WEBVTT 00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:09.300 Hey, this is Jeff with The Church Digital. We're going to get started with the episode here in just a minute, but before we get there, we all know Stadia, the organization that's been powering The Church.Digital. 00:00:09.740 --> 00:00:19.540 Well, guess what? Stadia is opening up some learning communities. We've been doing this for a while now. We've got about 70 churches that are actually part of these learning communities. 00:00:19.540 --> 00:00:29.340 They're learning how to thrive, grow, and multiply, not just physically, not just digitally, but digitally, the combining of physical and digital. 00:00:29.340 --> 00:00:36.300 And it's been a beautiful, beautiful thing. We've got content coming in from churches like Crossroads, from Saddleback, like Church Home. 00:00:36.720 --> 00:00:42.680 But guess what? It's not a content thing. Content's nice. Content doesn't change your church. Let's just say it. It doesn't. 00:00:43.020 --> 00:00:46.480 I'm a podcast operator. I understand this. It's not going to change your church. 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:57.960 The ability to walk with someone and to help you understand some of the guidance, some of the accountability, the community of connecting with other churches, engaging with them, 00:00:58.680 --> 00:01:12.440 conversations with people as you wrestle with some of these things to try to figure out how to make your physical church and your online church authentically you that lines up with your missions, visions, and strategies, 00:01:12.440 --> 00:01:18.920 or maybe is even tightly intertwined that maybe some of that strategy changes to get more online. 00:01:18.920 --> 00:01:29.380 This is what Stadia is trying to create, an opportunity for you to learn and to dialogue and to change your church to thrive, grow, and multiply. 00:01:29.540 --> 00:01:30.920 It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:33.500 Hey, the learning community starts in August. 00:01:33.960 --> 00:01:39.600 So right now, go to stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital. 00:01:39.820 --> 00:01:42.460 P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L. 00:01:42.960 --> 00:01:45.280 Stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital. 00:01:45.820 --> 00:01:50.320 And more information will be there for you to learn about these learning communities. 00:01:50.440 --> 00:01:51.620 This has been great. It's been fun. 00:01:51.960 --> 00:01:54.900 But let's go ahead and get you now to that podcast episode. 00:01:55.640 --> 00:01:57.440 Well, hey, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. 00:01:57.680 --> 00:02:01.660 My name is Jeff Reed, and it is a pleasure once again to be with you today. 00:02:01.660 --> 00:02:10.560 Here on episode three, Church Digital Podcast, we focus on church online and a lot of the implications that it has for discipleship in the long run. 00:02:10.740 --> 00:02:13.980 Implications is a big word to say when you're trying to say it quickly. 00:02:14.120 --> 00:02:20.480 I'm joined today by our guest host, once again, Ray D'Armis, online campus pastor from Christ Fellowship Miami. 00:02:21.060 --> 00:02:21.840 Hey, Ray, you want to say hey? 00:02:22.300 --> 00:02:23.800 Hey, everybody. Good to be with you again. 00:02:24.300 --> 00:02:29.580 I'm excited because today's guest is a professional basketball aficionado much like myself. 00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:30.860 So I'm very excited to have him on. 00:02:31.300 --> 00:02:34.020 I know. And you're wearing your team colors. 00:02:34.120 --> 00:02:40.720 I know we're listening to this, but I just, I want to let, like, I didn't come with my jersey on, so, or my warm-ups, so. 00:02:41.180 --> 00:02:43.840 Well, yeah, these are Brazil soccer colors. 00:02:44.020 --> 00:02:50.820 My wife is a Brazilian, and so anything else outside of Brazilian soccer wear in my household gets burned pretty much. 00:02:50.820 --> 00:02:54.280 So I am required by law and by marriage to wear these colors. 00:02:54.580 --> 00:02:55.620 But I'm glad you noticed, man. 00:02:56.360 --> 00:03:00.460 Well, we're going to play a game here because voice number three has not yet identified himself. 00:03:00.740 --> 00:03:03.820 So what online pastor do you think we're talking to? 00:03:03.940 --> 00:03:05.260 Okay, this is the worst game ever. 00:03:05.680 --> 00:03:09.020 Let me introduce Jay Cranda to the show here. 00:03:09.160 --> 00:03:16.600 Jay is online pastor at Saddleback and the godfather of online pastors in the American church. 00:03:16.600 --> 00:03:22.640 So I, for one, have enjoyed the relationship I've built up with him over the years. 00:03:22.740 --> 00:03:28.040 He's been instrumental for me saying leadership, look, this is the way Saddleback does it. 00:03:28.160 --> 00:03:29.400 We should do it this way, too. 00:03:29.920 --> 00:03:48.700 And if you've not really dove into looking at Jay's setup and how he structured things at Saddleback or Jay's website, jaycranda.com, you definitely should do that because Jay, man, he's on top of the game right now and doing a lot of things healthily in context of church online. 00:03:48.920 --> 00:03:51.640 As a matter of fact, isn't that like your branding, Healthy Church Online? 00:03:51.880 --> 00:03:53.060 Is it something like that? 00:03:53.120 --> 00:03:53.220 Yeah. 00:03:53.280 --> 00:03:56.180 When you say Godfather, I have like Godfather 3. 00:03:56.320 --> 00:03:58.120 Like, am I going to die on like an armchair? 00:03:58.320 --> 00:04:01.880 Like, and I'm just going to drop something and that's like the way I end. 00:04:02.200 --> 00:04:04.600 Why did you pick the worst Godfather movie of all? 00:04:04.600 --> 00:04:05.420 I don't know. 00:04:06.200 --> 00:04:07.920 It's probably a self-image issue. 00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:08.540 I don't know. 00:04:08.620 --> 00:04:09.700 That's a good question, right? 00:04:09.700 --> 00:04:13.100 You won't die in this episode because I need you for at least three more. 00:04:13.540 --> 00:04:14.360 Okay, okay. 00:04:14.460 --> 00:04:15.140 Episode four. 00:04:15.720 --> 00:04:16.340 That's my contract. 00:04:17.220 --> 00:04:18.680 Yeah, that's what you're on for. 00:04:18.920 --> 00:04:22.280 And we've been lamenting here, and I don't want to get stuck here, but we've been lamenting 00:04:22.280 --> 00:04:27.380 through LeBron Woes with Ray and I being, you know, Miami Heat fans over the years. 00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:31.380 And Jay is experiencing much sorrow these days in Lakerville. 00:04:31.880 --> 00:04:37.640 So, coming from LeBron fans, former LeBron fans out there, maybe current LeBron fans, but 00:04:37.640 --> 00:04:37.940 whatever. 00:04:38.100 --> 00:04:38.980 I still stan LeBron. 00:04:38.980 --> 00:04:39.700 I love the guy. 00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:41.780 Jay, I'm sorry. 00:04:42.400 --> 00:04:42.680 I know. 00:04:43.160 --> 00:04:44.620 We're going to have a good year next year. 00:04:44.700 --> 00:04:45.140 I'm hopeful. 00:04:45.340 --> 00:04:46.260 I'm naively hopeful. 00:04:46.520 --> 00:04:47.720 That's my attitude always. 00:04:48.280 --> 00:04:52.260 So, naively hopeful Jay Cranston story. 00:04:52.880 --> 00:04:53.120 Okay. 00:04:53.400 --> 00:04:54.760 Hey, so let's roll through this thing. 00:04:54.840 --> 00:04:56.360 Here's what we want to focus on today. 00:04:56.800 --> 00:04:59.980 And this is one of the things, and when I'm thinking about, hey, I want to talk about this 00:04:59.980 --> 00:05:00.320 topic. 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:02.740 Jay Cranston is at the top of the list for me. 00:05:03.140 --> 00:05:03.640 Here we go. 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:09.160 How to get a church online philosophy to align with physical location philosophy. 00:05:09.160 --> 00:05:14.680 And so, Jay, man, straight up, five years ago, six years ago, I'm wrestling with this 00:05:14.680 --> 00:05:17.000 for Christ Fellowship Miami. 00:05:17.720 --> 00:05:19.100 And I'm going on different websites. 00:05:19.500 --> 00:05:23.060 And you were, I'm not saying you're the first one that did this, but you were one of the 00:05:23.060 --> 00:05:26.780 first ones that was doing it on a large scale where we're physical and virtual. 00:05:26.940 --> 00:05:29.900 And the groups, like trying to sign up for a group, it was all the same thing. 00:05:30.040 --> 00:05:32.720 And there wasn't a separation in that. 00:05:32.720 --> 00:05:37.380 And so, man, like the thing that I want to hone in on is way well done. 00:05:37.700 --> 00:05:40.280 But B, like what have been the payoffs for that? 00:05:40.380 --> 00:05:41.460 What have been the struggles? 00:05:41.580 --> 00:05:42.460 What have been the rewards? 00:05:43.120 --> 00:05:45.920 Like at what point did you guys, and let's just start here. 00:05:46.240 --> 00:05:50.760 At what point did you guys really align the philosophy with the physical and the virtual 00:05:50.760 --> 00:05:54.940 so it really became one saddleback going forward? 00:05:55.840 --> 00:05:59.760 Yeah, and I think just to be clear, like think, well, first off, thanks for noticing that. 00:05:59.760 --> 00:06:02.480 I think that's something that we've tried really hard to align. 00:06:03.280 --> 00:06:06.820 But I think with a lot of people that I've experienced with, and I know you guys have had 00:06:06.820 --> 00:06:11.840 similar conversations, is around sometimes when you get started with online ministry, 00:06:12.620 --> 00:06:17.680 there's not a lot of documentation and expectation around what it should look like. 00:06:17.720 --> 00:06:21.580 It's one thing to launch a church or if you're multi-site, launch another campus. 00:06:22.340 --> 00:06:27.400 But with online, honestly, I don't feel like leadership had a ton of ideas. 00:06:27.700 --> 00:06:32.560 You know, I had resources to go to and ask questions, and there was tons of mentoring. 00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:35.420 But that allowed us to do a lot of things. 00:06:35.540 --> 00:06:40.240 And something that I learned really early on, that the only way that this is really going 00:06:40.240 --> 00:06:42.940 to work is that I got to align with what my church is great at. 00:06:43.580 --> 00:06:45.920 And so we started to have those conversations. 00:06:46.740 --> 00:06:52.560 And just as somebody that was on staff already, I kind of knew our paradigm of how we kind of 00:06:52.560 --> 00:06:56.900 bring people in and send them out and kind of our funnel, our process, how people around 00:06:56.900 --> 00:06:57.340 the bases. 00:06:58.140 --> 00:07:04.020 And I kind of strategically, and this is especially true when I first got started, because I felt 00:07:04.020 --> 00:07:09.860 like there was a lot of, not negativity, but there was this idea that online was going 00:07:09.860 --> 00:07:12.780 to hurt our local campuses and our local church. 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:18.220 Not that everybody thought that, but I felt like I needed to over-communicate to our local 00:07:18.220 --> 00:07:18.820 staff. 00:07:19.100 --> 00:07:26.000 And in my context, my local campus pastors, since we have 19 plus campuses, I wanted to 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:28.280 let them know that I'm an advocate for them. 00:07:28.420 --> 00:07:29.800 I never want to keep people online. 00:07:29.800 --> 00:07:35.200 So early on, a lot of it just came from us just pushing and really great leadership on 00:07:35.200 --> 00:07:40.440 my end, that was above me, that kind of just helped me understand what was important, what 00:07:40.440 --> 00:07:46.300 were culturally things that were going on, and a lot of just failures, too, of just figuring 00:07:46.300 --> 00:07:46.700 it out. 00:07:46.800 --> 00:07:51.940 But I just realized, too, that if I align with what my pastor was talking about in our teaching 00:07:51.940 --> 00:07:56.020 team, that that was a good chunk of our weekly experience online. 00:07:56.180 --> 00:08:00.940 And if I aligned with the language, then I wasn't having to have them replicate another 00:08:00.940 --> 00:08:01.740 process. 00:08:01.740 --> 00:08:05.860 Because the likelihood, my pastor, of thinking about different language for online audience 00:08:05.860 --> 00:08:09.160 versus local, no, he's probably just going to hold up the response card that he tells 00:08:09.160 --> 00:08:09.520 everybody. 00:08:09.740 --> 00:08:14.540 And if I align all that stuff, that means I get to easily assimilate people. 00:08:14.760 --> 00:08:17.340 So honestly, it makes sense now. 00:08:17.480 --> 00:08:21.540 But early on, there was a lot of just, I think this is what we need to do. 00:08:21.620 --> 00:08:22.780 And we just started doing it. 00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:24.780 And then it started to pay off. 00:08:25.940 --> 00:08:32.360 And so it was, it did it, there was more fog early on than I think, if you were to look 00:08:32.360 --> 00:08:36.020 at our experience now, it would say, oh, this probably always made sense. 00:08:36.040 --> 00:08:37.320 And I was like, no, it didn't. 00:08:37.460 --> 00:08:41.600 It was something that we just kind of slowly kind of, it started to make sense as we did 00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:41.740 it. 00:08:42.900 --> 00:08:44.740 How long have you been on staff at Settleback? 00:08:45.880 --> 00:08:48.600 I've been on staff, I think I'm coming up on 10 years. 00:08:48.960 --> 00:08:50.220 So I started right out of college. 00:08:50.520 --> 00:08:51.660 So it was like, yeah. 00:08:52.120 --> 00:08:53.080 It was, it was funny. 00:08:53.180 --> 00:08:55.560 I just, when you were talking, I just, I flashed back. 00:08:55.960 --> 00:08:58.900 And the year was probably 2007, 2008. 00:08:59.160 --> 00:09:04.280 And Ray, it was the, it was the first time we did Revelation at Christ Fellowship. 00:09:04.680 --> 00:09:08.140 And we did a, not, not the first time, but the first time under Geiger. 00:09:08.680 --> 00:09:14.800 And, and so we were doing, I did a virtual small group and it wasn't like Zoom or anything 00:09:14.800 --> 00:09:15.220 like that. 00:09:15.220 --> 00:09:16.980 We used a, it was a BBS system. 00:09:17.400 --> 00:09:20.080 I think we just was a blog comments. 00:09:20.080 --> 00:09:23.360 And so the video was in the blog and comments were underneath. 00:09:23.560 --> 00:09:27.180 You know, it was 2007, like technology wasn't, wasn't quite rolling yet. 00:09:27.580 --> 00:09:31.320 And, and, and somebody from Settleback called up Christ Fellowship. 00:09:31.360 --> 00:09:35.360 And, and, and I was like the production guy who just on the side was like, Hey, I want 00:09:35.360 --> 00:09:37.760 to do this for online and just see what happens type of thing. 00:09:37.760 --> 00:09:38.480 Just playing around. 00:09:39.020 --> 00:09:42.160 And somebody from Settleback called me up and they were like, Hey, yeah. 00:09:42.180 --> 00:09:43.680 So we see you're doing online small groups. 00:09:43.680 --> 00:09:45.140 Like what lessons are you learning? 00:09:45.140 --> 00:09:47.140 And, and like, really like interviewing me. 00:09:47.140 --> 00:09:49.640 And I'm like, dude, I'm like some gearhead. 00:09:49.680 --> 00:09:51.000 Like, I don't, I don't know what I'm doing. 00:09:51.020 --> 00:09:54.440 I just was, was having fun with it, but, but really, really drilling in. 00:09:54.440 --> 00:09:55.880 So that's awesome. 00:09:56.820 --> 00:10:02.220 So like what, what lessons have, have, have you learned kind of in that process where you 00:10:02.220 --> 00:10:04.320 started off the, the kid is college. 00:10:04.320 --> 00:10:06.380 You're, you're, you're just coming into this thing. 00:10:06.560 --> 00:10:12.160 Not a lot of expectations necessarily up high, but, but obviously you've got, um, you know, 00:10:12.200 --> 00:10:17.400 a strong leader in context of, of Rick Warren, who knows what he wants, but maybe isn't specific 00:10:17.400 --> 00:10:20.080 in context in this area with, with vision. 00:10:20.400 --> 00:10:23.620 Like you said, you aligned it very quickly to what they were doing. 00:10:23.620 --> 00:10:26.740 Like, what were the pros and cons of doing that? 00:10:26.740 --> 00:10:31.280 So you got a guy that you're talking to that doesn't, that's new in this, like what lessons 00:10:31.280 --> 00:10:32.200 would you coach him on? 00:10:33.100 --> 00:10:33.500 Yeah. 00:10:33.580 --> 00:10:40.120 So, I mean, first off, it's more like, just here's what's happening and where do we want 00:10:40.120 --> 00:10:40.360 to go? 00:10:40.420 --> 00:10:44.380 And to be honest, like we've had different phases of saddle, of, of our online ministry 00:10:44.380 --> 00:10:45.860 of like, this is the clear goal. 00:10:46.020 --> 00:10:47.460 Now this is a clear goal. 00:10:47.460 --> 00:10:52.080 And most recently, I know some of the conversations you and I have had, Jeff is, you know, we're, 00:10:52.080 --> 00:10:57.880 I'm really in this phase now of kind of revamping and re-energizing home gatherings, um, type 00:10:57.880 --> 00:10:58.460 of expression. 00:10:58.460 --> 00:11:03.760 So we're actually moving way more into that, but I think early on, one of the things was 00:11:03.760 --> 00:11:11.300 I, so first off, I, I wanted to kind of educate and I had a boss early on that kind of created 00:11:11.300 --> 00:11:15.880 this verbiage for me that I really loved is that we needed to educate our local staff of 00:11:15.880 --> 00:11:22.760 the value of the online service, that it isn't just this thing that, you know, people can 00:11:22.760 --> 00:11:27.240 just watch and not come to church type of thing is that, um, and we started saying this is that 00:11:27.240 --> 00:11:32.660 for tens of thousands of people, the online service or the online campus is the first and 00:11:32.660 --> 00:11:34.180 only expression of our church. 00:11:34.180 --> 00:11:35.340 So we got to do it right. 00:11:35.780 --> 00:11:40.200 And so, and he, he actually crafted that and he, and we had conversations on, you need 00:11:40.200 --> 00:11:45.160 to say that in team meetings to other people because they're just thinking you're just hosting 00:11:45.160 --> 00:11:48.560 this thing and you're just following up on response cards and you're, you know, and they 00:11:48.560 --> 00:11:50.260 might not really have, have thought about that. 00:11:50.280 --> 00:11:55.520 But if you educate them on, oh, this is, this is telling our community who we are and we got 00:11:55.520 --> 00:11:56.860 to make sure that product as well. 00:11:56.860 --> 00:12:01.820 And so that started to really help kind of build that culture within our local team, 00:12:01.820 --> 00:12:06.880 because the hardest thing I think for most people on staff at churches is when I come 00:12:06.880 --> 00:12:11.540 into a meeting and I want to do this thing that's going to require cameras and all this work, 00:12:11.540 --> 00:12:13.440 it's like, I'm another thing on their list. 00:12:13.600 --> 00:12:14.500 I'm a task. 00:12:14.900 --> 00:12:18.140 And so most people don't like to do things based off tasks. 00:12:18.140 --> 00:12:19.820 They like to do things based off vision. 00:12:20.060 --> 00:12:24.860 And so I think that was the coaching I learned is like, oh yeah, like, and I was fun. 00:12:24.900 --> 00:12:28.160 I was just, I was writing an email this morning about something we want to change up. 00:12:28.180 --> 00:12:30.640 And I was communicating to some people and same thing. 00:12:30.640 --> 00:12:35.740 I was communicating the vision of why I think this would be important, but I think really 00:12:35.740 --> 00:12:40.740 thinking about it, like this really is becoming a front door of our church and my team that's 00:12:40.740 --> 00:12:46.140 managing this and my volunteers that we're super lean and we want to make sure that the, 00:12:46.140 --> 00:12:48.120 you know, we're doing this right. 00:12:48.820 --> 00:12:53.460 The other thing is having a lot of conversations with our worship team and our video team around. 00:12:54.740 --> 00:12:58.760 I am somehow representing or interacting with this very polished product. 00:12:59.220 --> 00:13:03.040 And you think through from start to end how that should look and be. 00:13:03.820 --> 00:13:08.060 And then in my model, I'm plopping on these intros and these outros onto this thing. 00:13:08.380 --> 00:13:13.520 And I want to make sure like, you know, early on we did stuff just because we needed to do it. 00:13:13.520 --> 00:13:17.480 And now in the last couple of years, we've had more conversations around like, hey, you guys 00:13:17.480 --> 00:13:20.580 own that product and I'm kind of just a manager of it. 00:13:20.580 --> 00:13:22.220 And so we can change up anything. 00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:27.360 And I started to kind of have that conversation because like, I don't like my background is my 00:13:27.360 --> 00:13:28.980 background is way more pastoral. 00:13:28.980 --> 00:13:32.620 I'm not very, I'm technical, but I'm not a technical person by nature. 00:13:32.840 --> 00:13:36.480 And so like, I'm more care about just moving in to fill out a response card. 00:13:37.160 --> 00:13:43.080 Um, and so, um, so I think teaching the value to our, our leadership and that starts with 00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:46.180 me knowing, knowing those things. 00:13:46.180 --> 00:13:48.220 Like I have, I had to simplify our vision. 00:13:48.320 --> 00:13:49.580 I had to simplify our process. 00:13:49.580 --> 00:13:53.720 I had to figure out like that simple crafting of just thinking about for tens of thousands 00:13:53.720 --> 00:13:54.180 of people. 00:13:54.180 --> 00:13:57.040 It's the first and only expression of our church was a huge thing. 00:13:57.280 --> 00:14:02.440 And I remember when my boss said it, I was like, oh my, I, that makes total sense. 00:14:02.920 --> 00:14:07.900 Um, because again, most people on staff are just going about their day and I'm having to 00:14:07.900 --> 00:14:08.460 tell them. 00:14:08.460 --> 00:14:10.040 And the same thing of telling those stories up. 00:14:10.140 --> 00:14:16.840 And the last big thing was, um, you know, when we got stories, making sure that I would 00:14:16.840 --> 00:14:18.280 two things, I would save it. 00:14:18.640 --> 00:14:21.420 Um, and then I would also forward it and kind of get it up. 00:14:21.420 --> 00:14:26.280 And so, and the thing is we would have stories that would come in, but just because a story 00:14:26.280 --> 00:14:28.260 happens doesn't mean it's the right story to share. 00:14:28.460 --> 00:14:34.140 So like there's two, you know, like there's one story where it's like somebody like, like 00:14:34.140 --> 00:14:38.500 a pastor who's going, who's part of another church somehow recommenced their life through 00:14:38.500 --> 00:14:41.620 like, maybe there, there's something going on in their personal life. 00:14:41.740 --> 00:14:44.940 Well, I don't really want to tell the story of the pastor because he's not my main target, 00:14:44.940 --> 00:14:49.620 but the person who's unconnected, uh, we, we, we just had something a couple of weeks 00:14:49.620 --> 00:14:54.940 ago, as a perfect example, somebody who had started watching online, um, came to faith, 00:14:54.940 --> 00:14:59.780 um, or it was interested and I got them plugged into one of our campuses locally. 00:15:00.100 --> 00:15:01.740 And that's the story I want to tell. 00:15:01.740 --> 00:15:07.580 So figuring out what are the stories of kind of magnifying the potential of if we really 00:15:07.580 --> 00:15:10.480 kind of blow this thing up and really invest more. 00:15:10.600 --> 00:15:15.180 So I think those are some of the big learnings, um, early on that there's definitely some cons 00:15:15.180 --> 00:15:18.920 too, but I think those are some of the big things that I learned, at least in the first, 00:15:18.920 --> 00:15:20.180 you know, five years. 00:15:21.760 --> 00:15:22.200 Go ahead. 00:15:22.200 --> 00:15:23.040 Let me ask you a question, Jeff. 00:15:23.040 --> 00:15:28.920 Uh, when did, when did you guys make the turn from being purely content distributors to 00:15:28.920 --> 00:15:30.880 finally getting, gathering people in community? 00:15:30.880 --> 00:15:32.060 When did that happen for you? 00:15:32.820 --> 00:15:40.800 Yeah, I, so when I became the full-time online pastor, we had online groups previously, and 00:15:40.800 --> 00:15:44.340 I probably know who was calling you at that time. 00:15:44.440 --> 00:15:50.840 Um, and when I first got hired, the idea was the thing they wanted me to actually manage 00:15:50.840 --> 00:15:52.160 was the online groups. 00:15:52.160 --> 00:15:58.060 The idea was we have this service that happens, people respond, but like there isn't all this 00:15:58.060 --> 00:16:02.160 traditional campus pastor type of stuff to do because like, you don't have to worry about 00:16:02.160 --> 00:16:04.640 setup, tear down, you don't have to worry about this main product. 00:16:04.800 --> 00:16:07.180 That's kind of on autopilot in a lot of ways. 00:16:07.620 --> 00:16:12.840 Um, you can, you build volunteers around, but when we, when our online groups really started 00:16:12.840 --> 00:16:14.020 to grow, they go, you know what? 00:16:14.080 --> 00:16:18.440 We could actually have the online pastor be over the service and all that stuff and the 00:16:18.440 --> 00:16:23.020 volunteer teams and make sure that's going, but their job could become just over these, 00:16:23.260 --> 00:16:26.100 these small groups that he's just caring for these small groups. 00:16:26.100 --> 00:16:30.780 So I was hired initially kind of as kind of how you would hire like a men's pastor that 00:16:30.780 --> 00:16:34.780 he's over all the men's only groups that I was just over all the online only groups. 00:16:35.480 --> 00:16:38.940 And, um, and what happened was somebody was doing online groups at that time. 00:16:38.940 --> 00:16:42.100 And I kind of assimilated, we kind of like merged together in a way. 00:16:42.640 --> 00:16:48.060 And, um, at that time, really from the beginning, when I was full-time prior to that, I wasn't 00:16:48.060 --> 00:16:49.240 full-time I was part-time. 00:16:49.880 --> 00:16:55.400 Um, it was, it was prior to that, it was just all content and just kind of some volunteer 00:16:55.400 --> 00:16:55.760 stuff. 00:16:55.760 --> 00:17:00.120 But when I got the groups, they really set the standard early on that we want this to 00:17:00.120 --> 00:17:05.840 be not just a crowd building, but a community building thing by making me really the small 00:17:05.840 --> 00:17:07.940 group pastor of all the online groups. 00:17:08.700 --> 00:17:11.380 Um, and so I think that was, it was like, it was a bar set early on. 00:17:11.400 --> 00:17:14.880 Like, this is going to be your core community that you develop that if, if, if your groups 00:17:14.880 --> 00:17:17.480 are healthy, that means your online church is healthy. 00:17:17.640 --> 00:17:20.700 And I, and I think it kind of, it made a lot of sense to me. 00:17:20.700 --> 00:17:22.780 And we just kind of really embrace that model. 00:17:23.820 --> 00:17:28.060 You said something, this is off topic, but, uh, you said some talking about groups. 00:17:28.420 --> 00:17:33.120 You told me once in the physical churches, people connect to Christ before they connect 00:17:33.120 --> 00:17:33.520 to community. 00:17:33.520 --> 00:17:37.620 You see that as a accept Christ and invitation, then it takes six months to get them into a 00:17:37.620 --> 00:17:39.620 group or something like that, depending upon the church. 00:17:40.200 --> 00:17:44.420 But in an online context, you've seen examples of where people connect to community before 00:17:44.420 --> 00:17:45.300 they connect to Christ. 00:17:45.300 --> 00:17:47.760 We're looking for engagement to looking for friendship. 00:17:47.760 --> 00:17:52.880 And it's through those relationships, that real true understanding of who Christ is happens. 00:17:53.440 --> 00:17:55.080 Um, he's Jay shaking his head. 00:17:55.140 --> 00:17:55.320 Yes. 00:17:55.360 --> 00:17:56.840 So obviously he's agreeing with this. 00:17:57.000 --> 00:17:58.940 Jay unpack a little bit here. 00:17:59.060 --> 00:18:03.260 Tell me, tell me a story or two, an example of, of what that tangibly looks like online. 00:18:04.260 --> 00:18:04.660 Yeah. 00:18:04.660 --> 00:18:11.560 I mean, I, I think one of the hardest things with online overall is that it, it, it amplifies 00:18:11.560 --> 00:18:15.460 this amazing ability to connect with anybody on all sorts of stuff we can, you know, like 00:18:15.460 --> 00:18:19.400 example, you know, Rayna talking about like NBA Twitter is amazing. 00:18:19.400 --> 00:18:24.100 Like you can just connect with people in all sorts of creative ways, but also, you know, 00:18:24.180 --> 00:18:30.160 there's, there is this epidemic of loneliness that is very apparent and disconnection is 00:18:30.160 --> 00:18:30.500 happening. 00:18:30.500 --> 00:18:32.780 Now, you know, I, I definitely have my ideas. 00:18:32.920 --> 00:18:35.280 I know I just saw something you shared not too long ago. 00:18:35.740 --> 00:18:40.500 Um, Jeff, I think you blogged about it, but, um, from a report of, of what's happening 00:18:40.500 --> 00:18:41.240 with social media. 00:18:41.380 --> 00:18:45.120 Um, I think it's just magnifying things that already were there and coming to the, to the 00:18:45.120 --> 00:18:45.540 service. 00:18:46.080 --> 00:18:50.680 Um, and, and a lot of those conversations come around just, uh, just being wise with 00:18:50.680 --> 00:18:51.240 these things. 00:18:51.580 --> 00:18:55.660 Um, you know, so a lot of people are like, get scared of technology, but it's, it's the 00:18:55.660 --> 00:19:00.580 same thing with like a, you know, with a burger, you know, yeah, burger is not like bad, but 00:19:00.580 --> 00:19:02.360 if you eat five of them a day, it's going to be bad. 00:19:02.360 --> 00:19:05.880 And it's like, that's the kind of the idea, same thing with fire, fire can either make 00:19:05.880 --> 00:19:08.200 you food or it can burn your face off kind of thing. 00:19:08.580 --> 00:19:11.700 Um, and so technology there's, there's levels of it. 00:19:11.700 --> 00:19:16.680 And I think with us, what we learned is that we kind of, we got this influx of people that 00:19:16.680 --> 00:19:18.500 wouldn't normally just go to a church. 00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:23.660 Um, and so, or they had disconnected from my church and they were just watching. 00:19:23.660 --> 00:19:26.960 And then they started to fill out response cards and engage in new ways. 00:19:27.280 --> 00:19:32.120 And for many of those people before they would ever actually show up to a physical church, 00:19:32.120 --> 00:19:36.240 they were really interested in the ideas that they could start a small group with their 00:19:36.240 --> 00:19:39.580 friends or in, or, or engage with something online. 00:19:39.720 --> 00:19:42.740 And they could almost be kind of in, there's two scenarios. 00:19:42.860 --> 00:19:48.200 There's one people being kind of brought in back to life of what true community is or what 00:19:48.200 --> 00:19:50.200 true church is. 00:19:50.200 --> 00:19:53.860 And then there's another group of people that are being introduced to church for the very 00:19:53.860 --> 00:19:54.360 first time. 00:19:54.360 --> 00:19:55.620 And we're kind of setting the standard. 00:19:55.620 --> 00:20:00.360 And so I think it's just, um, I think it was like kind of getting to the heart of it 00:20:00.360 --> 00:20:03.620 and of really, what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? 00:20:03.620 --> 00:20:08.420 That ultimately it's not this, it's not this American large church type of thing. 00:20:08.420 --> 00:20:14.160 It's, it's, it's really church is, or, you know, biblical ecclesia is this idea of, of 00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:15.860 it's the people you're doing life with. 00:20:15.900 --> 00:20:17.020 So yeah, my church is huge. 00:20:17.020 --> 00:20:22.320 We might have 25,000 people, but like I have three other couples that I consider my church. 00:20:22.320 --> 00:20:26.520 And when I think about Saddleback, I don't really think about the large thing that happens 00:20:26.520 --> 00:20:26.920 every week. 00:20:26.920 --> 00:20:30.840 I'm thinking about the, the two, the two to three other couples and all their kids. 00:20:30.840 --> 00:20:32.020 That's the group of people. 00:20:32.020 --> 00:20:36.760 And actually I've been part of this, this small group between two churches now over the last 00:20:36.760 --> 00:20:37.480 15 years. 00:20:37.920 --> 00:20:40.140 And, um, that's my church. 00:20:40.140 --> 00:20:45.540 I just think we have this abundance of freedom in America that makes gathering large, very 00:20:45.540 --> 00:20:45.980 easy. 00:20:46.480 --> 00:20:50.540 Um, and so it's, in a lot of ways, the small group stuff is really going back to early church 00:20:50.540 --> 00:20:53.060 kind of for the first 300 years, how stuff function. 00:20:53.060 --> 00:20:59.560 And so, I mean, we, we've seen, we, we have stories of, of people, um, from everything from 00:20:59.560 --> 00:21:03.520 people in domestic issues that are married and they can't get out of a relationship and 00:21:03.520 --> 00:21:04.900 they engage with an online group. 00:21:05.300 --> 00:21:10.200 And, um, we had one case that that, that woman that I'm talking about lived outside of the 00:21:10.200 --> 00:21:10.720 United States. 00:21:10.720 --> 00:21:15.820 And I actually found somebody in a different scenario, uh, that lived nearby and actually 00:21:15.820 --> 00:21:20.540 baptized her, um, in a, in a rec center, um, in, in another country. 00:21:20.660 --> 00:21:22.900 Um, I couldn't share the story or the photo. 00:21:22.900 --> 00:21:26.060 I I I've seen it myself, but there was some security issues. 00:21:26.740 --> 00:21:30.880 Um, you know, so this person is not able to leave their scenario at this given moment, but 00:21:30.880 --> 00:21:34.080 they're able to engage online, be part of an online group for the season. 00:21:34.200 --> 00:21:36.800 And obviously our prayer is that that scenario changes. 00:21:37.080 --> 00:21:38.540 Um, but that's one way. 00:21:38.960 --> 00:21:43.180 Um, we, we have people that, you know, start, um, home groups in their area. 00:21:43.180 --> 00:21:47.100 We, we, we had a group of people in Northern California that were all graduates from Berkeley 00:21:47.100 --> 00:21:51.900 and they, um, you know, started reading purpose-driven life and they Googled and found us and they 00:21:51.900 --> 00:21:52.920 started a group in their home. 00:21:52.920 --> 00:21:57.500 And, um, really cool story where like, they got up to, you know, they started meeting and 00:21:57.500 --> 00:21:59.620 it was like 20 people were meeting in their home every week. 00:21:59.620 --> 00:22:02.660 And, you know, I go up and visit them and baptize three people in a bathtub. 00:22:02.660 --> 00:22:06.880 And it's like, you know, and, and the whole time as I'm engaging this, I want you guys to 00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:12.300 know, as you hear that story, it's, it's amazing, but I'm somebody who first off got, I got led 00:22:12.300 --> 00:22:13.940 to Christ at a church under 500. 00:22:14.220 --> 00:22:15.320 I came to Saddleback. 00:22:15.380 --> 00:22:18.880 I'm part of this and I'm literally going, what in the world is God doing? 00:22:18.920 --> 00:22:20.200 Like, this is nuts. 00:22:20.200 --> 00:22:22.900 Like, this does not like, this is not like, I did not sit here. 00:22:22.920 --> 00:22:25.960 And master plan this, you know, it speaks to our God. 00:22:26.060 --> 00:22:28.200 It speaks to my pastor and our church. 00:22:28.340 --> 00:22:32.600 And, and I'm just showing up and I'm asking the question, like, how do I like put this 00:22:32.600 --> 00:22:34.340 in a pill and like reproduce it? 00:22:34.420 --> 00:22:34.820 You know what I mean? 00:22:34.840 --> 00:22:37.540 I'm like trying to ask that question constantly. 00:22:37.540 --> 00:22:41.820 Like when I, when I went up to that, that thing in Northern California and I'm literally, 00:22:41.900 --> 00:22:43.320 I baptized three people in a bathtub. 00:22:43.700 --> 00:22:44.840 I'm literally the whole time. 00:22:44.880 --> 00:22:46.600 I'm just like, what is happening? 00:22:46.820 --> 00:22:48.220 Like, what is this? 00:22:48.620 --> 00:22:49.140 You know what I mean? 00:22:49.140 --> 00:22:51.520 Like I probably baptized at my old church. 00:22:51.600 --> 00:22:53.380 I probably baptized a handful of people ever. 00:22:53.800 --> 00:22:56.440 And now I'm like in this small bathtub in San Francisco, like that. 00:22:56.520 --> 00:22:59.340 It's just like, and you're like, how, what is God doing online? 00:22:59.400 --> 00:23:01.900 And what does this online to offline thing look like? 00:23:01.920 --> 00:23:02.740 Can we scale it? 00:23:02.760 --> 00:23:03.680 Does it make sense? 00:23:04.460 --> 00:23:07.420 And so some of it, we understand more now. 00:23:07.720 --> 00:23:09.760 Some of it, I still don't understand. 00:23:10.400 --> 00:23:14.920 And so, yeah, so just that, those are some stories that kind of stand out at the top, 00:23:15.040 --> 00:23:18.120 you know, and obviously those are the, like, that's the best stories that I'm thinking about 00:23:18.120 --> 00:23:20.460 right now at the moment. 00:23:21.460 --> 00:23:26.200 So there, yeah, there, there's a lot there and you mentioned online to offline and I really, 00:23:26.320 --> 00:23:33.940 I want to park there for a little bit because online to offline really, to me, it, it revolutionized 00:23:33.940 --> 00:23:41.340 the idea of church online because I was, I was struggling with this vision of online without 00:23:41.340 --> 00:23:48.260 biblical community, online without community at all, creating this idea of, of isolation. 00:23:49.040 --> 00:23:53.280 You know, and we're seeing that, that what you mentioned earlier, what I blogged is USA Today. 00:23:53.520 --> 00:23:57.940 And we talked about it, I think on an earlier podcast, USA Today, high school seniors are 00:23:57.940 --> 00:24:05.920 13% more likely to identify themselves as lonely today than even five years ago in technologies 00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:06.180 career. 00:24:06.260 --> 00:24:12.760 And there's plenty of stats of what, like, my gosh, like high school seniors go on 32 dates 00:24:12.760 --> 00:24:17.460 less, 32 less dates a year than when they, when, when I was in high school. 00:24:17.460 --> 00:24:17.840 Interesting. 00:24:17.840 --> 00:24:22.480 Like maybe that's just good parenting finally kicking in, but more likely it is just like, 00:24:22.480 --> 00:24:24.840 you know, kids are not, they're not going out. 00:24:24.880 --> 00:24:25.660 They're not being social. 00:24:25.820 --> 00:24:29.720 And so a lot of people reading Josh Harris is kissing, dating, goodbye is all that's not 00:24:29.720 --> 00:24:30.040 allowed. 00:24:31.260 --> 00:24:31.860 Ask that. 00:24:31.960 --> 00:24:33.260 You can't, I can't acknowledge that. 00:24:34.820 --> 00:24:36.480 You know, you know, it blew my mind. 00:24:36.500 --> 00:24:41.440 It was, I was listening to something and obviously I, I, I haven't dated in, you know, been married 00:24:41.440 --> 00:24:43.900 10 years, but they said like young, younger people. 00:24:43.900 --> 00:24:49.100 And I'm, I get, I'm, I'm saying I'm, I'm, I am young, but I, I have three kids and I'm, 00:24:49.100 --> 00:24:50.540 I'm out of that phase of life. 00:24:50.540 --> 00:24:54.020 But they said like young people now they don't exchange phone numbers. 00:24:54.180 --> 00:25:00.760 They exchange Instagram handles because you can just block them on Instagram and you don't 00:25:00.760 --> 00:25:02.720 have to block them on a phone, which is really impossible. 00:25:02.720 --> 00:25:05.420 And I was like, my mind was like, oh, that makes total sense. 00:25:05.420 --> 00:25:06.220 But that's nuts. 00:25:06.220 --> 00:25:07.860 Like people are just exchanging Instagram. 00:25:08.120 --> 00:25:10.420 Like the phone number is not being handed out. 00:25:10.440 --> 00:25:12.340 I'm like, I still give out my phone number all the time. 00:25:12.340 --> 00:25:16.780 Like that's anyways, besides the point, I said to a high school kid, I'll text you. 00:25:16.800 --> 00:25:17.600 And he's like, what? 00:25:17.860 --> 00:25:20.320 And I'm like, and he's like, Instagram. 00:25:20.320 --> 00:25:21.120 I was like, cool. 00:25:21.200 --> 00:25:21.780 I'll Instagram. 00:25:22.020 --> 00:25:22.940 Like, that's a thing. 00:25:23.020 --> 00:25:23.340 Who knew? 00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:23.860 That's hilarious. 00:25:23.860 --> 00:25:26.940 You know, if he would have said Snapchat, I would have been like, sorry, I'm no longer 00:25:26.940 --> 00:25:29.140 saying, but I'm 40. 00:25:29.420 --> 00:25:30.740 If I'm on Snapchat, it's weird. 00:25:30.900 --> 00:25:31.360 I'm just saying. 00:25:31.760 --> 00:25:31.880 Okay. 00:25:32.880 --> 00:25:35.840 So, but let's hold back because this is important. 00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:41.400 Online to offline revolutionized because it's this idea of, well, shoot, you're the guy 00:25:41.400 --> 00:25:44.340 who coined it, or at least you're the first person that I've heard said it. 00:25:44.600 --> 00:25:47.200 And so everybody I ever talked to, I said, Jay Cranda said it. 00:25:47.240 --> 00:25:47.980 So it's got to be true. 00:25:48.500 --> 00:25:51.260 Why don't you unpack a little bit and tell us what online to offline is about? 00:25:51.940 --> 00:25:58.680 Yeah, I have no idea who coined it, but I always think everything that comes from my 00:25:58.680 --> 00:26:00.320 head practically comes from my pastor. 00:26:00.320 --> 00:26:04.340 So inadvertently, because he's just constantly spewing wisdom. 00:26:05.020 --> 00:26:06.280 So it's probably from him. 00:26:07.180 --> 00:26:07.520 Yeah. 00:26:07.620 --> 00:26:14.040 So I think the idea was, you know, I've had this conversation with both of you guys is 00:26:14.040 --> 00:26:17.520 that, so I go to church with my family. 00:26:17.740 --> 00:26:21.720 So me and my family, we go to church, you know, we check in our kids, they have their 00:26:21.720 --> 00:26:23.220 own experiences, all this stuff. 00:26:23.340 --> 00:26:26.360 And, you know, that's a really healthy experience. 00:26:26.360 --> 00:26:30.400 It's, it's, it's, it's, it's probably the best experience of what biblical church looks 00:26:30.400 --> 00:26:33.120 like, because it's in person, and you're doing life with people. 00:26:34.160 --> 00:26:38.780 And so when I started to kind of go into this role as online pastor, you know, I was somebody 00:26:38.780 --> 00:26:43.920 who, you know, like cared about my theology, cared about what I was both enabling and maybe 00:26:43.920 --> 00:26:45.280 not aware of what I was enabling. 00:26:45.280 --> 00:26:49.600 And, and I was just like, what am I, I have these people that are watching and I'm engaging 00:26:49.600 --> 00:26:56.100 them, but like, like, am I being a good steward of this thing that God has put me over at this 00:26:56.100 --> 00:26:56.420 season? 00:26:56.420 --> 00:27:00.020 And, and especially when you start reading, you know, in the Bible, specifically in the 00:27:00.020 --> 00:27:03.620 book of James, when you think about some of the judgment that God has for teachers and 00:27:03.620 --> 00:27:04.460 people in positions. 00:27:05.140 --> 00:27:08.580 Um, you know, I started like it kind of early on, I would just think a lot about it. 00:27:08.580 --> 00:27:14.540 And at the time I was in seminary, um, and I was at a more, uh, not traditional seminary, 00:27:14.540 --> 00:27:16.240 but conservative seminary. 00:27:16.600 --> 00:27:21.020 And I would ask questions to professors and none of them really understood what the world 00:27:21.020 --> 00:27:21.920 I was asking them. 00:27:22.180 --> 00:27:28.760 And, um, I started to really think about like, well, you know, I don't think everything can 00:27:28.760 --> 00:27:29.620 be done online. 00:27:29.620 --> 00:27:34.680 Meaning I don't think we're at a place with the technology right now where, you know, somebody 00:27:34.680 --> 00:27:37.880 could watch online, engage online and like never leave their house. 00:27:37.880 --> 00:27:43.500 Like that's, I don't have like a surrogate type of ready player one type of theology at 00:27:43.500 --> 00:27:43.940 this moment. 00:27:44.080 --> 00:27:47.160 Some of it is because the technology isn't able and it's just not there. 00:27:47.420 --> 00:27:51.000 And so, but what I do feel comfortable in our model, and this is where it's really key. 00:27:51.100 --> 00:27:56.380 I might have personal beliefs that might differ a little bit from my church, mostly no, but 00:27:56.380 --> 00:28:00.680 I also am in a position where I have to, I have to echo what my leadership in my church 00:28:00.680 --> 00:28:01.120 is doing. 00:28:01.260 --> 00:28:04.540 So it's actually less about what I think it's about where my church is at. 00:28:04.540 --> 00:28:11.680 And so I knew strongly that at the end of our funnel is that the way we do church is 00:28:11.680 --> 00:28:12.780 physical expression. 00:28:12.780 --> 00:28:14.040 Like that's what we're good at. 00:28:14.120 --> 00:28:15.020 That's what we're doing. 00:28:15.300 --> 00:28:19.120 And so we kind of just kind of started to work towards this idea. 00:28:19.120 --> 00:28:22.840 Well, what if we could reach people where they're at and we kind of bring them to this 00:28:22.840 --> 00:28:27.420 offline experience where ultimately they're, they're either at a campus at another church 00:28:27.420 --> 00:28:29.600 or starting a small group of people in their home. 00:28:29.820 --> 00:28:35.480 And so, and what that practically looks like is usually it's allowing people to watch online. 00:28:35.480 --> 00:28:43.140 They take a next step and a individual would join an online group using zoom or Skype of 00:28:43.140 --> 00:28:44.460 some sort for a season. 00:28:44.460 --> 00:28:48.960 And then after six months to eight months, they'll have some kind of communication around, 00:28:49.580 --> 00:28:51.300 Hey, you've been in this online group for a bit. 00:28:51.600 --> 00:28:56.620 Have you thought about starting something in your home or going to this church experience? 00:28:56.620 --> 00:29:00.640 And we kind of, we kind of have this kind of, we kind of slowly turn up the heat and kind 00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:03.640 of move them towards this best expression of online to offline. 00:29:03.880 --> 00:29:08.320 And many times somebody will be part of an online group for six to eight months. 00:29:08.320 --> 00:29:10.880 And then they, they've kind of learned what a group is. 00:29:10.880 --> 00:29:14.500 And when they do something with their friends in their area, it becomes less foreign. 00:29:14.500 --> 00:29:16.340 It's like, Oh, this, this makes sense. 00:29:16.340 --> 00:29:18.440 And so we really lean heavy into that. 00:29:18.500 --> 00:29:22.700 I'm okay with people being kind of in seasons for different reasons. 00:29:22.700 --> 00:29:26.700 If they're traveling or if they're sick, there's all sorts of reasons, but ultimately we do 00:29:26.700 --> 00:29:31.000 want to move people to this offline expression, which for us is one of our campuses. 00:29:31.460 --> 00:29:37.260 It might be a local church or it might, and, and, and the way that we kind of like my core 00:29:37.260 --> 00:29:43.240 community, it's people in homes all around the world that are kind of doing life together. 00:29:43.240 --> 00:29:48.080 And we're trying to resource them as best as possible as like, Oh, you are a functioning 00:29:48.080 --> 00:29:48.580 church. 00:29:48.940 --> 00:29:50.380 And what does it look like to do that? 00:29:50.400 --> 00:29:54.600 And I say that as like very beta, like there's things we're good at in that and there's stuff 00:29:54.600 --> 00:29:55.880 we're still trying to figure out. 00:29:55.920 --> 00:29:57.540 What does that actually look like? 00:29:58.060 --> 00:30:02.720 Along those lines, you know, in that tool that you created alongside push pay, and I know 00:30:02.720 --> 00:30:07.360 that Jeff's going to link to that in the show notes, you talked about how you traveled places 00:30:07.360 --> 00:30:11.520 to baptize people in bathtubs and have trained online members from different continents to 00:30:11.520 --> 00:30:12.540 baptize fellow believers. 00:30:12.700 --> 00:30:17.020 Can you talk about what it's looked like to empower people leveraging some of the technology 00:30:17.020 --> 00:30:20.740 and, you know, some of the ins and outs, goods and bads of that, how that's worked out 00:30:20.740 --> 00:30:21.020 for you? 00:30:21.960 --> 00:30:26.620 Yeah, I think so one of the things that's, especially at a large church, but I think every 00:30:26.620 --> 00:30:31.940 online ministry has experienced this is that you can have a huge impact by uploading content 00:30:31.940 --> 00:30:32.300 online. 00:30:32.580 --> 00:30:34.340 Like you just, you get a lot of eyeballs. 00:30:34.560 --> 00:30:40.880 One of the things we started to have a lot of conversations around is, okay, how many people 00:30:40.880 --> 00:30:44.680 are actually getting like, that are indicating they're getting saved every week? 00:30:44.700 --> 00:30:46.260 And then how many people are actually getting baptized? 00:30:46.260 --> 00:30:51.180 And so we might have, you know, hundreds of thousands of people will visit us in a given 00:30:51.180 --> 00:30:56.100 year, but, you know, I'm, I don't have the exact number, but it was something like 20 people 00:30:56.100 --> 00:30:58.680 got baptized last year that we actually facilitated. 00:30:59.060 --> 00:31:03.400 So a hundred, a couple hundred thousand people turn into 20 or so baptisms. 00:31:03.820 --> 00:31:06.700 So, you know, that like, that's great. 00:31:06.740 --> 00:31:07.780 Like I'm, I'm amazed. 00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:12.280 Trust me, that number has gone up over the years intentionally from efforts, but like we 00:31:12.280 --> 00:31:15.760 started to have conversations of like a church is much more than just pushing content 00:31:15.760 --> 00:31:16.000 out. 00:31:16.100 --> 00:31:17.720 It's much more than just a chat room. 00:31:17.860 --> 00:31:19.860 It's much more than just our giving metrics. 00:31:20.060 --> 00:31:24.480 It's, there's these things and baptisms are one of those things that people in the early 00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:25.800 church were getting baptized. 00:31:25.800 --> 00:31:31.340 And so we started to have talks about like, how did we actually like scale that? 00:31:31.600 --> 00:31:35.880 And so I think early on when we were doing it, it was like, I had to ask questions like, 00:31:35.880 --> 00:31:40.420 are we allowed, am I able to encourage somebody to baptize another person? 00:31:40.540 --> 00:31:41.660 Like, do they have to be a pastor? 00:31:42.160 --> 00:31:46.440 You know, I can, I had my own theology, but I'm also a pastor on staff at my church. 00:31:46.440 --> 00:31:49.320 So I got to make sure I align with what my church thinks. 00:31:49.800 --> 00:31:55.760 And so, um, and sometimes, sometimes larger churches, um, have different standards, not 00:31:55.760 --> 00:31:59.440 because it's, they're trying to be hard on the Bible, but because they're a model for other 00:31:59.440 --> 00:31:59.860 churches. 00:32:00.120 --> 00:32:02.180 So they have to be aware of that influence. 00:32:02.360 --> 00:32:06.760 And so, and so just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, you should do it. 00:32:06.800 --> 00:32:11.160 The Bible is pretty free on this thing, but it's, it's sometimes you need to be careful. 00:32:11.160 --> 00:32:15.640 And I think early on, we had to have conversations around like, what does it actually look like 00:32:15.640 --> 00:32:16.120 to do this? 00:32:16.120 --> 00:32:21.260 And so we just now in the last year and a half, I feel like we've had this super openness 00:32:21.260 --> 00:32:26.200 now to be able to actually now go and say, okay, you know what, let's create a training. 00:32:26.200 --> 00:32:31.720 And so what early on, it was, I had like an audio training of our pastor talking through 00:32:31.720 --> 00:32:32.600 how to baptize somebody. 00:32:32.600 --> 00:32:34.320 And then I had an email signature. 00:32:34.320 --> 00:32:39.540 So in anybody would, um, want to be baptized and they couldn't travel to our campus. 00:32:39.540 --> 00:32:42.040 And we weren't expecting to travel to their area. 00:32:42.240 --> 00:32:45.440 I would say, do you have another follower of Jesus that lives near you? 00:32:45.560 --> 00:32:47.140 We can train them to baptize you. 00:32:47.160 --> 00:32:49.880 And they said, yes, we would send them this resource. 00:32:50.300 --> 00:32:54.380 Um, that, and then we would set up a three-way call with the people and kind of talk about 00:32:54.380 --> 00:32:55.680 like, do you guys know what's going to happen? 00:32:55.680 --> 00:32:56.500 And then it would happen. 00:32:56.500 --> 00:32:57.680 And then we would document it. 00:32:58.120 --> 00:33:04.220 Um, and so, um, we just did a thing, a couple, uh, you know, last week where we kind of went 00:33:04.220 --> 00:33:08.780 to our next stage of this, where we created a training, um, for our small group hosts, really 00:33:08.780 --> 00:33:13.160 for small group hosts, small group members, where how do you, how to baptize another believer 00:33:13.160 --> 00:33:16.020 and how to lead your small group through a private communion time. 00:33:16.020 --> 00:33:17.820 And that's going to be the standalone thing. 00:33:17.880 --> 00:33:23.380 But like that course that we just shot like a week and a half ago was an accumulation of 00:33:23.380 --> 00:33:27.060 like eight years of learnings of what both how to do it. 00:33:27.060 --> 00:33:30.580 And also what my church wanted me to do and where we're at. 00:33:30.700 --> 00:33:34.560 I couldn't do that training, um, you know, seven years ago. 00:33:34.560 --> 00:33:35.500 There's just no way. 00:33:35.760 --> 00:33:41.020 Um, and so, and I, I think we, you know, we figured it out, but I, in my head, I, my number 00:33:41.020 --> 00:33:43.260 one driver was how do we do more of that? 00:33:43.260 --> 00:33:47.780 And because the other thing is I had a lot of people always on waiting lists to be baptized 00:33:47.780 --> 00:33:49.160 and I couldn't travel everywhere. 00:33:49.160 --> 00:33:54.280 I just, as much as I would love to, it just, it didn't financially make sense for us to get 00:33:54.280 --> 00:33:55.400 on a plane and go everywhere. 00:33:55.400 --> 00:33:56.860 It may be in the beginning. 00:33:56.860 --> 00:33:58.400 It was like, oh yeah, this is awesome. 00:33:58.400 --> 00:34:04.360 But then it became a problem as we had, you know, at one point I had 50 people on a waiting 00:34:04.360 --> 00:34:05.640 list all throughout the globe. 00:34:06.020 --> 00:34:10.020 And I was like, I don't even, cause, cause the question is like, okay, now I got to vet all 00:34:10.020 --> 00:34:10.560 these people. 00:34:10.680 --> 00:34:11.860 I mean, that's a lot of work. 00:34:11.860 --> 00:34:16.980 It's just, there's, again, some problems are, it's a good problem, but we really leaned 00:34:16.980 --> 00:34:18.420 into, okay, you know what? 00:34:18.500 --> 00:34:20.240 We need to encourage other people to baptize. 00:34:20.340 --> 00:34:22.320 And then this is where it kind of came full circle for us. 00:34:22.700 --> 00:34:27.340 Well, if somebody can't get baptized right now, what they need to do is play the long game, 00:34:27.440 --> 00:34:28.880 start a small group, build a community. 00:34:29.020 --> 00:34:31.520 Somebody comes to faith and they kind of build up a group of people. 00:34:32.140 --> 00:34:35.740 And, and, and I think, I think that's where we kind of, okay, this is how this is all 00:34:35.740 --> 00:34:39.500 kind of, this is why, and this is why I was, I was mentioning earlier, we're talking 00:34:39.500 --> 00:34:41.840 about these home gatherings, encouraging these small groups to watch. 00:34:41.840 --> 00:34:42.680 We're talking about services together. 00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:47.040 And the idea is we want this to become a hub long-term and we have only a couple of 00:34:47.040 --> 00:34:48.420 them, but I haven't been able to scale it. 00:34:48.460 --> 00:34:50.080 I still have people on, on waiting lists. 00:34:50.400 --> 00:34:54.720 And so it's something it, honestly, that number, the baptism number keeps me up. 00:34:54.780 --> 00:34:56.100 It's something that I think about constantly. 00:34:56.440 --> 00:34:57.400 How do I do that more? 00:34:57.400 --> 00:34:59.020 Because that shows true discipleship. 00:34:59.220 --> 00:35:00.060 It's just not a viewer. 00:35:00.720 --> 00:35:00.820 So. 00:35:01.420 --> 00:35:01.760 That's good. 00:35:01.960 --> 00:35:02.120 Yeah. 00:35:02.120 --> 00:35:05.600 We're going to be, we're actually going to be interviewing Kevin Lee, who's, I think the 00:35:05.600 --> 00:35:08.700 small groups pastor with Saddleback. 00:35:08.800 --> 00:35:11.080 And so we, we've got that, that podcast scheduled. 00:35:11.300 --> 00:35:16.080 I know he was excited to talk about that communion training and, and I hope you guys didn't just 00:35:16.080 --> 00:35:17.220 let the cat out of the bag, but I'm sure. 00:35:17.220 --> 00:35:18.160 No, no, no, no, no, no, no. 00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:19.740 So more, more is coming down. 00:35:19.880 --> 00:35:22.220 He has a cool, he has a cool story. 00:35:22.280 --> 00:35:23.960 He was actually in Florida and he baptized somebody. 00:35:24.040 --> 00:35:24.680 He'll share that. 00:35:25.240 --> 00:35:25.680 Oh, cool. 00:35:25.900 --> 00:35:27.280 That's, that's awesome. 00:35:27.680 --> 00:35:33.020 But you know, and there's, there's this idea of, of now we're, we're expecting the online 00:35:33.020 --> 00:35:39.020 campus or the online church to, to start to, to generate things. 00:35:39.020 --> 00:35:42.680 Like it's not a, Hey, let's just throw the broadcast out there and see what happens. 00:35:43.120 --> 00:35:48.500 It's, we're going to do this on the small level, but then something interesting happens. 00:35:48.500 --> 00:35:53.900 It grows, it scales quickly to where a person cannot handle it. 00:35:54.020 --> 00:36:00.300 And when I look at church online, I actually see the, the church being the lid for what 00:36:00.300 --> 00:36:01.300 church online is. 00:36:01.300 --> 00:36:03.500 And Jay, what you just told is a great example of that. 00:36:03.860 --> 00:36:07.440 You're one guy traveling around the country, throw in Kevin Lee. 00:36:07.440 --> 00:36:09.460 And now you're two guys traveling around the country. 00:36:09.580 --> 00:36:12.740 You got to list 50 people long that you're trying to baptize. 00:36:12.880 --> 00:36:14.240 You can't do it. 00:36:14.240 --> 00:36:18.480 And so as, as a result, this idea of, and you know, 00:36:18.500 --> 00:36:22.800 Jay, you were one of these guys who were saying it early on, decentralizing the ministry, 00:36:23.260 --> 00:36:29.420 taking the power of church online away from staff and instead empowering people, doing 00:36:29.420 --> 00:36:33.580 that three-way call, empowering other people to baptize and empowering to do that. 00:36:33.980 --> 00:36:38.460 Like that's when, when church realizes that it's not about the pastors being the hero. 00:36:38.860 --> 00:36:46.580 And instead it's about empowering people, lay people to be the hero and giving them the Holy 00:36:46.580 --> 00:36:52.000 Spirit, God giving the Holy Spirit, but utilizing the Holy Spirit, giving them the authority to 00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:52.840 do these things. 00:36:52.840 --> 00:36:57.600 All of a sudden the power of the church isn't self-contained within that building or within 00:36:57.600 --> 00:36:58.800 what's on the stage. 00:36:59.060 --> 00:37:00.660 It's within the audience. 00:37:01.300 --> 00:37:03.400 And then, you know, I truly believe this. 00:37:03.560 --> 00:37:08.140 I think that's when America sees revival, not as a result of what our pastors are doing, 00:37:08.540 --> 00:37:13.680 but a result of our pastors saying, my success is not what happens out of result of my ministry, 00:37:13.680 --> 00:37:15.860 but when I empower others to do my ministry. 00:37:16.220 --> 00:37:22.800 I mean, I was just reading yesterday, actually a friend on staff mentioned this and I was, 00:37:22.900 --> 00:37:26.240 I wouldn't say, what's the, what's the book of the Bible? 00:37:26.940 --> 00:37:27.760 There it is. 00:37:27.960 --> 00:37:31.460 I always want to say, I always want to say filet. 00:37:31.640 --> 00:37:36.040 I always want to say filet, but if you read in like, we were just having this conversation 00:37:36.040 --> 00:37:40.220 and it was like, one of the first parts of that book is like, A, to the church in your 00:37:40.220 --> 00:37:40.620 house. 00:37:40.960 --> 00:37:45.300 If you read like the first couple of verses, you know, and it was like, and, and I really 00:37:45.300 --> 00:37:50.540 do think, and you've written about this on your blog a bunch, but it's, it's, it's really, 00:37:50.740 --> 00:37:56.780 it's thinking less about, if you think about online church as this American high expectation 00:37:56.780 --> 00:37:59.540 stage lights and all that, yeah, that's going to be hard to scale. 00:37:59.900 --> 00:38:06.200 But if you think more about the gatherings that were actually occurring early on, that's 00:38:06.200 --> 00:38:06.740 scalable. 00:38:06.740 --> 00:38:12.720 And, and a lot of people say that one of the things that hurt us the most in the history 00:38:12.720 --> 00:38:19.400 of the church was this corporate type of movement that happened in 300 AD when it like, when 00:38:19.400 --> 00:38:24.040 Constantine kind of centralized it, because it kind of fused with a lot of pagan stuff and 00:38:24.040 --> 00:38:25.480 it became this large thing. 00:38:25.480 --> 00:38:27.480 And we had to have many conversations. 00:38:27.480 --> 00:38:33.540 And even in America, one of the reasons why, you know, Protestant stuff flourished was because 00:38:33.540 --> 00:38:36.540 it was this 31 flavors of, and it just grew rapidly. 00:38:36.540 --> 00:38:41.300 And the church, the, the, the assemblies of God, the, the Southern Baptist conventions, 00:38:41.300 --> 00:38:44.840 the ones that grew the most were the ones that were more open with what it meant. 00:38:45.620 --> 00:38:49.220 And so, you know, and there's pros and cons to that type of growth for sure. 00:38:49.840 --> 00:38:54.360 But I, I think, I think, you know, and you've written about this, Jeff, is that it's just, 00:38:54.700 --> 00:38:58.800 I think there's going to be a lot more small churches that are going to leverage this long 00:38:58.800 --> 00:39:00.660 term because there's stuff they're going to do. 00:39:00.720 --> 00:39:04.260 And this is what I love, like you speaking at church planning conferences, stuff like that. 00:39:04.300 --> 00:39:09.200 I think that, you know, I'm actually more interested about that stuff about like, Hey, who's 00:39:09.200 --> 00:39:12.280 going to like really take, is there going to be a network that's really going to figure 00:39:12.280 --> 00:39:17.240 this out because there's stuff that I do that just, I'm only doing because I'm trying to 00:39:17.240 --> 00:39:21.760 figure it out in my own church model and it makes sense, but it's not going to make sense 00:39:21.760 --> 00:39:22.820 in your model. 00:39:23.040 --> 00:39:24.760 And so I get really excited about that. 00:39:24.860 --> 00:39:26.420 And I know it's happening. 00:39:26.600 --> 00:39:27.580 It's going to happen. 00:39:27.800 --> 00:39:31.860 I've already seen online church people who've done stuff like this and fail. 00:39:32.020 --> 00:39:33.140 I've seen plants fail. 00:39:34.220 --> 00:39:40.500 But that's why I like the adoption of like a true planner, like who's not trying to replicate, 00:39:40.500 --> 00:39:42.740 but like, actually like, you know, I'm planting physically. 00:39:42.940 --> 00:39:44.100 It's like the Perry Noble thing. 00:39:44.160 --> 00:39:45.540 Like it's more of that. 00:39:45.700 --> 00:39:49.820 It's like, you know, he started doing stuff online, but even that he started doing it online 00:39:49.820 --> 00:39:54.260 for the attention of physical, but I'm waiting for somebody who's going to start something 00:39:54.260 --> 00:39:58.020 online, do something physical, but also have the intention of also to be global. 00:39:59.300 --> 00:40:01.880 You know, and that's the part that's not yet. 00:40:02.420 --> 00:40:03.620 It was, it was the joke. 00:40:03.660 --> 00:40:09.160 It was like Amazon had to buy Whole Foods because it wasn't enough to own the virtual hemisphere 00:40:09.160 --> 00:40:10.040 of e-commerce. 00:40:10.180 --> 00:40:13.580 They had to actually do something, you know, in the physical space too. 00:40:13.740 --> 00:40:15.100 They had to shut down grocery stores. 00:40:15.800 --> 00:40:20.840 But yeah, let me like, cause there was, I spoke at this thing at Exponential and, and 00:40:20.840 --> 00:40:21.960 it was, it was awesome. 00:40:22.260 --> 00:40:26.000 And I had this, this one pastor, I want to tell this story and I'm still working with him. 00:40:26.080 --> 00:40:26.960 We're trying to figure it out. 00:40:27.660 --> 00:40:31.740 But he grabs me, he couldn't, I think I got a text message in the middle of the night. 00:40:32.140 --> 00:40:33.980 Hey, I need to talk with you before you leave. 00:40:34.120 --> 00:40:35.600 And like I said, I was leaving the next day. 00:40:36.280 --> 00:40:41.420 And so we got together and we ended up having like a face-to-face conversation behind the 00:40:41.420 --> 00:40:44.560 expo hall at like eight in the morning or something like that. 00:40:44.780 --> 00:40:45.960 And here's his story. 00:40:46.660 --> 00:40:53.080 He's a, he's a pastor at a, at a thousand person campus, a large church in, in New England. 00:40:53.500 --> 00:40:59.240 His weekly attendance at New England is like 200, 250 people. 00:40:59.500 --> 00:41:01.200 Now, this is him telling me the story. 00:41:01.340 --> 00:41:03.620 Numbers don't matter in the story as much as the heart. 00:41:03.940 --> 00:41:08.040 He tells me 98, 99.8% of New England is unchurched. 00:41:09.060 --> 00:41:12.980 98% of New England has said they will not go to church. 00:41:13.520 --> 00:41:17.580 And him having a thousand person building in New England doesn't make sense because there's 00:41:17.580 --> 00:41:19.960 no way for him to use that building. 00:41:20.560 --> 00:41:28.920 And he says, so a year ago, I had this idea of utilizing church online to reach into homes, 00:41:28.920 --> 00:41:36.480 to reach people, but also to empower the people that are attending my church to do church in 00:41:36.480 --> 00:41:40.820 their homes, because people are more likely to go to homes than they will to my building. 00:41:41.800 --> 00:41:47.340 And he says, he's like, I've been looking a year for somebody to help me with this. 00:41:47.960 --> 00:41:52.880 And then I sit in this lecture and you're speaking and you're describing the exact model. 00:41:53.080 --> 00:41:54.620 He's like, you have to help me with this. 00:41:54.660 --> 00:41:58.280 And so we've unpacked it and we're starting to work through this and it's going to happen. 00:41:58.340 --> 00:42:02.940 But this guy's literally talking about selling off major chunks of his property. 00:42:03.300 --> 00:42:03.740 Wow. 00:42:03.900 --> 00:42:06.960 Because it's ineffective to do ministry in New England. 00:42:07.700 --> 00:42:09.760 And here's the, oh my gosh, yes. 00:42:10.080 --> 00:42:11.440 But here's the reality of it. 00:42:11.760 --> 00:42:15.500 Like the New England of today is America of tomorrow. 00:42:15.840 --> 00:42:20.660 The problem that these guys are having today isn't that much different than what other 00:42:20.660 --> 00:42:22.100 churches are going to be experiencing. 00:42:22.100 --> 00:42:26.480 And, you know, unless you're in the Bible Belt, but even the Bible Belt suspect these days. 00:42:27.020 --> 00:42:32.580 And so like, I don't want to be like a prophecy type guy, but it's coming. 00:42:32.580 --> 00:42:40.240 And this way of shifting towards, let's not make ourselves the pastors, the hero, but let's 00:42:40.240 --> 00:42:47.600 empower people to, with their voice, to lead people to Christ, train them on how to disciple. 00:42:48.340 --> 00:42:53.900 And then all of a sudden now we've got disciples who are discipling other people to be disciples. 00:42:54.540 --> 00:42:57.820 Like that's the biblical model, the 300 AD, man. 00:42:58.220 --> 00:42:59.640 I want to write a book on that. 00:42:59.640 --> 00:43:06.840 Like I've, I've done research into that and it's scary how that swayed the perception of 00:43:06.840 --> 00:43:15.320 what organized religion is because the, the, the Roman government needed to control the church 00:43:15.320 --> 00:43:16.560 and to hold it back. 00:43:16.560 --> 00:43:18.240 So they set this structure up. 00:43:18.300 --> 00:43:19.540 I forget what it's called right now. 00:43:19.580 --> 00:43:20.560 It's just, I'm not thinking that. 00:43:21.560 --> 00:43:26.880 But then I see in Creed, but as a result of that, all of a sudden, like we're still using 00:43:26.880 --> 00:43:34.440 the same structure, like 2000 years, 18, 1500 years later, the power of the church doesn't 00:43:34.440 --> 00:43:37.620 rely in pastors and it doesn't rely in church. 00:43:37.620 --> 00:43:42.760 It relies in the people and the quicker in the church plants that are out there and the guys 00:43:42.760 --> 00:43:47.380 that are listening that in the small churches, I am far more excited about you guys doing 00:43:47.380 --> 00:43:48.380 stuff in church online. 00:43:48.380 --> 00:43:54.220 And I've said that multiple times and I will for the seeable future because the understanding 00:43:54.220 --> 00:43:59.140 and the capacity of, of creating a disciple is creating a disciple and kicking them out 00:43:59.140 --> 00:44:00.020 and moving them on. 00:44:00.700 --> 00:44:06.100 You know, the average, the average church size in America right now is 78 people. 00:44:06.100 --> 00:44:08.760 And I know we're going to talk about this a lot down the road. 00:44:10.340 --> 00:44:11.660 That's 78 people. 00:44:11.660 --> 00:44:12.660 That's a small church. 00:44:12.660 --> 00:44:15.840 And the first time I heard that stat, I looked at the pastor and told me, and I was like, 00:44:15.920 --> 00:44:17.060 man, that's bad leadership. 00:44:17.500 --> 00:44:20.820 That's a bunch of like stupid churches that, that aren't getting it right. 00:44:21.560 --> 00:44:26.420 And, and, and he looked at me sideways and he's like, what if that's God's way of saying 00:44:26.420 --> 00:44:28.260 that's what our church sizes should be? 00:44:29.040 --> 00:44:32.240 And I'm like, oh no, that's interesting. 00:44:32.400 --> 00:44:33.160 I'm an idiot. 00:44:33.500 --> 00:44:37.880 And he's like, what could you do with the 78 person church that you can't do with a, 00:44:37.940 --> 00:44:39.160 with a 4,000 person? 00:44:39.160 --> 00:44:44.120 And all of a sudden I just start going into, you know, discipleship training organization, 00:44:44.120 --> 00:44:46.200 people who are planting that. 00:44:46.980 --> 00:44:51.620 And it's like, and that's one of the reasons why I love this idea of online to offline and 00:44:51.620 --> 00:44:52.980 breaking it up into, into homes. 00:44:52.980 --> 00:44:58.260 Cause now I've got smaller units and, and, and where we can do that, that detailed discipleship. 00:44:58.500 --> 00:45:02.320 Hey, here's a question, Jay, like what in context of Saddleback. 00:45:02.500 --> 00:45:08.460 So you're doing these smaller units, you got some places around, um, like what's the end 00:45:08.460 --> 00:45:13.080 game when, when you sit down, when you talk with leadership, when they're looking at, at 00:45:13.080 --> 00:45:15.460 the structure of online, where is all this going? 00:45:16.820 --> 00:45:17.220 Yeah. 00:45:17.420 --> 00:45:24.220 I think, to be honest, I feel like that question is still, um, I, it's still being figured out. 00:45:24.220 --> 00:45:30.840 I think the, I think the hope is that we can be leaner in planting future campuses of our 00:45:30.840 --> 00:45:35.780 church, that we can have this kind of crawl step of what does it mean to have these home 00:45:35.780 --> 00:45:36.220 gatherings? 00:45:36.220 --> 00:45:41.520 And that, um, I, I know the conversation that has been happening has been, you know, 00:45:41.540 --> 00:45:46.600 we're moving into this phase as a kind of a society in America specific in, in America 00:45:46.600 --> 00:45:52.280 specifically that, um, you know, it's no longer Christianity is this neutral or pro thing. 00:45:52.300 --> 00:45:57.980 It's, it's this, um, when we first planted our church, um, you know, before I was there, 00:45:57.980 --> 00:45:59.040 before I was born really. 00:45:59.680 --> 00:46:05.400 And, um, now we're moving to this phase where like people just would never come to your 00:46:05.400 --> 00:46:09.280 church and the joke that the conversations that they've been having here is, you know, 00:46:09.300 --> 00:46:14.260 the idea is that if your Mormon friend would invite you to his temple service, would you 00:46:14.260 --> 00:46:14.620 ever go? 00:46:14.640 --> 00:46:15.480 And he's like, no. 00:46:15.580 --> 00:46:18.760 And, and the idea is it doesn't matter how relevant the teaching is. 00:46:18.760 --> 00:46:23.820 It doesn't matter how many lights and fog or whatever, um, you would never go. 00:46:23.820 --> 00:46:28.880 Um, but what you would do is you would listen if you had a relationship with this person. 00:46:28.880 --> 00:46:34.740 And so the, the, the conversation has been leaning towards, you know, maybe the side 00:46:34.740 --> 00:46:39.920 doors of our churches are going to become more important than our Sunday morning services 00:46:39.920 --> 00:46:44.660 long-term, um, kind of the way that other countries have already gone. 00:46:44.880 --> 00:46:47.660 And so, um, and we're just going to go there now. 00:46:47.780 --> 00:46:49.800 It doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. 00:46:49.860 --> 00:46:50.060 No. 00:46:50.140 --> 00:46:54.680 And, you know, you know, the prayer is it won't go that way, but, um, that's why these, this 00:46:54.680 --> 00:46:58.440 conversation of having some kind of online or some kind of home gathering thing is going 00:46:58.440 --> 00:47:04.180 to be potentially really important for churches of all sizes long-term and thinking about that 00:47:04.180 --> 00:47:06.640 78 type of, of experience. 00:47:06.640 --> 00:47:10.540 But I think the big hope is that we can do the home gathering thing well. 00:47:11.200 --> 00:47:16.460 Um, but that's where it does take, and this is one of the hardest things is, you know, I'm 00:47:16.460 --> 00:47:21.360 doing things in my bubble and I got to make sure that I'm interacting with the larger bubble 00:47:21.360 --> 00:47:25.380 like very well because it's really easy to kind of float off and be in my own sandbox, 00:47:25.380 --> 00:47:31.840 but it takes way more effort and more reward if I integrate and, you know, share what's 00:47:31.840 --> 00:47:32.520 working, what's not. 00:47:32.580 --> 00:47:36.160 Because to be honest, like, I don't know anything about leading a church. 00:47:36.160 --> 00:47:37.920 I don't know anything about planting a church. 00:47:37.960 --> 00:47:40.660 That's not my expertise, you know? 00:47:40.720 --> 00:47:42.860 And so I need to have that conversation. 00:47:42.860 --> 00:47:45.980 I was just emailing today with somebody on our worship team. 00:47:46.260 --> 00:47:51.660 Like, I have this idea, um, you know, tell me where am I wrong in my thinking? 00:47:51.660 --> 00:47:52.960 Because I don't know anything. 00:47:52.960 --> 00:47:56.680 Like, I don't know what, what it would, and, you know, they gave me some feedback and I 00:47:56.680 --> 00:47:57.500 was like, oh, that's good. 00:47:57.500 --> 00:48:02.320 And, and I, and I think this is where, like, just because you have a lot of people watching 00:48:02.320 --> 00:48:07.180 percentage-wise compared to your local campus doesn't mean like you're the resident expert. 00:48:07.180 --> 00:48:11.620 And I think if you come into it, it's very open-handed and integrate because I think 00:48:11.620 --> 00:48:15.340 there's a lot of ministries, online ministries that are reaching a lot of people. 00:48:16.120 --> 00:48:20.160 But I think the deep discipleship is where the local church is just the expert at. 00:48:20.300 --> 00:48:22.500 And I think that's why we got to have more of those conversations. 00:48:22.500 --> 00:48:23.860 Like, who's doing that well? 00:48:24.840 --> 00:48:30.660 Because one part, you know, getting eyeballs online is, is fairly easy. 00:48:30.680 --> 00:48:32.660 It's, it's not like automatically easy. 00:48:32.920 --> 00:48:33.320 Sure. 00:48:33.680 --> 00:48:36.120 But it's like scaling discipleship. 00:48:36.120 --> 00:48:38.640 That's a whole nother thing that only the local church can do. 00:48:39.160 --> 00:48:41.580 And that's where, okay, so what is your, what is your, what is your 00:48:41.580 --> 00:48:45.380 local church discipleship pathway look like for your online ministry? 00:48:45.600 --> 00:48:51.100 And that's where the hybrid, that's why I think having somebody who's a pastor who kind 00:48:51.100 --> 00:48:55.560 of like knows that part of it is, it's going to be so valuable. 00:48:55.560 --> 00:48:58.160 And, and, and I know a lot of online pastors think like that. 00:48:58.260 --> 00:49:03.340 I know they're doing stuff, but I think that's like, you know, like in that, Ray mentioned 00:49:03.340 --> 00:49:09.260 it in that book that, that I did with Vanderbloom and Pushpay, it was like, out of all the churches, 00:49:09.400 --> 00:49:13.340 90% of them are just streaming to Facebook and their church online platform. 00:49:13.340 --> 00:49:17.580 And then when you go down to like deeper stuff, like membership and baptism, it's 00:49:17.580 --> 00:49:19.120 like in a very low percentile. 00:49:19.120 --> 00:49:23.220 So when people think of online church, they think Facebook streaming, they think pushing 00:49:23.220 --> 00:49:23.720 content. 00:49:23.920 --> 00:49:26.580 They're not actually thinking of like deep church stuff. 00:49:26.700 --> 00:49:30.040 So that's where like people go like, well, church online isn't church. 00:49:30.040 --> 00:49:34.540 Well, I would go, well, yeah, because a lot of people are just pushing stuff out and they're 00:49:34.540 --> 00:49:35.720 not actually pastoring people. 00:49:36.300 --> 00:49:37.820 Now there are people doing that. 00:49:38.360 --> 00:49:40.640 And that's where, and a lot of that happened with Facebook. 00:49:40.640 --> 00:49:44.720 It's so easy to stream now that that's a great first step, but you can't stop there. 00:49:44.800 --> 00:49:45.880 You got to keep pushing forward. 00:49:45.940 --> 00:49:48.780 You got to develop this out, the strategy and integrate and all that. 00:49:49.260 --> 00:49:55.540 So guy out there listening to this broadcast, maybe you're new to church online, maybe you've 00:49:55.540 --> 00:49:58.140 been kicking it around and that's it. 00:49:58.320 --> 00:50:02.260 You're doing your Facebook feed, you're doing your chop, you're doing your YouTube, whatever 00:50:02.260 --> 00:50:02.920 it looks like. 00:50:03.340 --> 00:50:09.040 And you're excited about the metrics and, you know, somebody shared the video and you got 00:50:09.040 --> 00:50:11.360 a couple hundred more views and that's the win. 00:50:12.240 --> 00:50:17.720 Man, let's challenge you a little bit here to take one more step and start to figure out 00:50:17.720 --> 00:50:20.960 how to create this biblical community towards that. 00:50:22.020 --> 00:50:27.520 Jay Cranda's website, jcranda.com's got a ton of resources there. 00:50:27.640 --> 00:50:31.980 I'm just even, we didn't even talk about it here, but the Ecclesia blog that you wrote probably 00:50:31.980 --> 00:50:34.980 within the past couple months was awesome. 00:50:35.620 --> 00:50:40.280 And I would, I texted Jay, I literally had like the same blog and it was like, well, I'm 00:50:40.280 --> 00:50:42.360 going to trash it because he just said it. 00:50:42.640 --> 00:50:48.500 So I'll probably bring it back out in a little bit, but it was, it's Jay's Cranda.com's a 00:50:48.500 --> 00:50:49.840 great resource towards that. 00:50:50.260 --> 00:50:54.880 The church digital, man, we're writing a lot of stuff in that sweet spot as well. 00:50:55.440 --> 00:50:57.480 EBooks and we'll link to it in the show notes. 00:50:57.600 --> 00:50:58.640 All this is good. 00:50:59.600 --> 00:51:01.840 What other, what other resources are out there guys? 00:51:01.960 --> 00:51:06.740 What can we, how can we help people that are kind of interested in checking out this biblical 00:51:06.740 --> 00:51:08.100 community stuff online? 00:51:08.700 --> 00:51:09.800 What am I blanking on? 00:51:10.020 --> 00:51:14.240 I, I, you know, honestly, I would say just if I was going to talk to that person who's 00:51:14.240 --> 00:51:19.900 thinking about it, I would say the first thing I would consider is if you have a database 00:51:19.900 --> 00:51:25.600 of some sort for your church and I would consider running a report of how many people outside 00:51:25.600 --> 00:51:31.540 of a hour distance are in your system right now that are like, and so just get an idea. 00:51:31.540 --> 00:51:37.400 So if you have, let's say you have, you know, 5,000 contacts in your system, how many of those 00:51:37.400 --> 00:51:39.580 have an address that's outside of an hour distance? 00:51:39.580 --> 00:51:43.800 And then try to figure out how much have those people given in the last two years? 00:51:44.120 --> 00:51:48.420 And I think that's a really good place to kind of start to kind of understand who's there 00:51:48.420 --> 00:51:49.800 and the maturity of those people. 00:51:49.900 --> 00:51:55.960 Because if you have people driving from an hour away or somehow have engaged, I think you're 00:51:55.960 --> 00:51:59.740 going to start figuring out how many people are actually like, again, a lot of times our 00:51:59.740 --> 00:52:02.760 church, church online is a very, is an amazing local resource. 00:52:02.760 --> 00:52:06.980 But by just digging into your own metrics like that, I think you can start kind of flushing 00:52:06.980 --> 00:52:09.680 out like, oh, wow, we have some people watching from far. 00:52:10.180 --> 00:52:14.800 And you'd be surprised where, you know, people watch online, they give and, you know, that 00:52:14.800 --> 00:52:19.040 might be a good way just to kind of see the seeds of what's potentially, if you kind of 00:52:19.040 --> 00:52:20.380 invest a little bit more into it. 00:52:21.100 --> 00:52:28.540 Yeah, we had a, we had a small group leader, a regular giver for, with the online, a regular 00:52:28.540 --> 00:52:33.720 attender, literally met every metric that we were trying to evaluate for a physical campus. 00:52:34.100 --> 00:52:35.360 And she lived in Atlanta. 00:52:35.840 --> 00:52:41.220 And so, like, there's plenty of those stories, especially as you're more, one of the, one 00:52:41.220 --> 00:52:48.240 of my favorite stats to look at every Monday was the Google, but it was the locations field 00:52:48.240 --> 00:52:52.880 and starting to see where people were watching from and, and then, you know, trying to figure 00:52:52.880 --> 00:52:54.860 out how to cluster them together. 00:52:54.860 --> 00:52:59.380 And I know, Jay, you're doing like some of those watch parties and, or meetups, I think 00:52:59.380 --> 00:53:03.160 is, is some of the things that you're doing in an attempt to try to cluster some of these 00:53:03.160 --> 00:53:03.880 people together. 00:53:04.640 --> 00:53:10.200 And literally, man, I could talk about this all day, but I want to be faithful to time as 00:53:10.200 --> 00:53:11.440 we're wrestling through this. 00:53:11.780 --> 00:53:14.860 So, Ray, let's start with you up top, man. 00:53:14.940 --> 00:53:18.840 Any, any closing thoughts or anything as we're wrapping up this episode? 00:53:19.260 --> 00:53:24.520 I really appreciate Jay, just, you know, you, you upholding kind of your pastors, uh, buying 00:53:24.520 --> 00:53:28.340 into this, you know, one of the first things I remember hearing from Rick Warren was every 00:53:28.340 --> 00:53:29.140 member of minister. 00:53:29.360 --> 00:53:34.400 And it's funny how you guys have carried that out online and I just think it's so beautiful. 00:53:34.400 --> 00:53:36.540 And so thank you, man, for, for your thoughts and your time. 00:53:37.000 --> 00:53:37.440 Thanks. 00:53:38.280 --> 00:53:40.100 Jay, any thoughts as we're landing the plane? 00:53:41.880 --> 00:53:42.980 Go LeBron James. 00:53:43.640 --> 00:53:47.380 Oh man, we are not going to end on that note. 00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:52.420 Um, Hey, so person out there, um, listening to this, be encouraged. 00:53:53.200 --> 00:54:01.540 Um, realize like Jay, I mean, he, he said it, but the biggest takeaway is that the guy who's 00:54:01.540 --> 00:54:04.880 with the church, with the thousands of people who's doing this. 00:54:04.880 --> 00:54:06.220 And when I ask, Hey, what's the end game? 00:54:06.220 --> 00:54:07.560 He's like, we haven't figured that out yet. 00:54:08.160 --> 00:54:12.620 Uh, don't be frustrated if, if your church hasn't got it figured it out yet. 00:54:12.620 --> 00:54:16.260 If they're not, if they're not listening, if they're not seeing the big picture of it 00:54:16.260 --> 00:54:16.640 yet. 00:54:17.160 --> 00:54:19.980 Um, it's, it's, it's a long conversation. 00:54:20.520 --> 00:54:26.000 Uh, and, and it's one that, uh, given the opportunity to let leadership grow with you, 00:54:26.000 --> 00:54:31.860 uh, is one that will pay off in dividends long run, uh, in the long term, because there 00:54:31.860 --> 00:54:35.520 will come a point when you need leadership buy-in for something. 00:54:35.520 --> 00:54:41.100 And I can speak of this personally, like, uh, there've been seasons in my life where I ran 00:54:41.100 --> 00:54:43.180 by myself out to accomplish a goal. 00:54:43.660 --> 00:54:46.080 Uh, and I did not bring leadership with me. 00:54:46.080 --> 00:54:50.160 And then when I needed something from them, they didn't actually own the ministry. 00:54:50.160 --> 00:54:53.860 Like I did because I hadn't brought them into that process. 00:54:53.860 --> 00:54:59.260 So do that, work with your leadership, uh, go step-by-step with them through this. 00:54:59.260 --> 00:55:01.320 And don't be discouraged if you don't know the answers. 00:55:01.320 --> 00:55:03.980 Cause I don't, honestly, I don't think that anybody does. 00:55:03.980 --> 00:55:10.500 We all see little pictures and pieces of things, but in the end, um, we're still trying to all 00:55:10.500 --> 00:55:11.480 figure this out together. 00:55:11.480 --> 00:55:13.260 So be encouraged by that. 00:55:13.340 --> 00:55:19.980 Check out some of these resources, check out the show notes and, uh, for Ray, for Jay, uh, 00:55:19.980 --> 00:55:24.100 and, uh, other crazy people who like LeBron James playing basketball. 00:55:24.400 --> 00:55:27.140 Uh, this has been Jeff Reed with the church digital podcast. 00:55:27.140 --> 00:55:27.900 Appreciate y'all. 00:55:28.060 --> 00:55:30.020 And we'll see you next time here online. 00:55:30.100 --> 00:55:30.640 Talk with you later.