WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.980 Jeff here. We'll get back to the podcast in a second, but I wanted to let you know of an 00:00:07.980 --> 00:00:13.180 opportunity to help you further develop your church online. Here at The Church Digital, 00:00:13.360 --> 00:00:18.300 we've found some of the best ways for churches to grow their ministry online is to work alongside 00:00:18.300 --> 00:00:25.080 other churches. To that end, The Church Digital is opening up some coaching cohorts in January 2020. 00:00:25.080 --> 00:00:29.560 Through our cohorts, you'll be connected with churches with similar goals in place in ministry, 00:00:29.740 --> 00:00:34.040 and work through these goals together over the six months under the guidance of the crew 00:00:34.040 --> 00:00:40.000 here at The Church Digital. In 2020, invest in your church online, invest in you. For more 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:47.220 information and to find out how you can save 20%, visit thechurch.digital.com. 00:00:50.820 --> 00:00:55.800 All right, we got episode 32 of The Church Digital podcast, and this is going to be a fun one. This one 00:00:55.800 --> 00:01:04.640 was recorded live from the CITN Church IT Network conference that we just recently had in Kansas 00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:09.800 City, Kansas. Yes, we were on the Kansas side of Kansas, not the Missouri side. I checked my phone 00:01:09.800 --> 00:01:14.200 several times to make sure I didn't warp between states throughout the conference, but we were on 00:01:14.200 --> 00:01:18.900 the Kansas City, and it was a great conference. By the way, through The Church IT Network, we had 25, 00:01:19.020 --> 00:01:25.660 26, maybe 27 breakout sessions strictly designed towards church online and online ministry. It's 00:01:25.660 --> 00:01:29.280 a phenomenal conference. If you've never done it before, if you haven't checked out The Church 00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:37.140 IT Network as a church tech crew, as online ministry, as church online people, you should definitely check 00:01:37.140 --> 00:01:43.860 that out. I led a panel of four at The Church IT Conference specifically discussing how to redefine 00:01:43.860 --> 00:01:50.740 the why of church online. Joining me on the panel was Tyler Sansom from Church Anywhere slash First 00:01:50.740 --> 00:01:55.420 Capital Christian, no stranger to the podcast. Jason Morris from Westside Family, once again, 00:01:55.800 --> 00:02:01.400 no stranger to the podcast here either. Randy Green, who is actually from Church of the Resurrection, 00:02:01.520 --> 00:02:05.940 the church where the conference was at. By the way, who has a master's in divinity, and his thesis 00:02:05.940 --> 00:02:12.000 was specifically written on church online, which I found awesome. And then finally, Jan Touchberry 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:16.140 from Christ Fellowship. Now, it's not the Christ Fellowship in Miami or the one in West Palm Beach. 00:02:16.220 --> 00:02:21.240 This is the Christ Fellowship in Dallas. Yes, there are a lot of Christ Fellowships here in the 00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:26.100 church online realm. Anyway, the four of us get together, and we have a phenomenal conversation. 00:02:26.240 --> 00:02:31.180 We had some great questions from the audience to respond to, and it really was just a great panel. 00:02:31.380 --> 00:02:38.940 As together, we discussed how to redefine the why of church online. Now, audio here isn't the 00:02:38.940 --> 00:02:44.040 best quality we've ever done, and we please ask your forgiveness on that. But the quality of this 00:02:44.040 --> 00:02:48.620 content, maybe not the audio quality, the fidelity, but the quality of the content you're hearing is 00:02:48.620 --> 00:02:53.000 awesome. And I personally definitely wanted you all to experience this. So here you go. 00:02:53.160 --> 00:02:58.100 My name is Tyler Sansom. I am from a church in Corridan, Indiana, which I don't expect any of you 00:02:58.100 --> 00:03:02.580 guys to know where it's at. But it's right outside of Louisville, Kentucky. And the church is called 00:03:02.580 --> 00:03:06.460 First Capital Christian Church, but I'm the lead of a ministry called Church Anywhere. 00:03:07.800 --> 00:03:13.180 My name is Jan Tetchberry. I am the online campus pastor at Christ Fellowship in McKinney, Texas, 00:03:13.180 --> 00:03:19.120 not to be confused with any of the Christ Fellowships all over the other places. And although it's 00:03:19.120 --> 00:03:24.680 confused all the time. And I have been doing church online for about the last 10 years. 00:03:25.680 --> 00:03:30.020 Hey, I'm Randy Green. I'm actually on staff here at Church of the Resurrection. So welcome to 00:03:30.020 --> 00:03:35.040 Church of the Resurrection. Glad you all can be here. My role here is like kind of the lead of all of our 00:03:35.040 --> 00:03:41.620 digital marketing and engagement. So this is my first time at Church IT Network because I'm in our 00:03:41.620 --> 00:03:47.500 communications department, not our IT department. And so I'm like expanding the worldview of what I do 00:03:47.500 --> 00:03:53.660 to be with you all today. But I'm excited. I mean, I also have a Master of Arts and Theological Studies 00:03:53.660 --> 00:03:58.060 degree from a seminary here in town. And so what we're talking about today is something that's very 00:03:58.060 --> 00:04:02.740 close on my heart, this like integration of what it is between like the digital world and the church 00:04:02.740 --> 00:04:08.240 world and how those aren't necessarily separate spheres. So yeah, thanks for being here. 00:04:09.520 --> 00:04:16.060 I'm Jason Morris. I'm Global Innovation Pastor at Westside Family Church, just about 30 minutes away from 00:04:16.060 --> 00:04:25.320 here. I oversee the digital expression of Westside Family Church and use it to catalyze global church 00:04:25.320 --> 00:04:32.100 planning movements around the world. Awesome. So let's just dive into this thing. So we're going to 00:04:32.100 --> 00:04:39.260 redefine the why of church online. First question we're going to ask and see where we go. Why does 00:04:39.260 --> 00:04:45.800 your church do church online? Sub note, it's more than just so some lazy guy can watch church in his 00:04:45.800 --> 00:04:53.500 underwear, right? I'm hoping. I did not write this. Okay, I wrote it. I wrote it because that's the 00:04:53.500 --> 00:04:58.840 conversation I've had with, I've had pastors. Hey, can we not broadcast within like 15 miles of our 00:04:58.840 --> 00:05:03.140 church? Because we don't want people to stay at home in their underwear. But there's more to church 00:05:03.140 --> 00:05:08.500 online than just to let this guy stay at home in his underwear, right? So open for the room. 00:05:09.060 --> 00:05:28.280 So for me, church online is so important and so primal to what we do, because Jesus said, go into all the 00:05:28.280 --> 00:05:35.140 world. And that's what we get to do. So basically, that's it. Cliff Notes, that's it. 00:05:35.140 --> 00:05:44.400 I believe that Jesus gave us technology as a force multiplier for the gospel. And we need to use it. 00:05:44.640 --> 00:05:51.020 And we will be held account for not using it if we don't. That includes the internet, includes social 00:05:51.020 --> 00:05:58.940 media, includes everything of technology that Jesus has given us to extend his kingdom. So 00:05:58.940 --> 00:06:07.600 I would feel really scared for not using it. I'm seriously standing before Jesus one day, and he's 00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:13.080 like, dude, I gave you the internet. You know, what'd you do with it? So it's like, for me, that's why 00:06:13.080 --> 00:06:21.540 we do what we do. To answer the other part of this question is another conversation. But I'll let these 00:06:21.540 --> 00:06:28.540 guys speak into that. I will address the lazy guy. Okay, please. Because I think anybody who's been 00:06:28.540 --> 00:06:34.140 in the online church sphere has heard that come out of somebody's mouth in your leadership at your 00:06:34.140 --> 00:06:42.640 church. And what we pretty quickly found at our church is that are some people going to say, well, 00:06:42.640 --> 00:06:47.940 we just felt like being lazy and watching church online in our pajamas? Yes. But that's not the majority. 00:06:47.940 --> 00:06:55.100 And, um, and what we found is for people who cannot get there, whether it's because they have sick kids 00:06:55.100 --> 00:07:01.040 or they're traveling or whatever the life circumstances that prevents them from walking 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:07.080 into the brick and mortar, it allows them to stay connected. The question I feel like equates dress 00:07:07.080 --> 00:07:12.220 code with laziness. Yeah. And we shouldn't, I don't care if you're in your underwear or not. 00:07:12.580 --> 00:07:18.740 Are you a soul that needs Jesus? Yes. So I don't care what you're wearing. I think the question, 00:07:18.740 --> 00:07:26.380 the underlying question is the laziness part of it. And for whatever reason, there is this weird 00:07:26.380 --> 00:07:33.960 stigma that I don't think is as true today as it could have been five or 10 years ago. Because today, 00:07:34.340 --> 00:07:40.460 literally there are people that are intentionally gathering their families and their neighbors 00:07:40.460 --> 00:07:53.540 maybe in or not in their underwear. I don't know, but they're intentionally being missional right 00:07:53.540 --> 00:08:00.420 where they live. And to say that that's lazy, I think is an insult to the vision that some people 00:08:00.420 --> 00:08:05.660 have in using church online. That's true. To say that's, to say that's lazy is taking the vision 00:08:05.660 --> 00:08:10.860 of what God had for the church, period, way out of context. Right. It's actually more lazy in some 00:08:10.860 --> 00:08:16.800 cases to come to church and do nothing. To church and do nothing. For us, we are an exceptionally small 00:08:16.800 --> 00:08:23.100 church to be, to do online ministry. You don't, you don't think of a church our size doing that. 00:08:23.760 --> 00:08:27.980 Jason's actually been there. It's the worst possible location for a church. I'm not exaggerating. 00:08:28.420 --> 00:08:32.700 We are in a dead end street on a, like in a neighborhood where everything's been built around 00:08:32.700 --> 00:08:38.200 us. But we're like way away from the expansion of the town. And the town's only 3,000 anyways. 00:08:38.200 --> 00:08:42.760 So like a super small town. So for us, we started doing online ministry because that's where people 00:08:42.760 --> 00:08:49.660 were. We were in a town where fortunately we're drawing a lot of people from our area, but we figured a 00:08:49.660 --> 00:08:54.420 lot of other people needed the gospel as well. And so we're doing everything we can to one day look at 00:08:54.420 --> 00:09:00.080 Jesus and him saying, well done, good and faithful servant. Yeah. So in the process of, of redefining and 00:09:00.080 --> 00:09:04.800 reshaping what church online is, we really find ourselves maybe reshaping what the word 00:09:04.800 --> 00:09:10.840 church is, which will get us to question two. Um, how do we define church? 00:09:12.200 --> 00:09:19.400 How much time do we have? Go for it. So I, this is, this has been something that's, uh, that's reshaped 00:09:19.400 --> 00:09:25.940 for us at First Capitol over the last two years. Um, a lot of people, for, for a long time, a lot of 00:09:25.940 --> 00:09:31.580 people have looked at church from the Acts 2 42 perspective of the gathering and eating together and 00:09:31.580 --> 00:09:38.260 praying together. Um, and that's a hundred percent what church can be. But I think church started back in 00:09:38.260 --> 00:09:42.660 Acts one eight, um, which is you get the Holy spirit and it gives you power and then you go out and be 00:09:42.660 --> 00:09:47.140 witness. Um, and I think for a long time, we've, we've turned church into something that's very 00:09:47.140 --> 00:09:51.620 consumeristic because, um, when you meet together and you pray together and you eat together, that's 00:09:51.620 --> 00:09:56.340 great, but it's filling you. And, um, I think the church was meant to go out and be a witness. 00:09:56.340 --> 00:10:03.200 And the by-product of that is this community side of Acts 2 42. So for me, churches, um, followers of 00:10:03.200 --> 00:10:09.280 Christ being the witness and spreading the good news. And then the by-product of that is you have 00:10:09.280 --> 00:10:12.560 other followers that are doing the same thing. So you have this community and this network of 00:10:12.560 --> 00:10:17.440 people. And I think that's what church, at least for us is. I think there's really powerful, um, 00:10:17.440 --> 00:10:21.040 with what you were describing a minute ago of like people coming together in their homes, 00:10:21.040 --> 00:10:25.120 um, and just being in community in that sense, whether they're in their underwear or not. 00:10:25.120 --> 00:10:29.920 Uh, that's, that can, that is a very much a sense of community to me. And when I think of church 00:10:29.920 --> 00:10:35.760 and what it means to be the church, I think of, you know, we come to a church building for like 00:10:35.760 --> 00:10:42.160 an hour or two hours a week or something like that. But I think of the other six days and 22 hours. 00:10:42.160 --> 00:10:46.720 Um, and to me, that's the real like embodiment of the church. What we do when we're not in the 00:10:46.720 --> 00:10:51.120 building, what we do when we're out in the community and out living the rest of our lives, 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:56.000 that is how we'd be the church. Um, and so, so when I think of what it means to be the church, 00:10:56.000 --> 00:11:00.160 I think of the ways that we're taking what happens in that hour or two, 00:11:00.160 --> 00:11:04.240 or the ways that we're filled in that time and the ways we're pouring that back out into 00:11:04.240 --> 00:11:12.320 the rest of our lives. So the, when you say the word church, um, there are so many different, 00:11:12.320 --> 00:11:18.400 it's a complex word because when Jesus said that was what he was going to build, 00:11:19.040 --> 00:11:25.680 you find so many different metaphors of that because it's much bigger than just one thing. 00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:31.680 You find the church being described as the bride, as a flock, as a family, as a body. 00:11:31.680 --> 00:11:38.480 There's so many different metaphors because not one size fits all, not one word fits all, 00:11:38.480 --> 00:11:45.040 how expansive the church actually is. And so when we talk about what is church, immediately most of 00:11:45.040 --> 00:11:50.560 us think about what is a church service. And I think we need to discern the difference between the 00:11:50.560 --> 00:11:56.000 two, because if we're talking about how to do a church service online, well, we would answer that 00:11:56.000 --> 00:12:03.440 question very differently. And you know, to use your point, Acts 2, a lot of times the church service 00:12:03.440 --> 00:12:11.040 tries to do all of those things in one event, which I don't know that the passage really says that they 00:12:11.040 --> 00:12:16.240 did all of those things in one event, which it could be, you could do it in using different events, 00:12:16.240 --> 00:12:22.400 different things at different times. It also says they met every day. So maybe there's another way 00:12:22.400 --> 00:12:28.000 of describing that. But what is true definitely is that there is a sense of belonging. There is a sense 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:34.480 of family. There is a sense of unity and belonging that can't be denied. Whatever metaphor you happen to 00:12:34.480 --> 00:12:42.000 use. And the church service is just an outpouring of that community. So if we're talking about what is 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:46.880 church, I think first of all, we need to decide what we're talking about. Are we talking about 00:12:46.880 --> 00:12:52.720 church service? Are we talking about the church? And if we're talking about the church, then we can 00:12:52.720 --> 00:12:57.760 talk about the church online and we can talk about the church service online. And I'm not really clear 00:12:57.760 --> 00:13:04.080 as to what, which one you're gunning for. I'm just stirring the pot like that. Okay. 00:13:04.080 --> 00:13:10.880 Um, the, the end game is that I would suggest that a lot of, uh, a lot of churches today define 00:13:10.880 --> 00:13:15.760 that church by the one hour on Sunday. Right. Yeah. And that's where the confusion is. And as we, we talk 00:13:15.760 --> 00:13:21.040 with, you know, with staff, at least as I've talked with staffs about, you know, pouring some energy into 00:13:21.040 --> 00:13:26.000 other things or, or, or going away and doing something else with that, because there's more 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:31.280 to a church than just that one hour on Sunday, uh, in the physical space, but in our virtual spaces, 00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:36.800 there are five to 10,000 churches each week that broadcast their services in some context, 00:13:36.800 --> 00:13:42.960 whether it's, uh, Facebook live, whether it's job platform, uh, YouTube, whatever we're broadcasting 00:13:42.960 --> 00:13:49.040 the service. But when it comes to, you know, that next piece, uh, doing some sort of, uh, of, 00:13:49.040 --> 00:13:54.640 uh, a small group, a biblical community, uh, a disciple making process in that, uh, oh no, 00:13:54.640 --> 00:14:00.080 no, discipleship can only exist in physical space. It can't, it can't, uh, exist virtually, 00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:01.680 which, which kind of gets us to, 00:14:05.840 --> 00:14:11.120 which really segues nicely into this next question of, uh, what are the perceived weaknesses 00:14:11.120 --> 00:14:16.080 of, of church online? Uh, how do we answer these weaknesses? How can we answer these weaknesses? 00:14:16.080 --> 00:14:19.680 And how has your church kind of over overcome that? 00:14:19.680 --> 00:14:25.280 I think that a lot of the perceived weaknesses are from people who don't understand church online, 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:31.520 chiefly because they've never attended a church online service, i.e. a lot of the leadership who 00:14:34.480 --> 00:14:42.240 have, they're so focused on what happens in the hour on Sunday that, um, church online is church light, 00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:51.600 right? It's, um, it may or may not count for, uh, doing church that week or, or being part of the 00:14:51.600 --> 00:15:01.920 church. Um, I think that education is a huge piece of helping people understand that there can be 00:15:02.720 --> 00:15:12.240 very dynamic, um, discipleship and relationships and, um, deep connection with biblical truth 00:15:12.880 --> 00:15:20.160 and all of the things that we desire for people to experience when they are a part of our church. 00:15:20.880 --> 00:15:29.600 All that can happen in the online space. If your mind is not stuck in the box, mortar, brick and mortar box. 00:15:30.400 --> 00:15:36.560 But the, what you're describing is a lot of the things that when people talk to me about it, 00:15:37.440 --> 00:15:42.240 about some of the real weaknesses when you're dealing with just textual communication. 00:15:43.600 --> 00:15:49.520 But this is not a new problem for church online. We have the same problem that you can find in the 00:15:49.520 --> 00:15:57.040 Bible when they criticize the apostle Paul for his letters being harsh. But when he shows up in person, 00:15:57.040 --> 00:16:05.440 he's real nice, you know? And so that this particular problem of, uh, losing information 00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:12.560 when you use pen and ink or when you use words or text is not a new phenomenon. It's as old as the Bible. 00:16:13.120 --> 00:16:19.040 In fact, you know, the other criticism is, well, people can be anonymous and they can just write 00:16:19.040 --> 00:16:25.920 whatever. Well, again, this is not a new phenomenon only related to church online. 00:16:26.640 --> 00:16:31.120 Even in the new Testament, you find the apostle Paul, look, I'm writing in my own handwriting, 00:16:31.120 --> 00:16:34.240 all this other kind of stuff, because there were other people writing in his name that really weren't 00:16:34.240 --> 00:16:41.600 him. This is not anything new. So the whole idea of using anonymity as a problem for church online, 00:16:41.600 --> 00:16:48.640 well, that's a problem for the church. If you're talking about, um, people missing through textual 00:16:48.640 --> 00:16:53.600 communication, that's a problem for the church. It's not really a problem for church online. And what 00:16:53.600 --> 00:17:00.000 I think many times happens with church online is that it surfaces the inherent weaknesses, not of 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:07.680 church online, but our predominant model of doing church in general. So many times, um, people say, 00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:13.360 well, they're just numbers that are anonymous. Well, how many names, how do you, how many people do you 00:17:13.360 --> 00:17:22.400 know by name who show up, you know, in your onsite campus? Do you really know? You know, there's, 00:17:22.400 --> 00:17:27.280 there's so many other aspects of this that really root down into actually surfacing 00:17:28.480 --> 00:17:34.560 really wonderful conversations because church online is a force multiplier and it magnifies the good 00:17:34.560 --> 00:17:40.880 and the bad of whatever you're doing. So if your discipleship process on site isn't great, 00:17:41.680 --> 00:17:47.440 online is going to make that worse. If, if your service isn't that great, online is going to make 00:17:47.440 --> 00:17:52.160 it worse. You know, if, if your preaching is not that great, online is going to make it worse. 00:17:52.800 --> 00:17:58.560 But if you do have systems and processes and pipelines that do work well, online is going to make it 00:17:58.560 --> 00:18:07.600 better. So that for me is, um, yes, church online has weaknesses, but I don't know that there are any 00:18:07.600 --> 00:18:13.360 more of the weaknesses than what church on site has. Here's, here's a weakness that I think needs to be 00:18:13.360 --> 00:18:20.480 overcome. Uh, a couple of them actually. One is a proper scorecard that all of us struggle with, 00:18:20.480 --> 00:18:29.520 with church online. Um, because break that down. What's the scorecard? Well, the metrics of trying 00:18:29.520 --> 00:18:35.280 to compare what happens online with what happens on site is an apples to oranges comparison. Because 00:18:35.280 --> 00:18:41.280 what happens online, you can measure attention way better than you can measure attendance. But on site, 00:18:41.280 --> 00:18:47.360 you measure attendance, but you can't measure attention. And so what happens is, is that you, you 00:18:47.360 --> 00:18:55.120 have like thousands and thousands of people who show up for 15 seconds, right? That doesn't count. 00:18:55.920 --> 00:19:01.360 Yet for the person who shows up, puts his butt in the seat, totally ignores everything. And it's like 00:19:01.360 --> 00:19:07.680 looking at all the cute girls and checking out his fantasy football. And then maybe tunes in for the 00:19:07.680 --> 00:19:12.640 one time when the pastor says, if you don't hear anything else, hear this, you know, says it for 30 00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:17.520 seconds, that 30 seconds of attention, that does count when all the rest of his inattention doesn't. 00:19:18.160 --> 00:19:24.480 So you're measuring different things to begin with. And to get those two scoreboards to jive together, 00:19:24.480 --> 00:19:30.160 I think is a weakness and a challenge for all of us online because of the different types of scoreboards 00:19:30.160 --> 00:19:34.080 that we're working with. That's one thing. The other thing that I think is a weakness that I see 00:19:34.800 --> 00:19:41.920 on most of what happens with church online as it relates to comparing to church on site is the lack 00:19:41.920 --> 00:19:51.040 or the weakness of kids ministry. Now, that's not to say that that's really a problem because 300 years 00:19:51.040 --> 00:19:59.280 ago, nobody had kids ministry either, right? And somehow the church survived, right? And so for the 00:19:59.280 --> 00:20:04.480 family who's in their underwear with their PJs, with all their kids, that's trying to do church as a 00:20:04.480 --> 00:20:11.440 family, integrated as a family and doing that church online, that says more to me for the parents and 00:20:11.440 --> 00:20:16.880 their intentionality of what they're trying to do with their kids and taking ownership as the spiritual 00:20:16.880 --> 00:20:23.760 leader of their household. That says more to me for that family. And if we don't have kids ministry in the 00:20:23.760 --> 00:20:28.880 way that we have kids ministry on site, I don't know if that's a weakness or not, but it is an 00:20:28.880 --> 00:20:32.800 apples to oranges comparison. Well, I mean, at minimum, it's an opportunity, right? Right. 00:20:32.800 --> 00:20:39.520 Now, we as a church expressing ourselves online have a responsibility to empower that parent. I got 00:20:39.520 --> 00:20:44.720 two kids 9 and 11. I would love for a church to empower me with resources to allow me to better 00:20:44.720 --> 00:20:50.720 disciple my kids, rather than, you know, shuffling them off to children's church to enable me to be 00:20:50.720 --> 00:20:55.840 the spiritual father, you know, in that in that environment would be awesome. So if you're writing 00:20:55.840 --> 00:21:00.720 that down, take a note. Jeffrey wants help discipling. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that, 00:21:00.720 --> 00:21:08.320 that note. Hey, so let's let's segue into this with that. What is your physical church's vision, 00:21:08.320 --> 00:21:14.880 and how does Church Online help meet that vision? And this is hard, and some of these may be a work 00:21:14.880 --> 00:21:19.520 in progress, but we get a little bit here into the strategy part of this, right? So church, a physical 00:21:19.520 --> 00:21:26.000 church has a vision. Your church has a vision. What role does Church Online play? Our church's vision 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:32.080 is to help people find and follow Jesus. Super not original, and a lot of people have that. But the thing 00:21:32.080 --> 00:21:40.240 that we've done is on site and online, and then at our micro sites, we have this linear discipleship 00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:46.880 pathway. So one side of this is the find side. So it's how strategies to help people find Jesus. And we 00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:51.760 want to take someone who's just looking to like getting to know us, and there's a conversion line 00:21:51.760 --> 00:21:56.560 in the middle. So at some point, we hope to have like popped the question, and they decide to make 00:21:56.560 --> 00:22:02.560 Jesus lower their life. Are you on one knee for that? Yeah, yeah. We do this, and there's like 00:22:02.560 --> 00:22:09.120 the Jesus petting the lamb picture. So you've got a conversion line, and then you have someone who's 00:22:09.120 --> 00:22:13.520 digging deeper, and then all in. So we have to follow the side. But we've been very intentional 00:22:13.520 --> 00:22:19.040 of having a strategy that, like one, if this is church here, and this is church anywhere, which is 00:22:19.040 --> 00:22:23.360 what we call our church online, they can intersect at any point. So through this- 00:22:23.360 --> 00:22:27.200 He doesn't even break out on this, by the way. Yeah, Jason and I will be talking about this a little 00:22:27.200 --> 00:22:33.600 bit later today. But this pathway has really focused us on helping people meet the vision of 00:22:33.600 --> 00:22:39.840 finding and following Jesus, no matter where they enter that timeline, and no matter if they're in 00:22:39.840 --> 00:22:44.560 person or if we have a virtual relationship with them. By the way, to give you guys context, 00:22:44.560 --> 00:22:50.080 he's in a town of 3,000, but how many do you have at church? About 1,200. Wow. 00:22:50.080 --> 00:22:56.720 And how many are in church anywhere? Physical bodies in church anywhere. So these are microsites, 00:22:56.720 --> 00:23:00.720 somewhere around 800. Okay, so put that in perspective with a town of 3,000. 00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:04.960 So and then the church online is a different category for us. Right. Yeah. Okay. 00:23:05.680 --> 00:23:07.920 It's amazing what happens when you take church 00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:13.360 to the people instead of making the people come to church. All right. So anybody else want to chime in 00:23:13.360 --> 00:23:19.280 here? Uh, church online physical vision? For me, we just tightly align our online vision to the 00:23:19.280 --> 00:23:25.200 physical church vision. I think it should be that way. So for us at Westside, it's loving Jesus, 00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:30.640 becoming like Jesus, and sharing Jesus. And what we do online is helping people love Jesus, 00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:35.840 become like Jesus, and share Jesus. Online, we kind of use that as a qualifier, but I don't even think 00:23:35.840 --> 00:23:43.840 it's necessary. That's what we do. Sure. For us at Church of the Resurrection, our big kind of purpose 00:23:43.840 --> 00:23:49.680 is to build a Christian community where non-religious and nominally religious people are becoming deeply 00:23:49.680 --> 00:23:56.960 committed Christians. And so, you know, there's a lot you can unpack with that. But for me, the real, like, 00:23:56.960 --> 00:24:04.960 the real power behind online church is the idea that we can develop that community of deeply committed 00:24:04.960 --> 00:24:09.760 Christians. We can ask people to go deeper and deeper within their Christian faith at any point 00:24:09.760 --> 00:24:14.000 throughout the day, like, throughout the week. So it's this thing, like, it permeates their lives. 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:20.160 So instead of asking them to come to a service for an hour once a week, we can, throughout the week, 00:24:20.160 --> 00:24:26.800 be a presence in their lives. You know, asking, you know, how can we be praying for you? What do you have 00:24:26.800 --> 00:24:31.520 going on that we can be in ministry with you? And just those kind of things. So it's just the 00:24:31.520 --> 00:24:37.520 perpetual access that we have to, to continually work with people to become more deeply committed 00:24:37.520 --> 00:24:44.000 Christians. I love that, which segues excellently into the next question. I'm broadcasting my services 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:49.680 online. Isn't that enough? Well, yeah. 00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:01.360 It's enough if church were just a church service. Yeah. And some churches are like that. 00:25:01.360 --> 00:25:08.640 And if that's all it is, then fine. But most people I talk to, most pastors I talk to, 00:25:09.360 --> 00:25:15.840 while that one hour tends to consume a lot of their time, all of them would say that the church is much 00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:21.200 bigger than that. It's not just a church service. Because if it is just a church service, we should all 00:25:21.760 --> 00:25:26.480 be in our underwear and watch TV on Sunday morning. If that's all it is. 00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:31.200 Which goes back to the why. Um, I mean, if, if your church's vision is not being fulfilled, 00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:35.600 um, then you're not, you're doing something wrong with the church online. Like for example, 00:25:35.600 --> 00:25:40.720 who, you know, everybody have a cell phone like in your pocket right now. Okay. I'm assuming you don't 00:25:40.720 --> 00:25:45.200 only have that cell phone in your pocket at 1045 on a Sunday morning for an hour, correct? 00:25:45.200 --> 00:25:51.040 And so like, if we, if we can't help people find and follow Jesus in our case, um, for the rest of the 00:25:51.040 --> 00:25:56.240 hours of that week, um, with things that you literally have in your pocket, um, then we're not 00:25:56.240 --> 00:26:00.960 fulfilling the vision of our church. That's not, that's not being the church. Um, we're just simply 00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:06.000 doing something because other churches are doing it on Facebook. I love this. My pastor says that 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:12.000 church online is wrong because church is only in physical space. Help! Exclamation mark, 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:16.240 exclamation mark, exclamation mark. By the way, I hear this a lot. Hebrews 10, 25, 00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:23.360 do not abandon meeting together, blah, blah, blah. So, um, how somebody out there is thinking this, 00:26:23.360 --> 00:26:28.560 I guarantee somebody's had this conversation with leadership. How do we respond in a situation 00:26:28.560 --> 00:26:34.400 like that? Can I give a personal story? Please. Yeah. So last week, um, two weeks ago, 00:26:34.400 --> 00:26:40.800 two Saturdays ago, I, uh, preached a funeral of a lady named Betty. Um, and the first time I ever 00:26:40.800 --> 00:26:47.440 saw her in person was in the casket. Um, so if you, if, if you can tell me that I was not meeting with 00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:54.160 her, um, because I was only talking to her online, um, that would discredit the fact that, like, 00:26:54.160 --> 00:26:59.200 she had said I was her pastor and had requested, knowing she was sick, had requested me to do that 00:26:59.200 --> 00:27:03.520 funeral. Um, and so there's a real argument to be made that our culture has already moved past the 00:27:03.520 --> 00:27:08.800 point of, uh, community only being face to face. Uh, Jeff, I would consider you a friend and we've only seen each 00:27:08.800 --> 00:27:15.440 other versus twice ever, but, um, I know, right? But, but because of two hours sleep, thank you. 00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:20.800 Because of Zoom, because of FaceTime, because of constant communication, I believe absolutely that 00:27:20.800 --> 00:27:25.600 we've met before, um, besides the two times in physical space. Um, and so I don't think there's 00:27:25.600 --> 00:27:29.840 a whole huge argument for that one. I think that's just pastors being a little behind the culture. 00:27:29.840 --> 00:27:38.400 Hmm. That's so true. I, and I think, well, I, I also think that we have to consider, um, 00:27:38.960 --> 00:27:45.440 even Church Online has morphed so much over the last 10, I don't know, how long has Life Church 00:27:45.440 --> 00:27:47.520 been doing Church Online? I feel like they were like the beginning. 00:27:47.520 --> 00:27:48.480 This is 31 years. 00:27:48.480 --> 00:27:55.120 Right. But I feel like, uh, over the last 10 years, even what, what a lot of us who've been 00:27:55.120 --> 00:28:01.200 in that space has, has morphed as culture has changed and technology is moving so fast right now. 00:28:01.840 --> 00:28:10.720 And people who are not even willing to try to keep up are going to miss the boat. We are, 00:28:10.720 --> 00:28:17.520 we are raising digital natives right now. That's all they know. They don't, they don't know a world 00:28:17.520 --> 00:28:25.520 without it. And so if we are not figuring out, and I think what you are doing, we need to go have 00:28:25.520 --> 00:28:30.400 lunch or something because I really want to talk about what you're doing. Um, but what you're doing 00:28:30.400 --> 00:28:38.960 and it's not Church Online, it's the Church Online. And that's the key right there. That's awesome. 00:28:40.320 --> 00:28:47.360 I was just going to ask the question. It's been said that Generation 3, Alpha, and the Millennials, 00:28:47.360 --> 00:28:52.160 are the first generation that may never enter physical church doors and may be purely digital. 00:28:53.040 --> 00:28:57.840 I'm curious how, um, churches tend to react to this new reality. 00:28:57.840 --> 00:29:02.800 Uh, ostrich and sand. Depends on the church, I think. 00:29:02.800 --> 00:29:07.360 Yeah. There's a, there's a movement, there's a really interesting conversation. I don't want to have 00:29:07.360 --> 00:29:12.240 it here. Um, but what would it look like if a church lived only in digital space? 00:29:12.240 --> 00:29:20.800 How can a church, um, move away from a, um, a weekend service-oriented ministry plan 00:29:20.800 --> 00:29:28.640 to a discipleship-oriented, empower the people to be the pastor plan and become a much more 00:29:29.200 --> 00:29:34.640 multiplication, duplication process of enabling, not the pastor to be the hero of the story, but the 00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:39.440 people to be the hero of the story. Um, and like I said, if you're interested in that conversation, 00:29:39.440 --> 00:29:45.600 uh, tomorrow I think there's like a micro-location conversation panel I'm leading. We're going to get 00:29:45.600 --> 00:29:52.720 into that over there, um, because that is a completely separate conversation. But at the end of the day, 00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:58.960 you're right, the millennials, uh, millennials are. I do think that, uh, the generations underneath that, 00:29:59.600 --> 00:30:04.720 uh, I think there's an opportunity to engage a little more. Millennials have been damaged by 00:30:05.280 --> 00:30:10.720 us. We're the worst. Uh, yeah. Man, you're a lot more honest when you're lack of sleep. 00:30:12.320 --> 00:30:17.360 But, uh, I do think there's an opportunity for the church to turn it around. And what's interesting 00:30:17.360 --> 00:30:22.880 is I think you need different models to reach different people. And I think the existing model, 00:30:22.880 --> 00:30:27.680 the physical church will continue to exist and will continue to be successful. I do think we need 00:30:27.680 --> 00:30:33.520 another model. Um, and I'm looking forward to seeing that model develop because we need to do 00:30:33.520 --> 00:30:37.760 something else to reach other people. You can't cram everybody into this physical model. 00:30:37.760 --> 00:30:41.840 Really fast to address that question. Um, and Randy said something about it earlier about how, 00:30:41.840 --> 00:30:45.600 um, online we have a unique opportunity to engage people more within the service. 00:30:45.600 --> 00:30:52.320 Um, so that's really, really made, um, my church rethink the way that we do physical church as well, 00:30:52.960 --> 00:30:57.440 along with, with, uh, the microsites that we have and things like that. But, uh, three weeks ago, 00:30:57.440 --> 00:31:01.760 we launched our very first, um, I'm going to loosely call it a millennial service, but, uh, 00:31:01.760 --> 00:31:07.840 we would never tell our people that, um, but, uh, we tried to take what we've learned through micro 00:31:07.840 --> 00:31:12.720 sites and, um, the fact that we can engage people throughout the service online and see what that 00:31:12.720 --> 00:31:18.640 would look like to build a service around that type of community in person. Um, and it's been unreal how, 00:31:18.640 --> 00:31:24.560 um, quickly the growth has happened. So this week alone, we, um, we almost matched the amount that is 00:31:24.560 --> 00:31:29.680 in the, the regular auditorium, um, within this new type of service. Um, it's, it's literally like 00:31:29.680 --> 00:31:34.720 table groups, um, you do worship together, but like, there's a break every 10 minutes in the sermon 00:31:34.720 --> 00:31:38.560 where you have four minutes of discussion about what you're talking about. Um, a lot of other elements 00:31:38.560 --> 00:31:44.240 I'm not going to go into, but people are always going to create or crave community, period. We are 00:31:44.240 --> 00:31:50.240 designed to, to have community, regardless of your generation. Um, our job as, as leaders in this field, 00:31:50.240 --> 00:31:55.040 though, is to figure out ways that we can implement, um, strategies to, to reach different generations 00:31:55.040 --> 00:32:02.720 with community. I will say, I think going back to the question about the strengths of church online. 00:32:02.720 --> 00:32:16.320 Sure. Um, we live in a society that has no margins anymore. Yes, we, we are planned to the hill. You've, 00:32:16.320 --> 00:32:24.640 you've got most families who both parents work. They are without their children for nine, 10 plus hours 00:32:24.640 --> 00:32:31.200 a day. They pick them up from wherever they are, soccer, school, daycare, whatever. They come home, 00:32:31.200 --> 00:32:38.720 they feed them. They maybe have an hour of time and then they're putting their kids to bed. And traditional 00:32:38.720 --> 00:32:46.880 church is saying, oh, by the way, come to a life group or, oh, by the way, come to this class at the 00:32:46.880 --> 00:32:54.880 church or, oh, by the way, fill in the blank. And people are voting with their lack of presence. 00:32:54.880 --> 00:33:02.880 And so is it not our job as the church to give them the opportunity to still engage in biblical 00:33:02.880 --> 00:33:08.880 community, get the teaching and the discipleship and the knowledge that they need to live out 00:33:08.880 --> 00:33:14.720 Christian lives, wherever they are for all of those hours a day. And should we not be looking 00:33:14.720 --> 00:33:20.400 at the digital space to do that? Because otherwise people are going to be missing it because they 00:33:20.400 --> 00:33:25.760 literally do not have the time. When I look at this question, when you're talking about leadership, 00:33:25.760 --> 00:33:31.120 pretty much the way that I would engage the leadership in a conversation like this is to pick 00:33:31.120 --> 00:33:37.200 whatever century they happen to be familiar with. So, no, no, it is. 00:33:37.200 --> 00:33:43.760 So what did they cut this part out? Wow. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean it like, honestly, 00:33:43.760 --> 00:33:50.880 it's like, okay, if then, then I asked them the question, um, you know, did you call your mom 00:33:50.880 --> 00:33:58.640 on mother's day? And then most of the time they'll say yes. And I'm like, did your mom feel slighted 00:33:58.640 --> 00:34:04.560 that you didn't show up in person? You know, because that's his, that's his century of technology. 00:34:04.560 --> 00:34:09.840 He's probably familiar with, right? Well, she might be, she might be like, you didn't show up now is 00:34:09.840 --> 00:34:16.160 showing up better. Absolutely. But does that keep you from calling her? No. And so it's no different 00:34:16.160 --> 00:34:22.480 than what we see in, in second John, where he says, I'm writing you with pen and ink now, 00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:26.560 but I'm not going to write you everything because I want to come and visit you face to face so that 00:34:26.560 --> 00:34:32.800 our joy may be full. Well, that didn't stop him from writing the letter. So he's not saying that, 00:34:32.800 --> 00:34:37.360 you know, everybody knows that face to face is better, right? I'm not saying that it's not, 00:34:37.360 --> 00:34:42.800 but that can't stop us from doing something, right? And that's, if we're going to be so purist about it, 00:34:42.800 --> 00:34:48.960 then we're not going to do a lot of things. So if again, you know, the guy that's like, if only 00:34:48.960 --> 00:34:53.840 your physical meeting works, ask him if he's ever prayed with someone over the phone. 00:34:55.280 --> 00:35:00.960 And if he has, well, did that count? You know, because you work physically together. 00:35:00.960 --> 00:35:04.320 And then there's this other passage in scripture where the apostle Paul says, 00:35:04.320 --> 00:35:09.280 I can't be with you, but I'm with you in spirit. Well, what does that mean? We say that word all 00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:16.640 the time. And I honestly believe that the spiritual realm, the Holy Spirit transcends time and space 00:35:16.640 --> 00:35:21.360 in ways that we don't understand. That's right. And if you've ever been online and prayed to someone 00:35:21.360 --> 00:35:26.080 online and ministered to someone online, that's across the world, you know exactly what I'm talking 00:35:26.080 --> 00:35:34.400 about. Because it transcends all of that when you're connecting at that spiritual level. And 00:35:34.400 --> 00:35:39.200 you know, if you haven't experienced it, it's hard to, it's hard to explain, but sometimes if you pick 00:35:39.200 --> 00:35:45.280 the right generation or the right century of technology, then they start to get it a little bit. 00:35:47.840 --> 00:35:54.480 I am going to shift a bunch of stuff because I really want to have this question. I may come back. 00:35:54.480 --> 00:35:58.320 The year is 2029. No. What does church online look like? 00:36:00.240 --> 00:36:07.440 I think one of the things that we don't think about a lot is that we are very young in what the digital 00:36:07.440 --> 00:36:14.880 world looks like. Like, like the shift of like that has been brought about through like social media 00:36:14.880 --> 00:36:21.200 and things like that is like this like seismic shift in our culture. Like I've heard a lot of people 00:36:21.200 --> 00:36:25.680 compare the internet to like the printing press and how it revolutionized the distribution of information, 00:36:25.680 --> 00:36:30.400 but I don't think that's big enough to describe what we're actually seeing. What we're actually seeing 00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:36.720 is like the cultural change that happened when written language was created. Like when we go from an oral 00:36:36.720 --> 00:36:42.560 culture to a literate culture, that transforms the way that we think about time because we can record 00:36:42.560 --> 00:36:47.040 events that don't have to be communicated interpersonally. They can be recorded and they can last for 00:36:47.040 --> 00:36:51.680 centuries. It shifts the way that we think about relationships because we can communicate with 00:36:51.680 --> 00:36:56.320 people who don't live near us by writing them letters and things like that. So like the transformation 00:36:56.320 --> 00:37:02.000 that happened when we went from an oral culture to a literate culture is I think very similar to the 00:37:02.000 --> 00:37:06.880 culture change that's happening that we see right now and we are participants in in the very, 00:37:06.880 --> 00:37:13.840 very young infancy of this change. And so when we look at 2029, that sounds like it's so far away. That's 10 years 00:37:13.840 --> 00:37:19.440 away. But that is nothing in the amount of time it's going to take to really live into what this new culture 00:37:19.440 --> 00:37:26.720 looks like. And so I'm not really answering the question here, but I think that it's important for us to 00:37:26.720 --> 00:37:33.200 recognize the scale of this that it's going to take multiple, multiple decades. You know, I'm thinking 00:37:33.200 --> 00:37:39.520 a hundred years from now we might have a good grasp of what it means for us to exist within a physical 00:37:39.520 --> 00:37:45.280 and digital context simultaneously. And so until then there's tick tock until then. 00:37:51.920 --> 00:37:58.000 Who else? I don't know what it's going to look like. I didn't know what it would look like three years ago, 00:37:58.000 --> 00:38:07.440 but I believe that it'll be more important than we can imagine. So looking back at Acts like five-ish, 00:38:08.240 --> 00:38:14.640 so this is after Pentecost and like after everything's kind of going well, the first believers they would 00:38:14.640 --> 00:38:20.640 meet in Solomon's Colonnade. And I think the verse says something along the lines of they would meet 00:38:20.640 --> 00:38:26.320 there and even though they were well-regarded, no one would dare meet with them. So what that tells me is 00:38:26.320 --> 00:38:30.480 that they used to meet someplace and even though they were well-regarded, once they started to grow, 00:38:30.480 --> 00:38:36.560 people resented them. But then the Bible says right after that that their numbers grew every single day. 00:38:37.440 --> 00:38:42.160 So people didn't want to come join them, but still their numbers grew. And I feel like we live in a 00:38:42.160 --> 00:38:48.480 culture where we're consistently growing into this resentment phase. Nothing that you see culturally would 00:38:48.480 --> 00:38:54.320 say, "Hey, let's lift the church up." Anything you see that let's resent them even more and eventually we're 00:38:54.320 --> 00:38:59.040 going to reach the state of persecution to where people would not dare join us in person. 00:38:59.600 --> 00:39:05.120 But because of our online avenues that are in the baby stages, that's going to be so much more 00:39:05.120 --> 00:39:12.480 important to help fulfill the part of being added to daily. We see it, Jason, I'm sure you see it 00:39:12.480 --> 00:39:20.480 a lot more than I do, but overseas. That is how the gospel is being fulfilled overseas is through the internet. 00:39:21.040 --> 00:39:24.560 And I think that's coming here. What we're doing is so important because of that. 00:39:27.360 --> 00:39:35.280 I would be surprised if, first off, you know, what does church online look like in 2029? I think 00:39:35.280 --> 00:39:41.040 it just looks like the church because it will just take over the church. Because I don't think there 00:39:41.040 --> 00:39:47.520 will be having these discussions in 2029 about church online because it will be the primary expression 00:39:47.520 --> 00:39:52.960 of church. And the secondary expression is, "Oh, when do you guys get together every now and then? 00:39:52.960 --> 00:39:59.280 When's your meetup?" That will be the question. Whereas that's what I think is going to be happening, 00:39:59.280 --> 00:40:05.360 where we will be living in the online space that we already do anyway. We'll be living in the online 00:40:05.360 --> 00:40:12.720 space and our sense of identity, belonging and family will be technologically leveraged that we will 00:40:12.720 --> 00:40:18.880 occasionally get together for meetups to have fun and parties and stuff like that. That won't be happening every Sunday. 00:40:19.520 --> 00:40:23.840 They'll be happening once a quarter, once a year, kind of like how we're doing this gathering right now. 00:40:24.880 --> 00:40:29.840 And this is a lot of fun and I really enjoy it. And this is kind of, we are beta testing what I 00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:33.600 think the church will become because we're all in the Facebook group together. 00:40:34.080 --> 00:40:38.080 We all message each other on Slack and we all, you know, text each other and all that kind of stuff 00:40:38.080 --> 00:40:42.880 all throughout the year. And then we get together and give each other a hug. That's what church will be. 00:40:42.880 --> 00:40:46.960 Yeah. And here's the tension though, is we have to be okay with that. 00:40:47.840 --> 00:40:53.200 Yeah. We can't push back like we currently do. There's so much resistance to church online. 00:40:53.200 --> 00:40:56.800 That's why there's like three questions about it in this panel. But until we get to the point 00:40:56.800 --> 00:41:00.800 where we're okay with it, we will not be able to effectively do ministry moving forward. 00:41:01.840 --> 00:41:04.560 Well, I think they will become okay with it once it just dies. 00:41:04.560 --> 00:41:09.040 Yeah. It's going to be a hard process or it gets regulated out of existence. 00:41:09.040 --> 00:41:11.920 Yeah. I mean, like, let's, let's put some numbers on this just, just for kicks. 00:41:12.880 --> 00:41:17.440 325,000 evangelical churches in America today. That's rough. Maybe it's more than that. 00:41:18.880 --> 00:41:26.640 Arguably five to 10, maybe 12,000 are broadcasting each week. Like that's a massive transitionary shift 00:41:27.200 --> 00:41:32.240 because the majority are saying it's not acceptable. I agree with you, Jason. I just think it's going to be 00:41:32.240 --> 00:41:40.320 an ugly transition from 2019 to 2029, where that's not the standard. I'm working with a pastor in a, 00:41:40.320 --> 00:41:46.720 and this is a true story, a pastor up in New England area. And he is in the process of a thousand person 00:41:46.720 --> 00:41:52.720 church, New England. He sees maybe 120 people a week. He's got this massive campus. Nobody comes 00:41:52.720 --> 00:41:59.200 there. Nine of his numbers. He tells me 97, 98% of the people in his area don't want to come to church. 00:41:59.200 --> 00:42:05.120 They don't even like church. There's a very strong biases against Christianity. He's in the process of 00:42:05.840 --> 00:42:12.480 wanting to sell off his buildings, wanting to go down to a completely digital micro site model, 00:42:12.480 --> 00:42:16.960 set up a broadcast center somewhere to broadcast the message out and empower people not to come 00:42:16.960 --> 00:42:22.560 sit in the pew, but to go out and to do church in the homes. Like that's the model this guy's come up 00:42:22.560 --> 00:42:29.040 with entirely on his own, basically out of survival, because if that doesn't happen, he can't afford the 00:42:29.040 --> 00:42:34.240 mortgage and the maintenance on this facility and he's going to have to shut down. And it's going to be a 00:42:34.240 --> 00:42:38.640 scary, and I always hate to be the prophetic guy because I'm really not, but it's going to be a 00:42:38.640 --> 00:42:44.480 scary transition in the next five to 10 years as we start to feel some of that persecution. As we 00:42:44.480 --> 00:42:50.560 start to, oh my gosh, church no longer has a tax exempt status. Oh man, we got to pay property tax and 00:42:50.560 --> 00:42:56.160 all these massive buildings and campuses. Like it's, there's going to be a world of pinch and the church 00:42:56.160 --> 00:43:01.360 is going to feel itself transitioning more and more to a digital expression of worship for that. 00:43:01.360 --> 00:43:09.040 I was going to mention we're hitting them directly on a 10-year window where by 2029 up to 40% of all 00:43:09.040 --> 00:43:14.640 jobs are going to be automated according to Oxford academia. Yep. That means its impact to the 00:43:14.640 --> 00:43:20.400 congregants is phenomenal. I mean, I can't get my head around what that looks like. Yeah. 00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:31.680 Yes sir. Last year, if you remember, we had David Sutto, VR church. DJ. Yes sir. Yep, DJ. He was a pastor of my 00:43:31.680 --> 00:43:37.360 church and he went out on his own doing that. And I think that 2029, the cost effectiveness and 00:43:39.040 --> 00:43:43.040 you'll be able to, instead of sitting here like we are right now, you'll be back in our offices all 00:43:43.040 --> 00:43:50.560 sitting here like the same thing goes for the people in the church. Great point. I think that to speak into 00:43:50.560 --> 00:43:55.920 the regulations and people broadcasting and things like that, it really goes back to what is church. 00:43:57.200 --> 00:44:03.600 Because like if, in our definition, if church is really going out and being a witness for the gospel, 00:44:04.240 --> 00:44:08.960 it doesn't matter if you can broadcast your service or not. If you can go out and use whatever tools 00:44:08.960 --> 00:44:15.440 available to spread the gospel, then like if they can regulate all they want with it, a broadcast. But 00:44:15.440 --> 00:44:22.320 you still have the gospel to fall back on. But when we take our church online vision and make it all 00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:31.120 about a weekend service, we run the danger of becoming regulated. And I think there's, so the world around 00:44:31.120 --> 00:44:36.480 us is already trying, they're working to figure out what it means to create community within an online 00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:40.800 context. I mean, that's what Facebook is. That's a Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, even. 00:44:40.800 --> 00:44:43.920 Even I don't understand TikTok. Tinder. Like, they're working. 00:44:43.920 --> 00:44:45.760 It's Tinder time. 00:44:45.760 --> 00:44:49.840 No, I mean, you start online to go on site. 00:44:50.400 --> 00:44:56.000 Like, they're trying to figure this out. But like, what, what terrifies me is that we, 00:44:56.000 --> 00:45:00.720 the church might say, we don't want to be a part of figuring out what the, what Christian community 00:45:00.720 --> 00:45:05.040 looks like. Like, we don't want to be a part of shaping community within an online context. 00:45:05.040 --> 00:45:08.640 And that's like the resistance that I feel right now. We're saying, we don't think it can happen. 00:45:08.640 --> 00:45:10.880 So we're not going to do it. But the world is going to do it. 00:45:10.880 --> 00:45:11.360 Yep. Right. 00:45:11.360 --> 00:45:17.200 And so are we going to be voices in that shaping of what community is within an online context? 00:45:17.200 --> 00:45:18.640 And I think we have to. 00:45:18.640 --> 00:45:19.440 Drop the mic. 00:45:19.440 --> 00:45:19.840 Yeah. 00:45:19.840 --> 00:45:22.800 Yeah. What questions? I mean, at this point, I'll open it up. 00:45:22.800 --> 00:45:23.520 Yeah. 00:45:23.520 --> 00:45:24.800 Can I ask this question? 00:45:24.800 --> 00:45:25.600 Yeah, please. 00:45:25.600 --> 00:45:29.440 So as, and I think it sort of has to do with your question about like- 00:45:29.440 --> 00:45:30.400 Define who you are. 00:45:30.400 --> 00:45:35.200 Oh, I'm Daniel O'Haron. I lead a totally online youth-led church. 00:45:36.640 --> 00:45:37.440 In Roblox. 00:45:38.240 --> 00:45:42.160 Yes, in Roblox, which is a virtual video game platform. 00:45:42.160 --> 00:45:46.320 So we're totally online and entirely young people. 00:45:46.320 --> 00:45:54.800 So to answer your question as well about engaging Gen Z and millennials and what the church might 00:45:54.800 --> 00:46:03.760 look like, I think as one of the few Gen Z people here, part of what we do online is focusing on 00:46:04.480 --> 00:46:09.760 reaching people where they're at. And I think that's something that you guys have voiced is really important. 00:46:11.280 --> 00:46:18.320 But as we, there are so many churches out there that, like in my denomination, I'm a part of the Presbyterian church. 00:46:18.320 --> 00:46:24.000 And we, in our denomination, I can't think of a single church that broadcasts those services. 00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:34.240 Like in the denomination, we just, there's no pressure or like encouragement to go online. 00:46:34.240 --> 00:46:38.000 So I think a lot of the churches that are going online right now are churches that 00:46:39.360 --> 00:46:44.560 don't necessarily have a denomination that's supporting them, like financially, or they 00:46:45.920 --> 00:46:50.560 are losing members rapidly. And I think a part of this, like in a lot of your churches, 00:46:50.560 --> 00:46:55.120 I'm assuming that you're losing members in general or losing young members. 00:46:56.640 --> 00:47:01.200 And I think a big portion of this, and you guys said it too, is meeting people where they're at 00:47:01.760 --> 00:47:07.120 and not just going on Facebook and live streaming your services there because young people aren't 00:47:07.120 --> 00:47:16.720 on Facebook. Some people, some younger people are leaving Instagram. Like the church is so slow to reach 00:47:17.520 --> 00:47:21.760 like where people are at. They don't even know where people are. Young people are on Snapchat and they're on, 00:47:21.760 --> 00:47:27.280 I don't want to say TikTok, younger people on TikTok. There really are. There's millions and millions. 00:47:29.200 --> 00:47:36.800 Things like Fortnite, like I don't know if there's no churches there, but like if a ministry were to like somehow reach out to them and like, 00:47:37.520 --> 00:47:42.160 they're just these major platforms that are hubs for young people and finding ways to, 00:47:42.160 --> 00:47:50.400 you know, reach people there. And not even like, like necessarily do ministry there. But if you're 00:47:50.400 --> 00:47:56.640 trying to market your church or like get people to find out and come out in person or whatever it looks 00:47:56.640 --> 00:48:02.400 like, just actually having a presence on different platforms, I think is incredibly important. 00:48:02.400 --> 00:48:08.480 Yeah, I think that there's an interesting opportunity if you look at church, not as the one hour on Sunday. 00:48:09.040 --> 00:48:15.680 And you can have a existing ministry that exists on platforms like TikTok. 00:48:16.080 --> 00:48:21.760 But the goal of being on TikTok isn't to drive them to a church service, virtual or physical. 00:48:22.240 --> 00:48:27.600 The platform literally restricts that type of communication. And so because it's designed to keep it within. 00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:33.920 So you're on TikTok, you're engaging with young people to build a relational connection with them, 00:48:33.920 --> 00:48:40.000 to drive them into a discipleship, disciple making, forming relationship. And this has nothing to do 00:48:40.560 --> 00:48:45.920 with a service, but it has everything to do with impacting a life so that it can in turn impact another 00:48:45.920 --> 00:48:53.680 life. And that's where, honestly, when I look at the next 10, 15 years, 20 years of what church 00:48:53.680 --> 00:48:59.120 and what church online is, the digital expression of this is going to be much more relational. 00:48:59.120 --> 00:49:05.520 The strength of online, at least in my opinion, is not the broadcast of the service. Billy Graham 00:49:05.520 --> 00:49:11.440 in the 90s broadcasted a service, bounced it off 34 satellites, and literally one message was heard 00:49:11.440 --> 00:49:18.080 by a billion people across the world. That was 30 years ago, 20 years ago, whatever the math is, 90s. That's 30, 00:49:18.080 --> 00:49:23.840 right? Yeah, 30. We're there. I appreciate the laugh. Thank you so much. I mean, that was 30 years ago, 00:49:23.840 --> 00:49:29.040 right? And he managed to do it. Getting a broadcast around the world, that's old news. 00:49:29.760 --> 00:49:34.960 Being able to relationally connect with somebody on another continent to the point that he's now 00:49:34.960 --> 00:49:41.200 impacting people and are spreading out and doing things and impacting the gospel in different ways. 00:49:41.200 --> 00:49:46.560 That's far more attractive, at least to me in context of what the church can be. Well, 00:49:46.560 --> 00:49:50.480 I tell you what. Yeah, I just want to open up for questions. So what do you got? Do you think in 00:49:50.480 --> 00:49:59.520 2029, the church format will look less like a planned service and a, you know, we're doing this, 00:49:59.520 --> 00:50:05.200 I mean, a lot of people are moving parts and doing this, and more like a free form, you know, 10 minute, 00:50:05.200 --> 00:50:12.000 20 minute blocks of time throughout the week and around time? I personally, and I'll let others answer in 00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:16.720 a sec. I personally think the existing model of church will continue. I think there's going to be 00:50:16.720 --> 00:50:22.320 a new model that will come forward. I think you need both models to reach different people. There is 00:50:22.320 --> 00:50:30.080 a generation, there is a type, there's a personality that will not connect to a big building as much as 00:50:30.080 --> 00:50:35.840 this underlying thing that we're talking about now. Any of you guys have an opinion on that? Well, we've, 00:50:35.840 --> 00:50:41.600 you know, for a lot of us OG people who've been doing it for the past 10 years, you know, that's, 00:50:41.600 --> 00:50:45.680 that's a 10 year mark. You're saying, what is the next 10 years going on? Yeah. Well, when we started 00:50:45.680 --> 00:50:50.880 10 years ago, nobody even knew when we were doing it. And it was just like, you, you do what? 10 years 00:50:50.880 --> 00:50:55.440 later, they still don't know what you're doing. No, 10 years later, 10 years later, people are like, 00:50:55.440 --> 00:51:01.520 oh yeah, we'll do that. Yeah, no big deal. It's ubiquitous, but it's on the verge of becoming 00:51:01.520 --> 00:51:07.520 the preferred method of doing church. That's the difference. And where before it was like, oh, this 00:51:07.520 --> 00:51:14.560 is a cool option for like fringe cases 10 years ago. Now it's become very commonplace where it's 00:51:14.560 --> 00:51:21.520 like, if you don't have an online presence or something like that, you're a little bit backwards or 00:51:22.560 --> 00:51:27.680 maybe blood-eyed. I don't know, but so whatever that is, it's just, it's like, well, why not? 00:51:27.680 --> 00:51:33.520 You know, but because now it's shifting into the preferred method and what, and that's why I feel 00:51:33.520 --> 00:51:39.360 like it will in 10 years become the primary expression of church. Any other questions? 00:51:39.360 --> 00:51:47.600 I just want to encourage everyone, I'm sure we'll talk about it more, but doing ministry 00:51:47.600 --> 00:51:54.640 online when you're reaching people is so much cheaper, so much cheaper. For example, in my church, 00:51:54.640 --> 00:52:01.600 we reach 24,000 young people, 70 countries. We've been doing it for eight years. In the first six 00:52:01.600 --> 00:52:10.000 years, our annual budget was less than $350 a year. I mean, there was no personnel, but like the total 00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:15.920 operating cost was so little. So I just want to encourage you guys with that. It's a big, 00:52:16.560 --> 00:52:21.520 like it's a, it's a lot of work, but it can be done and it's... Yeah. Don't, don't let your, uh, 00:52:21.520 --> 00:52:25.920 your financial person talk you out and say it's too expensive. Push back on that. Yes, ma'am. 00:52:25.920 --> 00:52:31.920 I'm just curious what you guys think the role of privacy and security will play into the 2029 church. 00:52:33.200 --> 00:52:34.240 Any of y'all want to take a crack? 00:52:37.680 --> 00:52:45.520 Well, I think, okay, like let's say future future. It wouldn't surprise me if we all just end up with 00:52:45.520 --> 00:52:54.000 some kind of blockchain identity so that, um, it becomes less of a, of a factor altogether because 00:52:54.000 --> 00:53:02.080 everybody is going to be known and they want to be. Um, the problem is today people are creeped out by 00:53:02.080 --> 00:53:09.680 all of the weird marketing and the ugly side of identity when in all reality, if you're going to 00:53:09.680 --> 00:53:14.400 advertise to me, I would rather have a targeted advertisement anyway. Advertise to me about something 00:53:14.400 --> 00:53:19.200 I care about, not all this stuff that I don't, right? Don't give me a Victoria's secret. It's like, 00:53:19.200 --> 00:53:26.640 I don't care about that, you know, or at least I shouldn't, you know, so the point, the point I'm 00:53:26.640 --> 00:53:35.760 making is, is that I, I believe that we will have this ubiquitous identity that will translate across 00:53:35.760 --> 00:53:43.200 the social fabric of which we live and by that everyone will be known all the time and everyone 00:53:43.200 --> 00:53:50.400 will be okay with it. The, the point where the digital natives of Gen Z, they're on all these platforms 00:53:50.400 --> 00:53:57.360 and they understand how to manage their privacy much better than their parents do. And so, um, 00:53:58.080 --> 00:54:05.600 the awareness of the, the digital native toward their own personal privacy is much more acute than 00:54:05.600 --> 00:54:10.640 what we're used to and where the shock comes for us. I don't think it's going to be the case in the 00:54:10.640 --> 00:54:16.560 generation to come because it'll just be a part of life. I've never seen a Gen Z or millennial person 00:54:16.560 --> 00:54:21.440 post like copy and paste this because Facebook's changing their privacy size. It'll be $13.99 00:54:21.440 --> 00:54:29.040 tomorrow. That doesn't happen. So real one second. The, the, uh, the power is not in a broadcast 00:54:29.040 --> 00:54:34.240 out. The power is an individual. And so a lot of times the privacy issue in the future, I don't 00:54:34.240 --> 00:54:38.080 think it's going to be a problem because I think it's, I'm having a conversation with a friend. 00:54:38.080 --> 00:54:44.080 Lifeway research tells us this right now, 63% of people are not interested in coming to your building 00:54:44.080 --> 00:54:49.040 just in the same way, honestly, that I'm probably not interested in going to a mosque. I already have 00:54:49.040 --> 00:54:54.400 my spiritual identity formated. I know what I think I know and I'm living my life that way. 00:54:55.200 --> 00:55:00.000 The majority of people already feel that way. 80% of people will have a conversation about their 00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:06.560 faith with their friends if they see that their faith is important to their friends. And so the 00:55:06.560 --> 00:55:12.480 empowering of others to have those conversations is where we are going. We are already transitioning 00:55:12.480 --> 00:55:17.440 today. And I think that's just going to continue on in the future. Yes, sir. Yeah. Go ahead, 00:55:17.440 --> 00:55:21.680 Daniel. So kind of talking about what you were talking about, like the privacy laws and just 00:55:21.680 --> 00:55:27.840 technology in general. It's advancing so fast. How do you keep up with it? I'm sitting here 25 years 00:55:27.840 --> 00:55:32.240 old. I don't even know what TikTok is. Like I'm still trying to figure out what it is. 00:55:32.800 --> 00:55:35.440 How do you keep up with it? It's a Kesha song from like 2007. 00:55:39.440 --> 00:55:43.680 It's kind of catchy, but don't say it. Yeah, don't say you like it, but it's super catchy. 00:55:45.600 --> 00:55:52.480 To be honest, sometimes some of this stuff is a distraction. And so I don't think, and I'm all 00:55:52.480 --> 00:55:58.800 about, and I encourage churches to be innovative, but I don't think that the goal is not to be 00:55:58.800 --> 00:56:06.080 innovative, to be on every platform to do that. The goal is to find where your ministry are, where 00:56:06.080 --> 00:56:11.440 your people are, where your audience is, and reach that. Now, in the context of your physical church, 00:56:11.440 --> 00:56:16.000 if the goal is to get people who are already connected to your church engaged in the physical 00:56:16.000 --> 00:56:20.400 building in a church growth model, you're going to hit the Facebooks and that because that's where 00:56:20.400 --> 00:56:25.360 they are. And in the other Daniel behind you situation, he knows where his platform is. It's 00:56:25.360 --> 00:56:32.160 Roblox, and he's building within in that context. Maybe you're a church that actually has a vision 00:56:32.160 --> 00:56:38.800 towards reaching YouTube and the community of YouTubers that exists. Well, then I want to engage 00:56:38.800 --> 00:56:45.360 and dive in and own that that area. We were talking earlier about VR church. DJ Soto is a question in the 00:56:45.360 --> 00:56:52.320 back. There's five or six VR platforms, and DJ's mission, he treats every one of those VR platforms 00:56:52.880 --> 00:56:58.000 like a multi-site campus. And so he has, and I don't even know what the names are because I don't do VR, 00:56:58.000 --> 00:57:02.320 but he's in like this primary one, and then he's over here, and then he's over here. And then somebody 00:57:02.320 --> 00:57:08.480 else spins up another VR platform, and he's recruiting and building up teams to like expand into that other 00:57:08.480 --> 00:57:15.440 area, almost like a multi-site campus, expressing the church differently. I think you hone in with what 00:57:15.440 --> 00:57:21.360 your audience is, and you figure out where they are, and then you empower them to reach people from a 00:57:21.360 --> 00:57:27.280 discipleship standpoint in those areas. Once again, it's less important what you, and we live in the 00:57:27.280 --> 00:57:33.120 social media age. This is true. It's less important of what your organization says about itself, and it's far 00:57:33.120 --> 00:57:39.840 more important about what others say about you. The power is in others going out rather than you 00:57:39.840 --> 00:57:46.480 broadcasting your single message out to others. Can I speak to that for a second? Please. So I think that 00:57:48.160 --> 00:57:57.520 it's a hard lesson to learn. If we're at this conference, we like technology. We like new things. We're 00:57:57.520 --> 00:58:10.320 usually first adopters of most new things technological. I find in my space that I'm one of the only ones on my 00:58:10.320 --> 00:58:20.080 staff that is like that. And so trying to figure out what is a distraction versus what is and should be 00:58:20.080 --> 00:58:29.920 part of our church growth strategy is that delicate balance that we play. And so I think that what I've 00:58:29.920 --> 00:58:38.880 learned over the last 10 years is that you have to look at your unique church DNA, and you have to 00:58:38.880 --> 00:58:47.520 learn how to work within that to become the digital expression of your place, where you are. And what 00:58:47.520 --> 00:58:54.160 you're saying about finding out where your people are, super important. I do think that it's important 00:58:54.160 --> 00:58:59.520 to also bring new innovative things to your church leadership and say, "Hey, here's what our strategy 00:58:59.520 --> 00:59:04.720 is right now. Here's what I would like to add to it." But because technology moves so fast, I think the 00:59:04.720 --> 00:59:08.240 danger is, and let's add this, and let's add this, and let's add this, and let's add this. And you're 00:59:08.240 --> 00:59:14.000 diversifying so much that you can't do anything really well. And so I think focusing on, "Okay, 00:59:14.000 --> 00:59:19.120 here's what we need to do now, and now we've got this under our belt, and now let's add this thing, 00:59:19.120 --> 00:59:26.400 and then let's add this thing." And do those things really well. At least that's what I'm hoping 00:59:26.400 --> 00:59:29.840 starts working for us. One second, I got a question here. Yes, sir. I think there's an interesting 00:59:29.840 --> 00:59:34.640 connection between those two questions, because you're both saying, like, where is technology going, 00:59:34.640 --> 00:59:39.920 right? What is society going to decide about privacy? And what are people using? And I think in all of 00:59:39.920 --> 00:59:44.560 these, the church is going to be the church, right? The church's mission is to preach the gospel and make 00:59:44.560 --> 00:59:49.840 disciples. We're going to be using whatever technology the world around us is using, right? In the same way 00:59:49.840 --> 00:59:55.760 that we're using electricity to further the sake of this church's building, right? We're going to be 00:59:55.760 --> 01:00:01.600 using whatever technology society is using, because that's where people are, right? And so the church 01:00:01.600 --> 01:00:07.120 in 10 years and the church in 50 years, we can't predict the future. We don't know what the technology 01:00:07.120 --> 01:00:10.880 is going to be then, but we know what the church is going to be doing, hopefully preaching and making 01:00:10.880 --> 01:00:16.080 disciples, right? And so we'll use whatever tool people are using, wherever they are. If they go back 01:00:16.080 --> 01:00:21.440 to YouTube more than Facebook or TikTok or whatever, great, whatever. Any of those, pick your audience, 01:00:21.440 --> 01:00:30.160 be in church. I think that's true for, for, I hope that's true for most churches, but I think most 01:00:30.160 --> 01:00:36.880 people would agree that the church in what, and Christianity in a lot, whatever, I mean, 01:00:36.880 --> 01:00:46.000 you think about Christian movies and Christian creativity, we are so far behind the norm of society in 01:00:46.000 --> 01:00:55.600 creativity. And, um, it's sad to say that we are that far behind. And so even when we're talking 01:00:55.600 --> 01:01:02.320 about the church of 2029, I think you look at, at technological leaders now, the church is just 01:01:02.320 --> 01:01:07.520 going to be getting there in 10 years, you know, and that's unfortunate. I think it, it's sad. 01:01:08.640 --> 01:01:16.320 I'm not even going to comment. Yes. Yes. So the church of 2029, 2029, I think what my prayer would 01:01:16.320 --> 01:01:22.560 be is that the, the 63% of people that don't want to come to your building, they would actually be 01:01:22.560 --> 01:01:28.560 redefined and understand what the truth of Christianity would look like. There's a reason why that 63% don't 01:01:28.560 --> 01:01:34.000 want to come. And that's because every person in this room possibly has a different definition of what 01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:38.720 they think the Bible is or what the gospel is or how they shared it. And there's a distortion that's 01:01:38.720 --> 01:01:43.040 happened over the years because of lack of information or lack of truth or whatever it is. 01:01:44.400 --> 01:01:50.720 And why not use the platform to tear away all the things that have been built up 01:01:51.440 --> 01:01:54.320 and reach the people who actually need to be reached? Very true. Yes, sir. 01:01:54.320 --> 01:01:59.040 Very quickly, I was just curious, like we're in the transitional stage as well. And what role does 01:01:59.040 --> 01:02:05.200 finances play in the, you know, threat towards the traditional model, which is when you've got 01:02:05.840 --> 01:02:11.680 buildings and, and, and, and people's paychecks and, you know, it's very, it's very threatening and that, 01:02:11.680 --> 01:02:18.720 and I wonder if that plays into the slowness with leadership, you know, just, it's a big, silly model. 01:02:18.720 --> 01:02:24.000 That's, that's a great question. I think Daniel hit that really well. Um, so we, we've got 18 micro 01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:32.080 sites ranging from 15 people to 300 plus people. Um, and like, if you can start, we started a 300 01:02:32.080 --> 01:02:38.320 person micro site for $600. Um, granted that's not including like my position. Technically that's 01:02:38.320 --> 01:02:45.760 a prison. So, I mean, the taxpayer's money paid for the building. Okay, fine. Let's go non-prison. 01:02:46.560 --> 01:02:52.480 Let's start a 50 person church, um, in a neighborhood and, um, for 600 bucks. Like, 01:02:53.680 --> 01:02:59.200 that church planting model is so inexpensive. I think that we just are so intimidated by technology 01:02:59.200 --> 01:03:05.760 that we, we see this upfront cost, um, as being like outrageous, but, um, yeah, where's your, 01:03:05.760 --> 01:03:09.200 one, where's your faith at? And two, like, what's your goal? Like, if your goal is really to just 01:03:09.200 --> 01:03:13.440 go out and make disciples of all nations, you can do that pretty inexpensively, I guess. 01:03:13.440 --> 01:03:16.960 Well, and let me, let me unpack a little bit because there's this other level of, 01:03:17.600 --> 01:03:23.840 are people at a 50 person micro location. Are they tithing? Are they giving? Which I think is more 01:03:23.840 --> 01:03:29.360 of where you're wanting to go. Um, here's the challenge that I would say is if you didn't have 01:03:29.360 --> 01:03:34.960 to pay for the 5,000 person campus, could you imagine what you could do with the money to invest 01:03:34.960 --> 01:03:40.720 that back into the community to make a difference where people are? I was, I was in, I was in Colorado. 01:03:40.720 --> 01:03:45.120 I'll tell the story. I was in Colorado over the, over a couple of days ago and I'm with an Uber 01:03:45.120 --> 01:03:48.880 driver and I'm, I'm having a conversation with this guy and this guy's not a Christian. I know this 01:03:48.880 --> 01:03:53.920 because he F-bombed like twice on the drive and maybe I'm assuming that could be wrong, but he was, 01:03:54.960 --> 01:03:58.800 he was, he was showing me an example of a church. I'm not going to drop the name of the church, 01:03:58.800 --> 01:04:04.960 but in Colorado, there's, there's a giga campus over here to the left. And, um, and I said something 01:04:04.960 --> 01:04:08.560 about, I was working with churches and he started talking about churches and he's like, well, 01:04:08.560 --> 01:04:11.920 boy, like this church over here, that's got all the money. Like, look at just how much money they 01:04:11.920 --> 01:04:16.000 have talking about the movie. It's like, yeah, all the talking about this building. It's like, 01:04:16.000 --> 01:04:21.920 all they have is money. And, but the perception is he, the church was using the money for themselves 01:04:21.920 --> 01:04:26.160 to build this giant building and not pouring it into the community where this guy lives. 01:04:26.480 --> 01:04:32.240 And it's a mess where we have an opportunity to do something with, with our giving selflessly, 01:04:32.240 --> 01:04:37.280 not selfishly to build a better building, but selflessly. And I say that this is a glorious 01:04:37.280 --> 01:04:41.440 building. I don't want to knock this place, but there's an opportunity for us to do things 01:04:41.440 --> 01:04:43.280 within, in the community as well. Yes, sir. 01:04:43.280 --> 01:04:47.520 What would you say to the church that's pretty established, been around for a long time, 01:04:48.080 --> 01:04:54.720 but are slow to change and, you know, resistant to even online ministry, we're 10 years in, 01:04:55.440 --> 01:05:00.560 if they finally get on board, they're going to miss, you know, oh, then the next thing comes and it's, 01:05:01.280 --> 01:05:06.160 you know, it's hard to get them to commit when there's a new thing on the horizon. 01:05:06.160 --> 01:05:15.120 I would take it missiologically first, not, this is the next new tool, because if you look at the, 01:05:15.120 --> 01:05:19.920 the history of the church in the past 50 years, you've got, you know, church growth movement, 01:05:20.720 --> 01:05:27.680 you've got willows, seeker sensitive kind of deal, you've got multi-siting, you've got micro-siting, 01:05:28.320 --> 01:05:33.840 you've got church online, all of these things are tools to do the great commission 01:05:34.480 --> 01:05:41.840 and to figure out, okay, for a lot of people doing online ministry is an extension of a lot of these 01:05:41.840 --> 01:05:48.080 other tools that they're standing on the shoulders of giants, so that, but that's not to say that it 01:05:48.080 --> 01:05:54.480 should be that way, but that's how it commonly is, so a lot of multi-site churches that have 01:05:55.840 --> 01:06:04.240 decent production and are more attractional in nature tend to open up an online campus more easily 01:06:04.240 --> 01:06:12.000 and readily than ones that don't have that infrastructure and that history, so I can't really properly answer the question, 01:06:12.000 --> 01:06:19.120 but what I can say is that if you're trying to do online ministry of an online service, 01:06:20.960 --> 01:06:25.760 you don't necessarily have to do it with that attractional model and with that particular 01:06:25.760 --> 01:06:32.800 ministry stack in place, you can have a different online church model that is different in the way 01:06:32.800 --> 01:06:40.720 that it expresses what you do have, but let it express what you do have, and instead of trying to make 01:06:40.720 --> 01:06:46.080 it your, because you're, what you're asking sometimes for some churches is to not only start an online 01:06:46.080 --> 01:06:53.520 church, but to accept the entire ministry stack that went with it, and that is, I don't think wise, 01:06:54.160 --> 01:07:00.080 because God calls us, God calls different churches to be different things for different people. Let your online 01:07:00.080 --> 01:07:07.360 expression be of what Jesus has called you to do first, and then just magnify whatever Jesus is doing there. 01:07:07.360 --> 01:07:13.200 Hey, okay, so we're going to break the podcast right there. I love this and this idea that church online is 01:07:13.200 --> 01:07:20.000 more than just a broadcast, just like a church should be more than its service. It's one hour service on Sunday. 01:07:20.000 --> 01:07:27.120 There's a challenge to live by for us to look at our church beyond what our building is, to look at what the future is going to hold, 01:07:27.120 --> 01:07:35.680 and how we as a church body can do Christ proud by seeking after and expanding this idea of discipleship, 01:07:35.680 --> 01:07:42.720 by helping people grow deeper in their faith so that they can in turn help others. Church, here's the challenge for you. 01:07:42.720 --> 01:07:48.640 I would love for you to look at your church online as who's the hero of this story. I mentioned it 01:07:48.640 --> 01:07:54.800 briefly in the broadcast. The hero of your story oftentimes is the pastor. What if, and just what if, 01:07:54.800 --> 01:08:01.120 we shifted gears where the hero of your story wasn't someone who's paid to do the job, but what if the 01:08:01.120 --> 01:08:09.680 hero trained others to be the hero? What if a pastor shifted a little bit and made others the hero of the story? 01:08:09.680 --> 01:08:15.600 What if we empowered others with evangelism, with discipleship, with generosity so that they could go 01:08:15.600 --> 01:08:23.200 out empowered to go out and be the person that God called them to be? What if the church wasn't about 01:08:23.200 --> 01:08:31.680 us as pastors and staff? What if the church online was about them? We'll see you next week here at the 01:08:31.680 --> 01:08:32.700 The Church Digital Podcast. 01:08:32.960 --> 01:08:33.500 Y'all have a good day.