WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.980 Jeff here. We'll get back to the podcast in a second, but I wanted to let you know of an 00:00:07.980 --> 00:00:13.180 opportunity to help you further develop your church online. Here at The Church Digital, 00:00:13.360 --> 00:00:18.300 we've found some of the best ways for churches to grow their ministry online is to work alongside 00:00:18.300 --> 00:00:25.080 other churches. To that end, The Church Digital is opening up some coaching cohorts in January 2020. 00:00:25.080 --> 00:00:29.560 Through our cohorts, you'll be connected with churches with similar goals in place in ministry, 00:00:29.740 --> 00:00:34.040 and work through these goals together over the six months under the guidance of the crew 00:00:34.040 --> 00:00:40.000 here at The Church Digital. In 2020, invest in your church online, invest in you. For more 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:47.380 information and to find out how you can save 20%, visit thechurch.digital slash cohort. 00:00:50.740 --> 00:00:57.080 Hey everybody, welcome to The Church Digital podcast. My name is Jeff. You've got episode 34, 00:00:57.480 --> 00:01:02.720 and I'm going to tell you right now, I have been waiting for you all to listen to this podcast for 00:01:02.780 --> 00:01:08.800 a long, long time. One of my favorite ministry-minded people right now is going to be on this podcast. 00:01:09.040 --> 00:01:15.340 We've got Jim Tomberlin here today joining us. Multi-site guy is his moniker in social media, 00:01:15.480 --> 00:01:23.660 online, and he's been inspiring people for decades in context, especially around mergers and multi-sites. 00:01:23.780 --> 00:01:29.460 He's been one of the early innovators of multi-site. Jim and his company, you may have known from 00:01:29.460 --> 00:01:34.220 multi-site solutions. He's got a track record with Willow Creek, and honestly, he's been inspiring me 00:01:34.220 --> 00:01:39.940 for quite a while. Even before I met the guy, he's been an inspiration for me centering around this 00:01:39.940 --> 00:01:45.960 idea of church and multi-site, a decentralizing ministry and making it a scalable solution that 00:01:45.960 --> 00:01:49.900 can get out there. But you're probably asking this question, so what does a fanboy of church 00:01:49.900 --> 00:01:55.600 online, somebody like me, get obsessed with this idea of multi-site? Well, honestly, you're just 00:01:55.600 --> 00:01:59.880 going to have to listen to the podcast to really enjoy and appreciate the track of what's happening 00:01:59.880 --> 00:02:05.480 here. So join me, Jeff, with the Church Digital, along with Ray, online pastor at Christ Fellowship 00:02:05.480 --> 00:02:12.420 Miami, as well as Jim Torberlin, who is multi-site solutions, as well as chief of staff with Christ 00:02:12.420 --> 00:02:18.540 Fellowship Miami, in an episode discussing the similarities and the trends between multi-site 00:02:18.540 --> 00:02:24.780 and church online. Everybody, here you go. So Jim, I know obviously you have a very rich history in the 00:02:24.780 --> 00:02:28.860 church, but a lot of it's tied to this idea of multi-site. So man, just tell me a little bit 00:02:28.860 --> 00:02:35.080 about your story of how you helped grow multi-site. Well, my journey with multi-site church began back 00:02:35.080 --> 00:02:39.780 in the mid-90s when I was a senior pastor in Colorado Springs at Woodman Valley Chapel. I wasn't the 00:02:39.780 --> 00:02:46.680 original pioneer, but I was one of the original pioneers of this idea. And it really was birthed 00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:52.080 out of a space restriction, which is how the multi-site movement began. I came to a church of 00:02:52.080 --> 00:02:58.180 400 people, and over the first year, I grew it down to 200, while it grew to 1,000. Are you following 00:02:58.180 --> 00:03:03.160 me? Seven years later, several thousand people later, we were out of room and out of space. And so how do we 00:03:03.160 --> 00:03:07.620 solve a problem where we have no more room to grow on this location? It's a great location. We don't want to 00:03:07.620 --> 00:03:12.020 relocate. I and a few others around the country, unknown to each other, began to experiment with 00:03:12.020 --> 00:03:16.140 this new idea of video that maybe we could be one church in two locations. That eventually got me 00:03:16.140 --> 00:03:20.940 invited to leave Colorado Springs and come to Chicago to Willow Creek to develop the multi-site model 00:03:20.940 --> 00:03:27.300 there in the year 2000. I was there for five years, and I launched the first four campuses of Willow 00:03:27.300 --> 00:03:31.300 Creek. Five years later, four campuses later, I was getting a lot of calls from churches around the 00:03:31.300 --> 00:03:35.660 country. Could you come talk to us about that? And at that point, I believed that I'd accomplished what 00:03:35.660 --> 00:03:40.300 God had brought me there to do. My next chapter was to help, was to serve the church, the big C church, 00:03:40.300 --> 00:03:48.260 and this idea. Not thinking it'd last maybe three or four years, 15 years later, this model just kept 00:03:48.260 --> 00:03:54.640 growing and morphing, and more and more churches were doing this, and I was growing with it. That 00:03:54.640 --> 00:03:59.600 brought me here to Miami, where we're sitting here now, and working with what was started out to be my 00:03:59.600 --> 00:04:05.680 client, and now still is my client. I'm serving now in an interim chief of staff role here. And I've also 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:12.080 recently merged my company, Multi-Site Solutions, with my long-term friend and strategic partner, Tony 00:04:12.080 --> 00:04:17.680 Morgan, and the Unstuck Group. And so that's been my journey with the multi-site movement. And it's been, as I 00:04:17.680 --> 00:04:22.240 watch now what's been happening, and I've been a big advocate for the online campus, it's a very similar 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:28.320 journey. New ideas, innovative ideas, like multi-site, like the online church concept, always started out as a 00:04:28.320 --> 00:04:35.600 radical idea that, and we saw this in the multi-site movement, and it's now with the online, it's gone from a 00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:44.320 radical idea to a cool idea, and to a cool idea becomes a mainstream idea. And so I see that pathway 00:04:44.320 --> 00:04:50.400 unfolding with the online campus as well. Where did the, listen, in the 90s, I was a high school kid. I 00:04:50.400 --> 00:04:55.120 was playing football somewhere. I wasn't keeping up with church trends. But where did this idea of 00:04:55.120 --> 00:05:00.640 multi-site come from? Like, where was the birth of it, and how did it kind of build from there? 00:05:00.640 --> 00:05:05.120 Nobody was all meeting together and saying, "Let's do a church a different way." It was really, 00:05:05.120 --> 00:05:10.880 the beginning of this movement really was a band-aid strategy for mega-churches who found themselves out 00:05:10.880 --> 00:05:17.360 of room or out of space. That's what started me down this path in the mid-90s in Colorado Springs, 00:05:17.360 --> 00:05:22.000 when my church grew to several thousand people, and we'd built out everything we could on our property 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:26.320 that we were on, and we were still growing and turning people away. And so what do you do in the 00:05:26.320 --> 00:05:31.120 mid-90s when you're out of room and out of space? You're in a great location, you don't want to relocate. 00:05:31.840 --> 00:05:40.160 And so at the same time in the mid-90s, early 90s, this new idea of video was emerging. And so 00:05:41.520 --> 00:05:46.560 came up with this kind of crazy idea. I wonder if we could be one church in two locations using a video 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:55.760 recording. I think it's back in VHS or whatever it was. And I was thinking that way, and a handful of other 00:05:56.720 --> 00:06:00.320 pastors around the country, unknown to each other, were having similar 00:06:02.480 --> 00:06:09.920 ideas, ideas as well. But what started out as a band-aid solution for mega-churches to solve a space 00:06:09.920 --> 00:06:18.400 problem, grew beyond that to becoming a growth strategy for healthy churches of all sizes. 00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:24.880 Started out as a radical idea in the 90s. It went from being a radical idea to the cool idea in the turn 00:06:24.880 --> 00:06:32.320 of the century, when new church starters like Elevation and New Spring and some of those were 00:06:32.320 --> 00:06:38.080 starting their churches with a multi-site model in mind. And they were the hip cool churches. 00:06:38.640 --> 00:06:42.960 It went from radical to cool to now in this decade to mainstream idea. 00:06:42.960 --> 00:06:51.760 And every idea goes through these stages where it becomes, in time, an old idea. 00:06:51.760 --> 00:06:55.600 And then at that point, an old idea either has two options. It either 00:06:55.600 --> 00:07:01.360 is rejected as an idea anymore or nobody's doing bus ministry anymore. Or it becomes, 00:07:02.400 --> 00:07:12.240 there's a renewal of the idea. Hey, we're going to do it better and make it better. It's a renewal. 00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:21.200 Or it becomes a renaissance idea. That is, it becomes a new expression of the core idea. It's almost 00:07:21.200 --> 00:07:25.200 so fresh expression that you don't even recognize as the original idea, unless you were part of that. 00:07:25.200 --> 00:07:29.120 Wow. And so you see that in every idea that comes along. 00:07:29.120 --> 00:07:36.160 That's interesting. So back in the 90s, you're just starting multi-site. Very few are doing it. 00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:40.320 What were the, what were the challenges? What were the naysayers saying? What was the, 00:07:40.320 --> 00:07:46.080 you can't do multi-site because of blah, blah, blah. What were some of what they were saying? 00:07:46.080 --> 00:07:53.120 I think the biggest pushback, Jeff, was video sermons. That was the initial reaction was video 00:07:53.120 --> 00:07:57.040 sermons. Okay. I remember when I went to my board and said, you know, let's, let's solve our space 00:07:57.040 --> 00:08:05.840 problem by renting a school, you know, in the next community and take a video capture of our Saturday 00:08:05.840 --> 00:08:10.000 night service and show it on Sunday morning, put a pastor in that school and let's start a second 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:14.960 location of our church in that school. And they responded in the nineties or mid nineties, 00:08:14.960 --> 00:08:20.400 Jim, who would go to church and watch a video screen? And we had side screens, you know, 00:08:20.400 --> 00:08:23.680 for the PowerPoints at that point. Right. PowerPoint. Well done. 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:28.560 I'm not even sure if it was a PowerPoint. We call it PowerPoints then. When I went to Colorado Springs 00:08:28.560 --> 00:08:33.200 in 1991 as a pastor, the hottest and greatest technology, the latest technology in the church 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:35.680 across the country was overhead. Overhead projectors. Right. 00:08:35.680 --> 00:08:41.040 And projectors. And so we suggested the idea and that was their response. Who would want to go to 00:08:41.040 --> 00:08:45.440 church like that? What was that first service like having, you know, video driven? When we look back 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:49.040 in history and we look back, you know, all the way back in terms of Steve Jobs and the pirates of 00:08:49.040 --> 00:08:52.800 Silicon Valley and what they were doing, everybody said they were nuts and some of that was crazy. 00:08:52.800 --> 00:08:56.720 Can you take us back to that first service at Colorado Springs in terms of what that was like 00:08:56.720 --> 00:09:02.640 and how you guys from there saw the potential? Well, back in that day, it was a lumber cumbersome 00:09:02.640 --> 00:09:08.160 process to roll in this huge refrigerator like piece of machinery with video equipment, 00:09:08.160 --> 00:09:11.680 projection equipment and all that in there. Big, you know, video discs that you had to 00:09:12.480 --> 00:09:16.960 pop into this machines and all that. What was amazing to everybody is that 00:09:18.080 --> 00:09:21.360 and this is what we said in the early days, not everyone's going to like video. Sure. 00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:26.160 Not everyone has to like it. Only enough have to like it. I remember especially when I, 00:09:26.160 --> 00:09:30.880 this got me invited to come to Willow Creek and develop this model at Willow Creek in the year 2000. 00:09:30.880 --> 00:09:35.520 I was casting the vision for this in Colorado. I have a video. It's on my website. I still have 00:09:35.520 --> 00:09:40.960 that video. You could tell it's 1990s because it's so different the quality wise. I mentioned here we 00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:45.760 are in 1997 in this video. Right. As we approach the 21st century, it's time to think about church in 00:09:45.760 --> 00:09:50.800 a different way. One church in two locations. That was as big as my vision was at that point. Today, 00:09:50.800 --> 00:09:57.200 my church, by the way, in Colorado Springs has four locations and a couple more on the horizon. Awesome. 00:09:57.200 --> 00:10:03.200 And, um, one in a prison and the, um, and I tend that church when I'm there in town. That's my church. 00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:08.800 And so, um, I remember at Willow Creek when we were really rolling this out in a big way there, 00:10:08.800 --> 00:10:12.480 the older generation were saying, I don't know if I'm going to like the video, you know, that's for the 00:10:12.480 --> 00:10:17.600 young generation. Right. The younger generation are saying, it's too inauthentic. It's not real. 00:10:17.600 --> 00:10:21.920 When we started opening up our campuses, guess who showed up? All generations. Wow. 00:10:21.920 --> 00:10:25.680 And I, and we found that on the most part, it was the church crowd that had a, 00:10:25.680 --> 00:10:29.360 the traditional church going crowd. And you know, Willow Creek was an innovative, 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:34.960 progressive church in terms of that. But even that crowd was reluctant. As we opened up these campuses, 00:10:34.960 --> 00:10:39.040 people showed up. The learning was, is it's not about the medium. It's about the message and the 00:10:39.040 --> 00:10:44.320 messenger. Good content, video content, good messages, strong messages by capable communicators 00:10:44.320 --> 00:10:50.000 that's captured and delivered well works. It works in urban, suburban rural areas. So that was one of 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:55.920 the first takeaways was, you know, it, it, it will work. Right. Um, and it did, it was working. I think 00:10:55.920 --> 00:11:01.840 a second criticism of the, the multi-sider challenge, uh, idea in that time was, oh, this is all about 00:11:01.840 --> 00:11:06.480 celebrity pastors building their kingdom. Right. Spreading their kingdom. You know, I've worked with a lot of 00:11:06.480 --> 00:11:11.200 those pastors and, you know, there may be some that have a little bit of ego or get caught up with that. 00:11:11.200 --> 00:11:16.000 But I found that most pastors, bigger, you know, large churches or small, if anything, we're often 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:21.280 reluctant to, they, to do that for that very reason. It's not about me. And, and I, and I, you know, I don't 00:11:21.280 --> 00:11:24.960 want this to be about me. And, you know, and I got to have my face on the screen everywhere. And I said, 00:11:24.960 --> 00:11:28.800 no, it's really, it isn't about you, but it's about the gifts that's, that's in you, the gift that's in you, 00:11:28.800 --> 00:11:31.280 and how do we best leverage that. That was an early criticism. 00:11:31.280 --> 00:11:36.960 Uh, we know today that, uh, when people think multi-site, they think mega church and video. 00:11:36.960 --> 00:11:42.480 But the reality is that today about, about two thirds use video, either partially or fully. 00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:47.360 Uh-huh. A third now, our latest survey from Leadership Network shows about a third 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:52.000 are, are live, you know, not just, that does not use video. So it can be either or. Right. 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:58.480 And I'm an advocate for, for both. Um, I think I like to recommend to churches that they had to make, 00:11:58.480 --> 00:12:03.040 they had to build a live teaching team. Uh-huh. A teaching team, you know, of more than once 00:12:03.040 --> 00:12:07.600 a communicator, but make all campuses video capable, either to lead out with video or to 00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:11.440 complement or supplement with video. And that's where most churches are going. There was a season 00:12:11.440 --> 00:12:15.760 where it was three-fourths video and, you know, the early days. Right. Because it was all mega 00:12:15.760 --> 00:12:18.960 churches that were doing it. Then it went about half and half. And now at our latest survey, 00:12:18.960 --> 00:12:22.880 it's about two thirds are using video, either partially or fully, and a third are not. 00:12:22.880 --> 00:12:27.840 It's, it's, it's interesting how some churches maybe saw the, the challenge or the non-perception 00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:32.880 where people would not receive the video screen well, and they figured out a way how to create 00:12:32.880 --> 00:12:38.080 like a decentralized model or where it's maybe a teaching team that travels or, uh, or a teaching 00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:43.200 team that shapes the message and then is preached at individual campuses. You know, here in Miami, 00:12:43.200 --> 00:12:47.280 I know there are, are multi-site churches that operate on both sides of that. That's, 00:12:47.280 --> 00:12:55.440 that's video or that's not. Um, when, how difficult was the, some of those early times of multi-site where 00:12:55.440 --> 00:13:01.440 people are saying, no, you can't do this. No, you can't do this. Um, video screens bad, but there 00:13:01.440 --> 00:13:07.520 are solutions. It just takes time to work through it. Like what was that tension back then of you 00:13:07.520 --> 00:13:14.480 cannot do multi-site because we can't be across because there's ego because ecclesia isn't defined 00:13:14.480 --> 00:13:18.960 by one area. Like you overcame that. You were part of that. I don't think anybody was saying you can't 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:23.840 do it. They're just saying it's not the church. It's not, it's not the church. Uh, it, it's not 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:28.640 developing leaders. It's not, uh, developing teachers and preachers. How can a person on the screen 00:13:28.640 --> 00:13:33.760 preach to people and be a, you know, really be a shepherd or pastor to them? Those are the kind of 00:13:33.760 --> 00:13:37.440 questions they were, they were being raised and those, those are, they're, they're legitimate questions. 00:13:37.440 --> 00:13:44.080 Innovators, uh, aren't stopped by criticisms. Uh, they want to, you know, they just keep, keep 00:13:44.080 --> 00:13:49.280 working at it. You know, a new idea is like a virus to a body, to the body. And the first response to 00:13:49.280 --> 00:13:55.040 a virus is to resist it. And the outcome of that virus, it'll either be eliminated or it will overcome 00:13:55.600 --> 00:14:00.640 or integrate with the body. Right. And then change the DNA. And that's what's happened with the multi-site 00:14:00.640 --> 00:14:05.840 movement. And really the multi-site movement began not with video in the nineties. It really 00:14:05.840 --> 00:14:10.560 started the beginning of the multi-site movement. My opinion was back in about the mid seventies, 00:14:10.560 --> 00:14:17.600 when we had this radical idea of going from one to two services. It's good in the church until about 00:14:17.600 --> 00:14:24.960 1975, you know, America went to church at Sunday school at nine 30 and worship at 11. Yeah. And that 00:14:24.960 --> 00:14:30.480 was pretty much the model, but some churches were outgrowing their 500 seat auditoriums and all. And 00:14:31.440 --> 00:14:36.560 some progressive, uh, heroic pastor said, you know, our worship center is sitting empty at nine 00:14:36.560 --> 00:14:40.880 and 30 while we're all in Sunday school. What if we opened up a second earlier service 00:14:40.880 --> 00:14:45.360 and have two services? That way we could accommodate more people. It wouldn't cost us any more money. 00:14:45.360 --> 00:14:48.720 There was probably more pushback on that because that was when I started kind of my, 00:14:48.720 --> 00:14:53.200 as a pastor about that than the whole multi-site concept. You know, we don't have enough volunteers 00:14:53.200 --> 00:14:56.800 for that now for one service, how you want to do two and all that kind of stuff for the children. 00:14:56.800 --> 00:15:02.560 And anyway, so it happened and then it went to three services, you know, on Sunday morning. And then, 00:15:02.560 --> 00:15:09.920 and then, uh, some crazy pastors around the turn of the nineties, uh, said, what about a Saturday 00:15:09.920 --> 00:15:15.600 night service? Well, that's not even biblical. It's Saturday night. And so, uh, and then, 00:15:15.600 --> 00:15:19.600 and then as, as the technology started to evolve, uh, we have these overflow rooms, 00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:23.440 you know, a fellowship hall or student room or whatever. Right. And we have, well, 00:15:23.440 --> 00:15:28.640 hey, let's open that up and put a close circuit TV in there, which was really a bad experience for 00:15:28.640 --> 00:15:32.560 people. Sure. But, uh, I know in my church in Colorado, that's how we started. We had a basement 00:15:32.560 --> 00:15:38.800 and we did it just in a big screen, 30 inch screens was the, was just beginning to come on this, 00:15:38.800 --> 00:15:43.920 on the scene. Right. She put a couple of little TVs in this big room and it was an awful experience, 00:15:43.920 --> 00:15:47.920 but it worked, you know, it, it, it, it solved a problem for a season. And then, 00:15:47.920 --> 00:15:52.880 so you have multiple, uh, services on multiple days, Saturday, Sunday, and now you have in multiple 00:15:52.880 --> 00:15:57.520 rooms. And then as the technology got better, it got a better experience in those rooms. 00:15:57.520 --> 00:16:03.680 And it was an inevitable step to go to multiple locations. It was a natural step. And so, so that's 00:16:03.680 --> 00:16:10.960 been a journey of, of an idea created out of, you know, solving a problem that the, the solution 00:16:11.520 --> 00:16:17.280 becomes not just a, um, fixing a problem, it becomes maybe a new tool in the toolbox for sure. 00:16:17.280 --> 00:16:20.720 And that's, that's what's happening here. That's what I see happening with the online campus. 00:16:21.280 --> 00:16:26.480 Matter of fact, the online campus to me is an extension of the multi-site, multi-location concept 00:16:27.200 --> 00:16:34.320 that, uh, it's again, an inevitable next step coming out of this because the, uh, the online digital 00:16:34.320 --> 00:16:39.200 space or the digital space, the cloud is an, as another neighborhood. Absolutely. It's another 00:16:39.200 --> 00:16:46.720 neighborhood. And, uh, and it's how do we, my company name, multi-site solutions, uh, the tagline was 00:16:46.720 --> 00:16:51.680 taking church to the people. Well, where are people? Well, they're in the cloud, they're online. 00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:55.040 And they're, and so how do we get, bring the church there? 00:16:55.040 --> 00:16:59.840 The, the great irony is you told me, or what you just said was that a lot of churches saw some of 00:16:59.840 --> 00:17:03.920 these things as a lid for leadership development and everything else. And yet what we're seeing, 00:17:03.920 --> 00:17:08.000 and, you know, maybe elaborate on this is how multi-site and even now church online has allowed 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:12.960 us to develop more leaders than ever before, in my opinion. Well, it's a leadership intensive, uh, 00:17:12.960 --> 00:17:19.520 strategy because, uh, you opened up new locations, you need more people, but the, the challenge of 00:17:19.520 --> 00:17:25.520 growing big in one location, the big mega church, uh, is that you back and stack up a lot of people who 00:17:25.520 --> 00:17:31.040 have high capacity, want to play in the game, but there's not, there's the higher up the, the pyramid 00:17:31.040 --> 00:17:36.560 you go in terms of leadership and, and, and responsibility, there's, there's fewer seats there. Right. 00:17:36.560 --> 00:17:42.880 But when you, uh, start opening up more services or more campuses, uh, you open up more opportunities 00:17:42.880 --> 00:17:48.400 for people. Yeah. We always, I like to say to my clients when, when they're thinking about multi-site, 00:17:48.400 --> 00:17:54.080 you know, that going multi-site will increase, uh, the good news is you'll have more volunteers. Right. 00:17:54.080 --> 00:17:59.760 The hard news is you need more volunteers, but you know, it's amazing how people, uh, step up when 00:17:59.760 --> 00:18:03.680 you give them an opportunity. It's kind of like being on a, on a, on a winning football team. You 00:18:03.680 --> 00:18:08.000 know, there's a quarterback and there's, and then there's usually a couple of really good quarterbacks 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:12.480 sitting on the bench that never get to play. Yeah. And eventually what they're either going to quit 00:18:13.120 --> 00:18:16.720 or go somewhere else where they can play. Right. And that's what often happens in one church, 00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:20.720 big church in one location. There's not a lot of opportunities for everybody to play, but so what we see, 00:18:20.720 --> 00:18:26.720 and it's clearly a, a, um, you're, you're developing, multiplying volunteers and more importantly, 00:18:26.720 --> 00:18:31.600 leaders, uh, because you're giving more people opportunity to develop and play. It's, it also, 00:18:31.600 --> 00:18:38.400 uh, it, it, in my mind, in my sense, it allows us to function more biblically where teachers teach, 00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:44.160 leaders lead, pastors, pastor, uh, you know, shepherd, shepherd, administrators, 00:18:44.160 --> 00:18:49.840 administrate, instead of one person trying to do all those things. We all have two or three strong 00:18:49.840 --> 00:18:57.040 gifts, maybe. Right. Um, spiritual gifts, but, um, this allows us to really play to the gifts and the 00:18:57.040 --> 00:19:02.080 strengths that each individuals have. Within that elaborate kind of what you see across the landscape 00:19:02.080 --> 00:19:06.720 moving forward, because I know you talked earlier about a teaching team. It's still a relatively new 00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:10.720 concept. And obviously thanks to a lot of your leadership here, we've adopted that at Christ 00:19:10.720 --> 00:19:16.400 Fellowship where, where I'm at. But, and that's been helpful because it says more about the church 00:19:16.400 --> 00:19:21.360 as opposed to just on the personality. Kind of lay that out in terms of how that's changing what 00:19:21.360 --> 00:19:25.840 we're seeing moving forward. Uh, not just with the multi-cycle church online, everything, the whole 00:19:25.840 --> 00:19:32.880 shebang. Ray, I would say is the teaching team is not a new idea. It's, it's, it's as old as Acts 13, 00:19:33.680 --> 00:19:39.280 where you see, uh, five teaching leaders. One translation describes in that way, leading the 00:19:39.280 --> 00:19:43.680 church at Antioch. The church at Antioch in the first century was the healthiest church in the New 00:19:43.680 --> 00:19:49.200 Testament. It was the, uh, the five teaching leaders was the apostle Paul, a Jewish rabbi. 00:19:49.200 --> 00:19:55.600 Right. It was Barnabas, a Jewish businessman who was Greek, you know, uh, in his, his, uh, 00:19:55.600 --> 00:20:02.880 orientation. Rufus, which was a Roman. Uh, there was Niger, which was a North African person. 00:20:02.880 --> 00:20:07.840 Uh, and, uh, and then there was a member of Aristopoulos who was a member of Herod's household. 00:20:07.840 --> 00:20:12.800 So we had the first multi-ethnic church. Multi-ethnic. All right. Uh, diverse. Uh, 00:20:12.800 --> 00:20:18.480 it was a sending church and, um, and the healthy church in the New Testament. And it was, they were, 00:20:18.480 --> 00:20:23.280 that was a team. Right. Uh, of teaching leaders. So what we're seeing today and what I think is so 00:20:23.280 --> 00:20:28.480 healthy to have a teaching team where there's a, there are different voices that a church is hearing, 00:20:28.480 --> 00:20:32.960 but it's a united voice. And, uh, yes, we're doing that here at Christ fellowship. And we're really, 00:20:32.960 --> 00:20:37.520 and those who teach are those who have that, that gift of teaching. Right. And communicating. 00:20:37.520 --> 00:20:42.160 And then those others of us who maybe have other gifts, we're freed up to not, if I'm a pastor, 00:20:42.160 --> 00:20:48.880 if I, I, I, I was a pastor for many years, a senior pastor, but my leadership gift was more 00:20:48.880 --> 00:20:54.640 energizing to me than my, than preaching. And so I love lead leading more than I do preaching. Right. 00:20:54.640 --> 00:21:00.880 And so, uh, those who, who are campus pastors and who love the, who are thrilled to not have 00:21:00.880 --> 00:21:05.040 the burden of preaching if in a video teaching model, that's fantastic. They have 10 to 20 hours 00:21:05.040 --> 00:21:09.120 more a week to do the, all the other aspects of leading and shepherding the congregation. 00:21:09.760 --> 00:21:14.320 But, um, so I just think it's a healthy model, whether you're multi-site or not to have a teaching 00:21:14.320 --> 00:21:20.960 team. Absolutely. Uh, because it, it, uh, gives some, allows some margin in, in, in the teachers. Uh, 00:21:20.960 --> 00:21:26.640 it also gives a more balanced, uh, I think to a congregation of, of, uh, spiritual teaching and 00:21:26.640 --> 00:21:31.040 food. You know, that's, it's, there's a lot of difficulty in launching a multi-site, especially 00:21:31.040 --> 00:21:36.240 if a church isn't familiar with that. Uh, I've got a client right now that we're, uh, we're launching 00:21:36.240 --> 00:21:42.480 a multi-site out in Miami beach and, uh, the church hasn't really had a, a lot of history of launching 00:21:42.480 --> 00:21:46.960 set up and tear down. And it's been a while since they've launched one and staff has cycled through. 00:21:46.960 --> 00:21:51.600 I remember I was, was at a meeting and there were like maybe six or seven of the ministry leads in 00:21:51.600 --> 00:21:56.480 there and just even working through how to do set up and tear down church, the leadership that was 00:21:56.480 --> 00:22:00.960 there, they, they just, they couldn't get past some of the, the concepts that they're used to being in 00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:06.480 a, you know, fully functioning larger building. And I'll never forget this. The phrase, uh, was said 00:22:06.480 --> 00:22:10.800 in context of the multi-site. It was, well, that's, you got to realize if you're at a set up and tear 00:22:10.800 --> 00:22:16.800 down, there's, there's limitations on the model of church. Like there are things that as a, as a set up and 00:22:16.800 --> 00:22:20.480 tear down, you're not going to be able to do that. You could do in a, in a big building. 00:22:20.480 --> 00:22:25.120 Right. Um, you know, maybe it's in the con, honestly, in the context of this, it was like 00:22:25.120 --> 00:22:28.480 your staging, your staging is going to look completely different at a set up and tear down 00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:33.920 than, than at, than at a physical building. And that's, that's not a reason to stop the conversation. 00:22:33.920 --> 00:22:38.240 You don't walk away from the school as a multi-site because of the limitations of the model. 00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:42.080 All right. Uh, you figure out how to work through that. 00:22:42.080 --> 00:22:45.200 I remember having a conversation with my senior pastor at the time, Bill Hybels, 00:22:45.760 --> 00:22:50.960 when we were at three locations and they were working well, but the, the home campus 00:22:51.440 --> 00:22:58.640 was struggling on getting the mindset of multi-site. And, uh, and so I remember going to Bill and 00:22:58.640 --> 00:23:04.720 say, Bill, you know, can you just make everybody, uh, start thinking and operate? I mean, you know, 00:23:04.720 --> 00:23:10.800 make the multi-site, uh, the priority for them so they can start thinking of it as our future and not 00:23:10.800 --> 00:23:15.680 just a, um, a side, you know, side of thing going on at the church. And his response was classic. It 00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:20.560 was like, Jim, just become a force that can't be denied. Just keep starting them. Wow. That's 00:23:20.560 --> 00:23:26.320 a great quote. Yeah. I like that. Eight campuses later, we became a force, uh, that has turned the 00:23:26.320 --> 00:23:30.960 big ship. Just one other thought about the multi-site as we dive, dive into the online campus concept, 00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:36.240 because I see the similar pathway for an online campus that the multi-site movement traveled down, 00:23:36.240 --> 00:23:42.320 is that launching campuses was the easier part, even though there's a lot of hard work and challenges. 00:23:42.320 --> 00:23:48.000 That was the easier part of multi-siting. The more difficult part is, uh, managing the inter-campus 00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:52.800 relationships and the restructuring of the organization to support that. That's good. 00:23:52.800 --> 00:23:57.760 That's where most churches, multi-site churches get bogged down. Getting one or two locations up and 00:23:57.760 --> 00:24:03.360 running doesn't really require, force you to change your structure because basically everybody 00:24:03.360 --> 00:24:08.160 just does a little more work. And most churches that do this have high capacity staff and players, 00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:12.720 and they can kind of juggle two or three locations, uh, wear multiple hats, but that's, 00:24:13.360 --> 00:24:18.560 that's as far as most can do. Right. And that's the big turning point is when you launch that fourth 00:24:18.560 --> 00:24:22.320 campus or you're trying to, and you realize, you know what, we're going to have to change our structure 00:24:22.800 --> 00:24:28.160 and how we do church if we're going to do church this way. Right. And that's, it's an interesting 00:24:28.160 --> 00:24:33.280 parallel where, you know, I've looked at the church online realm and a lot of people will say, oh, 00:24:33.280 --> 00:24:40.240 there's limitations on that model where, you know, the perception is, uh, church online is, is weak in, 00:24:40.240 --> 00:24:44.560 in an area. And honestly, I think a lot of it's strong. Like, well, look at it like from a multi-site 00:24:44.560 --> 00:24:49.760 perspective, uh, multi-site. Oh, there's, uh, people aren't going to watch a video screen. Thousands of 00:24:49.760 --> 00:24:54.960 people do on a regular basis. Honestly, using your words, you don't, not everybody has to like it, 00:24:54.960 --> 00:25:00.000 but enough have to like it. And it's, and it's paid off. Similarly, you know, leadership, 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.400 multi-site campuses. Oh, if it's going to be a video screen, you're not going to be developing 00:25:04.400 --> 00:25:10.000 leaders. That's, that's a fallacy as well. Multi-site churches have this awesome leadership 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:16.400 pipeline to grow and develop volunteers, to be fully engaged in the gospel, to preach, to teach, 00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:22.080 to administer, to do all the different gifts that are available. So there's, there's opportunities 00:25:22.080 --> 00:25:28.560 to look beyond this weakness, uh, limitation of the model and say, okay, for a multi-site perspective, 00:25:28.560 --> 00:25:33.360 the limitation of the model, a lot of the perceived weaknesses actually became strengths. Just 00:25:33.360 --> 00:25:38.880 organizationally, like causes me to look at church online and ask questions like, okay, what are the 00:25:38.880 --> 00:25:46.000 perceived weaknesses of church online? And then from there, are those weaknesses really, 00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:50.880 are they really weaknesses? Because a lot of times I think what we're guilty of, what church online is 00:25:50.880 --> 00:25:55.200 guilty of, I really don't think so. I've always been a big advocate, as you know, Jeff, about the, 00:25:55.760 --> 00:26:00.640 about the online campus. I remember at Willow Creek in the, oh, early 2000s, 00:26:00.640 --> 00:26:06.640 2003 or so. I was advocating to it. I was on the senior leadership team. I was leading the multi-site 00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:12.480 model and I was on the teaching pastor team. But I was, uh, advocating that we put our services, 00:26:12.480 --> 00:26:20.000 our sermons live, uh, at the time. And the whole leadership team pushed back initially saying, 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:23.440 and these are the reasons that we're still here today. Well, if we do that, we'll, it'll hurt our 00:26:23.440 --> 00:26:29.200 church attendance. That's interesting. Did they do TV ministry at the time? No. Will never got into 00:26:29.200 --> 00:26:32.800 TV. No. Okay. There were, there was a concern that if we did that, then why would people come 00:26:32.800 --> 00:26:38.080 to church? And I said, uh, you know, our church tends to do that. And we hear, you hear that 00:26:38.080 --> 00:26:41.360 criticism. Absolutely. And somebody even said, you know, once we went online, we started seeing our 00:26:41.360 --> 00:26:45.440 attendance go down initially. I've heard, I've heard some people say that. And I said, no, our attendance 00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:52.160 won't go down. It'll go up because we will expose ourselves to more people. Right. 00:26:52.160 --> 00:26:57.440 You know, through the internet who will, who come there first. And so, uh, and it will 00:26:57.440 --> 00:27:01.440 accommodate those who are, who are missing church, who are part of our church family. Absolutely. 00:27:01.440 --> 00:27:06.400 And so after a while, after I'm really arguing for this, the decision was made, okay, let's do this. 00:27:06.400 --> 00:27:11.360 Let's, let's make our services available online, but make it password protected to our members only. 00:27:15.040 --> 00:27:20.160 The solution helps no one, right? So we did that for a few months and it was not working. 00:27:20.160 --> 00:27:25.520 Yeah. All right. And then, so then we decided, all right, let's, let's do, let's do a test case. 00:27:25.520 --> 00:27:31.120 Let's do our next series and make it fully live and, uh, and see what happens. Okay. 00:27:32.000 --> 00:27:36.800 It was, I forget the number. It was an astronomical number. It was over like, like a million people. 00:27:36.800 --> 00:27:38.080 Wow. Worldwide. Yeah. 00:27:38.080 --> 00:27:38.560 Wow. 00:27:38.560 --> 00:27:40.480 Wow. We're logging in and watching it. 00:27:40.480 --> 00:27:42.080 Oh, absolutely. I mean, you guys were the only game in town. 00:27:43.120 --> 00:27:48.480 And they realized, wow, what were, what were we thinking? How, you know, this is a huge opportunity. 00:27:48.480 --> 00:27:49.360 Yeah. Right. 00:27:49.840 --> 00:28:02.480 And, and also, but I think churches go, go through that, uh, as you know, today, uh, because, because of other things going on in our culture, the decline in church attendance, that's happening, that, that culture is no longer supporting. 00:28:02.480 --> 00:28:16.880 Uh, we, we've lost that or losing that cultural value that, that valued church attendance for 300 years in our country. That was always a value. It didn't mean everybody went to church, but there was a value that said, good people go to church. You should go to church. 00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:37.680 And the culture pretty much believed that and affirmed that. That's why they thought it was a good to have churches in communities. We, you know, give them tax free status. So, cause a local church is, is an asset to a community. That value is fading in our culture. We're overwhelmingly unchurched in America today. And so the culture is no longer going to artificially support churches. 00:28:37.680 --> 00:29:02.960 Uh, and so, um, so that is going on. And then because there's so, uh, with even within those who are committed churchgoers, Sundays are no longer sacred. Right. You know, there's a lot of sports activities. There's recreation there. The stores are all open, uh, except Chick-fil-A. Yeah. Except for Chick-fil-A because of the technology where now I don't have to wait till Thursday night to watch my favorite TV show. I can watch it anytime, any place from anywhere. 00:29:02.960 --> 00:29:32.920 Uh, and people now want that same and need that same access to their church. Right. So if you don't have an online campus, now you, there would be this decline in church attendance back in the nineties, last century when I was leading churches. Uh, if you are a church committed churchgoer, you're in church three out of four Sundays of the month. Yeah. And nobody, we didn't have to tell people that. They just did it. You know, it just, it was just kind of the internal expectation. Today, we know 1.7 people are in church 1.7 times in a month. 00:29:32.960 --> 00:29:50.420 So less than two times a month. And it's not that many of them don't want to be. It's just, they have a lot of other, they're working, they're traveling, they're sick. That's always been a, you know, always something. But, um, uh, and there's other, there's other competition for the time, but if, uh, they want to stay committed, they want to stay in, uh, in touch. 00:29:50.420 --> 00:30:10.280 And the online campus allows us to allows them to stay engaged. And that's the new measurement. It's not just, not just attendance to a physical campus, but engagement. And so that's how the conversation is happening among church leaders today is how do we keep people engaged? Hey, the church, if anybody ought to realize is church people who know their Bible know that church is more than a building. 00:30:10.340 --> 00:30:19.660 Right. And, uh, and so as a matter of fact, we know that churches, uh, for the first 300 years of the Christian faith, never owned or built a building because it was illegal to meet. 00:30:20.620 --> 00:30:31.480 Now, there's always a place where people be, but it's never been about a building. But we've made church in Western Christianity all about a building. The goal of it in the past, the goal of a new church start was to get into a building. 00:30:31.480 --> 00:30:44.700 And we've made the building an end game. And the bigger the building, the bigger the success in our minds. What I love about the multi-site movement and as well as now the online campus movement is that, um, buildings are just a means to the end. 00:30:45.220 --> 00:30:56.900 Technology is just a means to the end. And so it's all about, you know, bringing the good news of the gospel to people and then about bringing people together in community. And we know that community can happen for online. 00:30:57.080 --> 00:31:03.860 Some people say, how can community happen online? You know, you say, well, for some people who are not wired that way, it wouldn't happen for them. 00:31:03.960 --> 00:31:10.540 But there are other people who that's a safer place for many people, as you know, initially to have community. 00:31:10.800 --> 00:31:18.020 Well, and that gets back to your line earlier of everyone doesn't have to buy into it, but enough have to, to make it worthwhile. 00:31:18.020 --> 00:31:35.640 And while a lot of the church today is going to define itself more comfortably in that building, there's by far enough people outside of it that are going to benefit from a, from an online experience of a church service with that content, an online small group community relationship that to make it worthwhile. 00:31:35.900 --> 00:31:43.600 It's incredibly ironic. Like I, we were just before we started doing this podcast, I just wrapped up an online Bible study this morning with some online pastors. 00:31:43.600 --> 00:31:51.880 And we were reading through the book of Acts and when we hit Acts six, which is the, uh, Stephen's murder, killed, whatever the correct term there is. Sacrificed. 00:31:52.300 --> 00:31:57.320 Uh, and the whole murdered, that's the right word. Uh, Stephen's martyred. 00:31:57.320 --> 00:32:02.880 And, and the whole crux of it is centered around the destruction of the temple, the destruction of the building. 00:32:02.880 --> 00:32:07.700 Cause he said that Jesus, what Jesus said was going to destroy the temple and blah, blah, blah, whatever. 00:32:07.860 --> 00:32:17.600 But at the end of this, like Stephen's martyrdom was centered around the Sadducees, the Sanhedrin's loyalty, sacred view of what the temple was. 00:32:17.600 --> 00:32:26.420 And this is even 2000 years ago, they were still stuck in this building and didn't see the potential of what could be done, what the Holy Spirit could do outside of that. 00:32:26.600 --> 00:32:31.240 So, you know, it's funny when, when the, the, the Mount of Transfiguration, when, when Peter. 00:32:31.460 --> 00:32:31.660 Yes. 00:32:32.160 --> 00:32:35.780 And, and James and John were with Jesus on the mountain, Mount there. 00:32:35.780 --> 00:32:41.400 And when they had that experience, you know, their first reaction was Peter was, let's build something. 00:32:41.580 --> 00:32:41.760 Yeah. 00:32:41.860 --> 00:32:42.500 Let's build a tab. 00:32:42.500 --> 00:32:44.420 Let's build a tab to, you know, to mark this place. 00:32:44.520 --> 00:32:44.720 Yep. 00:32:44.820 --> 00:32:46.120 Cause it's a sacred place. 00:32:46.260 --> 00:32:46.380 Yeah. 00:32:46.700 --> 00:32:50.160 Jesus was talking about the temple is, is you. 00:32:50.360 --> 00:32:50.540 Right. 00:32:50.700 --> 00:32:54.660 As, as human beings with the, with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God living in them. 00:32:54.880 --> 00:32:55.460 The new temples. 00:32:55.580 --> 00:32:55.780 But anyway. 00:32:55.880 --> 00:32:56.480 They missed it. 00:32:56.560 --> 00:32:56.860 Oh, well. 00:32:57.140 --> 00:32:57.680 Indeed they did. 00:32:57.800 --> 00:33:05.200 And it's, you know, the great irony, Jim, is you talked about earlier how an idea starts off as innovative and then it becomes cool. 00:33:05.700 --> 00:33:08.020 Where are we at right now in the online church deal? 00:33:08.120 --> 00:33:08.960 Is it still innovative? 00:33:09.200 --> 00:33:09.820 Is it cool? 00:33:09.820 --> 00:33:17.620 No, I think, cause you, I, I know I listened to your interview with some of the early pioneers of the online campus here last week. 00:33:17.940 --> 00:33:20.740 And they were talking about 10 years ago when they were, had been doing this for 10 years now. 00:33:20.820 --> 00:33:21.720 I think 10 years ago. 00:33:21.720 --> 00:33:22.480 I think 10 years ago it was innovative. 00:33:22.820 --> 00:33:24.960 I think we're moving now, or radical. 00:33:25.100 --> 00:33:25.640 It was radical. 00:33:26.040 --> 00:33:27.900 I think we're moving now into the cool stage. 00:33:28.800 --> 00:33:32.540 You know, as I mentioned, we just had the survey of multi-site churches. 00:33:32.540 --> 00:33:37.320 The latest one that I've been involved with, about five of those over the last 20 years with Leadership Network. 00:33:37.500 --> 00:33:41.480 In 2014, five years ago, we asked multi-site churches, how many of you are doing an online campus? 00:33:42.160 --> 00:33:47.600 It was 28% indicated they were doing an online campus. 00:33:47.860 --> 00:33:52.180 Now, many of them at that point, what they described an online campus was we're putting our sermons online. 00:33:52.640 --> 00:33:53.640 And that's, that's the beginning. 00:33:53.740 --> 00:33:54.380 That's how it starts. 00:33:54.520 --> 00:33:58.260 I'd like to share what I think an online campus is, what it requires to be an online campus. 00:33:58.360 --> 00:34:00.720 It's more than just having a video sermon, a video online. 00:34:01.200 --> 00:34:01.900 But it's a good start. 00:34:01.900 --> 00:34:05.300 Five years ago, 28% of multi-site churches had an online campus. 00:34:05.580 --> 00:34:10.380 This year, that number has gone from 28% to 47%. 00:34:10.380 --> 00:34:11.160 Almost doubled. 00:34:11.320 --> 00:34:12.060 Almost 50%. 00:34:12.060 --> 00:34:13.180 Now, here's the interesting thing. 00:34:13.300 --> 00:34:19.740 Five years ago, when we asked the question, do you see an online campus in the future, 62% said no. 00:34:20.180 --> 00:34:20.820 Five years ago. 00:34:21.100 --> 00:34:21.240 Okay. 00:34:21.480 --> 00:34:23.840 But since then, about 25% growth. 00:34:23.960 --> 00:34:29.620 Clearly, people are changing their minds and seeing this maybe is something that is our future and our future. 00:34:29.940 --> 00:34:33.420 So I think we're moving into the cool stage now, or in the cool stage. 00:34:33.420 --> 00:34:34.840 You had a question to me earlier. 00:34:35.040 --> 00:34:39.780 You were asking the question, what will the online campus look like in 2029, 10 years from now? 00:34:40.100 --> 00:34:45.260 I think it will be, it'll be very much mainstream among healthy, growing, outreach-oriented churches. 00:34:45.260 --> 00:34:47.580 It will become a standard part of their ministry. 00:34:47.740 --> 00:34:52.660 An online campus to me, what makes an online campus is an online campus pastor. 00:34:53.660 --> 00:35:05.020 To me, that's the, there's a lot of other pieces, but when you have that, now you're really committing to making this another expression of your church in another, in a digital neighborhood. 00:35:05.100 --> 00:35:05.260 Yeah. 00:35:05.520 --> 00:35:05.680 Right. 00:35:05.680 --> 00:35:15.320 Where you are bringing the full impact of teaching, but also you're, in terms of the video, you're having a shepherd, a pastor that's leading people in online. 00:35:15.540 --> 00:35:21.320 You're, you're offering all kinds of opportunities to grow spiritually and to have spiritual experiences. 00:35:21.560 --> 00:35:22.420 You're building community. 00:35:22.620 --> 00:35:25.180 These are all the components, I think, of what makes an online campus. 00:35:25.180 --> 00:35:38.820 I think we'll see consolidated messages and worship as a capsule of the, of the full teaching and worship if they want it, but it'll be, it'll be shorter and it'll be, it'll be prominent. 00:35:38.820 --> 00:35:49.500 And it'll be, I think what the best, the most effective use of online campuses or the, it's not just a, we're providing this for our church family or just to get our message out there. 00:35:49.520 --> 00:36:07.740 Although I think those are great benefits, but it'll, it'll become more of a tool that will help reach people, get people in community and small groups locally somewhere that will be a strategy for local, small groups that become house churches that become eventually a fully locally functioning congregation. 00:36:08.340 --> 00:36:12.320 And as you know, that's, we're in the embryonic stage of that here at Christ Fellowship. 00:36:12.460 --> 00:36:12.780 Absolutely. 00:36:13.380 --> 00:36:16.100 And I think, I think we will see a lot of churches doing that. 00:36:16.620 --> 00:36:23.680 And they've seen this as not just a getting our content out there, but as an evangelistic tool that will eventually, you know, land, start more congregations. 00:36:23.820 --> 00:36:24.040 Right. 00:36:24.040 --> 00:36:32.080 Whether it's through church planning or multi-siting and, and, and continue to be a viable congregation in the cloud. 00:36:32.460 --> 00:36:32.860 That's good. 00:36:32.960 --> 00:36:33.320 For people. 00:36:33.580 --> 00:36:33.700 Yeah. 00:36:34.100 --> 00:36:44.400 For churches to get to that point though, where we start to utilize online groups to grow house churches, which goes to church planting like that, that pathway you just paved out. 00:36:44.920 --> 00:36:45.520 Did I miss anything? 00:36:45.640 --> 00:36:56.180 No, I think that is, there's a conversation, some of the conversations, honestly, that I'm having right now are, what would a digital only expression of church look like? 00:36:56.480 --> 00:37:02.300 In other words, what would a church look like that isn't based off of a brick and mortar building? 00:37:02.500 --> 00:37:04.640 You know, and I can give examples and I've talked about it in the past. 00:37:04.800 --> 00:37:07.700 There's, you know, church home is an example out in California. 00:37:07.700 --> 00:37:14.840 We've, we've, we've had them on the podcast recently where they've created a discipleship strategy that they're, they're moving away from. 00:37:14.920 --> 00:37:17.540 They're five campuses, but they're moving away from physical growth. 00:37:18.540 --> 00:37:27.220 Bloomberg Church is another one where they're moving away and they actually restricted their, their multi-sites to go towards a more digital process. 00:37:27.580 --> 00:37:30.800 There's a, a very small church up in New England. 00:37:31.040 --> 00:37:39.160 It's a pastor that I've talked with and he's got, he's got a thousand person venue and he's got maybe a hundred people that attend church there any given Sunday. 00:37:39.160 --> 00:37:47.020 And it's in New England where it's a very liberal environment and they're not really excited about Christianity or going to a church as a general rule. 00:37:47.520 --> 00:37:56.800 And so for him, he has to adjust his method of church away from come to the building, but to do what you're talking about. 00:37:56.800 --> 00:38:08.880 Starting creating and challenging his attenders to create this house church mentality, selling off his building and instead distributing out content and services and, and training people on discipleship. 00:38:08.960 --> 00:38:12.780 So that they can be the, the heroes, the, the disciples of the people. 00:38:13.160 --> 00:38:16.380 And so there's, there's many different, different spins on that. 00:38:16.620 --> 00:38:31.100 So I suggested to a pastor once, hey, pastor, you got to realize that the most effective place that Susie, some made up woman, most effective place that she could be is not sitting on a pew in your church service on Sunday. 00:38:31.440 --> 00:38:40.920 It's sitting over here on her couch at home with 15 or 20 of her friends and then her doing church in her neighborhood. 00:38:41.260 --> 00:38:45.900 That's a far more effective way of evangelism than, than her just sitting in the pew. 00:38:46.640 --> 00:38:48.640 And that conversation didn't go well. 00:38:48.940 --> 00:38:51.380 It's just the, the pastor couldn't. 00:38:51.380 --> 00:39:05.040 And for whatever reason, I don't know if it's, you know, pride or if it's part of it, I think is we're so used to this metric of, of measuring butts and seats, where the successfulness of our churches is measured on what Sunday morning looks like. 00:39:05.040 --> 00:39:17.900 And how full that venue is, where for church online to be effective, you really can't measure that butts in seats count because for online to be effective, you're creating those house church environments. 00:39:18.060 --> 00:39:23.480 You're empowering these people outside of your church to, to create their own, own community. 00:39:24.100 --> 00:39:35.020 How do you have conversations or what, what advice would you give to a pastor that's maybe feeling that tension of, okay, there is an opportunity for us to expand our horizons, to reach outside. 00:39:35.260 --> 00:39:42.440 To start new, but to start new, I've got to let go and I've got to change the way that I measure my success today. 00:39:42.800 --> 00:39:47.700 Well, you said one thing just then about this is something outside the church. 00:39:48.280 --> 00:39:50.900 And I think the mindset that this is the church. 00:39:51.180 --> 00:39:51.480 That's good. 00:39:51.960 --> 00:39:53.500 It's, it's an extension of the church. 00:39:53.680 --> 00:40:00.520 But I, I think that that's, it's a paradigm shift that has to happen in, in, in, and it is happening with a lot of pastors. 00:40:00.920 --> 00:40:08.600 Certainly the younger pastors that are coming on the board on the most part have less of an issue with this, but a lot of older pastors that clearly make, are making this change as well. 00:40:08.700 --> 00:40:14.200 But it's that mind shift away that, and this is again, the multi-site movement started to shift this thinking. 00:40:14.700 --> 00:40:23.440 We've made church a very building-centric model, you know, for the last few hundred years, a thousand years maybe. 00:40:24.260 --> 00:40:29.840 And we realized, as I mentioned earlier, that buildings are just a means to the end, they're not the end game. 00:40:30.580 --> 00:40:40.400 And so when we began to move away, back in the 70s and 80s, when the megachurch movement really took off in America, it was a new phenomenon, you know. 00:40:40.880 --> 00:40:49.480 And so what do you do when you've got a gifted teacher, preacher that can draw a crowd, and then they can also mobilize that crowd and to become a very effective church? 00:40:49.480 --> 00:40:51.320 So we saw that happening. 00:40:51.720 --> 00:41:02.400 But what we realized is that there's, but the problem with megacampuses is that they're not sustainable over the long time. 00:41:02.780 --> 00:41:10.700 You know, and right now we're approaching the retiring age of a lot of those baby boomer megachurch pastors who's led that movement. 00:41:10.940 --> 00:41:20.200 And there's going to be a lot of half-empty campuses in the next decade or so because the communities around them have leveled off in terms of their growth. 00:41:21.020 --> 00:41:27.360 And it's going to be hard to fill those pulpits with guys who want to come to a big shift that's declining. 00:41:27.520 --> 00:41:34.080 And so the multi-site movement now has said, you know, we don't have to have these big buildings to have a mega impact. 00:41:34.720 --> 00:41:39.940 You know, Life Church, I think of Life Church, has over 100,000 people attending on 31 locations across the country now 00:41:39.940 --> 00:41:41.200 because they're not limited by buildings. 00:41:41.500 --> 00:41:41.600 Right. 00:41:41.960 --> 00:41:42.820 Now we're not limited. 00:41:44.000 --> 00:41:46.920 We're not even have to be limited to a building now with online campuses. 00:41:46.920 --> 00:41:51.200 We can go anywhere and everywhere in the world for a fraction of the cost. 00:41:51.440 --> 00:41:56.780 I think when people realize what's our goal, we're not – I have to tell pastors all the time, Jeff, 00:41:56.880 --> 00:41:59.700 we're not in the church building business team, pastors. 00:41:59.960 --> 00:42:01.280 We're in the disciple-making business. 00:42:02.460 --> 00:42:07.140 You know, and facilities, technology, these are just means to the end of making disciples. 00:42:07.420 --> 00:42:07.840 That's good. 00:42:08.940 --> 00:42:10.060 And who make disciples. 00:42:10.600 --> 00:42:12.020 That's the history of the church. 00:42:12.580 --> 00:42:20.560 And so I like to tell people, you know, every – the Apostle Paul and the disciples, the apostles, they all started churches. 00:42:21.100 --> 00:42:21.520 Guess what? 00:42:22.200 --> 00:42:25.720 Does anybody know where those churches' buildings are now that they met in? 00:42:26.000 --> 00:42:26.160 No. 00:42:26.340 --> 00:42:27.140 They don't exist. 00:42:27.280 --> 00:42:27.400 Yeah. 00:42:28.040 --> 00:42:37.120 But the impact of those churches, that they started in their day, and they met in a place somewhere, we are feeling the benefit of that today. 00:42:37.380 --> 00:42:37.600 Right. 00:42:37.720 --> 00:42:47.300 But when you build something really big or small, but you're small, it gets very easy to get consumed with – if we don't have people coming in the door, we're not going to be able to keep the lights on. 00:42:47.400 --> 00:42:47.640 Right. 00:42:48.440 --> 00:42:54.140 The shift gets off of making disciples to, how do I keep all this going, you know, financially. 00:42:54.660 --> 00:43:00.760 So there's a lot of – there's a lot of church murders going on, which is the other movement that I'm very much involved with. 00:43:01.320 --> 00:43:02.640 And it's not all bad. 00:43:02.920 --> 00:43:14.820 A lot of churches do need to die and go out of business, but they can have a resurrection, a rebirth, by joining with another church that is growing and vibrant and is culturally relevant. 00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:15.500 Absolutely. 00:43:15.500 --> 00:43:23.740 And so, again, every generation has to reinvent itself, the church, to accommodate not the message, but our methods. 00:43:24.080 --> 00:43:27.700 And that's always hard in churches, among church people, to make those changes. 00:43:28.080 --> 00:43:28.180 Yeah. 00:43:28.400 --> 00:43:28.840 That's good. 00:43:29.660 --> 00:43:39.780 Recently, you've mentioned before you're listening to the podcast with the panel, it was the Church IT Network, Redefining the Y, Church Online, that did a couple weeks ago. 00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:45.580 But in there, we talked a lot about moving away from just broadcasting the service. 00:43:45.720 --> 00:43:52.400 Like it wasn't enough just to broadcast that, you know, let's look at a fully functioning model of what church is. 00:43:52.400 --> 00:44:01.180 You know, you mentioned hiring the campus pastor, Ray, to shepherd, to develop, to empower people with the gospel, to send out. 00:44:01.940 --> 00:44:08.140 And that's a huge part, I think, of reshaping what church online is. 00:44:09.540 --> 00:44:11.020 And this is for both of you guys. 00:44:11.160 --> 00:44:17.400 What are some other things that church online would need to do to reshape, to adjust? 00:44:17.500 --> 00:44:24.500 Like, okay, yeah, the perception of church online, people perceive, you know, things that aren't necessarily who we are. 00:44:24.500 --> 00:44:29.040 But at the same time, we need to evolve and change through that. 00:44:29.140 --> 00:44:37.660 So what are some things that we need to, that church online needs to change in order to be better received or more palatable for leadership? 00:44:37.660 --> 00:44:44.640 Let me say, before Ray answers that question, Ray became our campus pastor, our online campus pastor, two years ago. 00:44:45.380 --> 00:44:51.820 And of all of our campuses, the most growing campus of our church is the online campus. 00:44:51.920 --> 00:44:52.280 Absolutely. 00:44:52.880 --> 00:44:54.400 Beyond anything, all the others. 00:44:54.960 --> 00:45:03.140 And so, and I think a lot of it, Ray is probably, Ray is more known than probably any other pastor at our church right now. 00:45:03.840 --> 00:45:05.680 Because he's seen by more people. 00:45:05.680 --> 00:45:06.000 Yeah. 00:45:06.200 --> 00:45:09.480 And, well, and I guess, you know, Pastor Rick and now Pastor Omar. 00:45:09.500 --> 00:45:10.200 Yeah, Pastor Omar and Carl. 00:45:10.200 --> 00:45:12.060 Because they're part of that online campus. 00:45:12.120 --> 00:45:12.240 Yeah. 00:45:12.560 --> 00:45:20.800 But I'm on the road a lot traveling on Sunday, as you know, and getting here to help lead the church during the week. 00:45:21.340 --> 00:45:28.100 So Ray is more my pastor online than, I feel affinity with him more than probably any other pastors here. 00:45:28.280 --> 00:45:28.460 Yeah. 00:45:28.460 --> 00:45:31.280 Because he's that shepherd to me online. 00:45:31.460 --> 00:45:35.600 And I love how he plays that role so well. 00:45:35.780 --> 00:45:35.980 Yep. 00:45:36.860 --> 00:45:37.140 Thank you. 00:45:37.140 --> 00:45:42.900 Setting up the message, talking us through the worship, you know, the little breaks along the way, helping me understand what's going on in the church. 00:45:44.400 --> 00:45:48.020 You know, it's been an incredible experience. 00:45:48.020 --> 00:45:56.980 And so I think what Ray is doing, I think Ray is becoming one of the leading examples and models of how to do church online well. 00:45:57.400 --> 00:45:57.980 Thanks, Jim. 00:45:58.180 --> 00:45:58.340 Yeah. 00:45:58.460 --> 00:46:05.020 And, you know, because I had great people empowering me, like both you and Jeff, along the way, it's definitely helped, you know, carry a lot of that along. 00:46:05.540 --> 00:46:08.900 And it's funny because I think I'm more recognized now amongst our people as well. 00:46:09.020 --> 00:46:10.160 I get stopped a lot more often. 00:46:10.500 --> 00:46:12.620 And by the way, Jeff, you started this. 00:46:12.700 --> 00:46:12.820 Yeah. 00:46:12.820 --> 00:46:14.740 You got it going and now you're consulting. 00:46:15.120 --> 00:46:15.520 Absolutely. 00:46:16.320 --> 00:46:16.560 Yeah. 00:46:16.740 --> 00:46:18.480 And just did a phenomenal job. 00:46:18.580 --> 00:46:22.340 Jeff saw a lot of me early on for a lot of this role too, which was awesome. 00:46:22.440 --> 00:46:28.340 The big thing that I see that's happening is even I've had to lift my lid in terms of what community could look like online. 00:46:29.200 --> 00:46:35.020 I've had to expand my thought process in terms of how online community could take place. 00:46:35.500 --> 00:46:37.480 And we see a lot of different churches experimenting with that. 00:46:37.580 --> 00:46:43.440 We have a lot of group leaders experimenting with online community in terms of starting small groups within WhatsApp chats, 00:46:44.000 --> 00:46:49.600 starting small groups within YouVersion Bible plans and leveraging that as a way of discipling people, praying for them, 00:46:49.980 --> 00:46:52.940 keeping up with them in the Word, encouraging them on a daily basis, 00:46:53.420 --> 00:46:57.400 doing things that we would even consider beyond small group community. 00:46:57.400 --> 00:46:59.700 Imagine if you could have small group on a daily basis. 00:47:00.280 --> 00:47:02.080 And that's what's happening for some of these folks. 00:47:02.180 --> 00:47:03.720 They are staying in the Word together daily. 00:47:03.820 --> 00:47:05.160 They are praying for each other daily. 00:47:05.460 --> 00:47:11.120 They are carrying out a lot of what we saw in Acts 2 that we couldn't do just in a building. 00:47:11.420 --> 00:47:12.660 We couldn't do just in Sunday school. 00:47:12.720 --> 00:47:14.060 I grew up in that Sunday school model. 00:47:14.120 --> 00:47:14.720 I remember that. 00:47:15.160 --> 00:47:18.880 And, you know, there was Sunday morning contact, and then there was very little contact throughout the week. 00:47:18.940 --> 00:47:24.120 If you had a really engaging teacher, you know, as a kid, they might call your parents or they might just keep up with you, 00:47:24.540 --> 00:47:26.880 you know, wish you a happy birthday when that came around once a year. 00:47:27.240 --> 00:47:29.840 Now, thanks to online community, we see daily engagement. 00:47:29.840 --> 00:47:32.440 We see continual engagement along the way. 00:47:32.440 --> 00:47:35.020 And as a result, you get stronger Christians. 00:47:35.540 --> 00:47:43.880 You get people who are finding that their faith is applicable in real-world situations, whether they're at work amongst their employees, 00:47:44.020 --> 00:47:46.800 where it seems like a very tenuous atmosphere. 00:47:46.980 --> 00:47:48.880 Oh, man, how am I going to get the gospel out here? 00:47:48.920 --> 00:47:54.000 Well, you've got people encouraging you on a regular basis, and they're staying connected with you through your devices. 00:47:54.700 --> 00:47:57.580 And so you've got that constant encouragement happening around that clock. 00:47:57.660 --> 00:48:01.940 You've got that constant community happening where growth continues to happen. 00:48:02.080 --> 00:48:06.140 And then the church becomes more than just about the brand of Christ Fellowship. 00:48:06.220 --> 00:48:12.220 Now it's, oh, I can be part of your community first, where they're even inviting people into those online digital platforms first. 00:48:12.440 --> 00:48:19.260 And then they're willing to come into a physical space and experience church life because now they've got community to go with them. 00:48:19.420 --> 00:48:24.100 The whole concept of I've got somebody to sit with now, that's expanding even further. 00:48:24.580 --> 00:48:34.520 And so for church online in 2029, I just see continual expansion and thought process and lifting our lids on community in terms of what that could look like, what that could be. 00:48:35.160 --> 00:48:38.260 And it just does nothing, just excites me. 00:48:38.540 --> 00:48:39.360 I think it's going to be awesome. 00:48:39.940 --> 00:48:40.440 Very cool. 00:48:40.760 --> 00:48:42.300 What else does church online look like? 00:48:42.360 --> 00:48:47.020 You mentioned before what defines a church online and some things maybe to look at. 00:48:47.020 --> 00:48:51.880 So like just in your mind, I'm just curious, what does church online look like? 00:48:52.200 --> 00:49:03.240 As I mentioned before, I think church online, first of all, obviously, is a delivery through digital media of a message, of worship. 00:49:03.960 --> 00:49:09.800 It has a campus pastor that's dedicated to shepherding that flock online. 00:49:10.540 --> 00:49:13.580 It's offering all the components of a church. 00:49:13.900 --> 00:49:16.220 You can give online. 00:49:16.420 --> 00:49:19.260 You can ask for prayer online. 00:49:19.440 --> 00:49:23.900 You can respond to an invitation online to follow Christ. 00:49:23.900 --> 00:49:29.440 And you can even lead people through communion online. 00:49:30.140 --> 00:49:33.080 You can even lead people through baptism online. 00:49:33.300 --> 00:49:33.620 Absolutely. 00:49:33.940 --> 00:49:36.080 You know, we've seen all that can happen. 00:49:37.040 --> 00:49:39.840 And we know that community happens online, of course, as well. 00:49:40.400 --> 00:49:46.140 And you can start small groups and you can start, that can become house churches, that can become campuses or church plants. 00:49:46.360 --> 00:49:49.040 All that's all possible through this medium. 00:49:49.280 --> 00:49:50.640 We're going to see more and more of that. 00:49:50.740 --> 00:49:51.100 Absolutely. 00:49:51.420 --> 00:49:53.180 And churches are doing that. 00:49:53.600 --> 00:50:03.320 One of the big questions, our online also can help start global campuses or churches by people who are watching you from around the world. 00:50:03.460 --> 00:50:05.820 What's our global draw? 00:50:06.500 --> 00:50:08.880 That would be a question I'd like to ask you, Ray. 00:50:08.940 --> 00:50:12.200 What if the majority of people go online, how far out are they? 00:50:12.300 --> 00:50:15.360 Our strongest draw right now currently is within the United States. 00:50:16.100 --> 00:50:24.760 But what we are seeing as people shift around and move is we're seeing more and more countries pop up in terms of where their IPs are popping up from. 00:50:25.540 --> 00:50:26.480 You know, we're in Miami. 00:50:26.880 --> 00:50:29.180 And so as a result, we're a very transient city. 00:50:29.180 --> 00:50:35.180 But we've got a lot of people that are globally connected, which means that they are sharing the messages through digital mediums. 00:50:35.600 --> 00:50:41.460 And even the language factor isn't as much of a barrier anymore because younger generations in different countries are coming up in English. 00:50:41.580 --> 00:50:44.880 They're watching some of our sitcoms and some different things in English. 00:50:45.060 --> 00:50:49.840 And so they're very much wanting to adapt to American culture and even absorb a lot of our content. 00:50:50.340 --> 00:50:58.100 And so internationally even, we're seeing a lot of people pop up and watching us from – in our church contests, we're seeing folks in Central America. 00:50:58.320 --> 00:51:00.320 We're seeing people in Brazil and South America. 00:51:00.940 --> 00:51:04.340 And then, of course, we have a lot of businessmen and international folks who are traveling. 00:51:04.960 --> 00:51:06.760 And so we're seeing things pop up in Asia. 00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:10.240 We're seeing stuff pop up in Europe and even in the Middle East. 00:51:10.660 --> 00:51:12.200 And it's an amazing thing. 00:51:12.200 --> 00:51:19.240 Well, because we're in Miami, it seems like everyone in Miami is either one or two generations away from South America country. 00:51:19.700 --> 00:51:20.120 Right. Or Caribbean. 00:51:20.380 --> 00:51:25.380 And there's a strong family and relational connection that continues on. 00:51:25.520 --> 00:51:25.800 Absolutely. 00:51:25.800 --> 00:51:32.660 And so it's been a natural feeder out of Miami to the Caribbean and South America. 00:51:33.180 --> 00:51:38.240 Let me ask you this, though. You said most of it comes from the U.S. or our followers or our people logging in with us. 00:51:38.380 --> 00:51:39.380 Where's the majority of that? 00:51:39.380 --> 00:51:46.360 But in the past, it was my observation that for most online campuses, the biggest draw was about an hour. 00:51:46.780 --> 00:51:47.060 Sure. 00:51:47.220 --> 00:51:50.440 Is it an hour – one to three hours from the – 00:51:50.440 --> 00:51:52.860 The largest circle comes from within an hour away. 00:51:53.100 --> 00:51:56.700 But what we see is a growing circle even two to three, four hours north. 00:51:56.840 --> 00:51:59.280 So Miami is going through a cultural shift right now. 00:51:59.280 --> 00:52:04.240 And, Jeff, you can kind of attest to this in which housing prices and everything are causing everything to rise. 00:52:05.140 --> 00:52:08.400 And young families are having a harder time to start down here. 00:52:08.900 --> 00:52:11.020 And so a lot of them are navigating to Central Florida. 00:52:11.500 --> 00:52:16.700 And so we see a large population popping up in Central Florida that are tuning back in online. 00:52:16.880 --> 00:52:19.920 They've not been able to find a church to connect to there because of their job. 00:52:19.980 --> 00:52:21.000 Their job is weekend-based. 00:52:21.180 --> 00:52:23.120 And when they don't know what to do, they do what they know. 00:52:23.340 --> 00:52:27.200 And so they're navigating over to cfmiami.org and they're logging into the service. 00:52:27.260 --> 00:52:28.920 So they're just popping open the church app. 00:52:29.040 --> 00:52:33.580 Or it just creates more content for them to navigate with their family that's still back here. 00:52:33.580 --> 00:52:40.040 And so there is a growing population in Central Florida, in Orlando, in Tampa of people who are becoming part of CF Online. 00:52:40.500 --> 00:52:46.480 And then in the Carolinas, where our former elite pastor was from, a lot of folks wanted to watch him teach. 00:52:46.520 --> 00:52:47.780 And they wanted to stay engaged with that. 00:52:47.880 --> 00:52:54.260 And so we saw a lot of people in the Carolinas checking in on a regular basis and absorbing Rick's messages and tuning into the content. 00:52:54.860 --> 00:52:58.620 And so it's funny how pockets just kind of pick up and they take off. 00:52:58.940 --> 00:53:06.040 See, I can see where we still have some communities in Miami that we could have physical campuses on our strategy. 00:53:06.500 --> 00:53:15.440 But I can see the next round is where's a large pocket of people watching us from inside of our hour from the home campus here. 00:53:15.560 --> 00:53:18.380 We could start eventually a campus one day. 00:53:18.600 --> 00:53:18.740 Yeah. 00:53:18.800 --> 00:53:24.300 Starting with small groups online, small groups that meet in a house, watching us online together. 00:53:24.560 --> 00:53:24.740 Yeah. 00:53:25.180 --> 00:53:27.560 Yeah, we've actually got a group of folks in a house in Orlando. 00:53:27.860 --> 00:53:29.760 Jeff, you remember you helped Albert get started there. 00:53:29.760 --> 00:53:31.480 And down some in the Keys is West as well. 00:53:31.640 --> 00:53:32.000 Exactly. 00:53:32.260 --> 00:53:34.820 And so that's some of the folks that have started. 00:53:35.100 --> 00:53:38.400 And they've kind of just been taking the content and building community around it. 00:53:38.860 --> 00:53:43.040 And it's a beautiful thing that we see happening in terms of the potential for movement. 00:53:43.160 --> 00:53:48.860 We've got another house church getting ready to start up in Orlando that wants to take the content and they want to do it where they're at. 00:53:49.020 --> 00:53:52.560 And so that's amazing and it's awesome just to see how God could use that. 00:53:52.800 --> 00:53:56.520 And, you know, we've talked to Danny Hicks from Elevation on the podcast, Jeff. 00:53:56.920 --> 00:54:02.500 We've seen how different churches are finding different ways to move this expression and to leverage it. 00:54:02.500 --> 00:54:06.860 Maybe even not for the launch of a campus, even though in some cases like that happened with Elevation. 00:54:06.980 --> 00:54:08.840 They launched a Melbourne campus out of one of those. 00:54:09.460 --> 00:54:14.220 But over the long haul, it becomes a great opportunity for just great community and growth to be built. 00:54:14.760 --> 00:54:17.640 Costs are low because it's all volunteer driven. 00:54:18.420 --> 00:54:21.240 But discipleship is high because it's all volunteer driven. 00:54:22.240 --> 00:54:27.180 And as long as that discipleship level is high, I mean, I'm okay with it. 00:54:27.380 --> 00:54:37.640 You get the story of like a young adult family in Orlando, you know, just hypothetical somebody moves four hours up and they're still engaged with the Christ Fellowship Miami's feet. 00:54:38.780 --> 00:54:39.560 That's great. 00:54:39.960 --> 00:54:43.340 As long as we're giving them more than just the one hour on Sunday. 00:54:43.340 --> 00:54:43.840 Oh, absolutely. 00:54:43.840 --> 00:54:49.860 As long as you're, you know, you're shepherding them, they're being discipled in a group there. 00:54:50.100 --> 00:54:53.880 We're not taking them away from a community up in Orlando. 00:54:54.340 --> 00:54:59.800 We're empowering them to create a community where they are in Orlando. 00:55:00.180 --> 00:55:01.800 Like to me, that's the win. 00:55:01.980 --> 00:55:15.340 If not, and just even to call church online out here, is if they never engage in some sort of a disciple making community where all they are is just consuming video broadcast. 00:55:15.700 --> 00:55:17.620 I mean, I give pause to that, right? 00:55:17.660 --> 00:55:17.760 Sure. 00:55:18.100 --> 00:55:21.180 Because the standard isn't watch a service. 00:55:21.380 --> 00:55:23.520 The standard isn't go to a building even. 00:55:24.340 --> 00:55:25.880 It's create that disciple. 00:55:26.240 --> 00:55:26.400 Right. 00:55:26.660 --> 00:55:26.840 Yeah. 00:55:26.940 --> 00:55:28.700 Content needs to drive towards community. 00:55:28.980 --> 00:55:31.060 We talked about the whole online to offline relationship. 00:55:31.380 --> 00:55:34.200 You know, first option in a lot of cases out of town. 00:55:34.260 --> 00:55:36.720 For those of you who are thinking, oh, well, they're just trying to keep people online. 00:55:36.820 --> 00:55:39.180 First option is we try to get them connected to a local community. 00:55:39.180 --> 00:55:48.900 But if they're incapable of doing so because of time or work or anything else, the next best step is we connect them to online community so that they can be discipled, so that they can grow in their faith. 00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:52.540 We don't want just a connection card that says, hey, I received Christ. 00:55:52.620 --> 00:56:00.080 We want to take them to those next steps, which is very much what we've been about at Christ Fellowship and what we continue to be about as we move forward with church online. 00:56:00.400 --> 00:56:00.680 Awesome. 00:56:01.060 --> 00:56:02.000 It's been a great talk. 00:56:02.540 --> 00:56:04.020 You know, Jim, I want to thank you for your time. 00:56:04.120 --> 00:56:08.960 I know you're busy running the world, at least the multi-site world, but glad to have you on here. 00:56:09.540 --> 00:56:12.780 And Ray, man, once again, thanks for jumping on the podcast. 00:56:13.300 --> 00:56:13.800 That was a pleasure. 00:56:13.960 --> 00:56:15.740 Yeah, this podcast is close to home to me. 00:56:15.820 --> 00:56:26.040 I'm literally at Christ Fellowship Miami, a place I used to work, and love seeing what Christ Fellowship is doing here in Miami and global campuses and around the world through online. 00:56:26.320 --> 00:56:28.280 Well, Jeff, your fingerprints are all over this church. 00:56:28.420 --> 00:56:28.700 Absolutely. 00:56:28.700 --> 00:56:36.220 And especially in this space, you were the early champion and advocate for this, and we're here today because you were that voice. 00:56:36.580 --> 00:56:37.260 So thank you. 00:56:37.540 --> 00:56:37.760 Awesome. 00:56:38.020 --> 00:56:40.140 And thanks to you, it's my job to be a force to be reckoned with. 00:56:42.480 --> 00:56:44.100 Put that on your job profile. 00:56:44.260 --> 00:56:45.060 See all that goes. 00:56:45.560 --> 00:56:45.920 Awesome. 00:56:46.240 --> 00:56:46.860 Hey, thanks, everybody. 00:56:46.860 --> 00:56:47.660 May the force be with you. 00:56:47.760 --> 00:56:48.140 That's right. 00:56:48.480 --> 00:56:48.700 Very good. 00:56:49.260 --> 00:56:50.640 A force to be reckoned with. 00:56:50.700 --> 00:56:52.460 Yeah, we're going to break the podcast right there. 00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:54.420 Thank you, Jim, for the time. 00:56:54.620 --> 00:56:57.480 Ray, good luck with being that force to be reckoned with. 00:56:57.480 --> 00:57:01.160 I cannot wait to see what Christ Fellowship Miami does with that. 00:57:01.160 --> 00:57:03.140 Hey, I hope there's some takeaways here. 00:57:03.200 --> 00:57:16.840 As we see the multi-site model grow in the path that it's been on, we see a lot of similarities to how church online is trending maybe a decade behind it, but we're moving in that same direction. 00:57:17.040 --> 00:57:25.280 And what was a radical idea 10 years ago is now the cool idea of today, which will be the mainstream in 2029. 00:57:25.500 --> 00:57:41.640 So we're pressing forward, we're pushing, and we're realizing that church online needs people like you out on that edge, pushing this idea, having those conversations with leadership, and essentially, as Jim said, being a force to be reckoned with. 00:57:41.780 --> 00:57:45.800 So may the force be with you as you go out, and you know what, I'm not going to do it. 00:57:45.820 --> 00:57:47.700 I'm a Star Wars fan, and we'll talk about that later. 00:57:48.060 --> 00:57:52.780 But right now, know that we, here at the Church Digital, we're praying for churches like you. 00:57:52.860 --> 00:57:57.800 We are praying for you and your ministry out there in the digital realm. 00:57:58.000 --> 00:57:59.320 And that's going to cover it for this week. 00:57:59.380 --> 00:58:02.000 So we'll see you next week here at the Church Digital Podcast. 00:58:02.240 --> 00:58:02.840 Y'all have a good day.