WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.380 Hey, we're going to get you to that podcast in one second, but before we get there, I, 00:00:03.580 --> 00:00:08.160 Jeff Reed, the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planning, I wanted to have a conversation with 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:13.180 you, churches that are out there. One of the greatest things I arguably think that I've done 00:00:13.180 --> 00:00:17.300 in my life, other than married and kids, okay, that aside, one of the greatest ministry things 00:00:17.300 --> 00:00:21.800 I've ever done is this idea of the fidgetal learning communities that we are offering 00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:27.320 through Stadia Church Planning. We want to help you. We want to help your church learn to thrive, 00:00:27.320 --> 00:00:34.340 grow, and multiply fidgetally, physically, as well as digitally. We've seen about 200 churches go 00:00:34.340 --> 00:00:40.340 through this already, and it's been a phenomenal result of it. Culture is changing within these 00:00:40.340 --> 00:00:46.080 churches. They're understanding what it is to thrive. They're understanding how to grow people, 00:00:46.220 --> 00:00:52.500 how to grow their church, even in the midst of this COVID, not COVID, wherever we are in the season, 00:00:52.500 --> 00:00:59.520 and they're even starting to understand what it means to multiply in fidgetal space. There's no secret 00:00:59.520 --> 00:01:05.760 sauce to doing a digital strategy. There's no secret sauce to doing a fidgetal strategy. There's no 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:11.660 secret sauce to making your church thrive, grow, and multiply. It takes work. I'm not going to lie, 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:15.180 but through the framework, through the questions, through the learning communities, 00:01:15.180 --> 00:01:21.920 we connect you with churches. We give you some content. We coach you along the way to help you 00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:28.860 make the decisions that you need to make so that your church's strategy can thrive, grow, and multiply 00:01:28.860 --> 00:01:35.280 your church along the way. This is a great opportunity for your church. We would love to have you be a part 00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:42.100 of it. For more information, check out stadiachurchplanning.org slash fidgetal, 00:01:42.100 --> 00:01:49.320 stadiachurchplanning.org slash fidgetal, P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L. All right. Hey, that's it. 00:01:49.420 --> 00:01:51.280 We're going to get you back to that episode right now. 00:01:55.360 --> 00:02:01.720 Hey, welcome to the beta show, episode 13 here, also part of the church digital podcast. My name 00:02:01.720 --> 00:02:05.640 is Jeff Reed, powered by Stadia Church Planning, director of digital church planning with Stadia 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:09.720 Church Planning. It's funny. I said everything I was supposed to say there in the opening, 00:02:09.940 --> 00:02:14.080 but in completely wrong order. So you're going to have to jigsaw, puzzle, all that together. 00:02:14.280 --> 00:02:19.120 But basically, I'm excited you're here. We got a really interesting conversation coming up here 00:02:19.120 --> 00:02:26.780 with beta episode 13 here, measuring a successful church. And so bringing in a panel of people that 00:02:26.780 --> 00:02:33.600 are going to be part of helping us figure out here in 2021, mid post COVID, wherever you think we are 00:02:33.600 --> 00:02:37.920 in this situation, how do we measure the successfulness of a church? So we'll get into 00:02:37.920 --> 00:02:43.560 that here in a little bit. Here with the beta show, we answer your ministry questions. So online 00:02:43.560 --> 00:02:48.420 ministry, digital church, fidgetal church, all that fun stuff. If you've got questions, by the way, 00:02:48.420 --> 00:02:58.960 we got this question a lot. Text us the questions that you have, 484-324-8724. That literally rings my, 00:02:59.020 --> 00:03:05.240 that's my cell phone number. You want to call and harass Jeff Reed right there, 484-324-8724. 00:03:05.400 --> 00:03:11.280 We'd love to hear from you. Text me those questions and we'll use them in future episodes of the beta 00:03:11.280 --> 00:03:16.640 show here. Also, hey, Stadia is doing this. I just figured this out today when the dates are. Stadia is 00:03:16.640 --> 00:03:21.600 doing an innovation meetup where we're, one of the innovations that Stadia is doing in this season is 00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:28.420 really focusing on digital. And so we are doing an innovation meetup online free conference Tuesday, 00:03:29.020 --> 00:03:33.420 March 16th from, from noon to 4 PM. That's Eastern. Probably should have put Eastern on there. 00:03:33.420 --> 00:03:40.260 Noon to 4 Eastern stadia church planning.org slash meetup to sign up for that. Uh, we're going to have 00:03:40.260 --> 00:03:46.060 Conway Edwards, lead pastor of one community church there in, uh, in Plano, Texas is doing a 00:03:46.060 --> 00:03:51.780 phenomenal, uh, job with digital and, and adapting in the season, merging that physical and that digital 00:03:51.780 --> 00:03:58.780 together. And so excited to have a Conway Edwards speaking at our free conference online. Once 00:03:58.780 --> 00:04:04.640 again, stadia church planning.org slash meetup. Well, Hey, let's, let's turn the corner here and 00:04:04.640 --> 00:04:11.760 let's start talking here about this idea of how do we measure a successful church here in mid post 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:16.920 COVID 2021, COVID 2021, wherever we are. What does it mean to be successful in a church? What does that 00:04:16.920 --> 00:04:21.600 look like? So here's who we're bringing in for the, for the panel here. First off, uh, let's do Craig 00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:29.640 Whitney. Craig is, uh, well, used to be my boss, but a VP of planner development at stadia. Uh, a, one of my 00:04:29.640 --> 00:04:35.540 closest friends with stadia. And honestly, within the year that I've worked with him, I have learned so much 00:04:35.540 --> 00:04:41.420 about myself and about the church overall. So excited to include Craig into this conversation. 00:04:41.660 --> 00:04:47.340 It's funny. We're going over former bosses here. Carlos Lollette also used to be my former boss. I 00:04:47.340 --> 00:04:52.240 just put this together. Like this is going to be a really interesting panel. Carlos used to be my boss 00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:57.480 like a decade ago. Uh, when I was, when we were both on staff at Christ Fellowship Miami, Carlos is 00:04:57.480 --> 00:05:04.460 currently planting, uh, a church, um, uh, reality church here in Miami, Florida, and is working hard 00:05:04.460 --> 00:05:10.540 towards that launch, uh, whatever launch means in the coming days. The guy who's never been my boss, 00:05:10.540 --> 00:05:18.940 uh, Stephen Smith is, uh, director of not yet, but there's a chance, uh, director of, uh, multi-site, 00:05:18.940 --> 00:05:26.500 uh, for first Baptist Houston, uh, a large multi-site church. Um, and so in, uh, Houston, Texas, 00:05:26.500 --> 00:05:31.680 is obviously the first Baptist Houston, Greg Mott. Uh, I feel like Greg was my boss at one time. 00:05:31.680 --> 00:05:39.960 We just really, I spent so much time when he was at, um, um, uh, Texas A&M with breakout. Oh my gosh. 00:05:39.960 --> 00:05:44.960 Like just, just the experiences I've had over then. So ultimately these three people have had a really 00:05:44.960 --> 00:05:49.980 interesting influence in my life and, and everything from the, you know, giga church multi-site 00:05:49.980 --> 00:05:56.020 mentality all the way down to like the church plant that's yet to launch out here. Uh, I really am 00:05:56.020 --> 00:06:04.020 curious how we define what a successful church is. What, what are we measuring? What are we looking 00:06:04.020 --> 00:06:09.300 at here? And so this is one of these conversations. I just want to say upfront, I'm going to shut up, 00:06:09.360 --> 00:06:13.660 sit back and kind of listen. Cause I don't, I'm not necessarily driving this conversation as much as 00:06:13.660 --> 00:06:20.920 learning here. So, Hey, people way smarter than me. How do we measure? How do we define 00:06:20.920 --> 00:06:24.320 what a successful church is? What do y'all think? 00:06:27.360 --> 00:06:28.660 Who's brave enough to go first? 00:06:28.920 --> 00:06:33.520 All right. Well, Carlos has heard me say this, at least if Carlos was paying attention, he's heard me 00:06:33.520 --> 00:06:38.140 say this in our planner training, uh, to our planners, you're not going into the Sunday church service 00:06:38.140 --> 00:06:44.080 business. Um, you're going into the people movement business. Now, even that may surprise some people, 00:06:44.080 --> 00:06:48.520 but you know, the mission of the church is to make disciples. What is making disciples? It's helping 00:06:48.520 --> 00:06:53.360 people move from wherever they are to where God wants them to be. And the role of the church is to 00:06:53.360 --> 00:06:59.680 help them move. We can't make people move, right? That's, that's the work of the Holy spirit. We can 00:06:59.680 --> 00:07:04.240 help people move. We can create environments and experiences and relationships and all those things 00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:10.960 that help people move. And that's our primary work. And so the question is when we talk about 00:07:10.960 --> 00:07:17.600 effectiveness, how are you measuring? How are you keeping track of how do you know whether or not you're 00:07:17.600 --> 00:07:25.360 helping people move? Um, and so too many of our measures are about things that are, you know, about 00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:31.280 programs, about what's static and it's not giving us any insight into people movement. 00:07:33.920 --> 00:07:39.840 I say that same thing. Um, we, we talk with our campus pastors a lot about creating environments 00:07:39.840 --> 00:07:43.440 where people fall more in love with Jesus. Really? If you boil everything down to that, it's, 00:07:43.440 --> 00:07:47.440 it's about creating those environments. You can't move the people. The Holy spirit does that. It's just, 00:07:47.440 --> 00:07:54.800 as Craig said, the second ago, absolutely everything has changed, uh, in the last year, almost a year. 00:07:54.800 --> 00:08:03.840 Um, this is, uh, great commissioning has, is the same, but the great commissioning method, 00:08:03.840 --> 00:08:11.760 you know, has completely, uh, it's, it's tilted on its axis, I guess is the way to say it. Um, 00:08:12.480 --> 00:08:19.680 I think the first week of COVID, uh, last year, uh, I, I looked at Jeff and we were at a conference 00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:26.160 together. I, I walked up to Jeff. We didn't know each other and, uh, we spoke just for a moment. Um, 00:08:26.720 --> 00:08:33.840 and he told me what he does, you know, with church digital and now a stadia said, uh, man, 00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:42.400 you are about to become everyone's new best friend. Um, it's not a lie. Whether you, whether you know it or 00:08:42.400 --> 00:08:47.600 not, you're about to be the busiest man on planet earth, you know, and when everybody else's is, 00:08:47.600 --> 00:08:53.360 is, you know, not, not busy in the springtime of 2000 and wondering what to do. I think Jeff was 00:08:53.360 --> 00:08:58.560 out front with, with all of that stuff. So it's great to be here with you. These guys also, um, 00:08:58.560 --> 00:09:04.880 I'm interested in hearing from these smart guys on, uh, really what the, what the new targets are on 00:09:04.880 --> 00:09:13.200 the wall. So, yeah, I'm, um, man, listen, this question, uh, Jeff, when you asked me to be a part 00:09:13.200 --> 00:09:21.120 of this, it really, um, I had to back up a little bit and remind myself even like, Hey, how do you even 00:09:21.120 --> 00:09:28.160 define success in ministry? How do you define it? How do you define it? And I thought, uh, and of course, 00:09:28.160 --> 00:09:33.440 as somebody who's planting, um, just like what Craig said, part of what we want to do is we want to take 00:09:33.440 --> 00:09:38.720 territory, right? Like we want to take new territory in the city. There's a sense in which you're 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:45.200 advancing, um, the mission of God. You're, you're wanting to see new people come to know him and grow 00:09:45.200 --> 00:09:51.120 in him. And as a planter in this season of life, I think, you know, anybody in pastoral ministry can 00:09:51.120 --> 00:09:55.920 wrestle with like identity and success and all of these different things. And I'm like, wow, God, 00:09:55.920 --> 00:10:00.880 like, you know, where's my worth coming from? And for me, these kinds of three words stood out. 00:10:01.600 --> 00:10:06.160 Um, and it was the word, uh, you know, what does success in ministry look like? I think it looks 00:10:06.160 --> 00:10:11.760 like obedience. It looks like faithfulness and fruitfulness. And I know faithfulness is at the 00:10:11.760 --> 00:10:16.640 core of it. And everybody says, and if you talk to somebody about, Hey, what is success in ministry? 00:10:16.640 --> 00:10:22.880 Is it's, it's, oh, it's faithfulness. And I'd say yes, but it's not only faithfulness 00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:31.200 because I, you know, I started thinking, well, if we plant this church and let's say it closes in 00:10:31.200 --> 00:10:38.640 three years, I was faithful. Maybe it wasn't fruitful. Was that successful? And I thought, 00:10:38.640 --> 00:10:43.360 for instance, like, okay, um, I think obedience is a little bit different than faithfulness because, 00:10:43.360 --> 00:10:46.400 you know, I just started thinking, I'm like, okay, what are some places in scripture where there's 00:10:46.400 --> 00:10:53.040 success? You have Saul taking over the Amalekites. He was successful in accomplishing that mission, 00:10:53.040 --> 00:10:59.440 but he was disobedient to God. Um, you have faithfulness is not, um, like in that metaphor, 00:10:59.440 --> 00:11:04.480 I think my favorite one is in first Corinthians three, where like you have Paul saying that he 00:11:04.480 --> 00:11:10.560 waters and plants, but he also lays a wise foundation. I think there's, there's skill involved 00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:16.080 in church. Like, and, and I think at some point we've all met leaders who have great character and 00:11:16.080 --> 00:11:21.840 who are faithful men and women of God, but maybe they're not great at leading like, you know, 00:11:21.840 --> 00:11:27.200 and so sometimes you don't see particular fruit and it doesn't mean that they're unsuccessful in 00:11:27.200 --> 00:11:33.760 life as Christians, but sometimes I don't think that's enough in measuring, uh, success. And so, 00:11:33.760 --> 00:11:38.080 yeah, I don't, those are just some thoughts. That's really, that's great, Carlos. 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:49.760 Uh, let's go. Uh, Craig, you were breaking up on us. Uh, okay. Yeah. Let's, uh, let's try it again. 00:11:49.760 --> 00:11:53.040 Uh, what were you saying, Craig? Sorry about that. Oh, I was just say, Carlos, I mean, those are great, 00:11:53.760 --> 00:12:00.000 great thoughts. And I think, especially for church planners, as you move into that, uh, but I think 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:05.760 not just church planners, I think there's people leading, you know, existing churches, small churches, 00:12:05.760 --> 00:12:11.760 large churches that wrestle with the same kinds of things at a very personal level. Um, I was just 00:12:11.760 --> 00:12:17.680 gonna say to you, I, um, started a church 30 years ago. Now I hate to say that. I tell everybody I was 00:12:17.680 --> 00:12:25.520 12, so they won't know how old I really am. Uh, but, um, that church no longer exists. And there's a 00:12:25.520 --> 00:12:32.480 temptation on my part and particularly, you know, the, the church, um, you know, died after I had left, 00:12:32.480 --> 00:12:37.040 but there's still without having, there was this, this real deep sense of failure. Um, 00:12:37.040 --> 00:12:42.560 like this church we started, it failed, but really, you know, a little bit of time, I think a little 00:12:42.560 --> 00:12:48.480 bit of God, one of the things I began to recognize and is still true today, you know, 30 years later, 00:12:48.480 --> 00:12:55.840 I have friends who are followers of Jesus because we started that church. Right. The church was the, 00:12:55.840 --> 00:13:02.560 starting that church was not a failure. It was not fruitless. Uh, the church had a much shorter 00:13:02.560 --> 00:13:08.880 lifespan than we envisioned it having. I would even say that I, that I wanted it to have. Uh, 00:13:08.880 --> 00:13:12.880 but I think that's a key thing when we talk about those, like, you know, obedience, faithfulness, 00:13:12.880 --> 00:13:18.720 fruitfulness, there's a unique dynamic to each of those. Uh, but, but I think sometimes we, 00:13:19.280 --> 00:13:25.440 we can even misperceive, you know, what is fruitfulness. Um, you know, and so for me, 00:13:25.440 --> 00:13:29.760 that's just at least something that's encouraging for me is to think about those friends, those people 00:13:29.760 --> 00:13:35.040 that I know and how their lives have been changed. Uh, you know, probably the way I'm wired, 00:13:35.040 --> 00:13:40.640 you know, they'd be easy for saying, I kind of wish there were more, uh, maybe that's a good thing. 00:13:40.640 --> 00:13:44.880 Maybe that's an egotistic thing on my part. Um, you know, I'm, I'm willing to, you know, 00:13:44.880 --> 00:13:52.160 put that out there. Uh, but I know those people, I know the ways in which their lives were impacted 00:13:52.160 --> 00:13:56.800 and that was fruit. And so that effort was, was not fruitless, was not wasted. 00:13:56.800 --> 00:14:02.800 You know, I, I love some of us who were talking about Carlos is like obedience and faithfulness. 00:14:02.800 --> 00:14:08.480 Uh, the fruitfulness Craig is, is, is what you're enforcing. Ray, you're, you're jumping in the 00:14:08.480 --> 00:14:13.440 podcast here, jumping in the broadcast. Uh, what, what are, what's resonating with you with this 00:14:13.440 --> 00:14:19.600 question of how, how do we define what a successful church is? What, what, what are some of the lessons 00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:25.440 that, that you're learning in this season? Ray, you're muted. 00:14:28.240 --> 00:14:32.400 Is it on? Can you hear me? There you go. I'm the, I'm the old guy in the zoom now. Right. 00:14:32.400 --> 00:14:40.560 All right. Fantastic. Uh, so I agree with Craig. We've got to make sure and look towards people 00:14:40.560 --> 00:14:46.000 and have those stories of people whose lives have been changed because by any measure, we wouldn't 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:51.120 look at Jesus and call him a failure, but by the metrics that we might, right? Like, oh man, 12, 00:14:51.120 --> 00:14:56.640 you know, 12 guys or 11 guys, right? One, one went away and three and a half years of ministry 00:14:57.200 --> 00:15:02.320 is Jesus a failure. See, nobody would ever say that, but at the same time, when we judge ourselves 00:15:02.320 --> 00:15:06.960 according to metrics, sometimes we think we've got to go a certain distance in order to proclaim 00:15:06.960 --> 00:15:12.320 ourselves as a success. And so I think stories of black change are important. And I also think that 00:15:12.320 --> 00:15:17.520 we also look at churches and ministries as for a time and not as forever, you know, some things are 00:15:17.520 --> 00:15:22.800 just for a season. Some, some seasons of growth are just there and we should appreciate them when they're 00:15:22.800 --> 00:15:28.080 there. And that's why scriptures talk so much about farming and we're not a farming environment as much 00:15:28.080 --> 00:15:32.960 in the United States as much as Miami. So it's a hard time to think of us as planting a seed, taking 00:15:32.960 --> 00:15:37.680 the time to fall into developing and having a harvest and then having another time where there is death 00:15:37.680 --> 00:15:43.600 in the land and then planting again. That is a very difficult thing for us to accept in ministry. 00:15:43.600 --> 00:15:46.880 And so I totally understand where you're coming from, Craig. 00:15:46.880 --> 00:15:52.880 Yeah. I, I love that. I want to build off that because if we're, if we're looking at it as, 00:15:52.880 --> 00:15:58.640 hey, we're, we're in this for a season, um, there, there's, there's an, an angle of that where it's, 00:15:59.360 --> 00:16:05.360 okay, I'm able to take more risks. Uh, I'm, I'm willing to challenge and maybe do something 00:16:05.360 --> 00:16:09.760 different with, with this church. And this is maybe a little off topic, but, but I'm curious, 00:16:09.760 --> 00:16:15.200 like, and Steven, I'm going to put the hot seat on you here a little bit. First Houston is, 00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:22.480 is a legacy church. I've spent 20 years in, in maybe 15 years in Texas area, Dallas, Fort Worth, 00:16:22.480 --> 00:16:29.760 Austin. I know the legacy that, that first Houston carries. Is it, and as you went multi-site and as 00:16:29.760 --> 00:16:33.600 you're feeling some of the tension of maybe doing something different, I know that's been an 00:16:33.600 --> 00:16:38.640 experience and there's probably some other experiments that you've wanted to do or are not able to do. 00:16:38.640 --> 00:16:44.880 Like, how do you, or what's the difficulty of, of looking at the seasonal approach? Maybe when you're 00:16:44.880 --> 00:16:51.120 dealing with an organization that's not wanting to be experimental, that's not wanting to maybe even 00:16:51.120 --> 00:16:57.920 redefine how it's being measured as being successful. Is it more difficult? Is it easier? How do you balance 00:16:57.920 --> 00:17:00.800 some of those tensions, uh, within a legacy like first Houston? 00:17:00.800 --> 00:17:05.760 Well, first of all, thank you for giving me the rest of the podcast time to answer this question. 00:17:06.320 --> 00:17:12.480 Cause I'll need it. Um, let me tell you that, let me go back to something that Ray said. Uh, I think 00:17:13.040 --> 00:17:19.520 the agrarian mindset is something that we've got to recover in the church. We are too heavily invested 00:17:19.520 --> 00:17:25.680 in the industrial enterprise, uh, uh, mindset. I mean, we've got, we've, we're thinking in terms of 00:17:25.680 --> 00:17:32.640 widgets and multi-level X, Y, Z, and, and all this other stuff. I really think the agrarian mindset 00:17:32.640 --> 00:17:37.440 is something that we've got to go back to. That's just totally difficult in, you know, post-industrial 00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:42.800 revolution posts, you know, in modernity. We're not, we're just not going to think unless we do it. 00:17:43.520 --> 00:17:47.520 Uh, uh, and you're listening, you know, to this podcast in some place where you're familiar with 00:17:47.520 --> 00:17:54.240 that. The majority of people live in cities and they don't understand the waiting involved in seed 00:17:54.240 --> 00:18:00.800 planting, the waiting involved in what harvest me or the waiting and the starting over after a disaster. 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:07.120 Um, you're going to really want to, you know, even after Harvey, uh, you're really going to want 00:18:07.120 --> 00:18:16.240 for, uh, for Houston, you know, we just had to absorb Harvey and then, and then rebuild. The difference 00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:28.480 is for us that it took about a month to absorb and start rebuilding. This, this thing is just not that, 00:18:29.600 --> 00:18:35.840 um, we, we, we haven't seen the, uh, 00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:42.640 that may say it like this. There's just that we're, we're, once you're punched with something 00:18:42.640 --> 00:18:46.320 like this, you're just down for longer. I don't know if that makes any sense. I'm not a boxer, but 00:18:46.960 --> 00:18:52.240 I've been hit many times. You're just down longer. You're just down longer for, for this one. And so, 00:18:52.240 --> 00:18:55.280 um, by my kids, that's what I meant to say. Um, 00:18:56.960 --> 00:19:06.480 so what, what we've had to do is trace back to inflection points in our, um, in our history and, and 00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:12.240 go back. And so it's 180 years old, something like that. The church, uh, a guy took a boat from Boston, 00:19:12.240 --> 00:19:21.200 came around, landed in Galveston, went into Houston, started a church. Pre-Texas, pre-United States having, 00:19:21.200 --> 00:19:25.920 you know, I mean, this is crazy. What, what are we, what in the world are we doing? You know, 00:19:25.920 --> 00:19:31.040 now in 2020, that's the big question here. So we've had to go back to inflection points and, and just 00:19:31.040 --> 00:19:36.960 kind of in our recent history, we, we looked at what it meant to go multi-service in the eighties. 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:42.560 Okay. What did it mean? Or in the nineties, I should, what did it mean to do multi-service from 00:19:42.560 --> 00:19:52.880 mono to multi-service and then from multi-service to multi-multi-locational. So multi-site in 2013, 00:19:52.880 --> 00:19:59.440 we're able to draw off of those things to go, okay, what loss did we experience? How did we navigate 00:19:59.440 --> 00:20:04.960 through that loss into kind of the new reality? Uh, what's the, what was the preferable future of 00:20:04.960 --> 00:20:09.920 the thing? How did we lead people in that? And those things I've been around for a lot of those 00:20:09.920 --> 00:20:17.360 inflection points. And then we got to 2020 where I feel like we're in a, uh, completely new territory 00:20:17.360 --> 00:20:24.640 as a church where, uh, we're thinking kind of like meta thoughts, you know, it's just something like, 00:20:25.920 --> 00:20:32.160 it's so different. It's so meta that, um, I think our inflection point, we're trying to put a name 00:20:32.160 --> 00:20:37.200 on this inflection point for us as Houston's first is, is this really kind of, we've gone from multi-site 00:20:37.200 --> 00:20:45.520 to meta site now because the digital, the digital expression of every, of, of, of what we do, 00:20:45.520 --> 00:20:52.400 we've had to filter everything through the digital expression now. So we're in this meta world that we are 00:20:52.400 --> 00:20:59.280 learning a lot in and are enjoying like, like crazy. Um, but it's a, it's, we're still asking 00:20:59.280 --> 00:21:05.840 the question, is it real or not? You know, is this, is this, is this Bitcoin, you know, really for 00:21:05.840 --> 00:21:13.280 churches is digital Bitcoin, you know what I mean? So we, we're, uh, exploring that man on a daily basis, 00:21:13.280 --> 00:21:18.480 on a weekly basis. So, um, I can give you specific if they, you know, example of things that we've done, 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:26.880 but I think the general thing is our model has fundamentally changed in my, in my opinion, uh, 00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:33.920 to something, uh, way past multi, you know, anything. So, yeah, uh, this is dangerous, uh, 00:21:33.920 --> 00:21:37.520 because I'm realizing I'm going to call with a bunch of Baptists and I'm going to use a metaphor 00:21:37.520 --> 00:21:42.640 that's beer and wine. So I'm aware of where I'm about to go recovering Baptist. 00:21:46.240 --> 00:21:54.240 I'll cover up my, yeah, I'll cover up my camera. So I don't, uh, um, but your comment about, um, 00:21:54.240 --> 00:22:00.000 kind of industrial agrarian, uh, super insightful, Steven. And it just struck me, 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:05.280 I had an experience two days ago, three days ago, Sunday, went wine tasting with my wife, 00:22:05.280 --> 00:22:13.280 some friends. Uh, and the guy who has created this winery, uh, used to be a brewmaster. He used to 00:22:13.280 --> 00:22:17.600 make beer. And so we're kind of asking him this question, like, like what, what's the shift where 00:22:17.600 --> 00:22:21.440 he says, well, a lot of people don't realize that beer making is an industrial process, 00:22:22.640 --> 00:22:28.560 right? You, you have these formulas. Now there's a process of kind of creating the formula. What's the 00:22:28.560 --> 00:22:34.560 formulas created? You just, you know, you put those exact ingredients in through a, you know, a process 00:22:34.560 --> 00:22:40.880 and you get the same tasting beer out the other side, but wine making is an agrarian process and 00:22:40.880 --> 00:22:49.120 it's impossible to make a wine taste the same year after year after year because of all of the variables 00:22:49.120 --> 00:22:54.560 of weather. And it just, you know, all of those things that can happen. And so I think what, just as 00:22:54.560 --> 00:22:58.320 you were saying that made me realize that we've been in a season of church where we've 00:22:58.320 --> 00:23:04.640 approached it very much in that industrial mindset, we, we do certain things. We, you know, we, we 00:23:04.640 --> 00:23:10.800 generate certain inputs and we count on getting certain outputs. And it's like overnight we wake 00:23:10.800 --> 00:23:18.160 up and we're, we're no longer in that process where we become farmers again. Um, and there's all of 00:23:18.160 --> 00:23:22.880 these variables and the inputs that we create don't necessarily produce the same outputs. And there's 00:23:22.880 --> 00:23:28.160 a need to figure out. And this is what he was talking about. The fun of wine making is figuring 00:23:28.160 --> 00:23:33.520 out, okay, this is the grape that the vine, you know, produced this year because of all of those 00:23:34.960 --> 00:23:39.520 variables. And so how do we take that? And how do we make a good tasting wine out of that? 00:23:39.520 --> 00:23:44.240 Uh, you know, you could, in the same sense, you know, how do we take this environment that we're 00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:50.560 in right now? And how do we turn good news into something that, that tastes good and, and transforms 00:23:50.560 --> 00:23:59.200 lives, but it may look completely different than the way we did it last season. And that's the problem 00:23:59.200 --> 00:24:05.920 with our metrics being based around all those, you know, industrial processes is we kind of wake up 00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:12.240 overnight and go, those are useless to us now. That's right. It's, it's interesting. I love the 00:24:12.240 --> 00:24:17.600 beer wine metaphor. And evidently Brad Henson, uh, is watching on the outside, you know, maybe we're 00:24:17.600 --> 00:24:23.520 all recovering Baptist here. The beer wine metaphor is really helpful. Uh, Brad, we can give you 00:24:23.520 --> 00:24:28.240 inspiration. Uh, not sure you need to take that one to your leadership, maybe tweak it depending 00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:31.680 upon the thing. It's, it's, it's fine. You know, and it's funny. One of, one of the, um, 00:24:32.880 --> 00:24:38.320 well, Carlos, you know, I've, I've heard you say this, this analogy, the, the, um, the, the Cuban 00:24:38.320 --> 00:24:42.880 wine kind of proverb. You, you've told that story to me a couple of times, Lisa. I've been around. 00:24:42.880 --> 00:24:47.760 What, I mean, draw some analogy and, and, and tie into this. I think what you've said historically 00:24:47.760 --> 00:24:53.200 to me off air has really fitting in this season. Well, um, that's a quote by a 00:24:53.200 --> 00:24:58.000 Cuban poet by the name of Jose Martí. One of the people in, in our launch team was like, 00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:02.400 you know, when people think about Miami, uh, you know, like in a lot of global cities, 00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:08.560 um, it's sometimes you can have a love hate relationship. And so there's incredible things 00:25:08.560 --> 00:25:14.240 about Miami and other people are annoyed by Miami and that's okay. Uh, but there's a Cuban poet who's 00:25:14.240 --> 00:25:19.840 very famous. His name is Jose Martí. And he has a little phrase that says, "Nuestro vino 00:25:19.840 --> 00:25:25.760 is amargo, pero es nuestro vino," which means our wine is bitter, but it's our wine. 00:25:27.600 --> 00:25:32.000 You know? And, uh, yeah, I don't know if I can tie that in Jeff, but. 00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:38.080 Oh, I can't. I'll shoot. I'll, I'll preach that sermon. I mean, if, if we're really looking at this 00:25:38.080 --> 00:25:43.920 or organically, I mean, cause, cause what I'm hearing here is it's not a formula. What, what the 00:25:43.920 --> 00:25:48.480 formula for church X is going to be different than church Y. So now there's, there's an organic 00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:54.720 approach. Maybe it's intentional organic, but there's an organic fluctuation between. And so my 00:25:54.720 --> 00:26:01.520 church may measure success even in the same way that we're measuring discipleship at, at one church, 00:26:01.520 --> 00:26:06.000 but that's going to be different than, than race church. And that's going to be different than, 00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:12.080 than, than Stephen's church. And you know, I, it's historically pre COVID and call me crazy, 00:26:12.080 --> 00:26:13.920 totally open the conversation. Crazy. 00:26:13.920 --> 00:26:18.720 Pre COVID. Oh, that's, that's fine. You're not the first guy today. Um, pre COVID. It felt like 00:26:19.280 --> 00:26:24.960 it was, Hey, what are you doing? Let's do the same thing. And, and, and, and in this season, 00:26:24.960 --> 00:26:31.360 I'm wondering if it's not, Hey, we all need to be measuring out of the same bucket as much as we 00:26:31.360 --> 00:26:36.320 need to be intentional of what we're measuring, but that measurement may be different than what's 00:26:36.320 --> 00:26:41.280 happening. Someone else, you know, and even within stadia, we're, we're having conversations about 00:26:41.280 --> 00:26:47.920 multimodal churches. Like it's not just this launch large model. It's, Hey, let's, let's launch in 00:26:47.920 --> 00:26:53.520 physical space. Let's launch digital space. Let's launch digital only space. Let's launch micro 00:26:53.520 --> 00:26:59.680 church spaces. And so with a lot of this fluctuation, I'm asking the question humbly. 00:26:59.680 --> 00:27:06.480 Oh, I want to learn here. Is there consistency with some of the metrics or is, does it, is it 00:27:06.480 --> 00:27:13.600 okay that there's variations? Hey, this is my wine. This is how I'm measuring it compared to, 00:27:13.600 --> 00:27:16.560 Hey, we're going to measure our wine different somewhere else. 00:27:16.560 --> 00:27:18.880 Oh, open for conversation humbly here. 00:27:18.880 --> 00:27:25.280 I did have a thought on this, Jeff, and that can go again, you know, along with that agrarian metaphor. 00:27:27.280 --> 00:27:33.840 I think part of our metrics, I think part of what we need to embrace is time in terms of metrics and 00:27:33.840 --> 00:27:42.640 nuance. And the thing is, of course, even myself right now, it's very satisfying to embrace a short, 00:27:42.640 --> 00:27:49.440 clear measurement that gives me a quick picture and a quick snapshot. But if you're thinking about agrarian 00:27:49.440 --> 00:27:54.960 metaphors and you're thinking about, you know, what's that Dallas Willard quote about, yeah, 00:27:54.960 --> 00:28:00.080 you don't count the number of disciples, but you weigh them. You know, if you're going to weigh 00:28:00.080 --> 00:28:07.520 the disciples and the quality of disciples, I think that's going to take time and nuance. And if I'm 00:28:07.520 --> 00:28:13.280 thinking about, let's say five years from now, are marriages at reality flourishing? Is the rate of 00:28:13.280 --> 00:28:19.440 divorce less? What is the impact that we're having in a community? Are disciples from reality, 00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:26.720 we can't control this, but are they going to have a certain worldview that is going to embrace, 00:28:26.720 --> 00:28:33.840 let's say Jesus's work of mission and justice and flourishing in the world? And I think that takes 00:28:33.840 --> 00:28:38.240 time to measure. And that can't, I think it's difficult to do that in a quick snapshot. 00:28:39.440 --> 00:28:46.080 Yeah, I think your point, Jeff, back to your earliest comment, Carlos, about fruitfulness, 00:28:46.080 --> 00:28:53.120 and that is an agrarian term, right? And so the one thing I would say is, you know, every farmer who 00:28:53.120 --> 00:29:01.280 plants a crop expects it to produce fruit. That is what the seed is supposed to do. Nobody puts seed in 00:29:01.280 --> 00:29:09.200 the ground, you know, hoping that the plants will die. But, but there are so many variables. That's your 00:29:09.200 --> 00:29:15.040 comment, Jeff. I think we've tried to, to just imitate someone else's industrial process to get the same 00:29:15.040 --> 00:29:23.040 outcomes versus recognizing that the, the soil in Miami is different than the soil in Houston is different 00:29:23.040 --> 00:29:30.240 than the soil where I am in California. And thus, as a farmer, you know, I can't, and we see this with 00:29:30.240 --> 00:29:34.160 church planters all the time, you know, someone, you know, church planters will talk to each other, 00:29:34.160 --> 00:29:38.000 you know, it's kind of like, well, Hey, you know, I just harvested, you know, harvested, you know, 00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:43.600 a hundred bushels of fruit. Right. And the, the other planner over here is going, man, I haven't 00:29:43.600 --> 00:29:49.920 harvested any yet. And there's this, then there's this comparison about like, he must be doing it 00:29:49.920 --> 00:29:55.200 right. And I must do it, be doing it wrong. And what the agrarian mindset helps us realize is, 00:29:55.200 --> 00:30:02.960 you know, maybe his seasons are just ahead of yours. Um, and, and rather than trying to figure 00:30:02.960 --> 00:30:08.560 out how do I just become like him or do the things that he did or she did to get that outcome. 00:30:08.960 --> 00:30:14.080 It's more of going, Nope. What is the seed in the soil that God's given me need in order to be 00:30:14.080 --> 00:30:19.040 fruitful? I would think for you, Steven, the challenge of that is you probably have those variables 00:30:19.040 --> 00:30:24.960 inside of a single church. Yeah. I would say, you know, uh, 00:30:26.800 --> 00:30:31.760 totally blaming. I mean, let me say it like this, putting the emphasis in our model and our agrarian 00:30:31.760 --> 00:30:38.480 model on, uh, seed and soil, it leaves out, uh, personal development too. And that's what we've 00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:44.000 seen a lot of in the last year. I can only develop as far as I'm developed, you know, in the thing. 00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:50.640 And so, um, if I went out and I planted, uh, corn, uh, at the end of the harvest, I would, 00:30:50.640 --> 00:30:56.720 it would suck because I don't know how to plant corn. You know, um, uh, somebody that lives in 00:30:56.720 --> 00:31:04.160 Kansas or Iowa, if they went out and they plant, they know how to plant corn, but not just 00:31:05.200 --> 00:31:11.760 a row of it. They'd know how to plant thousands of acres. Why? Because they've been trained to do 00:31:11.760 --> 00:31:15.520 it. They know exactly what to look for. They understand the season. They understand crop 00:31:15.520 --> 00:31:20.480 rotation. They understand irrigation, all of these things. So I'm taking us back into this industrial 00:31:20.480 --> 00:31:25.040 thing by saying like, cause I'm a nerd about this and I, and I think about this a lot. I'm sorry. But, 00:31:25.040 --> 00:31:33.120 um, Israel has performed a miracle in the last, uh, 70 years, 80 years, they've turned a desert into a, 00:31:33.920 --> 00:31:44.160 um, into a, uh, a garden. And, uh, they are the leading, uh, uh, developers of, uh, agricultural 00:31:44.160 --> 00:31:50.320 technology in the world. People are looking at tiny Israel going, how in the world do you do, 00:31:51.040 --> 00:31:57.280 do you produce the amount of crops out of nothing? You know? So I think our, our metaphor takes one 00:31:57.280 --> 00:32:01.840 step farther and say it's, it's definitely seed and soil, but then there's some crazy 00:32:02.400 --> 00:32:07.440 Holy spirit given technique, you know, and development personally to go, okay, 00:32:08.880 --> 00:32:14.960 when to plant, when to reap, when to till, you know, all of these things. Now I'm getting out of my 00:32:14.960 --> 00:32:21.040 lead because I'm introducing, uh, and you know, implements and all that stuff. I think I'm about 00:32:21.040 --> 00:32:28.640 to burn out on the agrarian thing other than to say, um, other than to say that, um, that for us in 00:32:28.640 --> 00:32:33.680 our church, to answer your question, Craig, we've had to think about rapid development and, and Jeff, 00:32:33.680 --> 00:32:40.160 I would love for it to be, you know, as, as utopian, as you made it sound where we all sit back and go, 00:32:40.160 --> 00:32:44.720 what's good for you is what great for me with it. No, we're all scrambling to go. What are you doing? 00:32:45.760 --> 00:32:52.400 I mean, I'm on the phone the week of COVID going, okay, you got it with, with multi-site churches 00:32:52.400 --> 00:32:58.160 everywhere going, okay, it's multi-site now dead. What do you think? You know, because everybody, 00:32:58.160 --> 00:33:05.040 everything contracted, we all went mono-site again. Let me just let that sink in. We all went 00:33:06.160 --> 00:33:11.360 mono-site and it was through, through device, you know, so now we're having to like, think about, 00:33:11.360 --> 00:33:18.000 okay, now we go multi-site again and you know, 40% of the people or less show up, you know, that kind of, 00:33:18.000 --> 00:33:21.760 that kind of thing. Praise the Lord that they do. But what I'm trying to say is development in, 00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:31.120 in us has really led the, led the way to, uh, I'm hoping for, for new fruit. And I think it's not an, 00:33:31.120 --> 00:33:36.880 it's not an development is not industrial. There's, there's just development that's real organic too, 00:33:36.880 --> 00:33:41.840 that we've got to embrace, you know, as, as leaders too. I know that's like, so philosophical and, 00:33:42.400 --> 00:33:48.000 you know, meta, but again, that's, that's trying to tie some, some bows, you know, on what we're all 00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:55.200 talking about. So. Yeah. I, I would go back to, um, Carlos, your comment about, you know, um, 00:33:55.200 --> 00:34:01.040 I gotta go find that Willard quote. I think I've heard it. Absolutely. The weight of, uh, versus the 00:34:01.040 --> 00:34:06.640 number, uh, it works in, I grew up in the Napa Valley. So part of my wine thing is, you know, I, I grew 00:34:06.640 --> 00:34:16.320 up around grapes, didn't farm them, but I grew up around them and, um, a huge harvest in a, you know, 00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:22.640 grape concept is not necessarily a good thing because it matters how good they taste. 00:34:24.080 --> 00:34:30.080 Right. And so I think that's got to be like what you were saying, Carlos, it's not one or the other. 00:34:30.080 --> 00:34:36.400 Somehow I think it's got to become both and right. It's not going to do me any good if I can grow the 00:34:36.400 --> 00:34:42.480 perfect single vine of grapes and make one bottle of wine. That's the best wine anybody's ever had. 00:34:43.280 --> 00:34:47.360 What, what, you know, what good is that? You know, you know, 10 people get a little teeny sip of it, 00:34:47.360 --> 00:34:53.200 right? What's the good, we make one perfect disciple. That's not the point, right? And so it's not just 00:34:53.200 --> 00:34:58.480 about quality, but at the same time, if somehow I figure out how to double the output of that vineyard, 00:34:59.040 --> 00:35:03.840 right now I'm getting twice as many grapes, but the wine that it makes tastes terrible, 00:35:04.880 --> 00:35:08.160 nobody's going to want it. Nobody's going to drink it. Well, what was the point of doubling 00:35:08.160 --> 00:35:13.840 the size of the vineyard? I've just made more junk. Um, and so that, that's, and I think that's what 00:35:13.840 --> 00:35:21.440 somehow our metrics lack. And I think part of the industrial piece is we want to count things. 00:35:22.160 --> 00:35:30.720 How do you count discipleship? How do you, how do you count that a person is thinking, acting, talking, 00:35:30.720 --> 00:35:38.320 you know, more like Jesus in their daily life? That, that is not an easy thing to quantify. And I think 00:35:38.320 --> 00:35:43.440 sometimes because it's difficult, we've just defaulted to let's count the things we can count. 00:35:45.440 --> 00:35:51.920 That's right. Right. But that's not giving us the answer to the question. It's not letting us know 00:35:51.920 --> 00:35:58.160 whether what we're doing is really being fruitful. Yeah. I mean, is, is there a piece of this where 00:35:58.160 --> 00:36:03.360 we're trying to figure out the balance and I don't want to oversimplify this? Um, you know, 00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:08.640 utopian being what it is, but is it quality? Is it, is it quantity? Is it the quality of the 00:36:08.640 --> 00:36:15.120 discipleship? Is it the multiplication quantity of what the disciple making system provides? Like what, 00:36:15.120 --> 00:36:22.560 what is that balance look like for us moving forward? Event-based evangelism is waning. We need 00:36:22.560 --> 00:36:30.720 to figure out how to empower, how to equip, how to multiply in that space. So what, how, how do we 00:36:30.720 --> 00:36:34.880 measure that tension, even just between quality and quantity, like Craig was alluding to? 00:36:34.880 --> 00:36:39.680 So I'll speak to that just briefly. I think we, the word immersion has come up, not just because 00:36:39.680 --> 00:36:46.000 we're Baptist, but the word has come up in the last, um, the last little bit where we are, if we, 00:36:46.000 --> 00:36:51.920 if we take this environments where people fall more in love with Jesus thing out, we, 00:36:51.920 --> 00:36:58.800 we've really got to raise this word up in our meetings and our thinking. Um, uh, 00:37:01.840 --> 00:37:11.680 we had a very immersive experience pre COVID. Um, what, what are we going to do now that's going to 00:37:11.680 --> 00:37:20.160 provide an immersive experience, uh, post COVID or in the middle of it? I mean, this, this idea of immersion 00:37:20.160 --> 00:37:28.320 of saying, okay, it's not just the, the gathering part is not just the, is the only immersive element 00:37:28.320 --> 00:37:37.040 that we are trying to advance. It's, it's something, uh, it's, it's something completely different. 00:37:37.040 --> 00:37:41.920 So you've got the digital, you know, aspect of, of everything that it's going. I don't have that, 00:37:41.920 --> 00:37:46.080 all of this worked out in my head, but I'd love to hear from you guys. I think if, if we said, 00:37:46.080 --> 00:37:52.800 okay, immersion is the question now, what do we do? You know, if churches went, okay, how can we do 00:37:52.800 --> 00:38:01.360 immersion in everything gospel and everything Jesus to our people? How are we going to go about doing 00:38:02.240 --> 00:38:07.120 that? You know, I think that's an interesting question. Hmm. What do y'all think 00:38:10.080 --> 00:38:16.320 in the context of, you know, what my understanding, Steven, in the context of, um, being, uh, immersion, 00:38:16.320 --> 00:38:22.480 being immersed into the life of, of, of the church? I mean, how, how, how do we even measure 00:38:23.280 --> 00:38:30.880 what that looks like? Is that, uh, is that, uh, you know, recently we just did a podcast on, uh, 00:38:30.880 --> 00:38:36.720 knowledge-based, uh, discipleship versus, uh, obedience-based discipleship, knowledge-based 00:38:36.720 --> 00:38:41.280 discipleship. Ricky Bailey is a link somewhere, but the heart of it is come to the buildings, 00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:46.880 grow deeper in that Christ. And so the immersion within the, the Christian culture, within the 00:38:46.880 --> 00:38:52.080 church, within the discipleship is more of, of that knowledge base, you know, that, and honestly, 00:38:52.080 --> 00:38:59.520 that's getting back to this quality, uh, level. So the quality of my spiritual identity is how I'm 00:38:59.520 --> 00:39:05.120 measuring successfulness of the church. Whereas the, you know, another aspect would be, uh, 00:39:05.120 --> 00:39:09.440 obedience following the commands of Christ. Christ commanded us to, to go and share. 00:39:09.440 --> 00:39:14.880 And so the quality of the discipleship, isn't the depth as much as it is the depth of an individual, 00:39:14.880 --> 00:39:19.760 as much as it is. And I don't want to make it about numbers, but the breadth of our, of our disciple 00:39:19.760 --> 00:39:26.400 makers and how we're, we're multiplying pre COVID. I would at least say, I think that there was, 00:39:26.400 --> 00:39:32.640 and I may be overstating, correct me if I'm wrong. I think there was more tension, more energy, um, 00:39:32.640 --> 00:39:40.240 towards the idea of engaging with individuals at a deeper level and not necessarily more individuals 00:39:40.240 --> 00:39:46.080 at, at a deeper level, but not necessarily this multiplication piece. Are you seeing any pendulum 00:39:46.080 --> 00:39:52.320 shifts? Craig, you opened up talking about movements. Do we need to adjust and, and move towards, uh, 00:39:52.320 --> 00:39:59.360 a movement piece? What, what are y'all in thinking about maybe this idea of depth versus breadth? 00:39:59.360 --> 00:40:07.120 I think ultimately it's both. And I think that's the tension that we have to figure out 00:40:07.120 --> 00:40:16.960 how to manage it. You know, it's, you can, it is, um, you know, breadth is more, is more disciples 00:40:16.960 --> 00:40:27.040 better? Yes. Yeah. Depth is better. Disciples are, are better disciples better. Yes. It's not. So it's really not an either, 00:40:27.040 --> 00:40:34.720 or there's a tension. I think we have not, overall, I would say we have not thought about 00:40:34.720 --> 00:40:45.680 how do we measure the quality piece. And so we've defaulted to kind of over measuring the, the quantity 00:40:45.680 --> 00:40:50.080 piece. And it's not that that needs to go away. It's just kind of over measured it. And so we've, 00:40:50.080 --> 00:40:53.520 we've become unbalanced. We have to figure out how to kind of bring it back and let those things live in 00:40:53.520 --> 00:40:59.680 and the tension they belong in. In my people movement metaphor, the way that I kind of say it is, you know, 00:40:59.680 --> 00:41:07.520 if, if more people are taking more steps towards becoming who God wants them to be, 00:41:07.520 --> 00:41:15.520 then we're being effective or fruitful, right? Because then both things are happening. There's more and there's 00:41:15.520 --> 00:41:22.160 better. I think in most of our models, we don't have any way to measure or haven't even thought about 00:41:22.160 --> 00:41:27.520 identifying what are the steps towards Jesus. And that's part of the problem. We're measuring a 00:41:27.520 --> 00:41:32.320 program. So we're measuring, Hey, people showed up for this. That doesn't mean a person took a step 00:41:32.320 --> 00:41:37.520 towards Jesus. It just means they showed up for a program. And so how do, how do we begin to think 00:41:37.520 --> 00:41:42.400 about that? What are the, what are the evidence, evidences would be the, you know, that we could 00:41:42.400 --> 00:41:47.680 look at that would say, this person is taking these steps towards Jesus. And so then we could really be 00:41:47.680 --> 00:41:55.440 able to say, it's not perfect, right? We're never going to, you know, I can't judge any of your three, 00:41:55.440 --> 00:41:59.440 you know, minds or hearts or souls. It's not my place, but there are things that if I, you know, 00:41:59.440 --> 00:42:06.240 was in relationship with you, I would know, Oh, Stephen's doing this, that, that activity is 00:42:06.240 --> 00:42:10.960 reflective of a person moving towards Jesus. Carlos is doing this, that activity is reflective of 00:42:10.960 --> 00:42:16.720 moving towards Jesus. And if I had somehow thought those things through in a way that I could kind of, 00:42:16.720 --> 00:42:21.920 you know, measure them, then I could say, all right, this, you know, this person's taking steps. 00:42:21.920 --> 00:42:27.200 And if I could do that across a group of people, these people are taking steps. And ultimately, 00:42:27.200 --> 00:42:35.760 that would give me a pretty good indication that we were being fruitful. It's not perfect. And it's 00:42:35.760 --> 00:42:40.640 never going to be, I think that this might be the tension in our kind of American mindset. It's 00:42:40.640 --> 00:42:46.640 never going to be a hundred percent accurate. I think that's part, like we can count the people 00:42:46.640 --> 00:42:49.520 in the room. Cause like, we can tell all these people who are kind of like, you know, make sure, 00:42:49.520 --> 00:42:53.440 you know, churches at large has gone, you know, like video and pictures and ways like to make sure 00:42:53.440 --> 00:42:58.160 that we get the exact right number. You know, digital makes it super easy for us, right? You 00:42:58.160 --> 00:43:02.000 know, the digital data comes in perfect. This is exactly how many IPs, and this is, you know, what 00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:08.800 they were. The, the quantity side is never going to be that pure. It's never going to be that perfect. 00:43:08.800 --> 00:43:17.280 But somehow we have to figure out how to include those aspects into our measures or we'll be content to 00:43:17.280 --> 00:43:20.800 just run programs and not know whether or not we're actually making disciples. 00:43:21.360 --> 00:43:29.760 the, uh, I love the fact that you said it's both and it's quantity. It's a quantity and quality. So our, 00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:35.280 our hope is that it's up to up and to the right with quantity and quality, the fruit tastes sweet 00:43:35.280 --> 00:43:42.960 and everything. The outputs are great. Um, uh, that's such, that's such great wisdom, Craig, uh, for us to 00:43:42.960 --> 00:43:48.960 angle everybody towards. So for no, if we know that we're looking in that direction of, of height and 00:43:48.960 --> 00:43:54.560 breadth, then we're in good shape. I think on the other side of the seed planted, um, I think their 00:43:54.560 --> 00:43:59.920 church leaders are probably saying, okay, now what seeds do we plant? I don't want to take this analogy 00:43:59.920 --> 00:44:06.480 too far, but I mean, so what do I do tomorrow? You know, what are some steps? What's the tending 00:44:06.480 --> 00:44:13.200 that I've got to do in this garden tomorrow in order to, uh, make it through this thing? And I think 00:44:13.760 --> 00:44:18.480 you'd asked me originally, what in the world have we done in our particular context? 00:44:19.200 --> 00:44:26.240 We've had to reevaluate every piece of what we're doing. Even as late as yesterday, 00:44:26.240 --> 00:44:32.960 our pastor is standing in front of our whole staff doing staff training going, what are we going to 00:44:32.960 --> 00:44:39.040 cancel? What are we going to slide? What are we not going to plant anymore? Uh, we're going to put that 00:44:39.040 --> 00:44:43.360 to the side and we're going to get more energy to this particular thing. We're going to plant more of 00:44:43.360 --> 00:44:49.920 this in order to get, we hope more, you know, with, with, with the Holy Spirit's power, more of this. 00:44:49.920 --> 00:44:58.000 And I think that might be, you know, uh, if we could come to, I know we're at 43 minutes on this 00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:06.480 one, but if, man, if we came to some principles, you know, that, uh, that are universal and said, 00:45:06.480 --> 00:45:13.120 okay, this, this, and this, uh, let's, you know, I think that that would be such as a handy thing. 00:45:14.240 --> 00:45:18.080 Wouldn't you say though, Steven, I mean, I, there's an uncertainty. That's again, 00:45:18.080 --> 00:45:22.160 we're really leaning into this. I'm here for, right. Just, you know, I don't know what's 00:45:22.160 --> 00:45:25.680 going to happen after I plant a crop. I don't know if there's going to be a tornado or a flood 00:45:25.680 --> 00:45:33.520 or a drought or like all of those things. And so all you can do is the best you can do in the 00:45:33.520 --> 00:45:38.480 moment. But I think you're in that metaphor. I think what you're identifying is really good is that 00:45:38.480 --> 00:45:44.800 I think a farmer does to the best of their ability, you know, look at the field, look at the 00:45:44.800 --> 00:45:50.560 scene and say, all right, this in this season, this, that's right. I need to plant more corn and less 00:45:50.560 --> 00:45:56.560 wheat. That's right. Right. Now you don't know until it gets to harvest season, whether that decision 00:45:56.560 --> 00:46:03.440 was right. Now, you know, in, in our context, I think there's Holy Spirit that, you know, there's a 00:46:03.440 --> 00:46:07.680 lot, you know, there's wisdom. There's a lot of things that can, can be a part of how we make 00:46:07.680 --> 00:46:13.280 those decisions. I think the, the critical thing, and maybe this was your hit as 00:46:14.800 --> 00:46:22.800 what are we using as the evaluation or the expected outcome of those decisions? Are we, 00:46:22.800 --> 00:46:29.760 do we have a concept of, you know, what is the, the right kind of fruit of what, what do more and 00:46:29.760 --> 00:46:35.040 better disciples look like? And if the reason we're doing that is because it is in the moment, the thing 00:46:35.040 --> 00:46:42.320 we believe will have the best ability to be fruitful and make more better disciples, then all we can do 00:46:42.320 --> 00:46:53.040 is go do it. Yeah. It's very frustrating, um, to our, you know, industrial, you know, control 00:46:53.040 --> 00:46:59.520 kind of mindset, but it's really, it's really all we can do. Yeah. And so dude, you know, go ahead, 00:46:59.520 --> 00:47:05.360 Steve. No, no, you got it, Carl. I was going to say that it made me, I think one thing that COVID exposed 00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:11.760 is that we were really good at maybe doing the macro and environments. Um, we want to put people 00:47:11.760 --> 00:47:18.080 through a process. Um, but I think part of the quality question has to be almost a return to being 00:47:18.080 --> 00:47:26.800 excellent at the simple, small things. Can I, as a pastor, right? When's the last time I taught 00:47:26.800 --> 00:47:34.240 somebody just to read the Bible, you know, like you got to pick up the phone and just have a regular 00:47:34.240 --> 00:47:41.040 conversation and maybe be excellent at the small. How can I help, um, the person at the office, you know, 00:47:41.040 --> 00:47:45.200 this whole faith and work movement. I think that there's something there too in equipping people in 00:47:45.200 --> 00:47:51.600 their vocation, but it's like, how do you become excellent also in the small thing? And how do you, 00:47:52.160 --> 00:47:59.040 how do you measure that? Um, I don't know. I think we there, I'm sorry. Was that a question to Craig? 00:47:59.040 --> 00:48:06.000 Uh, go for it, Steven. So I, I don't have a direct answer to that, but that is exactly the line of 00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:12.560 thinking, uh, you know, for, for us that I think maybe gets into the practical areas of things. 00:48:12.560 --> 00:48:19.760 We realize some exposure as a mega church, a mega gatherer, whatever, you know, we don't ever refer 00:48:19.760 --> 00:48:27.520 to ourselves as a mega church, but we, uh, we realized that our care systems needed some help. 00:48:27.520 --> 00:48:33.040 We realized that our community systems needed some help. And the third C is our content systems 00:48:33.040 --> 00:48:39.360 needed some help. Our content was all coming here. Maybe you'll get a webcast. Our community was 00:48:39.360 --> 00:48:44.640 Sunday school. Our, our care was a pastoral care department that we kind of subbed it out to, 00:48:45.440 --> 00:48:52.640 you know, whoa. So now COVID hit and we're like, okay, we've got to, we've got to, we need roots 00:48:52.640 --> 00:48:59.600 to go deep in our care systems. Meaning just like you said, use the phone, begin to really, to really, 00:48:59.600 --> 00:49:10.320 uh, uh, uh, uh, reinvent care for our people, uh, really reinvent what it means to then do distributed 00:49:10.320 --> 00:49:16.480 model of, uh, of community, community groups over zoom and home groups and those kinds of things. 00:49:17.040 --> 00:49:23.360 And then obviously as everybody said, our content, how do we disciple people virtually? I'm not just 00:49:23.360 --> 00:49:29.520 talking about the, the weekend worship service or those things. And how do we read the Bible 00:49:29.520 --> 00:49:37.360 together as a group? How, how do we deliver? Uh, we're not seeing each other physically. How do we 00:49:37.360 --> 00:49:44.960 continue to deliver or deliver in new ways? Um, you know, just the, the, the basics, you know, 00:49:44.960 --> 00:49:50.880 to our people. So those are like three things that we have, have attempted to in this last year and 00:49:50.880 --> 00:49:58.240 that we're stressing with our, with our congregations is the win for 2021 is if you can get care systems, 00:49:58.240 --> 00:50:02.720 right. And I don't mean systems like Craig and I have been talking about, I don't mean systems like 00:50:02.720 --> 00:50:09.600 with cogs and wheels and pulleys and, you know, steel and rivets. I mean, systems like, uh, the 00:50:09.600 --> 00:50:17.520 earth and lining it out and tilling and, uh, the right, uh, piece of equipment for the right field, 00:50:17.520 --> 00:50:22.960 for the right time, the right irrigation system to do the care, do the community and do the content, 00:50:22.960 --> 00:50:27.840 man, if we could keep nailing that, you know, we're going to, we've, we've got some great comments 00:50:27.840 --> 00:50:32.480 coming in on that. And so let, let me throw some of these up here. Uh, Connie, simple, 00:50:32.480 --> 00:50:36.960 small things mean the world to many people, especially at this time in, in, in isolation 00:50:36.960 --> 00:50:43.600 and the church connecting with, with an individual, Eric, uh, Kidwell, uh, throwing in here. Uh, 00:50:43.600 --> 00:50:49.680 it's got me thinking how we get through ratio of people shepherding the sheep as close to one-to-one 00:50:50.320 --> 00:50:56.960 as possible. And so what, what I, what I love about this, Eric and Eric keeps talking here. Uh, I, I 00:50:56.960 --> 00:51:02.080 wonder the best way to measure breadth depth is this ratio of shepherds to sheep or from farmers to crop. 00:51:02.080 --> 00:51:09.680 Each person is a field, uh, in, in this metaphor. I, I, I love this approach because what you get here 00:51:09.680 --> 00:51:15.440 is you're not measuring, uh, quantitative. Uh, you're really measuring once you get to that intimate 00:51:15.440 --> 00:51:21.680 level. You're able to measure qualitative. Um, hey, yeah, let me, let me teach you to read the Bible. 00:51:21.680 --> 00:51:29.520 Let me teach you how, and it goes from, um, you know, scalability and mass, but it goes to, uh, uh, 00:51:29.520 --> 00:51:36.160 intimacy and, and, and depth. And what's interesting in the digital environment, you can use the digital 00:51:36.160 --> 00:51:44.960 tool either way. You can scale and do the mega giga thing broadcast, or you can disciple at a one-to-one 00:51:44.960 --> 00:51:53.040 level. The tool of digital adjusts either way. It's really how you as the sculptor are sculpting the, 00:51:53.040 --> 00:51:57.760 the work of art that, that is your church. And that may be a bad analogy, but you can get kind of what 00:51:57.760 --> 00:52:02.480 I'm hearing here. One last thing, Connie, uh, in the past church leaders have asked congregations what 00:52:02.480 --> 00:52:08.640 they are doing. The church is the people, not the leaders. They have to be surveyed kind of like what, 00:52:08.640 --> 00:52:14.480 what Eric was, was alluding to. So I listening and wrestling with this idea of 00:52:14.480 --> 00:52:23.920 this one-on-on-one. Um, how do we, is that the solution? How, how do we get our, our church to 00:52:23.920 --> 00:52:28.160 see that? What's, what are the holes? What do we need to watch for necessarily? What are the 00:52:28.160 --> 00:52:34.560 challenges that our churches may be facing as we're getting into this, maybe this idea of more care on a 00:52:34.560 --> 00:52:36.560 more individualized basis? 00:52:39.360 --> 00:52:45.840 I think some of it is just shifting what we really see as, as the end, but like what, what does, what, 00:52:45.840 --> 00:52:50.640 what is maybe the ultimate or the thing that tells us that a person is following Jesus? And I think, 00:52:51.200 --> 00:52:56.480 you know, again, kind of, you know, and I'm not trying to be, you know, really prepared, but you 00:52:56.480 --> 00:53:00.640 know, you know, are they a regular attender? Are they part of a group? Do they volunteer and serve? 00:53:00.640 --> 00:53:06.720 Do they give? Well, like that's all about the program. I think one of the greatest things for us 00:53:06.720 --> 00:53:12.240 us to look and say, is this person really all in with Jesus is, are they on mission with Jesus? 00:53:12.240 --> 00:53:16.960 That's good. And so, you know, when Eric's are talking about, you know, that one-on-one part of 00:53:16.960 --> 00:53:24.080 what that's telling us is that we've been effective in moving people who were once sheep to now be 00:53:24.080 --> 00:53:33.200 shepherds, right? And that is a great indicator to us that whatever the process was, the process moved 00:53:33.200 --> 00:53:37.680 that person from where they were to where God wants them to be because God wants them to become 00:53:37.680 --> 00:53:43.440 a disciple maker. We know that. And so it becomes evidence of that. And so when we don't, when we 00:53:43.440 --> 00:53:48.880 don't see that our systems aren't built for that, I think sometimes we put lids on people's development 00:53:48.880 --> 00:53:55.280 because they've done the things we've asked them to do, but we haven't actually asked them the thing 00:53:56.080 --> 00:54:06.800 that matters the most, which is to get on mission with Jesus and to identify, you know, what is the 00:54:06.800 --> 00:54:14.480 soil that God's given them to farm and to go do that. That's really the, you know, the, the measure, 00:54:14.480 --> 00:54:18.560 and that's the life cycle of the seed. We, I mean, we could, you know, easily go into all of that. 00:54:18.560 --> 00:54:20.240 Yeah. So good. 00:54:22.000 --> 00:54:26.880 Yeah. Connie seems to like that. Yes. Moving sheep to shepherds. Um, it's interesting, 00:54:27.440 --> 00:54:31.600 you know, and, and honestly, I didn't think I'd have this conversation, but you know, I've, 00:54:31.600 --> 00:54:37.120 I've talked a lot about through blogs and podcasts, this idea of churches platform and I'll type a link 00:54:37.120 --> 00:54:46.080 in here, but it's this idea of, uh, Airbnb doesn't deem its success based off of how many hotels they 00:54:46.080 --> 00:54:50.960 have, how much money they're generating, the quality of their product. Airbnb is a platform 00:54:50.960 --> 00:54:55.680 and through the platform, it empowers others to, to do the work, to lease out their, their homes. 00:54:55.680 --> 00:55:00.960 And Airbnb by platforming, instead of building, they've managed to make five times more money than 00:55:00.960 --> 00:55:05.200 the top, or excuse me, they've managed to make more money than the top five hotel chains combined. 00:55:05.200 --> 00:55:10.400 Uh, so they've been immensely successful off of helping others. I guess that the thing that I've 00:55:10.400 --> 00:55:16.960 always looked at is what if the church would take that stance instead of building the, the, the services 00:55:16.960 --> 00:55:21.040 and, and fine tuning the product. And I used to be the guy responsible for fine tuning that weekend 00:55:21.040 --> 00:55:28.480 product. Um, what if instead we, we went towards more of a disciple making multiplication approach, 00:55:28.480 --> 00:55:34.160 moving these, these sheeps to become the shepherds. And when I see churches that are doing 00:55:34.160 --> 00:55:38.080 that in digital space, when we talk about that through the digital learning communities, 00:55:38.080 --> 00:55:43.520 this idea of the churches platforming and empowering people with their, to define their 00:55:43.520 --> 00:55:49.040 farmlands and start telling those fields physically and or digitally. I don't know, like I see those 00:55:49.040 --> 00:55:53.920 churches being successful in, in this season and the idea of multiplication and reaching maybe a 00:55:53.920 --> 00:56:00.000 different type of person that comes into the building. Like I see that model being successful. 00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:07.920 Um, it's so good. What, what, what thoughts about this idea of, of multiplication here, uh, moving sheep 00:56:07.920 --> 00:56:14.160 towards, towards shepherds is, is that the ultimate metric? Are, are we measuring other kind of stop 00:56:14.160 --> 00:56:17.840 gaps along the way? What, what would that measurement look like? 00:56:21.440 --> 00:56:28.080 I think to use our metaphor, it's the moment where we, where the, the disciple takes up the tools 00:56:29.120 --> 00:56:35.920 and begins to farm, you know, uh, for themselves, you know, to Craig's point, I think there's that 00:56:35.920 --> 00:56:43.200 magic moment that the Holy Spirit provides where the person owns the thing, you know, and, uh, they 00:56:43.200 --> 00:56:54.080 begin to till soil. So, um, we, to, to church's platform, um, I think that's the, you know, 00:56:55.200 --> 00:57:02.080 one of the largest conversations that we've, we're having today, you know, is how can we, uh, uh, 00:57:04.240 --> 00:57:11.520 how can we, uh, let me figure out how to say this, how can we, um, create an immersive environment 00:57:11.520 --> 00:57:17.600 outside the local one, you know, one, one, one or two services on a Sunday morning kind of, 00:57:17.600 --> 00:57:22.880 kind of a thing. What, where, where are we going to meet people where they are most of the time and 00:57:22.880 --> 00:57:34.720 that's on their device? Um, where are we going to, um, uh, provide the, uh, platform to use your, 00:57:34.720 --> 00:57:39.840 to use your spot or the, the, uh, it, the environment where people can interact, 00:57:40.800 --> 00:57:46.800 you know, in discipling, uh, you know, or, or what can we use? It's already out there 00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:50.400 to get people in environments where they can disciple, you know? I mean, that's just, 00:57:51.200 --> 00:57:55.200 if you would have told me that's a year ago that, you know, 8 billion people would have learned how to 00:57:55.200 --> 00:58:02.880 use zoom, you know, in a week, you're like, what? That's incredible. You know, but it's, 00:58:02.880 --> 00:58:06.480 how can we, how can we marshal those things? Whether it's the platform that we're on right now, 00:58:06.480 --> 00:58:13.040 you know, I would love to be able to meet, you know, and do with three other guys and okay, 00:58:13.040 --> 00:58:17.840 this is what we're doing weekly. You know what I mean? It's about getting the, these type of resources 00:58:17.840 --> 00:58:23.920 in their hands and then handing them the, the shovel and going, turn some dirt. Let's go. 00:58:23.920 --> 00:58:33.280 You know, I, yeah, I also think that, um, embracing the fact that it's always going to be complex and 00:58:33.280 --> 00:58:37.680 it's going to be different and there's different ways to skin a cat. Um, I think it's totally okay 00:58:37.680 --> 00:58:42.000 in the sense of there's different ways of making disciples and which is why I think self-awareness 00:58:42.000 --> 00:58:47.760 is such a key part of planting. Uh, like dude, with the person you are and the gifts God has given 00:58:47.760 --> 00:58:52.480 you and how he has shaped you, what's the most that you can do for God's kingdom? I think I had to 00:58:52.480 --> 00:58:57.680 realize at some point that I'm like, dude, you know what? I'm not Alan Hirsch, you know? And like, 00:58:57.680 --> 00:59:05.120 I'm not, that's not how God providentially has shaped my experiences, my character and competencies. 00:59:05.120 --> 00:59:12.320 And it's okay for me not to be this kind of leader, you know, but I am totally okay. And excited for 00:59:12.320 --> 00:59:17.440 instance, about dude, what, uh, Casey underground is doing the micro church movement. There's so much 00:59:17.440 --> 00:59:23.520 to learn from that movement. And yet at the same time, I know that I'm like, okay, God, like, um, 00:59:23.520 --> 00:59:28.960 um, I, I need to have those moments of self-awareness in terms of men. Is that what I'm supposed to be 00:59:28.960 --> 00:59:34.560 doing? Is that what you've called me to do? And I think it goes back to that obedience piece of like 00:59:34.560 --> 00:59:42.720 my being obedient and trusting you in that not excusing, right? So it's not, it's not making an 00:59:42.720 --> 00:59:49.280 excuse for, let's say, uh, gaps in disciple making, but realizing that in order to reach a city, 00:59:49.280 --> 00:59:55.280 it takes a lot of different kinds of churches that are going to meet different needs. And so I think 00:59:55.920 --> 01:00:03.200 embracing the complexity and also investing in people's self-awareness, um, I think it's huge. 01:00:04.640 --> 01:00:10.560 Yeah. Yeah. I think a big part, go ahead, Craig. I was just going to encourage you, 01:00:10.560 --> 01:00:15.920 Carlos with that, because I think a big part of the faithfulness does flow out of the self-awareness, 01:00:15.920 --> 01:00:23.360 right? Right. It's the, it's the parable of the talents, right? Right. What did God give you? And 01:00:23.360 --> 01:00:27.840 the point is that, you know, the people that got the two and the five were faithful with what they were 01:00:27.840 --> 01:00:35.200 given, right? The one who got the one wasn't. And so, but I think sometimes we only think of that in 01:00:35.200 --> 01:00:42.000 the context of, okay, I shouldn't bury my talent. Well, one of the ways you bury your talent is by 01:00:42.000 --> 01:00:45.360 trying to be somebody else's talent. That's good. 01:00:45.360 --> 01:00:52.720 And instead of owning, no, this is what, you know, this is who God made me to be. This is what I know 01:00:52.720 --> 01:00:57.440 I have gifts and abilities for. And so I'm going to be faithful with that. And I'm going to celebrate 01:00:57.440 --> 01:01:03.280 what somebody else does. That's completely different than what I could do. I see that all the time with 01:01:03.280 --> 01:01:07.600 our church. Like I could never do what that person's doing, but that, right. But I'm going to celebrate 01:01:07.600 --> 01:01:13.280 that because that's who God made them to be. And, and they're being fruitful by being faithful. 01:01:16.320 --> 01:01:22.080 There's a piece of self-awareness that I think there's also a piece of faith to trust that what 01:01:22.080 --> 01:01:30.160 God gave me is enough to do what God wants me to do. Yeah. Amen. Come on. 01:01:30.880 --> 01:01:36.240 Yeah. I honestly don't know that we can add anything else to that, that conversation that, 01:01:36.240 --> 01:01:42.320 that, that was a beautiful point to end. Um, yeah, you know, honestly, the, the heart of this was not 01:01:42.320 --> 01:01:47.200 to solve the problem as much as to start the conversation. And so hopefully in this context, 01:01:47.200 --> 01:01:53.200 audience, podcast listeners, YouTube people, whatever you've now got an opportunity to have 01:01:53.200 --> 01:01:58.240 this conversation, uh, within your leadership to quote Carlos, there's more than one way to skin 01:01:58.240 --> 01:02:03.600 the cat. I hate cats and do want to skin them. Uh, and so, you know, there have been some things 01:02:03.600 --> 01:02:08.400 coming in, uh, about, you know, Connie's talking about clubhouse. Definitely want to do that. 01:02:08.400 --> 01:02:13.920 Somebody else on Facebook is saying, Hey, uh, a carpenter is very skilled at tools. We need 01:02:13.920 --> 01:02:20.640 training to help us understand how to do the skills. Uh, so cool. Uh, uh, Eric is saying this, uh, 01:02:20.640 --> 01:02:24.800 what tools are the sheep lacking? That's holding them back from being shepherds. Some of that, 01:02:24.800 --> 01:02:30.240 that training piece. Hey, the good part is you get to figure this out with your churches. So 01:02:30.240 --> 01:02:36.240 dig into this conversation. The beta part of this is you get to experiment. You get to have this 01:02:36.240 --> 01:02:40.960 conversation. You get to figure out how to do this within your environment. So it's been an awesome 01:02:40.960 --> 01:02:46.960 conversation. Ray had to drop out. He was having some bandwidth issues. Uh, but for it was at the 01:02:46.960 --> 01:02:51.280 beach. What are you talking about? Yeah, he technically was in a parking garage. Uh, I think 01:02:51.280 --> 01:02:56.800 he was, he was commuting back and forth. It's okay. Um, but for, for Ray, who's not here for Craig, 01:02:56.800 --> 01:03:02.320 for Steven, uh, for Carlos, uh, this is Jeff with the church.digital and Stadia church planning. Uh, 01:03:02.320 --> 01:03:06.160 this has been an awesome time. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time here at the beta show. 01:03:06.160 --> 01:03:10.080 Y'all have a good day. Thanks for the invitation, Jeff. Thanks. Oh, my pleasure. We're going to 01:03:10.080 --> 01:03:15.360 have to do this again. Definitely sometime soon. Thanks everybody. See you, man.