WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.800 Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast, powered by Stadia Church Planting. 00:00:04.440 --> 00:00:08.540 Through this podcast, learn about how God is using technology and innovation 00:00:08.540 --> 00:00:11.580 in digital and digital environments around the world. 00:00:12.080 --> 00:00:16.000 Our goal? To help churches like yours learn to be the church digitally. 00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:21.600 Our heart? That churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple-making 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:23.620 that will revolutionize your church. 00:00:24.120 --> 00:00:26.660 And now, your host, here's Jeff Reed. 00:00:27.080 --> 00:00:32.000 Well, if you listen to this podcast, you know that I, Jeff, I like to make up words. 00:00:32.300 --> 00:00:36.200 You know, sometimes I find that existing words that are like in the dictionary, 00:00:36.520 --> 00:00:40.960 even though they're in the dictionary, there's some confusion on the application of those words. 00:00:41.040 --> 00:00:47.320 And so it's a lot of fun for me to make up new words and give them more specific application. 00:00:47.480 --> 00:00:50.200 I can literally define what a word means. 00:00:50.200 --> 00:00:54.400 Digital is one of those examples, talking about the role of the church 00:00:54.400 --> 00:00:58.040 and how it can use digital discipleship to impact the church. 00:00:58.280 --> 00:01:04.400 Fidgetally, multimodal, the opportunity for churches to launch multiple models of church. 00:01:04.520 --> 00:01:11.000 Well, in this podcast today, we come across another, maybe made up word, maybe it's an actual word. 00:01:11.100 --> 00:01:11.880 I don't know. 00:01:11.960 --> 00:01:13.740 Maybe we can look it up in the dictionary and see. 00:01:14.600 --> 00:01:15.040 Uberization. 00:01:15.800 --> 00:01:19.240 We're having a conversation today about the Uberization of church. 00:01:19.420 --> 00:01:24.040 And I'm willing to bet that you probably never thought you'd hear the word Uber and church in the same sentence. 00:01:24.120 --> 00:01:25.140 Yet, here we are. 00:01:25.220 --> 00:01:28.440 And my favorite part of this conversation is I'm not the guy who made up the word. 00:01:29.100 --> 00:01:33.700 But as soon as I heard the word, I knew exactly what this conversation was going to be about. 00:01:33.740 --> 00:01:36.040 And I knew I needed to have him on the podcast. 00:01:36.040 --> 00:01:39.600 We're bringing in Matt Ingle, who is with Glue. 00:01:39.800 --> 00:01:43.860 He is the ministry innovation specialist over there. 00:01:43.980 --> 00:01:46.640 Leads the team of ministry innovation with Glue. 00:01:46.840 --> 00:01:52.360 And we are super excited about this conversation, talking about Uberization of church. 00:01:52.440 --> 00:01:53.740 Now, you're going to hear some words here. 00:01:54.200 --> 00:01:56.180 You're going to hear some words talking about platform. 00:01:56.180 --> 00:02:09.320 And in usual context with my church staffing career, platform for me is, I mean, literally the platform that the gentleman, that the lead communicator, that the speaker, that the preacher preaches on. 00:02:09.460 --> 00:02:15.180 And so a lot of times we use platform in context of how that person is going to communicate. 00:02:15.620 --> 00:02:21.660 But what's interesting is platform in the Uberization of church, you're going to find that it's not about an individual. 00:02:22.280 --> 00:02:24.620 Uber is not about an individual. 00:02:25.400 --> 00:02:26.700 It's not a pipeline. 00:02:27.160 --> 00:02:29.620 It's more of how do we get a platform? 00:02:29.780 --> 00:02:32.980 How do we get others to do this? 00:02:33.060 --> 00:02:40.640 How do we equip others to maybe even be the church, which is this conversation, the Uberization of church? 00:02:41.040 --> 00:02:42.200 Love this conversation. 00:02:42.440 --> 00:02:45.040 Love that we get to have it here with the Church Digital Podcast. 00:02:45.180 --> 00:02:50.300 And I'm excited for you listening audience out there to dig into this and process it. 00:02:50.680 --> 00:02:51.720 Put on your thinking caps. 00:02:51.780 --> 00:02:52.480 This is a deep one. 00:02:52.480 --> 00:03:00.560 For the conversation, once again, we're bringing in Matt Engel, ministry innovation specialist over with Glue. 00:03:00.940 --> 00:03:09.620 Myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and with Stadia Church Planning in a conversation that I'm eloquently calling the Uberization of church. 00:03:10.180 --> 00:03:11.240 Okay, everybody, here you go. 00:03:11.360 --> 00:03:11.480 Yeah. 00:03:11.560 --> 00:03:13.800 So, hey, maybe even just to get us started a little bit here. 00:03:14.060 --> 00:03:16.700 Man, tell me your ministry story. 00:03:16.840 --> 00:03:18.060 Like, how did you get to Glue? 00:03:18.180 --> 00:03:20.540 What did life look like before Glue? 00:03:20.680 --> 00:03:21.600 And how did you get there? 00:03:21.940 --> 00:03:30.640 Yeah, so actually, my background started in the desire to be in some sort of law enforcement. 00:03:31.740 --> 00:03:41.360 I didn't grow up in a bad neighborhood or any of that stuff, but I just had this aha moment when I was trying to decide what I wanted to do. 00:03:41.500 --> 00:03:44.120 I was like, a couple of my friends got busted for something. 00:03:44.300 --> 00:03:51.440 And I'm like, man, if the cops would have known six months ago what was going on in their home, they wouldn't have probably arrested them. 00:03:51.500 --> 00:03:52.900 They probably would have pastored them. 00:03:53.120 --> 00:04:00.120 Like, they would have done something different if they would have known just a little bit earlier what was going on that led to the six months later them being arrested. 00:04:00.620 --> 00:04:02.960 So that was the initial track. 00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:11.960 And then, you know, the Lord just kind of opened up unique opportunities for me to work at one of the largest universities in the country. 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:20.480 And it was all around how to improve the outcomes of students, both on the recruitment of but retention of. 00:04:20.620 --> 00:04:32.980 And then, basically, as that worked and we did some crazy cool stuff that I wish we knew what we were doing back then, but now it looks pretty smart, the Lord said, hey, take that and apply it into the local church. 00:04:32.980 --> 00:04:42.360 And so that's really where we started really innovating is taking some of the stuff that, you know, we just weren't smart enough to know that that's what we should have done. 00:04:42.580 --> 00:04:47.380 We just had an open mind and an open hand of like, hey, let's see if we can figure stuff out different. 00:04:48.280 --> 00:04:57.340 And honestly, we applied it into the church and it started working and doing some crazy cool things around outcomes versus just activity-based celebrations. 00:04:57.920 --> 00:05:07.280 And, you know, then from that perspective, I was able to support some city work with a bunch of churches in the geography. 00:05:08.180 --> 00:05:16.640 And then that's how I intersected GLU and GLU's basically just said, you know, keep innovating, like, let's figure stuff out, you know. 00:05:16.680 --> 00:05:21.440 And I like to say insanity is the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. 00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:22.820 That's Einstein's quote. 00:05:23.200 --> 00:05:27.000 In the church world, insanity is the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. 00:05:27.060 --> 00:05:28.020 We just pray about it. 00:05:28.180 --> 00:05:34.340 And so, like, how do we advance in that regard from this? 00:05:34.500 --> 00:05:43.400 And we're in this unique time and space where we have the opportunity to really advance the kingdom through learning versus thinking that we all got it figured out. 00:05:43.740 --> 00:05:45.660 Holy Spirit, do something different this time. 00:05:45.740 --> 00:05:47.420 Holy Spirit, do something different this time. 00:05:47.480 --> 00:05:50.100 Holy Spirit, do something different this time. 00:05:51.260 --> 00:05:53.040 I'll have to remember that. 00:05:53.080 --> 00:05:54.960 I don't know that I've heard that one before. 00:05:56.100 --> 00:06:03.540 And my gosh, your story there, even going back to, like, your early desire for the police, I got to tell you, I just had flashes back to Minority Report. 00:06:03.780 --> 00:06:05.460 I don't know, the pre-prime department. 00:06:05.840 --> 00:06:09.360 I mean, there's a little bit of that maybe lining in there. 00:06:09.420 --> 00:06:26.840 But honestly, like, that's the thing that I love about Glue, about the company Glue, is you guys are trying to be innovative, utilizing data that's readily available to try to figure out how to help churches be more effective in doing the things that they're doing. 00:06:26.840 --> 00:06:38.940 And honestly, the thing that I love about Glue, and I know people scattered throughout the organization, every time I talk with them, it's almost like there's, like, this, hey, Jeff, come over here. 00:06:39.060 --> 00:06:41.280 Let me tell you about this new thing that we're doing. 00:06:41.700 --> 00:06:44.140 And it's like, I've never heard about this. 00:06:44.160 --> 00:06:44.780 This is awesome. 00:06:44.880 --> 00:06:45.940 When is this going to launch? 00:06:45.980 --> 00:06:47.480 And it's working into this project and that. 00:06:47.700 --> 00:06:50.620 And, like, there's so many different layers of what's happening within Glue. 00:06:50.620 --> 00:07:01.860 It's just, it's awesome to see organizations and companies thinking outside of the box for churches and creating tools to help them in that. 00:07:01.940 --> 00:07:08.240 Oftentimes, you know, churches try to, but they don't have the funding, they don't have the resources, or they can't gather enough of them together. 00:07:08.980 --> 00:07:15.880 And, you know, companies like Glue are paving the road to allow churches to do some really cool things in the future. 00:07:15.880 --> 00:07:22.800 Yeah, we're fortunate from the standpoint of outside looking in and even inside looking out, sometimes it's organized chaos. 00:07:23.400 --> 00:07:30.800 But, you know, I think that's the ability for us to just learn quickly and understand certain things. 00:07:31.040 --> 00:07:41.460 And then understand also, like, some core principles of, like, architecture that matter, that then the manifestation of the architecture, we don't know. 00:07:41.460 --> 00:07:43.760 Like, that's building something, testing, and learning. 00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:47.520 But architecturally, there are sound things. 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:51.340 And the beauty is, is those are actually based out of Scripture. 00:07:51.860 --> 00:07:58.340 So it's not like it's revolutionary and you have to teach all these people and pastors and church leaders, like, something different. 00:07:58.420 --> 00:08:02.900 It's like, actually, no, we're just putting words to something that we've never said in the past. 00:08:03.340 --> 00:08:05.440 But if you look through Scripture, it's true. 00:08:05.960 --> 00:08:10.000 It's like, growth happens primacy of face-to-face interaction. 00:08:10.340 --> 00:08:12.220 Tech supports the gap between the two. 00:08:12.820 --> 00:08:19.300 Like, right, we're using technology to support our digital experience right here, right now. 00:08:19.540 --> 00:08:25.220 But, man, if you and I get in a room together, we grow 10 times better because we're face-to-face. 00:08:25.440 --> 00:08:28.240 Well, that's architecturally true from Scripture, too. 00:08:28.900 --> 00:08:31.840 You know, it was always about relationships helped catalyze growth. 00:08:31.840 --> 00:08:38.240 So things like that, it's like, it's unique when we can stack hands-on agreed-upon architecture. 00:08:38.500 --> 00:08:42.480 And then, like I said, the technology and the manifestation of that, hey, don't know. 00:08:42.920 --> 00:08:47.000 You know, maybe this little widget over here does that thing and it helps, but maybe it doesn't. 00:08:47.560 --> 00:08:48.200 Love it. 00:08:48.600 --> 00:08:53.420 Hey, and I want to touch on a revolutionary thing, the heart of the podcast here that I want to do. 00:08:53.880 --> 00:09:00.280 You said something, and we've bounced off each other in social media and intersected a couple times. 00:09:00.280 --> 00:09:06.700 And you said something on LinkedIn, which, by the way, LinkedIn is, like, growing to become my favorite network. 00:09:06.920 --> 00:09:13.180 I seem to have, like, conversation engagement with new people in LinkedIn probably more than any other. 00:09:13.360 --> 00:09:15.940 Like, they're church people, they're business people, they're corporate. 00:09:16.120 --> 00:09:19.500 Like, so it's not lost people necessarily from a ministry perspective, 00:09:19.500 --> 00:09:25.320 but just the networking opportunities of LinkedIn has grown in recent months in big ways. 00:09:25.560 --> 00:09:26.640 But anyway, I digress. 00:09:26.640 --> 00:09:32.720 The heart of this thing that you said, you said the word uberization of church. 00:09:33.360 --> 00:09:34.340 And it was funny. 00:09:34.500 --> 00:09:41.720 I saw that post and I'm like, I have never heard that phrase before, but I know exactly what he's talking about. 00:09:41.920 --> 00:09:48.460 And it's just like, I wanted to, and it's this crazy, radical, you used the word revolutionary earlier, 00:09:48.460 --> 00:09:51.580 and it's actually the same word that I've talked about, that concept as well. 00:09:51.800 --> 00:09:55.260 It's this revolutionary concept that's not that revolutionary. 00:09:55.540 --> 00:09:57.260 It's what we were supposed to be doing. 00:09:57.380 --> 00:10:02.560 And I would love to unpack this idea of when you talk about uberization of church. 00:10:02.660 --> 00:10:03.760 Well, let's just start there. 00:10:03.960 --> 00:10:06.420 When you say uberization of church, what do you mean? 00:10:06.500 --> 00:10:08.860 What does this thing, uberization of church, actually mean? 00:10:08.860 --> 00:10:21.060 So, in essence, it really, at the base level, it's helping the church think through itself more as a platform and less as a pipeline. 00:10:21.680 --> 00:10:30.540 So, think of it through the lens of, and because sometimes that cognitive load's too high, think of it more like uber and less like a yellow cab. 00:10:30.840 --> 00:10:35.220 A yellow cab, you have to own, control, and govern all of it, right? 00:10:35.560 --> 00:10:38.080 At the base level, the cab is yellow. 00:10:38.400 --> 00:10:40.220 At the base level, there is a fare. 00:10:40.360 --> 00:10:42.360 At the base level, all of these things are true. 00:10:42.920 --> 00:10:47.940 And then on the flip side of that, from a platform perspective or an uber perspective, well, guess what? 00:10:47.980 --> 00:10:51.500 They're the largest transportation provider on the planet, and they own no cars. 00:10:53.660 --> 00:11:00.440 Their valuation is greater than GM as General Motors, and they don't own anything. 00:11:00.840 --> 00:11:06.060 Airbnb is the largest accommodation provider on the planet, and they own no property. 00:11:06.880 --> 00:11:18.660 In this instance, can the church act more like a platform in that regard than it does in its traditional mindset, which is all around pipeline and its supply? 00:11:19.060 --> 00:11:23.020 And again, this is not an indictment on what's happened in the past. 00:11:23.020 --> 00:11:33.040 It's like, I actually am supportive of all church leaders that grew up in the same economic model you and I did, which was supply, demand, build a big pipe. 00:11:33.260 --> 00:11:36.780 It was always about, well, you know, there's people who don't know Jesus. 00:11:37.100 --> 00:11:38.700 Let's go get them to know Jesus. 00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:47.560 And we do that through this mechanism or economic model that was all out of the manufacturing days around pipeline theory. 00:11:47.560 --> 00:11:55.560 And it was just like, own control and govern everything and just build a really big pipe, because that's what we're trying to do. 00:11:56.020 --> 00:11:58.820 Whereas platforms don't own anything. 00:11:58.820 --> 00:12:09.140 It's unlocking sort of a different source of supply and demand where you're just allowing what wants to happen to happen without having to own control and govern everything. 00:12:09.140 --> 00:12:14.220 So that's the high level of like, practically, what does that look like? 00:12:14.660 --> 00:12:15.700 We can get into that. 00:12:15.780 --> 00:12:27.760 But at the abstract level, it's like we grew up in an economic model that was all around me standing on a stage, shoving a bunch of content to a bunch of people all the time. 00:12:28.100 --> 00:12:32.100 And that was a one directional flow of information, pipeline, one direction. 00:12:32.600 --> 00:12:33.740 You know, it's interesting. 00:12:33.880 --> 00:12:35.400 Rick Russo, another glue guy. 00:12:35.480 --> 00:12:56.880 We've had him on the podcast and he was I want to say maybe he was the first guy to really talk, at least that I heard, talk about this idea of church as platform, where church is not a pipeline where I'm trying to take a person from where an organization is trying to take a person from A to Z, from zero to 10, you know, whatever that process is. 00:12:56.880 --> 00:13:08.460 But instead, you know, and I've used the adage here on the podcast, it's not we're past the stage of one person standing on stage behind a podium trying to exude his spiritual gift to thousands. 00:13:08.780 --> 00:13:19.420 But if what if we, the church, we got our thousands to exude spiritual gifts to their 10, to their 15, to their 20s, to their hundreds, to the individuals that are in their life. 00:13:19.420 --> 00:13:24.260 And this starts to get towards this idea of being a church's platform. 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:34.580 And so did this, like, did the genesis of Uberization church's platform, like, is this something that you guys just, because you guys, Rick Russo is glued too, right? 00:13:34.660 --> 00:13:42.620 Like, so do you guys just huddle around like a coffee house, like talking crazy church's platform or like, where does the genesis of this mindset come from? 00:13:42.680 --> 00:13:47.780 Well, I, I, again, I wish I could say I was the, I knew what I was doing when I did it. 00:13:47.900 --> 00:13:50.180 Oh, own it, take it, like, let, let it be you. 00:13:50.440 --> 00:13:50.640 Okay. 00:13:51.600 --> 00:13:52.300 No way. 00:13:52.460 --> 00:13:53.880 I wish I was that smart. 00:13:53.880 --> 00:14:11.440 But, but what, where I would say from my perspective, where the genesis really took place, where I started then really digging into platform theory and, and this whole concept of, of Uberization of church was back at, so at my church. 00:14:12.100 --> 00:14:19.740 Um, we had staff prayer, um, it was like Wednesdays at nine o'clock and we, we'd get together, we'd pray over all the prayer requests that came in. 00:14:20.020 --> 00:14:24.900 And one day I just, again, I'd have this, you know, switch where I'm like, what are we doing? 00:14:24.980 --> 00:14:25.680 Why are we doing it? 00:14:25.980 --> 00:14:28.640 And so I asked the question, I'm like, what are we praying for? 00:14:29.360 --> 00:14:37.160 And, you know, the, the, the response in the room was like, oh, Engel, you know, it's, it's divorce, it's, you know, cancer, it's marriage, it's this, it's this. 00:14:37.160 --> 00:14:40.880 And I was like, yeah, but like, what are we, what are we praying for? 00:14:41.520 --> 00:14:43.600 Like specifically, I want to know. 00:14:43.760 --> 00:14:47.820 So I went through, um, three months worth of prayer requests line by line. 00:14:48.160 --> 00:14:52.200 I read every single one of them and I, and I'm not a researcher and I'm not a statistician. 00:14:52.200 --> 00:14:53.320 I'm not a data scientist. 00:14:53.540 --> 00:14:59.640 I like to say I'm more a decision scientist through the ministry lens than anything. 00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:02.480 And so I went line by line, read them all. 00:15:02.480 --> 00:15:08.740 And I applied in this instance, just, I read the prayer and I applied a standard naming convention to the prayer. 00:15:09.100 --> 00:15:20.420 So if it said anywhere in their marriage, I put marriage, if it said relationship, but I knew they were married, I honored the prayer request and said relationship, then divorce and cancer and all that other stuff popped up. 00:15:20.600 --> 00:15:24.200 So I popped all of those prayers into a word cloud. 00:15:24.600 --> 00:15:27.260 And it was like, that's what we're praying for. 00:15:27.560 --> 00:15:29.600 The number one prayer request was marriage. 00:15:29.720 --> 00:15:30.940 The second one was health. 00:15:31.320 --> 00:15:33.620 And I'm sitting here as an expositor. 00:15:33.780 --> 00:15:40.500 That's how I was taught as far as my, my approach to preaching was like verse by verse, you know, line by line. 00:15:40.720 --> 00:15:43.220 Well, we're going through the book of Acts during this season. 00:15:43.220 --> 00:15:46.260 Well, where do I cover marriage in the book of Acts? 00:15:47.640 --> 00:15:47.820 Yeah. 00:15:48.580 --> 00:15:51.140 Well, outside of Ananias and Sapphira, they both died for lions. 00:15:51.140 --> 00:15:57.520 So that's like my only shot at talking about the thing that 3000 people are basically, you know, uh, surfacing. 00:15:57.680 --> 00:15:59.220 So, so I do that, right. 00:15:59.240 --> 00:16:00.220 That's step one. 00:16:00.220 --> 00:16:12.020 And then step two, the other interesting factor was then when I cut the prayer request by men under 35, because if you are a church that's solving for men under 35 in your community, you're going to win as a church. 00:16:12.160 --> 00:16:13.540 That's just the research behind it. 00:16:14.160 --> 00:16:18.000 Uh, the number, the number one prayer request was mentorship and the number two was leadership. 00:16:19.220 --> 00:16:28.660 Well, I would regularly preach a message or, or, you know, and I would say this flippantly, I should, we should address, I've been blessed with spiritual gift of sarcasm for your listeners. 00:16:28.660 --> 00:16:36.480 So they know, but like, I would regularly say, you know, get out of your parents' basement, get a job, be productive members of society to that demographic. 00:16:36.780 --> 00:16:41.920 Yet the people in the church that are the demographic are sitting there raising their hand, telling us what they're looking for. 00:16:42.820 --> 00:16:49.400 So what we did the, the, the, the second weekend, again, we weren't that smart, but we just showed everybody the word cloud. 00:16:50.120 --> 00:16:53.940 And we were like, would you be willing to join us in praying for this word cloud? 00:16:54.820 --> 00:17:05.920 And overnight people who were not prayer specialists at our church had the capacity to join into the prayer specialist movement in our church. 00:17:06.100 --> 00:17:08.160 And we're talking 9,000 people on a weekend. 00:17:08.760 --> 00:17:13.840 So that's the difference is overnight Uber didn't exist before. 00:17:13.940 --> 00:17:21.400 You had 600,000 people the next day join this thing on becoming transportation specialists. 00:17:22.840 --> 00:17:25.560 That concept is very much biblical. 00:17:26.340 --> 00:17:30.160 We've just, our old motion was, well, no, they can't pray. 00:17:30.380 --> 00:17:36.300 They have to come at 630 in the morning on a Monday and pray over everything and make sure that they do what it is we tell them to do. 00:17:36.400 --> 00:17:39.240 God forbid, they say something wrong in their prayer. 00:17:39.700 --> 00:17:41.920 Like that was a yellow cab moment. 00:17:42.100 --> 00:17:44.440 That would have been pipeline all about control. 00:17:44.880 --> 00:17:51.040 Whereas this moment was like, hey, if you're willing and able and have a desire to pray, here you go. 00:17:51.540 --> 00:17:54.980 And we mobilized our people to become prayer specialists. 00:17:55.500 --> 00:17:58.400 So how can we do that across the board in that regard? 00:17:58.400 --> 00:18:05.980 How do we, how do we overnight unlock everybody's desire to contribute value into becoming a ministry specialist? 00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:10.720 Without having to own control and govern everything as the church. 00:18:11.360 --> 00:18:12.560 Now, I love this. 00:18:12.660 --> 00:18:17.300 And you've said the word control 47 times in this conversation or some. 00:18:17.760 --> 00:18:21.880 And, but like, really, that's the, that's the pain point, right? 00:18:21.920 --> 00:18:26.040 I mean, there's some level of things that, that Uber can control. 00:18:26.040 --> 00:18:32.660 But Uber doesn't want everybody being the same thing over and over again. 00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:33.880 They give freedom. 00:18:34.100 --> 00:18:36.200 Like some Uber drivers are providing water. 00:18:36.340 --> 00:18:36.940 Some aren't. 00:18:37.040 --> 00:18:38.660 Some are, are talkative. 00:18:38.780 --> 00:18:39.700 Some aren't. 00:18:39.700 --> 00:18:43.920 Some are driving the, you know, the, the Kia type car. 00:18:44.020 --> 00:18:47.960 Some are driving big black luxury vehicles or, or suburbans. 00:18:47.960 --> 00:18:54.800 And so like there's, there's variances in the experience that are tailored to meet certain types of people. 00:18:55.340 --> 00:19:12.680 How much, how much, how much freedom are we as a church, if we're really interested in this and empowering our people, is, is it, do we need to control for quality control to get a certain, are we releasing, are we letting people do what they want, moving more organic? 00:19:12.680 --> 00:19:15.360 What, what, what is, what are some of that control? 00:19:15.360 --> 00:19:17.400 What does that look like from a church perspective here? 00:19:17.400 --> 00:19:17.840 Yeah. 00:19:17.840 --> 00:19:31.100 So some of the things that, that, you know, from the platform perspective that you would, you would move toward is you would move toward resource orchestration versus resource control. 00:19:31.820 --> 00:19:55.460 And, and what we mean by that is how do we orchestrate things that allows for every person in the pew to be in the ministry specialist space versus you have, in order to be a small group leader, you have to come to this thing and it's got to be these five classes and you've got to check the box and you've got to do it this way, et cetera, et cetera. 00:19:55.660 --> 00:19:58.280 It's like, that's never been true. 00:19:58.280 --> 00:20:02.900 Like, just because I checked the box doesn't mean I'm going to be a good small group leader. 00:20:03.020 --> 00:20:03.700 Yes or no. 00:20:04.100 --> 00:20:07.700 I mean, or just because I have the badge doesn't mean I do or I don't. 00:20:07.780 --> 00:20:14.240 It's like, do pastors really think that they control the conversation around the water coolers at people's offices? 00:20:15.140 --> 00:20:22.220 No, like, but our job should be to equip them to have healthy conversations around the water cooler. 00:20:22.220 --> 00:20:30.840 But I can do that through more of an orchestrated, orchestrative motive or motion than, than I could, uh, from a control motion. 00:20:31.380 --> 00:20:38.420 And so in this instance, that's really the, that's one of the bigger juggernauts that you have to get your mental head around. 00:20:38.780 --> 00:20:49.200 And so there was a church, um, uh, here in Colorado that was like, well, Matt, so, uh, you know, I had a, I had a young adult guy come up and, and wants to do a CrossFit thing. 00:20:49.480 --> 00:20:55.160 Uh, are you saying that we should, that we should do it because that we just can't take on all this stuff. 00:20:55.160 --> 00:20:56.600 I'm like, well, you shouldn't take it on. 00:20:56.980 --> 00:21:01.100 This is his mission and vision and passion for what's something that the Lord's placed on his heart. 00:21:01.240 --> 00:21:05.280 You should help enable it to happen because that's his calling. 00:21:05.880 --> 00:21:09.280 So if that wants to happen, I don't have to control it. 00:21:09.480 --> 00:21:15.460 I don't have to control the fact that he's going to have a bunch of people in a, in a, in a spot working out. 00:21:15.640 --> 00:21:22.540 And I'm not going to control what music they listen to or what conversations they have when they're lifting weights and all that stuff. 00:21:22.540 --> 00:21:29.800 I just need to ensure that the orchestration works to enable him to pour into the people that are in that thing. 00:21:30.100 --> 00:21:32.040 That's a very different thought. 00:21:32.140 --> 00:21:38.960 And that's where you get this, you know, back in the day was like, uh, you know, in the eighties, we had an affinity group for everything. 00:21:38.960 --> 00:21:42.480 It was like, if you were left-handed and a female and 18, you were in a group. 00:21:42.800 --> 00:21:45.260 And then we swung the pendulum the other direction. 00:21:45.260 --> 00:21:48.200 It was like, it's all about simple church, just being a group and you're good. 00:21:48.460 --> 00:21:51.540 And I think there's this healthy balance in between the two. 00:21:51.600 --> 00:22:02.280 That's actually like, no, like if, if we truly are the church as a platform and we want to behave more like Uber, our job should be to help provide orchestration, not control. 00:22:02.280 --> 00:22:18.280 And, and, and even moving beyond affinity, like even if you're utilizing different methods of discipleship, you're going to a, um, you know, a, a, a female left-handed group is going to disciple different than something that's probably happening or a water cooler conversation. 00:22:18.460 --> 00:22:32.320 At the workplace, there's going to be a different discipleship, disciple making relationship in that environment, or even in a, a digital environment, a digital only church or a micro church or somebody that's doing something out of their home. 00:22:32.440 --> 00:22:37.720 All of this is going to look different when it comes down to the, the discipleship relationships. 00:22:37.720 --> 00:22:39.700 And that's not, that's not bad. 00:22:39.780 --> 00:22:51.120 You know, sometimes I think, and I, I come from environments where I'm very, have been very centralized kind of in that discipleship, especially across multi-site campus campuses and online. 00:22:51.120 --> 00:23:01.820 And, and, and, and, and really that makes you effective to reach a type of person, but it really makes you ineffective in reaching a whole lot of other people. 00:23:01.940 --> 00:23:13.080 And, and the, the challenges I think as a church, like we've become really effective in reaching a certain type of person, but we've become completely ineffective at reaching others. 00:23:13.080 --> 00:23:29.240 Which is why I love this idea of, of church's platform, because at this point we're really, or even, you know, Uber's Asian church, whatever the term is, because what we're saying is, hey, let us help you discover what God's calling you to, regardless of that works, looks like. 00:23:29.240 --> 00:23:38.720 And let's release you because by releasing you and giving you control, you're going to take us, the church places that we're not going to be able to go ourselves. 00:23:38.720 --> 00:23:50.260 Yeah. The, the, the mental model around pipeline versus platform and, and the yellow cab versus Uber concept is really your, your mental model is around scarcity or abundance. 00:23:51.120 --> 00:23:55.540 Platforms view the world through abundance. Pipelines view it through scarcity. 00:23:55.540 --> 00:23:58.540 That's why they control and own and govern everything. 00:23:59.080 --> 00:24:06.700 Whereas platforms are like, nope, everybody has been given something by the Lord to contribute value to somebody else. 00:24:07.220 --> 00:24:18.680 Our job as the church, to your point is to, and this is where I'll upset all your pastor, counselor friends, but enable that to happen, or let's churchify, equip it to happen. 00:24:19.400 --> 00:24:25.280 That, that's what we should be focused on is equipping the saint to do the work of the ministry. 00:24:25.280 --> 00:24:38.860 And an observation that I've seen in the past in, in, in, in doing all this research on everything has been, we've somehow twisted ourselves into the reality that somehow we, as the staff are the saint in the story. 00:24:39.400 --> 00:24:52.820 No, you're the organization. And, and, you know, I, I, I laugh at this term now just because it's the time reference of everything, but pre, pre COVID, you know, it was butts, budgets, baptisms, and buildings. 00:24:52.820 --> 00:25:03.900 Post COVID. It was like the, the, the weekend after COVID hit, the majority of church preached a very similar message, which was, remember the people are the church, not the building. 00:25:04.480 --> 00:25:09.440 Right. And now we're all coming. Hey, you got to be back in church. You got to, four walls matter. 00:25:09.900 --> 00:25:13.520 Well, buildings and organizations don't grow people. People grow people. 00:25:13.980 --> 00:25:27.920 So if you're on staff at a church, you're the org and your job is to actually scale the saint who is the person in the pew that has been given something by the Lord that wants to contribute value to somebody else. 00:25:29.020 --> 00:25:36.820 That, that's the saint. So we've, we have to, we have to structurally, and that, that kind of upsets some people, right? 00:25:36.820 --> 00:25:43.380 You've got your, the, the, you know, children's pastors sitting there going, no, my job is to grow the kid. 00:25:43.580 --> 00:25:47.600 No, your job is to equip the kids to help grow other kids. 00:25:48.280 --> 00:25:53.940 And we, we, our identity has been wrapped up into a position, uh, in that regard. 00:25:53.940 --> 00:25:56.700 And it's, it's actually just not been true. So. 00:25:57.240 --> 00:26:02.960 Yeah. I mean, you're, you're starting to pull the professional Christian thread where it's my job to, to do the preaching. 00:26:02.960 --> 00:26:15.480 It's my job to bring people to salvation. It's my job to, and then, and that's the way that unfortunately it's, it's, it's, that's what church has equated to, uh, or at least, you know, Western Civ Church over here where we are. 00:26:15.580 --> 00:26:24.460 You know, I, I saw an interesting, I am very self-conscious right now because I'm afraid that I'm going to quote a stat to you and you are like the stat king and you're going to call me on it. 00:26:24.460 --> 00:26:38.160 But I'm pretty sure I've, I've heard this 72% on average, 72% of church budget, um, is, is spent on either building or payroll, um, where 49% is payroll on average across America. 00:26:38.160 --> 00:26:43.640 Uh, and at 22, 23, somewhere around there is, is actual building costs. 00:26:43.640 --> 00:26:46.260 And what's, what's interesting is what you're describing here with this. 00:26:46.800 --> 00:26:50.600 I, I don't know that it costs a lot of money to get people activated on, on mission. 00:26:51.060 --> 00:26:56.780 Um, it's, and it's, and it's certainly, you're utilizing people in a different way, which are going to get you into different areas. 00:26:57.040 --> 00:27:00.860 And, and, and you're not necessarily saying, Hey, come be in this big building. 00:27:00.860 --> 00:27:06.100 You're saying go out into the, into the towns, into the places and connect with people where they are. 00:27:06.100 --> 00:27:12.120 It's much more of a go and go and tell than a, than a come and see strategy towards this. 00:27:12.120 --> 00:27:12.440 Yeah. 00:27:12.760 --> 00:27:22.480 I, I, I, I kind of say like this for, for some of the church leaders, it's like, you know, the, those who ride with Uber can easily start driving for Uber. 00:27:22.860 --> 00:27:25.660 I mean, it's, it's, they've removed a ton of friction out of it. 00:27:25.860 --> 00:27:33.140 Those that are, are renting a room for Airbnb can actually become a host of their own Airbnb at their own house. 00:27:33.360 --> 00:27:43.400 Well, my question to church leaders is, is like, can those who, who receive the gospel easily share the gospel, right? 00:27:43.460 --> 00:27:48.500 Like can, can those, can those who that are taught something easily teach others? 00:27:48.500 --> 00:28:03.160 Can those who participated in service easily include others in services that that's a different, just a slightly different way of looking at it versus what we're traditionally accustomed to as far as church goes. 00:28:03.360 --> 00:28:09.600 And, and, and largely when I tell, when I asked church, when I asked pastors that, um, they, it like hits them. 00:28:10.140 --> 00:28:17.320 They're like, I'm not really sure I've been equipping that to happen yet. 00:28:17.520 --> 00:28:27.920 What do you think that people that have just accepted Christ want to do go share it with people, give them a tool that helps enable that behavior to happen. 00:28:28.020 --> 00:28:28.540 And guess what? 00:28:28.580 --> 00:28:33.840 Your church is probably going to grow because they're going to start having questions and they're going to actually help grow people. 00:28:33.980 --> 00:28:43.120 And your job is just to provide scalability to the same, which typically the only, the only hindrance that we have really toward that is better tools. 00:28:43.580 --> 00:28:49.300 We just, we're, we're so focused on creating great content or using great content. 00:28:49.300 --> 00:28:51.620 It's like content alone is insufficient for growth. 00:28:51.740 --> 00:28:55.760 You have to have relationship and the relationship side of the equation helps people grow. 00:28:55.760 --> 00:29:01.240 But the tool is what's used to actually curate in the content into that equation. 00:29:02.020 --> 00:29:13.440 So if we helped churches, like I say this way, for your creative teams at churches, they should be less worried about what graphic to show on Sunday about the upcoming series. 00:29:13.440 --> 00:29:22.160 And they should be focused solely on curating or creating better tools that enable people to actually go do what God's called them to do. 00:29:22.220 --> 00:29:25.780 You may have cut a little close to home there, but I received that feedback. 00:29:26.280 --> 00:29:31.680 Well, um, that is not an excuse to use Comic Sans font in any of your graphics, but you, 00:29:31.980 --> 00:29:32.680 but, but you're right. 00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:35.380 We're not called to create, um, really good art. 00:29:35.460 --> 00:29:36.900 We're called to make, make disciples. 00:29:36.900 --> 00:29:39.340 And how are we setting up people to do that? 00:29:39.600 --> 00:29:43.500 Um, and that, that may challenge, I mean, you're, you're joking earlier about offending audience. 00:29:43.500 --> 00:29:46.040 That may, that may offend a lot of audience right now. 00:29:46.100 --> 00:29:51.540 Well, actually all those, those people already offended and left the people who, who are probably still remaining are, are, are, are, are with you. 00:29:51.700 --> 00:29:54.900 They're the ones that questioned them by salvation out the gate. 00:29:56.840 --> 00:29:58.520 You and me both, let's be honest. 00:29:58.760 --> 00:30:00.820 Hey, is anybody actually doing this? 00:30:01.200 --> 00:30:01.500 Yeah. 00:30:01.940 --> 00:30:03.460 So what's really cool. 00:30:03.460 --> 00:30:17.760 And, and again, I'm not thankful for COVID through the lens of people are hurting and dying and all that stuff, but I am thankful for the fact that it, it finally was the catalyst to disrupt the, the church space. 00:30:18.020 --> 00:30:33.700 The church space by and large survived the Uberization concept that really disrupted every other economy back in right around 2008, 2009 is when things really started shifting and, and it, and fundamentally things broke back then. 00:30:33.700 --> 00:30:47.480 And so COVID, and so COVID, and so COVID, and so COVID, and so COVID, and so COVID really exposed the gap and it broke what I call, it broke our pipeline and basically has this reconciliation moment with every church leader now has to decide. 00:30:47.480 --> 00:30:55.040 Do I want to go back to be more like, do I want to be more like, do I want to go back to being a pipeline and yellow cab or do I want to be more like an Uber and from that construct? 00:30:55.040 --> 00:31:05.900 So what COVID, when COVID first hit, it's funny because I was with one of the, one of the largest churches in Michigan, like three weeks before talking about the same concept. 00:31:05.900 --> 00:31:17.480 And it was, it was, it was just theory then, and then it was like COVID hit and now everybody's like calling going, Hey, Engel, I think we need to refresh her on what Uberization is because that was theory, but now it's reality. 00:31:17.480 --> 00:31:18.400 Like, what do we do? 00:31:18.560 --> 00:31:31.700 So here's a couple of cool things that churches that started embracing the Uber concept, things like, um, a church printed out or a church created a little card that said, my name is blank. 00:31:31.700 --> 00:31:33.260 My phone number is blank. 00:31:33.260 --> 00:31:41.260 My email is blank and I live here and it had no branding of church, no hashtag Jesus loves you or any of that other stuff. 00:31:41.420 --> 00:31:44.440 And they didn't even print the cards out. 00:31:44.680 --> 00:31:53.380 They just sent it to their church and said, Hey, fill these out and pass these around your neighborhood and be, be a help to people. 00:31:53.740 --> 00:31:58.240 It led to the largest evangelism moment in the history of this church. 00:31:58.600 --> 00:32:00.320 And they didn't even print them out. 00:32:00.460 --> 00:32:09.340 They just created a really hacked, you know, a creative person will look at it and go, that's a terrible, terrible image, but it's real. 00:32:09.640 --> 00:32:10.380 It was just real. 00:32:10.440 --> 00:32:13.340 It was, it was, it was not churchify or anything else. 00:32:13.480 --> 00:32:15.820 It was just, and, and so what did it do? 00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:19.460 It was a tool that helped me fill out some stuff. 00:32:19.460 --> 00:32:29.220 And you're my neighbor, Jeff, and I come over to you at your house and I give you this card and say, Hey man, if you can't make it to the grocery store because you, and you don't have toilet paper, like, let me know. 00:32:29.220 --> 00:32:30.460 I can help you. 00:32:30.680 --> 00:32:31.240 Right. 00:32:31.240 --> 00:32:39.020 And all that did was create opportunities to build trust and relationship between me and you. 00:32:39.140 --> 00:32:45.920 And guess what now, now that I have trust and relationship, you can actually grow and I can help you do that. 00:32:46.040 --> 00:32:48.860 And, and this church didn't tell me what to say. 00:32:49.020 --> 00:32:52.600 They didn't tell me that I needed to do 10 houses versus three. 00:32:52.940 --> 00:32:55.920 They literally said, here is a tool. 00:32:57.160 --> 00:32:59.240 Go, go forth and do what you think. 00:32:59.820 --> 00:33:10.800 Another example that I thought was really cool was some of the, some of the churches, um, sent out sidewalk chalk to all the kids, all the kids and the families that were, were at home. 00:33:11.000 --> 00:33:15.760 Knowing that the kids couldn't go to school and knowing that everybody needed to get out of the house. 00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:19.080 So working out and walking around the neighborhood was like a popular thing during COVID. 00:33:19.860 --> 00:33:21.680 Um, well, we're still in COVID, but you know what I mean? 00:33:21.940 --> 00:33:33.000 Um, so the kids, the kid, they, they, they, they, they sent them chalk and they sent them some stencils as, as a tool to say, Hey, just go, go right on the chalk, uh, right on the sidewalks. 00:33:33.520 --> 00:33:44.300 And, and, and all that did was create an opportunity for the family that was walking around the neighborhood to stop and look at the art and maybe have a conversation with the person that actually drew the art. 00:33:45.780 --> 00:33:46.740 Things like that. 00:33:46.740 --> 00:33:49.280 They didn't tell them what to say, how to say it. 00:33:49.340 --> 00:33:52.920 They didn't have badges that they had to fill out and forms that they needed to take in. 00:33:53.360 --> 00:34:02.040 It was literally just a tool that helped unlock their desire in their context to build trust and relationship with a neighbor. 00:34:02.480 --> 00:34:03.400 I love that. 00:34:03.680 --> 00:34:08.200 I would almost, I mean, part of me wants to maybe like pour gasoline on that flame. 00:34:08.340 --> 00:34:10.120 I sometimes I, I'm an extreme guy. 00:34:10.200 --> 00:34:11.240 I like to talk crazy. 00:34:11.720 --> 00:34:23.080 Um, and, and so, so part of me even looks at this and saying, okay, Hey, we're doing things in the, in the, in the neighborhood, neighborhood, you know, ministry, the ability to connect with people. 00:34:23.080 --> 00:34:28.280 You know, you're across the street neighbor that isn't even connected with a church at all. 00:34:28.440 --> 00:34:38.040 And you're going to be able to enter interface and connect with and reach that person in a better way than an organization like your neighborhood church ever would. 00:34:38.040 --> 00:34:49.540 And so huge opportunities there, man, I also just being the crazy guy that I am, I'm starting to see like, my gosh, maybe there's an opportunity even for that guy to do a church in his neighborhood. 00:34:49.540 --> 00:35:06.860 Like a, like a Rob Wagner, Casey underground, or, you know, start to engage with people on social media in a different way and start to explore maybe a, um, a social media expression of church or a discipleship community or something like that. 00:35:06.860 --> 00:35:19.120 Where maybe we're starting to replicate, um, church, not the way, not in the expression, but creating more stadia, we use the word multimodal, multiple models of it. 00:35:19.560 --> 00:35:21.720 Um, does that work in this? 00:35:21.800 --> 00:35:23.600 Like, I, I, honestly, I want your, what's your opinion. 00:35:23.740 --> 00:35:31.780 Does that work at that extreme level where now we're starting to almost create new expressions of church, even beyond where we're used to in our brick and mortar buildings? 00:35:31.980 --> 00:35:32.380 Absolutely. 00:35:32.840 --> 00:35:43.660 I mean, again, I, I'm, we, we, we kind of kidded, we, we, we would kid ourselves if we thought like, you know, the four walls of the building were the, the end all be all to everything. 00:35:43.800 --> 00:35:45.700 I'm not dismissing the local church. 00:35:45.700 --> 00:35:47.820 I think the local church has profound implications. 00:35:47.820 --> 00:36:01.960 And I think as more people are in the business of driving for Uber in this ministry construct, they're going to gravitate toward a church to ensure that they are equipped to help do the ministry. 00:36:01.980 --> 00:36:08.300 So I think it's going to be across the spectrum modality has shifted. 00:36:08.920 --> 00:36:21.340 And so, yes, there are a variety of modalities that are going to be embraced and it all comes down to the preference of the end user, knowing the person that they're trying to grow better than the organization. 00:36:21.800 --> 00:36:25.600 I, I, I know my friends better than my church. 00:36:26.300 --> 00:36:31.460 So therefore I'm going to leverage what I need to leverage to help my friends grow in Christ. 00:36:31.900 --> 00:36:34.820 And I'm going to pull from every tool in the tool chest. 00:36:35.140 --> 00:36:36.940 And some of it might be from this church. 00:36:37.000 --> 00:36:38.320 Some of it might be that curriculum. 00:36:38.480 --> 00:36:45.320 Some of it might be from a book that, you know, maybe my church is like, you know, we, we follow the leadership model of this author. 00:36:45.680 --> 00:36:47.940 Well, I know my friend better than you do. 00:36:47.960 --> 00:36:50.000 And I know that he's going to prefer that author. 00:36:50.360 --> 00:36:54.240 So we're going to have conversations around this from that perspective. 00:36:54.500 --> 00:36:56.800 That gate has been blown wide open. 00:36:57.060 --> 00:37:02.160 And now the, I think now our blinders are off a little bit going like, oh, that's always happened. 00:37:02.720 --> 00:37:04.460 You know, think about it from this perspective. 00:37:04.920 --> 00:37:19.540 You go to church, you know, I, I, and, and again, you know, church leaders don't necessarily like when I say this, but it's like the end user is my, my question for the congregant in the, in the church is what are you hiring that church to solve? 00:37:20.180 --> 00:37:25.060 What job as the congregant are, am I hiring this church to solve? 00:37:25.200 --> 00:37:27.860 In some instances, it's their kids ministry. 00:37:28.140 --> 00:37:29.600 Hey, I don't really like the teaching. 00:37:29.680 --> 00:37:32.380 The music's too loud, but our kids really like the kids ministry. 00:37:32.380 --> 00:37:39.160 So we, we hire this church to do kids ministry, but then I go home and I stream this church for my own development. 00:37:39.260 --> 00:37:47.200 And I go through this own, my own Bible study for my, for my wife and I's individual development together as a couple, et cetera, et cetera. 00:37:47.540 --> 00:37:49.780 We used to think, oh, well, they're coming to church. 00:37:49.860 --> 00:37:51.420 They're buying the entire package. 00:37:52.060 --> 00:37:53.540 That's never been true. 00:37:53.820 --> 00:37:55.480 But now our blinders are off gone. 00:37:55.700 --> 00:37:56.180 Oh yeah. 00:37:56.980 --> 00:38:02.620 You know, there are reasons why people stay out in the lobby for 15 minutes during music because the music's boring. 00:38:02.820 --> 00:38:04.880 And then they'll go in because the teaching's okay. 00:38:05.560 --> 00:38:07.320 That's the unfortunate reality. 00:38:08.320 --> 00:38:09.780 You know, and it's funny. 00:38:09.860 --> 00:38:11.920 We were, oh, actually I saw a Facebook post. 00:38:12.040 --> 00:38:14.600 I'll try to dig through and put it in the show notes if I can find it. 00:38:15.120 --> 00:38:24.600 But there was, it was a, I think it was in a Facebook group and somebody was, the comment was something to the extent of, there is so much more power and potential. 00:38:25.020 --> 00:38:26.360 And, oh, I know exactly what it was. 00:38:26.720 --> 00:38:31.240 Small churches have so much to teach the big churches post COVID, mid post COVID. 00:38:31.640 --> 00:38:33.820 Big churches need to learn from the small churches. 00:38:34.040 --> 00:38:40.060 And it was amazing to me the number of comments and emojis that were attached to that. 00:38:40.060 --> 00:38:45.260 And I was, cause I just, I know the people and it's like mega church, giga church, giga church, mega church. 00:38:45.740 --> 00:38:57.180 Everybody thumbs upping that because, and then from a relational context, the small church has so much more strength in that area than the big church who's overloaded. 00:38:57.380 --> 00:39:21.460 But really, I think the win, and I would even throw this at you, which even gets back to this whole part of, of uberization of church, the thing that makes an individual church, a local church special, the thing that a local church can do that really struggles in digital and online, or at least we haven't figured out the formula, is mission, is getting people activated, of giving them purpose. 00:39:21.460 --> 00:39:26.140 Yes, we need to figure out what getting people on mission looks like digitally. 00:39:26.140 --> 00:39:43.800 And there are some churches that are moving into that space, but by, in general, that is what's happening at your brick and mortar local church, or at least that's what separates you from the, you know, I'm just dropping names, Rick Warren's, the, uh, the elevations, the, the saddlebacks, the, the North points. 00:39:43.800 --> 00:39:49.860 And so it's church out there figuring out how to give people purpose, get people on mission. 00:39:50.120 --> 00:39:53.900 You know, I've said it on here, a pastor, don't be upset that your people aren't in your building. 00:39:54.020 --> 00:39:59.160 Be upset that they have no purpose, no spiritual purpose when, when they're not in your building. 00:39:59.160 --> 00:40:03.600 And that's, that's what I love about this so much is it gives people that spiritual purpose. 00:40:04.080 --> 00:40:08.340 And, and, and we talked about it at the beginning, but like architecturally, this matters. 00:40:08.720 --> 00:40:18.100 So in, I say it this way, we were designed by God to do two things at a base level, contribute value and be in community. 00:40:18.780 --> 00:40:30.520 And, and if you, if you look through Genesis, Adam was put in the garden of Eden when it was perfect to do a job, to contribute value into something that was already perfect. 00:40:30.520 --> 00:40:33.300 Go name the animals, go do this, go do this. 00:40:33.300 --> 00:40:33.600 Right? 00:40:33.820 --> 00:40:42.500 So if that is true and we were designed to contribute value, and then the first time it is not good is when Adam's by himself. 00:40:42.500 --> 00:40:50.440 So insert Eve, you can, you can go to marriage, which I typically do, but, but you can, at the abstract level, I would argue community. 00:40:50.820 --> 00:40:58.900 So if we were designed to contribute value and be in community, how do we then help unlock the contributive energy in every single person? 00:40:59.140 --> 00:41:01.600 Because they're hardwired to want to do it. 00:41:02.860 --> 00:41:05.580 And then insert relationship or community. 00:41:06.240 --> 00:41:08.260 That's all we need to be focused on. 00:41:08.380 --> 00:41:09.040 And you're right. 00:41:09.400 --> 00:41:20.960 The smaller the church, because of, in my opinion, the lack of, the lack of resourcing that they typically have, that they are solely focused on contributive energy. 00:41:21.200 --> 00:41:28.580 A.K.A. they need, you know, the 50 people in the church to go down and do something, something because they need the, they need the volume. 00:41:28.920 --> 00:41:31.680 And then they're focused solely on community. 00:41:31.980 --> 00:41:38.460 Whereas some of the other churches, some of the more giga churches, it's like, no, you can go and you can hide and consume. 00:41:38.460 --> 00:41:39.560 And that's about it. 00:41:39.980 --> 00:41:50.780 And that's where COVID really helped expose some of the gaps there is we had a lot of people that thought, hey, the pastor's job is to do the discipling, not my job. 00:41:51.200 --> 00:41:58.780 When in all reality, it was my job always to do the discipling, and their job was to help make me a disciple maker. 00:41:59.100 --> 00:42:02.960 Let me, let's, let's even, let's expand on that analogy right there. 00:42:02.960 --> 00:42:08.140 So there's pastors out there who do think it's their job. 00:42:08.740 --> 00:42:15.200 And they've been for decades patted on the back and told, well done, great sermon, excellent. 00:42:15.660 --> 00:42:22.100 And they've been told, bring people, not, not go and tell, but come and see, hey, you know what? 00:42:22.220 --> 00:42:30.260 Listen, I've, I've worked with a lead pastor who's literally said, audience, people out there, it's your job to bring people into the building. 00:42:30.260 --> 00:42:32.920 It's my job to preach the gospel to them. 00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:36.140 So there are that, I mean, that mentality is, is out there. 00:42:36.280 --> 00:42:42.760 And now, I mean, we're basically saying, hey, I, I don't know that that idea works in 2021. 00:42:43.080 --> 00:42:49.680 I, I, I'm not sure it's going to work in 2025 and we may need to, to change this, this philosophy. 00:42:49.680 --> 00:42:52.620 So how, listen, I'm a, I'm a lead pastor. 00:42:52.800 --> 00:42:55.140 I went to school that taught me one way. 00:42:55.320 --> 00:42:58.540 I've got 20 years experience that's taught me that way. 00:42:58.560 --> 00:43:02.380 You guys are now talking crazy to people on a podcast. 00:43:02.740 --> 00:43:05.820 Like, how am I supposed to process and thank you this? 00:43:05.880 --> 00:43:11.580 Like, how, how should people be responding to this as we're challenging the world, their ministry worldview anyway? 00:43:11.580 --> 00:43:24.520 So, so, so how I typically address this, because I'll be honest, like a lot of, a lot of church leaders hear, hear the subtitle of uberization of ministry or uberization of church. 00:43:24.580 --> 00:43:30.720 And they immediate, immediately go to, oh, Matt's going to talk about a digital app. 00:43:31.240 --> 00:43:32.920 Oh, it's Uber is just an app. 00:43:33.020 --> 00:43:33.220 Okay. 00:43:33.240 --> 00:43:38.340 So yeah, we're going to go find out about digital that they're, they're missing the boat. 00:43:38.540 --> 00:43:38.760 Okay. 00:43:38.760 --> 00:43:41.000 So digital supports the analog. 00:43:41.460 --> 00:43:43.460 That's the, that, that is the pecking order. 00:43:43.600 --> 00:43:49.200 The primacy of growth, which is what we do in church, grow people is, is face-to-face. 00:43:49.200 --> 00:43:52.380 That's the number one way people grow and tech supports the gap. 00:43:52.520 --> 00:44:02.320 That's, that's the basic premise where I go with platform and where I help pastors kind of reconcile what you just said is again, it's not an indictment on what they've done. 00:44:03.280 --> 00:44:12.540 They grew up and we did too, outside of the, you know, the high school students that are, that are in high school, you know, probably right now, maybe a little bit of the, the Gen Zers. 00:44:12.960 --> 00:44:16.720 They've now been exposed to platform theory as an economic model. 00:44:16.940 --> 00:44:24.860 Prior to 08, we didn't know a new economic model existed other than pipeline pipelines, supply, demand manufacturing. 00:44:24.860 --> 00:44:31.460 But here's the subtlety to what helps people begin to understand and, and sort of reconcile the new thing. 00:44:31.460 --> 00:44:38.040 That's emerged was back, back in like Jesus day, it, or let me, let me start by saying this. 00:44:38.100 --> 00:44:40.580 It's, it boils down to trust. 00:44:41.120 --> 00:44:41.580 Okay. 00:44:41.580 --> 00:44:51.220 The whole construct of Uber rising ministry has to do with where trust is originating now versus where it used to. 00:44:51.620 --> 00:44:52.880 And what do I mean by that? 00:44:52.880 --> 00:44:55.600 So Jesus back in the day, trust was hyper localized. 00:44:56.100 --> 00:44:56.560 Okay. 00:44:56.800 --> 00:45:02.480 I knew that you were a carpenter, so you could help me build certain things that was localized trust. 00:45:02.580 --> 00:45:09.000 And in a small town perspective, small city perspective, I knew that your wife was a, was a nurse. 00:45:09.000 --> 00:45:12.740 And so my kid scraped his hand so I can take him over there. 00:45:12.840 --> 00:45:13.480 Trust was localized. 00:45:14.000 --> 00:45:19.660 Then fast, fast forward all the way to the industrial revolution and trust. 00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:21.000 People say trust breaks. 00:45:21.120 --> 00:45:23.340 I don't actually necessarily agree with that. 00:45:23.420 --> 00:45:27.160 I think trust is malleable and trust moves. 00:45:27.480 --> 00:45:34.660 And in the industrial revolution, trust shifted from this hyper localized thing to these monolithic pipelines. 00:45:35.180 --> 00:45:40.460 And what you did is you associated the size of the pipe with the more I can trust it. 00:45:41.260 --> 00:45:42.160 Oh, wow. 00:45:42.620 --> 00:45:51.100 You know, fill in the blank, you know, Kmart, Montgomery Wards, Sears, all of these things, Ford, Chevy, right? 00:45:51.180 --> 00:45:57.800 These monolithic pipelines, insert your, your giga church name right now, the, the lead pastor at so-and-so. 00:45:58.080 --> 00:46:01.020 It, trust shifted to these monolithic pipelines. 00:46:01.460 --> 00:46:05.760 Well, what happened in 08 was trust shifted again. 00:46:06.260 --> 00:46:19.360 And you had all of these pipelines that got broke because quite frankly, like if you look at like things like Wells Fargo, they used to be a trustworthy bank until it found out that they were doing some shady stuff around mortgages, right? 00:46:19.360 --> 00:46:27.660 So all of these things, trust shifted again to what is, what it now calls it in my head is like a distributed trust model. 00:46:28.080 --> 00:46:29.840 So I, I'll say it this way. 00:46:29.920 --> 00:46:38.540 So my wife exclusively shops on Amazon by ratings alone, not by brand, not by size of, of budget and not by ads. 00:46:39.140 --> 00:46:44.360 Literally are a hundred thousand strangers telling me it's okay to buy that thing. 00:46:44.600 --> 00:46:46.660 And if you think about it, Uber did the same thing. 00:46:46.660 --> 00:46:51.560 Uber solved for trust because 15 years ago I was told to never get into a car with a stranger. 00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:56.820 And now I almost exclusively travel through Uber all over the place. 00:46:57.140 --> 00:46:57.980 But what happened? 00:46:58.080 --> 00:46:59.380 It wasn't because of an app. 00:46:59.460 --> 00:47:00.400 Yeah, that made it easy. 00:47:01.440 --> 00:47:06.780 But what it was is because I could trust a hundred thousand strangers that tell me, hey, you know what? 00:47:06.900 --> 00:47:08.120 Jeff's a 4.9. 00:47:08.220 --> 00:47:08.460 Great. 00:47:08.800 --> 00:47:10.220 I'm probably not going to have to worry. 00:47:10.680 --> 00:47:12.980 Man, you know, Matt Engel's a 2.3. 00:47:13.300 --> 00:47:15.520 I need a new driver, right? 00:47:15.780 --> 00:47:21.100 So in this instance for churches, we have to understand that trust is distributed. 00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:27.420 And so we need the saints doing the work of the ministry in the neighborhoods and in the communities. 00:47:27.980 --> 00:47:32.760 And by default, the trust rating of that local church does improve. 00:47:33.660 --> 00:47:36.600 So that's the paramount, like, fundamental core. 00:47:36.840 --> 00:47:43.160 When pastors start to have to reconcile this, they have to understand and embrace trust has now shifted. 00:47:43.540 --> 00:47:50.160 And you can have the biggest marquee sign on the side of the billboard or on a billboard or of the street. 00:47:50.160 --> 00:47:52.660 You can have the biggest budget around marketing. 00:47:53.540 --> 00:47:57.680 But if you haven't solved for trust in your community, it doesn't matter. 00:47:58.340 --> 00:47:59.480 They don't trust you. 00:47:59.620 --> 00:48:00.880 They don't trust your brand. 00:48:01.140 --> 00:48:07.600 They trust a hundred thousand strangers that tell them that I can get hope and healing at that location there. 00:48:08.080 --> 00:48:09.920 So somebody's interested in doing this. 00:48:10.320 --> 00:48:12.640 Like, okay, I hear you. 00:48:12.740 --> 00:48:14.200 Matt, I'm listening. 00:48:14.660 --> 00:48:16.840 I want to, let's give it a shot. 00:48:16.840 --> 00:48:20.680 What does an experiment look like? 00:48:20.940 --> 00:48:23.380 How do I even get started? 00:48:23.520 --> 00:48:24.240 How do I shift? 00:48:24.560 --> 00:48:28.080 How do I convince my leadership of something like this? 00:48:28.240 --> 00:48:30.420 Like, walk me through maybe some of those early steps. 00:48:30.880 --> 00:48:31.020 Yeah. 00:48:31.220 --> 00:48:44.260 So here's what I like to say is if your job title now is no longer pastor, but your job title is the chief platform architect of your local church, 00:48:44.620 --> 00:48:45.480 that's your new job. 00:48:45.480 --> 00:48:48.320 You have two functional things, or that's your title. 00:48:48.420 --> 00:48:51.880 You have two functional jobs that you need to do. 00:48:52.660 --> 00:48:55.220 Motivate people and provide better tools. 00:48:55.880 --> 00:48:56.540 That's it. 00:48:57.360 --> 00:48:59.480 So you have to still motivate people. 00:48:59.620 --> 00:49:01.420 You still have got to help cast vision. 00:49:01.740 --> 00:49:08.080 But it's not around, you know, me going up on a mountaintop, hearing the Lord say, Matt Engel, go, therefore, do with this. 00:49:08.600 --> 00:49:12.020 Therefore, I'm going to come back and try to convince my entire congregation to do the same thing. 00:49:12.020 --> 00:49:20.880 No, my job is to motivate people to be the saint and provide them better tools to do that thing. 00:49:21.760 --> 00:49:23.920 From that perspective, that's it. 00:49:24.600 --> 00:49:30.980 And from that end, like the experimentation, did this tool help move the needle on people? 00:49:31.880 --> 00:49:37.460 And the difference, again, the mental model is I'm not looking for everybody to do everything. 00:49:38.140 --> 00:49:46.240 I'm looking for the people who want to grab that tool that have a willing and able and a desire to use it, to go use it. 00:49:46.240 --> 00:49:53.080 And then platforms do this really well, which churches don't do very well, is they close feedback loops. 00:49:54.240 --> 00:49:55.900 Platforms are constantly learning. 00:49:56.260 --> 00:49:57.480 And I'll give you this example. 00:49:58.400 --> 00:50:01.620 Churches behave a lot like your local farmer's market. 00:50:02.520 --> 00:50:03.900 Farmer's markets are platforms. 00:50:04.340 --> 00:50:05.160 They have producers. 00:50:05.380 --> 00:50:06.760 They have people that are selling goods. 00:50:06.880 --> 00:50:09.720 And they have consumers, people that come to buy those goods. 00:50:10.200 --> 00:50:12.260 The challenge is they're dumb. 00:50:12.640 --> 00:50:13.540 They're not smart. 00:50:14.360 --> 00:50:15.560 And what do I mean by that? 00:50:15.620 --> 00:50:18.160 So my wife and I go down to the farmer's market here. 00:50:18.620 --> 00:50:24.040 And this weekend, we buy tomatoes, cilantro, jalapeno, onion, a little bit of garlic. 00:50:25.660 --> 00:50:39.580 The next weekend we show up, we should be recommended to go to the salsa table because the smart analytic would say, wow, they just bought stuff that I can reasonably assume they're probably making salsa. 00:50:39.720 --> 00:50:43.760 The next weekend, we should recommend salsa to Matt and Denise Engel. 00:50:44.680 --> 00:50:50.020 In the same instance, the church, we don't do a good job of being smart like that. 00:50:50.440 --> 00:50:57.220 We just constantly assume that they're going to, you know, we're just going to spray and pray everybody and hope that they figure it out. 00:50:57.360 --> 00:51:00.960 It's like, let's get smarter about this from that perspective. 00:51:01.120 --> 00:51:05.260 So motivate people, provide better tools, and close the feedback loop around the tool. 00:51:05.640 --> 00:51:07.420 And once you do that, this is the beauty. 00:51:07.880 --> 00:51:10.260 Once you do that, you can identify the pattern. 00:51:10.700 --> 00:51:15.900 And as soon as you see the pattern, you can actually help enable the pattern to spin faster. 00:51:17.120 --> 00:51:20.180 And that's the unique way. 00:51:20.320 --> 00:51:21.860 Like, I like to say it this way. 00:51:22.200 --> 00:51:37.520 What if the scorecard wasn't the budget baptisms and buildings that we're accustomed to, but the scorecard for a local church was the amount of time that it takes for the church to notice Matt Engel raising my hand saying, 00:51:37.520 --> 00:51:47.520 I want to contribute value to what the Lord placed on my heart and the church to come alongside me and equip me to do it versus did Matt Engel attend? 00:51:47.680 --> 00:51:48.900 Is he giving regularly? 00:51:49.140 --> 00:51:49.700 Blah, blah, blah. 00:51:50.320 --> 00:51:52.920 What if the scorecard was around that metric? 00:51:53.400 --> 00:52:01.040 How quickly are we identifying people's opportunities and calling on their life and enabling it to happen? 00:52:01.260 --> 00:52:18.200 And then closing feedback loops to ensure that that's happening because I guarantee you your pastoring would massively improve if you started seeing the patterns that want to happen with your women that are 40 years old with three kids or men who are under 35 that are single. 00:52:18.460 --> 00:52:27.000 If you saw the pattern, you could quickly begin to pastor that pattern way differently than we got to get more people here. 00:52:27.540 --> 00:52:30.100 So anyway, that was a long-winded answer. 00:52:30.300 --> 00:52:33.020 But in my opinion, it's that simple. 00:52:33.420 --> 00:52:33.600 I know. 00:52:34.080 --> 00:52:35.500 It's that simple. 00:52:35.620 --> 00:52:35.920 That's all. 00:52:36.500 --> 00:52:37.760 What's the metric? 00:52:37.880 --> 00:52:38.600 What's success? 00:52:39.600 --> 00:52:40.360 You know, it's funny. 00:52:40.460 --> 00:52:48.840 We had Tyler Sansom's digital pastor up at Church Anywhere up in Indiana, Corden, Indiana. 00:52:49.460 --> 00:52:51.780 And so, but we had his lead pastor on. 00:52:51.860 --> 00:52:52.540 I'm blanking. 00:52:52.580 --> 00:52:53.700 Sir, I'm blanking on your name right now. 00:52:53.720 --> 00:52:54.040 I'm sorry. 00:52:54.580 --> 00:53:02.520 But he was telling us, he's like, yeah, our church, we catalog, we celebrate the baptizee and the baptizers, 00:53:02.520 --> 00:53:08.400 the people who have accepted Christ and the people who brought them to Christ. 00:53:08.560 --> 00:53:10.380 What's the metric? 00:53:10.580 --> 00:53:12.000 Are we celebrating the conversions? 00:53:12.240 --> 00:53:17.540 Are we celebrating the fact that somebody, you know, was involved and shared? 00:53:17.760 --> 00:53:19.140 Like, what do you think? 00:53:19.260 --> 00:53:21.300 What's the REA moment? 00:53:21.820 --> 00:53:29.080 I think where the scorecard is moving toward, from a church, let me start by saying, 00:53:29.080 --> 00:53:35.820 from the church org perspective, I think our, our scorecard is really how many people are 00:53:35.820 --> 00:53:42.480 we flipping from consumers to contributors or in platform talk from consumers to producers, 00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:43.240 right? 00:53:43.480 --> 00:53:46.380 So I think that's at the church org level. 00:53:46.380 --> 00:53:52.320 I, at the person level, I think the, at the abstract level, I think our scorecard is our 00:53:52.320 --> 00:53:52.980 people growing. 00:53:53.560 --> 00:53:54.720 Like, that's it. 00:53:54.720 --> 00:54:01.460 Like, like, at the base level, I want to celebrate the growth of people, not necessarily the activities 00:54:01.460 --> 00:54:02.160 and outputs. 00:54:02.520 --> 00:54:06.940 I want to celebrate the outcomes and the impact associated with that. 00:54:07.080 --> 00:54:14.160 And, and that's really that saint getting to see their friend take baby steps over time 00:54:14.160 --> 00:54:17.620 to move closer to Jesus, right? 00:54:17.620 --> 00:54:24.860 Like that, that, and, and that's what actually helps flip that person from like a growee to 00:54:24.860 --> 00:54:26.020 a champion of other people. 00:54:26.580 --> 00:54:31.740 So we, in church world, we tend to try to rush people through like a process. 00:54:32.140 --> 00:54:38.600 And, and I like to say growth is not, um, it is not tied to speed. 00:54:38.980 --> 00:54:41.500 Growth is tied to trust and relationship. 00:54:42.500 --> 00:54:46.760 And so it's not a function of speed of getting people through things. 00:54:46.760 --> 00:54:51.200 It's a, really a function of a person and a person that's trustworthy that moves that 00:54:51.200 --> 00:54:55.540 person that moved, that moves the growee on a linear motion for growth and the growth at 00:54:55.540 --> 00:54:56.460 the abstract level. 00:54:56.840 --> 00:55:01.200 So that's how I would be thinking the scorecards are starting to shift. 00:55:01.460 --> 00:55:08.020 It's like, are we, are we moving people from, from consumers to producers or champions in 00:55:08.020 --> 00:55:08.980 my, my language? 00:55:09.180 --> 00:55:14.140 And then from the champion, the, the scorecard for the champion is, are, are the people that 00:55:14.140 --> 00:55:15.860 I'm involved with in their lives growing? 00:55:16.060 --> 00:55:18.760 Are we seeing growth, um, in that? 00:55:19.360 --> 00:55:21.460 Hey, uh, sorry, I was distracted. 00:55:21.560 --> 00:55:22.260 I was trying to look up. 00:55:22.340 --> 00:55:26.280 It was Randy Kirk, uh, is the lead pastor at First Capital and Corden. 00:55:26.280 --> 00:55:27.360 And I was like, dang it. 00:55:27.500 --> 00:55:29.080 Yeah, I, I, I got the name. 00:55:29.140 --> 00:55:30.560 I had to, I had to go back. 00:55:30.620 --> 00:55:33.700 And in fairness, that conversation was two and a half years ago. 00:55:33.980 --> 00:55:37.200 And so it took me a moment, but Randy, sir, it was funny. 00:55:37.280 --> 00:55:41.160 Randy, Randy, um, Randy retired on that podcast two and a half years later. 00:55:41.160 --> 00:55:41.700 He's still there. 00:55:42.140 --> 00:55:45.140 But, uh, so I, I think they're, they're working through search communities. 00:55:45.280 --> 00:55:48.620 I don't know something, but Hey, listen, Matt, this has been an awesome podcast. 00:55:48.620 --> 00:55:51.000 Thanks for, thanks for jumping on here. 00:55:51.700 --> 00:55:54.020 Uberization of church churches platform. 00:55:54.380 --> 00:55:58.280 Uh, it, you know, even, even the, the economic model of this. 00:55:58.280 --> 00:56:00.260 And, and that's a new perspective to me. 00:56:00.280 --> 00:56:03.840 I hadn't put that up to the, to the, to the economy perspective there. 00:56:03.840 --> 00:56:07.500 Or it, man, just as we're, as we're landing the plane here, any, any closing thoughts on 00:56:07.500 --> 00:56:07.860 your side? 00:56:08.260 --> 00:56:14.240 Yeah, no, I, I mean, really, really the, those paramount things are people cannot grow. 00:56:14.480 --> 00:56:19.720 And that is the core function of the, of the saint, you know, helping somebody grow. 00:56:20.580 --> 00:56:24.700 You cannot grow if trust and relationship are not present. 00:56:25.120 --> 00:56:31.580 And so churches should be focused on like right now, you know, we're, we're October, September, 00:56:31.580 --> 00:56:37.880 I guess still, um, churches right now that are focused on providing tools to their people 00:56:37.880 --> 00:56:43.720 to develop trust and relationship with their neighbors for the hope that as trust and relationship 00:56:43.720 --> 00:56:48.220 builds, they could do an invitation for that person to come to church on Christmas. 00:56:49.060 --> 00:56:53.480 That's the difference in what we're talking about versus waiting until December and then 00:56:53.480 --> 00:56:56.840 asking all of your people to go invite a friend to church. 00:56:56.940 --> 00:57:00.740 They can't invite somebody that doesn't have trust and relationship with them. 00:57:00.740 --> 00:57:03.600 So give them tools to be able to do that. 00:57:03.980 --> 00:57:10.720 And the by-product is you're, you're helping develop disciple makers and a catalytic platform 00:57:10.720 --> 00:57:13.400 is the local church helping, enabling it to happen. 00:57:13.580 --> 00:57:16.920 So that's the, that's the, probably the big, the big shift to be thinking through. 00:57:17.460 --> 00:57:22.020 So, so many good thoughts here talking about this idea of, of church's platform, 00:57:22.520 --> 00:57:27.720 uberization of church, releasing control to the people and empowering, equipping, whatever 00:57:27.720 --> 00:57:32.700 you want to throw at them, uh, to help them, you know, get out there and, and be on mission 00:57:32.700 --> 00:57:33.300 with that. 00:57:33.520 --> 00:57:37.120 So, Hey, Matt, thank you for, for jumping on the podcast and spend some time. 00:57:37.300 --> 00:57:40.040 Uh, but for Matt, thank you very much for Matt. 00:57:40.100 --> 00:57:43.260 This is Jeff with the church digital and with Stadia church planning. 00:57:43.260 --> 00:57:44.800 Thanks for jumping on the pod here. 00:57:44.800 --> 00:57:45.820 We'll see you next time on the show. 00:57:46.220 --> 00:57:46.620 Y'all have a good day.