WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.100 I had a senior level executive from Exxon come to our church and he had led in Virginia 00:00:05.100 --> 00:00:06.920 at a great church, a massive ministry. 00:00:07.040 --> 00:00:10.840 And he comes to our place and he's like, hey, I'd love to, I would love to lead here. 00:00:11.140 --> 00:00:12.740 I mean, his leadership skills are off the chart. 00:00:12.840 --> 00:00:15.840 I mean, he's leading one of the biggest corporations in America and he loves the local church 00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:16.540 and he's led there. 00:00:16.820 --> 00:00:19.080 But I'm like, I would love for you to lead here too. 00:00:19.180 --> 00:00:20.160 He's like, what do I need to do? 00:00:20.560 --> 00:00:25.120 I'm like, you need to go sit under other leadership that we've already approved and that we trust. 00:00:25.460 --> 00:00:28.020 And we want to see how you live together in our community. 00:00:28.140 --> 00:00:29.840 Do you become part of this culture? 00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:31.360 Is this something you really want? 00:00:31.400 --> 00:00:35.820 Because the worst thing in the world would be that we're going to put our hand on you 00:00:35.820 --> 00:00:36.520 and our name on you. 00:00:36.580 --> 00:00:40.320 And people are going to trust everything that church product means and the leadership says 00:00:40.320 --> 00:00:41.140 and they're going to go to you. 00:00:41.220 --> 00:00:44.220 And three months later, you're going to be like, ah, this isn't really for me. 00:00:44.220 --> 00:00:45.980 Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. 00:00:46.720 --> 00:00:50.760 Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church. 00:00:51.260 --> 00:00:55.180 But more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. 00:00:56.100 --> 00:00:57.960 Is disciple making possible digitally? 00:00:58.940 --> 00:01:00.980 How should we approach the digital mission field? 00:01:01.800 --> 00:01:04.500 Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:07.520 Oh, and where does the metaverse fit into all this? 00:01:08.360 --> 00:01:12.520 Whether you're a big or small church, an established church, or a startup church plant, 00:01:13.260 --> 00:01:18.180 the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church, 00:01:18.800 --> 00:01:20.160 digitally and physically. 00:01:20.840 --> 00:01:26.200 our heart, that churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will 00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:27.840 revolutionize your church. 00:01:28.500 --> 00:01:31.160 And now, here's your host, Jeff Reed. 00:01:31.520 --> 00:01:31.980 All right. 00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:37.520 Hey, it's episode 250, 250 here at the Church Digital Podcast. 00:01:37.700 --> 00:01:44.160 I can't believe we've done 250 of these conversations today talking, not today, but oh my gosh, 250 00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:45.100 conversations in one day. 00:01:45.460 --> 00:01:47.060 That's another conversation for a different day. 00:01:47.400 --> 00:01:52.680 250 shows talking about digital, talking about metaverse church, talking about digital church, 00:01:52.800 --> 00:01:53.680 digital discipleship. 00:01:54.100 --> 00:01:54.400 Figital. 00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:56.280 Are we still allowed to say figital in 2023? 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:01.680 I kind of got booed off the stage for saying that in 22, so I'm kind of afraid to bring 00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:02.920 it back in 2023. 00:02:03.300 --> 00:02:10.100 But man, it's been a great ride here and definitely looking forward to more coming up in digital 00:02:10.100 --> 00:02:11.660 and in metaverse space. 00:02:11.740 --> 00:02:15.320 We've got a great show coming up for you right here. 00:02:15.400 --> 00:02:19.560 Before we get there, I want to talk to you all about He Gets Us. 00:02:19.560 --> 00:02:28.400 It's an online evangelical option where we're helping connect people with spiritual questions, 00:02:28.600 --> 00:02:29.680 spiritual explorers. 00:02:30.060 --> 00:02:31.760 We're helping connect these people with churches. 00:02:31.940 --> 00:02:32.260 It's funny. 00:02:32.360 --> 00:02:35.920 Tyler Sansom, a friend of mine, as we're doing this recording right now, told me the other 00:02:35.920 --> 00:02:41.080 day that through He Gets Us, First Capital Christian Church, Church Anywhere, has connected 00:02:41.080 --> 00:02:48.940 with 580 people that had spiritual questions over the span of maybe call it six weeks, a little 00:02:48.940 --> 00:02:51.480 less than two months, 580 people. 00:02:51.980 --> 00:02:58.380 Incredible opportunities to get connected with people that are looking for spiritual help. 00:02:58.460 --> 00:03:02.780 And if you're comfortable with digital discipleship, digital ministry, man, there's incredible 00:03:02.780 --> 00:03:04.180 opportunity for you to do this. 00:03:04.280 --> 00:03:07.460 Go and check out thechurch.digital.com slash He Gets Us. 00:03:07.540 --> 00:03:08.320 And oh, by the way, it's free. 00:03:08.660 --> 00:03:10.600 That's a conversation for a different day. 00:03:10.600 --> 00:03:11.560 But you know what? 00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:16.860 The volunteer team that you're going to need to resource all these people you're going to 00:03:16.860 --> 00:03:20.740 meet and that He Gets Us, we're going to talk about that right here in this conversation 00:03:20.740 --> 00:03:21.720 today. 00:03:21.800 --> 00:03:25.220 Because coming in, we've got Jason Shepard in the conversation. 00:03:25.400 --> 00:03:26.800 Jason, thank you for joining us today. 00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:28.920 Man, honored to be around you, Jeff. 00:03:28.980 --> 00:03:31.260 Anytime I get to hang out with you is a good time for me. 00:03:31.340 --> 00:03:31.640 Thank you. 00:03:31.900 --> 00:03:36.680 Jason, as I recall, was actually on 2021. 00:03:36.900 --> 00:03:40.080 I think it was one of the last podcasts we did in 2021. 00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:47.080 We really dove into what is a network, what does a church network do? 00:03:47.420 --> 00:03:50.060 And Jason was kind of dual purpose. 00:03:50.260 --> 00:03:53.700 I don't know if you realize, but I was kind of like trying to figure out what to do with 00:03:53.700 --> 00:03:54.560 digital church network. 00:03:54.680 --> 00:03:55.440 What does it look like? 00:03:55.780 --> 00:04:01.400 And so I brought Jason in who runs a house church network and a church project network 00:04:01.400 --> 00:04:05.540 and a man who just genuinely uses the word network a lot. 00:04:05.580 --> 00:04:07.580 And I was like, hey, what does that even mean? 00:04:07.900 --> 00:04:08.760 What does that look like? 00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:12.000 And so, man, I love that conversation we had a year or so ago. 00:04:12.060 --> 00:04:12.420 Me too. 00:04:12.860 --> 00:04:14.180 And looking forward to this one. 00:04:14.480 --> 00:04:15.200 Yeah, me too, man. 00:04:15.920 --> 00:04:17.160 Yeah, no, I remember it. 00:04:17.180 --> 00:04:20.260 It doesn't feel like it's been a year, but it's a good time, man. 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:23.640 Hey, by the way, I do a decent amount of these. 00:04:23.700 --> 00:04:29.880 You do a great job letting conversations happen and not wasting time and get the best stuff 00:04:29.880 --> 00:04:30.620 out of a moment. 00:04:30.740 --> 00:04:31.560 You're really good at that. 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:33.140 So thanks for doing a great job at that. 00:04:33.460 --> 00:04:35.000 Oh, man, I appreciate that. 00:04:35.080 --> 00:04:38.120 And I know you're a man of limited words. 00:04:38.200 --> 00:04:44.340 And so let's crack the whip and let's, I'm kidding, it's a lot of fun being on podcasts 00:04:44.340 --> 00:04:45.100 and doing this. 00:04:45.180 --> 00:04:52.360 Well, after 250 of them, I guess you kind of get your rhythm down and let's just get 00:04:52.360 --> 00:04:52.840 into this. 00:04:53.080 --> 00:04:55.620 So here's what we're talking about today. 00:04:56.340 --> 00:04:59.540 You know, Jason is running a microchurch. 00:04:59.620 --> 00:05:03.720 Well, I tell you what, Jason, before I talk about what we want to talk about, just maybe 00:05:03.720 --> 00:05:05.920 set the stage here a little bit for the audience. 00:05:05.920 --> 00:05:10.380 Because you're micro, you're doing a house church network, church project network. 00:05:10.960 --> 00:05:14.220 You're a man of, you know, sometimes I feel like I've got a lot of jobs. 00:05:14.300 --> 00:05:16.520 I feel like you're one of those guys that's like right there with me. 00:05:16.860 --> 00:05:19.760 Just a lot of responsibilities, hands in a lot of different things. 00:05:20.380 --> 00:05:25.240 Maybe just give the audience here just a brief summary of who you are and what drives you. 00:05:25.580 --> 00:05:26.000 Yeah, cool. 00:05:26.120 --> 00:05:26.400 Thanks. 00:05:26.480 --> 00:05:27.580 Thanks for asking me, Karen. 00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:29.560 Yeah, my name is Jason Shepard. 00:05:29.560 --> 00:05:36.780 I started Church Project in 2010 with an idea of being a decentralized, distributed leadership, 00:05:37.040 --> 00:05:38.840 diverse community kind of church. 00:05:39.060 --> 00:05:41.760 We didn't have all of our nomenclature back then for sure. 00:05:42.340 --> 00:05:46.120 I'd never experienced this, been a part of it, didn't really know who to learn from. 00:05:46.620 --> 00:05:52.580 So jumped out of the airplane, had been working at really good churches by all definitions 00:05:52.580 --> 00:05:58.500 of church before that and left a really great church, super centralized, and I wanted to be 00:05:58.500 --> 00:06:02.420 a part of something that was deconstructed, decentralized, distributed leadership. 00:06:03.140 --> 00:06:08.100 And a lot of that really came from my convictions of studying scripture, church history, the global 00:06:08.100 --> 00:06:10.680 church, and I couldn't unsee that anymore. 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:15.280 So I started Church Project with no people, no place, no money, no name. 00:06:16.060 --> 00:06:17.720 In fact, Church Project was the idea. 00:06:18.220 --> 00:06:21.980 I had to get a 501c3 or a bank account or something for somebody to give something, and 00:06:21.980 --> 00:06:25.940 I thought, well, I don't want to come up with a stupid church name like we hear so many of 00:06:25.940 --> 00:06:26.040 them. 00:06:26.120 --> 00:06:30.120 So I'm like, I'll just, this is the idea, Church Project, and then we'll figure out a 00:06:30.120 --> 00:06:30.560 name later. 00:06:30.640 --> 00:06:32.720 And it just sort of stuck, and now I don't really care. 00:06:33.220 --> 00:06:35.240 I just care about what we do more than what we're called. 00:06:35.900 --> 00:06:38.420 But Church Project is a church of house churches. 00:06:38.940 --> 00:06:41.920 And so we are one church made up of many house churches. 00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:44.920 We're a church of thousands of people with no phone number, no foyer. 00:06:45.980 --> 00:06:48.580 No visible staff available to the city. 00:06:48.760 --> 00:06:52.640 You can't find my name or any of our staff on our website, on our signs. 00:06:53.160 --> 00:06:58.300 I mean, it's just, it's really a different approach to what I and many others, most others 00:06:58.300 --> 00:06:59.500 have experienced with church. 00:06:59.640 --> 00:07:04.020 And so we've distributed pastoral leadership to house church pastors. 00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:09.400 We live in diverse communities that people connect directly into, geographically based. 00:07:10.080 --> 00:07:12.220 And then we're planting other churches who are doing the same. 00:07:12.220 --> 00:07:17.780 We have church projects planted and planting and plans to plant more people we're assessing 00:07:17.780 --> 00:07:18.320 right now. 00:07:18.860 --> 00:07:23.940 And then we have house church network, which is a network of people who won't be church 00:07:23.940 --> 00:07:24.540 projects. 00:07:24.540 --> 00:07:30.400 They may differ in name or nomenclature or approach or even aspects of their theology, 00:07:30.920 --> 00:07:36.520 although central, evangelical, whatever, all that means to us, we would align with. 00:07:36.800 --> 00:07:42.040 But we have people who want to be churches of house churches all over the nation and other 00:07:42.040 --> 00:07:44.580 nations that we're meeting with and helping develop that. 00:07:45.080 --> 00:07:50.280 And we've also started something called Good City, which is our approach to do things in 00:07:50.280 --> 00:07:52.020 the city well beyond our church. 00:07:52.640 --> 00:07:53.800 That's been a lot of fun. 00:07:53.920 --> 00:07:54.820 We're starting a clinic. 00:07:55.220 --> 00:08:00.380 We're starting co-work space for ministry, supporting professionally, nonprofit leaders in 00:08:00.380 --> 00:08:05.200 our city through accountants and attorneys and business development and things like that. 00:08:05.360 --> 00:08:08.540 So yeah, I got a lot going on, but it's full, but not frantic. 00:08:08.640 --> 00:08:09.160 It feels good. 00:08:09.500 --> 00:08:10.420 That's great. 00:08:10.420 --> 00:08:17.500 And so Jason is leading a series of decentralized movements as we look at what digital church 00:08:17.500 --> 00:08:23.380 network is, or even what we want to challenge our digital churches and our metaverse churches 00:08:23.380 --> 00:08:24.060 to become. 00:08:24.480 --> 00:08:31.260 To be honest, a lot of that decentralized view is what we see being successful in 2022, and 00:08:31.260 --> 00:08:33.140 I'm assuming beyond. 00:08:33.620 --> 00:08:39.180 And what's fascinating, you know, in the conversation here, and I was joking with Jason off air, it's 00:08:39.180 --> 00:08:42.960 like, Hey, you know, Jason, I'm really, I'm not looking for a deep dive from you from a 00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:45.440 technological standpoint here and in the podcast. 00:08:45.620 --> 00:08:48.680 And, um, uh, do you have anything you would want to share from it? 00:08:48.720 --> 00:08:49.000 I'm kidding. 00:08:49.040 --> 00:08:49.800 I'm not going to do that to you. 00:08:49.800 --> 00:08:54.680 Like, he's just, that's, that's not really his, his voice and his place on that. 00:08:54.900 --> 00:08:59.500 But what, what, what I, what I really want to dig into with the show here is, is the, 00:08:59.900 --> 00:09:05.060 is the person is the volunteer is, is the owner of the vision. 00:09:05.060 --> 00:09:12.320 Because as we're talking about house churches, we're talking about, uh, an individual that's 00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:18.120 responsibility is to open up the house on a Sunday morning, is a person with a nine to 00:09:18.120 --> 00:09:18.780 five job. 00:09:18.780 --> 00:09:23.880 That's teaching, that's preaching, that's, that's engaging with people relationally. 00:09:23.880 --> 00:09:30.160 Like there's in, in micro church movements, there's a high level of ownership on bivocational 00:09:30.160 --> 00:09:34.760 people on people with a, these people are not getting paid to do the ministry. 00:09:35.440 --> 00:09:41.080 Um, but when we see physical churches, there's oftentimes volunteers, there's a lot of disconnected. 00:09:41.340 --> 00:09:43.000 There's a lot of, man, I need a break. 00:09:43.040 --> 00:09:43.800 It's a hard season. 00:09:43.880 --> 00:09:44.580 Let's take a stop. 00:09:44.680 --> 00:09:47.180 Like you just, you don't see that level of ownership. 00:09:47.180 --> 00:09:52.420 And even as we look at some of the digital churches, as they're trying to, um, distribute 00:09:52.420 --> 00:09:58.500 their vision forwards, I don't, I don't know that we found the secret sauce yet, like, like 00:09:58.500 --> 00:10:00.200 the micro church network this. 00:10:00.320 --> 00:10:03.080 And so I almost want to dig in here with the podcast. 00:10:03.080 --> 00:10:08.500 Not really like, let's set aside that it's a technological podcast or even the idea of a 00:10:08.500 --> 00:10:09.220 digital church. 00:10:09.220 --> 00:10:16.560 And let's just really start to explore maybe this idea of how do we get volunteers, bivocational 00:10:16.560 --> 00:10:22.300 people, how do we get them to buy into the, the mission and vision of something like a micro 00:10:22.300 --> 00:10:26.480 church or like a digital church in that context? 00:10:26.700 --> 00:10:29.620 So, um, yeah, I mean, let me just ask the question. 00:10:29.680 --> 00:10:30.700 I'll just throw it out there. 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:33.440 Jason, how, how, how do you do that? 00:10:33.440 --> 00:10:40.020 How do you get somebody with a nine to five to open up their house, to make the commitment 00:10:40.020 --> 00:10:41.680 to, to teach the sermons? 00:10:41.800 --> 00:10:46.100 How do you get, cause there's, there's a lot of time that gets invested into this. 00:10:46.180 --> 00:10:48.980 I would imagine like what, what's, what's the secret? 00:10:49.360 --> 00:10:49.900 Well, yeah. 00:10:49.900 --> 00:10:54.220 And beyond that, I mean, our house church pastors are doing weddings and funerals. 00:10:54.340 --> 00:10:56.160 All benevolence happens through house church. 00:10:56.340 --> 00:11:00.500 Frontline of counseling happens in house church, um, community. 00:11:00.500 --> 00:11:03.060 It's the primary means of discipleship and community. 00:11:03.300 --> 00:11:10.400 So yeah, I think, uh, there has to be some, some reason why people want to do this. 00:11:10.500 --> 00:11:12.240 And we have longevity too. 00:11:12.340 --> 00:11:15.360 I mean, we have people who have been doing this a really long time. 00:11:15.360 --> 00:11:17.160 Occasionally people are like, Hey, I got to quit. 00:11:17.280 --> 00:11:18.900 I'm tired or I need a break. 00:11:18.980 --> 00:11:20.240 But not often. 00:11:20.660 --> 00:11:23.660 That's not our primary approach from people. 00:11:23.660 --> 00:11:27.900 It's longevity because they've built something that they want to sustain. 00:11:28.020 --> 00:11:29.300 They want to see it continue. 00:11:29.300 --> 00:11:32.860 And so because they've invested so much, they don't want to just back out. 00:11:32.920 --> 00:11:38.980 And so I think, you know, I'm in, I'm in a little bit of both worlds. 00:11:39.160 --> 00:11:46.220 We're in the predominant model, prevailing model, whatever people are saying, church, the traditional centralized church. 00:11:46.620 --> 00:11:51.400 We're, we're, we see people in that world and talk to people in that world all the time. 00:11:51.400 --> 00:11:52.940 And I'm in the microchurch world. 00:11:52.940 --> 00:12:00.860 What I am seeing in the microchurch world that people are trying to correct right now, that they feel like is lacking in the microchurch world. 00:12:00.860 --> 00:12:06.700 I think it would translate into the digital church world too, because you're still talking about people. 00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:16.260 And that is this, there, there needs to be some centralization that connects the decentralized entities. 00:12:16.260 --> 00:12:19.360 There has to be some form of centralization. 00:12:19.960 --> 00:12:26.640 And I think the microchurch ideology has swung the pendulum a little bit and people then are isolated. 00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:33.520 Generally, most people are not pioneers and most people cannot do this on their own for very long. 00:12:34.020 --> 00:12:42.000 And so there has to be some centrality for direction, for support, for accountability, for encouragement. 00:12:42.260 --> 00:12:47.440 And so, I mean, we're with 250 of our leaders this past Sunday night for a big Christmas thing. 00:12:47.560 --> 00:12:53.260 We fed them, we gave them gifts, we thanked them, the notes we get back from it, the encouragement they get. 00:12:53.660 --> 00:12:56.020 They need people to support them. 00:12:56.120 --> 00:12:57.080 They need direction. 00:12:57.340 --> 00:12:58.080 They need encouragement. 00:12:58.480 --> 00:12:59.340 I mean, they're in the trenches. 00:12:59.560 --> 00:13:01.620 They're doing everything I'm saying they're doing. 00:13:01.760 --> 00:13:03.780 We don't have any other way for that to happen. 00:13:04.300 --> 00:13:08.260 They are doing it, but they're supported and they're encouraged. 00:13:08.580 --> 00:13:09.440 I'll give you an example. 00:13:09.440 --> 00:13:12.400 I use this sometimes because it's real and it's clear. 00:13:12.960 --> 00:13:13.980 Maybe I've given it to you. 00:13:14.760 --> 00:13:19.500 But this guy came to one of our gatherings and I met him. 00:13:19.880 --> 00:13:21.080 And I said, tell me your story. 00:13:21.740 --> 00:13:23.040 Do you have a God story? 00:13:23.140 --> 00:13:24.560 Is that part of your life yet or not? 00:13:24.640 --> 00:13:26.040 So he told me his God story. 00:13:26.160 --> 00:13:30.880 And then I'm like, would you have a church, a community story of other Christians that you live life with? 00:13:30.880 --> 00:13:31.600 And he told me that. 00:13:31.720 --> 00:13:32.760 I said, well, why are you here today? 00:13:32.800 --> 00:13:35.900 And he said, I've been a part of a house church for five years. 00:13:36.400 --> 00:13:38.280 But I said, well, why here now? 00:13:38.340 --> 00:13:39.860 And he said, my house church shut down. 00:13:39.900 --> 00:13:40.600 And I said, why? 00:13:41.040 --> 00:13:44.380 He said, the house church pastor, we met in their restaurant. 00:13:44.600 --> 00:13:45.680 It was a restaurant they had. 00:13:45.740 --> 00:13:49.380 We used that as sort of our little house church, same community for five years. 00:13:49.900 --> 00:13:55.940 And he said, then the guy, excuse me, got cancer, got sick and had to sell the restaurant and move to be with his family. 00:13:56.440 --> 00:13:57.900 And I said, I hate that he got cancer. 00:13:58.080 --> 00:14:00.500 I'm sorry that you're going through that. 00:14:00.540 --> 00:14:01.820 And I'm sorry you lost your house church. 00:14:01.820 --> 00:14:04.180 I said, here, let me tell you what would have happened. 00:14:04.700 --> 00:14:14.400 We would have stepped in and we would have cared for this family, probably paid the bills at their restaurant, helped them keep their restaurant functioning, helped their family, given them meals. 00:14:14.580 --> 00:14:15.620 We would have done all kinds of things. 00:14:16.080 --> 00:14:20.700 We would have helped somebody else step up and elevate and be the house church pastor there. 00:14:21.240 --> 00:14:27.000 And or we would have blended them together with another house church while he's going through this healing. 00:14:27.260 --> 00:14:33.740 We would have had support under and around all of you so that you could continue meeting as a community. 00:14:33.880 --> 00:14:34.720 We would have helped you. 00:14:35.200 --> 00:14:36.740 But people are isolated. 00:14:36.860 --> 00:14:43.360 We talk about megachurch pastors putting themselves up as a main person without any other people to help them or hold them accountable. 00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:45.480 We're also doing that in microchurches. 00:14:45.580 --> 00:14:48.240 There's nobody holding a microchurch pastor accountable. 00:14:48.440 --> 00:14:50.880 There's nobody supporting them when they're in need. 00:14:50.880 --> 00:14:54.680 There's nobody saying, hey, you got to take a Sabbath day a week. 00:14:54.760 --> 00:14:56.000 You got to rest with your wife. 00:14:56.120 --> 00:15:01.700 I mean, you're working, you know, as an engineer five days a week and you're doing this two days a week. 00:15:01.740 --> 00:15:02.540 You're going to burn out. 00:15:02.820 --> 00:15:06.800 I mean, so we've done the same thing with microchurch that we've done with megachurch. 00:15:07.300 --> 00:15:15.220 And so I think there has to be a centrality for accountability, for support, for encouragement, for resourcing, for training. 00:15:15.780 --> 00:15:24.980 And so I think the main thing is there are people out there who want to do what you're leading them to do, but they're probably not supported well. 00:15:25.360 --> 00:15:27.880 Also, they don't have the clarity of vision. 00:15:27.880 --> 00:15:31.280 And so we're giving people a consistent clarity of vision. 00:15:31.860 --> 00:15:34.060 They know exactly what we're calling them to do. 00:15:34.420 --> 00:15:37.420 And then we're calling them to accountability with that all the time. 00:15:37.500 --> 00:15:40.400 We have somebody meeting with that person once a month. 00:15:40.580 --> 00:15:43.180 We collectively meet with all of them every other month. 00:15:43.680 --> 00:15:50.980 And so I think the connectivity across microchurches or even digital churches is crucial, and I think it's been overlooked. 00:15:51.480 --> 00:15:52.140 That's interesting. 00:15:52.400 --> 00:16:02.460 You said, so talking centralized, and I want to get into what you centralized with it and some pros and cons in that space. 00:16:02.980 --> 00:16:08.980 But let's dig into the accountability piece, because you centralized accountability is what you were describing. 00:16:09.680 --> 00:16:18.940 How does an organization that is not paying a person bring about accountability in that structure? 00:16:19.080 --> 00:16:27.760 How would a microchurch network hold a microchurch volunteer, microchurch pastor, microchurch leader accountable? 00:16:28.020 --> 00:16:29.080 What would that even look like? 00:16:29.240 --> 00:16:31.120 Well, it's a great question. 00:16:31.220 --> 00:16:32.480 For us, it's answered really simply. 00:16:32.680 --> 00:16:34.220 People don't want to do this alone. 00:16:34.840 --> 00:16:38.080 And so we have accountability based upon our agreements. 00:16:38.980 --> 00:16:44.260 I mean, we have agreed before anybody on board, this is what it means to be a church project house church. 00:16:44.780 --> 00:16:51.000 For example, our overseers made a decision that we asked all of our house churches to do. 00:16:52.180 --> 00:16:54.240 We rarely make these kind of decisions. 00:16:54.660 --> 00:16:59.860 It was a period in time over the last couple of years that we felt like all of us need to do this. 00:17:00.220 --> 00:17:03.840 And so we asked them to do that. 00:17:04.660 --> 00:17:09.860 All but one of our house church pastors said, we're going to do that. 00:17:09.940 --> 00:17:15.460 I found out that through our channels that there was a house church pastor who said, hey, we're not going to do that. 00:17:15.560 --> 00:17:18.840 We're going to go on our own and do this. 00:17:19.600 --> 00:17:22.880 So I decided myself to call this guy. 00:17:23.120 --> 00:17:26.100 And I said, hey, man, I said, I just want to check in with you. 00:17:26.160 --> 00:17:27.140 And I said, congratulations. 00:17:28.120 --> 00:17:30.040 And he said, on what? 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:36.080 And I said, congratulations on starting your own, you know, church and your own network of churches. 00:17:36.280 --> 00:17:37.420 He said, well, I'm not doing that. 00:17:37.780 --> 00:17:41.640 And I said, well, you're not doing what you've agreed to do with us. 00:17:41.900 --> 00:17:44.740 Church project house churches right now are going to do this. 00:17:45.080 --> 00:17:49.020 After a lot of consideration and conversations and prayer, we made this decision. 00:17:49.520 --> 00:17:51.020 You've decided to not do that. 00:17:51.020 --> 00:17:58.160 So what that tells us is that you're removing yourself from our authority, our accountability, but also our support, our visibility. 00:17:58.860 --> 00:18:02.620 I mean, this guy had a really strong, enduring, healthy house church. 00:18:03.040 --> 00:18:06.320 And he knows that a lot of that is because of all that we give him. 00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:07.300 We give him visibility. 00:18:07.520 --> 00:18:09.960 We give him support and encouragement. 00:18:10.360 --> 00:18:11.860 And he doesn't want to be on his own. 00:18:12.260 --> 00:18:14.220 So really quickly, he said, you're right. 00:18:15.720 --> 00:18:18.180 I'm going to line myself back with you immediately. 00:18:18.400 --> 00:18:19.680 And I mean, that was three years ago. 00:18:19.740 --> 00:18:22.180 And he's thriving before and since then. 00:18:22.580 --> 00:18:27.220 And so people don't want to be alone. 00:18:27.220 --> 00:18:33.780 I mean, they want the resources of encouragement and oversight. 00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:44.100 And the cool thing is our centrality offers when things elevate above you because you're a medical doctor or you're a teacher or you're a fireman. 00:18:44.380 --> 00:18:49.840 When things elevate above your ability to handle this, we're here to help you. 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:55.980 We're going to when you ring the bell, we're going to be there right right now. 00:18:55.980 --> 00:18:57.980 And we're going to step in here and help you. 00:18:58.060 --> 00:18:59.340 So people don't feel alone. 00:18:59.700 --> 00:19:00.980 They don't feel overwhelmed. 00:19:01.440 --> 00:19:02.760 They feel supported and encouraged. 00:19:02.980 --> 00:19:04.360 They don't want to step out there. 00:19:05.700 --> 00:19:08.200 Yeah, so they stay. 00:19:08.460 --> 00:19:13.560 They feel like they stay because we've told them this is what it means to be a church-product house church. 00:19:13.960 --> 00:19:21.060 And that's what you're speaking to accountability is really a lot of quality control and that that is so important. 00:19:21.060 --> 00:19:24.520 And it was funny, like, as you were talking, I was writing down a question. 00:19:24.740 --> 00:19:27.360 What do you do when somebody wants to do something different? 00:19:27.460 --> 00:19:30.140 You kind of answered the question right as I was answering it. 00:19:30.740 --> 00:19:39.900 There's another part of this that's like, you know, it's not a quality control as much as, hey, you know, I just, I need a couple weeks off. 00:19:40.080 --> 00:19:40.920 I need a break. 00:19:40.980 --> 00:19:41.840 I need a timeout. 00:19:41.960 --> 00:19:44.500 I need a, it's a busy season. 00:19:44.740 --> 00:19:47.780 Kids soccer season's coming in and I need to check out. 00:19:48.300 --> 00:19:50.740 I got season tickets to watch the Houston Texans. 00:19:50.820 --> 00:19:52.740 Nobody wants to watch the Houston Texans anymore. 00:19:52.800 --> 00:19:53.400 Nothing to watch. 00:19:53.400 --> 00:19:54.100 You know what I'm saying. 00:19:54.700 --> 00:19:55.560 Yeah, that's true. 00:19:56.560 --> 00:19:59.820 I'm in Miami and this is my year, maybe. 00:20:00.020 --> 00:20:01.880 We got a couple more weeks to figure that out. 00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:02.480 I hope so, too. 00:20:03.020 --> 00:20:16.880 But I guess my point is there's, you know, being in Miami, it's very hard for churches because we live in the, you know, luxury capital of the world and there's always something better to do on a weekend. 00:20:16.880 --> 00:20:22.700 There's always that distraction that pulls away from the churches that do the event on Sunday morning. 00:20:23.400 --> 00:20:35.940 And so, like, I'm just wondering, even at that level, how, I mean, Houston, what you guys are doing in Texas and beyond, like, that still is a popular city, Texans or not. 00:20:36.100 --> 00:20:42.520 So, like, how do you get that relational equity to keep people tapped in? 00:20:42.620 --> 00:20:45.000 Is it relationships or are there other things? 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:48.140 Like, what does accountability look like maybe towards that? 00:20:48.580 --> 00:20:53.200 To keep people tapped in their individual house churches or to keep house church leaders connected with us? 00:20:53.400 --> 00:20:56.920 House church leaders tapped in and focused on mission. 00:20:56.960 --> 00:21:02.380 Well, I think, you know, the cool thing that's going to always endure is people need other people. 00:21:02.500 --> 00:21:03.420 They want other people. 00:21:03.520 --> 00:21:05.420 They want to be in relationships with other people. 00:21:06.820 --> 00:21:11.280 We did find, I mean, we drove so hard, pushed so hard for years. 00:21:11.280 --> 00:21:19.280 I mean, I'm going to, when I climb Kilimanjaro or Everett Space Camp or when I do these climbs, I don't stop on the hard days. 00:21:19.460 --> 00:21:20.160 I can't stop. 00:21:20.300 --> 00:21:21.080 I just go. 00:21:21.460 --> 00:21:22.900 I lead the same way. 00:21:23.300 --> 00:21:26.460 And so, I almost ran people into the ground for years. 00:21:26.600 --> 00:21:36.540 I mean, the few paid staff we had, the volunteers, the many that we had, I just wore them out because I felt like you're lucky to be a part of this almost. 00:21:36.680 --> 00:21:40.040 I mean, this is a beautiful thing and we can't stop. 00:21:40.120 --> 00:21:40.640 There's too much. 00:21:40.760 --> 00:21:44.600 And it wasn't healthy for me, for our people. 00:21:44.600 --> 00:21:50.280 We had no rhythms of rest in our systems and schedules. 00:21:50.920 --> 00:21:54.520 So, we've instituted those now for our people. 00:21:54.960 --> 00:21:56.320 In fact, we enforce it. 00:21:57.080 --> 00:22:01.380 Our leaders, they have to take breaks a couple times a year when we ask them to. 00:22:01.500 --> 00:22:06.840 We have a monthly rhythm for them as well as a couple of annual rhythms. 00:22:07.300 --> 00:22:08.980 And we've had people that have fought against that. 00:22:09.080 --> 00:22:09.940 They're like, we're not tired. 00:22:10.380 --> 00:22:11.380 We don't want to stop. 00:22:11.780 --> 00:22:12.980 This is going so great. 00:22:13.260 --> 00:22:14.160 We're enjoying it. 00:22:14.260 --> 00:22:16.280 We're like, no, you have to rest. 00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:19.500 I mean, we see, we're on all the communications channels. 00:22:19.980 --> 00:22:29.360 I mean, we really rarely have to step in, rarely have to step in and tell people to align with what we've called them to do because they trust us and they see it. 00:22:29.760 --> 00:22:32.420 But we've scheduled in rhythms of rest for people. 00:22:33.100 --> 00:22:37.260 And that includes, hey, your house church is not meeting for this month. 00:22:37.620 --> 00:22:38.680 You just, you're not meeting. 00:22:39.160 --> 00:22:40.880 I mean, of course, what do people do? 00:22:40.920 --> 00:22:41.940 They go on vacation together. 00:22:42.020 --> 00:22:42.940 They go to dinner together. 00:22:42.940 --> 00:22:49.360 But the normal operations and functions of a house church, even dependence on the pastor, leave them alone for this month. 00:22:49.920 --> 00:22:51.480 I mean, take a rest. 00:22:52.380 --> 00:22:54.200 It's increased health. 00:22:54.340 --> 00:22:55.620 It's increased longevity. 00:22:56.440 --> 00:23:03.540 Of course, there are seasons where people are sick or where, you know, business escalates and they got to make a change. 00:23:03.820 --> 00:23:11.060 But we love that, too, because we're always working on developing the next house church pastor, the next host, you know, 00:23:11.060 --> 00:23:13.360 people with hospitality enough to open up their home. 00:23:13.520 --> 00:23:26.600 And so it forces sometimes rapid multiplication when people say, hey, I got to take a break for six months or I'm going to work overseas for three months or whatever happens here in Houston. 00:23:26.700 --> 00:23:27.420 We hear it a lot. 00:23:28.060 --> 00:23:29.640 It forces rapid multiplication. 00:23:29.840 --> 00:23:34.800 So we're always in leader development, meaning who are you raising up? 00:23:34.860 --> 00:23:38.460 I mean, I don't want to get into, you know, corporate leadership development training language. 00:23:38.460 --> 00:23:40.300 I'll get into, hey, you're Paul. 00:23:40.380 --> 00:23:40.980 Who's Timothy? 00:23:41.200 --> 00:23:41.840 Who's Crescent? 00:23:41.960 --> 00:23:42.580 Who's Titus? 00:23:42.700 --> 00:23:47.720 Who's, you know, who are these people that you're finding and saying, man, you've been sitting. 00:23:48.060 --> 00:23:51.080 Now it's time to start leading, start pastoring. 00:23:51.220 --> 00:23:58.280 And so we're always working with the leaders on who are you raising up to deploy and to multiply. 00:23:58.620 --> 00:24:04.560 And so we create rhythms of rest and then we have somebody ready to go whenever those things inevitably happen. 00:24:04.800 --> 00:24:05.340 It's beautiful. 00:24:05.520 --> 00:24:10.720 We adopted the language apprenticing from New Thing or Discipleship Partner. 00:24:11.720 --> 00:24:15.800 You know, they're huge on apprenticing and always having that apprentice. 00:24:16.020 --> 00:24:19.280 And that's what we're slowly baking into DCN. 00:24:19.280 --> 00:24:21.500 So maybe talk to me a little bit. 00:24:21.620 --> 00:24:23.720 How do you grow a Timothy to be a Paul? 00:24:24.940 --> 00:24:27.400 Like, what's the time frame? 00:24:27.540 --> 00:24:29.880 What's the process through some of that? 00:24:30.260 --> 00:24:33.420 Yeah, I mean, you know, Paul told Timothy, you know all about my life. 00:24:34.360 --> 00:24:36.880 And it's life on life for us. 00:24:36.940 --> 00:24:49.480 I mean, the way that would happen in a house church, let's say a house church pastor sees some guy in his house church that he says, I think you may be the person to plant another house church out of our house church. 00:24:50.040 --> 00:24:55.080 So he starts spending time with that person, more than likely a one-on-one discipleship relationship. 00:24:55.400 --> 00:25:02.480 We train all of our house church pastors and hundreds and hundreds of other people in our church on how to disciple somebody. 00:25:02.560 --> 00:25:03.520 I mean, we have it down. 00:25:03.640 --> 00:25:04.640 We've refined it. 00:25:04.980 --> 00:25:07.480 It's powerful and it's pure and it's simple. 00:25:08.700 --> 00:25:12.820 It took years for a guy on our team to refine it. 00:25:12.880 --> 00:25:14.900 I would help him refine it where I would see problems. 00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:17.620 But he spent the majority of his time in leadership doing this. 00:25:18.180 --> 00:25:19.060 And it's just beautiful. 00:25:19.060 --> 00:25:23.780 So we have that happening in every house church, one-on-one discipleship, men on men, women on women. 00:25:24.240 --> 00:25:29.220 And house church pastor is going to be discipling somebody specifically to all the time, one or two or three people. 00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:35.440 And they're going to know that one or two of these people are ready to become a house church pastor. 00:25:35.820 --> 00:25:37.560 Then we have sort of a pipeline of that. 00:25:37.660 --> 00:25:38.980 We're going to approve that first. 00:25:39.220 --> 00:25:47.400 We have an overseer over all the house church that will meet with this person and really press into some things with them theologically, personally. 00:25:47.640 --> 00:25:50.680 And the house church pastor is going to start discipling this person every week. 00:25:51.120 --> 00:25:55.620 Talk to me about your marriage, your finances, your health, your parenting. 00:25:55.980 --> 00:25:58.880 How is Jesus infusing every aspect of your life? 00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:00.040 We're going to talk about that. 00:26:00.380 --> 00:26:02.560 And then we're going to talk about their pastoring. 00:26:03.020 --> 00:26:07.340 Part of that development is, hey, I want you to start discipling somebody else in our house church. 00:26:07.480 --> 00:26:10.560 I want you to handle this situation for me. 00:26:10.960 --> 00:26:16.060 And we start letting them step into some of the pastoring in a house church, and we see how they do. 00:26:16.480 --> 00:26:18.100 But we're already watching them, right? 00:26:18.180 --> 00:26:19.960 We watch how people listen to them. 00:26:20.020 --> 00:26:21.520 We watch how they care for other people. 00:26:21.860 --> 00:26:26.400 We watch how they're just spontaneously stepping into situations and pastoring people. 00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:32.340 And so it becomes pretty easy to identify who the next person is, who's rising to the top, who cares about this. 00:26:32.840 --> 00:26:34.240 And then we just really get them ready. 00:26:34.360 --> 00:26:40.500 We get down into acute things of life and doctrine and leadership and pastoring. 00:26:41.040 --> 00:26:42.460 And we got people in the pipeline. 00:26:42.640 --> 00:26:44.820 I mean, I got just the Woodlands right here. 00:26:44.880 --> 00:26:50.120 I think we have 25 people in our pipeline that are being prepared to go plant house churches this spring. 00:26:50.520 --> 00:26:50.720 All right. 00:26:50.740 --> 00:26:51.620 So let me ask this. 00:26:52.040 --> 00:27:02.840 Like, every person that wants to launch a church or a house church, in your context, everybody goes through some sort of apprenticing process. 00:27:02.840 --> 00:27:06.900 Like, there's not a skip jail, skip, go straight to go. 00:27:07.260 --> 00:27:11.460 Like, is there 100% has to go through some level of apprenticing. 00:27:11.780 --> 00:27:12.180 Absolutely. 00:27:12.780 --> 00:27:20.920 I mean, I had a senior level executive from Exxon come to our church, and he had led in Virginia at a great church, a massive ministry. 00:27:21.040 --> 00:27:24.820 And he comes to our place, and he's like, hey, I would love to lead here. 00:27:25.120 --> 00:27:26.740 I mean, his leadership skills are off the chart. 00:27:26.840 --> 00:27:30.520 I mean, he's leading one of the biggest corporations in America, and he loves the local church, and he's led there. 00:27:30.840 --> 00:27:33.080 But I'm like, I would love for you to lead here, too. 00:27:33.160 --> 00:27:34.160 He's like, what do I need to do? 00:27:34.520 --> 00:27:39.120 I'm like, you need to go sit under other leadership that we've already approved and that we trust. 00:27:39.180 --> 00:27:42.040 And we want to see how you live together in our community. 00:27:42.460 --> 00:27:43.800 Do you become part of this culture? 00:27:44.180 --> 00:27:45.360 Is this something you really want? 00:27:45.380 --> 00:27:50.520 Because the worst thing in the world would be that we're going to put our hand on you and our name on you. 00:27:50.600 --> 00:27:55.140 People are going to trust everything that church product means and the leadership says, and they're going to go to you. 00:27:55.200 --> 00:27:58.260 And three months later, you're going to be like, ah, this isn't really for me. 00:27:58.580 --> 00:28:00.620 I'm like, so I'm going to watch you for a while. 00:28:01.120 --> 00:28:03.280 I mean, there's a principle of this that Paul told Timothy. 00:28:03.280 --> 00:28:10.000 They don't even let a recent convert get into this leadership situation yet because they can become prideful. 00:28:10.120 --> 00:28:12.200 I mean, we need to know them and watch them. 00:28:12.740 --> 00:28:14.600 And so, yeah, we're going to do that. 00:28:15.560 --> 00:28:17.460 There's no way to have accountability. 00:28:17.800 --> 00:28:24.520 There's no way to have alignment and quality if you do not have some kind of proving period with people. 00:28:24.680 --> 00:28:28.160 I'm seeing people just so quickly say, hey, go do this. 00:28:28.760 --> 00:28:30.920 That's great myopically. 00:28:31.200 --> 00:28:34.380 There are aspects of that I really love, right? 00:28:34.620 --> 00:28:36.340 I'm going to help you plan a church in a day. 00:28:36.620 --> 00:28:37.200 That's great. 00:28:37.260 --> 00:28:40.040 But who is this person and how are we helping them? 00:28:40.240 --> 00:28:41.240 I will say this. 00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:43.260 Here's what I love about the Apostle Paul. 00:28:44.120 --> 00:28:45.200 The Apostle Paul did this. 00:28:45.560 --> 00:28:47.640 There are times he spent three and a half years in Ephesus. 00:28:48.200 --> 00:28:50.020 Sometimes he spent a year and a half somewhere else. 00:28:50.400 --> 00:28:51.740 There are times he spent a day. 00:28:52.240 --> 00:28:55.220 Sometimes he spent a day and he would, Ralph Moore and I have talked about this. 00:28:55.600 --> 00:28:56.720 Paul would spend a day. 00:28:57.140 --> 00:29:03.820 He would go into a town, stay with somebody overnight, lead them to Jesus, disciple them all night, get up the next morning, get ready to go. 00:29:03.900 --> 00:29:06.100 And he would, you're the two elders of the church. 00:29:06.920 --> 00:29:09.260 And it said he entrusted them to the leadership of the spirit. 00:29:09.260 --> 00:29:10.240 That was his default. 00:29:10.400 --> 00:29:11.500 That wasn't his primary way. 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:14.020 But here's what I say this often. 00:29:15.120 --> 00:29:18.840 Paul would always follow up in person when he could. 00:29:20.100 --> 00:29:23.680 In proxy, when he could not be there, he would send somebody on his behalf. 00:29:23.820 --> 00:29:26.120 Or by pen, he would follow up. 00:29:26.380 --> 00:29:28.880 He was, I mean, he would, like, we would write to them. 00:29:28.960 --> 00:29:30.240 We do videos for people. 00:29:30.380 --> 00:29:31.160 We'll do training. 00:29:31.620 --> 00:29:36.080 And so Paul was anticipating accountability, alignment. 00:29:36.260 --> 00:29:42.700 I mean, he had, he entrusted a lot to them, but he held them accountable in person, by proxy. 00:29:42.840 --> 00:29:44.860 I'm going to send Timothy, Titus, Crescent to you, whoever. 00:29:45.120 --> 00:29:49.240 Or by pen, he would follow up with them and hold them accountable there as well. 00:29:49.500 --> 00:30:00.080 And so if there is a quicker, a more rapid deployment of somebody leading a church, but you don't know who they are, I think there's a lot of accountability in that. 00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:10.460 I think we should make sure we know who we're entrusting to the leadership, and then we have to hold them accountable, especially if we didn't have a long time to train them and prove them. 00:30:10.820 --> 00:30:16.240 We need to have a lot of accountability in person, in proxy, or by pen after we send them out. 00:30:16.560 --> 00:30:17.860 Person, proxy, pen. 00:30:17.960 --> 00:30:18.780 That's really good. 00:30:18.860 --> 00:30:19.960 I'll have to remember that. 00:30:19.980 --> 00:30:20.600 Please quote me. 00:30:21.120 --> 00:30:22.220 That was good. 00:30:22.540 --> 00:30:26.200 Let's drill into maybe some specifics, more modern. 00:30:27.300 --> 00:30:32.060 Not that proxy, person, and pen don't make sense in modern space, but how do we apply this? 00:30:32.520 --> 00:30:38.400 Like you just told me a couple minutes ago, here we got 25 people in the woodlands ready to get apprenticed. 00:30:38.800 --> 00:30:44.560 You've got a network, you've got an infrastructure, you've built it for apprenticing. 00:30:44.780 --> 00:30:48.620 And so you've got the bench, and you've got the coaches that can do it. 00:30:48.700 --> 00:30:52.940 We always need more coaches, but I'm willing to bet you've got some sort of infrastructure. 00:30:54.120 --> 00:30:59.660 A lot of the people that we're working with in digital space, one dude, it's a husband and a wife. 00:31:01.040 --> 00:31:03.300 Maybe there's a third person in the mix. 00:31:03.300 --> 00:31:07.300 This is grassroots, this is early days. 00:31:08.240 --> 00:31:11.840 What did apprenticing look like for you all early? 00:31:12.020 --> 00:31:14.280 Or maybe what have you seen from some other spaces? 00:31:14.940 --> 00:31:18.320 Because you talked about fast-tracking and kind of growing through this. 00:31:19.480 --> 00:31:26.720 What advice would you give for somebody that's maybe a lone guy out there trying to build this thing from scratch? 00:31:27.040 --> 00:31:27.320 Yeah. 00:31:27.560 --> 00:31:28.900 Well, that's a great question. 00:31:29.160 --> 00:31:31.680 And let me also say, I was there too. 00:31:31.680 --> 00:31:46.380 I mean, I really try to – when people come to where we are now, I do everything I can to unravel what we've done and get back to the beginning and say, we had no – I'm not kidding. 00:31:46.460 --> 00:31:47.120 We had no money. 00:31:47.600 --> 00:31:48.440 We had no people. 00:31:48.520 --> 00:31:49.240 We had no place. 00:31:49.240 --> 00:31:50.280 We had no identity. 00:31:50.700 --> 00:31:52.960 And we had nobody ahead of us that we could learn from. 00:31:53.420 --> 00:32:01.720 Nobody in Houston that I was aware of was using – well, nobody anywhere used the phrase, the church of house churches. 00:32:02.120 --> 00:32:03.460 I had no idea who to learn from. 00:32:03.980 --> 00:32:04.800 I was scared. 00:32:04.980 --> 00:32:09.820 I was isolated, and I had no resources. 00:32:09.820 --> 00:32:14.220 So I understand, and I have a huge heart for the people who are starting. 00:32:14.820 --> 00:32:26.760 I think one of the mistakes that people make early on is they let go of values in order to – I mean, core conviction values. 00:32:26.760 --> 00:32:31.900 They let go of those in order to just get some help or just get some resources. 00:32:32.800 --> 00:32:38.020 And they lose their identity more quickly than they realize because it's hard to recover that. 00:32:38.300 --> 00:32:43.480 I mean, early on, the decisions you make are more important than the decisions I make today. 00:32:43.620 --> 00:32:48.320 I mean, I have a lot – there are a lot of people here who could absorb my worst mistakes. 00:32:48.880 --> 00:32:53.260 There are people who could – there's a culture created now that's way beyond me. 00:32:53.340 --> 00:33:03.440 But early on, I would tell our people, we are six decisions and six months away from not existing or not being who we are or who we want to be. 00:33:03.900 --> 00:33:10.380 And so early on, my job, I feel like, was to very clearly communicate who we were. 00:33:10.760 --> 00:33:15.540 I think – I frankly think most people don't have that down yet when they start. 00:33:16.100 --> 00:33:18.540 So people don't know what to align to. 00:33:19.420 --> 00:33:23.740 And so I know a lot of – I work with church planners weekly. 00:33:24.160 --> 00:33:29.160 And most of them, they don't know what to call people to. 00:33:29.980 --> 00:33:34.720 And I'm not talking about like a slick mission statement, vision statement, pamphlet, whatever. 00:33:35.060 --> 00:33:42.940 I'm talking about there's no clear opportunity of who are you going to be and what do you want me to do with that. 00:33:43.600 --> 00:33:49.900 And so I think refining that and clarifying that is one of the biggest things that people need to do. 00:33:50.420 --> 00:33:54.280 Number one, who are we and what do I want you to do to be a part of it? 00:33:54.600 --> 00:34:00.220 Most people are just saying, hey, just watch me, you know, whether it be online or come sit in a seat sometimes on a Sunday. 00:34:00.460 --> 00:34:01.960 I say most churches are this. 00:34:02.300 --> 00:34:06.520 We just want you to come sit in a seat sometimes on a Sunday and sing some songs and listen to a sermon. 00:34:07.220 --> 00:34:09.400 That's all we want you to do, you know, and give. 00:34:10.180 --> 00:34:13.000 But we're way beyond that here. 00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:15.000 If you come here, this is what this means. 00:34:15.340 --> 00:34:17.220 We clarified that very early on. 00:34:18.720 --> 00:34:24.600 Secondly, we had core convictions of diverse communities. 00:34:25.220 --> 00:34:26.380 I mean, it was mass. 00:34:26.500 --> 00:34:29.700 There was massive resistance to this because nobody was coming from that. 00:34:29.820 --> 00:34:31.960 Everybody was in homogenous communities, right? 00:34:32.520 --> 00:34:40.160 Older people, just like me, younger people, black, white, brown, you know, married, unmarried, rich, poor, mature, immature believer. 00:34:40.160 --> 00:34:43.400 I mean, they were all homogenous where they came from. 00:34:43.700 --> 00:34:44.760 And we're diverse. 00:34:45.020 --> 00:34:51.720 I mean, you may have people of different colors of skin, different places in their walk with Jesus or not walk with Jesus. 00:34:52.660 --> 00:34:54.720 You know, older, younger, married, unmarried. 00:34:55.380 --> 00:34:59.600 And so that was a core conviction, though, that we weren't going to let go of it. 00:34:59.980 --> 00:35:07.760 So no matter the resistance, or we could have grown more quickly, we could be a lot bigger than we are now if we let go of some of our other values. 00:35:07.760 --> 00:35:09.040 But we wouldn't be who we are. 00:35:09.720 --> 00:35:12.280 So clarity and calling, number one. 00:35:12.840 --> 00:35:17.020 And then core convictions that you don't let go of, number two. 00:35:17.240 --> 00:35:22.240 Those, for me, I think, from all the people we work with, are the biggest things. 00:35:22.420 --> 00:35:24.180 And then the third C, let me say that. 00:35:24.260 --> 00:35:24.960 Well, thank you. 00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:26.060 I'm alliterating as we go. 00:35:26.180 --> 00:35:27.600 Please remind me later what I said. 00:35:28.020 --> 00:35:30.600 I'm writing it down right now because it's very good. 00:35:30.820 --> 00:35:31.200 Thank you. 00:35:31.240 --> 00:35:32.220 I probably should, too. 00:35:32.340 --> 00:35:39.980 Yeah, I mean, clarity and calling, core convictions that you don't let go of, I think I just let go of my last thing. 00:35:40.220 --> 00:35:40.620 Oh, no. 00:35:40.840 --> 00:35:41.740 Did you lose the last C? 00:35:41.960 --> 00:35:42.360 Come on. 00:35:43.100 --> 00:35:43.500 Centralization. 00:35:44.300 --> 00:35:50.480 Here's what people are rebelling against all forms of centralization to their own demise. 00:35:51.540 --> 00:35:54.460 And I was a science major in college. 00:35:54.780 --> 00:35:59.160 And so I love the word organic. 00:35:59.660 --> 00:36:00.840 I love the word systems. 00:36:01.180 --> 00:36:07.140 It's one of my top five favorite S words, stakes and sleep and other words I really love. 00:36:07.140 --> 00:36:08.520 I love the word systems. 00:36:08.660 --> 00:36:10.140 I love the word organic. 00:36:10.560 --> 00:36:14.200 There's nothing more organic than our human body. 00:36:14.920 --> 00:36:19.640 And it has functioning systems based on a centrality. 00:36:19.960 --> 00:36:21.660 But it's invisible. 00:36:22.220 --> 00:36:23.400 It's autonomic. 00:36:23.680 --> 00:36:25.380 You don't even think about our systems. 00:36:25.580 --> 00:36:26.740 We just want to be healthy. 00:36:27.300 --> 00:36:30.380 And if we're healthy, our systems will autonomically operate. 00:36:31.020 --> 00:36:34.200 And most churches are not organic. 00:36:34.560 --> 00:36:34.980 They are organizations. 00:36:35.940 --> 00:36:36.860 They're not an organism. 00:36:37.120 --> 00:36:38.060 They're an organization. 00:36:38.720 --> 00:36:43.880 The systems, keeping the systems going is the purpose of most churches. 00:36:44.120 --> 00:36:47.060 If they don't want to admit that, I understand that. 00:36:47.300 --> 00:36:48.140 I worked in that. 00:36:48.240 --> 00:36:49.160 I propagated it. 00:36:49.160 --> 00:36:53.940 Keeping the systems going in most churches, that's what they exist for. 00:36:54.100 --> 00:36:55.260 And they don't even realize it. 00:36:55.640 --> 00:37:00.480 For us, a healthy, we've created systems, but they're invisible behind the scenes. 00:37:00.580 --> 00:37:01.500 You can't even see them. 00:37:01.560 --> 00:37:03.540 You don't even see the people who run them. 00:37:03.780 --> 00:37:08.620 But there have to be some systems that are functioning from a centrality. 00:37:09.160 --> 00:37:12.100 That's my main role and the people who work with us. 00:37:12.420 --> 00:37:14.000 I just left somebody today. 00:37:14.180 --> 00:37:15.580 I love them very much. 00:37:16.120 --> 00:37:17.780 They lead a great church. 00:37:18.160 --> 00:37:22.260 They have four or five times as many people on staff as we do. 00:37:23.260 --> 00:37:26.700 Most of their stuff is going right inside their walls of their church. 00:37:26.780 --> 00:37:27.880 They're doing great things. 00:37:27.980 --> 00:37:28.680 I love it. 00:37:28.960 --> 00:37:30.560 But that's not what I want to do. 00:37:31.240 --> 00:37:33.740 So, but they're super centralized. 00:37:34.560 --> 00:37:36.900 We have some invisible centralization. 00:37:37.680 --> 00:37:42.920 And I would say the third C for any of your people, if you're going to grow, that means 00:37:42.920 --> 00:37:43.700 you're going to scale. 00:37:43.820 --> 00:37:44.620 You're going to multiply. 00:37:44.820 --> 00:37:46.140 You're going to reproduce yourself. 00:37:46.600 --> 00:37:53.820 You have to have some centrality for alignment, accountability, support, resourcing. 00:37:54.580 --> 00:37:58.860 Don't hate centrality so much that it keeps you from multiplying. 00:37:59.620 --> 00:38:04.380 So, but resist it enough that you don't become over-centralized and move from an organism to 00:38:04.380 --> 00:38:05.080 an organization. 00:38:05.560 --> 00:38:05.780 Okay. 00:38:05.860 --> 00:38:07.260 I want to pull that thread. 00:38:07.980 --> 00:38:08.120 Great. 00:38:08.120 --> 00:38:13.560 Because this is something I've experienced in some of the organizations, some of the things 00:38:13.560 --> 00:38:14.400 that I've tried to do. 00:38:14.880 --> 00:38:21.740 We've tried to be decentralized, but at the beginning, for me, I couldn't let everybody 00:38:21.740 --> 00:38:25.700 do whatever they wanted because I needed to get the focus of the DNA in place. 00:38:26.460 --> 00:38:31.300 So, at the beginning of starting a decentralized movement was actually probably some of the 00:38:31.300 --> 00:38:36.960 strongest times where I actually stood on centralization of saying, this is the way that 00:38:36.960 --> 00:38:41.700 we have to do it, or this is the vision of what we're trying to do. 00:38:41.920 --> 00:38:44.300 This is the sandbox that we can play in. 00:38:44.520 --> 00:38:50.660 But there's a centrally defined barrier because that's organizationally what we were doing. 00:38:52.780 --> 00:38:54.400 I'm looking for genuine feedback. 00:38:54.960 --> 00:38:57.080 Like, is that the right way to do that? 00:38:57.180 --> 00:39:01.620 Am I trying to be too controlling from a centralized level in infancy? 00:39:01.900 --> 00:39:03.240 Like, give me some direction. 00:39:03.620 --> 00:39:04.560 You don't need my direction. 00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:08.540 I mean, you've done and are doing and will be doing some great stuff. 00:39:08.540 --> 00:39:15.360 And, you know, let's answer the question by looking at the alternative. 00:39:16.480 --> 00:39:18.980 If not, then what are you at all? 00:39:19.660 --> 00:39:26.560 If there's no clarity, if there's no clarity, then you have no need to be communicating anything. 00:39:27.300 --> 00:39:30.560 You know, there's a guy named Bill Hull out of California. 00:39:30.760 --> 00:39:34.880 I think he's around 80, former basketball player, discipleship. 00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:37.640 I mean, you got Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Dallas Willard. 00:39:37.760 --> 00:39:39.340 Dallas Willard discipled Bill Hull. 00:39:39.460 --> 00:39:40.660 Bill Hull's discipled me. 00:39:41.140 --> 00:39:41.540 Some. 00:39:42.040 --> 00:39:42.940 This guy's incredible. 00:39:43.420 --> 00:39:45.340 And I talked to him about the same thing, Jeff. 00:39:45.420 --> 00:39:54.180 I just said, Bill, I said, I feel like maybe I'm too dogmatic on our ecclesiology, the Church of House Churches. 00:39:54.240 --> 00:39:55.480 Like, I can't unsee this. 00:39:55.920 --> 00:39:58.660 I am convinced and convicted about it, right? 00:39:58.840 --> 00:40:00.040 I mean, this is my world. 00:40:00.200 --> 00:40:03.780 I am convinced and convicted about these things, and I'm really clear. 00:40:04.680 --> 00:40:08.860 And I said, sometimes people accuse me of being too dogmatic or too whatever about it. 00:40:08.860 --> 00:40:13.500 And he said, Jason, we need more ecclesiological clarity, not less. 00:40:14.240 --> 00:40:23.640 And so, Jeff, if whatever you're leading, it's not clear what it is and what you want other people to do, then you're not leading anything. 00:40:24.300 --> 00:40:25.920 I mean, everything has some clarity. 00:40:26.080 --> 00:40:29.480 It has some substance to it, some structure. 00:40:29.760 --> 00:40:38.180 So I think we're looking for people who they have been looking for this, and we're giving them what they're looking for. 00:40:38.180 --> 00:40:39.880 I mean, you know this, too, Jeff. 00:40:39.940 --> 00:40:41.300 You experience it all the time. 00:40:41.420 --> 00:40:44.780 We find people who say, I've had this in my head for years. 00:40:45.320 --> 00:40:47.420 I just didn't know how to do it or what to do. 00:40:47.680 --> 00:40:50.520 I didn't have language around it or I didn't have form around it. 00:40:50.820 --> 00:40:51.820 And I'm like, that's great. 00:40:51.880 --> 00:40:52.600 You don't need to. 00:40:52.700 --> 00:40:54.020 Now we have language for you. 00:40:54.100 --> 00:40:55.240 We have form for you. 00:40:55.360 --> 00:40:57.840 And we're inviting you to participate in it. 00:40:58.240 --> 00:41:04.660 And so we're going to – I guess maybe I'm wrong, but I'm going to keep clarity until the day I'm not here. 00:41:04.660 --> 00:41:10.200 I mean, I think that's my job is to protect the clarity of who we are and what we're called to do. 00:41:10.760 --> 00:41:14.940 And not everybody's going to want that, but I'm not trying to get everybody in the world here. 00:41:15.180 --> 00:41:18.340 I just think – but I'm so crazy. 00:41:18.500 --> 00:41:21.420 I think everybody – I say we're not for everybody, but we should be. 00:41:21.620 --> 00:41:22.920 Let me pull that thread. 00:41:23.560 --> 00:41:25.280 This is good here. 00:41:26.500 --> 00:41:29.300 Because there is an opportunity to change. 00:41:29.560 --> 00:41:33.420 There may be a good idea that doesn't generate from you. 00:41:33.960 --> 00:41:37.640 You were talking about your guy that pivoted and did something. 00:41:37.800 --> 00:41:41.580 I don't want to get into the weeds on that, but completely out of context, something completely different. 00:41:41.580 --> 00:41:54.380 Hey, congratulations on your launch because you're not anything with – but there is some level of, hey, maybe this is a learning opportunity or an experiment that maybe you're learning something and then rolling that out. 00:41:54.480 --> 00:41:57.780 In digital space, there's definitely avenues for that. 00:41:58.420 --> 00:42:09.180 And so what does missional imagination, what does growing – I'm saying the word evolving, I mean that nicely, but evolving into something different. 00:42:09.180 --> 00:42:11.400 Do you have any examples of that? 00:42:11.580 --> 00:42:21.120 Within your context or how would someone healthily grow to challenge the organization to do something different? 00:42:21.260 --> 00:42:22.260 What would that even look like? 00:42:22.540 --> 00:42:24.060 Well, it's a great question. 00:42:24.160 --> 00:42:32.120 There's a ton of interaction between all of our leadership out there leading house churches and the people who oversee it. 00:42:32.120 --> 00:42:44.900 And so we'll very often have suggestions on different approaches and different ways to affect what we're doing. 00:42:44.940 --> 00:42:46.080 And we learn from those. 00:42:46.160 --> 00:42:48.500 And sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. 00:42:48.500 --> 00:42:57.320 But when somebody wants to take what we're doing and do something altogether different, I mean, we've had people do that. 00:42:59.660 --> 00:43:00.800 Here's what we have found. 00:43:01.220 --> 00:43:08.400 We have found people who want to do exactly what we're doing, but they want to do it without any accountability or they want to do it on their own. 00:43:08.900 --> 00:43:13.300 And so, you know, we bless them and they go do that. 00:43:13.940 --> 00:43:17.600 100% of the time, it hasn't worked well for them. 00:43:19.100 --> 00:43:28.220 When somebody wants to do something altogether different, we have found, man, let's see how we can help you do that. 00:43:29.900 --> 00:43:37.400 But I will say, Jeff, we don't experience that a whole lot because it's super clear of what we are and what we're trying to do. 00:43:37.920 --> 00:43:47.440 So most people are so engaged in trying to make this a healthy thing that they're not trying to think of, well, what if we went down here and did this? 00:43:48.760 --> 00:43:55.360 And so, like, if people want to start homogenous communities of something else, I mean, that's great. 00:43:56.060 --> 00:43:57.060 Go do that. 00:43:57.540 --> 00:43:59.000 We support that. 00:43:59.000 --> 00:44:03.120 And actually, our house church structure wants you to be doing that. 00:44:03.620 --> 00:44:05.780 And so how can we support you in that? 00:44:06.340 --> 00:44:12.180 But I also don't apologize that we are not everything to everyone. 00:44:12.760 --> 00:44:14.680 I mean, we are, this is who we are. 00:44:15.160 --> 00:44:16.640 We're real clear on who we are. 00:44:17.060 --> 00:44:19.580 We want to become healthier and better and stronger. 00:44:20.260 --> 00:44:21.860 But this is who we are. 00:44:22.400 --> 00:44:28.100 If you're wanting to do something that's not who we are, we'd like to help you do that or get you connected to somebody. 00:44:28.100 --> 00:44:32.340 But I'm not that great. 00:44:32.720 --> 00:44:37.660 And I'm not going to live that long to become excellent at a whole lot of things. 00:44:38.280 --> 00:44:43.960 So I'm going to, if I try to do what you're doing, it would take me three lifetimes to figure it out. 00:44:44.060 --> 00:44:45.060 I just can't do it. 00:44:45.060 --> 00:44:52.200 So we do a lot of partnerships with other people to say, hey, look, what you're trying to do is awesome. 00:44:52.720 --> 00:45:00.000 Let's get you connected to people in that world. 00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:02.960 But we're trying to be something substantial here. 00:45:03.280 --> 00:45:05.240 And for us, that's fairly targeted. 00:45:05.600 --> 00:45:06.320 That's fascinating. 00:45:06.520 --> 00:45:07.680 It's good to know who you are. 00:45:07.760 --> 00:45:08.700 It's good to know who you're not. 00:45:09.380 --> 00:45:18.060 And, you know, I love one of the things that we're working on is an ecosystem of partners that we're collaborating with in digital space to hand off to. 00:45:18.380 --> 00:45:22.860 And so I love the idea of working together and collaborating. 00:45:23.340 --> 00:45:32.120 It's one thing that, you know, I don't mean this rudely, but the established church prevailing physical, whatever your term is, has often struggled with. 00:45:32.120 --> 00:45:48.360 But it's one of the things, you know, as I look at the micro church networks, how you all have been learning from each other and working together, digital, some of the opportunities that we're championing through digital church network and metaverse is an incredible opportunity for collaboration. 00:45:48.680 --> 00:45:53.160 Like it's really exciting to see how we're kind of changing the game here. 00:45:53.160 --> 00:45:56.240 Hey, this has been an incredible conversation. 00:45:56.700 --> 00:46:07.320 Well, Jason, Shepard, thank you for jumping on here and really giving us some insight as we're trying to figure out, you know, let me ask the last question. 00:46:07.420 --> 00:46:07.560 Great. 00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:16.080 I had somebody, so I had this conversation with someone, maybe it was 2020, maybe it was 2021. 00:46:17.640 --> 00:46:19.300 I can't even remember who it was right now. 00:46:19.360 --> 00:46:20.540 I couldn't put a name on it. 00:46:20.820 --> 00:46:23.080 But I used the word accountability. 00:46:24.180 --> 00:46:28.720 And the guy, it was, oh, I know exactly, I'm not going to say it was, but I have, I now have the face in my head. 00:46:28.720 --> 00:46:36.420 He says, Jeff, never say the word accountability in front of a church person, because like a church volunteer, they don't want to be held accountable. 00:46:36.820 --> 00:46:37.800 They want to be encouraged. 00:46:38.940 --> 00:46:41.860 I'm just curious, would you agree with that? 00:46:42.400 --> 00:46:52.580 Like, do you think that church leadership, volunteers, the people you're working with, that the word accountability is a negative word? 00:46:52.580 --> 00:46:54.540 Or do you say that? 00:46:54.620 --> 00:46:55.880 Do you adopt that language? 00:46:56.060 --> 00:46:57.180 I'm just curious your response. 00:46:57.400 --> 00:47:02.880 We don't, we don't actually use the word accountability a whole lot, but it's very obvious that it's ingrained into who we are. 00:47:03.220 --> 00:47:06.120 I mean, for me, every real relationship has accountability. 00:47:08.680 --> 00:47:15.660 In our, in our current culture, which isn't going well, people have shied away from clarity because they think it's control. 00:47:16.500 --> 00:47:20.460 And they don't want to have clarity because they're seen as controlling. 00:47:21.160 --> 00:47:22.300 Clarity is not control. 00:47:22.500 --> 00:47:23.560 Clarity is conviction. 00:47:24.700 --> 00:47:29.880 And clarity is absolutely necessary for anything to take root and grow. 00:47:30.040 --> 00:47:38.440 So, and I think people have shied away from the idea of accountability, but I don't know a good relationship that doesn't have some sense of accountability. 00:47:39.260 --> 00:47:45.640 From my marriage to in our church and scriptures replete with accountability, even to overseers and elders. 00:47:45.640 --> 00:47:48.260 And so have we shied away from a sense of accountability? 00:47:48.440 --> 00:47:48.840 We have. 00:47:48.900 --> 00:47:50.620 Have we overshot that? 00:47:51.080 --> 00:47:54.620 Because people have made mistakes in it, we have also done that. 00:47:54.980 --> 00:47:59.080 And so I frankly think people want and need accountability. 00:47:59.360 --> 00:48:03.880 We rarely use the word, but we practice it always. 00:48:04.100 --> 00:48:08.800 So we have accountability based on our agreements together. 00:48:09.600 --> 00:48:13.300 And our agreements are based, that's what makes us aligned. 00:48:13.900 --> 00:48:18.300 And so we have alignment based on our agreements and we have accountability based on our agreements. 00:48:18.500 --> 00:48:24.640 And so, yeah, man, I hope that people are holding people accountable to the clarity they've given them. 00:48:24.740 --> 00:48:26.460 Otherwise, you don't have anything. 00:48:26.500 --> 00:48:33.860 By the way, more C words have been said in this podcast than in any other podcast, I think, that I've done in my life. 00:48:33.940 --> 00:48:37.920 So thank you for raising the bar on average, I guess. 00:48:37.920 --> 00:48:38.280 Thanks. 00:48:38.420 --> 00:48:39.600 A bunch of Cs or something. 00:48:39.740 --> 00:48:40.080 I don't know. 00:48:40.500 --> 00:48:42.080 It's been awesome. 00:48:42.520 --> 00:48:42.880 Right. 00:48:42.980 --> 00:48:43.780 No, I'm a C guy. 00:48:43.860 --> 00:48:44.820 That's what I made through college. 00:48:44.820 --> 00:48:45.700 Yeah, you're a good guy. 00:48:46.640 --> 00:48:47.960 I thought I was the only one. 00:48:47.960 --> 00:48:51.120 I was a B minus. 00:48:51.460 --> 00:48:54.120 And my kids are like, Dad, what grade did you get in school? 00:48:54.220 --> 00:48:55.700 I was like, that's not important, kids. 00:48:55.800 --> 00:48:56.600 Just ignore that. 00:48:56.780 --> 00:48:57.900 Don't ask me that again. 00:48:58.640 --> 00:49:00.080 Keep doing what you're doing. 00:49:00.380 --> 00:49:01.020 Take after your mother. 00:49:01.500 --> 00:49:03.900 Hey, listen, this has been awesome, Jason. 00:49:04.140 --> 00:49:05.820 As we're landing the plane, any closing thoughts? 00:49:05.920 --> 00:49:08.520 Well, hey, I would just say, man, thanks so much for what you're doing. 00:49:08.760 --> 00:49:11.680 I couldn't do it, but I know the world is needed. 00:49:11.760 --> 00:49:12.960 The gospel has to be there. 00:49:13.340 --> 00:49:15.860 The church has to grow strong in the digital world. 00:49:15.860 --> 00:49:17.380 And so you're leading it. 00:49:17.500 --> 00:49:18.400 I'm encouraged. 00:49:18.560 --> 00:49:21.060 I'm grateful that you're leading the way you are. 00:49:21.460 --> 00:49:24.720 And I hope that you just don't stop and you keep going. 00:49:25.240 --> 00:49:28.420 I think you guys are, I mean, you're heading into space, right? 00:49:28.480 --> 00:49:31.660 I mean, it's a frontier that we haven't been in and we don't have any clarity on. 00:49:31.720 --> 00:49:37.040 And so I think I forged some new ground in some ways, not nearly as much as you and people 00:49:37.040 --> 00:49:38.320 in the church digital world are. 00:49:38.440 --> 00:49:39.500 So thanks for leading. 00:49:39.700 --> 00:49:41.280 I hope that you keep doing it. 00:49:41.340 --> 00:49:44.140 We're trying to figure out ways that we can partner with you and others like you. 00:49:44.220 --> 00:49:45.740 So I'm just grateful. 00:49:46.040 --> 00:49:50.060 Oh, well, you'll be getting an email from me any day now about some partnership opportunities. 00:49:50.240 --> 00:49:52.520 Thanks for working on it in this year. 00:49:52.520 --> 00:49:55.820 But definitely, definitely looking forward to it. 00:49:55.980 --> 00:49:57.620 But for now, we're going to land a plane. 00:49:58.140 --> 00:49:59.340 We'll have that conversation often. 00:49:59.600 --> 00:50:04.520 But for Jason, founder at Church Project Network, House Church Network, this is Jeff 00:50:04.520 --> 00:50:07.680 with Digital Church Network and the Church Digital. 00:50:07.840 --> 00:50:09.400 A bunch of networks running around here. 00:50:09.760 --> 00:50:11.360 Thanks for jumping on the podcast here. 00:50:11.760 --> 00:50:12.780 We'll see you next time on the show. 00:50:13.080 --> 00:50:13.640 Y'all have a good day. 00:50:14.220 --> 00:50:44.200 Thank you.