WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.380 Hey, we're going to get you to that podcast in one second, but before we get there, I, 00:00:03.580 --> 00:00:08.160 Jeff Reed, the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planning, I wanted to have a conversation with 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:13.180 you, churches that are out there. One of the greatest things I arguably think that I've done 00:00:13.180 --> 00:00:17.300 in my life, other than married and kids, okay, that aside, one of the greatest ministry things 00:00:17.300 --> 00:00:21.800 I've ever done is this idea of the fidgetal learning communities that we are offering 00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:27.320 through Stadia Church Planning. We want to help you. We want to help your church learn to thrive, 00:00:27.320 --> 00:00:34.340 grow, and multiply fidgetally, physically, as well as digitally. We've seen about 200 churches go 00:00:34.340 --> 00:00:40.340 through this already, and it's been a phenomenal result of it. Culture is changing within these 00:00:40.340 --> 00:00:46.080 churches. They're understanding what it is to thrive. They're understanding how to grow people, 00:00:46.220 --> 00:00:52.500 how to grow their church, even in the midst of this COVID, not COVID, wherever we are in the season, 00:00:52.500 --> 00:00:59.520 and they're even starting to understand what it means to multiply in fidgetal space. There's no secret 00:00:59.520 --> 00:01:05.740 sauce to doing a digital strategy. There's no secret sauce to doing a fidgetal strategy. There's no 00:01:05.740 --> 00:01:11.660 secret sauce to making your church thrive, grow, and multiply. It takes work. I'm not going to lie, 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:15.180 but through the framework, through the questions, through the learning communities, 00:01:15.180 --> 00:01:21.920 we connect you with churches. We give you some content. We coach you along the way to help you 00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:28.860 make the decisions that you need to make so that your church's strategy can thrive, grow, and multiply 00:01:28.860 --> 00:01:35.280 your church along the way. This is a great opportunity for your church. We would love to have you be a part 00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:39.180 of it. For more information, check out stadiacchurchplanning.org 00:01:39.180 --> 00:01:42.900 slash fidgetal. Stadiachurchplanning.org 00:01:42.900 --> 00:01:50.420 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 00:01:50.420 --> 00:01:57.400 episode right now. All right. So we are going to talk discipleship, disciple-making today. This is not 00:01:57.400 --> 00:02:02.260 going to be a technological conversation. Go check out the beta show if you want updates on 00:02:03.020 --> 00:02:07.580 Clubhouse and all the awesome things that are happening over in the tech world and in social 00:02:07.580 --> 00:02:13.060 media. We're not going to dive into that today here on the Church Digital Podcast. What we are going to 00:02:13.060 --> 00:02:19.840 talk about is the idea of doing discipleship in digital space, doing disciple-making in digital 00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:27.320 space, and what disciple, discipling someone, what that actually means. So for the conversation, 00:02:27.320 --> 00:02:33.900 we are bringing in Ricky Bailey. Now, Ricky is arguably probably one of the most humble people 00:02:33.900 --> 00:02:40.880 I've ever met in my life. And that drips through this podcast conversation entirely. Ricky has been 00:02:40.880 --> 00:02:46.840 very influential in my life. He's significantly younger than me, which is interesting. But his 00:02:46.840 --> 00:02:53.660 heart towards disciple-making, his heart towards evangelism, his heart towards obedience-based 00:02:53.660 --> 00:03:00.920 discipleship has revolutionized my life entirely. Well, I probably believed this stuff when I was like 00:03:00.920 --> 00:03:06.020 18 to 20, but I'll be honest, I forgot about it somewhere along the way. We talk about it on the 00:03:06.020 --> 00:03:11.540 podcast a little bit, but it's amazing how sometimes, well, you know, I don't want to get into it. You'll 00:03:11.540 --> 00:03:15.900 hear it on the podcast. It's awesome. So we're bringing Ricky into this conversation. We're doing, 00:03:15.900 --> 00:03:22.280 we, Stadia Church Planning, we are doing digital church planning cohorts, digital discipleship cohorts 00:03:22.280 --> 00:03:30.220 right now, where we're helping digital church planters wrestle through this idea of obedience-based 00:03:30.220 --> 00:03:38.720 discipleship, obedience-based digital discipleship, helping them have a foundation, a reproducible 00:03:38.720 --> 00:03:43.660 foundation that's going to help them plant churches in digital communities and digital spaces. 00:03:44.260 --> 00:03:51.260 It is an awesome time to be alive. And audience, I'm glad you get to join us in this conversation. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:56.400 So check it out. We're going to talk about Timothy Initiative. We're going to talk about some other 00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:02.960 resources. There are links in the show notes towards all of these things. This podcast episode, 00:04:03.480 --> 00:04:07.880 this is one of those conversations that could change the life of your ministry. This could change 00:04:07.880 --> 00:04:13.560 the life of your church. Like, I don't want to sell that short. I want you to recognize that 00:04:13.560 --> 00:04:22.480 this conversation deeply impacted me four years ago, and it has the potential to deeply impact you as 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:30.660 well. Take this conversation in prayer and look and see what God is leading you to and see if this 00:04:30.660 --> 00:04:38.480 lines up with maybe where God was already placing you in this COVID season. So for the conversation here, 00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:45.080 I'm bringing in Ricky Bailey, helping out with Stadia with some digital church planting cohorts, 00:04:45.480 --> 00:04:51.520 as well as very active in workplace ministry and myself, Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia 00:04:51.520 --> 00:04:57.340 Church Planning in a conversation that I'm calling Digital Discipleship through the Timothy Initiative. 00:04:58.020 --> 00:04:59.240 Okay, everybody. Here you go. 00:04:59.480 --> 00:05:05.860 Hey, so here's why I wanted to have this conversation. And what audience, what you need to realize is, 00:05:06.360 --> 00:05:10.400 I would probably put Ricky on a short list of people who have deeply impacted my life. 00:05:10.900 --> 00:05:16.620 And I don't know, I don't even think Ricky truly understands the level of this. And Ricky's 00:05:16.620 --> 00:05:24.600 significantly younger than me, which is not a bad thing. But in context of his passion for 00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:33.220 discipleship, for disciple making, for helping people find personal mission, I saw life differently 00:05:33.220 --> 00:05:39.900 up until about 2015. And I had a couple conversations, a couple relationships with a couple 00:05:39.900 --> 00:05:46.240 millennials. I don't think I should apologize for that, Ricky and another guy. And truly, 00:05:46.820 --> 00:05:52.640 my worldview perspective kind of, and I don't want to say it changed because honestly, it was, 00:05:52.640 --> 00:05:58.700 oh man, all that stuff that I believed 20 years ago. Yeah, I need to believe that today. It was almost 00:05:58.700 --> 00:06:06.280 like it was a refreshing reboot of my life going back. And so I really, even in context of how I view 00:06:06.280 --> 00:06:15.080 digital church, digital discipleship, like all of a sudden things looked different after kind of having 00:06:15.080 --> 00:06:19.840 some conversations here. And this is just a little bit of what I wanted to scratch the surface here 00:06:20.680 --> 00:06:27.980 with Ricky. And so even Ricky, just to open it up, you can line up 10 pastors and ask them what 00:06:27.980 --> 00:06:33.360 discipleship means. And you'll get 12 different definitions because a couple of them, well, 00:06:33.420 --> 00:06:39.200 they'll just tell you different things, multiple things. So in just to get us started here, what does 00:06:39.200 --> 00:06:43.560 discipleship mean for you? What does that look like for you specifically? 00:06:44.220 --> 00:06:50.700 Yeah, I think everything that, you know, I've, that I've learned or the main thing that I've learned, 00:06:50.840 --> 00:06:56.780 I guess, in the short time I've been doing this is keeping it as simple as possible. And the more 00:06:56.780 --> 00:07:01.500 simple it is, the more reproducible it is. So we typically would just say discipleship is teaching 00:07:01.500 --> 00:07:08.620 other people how to follow Jesus. Because the different definitions tend to come from everyone has a 00:07:08.620 --> 00:07:13.360 different goal of discipleship. You know, some churches, their goal is to get people serving on 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:20.500 Sunday. Some people's goal is to go to the mission field. And really, if we say, teaching other people 00:07:20.500 --> 00:07:29.460 how to follow Jesus, you know, that drives them to the Bible. And you're giving them a model that's 00:07:29.920 --> 00:07:35.600 easily replicated because if they follow Jesus, like the Bible tells us to follow Jesus, then there's 00:07:35.600 --> 00:07:41.940 no escaping that we have to continue to make disciples, who in turn make disciples. 00:07:42.620 --> 00:07:48.580 Yeah, that it's, it's interesting. Oftentimes, you know, you talk to a pastor and they're talking 00:07:48.580 --> 00:07:53.780 about like a lifelong following. And I don't want to single pastors, church staffers, you know, 00:07:53.780 --> 00:08:01.140 you said simple and reproducible, where oftentimes I'll hear from other church staff, like the vision 00:08:01.140 --> 00:08:12.060 is lifelong following, kind of a pursuit that never gets accomplished. What's, do those two ideas 00:08:12.060 --> 00:08:19.260 coincide? Or what's really the motivation that separates the simple reproducible model opposed to 00:08:19.260 --> 00:08:20.520 maybe what some of the others are? 00:08:20.520 --> 00:08:26.520 I think every, I mean, every pastor, there may be outliers, every pastor that I can remember 00:08:26.520 --> 00:08:33.900 meeting was, had amazing intentions. And, you know, for the most part, we're amazing men. But 00:08:33.900 --> 00:08:42.140 I think that there's, there's so many different ideas of what a Christian should be. And we're so, 00:08:42.220 --> 00:08:46.440 we're so tied to Sunday morning. And I think, like, I love Sunday morning. I love, 00:08:46.760 --> 00:08:52.520 you know, serving and doing all this stuff. But we're so tied to Sunday morning that we've created 00:08:52.520 --> 00:09:02.280 an identity around what happens on that hour, two hour window. And so that, I think that's influenced 00:09:02.280 --> 00:09:08.620 a lot of what we call Christians. So because we're used to good preaching, or we want good preachings, 00:09:08.620 --> 00:09:14.740 we think every Christian should be a, you know, amazing theologian, you know, things like that. So we've, 00:09:14.740 --> 00:09:20.180 we've created a more knowledge based, I think, discipleship versus obedience based. 00:09:22.360 --> 00:09:29.460 And essentially, you know, I feel like that it's, it's like everything in business and church, 00:09:29.540 --> 00:09:34.280 whatever, you have a goal. And at first, when you make your plan, it's very complex. 00:09:35.500 --> 00:09:42.200 And the main goal, or I guess maybe the things that separates a lot of great leaders from 00:09:42.200 --> 00:09:47.080 average leaders is being able to take what's complex and make it simple. And that's what made 00:09:47.080 --> 00:09:53.500 Jesus so great. And there was no question on what was his disciples were being asked to do, or 00:09:53.500 --> 00:10:01.680 that, you know, they were seeing it modeled. They were seeing, you know, Jesus was teaching them all 00:10:01.680 --> 00:10:06.800 the things to do. And it was just very, very simple, so much so that after three years, he dies, he 00:10:06.800 --> 00:10:12.520 resurrects, ascends, and they're praying. And when the Holy Spirit comes, it's boom, we know exactly what 00:10:12.520 --> 00:10:17.500 to do. And it was more about waiting on the power to do what he had commanded them to do versus 00:10:17.500 --> 00:10:20.920 waiting on direction. They'd already been given direction. 00:10:21.820 --> 00:10:28.140 That's fascinating. For me, this idea, and even looking in this COVID season, this idea of 00:10:28.140 --> 00:10:36.740 digital disciple making, figuring out how to make a disciple digitally, how to find, how to help people 00:10:36.740 --> 00:10:45.180 multiply, reproduce themselves in the digital space. I think this is the challenge, really, of 2021. 00:10:46.360 --> 00:10:52.020 2020, COVID hit March. None of us knew how to broadcast services. Everybody was freaking out. 00:10:52.500 --> 00:10:59.120 And we, as quickly as possible, leveraged to get the broadcasts happening so that we could do church 00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:05.480 services when, you know, the U.S. government and the whole world was shutting down large gatherings. 00:11:05.960 --> 00:11:14.780 And so now, 2021, we're coming back to it. I just read something in the news recently that I think 2% of the 00:11:14.780 --> 00:11:21.080 U.S. has the vaccine. Interestingly, and I don't even want to make digital discipleship about, you know, 00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:29.360 COVID. But life doesn't get back to normal, whatever normal is, until 60 to 70% of people, at least 00:11:29.360 --> 00:11:35.480 according to, I believe, the World Health Organization. So, like, we're not rushing here. 00:11:35.480 --> 00:11:41.180 Like, this is still going to be a sprint or it's still a marathon, a journey. 00:11:41.600 --> 00:11:47.280 But what's interesting is churches are trying to get back into the building as quick as possible and are 00:11:47.280 --> 00:11:52.920 hyping and are rushing to kind of do that because that's this model that they know. 00:11:53.560 --> 00:11:58.780 But the people aren't ready. It seems like the average church at this point has 20 to 30, maybe 00:11:58.780 --> 00:12:05.000 40% of physical attendance pre-COVID coming back to the building. And so that leaves a lot of people 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:11.420 disenfranchised, disconnected, disassociated with what's happening in the church. 00:12:11.900 --> 00:12:17.140 And unfortunately, we taught them that, hey, we need the church's, the spiritual tentpole. 00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:21.940 You do this on Sunday for the one hour. And if you can do that, that's going to carry you through 00:12:21.940 --> 00:12:30.560 for the rest of the week, the 167 hours still pending. But there's this idea that maybe instead 00:12:30.560 --> 00:12:37.680 of doing the church service, that's the tentpole that may or may not even be working in physical 00:12:37.680 --> 00:12:42.980 space. What if we spent our time or a portion of our time or a portion of our energy and resources 00:12:42.980 --> 00:12:50.100 towards doing discipleship, disciple-making, evangelism and relational evangelism in this 00:12:50.100 --> 00:12:55.100 digital space? And so I love this idea of reproducible systems. And it's one of the reasons 00:12:55.100 --> 00:13:01.780 why Ricky's actually starting to work with Stadia on helping us lead some cohorts that's designed 00:13:01.780 --> 00:13:10.140 towards digital-only church planting and digital discipleship. And so for us, it's the goal of, 00:13:10.780 --> 00:13:15.160 you know, it's, well, Ricky, tell us a little bit, you know, in context, we're doing this 00:13:15.160 --> 00:13:21.700 Timothy Initiative material. Talk to us a little bit about Timothy Initiative, what the purpose 00:13:21.700 --> 00:13:27.840 of this is, and kind of what the journey of somebody who's going through this process, what does that 00:13:27.840 --> 00:13:28.460 look like for them? 00:13:28.980 --> 00:13:34.880 Yeah, so I think that, I kind of introduced this, something that, as you were talking about 00:13:34.880 --> 00:13:41.920 what's happening in churches and, you know, COVID made everyone digital, you know, kind of in a sense, 00:13:43.140 --> 00:13:49.820 is it's kind of caused us to realize that what we do, what we were doing online is really not 00:13:49.820 --> 00:13:54.060 that much different than what we were doing in person. And we have to ask whether that's a good 00:13:54.060 --> 00:13:59.240 thing or not. And what I mean by that is, you know, for most of our church members, we're asking them to 00:13:59.240 --> 00:14:04.360 show up to, to watch a sermon, to watch people. I mean, yeah, they, they're singing along, they might 00:14:04.360 --> 00:14:12.040 say amen, or reading their, with their Bibles out, or whatever. But largely, they're not participating 00:14:12.040 --> 00:14:17.360 in what's happening on Sunday morning. They're, they're watching and it, it may help you grow and 00:14:17.360 --> 00:14:24.240 it can help you and, you know, whatever. But, you know, I was talking to my pastor about this a few 00:14:24.240 --> 00:14:28.100 months ago. It's like, you know, what, what our members are doing on Sunday morning, the only 00:14:28.100 --> 00:14:35.460 difference is they're in PJs and they're watching it on the computer. And so the whole idea of 00:14:35.460 --> 00:14:41.480 discipleship is to move someone from spectator to participant. Because that's exactly what Jesus, 00:14:41.480 --> 00:14:46.820 like, like when you read through the gospel, it feels like every time Jesus got this huge crowd, 00:14:47.560 --> 00:14:53.600 he would do something to turn them away. Like, I remember reading John 6, I guess like our freshman 00:14:53.600 --> 00:15:00.120 year of college. And, you know, there's, there's, you know, thousands of people there. And at that time, 00:15:00.120 --> 00:15:05.780 I was committed to being a mega church pastor. You know, that's what I wanted to do. And then all of a 00:15:05.780 --> 00:15:11.460 sudden, Jesus runs them off, even to the point where his disciples, his closest disciples look at him, 00:15:11.480 --> 00:15:17.860 and they're like, and he, and he looks at them and he's like, will you go away too? You know, we get 00:15:17.860 --> 00:15:22.880 the, you know, to where will we go? And I think the only reason that Peter was able to say that is 00:15:22.880 --> 00:15:29.560 because he had been participating in the mission of Christ and had bought into the mission because he 00:15:29.560 --> 00:15:35.480 was there, he was doing it. He was, you know, you read through, you know, Luke, um, eight through 10, 00:15:35.480 --> 00:15:41.880 and you see this progression of Jesus, you know, going out to heal the sick and to preach the gospel. 00:15:41.880 --> 00:15:47.280 And, you know, it's Jesus doing it. Then there's just a few disciples doing it. Then he sends a 70 to 00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:54.020 do it. And so the whole idea of following Christ is actively participating in the mission that God has 00:15:54.020 --> 00:15:59.100 set before us. Um, when I was in college ministry, a question I would get a lot is, you know, what does 00:15:59.100 --> 00:16:05.340 it mean to, to walk in the Holy spirit? How come I never feel the Holy spirit, or I never see, I never 00:16:05.340 --> 00:16:10.900 feel like the Holy spirit is doing something miraculous through me. And the question is always, well, are you 00:16:10.900 --> 00:16:16.960 being obedient? Like, are you putting yourself in situations where you have to be obedient and rely 00:16:16.960 --> 00:16:24.040 on the Holy spirit? And most time the answer is no. And so the Timothy initiative, um, which is based 00:16:24.040 --> 00:16:31.240 on, uh, four fields, which came out of India and training for trainers, or a lot of you may know 00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:37.520 it as T for T, which came out of China. It's kind of taking those principles and creating tools, 00:16:37.520 --> 00:16:43.420 um, for different cultures. I mean, they're all over the world, but there's a specific one for 00:16:43.420 --> 00:16:53.500 American culture as well. Um, so, so creating tools to invite people on the mission that Christ has 00:16:53.500 --> 00:17:01.840 given us. And the whole premise of this belief is by participating, we will grow by everything that 00:17:01.840 --> 00:17:08.480 we want to be as Christians, everything that we hear preached about on Sundays, we can become that 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:13.980 by participating in the mission that Christ has given us, but not doing it alone, doing it with 00:17:13.980 --> 00:17:20.820 a community of people that we can grow close relationships with. Um, not just someone, you 00:17:20.820 --> 00:17:25.420 know, my church is small and I, and I appreciate that for a lot of reasons. Like I feel like I'm going 00:17:25.420 --> 00:17:30.240 through life with people, but I've been a part of big churches before where I'm literally sitting 00:17:30.240 --> 00:17:36.620 beside someone like on one side is my wife. Another side is a guy that I've never met and may never 00:17:36.620 --> 00:17:42.020 see again. And that's kind of the disadvantages. Yeah. It's great to gather people to hear the 00:17:42.020 --> 00:17:48.840 message of the gospel, but, but Christ called us into mission as a community, not as individuals. 00:17:48.840 --> 00:17:53.900 So we have to have those people around us. And that's kind of the whole point of TTI is how can 00:17:53.900 --> 00:18:00.760 we get people actively participating in mission of God in a community that holds them accountable and 00:18:00.760 --> 00:18:06.300 encourages them and, and, and, you know, Hebrews three exhorts them so they don't lose the faith, 00:18:06.480 --> 00:18:12.320 you know, things like that. So you, you've said, you've said obedience based discipleship a little 00:18:12.320 --> 00:18:17.980 bit here, a lot, a lot, a lot here, a little, I don't, I'm recording this at the end of the day. 00:18:18.040 --> 00:18:22.320 I'm sorry. I apologize for not making any sense, but obedience based discipleship. What, 00:18:23.160 --> 00:18:29.360 help me. Um, cause you know, I may not know this, this term, um, what, from a practical standpoint, 00:18:29.360 --> 00:18:35.080 like what, what does that actually look like? I think, and there's probably other categories we 00:18:35.080 --> 00:18:40.680 can create, but typically what I have seen, um, through churches from, you know, the East Tennessee 00:18:40.680 --> 00:18:50.020 backwards Baptist churches to mega churches everywhere. There seems to be really only two pathways that 00:18:50.020 --> 00:18:54.080 believers are being offered. And there's what I call knowledge-based discipleship and obedience-based 00:18:54.080 --> 00:19:00.420 discipleship. Knowledge-based discipleship gauges your spiritual maturity based on how much you know. 00:19:01.240 --> 00:19:05.640 Now that could be something like, you know, how many Bible verses did you learn in Awana? 00:19:06.260 --> 00:19:12.360 Or that could be, can you, you know, speak intelligently about predestination? Um, you know, 00:19:12.420 --> 00:19:16.080 whatever that would look like, but typically our Sunday schools, our small groups, 00:19:16.580 --> 00:19:22.420 it's always been based on learning more about the Bible, learning more about God. And obviously 00:19:22.420 --> 00:19:32.060 that does great things, but obedience-based discipleship says essentially that we can't 00:19:32.060 --> 00:19:39.100 let our knowledge outpace our obedience. Um, and that's where, you know, and being a product of 00:19:39.100 --> 00:19:44.680 like the Bible college seminary world, it's really hard to do sometimes because I love learning about 00:19:44.680 --> 00:19:49.340 God, I love learning all the things that no one else cares about, about the Bible. 00:19:50.340 --> 00:19:55.980 But once our knowledge outpaces our obedience, we create this illusion that we're more spiritual 00:19:55.980 --> 00:20:01.140 than they really are because we can talk about these things when obedience-based discipleship is 00:20:01.140 --> 00:20:02.680 literally what Jesus did. 00:20:03.960 --> 00:20:11.600 Hey, I'm going to send you out sheep among wolves, go figure it out. And then report back to me. We'll 00:20:11.600 --> 00:20:17.620 talk about it and we'll debrief. So he was teaching them, absolutely. But he was giving them a mission. He 00:20:17.620 --> 00:20:22.360 was letting them watch him. He was sending them out to practice what he had commanded them to do. 00:20:22.620 --> 00:20:28.220 And then they came back together after it was all over to learn from the moments, to learn from the 00:20:28.220 --> 00:20:32.340 things, to celebrate what they did and to learn about the things that they weren't able to do. 00:20:33.340 --> 00:20:39.640 Um, and when you, when you really focus on obedience-based discipleship, what you tend to see is that your 00:20:39.640 --> 00:20:45.960 obedience level and your knowledge levels tend to go hand in hand, which is amazing because once you have 00:20:45.960 --> 00:20:51.960 the knowledge way up here and obedience down here, it's really hard to catch up. Um, and one of the 00:20:51.960 --> 00:20:57.560 things that I think of, I don't know if I've ever shared this with you or not, but the David Nelms, the 00:20:57.560 --> 00:21:03.600 guy who started the Timothy Initiative, for whatever reason, I still don't know to this day, started 00:21:03.600 --> 00:21:10.440 spending a lot of time with me and kind of mentoring me in different ways. And we went to the circuit in 00:21:10.440 --> 00:21:15.880 Knoxville, the circuit of churches he was sharing this mission with. And there was a guy from Chattanooga 00:21:15.880 --> 00:21:22.080 from a small church down the road that came with us. And it was a long day. We're all tired. 00:21:22.780 --> 00:21:28.040 It's like nine, 10 o'clock at night. And we're praying that, you know, I think I'm driving. So we're 00:21:28.040 --> 00:21:34.520 praying I don't fall asleep and kill us kind of thing. And, and Roger, like, uh, he's in the back seat, 00:21:34.640 --> 00:21:38.760 puts his hand on my shoulder and just kind of leans up where he can look at me. And he goes, 00:21:38.760 --> 00:21:44.300 I'm going to tell you something Ricky, cause I'm 62 years old. He said, and I've had a lot of people come 00:21:44.300 --> 00:21:50.900 through my church and I've created a lot of pastors. I've made a lot of Sunday school teachers. He goes, 00:21:50.980 --> 00:21:59.120 but until a month ago, I've never made a disciple. And I remember kind of just being taken aback and he 00:21:59.120 --> 00:22:06.320 starts explaining how the Timothy Initiative had impacted him. He's actually out in Nevada, I think now at 00:22:06.320 --> 00:22:13.400 Indian reservation as a missionary, but he, um, he said, I always thought the more someone knew 00:22:13.400 --> 00:22:17.640 the better they were going to be. But now I realize it's about what they do. 00:22:18.460 --> 00:22:24.920 And we all say that, but you know, as past ministry leaders, we tend to be more in the knowledge camp 00:22:24.920 --> 00:22:30.020 and we, whether we do it wittingly or not, we try to create people that look like us 00:22:30.020 --> 00:22:36.420 sometimes more than what looks like Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've heard stats like this and I'm 00:22:36.420 --> 00:22:41.140 going to butcher it. You may have the exact one, but it's something to the extent if a new, new 00:22:41.140 --> 00:22:47.480 Christian doesn't share Christ within the first month, two months, 10 days, some very short period 00:22:47.480 --> 00:22:53.700 of time, they don't do it quickly. They're never going to, um, do you, do you actually know what that 00:22:53.700 --> 00:22:58.140 exact stat is? Or have you heard something similar to that? I've heard a few, I've heard six months and 00:22:58.140 --> 00:23:03.120 I've heard three months. Um, but I don't remember where they came from or. Yeah. I can't ground it. 00:23:03.160 --> 00:23:10.300 But the philosophy though is, man, like if, if, if you don't make that practice part of, part of your 00:23:10.300 --> 00:23:16.760 life right off the bat, it's not going to catch up. And like you said earlier, when, when your knowledge 00:23:16.760 --> 00:23:23.700 gets to be so high, but you've not established that culture of, of obedience, all of a sudden your, 00:23:23.700 --> 00:23:32.200 your, your, your discipleship is dependent upon that knowledge without the action. You are, you're, 00:23:32.300 --> 00:23:38.840 you're not doing the church. You're not doing discipleship, but you're very strong, able to speak 00:23:38.840 --> 00:23:44.220 into it. And, and unfortunately, you know, I think that's the state of a lot of churches today 00:23:44.220 --> 00:23:51.920 physical churches. Definitely. Even in this COVID season where they've not been able to connect with 00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:58.340 people to exude that knowledge. When, if in this COVID season, if we were able to pivot or if we had 00:23:58.340 --> 00:24:04.780 pivoted before and not be driven off of creating environments for knowledge to be passed, but instead 00:24:04.780 --> 00:24:13.700 looking at it as opportunities to exude that obedience discipleship, following the, the, the commands of, 00:24:13.700 --> 00:24:20.680 of Christ in real time, physically, digitally, fidgetally, whatever, like, I think the world would 00:24:20.680 --> 00:24:26.780 look at much different place had we pivoted away and we're looking at it more towards obedience 00:24:26.780 --> 00:24:32.660 over the past, I don't know, year or so. Yeah. And I don't think I got that until, um, 00:24:33.180 --> 00:24:37.360 cause my, my, I had an internship with a church in Miami. I think you were probably still in Texas then 00:24:37.360 --> 00:24:45.440 cause we had, I don't think we had met yet. And, um, I was working with a, with a guy, um, who's, as part 00:24:45.440 --> 00:24:50.340 of a organization called No Place Left, which is extremely similar to Timothy Initiative. And we're 00:24:50.340 --> 00:24:54.260 doing the whole training and, you know, here's a model to share the gospel. And so we did the whole 00:24:54.260 --> 00:24:58.200 thing. And then it was kind of like, all right, you guys got it, practice it. Like we were going 00:24:58.200 --> 00:25:02.420 around practicing with each other, pretending, you know, we're the lost one. And he's like, all right, 00:25:02.420 --> 00:25:06.440 cool. We're downtown Miami. He's like, you guys got an hour and a half, go share the gospel. 00:25:07.820 --> 00:25:14.680 So I'm like, okay, well, you know what? I'm not going to just be brave, go do it. Well, 00:25:14.700 --> 00:25:18.240 I happened to have another guy with me who was much more experienced with this at the time. 00:25:18.640 --> 00:25:24.800 And we were at the, uh, is it government stage? Is that the government center? Is that the big 00:25:24.800 --> 00:25:30.620 government center? Yeah. So we were at government center and we had just, um, got off the, 00:25:30.620 --> 00:25:36.620 the metro loop into the brickle loop and we're waiting on the, the metro to come by. Um, 00:25:37.160 --> 00:25:41.060 which for, if you're not from Miami, the subway, that's our subway, like, you know, 00:25:41.120 --> 00:25:46.700 the 20 feet in the air, cause we can't go underground public transportation. And we shared with this guy 00:25:46.700 --> 00:25:52.920 and we had shared, everybody had said no, and we're getting ready to go back. And we shared with this 00:25:52.920 --> 00:25:56.780 guy and we're like, you know, is this, you know, do you feel like this is something you want to 00:25:56.780 --> 00:26:03.980 believe? And he's like, I've been waiting on this all day. We're like, Oh, okay. He's like, 00:26:04.020 --> 00:26:09.140 so, so what do I need to do to follow Christ? So we shared the gospel with him again to make sure 00:26:09.140 --> 00:26:13.600 he gets it. And he goes, I believe that. Can I, can I pray to Christ? We're like, yeah, man. 00:26:14.380 --> 00:26:18.760 So he, he prays. And then the guy beside me, he goes, all right, I got, I got a question for you, 00:26:18.780 --> 00:26:24.900 man. He's all right. He goes, can you tell me what we just told you? Talking about sharing the 00:26:24.900 --> 00:26:31.140 gospel. And the guy repeats it almost verbatim. And then he goes, who in your life needs to hear 00:26:31.140 --> 00:26:36.400 this message? And he names three people. He's like, where are they at right now? He's like, 00:26:36.440 --> 00:26:42.900 they're actually at the public library. I just left there. And I want to go back. Can I go share this 00:26:42.900 --> 00:26:49.160 with them right now? And so like, as soon as the guy came to faith, the first thing he was asked, 00:26:50.080 --> 00:26:55.100 okay, do you understand the message well enough to repeat it? Yeah. Okay. So now we know he gets it. 00:26:55.420 --> 00:27:01.180 And the next question is who else needs to know this? So literally from that point on, you know, 00:27:01.220 --> 00:27:05.720 unless he ends up getting involved with some community that doesn't practice this, 00:27:06.780 --> 00:27:11.880 he thinks evangelism is a normal part of his, of being a Christian. Yeah. And I think that's where 00:27:11.880 --> 00:27:16.780 we failed as a church. We've not made that. We talk about it a lot, but it's like, okay, 00:27:16.780 --> 00:27:23.520 now you're a Christian come to our church class, you know, our new member class. Here's the history 00:27:23.520 --> 00:27:29.860 of our church. Here's, you know, a new Testament survey. And those things aren't bad, but they've 00:27:29.860 --> 00:27:34.740 been in their church for months before they're ever told to go share the gospel. So what they've 00:27:34.740 --> 00:27:41.340 already normalized as true Christianity is exempt from a lot of the obedience, you know, or the commands 00:27:41.340 --> 00:27:48.520 that Christ has given us. And there's, there's so much more, um, faith and dependence on Christ 00:27:48.520 --> 00:27:53.620 in situations like you just described. You know, I remember you're, you're alluding, I think, 00:27:53.680 --> 00:27:57.700 to Scuba Steve. Scuba Steve has been on the podcast. Go back. Uh, we'll put a link in the show notes to 00:27:57.700 --> 00:28:05.700 the episode. Um, but, uh, the first time I met Scuba, uh, was probably 2018. I'm having, um, 00:28:05.980 --> 00:28:11.860 lunch with him at a, near a mall that's down here in Miami. And after, and after we finished our 00:28:11.860 --> 00:28:16.640 milkshakes, he's like, Hey, let's go across the street and let's go evangelize. And so I'm, I'm 00:28:16.640 --> 00:28:21.760 literally walking across the parking lot, mentally trying to figure out how I can bail out of this as 00:28:21.760 --> 00:28:29.340 quickly as possible. I don't have time. I, I, I'm like, dude, I got 30 minutes. And, um, and so 00:28:29.340 --> 00:28:36.360 while I'm praying, God, get me out of this, he's praying, God, bring me somebody. And we had two 00:28:36.360 --> 00:28:43.060 conversations, two different people breaking down at the point of tears in public that neither of us had 00:28:43.060 --> 00:28:50.080 never met before. And, and I'm sitting back, the, the skeptic of the situation, looking at it and saying, 00:28:50.080 --> 00:28:57.100 God is so much bigger and so much more powerful than I even realized at this moment. We just need 00:28:57.100 --> 00:29:04.880 to prepare to be obedient towards him and not trying to do things under our own volition or under our 00:29:04.880 --> 00:29:11.040 own knowledge, but be dependent on him. And I wonder how different our churches would look if instead 00:29:11.040 --> 00:29:18.940 of having the consumers, instead of having the John six followers, the clingers ons that, that are 00:29:18.940 --> 00:29:24.620 hanging onto the crowd because Jesus was doing signs, miracles, wonders, and meeting physical needs, 00:29:24.720 --> 00:29:31.900 literally doing food. And instead of trying to build a church based off of those people, uh, what if we, 00:29:31.940 --> 00:29:37.440 we built a church based off of the people who were left after Jesus chased them off? After Jesus said 00:29:37.440 --> 00:29:43.420 things like, eat my flesh, drink my blood and started challenging physical paradigms that as a result, 00:29:43.560 --> 00:29:49.200 all of a sudden, like what was left was this core foundation. I talk about John six so much in this 00:29:49.200 --> 00:29:54.240 podcast, they've heard it, but what was left after that initial reach, once Jesus started engaging 00:29:54.240 --> 00:30:01.180 was the core component of the church that was built. Like these were, this was where the movement 00:30:01.180 --> 00:30:07.460 happened. And, and, and, and my fear is that in this year, 2021, uh, at least the Western civilization 00:30:07.460 --> 00:30:14.220 church, the church of America has relegated itself away from multiplication, away from revival, away 00:30:14.220 --> 00:30:20.200 from a movement. And instead, even when the world is following, falling apart and saying no large 00:30:20.200 --> 00:30:25.240 gatherings, we're trying to go back to the way that it was, uh, which is going to set up some form of, 00:30:25.240 --> 00:30:29.800 I don't know that you're going to see multiplication. I don't even think that you're going to see growth 00:30:29.800 --> 00:30:37.600 out of this model because let's be honest, February 2020 was not that great of a time in the church 00:30:37.600 --> 00:30:43.160 life. Like we were on a 10 year decline, uh, according to Barna and others. And we want to go 00:30:43.160 --> 00:30:49.660 back to that. We want to celebrate that as this is the dream. Let's get back to that way. Or why don't 00:30:49.660 --> 00:30:56.800 we pivot and try to do something different? Look at how to create a movement, how to empower people 00:30:56.800 --> 00:31:02.220 with the gospel and teach them that this is what God commanded. This is what Jesus commanded. So 00:31:02.220 --> 00:31:08.640 we should be obedient to that. And so I love, I love, I love the heart behind this. What are you 00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:15.720 thinking, Ricky? And the paradigm shift, I think, um, and this, this goes well with digital. I'll give a 00:31:15.720 --> 00:31:20.300 physical example and then kind of transition because I think the digital platform has given us even better 00:31:20.300 --> 00:31:26.700 opportunity for this. But when I was doing college ministry in Miami, um, you know, the first university 00:31:26.700 --> 00:31:33.140 I started with, the, the, the guy that was before me was like, um, Gus was an incredible guy, like 00:31:33.140 --> 00:31:40.080 super discipleship minded. And, but he had left, but I came to replace him because he was going to 00:31:40.080 --> 00:31:47.440 another church. And, um, a lot of the students that I had, I think that I, I kind of fell into the trap 00:31:47.440 --> 00:31:53.400 of, okay, we've got to maintain like what this incredible guy who's years ahead of me, who's much 00:31:53.400 --> 00:31:58.160 more mature than me, knows what he's doing. I don't know what I'm doing. Like I've got to maintain this. 00:31:59.160 --> 00:32:05.700 Um, and so what that looked like was, okay, can I do more events? Can I, what can I do to get more 00:32:05.700 --> 00:32:11.980 people in the gathering? Because my thought process is if college students see a lot of people gathering 00:32:11.980 --> 00:32:16.780 for something, they'll be interested and they'll come see what it is. And it continued to fail. 00:32:17.920 --> 00:32:24.020 And eventually about a, after about a year into it, um, I realized like none of my students were 00:32:24.020 --> 00:32:30.580 sharing the gospel. Like I was really the only one doing that other than maybe one, one other person. 00:32:31.360 --> 00:32:37.160 And, um, and then Catherine, who also worked with us at that time, she was an evangelism beast, 00:32:37.420 --> 00:32:45.840 but we made the shift my last three years in Miami to never focus on gathering Christians 00:32:45.840 --> 00:32:53.100 and to, or sorry, that's not gathering Christians, but bringing Christians into it. We never did an 00:32:53.100 --> 00:32:58.720 event. We never did what we never planned anything for our ministry that was designed to draw Christians. 00:32:59.480 --> 00:33:05.260 Everything was focused on the loss. And the, and the thought process was one, this is what acts look 00:33:05.260 --> 00:33:12.120 like. Like this is modeling more effectively what we see in the Bible. Number two, it'll attract the 00:33:12.120 --> 00:33:18.640 Christians we want to be with because so many, like what, what you were talking about is in February, 00:33:18.820 --> 00:33:23.340 2020. And now like everything's shut down. We're trying to go back to normal. Some of these churches 00:33:23.340 --> 00:33:29.480 will grow, but they're going to grow from other church members from a church members from another 00:33:29.480 --> 00:33:34.960 church. And that that's not the kind of growth. I feel like it's not the growth I'm interested in 00:33:34.960 --> 00:33:40.160 engaging. I want to engage people coming from lostness to darkness, to light. 00:33:41.480 --> 00:33:47.240 So we made that shift. And what we saw was something incredible. We had one guy who shared the gospel 00:33:47.240 --> 00:33:52.820 with someone. This guy believed he shared the gospel with someone a few weeks later, led this guy to 00:33:52.820 --> 00:33:56.840 Christ. And about a month later, this guy shared the gospel. And we were starting to see generations 00:33:56.840 --> 00:34:03.880 multiply. And then we saw Christians who were even of a different denomination, see what we were doing. 00:34:04.440 --> 00:34:08.120 And they said, man, I want to be a part of that because that looks like what I'm reading in the Bible. 00:34:09.300 --> 00:34:13.480 And so we did have Christians come over, but they were ones we loved working with and ones that wanted 00:34:13.480 --> 00:34:19.100 to be a part of what we're doing. And the beauty of like your digital platforms is most people 00:34:19.100 --> 00:34:26.240 that you're engaging digitally, like, they're not, if they are believers, it's not something they're 00:34:26.240 --> 00:34:30.880 putting out there. You know, if you're, if you're gaming, or if you're on social media, 00:34:31.640 --> 00:34:35.660 you know, most of the people that you're engaging are lost. So you, you really have 00:34:35.660 --> 00:34:42.420 fewer options if you're trying to build a church with saved people, which I think has been a mistake 00:34:42.420 --> 00:34:48.080 that, you know, a ton of church plants have made is, is get a team together, start a church with lost 00:34:48.080 --> 00:34:51.580 people and show them how to follow Christ throughout that process. 00:34:52.360 --> 00:34:59.320 Yeah. So we're, we're doing a lot of that, uh, with, with Stadia and trying to help digital 00:34:59.320 --> 00:35:05.720 churches, help plant digital churches based on a lot of these obedience based disciple making 00:35:05.720 --> 00:35:13.440 practices and, and unleashing, mobilizing, training, equipping, and releasing people digitally. 00:35:13.440 --> 00:35:21.140 And it's phenomenal stories, even before Stadia was involved with digital churches connecting with 00:35:21.140 --> 00:35:26.140 lost people. Like I, I can tell you, we, these are, these are stories that have been told on this 00:35:26.140 --> 00:35:32.940 podcast. DJ Soto, VR church connects, uh, uh, three continents, five platforms at this point, 00:35:32.940 --> 00:35:45.080 alt space, um, uh, VR chat, uh, as well as, um, uh, rec room, uh, 80 to 85% lostness, specifically 00:35:45.080 --> 00:35:52.420 unchurched, a very high level of atheists evidently are involved in virtual reality. And he has a 00:35:52.420 --> 00:35:58.500 constant inflow where the first time an atheist is engaging with the church is not a physical building. 00:35:58.500 --> 00:36:03.820 It's in virtual reality. Uh, even to the point, the pro presenter, the equivalent of the virtual 00:36:03.820 --> 00:36:09.760 reality pro presenter operator, DJ's told the story before is not a Christian. He's an atheist. 00:36:10.060 --> 00:36:14.480 He likes the community. He's asking questions. He may be a Christian at this point. I think last I 00:36:14.480 --> 00:36:18.280 had heard a couple of months ago, he was really close, but was wrestling with a couple of points, 00:36:18.280 --> 00:36:23.240 but the, the overall argument there is there you can build those relationships digitally safer 00:36:23.240 --> 00:36:29.140 than maybe you can in physical space. Another guy is telling me, um, uh, Cornerstone up in the 00:36:29.140 --> 00:36:34.980 Pacific Northwest, Jason Poling, uh, JPO, as people like to call him, he's about 80% 00:36:34.980 --> 00:36:41.020 de-churched. So all those people that get burned by the physical church and swear they're never going 00:36:41.020 --> 00:36:48.300 back to a church again, 80 to 85% of what they see in, uh, virtual reality at Cornerstone Church, 00:36:48.660 --> 00:36:53.580 the first step of those people who were burned by the church, the first step back towards the bride of 00:36:53.580 --> 00:37:01.020 Christ is happening in digital space. And so equipping people, individuals like, uh, you know, 00:37:01.080 --> 00:37:08.360 co-vocational, sure, bi-vocational, sure, even church staffers to equip their ones of the church 00:37:08.360 --> 00:37:14.360 to have a voice out. I told a church this recently, uh, today, the day that we're recording this, 00:37:14.360 --> 00:37:19.680 uh, was, was doing a coaching session with the church. And the question was, okay, well, Jeff, 00:37:19.740 --> 00:37:27.360 our organization has like this particular model, uh, the persona, the target audience, like this is who 00:37:27.360 --> 00:37:32.480 our church is trying to reach. And he didn't tell me what, I was like, let me guess, it's a 30, 00:37:32.560 --> 00:37:38.500 30 year old male. Uh, and he's like, well, actually it's a 33 year old male, uh, with, with two kids. 00:37:38.500 --> 00:37:43.340 And I was like, yeah, every church in America has that organizational one. That's who you're 00:37:43.340 --> 00:37:49.240 trying to reach. Not saying that's bad, but realize that your organization has never lost, 00:37:49.520 --> 00:37:58.420 has never had as little power as it does right now. It's, its voice has never been as soft as it is 00:37:58.420 --> 00:38:04.700 right now. And you, your church trying to get out there and, and get into social media and do all 00:38:04.700 --> 00:38:11.160 those things. It's nice. The power is not within the organization. It's within the individuals. 00:38:11.500 --> 00:38:16.320 And I actually, I would throw up just as another example, look at everything that's happening with 00:38:16.320 --> 00:38:23.320 the whole GameStop, the Reddit, the, the crashing of the new economy. Once again, I mean, the reason 00:38:23.320 --> 00:38:28.380 this happens so often is that the power is not with the organizations. It's not with the corporations. 00:38:28.780 --> 00:38:35.880 It's with the individuals. And so church, as much as we want to own and say our organizational one, 00:38:35.880 --> 00:38:42.720 our target to try to reach the 33 year old male with two kids to kind of create that persona and, 00:38:42.720 --> 00:38:49.680 and reach that person. That's nice. If we really want to be effective, it's not even the church's 00:38:49.680 --> 00:38:57.220 organizational one. It's really more about these individual ones. The, the people who are attending 00:38:57.220 --> 00:39:05.700 your church, the religious hanger ons that were in John six, how do we get them to pivot to not be the 00:39:05.700 --> 00:39:15.480 consumer of a product? How do we get them to understand how to be released, mobilized, and how to share 00:39:15.480 --> 00:39:22.200 their faith within their circle of influence? Power is not within your organization. Power is more within 00:39:22.200 --> 00:39:28.700 your organization, empowering individuals to speak the gospel in, in these situations. And that's why I love 00:39:28.700 --> 00:39:33.920 so much of what's happening around the Timothy initiative and, and a lot of this. So we're wrestling 00:39:33.920 --> 00:39:41.460 with how to do this digitally. We, Stadia, we, the church digital, if we, as the church body, can figure out how to do 00:39:41.460 --> 00:39:48.680 digital discipleship, disciple people, mobilize people, release people in digital space, I believe that's when we find 00:39:48.680 --> 00:39:55.120 revival. And, and, and I'm praying for those situations to happen through our church planners and churches 00:39:55.120 --> 00:40:03.540 outside. And so it really does come down to the heart of this, of how do we disciple people in digital 00:40:03.540 --> 00:40:09.460 space? So much so, Ricky, you know, I'll brag on him in a little bit, he's doing a cohort with me. He's, we're, we're 00:40:09.460 --> 00:40:16.800 connecting him with eight, uh, digital church planners, uh, and, and guys that need training in digital 00:40:16.800 --> 00:40:22.340 discipleship. Uh, it's, it's seven digital church planners and there's a microsite guy. Uh, the 00:40:22.340 --> 00:40:27.600 microsite guy needs to understand digital disciple making. So we're kind of bringing them in, into that 00:40:27.600 --> 00:40:33.480 as well. It's good. It's going to be a great time, but what's fun is that it's all sorts of different, 00:40:33.480 --> 00:40:42.180 um, approaches. I mean, one of, one of these guys is a, uh, a, uh, IT director, uh, for a nationally 00:40:42.180 --> 00:40:52.200 recognized company in, uh, Canada. And his goal is not to, I mean, he wants to do his job. He likes 00:40:52.200 --> 00:40:58.460 his job. The job pays the bills. He wants to do ministry. He wants to start a church in digital space. 00:40:58.460 --> 00:41:02.340 He doesn't want a brick and mortar building. He doesn't, he doesn't want the headache for him. 00:41:02.420 --> 00:41:06.760 He wants to do discipleship. He wants to create a movement and he's wanting to do it in digital space. 00:41:07.900 --> 00:41:13.020 Another person that we've got in the cohort, ironically, uh, she's also from Canada. Uh, 00:41:13.020 --> 00:41:18.780 she's a 20 something who's really passionate about a video game called black desert online. 00:41:19.260 --> 00:41:24.620 Now I'll confess, I've never played black desert online. It's an MMO. It's one of these games that 00:41:24.620 --> 00:41:29.220 there's like this huge community in there. It's not about the beating the big bad. It's about 00:41:29.220 --> 00:41:33.420 being in a community and having friends within the community. And she talks to me 00:41:33.420 --> 00:41:38.320 a lot about her guild and how her guild needs Christ. And as a matter of fact, her guild just 00:41:38.320 --> 00:41:42.640 merged with another guild. And so now there's three times as many people that she's building 00:41:42.640 --> 00:41:50.040 relationships with towards the end of connecting them to Christ. And she wants to start a church 00:41:50.040 --> 00:41:58.140 in a video game, which is freaky and scary and awesome all at the same time. And so these are 00:41:58.140 --> 00:42:04.800 just some of the people that we're working with and trying to teach them, Hey, the importance of 00:42:04.800 --> 00:42:12.840 obedience, discipleship. And it starts with them. Obedying, uh, obedient. That's horrible. 00:42:13.080 --> 00:42:18.460 Obeying the words, diving in, into the scripture, sharing who are the people within your circle of 00:42:18.460 --> 00:42:23.040 influence. Who are the people within Black Desert Online, within your guild that need Christ? 00:42:23.440 --> 00:42:30.220 And, and, and how can we share them, the gospel with them? How can we share these easy, reproducible, 00:42:30.220 --> 00:42:36.920 um, systems with them? That's the heart of what we're trying to do with Stadia in context of, 00:42:36.980 --> 00:42:42.360 of the digital church. And Ricky's been, um, it's hugely influential heading into this season. 00:42:42.440 --> 00:42:43.740 What do you think of Ricky with all this? 00:42:44.400 --> 00:42:52.340 Interestingly enough, digital ministry was never really a, a fault until, I mean, I kind of thought, 00:42:52.420 --> 00:42:57.700 you know, you know, share the gospel on Facebook or, you know, you're gaming, tell people about 00:42:57.700 --> 00:43:04.920 Christ kind of thing. But beyond that, I never really thought about it until I think it was 2017. 00:43:06.380 --> 00:43:10.540 I read the novel, I think the movie that already came out, um, Ready Player One. 00:43:11.240 --> 00:43:11.860 Oh yeah. 00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:17.800 And, and I just remember, I think I read it in like two days. I'm sitting there at 3am in bed, 00:43:17.900 --> 00:43:25.300 still, still reading it. Um, and one is like, it was, it was entertaining and a good book, 00:43:25.300 --> 00:43:32.000 but the whole time, every, all I could think about was, man, like, you know, maybe not in the same 00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:39.180 way, but, but what's happening in this novel. It's like, it's like Ray Bradbury in the 1950s almost 00:43:39.180 --> 00:43:45.120 with like Fahrenheit 451 and things like that. Like what, what he's writing about, not all of it, 00:43:45.120 --> 00:43:53.340 but a lot of it will become our reality eventually. And too often the church has kind of been reactionary 00:43:53.340 --> 00:44:01.800 instead of, you know, being proactive. And I'm like, man, what can we do digitally to start engaging the 00:44:01.800 --> 00:44:06.480 people who are, you know, not, not in a bad way necessarily, but going down the rabbit hole, 00:44:06.780 --> 00:44:14.580 you know, um, what can we do with that? And, um, so, you know, super exciting about that. I was trying 00:44:14.580 --> 00:44:19.780 to, to find the document and I can't remember it now, but one of the things that gets me most excited 00:44:19.780 --> 00:44:26.300 about digital church planning, there's a, there's a book called Beyond the Local Church and it kind 00:44:26.300 --> 00:44:31.640 of talks about the relationship between local churches and parachurch ministries. Um, but one 00:44:31.640 --> 00:44:37.540 of the things that it, it really talks about a lot, and I don't remember the exact stats, but it, 00:44:37.800 --> 00:44:44.200 it talks about things that kill movement. And one of the number one things that kills movement is, 00:44:44.200 --> 00:44:54.620 it's clergy and it's not, not the presence of clergy. I'm not anti-clergy, um, but hiring clergy 00:44:54.620 --> 00:45:03.040 because the moment that a movement is taking place and churches are starting to grow, the moment you 00:45:03.040 --> 00:45:09.260 hire someone, uh, whether people admit it or not, there's a subconscious thing that happens where it's 00:45:09.260 --> 00:45:14.480 like, oh, okay, I can, okay, we've got a full-time guy now. He can take care of some of that. 00:45:15.280 --> 00:45:22.140 And so it talks about the hiring of clergy. It talks about, um, the, the maintenance of buildings 00:45:22.140 --> 00:45:29.740 where sometimes churches have to choose. Do we repair the roof? That's going to be leaking water 00:45:29.740 --> 00:45:35.700 on our head soon. Or do we send someone to an unreached people group to share the gospel? 00:45:36.800 --> 00:45:43.920 And that's an unfair position for any church to be in. Um, and I'm not saying that all the churches 00:45:43.920 --> 00:45:48.220 have put themselves in this position. Like, you know, like we, we have been given these models and 00:45:48.220 --> 00:45:56.280 we go with it, but a lot of the things that we call church that we give our money to, um, like it, 00:45:56.760 --> 00:46:02.600 they're, they're typically movement killers rather than movement spreaders, you know, and what's 00:46:02.600 --> 00:46:09.420 happening on digital, there's no roof to repair. There's no electric bill, you know, like all those 00:46:09.420 --> 00:46:15.820 things there it's, it doesn't exist. And we can actually give digitally. If we know the need, or we 00:46:15.820 --> 00:46:21.820 know the missionary, or we know something like the people can pull in together and give. So that aspect 00:46:21.820 --> 00:46:27.840 is still there, like you're giving to mission and you're giving to needs, but you know, there's no 00:46:27.840 --> 00:46:33.440 overhead with that. Uh, and if it's something that's simple and reproducible, you don't have to have 00:46:33.440 --> 00:46:39.580 clergy. Like you might have some guy leading a network as a, you know, being a resource to people and 00:46:39.580 --> 00:46:45.480 helping them through that. But in the, in the average church, there's not someone paid to do that 00:46:45.480 --> 00:46:52.760 with this model. And it doesn't really kill the movement so much because, you know, everyone 00:46:52.760 --> 00:47:00.740 realizes it's on us, not on him, not on her, not on me. It's on us to complete this mission that, 00:47:00.840 --> 00:47:01.920 that we've committed to. 00:47:02.380 --> 00:47:09.200 Yeah. I'm, I'm a fan. And thank you for, for those words. I love the idea of a digital only church 00:47:09.200 --> 00:47:16.040 and the, the scalability of, of what can happen. I've had that money conversation more times than 00:47:16.040 --> 00:47:20.800 I can remember. Um, I can tell you digital pastors who have, who have intentionally said, 00:47:20.860 --> 00:47:25.640 I'm not going to make a penny off this church because the moment I get paid, the movement dies. 00:47:26.100 --> 00:47:33.260 Um, you know, even to the point where, um, guys like Jade Earhart, uh, who have gone through 00:47:33.260 --> 00:47:38.720 church planning initiatives and things like that, don't want to be called pastor because even he 00:47:38.720 --> 00:47:44.080 thinks that's a movement killer and wants to be more theologically. We can argue that I'm, I don't, 00:47:44.080 --> 00:47:49.560 I don't care for that argument. I've already had it. So like the idea of doing something different 00:47:49.560 --> 00:47:55.720 here in a digital only space, I think, I think is, is incredibly exciting. Um, that my comment would 00:47:55.720 --> 00:47:59.980 be, what do you do with the money? Um, if you, if you're not paying for the building, like, 00:48:00.060 --> 00:48:03.900 and you're not paying for salaries and you're not like this, this money that, well, 00:48:04.020 --> 00:48:11.440 does it have to go to the church? Like, can it go straight to the issues within the community? 00:48:11.620 --> 00:48:16.360 Can you help people that are in need? Can you do the things maybe that we're called to do 00:48:16.360 --> 00:48:22.480 in Acts two? Acts two doesn't say pay for the mortgage. Acts two has a much higher standard when it, 00:48:22.480 --> 00:48:27.900 when it comes towards what we're supposed to do with the money. And I think there's an opportunity to 00:48:27.900 --> 00:48:34.820 do those things. Um, if you're in a, in a digital church environment now for, for our, our physical 00:48:34.820 --> 00:48:40.840 churches, I'm, I'm a huge fan of, of the, of the physical church. That's why, uh, if you can see 00:48:40.840 --> 00:48:46.660 the TV behind me, it literally says the word fidgetal P H Y G I T A L. So physical church, 00:48:46.660 --> 00:48:52.580 you, you have a place, you have a role and there's even an opportunity for you in this season, 00:48:52.580 --> 00:48:59.060 uh, to be successful for the future. Yeah. Digital only expressions of church is a radical concept. 00:48:59.500 --> 00:49:05.820 Digital discipleship in itself may be radical for your church, but when it comes to obedience-based, 00:49:05.820 --> 00:49:11.360 when it, when it comes towards empowering individuals with the gospel and then releasing 00:49:11.360 --> 00:49:20.140 them as your mission force within your city, um, that's how we need to think. That's how culture 00:49:20.140 --> 00:49:29.180 is going to receive the gospel. Barna 2020, December, 2020 Barna tells us that 80% of the 00:49:29.180 --> 00:49:34.980 people don't care about our physical worship service or our digital worship service. I 00:49:34.980 --> 00:49:39.960 butchered this, that 80% of people called to Christ, 80% of people who are not Christians 00:49:39.960 --> 00:49:45.280 don't care about your physical or your digital worship services. So that main vehicle for evangelism 00:49:45.280 --> 00:49:50.600 that you've been touting and that we've been riding that horse for years, um, Barna has 00:49:50.600 --> 00:49:55.540 got cold stats on it right now in the midst of this COVID season that we're not going back 00:49:55.540 --> 00:50:01.160 to it. It's not working. And so we need to shift. And that's where I think the, the importance 00:50:01.160 --> 00:50:06.500 is for us. Even Kerry Newhoff, churches that are going to be successful in 2021 are the ones 00:50:06.500 --> 00:50:15.860 that are empowering, that are equipping people. And so church, our institutional, our organizational 00:50:15.860 --> 00:50:23.780 ones need to take a back seat. And instead we need to start empowering others with that gospel, 00:50:24.120 --> 00:50:30.520 with this training and equipping them to have these conversations within their circle of influence. 00:50:30.660 --> 00:50:39.660 This is how we win in 2021. Um, not fighting on the battlefield, but coaching, cheering on 00:50:39.660 --> 00:50:43.140 warriors that we're equipping on the battlefield. 00:50:43.660 --> 00:50:49.580 And I think what it, what it boils down to, and I'm careful how I say this, because I feel 00:50:49.580 --> 00:50:56.960 like I can easily be branded as like, you know, physical church, mega church enemy. Um, it's really 00:50:56.960 --> 00:51:04.700 not true, but most of the pushback that I've got for trying to do simple and reproducible. Um, I think 00:51:04.700 --> 00:51:09.760 Frank Viola calls them just organic churches or organic groups. You know, you can define organic 00:51:09.760 --> 00:51:18.960 however you want to, but simple reproducible is we've made church so complicated that, you know, 00:51:18.960 --> 00:51:24.200 all the things that, all the questions that you tend to get with these smaller gatherings that are 00:51:24.200 --> 00:51:31.400 reproducible, very simple. Um, it's, it usually boils down to, it's not complicated enough. So it just 00:51:31.400 --> 00:51:35.420 doesn't. And then no one uses that language obviously, but that's what it comes down to is 00:51:35.420 --> 00:51:41.780 how do you handle giving? Well, we've made giving such a complicated thing in churches on how we do it, 00:51:41.800 --> 00:51:47.440 how much it should be when, when really the new Testament, the model given for the new Testament 00:51:47.440 --> 00:51:54.720 is give generously, give sacrificially to the needs of the community and to the mission of God. Like, those are 00:51:54.720 --> 00:52:00.620 really the two things that you see people giving sacrificially to, um, you know, even eldership. Like, 00:52:00.640 --> 00:52:08.040 we've made this so complicated that, you know, it doesn't have to be that way. Um, you know, and I'm not 00:52:08.040 --> 00:52:12.320 saying we just throw anyone in there, but the Bible gives us a model and it's really not that difficult. It's very 00:52:12.320 --> 00:52:18.720 simple. Um, and so I think that's one of the things that we're dealing with, but at the end of the day, 00:52:18.800 --> 00:52:25.940 like we're all, we're all trying to go the same way. Uh, I'm sure that, you know, 20 years from now, 00:52:25.940 --> 00:52:32.740 we'll have a conversation and I'll be like, man, I was so wrong about so many things. Um, but at the end 00:52:32.740 --> 00:52:36.360 of the day, like we're all on the same team, we're all heading in the same direction. And we absolutely 00:52:36.360 --> 00:52:44.820 all want the same thing. Like we, we want to see the kingdom of God made known and expand across the 00:52:44.820 --> 00:52:50.800 entire world. And we don't care if it's, you know, a guy walking through the desert, sharing the gospel 00:52:50.800 --> 00:52:58.300 with whoever he meets, or if it's online playing call of duty, uh, whatever, um, like this is what 00:52:58.300 --> 00:53:03.580 we're going to. And I think that, um, you know, what, what you're doing with the church digital, 00:53:03.580 --> 00:53:09.440 what Stadia is doing, like all these things, the, the tools that you guys are providing for churches. 00:53:09.800 --> 00:53:15.700 Um, it may not be used now by so many, but something I've realized in the past few years 00:53:15.700 --> 00:53:21.760 is typically what happens on the mission field is what we start doing, you know, 20 years. 00:53:22.160 --> 00:53:26.940 You read a church planning book from, I'm not going to name the book, but I read a church planning 00:53:26.940 --> 00:53:32.900 book that was released in 2016. And I read a book about missions from 1980s. 00:53:33.440 --> 00:53:36.780 It's like the same content. It just took us, it took us that long. 00:53:36.980 --> 00:53:38.760 It took us a couple of decades to get there. 00:53:39.400 --> 00:53:45.440 Yeah. It just took us that long to, to be willing to adjust and to listen to our brothers and sisters 00:53:45.440 --> 00:53:50.380 who are serving in countries that don't have the resources we have. They had to figure out 00:53:50.380 --> 00:53:54.920 something different. So the problems that they're solving, you know, 20, 30 years ago, 00:53:55.080 --> 00:54:01.840 we're just now starting to approach having to solve. Um, you know, so that's what encourages 00:54:01.840 --> 00:54:05.560 me about this is, yeah, there's a, there's a lot of churches doing amazing things online, 00:54:05.560 --> 00:54:15.100 um, fidgetally, but in 10, 15 years from now, you know, just because a church came to the party late, 00:54:15.100 --> 00:54:19.480 it doesn't mean they're not part of the party. It doesn't mean we don't support them. We don't 00:54:19.480 --> 00:54:25.660 pray for them. You know, at the end of the day, like, you know, who knows, like, but I guess only 00:54:25.660 --> 00:54:31.060 God knows where we're going with all of this, but, um, I don't know. It's just, it's exciting to see, 00:54:31.060 --> 00:54:35.120 you know, what's happening now. Amen. Well, Hey, we've been, we've been talking about this for a 00:54:35.120 --> 00:54:40.900 stretch. Let, let, let me say this. If, if it is, I'm putting on the commercial hat. Um, 00:54:41.180 --> 00:54:45.980 if you've been listening to this and, and, and you're like, Hey, I'm interested in doing a church 00:54:45.980 --> 00:54:53.660 like this, uh, a church in digital space. Um, um, I, I want more information on what digital 00:54:53.660 --> 00:54:58.880 discipleship is. Uh, so here's what I'm, I'm literally going to give my, my cell phone number 00:54:58.880 --> 00:55:08.220 here on the podcast. Text me directly 484-324-8724. There is a myriad of ways to get connected with me 00:55:08.220 --> 00:55:14.700 on social media. Take advantage of that. Hit up the church.digital contact me through that. I don't 00:55:14.700 --> 00:55:22.420 care, but let's say all of that. You're unable to do it. My cell phone, text me 484-324-8724. And 00:55:22.420 --> 00:55:28.100 let's, let's have a conversation. Uh, let's get started talking about what, uh, a digital church 00:55:28.100 --> 00:55:33.380 like this, like what we're talking about, what a movement in digital space would look like, um, 00:55:33.840 --> 00:55:40.220 with you being part of it. Like that's, that's for me, it's exciting. Uh, just even to start to get to 00:55:40.220 --> 00:55:47.220 help people understand how God can use them in, in digital space. So we'd love to have that 00:55:47.220 --> 00:55:53.040 conversation. Um, Ricky, Hey man, thanks for, for jumping on, on the podcast and going through this 00:55:53.040 --> 00:55:58.300 as we're landing the plane in any closing thoughts on your side. I appreciate the opportunity. Um, 00:55:58.860 --> 00:56:04.900 I appreciate all the kind words. I feel like I don't have very much to offer. So, um, but the same 00:56:04.900 --> 00:56:13.460 thing you said, I mean, um, if I can help in any way, um, text me, call me, um, email me, whatever. 00:56:14.400 --> 00:56:24.200 Um, yeah, same thing. My number 865-223-3607. I don't care whatever I can do to help. Um, you know, 00:56:24.300 --> 00:56:28.740 not, I don't have a whole lot to offer, but what I do have, uh, I probably know someone who does, 00:56:28.800 --> 00:56:33.040 so I can at least point you in the right direction. That's awesome. I've never had another person give 00:56:33.040 --> 00:56:38.300 their cell phone number. I'm mad respect right now, bro. I mean, it's not like there's millions of 00:56:38.300 --> 00:56:43.220 people who listen to this, but you just, you just threw down that, that was, that was, that was 00:56:43.220 --> 00:56:49.720 impressive. And, and, and, uh, one of the things that I've loved about Ricky is the humility, um, 00:56:49.720 --> 00:56:56.140 of it. Like he's, uh, in, in, in his calling now, what he's doing through Stadia and, and working in 00:56:56.140 --> 00:57:03.020 workplace ministry and, and starting to champion more and more of that idea. Um, a higher, there's 00:57:03.020 --> 00:57:08.600 not many individuals of higher caliber and him being able to, to speak and take the time here with this, 00:57:08.600 --> 00:57:14.500 um, and even being a part of what Stadia is doing in digital means a lot. So reach out, uh, get in 00:57:14.500 --> 00:57:18.480 touch. We'll put Ricky's contact info and things like that in the show notes on social, if you want to 00:57:18.480 --> 00:57:23.880 engage with him there, uh, you'll have to memorize the cell phone number. I'm not going to put that 00:57:23.880 --> 00:57:27.820 Google would not be friends with that if that was there. Anyway, we're going to wrap, we're going to 00:57:27.820 --> 00:57:33.720 close. We're going to move on, uh, to whatever's next for Ricky. Uh, this is Jeff with the church 00:57:33.720 --> 00:57:38.380 digital and Stadia church planning. Thanks for joining us here on the podcast and we'll see you 00:57:38.380 --> 00:57:39.980 next time here at the show. Y'all have a good day.