WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.620 If we're going to be willing to innovate what church is going to look like in the future with this digital revolution, 00:00:05.480 --> 00:00:08.220 we're going to have to be able to let go of some of those things. 00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:18.000 A lot of people look at the younger generation and they think because they spend so much time on screens that they're anti-social. 00:00:18.920 --> 00:00:23.420 And I think I heard somebody else say this online. I can't remember who to give it credit to. 00:00:23.540 --> 00:00:27.920 But we're like, no, you're younger kids that are spending all this time on screens. 00:00:27.920 --> 00:00:31.420 They might be a lot more social than you are because they're interacting with their friends. 00:00:31.500 --> 00:00:35.780 They're doing community. They're just doing it differently than what you're accustomed to in your generation. 00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:37.400 Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. 00:00:38.180 --> 00:00:42.180 Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church. 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:46.660 But more than TED for Tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. 00:00:47.500 --> 00:00:49.380 Is disciple making possible digitally? 00:00:50.400 --> 00:00:52.380 How should we approach the digital mission field? 00:00:53.120 --> 00:00:55.920 Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? 00:00:56.400 --> 00:00:58.940 Oh, and where does the metaverse fit into all this? 00:00:59.800 --> 00:01:03.940 Whether you're a big or small church, an established church, or a startup church plant, 00:01:04.680 --> 00:01:09.600 the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church, 00:01:10.220 --> 00:01:11.600 digitally and physically. 00:01:12.320 --> 00:01:13.060 Our heart? 00:01:13.560 --> 00:01:19.260 That churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church. 00:01:19.740 --> 00:01:22.580 And now, here's your host, Jeff Reed. 00:01:23.080 --> 00:01:23.440 All right. 00:01:23.460 --> 00:01:23.820 Hey, everybody. 00:01:23.900 --> 00:01:29.080 We've got episode 230, 230 of these things here with the Church Digital Podcast. 00:01:29.580 --> 00:01:32.020 And Digital Church Network, my name is Jeff Reed here. 00:01:32.060 --> 00:01:33.240 And of course, it's a pleasure. 00:01:33.540 --> 00:01:37.380 Let me tell you, I've been looking forward to this conversation ever since I met this guy. 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:41.100 And so I had a conversation with this church we'll get into here in a little bit. 00:01:41.300 --> 00:01:42.460 And I'm not kidding. 00:01:42.520 --> 00:01:45.920 Maybe 30 seconds into the conversation, I'm grinning in the ear. 00:01:46.020 --> 00:01:51.180 Because finally, finally, I found the church that kind of saw things the way that I saw it. 00:01:51.240 --> 00:01:56.180 And it was starting to experiment and aggressively head down a road that, honestly, 00:01:56.180 --> 00:02:00.940 I was just surprised that there was a church of this stature having this conversation. 00:02:00.940 --> 00:02:07.540 And so, listen, I'm really excited to bring into the conversation some of my friends over at Seacoast Church. 00:02:07.640 --> 00:02:13.400 Seacoast is a mega church, multi-site church in the Carolinas areas. 00:02:13.920 --> 00:02:17.440 And so let me introduce, first off, let me introduce Ryan Scott. 00:02:17.620 --> 00:02:23.000 Ryan is the campus pastor, the online campus pastor for the Seacoast location. 00:02:23.420 --> 00:02:25.480 And then I also want to bring in Gabe DeWalk. 00:02:25.640 --> 00:02:29.160 And so, Gabe, Ryan, hey, thanks for being part of this conversation. 00:02:29.460 --> 00:02:30.220 It's an honor to be here, Jeff. 00:02:30.220 --> 00:02:31.320 Thanks so much for having us, man. 00:02:31.540 --> 00:02:32.060 Yeah, thank you. 00:02:32.200 --> 00:02:36.860 Yeah, now, so if you're watching on YouTube, like they got the podcast set up with the multiple mics and the gig. 00:02:36.860 --> 00:02:45.760 And so, obviously, Seacoast is making an investment into digital and seeing potential for that in the future. 00:02:45.880 --> 00:02:46.980 And so excited about that. 00:02:47.340 --> 00:02:54.600 It was funny, off air, Ryan, you were talking about like a podcast you guys are getting ready to launch through Seacoast in the fall, right? 00:02:54.660 --> 00:02:55.960 Do you want to maybe talk about that for a minute? 00:02:56.160 --> 00:02:59.920 Yeah, it's just called the Seacoast Podcast, launching August 22nd. 00:02:59.920 --> 00:03:02.780 And it's already discoverable wherever you find your podcast. 00:03:02.780 --> 00:03:07.220 I think we've got a trailer up right now, but officially launched on August 22nd. 00:03:08.280 --> 00:03:11.500 It's going to be, it's not just going to be like uploading messages from the weekend. 00:03:11.640 --> 00:03:18.220 It's actually going to be conversations that you don't typically hear, you know, on a Sunday. 00:03:18.700 --> 00:03:25.120 So it's kind of trying to capture some of the conversations that we have maybe behind closed doors, you know, amongst the staff. 00:03:25.240 --> 00:03:31.320 And, you know, we bring in some people that, some influencers, some people we have relationships with. 00:03:31.420 --> 00:03:34.620 We talk about some current issues and whatnot. 00:03:34.840 --> 00:03:36.500 And it's going to be really exciting. 00:03:36.560 --> 00:03:36.960 Yeah. 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:42.720 And so the thing that I love about Seacoast is you're moving beyond the Sunday morning service. 00:03:42.860 --> 00:03:46.080 Now, I mean, virtually every church in the planet probably has a podcast, right? 00:03:46.100 --> 00:03:47.860 And it's a 40-minute sermon. 00:03:48.020 --> 00:03:52.540 It's, once again, it's throwing that weekend content out there for more people to process. 00:03:52.540 --> 00:04:02.760 And most churches' digital strategy is either get people into the building or reinforce the people that aren't in the building, making sure they have access to the content of the sermons and whatever's there. 00:04:03.100 --> 00:04:07.740 But what I love, even with the podcast, is you're moving beyond the Sunday morning. 00:04:07.820 --> 00:04:09.120 You're starting to do some other things. 00:04:09.240 --> 00:04:10.500 And this is what really intrigued me. 00:04:10.940 --> 00:04:14.220 Gabe, I think, booked something through my system for a conversation. 00:04:14.540 --> 00:04:19.560 And I had no understanding of anything that was going on with Seacoast. 00:04:19.560 --> 00:04:29.280 And Gabe started to tell me some of the things that he's working on in Discord and creating and really utilizing asynchronous communities in a unique way. 00:04:29.420 --> 00:04:36.920 And so, Gabe, maybe do you want to just maybe tip your hat a little bit here and talk to us a little bit about King's Tide and what you're kind of heading up in that space? 00:04:37.160 --> 00:04:37.460 For sure. 00:04:38.440 --> 00:04:41.500 So, yeah, I've been working here at Seacoast for about a year and a half. 00:04:41.620 --> 00:04:43.460 I've been going to school here for two years. 00:04:43.960 --> 00:04:49.320 The way my school works is you kind of have to pick a project, I guess, to go along with your schoolwork. 00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:51.520 So it counts for college credit. 00:04:52.580 --> 00:04:56.900 And I've always just been in the Discord space, been in the online community space. 00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:02.580 I have friends that are all around the country that were at one point all here but have moved on. 00:05:02.660 --> 00:05:05.220 So it's just a way that we connected with each other. 00:05:05.220 --> 00:05:15.440 And I thought, you know, it would be really cool if we took that kind of brotherhood that we have online and expanded it out, you know, to something that the church can use. 00:05:15.520 --> 00:05:23.740 Because a lot of the younger generation and a lot of, you know, just people like us, digital is the only way that they can connect with each other. 00:05:24.680 --> 00:05:31.700 So I started looking into streaming on Twitch, starting a Discord for our student ministry here at the church. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:43.640 And we worked on that for about probably six to eight months, working on streaming, working on the Discord, connecting with students in the online space. 00:05:44.460 --> 00:05:49.640 It was new to our students because most of them already used Discord. 00:05:49.900 --> 00:06:00.120 But it was like, you know, they couldn't attend Sunday, but they could still, you know, go on there and connect with their friends, you know, pray for each other, be a part of an online small group. 00:06:00.820 --> 00:06:18.500 And then, I guess, come February, we transitioned our model from just being a singular Discord server to partnering with Christian influencers, whether they're YouTubers or Instagram, Facebook influencers, partnering with those people and saying, 00:06:18.500 --> 00:06:30.780 hey, we understand that you're maybe just one guy running this substantial page of followers, general Christian audience page. 00:06:31.860 --> 00:06:41.000 How can we, you know, best serve your community and apply what we've been doing at our church to your ministry? 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:48.240 I would, I will say that I don't know if all influencers see their pages as a ministry. 00:06:48.240 --> 00:06:58.220 You can run a substantially large Christian page and have a substantially large Christian audience and not see, not see that as a ministry. 00:06:58.400 --> 00:07:01.940 But we just kind of said, here's all the things that we could bring to the table. 00:07:02.080 --> 00:07:03.460 Here's how we can care for your people. 00:07:03.880 --> 00:07:06.460 And we'd love to partner with you and push forward. 00:07:07.360 --> 00:07:10.280 So one of those conversations made it all the way through. 00:07:10.500 --> 00:07:14.420 And we were able to start a Discord server for an influencer on Instagram. 00:07:15.700 --> 00:07:19.480 And he was kind of our funnel, I guess, for this community. 00:07:19.820 --> 00:07:28.500 So he brought the people and we brought the ministry, I guess, and applied that same Discord model to his page. 00:07:29.500 --> 00:07:38.000 So kind of looking at it from a broad perspective, the Discord server carries the mission of our church. 00:07:38.640 --> 00:07:49.000 If you don't, I'm sure most of your listeners know what Discord is, but it is just the best way to describe it is just an online community of text channels and voice channels, each serving their own unique purpose. 00:07:50.280 --> 00:07:56.980 So, yeah, so we started doing ministry and the Discord server really took off. 00:07:57.080 --> 00:08:13.600 And I think now as we look at our own communities as a church and we look at our influencers communities, we want to kind of push out and expand a little bit more and continue applying this model moving forward in the future. 00:08:13.600 --> 00:08:24.560 What I love about it that fits in the, you know, kind of what, Jeff, what you were saying, talking about the podcast a minute ago is, you know, for years we've been doing, I mean, Seacoast has been doing church online for a long time. 00:08:25.280 --> 00:08:34.420 I think somewhere along the way I heard that we were maybe the seventh church to get on Life Church's church online platform back in like 2006 or 2007 or something. 00:08:34.420 --> 00:08:43.300 But for the majority of those years, it's been about content distribution, right, trying to just share our weekend service with as many people as possible. 00:08:43.420 --> 00:08:58.360 But the vision that's driving what we're doing with Gabe, with Discord, with the podcast and some other things we're working on is to try to ensure that we remain a church who's doing digital ministry, not just distributing content, but trying to create community. 00:08:58.360 --> 00:09:07.240 And so that's what I love about what Gabe's created with Discord is, you know, that influencer that he's partnering with is putting out content and that's a great thing. 00:09:07.280 --> 00:09:11.480 And people are getting that, but maybe it sparks something within them that they're looking for community. 00:09:11.980 --> 00:09:20.660 And that's what he's kind of brought to the table to be able to partner with them as, hey, here's where you can plug those people into some community to continue to support them. 00:09:20.880 --> 00:09:22.900 Yeah, this is a great idea. 00:09:23.320 --> 00:09:38.680 I mean, what it does is it positions the church as a discipleship authority, and it's working with content creators and influencers that are reaching a different type of person than the person that's coming to the building. 00:09:39.860 --> 00:09:43.960 And so, like, Gabe, I just, I love this idea so much. 00:09:44.540 --> 00:09:46.280 Where did this idea come from? 00:09:46.280 --> 00:09:51.740 Like, is this you sitting around with some guys talking, you dreaming, you saw it somewhere? 00:09:51.960 --> 00:09:57.220 Like, how did you come up with this collaborative idea of working with other influencers? 00:09:57.640 --> 00:10:03.960 So I guess it was kind of a roundtable discussion between me and some of the guys that helped me run the King's Tide. 00:10:04.540 --> 00:10:11.200 But we just kind of, after six months of working on Twitch and working on our own Discord server in the church, 00:10:11.400 --> 00:10:16.100 we kind of just took a step back and looked at the work we were putting into it. 00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:19.260 But also, we were focused more on kingdom impact. 00:10:19.440 --> 00:10:22.500 Like, how can we impact the kingdom the most? 00:10:24.120 --> 00:10:30.220 Because we didn't feel like, like, for us, like, being in the spotlight, I guess, per se, 00:10:30.340 --> 00:10:34.600 like, streaming on Twitch, you know, twice, three times a week to retain our audience, 00:10:34.760 --> 00:10:39.560 just wasn't where we saw, I guess we just didn't see that in our future. 00:10:39.560 --> 00:10:50.040 So we said, you know, how about we just find people that already have the community built up and just apply our model. 00:10:51.180 --> 00:10:56.200 And that way we can make more of a difference, do more of what we're passionate about, 00:10:56.320 --> 00:11:01.220 and connect with more people all at the same time and kind of accelerate the growth. 00:11:01.900 --> 00:11:05.060 I think that if we wanted to get to the place where we are now, 00:11:05.300 --> 00:11:12.880 if we only used our own channels and our own resources and our own content and building off of our own time, 00:11:12.960 --> 00:11:17.800 it would take years to establish the base of people that we've already been able to impact, 00:11:18.640 --> 00:11:21.680 to pray for, to, you know, funnel into small groups. 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:30.180 And I think that's kind of where our heart was when we came up with this idea and we started applying it for the church. 00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:33.600 Yeah, it's this really interesting relationship. 00:11:33.800 --> 00:11:39.980 Like, Gabe, I've been the guy that's been talking to streamers, that's been talking to influencers, 00:11:39.980 --> 00:11:45.260 and I've been trying to coach them on an asynchronous discipleship model, 00:11:45.260 --> 00:11:50.020 like what you're building, what you've built and are building now upon. 00:11:50.860 --> 00:12:01.420 And I've had just, I'll just be honest, I've had a really hard time trying to convince a streamer to take that approach because they're not gifted that way. 00:12:01.520 --> 00:12:02.420 They don't think that way. 00:12:02.500 --> 00:12:08.820 They don't understand, you know, the big picture and the potential of this, or it just seems so overwhelming. 00:12:09.200 --> 00:12:17.560 And so I've even been trying to like connect discord people that do see that with others and trying to collaborate here because I just, 00:12:17.700 --> 00:12:20.200 I didn't even in my furthest imagination, 00:12:20.200 --> 00:12:26.940 could I think of a mega church that would take the time to build something like this, 00:12:27.040 --> 00:12:31.620 catch that vision and start to work with streamers like you have. 00:12:31.860 --> 00:12:38.280 And so this is, this, I mean, literally when you started talking to me on this thing and tell me what you were doing, 00:12:38.760 --> 00:12:43.000 if you know me, I'm rarely speechless, but I was pretty close in that moment because I just, 00:12:43.140 --> 00:12:46.180 I couldn't believe a church had actually done this on their own. 00:12:46.240 --> 00:12:47.560 Like, this is, this is beautiful. 00:12:48.240 --> 00:12:54.040 What, talk to me, do you, like maybe a story or some relationships, you know, some, 00:12:54.100 --> 00:12:57.740 some churches would say, you know, Jeff, digital discipleship, 00:12:57.820 --> 00:12:59.600 discipleship needs to happen in physical space. 00:12:59.600 --> 00:13:04.580 Hey Jeff, some of those relationships, um, that, that you're doing digitally. 00:13:04.780 --> 00:13:04.880 Yeah. 00:13:04.900 --> 00:13:06.340 That's not discipleship level. 00:13:06.960 --> 00:13:11.340 Um, can you talk a little bit about like some of those relationships, 00:13:11.340 --> 00:13:16.820 some of those people that you've got in King's Tide that are in this asynchronous community? 00:13:17.340 --> 00:13:22.920 When we approach an influencer, it's, um, it's, I would say it's less relational. 00:13:23.100 --> 00:13:25.340 Uh, we do establish a relationship with them, 00:13:25.340 --> 00:13:29.740 but it is more of, this is what we want to do for your people. 00:13:30.240 --> 00:13:32.440 Uh, and we understand that you can't do this on your own. 00:13:32.520 --> 00:13:36.500 So just kind of let us step in and, um, do what we do. 00:13:36.860 --> 00:13:39.380 Um, and usually it's just an, okay, cool. 00:13:39.400 --> 00:13:40.220 Like, this is great. 00:13:40.320 --> 00:13:41.380 I'd love to have this. 00:13:41.620 --> 00:13:46.420 This will put me leagues ahead of my competition or other, you know, 00:13:46.420 --> 00:13:51.360 people that are, you know, uh, posting on social media with the same goal as me. 00:13:51.360 --> 00:13:55.360 This just establishes something else for my community to keep my users retained. 00:13:55.940 --> 00:13:58.560 Um, so that's kind of how we approach the influencer. 00:13:58.800 --> 00:14:04.440 Once we get people into the server, um, you generally start off as what we call a member. 00:14:04.640 --> 00:14:06.760 Um, so you can interact with people. 00:14:06.760 --> 00:14:10.900 You can, um, do, do pretty much everything the server's intended for. 00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:13.320 Um, but we also have forms built in. 00:14:13.320 --> 00:14:19.060 So if you want to become a leader, um, if you want to, uh, we carry the mission of our 00:14:19.060 --> 00:14:21.320 church over into our discord server. 00:14:21.980 --> 00:14:24.680 Um, so part of that is make a difference. 00:14:24.680 --> 00:14:27.180 So we really, um, push making a difference. 00:14:27.180 --> 00:14:32.500 Like you can make a difference here on this server, um, that you otherwise could not. 00:14:32.620 --> 00:14:40.300 So use, uh, the people like use the resources in front of you to kind of, you know, you, you 00:14:40.300 --> 00:14:44.080 can step into a leadership position and you can, uh, disciple people. 00:14:44.380 --> 00:14:47.740 Um, so our process for that is we connect with them one-on-one. 00:14:47.860 --> 00:14:52.620 We usually do about two voice calls and we ask them a series of questions just about, you 00:14:52.620 --> 00:14:57.380 know, what they're, uh, how they're looking to use our platform. 00:14:57.380 --> 00:15:04.200 If you know, they're an actual legit leader, I know that finding people strictly from online 00:15:04.200 --> 00:15:08.500 is difficult for some people, some people, cause you never know who could be on the other 00:15:08.500 --> 00:15:10.980 side of, of the computer. 00:15:10.980 --> 00:15:18.580 But, um, once they get connected, it really just establishes a basis for them to take, take 00:15:18.580 --> 00:15:26.140 charge of, um, you know, it helps them grow in their own faith, like answering difficult 00:15:26.140 --> 00:15:35.020 questions or, um, you know, interacting with people who, um, are difficult in of themselves. 00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:37.040 You've got the one streamer right now, right? 00:15:37.340 --> 00:15:42.260 Um, that, that's, that the influencer that's coming in as, as you, have you, have you been 00:15:42.260 --> 00:15:47.800 looking at expanding, uh, bringing others in like kind of what is, what's the roadmap of 00:15:47.800 --> 00:15:48.820 where you want to take this thing? 00:15:49.040 --> 00:15:50.400 We're pretty aware of our capacity. 00:15:50.760 --> 00:15:57.220 Um, so as I was talking about, like with the leaders, like we do, um, I'd say we get about 00:15:57.220 --> 00:15:59.560 three leaders a week who want to serve in a higher capacity. 00:15:59.640 --> 00:16:05.600 Um, but a step above that we have administrators and administrators, we don't allow our leaders 00:16:05.600 --> 00:16:10.000 to have, you know, permissions to, you know, change things. 00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:15.300 Uh, we just recently allowed them to start deleting messages as long as they reported to 00:16:15.300 --> 00:16:16.500 administrative staff. 00:16:17.220 --> 00:16:22.860 Um, but the administrators are really the base of what keeps the King's tide moving. 00:16:23.500 --> 00:16:27.260 Um, they're the ones that put in the hours, add new channels. 00:16:27.460 --> 00:16:31.620 They're the ones that, uh, like our friend Diego in the studio, create the branding. 00:16:32.080 --> 00:16:39.520 Um, they put in hours on their own time, um, as volunteers and they kind of take the leadership 00:16:39.520 --> 00:16:41.840 role, but they also take it to the next step. 00:16:42.440 --> 00:16:46.700 Um, and they help manage crisis or whatever could pop up. 00:16:47.780 --> 00:16:54.060 Um, but as we're looking at expanding, growing our administrators is where we're really focused 00:16:54.060 --> 00:16:57.760 on because we can't manage more people without more administration. 00:16:57.760 --> 00:17:02.680 It would just, it would get to a point where, you know, it could kind of just run away from 00:17:02.680 --> 00:17:04.180 us and that's not what we want to happen. 00:17:04.940 --> 00:17:09.680 Um, right now our administrative team is in a good place and we recently, uh, just came 00:17:09.680 --> 00:17:12.520 to an agreement with another influencer who's on Instagram. 00:17:13.140 --> 00:17:20.860 Um, not a content creator, a content reposter, um, just maybe posting like a cool Bible verse, 00:17:21.060 --> 00:17:22.860 something like that, if I could best describe it. 00:17:23.100 --> 00:17:26.320 Um, and he has 150,000 followers on Instagram. 00:17:26.980 --> 00:17:33.320 Um, so we'll coach him on how to use his page to best funnel people into the server. 00:17:33.460 --> 00:17:39.140 And just like we did with our other influencer, um, we'll create a community and start building 00:17:39.140 --> 00:17:39.900 it from scratch. 00:17:40.520 --> 00:17:45.920 Um, so I think we started that one last week and we have about 30 people in it now. 00:17:46.540 --> 00:17:52.720 Um, the way, uh, the way the Instagram algorithm works is different, different people, I guess, 00:17:52.780 --> 00:17:54.940 interact with different pages in certain ways. 00:17:55.040 --> 00:17:59.480 You know, you may have a page where people go straight to the Instagram bio and another 00:17:59.480 --> 00:18:04.700 page where people never look past the description of a post and never click in to see a story 00:18:04.700 --> 00:18:05.480 or whatnot. 00:18:05.480 --> 00:18:11.600 So it's working with them to establish, you know, what's the best plan, um, with the algorithm 00:18:11.600 --> 00:18:14.760 and how we're going to get people into this so we can really kick it off. 00:18:15.120 --> 00:18:19.420 Because kicking off a community with just a few people is really hard. 00:18:19.500 --> 00:18:24.340 It's hard when you only have 25 people in a server to get them all to interact with each 00:18:24.340 --> 00:18:29.800 other because they can't hide behind the mass of the more extroverted people, you know, 00:18:30.300 --> 00:18:31.180 talking every day. 00:18:31.860 --> 00:18:36.540 Um, so yeah, it's kind of, once we get to that point, working with our influencer and 00:18:36.540 --> 00:18:39.700 seeing how, um, we can funnel people into their community. 00:18:40.240 --> 00:18:41.540 I, I, I love this. 00:18:41.560 --> 00:18:42.460 This is, this is incredible. 00:18:42.460 --> 00:18:47.180 And of course this is, you know, branded Seacoast all over the place. 00:18:47.400 --> 00:18:48.860 Um, no, I'm, I'm, I'm kidding. 00:18:48.940 --> 00:18:50.820 It's, it's not, it's called King's Tide. 00:18:51.040 --> 00:18:56.440 So, um, you know, uh, let's let, let me ask this, uh, Ryan, as, as we look at like 00:18:56.440 --> 00:19:03.380 Seacoast's relationship of this, how, what as, as online campus pastor, is this part of 00:19:03.380 --> 00:19:04.180 the online campus? 00:19:04.180 --> 00:19:08.320 Is this branded, like what, what has Seacoast's posture been with this? 00:19:08.380 --> 00:19:12.420 If anything, just a sponsor for Gabe, you know, like he said, he, he started with this idea 00:19:12.420 --> 00:19:16.800 when he was in school, uh, and that's a partnership with, uh, Southeastern University. 00:19:16.800 --> 00:19:18.840 We were kind of one of their extension sites. 00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:22.080 I know a lot of churches around the country have got that, but, um, great school. 00:19:22.220 --> 00:19:27.680 But, um, but when he came up with this idea, he was also kind of working on a practicum 00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:28.580 project and stuff. 00:19:28.580 --> 00:19:32.800 And, uh, and, and he first brought the idea to me and I was like, dude, this is above my 00:19:32.800 --> 00:19:33.020 head. 00:19:33.100 --> 00:19:34.140 I don't know what discord is. 00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:35.620 I have no idea what you're talking about. 00:19:36.040 --> 00:19:38.560 Um, and, and so I said, listen, here's the deal. 00:19:38.620 --> 00:19:43.640 I don't want to, the last thing I want to do is, uh, micromanage or take over and squash 00:19:43.640 --> 00:19:44.960 what you're trying to build. 00:19:44.960 --> 00:19:46.660 So let me just support you. 00:19:46.800 --> 00:19:47.520 Keep me informed. 00:19:47.620 --> 00:19:49.180 We'll meet once a month or something like that. 00:19:49.600 --> 00:19:53.660 And, um, and, and so over time, you know, seeing how it's built and whatnot. 00:19:53.660 --> 00:19:58.320 And when, uh, the first influencer relationship came through, it just started exploding and 00:19:58.320 --> 00:20:02.560 I'm just blown away by what this guy has created and his team has created. 00:20:02.900 --> 00:20:07.180 Um, but to me, it's a cool example of, you know, like I'm Jeff, I'm 43. 00:20:07.180 --> 00:20:08.620 I've been doing ministry about 20 years. 00:20:09.520 --> 00:20:13.820 And, uh, we, over those 20 years, we always have these conversations in the church about, 00:20:13.980 --> 00:20:15.760 um, we're losing the next generation. 00:20:15.880 --> 00:20:16.760 We're losing the next generation. 00:20:16.760 --> 00:20:21.780 And we've got to, you know, stop this mass exodus of the younger people from the church. 00:20:21.780 --> 00:20:22.080 Right. 00:20:22.800 --> 00:20:25.440 And we like to talk about innovating. 00:20:26.180 --> 00:20:30.840 Um, but, but the cool thing to me is that like the, the ones to reach the next generation 00:20:30.840 --> 00:20:34.660 are probably going to be the ones in the next generation who are believers and are going 00:20:34.660 --> 00:20:36.560 to come up with these, with these ideas. 00:20:37.080 --> 00:20:41.160 Um, and so, you know, Gabe being a young guy still in school and whatnot, and his team is 00:20:41.160 --> 00:20:46.020 mostly young guys, um, you know, they're going to be the ones that are going to come up with 00:20:46.020 --> 00:20:50.120 the great idea as, as born out here, um, to reach their generation. 00:20:50.120 --> 00:20:55.840 And so just trying the best we could to, to not squash any ideas by trying to micromanage 00:20:55.840 --> 00:21:00.240 it, just supporting them, uh, and honestly learning from what they're creating the whole time. 00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:04.600 Um, you know, I could not have built this, you know? 00:21:05.100 --> 00:21:10.160 Um, but, but the cool thing, like you asked about branding and stuff and, you know, it's, 00:21:10.220 --> 00:21:13.160 it, it doesn't have to have the Seacoast stamp on it, right? 00:21:13.180 --> 00:21:18.580 It doesn't have to have our logo everywhere because what matters most is the culture of 00:21:18.580 --> 00:21:19.100 our church. 00:21:19.360 --> 00:21:21.860 Um, your Seacoast is a welcoming church. 00:21:21.940 --> 00:21:24.080 We always want everyone to feel welcome here. 00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:25.080 You don't have to dress up. 00:21:25.120 --> 00:21:27.500 You don't have to posture yourself to fit in here. 00:21:27.600 --> 00:21:28.280 Everybody's welcome. 00:21:28.680 --> 00:21:32.980 And we're seeing that borne out in the way the community is run at Kingstide. 00:21:32.980 --> 00:21:38.520 Um, so it might not have the Seacoast name on it, but it's got the Seacoast vision and 00:21:38.520 --> 00:21:42.440 mission and the lifeblood and the culture, uh, because all the guys that are running it 00:21:42.440 --> 00:21:45.300 bring that with them as they develop this community. 00:21:45.740 --> 00:21:51.440 First off, like not squashing the joy, uh, not squashing the idea, releasing it, realizing 00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:54.740 that, Hey, the kid may know more than I do in this space. 00:21:54.880 --> 00:21:58.740 I don't need to own it as much as I need to help him do it. 00:21:59.140 --> 00:22:00.900 Um, that's beautiful, man. 00:22:00.900 --> 00:22:03.540 Like we, we don't see that enough in churches. 00:22:03.540 --> 00:22:09.040 And often lately I've been talking a lot about like missional imagination and, and maybe it's 00:22:09.040 --> 00:22:16.100 time for us not to own every idea as much as help others do and execute their ideas. 00:22:16.640 --> 00:22:21.220 Um, you know, God is capable of, of doing things even beyond what we can imagine. 00:22:21.360 --> 00:22:22.600 Ephesians, I think it's six. 00:22:22.700 --> 00:22:28.360 And so like, there's an incredible opportunity to really empower some of these people that 00:22:28.360 --> 00:22:34.000 have imaginative ideas, missional ideas that, that can help reach a different type of person. 00:22:34.260 --> 00:22:39.260 And, and so like hats off to, to Seacoast for, for running down this road. 00:22:39.760 --> 00:22:43.320 Um, is that something that's within the culture of Seacoast? 00:22:43.420 --> 00:22:45.340 Do we see that in other places? 00:22:45.340 --> 00:22:48.420 Uh, is this something that you're hoping to grow and foster? 00:22:48.580 --> 00:22:50.240 Like what, what does this look like within the church? 00:22:50.480 --> 00:22:52.300 I want to take a second and honor our leadership. 00:22:52.500 --> 00:22:56.220 So our founding pastor, Greg Surratt, and now our lead pastor, Josh Surratt. 00:22:56.680 --> 00:23:00.520 Um, you know, over the years I've been on staff at Seacoast 12 years, and I've always seen this. 00:23:00.980 --> 00:23:05.980 Um, they hold, uh, people, ideas, ministries with very open hands, right? 00:23:06.420 --> 00:23:11.440 Uh, if God gives us something and trusts us something, um, we're not going to hold on tight 00:23:11.440 --> 00:23:15.580 to it because, uh, it might just be ours for a season, whether it's a person, whether it's 00:23:15.580 --> 00:23:16.800 a ministry, whether it's an idea. 00:23:17.280 --> 00:23:19.780 Um, the point is not to use it for Seacoast glory. 00:23:19.780 --> 00:23:21.960 The point is to use it for God's glory in his kingdom. 00:23:22.200 --> 00:23:26.660 And so that, that has always been a part of, uh, the culture here at Seacoast, you know, 00:23:26.720 --> 00:23:32.980 for instance, just in your, in your physical campus, uh, ministry scenario, you've got somebody 00:23:32.980 --> 00:23:36.800 that'll come to the church and say, Hey, I've got a great idea for a new ministry. 00:23:36.920 --> 00:23:38.360 Seacoast really needs to do this. 00:23:38.860 --> 00:23:42.440 And there's always been the response of that's a great idea. 00:23:43.260 --> 00:23:45.120 How about you take the lead on that? 00:23:45.200 --> 00:23:46.460 What, what can you do with that? 00:23:46.460 --> 00:23:50.900 You know, and, and put it back on people because the point is not for those who work at the 00:23:50.900 --> 00:23:54.400 church or paid by the church to make a difference in the kingdom. 00:23:54.400 --> 00:23:55.540 It's for all of us, right? 00:23:55.580 --> 00:23:56.760 The church is all of us. 00:23:57.220 --> 00:24:02.800 Uh, so that's definitely been a part of the culture, um, throughout Seacoast and just 00:24:02.800 --> 00:24:04.380 grateful for our leadership. 00:24:04.380 --> 00:24:08.080 That's always had that, uh, in their, in their minds. 00:24:08.540 --> 00:24:08.960 That's great. 00:24:09.360 --> 00:24:15.120 Um, I, I just, I, I just, I love this idea of, of, of, you know, empowering and, and even 00:24:15.120 --> 00:24:19.800 the fact that of the, the leadership being open-handed with some of these ideas, it's, it's 00:24:19.800 --> 00:24:23.600 atypical and it's, it's beautiful when you see it happen that way. 00:24:23.600 --> 00:24:25.640 Um, well, well, let me ask this, Gabe. 00:24:25.780 --> 00:24:35.400 Um, it sounded to me like the weakness in this thing is the ability to get, um, discord 00:24:35.400 --> 00:24:43.000 admins to get leaders in the system to manage the hundreds, the thousands of people. 00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:46.740 So I'm just curious, but it's, and I don't want to talk numbers for numbers, but numbers 00:24:46.740 --> 00:24:48.620 to define, you know, scalability. 00:24:49.260 --> 00:24:54.720 Um, like how many, would you say it's like one leader for a hundred people for 200? 00:24:54.720 --> 00:24:59.660 Like, what do you feel like, uh, a leader in admin can manage in discord? 00:25:00.200 --> 00:25:00.340 Yeah. 00:25:00.420 --> 00:25:10.700 So I'd say, um, our largest community at around 2,600, um, it takes about 10 dedicated leaders 00:25:10.700 --> 00:25:12.160 to run that server. 00:25:12.400 --> 00:25:14.540 That's my best, that's my best estimate. 00:25:14.680 --> 00:25:18.380 It's sometimes it's a little more, sometimes it's a little less just depending on traffic, 00:25:18.460 --> 00:25:21.820 uh, growth rate and whatnot, but I think it averages around 10. 00:25:22.300 --> 00:25:27.160 Um, that looks like a leader being at least three leaders being available, male and female 00:25:27.160 --> 00:25:28.580 24 hours a day. 00:25:28.960 --> 00:25:33.640 Um, so, uh, you know, discord is on the internet. 00:25:33.640 --> 00:25:38.040 So even when I go to sleep, I have to go to sleep knowing that when I wake up, it's not 00:25:38.040 --> 00:25:39.720 all going to be terrible. 00:25:39.720 --> 00:25:44.660 And I have to have people I trust, uh, people we trust to manage it and manage. 00:25:45.380 --> 00:25:52.040 Um, and I'd say for about every 10 to 15 leaders, about one administrator is what we 00:25:52.040 --> 00:25:52.480 shoot for. 00:25:52.480 --> 00:25:58.840 Um, and the cool thing is a lot of our leaders and a lot of our administrators, they, 00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:01.760 they follow our new servers. 00:26:02.140 --> 00:26:07.620 So like with our current largest community, all of the leaders that established a basis 00:26:07.620 --> 00:26:11.380 for this community and all the administrators that established a basis for this community 00:26:11.380 --> 00:26:14.020 came out of our youth groups, discord server. 00:26:14.220 --> 00:26:18.320 So they were all people that said, Hey, I'll step up and I'll help you get this thing kicked 00:26:18.320 --> 00:26:18.700 off. 00:26:19.060 --> 00:26:23.000 Um, but yeah, our, most of our administrators follow our servers. 00:26:23.000 --> 00:26:26.700 So you'll see a lot of the same administrators, no matter what server you're in. 00:26:27.200 --> 00:26:33.520 Um, and then we delegate out responsibilities and stuff of that nature amongst ourselves. 00:26:34.020 --> 00:26:35.220 You said 24 hours a day. 00:26:35.300 --> 00:26:39.060 I'm just curious what, a, how do you solve that problem? 00:26:39.220 --> 00:26:45.020 How do you get somebody at 4am Eastern and, uh, and, and B, how much traffic are you getting 00:26:45.020 --> 00:26:45.940 at 4am Eastern? 00:26:46.060 --> 00:26:49.060 What, what is the conversation that early look like? 00:26:49.360 --> 00:26:54.120 Um, so I'd say just looking at our audience, about 60% of our audience is in the U S and then 00:26:54.120 --> 00:26:59.200 40% is outside the U S. Um, uh, I guess it's a blessing. 00:26:59.380 --> 00:27:06.440 One of my buddies who, uh, is an administrator for me was, uh, stationed in Hawaii, um, and 00:27:06.440 --> 00:27:08.120 is now stationed in Okinawa, Japan. 00:27:08.560 --> 00:27:15.040 So he was doing this whole thing with us before he, um, got fully into the military. 00:27:15.500 --> 00:27:20.820 Um, but was able to help us kick off our basis of running this thing 24 hours a day. 00:27:20.820 --> 00:27:25.420 So as soon as, you know, we get to bed, he kind of woke up and kind of took the reins 00:27:25.420 --> 00:27:28.820 on managing people who might be from outside the U S. 00:27:29.400 --> 00:27:33.220 Um, or just people from the U S who like to stay up late or wake up early. 00:27:33.780 --> 00:27:40.640 Um, overnight, uh, I would say because 40% of our traffic is usually, um, more active overnight. 00:27:40.640 --> 00:27:45.580 I would say we get about 500 to 600 messages in 12 hours. 00:27:45.840 --> 00:27:50.480 Um, and then during the day can range from a thousand to 2000 in our largest community. 00:27:51.140 --> 00:27:57.200 Um, but, uh, we always have one administrator and then a few leaders active at all times to 00:27:57.200 --> 00:28:01.260 help manage the flow of people coming in and communicating with each other. 00:28:01.260 --> 00:28:05.560 And you're getting the global reach that you're getting because the, the influencers that you're 00:28:05.560 --> 00:28:08.560 working with have that global reach. 00:28:08.560 --> 00:28:12.200 I mean, that's, that's the reason you're pulling from these people that that that's, that's great. 00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:15.840 Um, so how many, like, what does it look like? 00:28:15.840 --> 00:28:18.300 Cause I, I'm hearing some hesitancy from you, which is great. 00:28:18.520 --> 00:28:23.560 You know, you've got the opportunity to bring on some other, uh, front doors, uh, how many 00:28:23.560 --> 00:28:29.180 leaders, admins, like what, what's your recruiting process before you bring on, on something 00:28:29.180 --> 00:28:29.440 else? 00:28:29.440 --> 00:28:34.440 Or do you feel like you've got enough now to, to onboard a second, um, influencer, second 00:28:34.440 --> 00:28:34.840 front door? 00:28:35.400 --> 00:28:39.800 The process will be just like for the first, uh, we pulled several leaders and administrators 00:28:39.800 --> 00:28:43.680 from our two previous communities to help establish a basis. 00:28:44.300 --> 00:28:50.320 Um, but most of our, one thing that's cool about having a centralized model, like the King's 00:28:50.320 --> 00:28:58.080 side is we can run events and we can run Bible studies, uh, in sync between different communities. 00:28:58.400 --> 00:29:04.460 Um, so you may be in community a, or you may be in community B. Um, but this Bible study 00:29:04.460 --> 00:29:07.660 is happening on Tuesday at nine o'clock on our website. 00:29:07.660 --> 00:29:12.760 You can come sit in, um, and then we're going to put it on the church online platform and play 00:29:12.760 --> 00:29:18.020 it 24 hours a day so that if you miss it, you can go back on and you can watch it like 00:29:18.020 --> 00:29:23.820 it's being watched live and a leader will be in the chat to meet you and, uh, communicate 00:29:23.820 --> 00:29:30.340 with you like you're, so you can actively participate in the Bible study without having, um, so event 00:29:30.340 --> 00:29:37.860 wise and server wise, um, we have, I guess, um, kind of a list of, um, you know, a big part 00:29:37.860 --> 00:29:39.760 of discord is keeping your community engaged. 00:29:39.760 --> 00:29:46.380 So like, um, sometimes if with smaller servers, especially if you don't send out announcements 00:29:46.380 --> 00:29:51.420 or you don't send out conversation topics or have somebody who stimulates the conversation, 00:29:51.640 --> 00:29:58.720 the conversation will just fall off and people won't, I guess people won't come back to communicate 00:29:58.720 --> 00:30:01.280 or they're just like, you know, the server's dead. 00:30:01.340 --> 00:30:05.020 I'll move on to another server with more active, uh, communication. 00:30:05.680 --> 00:30:11.740 Um, so keeping our servers active is a big, is a big, uh, part of a leader's responsibility 00:30:11.740 --> 00:30:15.720 or an administrator's responsibility, making sure that the community is healthy. 00:30:16.080 --> 00:30:20.980 I'd say if a community didn't have constant, a community of that size, if it didn't have 00:30:20.980 --> 00:30:25.280 constant traffic, if it didn't have constant, you know, people talking back and forth, if 00:30:25.280 --> 00:30:29.540 it wasn't being used for its intended purpose, then I would call that an unhealthy community. 00:30:30.060 --> 00:30:36.360 Um, and we have a plan to nurse a community back to health if in some case it drops off 00:30:36.360 --> 00:30:41.720 or, you know, maybe somebody has a busy week and they can't, you know, send out the announcements 00:30:41.720 --> 00:30:42.400 like they should. 00:30:42.620 --> 00:30:49.800 So, um, keeping the communities healthy and centralizing our events allows us to scale our leaders and 00:30:49.800 --> 00:30:55.460 our administrators to work, um, to work on more things and also work more confidently 00:30:55.460 --> 00:30:57.620 between all of our servers. 00:30:57.620 --> 00:31:02.460 So you've got all of these servers and you just said, I thought I heard you say that you 00:31:02.460 --> 00:31:06.340 centralize events among all the different servers. 00:31:06.720 --> 00:31:08.200 What else are you centralizing? 00:31:08.500 --> 00:31:12.400 Uh, so small groups, uh, will be something that we start centralizing. 00:31:12.900 --> 00:31:17.980 Uh, one thing that pastor Ryan and I talked about is that a lot of church lingo doesn't 00:31:17.980 --> 00:31:21.940 translate into the discord space. 00:31:22.280 --> 00:31:25.820 Um, and small groups was one of the first things that we discovered that that kind of 00:31:25.820 --> 00:31:27.860 didn't really work well with. 00:31:28.380 --> 00:31:33.820 Um, discord itself is a very relational platform. 00:31:34.060 --> 00:31:38.920 And I feel like that if you're involved in discord and you're talking to maybe a group of 00:31:38.920 --> 00:31:42.180 three or four people, you know, every week and you're praying for each other and you're 00:31:42.180 --> 00:31:46.460 doing life together through digital means, then that would be classified as what I would 00:31:46.460 --> 00:31:47.380 say is a small group. 00:31:47.560 --> 00:31:50.640 If you're all getting in a voice call together once a week. 00:31:50.780 --> 00:31:53.760 So we kind of shifted our lingo from small group to focus group. 00:31:54.020 --> 00:31:58.880 I'd say in our, in our largest community, we have about five or six focus groups of people 00:31:58.880 --> 00:32:01.480 that just intentionally connect with each other. 00:32:02.180 --> 00:32:07.820 Um, and they even communicate on platforms off of our discord. 00:32:07.820 --> 00:32:11.720 We noticed that they started creating group chats and they were like, Oh, join my group 00:32:11.720 --> 00:32:12.400 chat on Instagram. 00:32:12.400 --> 00:32:16.920 We're all going to, you know, move this to somewhere that we're a little more familiar 00:32:16.920 --> 00:32:19.600 with because a lot of our users are brand new to discord. 00:32:20.120 --> 00:32:26.420 What are you learning from this that's applicable to Seacoast online campus? 00:32:26.620 --> 00:32:32.460 The biggest thing I'm learning is, you know, we, in ministry, we like things to fit the way 00:32:32.460 --> 00:32:33.400 we expect them to fit. 00:32:34.180 --> 00:32:37.940 Um, you know, we've, we've got our structures that we're accustomed to. 00:32:38.440 --> 00:32:42.700 Um, but when we, if we're going to be willing to innovate, what church is going to look like 00:32:42.700 --> 00:32:47.680 in the future with this digital revolution, um, we're going to have to be able to let go 00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:48.520 of some of those things. 00:32:49.380 --> 00:32:56.580 Um, a lot of people look at the younger generation and they, they think because they spend so 00:32:56.580 --> 00:32:58.340 much time on screens that they're antisocial. 00:32:58.900 --> 00:33:01.660 And, uh, and I, I think I heard somebody else say this online. 00:33:01.780 --> 00:33:06.100 I can't remember who to give it credit to, but we're like, no, you're, you're younger kids 00:33:06.100 --> 00:33:08.220 that are spending all this time on screens. 00:33:08.220 --> 00:33:11.720 They might be a lot more social than you are because they're interacting with their friends. 00:33:11.720 --> 00:33:12.500 They're doing community. 00:33:12.500 --> 00:33:16.260 They're just doing it differently than what you're accustomed to in your generation and 00:33:16.260 --> 00:33:16.460 stuff. 00:33:16.560 --> 00:33:22.680 And so learning that, um, community, which is the, the whole point of doing this, you know, 00:33:22.680 --> 00:33:28.160 trying to make sure that, uh, everything about the church that happens outside of Sunday, 00:33:28.160 --> 00:33:33.160 you know, people doing life together, encouraging each other, praying for each other, uh, discipling 00:33:33.160 --> 00:33:35.260 each other, uh, with the word and everything. 00:33:35.720 --> 00:33:42.020 Um, that's, that's the point of all this is to make sure that, that life giving aspect of 00:33:42.020 --> 00:33:44.740 church is happening within digital spaces too. 00:33:45.440 --> 00:33:51.460 Um, and so we're learning that people want that and people are attracted to that and they're 00:33:51.460 --> 00:33:56.200 going to pursue that even if it looks different than what the church is used to that being 00:33:56.200 --> 00:33:56.960 structured as. 00:33:57.460 --> 00:34:02.340 Um, and so, you know, I think about a minute ago when Gabe was talking about the influencers, 00:34:02.340 --> 00:34:08.880 I was like, it's kind of cool, this partnership, because, um, those people, you might think that 00:34:08.880 --> 00:34:12.700 an influencer is just developing an Instagram channel because they want to make money. 00:34:12.700 --> 00:34:17.280 Well, maybe some of them, but some of them really care about the people that they're influencing. 00:34:17.920 --> 00:34:22.660 And when, when Gabe comes to them and says, Hey, we'd like to support those people with 00:34:22.660 --> 00:34:25.700 community in a way that you can't really do on that same platform. 00:34:26.240 --> 00:34:28.060 Um, they're attracted to that idea. 00:34:28.060 --> 00:34:33.920 They, you know, it's another way for them to make a difference, um, with the people that 00:34:33.920 --> 00:34:34.600 are following them. 00:34:34.600 --> 00:34:40.440 And, um, I think it speaks to the desire of a lot of people out there to make a positive 00:34:40.440 --> 00:34:43.760 difference and to be responsible with the impact that they're having on people. 00:34:43.760 --> 00:34:47.460 Um, Gabe, what's the biggest obstacle that, that, that you're facing with this? 00:34:47.660 --> 00:34:51.800 Um, I mean, we, we talked a little bit about, you know, duplicating training, training leaders, 00:34:51.800 --> 00:34:55.960 but what, what's another hurdle that, that you're facing or a challenge you're trying to figure 00:34:55.960 --> 00:34:56.480 out right now? 00:34:56.660 --> 00:35:01.040 I guess I would say the biggest obstacle trying to get the old guys like me to, to figure 00:35:01.040 --> 00:35:02.460 out what, what, no, no, I'm just kidding. 00:35:03.500 --> 00:35:05.280 We all have that problem. 00:35:05.520 --> 00:35:07.280 So I'm actually older than you. 00:35:07.380 --> 00:35:09.560 So I find that funny, but, uh, Gabe, what do you think? 00:35:09.900 --> 00:35:13.160 I guess my big, I would say my biggest obstacle is, uh, 00:35:13.760 --> 00:35:19.680 in myself and I think for my team is that we're young, which is why, um, working with 00:35:19.680 --> 00:35:27.100 pastor Ryan is such a good, not, not option, but it's such a good partnership between us 00:35:27.100 --> 00:35:34.220 because real ministry is happening online and being 20 years old, I am not yet equipped 00:35:34.220 --> 00:35:39.460 with all the tools that I need to be in charge of such a large group of people. 00:35:40.240 --> 00:35:46.160 Um, maybe be in charge of them from an administrative perspective, but not from a ministry perspective. 00:35:46.160 --> 00:35:52.320 Uh, I don't know that if, and this is also a conversation we had to have early on is that 00:35:52.320 --> 00:35:57.480 my leaders were uncomfortable being 19, 20, 21 years old. 00:35:57.620 --> 00:36:02.120 If somebody were to come in one of our servers and say, you know, I'm going to commit suicide. 00:36:02.900 --> 00:36:05.160 Um, God forbid that ever happens. 00:36:05.320 --> 00:36:14.260 But, um, um, having the pastoral backing of Seacoast and pastor Ryan equips us to deal with difficult 00:36:14.260 --> 00:36:18.440 things because ministry is difficult and it's still difficult online. 00:36:18.440 --> 00:36:27.200 You know, we may have, uh, established our system, but, you know, people still, um, have people 00:36:27.200 --> 00:36:29.740 problems and those translate into the digital world. 00:36:29.960 --> 00:36:35.220 Um, I would almost even say sometimes it's more difficult online just because one of the 00:36:35.220 --> 00:36:39.320 things I've noticed over the years is people are so much more comfortable sharing openly, 00:36:39.320 --> 00:36:45.060 uh, in a digital space, what maybe they would not share in person, you know? 00:36:46.000 --> 00:36:50.840 So you guys might, you guys probably come across people sharing things like that of a heavy 00:36:50.840 --> 00:36:54.340 nature, um, maybe more often than we do in person. 00:36:54.340 --> 00:37:01.980 So, yeah, so I guess, um, the biggest challenge for us is just, I guess maybe our age or our 00:37:01.980 --> 00:37:07.480 journey as we're, as we're continuing to grow, uh, in ministry ourselves is dealing with those 00:37:07.480 --> 00:37:08.180 challenges. 00:37:08.920 --> 00:37:12.420 Um, but that's why having our relationship with Seacoast works so well. 00:37:12.620 --> 00:37:16.120 I mean, and that's, that's why the relationship with Seacoast is so necessary. 00:37:16.480 --> 00:37:20.540 Um, and, and by the way, I just want to like reach through the computer screen right now and 00:37:20.540 --> 00:37:20.920 hug you. 00:37:20.920 --> 00:37:28.140 Like that was the best answer, uh, to, to that question, uh, because you are 20, you're 00:37:28.140 --> 00:37:28.460 20. 00:37:28.560 --> 00:37:29.780 Is that literally how old you are? 00:37:29.800 --> 00:37:30.500 Or is that just a number? 00:37:31.940 --> 00:37:33.680 You are 20 years old. 00:37:34.340 --> 00:37:39.620 Um, Hey, when I was, when I was 21 years old, I started a, a, a, a online company, a.com 00:37:39.620 --> 00:37:40.460 called eBeliever. 00:37:40.460 --> 00:37:41.440 It was an online community. 00:37:41.560 --> 00:37:43.440 It was literally the year 2000. 00:37:43.780 --> 00:37:47.560 Uh, we had 30 to 40,000 people in the online community around the world. 00:37:47.640 --> 00:37:49.640 Uh, this was before Facebook. 00:37:49.640 --> 00:37:53.700 I think Facebook was just college students, but social media was, was nothing. 00:37:53.760 --> 00:37:58.760 It was nowhere near 2.0, uh, when we launched this and, um, incredible first online Bible 00:37:58.760 --> 00:38:00.100 study I taught was in the year 2000. 00:38:00.260 --> 00:38:03.700 I was a 21 year old kid and you're exactly right. 00:38:03.860 --> 00:38:05.960 I didn't know anything. 00:38:05.960 --> 00:38:09.080 I, if I actually, I had this conversation the other day with a friend. 00:38:09.240 --> 00:38:15.420 If I knew today, if I knew that when I was 20 years old, 21, like it would be a completely 00:38:15.420 --> 00:38:16.960 different, different thing. 00:38:17.480 --> 00:38:21.000 Um, but don't let people look down on you because you're young. 00:38:21.320 --> 00:38:26.620 Uh, that's an opportunity for you to speak out, to reach a different type of person, but 00:38:26.620 --> 00:38:32.060 also realize with humility that you don't know everything and that there's wisdom that you 00:38:32.060 --> 00:38:33.100 need to contextualize. 00:38:33.120 --> 00:38:37.520 And that's why I think this, this relationship with Seacoast is so beautiful because Ryan's 00:38:37.520 --> 00:38:41.520 smart enough to realize he doesn't want to hold you back, but you do need some things 00:38:41.520 --> 00:38:45.460 from him and you're smart enough to realize you do need some things from him, but he doesn't 00:38:45.460 --> 00:38:46.440 need to drive the boat. 00:38:46.980 --> 00:38:54.100 And, and so that cut the, the humility of that situation, um, really opens up far more 00:38:54.100 --> 00:39:00.300 potential to reach a different type of person and do ministry differently than what each of 00:39:00.300 --> 00:39:03.060 you are used to in, in your own individual context. 00:39:03.240 --> 00:39:10.040 Both of you together will equal a sum far bigger than two because of this working together. 00:39:10.160 --> 00:39:10.900 That's why I want to hug you. 00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:12.420 Like, this is, this is just a beautiful moment. 00:39:12.600 --> 00:39:14.320 I'm getting all like teary over here. 00:39:14.840 --> 00:39:15.780 This is, this is great. 00:39:15.860 --> 00:39:16.000 Right. 00:39:16.040 --> 00:39:17.100 Ryan, do you have any thoughts on that? 00:39:17.100 --> 00:39:20.600 Well, yeah, that's just another aspect again, just honoring the leadership at Seacoast. 00:39:20.780 --> 00:39:23.200 Like that's, uh, that's true of me. 00:39:23.520 --> 00:39:27.340 Um, I've been in ministry 20 years, but I still have a lot to learn as a pastor, right? 00:39:27.360 --> 00:39:28.100 That never stops. 00:39:28.100 --> 00:39:34.960 And so I'm grateful to have, uh, several pastoral mentors here, uh, that are 50, 60, 70, something, 00:39:34.960 --> 00:39:39.700 um, to, to build into me and to continue to help me learn and grow. 00:39:39.700 --> 00:39:44.840 And, uh, now it's exciting to get the opportunity to pass that on, uh, to somebody who's 20, 00:39:44.960 --> 00:39:49.820 you know, and, and the cool thing about Gabe is, you know, the, the, the technical side of 00:39:49.820 --> 00:39:54.280 things just comes naturally to him, but I'm excited that he's already got a handle on that. 00:39:54.280 --> 00:39:58.040 So I can focus on helping to grow him on the spiritual side of things. 00:39:58.040 --> 00:40:00.380 Cause he's definitely got a heart for ministry. 00:40:00.380 --> 00:40:01.940 He's not just doing this thing for fun. 00:40:02.320 --> 00:40:03.520 Uh, he wants to reach people. 00:40:03.720 --> 00:40:04.800 So love it. 00:40:05.120 --> 00:40:09.180 This is, this is an, an incredible, incredible conversation. 00:40:09.680 --> 00:40:10.660 Gabe, what's another idea? 00:40:10.720 --> 00:40:11.020 You're set. 00:40:11.060 --> 00:40:12.340 You've got another idea you're sitting on. 00:40:12.380 --> 00:40:14.020 You haven't shared with anybody yet. 00:40:14.080 --> 00:40:15.140 What, what, what else you got? 00:40:16.140 --> 00:40:16.680 I'm kidding. 00:40:16.740 --> 00:40:17.720 I'm not going to put you on the spot. 00:40:18.120 --> 00:40:20.060 Gabe just freaked out on me right now. 00:40:20.120 --> 00:40:21.460 His face was like, oh. 00:40:24.080 --> 00:40:26.460 Jeff, I got to ask, is that your dog barking in the background? 00:40:26.620 --> 00:40:27.860 That was my dog barking. 00:40:28.000 --> 00:40:28.520 I'm sorry. 00:40:29.320 --> 00:40:31.840 I got, I got, I got two dogs now. 00:40:31.940 --> 00:40:33.820 Uh, we just recently picked up a second dog. 00:40:33.900 --> 00:40:38.260 My first dog was very docile and calm before we got the second dog. 00:40:38.260 --> 00:40:42.540 And now, now that we've got the second dog, the one dog feels like she needs to like prove 00:40:42.540 --> 00:40:43.280 that she's alpha. 00:40:43.280 --> 00:40:46.780 And so she's now far more yakety and that's not good. 00:40:46.780 --> 00:40:47.860 She wants to be heard on your podcast. 00:40:48.040 --> 00:40:49.640 She wants, she wants her voice to be heard. 00:40:49.640 --> 00:40:51.260 There have been times where she's tackled me. 00:40:51.620 --> 00:40:53.840 Well, actually there's like video of her, like, 00:40:53.880 --> 00:40:58.420 hitting me from the side, wrapping me up in my chair, kind of rolling out of the scene. 00:40:58.540 --> 00:41:00.820 She's a, she's a, an emotional dog. 00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:06.140 Ray, Ray Skywalker read it for, for those interested in that we're, we're Star Wars people. 00:41:07.360 --> 00:41:09.820 Um, yeah, listen, this, this is, this is beautiful. 00:41:09.820 --> 00:41:17.840 I, when I look at, at, at the, the, the nuance that I have talked about, and I'm actually 00:41:17.840 --> 00:41:20.160 curious looking at your experiment here. 00:41:20.160 --> 00:41:24.740 Um, uh, uh, uh, Gabe, because what you're doing is a little different than how I envisioned 00:41:24.740 --> 00:41:25.020 it. 00:41:25.400 --> 00:41:28.980 And, and, and once again, I'm going to be really transparent here and I want to ask your opinion, 00:41:29.100 --> 00:41:29.560 your feedback. 00:41:29.860 --> 00:41:37.700 So the way that I envisioned this is not what you're doing, where you're spinning off a individual 00:41:37.700 --> 00:41:40.040 server for every influencer. 00:41:40.820 --> 00:41:46.720 I actually was viewing it more as a shared server that gave you opportunity. 00:41:46.720 --> 00:41:53.180 I just did this talk recently, um, several times, but where like you're feeding in the 00:41:53.180 --> 00:41:57.280 physical church, you're feeding in the church broadcast, you're feeding in a virtual reality 00:41:57.280 --> 00:42:00.440 church, you're feeding in a couple influencers for stream. 00:42:00.440 --> 00:42:08.420 Like I saw it more of a large server as opposed to creating minimal, smaller servers. 00:42:09.040 --> 00:42:10.260 I would love feedback. 00:42:10.400 --> 00:42:11.200 I don't know that I'm right. 00:42:11.280 --> 00:42:12.040 I'm a theorist. 00:42:12.160 --> 00:42:16.840 I sit around and I just talk all day as somebody that's in the space that's, that's on this road. 00:42:17.060 --> 00:42:17.960 What do you think? 00:42:17.960 --> 00:42:21.820 Like what, what are the challenges in doing one server as opposed to breaking it up the 00:42:21.820 --> 00:42:22.500 way you're suggesting? 00:42:22.900 --> 00:42:28.200 So I'll say this first, I guess, I think that all ages want to connect digitally. 00:42:28.380 --> 00:42:29.560 It's not just young people. 00:42:29.760 --> 00:42:32.680 It's not any certain type of demographic. 00:42:32.840 --> 00:42:37.680 I think every demographic and every age of person wants to connect digitally in some way. 00:42:38.320 --> 00:42:46.300 And I think where we approached it from is that discord has its limitations, I guess, um, 00:42:46.300 --> 00:42:52.880 that we're not going to get, you know, I guess older generations in the discord server because 00:42:52.880 --> 00:43:00.340 you know, discord wasn't always as a company, you know, uh, dedicated community platform. 00:43:00.500 --> 00:43:02.380 They were once a gaming platform exclusively. 00:43:03.140 --> 00:43:16.580 Um, so I guess my mindset for creating the individual servers is that I don't, I don't know. 00:43:16.660 --> 00:43:22.860 I just, I think with, with interacting with each influencer that they just want to have their 00:43:22.860 --> 00:43:23.360 own community. 00:43:23.360 --> 00:43:26.220 I think that they want to keep their audience retained. 00:43:26.220 --> 00:43:30.040 And I think with each influencer, each has a different audience and each audience has 00:43:30.040 --> 00:43:30.700 different needs. 00:43:31.400 --> 00:43:36.180 Um, but in some cases, discord can't always meet the needs of the audience that the influencer 00:43:36.180 --> 00:43:37.080 brings to the table. 00:43:37.200 --> 00:43:42.480 And I don't necessarily think that discord meets the needs of the physical church all the 00:43:42.480 --> 00:43:49.200 way when looking at every type of demographic that exists, um, regardless of where your church 00:43:49.200 --> 00:43:50.220 is positioned. 00:43:50.220 --> 00:43:57.160 Um, my mindset on how to deal with that is creating our own platform, um, which comes with 00:43:57.160 --> 00:44:01.100 its own challenges and limitations, as I'm sure, you know, very well. 00:44:01.700 --> 00:44:08.800 Um, but I think creating the individual servers better helps tailor to the needs of the audience 00:44:08.800 --> 00:44:09.760 that's in the server. 00:44:10.260 --> 00:44:16.640 You talked about how there's like, uh, a minimum effective size for a server, right? 00:44:16.680 --> 00:44:18.300 In terms of the number of people, right? 00:44:18.940 --> 00:44:23.000 Um, like if you don't have at least a critical number of people, the interaction is not going 00:44:23.000 --> 00:44:23.760 to be enough and whatnot. 00:44:23.760 --> 00:44:27.780 But do you think there's also like a maximum number to where it's like, it's better to 00:44:27.780 --> 00:44:32.120 start another server than to have it grow so big that people are just kind of lost? 00:44:32.220 --> 00:44:36.480 Do you think that's, yeah, I mean, there's, I think there's a minimum number for certain 00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:37.300 discord requirements. 00:44:37.300 --> 00:44:40.320 If you want to be a discord partner, if you want to be on their server discovery page. 00:44:40.840 --> 00:44:45.780 Um, so there's those requirements, but I do think, I mean, there are discord servers, 00:44:45.780 --> 00:44:50.060 I believe that have the largest is over 300,000 users. 00:44:50.260 --> 00:44:50.360 Wow. 00:44:50.560 --> 00:44:57.000 Like how does one even company, like maybe it's like the Minecraft discord or something, but 00:44:57.000 --> 00:45:00.880 how does one, one company manage that many people? 00:45:01.100 --> 00:45:01.220 Yeah. 00:45:01.280 --> 00:45:04.440 I think it's for us, it'd be close to impossible. 00:45:04.440 --> 00:45:11.080 So I think as we look to grow more and follow more people into these communities, keeping them, 00:45:11.420 --> 00:45:15.240 keeping them large, but small is important. 00:45:15.680 --> 00:45:15.760 Yep. 00:45:15.780 --> 00:45:21.360 Since we've got a ministry heart behind what you're doing, you know, you want to make sure 00:45:21.360 --> 00:45:26.420 that we're able to minister to effectively to as many, uh, as large a percentage of those 00:45:26.420 --> 00:45:27.680 people in each server as possible. 00:45:27.680 --> 00:45:30.700 So yeah, you get too big, you know, too many people get missed. 00:45:30.700 --> 00:45:36.620 And, and part of the agreement we make with our content, um, creators and influencers is 00:45:36.620 --> 00:45:42.060 that if at any point you want to go a different direction, if you're like, you know, you know, 00:45:42.100 --> 00:45:45.680 influencers get burned out, YouTubers just quit all of a sudden, all of 00:45:45.680 --> 00:45:46.760 all sorts of things. 00:45:46.820 --> 00:45:54.000 What happens if the lifeblood of the server just decides to not funnel people anymore or 00:45:54.000 --> 00:45:58.180 go a different direction, then we say you can either take the discord server with you or 00:45:58.180 --> 00:45:59.200 you can leave it with us. 00:45:59.640 --> 00:46:04.240 Um, but we do specify that we want to, if our relationship ever comes to an end, that we 00:46:04.240 --> 00:46:07.620 want to leave your server in a place where it's going to be healthy, that there are real 00:46:07.620 --> 00:46:09.120 people in these communities. 00:46:09.840 --> 00:46:17.940 Um, and, you know, exiting in a way that would, um, not benefit both parties may negatively 00:46:17.940 --> 00:46:23.040 affect people's lives because for some people, this is all the ministry that they get to interact 00:46:23.040 --> 00:46:23.320 with. 00:46:23.760 --> 00:46:27.840 Let me ask, um, you mentioned, Hey, you know what? 00:46:27.900 --> 00:46:30.100 You're not going to get old people on discord. 00:46:30.320 --> 00:46:30.860 You're not wrong. 00:46:31.220 --> 00:46:32.540 Um, it's, it's funny. 00:46:32.620 --> 00:46:37.380 Every once in a while I'll see, um, some 20 something that's like, Hey, my entire church 00:46:37.380 --> 00:46:38.280 should move to discord. 00:46:38.400 --> 00:46:39.720 We're going to move everything to discord. 00:46:39.860 --> 00:46:42.160 And I'm like, good luck in the soccer mom. 00:46:42.320 --> 00:46:45.400 Good luck getting, you know, my grandma, you know, it's, it's just, you're not, you're 00:46:45.400 --> 00:46:46.040 not going to. 00:46:46.220 --> 00:46:47.600 And so it's, it's funny. 00:46:47.660 --> 00:46:51.360 I was actually, I, I've been, I've been talking about asynchronous communities a lot lately. 00:46:51.940 --> 00:46:58.140 And, um, the most common question I get when I talk about digital expressions of church, 00:46:58.140 --> 00:47:03.100 uh, not physical buildings, but like digital church, virtual reality church, metaverse church, 00:47:03.180 --> 00:47:07.240 asynchronous communities, community, like doing church without the physical building. 00:47:07.680 --> 00:47:11.900 It seems like the thing that most people are hung up on, uh, besides like, you know, not 00:47:11.900 --> 00:47:16.220 meeting in physical space is what does generational worship look like? 00:47:16.660 --> 00:47:22.160 Like you lose the ability of, of, of, of an older person connecting with a younger person. 00:47:22.280 --> 00:47:22.860 You're 20. 00:47:23.040 --> 00:47:27.680 What does it look like for you to be mentored and discipled by a 65 year old? 00:47:27.740 --> 00:47:31.640 You have the luxury of having a relationship with Ryan because you all work together, Gabe, 00:47:31.740 --> 00:47:36.460 but you know, somebody else that's in a digital environment that doesn't have access to a physical 00:47:36.460 --> 00:47:39.500 relationship like Ryan or, or like a church. 00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:42.560 Um, I'm curious cause you're 20. 00:47:43.200 --> 00:47:45.900 Um, a, what's your response to that? 00:47:46.000 --> 00:47:48.000 Like, is it, do you see negative? 00:47:48.180 --> 00:47:49.580 Do you see value in generational? 00:47:49.760 --> 00:47:51.880 Do you see a solution maybe to that, that problem? 00:47:52.060 --> 00:47:54.720 What are you thinking about this when you think digital? 00:47:54.720 --> 00:48:00.840 I guess, as I said before, I think, uh, looking at our discord community, uh, we pull numbers 00:48:00.840 --> 00:48:05.440 from the people that are interested in being in focus groups, uh, like what age group they're 00:48:05.440 --> 00:48:05.580 in. 00:48:05.680 --> 00:48:12.800 And I think out of 100% of our responses, less than 10% is anybody over the age of 30 years 00:48:12.800 --> 00:48:13.060 old. 00:48:13.600 --> 00:48:15.200 Um, it's not really a problem. 00:48:15.380 --> 00:48:19.160 I've even realized we may have in the future. 00:48:19.160 --> 00:48:26.220 Um, but I do think that pushing towards maybe not our own, I feel like there has to be some 00:48:26.220 --> 00:48:33.940 other kind of platform out there where, and I haven't found one that I like yet that meets 00:48:33.940 --> 00:48:39.060 the needs of this kind of ministry, but I feel like moving in the direction of a different 00:48:39.060 --> 00:48:39.420 platform. 00:48:39.580 --> 00:48:44.080 I think discord is a good short-term solution, but it's not a good long-term solution and 00:48:44.080 --> 00:48:45.680 it's not a good solution to scale. 00:48:46.580 --> 00:48:54.140 Um, I think I may have heard you say this, but, or somebody at, uh, the church it, uh, 00:48:54.140 --> 00:48:58.860 network conference say this, but if people are going online to connect, then they're gonna 00:48:58.860 --> 00:49:03.880 by nature just go to whatever's flashiest. 00:49:04.320 --> 00:49:05.280 I don't know if that makes sense. 00:49:05.300 --> 00:49:10.600 Like whoever has the biggest stage, like if I'm going online to watch church and I'm just 00:49:10.600 --> 00:49:16.020 a digital participant, like I don't attend a physical church, then I'm going to go to whatever 00:49:16.020 --> 00:49:17.240 one looks the best. 00:49:17.520 --> 00:49:18.220 Easy come, easy go. 00:49:18.400 --> 00:49:18.600 Yeah. 00:49:18.680 --> 00:49:20.340 Like I want it to have good quality. 00:49:20.500 --> 00:49:22.960 I want it to have, you know, great production. 00:49:24.020 --> 00:49:26.060 Um, excellence. 00:49:26.380 --> 00:49:26.560 Yeah. 00:49:26.660 --> 00:49:27.060 Yeah. 00:49:27.540 --> 00:49:33.820 Well, you know, I think, um, Jeff, you know, my thought on it is, of course, this thing that 00:49:33.820 --> 00:49:36.440 gave us built is blown up so much faster than we expected. 00:49:36.440 --> 00:49:42.540 But, um, the advantage of being a part of a church like Seacoast with its resources and 00:49:42.540 --> 00:49:48.580 with its people, people resources is, you know, I can start to recruit from our online community 00:49:48.580 --> 00:49:52.660 to say, Hey, you might, you might not already be on this platform. 00:49:52.660 --> 00:49:58.600 Um, it might be a little bit unusual to you, um, Gen Xer or, you know, 50 something year 00:49:58.600 --> 00:49:59.100 old person. 00:49:59.560 --> 00:50:04.340 Um, but there's a younger generation that needs to be built into, and I'm sure we can come 00:50:04.340 --> 00:50:10.580 up with some people whose passion it would be to interact with and do community with some 00:50:10.580 --> 00:50:11.780 of these younger folks that we're reaching. 00:50:11.780 --> 00:50:18.060 Um, and so it's, it's kind of the heart of our church to be a multi-generational, um, the 00:50:18.060 --> 00:50:24.480 technology might be a barrier between the generations, but I, I've seen, uh, enough to know that there 00:50:24.480 --> 00:50:31.620 are a good enough number of people in my generation and older who are willing to overcome that technology 00:50:31.620 --> 00:50:32.000 barrier. 00:50:32.000 --> 00:50:36.400 The, the, the discomfort with a new platform they're not familiar with to be willing to 00:50:36.400 --> 00:50:38.780 do that, to invest in some younger people. 00:50:38.780 --> 00:50:43.560 And so to me, heading into this fall, heading into this next year, uh, at Seacoast, that's 00:50:43.560 --> 00:50:48.740 kind of one of my priorities is to, to start recruiting, um, for that opportunity specifically. 00:50:49.120 --> 00:50:49.160 Yeah. 00:50:49.180 --> 00:50:51.480 I mean, casting vision, uh, towards that. 00:50:51.560 --> 00:50:57.260 I've, I've told the story of a lot of my mom, my mom's a small group leader, uh, online 00:50:57.260 --> 00:50:59.040 at the church, my dog's still barking. 00:50:59.280 --> 00:51:03.260 Uh, I don't know, but, um, my, my mom's a small group leader. 00:51:03.420 --> 00:51:08.340 She's 70 something years old and, uh, she teaches three online small groups. 00:51:08.460 --> 00:51:11.680 Uh, the first small group, I actually, I recruited my mom to teach online. 00:51:11.900 --> 00:51:16.240 There was, it was three college students or, or young, um, young graduates. 00:51:16.560 --> 00:51:19.100 Uh, one was, uh, um, studying to be a doctor. 00:51:19.100 --> 00:51:24.540 One was studying to be a lawyer and one was, um, in a company working her way up to be a CPA. 00:51:24.960 --> 00:51:30.620 And so they were all young professionals and I, I recruited my mom to, to teach the study 00:51:30.620 --> 00:51:37.080 to, to basically disciple these three young girls, um, who were, my mom was a former VP 00:51:37.080 --> 00:51:38.040 business executive. 00:51:38.040 --> 00:51:42.940 And so, I mean, in a, in a way she's like, Jeff, these became my daughters and in the, 00:51:42.940 --> 00:51:47.240 the ministry opportunities that happened to, as a result of that, several of those women 00:51:47.240 --> 00:51:50.860 are still teach, are now teaching online Bible studies. 00:51:50.860 --> 00:51:54.780 They've, they've multiplied and my mom's actually multiplied into, into, I think three 00:51:54.780 --> 00:51:55.700 groups at this point. 00:51:55.700 --> 00:51:59.160 And so it's really interesting to see how that's, that's developed. 00:51:59.260 --> 00:52:01.580 And my mom, she's, um, God bless my mom. 00:52:01.580 --> 00:52:02.380 And she may be listening. 00:52:02.380 --> 00:52:03.340 Sorry to say this, mom. 00:52:03.460 --> 00:52:05.680 She can't even print on her computer. 00:52:06.020 --> 00:52:08.820 Like she's not technologically advanced. 00:52:09.220 --> 00:52:10.700 Uh, I'm actually adopted. 00:52:10.800 --> 00:52:12.500 That's, that's where the tech came from. 00:52:12.500 --> 00:52:15.700 It's, it's the, not from my, my, my parents, it's birth parents. 00:52:15.980 --> 00:52:22.220 Uh, but the result of that is that mom fell in love with the idea, uh, not because of 00:52:22.220 --> 00:52:25.720 technological advancement, uh, but because of the relationships. 00:52:26.020 --> 00:52:30.160 And so I think when you're recruiting and talking to the older generation, it's always 00:52:30.160 --> 00:52:32.100 about that, that relationship piece. 00:52:32.200 --> 00:52:34.240 And I'll go and throw this as, as a side note. 00:52:34.460 --> 00:52:37.820 Hey, push pay, resi, glue. 00:52:37.980 --> 00:52:38.900 I know you're out there. 00:52:39.000 --> 00:52:40.220 I know you're listening to this. 00:52:40.260 --> 00:52:41.180 I'm friends with you. 00:52:41.340 --> 00:52:44.820 Y'all need to develop an asynchronous digital discipleship platform. 00:52:45.220 --> 00:52:48.280 Uh, you need to find ways to provide the solution. 00:52:48.280 --> 00:52:51.480 The average church does not know they need this solution. 00:52:51.480 --> 00:52:57.580 Uh, but the stuff that Seacoast is doing right now and the banging of the heads into discord, 00:52:57.800 --> 00:53:03.480 the things that we're all doing on, on some of these other platforms like it, um, there 00:53:03.480 --> 00:53:08.360 needs to be a, a solution that's more effectively created for a church. 00:53:08.360 --> 00:53:13.240 So I'm going to challenge you guys here publicly on the podcast, help us come up with a solution, 00:53:13.240 --> 00:53:19.120 uh, because no churches know they need this, but once it's created, thousands of churches 00:53:19.120 --> 00:53:22.120 will jump all over it because they don't have the vision for it today. 00:53:22.120 --> 00:53:27.540 Uh, but they will once they see, um, a when, you know, the success stories of, of Seacoast, 00:53:27.540 --> 00:53:32.800 but also how easy it is to do some of this stuff when there's a platform that's already created. 00:53:32.800 --> 00:53:35.500 So, um, we're going to, and, and, and I'm friends with those guys. 00:53:35.500 --> 00:53:38.180 I love them, but there's, there's just so much opportunities. 00:53:38.180 --> 00:53:41.040 And what's interesting, they're all floating around it right now. 00:53:41.140 --> 00:53:42.540 They're all asking those questions. 00:53:42.540 --> 00:53:43.260 They're all wondering. 00:53:43.580 --> 00:53:45.100 So this is, this is, this is good. 00:53:45.240 --> 00:53:45.360 Yeah. 00:53:45.400 --> 00:53:49.180 I think the next couple of years are going to be super exciting just to see what cool ideas 00:53:49.180 --> 00:53:50.020 come up, man. 00:53:50.160 --> 00:53:52.160 It's, it's an exciting time to be in ministry. 00:53:52.440 --> 00:53:56.880 If there's a takeaway church, pastor, listen to your 20 year old. 00:53:56.880 --> 00:53:59.900 Uh, actually like don't discredit them. 00:54:00.180 --> 00:54:01.480 Don't blow them off. 00:54:01.700 --> 00:54:03.300 Actually listen to the ideas. 00:54:03.400 --> 00:54:04.260 Some of it may be good. 00:54:04.340 --> 00:54:08.140 No, I'm not saying that, that Gabe needs a, a $2 million check. 00:54:08.340 --> 00:54:11.900 Uh, and, and I don't think he's going to get that funding at least at this point. 00:54:12.360 --> 00:54:18.340 Um, but there's gotta be ways to give Gabe and people like Gabe, uh, opportunities to explore, 00:54:18.440 --> 00:54:19.080 to experiment. 00:54:19.660 --> 00:54:23.580 Um, and especially if they can show results of reaching a different type of person than what 00:54:23.580 --> 00:54:28.600 Gabe is, like Gabe is a different type of person than what's in the building, uh, then that's 00:54:28.600 --> 00:54:29.460 a win. 00:54:29.460 --> 00:54:33.720 Here's another good point about all this, Gabe, how much money has been put into this? 00:54:34.740 --> 00:54:35.680 Zero dollars. 00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:37.580 Because it's discord, it's free. 00:54:37.940 --> 00:54:39.320 You're it's yeah. 00:54:39.620 --> 00:54:43.020 Other than your time and your team's time, which is all volunteer. 00:54:43.780 --> 00:54:44.260 Yeah. 00:54:44.740 --> 00:54:50.660 So, so church, what you can do, uh, with very little money is, is pretty amazing. 00:54:51.060 --> 00:54:53.100 If you're willing to think outside the box. 00:54:53.280 --> 00:54:54.780 That was a great point. 00:54:54.900 --> 00:54:55.740 I love it. 00:54:56.080 --> 00:55:01.340 Hey, as, as we're landing the plane here, um, let's have Ryan as, as we're landing the 00:55:01.340 --> 00:55:02.700 plane, any closing thoughts on your side? 00:55:03.080 --> 00:55:03.900 Closing thoughts, man. 00:55:03.980 --> 00:55:06.160 Just, um, I mean, you summed it up really well. 00:55:06.580 --> 00:55:13.200 Um, don't be afraid to, uh, let the next generation innovate. 00:55:13.580 --> 00:55:18.000 Uh, because like I said before, they are probably going to be the ones to come up with the ideas 00:55:18.000 --> 00:55:19.620 to reach their generation. 00:55:20.280 --> 00:55:24.060 Um, and, uh, don't be afraid to hold things with open hands. 00:55:24.060 --> 00:55:26.940 Um, what is somebody else? 00:55:27.000 --> 00:55:31.600 I should know who said this, but, um, it's amazing what you can do if you don't care who 00:55:31.600 --> 00:55:32.160 gets the credit. 00:55:32.340 --> 00:55:32.740 Right. 00:55:32.800 --> 00:55:34.760 Uh, churches need to apply that. 00:55:34.860 --> 00:55:36.900 I think more in, in their ministries and stuff, but. 00:55:37.300 --> 00:55:39.220 That's literally Ronald Reagan said it. 00:55:39.300 --> 00:55:42.260 I have a bobblehead on my desk of Ronald Reagan. 00:55:42.280 --> 00:55:42.940 I knew you'd know. 00:55:43.060 --> 00:55:47.660 For that one, for that one quote, there, there's no limit to the amount of good one can do 00:55:47.660 --> 00:55:49.420 as long as he doesn't care who gets credit. 00:55:50.140 --> 00:55:53.040 Um, huge Reagan fan for that one thing. 00:55:53.160 --> 00:55:53.820 So thank you. 00:55:53.900 --> 00:55:54.320 I'll keep going. 00:55:54.360 --> 00:55:54.660 I'm sorry. 00:55:54.980 --> 00:55:55.620 No, that's it. 00:55:55.740 --> 00:55:56.480 That's, that's good. 00:55:57.380 --> 00:55:58.420 Exciting time to be in ministry. 00:55:58.540 --> 00:55:59.360 Thanks for having us, Jeff. 00:55:59.600 --> 00:56:00.820 Oh, listen, my, my pleasure. 00:56:00.960 --> 00:56:04.460 Gabe, on your side is, as we're, we're wrapping up here, any, any closing thoughts on your side? 00:56:04.800 --> 00:56:08.140 If you're listening and you're somebody like me, uh, you may be, uh, in your church. 00:56:08.140 --> 00:56:13.760 Uh, if you're a younger individual, uh, takes, take this just as inspiration. 00:56:14.140 --> 00:56:22.440 Um, you know, uh, lots of the people that helped build this type of ministry, um, aren't 00:56:22.440 --> 00:56:23.100 even in ministry. 00:56:23.100 --> 00:56:28.820 We were just a group of guys that got together and, you know, um, worked to work up a cool 00:56:28.820 --> 00:56:29.160 idea. 00:56:29.160 --> 00:56:34.180 Um, so if you're somewhere out there and you think that you can make a difference, uh, being 00:56:34.180 --> 00:56:38.300 young without, uh, a checkbook, um, you can do it. 00:56:38.440 --> 00:56:38.800 I love it. 00:56:39.240 --> 00:56:41.940 Um, so I, I am going to invest stock. 00:56:42.100 --> 00:56:45.520 If I could buy stock in Gabe, I would buy stock in Gabe, man. 00:56:45.580 --> 00:56:46.680 I love what you're doing. 00:56:46.900 --> 00:56:48.700 He's spoken for back off. 00:56:48.820 --> 00:56:52.680 No, that just happens. 00:56:53.040 --> 00:56:54.000 I love it. 00:56:54.940 --> 00:56:55.740 Very cool. 00:56:55.920 --> 00:56:59.840 Hey, listen, let's, let's go to toe to toe, but listen, it's seriously, uh, love what you're 00:56:59.840 --> 00:56:59.980 doing. 00:57:00.060 --> 00:57:00.780 Keep doing, man. 00:57:00.880 --> 00:57:05.940 Keep, um, keep leaning in, uh, don't let, let people look down on you because you're 00:57:05.940 --> 00:57:10.060 young, um, but be humble enough to listen to the guidance that's around you. 00:57:10.200 --> 00:57:12.220 And I can't wait to see what develops from this. 00:57:12.220 --> 00:57:16.120 So, so keep us in the loop here and we'll have to have you back on and, uh, in six months 00:57:16.120 --> 00:57:21.020 or a year or so, and start to tell stories of what 21 year old Gabe's working on and, 00:57:21.020 --> 00:57:25.900 uh, and how the, the community's King's Tide is, uh, that network is, is flourishing. 00:57:26.020 --> 00:57:29.000 The collaborative network of, this is just so beautiful. 00:57:29.100 --> 00:57:29.440 This is great. 00:57:29.780 --> 00:57:32.800 Hey, but we're going to land the plane, uh, for Gabe, for Ryan. 00:57:32.880 --> 00:57:35.320 This is Jeff with the church, digital, digital church network. 00:57:35.440 --> 00:57:36.860 Thanks for jumping on the podcast here. 00:57:37.120 --> 00:57:38.080 We'll see you next time on the show. 00:57:38.420 --> 00:57:38.860 You have a good day.