WEBVTT

00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:09.300
 Hey, this is Jeff with The Church Digital. We're going to get started with the episode here in just a minute, but before we get there, we all know Stadia, the organization that's been powering The Church.Digital.

00:00:09.740 --> 00:00:19.540
 Well, guess what? Stadia is opening up some learning communities. We've been doing this for a while now. We've got about 70 churches that are actually part of these learning communities.

00:00:19.540 --> 00:00:29.340
 They're learning how to thrive, grow, and multiply, not just physically, not just digitally, but digitally, the combining of physical and digital.

00:00:29.340 --> 00:00:36.300
 And it's been a beautiful, beautiful thing. We've got content coming in from churches like Crossroads, from Saddleback, like Church Home.

00:00:36.720 --> 00:00:42.680
 But guess what? It's not a content thing. Content's nice. Content doesn't change your church. Let's just say it. It doesn't.

00:00:43.020 --> 00:00:46.480
 I'm a podcast operator. I understand this. It's not going to change your church.

00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:57.960
 The ability to walk with someone and to help you understand some of the guidance, some of the accountability, the community of connecting with other churches, engaging with them,

00:00:58.680 --> 00:01:12.440
 conversations with people as you wrestle with some of these things to try to figure out how to make your physical church and your online church authentically you that lines up with your missions, visions, and strategies,

00:01:12.440 --> 00:01:18.920
 or maybe is even tightly intertwined that maybe some of that strategy changes to get more online.

00:01:18.920 --> 00:01:29.380
 This is what Stadia is trying to create, an opportunity for you to learn and to dialogue and to change your church to thrive, grow, and multiply.

00:01:29.540 --> 00:01:30.920
 It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:33.500
 Hey, the learning community starts in August.

00:01:33.960 --> 00:01:39.620
 So right now, go to stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital.

00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:42.460
 P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L.

00:01:42.960 --> 00:01:45.280
 Stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital.

00:01:45.620 --> 00:01:50.320
 And more information will be there for you to learn about these learning communities.

00:01:50.440 --> 00:01:51.620
 This has been great. It's been fun.

00:01:51.960 --> 00:01:54.920
 But let's go ahead and get you now to that podcast episode.

00:01:55.420 --> 00:01:58.020
 Episode 38 of the Church Digital Podcast.

00:01:58.260 --> 00:02:02.500
 I'll be honest, anytime I talk with this guest, I feel smarter.

00:02:02.620 --> 00:02:08.940
 I don't know about you, but I just have this natural inclination that I am smarter than I was when I started the conversation

00:02:08.940 --> 00:02:11.980
 because I am always, always learning something from this guy.

00:02:12.520 --> 00:02:17.920
 Jay Cranda, online pastor from Saddleback Community Church, just a small church out in SoCal.

00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:19.680
 You may have heard of it before.

00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:25.140
 Lead Pastor Rick Warren, Purpose Driven Church, Purpose Driven Life, Purpose Driven whatever it is out there.

00:02:25.600 --> 00:02:30.980
 Jay has been doing a great job with Church Online out there for years,

00:02:31.080 --> 00:02:36.520
 and it's really helping utilize Church Online as a platform to expand some of the mission and the vision

00:02:36.520 --> 00:02:39.140
 of what Saddleback is trying to achieve.

00:02:39.320 --> 00:02:42.980
 And as a result of that, it has really been paving the way for other churches

00:02:42.980 --> 00:02:46.840
 to realize the importance of online small groups,

00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:52.340
 even micro locations and home gatherings and some of the things they're working on now.

00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:56.780
 Now, what I love about this interview and this conversation that we had with Jay

00:02:56.780 --> 00:03:02.360
 is Jay's honest enough to tell you, like, some of the stuff that he was doing didn't work.

00:03:02.700 --> 00:03:05.980
 Actually, if you go back to episode four of the Church Digital Podcast,

00:03:06.280 --> 00:03:12.040
 you'll hear Jay talking in detail about some of the things that he was trying maybe six,

00:03:12.200 --> 00:03:14.840
 nine months ago, it was April 2019.

00:03:15.880 --> 00:03:21.220
 And he observed in the time since then, hey, some of these aren't working.

00:03:21.620 --> 00:03:25.380
 Or it is working, but it could work better if.

00:03:26.120 --> 00:03:30.000
 And rather than sticking with the horse on the trail that it's on,

00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:36.400
 he opted to change, change strides, change the model, shut the thing down and start over.

00:03:37.100 --> 00:03:43.100
 And so what this conversation here is, is the home gathering model from Saddleback Church

00:03:43.100 --> 00:03:48.960
 and what it looks like for a church online to create physical locations,

00:03:48.960 --> 00:03:55.520
 to create biblical communities all over the country utilizing online technology.

00:03:55.920 --> 00:04:02.960
 Now, the amazing thing here is he was able to actually stop, stride, re-aim, and then go again.

00:04:03.260 --> 00:04:06.560
 And there's lots of things in that culture and there's lessons to be learned there.

00:04:06.680 --> 00:04:13.620
 But this is a very rich, very informational, very heavy conversation that gets into the heart of

00:04:13.620 --> 00:04:20.920
 the role of church online into not only impacting the online world, but to actually impact the offline,

00:04:21.260 --> 00:04:27.060
 to impact the physical world, a digital church that impacts the physical realm.

00:04:27.480 --> 00:04:28.260
 It's good stuff here.

00:04:28.600 --> 00:04:31.860
 So here in the conversation, I'm bringing, of course, Jay Cranda from Saddleback.

00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:36.840
 I'm bringing in Ray Diarmus, guest host once again from Christ Fellowship Miami, online pastor there.

00:04:37.260 --> 00:04:42.740
 Myself, Jeff, and the church digital with a conversation on the natural way

00:04:42.740 --> 00:04:45.260
 to build micro-locations at Saddleback.

00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:46.820
 Hey, everybody, here you go.

00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:48.820
 Man, so how's life in California?

00:04:50.360 --> 00:04:52.720
 Very sunny, like Florida.

00:04:53.220 --> 00:04:54.300
 I haven't even looked.

00:04:54.360 --> 00:04:55.420
 How's LeBron doing this year?

00:04:55.520 --> 00:04:56.460
 I don't care about that.

00:04:56.460 --> 00:04:57.020
 He's doing amazing.

00:04:57.280 --> 00:04:57.620
 He's killing it, dude.

00:04:57.940 --> 00:04:58.800
 He's killing it.

00:04:59.180 --> 00:05:00.420
 Yeah, he's amazing.

00:05:01.360 --> 00:05:02.520
 I'm impressed, man.

00:05:02.780 --> 00:05:05.520
 Homeboy in his 40s is not going to slow down.

00:05:05.640 --> 00:05:08.080
 He is legit going to be Tom Brady out there on the court, man.

00:05:08.080 --> 00:05:11.280
 Yeah, the Lakers got the best record right now.

00:05:11.280 --> 00:05:14.020
 No, I will say, though, we have a very easy record.

00:05:14.520 --> 00:05:18.980
 So we've played a lot of average teams.

00:05:19.900 --> 00:05:21.020
 But that's what everybody's feeling.

00:05:21.100 --> 00:05:22.640
 But we haven't had a ton of hard.

00:05:23.440 --> 00:05:24.860
 We've had some hard games.

00:05:24.960 --> 00:05:27.280
 Our hardest game was game one, which against the Clippers.

00:05:28.100 --> 00:05:32.220
 But anyways, so yeah, LeBron's doing great.

00:05:32.660 --> 00:05:36.220
 Are you at least the best team in Los Angeles, or are the Clippers better than you?

00:05:36.600 --> 00:05:41.200
 I think technically, we have the best record.

00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:51.080
 But I will say that if you, the whole team, the Clippers technically are a better team in the sense,

00:05:51.300 --> 00:05:52.880
 like I think every, like the whole team.

00:05:53.680 --> 00:06:03.060
 But the one thing that I think the Lakers have, obviously, we have, I would say, the two top three players in the NBA.

00:06:03.200 --> 00:06:05.480
 But the other thing is that we have a lot more vets.

00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:08.340
 And that's ultimately what's going to matter come playoff time.

00:06:09.060 --> 00:06:09.500
 Right.

00:06:10.540 --> 00:06:13.100
 Are you prepared for the Lakers to fire Frank Vogel?

00:06:13.320 --> 00:06:14.800
 Because you know that's coming.

00:06:14.920 --> 00:06:17.920
 It's part of the LeBron package, the firing of the head coach.

00:06:18.300 --> 00:06:18.680
 It is.

00:06:19.160 --> 00:06:22.800
 You know, like we stayed it off at the Heat, because that's the whole culture thing.

00:06:22.880 --> 00:06:24.360
 They were like, we're not getting rid of Spoh.

00:06:24.480 --> 00:06:25.520
 Stop with the baby stuff.

00:06:25.720 --> 00:06:26.100
 Yeah.

00:06:26.360 --> 00:06:27.580
 But it's part of the LeBron package.

00:06:28.740 --> 00:06:31.000
 Yeah, I don't really care who the coach is when it's LeBron.

00:06:31.180 --> 00:06:34.520
 So I don't have any, I'm not any loyalty to Frank Vogel.

00:06:34.760 --> 00:06:35.680
 He's a great coach.

00:06:35.680 --> 00:06:37.660
 He came for the Pacers, and he's awesome.

00:06:37.980 --> 00:06:43.160
 You know, the topic that I really wanted to hit on today is to really focus on, Jay, the

00:06:43.160 --> 00:06:47.260
 stuff that you're developing and talking about with, I know you're doing some training with

00:06:47.260 --> 00:06:47.920
 small groups.

00:06:48.440 --> 00:06:53.740
 I know you guys pushed the poker chips in hard when it came to micro locations and starting

00:06:53.740 --> 00:06:55.720
 to really develop that micro church model.

00:06:56.040 --> 00:06:59.160
 I'd love to spend a little time here, just maybe picking your brain.

00:06:59.300 --> 00:07:00.320
 What is Saddleback learning?

00:07:00.440 --> 00:07:01.240
 What are you observing?

00:07:01.980 --> 00:07:05.760
 Kind of what does this trend look like as you've really focused on this within the past three

00:07:05.760 --> 00:07:06.400
 or four months?

00:07:06.760 --> 00:07:13.080
 I know Ray, asterisk, really is excited about Disney+, and wants to really dive into this.

00:07:13.160 --> 00:07:17.840
 We've seen you talk about some stuff on social media, and so he's got something he wants to

00:07:17.840 --> 00:07:18.300
 get to.

00:07:18.860 --> 00:07:19.780
 I have not signed up.

00:07:20.620 --> 00:07:21.640
 I have not signed up.

00:07:21.880 --> 00:07:22.680
 Wait, what?

00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:25.620
 You're the one guy in America.

00:07:26.040 --> 00:07:26.520
 I know.

00:07:26.800 --> 00:07:27.200
 I know.

00:07:27.560 --> 00:07:32.060
 I was watching, I'm watching a show on Netflix right now, and I'm like, I just finished it

00:07:32.060 --> 00:07:32.460
 today.

00:07:32.800 --> 00:07:35.380
 And so I was like, I don't have time to go sign up yet.

00:07:35.380 --> 00:07:39.200
 So I think I'll probably sign up today or tomorrow, but I have not signed up.

00:07:39.320 --> 00:07:40.860
 I got to, that's my confession.

00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:43.700
 So I was going to ask you, like, how's the Mandalorian?

00:07:43.880 --> 00:07:44.740
 Like, I don't even know.

00:07:44.900 --> 00:07:51.760
 I know things because of the internet, but I don't really know how good it is, or I don't

00:07:51.760 --> 00:07:54.840
 even know when it gets, I thought it was Sunday night it got released, but it looks like it's

00:07:54.840 --> 00:07:55.060
 not.

00:07:55.220 --> 00:07:55.820
 It's tonight?

00:07:56.060 --> 00:07:56.300
 It's Friday.

00:07:56.560 --> 00:07:56.920
 It's Friday.

00:07:57.280 --> 00:07:58.080
 Oh, it's Friday.

00:07:58.340 --> 00:08:00.340
 So, and we're three episodes in.

00:08:00.400 --> 00:08:00.600
 Okay.

00:08:00.760 --> 00:08:01.400
 See, I see.

00:08:01.460 --> 00:08:04.560
 I'm already, I've, I've jumped, I've jumped ahead, but wow.

00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:05.820
 I'm just, I'm sorry.

00:08:05.820 --> 00:08:06.200
 That's awesome.

00:08:07.020 --> 00:08:07.820
 Jake Heranda.

00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:10.860
 I'm saying two words I've never said before in my life to you.

00:08:11.180 --> 00:08:12.140
 I'm disappointed.

00:08:12.600 --> 00:08:15.020
 I really, I'd expected more out of you.

00:08:15.760 --> 00:08:18.340
 So Cal boy out there soaking it in.

00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:19.940
 Not doing Disney plus.

00:08:20.640 --> 00:08:25.840
 You know, this with, with being in a sunny area, you know, there's, I'm not stuck inside.

00:08:26.040 --> 00:08:32.420
 So, you know, like I don't, you know, and it's, and we, I just, I get into a show and

00:08:32.420 --> 00:08:34.960
 then I, I don't have, I don't, I like to finish things.

00:08:35.420 --> 00:08:40.860
 So that's, so I've, I'm, I have some time and I do, I do like Star Wars, but I've not,

00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:43.240
 I'm, I was waiting to kind of see how I'll figure it out.

00:08:43.280 --> 00:08:45.420
 But yeah, microsites and online.

00:08:45.420 --> 00:08:47.300
 Let's dive into the microsites community.

00:08:47.300 --> 00:08:50.880
 Cause what's some of the stuff you guys are doing in context with Saddleback.

00:08:51.180 --> 00:08:55.260
 I mean, you're, you're, you're putting while the rest of the church is arguing whether or

00:08:55.260 --> 00:09:00.720
 not they can do biblical community online, you guys have paved the freeway and are inviting

00:09:00.720 --> 00:09:03.160
 as many people as possible to take advantage of it.

00:09:03.540 --> 00:09:05.800
 So what are you guys doing currently?

00:09:05.900 --> 00:09:07.080
 What's some of this new trends?

00:09:07.160 --> 00:09:10.520
 What are you, what are you exploring in this idea of community online?

00:09:10.520 --> 00:09:15.020
 For anybody that I've talked to, or if you kind of even probably talked about this

00:09:15.020 --> 00:09:20.600
 when I was first on this show, the, which I think I'm one of the OGs on this podcast,

00:09:20.680 --> 00:09:22.340
 I had to be like the first five.

00:09:22.820 --> 00:09:24.620
 So I will, we'll call, we'll call you out.

00:09:24.840 --> 00:09:29.800
 You were part of the first four episodes we launched with, with this podcast.

00:09:30.020 --> 00:09:35.480
 Well, the, the big thing for us at Saddleback has always been about kind of why are we doing

00:09:35.480 --> 00:09:39.660
 what we're doing in, in being conscious about where are we leading people?

00:09:39.660 --> 00:09:44.100
 And so something that I found out, especially being at a larger church very quickly is that

00:09:44.100 --> 00:09:48.480
 we had people watching in all sorts of places that didn't have a church down the street.

00:09:48.480 --> 00:09:53.480
 And so trying to problem solve that, I think, you know, maybe if you're just kind of getting

00:09:53.480 --> 00:09:59.260
 this on, I get going in the online space for the most part, you know, you're going to be

00:09:59.260 --> 00:10:04.720
 very local focus, but as that audience grows and more people share, you'll have these opportunities

00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:08.160
 where people will be like, I live in this remote area, what's going on?

00:10:08.540 --> 00:10:12.400
 And really there's starting to be this population of people, I would say an hour outside of a

00:10:12.400 --> 00:10:16.100
 large town or a large city that wanted a church.

00:10:16.100 --> 00:10:21.760
 And it was really hard for them to, to drive into a city and, and, and engage.

00:10:21.760 --> 00:10:26.440
 And so we started to really think about this and we've had all sorts of iterations, even

00:10:26.440 --> 00:10:29.380
 before I was in my role, Saddleback has done this.

00:10:29.380 --> 00:10:31.840
 This is not something that's just limited to my space.

00:10:31.840 --> 00:10:37.580
 It's, it's limited to every, everybody's had tests and we're always putting hooks in the

00:10:37.580 --> 00:10:38.580
 water, trying out stuff.

00:10:38.580 --> 00:10:43.720
 And so, so the most recent iteration has been something we're calling home gatherings.

00:10:44.220 --> 00:10:50.600
 And the whole concept was around how do we make it so that anybody could start something

00:10:50.600 --> 00:10:54.800
 in their home and do like a pop-up church service in their home.

00:10:55.240 --> 00:10:59.960
 And part of the learnings was we did something that was a little bit larger and a little bit,

00:10:59.960 --> 00:11:02.220
 I would say, get a crowd focus.

00:11:02.220 --> 00:11:04.440
 And we call those extensions for a period of time.

00:11:04.860 --> 00:11:09.800
 And some of the learnings out of that is that it does work, but it took a lot of staff time,

00:11:09.980 --> 00:11:11.940
 even travel time, even resources.

00:11:12.660 --> 00:11:15.880
 And there was high burnout because it was typically one leader focus.

00:11:16.500 --> 00:11:20.720
 And so I think that model still really works, but it's not something, we're not going to

00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:22.560
 launch a hundred of those or 10 of those.

00:11:22.620 --> 00:11:25.800
 We only really could do maybe one of those every year.

00:11:26.700 --> 00:11:31.280
 And I wanted something that was a little bit more lay driven and I wanted something that

00:11:31.280 --> 00:11:35.800
 we could, especially because we're very, I would just say like our team is kind of small.

00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:37.840
 And so I'm trying to think, how do we do this?

00:11:37.900 --> 00:11:38.800
 That's sustainable.

00:11:38.900 --> 00:11:42.840
 The other thing is when you get a group of people in a room and you get 50 people, they

00:11:42.840 --> 00:11:45.580
 start expecting more too, because they're growing rapidly.

00:11:45.820 --> 00:11:49.920
 And we didn't have some of the mechanisms in place at the time to kind of, I would say,

00:11:50.020 --> 00:11:50.800
 figure that out.

00:11:51.020 --> 00:11:56.020
 And so we started this home gathering concept, which is more, have three small groups partner

00:11:56.020 --> 00:11:56.400
 together.

00:11:56.400 --> 00:12:00.720
 So there's a bunch of people that are, have incentives to kind of pull off this pop-up

00:12:00.720 --> 00:12:01.400
 service.

00:12:01.880 --> 00:12:04.240
 And then do a lot of evangelism training.

00:12:04.400 --> 00:12:07.980
 And really it's about creating a core of people that can execute this easily.

00:12:07.980 --> 00:12:12.720
 So if one person leaves or is out, you can still go on and create a culture of sharing

00:12:12.720 --> 00:12:13.160
 your faith.

00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:18.180
 And our goal is to get these two very quickly, get them to about 25 people and they're meeting

00:12:18.180 --> 00:12:18.620
 regularly.

00:12:18.860 --> 00:12:24.560
 And those long-term for the online campus directly, those become regional hubs.

00:12:25.220 --> 00:12:28.620
 This is our plan to, that we can go travel to.

00:12:28.880 --> 00:12:33.340
 And so the idea is when somebody wants to get baptized or want some kind of training, instead

00:12:33.340 --> 00:12:38.960
 of them doing that by themselves or training somebody there, which we would do, we would

00:12:38.960 --> 00:12:43.780
 have a Saddleback home gathering, you know, within, you know, a day's drive essentially

00:12:43.780 --> 00:12:45.680
 everywhere in the world.

00:12:45.680 --> 00:12:52.100
 And so part of that is we did a beta, you know, actually in your guys' backyard in Florida

00:12:52.100 --> 00:12:53.840
 that we're testing out right now.

00:12:54.180 --> 00:12:55.160
 It's been going.

00:12:55.420 --> 00:13:00.720
 And then we got, we just started to roll out promotion of it like more heavily.

00:13:00.720 --> 00:13:04.020
 And we've got about 20 or so people interested in it.

00:13:04.020 --> 00:13:09.360
 And we're having phone calls with those people as we engage and come Christmas, we're doing

00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:14.680
 something that, you know, I first heard from Elevation Church like five, six years ago,

00:13:14.680 --> 00:13:17.660
 but we've done this a couple of different times, but we're kind of bringing it back.

00:13:17.740 --> 00:13:21.220
 We're doing a Christmas watch parties where they're going to watch together.

00:13:21.220 --> 00:13:25.900
 And the idea is that the watch parties will be kind of a cross step to a home gathering.

00:13:25.900 --> 00:13:30.900
 So maybe twice a year or three times a year, you do a watch party and those become warm

00:13:30.900 --> 00:13:32.920
 leads for permanent home gatherings.

00:13:33.560 --> 00:13:37.840
 And so, yeah, so it really, it's about just empowering anybody to do something and then

00:13:37.840 --> 00:13:41.460
 figuring out where we can do this and how can we really get out of the way?

00:13:41.520 --> 00:13:45.460
 Because I found we, our church, and I'm not involved in this directly, but we know how

00:13:45.460 --> 00:13:49.440
 to plan a church, but it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars, takes people, it's all

00:13:49.440 --> 00:13:56.060
 this stuff and we're looking at something way more lean and this model we're praying is,

00:13:56.060 --> 00:13:57.980
 is, is the model that can work for us.

00:13:57.980 --> 00:14:03.640
 But we are just now in, I would say this is the third iteration of the online campus trying

00:14:03.640 --> 00:14:09.900
 this and we could do it, but I don't like the scalability of our previous models, to be

00:14:09.900 --> 00:14:10.200
 honest.

00:14:12.220 --> 00:14:15.700
 So the first, the first model was staff driven, is that correct?

00:14:15.700 --> 00:14:17.520
 Or what was going on there with that?

00:14:18.300 --> 00:14:23.400
 Yeah, essentially it was because it was taking about 10 hours of my week to kind of manage

00:14:23.400 --> 00:14:24.680
 an individual location.

00:14:25.420 --> 00:14:27.580
 And that was up in the San Francisco area.

00:14:28.060 --> 00:14:32.600
 We had one, we had groups come together and do something and I would go up once a month

00:14:32.600 --> 00:14:35.140
 because it's San Francisco and I'm in Southern California.

00:14:35.260 --> 00:14:38.560
 It's an easy flight, but it was, you know, it's taxing.

00:14:38.740 --> 00:14:40.980
 It wasn't something that, and it was working.

00:14:41.560 --> 00:14:46.160
 The other thing is what's really hard and my pastor says this all the time is that it's

00:14:47.160 --> 00:14:53.320
 it's really easy to turn a crowd into a core, but not a core into a crowd because there's

00:14:53.320 --> 00:14:56.100
 like culture and different things that kind of, kind of build up.

00:14:56.160 --> 00:15:03.380
 And one of the things I found is we had built up a core of people that were really just showing

00:15:03.380 --> 00:15:06.680
 up to a service every week and they weren't really executing on it.

00:15:06.680 --> 00:15:09.560
 So I had like probably four or five people that would do it.

00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:14.820
 But what happens is, just to be honest, one of them, we had about 90 people in this room

00:15:14.820 --> 00:15:15.520
 up in the Bay Area.

00:15:15.700 --> 00:15:19.320
 I rented this hotel room and we did a pop-up church services all through my laptop.

00:15:19.960 --> 00:15:22.080
 And this was about three and a half years ago.

00:15:22.320 --> 00:15:25.620
 And it was amazing because it was all online campus driven.

00:15:25.820 --> 00:15:26.500
 It was awesome.

00:15:26.920 --> 00:15:28.940
 But, you know, every other person would come.

00:15:29.020 --> 00:15:30.280
 I goes, when's Saddleback coming here?

00:15:31.340 --> 00:15:37.400
 And there was this very clear, this is an overstatement of it, but there was this consumer

00:15:37.400 --> 00:15:38.160
 type of model.

00:15:38.340 --> 00:15:42.180
 I had it, we did not have like a loyal group of people that were willing to do whatever

00:15:42.180 --> 00:15:42.580
 it took.

00:15:42.660 --> 00:15:46.020
 We had about 30 people that were really in, but we had a larger crowd.

00:15:46.100 --> 00:15:48.680
 And I realized is that had a peak.

00:15:49.120 --> 00:15:52.480
 And those people, if you don't deliver a campus within a certain time frame, they're going

00:15:52.480 --> 00:15:52.920
 to leave.

00:15:52.920 --> 00:15:58.220
 And I think I figured out, I was figuring out just as a young leader, like, how do you

00:15:58.220 --> 00:16:05.800
 deliver vision with understanding what they are expecting and not disappointing them?

00:16:06.140 --> 00:16:09.880
 And I think we, that was one of those things that I learned a lot.

00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:15.900
 And this is why the home gathering, we're really focusing in on you building something with a

00:16:15.900 --> 00:16:17.280
 group of people you want to do life with.

00:16:17.500 --> 00:16:20.280
 And there's not an expectation of a campus coming there.

00:16:21.240 --> 00:16:25.500
 It's, we want you to live out the vision of the church in your area with a group of people.

00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:30.120
 And that group of people will be your home gathering that you meet regularly with.

00:16:30.140 --> 00:16:31.460
 And then you have a small group during the week.

00:16:31.500 --> 00:16:32.980
 And that's kind of the framework.

00:16:33.100 --> 00:16:40.080
 So a lot of our language, we're trying to make it so it's not so weekend focused, I would

00:16:40.080 --> 00:16:40.520
 just say.

00:16:41.040 --> 00:16:43.500
 And we're trying to make it so it's more small group focused.

00:16:43.920 --> 00:16:47.660
 And those small group, being small group focused allows us to care people on an easier

00:16:47.660 --> 00:16:48.960
 model, like on scale.

00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:51.880
 And it also builds leaders that can help us execute.

00:16:52.280 --> 00:16:55.640
 Because that's the other thing is, we had a couple of times we had, you know, one person

00:16:55.640 --> 00:16:56.240
 and one couple.

00:16:56.640 --> 00:17:00.860
 And, you know, anybody who's been had a friend who's planted a church or you've been part of

00:17:00.860 --> 00:17:03.960
 a planting, you know, not every week, you don't grow every week.

00:17:04.600 --> 00:17:09.420
 And so once they experienced, let's say, six months, and maybe they had two really big

00:17:09.420 --> 00:17:11.500
 months and it dipped down, there's discouragement.

00:17:12.020 --> 00:17:15.520
 And this is why they say when you plant in church, you do it with people, you do it with

00:17:15.520 --> 00:17:17.560
 a team, you don't do it alone, because you'll get discouraged.

00:17:18.260 --> 00:17:21.220
 And I think we're trying to build some of that into this.

00:17:21.280 --> 00:17:27.660
 But I think one of the quotes that I kind of stood out to me recently from Ray Dalio's

00:17:27.660 --> 00:17:34.440
 book, Principles, he was talking about this idea of like, not everybody understands, like

00:17:34.440 --> 00:17:36.800
 if you have success in something.

00:17:36.800 --> 00:17:42.980
 So some people are part of some point of success, but they don't necessarily know the cause and

00:17:42.980 --> 00:17:45.120
 effect of that success, and they can't replicate it.

00:17:45.180 --> 00:17:51.680
 Some people can, I would say, understand the cause and effect, but they can't replicate it.

00:17:51.700 --> 00:17:53.060
 And some people can replicate this.

00:17:53.380 --> 00:17:56.260
 And I think what's happened, especially with the online space, especially with the house

00:17:56.260 --> 00:18:00.000
 church movement type of space all around, is there's a lot of people that have been in

00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:02.200
 roles that stuff has happened.

00:18:02.440 --> 00:18:06.640
 That doesn't necessarily mean that you understood or understand what happens.

00:18:06.640 --> 00:18:09.540
 And it doesn't even mean you know how to scale it for somebody else.

00:18:10.060 --> 00:18:14.300
 And I think as I've talked to people, I've seen that.

00:18:14.380 --> 00:18:17.680
 I've seen people do it both in the online space and also reading books.

00:18:18.080 --> 00:18:22.880
 Sometimes it's like, well, churches are scaling in China or India.

00:18:23.020 --> 00:18:24.840
 And it's like, so that might be true.

00:18:25.020 --> 00:18:27.900
 But do we even know how to replicate some of that over here?

00:18:27.940 --> 00:18:28.680
 Is it possible?

00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:30.280
 I think these are the conversations.

00:18:30.540 --> 00:18:35.220
 And I'm not as worried about, we could hire somebody full time and maybe go do something.

00:18:35.220 --> 00:18:38.400
 And I'm trying to figure out, how do I get it where it's more lay driven?

00:18:38.600 --> 00:18:41.940
 And I think that's where we're really motivated to kind of dive into.

00:18:42.700 --> 00:18:42.800
 Yeah.

00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:47.240
 So you, I want to follow this rabbit trail for a second, see how far we go.

00:18:47.620 --> 00:18:50.480
 So you had an idea a couple years ago.

00:18:50.860 --> 00:18:52.000
 It wasn't working.

00:18:52.120 --> 00:18:53.500
 It was too heavy.

00:18:53.740 --> 00:18:55.740
 It wasn't, ultimately, it sounds like it just wasn't scalable.

00:18:56.200 --> 00:18:59.100
 And so you, you trashed it.

00:18:59.400 --> 00:19:01.120
 So you trashed an idea.

00:19:01.680 --> 00:19:02.780
 You went back to leadership.

00:19:03.140 --> 00:19:06.260
 You developed a more scalable idea.

00:19:06.260 --> 00:19:08.320
 And then you got them to execute that.

00:19:08.980 --> 00:19:11.300
 So the question I want to ask is how?

00:19:12.260 --> 00:19:17.100
 Because oftentimes when you trash an idea, oh, that didn't work.

00:19:17.600 --> 00:19:20.160
 Let's not revisit the concept and move on.

00:19:20.300 --> 00:19:21.880
 It's that just didn't work.

00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:23.540
 Let's try something else.

00:19:24.080 --> 00:19:25.300
 Online's not going to work.

00:19:25.400 --> 00:19:27.820
 So what you've managed to do was somehow transition.

00:19:28.400 --> 00:19:30.900
 This was a bad execution for online.

00:19:31.020 --> 00:19:32.600
 There's other ways to do online.

00:19:33.060 --> 00:19:35.440
 Let's keep experimenting to find the right balance.

00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:37.700
 What is the culture?

00:19:37.820 --> 00:19:38.600
 What is the environment?

00:19:38.840 --> 00:19:39.980
 What does that look like?

00:19:40.320 --> 00:19:42.820
 What did that conversation look like when you're talking with leadership?

00:19:43.540 --> 00:19:44.700
 Were they like, hey, you know what?

00:19:44.780 --> 00:19:46.640
 It's just, let's just broadcast services.

00:19:47.100 --> 00:19:51.600
 Was there any of, to that extent, let's just abandon ship and move on, cut our losses?

00:19:51.600 --> 00:19:57.940
 Or were they into the point of wanting you to experiment more to come up with a workable model?

00:19:59.460 --> 00:20:02.080
 Yeah, so that's a great question.

00:20:02.260 --> 00:20:05.900
 I would say, first off, I think most people understood what had happened

00:20:05.900 --> 00:20:11.140
 particularly in two locations that we were kind of focused in on at the time.

00:20:11.520 --> 00:20:15.640
 It was a success in the sense that it worked, this idea there's something here.

00:20:16.460 --> 00:20:20.080
 So I don't think I really had to work at, did it work or not?

00:20:20.080 --> 00:20:23.220
 The question was, it worked, but it wasn't scalable.

00:20:23.840 --> 00:20:26.640
 And we weren't willing to kind of take it to the next level.

00:20:26.760 --> 00:20:30.180
 We had to do it almost like a second round of investing had to happen.

00:20:31.220 --> 00:20:34.820
 So it's like, hey, you know, you raise money and then you want to go to the next level.

00:20:35.060 --> 00:20:38.940
 And it's, you know, you either decide, is it worth the second round?

00:20:39.000 --> 00:20:41.140
 And I thought it could be worth the second round.

00:20:41.480 --> 00:20:48.320
 But I think we just as a church decided it probably wasn't the right time to invest in the second round of this.

00:20:48.680 --> 00:20:58.700
 And honestly, what's interesting, and I still remember, I had this thought for about a month when I was going through some of this stuff.

00:20:58.800 --> 00:21:02.960
 It was, I remember it was, I mean, this was three and a half years ago.

00:21:03.060 --> 00:21:06.380
 So I remember being up in the Bay Area for one of these events.

00:21:07.160 --> 00:21:13.980
 And I think there were some things our church were, was really excited about with online community and some stuff, there was still some pushback.

00:21:14.100 --> 00:21:20.400
 And I remember being in a hotel room meeting space with everybody.

00:21:21.240 --> 00:21:26.920
 And, you know, you have 90 people watching a service that's running from your laptop on rented gear.

00:21:27.380 --> 00:21:35.540
 And I'm thinking, I started to really think about it that time around like, what am I, how am I shepherding people?

00:21:35.860 --> 00:21:45.400
 Because now I felt a sense of responsibility for all these people in this room, you know, like, and I'm either going to, with this idea, I'm either going to, I'm gonna have to kill it real quick.

00:21:46.060 --> 00:21:51.120
 Because, like, we can't continue this on, or I need to do something else.

00:21:52.200 --> 00:22:00.620
 And I remember, I actually felt, it really stressed me out, because it was like, this online church thing is, you know, it's not online, it's people.

00:22:00.980 --> 00:22:03.280
 And I'm funneling people to something.

00:22:03.520 --> 00:22:07.680
 And I think it made us ask some very serious questions.

00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:16.960
 And I think, if I'm remembering right, there was, it was a little bit of an open question of, you know, Jay, you can continue this, if you want.

00:22:17.980 --> 00:22:23.760
 Because I don't think it was impacting, like, there wasn't too much issue with what we were doing.

00:22:23.900 --> 00:22:24.660
 I could continue it.

00:22:24.840 --> 00:22:28.100
 But I thought some things needed to happen in order for it to go to the next level.

00:22:28.180 --> 00:22:33.220
 And I felt like it would slowly die if we didn't just kind of end it now.

00:22:33.520 --> 00:22:37.500
 Because I was like, either we do this, and if we're not interested in this, that's okay.

00:22:37.680 --> 00:22:42.080
 Like, I'm not, you know, I'm just iterating on this idea.

00:22:42.180 --> 00:22:43.080
 I'm trying to think about it.

00:22:43.200 --> 00:22:47.920
 But I don't want to continue down this line if we're not interested, or if you can't deliver on certain things.

00:22:48.620 --> 00:22:53.440
 And I think it forced the question at our church at the moment to kind of, do we really want to do this?

00:22:54.060 --> 00:22:59.860
 And our church is at a place, our church is one of those places where people are given tons of freedom to iterate.

00:23:00.220 --> 00:23:02.560
 And our pastor really challenges us to fail.

00:23:03.080 --> 00:23:07.320
 And sometimes, you know, something can work, but maybe it's not for that season.

00:23:08.140 --> 00:23:14.880
 And, you know, one of the more famous ones at our church is we had a Wednesday night program for, you know, 15 years.

00:23:14.920 --> 00:23:15.660
 And it was successful.

00:23:15.660 --> 00:23:17.960
 And we killed it when we launched small groups and homes.

00:23:18.440 --> 00:23:21.720
 And we did not kill Wednesday night because it was not successful.

00:23:21.800 --> 00:23:22.480
 It was working.

00:23:23.020 --> 00:23:29.580
 But in order for small groups to go to the next level, we didn't want people coming on Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, and doing something in the home.

00:23:29.640 --> 00:23:32.100
 That three days on top of serving and missions.

00:23:32.300 --> 00:23:33.380
 And so we killed Wednesday nights.

00:23:33.520 --> 00:23:34.760
 And that's what led to the explosion.

00:23:34.920 --> 00:23:38.560
 And I think we were having one of those moments of, like, I don't think this is scalable.

00:23:38.980 --> 00:23:42.780
 And, you know, I'm asking people to gather together and do church.

00:23:42.900 --> 00:23:44.160
 Like, this is a huge thing.

00:23:44.260 --> 00:23:45.620
 And we can't casually do it.

00:23:45.660 --> 00:23:46.980
 And so we allowed it for a little bit.

00:23:47.040 --> 00:23:49.680
 And we started to get more interest in other areas.

00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:52.440
 And I think we just, we had to pull back.

00:23:52.520 --> 00:23:58.400
 And I think that's part of it was I just went to leadership and I said, I don't think this is going to work with the way.

00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:02.060
 I don't think we can scale this the way it's currently built.

00:24:02.200 --> 00:24:06.200
 And so I think we should pull back, hit the reset, and just have a lot of conversations.

00:24:06.200 --> 00:24:11.140
 And what that looked like was it was about a year and a half of not doing anything really in that space.

00:24:11.140 --> 00:24:14.000
 It was just kind of letting it simmer.

00:24:15.700 --> 00:24:16.500
 Managing people.

00:24:16.620 --> 00:24:20.580
 You know, I had a lot of people that were, you know, upset that we had to manage.

00:24:20.820 --> 00:24:22.780
 And then go back to the drawing board.

00:24:23.380 --> 00:24:28.340
 And I think this most current iteration, there's still a lot of questions to be answered.

00:24:29.120 --> 00:24:33.820
 We just had, I just had somebody that came to me just this past week.

00:24:33.840 --> 00:24:36.820
 And they have a church building and they want to do something with us.

00:24:37.040 --> 00:24:39.440
 And this is not the first time I've encountered that.

00:24:39.660 --> 00:24:45.700
 But, you know, something with a church as big as ours is we have tons of opportunities.

00:24:46.200 --> 00:24:52.060
 And what I've learned from really wise people at our church is, you know, it's acting on those responsibilities.

00:24:52.060 --> 00:24:59.340
 It's because that's going to be a tax on my time and tax on vision, and it's going to hurt us in different ways if it's not part of our direct strategy.

00:24:59.820 --> 00:25:02.700
 And so it's answering some of this stuff.

00:25:02.860 --> 00:25:05.900
 And so it's still something to be figured out.

00:25:06.180 --> 00:25:16.700
 I will say we dialed in during that time with our leadership, the vision a little bit more clear, drawing the lines a little bit more clear or where the lines don't exist.

00:25:16.860 --> 00:25:23.500
 I just heard something recently they talked about, you know, sometimes some jobs need to have clear definition.

00:25:23.500 --> 00:25:26.140
 So like a marketing communication, you need to have clear lines.

00:25:26.280 --> 00:25:30.180
 But if there are no lines for your job, don't draw the lines until you know where the lines are.

00:25:30.580 --> 00:25:33.020
 And I think when we first did this, we didn't know where the lines are.

00:25:33.140 --> 00:25:34.700
 I think now I know where the lines are.

00:25:35.040 --> 00:25:37.380
 Child care is a line.

00:25:37.600 --> 00:25:41.040
 And then legality is a line particular.

00:25:41.280 --> 00:25:44.940
 And what is actually, is it us doing it or is it somebody else?

00:25:44.960 --> 00:25:46.380
 And is there any type of contract?

00:25:46.780 --> 00:25:50.420
 And I think some of those, we are drawing the lines a little bit more clear.

00:25:50.500 --> 00:25:57.020
 It doesn't mean we have all the answers, but I think I want to have a very defined sandbox to know what's successful this time around.

00:25:57.180 --> 00:26:06.960
 I admire that heavily because it takes a tremendous amount of discipline to look at the 90 and say, well, yeah, success here.

00:26:07.520 --> 00:26:13.240
 But we're going to go ahead and move beyond that because that's not about what we are as an organization.

00:26:13.480 --> 00:26:19.840
 Dig in a little bit more about that, like what that meant for you guys to look at the perceived success and say, no, that's not what we're going to do.

00:26:21.480 --> 00:26:21.840
 Yeah.

00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:22.600
 Yeah.

00:26:24.340 --> 00:26:24.700
 Yeah.

00:26:24.800 --> 00:26:33.960
 So I, you know, in one, and the biggest motivator too personally was I was at the time, I don't, I didn't have any other staff on my team and it was just me.

00:26:34.860 --> 00:26:40.080
 And I was like seeing these churches pop up, these two locations that had 90 plus people.

00:26:40.780 --> 00:26:45.600
 And, um, the care that was going to require, I didn't think I could really do it.

00:26:45.700 --> 00:26:47.360
 Like I was like, we need something else.

00:26:47.460 --> 00:26:50.500
 And so it was a motivator of just what was, what was healthy.

00:26:50.500 --> 00:26:53.700
 I think for me and for our team and our church.

00:26:54.240 --> 00:27:04.900
 Um, and at that, at that moment, it was, I needed to tap into, um, our, our team that plants churches and just go, Hey, are you guys interested?

00:27:05.020 --> 00:27:11.000
 And at the time they weren't at that moment and that was, you know, there's part of it that was not fun.

00:27:11.000 --> 00:27:12.560
 You know, I was like, well, what do I do?

00:27:12.620 --> 00:27:16.860
 I got to go back to these people and say, like, we're not doing this.

00:27:17.420 --> 00:27:20.840
 Um, and trust me, I learned, you know, there's a bunch of stuff I could have done better.

00:27:21.320 --> 00:27:24.260
 Um, I, I could have been better on being very clear on the vision.

00:27:24.660 --> 00:27:33.780
 I could have, you know, I do think naively, I thought if I got it, if, if our, if our team got it up to about 90 people, I thought certain people would be more interested.

00:27:34.120 --> 00:27:41.160
 And, um, and that's, and part of it was like, no, and because there are real reasons why you go to different areas.

00:27:41.160 --> 00:27:44.680
 Like there's strategic reasons to go to different cities and areas.

00:27:44.840 --> 00:28:02.000
 And one of the hard learnings, I will say that I, I didn't, I was not aware of, um, just because I hadn't really had any experience outside of reading books and having friends that have planted churches was, um, people will go to something once a month, but it doesn't mean they will go there weekly.

00:28:02.720 --> 00:28:07.120
 Um, and so just because I have 90 people doesn't mean that's a 90 person church.

00:28:07.800 --> 00:28:15.660
 Um, and particularly with the Bay area, we had people coming in from all over the Bay once a month.

00:28:15.860 --> 00:28:19.360
 Um, and that could be a 45 minute to an hour and 10 minute drive.

00:28:20.260 --> 00:28:23.440
 And the learning for us was great.

00:28:23.480 --> 00:28:30.640
 We have tons of people in the Bay and we have, you know, we can probably go anywhere and get 30 people, but we're not trying to reach those people.

00:28:30.640 --> 00:28:32.880
 We're trying to reach their friends that don't go to church yet.

00:28:32.880 --> 00:28:38.660
 So their friends who don't go to church, aren't going to drive 45 minutes to an hour and 10 every week, especially if they have kids.

00:28:39.660 --> 00:28:48.220
 Um, and so we needed, so if we were going to zero in on one area in Northern California, we would automatically be like exiting out 90, you know, 70 people.

00:28:48.840 --> 00:28:54.420
 Um, and I think those are some of the learnings about being like focused in certain areas was a big deal.

00:28:54.420 --> 00:29:06.500
 Well, and something as, as I mapped out our, a lot of our small group data and online member data across the country, particular, not just the world, but just looking at the United States is we don't have a lot of high concentrations.

00:29:07.060 --> 00:29:09.100
 Um, it's very spread out.

00:29:09.720 --> 00:29:15.740
 Um, and so, yes, we might have a bunch of people in the Phoenix area, but they're all around Phoenix and Phoenix is a huge city.

00:29:16.360 --> 00:29:21.420
 Um, and so it's like, I think, I think that's one of the pros and cons of the internet.

00:29:21.480 --> 00:29:24.500
 You could just reach all sorts of people, but just, you know, from afar.

00:29:24.500 --> 00:29:29.200
 And I've, I, when I've used mapping software, I use a, a batch geo a lot.

00:29:29.300 --> 00:29:32.620
 Um, it's, it's a service that you can use to map, uh, stuff pretty easily.

00:29:33.160 --> 00:29:37.320
 And, you know, we'll say, oh, you have 90 people, like, let's say in Chicago.

00:29:37.480 --> 00:29:42.720
 And then you zoom into the map and it's like, oh my goodness, like this is spread out.

00:29:42.980 --> 00:29:47.240
 Um, and I think a lot of people are like, use internet to plant churches.

00:29:47.380 --> 00:29:47.740
 Great.

00:29:48.380 --> 00:29:54.460
 But it doesn't automatically mean that there's a focused area, um, that makes a ton of sense.

00:29:54.460 --> 00:29:59.160
 Cause, um, and I think that learning of like, your friends are not going to drive, you know,

00:29:59.160 --> 00:30:00.720
 there's this 10 minute radius thing.

00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:01.720
 And so it's like reaching.

00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:02.320
 Yeah.

00:30:02.380 --> 00:30:02.560
 Yeah.

00:30:02.560 --> 00:30:04.620
 So I, I think some of those, yeah.

00:30:04.720 --> 00:30:07.640
 So some of that stuff, it's just still stuff we're processing through.

00:30:07.640 --> 00:30:12.680
 And the most current iteration, I think kind of to help frame this conversation too, is we

00:30:12.680 --> 00:30:18.480
 really leaned into our churches knows how to plant, like almost like saddle, uh, I would

00:30:18.480 --> 00:30:21.320
 think of it as like Starbucks locations, like franchise locations.

00:30:21.420 --> 00:30:25.740
 And we wanted something that's more like the proudly brew Starbucks model where it's like

00:30:25.740 --> 00:30:27.060
 it would be popped up in a hotel.

00:30:27.240 --> 00:30:30.160
 And those are two different types of experiences.

00:30:30.460 --> 00:30:33.680
 You do expect less from, you know, if you see proudly brew, you're like, this is probably

00:30:33.680 --> 00:30:34.340
 not going to be that great.

00:30:34.760 --> 00:30:40.500
 Um, and so we're trying not to hit that bad of a, of a, of a barrier, but, um, you know,

00:30:40.500 --> 00:30:44.980
 like there's a reason why I'll go to a, uh, a Starbucks that's outside of a target

00:30:44.980 --> 00:30:46.140
 versus inside of a target.

00:30:46.240 --> 00:30:47.640
 Those are two different expectations.

00:30:48.260 --> 00:30:52.860
 Um, and I think we're trying to figure out what does the lower expectation, lower expectation

00:30:52.860 --> 00:30:57.360
 look like so that anybody could almost anybody, um, can do it.

00:30:57.360 --> 00:31:00.820
 And really looking at our success with small groups, I think is our ultimate deal.

00:31:01.160 --> 00:31:02.960
 Success with small groups is very open-minded.

00:31:03.400 --> 00:31:06.760
 Um, we can't be as open with this, but it's something we're thinking about.

00:31:07.820 --> 00:31:12.340
 Are you intentional at all about where these are being located at?

00:31:12.340 --> 00:31:17.860
 Like I know in previously you were very honed in on the Bay area, you know, you're talking

00:31:17.860 --> 00:31:23.840
 about maybe some things in Phoenix, like, are you putting any thought into, Hey, maybe

00:31:23.840 --> 00:31:27.740
 this area is Dallas, Texas, where there's like 1.2 million Baptist churches.

00:31:27.740 --> 00:31:33.460
 I'm kidding, but not really like there where maybe, you know, you don't focus on that area

00:31:33.460 --> 00:31:38.220
 or is it really just more viral and organic wherever God plants seeds, you know, they're,

00:31:38.280 --> 00:31:39.100
 they're starting to grow.

00:31:40.060 --> 00:31:45.400
 Yeah, I, I definitely am not as motivated in areas that already have established, you know,

00:31:45.780 --> 00:31:47.240
 uh, communities like that.

00:31:47.320 --> 00:31:48.440
 You know, Dallas is one of those.

00:31:48.940 --> 00:31:55.740
 Um, but I will say that we are more focused on finding evangelists or gatherers.

00:31:55.960 --> 00:32:02.600
 Um, and I think that's actually the number one, like learning from, from doing this is that

00:32:02.600 --> 00:32:03.780
 there's a difference.

00:32:04.440 --> 00:32:09.360
 I, I think I get too many emails and phone conversations with people that ask me the question,

00:32:09.360 --> 00:32:13.760
 is there anybody in my area who also watches our online services?

00:32:13.760 --> 00:32:18.480
 And they think that's the golden ticket to building community.

00:32:18.480 --> 00:32:24.340
 And, but I don't think it's natural for a stranger to just come over to your home or

00:32:24.340 --> 00:32:26.840
 meet you at a Starbucks and hang out.

00:32:27.420 --> 00:32:30.480
 Um, what's more natural is for you to invite friends over.

00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:35.700
 And so, yeah, we might have, you know, if you pick Portland, Oregon, we might have, you

00:32:35.700 --> 00:32:37.340
 know, you know, 50 people in the area.

00:32:37.340 --> 00:32:40.760
 But if I email those 50 people and say, come hang out with you, like, they're going to be

00:32:40.760 --> 00:32:41.560
 like, who are you?

00:32:41.920 --> 00:32:46.860
 And they think there's a brand, you know, and, and obviously our church being larger that

00:32:46.860 --> 00:32:51.920
 there, there is that type of exposure, but you know, people hang out with you, do life

00:32:51.920 --> 00:32:53.740
 with you because of who you are.

00:32:53.740 --> 00:32:58.320
 And I think we're trying to, um, we're trying to figure that piece out.

00:32:58.380 --> 00:32:59.740
 I think a lot of it has to do with training.

00:33:00.480 --> 00:33:06.980
 Um, but I think ultimately we want to be this, this needs to be more organic because my team,

00:33:07.080 --> 00:33:10.340
 my team directly is not responsible for planting churches.

00:33:10.340 --> 00:33:11.540
 Like, that's not what I do.

00:33:11.540 --> 00:33:16.400
 So I don't think right now, if, if, if a team came to me and said, Hey, these are areas

00:33:16.400 --> 00:33:18.800
 we're interested in, then there would be a partnership.

00:33:19.600 --> 00:33:25.320
 Um, and, but right now it's very much, I'm just looking for the person or the team that

00:33:25.320 --> 00:33:26.780
 is very motivating and can do it.

00:33:26.780 --> 00:33:30.880
 Because if I find a gatherer, somebody that knows how to build a, get a group of people

00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:32.680
 together, I want to get behind that.

00:33:32.740 --> 00:33:36.440
 That that's, yeah, I think that that's a, that's a big thing for us in this model.

00:33:37.420 --> 00:33:37.820
 Absolutely.

00:33:38.380 --> 00:33:40.880
 And that person is very hard to identify, aren't they?

00:33:41.040 --> 00:33:43.640
 Especially considering an online campus.

00:33:43.880 --> 00:33:49.140
 I mean, a lot of folks who are, who are watching church online typically aren't, aren't that

00:33:49.140 --> 00:33:52.840
 kind of person, unless it's somebody who is in your community that, you know, got because

00:33:52.840 --> 00:33:56.100
 of transient reasons, work reasons, maybe got moved to a different area.

00:33:56.100 --> 00:33:56.500
 Right.

00:33:56.680 --> 00:33:56.880
 Yeah.

00:33:57.020 --> 00:34:01.760
 Well, and, and this is why it's, it's built on our existing discipleship kind of, you know,

00:34:01.820 --> 00:34:06.900
 pipeway here is that it's, we move people from our services into our class one-on-one

00:34:06.900 --> 00:34:08.920
 and class one-on-one is when they start to learn that out.

00:34:09.120 --> 00:34:13.720
 I will say that, yeah, there's a large percentage of people that watch regularly that aren't

00:34:13.720 --> 00:34:15.120
 necessarily gatherers.

00:34:15.720 --> 00:34:20.140
 But I, but I, I do think I've noticed, especially in the last year and a half, I'm seeing a lot

00:34:20.140 --> 00:34:26.160
 of almost like early adopters that are, are moving away and are in, you know, especially

00:34:26.160 --> 00:34:30.860
 with a lot of people moving to more rural areas directly because of housing issues.

00:34:31.540 --> 00:34:34.540
 Um, they're, they're wanting larger spaces and they're realizing they can do that.

00:34:34.540 --> 00:34:38.900
 Now that also brings a new dilemma is if you live in a more remote area, you're not going

00:34:38.900 --> 00:34:42.400
 to have the density that will allow you to reach people easily.

00:34:42.400 --> 00:34:45.080
 So that, you know, again, every new opportunity has new problems.

00:34:45.300 --> 00:34:53.280
 And so I think, um, I, I personally am motivated by the strategy and the scalability of these

00:34:53.280 --> 00:34:53.600
 things.

00:34:53.600 --> 00:34:57.360
 And so I definitely leaned into what, you know, kind of gets me excited.

00:34:57.360 --> 00:35:05.960
 And I think the idea of allowing a person, um, to kind of start a church, um, with not having

00:35:05.960 --> 00:35:10.600
 to think about the weekend content, but just building the community and using some of our

00:35:10.600 --> 00:35:14.640
 church's paradigm stuff with small groups and classes, that's all preexisting and just focusing

00:35:14.640 --> 00:35:19.180
 in on building that group and expressing those purposes in your, I love that.

00:35:19.220 --> 00:35:20.240
 And I do think it's scalable.

00:35:20.240 --> 00:35:26.960
 I will say that we're going to continue to see, and I've already seen it, people launch

00:35:26.960 --> 00:35:33.980
 churches without as much resources, you know, just like, Hey, the idea is, you know, I, if

00:35:33.980 --> 00:35:39.320
 I want to, if I want to see if being in retail would be fun, I could go start at Etsy store

00:35:39.320 --> 00:35:40.020
 and go do it.

00:35:40.020 --> 00:35:43.920
 And I can spend very little money and have a very small failure.

00:35:44.560 --> 00:35:50.000
 Um, the same way, um, I think planting a church should have a similar type of model experience.

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.140
 And I think, um, this type of experience could see if you have it in you.

00:35:54.140 --> 00:35:58.460
 And again, that's why there's so many church plants that fail, um, because a lot of people

00:35:58.460 --> 00:36:01.080
 just realize, you know, they're just not necessarily built for that.

00:36:01.080 --> 00:36:05.940
 And I want, I think something like this, along with what other people are doing, I think we're

00:36:05.940 --> 00:36:06.820
 going to see this.

00:36:06.820 --> 00:36:07.840
 It's, it's yeah.

00:36:07.960 --> 00:36:10.340
 And, um, I, that gets me excited.

00:36:10.340 --> 00:36:14.100
 And I think there should be now the other part of this is training people in the digital

00:36:14.100 --> 00:36:17.160
 space is a big, there is a gap there.

00:36:17.260 --> 00:36:18.340
 There's a gap in training.

00:36:18.560 --> 00:36:20.540
 Um, but I, yeah, yeah.

00:36:21.640 --> 00:36:22.900
 Well, let's ask that question.

00:36:22.900 --> 00:36:24.520
 Cause that was actually on my, on my list.

00:36:24.520 --> 00:36:29.640
 So you've got somebody in, I don't know, Saskatchewan doesn't matter somewhere, Timbuktu

00:36:29.640 --> 00:36:30.040
 USA.

00:36:30.380 --> 00:36:34.740
 They want to do a, um, uh, uh, what was your term?

00:36:34.780 --> 00:36:35.780
 It was a home gathering.

00:36:35.780 --> 00:36:38.180
 So they want to do a home gathering.

00:36:38.780 --> 00:36:43.040
 How are you equipping them, training them, empowering them?

00:36:43.160 --> 00:36:49.720
 What, what does this process looks like from identifying someone as, Hey, I am a gatherer.

00:36:49.720 --> 00:36:53.060
 I am a, uh, personable evangelist.

00:36:53.060 --> 00:36:58.560
 I have relational equity with others and turning that person into a, what do you call them?

00:36:58.560 --> 00:37:03.100
 Like a, a shepherd, a pastor, a leader, like what's your, what's your terminology for this

00:37:03.100 --> 00:37:04.040
 home gathering leader?

00:37:04.660 --> 00:37:05.140
 Yeah.

00:37:05.220 --> 00:37:09.100
 Essentially we use the word leader, um, at the moment.

00:37:09.420 --> 00:37:13.000
 Um, but the process right now is to, to take our training.

00:37:13.000 --> 00:37:14.860
 So we have some training that we've created.

00:37:14.860 --> 00:37:15.940
 It's about an hour long.

00:37:16.180 --> 00:37:20.120
 Um, there's some theology and very practical type of elements.

00:37:20.120 --> 00:37:25.800
 And we go through everything about leaning into, you know, you know, the context of what a church

00:37:25.800 --> 00:37:30.520
 is biblically, and then really to encourage them that this, this is church.

00:37:30.800 --> 00:37:33.500
 And then you don't need to think less of it because it's smaller.

00:37:33.500 --> 00:37:35.800
 And that's something that we really focus in on that training.

00:37:35.800 --> 00:37:40.100
 And then looking at practically what does it look like to execute this every week?

00:37:40.240 --> 00:37:42.400
 And so it looks like getting a leader.

00:37:42.560 --> 00:37:46.880
 You need somebody, um, to be more hospitality who's caring for people.

00:37:46.880 --> 00:37:52.340
 And then you have somebody that is logistics that's, you know, pull downloading notes, printing

00:37:52.340 --> 00:37:54.180
 them, sending us attendance every week.

00:37:54.180 --> 00:37:59.680
 And so the really out of that training, they fill a commitment card out.

00:37:59.680 --> 00:38:03.880
 And it's, it's a kind of like a covenant where they commit to aligning with us.

00:38:03.880 --> 00:38:07.880
 And, and part of what we give them is you could show our weekend services for free.

00:38:07.880 --> 00:38:11.820
 You know, you can just go, um, but you are aligning with us theologically.

00:38:12.480 --> 00:38:16.580
 And, um, and so they take the training, they sign that commitment, and then we set up

00:38:16.580 --> 00:38:17.020
 a call.

00:38:17.160 --> 00:38:20.400
 Um, and that call is really about, tell us how you got here.

00:38:20.980 --> 00:38:22.260
 Why are you interested in this?

00:38:22.380 --> 00:38:23.120
 Where are you at?

00:38:23.200 --> 00:38:27.900
 And then that first call is normally around, do you have any questions about the strategy

00:38:27.900 --> 00:38:29.800
 or anything that we said?

00:38:29.800 --> 00:38:32.280
 I usually ask something about theology very directly.

00:38:32.280 --> 00:38:36.280
 I go, is there anything about what we believe that, um, you just wanted to clarify?

00:38:36.640 --> 00:38:42.640
 And then, um, we, most of the time it's, do you have two other people to help you?

00:38:43.040 --> 00:38:46.540
 And so, and then I say the first part is for you to get to other people.

00:38:46.540 --> 00:38:50.700
 So, um, if ask people in your small group, if you're not doing a small group, you need

00:38:50.700 --> 00:38:52.860
 to do that first and then get to other people.

00:38:52.860 --> 00:38:55.640
 And once you have those two other people, have them go through the training.

00:38:55.880 --> 00:39:00.140
 They don't need to fill out a commitment card and then let's have a three-way conversation

00:39:00.140 --> 00:39:05.960
 around, or, you know, let's have a four, a four member conversation around the next steps.

00:39:05.960 --> 00:39:10.580
 And normally that conversation is about, um, doing some evangelism training.

00:39:10.660 --> 00:39:16.220
 So I want them to kind of read our book, um, that our pastor wrote on purpose-driven, uh,

00:39:16.360 --> 00:39:16.880
 church.

00:39:16.880 --> 00:39:18.660
 So you kind of understand how we frame things.

00:39:18.720 --> 00:39:23.200
 And then I either encourage them to read through the book of Acts together to kind of structurally

00:39:23.200 --> 00:39:26.740
 understand some things, but really I'm trying to get them to, and this is something we're

00:39:26.740 --> 00:39:28.140
 actually still deciding.

00:39:28.140 --> 00:39:32.880
 I had a group that I'm just walking through this right now where I'm picking some evangelism

00:39:32.880 --> 00:39:37.720
 training that I think is better and kind of, you know, forcing them to, to really share

00:39:37.720 --> 00:39:38.140
 their faith.

00:39:38.140 --> 00:39:39.760
 And a lot of it's just answering that.

00:39:39.820 --> 00:39:40.880
 And then we pick a start date.

00:39:40.960 --> 00:39:42.120
 They start inviting people.

00:39:42.320 --> 00:39:47.360
 We, we problem solve some things, you know, as simple as, you know, one of the things is

00:39:47.360 --> 00:39:52.000
 we, we had a group that was gathering together that was using Roku to watch the services and

00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:57.100
 the service once or twice bumped, it got a little choppy and it's a little awkward with having

00:39:57.100 --> 00:39:58.300
 15 people in the room is choppy.

00:39:58.480 --> 00:40:02.860
 So as simple as I said, I would buy a very long ethernet cable and hard line that

00:40:02.860 --> 00:40:07.120
 baby, you know, and those are just simple things that, you know, we're just, we're talking

00:40:07.120 --> 00:40:07.460
 through.

00:40:07.460 --> 00:40:13.340
 And then long-term it's, I set up a monthly meeting with their team and which is just an

00:40:13.340 --> 00:40:14.820
 hour, an hour a month.

00:40:14.880 --> 00:40:17.320
 And I'm trying to build it right now.

00:40:17.400 --> 00:40:18.580
 We only have a couple of these.

00:40:18.580 --> 00:40:20.060
 And so I'm trying to build it long-term.

00:40:20.320 --> 00:40:27.320
 I'm going to build, I probably come February when we have, you know, about 15 of these going

00:40:27.320 --> 00:40:28.920
 is I want to do two things.

00:40:29.020 --> 00:40:32.240
 I want, I want to build like probably a Facebook group where everyone's learning together.

00:40:32.840 --> 00:40:36.380
 And then the other thing is probably have a large, make that call, not individual, but

00:40:36.380 --> 00:40:37.200
 a large call.

00:40:37.200 --> 00:40:47.740
 Because we did not, we should, I shipped one thing to this, to the one outside of Orlando

00:40:47.740 --> 00:40:54.020
 actually, where I, I bought a, I had a banner made online and I just, it was like 60 bucks

00:40:54.020 --> 00:40:56.560
 and I mailed them a banner through an online resource.

00:40:56.560 --> 00:41:00.340
 And I really did not want to get in the business of mailing anything.

00:41:00.340 --> 00:41:02.440
 And so they are, they are going.

00:41:02.440 --> 00:41:07.100
 And so it's, it's a very, it's, it's very motivated to try to get them to get going quickly,

00:41:07.100 --> 00:41:11.540
 but the training, the call, and then get two people, have them go through the training and

00:41:11.540 --> 00:41:13.840
 then let's start setting a date and then talking regularly.

00:41:13.840 --> 00:41:17.640
 And I'm in this process right now with, with, with a couple where I'm just, I'm meeting with

00:41:17.640 --> 00:41:17.880
 monthly.

00:41:17.880 --> 00:41:22.300
 And I met with one of them on, on Monday and we were problem solving that ethernet thing.

00:41:22.300 --> 00:41:26.900
 I was like, okay, here's, and I'm now working on some digital rights stuff with our church.

00:41:27.000 --> 00:41:29.680
 Can I give them something that's downloadable on Saturday nights?

00:41:30.200 --> 00:41:32.280
 Um, and you know, some of that's easy.

00:41:32.280 --> 00:41:36.680
 Some of it's, some of it, we have some rights things that we have to navigate and, um, yeah.

00:41:36.880 --> 00:41:42.660
 So all the fun stuff and, and part of this beta was to, as I have, I have about 20 people

00:41:42.660 --> 00:41:44.360
 interested in doing this in all sorts of places.

00:41:44.480 --> 00:41:47.600
 I've now, I'm doing it really intently with one.

00:41:47.600 --> 00:41:51.500
 And now I'm, I'm taking these learnings and I'm going back and going, Hey, if we want to

00:41:51.500 --> 00:41:53.960
 do this large scale, we need to figure out this stuff.

00:41:54.020 --> 00:41:55.580
 And so it's beta, beta, beta.

00:41:56.280 --> 00:41:56.640
 Awesome.

00:41:57.200 --> 00:42:01.260
 And so, but a lot of what you're describing is, is centered around that one hour on Sunday,

00:42:01.260 --> 00:42:03.260
 you know, and, and you alluded to earlier.

00:42:03.480 --> 00:42:03.840
 Yeah.

00:42:03.940 --> 00:42:06.620
 Um, you know, there's more than just the one hour you killed this.

00:42:06.760 --> 00:42:10.280
 Wednesday thing to make the small groups push and homes happen.

00:42:10.280 --> 00:42:14.660
 So like when it comes to some of those next steps, when it comes to groups, when it comes

00:42:14.660 --> 00:42:17.780
 to money, you know, where, where tithing, where does that go?

00:42:17.820 --> 00:42:21.540
 Like how, how are you structuring some, some of that?

00:42:21.620 --> 00:42:23.340
 How is Saddleback answering those questions?

00:42:23.340 --> 00:42:24.340
 Yeah, that's a good question.

00:42:24.500 --> 00:42:28.180
 So the money one in particular, we, we have, we don't have a clear answer.

00:42:28.180 --> 00:42:33.060
 Um, and my argument to my leadership right now, and I think this is a good learning for,

00:42:33.060 --> 00:42:36.600
 you know, anybody doing this is I pretty much said,

00:42:36.640 --> 00:42:38.720
 can you give me some space to try this out?

00:42:38.720 --> 00:42:41.920
 And instead of theoretically talking about it, let me bring an example.

00:42:43.060 --> 00:42:49.260
 Um, and that's where we're at right now, where I had, I had this with the other, um, with

00:42:49.260 --> 00:42:52.540
 the other locations where we started to have money, where it's like people were giving.

00:42:52.640 --> 00:42:53.940
 Now it wasn't coming to our team.

00:42:54.000 --> 00:42:57.620
 It was going out to the world, but I was like, Hey, we have money here.

00:42:57.880 --> 00:43:02.080
 So something as simple as my budget, for example, every year, I have a budget that's given to

00:43:02.080 --> 00:43:02.740
 me once a year.

00:43:03.160 --> 00:43:05.060
 These locations kind of started popping up.

00:43:05.160 --> 00:43:05.920
 I was doing travel.

00:43:06.020 --> 00:43:10.600
 I was doing some things and I was draining my own online campus budget to execute this.

00:43:10.900 --> 00:43:14.080
 And I was like, but I know there's resources coming in.

00:43:14.080 --> 00:43:19.220
 It doesn't mean those resources don't solve all the problems, but we needed something that

00:43:19.220 --> 00:43:20.740
 was, that was more helpful for them.

00:43:20.820 --> 00:43:25.700
 So for example, in these locations, we've said it very clear upfront that, you know, when you're

00:43:25.700 --> 00:43:29.380
 under 25, you're not going to have a lot of financial needs.

00:43:30.360 --> 00:43:37.440
 Um, and so you guys, you guys treat your money, um, you know, give towards Saddleback, but if

00:43:37.440 --> 00:43:40.860
 you guys have something that you need at your area, treat that as a tithe.

00:43:40.980 --> 00:43:45.040
 Now, the only difference is there's not a tax incentive, you know, but like, you know, if

00:43:45.040 --> 00:43:48.400
 you had a hundred dollars and you're going to tie that to Saddleback and 20 of it got used

00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:52.500
 on food for an event, you know, technically you are tithing, you're tithing to God.

00:43:52.500 --> 00:43:58.040
 Now you can't give us a hundred and, and you can't give us 80 and we're going to give you

00:43:58.040 --> 00:44:00.040
 the a hundred back because we have to flow that money back.

00:44:00.340 --> 00:44:03.780
 Um, but we're, we're not going to be a pass through essentially at this stage.

00:44:04.140 --> 00:44:10.460
 Um, and, but I do think once you have a hundred, 150 people, you have to have very clear lines.

00:44:10.460 --> 00:44:15.640
 And I think, um, that's part of one, a couple of these locations we're trying to figure it

00:44:15.640 --> 00:44:18.100
 out because that, that comes in that staff time.

00:44:18.500 --> 00:44:23.200
 Those are some, that all takes, that gets in the way of scalability.

00:44:23.200 --> 00:44:27.840
 And I think we're trying to, I'm trying to build a case right now of like why that's

00:44:27.840 --> 00:44:33.400
 worth investment because we are talking about it, but it's not like, it's like, is anybody

00:44:33.400 --> 00:44:34.240
 really want to do this?

00:44:34.240 --> 00:44:39.500
 And right now it's, I had this with, with class one-on-one where, um, when we launched

00:44:39.500 --> 00:44:43.100
 membership online, I remember my, one of my leaders said, does anybody even want to take

00:44:43.100 --> 00:44:43.240
 it?

00:44:43.240 --> 00:44:44.020
 You're pushing it.

00:44:44.920 --> 00:44:46.120
 Um, and I was like, yeah.

00:44:46.220 --> 00:44:48.380
 And I remember I, I built a waiting list.

00:44:49.320 --> 00:44:53.960
 So instead of just theoretically thinking about it, um, it was like, oh, look, I have a hundred

00:44:53.960 --> 00:44:55.700
 people waiting to take it right at this moment.

00:44:55.700 --> 00:45:02.300
 And I think that's why try to, try to have, try to define a sandbox where you can experiment.

00:45:02.300 --> 00:45:05.380
 And then instead of theoretically talking about bring a user case.

00:45:05.380 --> 00:45:10.140
 So my hope is in like six months, I'll have this case in, you know, somewhere in Florida

00:45:10.140 --> 00:45:14.400
 where I'll be like, Hey, we have 25 people and they're tithing every week to the main

00:45:14.400 --> 00:45:15.100
 Saddleback website.

00:45:15.100 --> 00:45:17.300
 And it's, it's tens of thousands of dollars.

00:45:17.600 --> 00:45:19.720
 Should it, some of that flow back here.

00:45:19.780 --> 00:45:23.220
 And shouldn't we figure, you know, and I think those are the things we have to figure out right

00:45:23.220 --> 00:45:23.380
 now.

00:45:23.380 --> 00:45:27.900
 A lot of it's just theoretical to be honest, because if you're under 25, you really don't,

00:45:28.520 --> 00:45:29.700
 you don't need anything.

00:45:29.700 --> 00:45:34.680
 Like it's very little, um, and it's very community focused, which is part of our incentive.

00:45:34.680 --> 00:45:38.520
 But I think as we get more over a certain size, the only ones that are larger in

00:45:38.520 --> 00:45:40.860
 our model are more prison based, which are unique.

00:45:41.360 --> 00:45:47.500
 Um, and they're not going to, they don't have money and, um, they're not going to turn into

00:45:47.500 --> 00:45:50.580
 a church long-term and like how we would define that.

00:45:50.580 --> 00:45:54.400
 So that's a different, a different model altogether too.

00:45:55.620 --> 00:46:01.660
 There's an interesting opportunity, you know, even the, even the 18, 20, 25, the money to come

00:46:01.660 --> 00:46:06.560
 in to pour it back into the community instead of supporting the mothership or a portion supporting

00:46:06.560 --> 00:46:12.120
 the community, some of their local mission opportunities, or, you know, maybe to your

00:46:12.120 --> 00:46:17.800
 point, maybe they're, they're withholding the tithe to the church and tithing to the organ,

00:46:17.900 --> 00:46:20.320
 you know, and, and that's, that's an option.

00:46:20.320 --> 00:46:24.420
 Although it sounds kind of sticky, even when you say it, uh, a hundred percent, it does.

00:46:24.500 --> 00:46:30.060
 And trust me, it's, it's something that we've, you know, every group will ask that of me of

00:46:30.060 --> 00:46:34.300
 like, what do you, and, and, and I said, pretty much I'm, I'm pushing the ball down the road.

00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:39.640
 What I have found in each iteration of these things, you have tons of these questions that

00:46:39.640 --> 00:46:42.580
 kind of start to pop up of what do you do with kids?

00:46:42.640 --> 00:46:44.040
 What do you do with money?

00:46:44.120 --> 00:46:45.400
 What do you do with legality?

00:46:45.940 --> 00:46:50.080
 And, and there's two things you could either wait to have all the answers.

00:46:50.080 --> 00:46:53.120
 And I have found that you will be waiting a very long time.

00:46:53.720 --> 00:46:56.820
 Um, and, and, and it's not how I tend to work.

00:46:57.040 --> 00:47:03.720
 Um, and so for me, you can't, we've decided at least in this very small, like piece of the

00:47:03.720 --> 00:47:08.660
 pie that we've carved up of what I can experiment with on the online campus team is I said, let

00:47:08.660 --> 00:47:09.740
 me just experiment over here.

00:47:09.740 --> 00:47:11.180
 We're going to lean into the gray a bit.

00:47:11.300 --> 00:47:12.960
 We're not going to scale it yet.

00:47:13.100 --> 00:47:15.700
 We want to scale it, but we're going to test it.

00:47:15.960 --> 00:47:20.080
 And so that means typically, you know, just having a couple of people, we haven't fully

00:47:20.080 --> 00:47:23.700
 unleashed this model yet because I think some of these questions do need to be

00:47:23.700 --> 00:47:27.240
 answered, or at least there needs to be some fog removed.

00:47:27.620 --> 00:47:32.220
 And so right now, um, the reason why I don't talk about it on the weekend much in the sense

00:47:32.220 --> 00:47:34.220
 that I'm not, I'm not calling these things churches.

00:47:34.220 --> 00:47:37.620
 I'm not, it's because we're still figuring it out.

00:47:37.720 --> 00:47:41.620
 Um, and so I think you've got to figure out what that looks like within the context of your

00:47:41.620 --> 00:47:43.160
 church, um, for sure.

00:47:43.160 --> 00:47:48.540
 But I think having examples is way better than just saying theoretically, because, you

00:47:48.540 --> 00:47:51.640
 know, I just had a conversation with one of our leaders a couple of days ago about

00:47:51.640 --> 00:47:58.220
 this and he was, uh, he was asking me, uh, some stuff about our church and, you know,

00:47:58.340 --> 00:47:59.320
 well, Jay, you can do this.

00:47:59.340 --> 00:47:59.800
 You can do this.

00:47:59.800 --> 00:48:00.920
 And he was kind of up upper.

00:48:01.040 --> 00:48:03.940
 And I just remember going like, nobody has the answers for this.

00:48:03.940 --> 00:48:08.920
 And so you are, you know, you're having this, you're asking me what to do.

00:48:08.920 --> 00:48:16.240
 But if I wait for your answer, I'm going to, I'm going to get old because I, like I, I, and

00:48:16.240 --> 00:48:16.680
 I get it.

00:48:16.680 --> 00:48:17.440
 It's a good question.

00:48:17.440 --> 00:48:21.700
 But if we don't have clarity, I think sometimes with no clarity, you have the opportunity to

00:48:21.700 --> 00:48:22.320
 proceed forward.

00:48:22.320 --> 00:48:24.280
 It's like the classic yes, no, or not yet.

00:48:24.700 --> 00:48:29.300
 And I, you know, to me, I've heard not a no, I, it's a not yet.

00:48:29.400 --> 00:48:30.740
 And I haven't heard a yes yet.

00:48:30.740 --> 00:48:33.040
 And so I'm leaning forward on the not yet.

00:48:33.560 --> 00:48:37.360
 Um, and I'm just going to say, okay, if I've told I can't, if I don't need to stop, then

00:48:37.360 --> 00:48:38.720
 I'm just going to keep pushing forward.

00:48:38.780 --> 00:48:42.800
 And it doesn't mean I'm going to find the answer, but I at least want to just continue

00:48:42.800 --> 00:48:45.000
 to, to explore, um, for sure.

00:48:46.360 --> 00:48:50.020
 How are you making sure that, cause those are obviously like the big picture things.

00:48:50.020 --> 00:48:52.640
 How are you making sure that the Saddleback DNA is still there?

00:48:52.640 --> 00:48:55.800
 Like the five purposes, the whole nine, that those are kind of the driving factors there.

00:48:56.340 --> 00:49:01.860
 Yeah, that, that, that's a big, that's something we heard from a lot of different people, um,

00:49:01.860 --> 00:49:06.920
 who had planted churches, um, particular, like that, that's something that's really important

00:49:06.920 --> 00:49:11.500
 because our prime candidates are members that have moved away, members of our local church,

00:49:11.500 --> 00:49:12.600
 um, because they get it.

00:49:13.060 --> 00:49:16.780
 Um, now it gets a little harder when you have people that have never been here physically

00:49:16.780 --> 00:49:18.360
 that want to do this.

00:49:18.640 --> 00:49:24.760
 And so for us, what that looks like is, it's obviously going through some of our training.

00:49:24.880 --> 00:49:29.720
 The other thing is, um, I think there's two elements of this long-term one is we're going

00:49:29.720 --> 00:49:34.260
 to ideally ask each leader of a home gathering long.

00:49:34.260 --> 00:49:39.880
 These, this is a long-term strategy, uh, as we've talked about this out loud, it's come

00:49:39.880 --> 00:49:43.720
 to a, one of our yearly purpose-driven conferences once every three years.

00:49:44.120 --> 00:49:47.900
 So as you know, let's say hypothetically, we have a hundred of these down the road.

00:49:47.900 --> 00:49:52.880
 I think the ask would be, you come to one of, one of these every three years.

00:49:52.880 --> 00:49:56.340
 I'm not saying every year, every other year, I'm saying one every three years so that you

00:49:56.340 --> 00:49:57.760
 understand our culture, you're here.

00:49:57.760 --> 00:50:03.860
 And I want you to kind of get us the other thing, um, that I think is, is really going

00:50:03.860 --> 00:50:04.460
 to be important.

00:50:04.460 --> 00:50:09.200
 Long-term is us visiting these locations, uh, occasionally.

00:50:09.820 --> 00:50:16.820
 Um, now I, I am motivated too, for this solution because as somebody who has groups and members

00:50:16.820 --> 00:50:20.440
 in, you know, 500 plus cities in every state.

00:50:20.440 --> 00:50:25.120
 And in, in like, I, last time I checked, I think it was 40 different countries.

00:50:25.380 --> 00:50:29.040
 Um, it's really hard to map out a plan to visit people.

00:50:29.440 --> 00:50:34.100
 So I am selfishly building this kind of web, or at least I'm trying to work towards this

00:50:34.100 --> 00:50:39.560
 web is that if I could have regional hubs that I could say, Hey, by the way, once a quarter,

00:50:39.560 --> 00:50:40.420
 we're going to be here.

00:50:40.520 --> 00:50:43.960
 And I could tell everybody within a hundred mile or 300 mile radius, we're going to be

00:50:43.960 --> 00:50:44.620
 here on this date.

00:50:44.760 --> 00:50:49.820
 I think it's a better way for us to scale our care geographically, um, with our time as

00:50:49.820 --> 00:50:52.020
 staff with staff presence.

00:50:52.120 --> 00:50:56.780
 So instead of me driving, I mean, I did this, I was, I think this was four years ago.

00:50:57.140 --> 00:51:02.380
 I did like a tour on the East coast and over a course of like five or six days, I start,

00:51:02.380 --> 00:51:07.520
 I landed in Boston and I left from DC and I went to all these different places and we did

00:51:07.520 --> 00:51:08.140
 like meetups.

00:51:08.860 --> 00:51:16.900
 Um, and I remember I drove from New York down to, um, was it Africa?

00:51:17.020 --> 00:51:20.320
 Anyways, I drove into Connecticut, uh, into Connecticut essentially.

00:51:20.320 --> 00:51:24.960
 And I said, I was going to be at this coffee shop at noon is the only time I could meet at

00:51:24.960 --> 00:51:25.300
 this place.

00:51:25.300 --> 00:51:29.640
 And I did have a couple of small groups, like in Connecticut area, but it was a noon, like

00:51:29.640 --> 00:51:30.160
 on a Thursday.

00:51:30.160 --> 00:51:32.280
 So it was kind of a hard time for people to meet.

00:51:32.940 --> 00:51:39.400
 Um, but I had, I had two people show up and I couldn't have been of more random town in

00:51:39.400 --> 00:51:43.080
 Connecticut where I was at, um, because it was, I was passing through essentially.

00:51:43.640 --> 00:51:49.580
 But the idea is that that would have made more sense if I had something, I, you know, my geography

00:51:49.580 --> 00:51:53.040
 is a little off in my head right now, but I've had something in a larger city and they knew

00:51:53.040 --> 00:51:56.020
 in advance once a quarter, we kind of do these rounds.

00:51:56.020 --> 00:51:59.380
 I think that could be scalable hypothetically.

00:51:59.920 --> 00:52:05.540
 Um, one thing we don't want to do is we want to, we're not trying to, I don't naturally,

00:52:05.760 --> 00:52:09.720
 I'm not, there might be unintended consequences here that I'm not thinking about with like

00:52:09.720 --> 00:52:14.500
 denominational stuff because I don't want it to turn into a denomination thing where I'm

00:52:14.500 --> 00:52:16.220
 like building some kind of infrastructure.

00:52:16.220 --> 00:52:18.880
 But I think these are all the things, this is part of it.

00:52:18.940 --> 00:52:22.560
 There's, there's these pros and there's just cons, but one of the cons of online ministry

00:52:22.560 --> 00:52:29.220
 is not really been able to visit people and, um, and it's not just, I've, I've done multiple

00:52:29.220 --> 00:52:34.740
 trips where I fly places and, you know, the problem is most of the time, the best time

00:52:34.740 --> 00:52:36.120
 to meet people are on the weekends.

00:52:36.120 --> 00:52:40.740
 And that means you only really can go one place, um, typically.

00:52:41.480 --> 00:52:45.000
 Um, and so I can't really, cause I've done it where I've, I've hit multiple cities.

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:50.360
 I did this in Texas where I, in a course of a day, I was in San Antonio, Dallas, um, and

00:52:50.360 --> 00:52:54.420
 Austin, I did different, like a morning lunch, uh, dinner thing.

00:52:54.660 --> 00:52:58.360
 You know, when I'm hitting morning in Austin, you know, only some people, the people that

00:52:58.360 --> 00:53:01.560
 are working or typical jobs, you know, they're not going to be able to meet.

00:53:01.660 --> 00:53:02.300
 And so this is hard.

00:53:02.360 --> 00:53:08.020
 This is why if I go all the way to DC, I probably need to be there on a Saturday night or a Sunday

00:53:08.020 --> 00:53:08.940
 morning and be there.

00:53:08.980 --> 00:53:10.840
 And that means I can only be in DC.

00:53:11.220 --> 00:53:15.460
 And so, um, I think some of these regional hub things, I think we're trying to figure out

00:53:15.460 --> 00:53:19.160
 maybe could this be a, a web for us to kind of connect with people.

00:53:19.820 --> 00:53:24.160
 And I heard you mentioned earlier that you're even looking at like baptisms and maybe some

00:53:24.160 --> 00:53:28.700
 of the utilizing some of the ordinances within these regional hub meetups, right?

00:53:29.200 --> 00:53:29.600
 Yeah.

00:53:29.600 --> 00:53:34.560
 So like we, we have a ton of people that want to get baptized and we train people to baptize

00:53:34.560 --> 00:53:39.120
 each other and it happens, but I don't think it's the, it's not as scalable as I want.

00:53:39.540 --> 00:53:44.380
 Um, I, I don't have a, I have people, you know, every other week that say like, I want

00:53:44.380 --> 00:53:44.820
 to get baptized.

00:53:44.900 --> 00:53:47.520
 And then I say, Hey, do you have a small group member?

00:53:47.540 --> 00:53:48.480
 They can baptize you.

00:53:48.480 --> 00:53:53.300
 And, you know, maybe one out of 10 say yes to that, um, because it's weird.

00:53:53.300 --> 00:53:58.220
 And so it's like, so I, I know it's an option and people do it, but it's most people want

00:53:58.220 --> 00:54:02.920
 to be baptized by somebody who's a, they want to get baptized by a pastor and maybe a leader.

00:54:02.920 --> 00:54:06.640
 And I think these leaders of these home gatherings could potentially be that.

00:54:06.700 --> 00:54:11.560
 And I think that's part of our hope is maybe these locations could be places where we hold,

00:54:11.760 --> 00:54:13.540
 you know, things like that.

00:54:13.580 --> 00:54:17.300
 We, we do trainings, we come in, I did, did this in the Bay area, went up one time and did

00:54:17.300 --> 00:54:19.400
 a one, our membership class in person up there.

00:54:19.740 --> 00:54:20.800
 And it was very fruitful.

00:54:20.800 --> 00:54:25.120
 And we had more people, um, engage on that than I think the previous three months.

00:54:25.260 --> 00:54:29.560
 Um, so we had, you know, and so, yeah, so I think some of this stuff, that's the hope.

00:54:29.560 --> 00:54:35.320
 Again, this is all, I can't tell you how much of this is very, it's theoretical in the

00:54:35.320 --> 00:54:39.940
 sense that, um, you know, we think a lot about it, but, and there's learnings out of past stuff,

00:54:39.940 --> 00:54:44.640
 but you know, we're very, uh, being aggressive in iterating on top of these thoughts.

00:54:44.640 --> 00:54:45.780
 So there's a lot of thoughts.

00:54:45.860 --> 00:54:49.540
 So I think this is a perfect for this type of podcast is kind of, this is where we're going.

00:54:49.620 --> 00:54:50.340
 This is what we're thinking.

00:54:50.500 --> 00:54:52.220
 It's not, it might change next week.

00:54:52.780 --> 00:54:53.520
 Um, yeah.

00:54:54.380 --> 00:54:56.440
 So what's the theoretical success?

00:54:56.440 --> 00:54:58.580
 You don't know, you don't know where the finish line is yet.

00:54:58.600 --> 00:54:59.900
 You're still trying to figure it out.

00:55:00.340 --> 00:55:01.440
 We're still theoretical.

00:55:02.380 --> 00:55:03.300
 What's the win?

00:55:03.400 --> 00:55:07.880
 When are you going to look back and say this worked or this didn't like what, what's the

00:55:07.880 --> 00:55:08.840
 tipping point for you?

00:55:09.180 --> 00:55:13.460
 I think in, we've, we've put it down in six months.

00:55:13.460 --> 00:55:18.420
 We want to have, uh, well, I would say in 2020, we want to have 20 of these locations.

00:55:18.760 --> 00:55:23.800
 So by the end of 2020, I think we'll build a home, a 20 separate home gatherings.

00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:24.280
 Yeah.

00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:24.840
 Yeah.

00:55:24.960 --> 00:55:29.600
 And so I think by then we'll build a no very quickly because our church is moving into a

00:55:29.600 --> 00:55:33.380
 big campaign push here in January where our church is going to be going through this curriculum

00:55:33.380 --> 00:55:36.440
 and I'm going to have a ton of people interested.

00:55:36.600 --> 00:55:38.220
 Now the question is, does the training work?

00:55:39.040 --> 00:55:40.480
 Is it something people want to do?

00:55:40.580 --> 00:55:44.300
 I think that's the one thing people really overlook is, you know, what are you actually

00:55:44.300 --> 00:55:45.520
 asking people to do?

00:55:45.980 --> 00:55:49.120
 Like I'm asking them to host church in their home.

00:55:49.220 --> 00:55:50.840
 Do people want to do that?

00:55:51.600 --> 00:55:54.000
 So like, really, do they really want to do that?

00:55:54.740 --> 00:55:57.600
 And, um, and there's all sorts of reasons why they want to do that.

00:55:57.600 --> 00:55:58.680
 And it's filtering out that.

00:55:58.760 --> 00:56:03.400
 So I think by the end of 2020, I'll be able to know if there's, if a large percentage of

00:56:03.400 --> 00:56:05.460
 this idea really works.

00:56:05.620 --> 00:56:10.460
 Um, and, and that, that's the part I think most people that have been doing anything with

00:56:10.460 --> 00:56:14.860
 online church in that is that they've been able to do one or two times the success rate,

00:56:14.860 --> 00:56:18.780
 but I don't think they've been able to scale it to what's, if you look at how many people

00:56:18.780 --> 00:56:22.080
 are attending every week and how many people are engaged in your home gatherings or your

00:56:22.080 --> 00:56:26.640
 extensions or your anywheres, I don't think that there's this correlation that is as tight.

00:56:26.800 --> 00:56:27.760
 It's, it's not the same.

00:56:28.100 --> 00:56:33.240
 I mean, I don't know if it's going to be the same type of retention, but, um, I think that's

00:56:33.240 --> 00:56:34.320
 something I think a lot about.

00:56:34.320 --> 00:56:39.220
 Um, and I, I've probably said this on, on the past, the past podcast is I think the most

00:56:39.220 --> 00:56:44.460
 glaring number for me in our strategy is that we have tons of people attending every week.

00:56:44.540 --> 00:56:45.540
 We have tons of small groups.

00:56:45.540 --> 00:56:50.800
 We have tons of salvations and people in our Facebook group, but we do not baptize that

00:56:50.800 --> 00:56:52.880
 many people every year with our online community.

00:56:52.880 --> 00:56:59.480
 Um, and so I think we've baptized about 19 people or 20 people the past year, um, which

00:56:59.480 --> 00:57:00.220
 is a lot of people.

00:57:00.220 --> 00:57:01.900
 And that's God, God's honoring that.

00:57:02.000 --> 00:57:06.520
 But I think when we go from, you know, let's say, I think we've, we're at like 300 people

00:57:06.520 --> 00:57:10.760
 have indicated some kind of salvation in the past 11 months or something.

00:57:11.380 --> 00:57:13.900
 And maybe regular attendance about 20,000.

00:57:14.420 --> 00:57:17.880
 If I kind of look down the road, I go 19 people.

00:57:17.880 --> 00:57:22.360
 That means the physical community stuff is still a problem for us, that it's still, there's

00:57:22.360 --> 00:57:23.100
 still a gap there.

00:57:23.100 --> 00:57:27.100
 One of the things that I'm working on, uh, is this idea and I've talked with you about

00:57:27.100 --> 00:57:32.460
 it, I think in passing, maybe not even this idea of planting a digital church, a church

00:57:32.460 --> 00:57:35.420
 that lived fully in a, in a virtual expression.

00:57:35.420 --> 00:57:40.560
 Like I'm talking DJ Soto VR, maybe as, as a pioneer in that area, it does not have to

00:57:40.560 --> 00:57:46.820
 be VR there's Jade Earhart, who's doing stuff with, uh, uh, video games and, and discord

00:57:46.820 --> 00:57:48.620
 creating a discipleship movement.

00:57:48.620 --> 00:57:50.680
 And he's in the process of planting a church there.

00:57:51.300 --> 00:57:53.960
 Um, yeah, and there's others that are, that are doing that.

00:57:54.100 --> 00:57:58.860
 What you've also been talking a little bit here is this idea of, of needing that physical

00:57:58.860 --> 00:58:04.760
 touch, maybe to go alongside with a digital, uh, discipleship plan or a digital, uh, expression

00:58:04.760 --> 00:58:05.500
 of, of worship.

00:58:05.680 --> 00:58:09.780
 So what, what in your mind, just briefly, I know it's a big question in a short amount of

00:58:09.780 --> 00:58:17.200
 time, but what is that, that tension between doing things digital, um, having it live out

00:58:17.200 --> 00:58:19.960
 in, in the physical realm, online to offline kind of thing?

00:58:20.020 --> 00:58:21.340
 What, what does that look like, Jay Crandon?

00:58:22.420 --> 00:58:25.200
 Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting question.

00:58:25.280 --> 00:58:29.340
 I, it's funny, I get, I'll get that question every once in a while.

00:58:29.500 --> 00:58:34.000
 Someone just asked it to me on Twitter a couple of weeks ago where, why don't you talk more

00:58:34.000 --> 00:58:36.080
 about just a purely digital church?

00:58:36.480 --> 00:58:40.760
 You're so focused on offline, offlining it essentially.

00:58:41.500 --> 00:58:47.360
 Um, and I've talked to DJ about this too, um, where, you know, he's all, he's all digital

00:58:47.360 --> 00:58:48.600
 for very clear reasons.

00:58:48.720 --> 00:58:52.420
 Now he also does physical stuff cause he meets up with people and, and it's part of his travel.

00:58:53.420 --> 00:59:00.180
 I, I, I, I, you know, I'm not sure how to answer it because I feel like some of that stuff is

00:59:00.180 --> 00:59:01.300
 still being figured out.

00:59:01.300 --> 00:59:07.800
 Um, but I, I know personally, I find if, if I have people close to me, things become easier.

00:59:07.800 --> 00:59:10.280
 And I do think that theology is a little bit simpler.

00:59:10.540 --> 00:59:18.680
 And so, um, I feel like sometimes, and this is part of just the, the swings of these conversations

00:59:18.680 --> 00:59:25.300
 is that politically this happens where you're like the country becomes too rigid or let's

00:59:25.300 --> 00:59:26.760
 say like the patriarch happens.

00:59:26.760 --> 00:59:30.040
 And then people are like, Oh, this is way too controlling.

00:59:30.180 --> 00:59:31.400
 We need to swing this way.

00:59:31.500 --> 00:59:32.980
 We go to left and then we go right.

00:59:33.280 --> 00:59:37.820
 And I think sometimes in the online conversation, people swing too much into what is possible

00:59:37.820 --> 00:59:39.900
 and they don't think about the unintended consequences.

00:59:40.720 --> 00:59:44.940
 And I think I understand the exceptions of why online church is church.

00:59:45.060 --> 00:59:49.140
 Like I totally understand that, but I don't think that means, I don't think you build a

00:59:49.140 --> 00:59:50.580
 theology on the exceptions.

00:59:51.100 --> 00:59:57.320
 And I think this is, this is the, the example of, um, kind of just seeing how the world is

00:59:57.320 --> 00:59:57.920
 dealing with this.

00:59:57.920 --> 01:00:03.560
 It's like Facebook is, is, is a great example of Facebook is hearing two things from the world

01:00:03.560 --> 01:00:04.080
 right now.

01:00:04.460 --> 01:00:06.340
 We want you to crack down.

01:00:06.340 --> 01:00:09.800
 Um, oh no, we want you to be out of our personal conversation.

01:00:10.040 --> 01:00:11.600
 Stop listening to us.

01:00:11.820 --> 01:00:13.900
 And they, people want privacy.

01:00:13.900 --> 01:00:17.760
 And then they're hearing crackdown on child pornography.

01:00:19.160 --> 01:00:21.580
 These are mutually exclusive concept.

01:00:21.820 --> 01:00:27.080
 Like Facebook needs to listen to your conversations if they're going to crack down on other people's

01:00:27.080 --> 01:00:27.780
 private messaging.

01:00:27.780 --> 01:00:32.040
 And so the conversation in most countries happening right now is, is encryption good or bad?

01:00:32.540 --> 01:00:38.140
 Well, it's bad in a country where we have freedom because essentially we don't want people

01:00:38.140 --> 01:00:43.480
 engaged, but, um, it's a good thing if you're in a suppressive country where the government

01:00:43.480 --> 01:00:46.460
 is regulating religion, sexuality, and all these things.

01:00:46.460 --> 01:00:51.680
 And so I think the, I think theology is having some of these conversations that they'll say

01:00:51.680 --> 01:00:53.140
 nothing is possible online.

01:00:53.140 --> 01:00:57.840
 And of course, and, and obviously you're belittling the church, you're belittling God's power.

01:00:57.840 --> 01:01:02.880
 When you say that on the flip side, it's, you know, it's, we have to understand the value

01:01:02.880 --> 01:01:04.120
 of face-to-face community.

01:01:04.120 --> 01:01:09.680
 So like, I think in the planting of purely digital church, I don't, I don't feel like that's

01:01:09.680 --> 01:01:11.600
 a true statement.

01:01:11.600 --> 01:01:17.540
 Like I don't feel like, cause the church is, but my, my most, one of my, one of my early

01:01:17.540 --> 01:01:23.840
 blog posts on this is the internet, even though it's fully internet, it's ultimately dependent

01:01:23.840 --> 01:01:25.860
 on physical servers sitting on ground.

01:01:25.860 --> 01:01:29.940
 Even the internet itself is not fully digital.

01:01:29.940 --> 01:01:32.400
 It's relied on physical devices on the ground.

01:01:32.480 --> 01:01:33.240
 Now it's decentralized.

01:01:33.640 --> 01:01:35.840
 So I think that's a model for us as a church.

01:01:35.840 --> 01:01:40.400
 So I would always, I would always go, I would always come around somebody who's doing something.

01:01:40.400 --> 01:01:41.060
 I go, I get it.

01:01:41.060 --> 01:01:42.400
 Like DJ is an evangelist.

01:01:42.500 --> 01:01:45.540
 So I understand the motive and I understand what he's doing.

01:01:45.660 --> 01:01:46.900
 And I, I'm a fan boy.

01:01:47.020 --> 01:01:47.820
 I'd go do it.

01:01:48.280 --> 01:01:50.360
 Because I also know he cares about physical too.

01:01:50.480 --> 01:01:52.220
 Like I, it's not that he doesn't care about it.

01:01:52.260 --> 01:01:55.900
 So I, I, to me, I, I struggle with that tension.

01:01:55.960 --> 01:01:56.960
 I struggle with that tension.

01:01:56.960 --> 01:02:02.180
 And I tend to default to physical because most of the people like that I hang out with

01:02:02.180 --> 01:02:04.800
 are probably more digital than they need to be.

01:02:05.120 --> 01:02:07.040
 And so I think that's why I go that way.

01:02:07.040 --> 01:02:11.980
 Because if somebody is engaging in the church online, then I'm over, you know, typically there's,

01:02:11.980 --> 01:02:13.280
 there's a reason why they're engaging online.

01:02:13.280 --> 01:02:16.900
 And I need to remind them of why they can't abandon the physical areas.

01:02:16.900 --> 01:02:21.960
 And I get excited about the vision of kind of turning on people in a city all around the

01:02:21.960 --> 01:02:23.480
 world that we have people from all around the world.

01:02:23.480 --> 01:02:27.540
 And I can kind of, I can't almost like, it's almost like a good terrorist, you know,

01:02:27.560 --> 01:02:31.620
 it's like a religion where you can turn them on and they get to impact that area for your

01:02:31.620 --> 01:02:31.980
 churches.

01:02:32.120 --> 01:02:34.120
 That's probably a bad example, but you get, you get my point.

01:02:34.500 --> 01:02:34.860
 Yeah.

01:02:34.900 --> 01:02:37.660
 I'm not, I'm not putting good terrorists on the webpage.

01:02:37.660 --> 01:02:41.740
 Like that's Google will flag me and it'll be all over.

01:02:41.960 --> 01:02:45.360
 I'm waiting for guys in suits to start busting down our doors at any moment.

01:02:45.500 --> 01:02:47.540
 No, we're going to get the SWAT.

01:02:47.640 --> 01:02:48.980
 That's the Twitch SWAT thing.

01:02:49.100 --> 01:02:50.380
 People are going to come in and rate us.

01:02:50.440 --> 01:02:50.540
 Yeah.

01:02:51.240 --> 01:02:51.600
 Yeah.

01:02:52.820 --> 01:02:57.380
 No, I was going to say that, that is a struggle, Jay, as far as maintaining that line.

01:02:57.400 --> 01:03:02.380
 And we've talked about it in the podcast of digital in terms of the relationship between

01:03:02.380 --> 01:03:05.420
 physical and digital church and how a lot of that's supposed to work out.

01:03:06.620 --> 01:03:10.900
 What is in us that really wants to swing to pendulum sides on this?

01:03:10.900 --> 01:03:15.640
 And why can't we seem to find like good, good lines to walk in the middle on how a lot

01:03:15.640 --> 01:03:20.540
 of these things can work together as opposed to separating them and thinking them, oh, these

01:03:20.540 --> 01:03:21.400
 are two separate worlds.

01:03:22.160 --> 01:03:25.140
 I mean, I think the obvious is because they're two different things.

01:03:25.700 --> 01:03:31.660
 They may be linked and they may be, you know, motivated by each other, but, you know, any

01:03:31.660 --> 01:03:37.160
 type of fusion word or even like online, offline, like essentially online and offline are two

01:03:37.160 --> 01:03:37.720
 separate things.

01:03:37.720 --> 01:03:43.340
 Now we may be expressing ourselves on both of them in similar ways, but I do think we have

01:03:43.340 --> 01:03:48.720
 to, I think I'm just embracing the differences is going to, is helpful.

01:03:49.080 --> 01:03:55.520
 And I, that's why I always push back on words that kind of fuse them because I don't, I understand

01:03:55.520 --> 01:04:00.760
 that I myself, just like my spirit, I'm expressing myself in multiple ways and you could do all

01:04:00.760 --> 01:04:01.980
 sorts of interesting things.

01:04:01.980 --> 01:04:08.060
 But with kind of the terminology and examples it's honestly, I just think it's a struggle

01:04:08.060 --> 01:04:09.720
 of just the complexity of us.

01:04:09.720 --> 01:04:14.220
 It's the, I mean, you take something as simple as like, I say simple, but you think of something

01:04:14.220 --> 01:04:16.620
 as defined as like the Trinity.

01:04:17.040 --> 01:04:21.820
 This is why they say there's no illustration that is like not heretical when you talk about

01:04:21.820 --> 01:04:26.080
 the Trinity because it starts to overemphasize one over the other.

01:04:26.260 --> 01:04:28.860
 And I think online and offline, it is true.

01:04:28.940 --> 01:04:33.240
 Like we are, we are who we are and we are expressing ourselves in all those things.

01:04:33.820 --> 01:04:39.720
 And I think that tension, I think once you start to, once you start creating new words

01:04:39.720 --> 01:04:44.840
 and trying to fuse them, I think we're kind of missing, I think we've kind of overthought

01:04:44.840 --> 01:04:46.960
 it and I think we just need to understand the differences.

01:04:47.260 --> 01:04:50.800
 And part of it is I haven't seen something that like, I love that.

01:04:51.860 --> 01:04:57.380
 I will say, I see a lot of stuff I don't like, which is the reverse of that, that is helpful

01:04:57.380 --> 01:04:58.260
 for defining.

01:04:58.260 --> 01:05:03.840
 So I love when people attempt to define stuff because I think it allows me to go like, I

01:05:03.840 --> 01:05:05.780
 didn't like that, you know, or I love that.

01:05:05.980 --> 01:05:09.560
 And it's, again, it's always easier to criticize when you're not trying.

01:05:10.320 --> 01:05:12.480
 And so, and I've said a lot of stuff.

01:05:12.620 --> 01:05:17.620
 I've been writing about online church since 2013 and I've said a bunch of stuff that I've

01:05:17.620 --> 01:05:18.480
 removed from the internet.

01:05:18.620 --> 01:05:19.720
 At least I thought I have.

01:05:20.480 --> 01:05:22.860
 And so my thoughts are better.

01:05:23.080 --> 01:05:29.700
 And I know in, you know, it took me forever for my pastor to get me on Facebook, let alone

01:05:29.700 --> 01:05:31.140
 now I think about what I do now.

01:05:31.320 --> 01:05:32.020
 It's like funny.

01:05:33.140 --> 01:05:37.340
 And so, because I am, at the end of the day, I know my personality, I'm super pragmatic.

01:05:37.820 --> 01:05:42.820
 So you tell me, you know, I don't care if it's big, powerful, how can I use it?

01:05:42.860 --> 01:05:45.680
 Like something as simple as like a TikTok, like TikTok's popular.

01:05:46.000 --> 01:05:51.040
 I don't use TikTok, like, and I'm not using TikTok, not because I'm not trying to not do

01:05:51.040 --> 01:05:51.320
 something.

01:05:51.560 --> 01:05:53.940
 I just, I don't use it in my daily life.

01:05:54.040 --> 01:05:57.040
 And so, and I'm not motivated by a bunch of people.

01:05:57.160 --> 01:06:02.420
 Now, at one point, I know in two years, if TikTok continues to evolve, I might do that

01:06:02.420 --> 01:06:03.720
 because I've done that with other platforms.

01:06:03.720 --> 01:06:04.520
 I've done that with Snapchat.

01:06:04.680 --> 01:06:05.580
 I've done that with Instagram.

01:06:05.840 --> 01:06:07.060
 I've changed my mind.

01:06:07.060 --> 01:06:12.560
 And I think all this stuff is just confusing, but I tend to like the differences of online

01:06:12.560 --> 01:06:15.880
 and, and, you know, digital and physical or online and offline.

01:06:16.020 --> 01:06:18.780
 I like the differences because I do think that they are different.

01:06:19.320 --> 01:06:24.660
 So TikTok pastor, we're not, do you already have your account set up reserved for the side

01:06:24.660 --> 01:06:26.520
 for, for later on or what?

01:06:26.660 --> 01:06:28.260
 I do, I do have an account.

01:06:28.760 --> 01:06:29.840
 So there you go.

01:06:30.080 --> 01:06:31.200
 So I do have an account.

01:06:31.380 --> 01:06:33.800
 So it's there, but I, I, uh, yes.

01:06:34.020 --> 01:06:36.400
 So mainly I have account because of my kids.

01:06:36.400 --> 01:06:39.460
 Cause I'm like, they've started to want to watch stuff and I'm like, what's happening here?

01:06:39.840 --> 01:06:41.680
 And so, uh, so yeah.

01:06:42.340 --> 01:06:42.560
 Yeah.

01:06:42.640 --> 01:06:44.440
 But the Saddleback Online have the account yet.

01:06:44.540 --> 01:06:46.000
 Does Saddleback Online have the account?

01:06:46.120 --> 01:06:47.120
 Are you already laying the groundwork?

01:06:47.160 --> 01:06:51.040
 Are we breaking news here on the, on the, on the, we do not.

01:06:51.040 --> 01:06:52.620
 I don't think Saddleback has an account.

01:06:52.700 --> 01:06:53.340
 That's a good question.

01:06:53.420 --> 01:06:54.020
 I don't think we do.

01:06:54.740 --> 01:06:56.800
 We're going to end the podcast on four words.

01:06:57.240 --> 01:06:59.600
 Rick Warren, music video.

01:06:59.980 --> 01:07:01.420
 We got to find a way to make that happen.

01:07:01.960 --> 01:07:05.780
 Drop that on TikTok, blow up the internet.

01:07:06.120 --> 01:07:08.920
 Well, man, I tell you what, Jay, uh, thank you for the time, man.

01:07:08.960 --> 01:07:12.820
 I always, I always love talking with you and having you on the podcast and learning.

01:07:13.080 --> 01:07:18.360
 There are lots of people that have been doing church online for a long time and, and you

01:07:18.360 --> 01:07:23.300
 being one of these guys, but that also have the, the freedom with the leash to think ahead,

01:07:23.300 --> 01:07:30.180
 to, to, to, to, to plan ahead, to really run, um, uh, taking advantage of, of some of that,

01:07:30.240 --> 01:07:35.040
 even just to pause, ask questions, evaluate and say, Hey, this isn't working like it should.

01:07:35.100 --> 01:07:40.420
 Why don't we trash the trash, the model and, and, and rebuild like that's, that's phenomenal.

01:07:40.420 --> 01:07:42.980
 And what you're learning is, is great.

01:07:42.980 --> 01:07:45.600
 Thanks for sharing that with us, uh, man.

01:07:45.600 --> 01:07:47.200
 So just thanks for the time and being here.

01:07:47.200 --> 01:07:47.420
 Yeah.

01:07:47.720 --> 01:07:51.720
 Um, Ray, man, just in closing thoughts, anything as we're landing the plane, he didn't even

01:07:51.720 --> 01:07:52.840
 get to talk about Disney plus.

01:07:53.200 --> 01:07:55.100
 So we, we next time, next time.

01:07:55.380 --> 01:07:56.680
 There's another episode in this.

01:07:56.780 --> 01:07:59.480
 It's going to be, there's another, well, dude, you killed me when you were like, we didn't

01:07:59.480 --> 01:08:00.660
 even, you don't even have an account.

01:08:00.700 --> 01:08:01.620
 I'm like, not even going to go there.

01:08:02.000 --> 01:08:07.320
 I could trash, I could trash YouTube, but yeah.

01:08:07.540 --> 01:08:07.680
 All right.

01:08:07.720 --> 01:08:08.440
 I love you.

01:08:09.920 --> 01:08:15.000
 Anyways, I, I, I just wanted to applaud, uh, how disciplined you guys were that you're not

01:08:15.000 --> 01:08:19.400
 just going to stare down success and say, well, this is, this is reason enough to keep it

01:08:19.400 --> 01:08:19.720
 around.

01:08:19.720 --> 01:08:24.680
 And I think if more organizations had that kind of discipline, I think churches in general

01:08:24.680 --> 01:08:28.400
 would be in a much better place if they learned what they centered on and what they define

01:08:28.400 --> 01:08:33.360
 the success and continue to work the beta over and over and over again, to not give up on

01:08:33.360 --> 01:08:33.740
 something.

01:08:34.100 --> 01:08:34.980
 Kudos to you guys, man.

01:08:35.080 --> 01:08:35.420
 Well done.

01:08:36.580 --> 01:08:36.980
 Yeah.

01:08:37.080 --> 01:08:41.160
 I, I don't know a lot of churches that have trashed one model and are still sticking around

01:08:41.160 --> 01:08:42.900
 to go to another, at least in online context.

01:08:42.900 --> 01:08:45.940
 So I just, to me, that's the one takeaway of this.

01:08:45.980 --> 01:08:46.100
 Yeah.

01:08:46.100 --> 01:08:47.380
 The model's awesome.

01:08:47.380 --> 01:08:52.400
 What you built the first time pluses and minuses maybe had issues, but as you've learned

01:08:52.400 --> 01:08:55.240
 from that into ingest that into another model is great.

01:08:55.620 --> 01:08:57.820
 Jay, man, any thoughts as we're landing the plane?

01:08:58.400 --> 01:09:02.880
 I just say, uh, don't be like me and sign up for Disney plus.

01:09:03.120 --> 01:09:03.420
 Okay.

01:09:03.460 --> 01:09:05.080
 So I just, I think they need more users.

01:09:05.560 --> 01:09:06.560
 That's how I'm going to end.

01:09:07.240 --> 01:09:07.600
 Yeah.

01:09:07.840 --> 01:09:09.480
 They're a small upstart of a company.

01:09:09.540 --> 01:09:10.420
 They need all the help.

01:09:10.600 --> 01:09:12.540
 They need all the help to beat Netflix.

01:09:12.740 --> 01:09:14.260
 So I say sign up for Disney plus.

01:09:14.420 --> 01:09:15.120
 They need the money.

01:09:15.120 --> 01:09:16.220
 So we're going to end the plane on that.

01:09:16.360 --> 01:09:17.940
 Disney plus, ladies and gentlemen, thank you.

01:09:18.000 --> 01:09:23.760
 Hey, this has been the church digital podcast for Ray, for Jay, for a 40 year old LeBron

01:09:23.760 --> 01:09:27.040
 James still playing the game at the top of his game.

01:09:27.200 --> 01:09:28.620
 I am Jeff at the church digital.

01:09:28.760 --> 01:09:29.760
 Thanks for being here.

01:09:30.020 --> 01:09:32.380
 And, um, can I say go Lakers?

01:09:32.500 --> 01:09:33.100
 Is that appropriate?

01:09:33.500 --> 01:09:33.740
 Yes.

01:09:33.920 --> 01:09:34.180
 Yes.

01:09:34.480 --> 01:09:34.740
 All right.

01:09:34.780 --> 01:09:35.020
 Fine.

01:09:35.180 --> 01:09:35.520
 Go Lakers.

01:09:35.520 --> 01:09:36.300
 I got to drop a go heat.

01:09:36.460 --> 01:09:36.740
 All right.

01:09:36.940 --> 01:09:37.520
 Thanks everybody.

01:09:37.600 --> 01:09:38.000
 Have a good day.

