

Cool. As Jason transitions off, man, give it up for J Mo. Throw some encouragement in the chat. Jason Morris has been a friend for years and so excited. I see the troll. Thank you for putting the troll in chat. I just like I almost want to make that the thumbnail. That's so good. So thankful for Jason in his message with that. It's funny in fam. You know, I posted that graphic about fam. I haven't checked out the right now media stats. Maybe I'll look into that here in a minute. With fam, like it blew up like a whole bunch of people in WhatsApp wanted to come and join what's going on and so excited about that.

I'll put the link out. You know what? I'll do the link right now. I'll find it. But if you are wanting to connect with people like us on a regular basis because we talk about this stuff all the time and streams and open offices and would love to do that, let's just go ahead and do that again. There, click join the fam. Here's your community for digital missionaries. Jason, the idea of Jesus being the CTO. He said that offline like two minutes before the talk and that was another thing that was like, okay, I see what you're doing. I hadn't thought of it that way. You know, God's giving us this technology to use. It's not to run away from it, but it's to, you know, maximize it and how to better utilize that in big ways is very important for us.

So join the community, get connected with us in that. But I want to transition right now. Listen, like I said, right now media is an incredible sponsor and has helped out so much with the conference and excited about some of the resources that they're providing for you as digital missionaries. There's another one we're bringing on right now. And so I'm excited about this. I'm excited about this person and this organization support for digital missionaries at a global scale.

But before we get there, Andy, why don't you go ahead and play that video?

Do you remember the last time you watched something that moved you spiritually? Maybe it was a sermon clip or a short film or even the Jesus film. But what happened next? Most of us just scroll on to the next thing and the impact fades.

For the last forty years, Jesus Film Project has been at the forefront of visual storytelling, capturing and translating thousands of hours of media that have touched millions.

But pressing play is no longer enough. To truly change lives, we need to help people go beyond just watching content. Everyone, everywhere needs a next step to discover and follow Jesus.

Let me introduce you to Next Steps, a revolutionary tool that lets viewers seamlessly engage and take action directly from the screen they watched our content.

With a further tap, users can hear the gospel, ask for prayer, connect with the local community, and grow their faith through experiences called journeys.

Journeys combine clips from the Jesus Film Project and custom content with interactive elements tailored to each viewer's needs and interests. Across the world, Next Steps is already proving effective.

In Ukraine, pastors' wives are using it to guide faith communities and invite people to church. In Malaysia, Campus Crusade for Christ is using it to help students follow Jesus and invite others into prayer groups.

And even in Korea, digital missionaries are using culturally relevant journeys to share Christ with their communities. Imagine the ripple effect if every viewer could take a personalized step towards discovering and following Jesus.

Well, now they can. Join us in providing next steps because everyone everywhere deserves a next step to take. Let's give that to them.

Awesome. So we I want to bring M'hare on onto the stage with Jesus Film Next Steps. I just I want to praise first off the Next Steps product. This is incredible. This is so simple. This is so easy. This is so useful. This maybe two or three years ago would have been like a ten thousand dollar app that you would have paid way too much money for that really wouldn't have worked like it should have.

And God bless, I'm just I'm going to get off on a tangent here. God bless the people at Jesus Film for creating this for their purposes and then saying, "Hey, you know what? Other people might benefit from this too." And so let's make it public and share with them. And so let me go ahead and introduce M'hare and M'hare, man, the stage is yours.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you so much. The church digital team, you guys are putting a very important conference. This is happening the second time and I am so blessed by the speakers previously, Jason, and others. So this is a very critical work you are doing. In the next few minutes, you saw a video about Next Steps. I'm here for a brief moment to share you a little bit about Jesus Film and what you can learn even during this conference in the breakout room.

So let me try to share my screen. Then we will take the movie. The film Jesus Film is all about really partnering with the body of Christ with heart language media. One of our Jesus Film classic movie is translated over 2,240 languages and we want to go all the way to 5,000 and 7,000. And guess what? God is giving us AI and that is going to accelerate our work. So as we do heart language media with our partnership with the body of Christ, the key aspect of the delivery is going to be digital strategies. And in our Jesus Film Project, our digital strategy product suite looks like this. I'm not going to go all of it. We have the app, we have we create new medias, we have a YouTube page and of course what we are focusing on this conference is next steps. And we also stream our videos on website and very excited also to shape the future with AI and virtual reality. There are a number of works we are doing about that as well.

We were hearing a number of stats today and one of my favorites, which I read this book called "Is God Real" by Lee Strobel, and he talked about in the beginning of the book: every second, 200 people are asking "Is God real? Who is Jesus?" on the internet. Every second, that is about 17 million people. Somebody was chatting earlier on the chat saying like, you know, people who are scrolling, they are actually searching for hope. I 100% agree. I went to a VR chat, virtual reality room one time, and the person I met, his label or the avatar or profile name literally says "I am in pain." So people are very open in the digital neighborhood to talk about hope and Jesus, and this research shows that.

So if you think of the Great Commission today, which we are so connected to and all of us are, you know, our vision is like to reach everyone everywhere. How do we do that? You know, there is a lot of attempts by 450,000 missionaries, which is estimated the existing missionaries who gave their full time for the cause of the Great Commission. And we have about 22 million evangelists, church leaders, pastors all over the world. And we have 2.5 billion believers, which includes the Catholic, Orthodox, Protestants, and evangelicals and all of us. So how do we? The question is like, all of us are trying to reach the big neighbor, which is the 5.4 billion people who don't know Jesus or who don't have a personal relationship with Jesus. So how do we activate that?

I think it's great things the missionaries are working, the leaders are working, but I think the key part is to activate all believers to become ambassadors of Jesus in their giftings, in their workplace. You know, I don't need to go into detail. I think one of the things we are pitching here is we believe Next Steps can help activate believers to share about Jesus in their digital life and even together in their offline. And it's a web app which can be customized in so many ways to help you share Jesus using videos, a number of things which you should come to the workshop. My colleague Melissa email is going to facilitate right after this, and I'll give you two examples and I'll finish.

The first is we are actually using Next Steps in our products. One of the places we use Next Step is on YouTube. And last year when we did Easter campaign, we put Next Step journeys as a URL on description with 63 videos. You know how many people opened that, all organic? 50,990 people. And you are seeing the timeline. This is in a short period, Easter period. We got 50,000 people from watching. They clicked Next Step journey. And out of that, we saw 8,227 of them actually initiated a Facebook Messenger chat. So they are interested to connect with someone. So all of that technology is included for you, where you can have a personalized chat with everyone who's clicking these links from all your social media.

And another one, I think it's always great to give you an example about a story. For example, this one is a picture from New Zealand. You know, New Zealand is a postmodern world and Christianity is not, you know, in the big public discussion anymore as it used to be. But what we see here is students from campus. They started using Next Steps and they started to put a QR code on kind of a coffee cup. So they put the QR code and students started to click that and you know have some conversation. Then they partnered with the coffee shop on campus and all of the coffee shops now started to have the QR code. And that led to Jacob to click, to scan that QR code and clicked on it and he got connected to the campus ministry and gave his life to Jesus Christ. And now he is one of the student ministry leaders.

Not only Jacob, through that just Next Step journey from, you know, a coffee cup in Instagram URL as well as a coffee cup QR code, 100 students, 100 students came to know the Lord in a postmodern world, New Zealand. So God can use, you know, all of the strategies, whether it is hybrid like offline as you see it here, or online. People are eager. They are scrolling because they are looking for hope. I agree with that. So I would encourage all of you. I know I talked in a very brief moment a lot of things. Go to the workshop, go to the website and hear about how you can use this free tool in your social media, in your digital engagement campaigns. And the next video which is going to show you the overall vision and strategies and tools we are offering the body of Christ free in their digital engagement. So thank you for your time.

Go through the digital space. Is there more to life? Does God see me? Is Jesus real? Behind every single search, every single tap or swipe is a soul. The mission field has moved. Over 5 billion people now carry it in their hands. Sharing the gospel is no longer just about access. It's about presence, being where they already are.

At Jesus Film Project, our mission is to partner with the body of Christ through heart language media so everyone everywhere can encounter Jesus. This vision unites us with thousands of missional believers across the globe. Together, we're building a growing media library in over 2,200 languages, proclaiming Jesus in every tongue, to every tribe, in every nation. Media such as short films designed to spark spiritual conversations. Portable stories that connect in coffee shops, refugee camps, dorm rooms, and DMs. A watch page which creates pathways for seekers to discover content in their heart language. And we're equipping believers with Next Steps, a flexible digital tool that helps people discover and follow Jesus right where they are.

But we're not just creating tools. We're pioneering experiences that bridge technology and transformation. Through virtual reality, viewers can experience the gospel with immersive impact that transcends cultural barriers. Soon, a Next Step journey can be created in just a few clicks and prompts. Customized, sharable, translatable, designed for your context, and multiplied around the world. The tools to finish the work of the Great Commission are in our hands. And every day, millions are discovering the truth. With our partners, we're helping them find him.

This is your moment. Not just to click, but to carry. Because as the world continues its journey of discovery, our Father is already moving. And if he gives good gifts to those who ask, how much more will he move through a digitally connected generation that is searching for him? How much more could he do through you? The harvest is here.

Will you join us? Man, that was a powerful video. We were just talking about that offline. Um, look, listen, I'm serious. Next Steps, it would be thousands of dollars a couple years ago. Very powerful tool and available right now free accounts. Click that, try Jesus Films Next Steps. Click that button and create a free account.

Now, there was funny, there's a question in chat. I saw it pop up. I don't have it on my screen right now, but what type of journey should we create? And so like, what's effective? What's powerful there? We're going into breakouts right now. We'll talk about breakouts soon, but Melissa is doing a breakout session right now on Next Step. She'll do a screen share. She's going to do a build. You can ask her questions about that. It was, I did a stream with her a week or so, a couple weeks ago, maybe a month ago. And so it's so good. If you're interested in Next Steps, if you're watching this and thinking, "Wow, how can I use this tool for ministry and I'm interested in it?" I would strongly encourage you click the link to go get an account, but swing over and see Melissa's breakout.

Stop over at the table at some point today and talk to Melissa Marett or whoever is over at the table for that. That is a great opportunity.

Now, now listen, that is not the only breakout that is happening. Now, this is the hardest part of the digital missionary conference. I said my pool guy just showed up and the dog that hates me is currently barking. I knew it was going to happen. I told him offline. I was like, "It's going to happen in about 30 seconds." And it did.

Um, listen, the breakouts that we have are incredible. This is the biggest complaint that we have every time we do the conferences. Is Jeff, you've got all these breakouts. Which one do I choose? The answer is, are you seeing the good dog here? The good dog's coming in. She's scared because the bad dog is barking. Welcome to my life, man. Working at home, this is the way we work. I have to yell at the bad dog, but I don't want to do that because I'm on mic and the dog won't shut up unless I yell at him.

Okay. So, hey, listen. At the top of the menu bar, there's one of the buttons, you know, one says schedule, one says tables, and one says breakout rooms. You're going to click that breakout room, and you're going to see a list of breakouts. Choose the one that works for you. Now, there's some of the breakout rooms are now, some of the breakout rooms are later today. There's a little toggle you can switch to to choose the correct breakout room. Go. Now, if you are not interested in a breakout room, go to the table, interact with people, and talk.

But if you're not interested in one of the breakouts, what's wrong with you, man? The topics are incredible. There's definitely something you can dive into. If you're watching on Twitch, engage in Twitch. We got I think 15, 20 people watching on Twitch. If you're watching in virtual reality on big screen, I just saw we got hacked and did that too. Mr. Pete is doing that dialogue where you are in big screen and just have a conversation about what you're interested in or the idea of sharing Jesus in digital or virtual space. So many opportunities to dialogue and learn from each other today.

We're going to come back at, um, whatever time it is. Check the schedule. I think we're going to be back on stage at about 12:45. So see you all 12:45 Eastern. This is lunch break as well or whatever break you need, take it during this time. We got the keynotes kicking back up at 12:45 Eastern UTC4. All right, this is the part of the show where you go. Thanks everybody.

— departure log decoded via WhisperX, lightly cleaned for reading —