WEBVTT 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:06.280 Hey, welcome to The Beta Show. It's episode 32 once again. My name is Jeff with the Church 00:00:06.280 --> 00:00:10.680 Digital Podcast, as always, powered by Stadia Church Planning. We're going to be talking 00:00:10.680 --> 00:00:16.360 a lot about Stadia Church Planning in this conversation today. Here with The Beta Show, 00:00:16.460 --> 00:00:21.880 of course, we answer your digital ministry questions online. Go ahead and feel free to 00:00:21.880 --> 00:00:29.800 text those questions in 484-324-8724. I'm literally giving you my cell phone number 00:00:29.800 --> 00:00:33.460 on the air. By the way, if you're watching on YouTube, which is awesome, you can tell 00:00:33.460 --> 00:00:38.240 that I totally have tape all over my cell phone because I cracked the screen, and I'm 00:00:38.240 --> 00:00:42.180 waiting for that new iPhone coming out in the fall, so trying to get this one stretched out 00:00:42.180 --> 00:00:47.160 as much as possible and up too cheap to get the glass fixed. Welcome to the life of being 00:00:47.160 --> 00:00:51.320 a digital guy. You're always stretching out, trying to hold on as long as possible for that 00:00:51.320 --> 00:00:59.600 next thing. I digress. Hey, with The Beta Show, we answer these shows live on air every 00:00:59.600 --> 00:01:05.360 Thursday. So right now, Thursday noon Eastern. You can watch this if you're watching on demand or you're 00:01:05.360 --> 00:01:29.580 listening on YouTube, facebook.com slash thechurchdigital, as well as youtube.com slash thechurchdigital. Check out The Beta Show live. And if you are watching live out there right now, throw in your questions, comments, thoughts, and whatever the social media platform you're watching in. Would love to engage with that during the show, as well as afterwards. I actually am seeing a comment right now. 00:01:29.600 --> 00:01:35.360 Now, Facebook user, I am so sharing this somewhere. Not sure who that is. 00:01:35.360 --> 00:01:41.120 That is. You got to get permission for us to see the name, but love the fact we're already getting comments coming in on that. 00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:46.880 By the way, if you're listening on podcast or anybody else, feel free to text in comments and thoughts as well. 484 00:01:46.880 --> 00:01:57.820 324-3248-724. Once again, that is literally number four, the church. Alphabet, number four of the church. Type that in on your phone. And yeah, give me a call sometime. Text me. That'll be great. 00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:25.460 Next week, we are talking seven foundations of a digital church. If we're really going to be effective in digital ministry, what do we need to have? What are the foundations that a physical and digital ministry needs to have for your established church? We'll dig into that next week. That'll be a fun conversation to have. Ultimately, realize this. Stadia wants to help you find digital purpose in your ministry. 00:02:25.460 --> 00:02:51.180 In this post-COVID society, in the culture that we live in, we still church, established church, church planter. We still need to be thinking digitally. We still need to be thinking fidgetally. So if you're a digital-only church planter, you want to start something from scratch without a building. You want to be a fidgetal ministry person. You want your established church to understand how to do digital discipleship. You want to go multimodal. 00:02:51.180 --> 00:03:07.560 Your church wants to run different strategies throughout the church. You want to be a physical church. You want to also really understand how to use Twitch. You want to understand how to do kids ministry and student ministry differently using some of these platforms that are out there. 00:03:07.740 --> 00:03:14.100 Look, Stadia, we want to help you. Swing over to the church.digital for next steps on all of this. 00:03:14.240 --> 00:03:19.440 And by the way, I freaking have given my cell phone number out multiple times, so there's no excuse to call. 00:03:19.720 --> 00:03:23.520 One more time, 484-324-8724. 00:03:23.680 --> 00:03:30.880 All right, specifically with this show, Beta 32, four different types of digital-only churches. 00:03:31.020 --> 00:03:37.980 Look, digital, there is a tool, just like physical. And so the building can be used in many different ways. 00:03:38.320 --> 00:03:44.540 You can have a very charismatic church. You can have a very traditional church. You can have a rock show. 00:03:44.660 --> 00:03:51.020 You can have everything. I don't know what the opposite of a rock show is, but a very organ-driven, choir-based. 00:03:51.280 --> 00:03:57.200 These are all just tools. And in the same way in the physical space, the digital is a tool as well. 00:03:57.540 --> 00:04:02.820 And so you can use digital in different ways, and there's different strategies in place for it. 00:04:02.820 --> 00:04:09.640 So right now, today, I'm going to highlight four different types of digital-only churches 00:04:09.640 --> 00:04:13.740 and give you some examples of some churches that are already out there, that are trying it out, 00:04:13.820 --> 00:04:17.140 that are seeing some success even in this early stage. 00:04:17.200 --> 00:04:21.740 So here you go. Number one, four different types of digital-only churches. 00:04:22.620 --> 00:04:26.060 Digital churches that are aimed at affinity or at people groups. 00:04:26.060 --> 00:04:31.580 Look, here we go. We've talked a lot about the video gamer church, the trucker church. 00:04:31.900 --> 00:04:35.220 I've worked with a church planner, a digital church planner in the Philippines, 00:04:35.220 --> 00:04:40.860 who wants to reach millennial creatives in the Philippines and Gen Z creatives. 00:04:40.860 --> 00:04:44.280 Like, we're talking graphic artists and video in the Philippines. 00:04:44.460 --> 00:04:47.300 Like, that's what he's designing his church for. 00:04:47.740 --> 00:04:53.960 I've been talking with a guy who wants to plant a church for Nigerian refugees. 00:04:53.960 --> 00:05:01.260 He himself is a first-generation Nigerian refugee, and he wants to create a church 00:05:01.260 --> 00:05:07.320 digitally that connects with displaced Nigerian refugees across the planet. 00:05:07.660 --> 00:05:10.020 Look, we're talking about things here. 00:05:10.100 --> 00:05:14.620 Yeah, okay, video gamers, maybe that's self-serving, and you may have opinions on that. 00:05:15.640 --> 00:05:18.600 Reaching Nigerian refugees displaced? 00:05:18.940 --> 00:05:20.860 Like, this is a noble cause. 00:05:20.940 --> 00:05:24.840 This is things that you cannot do in context of the building. 00:05:24.940 --> 00:05:31.260 I had the conversation with the trucker church guy just this week, and when I heard it in my head, I'll be honest, I exploded. 00:05:31.260 --> 00:05:35.120 It exploded a little bit, a little emoji, because it never occurred to me. 00:05:35.400 --> 00:05:36.740 Hey, you can do a trucker church. 00:05:37.140 --> 00:05:39.320 And this guy's out there, and he's trying it. 00:05:39.620 --> 00:05:48.920 And we're giving him resources and training on how to use, in his context, Facebook as a platform to better reach truckers. 00:05:49.340 --> 00:05:50.720 And what's interesting, we'll get into it. 00:05:50.900 --> 00:05:52.040 It's more than just truckers. 00:05:52.060 --> 00:05:53.560 You'll hear that in a little bit. 00:05:53.560 --> 00:05:56.800 By the way, here we go with this, with this idea. 00:05:56.980 --> 00:06:01.760 Some people tell me, with the idea of reaching affinity groups, look, Jeff, 1 Corinthians 9, 00:06:01.840 --> 00:06:08.360 I have become all things to all people, so that by all possible means, I might save some. 00:06:08.480 --> 00:06:14.780 Paul's talking here, and the idea is, Jeff, we really shouldn't focus on specific people groups. 00:06:14.860 --> 00:06:17.260 We as a church, we need to be everything to everyone. 00:06:18.280 --> 00:06:19.480 Here's kind of the challenge. 00:06:19.480 --> 00:06:23.340 Yes, we, the big C church, need to be everything to everyone. 00:06:23.480 --> 00:06:30.400 But in 2021, I don't know that we, an individual organization, needs to carry the burden of being everything to everyone. 00:06:30.860 --> 00:06:36.620 Because as a result, really what comes up, and this is a marketing principle, this isn't like some theory. 00:06:36.780 --> 00:06:38.000 We see this in real life. 00:06:38.120 --> 00:06:44.080 By being everything to everyone, effectively, what we're more likely to be is nothing to no one. 00:06:44.260 --> 00:06:53.580 Because by making these messages so large and so vast, and by trying to reach everyone, we're not actually effectively connecting with anyone for it. 00:06:53.880 --> 00:07:03.740 By the way, and this is what I was hinting to earlier, this church of video gamers, or for video gamers, you're not necessarily crafting things specifically for video gamers. 00:07:03.740 --> 00:07:14.360 This is a conversation that I had specifically for, with the trucker guy just this week, the truckers, Church for Truckers, you can search it on Facebook and find it. 00:07:15.100 --> 00:07:18.880 He's really, he's like, Jeff, I can't just be for truckers. 00:07:19.280 --> 00:07:20.040 Truckers are married. 00:07:20.500 --> 00:07:23.400 And so, like, I want to be for truckers and for trucker spouses. 00:07:23.640 --> 00:07:31.320 And so, it's not just for a people group, but it's ultimately a group of these people. 00:07:31.500 --> 00:07:36.860 And now, possibly even reaching into the circle of influence of who they can reach. 00:07:36.940 --> 00:07:38.980 Yeah, Gen 1 may be truckers. 00:07:39.320 --> 00:07:40.960 Gen 2, that's next level. 00:07:40.960 --> 00:07:46.480 Well, who is within the circle of influence of truckers, and how can you help them with the gospel? 00:07:46.960 --> 00:07:57.780 As you grow and as you multiply your affinity group, your people group church, you may find that you're stretching the limits beyond what your initial impression was. 00:07:58.200 --> 00:08:08.340 As a result of this, you're going to find that you're ultimately not going to be a church for a specific people group, but you're a church that's made up of that specific people group. 00:08:08.340 --> 00:08:14.460 By the way, I want to give a shout-out to Mark Lutz, who's the guy that taught me that just within the past couple months. 00:08:14.560 --> 00:08:19.420 He's doing Lutz Digital Church, Twitter Church, and it's phenomenal to see some of the things happening there. 00:08:19.500 --> 00:08:20.700 Mark, if you're watching, I love you. 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:21.180 That was beautiful. 00:08:22.140 --> 00:08:27.620 Seth Godin, craft messages in such a way that it's not for everyone. 00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:29.800 Craft it in such a way that it's for someone. 00:08:29.980 --> 00:08:33.360 You want to get your message heard around the world, it's not tell a billion people. 00:08:33.460 --> 00:08:38.960 It's craft a message in such a way that it's for an individual, and get that individual to tell somebody else. 00:08:39.020 --> 00:08:41.060 Get them to own it, and then tell somebody else. 00:08:41.100 --> 00:08:43.460 We beat that up all day long. 00:08:43.680 --> 00:08:45.740 By the way, we talk about this. 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:47.000 This is a blog. 00:08:47.080 --> 00:08:48.440 I've not talked about this one in a while. 00:08:48.840 --> 00:08:51.420 What Seth Godin and the Beatles taught me about disciple-making. 00:08:51.580 --> 00:08:55.540 It gets to this idea of you want to craft a message specifically for someone. 00:08:55.640 --> 00:08:56.220 Do you know the Beatles? 00:08:56.360 --> 00:08:57.580 There's never going to be another Beatles. 00:08:58.140 --> 00:09:00.020 I love them. 00:09:00.080 --> 00:09:00.620 Ringo, awesome. 00:09:00.720 --> 00:09:00.900 Great. 00:09:00.900 --> 00:09:09.440 At the heart of this, right now, there are 40 Google lists, 40 different sub-genres of rock and roll. 00:09:09.860 --> 00:09:14.920 Even if you're a rock and roll guy, you have 40 different options to be passionate about. 00:09:15.500 --> 00:09:23.000 The idea that we can have another Beatles that's out there, probably the closest Beatles we've had at this point is Coldplay, maybe? 00:09:24.160 --> 00:09:25.860 Just imagine dragons. 00:09:26.200 --> 00:09:26.600 Nickelback? 00:09:26.720 --> 00:09:27.180 Okay, I'm kidding. 00:09:27.260 --> 00:09:27.800 Not Nickelback. 00:09:27.900 --> 00:09:33.180 At the heart of this, we're becoming such a diversified, bifurcated society. 00:09:33.360 --> 00:09:34.700 Thank you very much, social media. 00:09:35.140 --> 00:09:36.440 It's got to be for someone. 00:09:36.440 --> 00:09:38.140 Check out thechurch.digital.com. 00:09:38.140 --> 00:09:40.480 You'll find a blog on that. 00:09:40.720 --> 00:09:47.400 Okay, that was a lot I just threw in there, specifically talking about number one, affinity groups. 00:09:47.500 --> 00:09:48.960 Let's get into number two here. 00:09:49.720 --> 00:09:50.160 And I love this. 00:09:50.200 --> 00:09:51.480 I just had this conversation yesterday. 00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:54.580 Digital-only churches, four different types of digital-only churches. 00:09:54.720 --> 00:10:00.320 Number two, hyper-focused on local specific areas. 00:10:00.580 --> 00:10:06.420 Yesterday, I had a conversation with a digital church planner that wants to hyper-focus his ministry in Los Angeles. 00:10:06.640 --> 00:10:10.120 He's very passionate about reaching the city of L.A. 00:10:10.240 --> 00:10:14.580 And what I love about this guy is he does want to do physical things. 00:10:14.580 --> 00:10:21.100 He's thinking about renting out restaurants and connecting people regionally in Los Angeles in specific spaces. 00:10:21.100 --> 00:10:25.120 But he realizes, Jeff, I want to build churches. 00:10:25.120 --> 00:10:31.080 I want to reach people in the northwest quadrant, the southwest quadrant, northeast, southeast. 00:10:31.300 --> 00:10:32.380 Oh, my hands were totally wrong there. 00:10:32.580 --> 00:10:37.060 But he wants to reach people in the entirety of New York or, excuse me, Los Angeles. 00:10:37.060 --> 00:10:41.180 And he can't do that by buying a bunch of buildings. 00:10:41.420 --> 00:10:55.300 He has to do that by building a digital strategy that's going to connect those people and then doing pop-up events and regional events and strategically doing events as physically as he has the ability to do that. 00:10:55.300 --> 00:11:05.480 And so if we're really thinking about reaching cities, especially expensive cities, holy cow, like Los Angeles would be, yeah, we need to do stuff digitally. 00:11:06.020 --> 00:11:07.180 I've had similar conversations. 00:11:07.320 --> 00:11:10.700 Pacific Northwest, there's a whole bunch of people thinking this way. 00:11:10.780 --> 00:11:18.220 I'm often thinking that maybe I should move up to, like, Oregon or Seattle and, like, be with the digital church people because it seems like they're all kind of up in that quadrant. 00:11:18.680 --> 00:11:20.060 Kansas City is another one. 00:11:20.180 --> 00:11:27.300 I've talked to several people that are wanting to do micro church movements similar to what Rob Wagner is doing with, ironically, with KC Underground. 00:11:27.300 --> 00:11:40.560 But they're wanting to use digital as that foundation, and it's like this digital first that follows up with a micro church, a small gathering strategy within certain regions. 00:11:40.700 --> 00:11:42.860 And so you can definitely see that happening. 00:11:42.940 --> 00:11:52.620 By the way, how much cheaper is that than having to pay for the AVL or the physical building that you're only going to use for that one hour a week? 00:11:52.700 --> 00:11:54.460 So definitely love that. 00:11:54.860 --> 00:12:01.380 We've seen, I mean, honestly, I can tell you stories of church planters thinking digital first. 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:05.660 By going digital first, there's a church planter we're working with there. 00:12:05.720 --> 00:12:09.660 He's wanting to plant a church in South Africa in physical space. 00:12:09.800 --> 00:12:11.700 He's not even in South Africa yet. 00:12:11.760 --> 00:12:12.860 He's living in other countries. 00:12:12.980 --> 00:12:16.800 A lot of his leadership's kind of scattered around the planet at this point. 00:12:17.700 --> 00:12:30.560 And what this planter, by thanking digital first, has successfully launched small groups in 25 countries, something like 75 to 100 cities scattered across the planet. 00:12:31.080 --> 00:12:42.360 And especially if you're talking about this idea of it's not necessarily ecclesia, it's using digital to be the diaspora, to be the scattering of the church, only to create new ecclesias where they are. 00:12:42.360 --> 00:12:54.740 My South African planter friend here has a start to reach 25 nations, and the dude hasn't even officially launched one physical location yet. 00:12:54.820 --> 00:12:58.200 He's just thinking digitally first. 00:12:58.380 --> 00:13:01.960 There's huge opportunities to do things in a big way. 00:13:02.500 --> 00:13:03.600 And this really gets to the heart of this. 00:13:03.680 --> 00:13:06.540 And we actually, I woke up this morning before I got out of bed. 00:13:06.660 --> 00:13:13.740 I got thrown into a Facebook group that was having this theological conversation about the validity of digital church. 00:13:13.880 --> 00:13:16.840 Thank you, Matt, and the others that were in there. 00:13:16.880 --> 00:13:17.220 It was funny. 00:13:17.340 --> 00:13:19.340 It was not a group that I'm regular in. 00:13:19.380 --> 00:13:21.500 I think it was like a large church communication group. 00:13:22.040 --> 00:13:25.480 But I saw a lot of friendly faces when I was in there hanging out. 00:13:25.920 --> 00:13:28.440 Digital church is not the abandoning of ecclesia. 00:13:29.200 --> 00:13:32.440 And so much, that's the knock theologically against it. 00:13:32.440 --> 00:13:39.860 And even what we're doing here with being hyper-focused on a local area using digital, we're not abandoning ecclesia. 00:13:40.280 --> 00:13:51.500 We're embracing this idea of diaspora, of breaking up the church, breaking up the gathering for the purpose of starting new ecclesias. 00:13:52.160 --> 00:13:56.360 And so don't look at this as we're abandoning what the Bible has called us to. 00:13:56.640 --> 00:14:08.120 But it's more of we're actually doing what the Bible has called us to by breaking up that diaspora and regathering and starting something new in physical and or digital spaces. 00:14:08.740 --> 00:14:09.960 This is not a step backwards. 00:14:09.960 --> 00:14:16.440 This is a step forward that we, the Big C Church, the Western Civ Church, that we need to understand. 00:14:16.680 --> 00:14:20.260 Okay, I am going way slower than I was planning on going here. 00:14:20.340 --> 00:14:26.220 Number three, four different types of digital churches, platform-specific churches. 00:14:26.220 --> 00:14:27.280 We're going to fly through this one. 00:14:27.300 --> 00:14:27.860 This is going to be great. 00:14:28.180 --> 00:14:35.880 Hope City Church is arguably probably one of the largest Facebook churches, Facebook-specific churches in North America. 00:14:36.280 --> 00:14:42.720 They do all of their streaming, the broadcasting, all of it through their discipleship. 00:14:42.800 --> 00:14:43.620 They're small groups. 00:14:43.700 --> 00:14:50.240 They're using Facebook Messenger, the accountability, the live broadcast, the on-demand stuff, the small group. 00:14:50.300 --> 00:14:51.900 Everything is on Facebook. 00:14:52.400 --> 00:14:53.940 Now, look, there's huge wins. 00:14:54.360 --> 00:14:55.540 They don't have to pay for the platform. 00:14:56.240 --> 00:14:57.160 There's challenges. 00:14:57.660 --> 00:15:02.580 If you're not paying for your platform, if you're not paying for the product and using that, then you are the product. 00:15:03.080 --> 00:15:06.920 And so Facebook controls a lot of the algorithms and things like that. 00:15:06.940 --> 00:15:07.780 And there's challenges. 00:15:08.320 --> 00:15:09.480 You got to know how to work the algorithm. 00:15:09.640 --> 00:15:10.900 Sometimes you get bit by it. 00:15:11.300 --> 00:15:14.900 What if we, the church, we lose the ability to do church on Facebook? 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:15.900 What if they're blacklisted? 00:15:15.900 --> 00:15:24.080 Do they still have access to the 16, 17, 18,000 people that they have listed within the Facebook platform? 00:15:24.420 --> 00:15:26.240 These are things that you got to wrestle with. 00:15:26.480 --> 00:15:30.500 These are not reasons, by the way, to run away from Facebook or any other platform. 00:15:30.660 --> 00:15:32.560 There are other platforms. 00:15:32.700 --> 00:15:34.120 There are other people that are doing things. 00:15:34.220 --> 00:15:36.360 Robloxian Christians, we've talked a bunch about that. 00:15:36.640 --> 00:15:42.420 It's a student-led organization, a student-led church that exists in Roblox. 00:15:42.420 --> 00:15:44.880 If you don't know what Roblox is, your elementary kids probably do. 00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:48.100 And they've reached 50, 60, 70,000 people. 00:15:48.740 --> 00:15:52.840 And that's a small number, probably much larger than that in the 10 years they've been around. 00:15:54.200 --> 00:15:57.120 Why not do church in Roblox? 00:15:57.160 --> 00:15:58.660 Why not figure out how to do that? 00:15:59.520 --> 00:16:03.520 It started with a kid who was 10 years old trying to figure out how to do this, smarter than all of us. 00:16:04.060 --> 00:16:09.280 Lux Church, Love Clan, these are churches that exist in Twitch. 00:16:09.700 --> 00:16:16.700 By the way, two different churches run by two different pastors with two completely opposite strategies. 00:16:18.100 --> 00:16:26.440 Complete opportunities to do church the way that Lux Digital Church is, which feels more like an established church service that he does weekly. 00:16:26.440 --> 00:16:29.300 On Wednesday night, 8.30 Eastern, I think, something like that. 00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:32.540 And then what we see with Love Clan, completely opposite. 00:16:32.960 --> 00:16:34.240 He doesn't do church services. 00:16:34.740 --> 00:16:39.640 What Jake's doing over there, he streams, I don't know, 50, 60 hours a week. 00:16:39.860 --> 00:16:46.580 Honest to God, anytime I wake up in the middle of the night, I open up Twitch, see what he's doing, and kind of throw a chat in there and make fun of him. 00:16:46.740 --> 00:16:50.040 Because the dude's operating while the rest of America is sleeping. 00:16:50.240 --> 00:16:53.360 Because that's when the Twitch people, the streamers, are up. 00:16:53.500 --> 00:17:02.420 And so he is building relationships while the rest of us are sleeping, which means while the rest of us are working our nine-to-fives, dude's probably crashed out trying to catch up on sleep. 00:17:03.300 --> 00:17:06.220 You're understanding how these platforms work. 00:17:06.560 --> 00:17:20.820 And you're taking the biblical view of what a church is, and you are applying that to the idea of doing a church in a social media platform, in Twitch, in YouTube, in Roblox, in Minecraft, in whatever. 00:17:21.300 --> 00:17:25.260 Your target audience are the type of people that would use that. 00:17:25.700 --> 00:17:28.160 That's the heart of where we're going here. 00:17:28.460 --> 00:17:30.720 By the way, who needs a building? 00:17:31.480 --> 00:17:33.000 Talk about this all the time. 00:17:33.120 --> 00:17:41.440 I'm actually going to be doing a talk at a social media church conference, doing just a quick plug here, how to be a church completely on social media. 00:17:41.500 --> 00:17:43.360 We're going to dig into the theology. 00:17:43.820 --> 00:17:46.940 We're going to dig into the practicality of this. 00:17:47.200 --> 00:17:50.240 More information on the conference is socialmedia.church. 00:17:50.360 --> 00:17:55.140 Dig into that to get more information and to sign up for the conference. 00:17:55.220 --> 00:17:56.420 We'd love to get you connected there. 00:17:56.820 --> 00:18:01.060 Number four, four different types of digital-only churches. 00:18:01.200 --> 00:18:04.140 Number four is going to be Avatar Church. 00:18:04.320 --> 00:18:07.820 Now, some of you with Avatar Church, you're probably thinking this. 00:18:07.960 --> 00:18:09.300 The people, thank you. 00:18:09.440 --> 00:18:11.100 Was it James Cameron there? 00:18:11.520 --> 00:18:17.060 I don't know of any movie franchise that really doesn't want to get made as much as Avatar here is. 00:18:17.320 --> 00:18:19.520 When you hear Avatar, this is probably the first thing that you think. 00:18:19.520 --> 00:18:23.000 Some of you are probably thinking this, Avatar, the last airbender. 00:18:23.280 --> 00:18:23.940 I'll be honest. 00:18:24.080 --> 00:18:26.460 I don't, this is not my world. 00:18:26.660 --> 00:18:27.660 Don't really understand it either. 00:18:28.060 --> 00:18:30.340 But this, when you hear Avatar, this is what you're thinking. 00:18:30.740 --> 00:18:32.920 Hopefully, some of you are thinking this. 00:18:33.240 --> 00:18:36.200 The whole goggles, the whole virtual reality world. 00:18:36.660 --> 00:18:41.240 And ironically, this is DJ Soto, lead pastor of VR Church. 00:18:41.700 --> 00:18:42.280 Good friends. 00:18:42.380 --> 00:18:43.260 Talk with him a lot. 00:18:43.360 --> 00:18:44.820 Love the stuff that he's doing here. 00:18:45.040 --> 00:18:58.920 Because essentially, what DJ Soto, lead pastor of VR Church, is recognizing that these people right here, these avatars, the people that are represented by these avatars, these people deserve church. 00:18:59.600 --> 00:19:09.320 And believe it or not, for whatever reason, and yes, you may think it's weird, but that doesn't make it wrong, is that these people that are in here are comfortable in this virtual reality world. 00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:11.700 Yes, some of you watching this probably are not. 00:19:11.800 --> 00:19:14.300 Arguably, the majority of you watching this are not. 00:19:14.860 --> 00:19:19.960 But there are enough people in that virtual reality world to make it worthwhile. 00:19:20.160 --> 00:19:22.700 I've had conversations with people in virtual reality. 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:24.500 I'll be honest, and I've told this story a couple times. 00:19:24.580 --> 00:19:25.680 There was one in particular. 00:19:26.220 --> 00:19:27.280 Hey, let's jump on a Zoom. 00:19:27.360 --> 00:19:28.140 Let's have a conversation. 00:19:28.460 --> 00:19:31.180 And it was arguably the most awkward 30 minutes of my life. 00:19:31.440 --> 00:19:37.260 Because this person was not comfortable communicating in a physical realm. 00:19:37.320 --> 00:19:40.400 Even a Zoom realm wasn't comfortable for this person. 00:19:40.820 --> 00:19:41.620 Had a follow-up meeting. 00:19:41.720 --> 00:19:42.640 Went and talked about some other things. 00:19:42.720 --> 00:19:44.640 And hey, this time, let's meet in virtual reality. 00:19:44.860 --> 00:19:48.140 And I've got to tell you, it was night and day. 00:19:48.320 --> 00:19:53.900 Because this person was more familiar with doing things in the virtual reality. 00:19:54.020 --> 00:20:01.040 She was more comfortable, literally, in her avatar skin than she was when I was looking at her face-to-face. 00:20:01.480 --> 00:20:03.240 Is that a healthy thing? 00:20:03.340 --> 00:20:03.920 I don't know. 00:20:04.220 --> 00:20:06.360 There's probably some things we need to work through on that. 00:20:06.440 --> 00:20:07.220 Yeah, and time. 00:20:07.440 --> 00:20:13.000 But what's important is if I wanted to get Christ, the idea of Christ, to a person like that, 00:20:13.340 --> 00:20:23.960 rather than forcing them to come to a building, why don't we go to where they are and meet them, literally, where they are in virtual reality? 00:20:24.340 --> 00:20:25.280 Crazy idea? 00:20:25.660 --> 00:20:25.940 Yes. 00:20:26.060 --> 00:20:27.420 Does it make it wrong? 00:20:27.740 --> 00:20:28.400 I don't think so. 00:20:28.900 --> 00:20:32.060 So, we see guys like DJ Soto, VR Church. 00:20:32.140 --> 00:20:34.700 We also see established churches doing this. 00:20:34.860 --> 00:20:39.220 We've got guys like Jason Poling, who's with—I'm Jason, I'm blanking on you. 00:20:39.300 --> 00:20:41.680 Cornerstone Church up in Yuba City. 00:20:41.680 --> 00:20:58.800 We've got lead pastors like Josh Amstutz with Lakeland Church that have established physical churches, but are launching completely separate, multimodal, virtual reality churches, reaching a different set of people. 00:20:59.380 --> 00:21:01.520 And it is a different set of people. 00:21:02.280 --> 00:21:10.700 Jason Poling will tell you that through his virtual reality church, 80% to 85% of the people that attend the church and virtual reality are de-churched. 00:21:10.700 --> 00:21:21.120 They have been so burned previously by church experience that their first step back to the bride of Christ is through goggles and headsets and virtual reality. 00:21:22.420 --> 00:21:32.180 DJ Soto would tell you through his VR church, it's 80% to 85% lost people, people that have no understanding of Christ. 00:21:32.340 --> 00:21:34.460 Atheists are coming into his church. 00:21:34.600 --> 00:21:41.860 Atheists are actually part of serving through VR Church, and it's this beautiful picture of what the church can be as a community. 00:21:42.440 --> 00:21:45.860 And through that community, we are connecting people to Christ. 00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:49.240 We need to be okay that there are different types of people. 00:21:49.240 --> 00:21:58.980 And we need to use tools like digital-only churches to reach people that would only connect with the church in digital-only space. 00:22:00.040 --> 00:22:09.360 You know, so the real question is, is an avatar community, is a virtual reality community, is it worthy of a church? 00:22:11.120 --> 00:22:14.260 Would you connect with it is a completely separate question. 00:22:14.820 --> 00:22:19.460 The heart of all of these is not, is it effective for you as an individual? 00:22:20.260 --> 00:22:25.500 Some of you out there, and I have these conversations regularly, fight this idea of a digital-only church. 00:22:25.660 --> 00:22:29.620 Jeff, why are you leaning so hard into this idea of digital-only? 00:22:29.760 --> 00:22:32.360 Such a few percentage of people are engaging with this. 00:22:32.440 --> 00:22:40.460 We're finding right now that Barn is saying 10% to 15% of lost people out there, people disconnected with the church, would be interested in a digital-only. 00:22:40.460 --> 00:22:45.880 Jeff, we need to pour more of our energy into physical and other realms because that would be more effective for today. 00:22:46.260 --> 00:22:48.260 And you're probably not wrong. 00:22:48.700 --> 00:23:04.260 What I would say is there's enough people today that buy into a concept of a digital-only that we have to address it, that we have to swing to it, that we have to embrace the idea of digital, of multimodal, of having different strategies. 00:23:04.260 --> 00:23:11.460 We have to look at these types of churches and recognize that there are more people to reach that will not go to that building. 00:23:12.320 --> 00:23:18.040 And we have to see that the pendulum is shifting that way even more so. 00:23:18.940 --> 00:23:31.500 COVID was an accelerant, and where we're going to be in 22, 23, 24, 25, 30, 35, you are going to see digital become more and more as the culture looks at digital community as a community. 00:23:32.060 --> 00:23:35.960 The question that we, the church, have to answer is not, is digital church a community? 00:23:36.400 --> 00:23:41.720 What we have to answer is, is that community worthy of a church? 00:23:42.140 --> 00:23:45.100 And the answer, I believe, wholeheartedly is yes. 00:23:45.560 --> 00:23:46.640 Well, hey, we went a little long. 00:23:46.720 --> 00:23:51.140 I hope this was a good conversation for different types of digital-only churches. 00:23:51.140 --> 00:23:57.180 Once again, Stadia, we want to help you find your digital purpose in ministry. 00:23:57.700 --> 00:24:05.540 Thechurch.digital for next steps there, 484-324-8724, quite literally my cell phone number. 00:24:05.860 --> 00:24:08.020 There are many ways that we can get you connected. 00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:14.820 There's many different approaches that we, Stadia, are doing, and I would love to usher you and help you in that. 00:24:14.880 --> 00:24:19.400 Let's get you started on your journey, 484-324-8724. 00:24:19.740 --> 00:24:20.840 And so for that, we're going to wrap. 00:24:20.920 --> 00:24:23.760 Oh, my gosh, there are 19 comments. 00:24:24.360 --> 00:24:27.380 I don't even know how to get started in 20. 00:24:27.480 --> 00:24:28.620 We're still blowing up. 00:24:28.680 --> 00:24:31.800 I didn't even look at this screen, and it's going good. 00:24:31.880 --> 00:24:32.460 I love this. 00:24:32.460 --> 00:24:34.740 I'm just going to pick a couple right here before I hang up. 00:24:35.580 --> 00:24:36.000 Andy Hill. 00:24:36.140 --> 00:24:38.820 Digital is not a threat to physical. 00:24:39.040 --> 00:24:40.180 It's a compliment. 00:24:41.540 --> 00:24:42.560 Andy Hill, again. 00:24:42.920 --> 00:24:45.040 J. Earhart is amazing. 00:24:45.320 --> 00:24:45.660 He is. 00:24:46.580 --> 00:24:49.180 Look, arguably one of the smartest people I know, J. 00:24:49.380 --> 00:24:50.660 And so love what he's doing. 00:24:51.080 --> 00:24:51.800 Facebook user. 00:24:52.320 --> 00:24:58.860 No building here, but now converting pastor's third-car garage into the church studio. 00:24:59.820 --> 00:25:05.400 I know a couple churches that have done that, lead pastors, kind of working with what you got. 00:25:05.520 --> 00:25:06.420 And that's the thing with digital. 00:25:06.540 --> 00:25:07.480 It's so cheap. 00:25:07.860 --> 00:25:08.540 Why not? 00:25:08.900 --> 00:25:10.940 It's so inexpensive to do this stuff. 00:25:11.060 --> 00:25:11.540 How much? 00:25:11.840 --> 00:25:13.040 I mean, look, I've got a nice rig. 00:25:13.240 --> 00:25:13.760 I'll be honest. 00:25:13.840 --> 00:25:19.420 I spent a couple thousand dollars in this COVID season slowly building together, even the rig that I'm using. 00:25:19.820 --> 00:25:21.620 Why not try something? 00:25:21.780 --> 00:25:24.100 Why not embrace some of this stuff and do it? 00:25:24.500 --> 00:25:27.200 Cost is not limited to it. 00:25:28.160 --> 00:25:31.140 Just because it's weird doesn't make it wrong. 00:25:31.480 --> 00:25:34.320 That, I may get that tattoo. 00:25:34.580 --> 00:25:36.940 Like, I just, I need to follow up on that. 00:25:37.020 --> 00:25:37.640 That's good stuff. 00:25:38.120 --> 00:25:40.420 Hey, and some other people are coming on. 00:25:40.500 --> 00:25:43.380 Stacey was one of the Facebook users that are out there. 00:25:43.500 --> 00:25:48.600 Stacey is, and Stacey, honestly, in my notes, I meant to reference the church that you guys are doing. 00:25:48.820 --> 00:25:52.540 Literally doing micro church strategy on Zoom. 00:25:53.140 --> 00:25:55.420 Zoom churches, looking at that platform. 00:25:55.660 --> 00:25:56.460 Clubhouse churches. 00:25:56.600 --> 00:25:58.260 Others are going into that platform. 00:25:58.600 --> 00:26:05.660 You're seeing this platform-specific idea come into play to reach a different type of person. 00:26:06.060 --> 00:26:08.780 Why would we not embrace this idea? 00:26:09.280 --> 00:26:11.680 If you're a pioneer out there, and we're going to wrap with this. 00:26:11.720 --> 00:26:12.180 This is beautiful. 00:26:12.300 --> 00:26:13.500 Thanks, y'all, for the comments. 00:26:13.820 --> 00:26:20.580 If you're a pioneer out there, if you're looking at what's happening in the building and the rush to go back to the building, and which is not wrong. 00:26:21.220 --> 00:26:24.200 But if you're thinking to yourself, man, there's something different. 00:26:24.760 --> 00:26:26.900 There's something we can do different here. 00:26:27.160 --> 00:26:33.920 There were lessons that we learned in COVID, and I want to figure out how to do that, even as we're going back to the building. 00:26:34.220 --> 00:26:37.820 Numbers on the screen, 484-324-8724. 00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:38.780 Love you guys. 00:26:38.820 --> 00:26:39.880 It's been a great conversation. 00:26:40.380 --> 00:26:42.280 Longer than I wanted, but this has been healthy. 00:26:42.380 --> 00:26:44.280 Jeff with the Church Digital and State of Church Planning. 00:26:44.740 --> 00:26:47.760 Man, let me know how I can help you in your digital ministry. 00:26:48.140 --> 00:26:48.540 Y'all have a good day.