WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.620 The biggest hurdle, and the audience knows this, the biggest hurdle I see it time and time again 00:00:05.620 --> 00:00:13.580 with churches right now where we are in September, August, September 2022, physical pastors are 00:00:13.580 --> 00:00:18.180 wanting to get back to physical buildings and putting all the eggs in that basket, which may 00:00:18.180 --> 00:00:24.920 be the right answer for today, but it's fraudulent and it's short-sighted because I think there's an 00:00:24.920 --> 00:00:28.940 opportunity to do something different. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. 00:00:29.320 --> 00:00:33.720 Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, 00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:40.300 but more than tech or tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciple making possible 00:00:40.300 --> 00:00:46.040 digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church 00:00:46.040 --> 00:00:52.200 operate in digital space? Oh, and where does the metaverse fit into all this? Whether you're a big 00:00:52.200 --> 00:00:57.940 or small church, an established church, or a startup church plant, the Church Digital's goal is to help 00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:05.880 learn to be a multiplying church, digitally and physically. Our heart? That churches like yours 00:01:05.880 --> 00:01:12.580 will discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now here's 00:01:12.580 --> 00:01:17.840 your host, Jeff Reed. Hey there, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Jeff here once again, 00:01:18.300 --> 00:01:22.740 co-founder of Digital Church Network, the Church Digital Leadership Network, New Thing Network, 00:01:22.940 --> 00:01:27.540 Media Impact International, and well, pretty much anybody else that'll sign a conch. No, 00:01:27.540 --> 00:01:33.760 I'm kidding. Well, not everybody, but definitely looking forward to helping forward-facing organizations 00:01:33.760 --> 00:01:40.240 that are interested in tackling digital churches, nonprofits. Very excited about this and obviously 00:01:40.240 --> 00:01:46.980 helping people plant digital and metaverse examples of church. Hey, that was a mouthful. I really got to 00:01:46.980 --> 00:01:51.440 figure out how to simplify that, but that's not going to happen today. Hey, so it's going to be an 00:01:51.440 --> 00:01:57.400 interesting podcast. We're going to have a little fun here. I'm talking to a guy I know very, very little 00:01:57.400 --> 00:02:05.640 about. We've got Doug Bursch in the conversation here. And so I'm going to set the stage and we're 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:10.640 going to dig into it here a little bit. Doug, we've got some mutual friends, Sarah Kinzer and Hector, 00:02:11.060 --> 00:02:18.520 my pocket pulpit friends with the pocket pulpit podcast. Say that three times fast. And so I was 00:02:18.520 --> 00:02:23.800 following them on Twitter, seeing some things. And Doug said something in passing on Twitter. 00:02:24.480 --> 00:02:29.280 Hey, if anybody's like interested in being interviewed on their own podcast, I'd love to be a guest. 00:02:30.040 --> 00:02:35.480 And if you know me, I'll say yes to pretty much anything. And so Doug, welcome to the podcast. 00:02:35.960 --> 00:02:38.980 Oh, thanks for having me. And this is kind of fun because we don't know each other that well. 00:02:39.060 --> 00:02:44.200 Even your introduction makes me want to ask a hundred questions. Did you mention 20 things that 00:02:44.200 --> 00:02:48.540 you're doing all at once? I got a panic attack just thinking about all those. 00:02:49.120 --> 00:02:53.000 You know what they call that now? It's actually, I was doing an interview for Leadership Network today 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:58.960 and another show. And the guy's like, Jeff, you are an excellent example of a fractional leader. 00:02:59.520 --> 00:03:05.700 And I was like, is that what they call me? Fractional leaders? Where I lead a bunch of 00:03:05.700 --> 00:03:10.940 different fractions? I guess so. Hey, I'm a fractional leader, everybody. It's great to have a label. 00:03:11.280 --> 00:03:15.800 Well, I don't like math. So I need a term that doesn't use fractions. I don't know. I'll have to 00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:21.960 get some poetry term as well. Awesome. So Doug, I'm excited for this conversation. 00:03:22.700 --> 00:03:27.980 You know, let me throw it at you right now. I know you've written several books and recently, 00:03:28.160 --> 00:03:33.920 and one of the ones that I was curious about, Posting Peace, Why Social Media Divides Us 00:03:33.920 --> 00:03:39.720 and What We Can Do About It. We'll put a link in the show notes, but Doug, talk to us a little bit. 00:03:39.720 --> 00:03:43.960 Yeah. Well, one, thanks for having me on. I've written a couple books and they're both, 00:03:44.100 --> 00:03:48.120 you know, about different things, but community is a big issue to me, like how we come together 00:03:48.120 --> 00:03:52.840 and what divides us. So my first book, The Community of God, The Theology of the Church 00:03:52.840 --> 00:03:57.420 from a Reluctant Pastor, is what does it really mean to be a community? What does it really mean 00:03:57.420 --> 00:04:00.600 to be a church? And I think that works with technology in the world, you know, you're working 00:04:00.600 --> 00:04:04.620 in as well, right? Like how do we facilitate community? What do you need for something to 00:04:04.620 --> 00:04:09.840 be called a church? And how essential is it for community? But my latest book, Posting Peace, 00:04:10.260 --> 00:04:14.700 is Posting Peace, Why Social Media Divides Us and What We Can Do About It. And the issue is, 00:04:14.760 --> 00:04:19.840 we've all realized this, that social media, this divisiveness, this anger, this polarization, 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:25.760 at the same level, I love social media. So that's not one of those Amish 2.0, let's just not, 00:04:26.060 --> 00:04:31.540 you know, let's just take a fast from all media and just, I care about it. It's not going to go away. 00:04:31.800 --> 00:04:36.420 But how do we live with this technology? How do we understand how it polarizes us? Because I don't 00:04:36.420 --> 00:04:43.000 think we understand the technology itself transforms and changes the way we abide together. And then also, 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:47.100 in the sense of as Christians, are we supposed to look different online? Or do we just look 00:04:47.100 --> 00:04:51.700 like everybody else? So it's a way for people to process how they use social media and to understand 00:04:51.700 --> 00:04:57.440 that people aren't just becoming worse, terrible people. But the technology itself is bringing out 00:04:57.440 --> 00:05:03.060 some of the best of us or the best in us and the worst in us as well. And both those exaggerations, 00:05:03.160 --> 00:05:04.120 we need to pay attention to. 00:05:04.680 --> 00:05:11.040 Definitely. And let me just say, as a guy who has literally dedicated the majority of his life 00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:17.180 towards digital and digital ministry and church and digital space, the internet is horrible. Digital 00:05:17.180 --> 00:05:23.300 is tragic. And when like, it was funny, I was actually, I was sitting, I'm not going to drop a 00:05:23.300 --> 00:05:27.620 name because I might be rude to another author, but I was sitting into and talking to a nationally 00:05:27.620 --> 00:05:36.060 recognized author. And dude, in his book, he rips digital to shreds. And when I said I was a digital 00:05:36.060 --> 00:05:40.980 guy, like in his face kind of dropped, because he was like, I've literally, I've watched his eyes. 00:05:41.080 --> 00:05:45.820 He was afraid I was going to rip them. And I was like, I agree with everything you said. It is horrible, 00:05:45.820 --> 00:05:52.500 but it doesn't have to be. And that's the pivot. I mean, this thing is, it's a nightmare. Like it is 00:05:52.500 --> 00:05:59.440 toxic. It's addictive, but it doesn't have to be. And maybe there's an opportunity to do something 00:05:59.440 --> 00:06:00.760 with these tools. 00:06:01.160 --> 00:06:06.100 Well, and it's not going to go away. And certainly the platforms might change. I think every generation 00:06:06.100 --> 00:06:09.780 doesn't want to be on their parents' platform. So that's always going to change. You know, I don't 00:06:09.780 --> 00:06:13.040 want to be on Facebook because my parents are there. And it'll be like that with Snapchat. It'll be like 00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:16.980 that with Instagram. So they'll have to create some other new thing for your kids or grandkids to be 00:06:16.980 --> 00:06:22.700 on. But the way we behave online is going to be, online is going to have its strengths and weaknesses 00:06:22.700 --> 00:06:26.900 regardless. You know, one of the things that I look at is there's a technological theorist by the name 00:06:26.900 --> 00:06:33.480 of Marshall McLuhan. He was popular in the mid, you know, late seventies. And I know you know about him, 00:06:33.560 --> 00:06:37.400 but there's a couple of things he said that really hit me. First, the medium is the message. And 00:06:37.400 --> 00:06:42.800 basically what he's saying is we need to understand that every form of media, whether it's printing, 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:49.380 press, television, radio, internet, it changes the way we communicate. It's not just another way to 00:06:49.380 --> 00:06:54.800 communicate information, but it changes what we communicate and how we communicate it. And so 00:06:54.800 --> 00:06:58.860 that's a big issue that I look at is, you know, I think about Twitters like this. Have you ever 00:06:58.860 --> 00:07:05.900 tried to tweet a scripture? Most scriptures don't even fit into a tweet, which might not mean much, 00:07:06.540 --> 00:07:10.140 but that changes what we communicate, right? You don't want to do a thread of scripture. So 00:07:10.140 --> 00:07:16.680 that's a very simple thing, but that means we limit what we communicate, what we talk about within those 00:07:16.680 --> 00:07:21.700 boundaries and those borders. The other thing McLuhan talks about that just fascinates me is, 00:07:21.860 --> 00:07:28.380 he says, every technology extends a part of our human capacity, but it also weakens that human 00:07:28.380 --> 00:07:33.020 capacity that it extends. And I know that sounds a little complicated, but the idea is like the car 00:07:33.020 --> 00:07:38.760 extends the feet, you know, we can go farther than ever, but it also makes us lazy where we don't 00:07:38.760 --> 00:07:43.580 exercise, we don't go anywhere. So it extends our human capacity and then it makes us weak as humans. 00:07:43.680 --> 00:07:47.960 Well, the internet's like that. In fact, every technology is like that. So the internet extends 00:07:47.960 --> 00:07:53.520 our ability to connect with people, to find more people than ever before, to share our thoughts 00:07:53.520 --> 00:07:59.900 instantaneously. But at the same time, it's weakening some of our human connections, our ability to abide 00:07:59.900 --> 00:08:05.260 with people through conflicts, our ability to deal with difficulties, to form relationships that are 00:08:05.260 --> 00:08:10.980 complex and not simplistic that go through a conflict, to be able to pause in that instantaneous 00:08:10.980 --> 00:08:16.140 communication and learn how to discern what should be communicated and shouldn't be communicated. So 00:08:16.140 --> 00:08:20.820 those are the things I want us to process. It's not, oh, just get off internet or, you know, embrace 00:08:20.820 --> 00:08:26.600 it completely. It's we need to understand how it's forming us and then to make sure as Christians, 00:08:26.600 --> 00:08:31.620 we allow Christ to form us through our community and through our social media interactions. 00:08:31.980 --> 00:08:39.120 That's a pretty heady view. What strengthens us, weakens us. Like that, there's a, it's a two-sided 00:08:39.120 --> 00:08:39.620 coin. 00:08:39.820 --> 00:08:45.640 Yeah. And by the way, and I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you. You, in the stuff you do, you have to, every 00:08:45.640 --> 00:08:49.720 strength can be a weakness, right? Like Zoom meetings, what are the strengths of those Zoom 00:08:49.720 --> 00:08:52.760 meetings? During COVID, we found this, you know, you could gather, even if you couldn't be in 00:08:52.760 --> 00:08:57.980 person. But then also the fact that you can easily gather through a Zoom meeting, that sometimes 00:08:57.980 --> 00:09:03.080 people don't take community seriously. Like when you had to set time to meet on a Thursday 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:08.240 at 7 p.m. and drive to some place and be a part of that, that was a different reality 00:09:08.240 --> 00:09:14.820 than I can just stumble out of bed and turn on the computer and connect. That changes a 00:09:14.820 --> 00:09:19.120 dynamic. There's strengths and weaknesses to that dynamic. And that's the part I don't 00:09:19.120 --> 00:09:24.320 think we look at enough. It eases our ability to connect with each other, but it also might 00:09:24.320 --> 00:09:33.280 weaken the input and the energy and the commitment we do to building community because of the 00:09:33.280 --> 00:09:39.040 easiness of doing that. And we all know getting tired with, you know, Zoom meetings where we're 00:09:39.040 --> 00:09:44.740 online all the time. And because on Zoom, we have to look each other in the eye and there's 00:09:44.740 --> 00:09:49.120 less cues in the room. And so the strength is we connect to the weaknesses. We can't, you 00:09:49.120 --> 00:09:52.220 know, when you're together with someone in a room, you can interrupt each other. You can 00:09:52.220 --> 00:09:56.220 look down, you don't have to look at the screen the whole time, but the insecurities of online 00:09:56.220 --> 00:10:00.920 communication have another, you know, reality. I think the church doesn't take this seriously 00:10:00.920 --> 00:10:06.240 enough when we institute new, you know, online expressions. I don't think our world takes 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:09.320 it seriously enough. So I want us to ponder this as we're forming the technology. 00:10:09.320 --> 00:10:19.820 That's really interesting. Is there, what is a model that isn't toxic of social media? 00:10:20.280 --> 00:10:26.400 Like, have, is that, is, are you looking to redeem it? Is, is it lost? And you're wanting 00:10:26.400 --> 00:10:34.100 to go on to the next, like, what's, what's the utopian version of, of where you are? Like 00:10:34.100 --> 00:10:35.960 what's, where, where, where would you want to go? 00:10:36.420 --> 00:10:41.280 By the way, utopia literally means a place that does not exist. And so I, I think that's 00:10:41.280 --> 00:10:43.980 one of the problems is we think we have this idea of utopian church. 00:10:43.980 --> 00:10:50.760 I'm on to you. We want a utopian church is utopian. They don't exist. And I don't think 00:10:50.760 --> 00:10:56.220 we should even seek those out. You know, God can give us utopia in heaven, but well, one 00:10:56.220 --> 00:11:00.040 of the things, here's an example of the strengths and weaknesses of it. What is one of the tremendous 00:11:00.040 --> 00:11:05.900 strengths of social media? It unites people with shared interest, shared trauma. So people 00:11:05.900 --> 00:11:10.140 who've been abused by the church, they can gather together and share their stories. They 00:11:10.140 --> 00:11:15.060 never would have been able to do that. They can find voice. They can find advocacy. They 00:11:15.060 --> 00:11:20.880 can mobilize to take down terrible ministries and corrupt people. That's a strength. But 00:11:20.880 --> 00:11:25.980 here's the weakness of that. People tend to unite around one thing, right? We all unite around 00:11:25.980 --> 00:11:31.120 the church abuse thing. The internet allows us to unite around one thing. And so many communities 00:11:31.120 --> 00:11:36.060 are formed that way. We all unite around deconstruction. We all unite around Star Trek. You know, we 00:11:36.060 --> 00:11:42.820 are big fans of that. And we can exist within that one form of community. That relationship 00:11:42.820 --> 00:11:48.760 is still a weak tie relationship in that it's only one thing that ties you together. Strong 00:11:48.760 --> 00:11:52.740 tie relationships, there's lots of things that tie you together. And that's what we would 00:11:52.740 --> 00:11:58.160 call marriage and long-term friendships. You don't necessarily agree on everything. You're 00:11:58.160 --> 00:12:03.400 together for more than just one shared interest. So what happens in these groups, they unite 00:12:03.400 --> 00:12:10.060 around that one strong interest. What happens? Conflict occurs. Disagreement about that one 00:12:10.060 --> 00:12:14.800 issue. Diversity of thought and opinion. What are those groups doing? Are they finding ways 00:12:14.800 --> 00:12:19.140 to heal and come together and have a more diverse understanding of their community? In general, 00:12:19.220 --> 00:12:23.060 they're not. They just fracture. And then they go and find other people who agree with what 00:12:23.060 --> 00:12:27.060 they agree with. So we're not learning. The strength is we can unite with people around 00:12:27.060 --> 00:12:32.680 one issue. But when conflict occurs, because we can go to so many other people, we can replace 00:12:32.680 --> 00:12:36.420 people. People are replaceable online. I got thousands, millions of people I can find. 00:12:36.940 --> 00:12:41.580 We don't take the time to go through that conflict. So to me, that's both sides of it. 00:12:41.900 --> 00:12:46.800 The toxicity is we only unite with people as much as they agree with us versus we're forming 00:12:46.800 --> 00:12:52.020 a community. And a community goes through conflict. And a community has diversity. And a community 00:12:52.020 --> 00:12:58.140 loves each other regardless if we disagree. So that's what I would look at. Almost every expression 00:12:58.140 --> 00:13:05.720 has a positive side. But the danger of it is how do we handle conflict? How do we handle when that thing 00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:09.580 that brought us together isn't as happy as it was when we started? 00:13:10.020 --> 00:13:10.800 So what's the next book? 00:13:11.480 --> 00:13:18.560 I don't know. Man, I am so... By the way, as a pastor, I'm just going to say this to you. Don't 00:13:18.560 --> 00:13:22.320 tell anybody. Everybody listening, you can't tell anyone. But when you write Christian books, 00:13:22.540 --> 00:13:29.400 you have to dot every T. No, you don't dot T's. You cross T's and you dot every I. That tells you 00:13:29.400 --> 00:13:29.840 how it is. 00:13:29.840 --> 00:13:31.380 Not anymore. You're done. 00:13:32.280 --> 00:13:39.600 And I just, you know, I just would like to write maybe a fiction book where I don't have to have 00:13:39.600 --> 00:13:45.680 the answer. And I can just say some nebulous thing. And I don't finish the thought. And it's just 00:13:45.680 --> 00:13:50.540 feels a certain way. So that's kind of where I'm torn. I'm torn between the nonfiction where you have 00:13:50.540 --> 00:13:55.720 to kind of finish every thought versus just doing something kind of emotional, emotive, or humorous, 00:13:55.740 --> 00:13:58.740 or funny. So that's an honest answer for me. I don't quite know where I'm at. 00:13:59.420 --> 00:14:05.660 I want to know for you, though. Sorry. Well, for you, because I don't trust, like, I'll talk 00:14:05.660 --> 00:14:10.980 forever. Like, I want to partly interview you as well. Like, do you have more? What are you doing? 00:14:11.060 --> 00:14:15.600 You have six different ministries. Do these all go together? What's the big picture for you? Like, 00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:20.260 what does that mean? What are you doing? Digital ministry? Explain it to the person who has no idea. 00:14:21.020 --> 00:14:27.260 Yeah. So the thing that makes me different is that I believe that we can do church, 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:34.640 a biblically styled, ecclesiologically stable church in digital and or metaverse virtual reality 00:14:34.640 --> 00:14:45.560 space. Okay. And so I, for years, going back to 2018, I started championing this idea of a digital 00:14:45.560 --> 00:14:51.180 expression of church. I started a company called The Church Digital, really kind of screaming it from 00:14:51.180 --> 00:14:56.620 the rooftops, celebrating stories and examples of churches that were experimenting with it, 00:14:56.620 --> 00:15:01.600 their successes, their failures, their lessons. Yeah. Listen, a physical church wants to help with 00:15:01.600 --> 00:15:07.460 digital discipleship. I can do that. You know, I can help with that. And there's some things that we 00:15:07.460 --> 00:15:14.660 extend beyond, but it really was about championing these different types of churches pastored by 00:15:14.660 --> 00:15:19.220 different types of people in different environments that are reaching different types of people in the 00:15:19.220 --> 00:15:26.220 buildings are reaching. And so like that became the heartbeat. And I've worked with organizations like 00:15:26.220 --> 00:15:31.580 Stadia Church Planting on championing that, which was an awesome experience, but it wasn't quite, 00:15:32.060 --> 00:15:38.140 it didn't give me the opportunity to really help the big C church as much as just the little funnel 00:15:38.140 --> 00:15:46.440 that not to disregard what Stadia was doing, but it was a smaller subsector of a much larger problem. 00:15:46.440 --> 00:15:53.540 And so resigned from Stadia and actually started the nonprofit Digital Church Network. So I run a 00:15:53.540 --> 00:15:58.800 consulting company, The Church Digital. I run a nonprofit agency, Digital Church Network. 00:15:59.520 --> 00:16:05.420 I'm not going to lie to you. There's no money in either of those. And so, hey, I've got to figure 00:16:05.420 --> 00:16:11.960 out how to like, I don't know, buy groceries. And so I was approached by an organization called 00:16:11.960 --> 00:16:16.820 Leadership Network that's very close with Exponential. And they're wanting me to come on and talk about 00:16:16.820 --> 00:16:22.280 Metaverse Church. And at the same time, I can talk about Digital Church Network. Okay, I'll do that. 00:16:23.120 --> 00:16:29.420 You know, a new thing network is actually our partner, our ministry partner with Digital Church 00:16:29.420 --> 00:16:35.160 Network. And they're like, hey, we want to, you know, pay you some salary to help us digitally and 00:16:35.160 --> 00:16:43.820 develop a digital strategy with new thing. Okay, I can do that. Media Impact International is a new 00:16:43.820 --> 00:16:48.580 relationship that I have just within the past couple of weeks where they're doing social media training 00:16:48.580 --> 00:16:57.300 and resourcing organizations and churches in the Middle East, in the MENA region and North Africa. And it's 00:16:57.300 --> 00:17:04.960 like, yes, I want to learn from the global church. And so it's all of this, it sounds very cluttered and 00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:12.260 messy. And it's hectic, I'm not going to lie. But it's all centered around understanding and gaining 00:17:12.260 --> 00:17:20.000 insight on how the church can better utilize this technology, not just to broadcast a service, not just 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:27.320 to do something on social media, but to actually create expressions of church utilizing this technology 00:17:27.320 --> 00:17:31.460 in Digital Network. Well, it didn't sound cluttered to me at all. I, for me, I'd like to do 100 things 00:17:31.460 --> 00:17:36.440 at once. I don't believe in reincarnation, but I understand how the idea was formed, because I need 00:17:36.440 --> 00:17:40.700 more than one life to do all the things that I want to do. I don't know if that resonates with you. 00:17:41.420 --> 00:17:46.460 One of the things I want to ask you on this is, and this, I think, goes along with even McLuhan, 00:17:46.460 --> 00:17:50.360 who said people tend to think, oh, you know, a medium just going to take the same message and put 00:17:50.360 --> 00:17:55.060 it on a new medium, you know, the same way of doing things and kind of, I see this with how the church 00:17:55.060 --> 00:18:02.600 uses the internet, social media, the digital world, is they basically try to recreate a form of what 00:18:02.600 --> 00:18:10.420 they're doing, a structure in person online. And I was wondering your thoughts on this. Here's just like 00:18:10.420 --> 00:18:15.980 an example. We don't do this well as a church, but I have an in-person service. And then we have a 00:18:15.980 --> 00:18:20.880 separate online service. Now it's recorded. Again, we're a small church, so I can't do all the kind 00:18:20.880 --> 00:18:25.080 of monocular things. But I thought, I don't want to just record people watching our service. To me, 00:18:25.160 --> 00:18:30.780 that's not really what social media or YouTube or those things are like. So I do a message where my 00:18:30.780 --> 00:18:35.420 wife and I, we're looking at the camera, we're talking to the people directly. That's our expression. 00:18:35.420 --> 00:18:41.520 And then on Sunday mornings, it's more a different expression. So, and I'm still trying to discover, 00:18:41.780 --> 00:18:47.800 what are your thoughts on this of how far, let's say, the church has gone to allow the technology 00:18:47.800 --> 00:18:52.380 to change the way we express or to form the best way to express? Or are we just taking what we do 00:18:52.380 --> 00:18:57.020 in person and trying to put it online? You know, that tension, where do you see the church at? 00:18:57.160 --> 00:19:01.740 I mean, that's, that's, that's a great question. That's a great tension for a small church to live 00:19:01.740 --> 00:19:06.720 in. To be honest, I'm the guy who's like, Hey, you know what? Small churches, maybe you don't 00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:11.800 stream your services online. If you're really wanting to be effective in reaching people, creating a, 00:19:11.800 --> 00:19:20.160 a mid quality video product and putting it online for people to watch, like that may not be the best 00:19:20.160 --> 00:19:26.140 option for you. And Irma McManus has, has said this recently. If you really respect your, your physical 00:19:26.140 --> 00:19:32.280 gathering, don't stream it online. Like if physical gathering is the thing for you, don't cheapen it 00:19:32.280 --> 00:19:40.860 by doing it online, do something else online. And like a, an alpha course online or a, a small groups 00:19:40.860 --> 00:19:48.760 or a relational or empowering the people in your pews or in your seats to reach their circle of influence 00:19:48.760 --> 00:19:54.160 digitally, to be digital missionaries in social media or in the metaverse. Like there's so many 00:19:54.160 --> 00:20:01.100 other things more effective than streaming a service online. People that have spiritual questions, 00:20:01.100 --> 00:20:05.880 they're not looking to church online services. They're looking to their friends for spiritual 00:20:05.880 --> 00:20:10.980 answers and they're looking to Google and Google is not picking up your service. And so it's 00:20:10.980 --> 00:20:16.940 understanding digital strategy and it's understanding disciple making and the relational aspect of a small 00:20:16.940 --> 00:20:23.000 church doing this is incredible, but they've got to realize that they, it's not competing with the big 00:20:23.000 --> 00:20:29.080 boys. Let the big boys be the big boys. Small churches need to be authentic to who they are, which is 00:20:29.080 --> 00:20:33.820 relational if nothing else. Okay. And the challenge with the online, you talked about being able to have 00:20:33.820 --> 00:20:39.740 church in digital spaces. What do you think is the biggest weakness? Like if the accusation that most 00:20:39.740 --> 00:20:46.920 sticks, like here's the problem when someone says, this is why I don't think you can really have church in a digital 00:20:46.920 --> 00:20:53.080 space. Yeah. I think that there are people that are more comfortable with it than not. And so like, you'll never 00:20:53.080 --> 00:20:59.040 hear me say everything has to be digital. That would be chaotic, but you're, you're not going to hear me say 00:20:59.040 --> 00:21:07.800 everything has to be physical because there are people that connect digitally as well as physically. Like I can even look at, 00:21:07.800 --> 00:21:13.820 at, at the younger generation and the kids where like the, the line of physical and digital, I mean, 00:21:13.820 --> 00:21:20.720 it exists for me. I'm 45 years old. I remember a life before the internet. And, and so for a native, 00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:26.540 somebody that can dance back and forth between the two, it's, it's not there. The thing that scares me, 00:21:26.600 --> 00:21:33.840 the thing that gives me pause really is, is the mental health, uh, implications of, of what's happening. 00:21:33.840 --> 00:21:39.380 Like we're challenging P and I don't know. I'm, I'm working on this. This is, this is one of my goals 00:21:39.380 --> 00:21:48.300 of 23. Um, like we are literally challenging people to be on mission in spaces that are addictive. 00:21:48.300 --> 00:21:54.780 Uh, secondhand trauma is an actual thing. We're, we're dealing with the high levels of depression, 00:21:54.780 --> 00:22:00.740 a suicidal rate. And especially when you get into the metaverse, uh, you're seeing a lot of, um, uh, 00:22:00.740 --> 00:22:07.960 pornography. Uh, you're seeing a lot of, of drug alcoholism. Like these things are very strong 00:22:07.960 --> 00:22:12.260 in digital and metaverse spaces. I've, I've actually, I had a friend of mine, a former, 00:22:12.260 --> 00:22:18.860 um, digital pastor. She tried to commit suicide earlier this year, a good friend. And, and, 00:22:18.860 --> 00:22:24.800 and thankfully her husband stopped her. Um, and when, when, when I asked weeks later, 00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:32.580 why, what happened, Jeff, I, I, things got dark. Um, and, and because I was digital, 00:22:32.580 --> 00:22:38.040 I didn't have a community around me to talk to, and I didn't know where to go. 00:22:38.040 --> 00:22:43.140 You know, it's interesting. I talk a bit in the book posting piece about strong ties versus weak 00:22:43.140 --> 00:22:48.440 tie relationships. Um, a weak tie relationship is you're just connected on one thing and that's 00:22:48.440 --> 00:22:52.680 not wrong. You know, just one issue. Strong tie means many things you're connected with. Strong 00:22:52.680 --> 00:22:58.060 ties would be like friendships, marriage, those sorts of things. Uh, what's happening in social 00:22:58.060 --> 00:23:03.420 media. And you can see this anxiety in kids and in adults is they have lots of weak tie relationships. 00:23:03.420 --> 00:23:07.140 So they have thousands of people that they interact with, whether it's Facebook, Snapchat, 00:23:07.140 --> 00:23:11.900 whatever the platform they're on, but it kind of feels like as much as I interact with them, 00:23:11.900 --> 00:23:16.380 I exist. But the moment I stopped posting, the moment I stopped interacting, I disappear. 00:23:16.680 --> 00:23:22.980 There's not a connection that goes beyond that. So there's less and are fewer and fewer, uh, 00:23:22.980 --> 00:23:28.280 strong tie relationships. So that also puts a strain on our strong ties on our marriage. So 00:23:28.280 --> 00:23:33.200 in a church context, let's say if you go into a physical space of a church, it's more than just 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:36.880 uniting about one thing. You're hanging out, you talk about larger things. If it's healthy, 00:23:37.140 --> 00:23:42.360 you connect and other things, your children, whatever. So you have more of a relationship 00:23:42.360 --> 00:23:47.260 there. Online, you might feel like someone's only interacting with me as much as I'm posting a 00:23:47.260 --> 00:23:53.260 picture or sharing a thought or a comment. The moment I stop, I disappear. Uh, and that could be 00:23:53.260 --> 00:23:56.780 true. If I stopped going to church, I disappear. But at least when you're hurting, you can show up at 00:23:56.780 --> 00:24:00.080 church and people see you're hurting and they can come to you, hopefully if they're healthy again 00:24:00.080 --> 00:24:05.100 and, and meet with you. So this is a struggle that people have more and more weak tie relationships 00:24:05.100 --> 00:24:10.600 than ever before, less strong tie. And then also we're putting strains on that. And then we're not 00:24:10.600 --> 00:24:14.740 able to go through conflicts as much. Cause one of the things I think the internet does, the strength 00:24:14.740 --> 00:24:19.020 is it provides us to have relationships. The weakness is it's keeping us from learning how to go 00:24:19.020 --> 00:24:24.720 through conflicts. And I, here's the perfect example. Go back to olden days, let's say before the car. 00:24:25.440 --> 00:24:32.040 Um, what was your social network before the car? Basically anyone within walking distance or you hook 00:24:32.040 --> 00:24:39.860 up the wagon, right? It's a very limited group of people. Why did people reconcile or try to get along 00:24:39.860 --> 00:24:46.800 in olden days? It wasn't because they were better people. They did it because they had to. Because if you 00:24:46.800 --> 00:24:51.320 get in a fight with your neighbor, there's no one to talk to. So you have to find a way to get along 00:24:51.320 --> 00:24:55.180 with your neighbor. And there's only two churches in town. And if you don't find a way to exist with 00:24:55.180 --> 00:25:00.340 that church, there's no church online. There's no, you might have one book about God. You don't, 00:25:00.440 --> 00:25:07.700 you can't search sermons. So people had to learn to deal with difficult people, have a more diverse 00:25:07.700 --> 00:25:12.260 expression of community. Now they didn't always do this. There's terrible things about the olden days, 00:25:12.320 --> 00:25:17.200 right? Where you had the neighbor who controlled everyone, the pastor who controlled everyone, 00:25:17.200 --> 00:25:21.980 and people were stuck in these abusive systems. So I'm not saying that was a good time. It's just 00:25:21.980 --> 00:25:27.680 what it was. Now what's the strength of the internet? I don't have to go to that abusive church. I don't 00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:34.140 have to have that nosy neighbor control my life. But now I have all these options and we're finding 00:25:34.140 --> 00:25:39.300 this with people. The moment conflict occurs, they just find someone else. I got a million churches. 00:25:39.300 --> 00:25:43.600 I got a million people I can connect with. It's a strength to have all those opportunities, 00:25:43.600 --> 00:25:49.340 but we're forgetting how to be Christians, to go through conflict, to express love, to do those 00:25:49.340 --> 00:25:54.460 things. So I think that's hitting with this depression too, is we're isolated. We have these 00:25:54.460 --> 00:25:59.280 weak tie relationships. And then when conflicts occur, instead of going through that, even if we want to 00:25:59.280 --> 00:26:03.340 go through, people quickly abandon us and replace us for someone else. So it can be a very challenging 00:26:03.340 --> 00:26:03.840 environment. 00:26:03.840 --> 00:26:08.360 Yeah. No, I love that. You know, trying to get the, I mean, you're really speaking towards 00:26:08.360 --> 00:26:17.380 emotional IQ, the maturity of the situation of the individuals here. We, in digital, we talk a lot 00:26:17.380 --> 00:26:25.020 about a standard of online to offline. Simply, the gospel that we hear online, it has to influence our 00:26:25.020 --> 00:26:31.640 offline, our physical relationships. Otherwise, what we're doing is we're creating consumers. It's 00:26:31.640 --> 00:26:37.740 consumerism. I mean, it's based off of James 1.22, don't just be hearers of the word, paraphrasing 00:26:37.740 --> 00:26:45.000 online. And so deceive yourselves, do what the word says in the real world. And so there's an 00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:51.620 opportunity. And this is what I think makes a lot of what we talk about differently, at least through 00:26:51.620 --> 00:26:58.840 digital church network, the church digital, like the platform, even pre-COVID, was it's not just 00:26:58.840 --> 00:27:06.740 consuming a product. There's the challenge to have this impact the real world, where we're not just 00:27:06.740 --> 00:27:12.620 hearing sermons about conflict resolution. We're not just consuming that as product, but we are 00:27:12.620 --> 00:27:19.800 challenging you, audience, to live this out in your life, to be that representative. If you've got 00:27:19.800 --> 00:27:26.240 conflict, resolve it. If I am, you know, I tell this story, we want to see the fruits of the spirit 00:27:26.240 --> 00:27:31.620 in not just physical realm, but we want to see it in physical too. Love, joy, peace, patience, 00:27:31.740 --> 00:27:35.880 kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. I think that was all of them. But if I 00:27:35.880 --> 00:27:42.820 am a, if I'm a strong Christian, if I'm exuding the fruits of the spirit digitally, in physical realm, 00:27:42.900 --> 00:27:47.760 I'm abusive to my wife, I'm verbally abusive to the kids, and I steal from my workplace. I mean, 00:27:47.760 --> 00:27:54.360 you're using words like hypocrite or worse to describe me. And so if we are going to do church, 00:27:54.360 --> 00:28:01.060 if we're going to be the church digitally, I think there's a demand that we exude that we're 00:28:01.060 --> 00:28:06.620 consistent with that, with our fruits of the spirit. We're consistent with our spirituality, 00:28:06.620 --> 00:28:13.500 with our maturity. And that maybe it's not run away like you're talking about, run away to go to the 00:28:13.500 --> 00:28:19.920 easier option. It's no, I've got to exude that in physical space. And we're gonna, we're gonna grow 00:28:20.100 --> 00:28:25.540 through this. I actually, I had a question for you. That is so good. I want to turn this on, on you a little bit. 00:28:26.700 --> 00:28:31.960 You're talking about, you're using words, forgive me, you said one and then multiple, like it's, 00:28:31.960 --> 00:28:37.140 strands, strings. What's, what's the label that you've said here a couple of times? Where you're, 00:28:37.200 --> 00:28:39.960 you're talking about like, man, this is embarrassing. 00:28:40.500 --> 00:28:42.660 Weak tie versus strong tie you're talking about? 00:28:42.660 --> 00:28:47.820 Thank you, that's what I'm asking. So a weak tie is, is basically you've said like one strand and then. 00:28:47.880 --> 00:28:51.500 You disconnect on one thing. We all like Star Trek. That's a weak tie. 00:28:51.620 --> 00:28:53.480 Can you, can you grow from a weak to a strong? 00:28:53.780 --> 00:28:59.420 Isn't that how relationships grow? I mean, we start with an interest, you know, our kids played softball 00:28:59.420 --> 00:29:03.620 together, right? And then we started talking, but even softball is an opportunity to talk about 00:29:03.620 --> 00:29:08.520 something else. This is a fascinating thing about as well. I don't talk about this much in the book, 00:29:08.520 --> 00:29:17.080 but it fascinates me. The concept of, we are more segmented than ever before. So my son is playing 00:29:17.080 --> 00:29:23.260 his switch and listening to YouTube. I'm watching TV like an old man. My wife is on Instagram. 00:29:23.780 --> 00:29:27.660 Somebody else is doing something else. Now, I don't think any of those things are wrong, 00:29:27.820 --> 00:29:34.280 but we're all doing different things. How do we form human connections? By doing something together, 00:29:34.940 --> 00:29:40.760 as we do it together, other connections form, other conversations arise. It's like, why did the guy 00:29:40.760 --> 00:29:44.920 like going hunting with his dad or fishing with his dad? It's more than the hunting. It's more than 00:29:44.920 --> 00:29:49.760 the fishing. It's the conversations that occurred during the time. What we're doing right now as a 00:29:49.760 --> 00:29:56.220 culture is we're so segmented in our own groups that we're not able to have those conversations where 00:29:56.220 --> 00:30:01.860 we go beyond a weak tie into a strong tie relationship. It's just about politics, you know, 00:30:01.860 --> 00:30:07.220 far right, far left, whatever. It's just about, and we're just enmeshed, you know, or immersed in that 00:30:07.220 --> 00:30:13.100 stuff. So yeah, I think weak ties can become strong ties, but you need to have a safe space where you can 00:30:13.100 --> 00:30:18.040 do something together. And then by doing something together and having a relationship, then other 00:30:18.040 --> 00:30:22.820 things rise up. So to me, like in the home, you know, I have to find ways, something we like to do 00:30:22.820 --> 00:30:26.180 together. And if we don't like doing things together, then I have to find a way to be interested 00:30:26.180 --> 00:30:32.240 in my son's YouTube videos and his switch, because as we do that together, then he might have a 00:30:32.240 --> 00:30:37.160 conversation about what happened at school or something he's upset about. That's the whole family 00:30:37.160 --> 00:30:40.520 dinner thing. We all need to gather around for family dinner. I don't think we all need to be at the 00:30:40.520 --> 00:30:44.880 family table, but what happens when we're all together at a family table, we talk about other stuff. 00:30:45.040 --> 00:30:49.340 So in this digital age with all the strengths of all the things we can do to build stronger tie 00:30:49.340 --> 00:30:54.420 relationships. We got to do stuff together and be able to bring in other things that we can talk 00:30:54.420 --> 00:30:59.540 about than just our interest in our wants. That I'm not ready to say that's a weakness of digital 00:30:59.540 --> 00:31:05.940 church. Um, but I don't know that we've cracked the, the, the shell. I don't think we've got a 00:31:05.940 --> 00:31:13.220 solution for, uh, generational church digitally. Yeah. You know, a lot of, a lot of the church, 00:31:13.340 --> 00:31:18.440 a lot of the church, not all of them, some of them are more, um, generic in who they're reaching, 00:31:18.440 --> 00:31:22.700 but you know, in, in the internet, if you're trying to reach everybody, you're not reaching 00:31:22.700 --> 00:31:28.660 anybody. There's the largest nation on the planet is Facebook users. And so like to try, 00:31:28.740 --> 00:31:34.400 you can't effectively target everybody. And so, you know, rule number one of digital narrow the 00:31:34.400 --> 00:31:39.740 focus, create a persona. And so as a result of that, you're right, we are, are creating echo 00:31:39.740 --> 00:31:44.580 chambers. We are surrounding ourselves with, with people that, that think like us transparent 00:31:44.580 --> 00:31:51.060 here. Um, and yes, that could be a perceived weakness. There's an opportunity though to grow 00:31:51.060 --> 00:31:56.680 beyond that. I mean, I, I can tell you, this is interesting. Mark Lutz is a, is a, is a digital 00:31:56.680 --> 00:32:02.900 church planter. He's been running Lux digital church for about a year on Twitch and on discord. 00:32:02.900 --> 00:32:09.160 It's a video game church. He's a video gamer and he's got, I forget the age of the grandma, 00:32:09.380 --> 00:32:16.640 but like she's in her seventies or eighties, uh, who's very active in discord being discipled 00:32:16.640 --> 00:32:21.920 through this church. Like, which, and it's funny cause Mark, like she didn't even know what discord 00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:27.340 was before the church. It's not like she's some abnormality. That's really hyped up about, you know, 00:32:27.740 --> 00:32:34.780 um, fortnight. She just somehow got connected into this community and, and loved it and is being 00:32:34.780 --> 00:32:41.760 stretched as a result of it. And so we're seeing exceptions to the rule. And I think what happens 00:32:41.760 --> 00:32:48.760 is when the church has time to like, if the church is really successful in, in multiplying, like if we 00:32:48.760 --> 00:32:54.860 are actually successful in helping people realize that they have spiritual mission and that they're not 00:32:54.860 --> 00:32:59.840 just consuming a product, but they need to be exuding this in physical realm. If I start with 00:32:59.840 --> 00:33:05.020 a gamer, well, that gamer is probably going to have a conversation with their spouse relatively 00:33:05.020 --> 00:33:09.500 quickly. And they're going to talk to the friends across the street. They're going to talk to, uh, the, 00:33:09.500 --> 00:33:15.320 the kids at the Taekwondo dojo. And so as a result of this, you're seeing, um, some 00:33:15.320 --> 00:33:22.200 diversification. I think that that's happening. Uh, and we're seeing early signs of that. Uh, but, but it's 00:33:22.200 --> 00:33:28.060 really too soon to tell, I think on how vast it can be and what that reach is as we're trying to get beyond 00:33:28.060 --> 00:33:28.720 the echo chamber. 00:33:29.180 --> 00:33:35.640 I love, you know, any creative expression. I, I, uh, well, one of the things I, I sometimes 00:33:35.640 --> 00:33:41.480 get frustrated. If you ever met a pastor is like, what we need to be is a local church in our local 00:33:41.480 --> 00:33:47.400 community. You know, we eat and drink and connect in this neighborhood and it sounds very ideal, but 00:33:47.400 --> 00:33:52.380 people don't live in their local. They, they live somewhere. They move, they work 30 minutes away 00:33:52.380 --> 00:33:58.200 from there. They're involved in a soccer match. That's, you know, regional. They don't do that. 00:33:58.200 --> 00:34:03.800 That's an old timey idea that doesn't exist anymore. People are connected in all kinds of 00:34:03.800 --> 00:34:07.520 different ways. And so I think that is one of the strengths of the digital issue is you're trying to 00:34:07.520 --> 00:34:11.520 find out how people actually are connected. They're connecting through like interests. They're more 00:34:11.520 --> 00:34:15.280 connected with someone thousand miles away than they are with their neighbor. And we could say, well, 00:34:15.280 --> 00:34:20.160 that shouldn't be that way. Well, it just is that way. How do we connect with them? To me, a church, 00:34:20.240 --> 00:34:25.860 though, at some level has to be large enough that someone can annoy you and small enough that you can 00:34:25.860 --> 00:34:30.740 connect with someone. So to me, if I'm in a group that I'm just isolating with people that I like, 00:34:30.800 --> 00:34:35.600 I don't know if that's really a church. It's got to be that there's some annoying, difficult people 00:34:35.600 --> 00:34:40.220 that you're trying to love. This is another strength and a weakness of the internet. Rainey and Wellman, 00:34:40.460 --> 00:34:47.460 two, I think they're Pew Research people. They said the internet is used for networked individualism 00:34:47.460 --> 00:34:52.200 and they use this as a strength. So I network with people based on my individualistic needs. 00:34:52.520 --> 00:34:56.680 I need something answered and I find a group for that. I like Star Trek. I find a group that meets 00:34:56.680 --> 00:35:01.060 that need. I like to complain about the government. I find a group that meets that need. But it's my 00:35:01.060 --> 00:35:06.600 individual need that I find networks for. The problem with that is that turns us into consumers that only 00:35:06.600 --> 00:35:10.940 relate with people as much as they meet our individual needs. And so we don't want church to be that way. 00:35:11.000 --> 00:35:15.700 And church can be that way in person as much as it can be that way online. I'm not going to church just 00:35:15.700 --> 00:35:20.180 for me. I'm going to church because I've been called into community. I'm not going to this Bible 00:35:20.180 --> 00:35:24.260 study just for me, but because I've been called into community expression larger than myself. 00:35:24.420 --> 00:35:30.380 Whether it's in person or online, that's the kind of teaching that somehow has to be there. This 00:35:30.380 --> 00:35:37.000 isn't just about what meets our individual needs. It's about building a community. And that part, 00:35:37.100 --> 00:35:40.760 like I think about building a community, people will ask me, Doug, how's Evergreen Church doing? 00:35:40.760 --> 00:35:44.180 That's the church I serve. Because the church has an expression larger than myself. 00:35:44.740 --> 00:35:49.820 People seldom say, how's Facebook doing? How's Twitter doing? Because we're not seeing those 00:35:49.820 --> 00:35:54.680 as communities. We're seeing them as avenues for our personal expression that we can take a break 00:35:54.680 --> 00:36:01.020 from, a sabbatical from. So I think using these platforms, we still need to have communities where 00:36:01.020 --> 00:36:08.040 we can say, how is the digital church doing? And it has a concept that's larger than Jeff and Doug 00:36:08.040 --> 00:36:12.460 and our individual needs. And that is a challenge, whether it's in person or online. 00:36:12.860 --> 00:36:17.960 Yeah, that's, I mean, you're, you're a hundred percent right. Um, you know, we can, and one of, 00:36:18.040 --> 00:36:24.380 one of the fears that I have with, um, a digital expression of a church is some of the ones that I've 00:36:24.380 --> 00:36:32.280 seen are very, uh, personality centric. Um, and that's, that's, that's a, that's a fear. Um, I don't 00:36:32.280 --> 00:36:37.640 think it's, I think it's a, um, attention to be managed. I mean, using the phrase that you said 00:36:37.640 --> 00:36:42.840 earlier, because I, cause you, you're, you're building this off of an individual, you're using 00:36:42.840 --> 00:36:48.740 an individual influence to point to a church, to point to a community. And we're seeing, um, 00:36:48.820 --> 00:36:53.720 honestly, some great success. I'm going to use a word you may not know, asynchronous communities. 00:36:53.720 --> 00:36:59.180 Uh, this is, these are software like discord or like Slack or WhatsApp, mighty networks, 00:36:59.280 --> 00:37:04.320 even Facebook groups. There's actually a, um, uh, an established, it's interesting. I just did a 00:37:04.320 --> 00:37:12.060 podcast last week. Uh, and so Seacoast up in, um, the Carolinas areas, um, they ran an experiment 00:37:12.060 --> 00:37:15.980 and this is, you're going to listen to last week's episode to hear it. I love this episode. 00:37:16.400 --> 00:37:22.920 There was this 20 year old kid. The 20 year old kid had an idea. Um, why don't we create as an 00:37:22.920 --> 00:37:28.580 intern? They literally get, listen to the intern. I'm so proud of this church. The intern had an idea. 00:37:28.580 --> 00:37:37.280 What if we created a community over here in discord and we connected with Christian influencers and we 00:37:37.280 --> 00:37:45.920 allowed them to talk about our community. And so the influencers who are just creating content noise, 00:37:45.920 --> 00:37:53.360 they literally started to point to the community. So the purpose of the influencer wasn't noise. 00:37:53.360 --> 00:37:59.140 It was community. And then within the community, they started to, to build relationships. They started 00:37:59.140 --> 00:38:05.120 to do Bible studies. They started to do discipleship within this discord community. The influencer now has 00:38:05.120 --> 00:38:11.860 purpose beyond just the, the fuzzy feeling from that scripture, because now it's reinforced by a 00:38:11.860 --> 00:38:19.240 disciple making community. By the way, there's 3000 people in that, uh, discord that are now going 00:38:19.240 --> 00:38:23.780 through the process. And what's funny is that church is growing. So there, this group is going so fast, 00:38:23.780 --> 00:38:28.240 like the leadership's like, we don't know what we're doing. How do, how do we do this? What? And so 00:38:28.240 --> 00:38:32.940 they're, they're experimenting, they're trying, but it's like, God bless them for, for doing something. 00:38:33.200 --> 00:38:38.400 And I'm all for the experimentation. The biggest one for me is online. Can I find someone if they 00:38:38.400 --> 00:38:43.960 disappear? And my argument is if I can't find a person, then I don't know if we had community. Like 00:38:43.960 --> 00:38:47.760 if someone stops coming to church, I know where they live. I can find them. I can connect with them. 00:38:48.140 --> 00:38:52.260 There's another way. And I think that part of connection, not like everyone has to do that, 00:38:52.540 --> 00:38:56.020 but there needs to be that progression. There's people who show up to church that I can't find. 00:38:56.100 --> 00:38:59.940 They're a visitor. I never see them again. That's fine. But others where if they disappear, 00:38:59.940 --> 00:39:04.240 they don't just disappear. And I think that's the area we kind of have to look at respecting people's 00:39:04.240 --> 00:39:08.960 boundaries, their privacy, but also being able to help someone and find them, seek the lost sheep, 00:39:09.180 --> 00:39:13.260 bless them, encourage them, those who are weak. But I want to ask you some questions here. Okay. So 00:39:13.260 --> 00:39:17.220 this, what am I on right now? Is this a podcast, a video? Like I know sometimes people aggregate these 00:39:17.220 --> 00:39:19.820 in all kinds of directions. What is this going to be used for? 00:39:20.100 --> 00:39:23.780 It's both. It's the video will be on YouTube and the podcast. We get maybe 00:39:23.780 --> 00:39:26.640 five times more audience on audio only than video. 00:39:26.900 --> 00:39:34.480 Okay. All right. So doing these podcasts, what is the thing you wish people would do that frustrates 00:39:34.480 --> 00:39:38.440 you that they won't? You know, even people who like the show, who are like, what's the one thing 00:39:38.440 --> 00:39:43.360 that would just help you the most? Like if you would only do this, you don't know how much it would 00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:46.700 help me in this endeavor. What is the one or two things that come to mind? 00:39:46.700 --> 00:39:50.700 You can make future checks payable to Jeff. No, I'm kidding. 00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:57.100 Say what you think. Tell me what, tell it. I'm interviewing you. This is not your question. 00:39:57.200 --> 00:39:59.920 You didn't give me a list of questions. I want to know the answer on this. 00:40:00.020 --> 00:40:06.120 I love it. The biggest hurdle, and the audience knows this, the biggest hurdle I see it time and 00:40:06.120 --> 00:40:12.000 time again with churches right now where we are in September, August, September, 2022, 00:40:13.300 --> 00:40:17.360 physical pastors are wanting to get back to physical buildings and putting all the eggs 00:40:17.360 --> 00:40:23.380 in that basket, which may be the right answer for today. Uh, but it's, it's fraudulent and it's 00:40:23.380 --> 00:40:31.000 short-sighted because I think there's an opportunity to do something different. Um, and so it's the, 00:40:31.140 --> 00:40:35.380 the, the challenge of, and we talk about it, the challenge of experimenting, the challenge of, 00:40:35.380 --> 00:40:40.940 of embracing, uh, a digital discipleship system so that it's, uh, to allow for more scalability, 00:40:40.940 --> 00:40:47.500 uh, the, the challenge to reach a different person by doing something different instead of just trying 00:40:47.500 --> 00:40:54.600 to do the same thing over and over again. Um, you know, I mean the church, February, 2020 was not a 00:40:54.600 --> 00:41:01.180 great time in context of the church. Uh, I mean, we're, we're in 20, I think there was a 25% decrease 00:41:01.180 --> 00:41:07.740 over a 23 year period, according to multiple stats. Um, we were, we were at a decline. We were actually 00:41:07.740 --> 00:41:14.920 on a little bit of a tick up, but after a multi-year decline heading out of 2019. Um, so like to go back 00:41:14.920 --> 00:41:21.940 and say, Oh, that was the golden age, I think is very short-sighted and the, the, the opportunities 00:41:21.940 --> 00:41:28.000 to do something different, like there's no better time than now. And, uh, you know, unfortunately, 00:41:28.620 --> 00:41:33.820 oftentimes, you know, I have the conversations where the people that are wanting to do something 00:41:33.820 --> 00:41:38.560 different, don't have the clout within the organization to make that happen. Right. Right. 00:41:38.600 --> 00:41:43.160 And that's often a generational thing too, right? You have older people in the lead pastor role and 00:41:43.160 --> 00:41:48.460 then the younger people like do something digital, but it doesn't mean they know how to, here's the 00:41:48.460 --> 00:41:53.280 struggle though, isn't it? People are more worn out than ever. And I know as a pastor where I'll 00:41:53.280 --> 00:41:59.040 just say no, cause I just don't want to fail at another thing. You know, just say no without even, 00:41:59.180 --> 00:42:02.900 you know, I'm doing enough, not well, I don't need to do another thing where you're thinking in the 00:42:02.900 --> 00:42:07.160 long haul, this will help you with all those things. But it's so hard when someone is weak, 00:42:07.380 --> 00:42:12.140 feeling worn out to get them to have that longer view picture, isn't it? 00:42:12.400 --> 00:42:18.400 Yeah. I, it was, there was a, there was a, uh, nationally known Christian, um, influencer, 00:42:18.900 --> 00:42:23.060 uh, works a lot with church leaders. And, uh, I, it was funny. I don't listen to his, 00:42:23.160 --> 00:42:30.700 his podcast a lot. I listened to this one episode and, uh, I, I about literally, I about F-bombed in my 00:42:30.700 --> 00:42:41.020 car driving down the road when he's like, pastors, we have pivoted enough. It's time to stop and it's time to, 00:42:41.020 --> 00:42:47.360 it's time to rest. Uh, and, and it's time to be just good enough where we are and, and okay. Yeah. 00:42:47.360 --> 00:42:53.020 Hey, we need to rest. Hey, it's been a very rough season. Um, but don't call this the promised land. 00:42:53.020 --> 00:42:58.300 Don't call this the completion of the great commission. And what it's, it's, it's, it's funny, 00:42:58.400 --> 00:43:03.740 Doug, when people talk with me, um, we start talking technology, but we don't stick on technology 00:43:03.740 --> 00:43:08.460 long because it gets down to disciple making. It's down to multiplication. It gets down to 00:43:08.460 --> 00:43:14.240 helping people find their mission, embracing missional imagination, um, giving them pastor, 00:43:14.360 --> 00:43:18.560 don't be upset. People are not in your building. Be upset. People have no spiritual purpose when they're 00:43:18.560 --> 00:43:24.300 not in your building. And so it's, it's these types of things that if I could like scream from the 00:43:24.300 --> 00:43:30.360 rooftops and get everybody to listen, it, it does, if it's, if it's digital, if it's micro, if it's 00:43:30.360 --> 00:43:38.120 whatever it is, but the idea that one model, that one expression of church is going, especially in 00:43:38.120 --> 00:43:45.680 America is going to be able to reach these people here consistently. The answer is no. And we have 25 00:43:45.680 --> 00:43:50.940 years history to show that. Uh, and so to say, we don't need to pivot. Well, you haven't listened 00:43:50.940 --> 00:43:56.940 over the past 25 years, maybe if we had pivoted before or more aware, uh, but we didn't know. 00:43:56.940 --> 00:44:02.960 And so to me, that's, that's the frustrating piece. Yeah. Okay. We've, we've got the great, 00:44:02.960 --> 00:44:07.540 uh, what is it? The great exodus, the great resignation is happening. That's not just the 00:44:07.540 --> 00:44:13.880 church thing that's across the board. And what another reason church for us to pivot, to understand 00:44:13.880 --> 00:44:19.220 we're looking at a new level of financing, even in our churches, we're not going to be able to roll 00:44:19.220 --> 00:44:26.040 as deep on the staffing as we were because giving or even finding credible people to take these jobs 00:44:26.040 --> 00:44:31.240 is going to be hard to find. We have to pivot to something different. 00:44:31.780 --> 00:44:36.720 It, I mean, it really is the challenge. I'm not trying to be a naysayer. I personally believe 00:44:36.720 --> 00:44:42.340 there's going to be a huge decline in the American church in the next 10 to 20 years, no matter what 00:44:42.340 --> 00:44:49.320 is done. I know as a pastor, uh, like an online, by the way, a pastor online, for the most part, 00:44:49.380 --> 00:44:55.080 I just get beat up regularly. It's not a place you go to be encouraged or built up. Almost all the 00:44:55.080 --> 00:44:59.700 Christians I follow, their poster about what's wrong with the church and what's wrong with pastors and 00:44:59.700 --> 00:45:03.320 what's wrong. And a lot of them, you know, it's because they've been hurt and the, but you just get 00:45:03.320 --> 00:45:11.160 like, I just feel like, I don't want to go there. Uh, but the reality is, um, you know, okay, we've done 00:45:11.160 --> 00:45:16.140 what's wrong. We've deconstructed. We've, but what are we going to do now? And I think to me is I want 00:45:16.140 --> 00:45:21.320 to, uh, instead of holding on to the last gasps of something that might be declining or fading away, 00:45:21.320 --> 00:45:27.500 I'd rather make room for the possibility of the future. And even if I fail at it, I still would 00:45:27.500 --> 00:45:32.000 rather give opportunity for people to follow my example and learn from it for what they're doing 00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:36.460 than to hold onto something that no one's going to be caring about. And I think that's beyond even 00:45:36.460 --> 00:45:41.240 digital. It's just a lot of the things that we're doing. And I just wanted to let you know that 00:45:41.240 --> 00:45:45.320 that's what I respect about what you're doing. I know the entrepreneurial spirit, a lot of things 00:45:45.320 --> 00:45:50.100 you do, lots of vision, not much money to resource it. And sometimes it can be, why am I doing this, 00:45:50.140 --> 00:45:55.700 you know, Lord? Um, but I do know, like, I'd like you to succeed, whatever that means. 00:45:56.140 --> 00:46:02.400 But even if you don't, you've decided not to bow down and you've decided that your life would be a 00:46:02.400 --> 00:46:07.080 witness that others could follow, that you're laying a foundation that allows others to follow. 00:46:07.200 --> 00:46:10.900 And you need to remember that because I don't know how you assess it through analytics or, 00:46:11.040 --> 00:46:17.000 you know, all those assessments, but fear can keep people just doing the same thing and working on 00:46:17.000 --> 00:46:22.360 the same thing until it, you know, just ends. And also, you know, some people, they're called to do 00:46:22.360 --> 00:46:27.840 that. That's fine. But I found like what I do, I pastor, I do books, I do online stuff. It doesn't 00:46:27.840 --> 00:46:32.240 fit into really any category. And sometimes I get judged by that, but I want to ultimately make 00:46:32.240 --> 00:46:37.040 ministry authentically me and then people can reject the core of who I am because I want other 00:46:37.040 --> 00:46:40.840 people to be authentically them. I don't want them to fit into the role of what a pastor is supposed to 00:46:40.840 --> 00:46:45.300 be an author, supposed to be a person. I just want them to be obedient to what the Spirit of the Lord 00:46:45.300 --> 00:46:49.260 has called them to do. And I don't have a right to judge that. You know, the harvest is ripe, 00:46:49.360 --> 00:46:54.060 workers are few, there's so many people in need. So I want to encourage any expression. You might tell 00:46:54.060 --> 00:46:57.240 me what you're doing, like, that doesn't make sense to me at all. I think that's terrible. But I want 00:46:57.240 --> 00:47:02.480 someone in that field. Because you know that there's field after field after field that people 00:47:02.480 --> 00:47:06.360 aren't there. And that's kind of, I don't think I'm a good pastor, but I don't think there's a lot of 00:47:06.360 --> 00:47:10.440 people doing what I'm doing. So I'm going to do it until God replaces me. So we need to encourage 00:47:10.440 --> 00:47:15.540 more people to do more things, creative expressions, expand the definition of the church, and then be 00:47:15.540 --> 00:47:21.000 Christ. Be Christ to people. That definition doesn't change. To be Christ, to love, you know, we can be 00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:25.480 biblically based and look very different in our expressions. That's my sermon. I'm going to pass 00:47:25.480 --> 00:47:32.620 around the offering plate now. You were just my pastor, Doug. Like that, that was an incredible 00:47:32.620 --> 00:47:42.720 online pastoral expression. And so thank you for that. We, it's funny, we have a saying through DCN. 00:47:43.840 --> 00:47:49.340 I think Chesley came up with it. Chesley Lundy. No, I mean, he found it somewhere, but it was funny. I 00:47:49.340 --> 00:47:54.720 Googled it and there's like 15 different expressions or offshoots of the phrase, but essentially it's, 00:47:54.720 --> 00:48:02.020 it's, uh, pioneers get slaughtered, uh, settlers get rich. And, and, and, and in many ways, like what 00:48:02.020 --> 00:48:08.160 we're, what we're doing with, with how we're viewing digital ministry, which is amazing to me, 2022 post 00:48:08.160 --> 00:48:14.980 COVID, we're still getting slaughtered, you know, in, in many ways out there with it. Um, now what's, 00:48:14.980 --> 00:48:20.000 can I, can I use definition? I, I, I call it this, the prophetic middle. This might be my 00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.220 Pentecostal background. Okay. But sometimes we'd like to build ministries from starting from one 00:48:24.220 --> 00:48:29.420 camp or another camp, right? And then we try to build in a direction, but that's not really 00:48:29.420 --> 00:48:34.300 reconciliation. It's not, I think we kind of just put ourselves in the prophetic middle and then we 00:48:34.300 --> 00:48:40.560 trust that God connects us. And that's hard because you're really alone and none of the camps really 00:48:40.560 --> 00:48:45.160 accept you, but you know, if you just totally immerse yourself in one camp, then you lose the 00:48:45.160 --> 00:48:49.820 ability to speak to the other. And I think there's a lot of, in that entrepreneurial spirit where you're 00:48:49.820 --> 00:48:53.980 doing that. And then it's just, Lord, I feel like you called me to do this and I'm trusting that I can 00:48:53.980 --> 00:48:58.600 connect with the people, but you can really feel like you're just out there alone, but you have to 00:48:58.600 --> 00:49:04.520 do that because otherwise you're just one group, you know, it's the traditional church trying to 00:49:04.520 --> 00:49:08.660 convince people you're not, or, or even on the side of people who are hostile towards the church and 00:49:08.660 --> 00:49:12.280 giving that all up and just the tech or they're hostile. Like you're even talking in ways that I 00:49:12.280 --> 00:49:16.840 know probably aren't accepted on all sides about, there are these weaknesses to our technology and 00:49:16.840 --> 00:49:22.020 it can't just be, it's all great. And we do need real community and there are limitations. When you 00:49:22.020 --> 00:49:25.940 do that, you're in the prophetic middle and then you just have to hope that God connects you. And he 00:49:25.940 --> 00:49:30.120 does, he connects you to these amazing people, but I don't know if he necessarily connects you with 00:49:30.120 --> 00:49:37.120 money or resource or fame or fortune. Uh, but you know, eternal reward. I'm sure there's lots of 00:49:37.120 --> 00:49:42.960 that. That's, that's, that's what I'm hoping for. Um, it's, it's, you've, you just literally put words 00:49:42.960 --> 00:49:50.320 prophetic middle. I have been struggling with how to define that. And you just, you just nailed it. 00:49:50.320 --> 00:49:56.000 I mean, here, here's the, like, I want you to understand if, if you wanted to get a picture 00:49:56.000 --> 00:50:04.580 of what my past four years has looked like. Um, so I was literally hired by stadia to plant digital 00:50:04.580 --> 00:50:09.240 expressions of church because I was talking about digital expressions of church going all the way 00:50:09.240 --> 00:50:15.880 back to 2018 before any, like any, anybody had a clue about this. So I'm either a genius or I'm the 00:50:15.880 --> 00:50:22.200 lone idiot. I'm still books, still not quite sure yet. Um, but we, as a result of taking this job, 00:50:22.200 --> 00:50:29.460 um, and so I started talking with organizations, people started finding, searching, uh, on Google for 00:50:29.460 --> 00:50:35.680 planting a digital expression of church at this point today, I have documented over 400 conversations 00:50:35.680 --> 00:50:40.620 with people that are wanting to plant a church exclusively in digital or metaverse space. 00:50:40.860 --> 00:50:48.540 Like this is not a couple of people having a stupid idea. There are hundreds of this. And four years 00:50:48.540 --> 00:50:55.500 ago, here's how the conversation would go from the planter. Jeff, I've got this crazy idea. 00:50:56.160 --> 00:51:02.820 My, my pastor thinks I'm nuts. My denomination doesn't want anything to do with me. Uh, my spouse and 00:51:02.820 --> 00:51:08.380 my friends, because they've never seen it before. They don't even know how to support me or, or this, 00:51:08.520 --> 00:51:15.060 this idea, Jeff, is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea? Is this even biblical biblical? And so I had 00:51:15.060 --> 00:51:20.540 the opportunity to sit down with some of these guys, Chesley Lundy, Mark Lutz, and even tell the 00:51:20.540 --> 00:51:25.580 stories about some of these churches that had existed going all the way back to 2015. The oldest digital 00:51:25.580 --> 00:51:33.440 church, as far as I know, came 2011. It was planted by a teenager, a teenager planted a digital church in 00:51:33.440 --> 00:51:39.640 roadblocks that's reached tens of thousands of people decades later. It's crazy how this is. Yeah. Okay. 00:51:39.640 --> 00:51:44.600 The, the, the teenager didn't understand discipleship. He's a teenager. What were you doing when you were a 00:51:44.600 --> 00:51:53.060 teenager? Like, I mean, yeah, old men don't understand discipleship. So, but the, the heart of this is 00:51:53.060 --> 00:52:01.400 decades or like years later, 2022. Hey, you know what? You're, you're not crazy. Your pastor may not 00:52:01.400 --> 00:52:06.620 understand it. The denomination doesn't, but now there's people that are having success. Can I 00:52:06.620 --> 00:52:13.620 introduce you to them? I mean, this, this is why I resigned from Stadia. This is why we started 00:52:13.620 --> 00:52:20.120 digital church network so that we can be the community where that we can provide the care 00:52:20.120 --> 00:52:26.080 and we can provide the coaching for the people that have these ideas. We're not a denomination. 00:52:26.340 --> 00:52:33.020 We're, we're a network. We're a community. We're, we're, we're family to people who are literally 00:52:33.020 --> 00:52:40.000 alone. Like I joke with these, with these people. We're the island of misfit toys. Nobody, we were the 00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:46.340 prophetic middle. We don't speak to either side. We don't connect anymore, but that doesn't make us 00:52:46.340 --> 00:52:50.540 wrong. Well, and this is one of the things that drives me crazy. We are an assessment culture in 00:52:50.540 --> 00:52:53.760 general where there's less people on the field playing and there's more people in the stands, 00:52:53.760 --> 00:52:58.540 just assessing what other people are doing. And that I think that's a problem. So I don't mind an 00:52:58.540 --> 00:53:05.160 opinion, but I'm like, go do your opinion. It's amazing how pristine an opinion can be, uh, when you 00:53:05.160 --> 00:53:10.060 don't have to actually put it into practice. So to me, I encourage any expression. A lot of people say, 00:53:10.140 --> 00:53:14.660 you know, what's wrong with this kind of church. I'm like, fine, I get it. It's, it's wrong. Go do 00:53:14.660 --> 00:53:17.960 what God's put on your heart. And then you're going to find, you're going to find the strengths 00:53:17.960 --> 00:53:22.140 and weaknesses to it. You're going to find how to modify it. But I believe the harvest is ripe and 00:53:22.140 --> 00:53:27.120 the workers are few. I want to welcome anyone who's going out into the world to reach people. 00:53:27.400 --> 00:53:33.560 And so that part of being threatened by it, being worried about it, you know, I just, I'm not afraid of 00:53:33.560 --> 00:53:38.860 that reality, but it will drive me crazy when someone will just every day, what's wrong with the 00:53:38.860 --> 00:53:43.420 church they left? What's wrong with this? And I'm like, you know, Christ in you has got to have 00:53:43.420 --> 00:53:47.360 some expression. There's got to be something you could partner with, something you could do, 00:53:47.480 --> 00:53:51.640 and then see if it works. Because here's the reality, no matter how you do it, if you do it 00:53:51.640 --> 00:53:57.840 online, in person, in the hills, or in a cathedral, community's tough. And eventually you don't want to 00:53:57.840 --> 00:54:03.640 be in it. And eventually there's conflicts, eventually, you know, and then you have to learn how to love and 00:54:03.640 --> 00:54:08.660 the universal things that happened in every age, regardless of the technology. So what I like and what 00:54:08.660 --> 00:54:13.600 you're doing and others are doing is, here, okay, you think the church should be more involved? Let's 00:54:13.600 --> 00:54:17.600 go do it. Plant a church. I'll resource you. I'll help you. You know, here's your questions. And then 00:54:17.600 --> 00:54:23.000 to me, managing expectations is probably the biggest thing, okay? Doing that, are you okay if this doesn't 00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:27.520 happen? Are you okay if this happens? Like, as long as people can manage those expectations, and it's 00:54:27.520 --> 00:54:32.400 true with any kind of church expression, then it's okay. The other one, and anyone listening here, is I think we 00:54:32.400 --> 00:54:37.340 need to live for value in the doing. Everything I do has to have value in the doing. I think we get 00:54:37.340 --> 00:54:41.080 dangerous when we do something for a future payoff. Like, well, I'm going to start an online church, 00:54:41.180 --> 00:54:46.460 but it better get to this or it's failed. If you do that, you're going to be miserable. It has to 00:54:46.460 --> 00:54:52.160 have value in the doing. That means this service had value whether we do it again. This relationship 00:54:52.160 --> 00:54:57.400 had value whether it continues on. We need to free people up to do that because all these leadership 00:54:57.400 --> 00:55:01.180 books and expectations for the church have put so much pressure that you have to become a certain 00:55:01.180 --> 00:55:05.580 thing, and you have to get past 100 people or 200, and you got it. There's all these expectations, 00:55:05.580 --> 00:55:10.320 and people are living for some future payoff that never comes, or when it comes, they're 00:55:10.320 --> 00:55:15.200 not satisfied. So to me, to encourage someone, do what God's put on your heart. Make sure it has 00:55:15.200 --> 00:55:20.920 value in the doing, and whether you do it for one year or for 50 years, let's celebrate it that you 00:55:20.920 --> 00:55:25.220 spent time in the harvest. We have to expand the definition of church, expand the definition of 00:55:25.220 --> 00:55:30.580 pastor, celebrate more expressions, celebrate different issues of how long they are, their reach, 00:55:30.700 --> 00:55:36.480 focus. The harvest is ripe, workers are few, and we are a diverse group of people, and our churches should 00:55:36.480 --> 00:55:43.440 express that diversity. You know, 75 percent of the people that we talk with about planning those 00:55:43.440 --> 00:55:53.200 churches, 75 percent over, are bivocational. Like, it is, it's no longer seminary educated. 00:55:53.700 --> 00:56:00.360 And it was interesting, when I was with Stadia, I was reporting 75 plus, and people that were 00:56:00.360 --> 00:56:07.640 planting physical churches, even 12 months ago, like, it was within Stadia, it was 25 percent 00:56:07.640 --> 00:56:12.700 bivocational. So they were seeing a bivocational shift, but nowhere near as drastic as what I was 00:56:12.700 --> 00:56:18.900 reporting with 75. And now, you know, a more recent stat, they're seeing 25 percent actually move to 00:56:18.900 --> 00:56:23.800 50 percent. 50 percent of the applicants that are wanting to plant a church through Stadia are now 00:56:23.800 --> 00:56:30.800 bivocational. And so there's this phenomenal shift towards this new model. 00:56:31.640 --> 00:56:37.040 Well, that would make sense, though, even in traditional churches. The problem with our church 00:56:37.040 --> 00:56:43.140 growth movement is it's platformed anomalies and exceptions to the rule. That's not the reality of 00:56:43.140 --> 00:56:50.680 the church. The majority of churches are under 250 people, bivocational pastors. But we've created 00:56:50.680 --> 00:56:54.360 all those people to say, you're all doing it wrong. You all need to be something else. So the majority 00:56:54.360 --> 00:56:58.180 of the church are saying 80 percent of the church is doing it wrong. You got to be like the 20 percent 00:56:58.180 --> 00:57:02.360 anomaly. Now, I don't mind the 20 percent. I just think, I don't think God's looking at the majority 00:57:02.360 --> 00:57:07.300 of the church and saying, this is terrible. You need to be something different. So even with online 00:57:07.300 --> 00:57:14.740 expressions, let it be what it is. And in the sense of this is because, by the way, you don't even know 00:57:14.740 --> 00:57:17.980 what you're going to collect. I bet you a lot of people started and they thought they knew the people 00:57:17.980 --> 00:57:20.380 they're going to reach and they reached different people than they thought they're going to reach. 00:57:20.440 --> 00:57:27.500 You just don't know. But we need more bivocational expressions. We need more. I don't I that's what's 00:57:27.500 --> 00:57:33.560 driven me crazy about all this. This literature on church leadership and growth has limited people's 00:57:33.560 --> 00:57:37.460 willingness to go be pastors because there's so many expectations. They're like, I can't be that. 00:57:37.700 --> 00:57:42.040 I have a doctorate of ministry. I have lots of education theologically. But if someone has a 00:57:42.040 --> 00:57:46.980 calling to plant a church, I want them to plant it, whether they don't have an AA. Now, do I want 00:57:46.980 --> 00:57:52.480 them to continue in education and be in community and grow and learn? You bet. But to think that somehow 00:57:52.480 --> 00:57:58.040 you need that traditional formal education to go out and preach the gospel is foolishness to 00:57:58.040 --> 00:58:03.340 fishermen. So I like this concept, you know, release people. But we are so much more 00:58:03.340 --> 00:58:07.580 healthy when we're doing than when we're assessing. I would even tell some of the people listening right 00:58:07.580 --> 00:58:12.680 now, if you're really bitter with like and you're critiquing other expressions, often it's a sign 00:58:12.680 --> 00:58:17.020 that you're critiquing expressions where you should be doing that. But because you're not doing something 00:58:17.020 --> 00:58:21.900 like that, all you can do is critique other people who are doing it. You've got to make room for that 00:58:21.900 --> 00:58:25.240 gifting. If you're spending all your time critiquing other people's messages, then you need to get a 00:58:25.240 --> 00:58:29.780 message out there. If you're spending all your time critiquing how people are forming church, then you need to form 00:58:29.780 --> 00:58:34.900 something. And I've often found a sign that we're not using our gifting as we begin to judge other 00:58:34.900 --> 00:58:38.900 people who are using that gifting. Now that's hard because we think people may judge us the way we've 00:58:38.900 --> 00:58:43.360 been judging them. But that helps us with how we interact with people when we start doing it ourselves. 00:58:43.760 --> 00:58:45.900 Maybe that brings about a little humility, right? 00:58:46.020 --> 00:58:51.380 I mean, yes, it does. Yeah. You know, I used to, when I, when I was, uh, maybe a couple of decades 00:58:51.380 --> 00:58:55.140 ago, but I used to say that the complaint, but I was the set up and tear down church. And so I'd be 00:58:55.140 --> 00:59:01.380 like the complaint box, uh, exists in, in the, in the box truck. And so like, if you want to complain, 00:59:01.700 --> 00:59:06.740 you better be working because if you're, if you're complaining and you're working, then maybe you've got 00:59:06.740 --> 00:59:13.000 value with that because you're, you're part of the solution instead of just the, the disgruntled guy. 00:59:13.140 --> 00:59:16.020 Hey, here's another question I want to ask you. Cause we've gone a little while and I want to make 00:59:16.020 --> 00:59:20.780 sure I get this in, um, big, big picture, you know, the dream stuff that you maybe don't share 00:59:20.780 --> 00:59:24.660 with everybody. Cause it might seem foolish. I guess it's not like Joseph's, you know, 00:59:24.980 --> 00:59:29.300 coat of many colors and your brothers are all going to throw you in a pit for telling your dreams, 00:59:29.300 --> 00:59:35.940 but what, what's the big, ideally you'd love it if the work you're doing here, you know, 20 years from 00:59:35.940 --> 00:59:40.060 now, 30 years from now, 50, what it could become or your desire for the church. What is that? 00:59:40.060 --> 00:59:49.420 You know, I, um, I, I, I am a, I'm an AV guy. I'm literally the geek that sits in the church closet 00:59:49.420 --> 00:59:56.220 and runs the technology that that's, that's what my, that's what my training was. And so even that 00:59:56.220 --> 01:00:01.900 I'm, um, um, you're asking me some of these questions, it like those, my friends who know 01:00:01.900 --> 01:00:07.420 me, my friends who knew me 20 years ago, they, they can't believe some of the stuff that I'm involved. 01:00:07.420 --> 01:00:12.300 I can't believe some of the stuff that I'm involved in. And so I had, I had the honor, 01:00:12.520 --> 01:00:17.580 Dave Ferguson's a friend, but I had an honor of sitting down with him maybe a year ago at a 01:00:17.580 --> 01:00:22.480 conference. And, um, and, and I started casting vision towards what we're doing with digital church 01:00:22.480 --> 01:00:28.860 network. And, um, and Dave looked at me and it was just incredible. Like I had booked 15 minutes 01:00:28.860 --> 01:00:34.200 with the guy and 15 went to 30, 30 minutes went to an hour. I almost spent 90 minutes and I'm not 01:00:34.200 --> 01:00:38.940 bragging here. This is just the overwhelming thing of how I believe God's in the middle of this. 01:00:39.180 --> 01:00:45.780 Like, and Dave looks at me after hearing me talk about my heart and these people and this opportunity 01:00:45.780 --> 01:00:50.900 and what we want to see. And Dave says, Jeff, do you realize if this actually works the way that 01:00:50.900 --> 01:00:56.540 you're describing, you're going to be bigger than the Catholic church. And I'm, I'm not going to lie. 01:00:56.600 --> 01:01:01.600 I hadn't thought of it that way. And I kind of freaked me out at the moment. I may have gone into 01:01:01.600 --> 01:01:07.840 a panic attack, but that's a, another conversation. I mean, the heart of this is, is that I, and I think 01:01:07.840 --> 01:01:13.920 I said it earlier, I want to reach a different type of person in the building. I want to empower a 01:01:13.920 --> 01:01:19.640 different type of leader in different environments where discipleship may look different. For love 01:01:19.640 --> 01:01:25.160 of God, I just want to do something different than we're already doing. And, and, and if, and if we can 01:01:25.160 --> 01:01:31.640 create a new model of church, not the only model, I don't want to evolve. I'm not exclusive, but just 01:01:31.640 --> 01:01:39.680 a new model to reach different people than what we're reaching currently, that's a kingdom win. And, and, 01:01:39.680 --> 01:01:49.040 and so that's, that's for me is, is, is the goal to be able to, to see generations of disciples being 01:01:49.040 --> 01:01:55.420 created as a result, multiplying disciples being created as a result of the ministry that we're doing. 01:01:55.420 --> 01:02:02.320 Oh, by the way, in digital and metaverse space, and we're seeing it happen on a, on a, I would say 01:02:02.320 --> 01:02:07.840 micro, we're seeing it happen on, on, on some situations, but obviously there's an opportunity 01:02:07.840 --> 01:02:12.780 for more. That's really good. I, I, it frustrates me when people have to tear down another expression 01:02:12.780 --> 01:02:17.480 to make room for their own, which to me is always a sign of insecurity. And I got to tear down large 01:02:17.480 --> 01:02:21.200 churches for a small church. I got to tear down traditional churches for house churches. You know, 01:02:21.200 --> 01:02:25.240 I, I just, I, I'm going to go do what God's put on my heart. I'm going to trust 01:02:25.240 --> 01:02:29.420 other people are trying to listen to the Lord with their expressions. One question that'll follow 01:02:29.420 --> 01:02:35.180 up. So are we tithing in crypto? Is that what we're doing online? How's this going to work? 01:02:35.460 --> 01:02:41.040 You, you, you laugh. Yeah. I mean, that actually is, is a conversation. I mean, I, listen, I'm, 01:02:41.200 --> 01:02:45.840 we're in the middle of talking about blockchain crypto. We're talking about DAOs. We're talking 01:02:45.840 --> 01:02:54.960 about decentralized expressions of church. And so, I mean, yeah, most, most will accept Venmo and cash app and, 01:02:55.060 --> 01:03:01.920 credit cards. But, um, listen, the next, I, I mean, I just literally did, did, uh, interviews on that 01:03:01.920 --> 01:03:11.440 today. Um, church is going to look different and we've got to be okay with that. If, if, if you are 01:03:11.440 --> 01:03:17.640 digging into your, to your typical model and you're unable to give, then you're making your model and 01:03:17.640 --> 01:03:23.060 idle. Um, and I even, it's, it's funny, like as much as I passionate, I am about digital and meta, 01:03:23.240 --> 01:03:28.540 the day that something else comes out better, that's more effective than creating disciples and 01:03:28.540 --> 01:03:35.280 multiplying disciples. I'm going to embrace that idea because that's the end game. And so as much 01:03:35.280 --> 01:03:39.740 as we're kind of stuck trying to, well, that's not the way that it used to be. That's not the way that 01:03:39.740 --> 01:03:44.880 it was. That's not that any of what, what drives me nuts is the, that's not the way that it is in the 01:03:44.880 --> 01:03:49.900 Bible. Well, shoot, they didn't talk about crypto in the Bible. Really? Like, is that what you want to, 01:03:49.900 --> 01:03:54.660 is that what you really want to get into? Um, they, they didn't talk about your steeples in 01:03:54.660 --> 01:03:59.100 the Bible either. So let's, let's really start to be consistent. Well, I think we're pragmatic too, 01:03:59.140 --> 01:04:01.940 because sometimes people, well, it's a house church. Well, you know why they were a house church? 01:04:01.940 --> 01:04:04.840 Because they were kicked out of the synagogues. They probably would have stayed in the synagogues 01:04:04.840 --> 01:04:08.360 if they hadn't been kicked out of that. And then why did they kind of move from house churches back 01:04:08.360 --> 01:04:13.140 into regular churches? Because people were martyred in their homes and things happened and there was 01:04:13.140 --> 01:04:17.260 instability. And so they decided to have its own place. You know, those are all pragmatic decisions. 01:04:17.260 --> 01:04:22.000 And then we turn them into the, thus saith the Lord. Uh, that's the thing. People who are avoiding 01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:26.900 technology and especially even older people, it's, that's the reality. You want to be able to engage 01:04:26.900 --> 01:04:30.160 with people. You want to be able to connect with them. You don't want to find yourself in some 01:04:30.160 --> 01:04:34.380 isolated Island. You know, obviously something's interested, some things don't. I get that. But 01:04:34.380 --> 01:04:38.740 I want to, when I die, whatever that is, that I'm connected with someone from every generation. 01:04:38.740 --> 01:04:43.660 At some level, I have a connection. I think we're dangerous if we're just with one group of our age 01:04:43.660 --> 01:04:47.500 or one ethnicity or one political category, whatever. When we're just with a bunch of people 01:04:47.500 --> 01:04:52.020 like us, I don't know if we're where Jesus is because Jesus is going in every generation, 01:04:52.320 --> 01:04:58.120 every race, ethnicity, economic strata, and the digital world. Some of the most important 01:04:58.120 --> 01:05:02.160 conversations of our time are happening online. And that's, you know, bring it back to my book 01:05:02.160 --> 01:05:05.820 because I also have to sell books, posting piece, why social media divides us and what we can do 01:05:05.820 --> 01:05:11.460 about it. The issue is like some of the most important issues are being talked online. And 01:05:11.460 --> 01:05:15.580 shouldn't Christians be there, not just with different content, but with a different spirit. 01:05:16.020 --> 01:05:21.420 And regardless of what we're using, we can have a different spirit. We can engage these things and 01:05:21.420 --> 01:05:25.240 tell people we care about where they are and the spaces that they value. 01:05:25.740 --> 01:05:33.440 Amen. This has been fun. I got to tell you, I was nervous walking in, but I love your conversation. 01:05:33.440 --> 01:05:36.460 Doug, thank you for, thank you for joining us today. 01:05:36.720 --> 01:05:40.200 Oh, Jeff, thanks for letting, you know, answer my questions and let me answer a few of yours. 01:05:40.320 --> 01:05:41.300 This really was a privilege. 01:05:41.600 --> 01:05:46.500 Awesome. So, hey, we're going to put a link in the show notes to Doug's book. Check it out. 01:05:47.380 --> 01:05:54.000 Twitter, Fairly Spiritual. It sounds like there's a story there. I regret not having time to get into 01:05:54.000 --> 01:05:59.780 that, but you can hit them up on Twitter and check out the book, but definitely excited, Doug. 01:05:59.780 --> 01:06:06.180 Thank you again for joining us. But we're going to land the plane. And so for Doug, this is Jeff with 01:06:06.180 --> 01:06:09.340 the Church Digital, blah, blah, blah, Digital Church Network and a whole bunch of other stuff. 01:06:09.920 --> 01:06:12.400 Thanks for being on here. Y'all have a good day. See you next time on the show.