WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.580 All right. Hey, welcome to The Beta Show, episode 38. Hey, it's Jeff with The Church Digital. 00:00:07.100 --> 00:00:12.580 Once again, all of this is powered by Stadia Church Planning, and I am not in my office. 00:00:12.760 --> 00:00:16.240 I'm not broadcasting from where I normally am. You literally see the word connection, 00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:21.880 wrong hands, over here on the side. I'm in Nashville, Tennessee, in Brentwood Baptist 00:00:21.880 --> 00:00:26.860 Church up here with an exponential thing. Man, it's hard, backwards, mirror, on an exponential 00:00:26.860 --> 00:00:31.940 thing. The software I'm using is not reversing right now, and so it's convoluted. All right. Hey, 00:00:32.240 --> 00:00:36.840 so we're doing a thing up here with Exponential, and I've been up here for about a week, which is 00:00:36.840 --> 00:00:42.040 actually the heart of what I wanted to talk about here with This Beta Show, because I had a ridiculous 00:00:42.040 --> 00:00:48.440 experience Monday that really shed some new light for me, and I want you, audience out there, to 00:00:48.440 --> 00:00:54.540 gain some understanding here of what my Monday looked like. But before we get there, Stadia Church 00:00:54.540 --> 00:01:01.980 Planning on Tuesday, August 17th, literally next week, literally, if you're listening in broad, 00:01:02.060 --> 00:01:09.680 on podcast tomorrow, August 17th, Stadia is hosting an innovation meetup. Stadia churchplanning.org 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:14.440 slash innovation is for more information. But the heart of this meetup is really getting into 00:01:14.440 --> 00:01:20.000 multimodal churches, churches that are running multiple strategies, how to be more effective by 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:25.400 running multiple strategies, doing multiple types, multiple models of church out of your 00:01:25.400 --> 00:01:31.440 organization, future-proofing your church as a result of it. So literally, I'm leading a breakout 00:01:31.440 --> 00:01:39.100 future church today. How to prepare your church for tomorrow today. The future is not tomorrow. The 00:01:39.100 --> 00:01:44.680 future is bright now. What do we need to do to get started on that? There's plenty of multimodal stuff. 00:01:44.680 --> 00:01:51.760 There's plenty of insourcing, leadership development. How do we develop a leadership pipeline? How do we 00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:57.120 develop systems and structures that can, not where we have to bring people in from the outside, but we've 00:01:57.120 --> 00:02:03.320 got the next best people already within the organization. Maybe even some of those people that are sitting in 00:02:03.320 --> 00:02:09.320 those pews on Sunday morning. How do we activate them and grow and develop them? Some phenomenal stuff 00:02:09.320 --> 00:02:15.800 coming out of Stadia Innovation Meetup Tuesday, August 17th, noon to 4 p.m., 100% free. 00:02:16.400 --> 00:02:23.720 StadiaChurchPlanning.org slash innovation. All right. Let me tell you about Monday. Monday was crazy. I flew in. 00:02:24.080 --> 00:02:31.320 I was in Miami, woke up, got on a plane, flew out here to Nashville, Tennessee, landed about 10 a.m., 00:02:31.320 --> 00:02:36.220 took out my phone. I wanted to be in like the Brentwood, Franklin kind of area because that's where the 00:02:36.220 --> 00:02:41.160 church is going to be and where my hotel was. And so I just literally, I opened up Apple Maps 00:02:41.160 --> 00:02:47.740 and I typed coffee house. Brentwood ended up at a place called The Well. Now, The Well as a coffee 00:02:47.740 --> 00:02:51.900 house, it's not Starbucks. And let me tell you, when you go to an actual coffee house that's not 00:02:51.900 --> 00:02:57.400 Starbucks, you realize how crappy Starbucks actually is. Sorry, Starbucks fans. I spent the 00:02:57.400 --> 00:03:02.360 majority of my life at a Starbucks. I've been a Gold Club member at Starbucks for years, maybe even 00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:10.140 decade plus. But it is subpar compared to a really good coffee house. And The Well was a really good 00:03:10.140 --> 00:03:18.300 coffee house. Walked in, it was a great environment, lobby-like feel, wall-to-wall people. It was kind 00:03:18.300 --> 00:03:23.220 of weird. Nobody was wearing a mask. It's the first time I've really been in a room with no masks. And I 00:03:23.220 --> 00:03:27.780 know Delta variant's going crazy in Florida, especially Miami right now. And so it's kind of weird 00:03:27.780 --> 00:03:35.200 feelings. But that aside, oh my gosh, the coffee, I had a hot chai latte. It was the best liquid I've 00:03:35.200 --> 00:03:41.840 put in my body in years. The iced coffee, slow drip, just how I like it. Oh my gosh, it was an 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:47.820 incredible, incredible experience. But even when I'm looking around at these people that are in the, 00:03:48.020 --> 00:03:56.620 like, all, every pastor that is in the Franklin Brentwood area is in this coffee house all at the 00:03:56.620 --> 00:04:02.680 same time. Everybody is talking church, ministry, retiring from ministry. What's next? What are you 00:04:02.680 --> 00:04:10.200 preaching this Sunday? Like it was freaking heaven in a coffee house that serves incredible chai latte. 00:04:10.200 --> 00:04:17.660 And so, and it was completely random. I didn't want to go to a place like that. I literally let Apple 00:04:17.660 --> 00:04:23.100 Maps define for me where to go. And that was the top billing that it sent me. And so I had a couple 00:04:23.100 --> 00:04:27.660 meetings there, caught up with some friends that I've been doing ministry with over the years. And so 00:04:27.660 --> 00:04:33.320 it was an awesome time hanging out there in that area. And a third meeting, and with this one, I went to 00:04:33.320 --> 00:04:38.060 another location. I drove two miles, I think, or two hours, an hour and a half, I think east, 00:04:38.480 --> 00:04:44.680 out to an area called Cookville. And so met with a third guy in Cookville, Tennessee. And this is not 00:04:44.680 --> 00:04:50.620 far away from Nashville. These are still Tennessee people. There's not a radical shift of what's 00:04:50.620 --> 00:04:57.280 happening here. But the type of person, the environment that we met in, in Cookville, we met 00:04:57.280 --> 00:05:02.540 at a Waffle House. Now, I love Waffle House. I'm in IHOPs, like some of those places. This isn't like 00:05:02.540 --> 00:05:10.700 me going critical on the environment. There's a homeless guy sitting at the bar. And at one point, 00:05:10.720 --> 00:05:15.680 he was drunk. And at one point, he got up from the bar to go get in his car. And long story short, 00:05:16.020 --> 00:05:22.860 dude, like, lost control of his car in the parking lot and jumped up curb and came within probably three 00:05:22.860 --> 00:05:32.020 inches away from hitting the literal building. Like he almost ran the Chevy 1500 into this building. And 00:05:32.020 --> 00:05:39.780 I'm like looking at this bumper in the booth where I'm sitting where I almost got like concreting in a 00:05:39.780 --> 00:05:45.880 Waffle House. And other situations where there's a couple over here, a husband and wife with two kids, 00:05:46.040 --> 00:05:53.640 mom and dad are just going at it the entire time, yelling, fighting, verbally abusing each other. 00:05:54.060 --> 00:06:02.480 The kids, AirPods, a Switch, iPhone, or maybe it was an iPad. Completely, I don't, ignoring, 00:06:02.700 --> 00:06:06.160 completely oblivious. I don't know what the thing is, but there's obvious tensions in there. We even 00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:11.540 asked the waitress at one point, you know, how, how can we pray for you? And the waitress started 00:06:11.540 --> 00:06:17.740 telling this, like the sob story of her daughter was the, was the cook, but her son lives somewhere 00:06:17.740 --> 00:06:25.960 else. He has COVID very bad. She can't afford to go visit him and she can't get off. Like there's 00:06:25.960 --> 00:06:32.440 lots of drama. I'm not painting this picture clear enough to the audience here. There's lots of drama 00:06:32.440 --> 00:06:40.440 in this Waffle House in Cookville. By the way, coffee. I mean, let's, let's be honest. It was Waffle 00:06:40.440 --> 00:06:45.020 House coffee. There's better, but it's, it's honestly, maybe it's better than Starbucks, 00:06:45.020 --> 00:06:49.820 but let's really hone in here to what I wanted to hit on. Two different environments, two different 00:06:49.820 --> 00:06:56.440 places. Oftentimes what the well looked like, Hey, there's people, there's Christians all over. 00:06:56.500 --> 00:07:01.000 We're talking about all this stuff. There's no drama. It's all clean. It's all simple. It's all 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:06.160 pretty. Ironically, the well, this coffee house, the first place I went to is literally owned by a 00:07:06.160 --> 00:07:12.440 church. The, there's an organization and they use it for like, um, was it, it's like coffee to clean 00:07:12.440 --> 00:07:18.120 water. And so you, you drink coffee and then they, they invest the money and some of the profits into 00:07:18.120 --> 00:07:23.060 clean water organizations globally. So, um, I literally went to a church without realizing I was 00:07:23.060 --> 00:07:28.100 going to a church. Uh, but isn't that what our Sundays look like where we're, we're in our physical 00:07:28.100 --> 00:07:31.920 buildings. And I don't want to be critical of the physical buildings. I'm literally sitting in one at 00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:36.440 this moment, Brentwood Baptist, but we sit in these buildings and it's, everything's clean. 00:07:36.520 --> 00:07:41.680 Everything's simple. Everything's pretty. Um, and we all put on the Christian faces, the Christian 00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:48.440 conversations, Christian dialogue, and we just live in that, that Christian environment where everything's 00:07:48.440 --> 00:07:53.660 simple. Now it's fascinating for some of us that are doing online ministry. We're realizing 00:07:53.660 --> 00:08:00.220 it's not simple, anything but simple. And oftentimes online ministry and the messiness of what online can 00:08:00.220 --> 00:08:06.300 look like just like the messiness of, of what call, uh, Cookville look like for me out, out in Tennessee. 00:08:07.560 --> 00:08:11.700 It's, it's a, it's a, it's a turnoff to some people that, that are more interested in the clean. 00:08:11.780 --> 00:08:18.080 It's a difficulty. It's an obstacle. It's something that we should not get into because it's so different 00:08:18.080 --> 00:08:24.420 than what we typically see in the pretty simple price centered environments that we're in. 00:08:25.320 --> 00:08:34.320 But what's funny is there's more, the waitress at Cookville at, she was open to prayer. When we asked 00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:38.880 her how we could pray for you, she was very open with the things that were in her life. She didn't 00:08:38.880 --> 00:08:42.900 stick around for the prayer. She just said, Hey, if you're a praying person, I need you to pray for 00:08:42.900 --> 00:08:48.340 this. My son's got COVID. Uh, he's got it really bad. I don't, I can't afford to see him. I can't go 00:08:48.340 --> 00:08:53.140 over. I'm a mom and I'm struggling with the emotions of, of what that means. And she was like, 00:08:53.140 --> 00:08:58.000 uh, she was old on the older side of the equation. So I feel like it was a younger son. I just waving 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:02.420 to the altar live people, by the way, it's awesome. It's altar live.com. If you've not hooked up with 00:09:02.420 --> 00:09:08.420 them yet, but there's this opportunity that we have to do ministry different, to connect with a 00:09:08.420 --> 00:09:13.140 different type of person to get in the mud a little bit, to get in those situations. And yes, 00:09:13.140 --> 00:09:20.180 you may put your life on the line. You may have to get dirty and almost get hit by a Chevy F1 or a 00:09:20.180 --> 00:09:26.260 Chevy 1500 that's driven by some drunk guy that doesn't know where he's at. Um, and the proverbial 00:09:26.260 --> 00:09:32.160 word war that happens as customers start to cuss this guy out because of the situation, like it was a 00:09:32.160 --> 00:09:38.320 mess. But the point is that's what life is in 2021. That's what life is by doing digital ministry. 00:09:38.420 --> 00:09:45.140 It's not all pretty lobbies. It's, it's not all mega giga buildings. It's not coffee that's served 00:09:45.140 --> 00:09:50.760 literally at the church. Sometimes it's an opportunity for you to get messy. So the challenge 00:09:50.760 --> 00:09:54.420 that I have for you today, audience out there, when you're doing digital ministry, 00:09:54.600 --> 00:09:59.560 are you getting messy? Are you getting dirty? Are you getting so involved in people's lives 00:09:59.560 --> 00:10:06.660 that they know you care that you're walking with them, even in those hard times, those difficult 00:10:06.660 --> 00:10:12.060 times? Or for you, is your church more about, man, listen, I just want to broadcast. I don't want 00:10:12.060 --> 00:10:16.780 to get dirty. I just want to get it out. Are you getting dirty digitally? Maybe I should buy that 00:10:16.780 --> 00:10:24.680 dirtychurch.com slash dirtychurch.digital dirty, dirty, dirty.church. That just got weird. Somebody's 00:10:24.680 --> 00:10:28.780 actually probably bought that just right now. Hey, so we're going to wrap your innovation meetup 00:10:28.780 --> 00:10:34.840 Tuesday, August 17th. You guys have to be there. It's going to be an awesome session here with 00:10:34.840 --> 00:10:39.340 Exponential. By the way, and I haven't said this publicly yet, Exponential is doing some regional 00:10:39.340 --> 00:10:46.280 events and I'm going to be traveling around. I've got like five or six locations here in 2021, up until 00:10:46.280 --> 00:10:51.340 Thanksgiving 21, where I'm going to be meeting up with people and talking digital church, digital 00:10:51.340 --> 00:10:56.300 church, church planning, all that stuff. So if you know an Exponential regional event is coming to your 00:10:56.300 --> 00:11:02.180 area, sign up. Look for information. Let me know. Let me get you connected with some of the pre-conference 00:11:02.180 --> 00:11:07.040 stuff that we, Stadia, that we're doing. And we'd love to meet up with you at those regional 00:11:07.040 --> 00:11:13.100 conferences. We'll be in Orlando too in, what is it, March something or other, 22. But definitely want 00:11:13.100 --> 00:11:19.000 to connect up with you all. Hit me up on social media. Dear Feds, Jeffrey Backwood, you all know that 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:26.000 drill. But for Stadia Church planning, for Exponential, yay! For, man, I did it again. I pointed to the 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:31.640 wrong side. Yay! Dang it. Yay! This is harder than it looks. It's like shaving without like, anyway. 00:11:32.400 --> 00:11:36.720 For everybody of these people, I'm totally going long. This is Jeff at the Church Digital 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:41.200 and Stadia Church planning. Thanks for jumping on the beta show here and we'll see you next time. 00:11:41.300 --> 00:11:41.740 Y'all have a good day.