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 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 --> 00:00:29.540 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 --> 00:00:40.460 here at The Church Digital. In 2020, invest in your church online. Invest in you. For more information 00:00:40.460 --> 00:00:47.380 and to find out how you can save 20%, visit thechurch.digital slash cohort. 00:00:50.660 --> 00:00:55.420 Well, I tell you what, hey, we're on episode 33 of The Church Digital, and we've got a special 00:00:55.420 --> 00:01:00.640 treat for you. And I've not even said this publicly. I've never told this story before publicly. So 00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:05.640 listening audience, you are the first one to hear this. So I was at the Church IT Network conference 00:01:05.640 --> 00:01:10.020 a couple weeks ago. I spoke and helped them coordinate a lot of the breakout sessions, and it 00:01:10.020 --> 00:01:15.580 was a lot of fun and really got to just love on and encourage a lot of the online ministers and 00:01:15.580 --> 00:01:20.240 online pastors that are out there at the churches doing things week in and week out. One of the sessions 00:01:20.240 --> 00:01:25.840 that I had scheduled myself to teach was this idea of merging church online and microlocations. And if 00:01:25.840 --> 00:01:31.680 you listen to my podcast, you know that we talk about microlocations all the time. So I have a talk, 00:01:31.760 --> 00:01:37.620 I've written blogs upon it, I've written ebooks on it. That's just one of my sweet spots. Then I find 00:01:37.620 --> 00:01:42.260 out they were very excited to tell me that Rob Wagner was going to be one of the keynote speakers 00:01:42.260 --> 00:01:48.380 for the conference. Now, if you don't know Rob, Rob is part of this underground movement of churches. 00:01:48.620 --> 00:01:55.220 There's Casey Underground, which Rob has been very passionate about working with and helping this, 00:01:55.340 --> 00:02:01.740 not a service-oriented, but a discipleship-oriented movement of church happening in the Kansas City 00:02:01.740 --> 00:02:07.700 area, which has actually spawned off other locations. I know Tampa Underground is existing and 00:02:07.700 --> 00:02:12.040 is going very strong. And there's even talks of starting to do something here in the Miami area. 00:02:12.040 --> 00:02:17.200 Oops, maybe I shouldn't have said that, but it's been really fun to see this idea of underground 00:02:17.200 --> 00:02:23.280 church, of a house church, of a microlocation, of a family being passionate about reaching into their 00:02:23.280 --> 00:02:29.240 community on their own and empowering these people to do this, to do this level of discipleship. 00:02:30.100 --> 00:02:35.180 And so I was scheduled to talk about house church and microlocation, but instead I'm like, 00:02:35.260 --> 00:02:40.120 I would rather listen to this guy, Rob Wagner, over here talk about it. So I'm not going to do my talk 00:02:40.120 --> 00:02:45.700 because I just want to listen to him, the expert, the guy who's really doing this, go into detail. 00:02:45.980 --> 00:02:51.300 And so it was a phenomenal panel. We had some others on there. Rob was very humble to jump in here and 00:02:51.300 --> 00:02:57.620 the others as well. But we painted a picture of what it means to move away from a service-oriented 00:02:57.620 --> 00:03:03.900 discipleship structure and instead move towards a discipleship structure where we empower people, 00:03:03.900 --> 00:03:10.720 where we make disciples, where we empower others in sharing their faith and discipling them to a 00:03:10.720 --> 00:03:15.880 greater understanding of who God is and what God has for them. And I'll tell you, at the end, I think 00:03:15.880 --> 00:03:22.540 the audience had a far greater understanding of how the microlocations worked and how just maybe, 00:03:22.540 --> 00:03:30.600 just possibly the church of today can exist and help build these microlocations around through church 00:03:30.600 --> 00:03:35.140 online. So here's what we've got. We had a panel set up. Of course, Rob Wagner from KC Underground 00:03:35.140 --> 00:03:39.520 mentioned that earlier is there. We brought in Brian Phipps to the conversation. He is with an 00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:44.200 organization called Disciples Made. It's their discipleship pathway that really ties in with the 00:03:44.200 --> 00:03:49.660 KC Underground movement. And just both of those guys are phenomenal. We brought in Tyler Sampson from 00:03:49.660 --> 00:03:54.640 Church Anywhere. Once again, no stranger to this podcast. It seems like every time we're talking 00:03:54.640 --> 00:03:59.380 microlocations and church online, I'm mentioning Tyler Sansom's name. And then we brought in Jason 00:03:59.380 --> 00:04:06.320 Morris, who also is from the Kansas City area, who has a long history with doing microlocations, 00:04:06.540 --> 00:04:11.660 especially in context with his church and Westside family. Okay, so I want to apologize here. The recording 00:04:11.660 --> 00:04:18.020 of this, the audio quality, isn't the best compared to what we normally have. The fidelity just is off. 00:04:18.020 --> 00:04:22.360 The main device we were using, long story short, didn't work. And so we had to fall back on a 00:04:22.360 --> 00:04:28.440 backup, which didn't have as crisp a recording. The content, what we're discussing, the messaging 00:04:28.440 --> 00:04:33.840 here, honestly, is one of the better podcasts that we've created to date. And so I present to you Rob 00:04:33.840 --> 00:04:39.500 Wagner, KC Underground, Brian Pipps, Disciples Made, Tyler Sampson, Church Anywhere, Jason Morris, 00:04:40.220 --> 00:04:45.140 Westside family, and myself, Jeff from the Church Digital, having a conversation, 00:04:45.840 --> 00:04:48.960 microlocations, and church online. Hey everybody, here you go. 00:04:49.100 --> 00:04:53.460 Hi, my name is Tyler Sansom. I work at a church in Cordon, Indiana called First Capital Christian Church, 00:04:53.520 --> 00:04:56.220 and we do a ministry called Church Anywhere. 12 seconds. 00:04:57.060 --> 00:04:59.080 That was awesome, right? Well done. 00:04:59.760 --> 00:05:03.520 Yes, sir. Awesome. Brian Pipps, I've been in Kansas City for about 10 years, 00:05:03.980 --> 00:05:09.220 pastor for about 25 years. The last 10 was at Westside Family Church, where I was the next steps 00:05:09.220 --> 00:05:14.880 pastor, disciple making structures, developed some structures that got more result than we ever 00:05:14.880 --> 00:05:19.980 thought. A short version became a thing, stepped out to do that about a year and a half ago. It's 00:05:19.980 --> 00:05:24.520 called Disciples Made, and we deliver online technology and coaching to implement it well. 00:05:25.440 --> 00:05:32.440 I'm Rob Wagner. I was on staff at a church plant in Granger, Indiana, which is near South Bend. I was 00:05:32.440 --> 00:05:38.980 there for almost 25 years, and then about five and a half years ago, moved here to Kansas City. I was 00:05:38.980 --> 00:05:44.980 also on staff at Westside Family Church with these guys. Last year, I've been a part of founding 00:05:44.980 --> 00:05:50.860 something called the Kansas City Underground, which is a network of missional leaders, disciple makers, 00:05:51.420 --> 00:05:54.840 and microchurches in Kansas City, which we'll talk a little bit more about that later. 00:05:55.340 --> 00:06:00.640 I'm Jason Morris, global innovation pastor of Westside Family Church, overseeing the digital 00:06:00.640 --> 00:06:09.020 expression of Westside to catalyze church planting movements globally around the world and microsites 00:06:09.020 --> 00:06:14.320 wherever they happen to be. Awesome. So a lot of what we're talking about, hopefully talking about, 00:06:14.320 --> 00:06:24.960 is how this idea of a church online can connect with and start a micro location or a physical location 00:06:24.960 --> 00:06:31.680 around. And so there's a difference between a campus, a multi-side campus, and then like a micro 00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:38.320 or a house church or a watch party. And through churches around America, the ones that are doing it, 00:06:38.320 --> 00:06:44.960 like they use different terms of what those smaller locations are. I'd love to maybe just pick apart 00:06:44.960 --> 00:06:50.960 here a little bit, Casey Underground, like what does expression of church look like? Church Anywhere, 00:06:51.240 --> 00:06:56.540 what does that micro expression of church, what does it tangibly look like? For us, when we talk about 00:06:56.540 --> 00:07:03.960 a micro church, our one sentence definition is it's an extended spiritual family that's led by ordinary 00:07:03.960 --> 00:07:08.600 people. The goal is to live in everyday gospel community, and they own the mission of Jesus in 00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:14.680 a particular network or neighborhood. So to break down a little bit, for us, micro church is a missionary 00:07:14.680 --> 00:07:19.800 endeavor. So we're not like organizing people that already go to churches into groups. It's like an 00:07:19.800 --> 00:07:26.360 assimilation strategy. Usually it's a couple or people partnering as what we call missional team 00:07:26.360 --> 00:07:31.960 that feel called to a certain context. So sometimes it's a neighborhood, sometimes it might be a people 00:07:31.960 --> 00:07:37.480 group like there's Algerian refugees that are in Olathe, which is about 25 minutes from here, 00:07:37.480 --> 00:07:43.000 like one of our micro churches is among Algerian refugees. We have others that are embedded into 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:49.400 the youth rodeo circuit of Kansas, for example, or a travel baseball league. One of them has even become 00:07:49.400 --> 00:07:57.320 a for profit business in Bonner. So there's different contexts, but you've got people making new disciples. 00:07:57.880 --> 00:08:01.960 And as you multiply disciples, we believe that's when you have the church. And the church, it's most 00:08:01.960 --> 00:08:08.920 fundamental level is an extended spiritual family. And then the goal is not a meeting. So a lot of 00:08:08.920 --> 00:08:13.800 times house churches, for example, it's people trying to take what is typically done in a weekend 00:08:13.800 --> 00:08:18.600 service inside of a big box somewhere, and they just do it in somebody's living room. Now I'm all for 00:08:18.600 --> 00:08:24.680 that. But the goal for us is actually a community on mission, living into the gospel as a community, 00:08:25.320 --> 00:08:30.760 not meeting weekly. Are there weekly meetings? Absolutely. But there's so many different touches 00:08:30.760 --> 00:08:35.080 between the meetings. And then they're owning the mission of Jesus in a particular neighborhood 00:08:35.080 --> 00:08:42.920 or network. So there's a very like fiercely local focus on owning the mission of Jesus. We're in a 00:08:42.920 --> 00:08:48.360 subdivision called City View Farms. And so our microchurch is owning the mission of Jesus in about a two to 00:08:48.360 --> 00:08:54.440 three block radius of that neighborhood. And our microchurches have that kind of mission specificity. 00:08:54.440 --> 00:08:58.360 Because if you're going to actually live like a great missionary, you can't do that very well in 00:08:58.360 --> 00:09:03.320 multiple contexts. Like you have to kind of pick a primary where you drop down deep and really live 00:09:03.320 --> 00:09:08.360 out the missionary rhythm. So that's what our microchurch is for us. And then we have different rhythms. 00:09:08.360 --> 00:09:15.960 We have what we call two out, two up, two in. So two out is about once a month. One of your outs is 00:09:15.960 --> 00:09:20.840 going to be some kind of socially inclusive party. Another one's going to be serve oriented. The two 00:09:20.840 --> 00:09:25.400 up is within your extended spiritual family. You have like an immediate spiritual family. That's your 00:09:25.400 --> 00:09:29.080 missional team that's owning the mission with you. You want to be meeting with them at least twice a 00:09:29.080 --> 00:09:34.280 month. And that's orbiting around a meal, a discovery Bible study, prayer, planning for mission, 00:09:34.280 --> 00:09:39.800 and then two in. And the two in is underneath all these microchurches, we have what we call a hub. 00:09:39.800 --> 00:09:44.840 And the hub is the mission agency that trains the missionaries in the microchurches. So we have 00:09:44.840 --> 00:09:50.600 seven equipping teams in a hub. And those provide all the services needed to launch and sustain and 00:09:50.600 --> 00:09:55.800 coach and multiply microchurches. So we're saying at least twice a month, you want to be connecting with 00:09:55.800 --> 00:10:00.680 your hub. So you're not some disconnected sort of cancerous cell that's reproducing out there that 00:10:00.680 --> 00:10:05.640 you're under governance and you're being coached and supported. So does that get at it? 00:10:05.640 --> 00:10:08.840 Oh yeah, I mean that was pretty rich right there. Is everybody taking notes on that? 00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:16.200 What's interesting, I don't want to like go down this rabbit trail, but like there was a really thick 00:10:16.200 --> 00:10:21.240 strategy there in context of what perception on the outside might actually be. It's very organic. 00:10:22.440 --> 00:10:27.480 And so it's a really interesting tension of where you've got that hub, you've got, you know, 00:10:27.480 --> 00:10:31.960 all these infrastructures and this plan in place. There's the six, the ins and the outs and I'll have, 00:10:31.960 --> 00:10:35.720 I'm glad I got that recorded because I didn't write any of that down. But there is, there is 00:10:35.720 --> 00:10:41.080 intentionality behind a lot of that, which I, just from the outside, man, I really appreciate that. 00:10:41.080 --> 00:10:45.320 Yeah, we, we're radically committed to like grassroots and kind of organic growth. 00:10:45.320 --> 00:10:49.640 But like if you have a garden and you have a tomato plant that's growing and you don't have 00:10:49.640 --> 00:10:54.040 some kind of structure to hold it up, it'll lay down on the ground and rot out and die. 00:10:54.040 --> 00:10:58.040 And that's what happens with a lot of organic church stuff. It's like first generation and 00:10:58.040 --> 00:11:04.760 then it tends to rot. So we're trying to create a structure to support that organic growth without 00:11:04.760 --> 00:11:09.320 controlling it or micromanaging it. Awesome. So Church Anywhere is a 00:11:10.440 --> 00:11:15.880 initiative-based microsite strategy that we have in our discipleship pathway. 00:11:16.520 --> 00:11:23.320 So when I say initiative-based, we, our goal would be to take someone from an unbeliever all the way to 00:11:23.320 --> 00:11:28.360 conversion and then from conversion, help them find their purpose that will eventually help people 00:11:28.360 --> 00:11:34.520 find and follow Jesus. So their purpose could be for, I'll give you a real life example of purpose. 00:11:35.320 --> 00:11:41.480 One of our Church Anywhere leaders was, she was exposed to some orphans in our area 00:11:42.120 --> 00:11:47.800 and fell in love with these orphans. So she felt like her purpose and passion was to go and help 00:11:47.800 --> 00:11:54.440 these orphans find and follow Jesus. So she has created a Church Anywhere location at a local 00:11:54.440 --> 00:12:00.760 orphanage that has resulted this year in three of those kids finding homes. So they do like a church 00:12:00.760 --> 00:12:06.520 service-ish with them. That's the technology piece of it. But we always train our leaders to say that 00:12:07.080 --> 00:12:12.600 relationships trump technology every single time. The main goal was to go out and build relationships. 00:12:12.600 --> 00:12:19.880 And at SPIRE conference, one of the keynote speakers mentioned us, and we had never thought of us 00:12:19.880 --> 00:12:24.120 in this context before, but it makes total sense. He said we're like the Dollar General of Churches 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:31.160 because we're rural. Our main mission is to have people find their purpose and go out and serve 00:12:31.160 --> 00:12:35.880 underserved people. And so Dollar General thrives in most people like Walmart and Target because they're 00:12:35.880 --> 00:12:43.160 serving the underserved. And so that's kind of who we are. We want to empower our people to go out and be 00:12:43.160 --> 00:12:48.440 pastors to the underserved by utilizing technology as the tool to get in that door. 00:12:48.440 --> 00:12:51.880 That's awesome. The Dollar General. Right. Very. 00:12:51.880 --> 00:12:58.760 That's clear. Dollargeneralchurch.com. Right. Jason, I don't have you for the slide. I know you were coming, 00:12:58.760 --> 00:13:06.440 but maybe share a little bit. How does Westside treat micro? Well, we have two flavors of small. 00:13:07.880 --> 00:13:16.680 One is our church planting movement that we have internationally. And those average 42, 00:13:16.680 --> 00:13:22.680 so that's relatively small. But we keep it small and reproducing on purpose. And it's just a full-blown 00:13:22.680 --> 00:13:29.560 church planting movement that gets empowered through a lot of tools technologically that help them get the 00:13:29.560 --> 00:13:35.880 job done. One of the cool things, just so that you know, just got back from India last week 00:13:36.520 --> 00:13:46.040 and was at the graduation at the Naglanda group that KC Underground supported. In 18 months now, 00:13:46.040 --> 00:13:48.200 we have 80 new churches. Wow. 00:13:48.200 --> 00:13:58.440 Go God. Go God. And Enosh wanted to say thank you. So anyway, just a lot of what we do is partner 00:13:58.440 --> 00:14:03.080 with other churches too, to create those linkages to people on the ground that are actually getting 00:14:03.080 --> 00:14:11.960 the work done and to help them to just multiply Jesus everywhere. That's one flavor of micro-citing. 00:14:11.960 --> 00:14:16.440 Another flavor, that's really probably more church planting in a house church scenario, 00:14:16.440 --> 00:14:22.040 but we do a lot of online tools to empower that. That's primarily global, right? Yes, yes, globally. 00:14:22.040 --> 00:14:27.160 One of the neat things is that some of our global partners are now using the same online tools 00:14:27.160 --> 00:14:33.880 that I have used with them to further their efforts. Like Ed, for example, because you guys know who he is, 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:39.880 was on a motorbike going to three different countries all the time, rarely ever home. Today, 00:14:39.880 --> 00:14:45.880 and I've got video of this. It's really cool. He's doing online church planning training with a Facebook 00:14:45.880 --> 00:14:52.440 group in his language in Thai, you know, with the church planters that are in Laos and me and Marno, 00:14:52.440 --> 00:14:58.600 that kind of stuff. So that kind of stuff, killer. Love that guy. So that's the flavor of micro-citing as a 00:14:58.600 --> 00:15:03.480 church planter. The other flavor, which is a little bit in contrast to what you mentioned, 00:15:04.200 --> 00:15:12.840 was taking the, what we do online and giving it freely available to anyone who wanted to use it 00:15:12.840 --> 00:15:18.760 as a watch party for either online or on site in their neighborhood, wherever they happen to be. 00:15:18.760 --> 00:15:25.240 We have a micro-site in France. We've got one in San Antonio. We've got one in Mexico now. There's a lot 00:15:25.240 --> 00:15:31.480 of different places that they somehow are connected or associated with Westside that love it so much, 00:15:31.480 --> 00:15:37.320 but they don't have something like that where they ended up moving to or something like that. And so 00:15:37.320 --> 00:15:42.760 we just tell them, well, hey, we can help you be Westside wherever you are. We call that Westside 00:15:42.760 --> 00:15:48.120 anywhere. So we've even, you know, messed around with the idea of instead of calling it Westside 00:15:48.120 --> 00:15:52.680 online because online really doesn't mean anything anymore because everybody's online. It meant 00:15:52.680 --> 00:15:58.200 something a year ago, 10 years ago when that was the differentiating factor. But today online, 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:04.040 it doesn't really say much. But if you say Westside anywhere, then that sparks a little bit of 00:16:04.040 --> 00:16:09.320 creativity in people to think, oh, I could have Westside in my home or my neighborhood. But what if I'm on 00:16:09.320 --> 00:16:13.960 the Eastside? You're always on the Westside of something. You're always on the Westside of 00:16:13.960 --> 00:16:22.440 something. So anyway. So anyway, those are the two flavors of micro-site. Awesome. Yeah. So let's 00:16:22.440 --> 00:16:27.880 hone in a little bit on this idea of in the global, the micro, the church planning, like that, that's 00:16:27.880 --> 00:16:32.120 awesome. But let's try to keep it in context. Yeah, keep it domestic. Domestic. Sure. That may 00:16:32.120 --> 00:16:39.000 trickle over international for this. So let's get practical here, whether online or physical. Like let's 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:45.080 define what a micro-location or micro-site is. Who are they? What are they doing? Where are they going 00:16:45.080 --> 00:16:51.640 to be? What are some examples of micro-locations that are around? Ours are, because it's passion-based, 00:16:51.640 --> 00:16:57.080 because it's this initiative-based, they're all over the spectrum with the possibilities of what they 00:16:57.080 --> 00:17:04.360 could be. So for example, there's a lady and her husband who are very passionate about special needs 00:17:04.360 --> 00:17:08.680 adults. They realize that the people that are not getting the attention are the workers. So the people that 00:17:08.680 --> 00:17:13.880 are driving these special needs adults around, they're caring for them. And so while the special 00:17:13.880 --> 00:17:17.880 needs adults hang out in one room of their house on Sunday nights, they do church together in the 00:17:17.880 --> 00:17:23.000 living room with the workers. So that's like one example of what a micro-location is. So that's 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:27.960 empowering to people from our church that said our passion is this, to become the pastors of house 00:17:27.960 --> 00:17:32.600 church. Another example of that though is, I shared this yesterday, but it's the coolest story ever. 00:17:34.280 --> 00:17:42.520 An inmate at one of our locations decided that after he found Christ, his passion is now to reach out to 00:17:42.520 --> 00:17:47.720 other people that were in his similar situations. So not necessarily just an inmate, but he's a convicted 00:17:47.720 --> 00:17:54.280 murderer. So he's serving 65 years and he's like, guys, I love what you're doing, but you will never 00:17:54.280 --> 00:18:00.280 reach the hardcore people in this jail with like praise and worship music and a sermon. And so what he's 00:18:00.280 --> 00:18:06.200 decided to do is something that he's calling hardcore church. And so we helped him learn how to edit 00:18:06.200 --> 00:18:12.120 videos. So he's creating his own videos. He's using former gang members, testimonies, that kind of thing. 00:18:12.920 --> 00:18:18.760 And he's, he's recruited like cell leaders. So he's got his own team working with the chaplain at the 00:18:18.760 --> 00:18:24.920 jail. And I went, I went on Sunday to be there for him for, for that service on my way here. And they 00:18:24.920 --> 00:18:31.560 had like 307 inmates that, that, that, that were not the normal people we minister to in that jail. And 00:18:31.560 --> 00:18:36.280 can't stress that enough. Like that's not, they're not double dipping. There's 300 completely separate 00:18:36.280 --> 00:18:43.720 inmates. So for us, a micro location is empowering a normal person to lead a church that could be 15 00:18:43.720 --> 00:18:49.960 people. It could be 300 people. I would basically echo your answer for us. A micro church is again, 00:18:49.960 --> 00:18:55.560 it's a spiritual extended family. It's led by ordinary people. And we wouldn't call it like a micro site, 00:18:55.560 --> 00:19:01.000 per se, because again, we see it more as an extended spiritual family, but they would have locations that 00:19:01.000 --> 00:19:07.080 they're called to. Um, some examples that I just mentioned a few minutes ago, uh, one of them, 00:19:07.080 --> 00:19:12.200 Chad and Allison Chambers, they've embedded into the youth rodeo circuit. These are kids that are, 00:19:12.200 --> 00:19:17.400 you know, middle school, high school age. And every weekend, there's a different rodeo. And there's 00:19:17.400 --> 00:19:23.320 about, you know, a couple hundred families that are making this circuit. So they started making disciples 00:19:23.960 --> 00:19:29.960 in that kind of traveling band of gypsies that follow the rodeo. And, uh, like three weeks ago, 00:19:29.960 --> 00:19:35.800 they had two, uh, women get baptized. Like they're leading people to Christ. Yeah, it is. It's amazing. 00:19:35.800 --> 00:19:40.440 And what happens is when they're at the rodeo now, they've had so many people come to faith that they 00:19:40.440 --> 00:19:45.640 actually have a public service and they'll have, uh, more than a hundred people who show up for that 00:19:45.640 --> 00:19:51.880 gathered service. But then outside of the radio, uh, rodeo, we also do, we call discovery Bible studies. 00:19:51.880 --> 00:19:58.120 So these are, it's a very simple discovery based of way of engaging the Bible. So they'll spin out 00:19:58.120 --> 00:20:03.720 discovery Bible studies in the hometowns of the people that are a part of this larger microchurch 00:20:03.720 --> 00:20:10.280 as a way to multiply potential new microchurches. Another family, the Barnes, um, their kids are 00:20:10.280 --> 00:20:15.960 in a travel baseball league and, um, and then their daughters in a travel volleyball league. 00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:21.080 That's become kind of the feeder system for their microchurch, which is located in Piper, 00:20:21.080 --> 00:20:25.960 which is a rural community. And, uh, they've grown to where if they throw a party, they'll 00:20:25.960 --> 00:20:30.680 have a hundred people show up. But within that there's six or seven families that kind of make 00:20:30.680 --> 00:20:38.680 up the core of the family. Um, for us, a microchurch is going to have, you're going to have the presence of 00:20:38.680 --> 00:20:50.280 worship community and mission. And you need to have, um, that, that balance of all three in our mind for 00:20:50.280 --> 00:20:57.560 it to actually be a church. Like a guy who is passionate about the homeless, who's like feeding 00:20:57.560 --> 00:21:03.160 them and then reading verses and then kind of goes home. That's fantastic. It's not a church though. 00:21:03.160 --> 00:21:08.120 Right. So when you have a community that's built around the person of Jesus, they're practicing 00:21:08.120 --> 00:21:13.480 community mission and worship. And for us, they also have to be willing to come under some kind 00:21:13.480 --> 00:21:18.680 of governance. Like for us, it's pretty simple. Jesus is the head of the church. Amen. But then 00:21:18.680 --> 00:21:24.520 there's also elders and deacons, you know? So when they're connected to the hub, they're connected 00:21:24.520 --> 00:21:28.360 to a network of microchurches where there is that kind of governance, where they're going to 00:21:29.240 --> 00:21:33.960 experience the headship of Jesus through eldership and so forth. A lot of what we're talking about, 00:21:33.960 --> 00:21:40.360 they're very, um, so positive. You've got people, you got six or seven families doing a thing, um, 00:21:40.360 --> 00:21:45.400 connected to this, uh, sporting. I honestly never thought of that. Gathering a hundred people together, 00:21:45.400 --> 00:21:50.040 but having a core family of six or seven that are in control of their own, uh, spiritual growth, 00:21:50.040 --> 00:21:55.000 spiritual development. A lot of times, uh, when talking with, with churches, there's a, 00:21:55.000 --> 00:22:00.120 there's an underlying negativity, uh, maybe a perception when it comes to a house church, 00:22:00.120 --> 00:22:04.440 somebody that's kind of controlling their own spirituality or, you know, they're so disgruntled 00:22:04.440 --> 00:22:09.160 with the big C church or a local church expression that they're kind of doing something 00:22:09.160 --> 00:22:14.920 on their own. What's, what is that tension really like? Like, how do you answer some of those concerns 00:22:14.920 --> 00:22:21.560 or, or what's your perception of reading of a situation of a family who arguably another church 00:22:21.560 --> 00:22:25.720 would look at it like, well, they're isolating themselves from being part of a larger community, 00:22:25.720 --> 00:22:29.800 instead doing this together in their own neighborhood? Okay. For us, I think whenever 00:22:29.800 --> 00:22:34.600 there's any kind of movement, the first part of the movement is always reactionary. 00:22:35.400 --> 00:22:42.520 So like missional has been a movement in America for what, 15 years. So I do think early on, 00:22:42.520 --> 00:22:47.800 there were a lot of people that were angry, um, and not unjustifiably so. There's probably some 00:22:47.800 --> 00:22:53.960 legitimate reasons for their anger. There's been a lot of like spiritual abuse and, and corruption. 00:22:53.960 --> 00:22:59.240 And we all can name one leader after another who built their brand around their personality, 00:22:59.240 --> 00:23:03.080 and then it collapsed. And a lot of people have been hurt by that and disillusioned by that. 00:23:03.640 --> 00:23:09.480 Um, but what I see a lot more of happening right now is actually like mature expressions of missional, 00:23:09.480 --> 00:23:13.400 like what's happening with church anywhere. Like the folks that are a part of the Kansas City 00:23:13.400 --> 00:23:20.520 underground, um, many of them discovered this passion for mission in the context of the prevailing model. 00:23:21.080 --> 00:23:26.280 Like Westside was a fertile environment where they were learning how to become a disciple maker. 00:23:26.280 --> 00:23:32.200 They were experiencing missionary formation. They were growing as leaders, discovering their calling, 00:23:32.200 --> 00:23:36.360 leading this thing on mission. So when we launched out of Westside, it was actually a really positive 00:23:37.240 --> 00:23:43.640 experience in that a bunch of people who had been developed this way. Now we're launching out, um, 00:23:43.640 --> 00:23:49.560 a new expression of church that isn't just reaction against the old. It's more like an extension, 00:23:50.520 --> 00:23:55.800 um, that in order for it to reach its full potential needed to break away from the prevailing model. 00:23:56.360 --> 00:24:04.760 Um, so we, what we do to keep it being from being reactionary or getting toxic is like, 00:24:04.760 --> 00:24:09.720 we have like a orth, orthodoxy kind of irreducible minimum that everybody agrees to, 00:24:09.720 --> 00:24:14.840 which is like the apostles creed, the Lausanne covenant. And then we have 18 values that are part of 00:24:14.840 --> 00:24:20.360 what it means to be the underground. The hub also provides like support and coaching and governance. 00:24:20.360 --> 00:24:26.120 We feel like, and I've been in the prevailing model and very successful churches for 25 years. Like, 00:24:26.120 --> 00:24:30.920 I feel like we have better eyes on, and we're more informed about what's happening in our microchurches 00:24:30.920 --> 00:24:35.160 on a daily and weekly basis than most churches are about what's going on in their small groups. 00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:36.520 It's just true. 00:24:36.520 --> 00:24:36.840 Agreed. 00:24:36.840 --> 00:24:37.640 Like, and there's a- 00:24:37.640 --> 00:24:44.440 Yeah, I can second that too. And I'm, I'm part of Westside and my wife, she is a part of underground, 00:24:44.440 --> 00:24:50.040 right? Because we have this, Westside is great. I often talk about it as it's a kingdom incubator. 00:24:50.040 --> 00:24:50.440 Mm-hmm. 00:24:50.440 --> 00:24:56.920 You know, it allows for expressions of kingdom work to go beyond the four walls of Westside, 00:24:56.920 --> 00:25:00.920 you know, Disciples made with you. Great example. Underground's a great example. The, 00:25:00.920 --> 00:25:06.680 the point I'm trying to make is, is that my wife has been poured into, she told me this. She's like, 00:25:06.680 --> 00:25:12.280 I feel like I've been poured into more in the past year or two than I have in my entire life before. 00:25:12.280 --> 00:25:12.840 Prisga. 00:25:13.400 --> 00:25:18.920 That was the last piece I was going to say. He didn't say it, this phrase, but what got, what gets elevated to 00:25:18.920 --> 00:25:23.720 this level and answers your question specifically is the level of soul care they provide to these 00:25:23.720 --> 00:25:28.440 folks. Because the folks that step out, if you step out angry, whether you step out angry to plant a 00:25:28.440 --> 00:25:33.080 church or you step out angry to start a microchurch, if you start out angry, you're going to end up 00:25:33.080 --> 00:25:39.000 shriveling. The antidote to that is meaningful soul care under the governance support of the elders 00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:44.040 and deacons. And, and you can't, you can't keep going in underground. You'll find your way out. 00:25:44.040 --> 00:25:50.600 Yeah. In fact, every new microchurch leader goes through a really immersive assessment where we're 00:25:50.600 --> 00:25:54.840 checking into like, how are you with your most important relationships, with your spiritual and 00:25:54.840 --> 00:25:58.200 emotional health, how are you actually doing financially? And then we do a really deep 00:25:58.200 --> 00:26:04.120 assessment on their calling. Um, everything from the GPS assessment we developed to Enneagram and 00:26:04.120 --> 00:26:12.680 strength binders and disc and every single microchurch leader gets like a personalized coaching plan. 00:26:12.680 --> 00:26:18.360 Um, that's like probably a year's worth of spiritual direction. Um, and then we're meeting with them to 00:26:18.360 --> 00:26:23.320 kind of follow through on that. So all of that kind of stuff keeps it healthy, keeps it on mission and 00:26:23.320 --> 00:26:28.520 not reactive. And there's, there's, I think if you're hearing a lot of this, it's like, whoa, that's a lot. 00:26:28.520 --> 00:26:35.560 And yes, that is true. And I also believe that because of the way that this is being approached, 00:26:36.120 --> 00:26:44.280 it is getting close to why you can take an ordinary person and release them into ministry 00:26:44.280 --> 00:26:49.720 is because of this backup stuff that you guys are doing. One of the prevailing statistics that gets 00:26:49.720 --> 00:26:55.800 talked about a lot is that the best way to get gospel saturation, have more people get baptized, 00:26:55.800 --> 00:27:01.960 more people come to Jesus is to is new church plants. And I think that that's not necessarily 00:27:01.960 --> 00:27:09.240 causation, but a correlative step, because I personally believe that the reason why people 00:27:09.240 --> 00:27:14.600 get saved and people get baptized and more people get saved and baptized in a new church plant is 00:27:14.600 --> 00:27:20.440 because the church planter was the only one that got really discipled. So if we were to really disciple 00:27:20.440 --> 00:27:25.640 to this level, everybody, what would happen? That would change the statistic. 00:27:26.280 --> 00:27:30.600 Let me, let me interject one thing, because we've used this word disciple, I don't know, 00:27:30.600 --> 00:27:36.600 a dozen times in the past 15 minutes. Disciple means 100 things to 80 different people. So let's 00:27:36.600 --> 00:27:44.600 assign, let's actually define right now what discipleship means. Like our usage of using it, 00:27:44.600 --> 00:27:47.000 gentlemen, what is exactly discipleship? 00:27:47.000 --> 00:27:51.240 Well, I mean, I think one of the biggest issues is the disciple making. You're pointing it, 00:27:51.240 --> 00:27:56.680 it lacks definition and it lacks a definition that includes a motivation for people to want to be a 00:27:56.680 --> 00:28:01.880 part of it. And I believe that Jesus offers the most extraordinary invitation that's filled with 00:28:01.880 --> 00:28:07.720 motivation to be a disciple of his. It's in John 10, 10. It's like, let's leave the stuff that's broken, 00:28:07.720 --> 00:28:13.960 that the thief killed, steal, killed, and destroyed. And let's walk into a fully alive life. Anybody at 00:28:13.960 --> 00:28:19.080 fully alive already? That's it. Anybody like to have a little bit more of that fully alive 00:28:19.800 --> 00:28:23.160 tomorrow? Yeah. And everybody in the world is saying the same thing. 00:28:23.720 --> 00:28:29.640 So if Jesus has that kind of invitation to being his disciple, come live fully alive and leave the 00:28:29.640 --> 00:28:34.920 brokenness of the thief, then what does that look like? And the Holy Spirit, I believe, is the source of 00:28:34.920 --> 00:28:38.920 transformation in a disciple's life. So we ought to ask the question, how does the spirit then 00:28:38.920 --> 00:28:44.520 practically change the life of a person into a more fully alive life? Amen. 00:28:44.520 --> 00:28:53.000 And to me, yeah, I'm with you. Totally with you. Right? And so, I mean, you look at the scriptures and 00:28:53.000 --> 00:28:59.240 everything boils down to these two ideas. One, he's going to bear spiritual fruit in your life. 00:28:59.960 --> 00:29:06.600 If you're not more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, you know, self-controlled, faithful, 00:29:06.600 --> 00:29:14.200 whatever the other one is. If you're not that, and you can parse Romans, you've missed the point. 00:29:15.960 --> 00:29:21.080 And we're not helping people cultivate that fruit. But a definition of a disciple is one who's 00:29:21.080 --> 00:29:25.960 becoming filled with the Spirit, evidence of the Spirit. And the other part of the Spirit's 00:29:25.960 --> 00:29:30.760 influence in our life is what the Bible calls spiritual gifts. You know, a lot of people try 00:29:30.760 --> 00:29:34.760 to take disciple making and boil it down. It's not what you're doing, it's who you're becoming. Or it's 00:29:34.760 --> 00:29:39.320 not just what you're becoming, it's what you're doing. It's a hundred percent both of those things. 00:29:40.280 --> 00:29:44.920 And if we really aim at disciple making around those two things, we call them character, fruit of the 00:29:44.920 --> 00:29:51.000 Spirit. And then our personal calling, which is largely informed by the gifts of the Spirit, but 00:29:51.000 --> 00:29:56.840 there's more to a personal calling. What we found in our disciple making efforts is when we cultivated fruit 00:29:56.840 --> 00:30:02.680 and developed gifts, that created an impact in the people and then through the people that made people 00:30:03.240 --> 00:30:09.480 predisposed to doing the kind of activity that these folks are talking about. It's almost like it created 00:30:09.480 --> 00:30:17.480 a space for a new creativity, a new imagination about how they can be priests in their own pulpit, 00:30:17.480 --> 00:30:21.720 whether that's serving in the way they have or the Algerian folks or whatever. I mean, 00:30:21.720 --> 00:30:26.920 the Spirit is infinitely creative in how He wants to give people. So the definition, character times 00:30:26.920 --> 00:30:33.000 calling equals impact. Motivation, intrinsically there. We were born to be people who are in 00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:37.240 relationship with people. And by the way, if you develop the fruit of the Spirit, your relationships 00:30:37.240 --> 00:30:42.520 get a whole lot better. How many of you would have better relationships with your kids if you were 00:30:42.520 --> 00:30:48.600 more patient, self-controlled, kind, gentle. How about with your spouse? I don't have to go far. 00:30:50.120 --> 00:30:56.440 You want those relationships. And Jesus is saying, "The thief broke him, and I've come to fix him." 00:30:57.880 --> 00:31:04.120 All right? And then everybody's dying for the significance answer in their life. We talk about 00:31:04.120 --> 00:31:11.080 legacy. We talk about wanting to be an intimate part of whatever is good in the world. And if you've 00:31:11.080 --> 00:31:16.040 been given spiritual gifts from heaven that the Father says, "I'll infuse with my power to go beyond 00:31:16.040 --> 00:31:22.760 what you can do on your own to make a difference," then why not sign up? And by the way, those two 00:31:22.760 --> 00:31:29.240 deep-seated passions of ours to become better people that have loving relationships and to be people of 00:31:29.240 --> 00:31:37.480 significance and influence are wired into our IT. See? I tried that. I'm a discipleship guy. I tried to go 00:31:37.480 --> 00:31:47.640 into your world. Let me pick myself back up here. God hard-coded into you at your creation those two 00:31:47.640 --> 00:31:52.280 desires. When he said, "Be fruitful and multiply," what does that take? 00:31:53.320 --> 00:32:01.560 Animacy. How's it restored? Through the Spirit. And he's also hard-wired into you the "have dominion 00:32:02.360 --> 00:32:08.600 over my creation." It's right there in the creation mandate. Be fruitful and multiply and have dominion. 00:32:08.600 --> 00:32:13.560 That's right. So we're going to go ahead and call the ushers forward for us to talk us. 00:32:13.560 --> 00:32:15.880 Can I jump in here with that? Please, go ahead. 00:32:15.880 --> 00:32:21.480 Bec, I'm going to bounce off of what you just said to answer this question. So for most of you in this 00:32:21.480 --> 00:32:25.560 room, you're not in the context of something like the underground. So you have a governing body over 00:32:25.560 --> 00:32:30.280 top of you. It's very similar to my estimation. We are a church, not like a movement. And so it's 00:32:30.280 --> 00:32:35.000 significantly harder to talk to leadership about the negative impacts of doing something like house 00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.000 church. Because if you say, "Hey, let's have our people go be the church outside of the building," 00:32:39.800 --> 00:32:44.760 naturally, the building's a lot more empty. And so the church leadership across the country 00:32:44.760 --> 00:32:48.920 looks at that and says, "Are you crazy? I'm not going to let people not come to the church." 00:32:48.920 --> 00:32:52.680 Just hit the tension point. Right, hit the tension point. But here's the shift, though. 00:32:53.240 --> 00:33:00.200 Whenever you empower people to go be like Jesus, that's really attractive. And we've noticed, 00:33:00.200 --> 00:33:04.840 and it was a shock to us, but when we got out of the mindset of everything's about us, 00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.000 I have this tattoo that says, "Not the kingdom of Tyler." It's this constant reminder like, 00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:12.440 "Hey, it's not my kingdom." And so when we got out of the mindset of like, 00:33:12.440 --> 00:33:17.000 it's all about building this physical building of the people in this church. I got 305 Oliver 00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:22.680 Street in Cordon, Indiana. Our people became so attractive because they're living like Jesus 00:33:22.680 --> 00:33:26.600 on mission and on purpose that our physical campus grew as well. 00:33:26.600 --> 00:33:34.040 So wait a minute. Tyler, you're saying that if people become more open-handed and generous that 00:33:34.040 --> 00:33:37.640 God will give more... Somebody probably taught that at some point. 00:33:40.120 --> 00:33:46.040 The byproducts we thought with the negativity was actually a positive byproduct for us. 00:33:46.600 --> 00:33:52.440 So not only did these microsites grow, but then our community of believers that were not in microsites 00:33:52.440 --> 00:33:57.960 also began to grow because they saw our church going into the community, which is part of what 00:33:57.960 --> 00:34:03.480 we're called to do. Another tension point that's like the numbers on the weekend is also giving. 00:34:03.480 --> 00:34:08.680 People are concerned like, "Okay, the giving is going to just go to the wind." Like our experience 00:34:08.680 --> 00:34:13.400 in the underground, I have a very, very close friend. He's actually like my spiritual father who 00:34:13.400 --> 00:34:18.440 planted kind of a traditional model church at the same time as the underground. And if you would compare 00:34:18.440 --> 00:34:24.920 our giving, like our internal giving through the microchurches towards the hub to sustain everything, 00:34:24.920 --> 00:34:30.040 is actually outpacing the giving that's coming in in the weekend services in the traditional 00:34:30.040 --> 00:34:35.480 model. And these are up to 300 people a weekend. And so that's been an interesting sort of like 00:34:35.480 --> 00:34:38.520 experiment that we've been sort of running concurrently. 00:34:38.520 --> 00:34:42.840 The same logic applies. Whenever you're living on mission and on purpose, 00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:48.280 you're becoming a better disciple, which will lead to more generosity in total. It all comes full circle 00:34:48.280 --> 00:34:54.520 there. But we've somehow for a long time kind of just stopped the ball from rolling and focused on 00:34:54.520 --> 00:34:56.520 butts in seats. It's true. 00:34:56.520 --> 00:35:02.120 So what are the tensions? Because we live in a world, and I put a slide up, USA Church is often 00:35:02.120 --> 00:35:06.520 driven by large buildings and butts in seats. I didn't know he was going to say that. It was already 00:35:06.520 --> 00:35:13.560 predestined. Is there a place for - predestined. All right. Is there a place for micro sites? 00:35:14.600 --> 00:35:19.960 So the goal of the people in here is that they're doing the large. We need to go from large to small. 00:35:21.720 --> 00:35:26.840 What tensions is an organization that's used to large going small? What tensions are they going to feel? 00:35:27.560 --> 00:35:32.040 I think Jason should probably jump in this one. I do, actually. I'm not a staff at a large church. 00:35:33.080 --> 00:35:40.280 Yeah. I can tell you about, okay, on a personal level, I can tell you about the tension in our 00:35:40.280 --> 00:35:48.600 family, you know, because I'm a pastor of a large prevailing church with a, you know, an online campus of 00:35:48.600 --> 00:35:50.840 thousands of people. And my wife 00:35:51.560 --> 00:35:59.400 really felt like helping out the underground. And so there are two different, and don't get me wrong, underground 00:36:00.040 --> 00:36:04.520 isn't, I think, has been launched from Westside. We call it divide and partner. 00:36:05.160 --> 00:36:11.240 So the expression, in order for it to be what it needed to be, at some point when the teenager gets old enough, 00:36:11.240 --> 00:36:12.360 they need to leave the house. 00:36:12.360 --> 00:36:18.680 And they're not, it's not best to keep them cloistered in the basement. You've got to launch them. 00:36:19.240 --> 00:36:24.200 And so that's what I feel like, you know, simple church and Casey and all that stuff, 00:36:24.200 --> 00:36:29.320 when we went with disciples made at some point, you've got to launch it for it to be what God wants 00:36:29.320 --> 00:36:36.280 it to be, because it's not our church. It's Jesus church. So at the end of the day, the, the way that 00:36:36.280 --> 00:36:41.960 things happen is so radically different in the Casey underground context and everything that Maria was 00:36:41.960 --> 00:36:49.800 used to, it was major whiplash because she had to unlearn so many things in order to be able to 00:36:49.800 --> 00:36:55.160 even know how to function inside this environment that it took a while. 00:36:55.160 --> 00:36:57.000 She kept thinking I was the lead pastor. 00:36:58.600 --> 00:37:03.640 We don't have any pastors. Like everybody who leads a microchurch is a pastor, but we don't have 00:37:03.640 --> 00:37:09.400 pastors on staff, you know, but probably the first three or four months I had to correct her for it, 00:37:09.400 --> 00:37:11.720 but I was like, I'm not, I'm not a lead pastor. 00:37:11.720 --> 00:37:18.280 We'll see. And that's, that actually surfaces. One of the tensions is the confusion because we tried to 00:37:18.280 --> 00:37:25.400 have simple church and Casey underground coexist inside the big box environment. And what we created 00:37:25.400 --> 00:37:31.080 was a lot of confusion for people because the discipleship pathways were so radically different 00:37:31.080 --> 00:37:35.960 from one expression to the other. People were just confused and they didn't know what to do. 00:37:36.760 --> 00:37:40.200 And they would, it was, it wasn't working. It wasn't working well. 00:37:40.200 --> 00:37:45.080 I can share another tension point as well. When it comes to developing volunteers, 00:37:45.080 --> 00:37:50.040 you know, everybody has the scramble, even IT folks has the scramble to have enough volunteers to 00:37:50.040 --> 00:37:57.160 carry out the work on a given weekend. Like I was in charge of all the systems for first impressions 00:37:57.160 --> 00:38:02.440 and small groups and everything else. So we had our own roll call every week. And when we started 00:38:02.440 --> 00:38:08.200 developing our people, we realized that they were, their personal calling actually led them out of our 00:38:08.200 --> 00:38:13.000 our department, you know, and I don't know about what you call it, but that's called customer 00:38:13.000 --> 00:38:18.840 acquisition. You paid a price to get those people in your department. And now you're going to send 00:38:18.840 --> 00:38:27.160 them off to the worship team or God help us the IT team or, you know, whatever else. And I can 00:38:27.160 --> 00:38:31.960 remember the very first time, you know, my very first group discipling this way, where the guy, it was 00:38:31.960 --> 00:38:37.640 pretty evident didn't really care as much about leading small groups as he cared about his microsite, 00:38:37.640 --> 00:38:43.800 which was investing in folks that were on the autism scale to help them find employment and to 00:38:43.800 --> 00:38:48.520 maintain employment. And he's changing the industry and that whole thing now. And I remember that tension 00:38:48.520 --> 00:38:53.880 point of asking, will I let them go into their personal calling out of my space, even if that makes me 00:38:53.880 --> 00:38:58.680 recruit more? And I answered that question quickly because God graciously gave me a conviction 00:38:58.680 --> 00:39:03.080 that it's about the people and not about me. Like I need that tattoo. I can give you one later. 00:39:03.080 --> 00:39:13.400 Make sure he doesn't get my tattoo. But that wasn't the case all the way around. 00:39:14.520 --> 00:39:19.640 You know, when it came to opportunity for other folks and other departments to decide, well, 00:39:19.640 --> 00:39:24.280 do I let these people go? Then you've got that same tension point. Will I try to hold on to people 00:39:24.280 --> 00:39:28.760 or will I release them to this? And, uh, and that became a tension. Wow. 00:39:28.760 --> 00:39:35.800 Yeah. The Bust in Seats model. Um, I, the only answer I can give you to this, uh, the, I don't, 00:39:35.800 --> 00:39:40.200 I don't know what else I could say beyond this, but we have brought more people into the kingdom 00:39:40.200 --> 00:39:48.920 and baptize more people at microsites this year than we have onsite. Um, so that's in my grand scale 00:39:48.920 --> 00:39:54.680 of things that completely destroys that argument in my mind. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, if your goal is 00:39:54.680 --> 00:40:01.000 actually a gospel saturation, which to me is like every man, woman, boy and girl being able to see, 00:40:01.720 --> 00:40:08.680 hear and experience and respond to the gospel, like the more, what do you call it? Micro churches or 00:40:08.680 --> 00:40:15.960 microsites or ministries or whatever ministries. It's like we're each time we're increasing the mission 00:40:15.960 --> 00:40:21.480 mosaic, right? They're like pieces of a mosaic. Yeah. And so if we want to actually see the entire 00:40:21.480 --> 00:40:27.160 metro Kansas city area in our case, it's like, well, we think it's going to take 20,000 microchurches 00:40:27.160 --> 00:40:32.760 because that would be about 100 people for every microchurch. And we think a healthy microchurch 00:40:32.760 --> 00:40:40.040 and it's kind of what we call spheres of influence can touch and really be, um, a gospel presence for 00:40:40.040 --> 00:40:44.760 about a hundred people, you know? Well, you can't do that from one location, even if it's core, 00:40:44.760 --> 00:40:49.400 which is amazing. And there's 19,000 people here, but it's still a drop in the bucket, 00:40:49.400 --> 00:40:55.400 right? And if we keep doing and trying to scale out this very expensive model where it requires 00:40:55.400 --> 00:40:59.240 buildings and lots of professional staff, it's like, we're never going to scale out the gospel 00:40:59.240 --> 00:41:04.760 saturation. It's too expensive. There aren't enough high level leaders who can manage the complexities of 00:41:04.760 --> 00:41:11.560 this thing. Um, but when church is like 20 people in my neighborhood and planning for mission is 00:41:11.560 --> 00:41:16.200 planning the next party and inviting three new neighbors, it's like, okay, millions of people 00:41:16.200 --> 00:41:22.440 can do that. And if discipleship like our, when we create robust experiences, but they're simple 00:41:22.440 --> 00:41:27.400 for an ordinary person to lead and replicate, like it's, that's the game changing stuff. 00:41:27.400 --> 00:41:32.760 Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's powerful right there. Um, let me ask this question because when you 00:41:32.760 --> 00:41:36.760 mentioned the story or when, when Jason mentioned the story of his wife and you said, there's no 00:41:36.760 --> 00:41:42.760 lead pastor, I, I twitched a little bit. I confess. Um, and it's in it, honestly, it's the 00:41:42.760 --> 00:41:56.920 next question. There's only one chief shepherd. His name is Jesus. That's the only. So let's, 00:41:56.920 --> 00:42:03.560 let's, let's unpack this and let's break it down at a biblical level. Um, are, what is a, what's a 00:42:03.560 --> 00:42:08.840 challenge? Where does microsite struggle? Or does it not? Is there anything that a microsite cannot 00:42:08.840 --> 00:42:16.440 be that the Bible calls us to be? Here's what I think. It, it can easily be less than like there's, 00:42:16.440 --> 00:42:22.360 okay, if I had a whiteboard and draw this, like, okay, at this end of the, imagine a funnel. Okay. 00:42:22.920 --> 00:42:26.600 At this end of the funnel and it's widest, I think a hundred percent of God's people are called to be 00:42:26.600 --> 00:42:32.520 missionaries and disciple makers. That's your birthright as a child of God. Then you, the funnel 00:42:32.520 --> 00:42:38.760 gets a little smaller within that group. There's a smaller number that are able to lead a team 00:42:38.760 --> 00:42:45.640 of people or a group of people. Are you with me? Yeah. Right. And then within that group of people 00:42:45.640 --> 00:42:50.280 that can lead a group or a team, there's a smaller number that can lead what I would call a church. 00:42:52.040 --> 00:42:55.960 And, and then there's different models of church. If you're leading a micro church, there's tons of 00:42:55.960 --> 00:43:00.040 people can lead that. But now if you're going to get to like prevailing traditional model, 00:43:00.040 --> 00:43:07.960 now suddenly your funnel is getting like very, very small. So what I'm saying is if my biblical ecclesiology 00:43:08.680 --> 00:43:15.160 like, I think the strongest case is the definition I've already given. Like if you look at what the 00:43:15.160 --> 00:43:21.960 church was in the new Testament reality, like from the best historical data and, and also in terms of 00:43:21.960 --> 00:43:27.960 like just biblical studies, most of the churches in the new Testament are probably 20 to 70 people that 00:43:27.960 --> 00:43:33.800 were in Oikos, a network that was converted basically to a church. And they continued to meet like in their 00:43:33.800 --> 00:43:39.480 homes and they became like little networks of these home churches in a city. Now when the church could 00:43:39.480 --> 00:43:43.880 meet, bring everyone together, like they could in Jerusalem, they would, you know, and then Paul rented 00:43:43.880 --> 00:43:49.080 a hall, the hall of what Tyrannus I think it was, right. And brought people together. So I'm all for the 00:43:49.080 --> 00:43:53.480 public gatherings. And we actually have a space for public gatherings, even in the underground, where we bring 00:43:53.480 --> 00:43:59.720 micro churches together as kind of a congregation to meet together. But if you have to get down to 00:43:59.720 --> 00:44:06.200 like what is the essential ecclesiology to me, it's like, it's a spiritually, a spiritual extended family 00:44:06.680 --> 00:44:14.280 that's led by, uh, what the Bible calls elders. And Paul didn't set up lead pastors. He set up teams 00:44:14.280 --> 00:44:20.600 of elders in cities, right? It was a plurality of leadership. And then there's the other layer of 00:44:20.600 --> 00:44:25.640 deacons that came in with the church of Jerusalem. Those are pretty much the only offices. So for me, 00:44:25.640 --> 00:44:33.800 it's not a church, if there's no eldership, like to me, it's like you're, it's a great Christian group. 00:44:33.800 --> 00:44:38.920 But if you're not under any eldership somewhere, then you're, you've chosen not to really be under 00:44:38.920 --> 00:44:43.800 the full headship of Jesus. Because like, to me, it's like you see elders and deacons. So for it to be 00:44:43.800 --> 00:44:50.280 a micro church, in my mind, you have to be practicing community mission and worship. And we all kind of know 00:44:50.280 --> 00:44:55.560 the main passages for those great commandment, great commission, right? Um, but then you also have to 00:44:55.560 --> 00:45:01.480 have those offices in place somewhere. Now that doesn't mean every micro church has to have its own 00:45:01.480 --> 00:45:07.080 circle of elders, right? But over this network of micro churches, there are elders providing oversight. 00:45:07.080 --> 00:45:12.600 You just alluded to elders, deacons over a network. And I'm just curious, it's not even on my list of 00:45:12.600 --> 00:45:17.800 questions, but how, what does a network look like compared to like a one-off? Like what's the, the 00:45:17.800 --> 00:45:24.280 stability of something of, of, of a family doing it versus creating a larger theologically backed 00:45:24.920 --> 00:45:30.440 network of house churches that are running? Like, give me a, give me a pros and cons kind of both. 00:45:30.440 --> 00:45:34.840 Well, I just think if you're a one-off, you're completely vulnerable. It's not going to be 00:45:34.840 --> 00:45:41.000 sustainable. Um, it's unbiblical because you're not connected to any eldership. I think the Bible 00:45:41.000 --> 00:45:46.520 clearly teaches that. Um, the way that we're doing it right now, this first year of the underground, 00:45:46.520 --> 00:45:51.480 again, we're still an infant. Okay. So, um, but we decided the first year, we're just going to do 00:45:52.040 --> 00:45:57.240 like one hub and we're going to support and create multiple networks of micro churches. 00:45:57.240 --> 00:46:00.280 So we have like one network that's forming in Shawnee and one that's up in 00:46:00.920 --> 00:46:06.120 Piper and Bonner, and then another one that's forming in Overland Park and Olathe. Like we have 00:46:06.120 --> 00:46:11.000 these networks of micro churches that are forming. So we just started a task force that's going to do 00:46:11.000 --> 00:46:17.080 elder training. So that like probably the middle of next year, we'll have elders for each one of these 00:46:17.080 --> 00:46:22.440 networks. And then we'll formalize that and we're going to call them collectives. Okay. So a collective 00:46:22.440 --> 00:46:30.200 is a network of at least four or five micro churches and they have eldership. Um, they will have ownership 00:46:30.200 --> 00:46:37.400 of kind of like sustaining themselves and replicating themselves, all the signs of maturity kind of thing. 00:46:37.400 --> 00:46:45.240 Um, they will choose to gather as much as they want. So then networks might say, we want to meet with 00:46:45.240 --> 00:46:49.160 all the micro churches once a month. Others might say, you know what, we're going to meet every week 00:46:49.160 --> 00:46:51.400 and we'll leave that up to the elders in those regions. 00:46:51.400 --> 00:46:57.480 So you've been talking about this. You've got this leader, you've got this person in your funnel, 00:46:57.480 --> 00:47:04.360 you're driving them deeper in and you want them to be the, the pastor of your house church. Uh, 00:47:04.360 --> 00:47:11.800 you use the term campus pastor for your, your, uh, micro sites. Like, um, how do you prepare someone? 00:47:11.800 --> 00:47:16.200 How do you grow someone to the point where they're spiritually mature enough to shepherd, 00:47:16.200 --> 00:47:24.680 to lead, to guide house church of 30, 50, 100 people? So we, we do a, a one-on-one teaching basis. 00:47:25.640 --> 00:47:31.320 So the first, the first couple that we launched our first two micro sites with, um, I, I trained 00:47:31.320 --> 00:47:36.520 them for a while, uh, about six months, uh, going over a lot of the stuff that we cover in our 00:47:36.520 --> 00:47:41.960 discipleship, um, groups like rooted, things like that, um, spiritual rhythms, spiritual disciplines 00:47:41.960 --> 00:47:46.600 that they, they're going to need in order to pastor these people. Um, and then from then on out, 00:47:46.600 --> 00:47:52.120 they have served as pretty much the, the gold standard and the trainers. Um, so whenever we launch 00:47:52.120 --> 00:47:58.520 a new one, we, we kind of send them to that micro site, um, to, to like shadow these people for a 00:47:58.520 --> 00:48:04.280 while before we launch those out. Um, but there's like, there's no, like, how many of you guys went to 00:48:04.280 --> 00:48:09.640 Christian college? Yeah. How many of you really were prepared to do ministry when you got to your 00:48:09.640 --> 00:48:15.880 for sure? Like, you don't, you don't know how to do ministry until you do ministry. And so, um, 00:48:15.880 --> 00:48:20.520 we are comfortable with empowering people to use the gifts God's given them, realizing that there 00:48:20.520 --> 00:48:26.360 might be some failures, but, um, the, the, the pros outweigh the cons in that every, every time for us. 00:48:26.360 --> 00:48:31.560 Uh, for us, we've got like a suite of tools and training that go from informal to formal. 00:48:31.560 --> 00:48:38.440 Um, and our hub, basically, you've got that personal discovery calling team 00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:43.000 that helps you discover your calling, do kind of a deep dive on your own spiritual, 00:48:43.000 --> 00:48:47.960 emotional, relational health. You get spiritual direction. So it's provided. We have a startup 00:48:47.960 --> 00:48:51.880 coaching team that meets with new potential leaders to help them basically put together 00:48:51.880 --> 00:48:55.640 their business plan for their new kingdom initiative. We have an ongoing coaching team 00:48:55.640 --> 00:49:04.120 that helps to optimize the ongoing micro churches. Um, and then, um, we also, I'll let you go ahead 00:49:04.120 --> 00:49:08.840 and talk about, we have what we call intentional disciple making environments, which is, is actually 00:49:08.840 --> 00:49:13.480 kind of a overall, it would take you three years to go through this training. But like Tyler said, 00:49:13.480 --> 00:49:17.640 it's on the job training. It's not like you're doing this all beforehand. And then when you're 00:49:17.640 --> 00:49:21.480 finished with this, you'll go, it's like, no, you're doing this along the way. So why don't you talk 00:49:21.480 --> 00:49:27.960 about the ideas? IDE, um, basically I created a couple of things. Westside was really good at 00:49:27.960 --> 00:49:33.640 reaching the lost and equally good at losing the found, if that makes sense. We could get a lot 00:49:33.640 --> 00:49:38.120 of folks there, but we could help seekers become believers, but we weren't systematically helping 00:49:38.120 --> 00:49:43.000 believers become followers and followers become influencers. And so it created a couple of 00:49:43.000 --> 00:49:47.960 experiences to do that. I'll unpack those in just a minute. But at one point I was asked, 00:49:47.960 --> 00:49:52.840 you can't take the tools, Brian, that you've created into a third world environment where we're 00:49:52.840 --> 00:49:58.280 doing some of our global work. So what are the irreducible minimums? And out of that has come our 00:49:58.280 --> 00:50:04.280 language for intentional disciple making environment. And it's really three phrases that summarize it all. 00:50:05.800 --> 00:50:10.760 The first one is outcome focused. We're relentlessly focused on the outcomes. And what are the outcomes, 00:50:10.760 --> 00:50:16.840 if you recall, character and call? So we're always revisiting. How are we doing? Are you more loving 00:50:16.840 --> 00:50:21.960 and joyful, peaceful? How's the calling going? The development going? Not just determining what your 00:50:21.960 --> 00:50:27.240 gifts are, but your area of passion is and serve in that area of passion with your gifts. So we're 00:50:27.240 --> 00:50:33.880 relentlessly focused on those two things. So it's outcome focused. It's habit fueled. Habit fueled. 00:50:33.880 --> 00:50:40.920 It's not content fueled. Learning things doesn't make you different. It just helps you realize the gap 00:50:40.920 --> 00:50:49.960 between where you could be and where you are, which is a problem. Right? I can't go to a CrossFit gym, 00:50:49.960 --> 00:50:56.360 open up their manual and read it and get more fit. But for whatever reason, we've allowed content to 00:50:56.360 --> 00:51:02.760 kind of remain king inside the church. Thinking that if we deliver the information, the practical 00:51:02.760 --> 00:51:07.800 applications will be made and the outcomes will be accomplished. I think that that's not working. 00:51:09.320 --> 00:51:15.160 Okay? Exclamation point. Here, here. So it's outcome focused and it's habit fueled. And what's 00:51:15.160 --> 00:51:21.240 important is to marry the habits to the outcomes. I don't want to go to a CrossFit gym, 00:51:21.240 --> 00:51:23.560 as I can demonstrate without any further 00:51:28.120 --> 00:51:35.080 investigative research on that. Right? But there have been seasons of my life where the, uh, the 00:51:35.080 --> 00:51:41.960 outcome of a more fit body got me into the gym and will get me back because it tastes good when you get 00:51:41.960 --> 00:51:49.000 going. So what if we did tie the spiritual habits to the spiritual outcomes that help you get there? 00:51:49.000 --> 00:51:53.320 And everybody gets it. You know, if you want the reps, you want the abs, you got to do the reps. 00:51:53.320 --> 00:51:55.000 And it's the same thing with spiritual formation. 00:51:56.520 --> 00:52:00.280 Somehow the enemy has tricked us into believing that the habits are about legalism. 00:52:01.160 --> 00:52:02.840 Like it could be further from the truth. 00:52:03.960 --> 00:52:11.080 Outcome focused, habit fueled, and then content flavored. The content is adjusted based upon where 00:52:11.080 --> 00:52:16.760 they are in their spiritual formation. You don't teach systematic theology to folks that are 00:52:16.760 --> 00:52:24.360 searching for Jesus. But you don't teach Craig Groeschel's same six week thing for people that are 00:52:24.360 --> 00:52:29.480 wanting to really grow. If that makes sense. There's content that can serve folks at different 00:52:29.480 --> 00:52:33.960 areas of formation. So that's our IDE. That's our intentional disciple making environment. And we 00:52:33.960 --> 00:52:39.960 have one that's six months long that basically reorients people around the missional rhythms of 00:52:39.960 --> 00:52:44.040 dependence upon the spirit to actually change in character and calling. It's called followers made. 00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:50.040 Folks that have done that and you have to be serving somewhere in Jesus name to actually get 00:52:50.040 --> 00:52:56.680 into these things. And it's a high bar, you know, exclusive invitation, limited duration. 00:52:57.560 --> 00:53:02.440 What are some of the other dynamics that are unusual about followers made? Well, the length of it. 00:53:02.440 --> 00:53:08.360 Most people are shocked that you can get someone to do six months. Yeah. And then everyone in it, 00:53:08.360 --> 00:53:12.760 it's built on shared leadership. So not only are you learning to be a disciple by the end of it, 00:53:12.760 --> 00:53:19.480 you're ready to make disciples. And we average 30% reproduction rate. 30% of the people that go through 00:53:19.480 --> 00:53:26.200 followers made end up actually making you disciples. Wow. It is crazy. And another distinctive of it is we 00:53:26.200 --> 00:53:31.800 encourage groups of up to 12 because Jesus kind of modeled that. And then we break the group, we 00:53:31.800 --> 00:53:38.680 subdivide the groups into triads. And it's all done all at the same time. In our technology that we 00:53:38.680 --> 00:53:45.960 delivered, we actually are a tech company that depends on tech. We deliver these experiences in a way where 00:53:45.960 --> 00:53:50.760 you're actually reading the scripture like you version in our app. You're actually journaling. 00:53:50.760 --> 00:53:55.320 And I will, I believe in an I will statement like, what did I learn? What am I going to do about it 00:53:55.320 --> 00:54:01.800 within the app? And you have two other people in the group of 12 or above the 12 that are actually 00:54:01.800 --> 00:54:07.800 seeing your journals and holding you accountable to them. Wow. So it's not just the frequency of the 00:54:07.800 --> 00:54:14.120 journaling that you're required to keep up with. It's the actual actions that Jesus led you to 00:54:14.120 --> 00:54:18.520 in that app. So followers made, there's a 10 and a half month leaders made that 00:54:19.000 --> 00:54:24.280 optimizes spiritual influence and spiritual leadership, servant leadership. And then we have 00:54:24.280 --> 00:54:30.440 one called missionaries made, which takes those folks that are already mature in Christ, either 00:54:30.440 --> 00:54:35.960 after followers made or after leaders made, typically not all the time, that helps people really deep 00:54:35.960 --> 00:54:40.840 dive into the blessed rhythms, where they're fully engaged with their neighbors and God is creating 00:54:40.840 --> 00:54:48.200 spiritual activity in and through them in their area. And then microchurch learning community is a 12-month 00:54:48.200 --> 00:54:54.600 process that helps you actually move from just having that spiritual activity into more organized 00:54:54.600 --> 00:54:59.080 and trained into the whole system that lends to a network of houses and hubs. 00:54:59.080 --> 00:55:03.320 So you've got disciples made. That's the six-month one. That's the initial one, right? 00:55:03.320 --> 00:55:06.680 Disciples made is the umbrella that all four of them. Okay. So which is, well, I'm sorry, 00:55:06.680 --> 00:55:09.960 what's that first one called? Followers made. Followers made. All right. So followers made is that 00:55:09.960 --> 00:55:15.320 first bucket of the six months. Like what percentage of people that are involved in any given house 00:55:15.320 --> 00:55:21.960 church micro-location go through followers made? Well, again, we have this, back to that suite of tools, 00:55:21.960 --> 00:55:27.480 we have informal tools, which are things like, we have a set of like 11 different shapes or symbols 00:55:27.480 --> 00:55:31.720 that are each around a key area of life. And it's the kind of thing where you can share them in like 00:55:31.720 --> 00:55:36.280 two minutes with somebody, or you could have a two-hour conversation about it, or we have discovery 00:55:36.280 --> 00:55:40.600 Bible studies where you can spend six weeks on it. We train all of our microchurch leaders on how to use 00:55:40.600 --> 00:55:46.280 all those tools. Because they typically end up starting by using these informal tools. Then we teach 00:55:46.280 --> 00:55:54.200 people how to do discovery Bible study, which is a very simple way of engaging the scripture as a community. 00:55:54.200 --> 00:56:00.840 It bakes in obedience. It bakes in reproduction. So we teach people how to do discovery Bible study. 00:56:00.840 --> 00:56:06.200 And then we have these follower made, leaders made. So we're again, we're under a year old. We have just 00:56:06.200 --> 00:56:15.560 launched like one new followers made, one new leaders made, a new missionaries made, and a new microchurch 00:56:15.560 --> 00:56:21.320 learning community. So right now, there's four of those operating. But it's just the first round. 00:56:23.640 --> 00:56:25.640 It's not the first round for Disciples Made stuff. 00:56:25.640 --> 00:56:27.400 No, but in the underground it is. 00:56:27.400 --> 00:56:32.360 In Disciples Made, I mean, you guys are in New Spring Church, you're like lots of other 00:56:32.360 --> 00:56:38.360 restores, about 40 or 50 churches so far. We're very young, very small, but about 00:56:39.320 --> 00:56:42.040 over 5,000 people have come through these experiences. 00:56:42.040 --> 00:56:46.440 So you've got tools that, you know, cold to hot. Maybe you've got some of the 00:56:47.720 --> 00:56:53.240 more organic two minutes, two hours type of things to get someone who's maybe cold to Christ or cold to 00:56:53.240 --> 00:56:58.600 the idea, and come warm them up into the process and eventually get them in a more rich pipeline of 00:56:58.600 --> 00:57:00.120 followers made and others to roll. 00:57:00.120 --> 00:57:08.040 Yeah. Like we would tell people it's probably going to be at least 12 to 24 months before you 00:57:08.040 --> 00:57:13.480 actually see a really sustainable extended spiritual family in your community. And that's at the point 00:57:13.480 --> 00:57:17.880 where you can start looking and going, okay, maybe I'll start a followers made with my microchurch. 00:57:17.880 --> 00:57:23.240 And so it's interesting, you've got two different paradigms here, and I don't want to tug on the thread too hard, 00:57:23.240 --> 00:57:30.280 but 12 to 24 months over here with followers made. I know rooted is probably 10 to 12 weeks. 00:57:30.840 --> 00:57:35.720 And there's obviously strengths and weaknesses in both models and challenges to overcome. 00:57:35.720 --> 00:57:42.520 But what's interesting is both of them have a pathway to go through to create an additional 00:57:43.080 --> 00:57:47.560 disciple model. Well, there is a common denominator with all of this. Go for it. 00:57:47.560 --> 00:57:53.480 It's not, it's their discipleship strategy is not one and done. It's coaching on top of just-in-time 00:57:53.480 --> 00:57:57.720 training. Yeah. Just-in-time training. I love that. Cool. Yeah. 00:57:58.440 --> 00:58:05.000 Tyler, Jeff, you mentioned the rooted. Tyler, did you guys use that to help build leaders up and 00:58:05.720 --> 00:58:09.880 to prepare them for that? Is that kind of part of that training? I'll get like a two or three minute 00:58:09.880 --> 00:58:17.400 coming. So initially, no, because we started Church Anywhere before we started doing Rooted as a 00:58:17.400 --> 00:58:22.840 church. So we're two and a half years in Church Anywhere at this point. We started Rooted about a 00:58:22.840 --> 00:58:28.760 year and a half ago. So now that's the funnel. Before it was, like I said, the one-on-one teaching, 00:58:29.400 --> 00:58:36.280 the one-on-one, come along with me to a hospital call, that kind of deal. But now we have a much better 00:58:37.080 --> 00:58:43.720 funnel. When we started it, like nobody else was doing that. So we had no idea what we were doing. 00:58:43.720 --> 00:58:49.240 David Ertz yesterday says like the Wild West. We're shooting whatever just to see what happens. And 00:58:49.240 --> 00:58:55.400 that's kind of how we did it. So we knew we wanted to push our people to be the church. We just didn't 00:58:55.400 --> 00:59:00.840 have a great strategy to make those disciple leaders yet. And now we do. So we've been doing 00:59:00.840 --> 00:59:06.120 Rooted now for about a year and a half or so. It's interesting. I just had a conversation with 00:59:06.120 --> 00:59:11.080 a church leader out in Spokane. He's a new thing network leader out there. And they use Rooted too 00:59:11.080 --> 00:59:16.440 as the front end of their kind of slapship pathway. And they're about to adopt Missionaries Made as 00:59:16.440 --> 00:59:20.760 like the phase two part. It's like a four month. As he was saying that, I was like, man, that could 00:59:20.760 --> 00:59:26.200 marry together so well. I was like, I think it's gonna, it seems like they'll actually really 00:59:26.200 --> 00:59:32.040 complement it. We just worked with Rooted to develop an app as well. So we piloted the first 00:59:32.040 --> 00:59:36.840 online Rooted group. And through that, they developed an app where everything was like right on there, 00:59:36.840 --> 00:59:42.360 where you can have community within it. You can read the material. You can stay connected, 00:59:42.360 --> 00:59:48.440 did that kind of deal. Sounds heartily familiar. Seriously, there's a lot of shared. How we did it 00:59:48.440 --> 00:59:53.280 before was so scattered because we were in Zoom, Marco Polo, Facebook, and all this stuff, but now 00:59:53.280 --> 00:59:58.640 it's all over the place. Yeah, one of the things that I hope you guys are noticing is that the 00:59:58.640 --> 01:00:03.320 conversation that we were having about church online five, ten years ago was about the Sunday 01:00:03.320 --> 01:00:07.860 service, but a lot of the new tools that you're seeing and what people are putting their energy 01:00:07.860 --> 01:00:13.520 toward is the more important discipleship stuff that's happening. And the tech that we need to 01:00:13.520 --> 01:00:18.400 make the discipleship work. The online ministry that we do, the Sunday service is such a small 01:00:18.400 --> 01:00:24.780 portion of that. Right. When I come to this conference, I have to get my mind back around 01:00:24.780 --> 01:00:29.780 like, okay, we need to focus on the Sunday service because I spend so much of my week not focusing 01:00:29.780 --> 01:00:37.600 on the Sunday service and doing ministry in other ways. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, sorry. I don't 01:00:37.600 --> 01:00:41.260 want to get lost on the Sunday service either. No. So somebody out there is thinking about doing 01:00:41.260 --> 01:00:45.580 this, like how do they get started? What do they need to do? They probably need to have a 01:00:45.580 --> 01:00:50.220 conversation with leadership. How's that go? Like what next step for somebody out there who's 01:00:50.220 --> 01:00:54.440 interested in micro locations? What does that look like? If you're thinking about microchurch, 01:00:55.060 --> 01:01:01.280 Brian Sanders, he leads the Underground Network, which is a larger network we're a part of. He just 01:01:01.280 --> 01:01:05.160 released a new book. It's called Microchurches, a smaller way. I would read that book. 01:01:07.340 --> 01:01:12.160 As a leadership team, because I think it's the best thing I've seen out there. And then 01:01:12.160 --> 01:01:17.780 more importantly, I would ask you to think about how you can be a better missionary where 01:01:17.780 --> 01:01:22.000 God has already sent you. So like when I'm talking about church leaders, I'll walk through 01:01:22.000 --> 01:01:27.780 the bus rhythms and say, really the best thing you could do is like spend six months actually 01:01:27.780 --> 01:01:32.560 really trying to live these rhythms deeply in one context and watch what Jesus does in your 01:01:32.560 --> 01:01:38.400 own life. You know, I would start there. Yeah. I can't stress enough how, um, it's one thing to 01:01:38.400 --> 01:01:43.940 talk about doing the cycle ministry in theory. It's another thing to actually, even though I'm the, 01:01:43.940 --> 01:01:50.380 like the facilitator of all of Church Anywhere within our context. Um, like it is, it has changed my 01:01:50.380 --> 01:01:55.720 life. Like really, I have a 17 year old daughter now because of Church Anywhere. Um, and so I can't 01:01:55.720 --> 01:02:01.960 stress enough. Adopt it. Adopt it. Yeah. You have to be a part of it. Like you, you have to allow God to 01:02:01.960 --> 01:02:06.640 take your calling and do the same thing. Um, and so start there. So even if you haven't had that 01:02:06.640 --> 01:02:10.680 conversation with leadership yet and you're still tossing this around, nothing is stopping you from 01:02:10.680 --> 01:02:14.680 going out and being a missionary in your neighborhood or in the local school system or wherever you're 01:02:14.680 --> 01:02:22.340 passionate about it. Amen. With us, um, the quick answer to us is, you know, we would actually, if 01:02:22.340 --> 01:02:26.640 you're interested in using disciples made more formal tools, like we were talking about, we actually 01:02:26.640 --> 01:02:32.180 encourage you to start small. We don't want to go big. We encourage you to start with one pilot group 01:02:32.180 --> 01:02:37.420 and let those stories invite other people because it is a different way that does create tensions over 01:02:37.420 --> 01:02:43.760 time. And I would invite you to do it more small with leadership. Um, but I can give you a little poker 01:02:43.760 --> 01:02:48.420 chip we have. That's my business card. And we've got videos on there that kind of unpack the IDE 01:02:48.420 --> 01:02:54.120 followers made, leaders made that you can share with leadership. Uh, if nothing else, just to help 01:02:54.120 --> 01:03:00.080 turn the dial more in the direction that we've discussed today. Yes, sir. And they're acting. You had one 01:03:00.080 --> 01:03:03.980 as well. So, you know, my, my church site came from, I tried to launch missional communities a couple 01:03:03.980 --> 01:03:08.940 years back. Um, and I've heard all four of you talk about, uh, these missional communities as micro 01:03:08.940 --> 01:03:14.380 expressions. It's typically people who are focusing a majority of their time and effort being a part of 01:03:14.380 --> 01:03:22.120 that community. So, uh, are the members of these micro churches also, uh, members and largely committed to 01:03:22.120 --> 01:03:27.180 macro expressions of the church? Are they committing their time and their family specifically to these micro 01:03:27.180 --> 01:03:33.280 sites? So ours are, are, um, so our, yeah, and our micro sites would consider themselves part of 01:03:33.280 --> 01:03:37.200 First Catholic Christian church. For example, uh, there's an inmate at Branchville correctional 01:03:37.200 --> 01:03:42.060 facility named Jerry who sends us a $10 check every single month, um, because he believes he should 01:03:42.060 --> 01:03:47.540 be tithing to his church. Um, and that's not an uncommon thing for us. So they, they feel part of 01:03:47.540 --> 01:03:55.060 our family. So it really is like a, um, like an, an extension of what we do in, in the building. Um, 01:03:55.060 --> 01:03:57.200 with us just being the church outside of the building. 01:03:58.820 --> 01:04:03.240 Oh, with Kansas city underground, um, most of the people in the micro church would see that as 01:04:03.240 --> 01:04:08.960 their primary church. Uh, some of them though are also connected to other congregations. 01:04:09.420 --> 01:04:13.840 So we have like various partnerships in the city. Like there's a large church in our city called 01:04:13.840 --> 01:04:20.280 Heartland, probably church about 3000. And they, um, have freed up a staff person to help develop 01:04:20.280 --> 01:04:25.200 micro church leaders in their congregation. So they see their, their congregation and their 01:04:25.200 --> 01:04:30.020 church as the hub, you know, and they want to build out the equipping teams and they're a part of the 01:04:30.020 --> 01:04:35.380 underground. So right now we're providing all those services for their people while they raise up 01:04:35.380 --> 01:04:38.940 their first round of micro church leaders. And then over time can build their own equipping teams. 01:04:39.180 --> 01:04:43.080 It's a, it has to be a philosophy shift because we would consider ourselves, we wouldn't say the hub, 01:04:43.080 --> 01:04:50.200 but our church vision has shifted to function in a way of like our church is the hub. Um, and so if, 01:04:50.200 --> 01:04:55.980 if the leadership can't make that shift, there's going to be some serious tension. Um, and you're 01:04:55.980 --> 01:04:59.880 going to get into some problems of, well, these people are leaving and they're not, they're an actual 01:04:59.880 --> 01:05:04.320 church, student house church, that kind of deal. Do you feel like though, the implementation of this 01:05:04.320 --> 01:05:10.040 philosophy can fail? You try and have two feet in, you know, both these camps at the same time that we're going to be, 01:05:10.040 --> 01:05:13.100 uh, our leadership and our vision is going to be up about macro church. 01:05:13.360 --> 01:05:19.820 The thing I love about, uh, First Capital Church Anywhere is the vision is intricately tied to it. 01:05:19.900 --> 01:05:24.160 That's right. Yeah. And they are, and they are reaching people that are not coming to the building. 01:05:24.700 --> 01:05:30.780 And so I think if your audience overlaps, that's where you're going to have problems because you're, 01:05:31.020 --> 01:05:34.580 you're Mike. It's the same thing with church online, where church online is allegedly taking people out of 01:05:34.580 --> 01:05:40.020 the pews, find another audience, find a strategy place where it makes sense and allow both, 01:05:40.020 --> 01:05:44.460 to compliment and help each other instead of constantly fighting and conflicting and robbing 01:05:44.460 --> 01:05:49.260 Peter. Without that ministry philosophy shift, there will be tension. Which is in the leadership, 01:05:49.600 --> 01:05:54.120 not just the audience. And so that's, and I know some, and I've had conversations with some of you 01:05:54.120 --> 01:05:59.160 guys who are really considering this. It's a leadership, it's a strategy decision. You're just 01:05:59.160 --> 01:06:04.700 rolling dice and launching something without having that strategy buy-in. Um, yeah, it's not going to 01:06:04.700 --> 01:06:08.860 work. There's going to be too much attention. There's going to be too much. Um, I'm, I'm taking 01:06:08.860 --> 01:06:12.720 away from this. I don't want to give it the attention. If there's some philosophical shifts 01:06:12.720 --> 01:06:18.180 for this to be done well, that need to happen. And that leadership has that strong buy-in for it. 01:06:18.240 --> 01:06:23.440 Yeah, I would, my, my experience having helped two churches transition and then like that, I was 01:06:23.440 --> 01:06:28.080 personally, uh, on leadership team at, and then I've helped literally hundreds of other churches with 01:06:28.080 --> 01:06:36.520 this is if, if you're trying to make attractional and missional equal, you can't do it. Attractional, 01:06:36.520 --> 01:06:42.300 uh, requires a certain strategy. Missional requires a certain strategy. Sometimes they are literally 01:06:42.300 --> 01:06:47.020 cross-current and that's just the reality of it. So you have to decide which is going to be the major, 01:06:47.900 --> 01:06:52.380 and I think you can decide either one. You can say, we're going to be primarily attractional, 01:06:52.380 --> 01:06:56.780 but we're going to create some space over here for R and D to do some great missional things. 01:06:57.340 --> 01:07:02.300 Or you have to say, no, really we're attractional for missional. So now we're going to restructure 01:07:02.300 --> 01:07:06.460 so that this is the primary and the attractional supports it, which is what I think you guys have done. 01:07:06.460 --> 01:07:13.020 The byproduct of making it missional is the, the attractional part of what we do is, is the, is our 01:07:13.020 --> 01:07:18.380 people, not necessarily like what we put on the stage. So it's still attractional. You can't ask people 01:07:18.380 --> 01:07:22.860 to serve on the weekends in the children's ministry and then go launch these missions. You can't, 01:07:22.860 --> 01:07:28.780 there's not enough time. But you can leverage those volunteer positions as incubators for developing 01:07:28.780 --> 01:07:35.180 people's personal calling. We actually created a measurable on our data sheet for the first impressions 01:07:35.180 --> 01:07:41.180 team. Like we had 230 volunteers or so at any given time. We had a line item in our measurables every 01:07:41.180 --> 01:07:46.700 year. How many people did we graduate out to a better step of personal calling? Like they went, 01:07:46.700 --> 01:07:51.980 they went from being just people that came to people that served. That's a smaller pool. If there's 01:07:51.980 --> 01:07:58.460 people that serve, how do we help develop them and influence in that area and disciple them and then 01:07:58.460 --> 01:08:03.900 disciple them out? So one of our micro sites is at an elementary school and 01:08:03.900 --> 01:08:09.740 the, um, the, the lady started, uh, she's a teacher, but she started serving in our church, 01:08:09.740 --> 01:08:14.540 um, in the elementary department, like the kids department. But when we released people, 01:08:14.540 --> 01:08:20.140 uh, two years ago to like go about and be empowered to be the church, like she, we've cultivated this 01:08:20.140 --> 01:08:25.340 passion within her for elementary kids for years. And so it was natural for her to step into the role 01:08:25.340 --> 01:08:29.180 of volunteer campus pastor for an elementary campus of 100 kids. 01:08:29.180 --> 01:08:32.940 I'm fortunate enough to have leadership behind me as far as doing on my career location. 01:08:34.060 --> 01:08:39.420 The concern is the general attenders, the general attendance of getting the rest of the congregation 01:08:39.420 --> 01:08:43.420 on board. Did you guys have any put back on that? And if you did, how did you navigate that? 01:08:45.580 --> 01:08:52.380 Yeah, we had, we had some, um, but we shifted, like, like I said, we shifted our entire vision 01:08:52.380 --> 01:08:56.380 of the entire church. So you're gonna, you're obviously gonna have to push back with that. 01:08:56.380 --> 01:09:03.660 We knew we would take some lumps. Um, but as people started to see results, um, and so part of the 01:09:03.660 --> 01:09:09.100 thing we do is we'll videotape baptisms, um, like at the other side. When you start showing that stuff 01:09:09.100 --> 01:09:15.740 on the weekend of like, Hey, this is a so-and-so from two hours away. And, um, these people we sent 01:09:15.740 --> 01:09:20.780 out to be pastors, just baptize them, check this out. Like people start to the way they feel about 01:09:20.780 --> 01:09:27.420 these pretty quickly. There's a transition bell curve that saved my soul, Jesus, and then the 01:09:27.420 --> 01:09:33.260 transition bell curve, because it helps you see, and this is a sociological proven thing that's in 01:09:33.260 --> 01:09:37.740 businesses. Anytime you bring change into an organization, you've got the innovators, you've 01:09:37.740 --> 01:09:41.980 got the early adopters, you've got the early majority, the late majority, and then the laggards, 01:09:41.980 --> 01:09:46.220 and there's percentages of people. And here's what I've learned. It's the stories of the innovators 01:09:46.220 --> 01:09:50.700 that attract the early adopters. It's the story of the early adopters that gain the trust of the 01:09:50.700 --> 01:09:55.260 early majority, and so forth. And then the last 16%, the laggards, they never come. 01:09:56.220 --> 01:09:59.820 And so there will always be pushback. There will always be 16% pushback, 01:10:00.460 --> 01:10:04.060 regardless, for as long as you do it, until they're gone. 01:10:04.060 --> 01:10:07.420 And if you disciple right, you're well beyond that 16%. 01:10:07.420 --> 01:10:11.740 If you disciple right, that's why we actually say start small, and let the stories of the 01:10:11.740 --> 01:10:18.300 first group or two or three start to leaven in the flower. It just grows over time. 01:10:18.300 --> 01:10:23.820 So for us, that 16% pushback became very quickly outweighed by the like 103% 01:10:23.820 --> 01:10:30.460 life change compared in person. But you can Google that bell curve and see those stats, and it's so 01:10:30.460 --> 01:10:35.580 helpful. We're going to break the podcast right there. Many of you guys are considering this shift 01:10:35.580 --> 01:10:43.180 to a micro location. And having done them, it is a very exciting part of ministry and the ability 01:10:43.180 --> 01:10:48.860 that we have to impact the disciple to help people grow deeper in their faith, even using online to 01:10:48.860 --> 01:10:55.100 create a virtual network of discipleship across the country and around the world. 01:10:55.100 --> 01:10:59.820 Man, it's just awesome. And I pray for churches today, and I've been encouraged more and more 01:10:59.820 --> 01:11:06.140 as more and more churches are realizing that that church online needs to replicate itself in physical 01:11:06.140 --> 01:11:11.580 areas. And they're using this idea of the micro model really to kind of start to foster and grow 01:11:11.580 --> 01:11:17.180 these micro locations all around the country. And so it is happening. It is a model and we will see 01:11:17.180 --> 01:11:23.420 it continue to grow and prayerfully succeed. But this idea of getting leadership on board is so key. 01:11:23.420 --> 01:11:29.500 And I just wanted to reiterate here right now with y'all. As you're developing these plans, 01:11:30.060 --> 01:11:34.860 a philosophical shift like a micro location is definitely something that your leadership, that 01:11:34.860 --> 01:11:41.020 your senior pastor, that your elders, whatever your structure is at your church, they need to understand 01:11:41.500 --> 01:11:46.940 and catch the vision of. There are some things in church online where I've had pastors tell me in the 01:11:46.940 --> 01:11:51.260 past, I don't care what you're doing, Jeff, just go out there and just make it happen. That's 01:11:51.260 --> 01:11:56.140 awesome. I trust you intricately. The idea of a micro location is not something that you can just get 01:11:56.140 --> 01:12:02.220 a free pass on. But in finding that strategy where you can reach out and impact people through the 01:12:02.220 --> 01:12:08.300 micro location that isn't impacting your physical campus locations or fine tuning it in such a way 01:12:08.300 --> 01:12:13.500 that both can coexist, that's where you're going to see the physical church is going to understand the 01:12:13.500 --> 01:12:19.500 most of what church online can give you, where you're not just impacting the local areas in your town, 01:12:19.500 --> 01:12:25.180 but you're expanding your church's reach far beyond the 15-20 miles around your building to 01:12:25.180 --> 01:12:31.420 where God leads you and where the Holy Spirit can direct you. Micro locations goes a step further and 01:12:31.420 --> 01:12:37.660 takes the lid off of the church. And all of a sudden you can see yourself spread in a richer, 01:12:37.660 --> 01:12:43.660 deeper and further way. And we discussed in many ways in this podcast why micro locations can help the 01:12:43.660 --> 01:12:48.780 church. And there's certainly more that we'll be talking about soon. Well, it's been a great podcast. 01:12:48.780 --> 01:12:52.460 We've loved being here with you guys and we look forward to seeing you again soon here at the 01:12:52.460 --> 01:12:54.460 church digital podcast. Y'all have a good day.