WEBVTT

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 Hey, we're going to get you to that podcast in one second, but before we get there, I,

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 Jeff Reed, the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planning, I wanted to have a conversation with

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 you, churches that are out there. One of the greatest things I arguably think that I've done

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 in my life, other than married and kids, okay, that aside, one of the greatest ministry things

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 I've ever done is this idea of the fidgetal learning communities that we are offering

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 through Stadia Church Planning. We want to help you. We want to help your church learn to thrive,

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 grow, and multiply fidgetally, physically, as well as digitally. We've seen about 200 churches go

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 through this already, and it's been a phenomenal result of it. Culture is changing within these

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 churches. They're understanding what it is to thrive. They're understanding how to grow people,

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 how to grow their church, even in the midst of this COVID, not COVID, wherever we are in the season,

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 and they're even starting to understand what it means to multiply in fidgetal space. There's no secret

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 sauce to doing a digital strategy. There's no secret sauce to doing a fidgetal strategy. There's no

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 secret sauce to making your church thrive, grow, and multiply. It takes work. I'm not going to lie,

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 but through the framework, through the questions, through the learning communities,

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 we connect you with churches. We give you some content. We coach you along the way to help you

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 make the decisions that you need to make so that your church's strategy can thrive, grow, and multiply

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 your church along the way. This is a great opportunity for your church. We would love to have you be a part

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 of it. For more information, check out stadiacchurchplanning.org

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 slash fidgetal. Stadiachurchplanning.org

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 slash fidgetal. P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L. All right. Hey, that's it. We're going to get you back to that

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 episode right now. Hey, welcome everybody to Clubhouse. Tom, you're welcome to hang out at

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 the speaker level. If you need to, you can go back down however you want to regulate yourself, man.

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 This is going to be a fun conversation either way, but we are, I, Jeff Reed, I'm excited to have you

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 here. So we are going to have a conversation here in context of small groups and how small groups

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 maybe needs to change or what it looks like moving forward. It's interesting. We have conversations

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 like this all the time here through the church digital, through stadiacchurchplanning, talking

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 with digital pastors, executive pastors, church leaders, trying to figure out how to be effective

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 in moving forward in physical space and digital space and everything in between. And so in a

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 conversation with Lee Cote recently, talking with some other churches, honestly, it just sprung up

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 in me this idea of, hey, we need to get some people together and kind of unpack this. So we'll get into it

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 a little bit, but at the core of it, it's, hey, let's rethink, what if we kind of paused? What if

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 we kind of restarted? What if we blew up this idea of small groups, physical small groups, digital

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 small groups, just the whole thing in general, and kind of revisited this concept. So we are recording

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 this conversation. I want to say this up front. This is on Clubhouse. I don't know about you, but there

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 are people that love Clubhouse. I'm among them. But there are people that can't stand Clubhouse

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 because they can't get on it because they're on an Android device, or they're not able to jump in

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 this. They have FOMO. They're not able to engage it in real time. And so they want to have it. We

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 distribute it on the Church Digital Podcast. There's links to it in my bio, and we also distribute it in

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 other ways on social media. And so we want to enable this conversation to go well beyond the 20-some

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 people that are in this room right now. But at some point in this, I'm very big on conversation.

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 So we want to hear from the audience. If you've got questions, raise your hand, so to speak, within

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 the platform. We'll bring you up, even if there's thoughts on this. I want this to be an open dialogue,

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 not so much like the three of us, the four of us kind of monologuing towards it. So at some point,

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 we'll open it up and be more aggressive towards Q&A. But I want to do this, just even to introduce

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 the room real quick. Andy Mage is in. He is a digital pastor with, oh my gosh, I just blanked on the

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 church, Bay Hope Church in Tampa, St. Pete, somewhere in that area, right?

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 Yeah, Tampa, Florida. Awesome. And so he's been a friend. I've done online Bible studies with him,

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 and he's been one of my go-to guys for a while now, even just dreaming about what digital church

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 could be pre-COVID, not even recognizing, oh my gosh, all this COVID has turned all this stuff into

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 a crazy reality. Also in this is Stan. So Stan Roda. Roda or Roda? How do I pronounce that?

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 Roda. Roda. This is the awkward part of having friends on social media. You actually don't know

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 how to pronounce last names and stuff like that because it never comes up. But Stan has been,

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 is on staff at New Life Church in the D.C. area and has been really a voice, and I don't know that I

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 want to give him credit for this, but towards my co-church, towards discipleship, towards

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 disciple-making, and really been one of those voices that I've listened to and even repeating

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 in some areas as is helpful. And so if we're really talking about reimagining groups, Stan is one of

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 these guys that I'm like, hey man, Stan, I'd love to have you come in and share some insight towards

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 this. And then there's Lee Coat, who is executive pastor at the Crossings in Las Vegas, is part of

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 a church consulting group called Gromentum. And just one of these voices, honestly, that when he speaks,

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 he speaks, let's just be honest, like in a physical world, the guy was thinking digital.

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 As things pivoted, physical and digital, as the church was dealing with this COVID thing, Lee was

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 one of the voices of church leaders that were leaning very hard towards a digital space. And even in how

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 he was consulting and coaching other churches, it was a surprise to me to hear guys like Lee with the

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 credibility that they had in the physical ministry really pivoting towards a digital. So when Lee's

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 like, and I said this earlier, I know some other people have walked in, I was in a coaching call

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 with Lee, several other of the stadia, people were there and other churches were there, I asked Lee to come

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 in and speak on a topic. And Lee almost at a throwaway thought was talking about, man, what if we like

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 threw away the whole small group model and started from scratch. So I want to hand it over to Lee to start

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 this thing off. I've been talking a lot, I'm going to shut up for a while. Lee, kind of set the stage here as we're

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 talking about what maybe small groups is, where the weak spots are, and maybe why it needs to blow up,

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 why it needs to change, why we need to maybe look at this towards starting over. What are you thinking?

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 Kind of relive that conversation.

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 You really want to know that, Jeff? That's great.

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 Jeff, first of all, thanks everybody for being here. And Jeff, thanks for putting this together and Andy

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 and Stan. And yeah, I think just to piggyback on Jeff and maybe start the conversation, it has struck me

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 in both my conversations in leadership here at the Crossing in Las Vegas, I'm having with church leaders

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 across the country. Jeff, with this idea that engagement is this on our team here and conversations,

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 and you got caught in the middle of them when you invited me in. It sort of began to morph for me into,

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 and reading Adam Grant's Think Again book, which is very challenging and very timely for

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 the season back and go, what are the things that we are going to recreations of the old and results?

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 To think again about and recreate in a way that would reach the objective of not just engagement,

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 but we believe in the church that we are attempting to do an engagement towards discipleship and someone

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 growing in Christ and growing in community with others who are like-minded and doing the same thing,

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 right? So that's where the Peloton thing came up, and you included that in the title. I don't know how

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 many people on here have a Peloton. It's kind of a cult, and I'm part of it, and I'm not in denial

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 about that. It's fantastic. And so part of this conversation came out of us going,

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 what is it that Peloton has captured that makes people get up at 5 a.m. to join a ride with an

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 instructor they've never met, and hundreds if not thousands of people from around the world, and to

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 high-five people digitally, and to race people digitally, and to participate with the objective

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 of health and fitness in something virtually like that? And what is it about that and that experience

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 and that motivation where we can't get people to show up once or twice a month to somebody's living room

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 for 60 minutes for something that we believe is really important? And so I started digging in

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 personally and with my team to, what is it about this methodology? Is small groups now the old Sunday

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 school, right? Where most of us would say, yeah, Sunday school is kind of a dinosaur. I'm starting to

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 quickly becoming the Sunday school of the last generation.

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 It's in charge, right? Like, has so many churches that are running Sunday school.

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 But the model is there for people, right?

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 Exactly. But there's this goal and this challenge, I think, even coming out of COVID,

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 of maybe we need to challenge our people, our individuals to do more, and to be more.

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 Yeah. Here's where we are wrestling, even this morning, Jeff, in context here,

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 is the objective of what all the guys listening on this call, all the leaders on this call would say

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 is we want people to grow spiritually, spiritual disciplines to develop in their life, connection

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 to Christ, all that. And we would use whatever method of life groups, small groups, cell groups

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 that we would do to try to make that possible. Here's where we have to admit that in some ways it's

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 breaking down. One, we are combining a content space with a community space and trying to accomplish both.

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 So, most small group models, there's a content element and there's a bonding community and maybe

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 even a care element that goes along with that, all three of which are very good. They're excellent.

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 But at the same time, you begin to wonder like, can a small group of eight to 10 people sitting

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 in a living room, can I legitimately stand on my platform or on our social media platforms

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 and push people into a small group and go, listen, if you go to this environment, this is going to

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 resolve. Because I can get on the Peloton and if I get on the Peloton every day and I ride for 30 or 45

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 minutes, I may not lose weight or become an athlete, but I'm going to be physically in better shape.

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 There's no way around it. It's going to happen, right? And so, I'm just concerned that we have said over

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 and over again to our people, go do this. But if we were honest, even those that are going and doing

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 it, the amount of what we say is going to be accomplished in their life is a much smaller

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 percentage than we would probably even want to know. So, we just turn up the music on the engine that's

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 that's rattling and keep doing the same thing. And so, we're like, we're not going to turn the

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 music up anymore. We're going to try to figure out how to change that.

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 That's beautiful. Turn up the music, crank up in your AirPods and start living a Peloton life.

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 Hey, let's hand it over Andy Stan. I would love some insight. Is this resonating with you? I don't

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 know about the Peloton thing. I don't have one, but I know kind of that passion and it

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 activating people and kind of getting them moving towards that. Have you seen that in small groups?

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 Do you think we need to pivot as well? What's your kind of observations towards that? Andy,

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 why don't you get started on your side? Yeah. Actually, it's funny that we're kind of having

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 these conversations and thoughts kind of across the country, Lee. I think we're not the only ones.

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 I think there's many, many, many other people that are thinking the same thing. I actually wrote a blog

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 and gave it to Jeff, what, three or four weeks ago. It had to be three or four weeks ago about this

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 concept of our small groups were not working. This is me seeing this on the front lines during COVID,

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 but even before COVID. I was a worship pastor for 10 years and then I got called to be a digital

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 pastor. And so I was a digital pastor for about eight months before COVID started, which was kind

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 of fortuitous that our church had foresight to say, hey, we need to do this thing. And so in that,

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 even in the eight months prior to COVID, it was trying to get a group up off the ground was just,

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 it wasn't working. And something about the, it wasn't necessarily the content. Like Lee said,

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 we were, we were trying to jam the content and the community into the same space. And you know,

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 you're, you're, you're, you're, it's almost like this weird dichotomy that happens in the human head

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 when they're trying to do two separate things at the same time. So during COVID, it got even worse.

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 All of our existing groups obviously were trying to figure out Zoom and figure out FaceTime and figure

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 out Google Hangouts and just nobody knew what a mute button was. Inevitably, somebody's kid had their

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 shirt off and was walking around in the background. And like, you heard my dog earlier barking and just,

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 you know, all that stuff happens when you get eight to 12 people on a call. And so I,

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 I grew up a gamer, um, a pretty competitive gamer. I actually played, uh, for those nerds out there

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 that are listening, I played, uh, Halo one and Halo two competitively in tournaments and we won money

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 and all sorts of stuff. And it was great. But, but, but the core of that was there was three to four

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 people all the time. And we had a team of four people and myself included. So three other people

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 on a, what was essentially a Skype call at the time, uh, over Microsoft, uh, the Microsoft live servers.

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 And we are, our team actually came up. This is back in 2006, 2007. We would start our training sessions,

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 quote unquote, and this is super nerdy. So just forgive me everybody out there, but we would start

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 our training sessions with about 30 minutes of prayer and Bible study. And mind you, I'd never,

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 I'd never met these guys. Like they were, we literally would play virtual tournaments. So, uh,

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 one guy was in Albuquerque and the guy was in my old hometown up in, uh, up in Michigan and another

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 guy was in New Jersey. And so we would just do Bible studies. And I knew more about their life.

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 Uh, I knew more about them. I knew more about where their trajectories were and all of that other

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 stuff through that 30 minute Bible study. And then of course, you know, you go try to figure out

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 headshots and strategies and capture the flag and all the other nerdy stuff happening. But,

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 but the core of it was I was learning about those people and there wasn't the distraction of another

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 four to six people. And so my thinking, Lee, and, and, and you're, you're, I think that you have the

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 broad strokes. I was actually just trying to do a little bit of triage in, uh, the digital pastor

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 realm, kind of in the 3000 plus people I'm trying to minister to on a, on a daily basis. And I said,

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 what if we didn't do the eight to 12 kind of, you know, right now media type thing,

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 not saying it's bad, but what if we instead tried to get two to three, maybe four people,

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 same sex, or maybe one or two couple type thing. Let's get more intense about the actual community

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 thing. Cause the content, the content's going to happen. I mean, we, you know, God gave us 66 books

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 of the Bible for content, um, plus all of the other stuff, stuff around it. Let's actually concentrate

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 on the community. And so that, that was kind of our path. And I'm, and again, it's kind of funny

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 that we're all thinking about this right now. I think, uh, a year on in COVID we're, we're

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 technically a year on from everything just basically shutting down in the Western world.

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 And we've learned so much and yet we've learned nothing at all.

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 That hurts. We've learned so much yet we've learned nothing at all, you know? And so Stan,

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 I want to ask you like you, you're a, you're a discipleship, a disciple making guy. When I'm

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 looking at people that are aggressive in the discipleship space, you're one of those. You're

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 one of those voices through the things that, that you're, you're, you're working towards. So the idea

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 of, of not content, but focusing more in deeper relationships, I would imagine the idea of even

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 a smaller group gathering together. This is going to resonate with you, right? What are you thinking?

00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:12.720
 Um, yeah, so I'm probably the, uh, I'm probably the oddball in the group since I don't spend a whole

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 lot of time. I mean, I have a little bit of connection to the digital and all that kind

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 of stuff, but man, I, I think my, my perspective really does kind of begin from, can we just,

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 can we start with kind of the end in mind? Like what, what's the hope out of small groups? What's

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 the hope out of digital engagement, online engagement? Like what's ultimately the hope is

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 the, is the hope or is the win at the end of the day that, that there's more community, that people,

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 that we know each other, that we, you know, kind of have that kind of rhythm.

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 Someone is kind of walking in the, the shepherd and following, he lands squarely on the show.

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 And I learn from other people who probably have much smarter things to say than me, but what can I

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 learn about digital as a tool for, um, for disciple making specifically, not so much about like the

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 arenas of church. I kind of feel like, you know, the Sunday morning celebration is one arena,

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 the corporation, the body of Christ is kind of an arena. The, the community is an arena, the,

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 like, there's these different kinds of aspects to it, but ultimately all of these things are

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 supposed to be pointed squarely at go and make disciples. So I'm coming from a disciple maker

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 background saying, how do I get people who I'm engaging with either online via zoom? Cause I do

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 a ton of my training now via zoom. How do I get those people on zoom? Not just, how do I get to

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 a place where I don't just know what they're doing and about their life, but how do I develop that into

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 a long-term relationship where we're walking in steps of obedience together and they're actually

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 reaching people as well. So I guess part of my question with it is I'm, I feel like I'm partly

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 here to learn, but, um, I think beginning with the end in mind is a really important, uh, concept here

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 for us. What's the, is it just engagement? Is it just community or how are we taking this to the next

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 level and helping people hear the voice of Christ in those relationships, in those spaces,

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 and then walking in obedience? That's kind of what I'm processing.

00:19:33.680 --> 00:19:38.640
 Yeah. I love that. And let's, let's open that up. By the way, I don't, I don't know that I'm

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 necessarily suggesting a digital only approach. Um, I actually think that there's things in the

00:19:44.960 --> 00:19:50.960
 physical realm that, that we need to be addressing and revisiting in there, but, um, and let's,

00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:56.800
 let's open it up, Lee, you know, uh, Andy, I would love you guys inside on this, the, the end game.

00:19:56.800 --> 00:20:02.720
 What, what are we as a church? What are we expecting? What, what is our desire to what,

00:20:02.720 --> 00:20:07.760
 what's the finish line? What's the goal of our, of these new groups? Where are we, where are we

00:20:07.760 --> 00:20:13.040
 wanting them to take the, the attenders, the, the members that the people who are in the groups?

00:20:13.040 --> 00:20:19.600
 Well, and I think to stand, I appreciate what you said. I think partly why, why I'm using Peloton,

00:20:20.160 --> 00:20:25.280
 and I promise not to keep saying it for those of you that resent Peloton, but part of why I keep

00:20:25.280 --> 00:20:31.920
 saying it is because unfortunately in the church, we have a prime example of an organization that

00:20:31.920 --> 00:20:37.280
 probably both intentionally and accidentally has figured out how to leverage human behavior

00:20:37.840 --> 00:20:44.400
 in a way that is both beneficial for the, for the end user. And, and so it's like, where I feel

00:20:44.400 --> 00:20:49.760
 like sometimes to Stan's point, we don't understand. So we get caught up in the minutia of, for example,

00:20:49.760 --> 00:20:55.200
 so for example, it's like we, we would count and they watched an Andy Stanley DVD and they had a

00:20:55.200 --> 00:21:00.960
 conversation. We'd go, man, we count that. And I'm asking the deeper questions of, are we towards our end

00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:09.040
 objectives, right? Because we had a day long year, two days ago, which sparked even more of a number of

00:21:09.040 --> 00:21:13.680
 things that came out. But when, as far as attendance, including our online, like we're, we're, we're at

00:21:13.680 --> 00:21:22.400
 either pre COVID levels or even above, which would have been the typical pre COVID indicator of, or at

00:21:22.400 --> 00:21:27.280
 least what we, uh, church endeavor, but when we, elements that we would consider at least indicators

00:21:27.280 --> 00:21:32.880
 of engagement, right? You can't mitigate engagement. It was, it was, uh, that when I ran them to soak

00:21:32.880 --> 00:21:38.960
 it up, um, it, it was shocking when we started looking at things like, you know, are people giving,

00:21:38.960 --> 00:21:44.000
 are they connecting, are they serving, are they, are they influencing people outside of the church and

00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:48.800
 their neighbor and their neighborhoods. And when the data told us that on a larger scale, that was not

00:21:48.800 --> 00:21:55.360
 happening. Um, but, but people were still showing up and people were still giving. So we could just keep

00:21:55.360 --> 00:22:00.400
 going forward like that. Um, but we're, we're asking the question, what are we really trying to

00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:07.600
 accomplish and what are some, what are some new methodologies using the virtual, uh, tools that we

00:22:07.600 --> 00:22:13.120
 have that we can start. So we've begun some preliminary conversations and some beta stuff that's starting to

00:22:13.120 --> 00:22:19.520
 happen towards that. Um, and we're, our plan right now is not even to blow up our life groups as they

00:22:19.520 --> 00:22:24.640
 are, but we believe there's some things we can roll out that will run alongside those that will either

00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:31.760
 eventually bring life to those or we'll give them a, uh, necessary funeral. And so that's the type of

00:22:31.760 --> 00:22:37.120
 stuff that we're talking about right now. And what we're doing, I mean, I'll throw this out there, Jeff, and then

00:22:37.120 --> 00:22:43.120
 I'll, I'll be quiet. But what we're doing is we're having conversations around separating content from

00:22:43.120 --> 00:22:51.920
 the community aspect of groups to, to, to, to strategically look at those as two, they, they

00:22:51.920 --> 00:22:57.360
 integrate, but it's two separate paths of engagement and spiritual growth with people and try to figure

00:22:57.360 --> 00:23:04.480
 out how do we do, what do we do the, how do we provide content and provide life change through

00:23:04.480 --> 00:23:10.000
 that content at the best possible ways with the best possible delivery systems to people. And then

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:15.520
 separately, how do we bring people together in community as they need it without being, you know,

00:23:15.520 --> 00:23:19.920
 the church that, you know, we don't want to, we don't believe our primary goal is to help people make

00:23:19.920 --> 00:23:25.680
 friends, but how do we bring people at similar life places together so that they can do life together,

00:23:25.680 --> 00:23:30.320
 care for each other. And then the content stuff that they're learning will leak into that.

00:23:30.320 --> 00:23:35.200
 But we're starting to have conversations around not trying to accomplish all of that in the same,

00:23:35.200 --> 00:23:38.800
 in the same sphere.

00:23:40.160 --> 00:23:46.480
 Awesome. Hey, clarify for me. I mean, just like define content and define community for me. Devil's

00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:50.560
 into details, so to speak. Yeah, I get it. Like, what is that?

00:23:50.560 --> 00:23:55.600
 Yeah, I would say in a typical small group model, life group model, right? And we would even have said

00:23:55.600 --> 00:24:00.560
 this, we probably still would say this, like, how do you define a small group? And we would define it

00:24:00.560 --> 00:24:07.680
 by it's a group of people that meet on a, on some kind of definable regular basis, and they have some

00:24:07.680 --> 00:24:12.480
 sort of biblical content that is a part of it. So when I'm saying content in our context,

00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:17.920
 it's, you know, our typical small group will meet in a living room or in some space, coffee shop,

00:24:17.920 --> 00:24:23.120
 they will have some degree of community, pray for each other, and they will have some degree of

00:24:23.680 --> 00:24:29.360
 biblical teaching or biblical study that will go alongside of that. And I'm not, I hope people,

00:24:29.360 --> 00:24:34.640
 I'm not against any of that. What I'm saying is how do we do that better? And maybe they don't all need

00:24:34.640 --> 00:24:42.400
 to happen in the same, in that same space at the same time. Andy, Stan, what are you thinking about

00:24:42.400 --> 00:24:48.880
 that? Any response? Well, see, I, I view all of this, Lee, and I, I really appreciate your view. I view

00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:54.160
 all of this through, obviously my vocational perspective, and that's strictly digital,

00:24:55.600 --> 00:25:01.600
 for us, for, for, for a digital model to work in this aspect. So let me, let me also back up real

00:25:01.600 --> 00:25:09.360
 quick. I owned a CrossFit gym. It was a faith-based nonprofit CrossFit gym, but I started it and did all

00:25:09.360 --> 00:25:14.960
 that for about two years with my wife. And then we really didn't make any money on it. So, so we had

00:25:14.960 --> 00:25:22.400
 to kind of, you know, let it go. But, um, the whole point of it was let's leverage that community that

00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:28.000
 is in those fitness, the fitness realm. Uh, and this was, you know, four or five years ago.

00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:34.400
 And so we saw great strides. And so lead to your point of Peloton, I think there's a shared struggle

00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:39.040
 in that. Um, and I think there's a, a definite band of brothers mentality, even if it's, you know,

00:25:39.600 --> 00:25:45.280
 um, um, multi-gender, you know, it doesn't matter what it is. There's a shared sense of struggle.

00:25:45.280 --> 00:25:49.120
 So how, and this could be a, this is a rabbit hole that we could go down if we wanted to, but

00:25:49.760 --> 00:25:56.080
 how do you get that shared sense of struggle in a small group, uh, other than, you know, I, I don't

00:25:56.080 --> 00:25:59.760
 know, I don't know how to do that, but in the online, in the online sphere, in the online world,

00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:05.120
 the eight to 12 just doesn't work. Um, it's just, it's too many voices. It's too, there's just

00:26:05.120 --> 00:26:09.280
 always some sort of delay. Uh, there's always some sort of something. And so we have found,

00:26:09.280 --> 00:26:15.280
 and I have found, uh, making it smaller is the way to accurately and, and adequately

00:26:15.280 --> 00:26:18.720
 serve the needs of everybody in that group. Pretty simple for us.

00:26:21.520 --> 00:26:25.520
 Stan, how do you, how do you get this in, in a, in a physical environment? I know through

00:26:25.520 --> 00:26:31.360
 the disciple making and ignore that maybe the digital context, but you know, at the heart of this,

00:26:31.360 --> 00:26:35.040
 and Lee, I want to come back later and talk more about even to the point of how do we,

00:26:35.040 --> 00:26:40.160
 activate these people, but like in a, in a house church and in those environments, you're,

00:26:40.160 --> 00:26:46.480
 you're really staying active towards re mobilizing and releasing people, training people, discipling

00:26:46.480 --> 00:26:49.520
 people. That's, that's in these, these smaller environments, right?

00:26:50.320 --> 00:26:57.840
 I mean, yeah, it absolutely can be. Um, I, I mean, I'm sitting here listening and I, I love what I'm,

00:26:57.840 --> 00:27:03.520
 I love what I'm hearing. I love the, I love the idea of taking the, the tools that are available,

00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:10.080
 all of these pieces that are available to us through technology and all this stuff. Like I love

00:27:10.080 --> 00:27:16.880
 all of it, but I guess for me, I'm still coming back and just wrestling with what I'll end up reading

00:27:16.880 --> 00:27:24.960
 in a Barna research study, you know, in five years, right? Like I I've stood up and preached,

00:27:24.960 --> 00:27:30.880
 I don't know how many hundreds of sermons over 20 years of ministry. And I've, you know, quoted the,

00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:36.400
 the statements about how the church is losing the culture war and people are leaving the church in

00:27:36.400 --> 00:27:42.720
 droves and 75% of high school students, when they go to college, they leave the church. And like, I,

00:27:42.720 --> 00:27:46.880
 I mean, I remember some of these quotes and those numbers may have changed and whatnot.

00:27:47.600 --> 00:27:54.080
 My, my thing is, is still just trying to get back to the basic of like, how do we take

00:27:54.960 --> 00:28:01.600
 each of these elements here and get people moving more toward, more toward movement rather than

00:28:02.800 --> 00:28:08.640
 kind of to what Lee was saying, I guess, coming in for community and, and content. So like when Lee was

00:28:08.640 --> 00:28:14.160
 talking, my head went to the way we structure, the way I train and structure all of our small group

00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:21.360
 leaders, my house church leaders, um, I, I give them a process. It's a seven step format. It's, it's a tool

00:28:21.360 --> 00:28:28.160
 called three thirds, but the whole point of it is not to deliver content. The whole point of it

00:28:28.160 --> 00:28:33.120
 is to kind of walk through a little bit of community, a little bit of content, but the way I train it for

00:28:33.120 --> 00:28:37.360
 our people, whether they're meeting in person in a living room, whether they're meeting on someone's

00:28:37.360 --> 00:28:43.200
 driveway, whether they're meeting in a cigar lounge, whether they're meeting via zoom, it doesn't

00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:51.440
 really matter. The formatting of the group leads toward some kind of a step of obedience and goal

00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:57.840
 setting for each person that's a part of it. So everybody's taking steps forward in obedience and

00:28:57.840 --> 00:29:05.040
 surrender, um, to, to Jesus. And so that's, that's, it really doesn't matter to me what the format is.

00:29:05.040 --> 00:29:11.120
 I want to try to take advantage of all of the tools and use them to the best of my ability,

00:29:11.120 --> 00:29:16.000
 but to get to that point, because like we're talking about, I think small groups and Lee

00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:20.240
 said it way better than I would have. Small groups are kind of becoming the,

00:29:21.120 --> 00:29:27.120
 the Sunday school of the 2010, 2020s kind of a thing. Like it's starting to, it feels like it's

00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:33.120
 not really relevant. Almost in Northern Virginia, we deal with people who have

00:29:34.240 --> 00:29:39.840
 three and four hour commutes a day. And we were saying that their discipleship next step was a

00:29:39.840 --> 00:29:46.160
 small group. So I've got guys in the Pentagon, White House, NRO, whatever, you know, leaving home

00:29:46.160 --> 00:29:52.720
 at five or 6am, coming home at seven or eight at night, or being gone for two weeks on a secret

00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:58.560
 service mission or whatever. And then they're hearing from their church, well, you got to get in this small

00:29:58.560 --> 00:30:04.720
 group every Tuesday night for two hours to be. And so then there was this feeling of guilt building up.

00:30:04.720 --> 00:30:09.600
 And I don't know if I can fit here. So we were at the place of scrapping groups as well. Just kind of

00:30:09.600 --> 00:30:16.160
 like, what do we do? So for me, all of it just comes back to, let's get these things formatted,

00:30:16.160 --> 00:30:22.560
 whether we're using Zoom, whether we're using Clubhouse, whether we're using, you know, a meeting

00:30:22.560 --> 00:30:28.320
 in a driveway, whatever it is, let's, let's just format it more toward obedience and goal setting to

00:30:28.320 --> 00:30:35.840
 try to move, to try to take some kingdom territory, rather than kind of riding on the heels of like,

00:30:35.840 --> 00:30:41.200
 oh, well, this is the latest trend. The church has to jump on it because this is the new thing.

00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:45.600
 And then a year or two later going, oh, it wasn't the thing. Let's go back to the drawing board.

00:30:45.600 --> 00:30:52.880
 Well, why did we lose a whole generation of people kind of a thing? So maybe, maybe my cynicism is

00:30:52.880 --> 00:30:59.200
 coming out a little bit, but I I'm really just all about how do we get people to take a step of

00:30:59.200 --> 00:31:05.360
 obedience? Oh, I don't, I don't think it's cynicism. I think it's, it's, um, and this again, so again,

00:31:05.360 --> 00:31:12.480
 I'm a digital guy. So go with me real quick, but there's a, the eight to 12 model again, not to bash it.

00:31:13.360 --> 00:31:18.560
 It, there's a, it feels very cumbersome. It feels very weighty. It feels very much, um,

00:31:19.280 --> 00:31:24.160
 like the, the, you know, the old, um, church adages, you know, churches are a cruise ship and

00:31:24.160 --> 00:31:27.440
 takes a mile to turn a cruise ship and all that. And you can't turn it too fast or everybody flies

00:31:27.440 --> 00:31:32.960
 off. And like, that feels very antiquated because our culture, none of our culture is like that

00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:38.480
 anymore, uh, as shown through COVID. I mean, how many people transitioned to going to school online

00:31:38.480 --> 00:31:43.440
 within a week and, you know, working from home within a week, you know, it's the eight to 12

00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:50.720
 small group model feels very cumbersome. Whereas we need something agile, a little more, um, uh, less

00:31:50.720 --> 00:31:58.000
 burdensome, a little bit more, uh, uh, able to kind of, I, I, I failed to think of the word, but almost

00:31:58.000 --> 00:32:09.600
 like a, a quick response team. Andy, as you were talking about that, um, I was thinking about what,

00:32:09.600 --> 00:32:14.880
 what makes the power of the shared experience within, within the cycle world. And, and again,

00:32:14.880 --> 00:32:19.360
 circling back to that again, and, and what are the learnings there as you were saying that,

00:32:19.360 --> 00:32:25.120
 and it's like what they're, what they're doing is there again, they're understanding what they're

00:32:25.120 --> 00:32:33.440
 trying to accomplish and they're putting the best people on it. Right. So part of what the secret to

00:32:33.440 --> 00:32:41.760
 a Peloton experience or, or other places is they're finding the best, uh, spin instructors in the world,

00:32:41.760 --> 00:32:49.360
 right. With a variety of backgrounds, a variety of styles, and they are offering them at your

00:32:49.360 --> 00:32:56.080
 convenience across the board. Right. So you can, you can tap into the best anytime that works for you

00:32:56.080 --> 00:33:02.160
 and accomplish something that they're telling you and you believe is very important. Right. And so the

00:33:02.160 --> 00:33:07.680
 virtual aspect of that obviously fast forwards that for the church, if we can start to get our minds

00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:12.800
 around, everything doesn't have to be physical. That's step number one. And then step number two

00:33:12.800 --> 00:33:20.880
 is figuring out, are we comfortable putting less than, uh, productive content in front of people

00:33:20.880 --> 00:33:27.920
 and calling that. Okay. Because the, the, the model is what we care more about than actually

00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:33.120
 the data. I would challenge people that are on this call that if they really haven't dug into

00:33:33.120 --> 00:33:38.480
 their data. And again, I'm not a data person and people that work with me know that, but if you start

00:33:38.480 --> 00:33:43.440
 to dig into your data and you start to really run numbers around the things that you're trying to

00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:48.640
 accomplish, my gut would tell me, and if it doesn't scare you and you're like, we're killing it, please

00:33:48.640 --> 00:33:52.560
 reach out to me. Cause I want to know what you're doing. But my gut would tell me that you're going

00:33:52.560 --> 00:34:00.160
 to be shocked at what those numbers tell you. Um, and I think those numbers are reasonable to, to Andy's

00:34:00.160 --> 00:34:06.960
 point of, I think it was Andy who said, you know, we're, we're also asking people to do a multitude and a

00:34:06.960 --> 00:34:12.160
 multiple of stuff who have very little margin in my life. I told somebody yesterday, the people that

00:34:12.160 --> 00:34:15.920
 have enough margin in their life to do all the things that we as a church sometimes point them

00:34:15.920 --> 00:34:22.400
 to actually scare me, right? Like who, who has that margin? Who has that, that freedom? Who, who,

00:34:22.400 --> 00:34:27.200
 you know, and maybe their priorities are messed up. I mean, it's like, you know, there's only, you know,

00:34:27.200 --> 00:34:32.400
 168 hours in the week, you know, and if you, if you have a normal life and family and maybe a spouse

00:34:32.400 --> 00:34:37.360
 and all those things and a, and a, and some sort of a career, you know, we've said this before in

00:34:37.360 --> 00:34:41.040
 the church, but we have a slice there. And so how do we leverage that? So we're starting to have

00:34:41.040 --> 00:34:47.360
 conversations around how do we get those objectives in front of people in ways that they can opt in

00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:54.720
 and grab ahold of it as frequently and often as possible and, and do it in a way that actually

00:34:54.720 --> 00:34:58.880
 is accomplishing things. Cause the other conversation we're having is actually, and this is going to

00:34:58.880 --> 00:35:04.160
 surprise some of you, we're looking at models that actually promote scarcity. In other words,

00:35:04.160 --> 00:35:11.680
 how do we, how do we, how do we present a level of scarcity around content specifically that people

00:35:11.680 --> 00:35:17.440
 have to opt in now and they have to get it now and they have to choose it now versus, you know,

00:35:17.440 --> 00:35:24.080
 just a content dump that has no value whatsoever, you know? And so that's why Peloton does live rides.

00:35:24.080 --> 00:35:29.760
 I've only done like two of them, but the point is that they do it because it creates that level of

00:35:29.760 --> 00:35:34.880
 urgency with people. I want to be part of that community. So I bookmarked to do that. And so

00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:40.000
 anyway, there's some of that, that I believe if somebody will dig in and try to innovate around

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.400
 that, I'm sure there'll be a lot of failures in that process, but coming out the other side,

00:35:44.400 --> 00:35:48.880
 it's going to be, there's going to be some amazing stories of how we tapped in. Cause I know,

00:35:48.880 --> 00:35:54.320
 you know, I'm a middle-aged guy and a lot of my friends that I hang out with, play golf with and go

00:35:54.320 --> 00:35:59.680
 eat with, they aren't doing a lot of the things that I'm standing on stage telling everybody in my

00:35:59.680 --> 00:36:05.120
 congregation to do, and they're not going to do it in the way that we're modeling it. So I'm personally

00:36:05.120 --> 00:36:11.440
 convicted to solve that. That's great. Yeah. I mean, you, you feel that, right? If you're doing,

00:36:11.440 --> 00:36:18.400
 there's always this tension between live and on demand. The reason why you want to do things live,

00:36:18.400 --> 00:36:23.760
 this may be getting in some into the weekend service, but live is going to give you more ability

00:36:23.760 --> 00:36:30.160
 to have a shared experience simultaneously with more people, which gives you the opportunity to create

00:36:30.160 --> 00:36:36.640
 community. And so live experiences for the most part are going to give you more people to build a

00:36:36.640 --> 00:36:43.760
 community around. Whereas if you do things on demand, make it readily available, that's not giving you the

00:36:43.760 --> 00:36:50.240
 shared community. You've got two people watching at 4am on a Tuesday morning. Like you're not going to

00:36:50.240 --> 00:36:57.760
 create community around those two people at 4am. Now, traditionally, we actually see that on demand

00:36:57.760 --> 00:37:05.200
 gives you more reach. It gives you more eyeballs. And so you've got more consumers of the product,

00:37:05.200 --> 00:37:11.360
 but maybe not necessarily more people being activated, more people being sent out,

00:37:11.360 --> 00:37:17.120
 more people making it, you know, online to offline. The gospel we hear in the online world has to

00:37:17.120 --> 00:37:24.160
 influence our offline relationships, releasing these people and getting them not just consuming a product,

00:37:24.160 --> 00:37:30.800
 but doing some things in the physical realm. Stan, I want to come back to you. And you were the one I think

00:37:30.800 --> 00:37:35.760
 that was dealing with, you know, in Washington DC, the Secret Service, the guy who's way too busy,

00:37:35.760 --> 00:37:42.320
 working 5am to 8pm, and he needs to be dad, he needs to be husband. And so you don't want to overtax him,

00:37:42.320 --> 00:37:48.160
 and you don't want that guy to feel guilty, because of, you know, there's 27 things that he needs to do as a

00:37:48.160 --> 00:37:53.760
 Christian, in context of the church. And so you're, you're reimagining some things, I would imagine.

00:37:53.760 --> 00:38:00.160
 You're reprioritizing, maybe what it means to be. And so I'm walking through that mind space a little

00:38:00.160 --> 00:38:07.600
 bit. Okay, what does it mean? Like, how did you reprioritize some things? What did you value over

00:38:07.600 --> 00:38:13.120
 over others? Maybe what was some of the decision process? How did you get from, you know, maybe a

00:38:13.120 --> 00:38:18.720
 buffet of options down to more of a leaner approach in your church?

00:38:19.680 --> 00:38:26.400
 Yeah, so, sort of to what I mentioned a little bit ago, you know, we started really with the end

00:38:26.400 --> 00:38:31.680
 in mind, we wanted to define a disciple, we wanted to have a really clear picture of,

00:38:32.560 --> 00:38:38.240
 at the end of the day, if you went through a small group, if you went through an online service,

00:38:38.240 --> 00:38:44.320
 if you were on a zoom call, no matter what it was, we knew exactly what we believed you were

00:38:44.320 --> 00:38:51.920
 supposed to look like, if you're following Jesus. So we cheated, we did not do the creative church

00:38:51.920 --> 00:38:58.560
 approach, mission of a disciple to be super trendy, we just stole it right from Jesus and John 1027,

00:38:58.560 --> 00:39:04.960
 my sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. So we started to define a disciple,

00:39:04.960 --> 00:39:10.400
 a new life of somebody who hears the voice of the shepherd and follows, or hears the voice of God,

00:39:10.400 --> 00:39:19.040
 we basically reverse said, okay, when a live stream Sunday mornings, zoom, Bible studies,

00:39:19.040 --> 00:39:24.640
 men's groups, whatever, it didn't matter to us, we wanted to use the tools effectively.

00:39:25.440 --> 00:39:30.480
 But at the end of the day, we wanted to say, what does that disciple look like? Let's break it down.

00:39:30.480 --> 00:39:37.120
 So we broke it down this way, somebody who is hearing the voice of the shepherd is a follower

00:39:37.120 --> 00:39:43.920
 or a disciple of Jesus, who hears God's voice through scripture, and can communicate back to God

00:39:43.920 --> 00:39:51.920
 through prayer. So we said, one of the two of the skills we want every disciple to have, we want every

00:39:51.920 --> 00:39:58.800
 disciple to know how to read the Bible, and how to pray. And then I started implementing a lot of that

00:39:58.800 --> 00:40:05.760
 in my training through 4Gen, but we went to the next level, what did it look like to actually obey God,

00:40:05.760 --> 00:40:12.240
 we started talking in terms of engaging the mission of God. So at that point, we said,

00:40:12.240 --> 00:40:17.840
 we know that part of the mission of God is, well, it's the Great Commission, it's go and share the

00:40:17.840 --> 00:40:24.080
 gospel. So we broke down the gospel, we have some tools that we use and have developed to help people

00:40:24.080 --> 00:40:31.040
 share the gospel. But we also, I look at John 9, the story of the blind man. He has the most powerful

00:40:31.040 --> 00:40:37.760
 13 word story ever told. He says, I don't really know if Jesus was a sinner or not. All I know,

00:40:38.480 --> 00:40:45.040
 I was blind, now I see. So we started training people how to tell their story. We've done these trainings on

00:40:45.040 --> 00:40:51.240
 Zoom, we've done them on, we've had some of these conversations, I think, even on places like Clubhouse.

00:40:52.320 --> 00:40:58.320
 We've done in-home things, we've done some of these things from stage, blah, blah, blah. So boil all that

00:40:58.320 --> 00:41:03.840
 down. We said, a disciple hears the voice of Jesus and follows, here's the voice of God and obeys.

00:41:04.560 --> 00:41:10.880
 Every disciple of Jesus must be able to do these four things. And when I train it through Fortune, I say,

00:41:11.520 --> 00:41:20.400
 imagine the transformation in your church's disciple-making efforts. If 100% of the believers

00:41:20.400 --> 00:41:26.320
 in your church all know how to read their Bible, how to pray, and through that they know how to hear

00:41:26.320 --> 00:41:30.880
 the voice of God, to discern the will of God for their life, what step of obedience they should take.

00:41:30.880 --> 00:41:36.160
 And every single disciple can share their story of how God is changing their life,

00:41:36.160 --> 00:41:42.960
 I was blind, now I see, and share the gospel with anybody at any time. Would that transform

00:41:42.960 --> 00:41:51.400
 your city, your church, your community, your neighborhood? And so for us, all of these tools

00:41:51.400 --> 00:42:00.740
 became super helpful to say, let's get this stuff out there in about as many ways as we

00:42:00.740 --> 00:42:09.360
 possibly can. But every single one of them needs to point to these core foundational things to help a

00:42:09.360 --> 00:42:14.700
 disciple of Jesus hear the voice of God and obey through these four specific practices. That's where

00:42:14.700 --> 00:42:21.080
 we landed. So we just tried to simplify everything we did to those four things. Those are the things I

00:42:21.080 --> 00:42:28.560
 do most of my training in through 4Gen. We pointed everything we had right at that and then went from

00:42:28.560 --> 00:42:36.460
 there, but we've used physical, digital, all the stuff to point directly at those four practices.

00:42:38.520 --> 00:42:43.560
 Yeah, I mean, that was rich, that was thorough, but there's a lot there. And it's really,

00:42:44.020 --> 00:42:49.320
 it's funny, and I didn't know, really, we were going to get to this place, but there's a tension,

00:42:49.560 --> 00:42:55.880
 I think sometimes between, and Stan, I don't know if this is language with you through 4Gen, but like

00:42:55.880 --> 00:43:03.460
 knowledge-based discipleship and this idea of obedience-based discipleship, where sometimes it's,

00:43:03.460 --> 00:43:11.540
 sometimes our churches, we're educating people in mass, but we're not exactly seeing where they're

00:43:11.540 --> 00:43:17.520
 living it out in their life, where they're not being the obedience to Christ. They're not living out the

00:43:17.520 --> 00:43:21.840
 Great Commission. They have the knowledge of that, but they're not feeling it towards the obedience

00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:26.820
 point. But some of the stuff that you're talking about really gets more towards, you know, the heart

00:43:26.820 --> 00:43:32.720
 of activating these people, getting them out, giving them personal mission, helping them realize what

00:43:32.720 --> 00:43:38.960
 God's called them to do. And then as a church, more releasing them out to do that. Maybe it's not,

00:43:39.420 --> 00:43:45.300
 hey, getting that high-level volunteer to be a guest services person, greeting, you know, as they're

00:43:45.300 --> 00:43:49.900
 coming into the building, maybe instead it's something about engaging missionally within the

00:43:49.900 --> 00:43:57.120
 communities, or maybe even being the church more in a, in a digital or a physical environment. Like,

00:43:57.420 --> 00:44:03.100
 have you seen people respond well to that? Like, as people do, are they receptive? Are they

00:44:03.100 --> 00:44:09.300
 hesitant to kind of embrace into that idea? No, I mean, we, we definitely have stories of people

00:44:09.300 --> 00:44:15.700
 trying to embrace into that. Tom, who was on here a little while ago, he's got, you know, a team of

00:44:15.700 --> 00:44:21.780
 people of like chat hosts and people engaging online who love that process or connecting with people

00:44:21.780 --> 00:44:26.740
 online, trying to touch base with them during the week, trying to make those conversations happen.

00:44:26.740 --> 00:44:33.940
 We've got, um, people who are taking full advantage of God's uniquely positioned me somewhere. So we've

00:44:33.940 --> 00:44:40.180
 got a guy who's trying to do all of his disciple-making efforts in a, in a prison. We've got, you know,

00:44:40.220 --> 00:44:46.220
 I've got a guy who's using his entire three or 400 person business network to try to disciple. He's

00:44:46.220 --> 00:44:54.260
 baptized, I don't know, people down to like the fourth generation. I, I think, I think Christians are

00:44:54.260 --> 00:45:01.260
 hungry for an adventure and meaning and purpose. And I don't, I do not mean this to sound harsh or

00:45:01.260 --> 00:45:06.980
 negative, but not just kind of come back next week for the next step and how to whatever, like

00:45:06.980 --> 00:45:14.180
 they're, they're really hungry for this experience of, of God. And my preacher side comes out, Jeff,

00:45:14.220 --> 00:45:18.340
 I'm sorry. When I start talking about this, I start preaching and it all comes out of my mouth and it

00:45:18.340 --> 00:45:26.160
 gets messy, but I absolutely think we have people engaging that online in their homes, wherever,

00:45:26.760 --> 00:45:33.580
 because they want, they want it. And I think we maybe for years have undersold people on the,

00:45:33.580 --> 00:45:37.940
 the adventure of following Jesus at that level. But anyway, I'll stop preaching.

00:45:39.340 --> 00:45:44.540
 Oh, I mean, the, the heart of what you're talking about really is, is some of my motivation behind

00:45:44.540 --> 00:45:48.940
 saying it. And I would love feedback because I'm perfectly willing to be wrong. But when I talk

00:45:48.940 --> 00:45:55.860
 about, Hey, maybe we should blow up small groups like this model and start over. The reason, one of my

00:45:55.860 --> 00:46:02.340
 motivations behind that is I, I don't see small groups necessarily being that, that great commission

00:46:02.340 --> 00:46:09.360
 commission vehicle to get people outside, you know, Lee, I'm, I'm pretty sure you guys at, at, uh, at the

00:46:09.360 --> 00:46:15.180
 crossings have used the word activator. Like I do the podcast or, or through one of the times we've

00:46:15.180 --> 00:46:20.840
 talked, I just, I remember you guys have, have used that term activating people within the church,

00:46:20.840 --> 00:46:25.500
 right? Like is that was you, right? Like, what does that look like? What does activating look like

00:46:25.500 --> 00:46:26.640
 there, there at the cross?

00:46:27.640 --> 00:46:34.320
 Yeah. We, we use the term, um, in a practical way, Jeff, like people on the call in, you know,

00:46:34.420 --> 00:46:41.680
 dream team, uh, owners, you know, whatever term we would use in a practical way, obviously we've

00:46:41.680 --> 00:46:49.020
 got t-shirts that say activators. So it's a thing, right? So, um, but what we mean by that is what

00:46:49.020 --> 00:46:54.900
 we're now defining as kind of full, a fully engaged individual, right? Where they're fully engaged

00:46:54.900 --> 00:47:01.560
 in what's going on. I think the challenge that we're also wrestling with is even with that activator,

00:47:01.680 --> 00:47:06.340
 love the idea of that, right? That shows ownership. There's a church community element that I believe

00:47:06.340 --> 00:47:11.380
 is important. Um, you know, but I think we're wrestling with that as well. Like, you know,

00:47:11.440 --> 00:47:18.900
 what qualifies somebody to be in that, uh, to, to be considered in that group circle, whatever you want

00:47:18.900 --> 00:47:24.800
 to define it. And, you know, is that actually something that we are comfortable applauding at

00:47:24.800 --> 00:47:29.020
 this point? Um, or is there elements of that, that we're like, we got to rethink that a little

00:47:29.020 --> 00:47:35.640
 bit. Um, and so I think in a purest form, we're looking at activation or activator as someone who

00:47:35.640 --> 00:47:42.740
 is, who is, who is, who is, who is evidencing the, the elements of what a life on mission would look

00:47:42.740 --> 00:47:46.820
 like. They're living a life on mission and like influencing others. They're giving, they're

00:47:46.820 --> 00:47:52.480
 serving, they're connected to each other. And you would say that like, I know gathering is still a

00:47:52.480 --> 00:47:58.140
 thing, right? It's just where we're at. And I think that would be the same in the activator realm for us

00:47:58.140 --> 00:48:02.200
 here at the crossing and having some more conversations around, you know, how do we do

00:48:02.200 --> 00:48:06.080
 that? Cause we've treated that as the group that we want to kind of give much more of an insider

00:48:06.080 --> 00:48:10.240
 load ideas. And so we want to make sure that that continues to be, what's going to really be

00:48:10.240 --> 00:48:13.920
 important is for us to figure out how do we now can be key leaders to our activators.

00:48:14.880 --> 00:48:22.720
 Activators really is that opportunity to multiply, to create new community, to, to get that person to,

00:48:22.820 --> 00:48:30.200
 uh, to share Christ, to be able to bring others into the faith where it's not just growing in context

00:48:30.200 --> 00:48:35.480
 of what's happening in a, in a large service, you know, event-based evangelism may be questionable,

00:48:35.480 --> 00:48:41.240
 maybe iffy kind of moving forward if it wasn't even pre-COVID. Uh, but now seeing some of those

00:48:41.240 --> 00:48:46.160
 people being released and be able to create new expressions. You know, one of the things that we

00:48:46.160 --> 00:48:51.680
 talk about with Stadia is, uh, is multi, we're using a new word. We were one of the first to use

00:48:51.680 --> 00:48:56.560
 digital church. That's awesome. And so for us, the new word we're creating here is this idea of,

00:48:56.560 --> 00:49:03.940
 of multimodal. It's, it's churches that are doing different models of church. They're being the

00:49:03.940 --> 00:49:09.060
 church in different shapes. And so an established church that's, that's doing a church in virtual

00:49:09.060 --> 00:49:15.820
 reality, or that's releasing people and doing workplace ministry or creating a micro church or

00:49:15.820 --> 00:49:23.160
 a micro location network as well. You know, I think you need different models to reach different types

00:49:23.160 --> 00:49:30.220
 of people. And, and I actually, I think coming out of this, the physical approach is going to have

00:49:30.220 --> 00:49:35.280
 limitations and we're going to need to be more organic with some of these approaches. And that's

00:49:35.280 --> 00:49:44.420
 why I love this idea of, of utilizing the groups to equip people to do things even outside of what

00:49:44.420 --> 00:49:50.400
 the physical church space is. And that may be a radical approach, uh, but I think it's one that's

00:49:50.400 --> 00:49:57.060
 going to be necessary. That's going to help our, our, our groups have purpose, maybe even beyond what

00:49:57.060 --> 00:50:04.060
 it's typically done in creating just a, a small community, giving those people purpose, maybe even

00:50:04.060 --> 00:50:09.760
 beyond that quarterly service project, the church asks them to do. I mean, just even today, I was

00:50:09.760 --> 00:50:15.080
 talking with, uh, uh, a pastor of a church that we work with the stadia. And he was telling me that

00:50:15.080 --> 00:50:21.440
 they they've abandoned this idea of, uh, of small groups and for them, they call them impact groups

00:50:21.440 --> 00:50:27.200
 where, where they're challenging all their small groups to have, um, service impact within the

00:50:27.200 --> 00:50:33.880
 community. And there's this one particular group, and this is 100% volunteer led. They've adopted,

00:50:33.880 --> 00:50:41.740
 uh, the local, um, uh, firefighter station, uh, to the point where the firefighters, the head,

00:50:41.740 --> 00:50:46.080
 whatever they call the head guy at the fire fires, uh, says, Hey, you know what we need? We need a

00:50:46.080 --> 00:50:52.420
 chaplain. We would love to have somebody that could, could shepherd the 25 people that operate this

00:50:52.420 --> 00:50:58.060
 fire station. Would any of you like to do that? And so there's a volunteer who is now the quote

00:50:58.060 --> 00:51:05.500
 unquote shepherd, pastor, firefighter, chaplain doing ministry in this area. And they're, they're

00:51:05.500 --> 00:51:10.780
 providing food. They're coming for times of prayer. They're doing services. And this is beyond,

00:51:10.780 --> 00:51:17.660
 I think what we would see out of a nor unfortunately out of a normal small group, but now you've got a

00:51:17.660 --> 00:51:25.500
 really a multiplication opportunity where there's creating an expression of church within a fire

00:51:25.500 --> 00:51:32.040
 station for the 25 people that are there. And I think that's an example of creating a new expression

00:51:32.040 --> 00:51:37.960
 of community. So, Hey, we're going to get to questions. Uh, go ahead and raise your hands if you're

00:51:37.960 --> 00:51:43.340
 interested in, in, in asking questions, sharing thoughts. We'd love to kind of dialogue through

00:51:43.340 --> 00:51:49.720
 this, but is, uh, and I mean, this completely transparent and humbly here. Sometimes I lean

00:51:49.720 --> 00:51:57.000
 heavy one direction. Is there, are we seeing opportunities like this? Like, Hey, let me take

00:51:57.000 --> 00:52:04.160
 over and let me be the chaplain at a fire station. Are we seeing that typically in small groups? Am I blind?

00:52:04.160 --> 00:52:09.600
 And that, that level of buy-in is there, or are we really not getting these people on,

00:52:09.600 --> 00:52:13.780
 on mission at that level? Honestly, we'd love feedback on that. What do you guys think?

00:52:16.880 --> 00:52:18.140
 It's a hard question, right?

00:52:26.780 --> 00:52:32.200
 Well, I mean, I feel like I've talked too much and so I keep wanting to be quiet, but, um,

00:52:32.860 --> 00:52:39.700
 yeah, I mean, I think we are like, I think we're seeing people engage right where they are and finding

00:52:39.700 --> 00:52:45.000
 creative ways to do that. And again, that can be, you know, that can definitely be this whole kind of

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:51.460
 rethink the small group. It can be just engaging right where I'm at. I definitely think we're seeing

00:52:51.460 --> 00:52:58.260
 people do that. Like I said, I've got a guy with a 400 person business network and he'll travel to a

00:52:58.260 --> 00:53:02.860
 conference, take a hundred of them to church and share the gospel with them. And he's baptized like

00:53:02.860 --> 00:53:07.900
 three or four generations worth of disciples out of his business network. Just, just right where he is

00:53:07.900 --> 00:53:13.540
 kind of seeing that as his, as his mission field. So for me, again, this whole conversation to me is

00:53:14.360 --> 00:53:20.440
 is a tool to say, let's get toward the mission. But yeah, I, I a hundred percent think that we're

00:53:20.440 --> 00:53:25.660
 seeing people, um, take full advantage of the mission field, right where they're at fire stations,

00:53:25.660 --> 00:53:33.320
 offices, um, you know, the Pentagon, I'm trying to disciple a guy who's secret service in and out of

00:53:33.320 --> 00:53:38.760
 the DC area, you know, in the mornings and whatnot, like there, there are people taking full advantage

00:53:38.760 --> 00:53:43.660
 of, of the mission, right where they're at. So, um, yeah, I don't know how else to speak to that.

00:53:43.700 --> 00:53:45.520
 I just, I definitely see that happening.

00:53:47.660 --> 00:53:55.080
 What's maybe a key component. How do we, how do we find people that, that are willing to invest in

00:53:55.080 --> 00:54:01.780
 that area? How are we training people that, that can maybe invest into that area? Um, you know,

00:54:01.820 --> 00:54:06.560
 Andy, in a, in a digital space, maybe even what does some of this look like, um, in, in a,

00:54:06.560 --> 00:54:09.680
 in a digital component in the digital environment?

00:54:09.680 --> 00:54:14.140
 It's funny. I was just going to chime in with almost that exact same thing. It's tougher in

00:54:14.140 --> 00:54:21.200
 the digital realm because, um, the first thing that a digital pastor or any digital quote unquote

00:54:21.200 --> 00:54:27.820
 missionary has to do is get past the mask that everybody puts on their social media because,

00:54:27.960 --> 00:54:32.060
 you know, everybody wants to see the best picture and yada, yada, yada. And so you don't actually learn

00:54:32.060 --> 00:54:37.920
 the person until you, you have, um, gone to a face-to-face type thing. And, and kind of the goal

00:54:37.920 --> 00:54:44.580
 of our, the goal of the digital ministry that I've been kind of running is we don't, it just doesn't

00:54:44.580 --> 00:54:49.180
 stop at a chat room or it just doesn't stop at, Hey, you, you did a six week discipleship course.

00:54:49.180 --> 00:54:54.800
 Like that, that doesn't cut it. Uh, we want this to eventually turn into a face-to-face relationship,

00:54:54.800 --> 00:54:59.340
 whether that is face-to-face in, you know, a two to four person online group, or whether that's,

00:54:59.340 --> 00:55:03.300
 Hey, you're physically, uh, in one of these groups or something like that. And then we can

00:55:03.300 --> 00:55:08.740
 help you discern who you are, who God has created you to do, you know, the spiritual gifting type

00:55:08.740 --> 00:55:14.840
 thing. Um, I have found in, at least in the Bay Hope breach that we have seen an inordinate amount

00:55:14.840 --> 00:55:20.200
 of people just, uh, working what I call small miracles throughout COVID, especially just blessing

00:55:20.200 --> 00:55:25.820
 people, you know, blessing shut-ins and things like that, um, that are unable to get out of the house.

00:55:25.820 --> 00:55:31.700
 And, uh, I've seen an overwhelming amount of things like that, that I just kind of redirect

00:55:31.700 --> 00:55:35.840
 to our care department and say, Hey, look, see the digital, like this, this works the ones and zeros.

00:55:35.840 --> 00:55:40.860
 They, they work. They, they, uh, people actually connect through this stuff. Um, I think there's a,

00:55:40.980 --> 00:55:46.400
 there's an interesting personality trait though. Again, digital guy, digital realm, an interesting

00:55:46.400 --> 00:55:51.740
 personality trait that comes through. I hear a lot of stories about people being introverts.

00:55:51.820 --> 00:55:57.700
 And yet when you give them a task or you say, Hey, I, I would love it if you would be able to

00:55:57.700 --> 00:56:01.660
 jump at the chance. And it's almost like, uh, and I think Lee is talking about act activated

00:56:01.660 --> 00:56:04.200
 all over the place and they just don't know how.

00:56:06.260 --> 00:56:10.420
 Yeah. And I think part of that challenge to what Andy said is, as I mentioned a few minutes ago,

00:56:10.420 --> 00:56:17.900
 the type of people that we are trying, that is that, that are challenging. And I'm talking about

00:56:17.900 --> 00:56:24.300
 two areas. Number one, I would talk about people who are, who are past the lifestyle, whether that's

00:56:24.300 --> 00:56:30.380
 somebody who's a mom or a dad with three kids, once our stage of life that they're in model for our

00:56:30.380 --> 00:56:36.220
 model to actually meet that towards the growth of that who's far from God. And how do they actually

00:56:36.220 --> 00:56:42.300
 make a move to connect to the church and connect to Christ and do our systems of group engagement,

00:56:42.300 --> 00:56:48.100
 actually meet somebody who's a minus five or even a minus three on the spiritual spectrum.

00:56:48.840 --> 00:56:51.740
 I'm not, I, you know, that's a whole not, that's a whole nother thing.

00:56:52.300 --> 00:56:59.540
 See, and I find I have an opposite, uh, kind of react, not reaction, but an opposite, uh, experience to

00:56:59.540 --> 00:57:04.900
 that because in the digital space, at least the people that I connect with on a daily and weekly basis,

00:57:05.700 --> 00:57:09.880
 you know, a lot of them were, are, are especially, you know, died in the wall, been going to church

00:57:09.880 --> 00:57:12.860
 for whatever, and can't go out of the house now because of COVID type stuff. But there have been an

00:57:12.860 --> 00:57:17.680
 over, not overwhelming, there have been a lot of people that are far from Christ that really are,

00:57:17.880 --> 00:57:22.380
 are interacting and engaging with some piece of tweet or some, you know, Instagram posts or something.

00:57:22.760 --> 00:57:27.620
 I could probably count 10 to 15 people that started actively become members of the community

00:57:27.620 --> 00:57:31.940
 and across the threshold of, Hey, let's actually join a small group with you.

00:57:32.400 --> 00:57:36.640
 Those people are there. And as long as you can get the keyboard junkies to back down a little bit,

00:57:36.680 --> 00:57:38.220
 I think you can speak truth into them.

00:57:41.440 --> 00:57:44.880
 Yeah, that's an interesting backup to, to what you were saying, you know,

00:57:44.880 --> 00:57:51.500
 Barna, uh, December, uh, stats that came over research, uh, do not have relationship with Christ.

00:57:51.660 --> 00:57:56.760
 Um, they're not interested in it to the physical building or they're not watching the digital services as well.

00:57:56.840 --> 00:58:02.420
 Like that's, that's not something they're interested in. Uh, and so what Barna was finding is that those

00:58:02.420 --> 00:58:09.240
 people, Jesus Christ, uh, they're going to their friends that 40% is going to pastor Google or going

00:58:09.240 --> 00:58:15.060
 to YouTube to find the answers to this. And so like the, which really, I think it's back to this place

00:58:15.060 --> 00:58:21.920
 of activation, because if we can equip our people to honoring conversations with others, maybe even be

00:58:21.920 --> 00:58:27.720
 aggressive towards, uh, connecting with their circle of influence towards it. I just think

00:58:27.720 --> 00:58:33.340
 activation looks different or suggest maybe there's an opportunity to do something different,

00:58:33.340 --> 00:58:41.980
 even in context of, as before we put so much energy into that physical gathering, but realizing that the

00:58:41.980 --> 00:58:48.900
 physical gathering in itself is losing its effectiveness towards an evangelistic point where now we need to do

00:58:48.900 --> 00:58:55.360
 other things to really reach out, engage with others, maybe even leaning on others to be that voice.

00:58:55.360 --> 00:59:00.880
 Maybe it's not one person exuding a spiritual gift in front of thousands, like a pastor typically would,

00:59:00.960 --> 00:59:07.460
 but maybe it's empowering thousands of individuals to be, have those spiritual conversations with their

00:59:07.460 --> 00:59:13.440
 10 people within their circle of influence. I just, I think that the, the standards that we have,

00:59:13.440 --> 00:59:20.520
 um, I think need to shift. And with that, honestly comes a lot of maybe the assimilation strategies and, and the,

00:59:20.520 --> 00:59:27.540
 the groups and, and the ideas of, of what we've been doing and what the expectations that finish line with our

00:59:27.540 --> 00:59:36.460
 groups are. I, I honestly, I just, I feel like we need to, to revisit what that, uh, activated person looks like

00:59:36.460 --> 00:59:43.400
 and what we're, what we're challenging them to be. Uh, maybe not as a desire that we want them to have

00:59:43.400 --> 00:59:49.520
 all sorts of checks off that they have to do, but maybe it's as simple as, uh, obey some of the

00:59:49.520 --> 00:59:56.180
 Jesus commands and, and the great commission and the things towards that and be more of being Christ

00:59:56.180 --> 01:00:02.780
 as opposed to, uh, being seen in a building, um, worshiping Christ. I don't know. It's, it's,

01:00:02.780 --> 01:00:08.320
 it's a weak thought. It's something I'm working through, but I definitely just feel that there's a shift

01:00:08.320 --> 01:00:15.820
 necessary as we're trying to re-adapt towards this new culture. Are you guys feeling that, this shift?

01:00:15.820 --> 01:00:20.780
 By the way, I would love questions and comments from, from the audience. So if you've got something,

01:00:20.840 --> 01:00:26.560
 click the hand raise icon, let's bring you up. Happy to let you dialogue up here with us. But while they're

01:00:26.560 --> 01:00:33.560
 listening, um, like, does the, are you feeling the shift that aggressive? Do you think that,

01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:41.120
 that it will revert back to some semblance of normality post COVID or am I being a little too

01:00:41.120 --> 01:00:52.300
 aggressive here? Lee, you're wise. Tell me. No, I'm just, I'm just loud. Um, uh, you know,

01:00:52.300 --> 01:00:58.620
 I think I've started using the term better normal, Jeff, and maybe it's more of a, of a, of a, uh,

01:00:58.940 --> 01:01:04.780
 of an incentive or a hope then maybe we'll get there. You know, uh, the new normal phrase is

01:01:04.780 --> 01:01:10.340
 popular and I agree with it, but I've begun to talk in the frame of, we are in new normal. Now

01:01:10.340 --> 01:01:18.120
 where are the opportunities for a better normal as we emerge? So my hope would be that, and I think

01:01:18.120 --> 01:01:22.880
 someone mentioned earlier in the clubhouses, you know, that we wouldn't just revert back.

01:01:23.220 --> 01:01:28.340
 Unfortunately, everybody on this call knows that without intentionality, without a little bit of

01:01:28.340 --> 01:01:33.200
 innovation and without some real push, we're just going to drift back to where we were before.

01:01:34.260 --> 01:01:38.980
 And so I think now in this season, probably the next six months, maybe through the end of the year

01:01:38.980 --> 01:01:44.460
 is probably the biggest opportunity for a better normal to emerge.

01:01:44.860 --> 01:01:51.140
 Because otherwise I think 2022, assuming things health-wise go back, will probably in, in most

01:01:51.140 --> 01:01:56.480
 cases just go back to an old normal. And I'm not sure that that was as effective as we would like it

01:01:56.480 --> 01:01:56.880
 to be.

01:01:59.600 --> 01:02:04.100
 New normal. I may have to borrow that. I'll give you credit the first couple of times. I like that new,

01:02:04.680 --> 01:02:09.200
 uh, the new normal. How are you guys, Andy, what, what are you feeling new normal coming out of this?

01:02:09.500 --> 01:02:15.280
 Yeah, we're, we're actually, uh, having large scale church. We have like a, we have what's called a

01:02:15.280 --> 01:02:22.320
 discipleship task force, which is, it feels very GI Joe to me, but it, uh, it is, it's a collection of

01:02:22.320 --> 01:02:27.620
 all of our ministry champions. And we've been meeting fairly regularly once or twice a month now,

01:02:27.620 --> 01:02:34.620
 um, trying to figure out the, I think the question, and I forget who it was, maybe Jeff was raising about

01:02:34.620 --> 01:02:42.140
 what is, what's the disciple of Christ doing now? Um, and so we're, we're actively engaged in those

01:02:42.140 --> 01:02:46.400
 things. And I think it's not just in the digital sphere. I think it's not just in the physical sphere.

01:02:46.400 --> 01:02:54.840
 I think it's also in, uh, like the meta sphere. Uh, and then that sounds very infinity war, but it's,

01:02:54.840 --> 01:03:02.920
 it's a, um, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very prevalent thing in our world

01:03:02.920 --> 01:03:08.880
 right now. Everybody's trying to figure out the, the meta feeling kind of everything that's going on.

01:03:08.880 --> 01:03:12.980
 And, and there's going to be a weird, I think Lee, I think you're absolutely right. There's going to be

01:03:12.980 --> 01:03:16.160
 six months. I actually think it's going to be even longer than that. I think it's going to be one to

01:03:16.160 --> 01:03:23.020
 two years, just as the economic recoveries slow down. Um, and I, not to get, I'm not getting

01:03:23.020 --> 01:03:26.200
 political. I'm just saying, you know, there's, there's, this is going to have wide ranging effects

01:03:26.200 --> 01:03:31.080
 into a lot of industries, uh, in this, especially into the tech industry. I look at the fact that

01:03:31.080 --> 01:03:38.160
 we're, um, not able to produce, uh, silicon chips right now as such things as the iPhone release and

01:03:38.160 --> 01:03:41.140
 things like that. It's going to have ripple effect trying to figure this out for a while.

01:03:42.500 --> 01:03:43.800
 One to two more years.

01:03:45.920 --> 01:03:50.780
 I'm hoping it would be sooner, but well, just, just keep thinking, you know, it's not just

01:03:50.780 --> 01:03:55.140
 schools now. We now have to let manufacturing catch back up. And like I said, that's, and

01:03:55.140 --> 01:03:59.540
 that's just with silicon, but silicon, if you think about the, the, the supercomputers and

01:03:59.540 --> 01:04:05.340
 things that are being powered by these little chips, that's cars, that's refrigerators, that's

01:04:05.340 --> 01:04:10.260
 phones, that's computers, that's, um, the little computers that are at your restaurants.

01:04:10.260 --> 01:04:14.400
 And so if something breaks down, you know, there's a, there's a, a backup effect that we've

01:04:14.400 --> 01:04:21.340
 had in this. And I think church leaders right now are, are scrambling with good reason, but

01:04:21.340 --> 01:04:25.820
 I think there's going to be a little bit more grace involved as a by-product of all of this.

01:04:27.120 --> 01:04:31.780
 So, so you're telling me I've got COVID to blame for the fact that Apple has not released my

01:04:31.780 --> 01:04:34.180
 augmented reality glasses yet.

01:04:34.480 --> 01:04:38.700
 I mean, you've got that, you've got a lot to blame for that. Uh, that's, that's been in

01:04:38.700 --> 01:04:40.200
 talks for what, 10 years now?

01:04:42.200 --> 01:04:50.140
 One day, one day we'll, we'll hope. Um, Hey, yeah. So this has been a, a, a great conversation,

01:04:50.140 --> 01:04:56.780
 um, looking at, and trying to figure out how to, um, honestly, just wrestle with the new

01:04:56.780 --> 01:05:02.760
 normal. What, what community looks like, what small groups looks like, how are we equipping

01:05:02.760 --> 01:05:10.140
 people towards, um, towards the next normal towards activating them and releasing them out.

01:05:10.140 --> 01:05:16.560
 Let me ask this question. Um, cause I'm also interested in this. There's, there's the, the

01:05:16.560 --> 01:05:22.540
 typical, and thank you very much, Rick Warren, even 20, 30 years ago, purpose-driven church,

01:05:22.540 --> 01:05:29.060
 the, uh, the baseball diamond strategy of, uh, connect to God, which is that weekend service

01:05:29.060 --> 01:05:33.600
 connect to others, which is typically the small groups connect to serving in some capacity,

01:05:33.600 --> 01:05:38.000
 which is getting people serving within the building. And then maybe getting people on mission,

01:05:38.000 --> 01:05:42.540
 which is mission trips, which is multiplication evangelism, you know, that's kind of like that,

01:05:42.540 --> 01:05:50.820
 that home plate kind of thing. Um, is the, as, as we're rethinking what small groups could be,

01:05:51.240 --> 01:05:58.800
 is, is there, is this an opportunity to maybe revisit some of that order is first base that the church

01:05:58.800 --> 01:06:05.880
 service, is that really the most effective is, you know, group second is getting them serving third.

01:06:05.880 --> 01:06:11.120
 Like, is that, is that the correct order? Or even in context, while we're re-imagining some of this

01:06:11.120 --> 01:06:16.380
 stuff, is it not time to maybe revisit some of that structure in context of our churches?

01:06:16.600 --> 01:06:18.960
 We'd love to know what you guys are thinking from your perspectives.

01:06:21.860 --> 01:06:22.840
 Andy, what are you feeling?

01:06:24.740 --> 01:06:34.240
 Um, uh, as the digital guy, I always think that it, not always, but for me, whenever I hear this,

01:06:34.400 --> 01:06:39.880
 this talk, it brings up the old seeker friendly, this seeker friendly church, but this is a bit of

01:06:39.880 --> 01:06:44.460
 weight has been put on the production. And I think a lot of weight has rightfully so been put on that

01:06:44.460 --> 01:06:50.480
 scene, you know, people, people have, but all I got to do is go type in that has better production than

01:06:50.480 --> 01:06:55.440
 my church. And I can go to, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever.com and watch something. And so

01:06:55.440 --> 01:07:00.600
 I think you're right, Jeff. I just don't, I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. Cause I

01:07:00.600 --> 01:07:07.420
 think, I think there's a, a one a one B situation happening here. I think we need a platform and I don't

01:07:07.420 --> 01:07:15.660
 know how, and this is 30,000 foot view of, of making it so that community and engagement are just as

01:07:15.660 --> 01:07:25.620
 important as the live or simulated live streaming or in-person church service. And I don't know how

01:07:25.620 --> 01:07:31.480
 to do that, uh, because people smarter than me are trying to do that, but that that's, that's exactly

01:07:31.480 --> 01:07:37.940
 what I'm feeling. In a digital component, oftentimes it almost does feel like the relationship comes

01:07:37.940 --> 01:07:43.700
 first. You talk about, you know, thinking above the funnel before even that, that service trying to

01:07:43.700 --> 01:07:48.140
 build relationships above. I feel like Jason Morris, we talked about that here in clubhouse.

01:07:48.200 --> 01:07:52.820
 There's a podcast on that, on the church digital kind of touching on that. And so, yeah, kind of

01:07:52.820 --> 01:08:00.540
 trying to reimagine that in a digital context. I feel that too. Um, you know, stand where you are,

01:08:00.540 --> 01:08:08.600
 are you, does that feel like the correct order? I know you're kind of like that disciple guy and

01:08:08.600 --> 01:08:16.500
 you're all honestly thinking backwards in a lot of this approach. So do you feel that normal one,

01:08:16.560 --> 01:08:22.180
 two, three base path or, or do you feel something different too? Yeah. I mean, I, I, to some degree,

01:08:22.180 --> 01:08:28.600
 I think a lot of it is similar to what Andy said. I mean, I feel like there's a lot of both and kind

01:08:28.600 --> 01:08:35.340
 of approaches that need to be taken. I think there's a space for, you know, the whole digital

01:08:35.340 --> 01:08:41.200
 conversation. There's a space for the mega church. There's a space for the house church. There's,

01:08:41.420 --> 01:08:48.240
 you know, there's kind of this both and approach that, that needs to be taken. Um, however, I mean,

01:08:48.280 --> 01:08:54.640
 I, like I said, I, it, it's hard for me to get away from my, my, my heartbeat on this whole,

01:08:54.800 --> 01:09:01.940
 whole conversation and how it overlays with disciple making and the mission. I think that the church has

01:09:01.940 --> 01:09:11.700
 seen worse times than COVID. Like COVID, COVID's not the worst thing that the church has gone through

01:09:11.700 --> 01:09:18.280
 and not only survived, but actually thrived as a result. I think a lot of what we're seeing

01:09:18.280 --> 01:09:28.820
 is in, in any tragedy, pandemic or chaos, a lot of what we see is not a new character in per in a

01:09:28.820 --> 01:09:35.080
 person developing, but we just see revealed what's really there. And I think maybe more than anything,

01:09:35.080 --> 01:09:40.700
 I don't know about reframing Rick Warren's structures, but maybe we need to start looking

01:09:40.700 --> 01:09:47.380
 at the results of COVID and the impact on the church and say, this kind of shows us where we were

01:09:47.380 --> 01:09:55.720
 in, in reality with like our mission efforts, how many people were genuinely, you know, following and

01:09:55.720 --> 01:10:02.980
 pursuing Jesus. And so whatever structure that needs to, to take, whether part of it's digital,

01:10:02.980 --> 01:10:07.220
 whether part of it's still physical, because I think there will always be a place for the,

01:10:07.480 --> 01:10:11.880
 there will always be a place for the physical gathering of the church. I think the future,

01:10:12.040 --> 01:10:17.300
 absolutely. There's a, a place for the digital gathering of the, of the church and who knows,

01:10:17.360 --> 01:10:22.160
 maybe there's going to be an augmented reality space someday. Like, I, I don't know what all the

01:10:22.160 --> 01:10:28.160
 future holds on that front, but I think maybe if I could just encourage people a little bit too,

01:10:28.160 --> 01:10:35.740
 like the church has been through a lot worse than COVID. And in those times, the church thrived and

01:10:35.740 --> 01:10:41.440
 God did incredible things. And so I think if I had to sum all that up, I would say no matter what your

01:10:41.440 --> 01:10:49.780
 system or baseball diamond strategy or whatever it is that you've got going on, you just fully surrender

01:10:49.780 --> 01:10:55.660
 it to the will of God and what he wants you and your church and your ministry and context to be doing

01:10:55.660 --> 01:11:03.780
 and, and do your best to make disciples out of that, but let, let God use it more than just saying, Hey,

01:11:03.780 --> 01:11:10.020
 how can I get on the next cool train and try to take advantage, like genuinely surrender it and

01:11:10.020 --> 01:11:16.880
 allow God to use you through it. So anyway, those are just kind of my thoughts on the, that.

01:11:17.040 --> 01:11:22.640
 That's beautiful. I saved Lee for last because he's the one. He's the smart one. He's the smart one.

01:11:23.160 --> 01:11:29.620
 That was, that was beautifully said, Stan. Uh, but you know, Lee's, Lee's dealing in his role as

01:11:29.620 --> 01:11:33.620
 XP. He's dealing with the physical, he's dealing with the digital. He's dealing with, you know,

01:11:33.660 --> 01:11:39.820
 multiple aspects of that and, and, and even kind of wrestling with, and we've talked about this is the

01:11:39.820 --> 01:11:44.640
 idea of like physical discipleship and digital discipleship. Sometimes that looks different.

01:11:44.640 --> 01:11:49.280
 And, and, and I can even, I can even remember Lee looking at your funnel where there's this line

01:11:49.280 --> 01:11:53.540
 down the middle and it's like, okay, sometimes this is over here. Sometimes this is here.

01:11:53.980 --> 01:11:59.560
 Sometimes the physical is doing this. Sometimes the digital, um, how do you, how do you keep all that,

01:11:59.560 --> 01:12:04.260
 that straight in, in having the strategies where it aligns and the physical and the digital,

01:12:04.260 --> 01:12:09.240
 because you're, you're having to deal with both hemispheres. Like what, what, what does that even

01:12:09.240 --> 01:12:19.780
 that pathway even look like? I have no idea. Awesome. I mean, I think that's part of the,

01:12:19.840 --> 01:12:24.500
 that's part of the learning that we're in the middle of right now as Stan and Andy are. I mean,

01:12:24.500 --> 01:12:30.660
 I would, I would hate to even pretend to be, um, that we've figured anything out. I think we're,

01:12:30.660 --> 01:12:36.800
 we are figuring encouragement would be, I don't know that what we have experienced, uh, conversation.

01:12:37.040 --> 01:12:42.020
 We, we, I don't know what the word is. You said, Jeff, that you said we introduced a new word

01:12:42.020 --> 01:12:47.320
 multi-mogul, or you said something. It was really cool. Yeah, it was, it was multimodal.

01:12:48.320 --> 01:12:54.020
 Cool. Love that. We're using an easier word. We just call it an integrated model. And I know some

01:12:54.020 --> 01:12:58.640
 use the word, some use the word. I've heard people say hybrid, find more deeply in how you're

01:12:58.640 --> 01:13:05.160
 describing it. We're using the word that I think is true and physical. Um, and probably even when you

01:13:05.160 --> 01:13:11.500
 and I talked, Jeff is we thought, okay, so what this is going to demand is that we create, that we

01:13:11.500 --> 01:13:19.280
 create a duplicated virtual environment for everything that we feel is, um, that the church does. Okay.

01:13:19.280 --> 01:13:25.840
 This is overwhelming. What we've come to learn. And I think, how do we prioritize the key elements

01:13:25.840 --> 01:13:31.440
 and the key roles that the church can play in helping people discover Jesus and their own personal

01:13:31.440 --> 01:13:37.560
 journey of faith? How do we prioritize those? And then virtual experience, the experience there.

01:13:37.820 --> 01:13:43.020
 When we say integrated here at the, what we mean is that people can experience things both as they

01:13:43.020 --> 01:13:50.300
 so desire and so true. And so we don't limit one or the other. We just start making some decisions

01:13:50.300 --> 01:13:56.740
 decisions as to what will be in that integrated mode that we're creating. And so that's been some

01:13:56.740 --> 01:14:04.120
 interesting conversations to have to try to decide that or to try to prioritize that and to then execute

01:14:04.120 --> 01:14:09.400
 that in the real world. Because what I know a lot of leaders are discovering is what they were so

01:14:09.400 --> 01:14:16.000
 excited about 10, 11 months ago, when they actually start getting back to in-person, the demand on resource,

01:14:16.200 --> 01:14:23.020
 time, et cetera, starts to change some of those decisions. And so my encouragement would be don't

01:14:23.020 --> 01:14:29.400
 allow that to determine it. Find a, find a mode that you guys feel committed to, and then begin to move

01:14:29.400 --> 01:14:33.740
 there, whether it's in the area of small groups, whether it's in the area of, you know, your gatherings,

01:14:33.980 --> 01:14:37.420
 all of, all of those things. We have one cool thing going on right now. And I don't know,

01:14:37.440 --> 01:14:41.620
 it's just kind of interesting. As many people, we've, we've moved some of our key environments

01:14:41.620 --> 01:14:48.700
 online. So we're right now we're still in a mode where we use as many are aware of like a rooted model of kind of

01:14:48.700 --> 01:14:55.900
 initial discipleship step. And so that that's been on, we we've been doing a virtual option or an integrated

01:14:55.900 --> 01:15:03.560
 option for rooted. Twice we've done it. This time we've really leaned in our online campus guy, Aaron, who's on this

01:15:03.560 --> 01:15:08.300
 call is, is facilitating that. And one of the things that's really cool is at the end of that nine or 10 week

01:15:08.300 --> 01:15:13.580
 experience. We do a physical celebration. People come together and their groups and any of you that

01:15:13.580 --> 01:15:17.920
 are doing it know what I'm talking about. We see people get baptized, they share a meal. So we're

01:15:17.920 --> 01:15:23.440
 doing that here in a couple of weeks. And we actually have, I believe four or five people who have

01:15:23.440 --> 01:15:28.900
 experienced it completely virtual outside of Las Vegas, who have made the decision to hop on an

01:15:28.900 --> 01:15:36.240
 airplane and fly here to be present physically for that celebration. And I'm like, okay, wow, that's,

01:15:36.440 --> 01:15:42.540
 that's again, it's a small anecdotal story. So, you know, I get it, but still it kind of go, it kind of

01:15:42.540 --> 01:15:48.480
 proves to your point, Jeff, that things can work on that bridge. We always think of people physically

01:15:48.480 --> 01:15:54.060
 going into the virtual, but what we're experiencing there is a little bit of the virtual, then

01:15:54.060 --> 01:16:00.120
 kind of engaging with the physical, if even for a brief moment. So those are the type of things that

01:16:00.120 --> 01:16:07.240
 we're wrestling with strategically on a daily basis. As we pursue that multimodal, modal, how'd I do

01:16:07.240 --> 01:16:14.000
 there, Jeff? Multimodal. Getting better. Getting better. It's a mouthful. Multimodal or what we would

01:16:14.000 --> 01:16:17.140
 call integrated model. So that's, that's some of the stuff that we're wrestling.

01:16:18.340 --> 01:16:23.100
 Well, you know, and I even love there that, you know, we mentioned online to offline, the gospel

01:16:23.100 --> 01:16:28.260
 we hear in the online world influences our offline relationships. At some small level, you're seeing

01:16:28.260 --> 01:16:33.860
 that because the, the relationship with these four or five people that made the travel to the shared

01:16:33.860 --> 01:16:41.380
 experience, um, to Vegas to, for the rooted, like the relationships, the, the content, the process for

01:16:41.380 --> 01:16:47.540
 them and their digital communities drove them to pay for a ticket in the physical world, jump on an

01:16:47.540 --> 01:16:54.120
 airplane, drive a car, pay for the gas, whatever, but it got them from their environment and it got it

01:16:54.120 --> 01:17:01.060
 to, to yours. They were so invested in what they learned and what they experienced and the people

01:17:01.060 --> 01:17:07.860
 they had relationship with in digital space that it affected and it drove them to do something in the

01:17:07.860 --> 01:17:12.820
 digital realm. You know, I, and even, and it's going to sound cheesy, like I can't think of the last

01:17:12.820 --> 01:17:18.900
 time, you know, something on Netflix drove me to the point of, of affecting and doing something

01:17:18.900 --> 01:17:24.420
 physically. Like, okay, WandaVision that has Disney plus is, is the king of everything. And, you know,

01:17:24.420 --> 01:17:30.740
 I'll watch that thing over and over again. But in, from an average standpoint, content real is really

01:17:30.740 --> 01:17:34.900
 hard to affect people physically, but through the community and some of the stuff that you're

01:17:34.900 --> 01:17:41.680
 describing, Lee, that's beautiful to see. So, Hey guys, I want to thank you for, for this time. It's been a,

01:17:41.680 --> 01:17:48.200
 a great conversation looking at rethinking small groups and, and, and what this looks like. Hey,

01:17:48.240 --> 01:17:53.600
 you know, let's just do this as, as we're landing the plane here one minute, just any closing thoughts,

01:17:53.780 --> 01:17:59.080
 any, any closing vibes, stuff like that. Um, uh, Stan, why don't you go first?

01:18:00.880 --> 01:18:07.820
 Yeah. Uh, sure. Thanks, man. Um, yeah, my, my closing vibe, number one is I think my biggest

01:18:07.820 --> 01:18:12.240
 takeaway from Lee was buy a Peloton. I don't know if that's what he was trying to say all night,

01:18:12.240 --> 01:18:19.020
 but that was the big feel, uh, I got was get a Peloton. Um, no, that was just Jeff. That was

01:18:19.020 --> 01:18:26.500
 just a joke, man. That was just a joke. Um, yeah. Trying to land the plane. I, I, I just think

01:18:26.500 --> 01:18:33.600
 so much of it comes down to our ability to surrender to what it is that God would have us to do next.

01:18:34.120 --> 01:18:43.240
 Um, it's far less about the specific, um, platform we use or whatever it's about. Are we surrendering

01:18:43.240 --> 01:18:52.240
 these things for the purposes of God and for his kingdom to pursue the mission? Um, and do we have

01:18:52.240 --> 01:18:58.060
 a really clear picture of that? You know, can we take the digital presence that we've got? Can we take

01:18:58.060 --> 01:19:03.980
 the physical presence that we got, uh, that we have? Can we, can we use all of that and point it

01:19:03.980 --> 01:19:10.820
 very, very specifically and intentionally at, uh, at, at the mission? And, uh, so I think if everybody

01:19:10.820 --> 01:19:14.940
 wrestles with that, that would be, that would be one of the big things I would encourage people to,

01:19:15.000 --> 01:19:19.500
 to wrestle with is just having a really clear picture of what the win is at the end of the day,

01:19:19.500 --> 01:19:25.460
 no matter which one of these things we use or how we rework groups or whatever, you know,

01:19:25.460 --> 01:19:31.220
 what's the big win at the end of the day? Well said, kind of get, discover that why, discover that

01:19:31.220 --> 01:19:37.320
 finish line and, and, and hopefully that dictates and drives how we're going to get people to,

01:19:37.400 --> 01:19:40.600
 to that place and in discipleship. Well said. Andy, what do,

01:19:40.600 --> 01:19:45.740
 what do you think in here as we're wrapping up? Yeah, I'm, I'm extremely excited about the future.

01:19:46.100 --> 01:19:52.620
 Uh, I'm extremely excited about how church is going to look in the next year, two years, five

01:19:52.620 --> 01:19:59.300
 years. Uh, I think this defining moment that we all had in 2020 was actually started way before that.

01:19:59.780 --> 01:20:05.660
 And I think the seeds that we were sowing are, were, were, were starting just even now starting to

01:20:05.660 --> 01:20:11.080
 reap them. Um, and stand to your point about, you know, the platform or the mode or anything. I think

01:20:11.080 --> 01:20:19.060
 culturally and, and contextually where we, we now have the ability to have two, three, four different

01:20:19.060 --> 01:20:25.080
 types of models and within the same church. And that to me is it'd be multi-generational,

01:20:25.480 --> 01:20:31.620
 multi-animate disciples of all nations. Right there. Uh, multi-generational, uh, is, is an

01:20:31.620 --> 01:20:36.560
 awesome challenge. I think for us, not even to just to affect the one generation, but get that

01:20:36.560 --> 01:20:41.620
 generation to share others. Jeff, by talking about multi-generational, I just feel like that should

01:20:41.620 --> 01:20:47.620
 be said. Hey Lee, uh, what are you thinking? I would just say a couple of things to everybody

01:20:47.620 --> 01:20:53.880
 to kind of wrap up this conversation. I think, I think number one would be, um, don't turn up the

01:20:53.880 --> 01:21:01.860
 radio. We said it earlier, right? So there's going to be that temptation to avoid the, the, the

01:21:01.860 --> 01:21:09.120
 important noise that's out there right now that can be exhausting for leaders. I feel that at times

01:21:09.120 --> 01:21:14.760
 that you can feel overwhelmed or there's so much noise and there's so much change happening at such a

01:21:14.760 --> 01:21:20.160
 large pace and we're still mourning the loss of a lot of the, the things that used to be sort of the

01:21:20.160 --> 01:21:24.760
 cornerstone of what we did. And so there's going to be that temptation for you to just kind of say,

01:21:24.800 --> 01:21:29.880
 you know what, I, I just can't even process another thing. So I would encourage you number one to fight

01:21:29.880 --> 01:21:35.420
 that urge to just turn up the music and ignore what's happening under the hood of your organization

01:21:35.420 --> 01:21:41.500
 or whatever you're leading. And I think secondly, kind of alongside that, I would encourage,

01:21:41.500 --> 01:21:49.100
 and as the old guy, I guess, Stan, right? I would encourage those on the call that have an opportunity.

01:21:49.220 --> 01:21:55.980
 There may be, even as you might be getting a little bit, uh, fatigue team or those eyes by the

01:21:55.980 --> 01:22:00.980
 opportunities for innovation in this year, or at least, um, a hundred percent of conversations with them,

01:22:01.100 --> 01:22:07.640
 collaborate with them, give, continue to do things and provide an avenue for them to innovate,

01:22:07.640 --> 01:22:14.720
 provide an avenue for them to, for them to, uh, tap into that alongside the mode. And I think,

01:22:14.820 --> 01:22:20.400
 I think, uh, progress, which is what we all want, because what we're talking about has consequences

01:22:20.400 --> 01:22:30.520
 for, for, well said from, from not old in any way, shape, manageable and soft-spoken, never abrasively.

01:22:30.520 --> 01:22:34.700
 Lee, thank you very much, man, man, for that. Let me, and Lee, I didn't even know you were going to say

01:22:34.700 --> 01:22:39.820
 the innovation thing, but I, I've, um, was, was going back to a God, which I'm pretty sure he wrote

01:22:39.820 --> 01:22:46.140
 before I was born. I think the idea of, of see where God's moving in the fidgetal, uh, uh, March 16th,

01:22:46.140 --> 01:22:52.040
 uh, noon to 4 p.m. Eastern time. We've got 20 plus churches just talking about some of the innovations

01:22:52.040 --> 01:22:57.420
 that they're, that they're seeing and doing, um, in, in, in, through this COVID season, things like,

01:22:57.420 --> 01:23:03.660
 um, you know, watch parties, micro locations, house churches, um, discipleship, things like QR codes,

01:23:03.660 --> 01:23:09.840
 um, you know, all sorts of different innovations, um, and, and it's, and it's fascinating. I, so much,

01:23:09.940 --> 01:23:16.020
 I think churches aren't interested in, in that innovation piece. They, they like things where,

01:23:16.020 --> 01:23:21.040
 where it's standard, where it's normal, where it's, it's comfortable. Uh, but I, I really believe

01:23:21.040 --> 01:23:27.940
 that God moves, um, when, when we innovate, when we change. And, and what's fascinating is, is there's

01:23:27.940 --> 01:23:33.180
 stories coming out of this season of, of where God's doing some phenomenal stuff with churches that

01:23:33.180 --> 01:23:39.300
 are being innovative when they're trying to do things differently. And, and, and I would challenge us

01:23:39.300 --> 01:23:45.660
 all. Maybe this is an opportunity to, to look and see what this innovation looks like. And maybe for us

01:23:45.660 --> 01:23:52.040
 even evaluate how we do this, uh, within our church. So, um, it's stated churchplanning.org slash

01:23:52.040 --> 01:23:58.940
 innovation is the link up for that. And it's going to be, like I said, uh, Tuesday, March 16th at,

01:23:59.000 --> 01:24:06.360
 um, noon to 4 PM Eastern. Uh, three, I'm, I'm, I'll tell you what, this is where we are publicly

01:24:06.360 --> 01:24:11.460
 releasing for the first time. I'm going to be publicly talking about multimodal. Uh, this was

01:24:11.460 --> 01:24:15.180
 actually the test drive for that term. It's the first time I've talked about it publicly here.

01:24:15.580 --> 01:24:19.940
 Uh, but I got to get my act together by Tuesday. Cause that's when I'm, I'm saying it for real in

01:24:19.940 --> 01:24:24.500
 front of like a whole bunch of people. So thank you for being my Guinea pig in this experiment while,

01:24:24.620 --> 01:24:28.600
 while I'm trying to figure out like how to use that language and Lee struggling to pronounce it

01:24:28.600 --> 01:24:33.940
 actually really meant a lot to me because now I've got to be very clear as, as I do it on my side.

01:24:33.940 --> 01:24:39.500
 So gentlemen, to kind of wrap up on here, thank you very much for jumping in this conversation while

01:24:39.500 --> 01:24:46.520
 we're, uh, looking at, uh, re-imagining what, uh, church small groups can look like. Uh, and by the

01:24:46.520 --> 01:24:54.440
 way, we will post a link to, uh, Lee's, um, commission page where if you are interested in

01:24:54.440 --> 01:24:59.700
 buying a Peloton, if you would buy through links, uh, Lee's referral link, I'm sure he will get like

01:24:59.700 --> 01:25:04.140
 10% of whatever the monthly is from now on. So Lee, you can go ahead and send that to me. I'll

01:25:04.140 --> 01:25:08.100
 make sure it's published there. And that way, you know, we, we can, you know, fund your future

01:25:08.100 --> 01:25:14.720
 vacation or something since you are evidently the Peloton man. So for Andy, for Stan, uh, for Lee,

01:25:14.780 --> 01:25:19.160
 this is Jeff with the church digital and with Stadia church planning. I just want to thank you all for,

01:25:19.160 --> 01:25:25.900
 for joining us today. We'll do it next week, uh, 5 PM on Thursday, 5 PM Eastern. We'll see you then

01:25:25.900 --> 01:25:26.840
 talk to y'all later.