WEBVTT 00:00:00.480 --> 00:00:04.900 Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. My name is Jeff Reed, and I'm joined 00:00:04.900 --> 00:00:09.940 today by our guest host, Ray DeArmas from Christ Fellowship Miami. Hey, Ray, you want 00:00:09.940 --> 00:00:10.680 to say hey to everybody? 00:00:11.420 --> 00:00:14.420 Hey, everybody. It's good to be with you again. We're so excited to be back. 00:00:15.780 --> 00:00:22.060 Awesome. Thanks for that. And I'm joined by a special guest today, Jason Morris from Westside 00:00:22.060 --> 00:00:27.160 Family in Kansas. And we are actually, hey, Jason, man, why don't you just tell us a little 00:00:27.160 --> 00:00:30.840 bit before we dive into all that, just tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of 00:00:30.840 --> 00:00:36.360 what your role is there at Westside Family and who you are. 00:00:36.940 --> 00:00:44.740 Okay. My official title is Global Innovation Pastor at Westside Family Church. And usually 00:00:44.740 --> 00:00:49.020 when I tell people that, they kind of tilt their head and say, well, what does that mean? 00:00:49.700 --> 00:00:55.940 And that's when I get to have the fun conversation of sharing with them that I wear a lot of hats 00:00:55.940 --> 00:01:02.540 at Westside. But my main responsibilities is overseeing all things technical, which would include 00:01:02.540 --> 00:01:11.760 our IT stuff, as well as all of our online ministry, website, things of that nature. But as we have 00:01:11.760 --> 00:01:18.400 globally scattered the seed with our messages and church online and things of that nature, 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:24.860 the crazy thing is that it's spawned off global church planting movements all around the world, 00:01:24.860 --> 00:01:32.900 specifically where we're working is in Southeast Asia, South Africa, and India. But we also have like 00:01:32.900 --> 00:01:38.840 microsites in France and Paraguay and peppered around all over the place. And basically, because 00:01:38.840 --> 00:01:47.660 I enjoy tech, that's the tool that I tend to use the most. And since tech tends to scale well, 00:01:48.260 --> 00:01:54.860 we're able to leverage that technology to resource a lot of these places all around the world that are using 00:01:54.860 --> 00:02:01.880 our content and in their own way, sharing the gospel wherever they live. 00:02:02.900 --> 00:02:09.400 I love that. By the way, like that's the coolest job title, Global Innovations Pastor. 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:15.560 I mean, I've had a lot of job titles in my life, but I'll just be honest, that gives me something to 00:02:15.560 --> 00:02:20.480 aspire for. So, well, you know, a lot of what we do here at the Church Digital Podcast is we talk 00:02:20.480 --> 00:02:26.300 through innovations. And so I definitely want that Jason and Ray on to have this conversation. But today, 00:02:26.300 --> 00:02:31.420 I want to hone in specifically in context of Church Online. And we've been talking a lot about, 00:02:31.420 --> 00:02:37.880 you know, doing the services and the necessity of having the Church Online services. But then a lot of 00:02:37.880 --> 00:02:46.560 it's what happens next or why are we doing this? And so that we can start to understand why we're doing 00:02:46.560 --> 00:02:51.980 these services and what do we do with these people once we connect with them in context. So much of 00:02:51.980 --> 00:02:57.960 Church Online is all about that weekend or it's all about that broadcast, but there's really so much 00:02:57.960 --> 00:03:04.080 more that comes in context to it. And so what I wanted to talk about, and this may be a new term for some 00:03:04.080 --> 00:03:11.540 of you that are out there listening or watching, is this idea of a discipleship pathway. And so in 00:03:11.540 --> 00:03:19.480 context of Church, a discipleship pathway is basically it's everything that happens except Sunday or Sunday 00:03:19.480 --> 00:03:28.180 is the first step of what happens. And so, you know, let's say somebody gets saved watching your 00:03:28.180 --> 00:03:35.340 service online. What happens? Now, in a physical environment, a lot of time we have that plan already 00:03:35.340 --> 00:03:39.920 placed where there's, okay, well, if somebody gets saved, we do this and we connect them to this person and 00:03:39.920 --> 00:03:46.060 they join this small group or this thing. And there's intentionality towards that. But a lot 00:03:46.060 --> 00:03:53.200 of times when that happens in an online space, it just, it gets crickets. There's really no plan for 00:03:53.200 --> 00:03:59.320 that. We haven't thought about that. And so I really wanted to take this conversation to just learn from 00:03:59.320 --> 00:04:08.160 these two guys here, Jason and Ray, and start to unpack, hey, why are we not paying attention to this? Or what 00:04:08.160 --> 00:04:15.440 can we do to start to leverage some of that? And so Jason, man, start the conversation for us. Like, 00:04:15.880 --> 00:04:19.920 what does the discipleship pathway, what does that look like there? 00:04:20.460 --> 00:04:29.740 Okay. We are, just to be completely transparent, we are in the middle of a year-long transition right now of 00:04:29.740 --> 00:04:38.600 upgrading and updating our discipleship pathway. And we're on the tail end of a campaign or journey, 00:04:38.600 --> 00:04:45.640 whatever you want to call it, church-wide. It's using the Believe material. Our new lead teaching pastor, 00:04:45.740 --> 00:04:54.240 Randy Frazee, wrote the book. And basically it's a data-driven, results-based form of knowing what 00:04:54.240 --> 00:05:02.020 key beliefs, practices, and virtues actually move the needle in someone's spiritual life. 00:05:02.580 --> 00:05:08.340 And it was data that was, you know, pulled from Gallup and all these other guys. And they figured out, 00:05:08.340 --> 00:05:15.060 okay, if we could distill down into a framework of what discipleship actually is to begin with, 00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:21.540 then we can actually start to work on it. So we're actually in the middle of right now taking our 00:05:21.540 --> 00:05:27.780 church through that. We've gone through the 10 beliefs, the 10 practices. And this past Sunday, 00:05:27.780 --> 00:05:33.820 we started on our first of the 10 virtues, which was love. And what ends up happening is that it's, 00:05:33.820 --> 00:05:37.540 the 10 virtues are basically the fruit of the spirit with humility and hope thrown in. 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:45.620 And so when it comes to the virtues, that's what people tend to, that's what they experience with 00:05:45.620 --> 00:05:52.020 a person. Because like Jesus said, from your fruits, you will know them. And so in that sense, 00:05:52.060 --> 00:05:57.040 people see your virtues. They may not know what your beliefs are, or they may or may not know what 00:05:57.040 --> 00:06:03.300 your practices are, but they can definitely sniff out your virtues fairly quickly. And so what we've done 00:06:03.300 --> 00:06:10.320 is, is we've kind of done it reverse foundation layer by layer saying, okay, if these are your virtues, 00:06:10.320 --> 00:06:16.880 what are the practices that one would do so that that becomes who you are? And then what are the 00:06:16.880 --> 00:06:24.100 beliefs that underlie those particular practices that cause you to act the way you do? And so basically, 00:06:24.240 --> 00:06:29.740 that's, that's what we're doing. We're, we're unpacking the whole thing. It's not a short process. 00:06:29.740 --> 00:06:36.660 It's 30 weeks. We've taken, you know, by the time we're done this may, it will be pretty much a year 00:06:36.660 --> 00:06:43.400 that we've taken our folks through this process. When we're finished with introducing people with the 00:06:43.400 --> 00:06:51.140 framework, then we'll be able to say, okay, we've got an assessment prepared for them so that they can 00:06:51.140 --> 00:06:59.440 take it and then find out, okay, what am I weak in, in my beliefs, practices, and virtues, and what then 00:06:59.440 --> 00:07:06.240 would be the thing that I could work on going forward as I want to grow in my spiritual walk. So 00:07:06.240 --> 00:07:12.480 that is the update to what we've done. Now, what that whole framework does is it really concentrates 00:07:12.480 --> 00:07:18.760 hard on one's character. Yeah, there is so much right there. I want to back up because I don't want 00:07:18.760 --> 00:07:26.440 this to get, get lost. Your entire church is, is going through this strategy right now, not just 00:07:26.440 --> 00:07:33.960 physical, online, virtual, everybody is, is going through. Everybody, and not just the adults either. 00:07:33.960 --> 00:07:40.080 The kids are doing it. They're memorizing verses for each of the beliefs, practices, and virtues. 00:07:40.540 --> 00:07:47.280 There are declarations for each of them, and there's 30 of them. Holy cow. And our small group 00:07:47.280 --> 00:07:54.380 material is on it. Our student ministry is doing it. Kids ministry is doing it. Family devotionals, 00:07:54.460 --> 00:08:01.380 the whole thing. And we kind of flip the classroom in that people are reading the chapters of the book 00:08:01.380 --> 00:08:12.020 to introduce themselves to that particular key practice or virtue or belief before they hit Sunday. 00:08:12.020 --> 00:08:17.620 And then Sunday is kind of like the cherry on top because we've read it, we've talked about it in 00:08:17.620 --> 00:08:25.460 group together, and then we hear about it on the weekend. Okay. Jason, this sounds very similar to 00:08:25.460 --> 00:08:30.300 what I've been a part of with churches before. Is this kind of like a campaign strategy where it's like, 00:08:30.400 --> 00:08:35.040 hey, everybody across the board has taken a pause from what you're doing, and we're all going to do this 00:08:35.040 --> 00:08:40.200 together. Yes, that's exactly what's going on. It is a campaign strategy, and it is a campaign 00:08:40.200 --> 00:08:47.300 that churches can use and purchase and that sort of thing. Fortunately for us, Randy, he's the author, 00:08:47.300 --> 00:08:55.340 so he developed it. And our Next Steps pastor helped Randy develop it many, many years ago. So with 00:08:55.340 --> 00:09:01.180 those two guys on board, on staff, of course, it's like, yeah, let's do this. You know, we totally know 00:09:01.180 --> 00:09:04.700 what's going on. Let's do this campaign, but it's available for any church to use. 00:09:05.300 --> 00:09:10.380 So tell me about how that's impacting some of your digital environments because I'm familiar with, 00:09:10.440 --> 00:09:13.800 and especially some of the folks who might be listening, like if you've ever done purpose-driven 00:09:13.800 --> 00:09:18.380 life or purpose-driven church, that was kind of a campaign strategy that many of us did like back 00:09:18.380 --> 00:09:23.360 in the day that like, hey, everybody's on pause. Back then I was a student guy, and so students would 00:09:23.360 --> 00:09:30.260 not like, this is how it impacts us, like in particular. And so what I'm curious to see as 00:09:30.260 --> 00:09:34.100 to how the campaign strategy has impacted your digital environments as far as that's concerned. 00:09:34.560 --> 00:09:40.320 Well, our digital environments are designed to synergize with what we're doing on site, 00:09:40.480 --> 00:09:49.260 because in my mind, online and on site should not be separate. They should synergize with each 00:09:49.260 --> 00:09:57.040 other. Like on site helps online, online helps on site. So when we're doing our online life groups, 00:09:57.740 --> 00:10:04.760 they're doing belief stuff, and the weekends are all belief stuff. So for us, it was a no-brainer. 00:10:04.880 --> 00:10:09.080 We're not going to reinvent the wheel here. We're going to do what everybody else is doing. 00:10:10.680 --> 00:10:17.340 And yeah, so for us, it was actually pretty easy. Now, again, trying to convince everybody, 00:10:17.420 --> 00:10:21.680 because I know how those campaigns work, because I've done them, and I actually helped facilitate 00:10:21.680 --> 00:10:29.280 40 Days of Purpose in South America way back in the day. And I know the angst that many ministries 00:10:29.280 --> 00:10:34.620 feel whenever they're doing a campaign, when the whole church begins to align, is that everybody has 00:10:34.620 --> 00:10:41.280 to lay aside their own little pet things that they want to do for six weeks. Well, this one, 00:10:41.900 --> 00:10:48.660 the cool thing about it is, is that we laid aside everything for an entire year. And what it's done 00:10:48.660 --> 00:10:53.360 for us is that in six weeks, you gain a lot of synergy and momentum, and then everything goes back 00:10:53.360 --> 00:10:58.100 to normal. Because you know that you can like take a pause. For us, this was a whole lot more than a 00:10:58.100 --> 00:11:08.380 pause. This was a reset for the entire church to all of us know and to align ourselves well, and to get our 00:11:08.380 --> 00:11:16.360 systems to align well. So we do that over the course of a year, you begin to create ministry habits that 00:11:16.360 --> 00:11:23.340 force alignment in ways that even in six weeks, you can still do and get the benefit of, but you just 00:11:23.340 --> 00:11:29.060 get so much more out of it from a system standpoint as a church when you do a churchwide over the course 00:11:29.060 --> 00:11:33.940 of a year. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And I think for some folks, this probably may sound 00:11:33.940 --> 00:11:39.960 nuts to them. But to me, it's kind of freeing in terms of content, you know, done for an entire year 00:11:39.960 --> 00:11:47.640 and giving direction. Just imagine what your worship arts people could do if they knew six months ahead 00:11:47.640 --> 00:11:53.840 of time, what the sermon was going to be about. Yeah, exactly. It gives them a lot more time to 00:11:53.840 --> 00:11:57.980 free up to spend time on the actual ministry to people as opposed to, well, we got to develop content 00:11:57.980 --> 00:12:05.700 week to week. It can't be very free. And then for digital environments, especially for promotion and 00:12:05.700 --> 00:12:11.000 kind of leading up to it, you're almost, you know, I'm even thinking of like the online service, you're 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:14.300 able to say, hey, next week, we're going to talk about this. It's almost like, you know, the next time you 00:12:14.300 --> 00:12:17.760 join us, we already know where we're going. And we can even give you a hint as to where you're going, 00:12:18.160 --> 00:12:23.860 kind of bridging the gap between the two. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, what's great about it is if 00:12:23.860 --> 00:12:30.540 you have a plan like this for an entire year, then you're absolutely right. It helps to create new 00:12:30.540 --> 00:12:40.960 ministry ruts for people that instead of being a slave to Sunday, because it's always coming, and always 00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:46.600 being about the weekend and the production of the weekend, when a lot of that stuff is already done, 00:12:47.340 --> 00:12:52.520 then you actually can focus on what's actually more important. And that's what's not really 00:12:52.520 --> 00:12:57.380 happening on Sunday, but what's happening throughout the week, when it comes to the one-on-one 00:12:57.380 --> 00:13:03.180 relationships, and the real discipleship that takes place outside of the Sunday service. And I think 00:13:03.180 --> 00:13:07.480 it's been really healthy. I'm confused. There's stuff that happens at church outside of the Sunday 00:13:07.480 --> 00:13:14.000 service? We just pray, clap, and whistle the whole time, and you know, in the church office. 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:20.100 We just like turn the entire like thing on its ear. That's incredible. I kid. So let me ask this 00:13:20.100 --> 00:13:26.820 question, because I was incredibly rude. So this rolls for 12 months, right? So what happens in the 13th 00:13:26.820 --> 00:13:31.360 month? Because you've got people that are probably coming in, in that 11th month, in the 12th month, 00:13:31.360 --> 00:13:37.600 they're catching the end of it. Does this recycle? Do you do it again? Do you launch it 00:13:37.600 --> 00:13:45.800 at times? Like, how does this belief ideology, once you get past the initial onboarding of your entire 00:13:45.800 --> 00:13:53.520 church, how does it live on beyond that? Well, it will always live on as like a small group curriculum 00:13:53.520 --> 00:14:00.740 as part of the way for us to, with new folks, introduce them to the discipleship framework as it 00:14:00.740 --> 00:14:08.140 relates to their character. And so that will always be available for them. We also have as part of our, 00:14:08.140 --> 00:14:15.520 you know, the app that we're working on with the assessment and the discipleship pathways uses that 00:14:15.520 --> 00:14:20.860 framework as well. All of the messages that we will preach, you know, because I've, you know, 00:14:20.860 --> 00:14:28.600 talked with the, you know, our teaching team, and they've got a cycle already mapped out past in like 00:14:28.600 --> 00:14:35.220 month 13, 14, where they talk about, okay, we're going to be talking about the virtue of joy this week, 00:14:35.220 --> 00:14:42.280 you know? And so they will be referencing this underlying framework, you know, for the foreseeable 00:14:42.280 --> 00:14:47.420 future. And so even if they're, even if the sermon topic is a little bit different, you know, you've got 00:14:47.420 --> 00:14:54.400 30 things to talk about. Now that's enough to talk about really. And they're foundational types of 00:14:54.400 --> 00:15:00.620 things, whether you're talking about beliefs, like, um, I believe in a personal God that he cares about 00:15:00.620 --> 00:15:07.080 and is interested in my daily life. Or another big one is, uh, the authority of scripture. I believe 00:15:07.080 --> 00:15:14.680 that the, the Bible is, you know, God's inspired word and is relevant to rule my daily life. I mean, 00:15:14.680 --> 00:15:20.480 you get those two things together. Holy cow. You know, you're already, those worth of stuff right 00:15:20.480 --> 00:15:24.900 there. Yeah. You know, you could, you could call it whatever you want to call it. We're going to be 00:15:24.900 --> 00:15:31.900 doing at the movies series right after we finish off Believe. But I'm telling you, a lot of the, 00:15:31.980 --> 00:15:36.920 a lot of the topics, even though we're talking about like Black Panther or whatever, we're actually 00:15:36.920 --> 00:15:44.860 going to be referencing a lot of these core beliefs, practices, and virtues when we're talking about, 00:15:44.860 --> 00:15:49.280 you know, whatever movie that we happen to be talking about. Well, that's good. So did, 00:15:49.280 --> 00:15:53.640 did your pastor freak out when you told him, Hey, listen, I got the great idea to take this online 00:15:53.640 --> 00:15:56.920 or was this his driving force? Was he like, no, man. Loved it. 00:15:57.580 --> 00:16:02.780 Part of the reason why Randy, uh, part of the reason why Randy came to Westside is because he loved 00:16:02.780 --> 00:16:10.280 what we were doing online. That's great. Because he was like, dude, you know, you guys are rocking it. 00:16:10.320 --> 00:16:15.140 Because he was used to what was going on with O'Kills. And he was like, dude, you know, 00:16:15.160 --> 00:16:21.020 we've got an online pastor, people who actually, you know, care and talk to people who are showing 00:16:21.020 --> 00:16:27.640 up online that do follow up and discipleship. You know, he was like, and then micrositing with it 00:16:27.640 --> 00:16:33.140 and stuff. I mean, he's been pushing me and it's been really, really great because he has such a social 00:16:33.140 --> 00:16:39.820 media presence anyway. It's really did a lot of our efforts anyhow, which is so great when you have the 00:16:39.820 --> 00:16:45.960 leader who's digitally minded and social media minded to begin with and knows how to leverage it 00:16:45.960 --> 00:16:51.780 and uses it, you know, to get the message out. So it's been a really joy to work with him. 00:16:52.460 --> 00:16:57.760 Well, and Randy may be, I mean, just even looking at his pedigree and his experiences coming through, 00:16:58.180 --> 00:17:03.440 he may be one of those, um, you know, cutting edge guys who has a, has a richer picture of that, 00:17:03.440 --> 00:17:09.320 just through of where he's come from. And he sees the benefit of that and, and even working under, 00:17:09.320 --> 00:17:14.980 um, you know, he was XP under Lucado for, I don't know how many years down in San Antonio. And so 00:17:14.980 --> 00:17:19.760 like the majority of the pastors out there, let's, let's just, you know, bring it back to maybe reality 00:17:19.760 --> 00:17:25.500 for the majority of those listening. They don't have that guy. Um, they don't have it. They don't 00:17:25.500 --> 00:17:31.460 have a 12 month plan. They don't have, um, you know, they're, they're week to week. They're trying 00:17:31.460 --> 00:17:38.280 to, um, to, to, to build something or design something out. And so we're, let's, let's, so maybe 00:17:38.280 --> 00:17:43.760 let's, let's reflect, reflect back a little bit. Like I've had a conversation with a pastor, um, 00:17:44.060 --> 00:17:49.780 a guy and I've told this story probably on this podcast, but a guy gets saved in Finland, um, 00:17:49.780 --> 00:17:55.740 watching a church online service. And so I tell the story a lot, Hey, pastor, you're putting your 00:17:55.740 --> 00:18:01.180 services on Facebook. Let's say somebody gets saved in Finland. We're, we're not called to drive by 00:18:01.180 --> 00:18:05.940 evangelism. We should actually care for this soul that God's entrusted to us. What should we do? 00:18:06.100 --> 00:18:10.600 You know, in the pastor and I tell the story and I've had it multiple times. I've had a pastor tell 00:18:10.600 --> 00:18:15.360 me that guy in Finland's not my responsibility. Yes. He came to Christ listening to my message, 00:18:15.840 --> 00:18:21.700 but he's, yeah, sorry. Um, not out, not outing any churches, not saying who, but I've had that 00:18:21.700 --> 00:18:27.480 response multiple times. So like, let's, let's hone in on that because those people are out there 00:18:27.480 --> 00:18:33.560 and they, they do need, and, and our, our listeners are online, you know, ministry people, 00:18:33.560 --> 00:18:40.100 our online pastors need to address that and work through that. So like, what are some takeaways? 00:18:40.380 --> 00:18:45.880 What are some things that you guys are in the front lines of, of, of ministry here? Like what's, 00:18:46.080 --> 00:18:51.260 what's a, what's a baby step? What's a next step for somebody like that who needs to set up some 00:18:51.260 --> 00:18:58.740 sort of a discipleship process, but maybe isn't clearly defined on what that even is in the physical 00:18:58.740 --> 00:19:02.920 church, much less for the virtual side. Well, let me, let me, let me kind of interview Jason a 00:19:02.920 --> 00:19:07.200 little bit on this. All right, Jason. So within your, within your process, um, somebody gets 00:19:07.200 --> 00:19:12.200 outside of your context. Um, what, what's the process that you guys typically do for this person? 00:19:12.480 --> 00:19:16.880 Um, what's their next step? What do they do? Okay. Well, here, here's, here's where I think, 00:19:17.620 --> 00:19:25.400 um, it's super helpful for churches because they can easily think, oh, with the billions of people 00:19:25.400 --> 00:19:31.920 that are on the internet, how do I structure a system that will scale to do a lot of volume? 00:19:32.280 --> 00:19:37.720 And the truth of the matter is for most of us, especially with the ratios that we do with 00:19:37.720 --> 00:19:44.400 online, the number of people that actually respond or do baby steps of what I call baby steps of 00:19:44.400 --> 00:19:50.680 obedience, whether it be, you know, clicking on a link or raising their hand for salvation or 00:19:50.680 --> 00:19:57.900 whatever. The number of those is usually way more manageable than what we're thinking. So we're 00:19:57.900 --> 00:20:02.340 thinking, you know, okay, how do I, how do I deal with thousands of people? Well, dude, 00:20:02.340 --> 00:20:09.460 just deal with the one person who responded, you know, that means that they're on Facebook and they 00:20:09.460 --> 00:20:15.460 came to Christ. In my mind, I would be like, forget about the system. If the person were like right 00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:21.720 smack in front of you, what would you do? Do that, you know, just use Facebook, you know, 00:20:21.840 --> 00:20:28.800 DM the guy and start the relationship in a personal human way. Because the truth of the matter is a lot 00:20:28.800 --> 00:20:33.760 of times I think people, they look at the big numbers of online, the vanity metrics, and then 00:20:33.760 --> 00:20:38.540 they think, oh, if I had a church of, you know, 40,000, how would I structure my church? And then 00:20:38.540 --> 00:20:45.640 they get overwhelmed. When the reality is those vanity metrics are so wildly inflated that usually 00:20:45.640 --> 00:20:51.980 when you're dealing with people that actually obey, it's way more manageable. So you're talking about 00:20:51.980 --> 00:20:58.620 the one guy in Finland, well, dude, it's just one dude, you know, and not to mention the fact that I do 00:20:58.620 --> 00:21:04.080 feel that I would be responsible for that guy. And the reason why is because Jesus brought that guy to 00:21:04.080 --> 00:21:13.320 me. So it's like, it would be a lot like Philip going to the dude who was, you know. Yeah, the Ethiopian 00:21:13.320 --> 00:21:19.900 eunuch. And he's like, oh, well, you know, he's outside of Jerusalem, so I don't have to worry about 00:21:19.900 --> 00:21:28.320 him. Well, you know, no, the spirit brought him there for a reason. And so if Jesus is bringing you to 00:21:28.320 --> 00:21:35.840 Finland for a reason, you had better execute, dude. That's how I see it, because we're going to give an 00:21:35.840 --> 00:21:41.040 account for that. You can make a phone call, you can, if they're contacting you on WhatsApp, and make 00:21:41.040 --> 00:21:47.800 it as human as possible, and then only create a system as volume warrants. And you'll probably find 00:21:47.800 --> 00:21:54.120 that you don't need much of a system, and you probably would over-engineer it anyway. And just, 00:21:54.120 --> 00:22:02.180 just, just be a human being, be a pastor, do your job, you know. And then if the volume gets high 00:22:02.180 --> 00:22:07.080 enough, you will probably figure out the system, because you'll notice patterns as you do ministry, 00:22:07.080 --> 00:22:11.960 rather than trying to engineer those patterns ahead of time, and then have crickets and have nobody 00:22:11.960 --> 00:22:18.600 show up. Ask me how I know that. That's good. That's good. And you know, it's great that you 00:22:18.600 --> 00:22:22.760 mentioned this, Jason. I think so often we get so caught up in the vanity matrix, like you said, 00:22:22.900 --> 00:22:28.200 but the reality is, is we're accountable for each and every person that God brings to us. And you 00:22:28.200 --> 00:22:32.960 know, pastors, we're so quick to talk about that in terms of evangelism, but as we think through these 00:22:32.960 --> 00:22:39.580 next steps for online, we do kind of get in our own way in terms of how we would take somebody through 00:22:39.580 --> 00:22:44.820 that next step, what we would do for that person. So I think a lot of times, even in the way that we 00:22:44.820 --> 00:22:50.860 think about it, where the process, the discipleship process would start at conversion, the way that 00:22:50.860 --> 00:22:55.280 we think about it starts way before then. Discipleship starts before conversion. So if 00:22:55.280 --> 00:23:00.720 people are showing up, and they're like listening, and they're, they're actually, you know, paying 00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:07.600 attention, that's like the Zacchaeus in the tree, you know. And what you need to do is go over to his 00:23:07.600 --> 00:23:11.300 house for dinner, you know. And part of that, all of that is part of the discipleship process 00:23:11.300 --> 00:23:17.720 before he believed. So when you unpack the pathway, for us, it starts with the Get Connected 00:23:17.720 --> 00:23:23.460 orientation. And inside the Get Connected orientation, we do talk about salvation, we do talk about 00:23:23.460 --> 00:23:28.980 baptism, we do talk about all of the resources that we have, so that you can find your character 00:23:28.980 --> 00:23:36.880 and your calling, and find out the unique way that God has wired you and has you alive, so that you can 00:23:36.880 --> 00:23:42.520 make a dent in the universe before you die. So that's basically what we do. We throw all that 00:23:42.520 --> 00:23:48.400 out there and say, okay, here's the tools that we have at your disposal. And we even have like 00:23:48.400 --> 00:23:54.540 shape coaches. I don't know if you're familiar with like purpose driven shapes. So we have a shape 00:23:54.540 --> 00:24:03.600 server that, that we developed that helps people as it relates to their calling side. And, you know, 00:24:03.600 --> 00:24:08.620 shape.westsidefamilychurch.com. So they're, they're digital tools that we use, whether you're on site 00:24:08.620 --> 00:24:15.920 or online. And since we're digitizing everything anyway, just so that it can scale well with our 00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:21.080 people that are on site, well, then that's a slam dunk when it comes to online ministry. But that's, 00:24:21.180 --> 00:24:27.180 that's what I would do is from our context is just put you right into the slipstream of what we 00:24:27.180 --> 00:24:34.020 already have as a church on site. And that way it really helps to have one unified strategy across 00:24:34.020 --> 00:24:40.640 the church. And a couple of things happen when you synergize that way. One is with your staff, 00:24:41.040 --> 00:24:48.040 many times online pastors really struggle with having the onsite staff get a vision for what's really 00:24:48.040 --> 00:24:54.180 going on. But when that online admin staff has to do the follow-up for that guy that's in Finland, 00:24:54.180 --> 00:25:01.100 he will immediately get a global mindset. If, because we already had a system where we had, 00:25:01.100 --> 00:25:05.260 you know, deacons that would call up people who on a connect card would say, you know, I just accepted 00:25:05.260 --> 00:25:10.480 Jesus. I'd like some follow-up where they call him up on the phone. Well, dude, that's easy. You know, 00:25:10.480 --> 00:25:15.040 somebody from Finland just accepts Jesus. Well, I just throw them in that same system. And the deacon 00:25:15.040 --> 00:25:20.120 calls them up because he's calling them up in Finland, whatever. It doesn't even matter. Right. And now 00:25:20.120 --> 00:25:25.040 that deacon, he has a completely different mindset of what online ministry can do. So that really helps 00:25:25.040 --> 00:25:30.120 sell for our staff team, what online ministry can do. And the other thing that happened was, 00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:36.780 was as I started developing digital tools to help get this job done, a lot of our folks who then were 00:25:37.040 --> 00:25:41.720 burdened with all of this follow-up in a global fashion, they came to me and said, Hey, well, 00:25:41.760 --> 00:25:46.240 what would you do? And I'm like, well, I'd, I'd shoot him this email or whatever. And they'd be 00:25:46.240 --> 00:25:51.960 like, dude, we should do this for all of our stuff on site. That's the key. It scales. And so what 00:25:51.960 --> 00:25:57.580 happens is, is we just created a unified discipleship model, whether you're online or on site, it doesn't 00:25:57.580 --> 00:26:03.040 really matter because at the end of the day, for most admin people, when it comes down to follow-up, 00:26:03.180 --> 00:26:08.240 they're calling somebody or they're sending them an email. You can do that wherever you are in the 00:26:08.240 --> 00:26:12.680 world. It really doesn't matter. You're exactly right. In terms of people need to stop viewing 00:26:12.680 --> 00:26:16.220 the two audiences as separate. They need to start singing this together, which has kind of been a 00:26:16.220 --> 00:26:20.460 theme that Jeff and I've been running with this time is a lot of folks want to separate as if 00:26:20.460 --> 00:26:23.740 they're, they're serving two different churches when the reality is it's the same church. 00:26:24.240 --> 00:26:28.420 Right. You know, everywhere. It doesn't matter if, if they're, if they're watching it digitally, 00:26:28.420 --> 00:26:32.940 if they're, if they're sitting in a pew, they're obtaining the same content. They're going through 00:26:32.940 --> 00:26:38.060 the same pathway and you're going to love them just the same. Right. Yeah. And 00:26:38.060 --> 00:26:43.740 not only that, but I think, especially as we're noticing as pastors, how attendance patterns 00:26:43.740 --> 00:26:49.580 have been shifting where, uh, they're not coming every week anymore. Right. Um, we're lucky if 00:26:49.580 --> 00:26:55.660 they're coming twice a month, but what they're also doing while they may not be on site every week, 00:26:55.720 --> 00:27:01.500 they're supplementing with online. So church attendance and, you know, Dave Adamson, I love 00:27:01.500 --> 00:27:07.800 his quote when he says this church attendance is not declining, it's decentralizing. So when you look at 00:27:07.880 --> 00:27:14.360 everything as one church anyway, chances are you're going to be finding that you're dealing with 00:27:14.360 --> 00:27:17.320 people that are on site and online and they're probably the same people anyhow. 00:27:18.960 --> 00:27:25.860 Um, yeah, like that's beautiful. So what are some, what are some like practical steps? What are, 00:27:25.860 --> 00:27:29.840 what are some application? What are some touch points? I know you talked about like text. I'm just 00:27:29.840 --> 00:27:35.320 thinking like guy at home, man, how do, how do I do this? We're doing phone calls. We're doing, 00:27:35.320 --> 00:27:42.320 um, uh, emails. Texting is an option. You know, you talk some and you're doing some stuff with, 00:27:42.420 --> 00:27:48.040 with mobile app. You hinted at that earlier. Like what some touch points that, that we can use to 00:27:48.040 --> 00:27:55.160 interface with, with people, um, virtually or physically. Uh, well, I mean, you kind of mentioned 00:27:55.160 --> 00:28:02.520 the bit, the big ones, I mean, especially texting super easy to do scale, copy paste stuff and people, 00:28:02.660 --> 00:28:09.180 they read their texts. Holy cow. You know? And so for us, we use, um, with our church management 00:28:09.180 --> 00:28:14.640 system, part of the reason why we decided on the one that we're using is that it has what's called 00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:22.140 process cues inside of it. Um, and it basically creates a workflow with which, um, we can take 00:28:22.140 --> 00:28:29.420 people through discipleship. So we take, we've got a master process cue or workflow for everybody in 00:28:29.420 --> 00:28:34.940 our church and we can run reports off of it and help people step them through from one part to 00:28:34.940 --> 00:28:42.540 another. And the main mechanism with which we use is email and texting because it just, it scales super 00:28:42.540 --> 00:28:49.400 easy and it doesn't hardly cost anything. I mean, texting is even super cheap. So, but a lot of those 00:28:49.400 --> 00:28:54.320 automated tools that we use so that nothing gets dropped to the, you know, so that we don't drop the 00:28:54.320 --> 00:28:59.880 ball or people don't fall in the cracks that, that you would really only need if you're dealing with 00:28:59.880 --> 00:29:05.700 a diverse and large staff with lots of handoffs between different ministries or departments. 00:29:06.060 --> 00:29:12.260 That's why we needed that cohesive strategy for most churches, man, it's, it's actually a lot 00:29:12.260 --> 00:29:16.820 simpler because you're probably dealing with one or two people or maybe even three staff people 00:29:16.820 --> 00:29:27.400 anyway. And so those types of systems I think can be helpful, but it can also make, uh, make a, 00:29:27.400 --> 00:29:32.760 a pastor kind of over-engineer himself. And so he's spending all of his time on the system 00:29:32.760 --> 00:29:39.320 instead of spending his time with people. So if, if you can just think through, like if you were 00:29:39.320 --> 00:29:43.780 face-to-face with somebody and say, okay, well, what would you do? Well then do that, 00:29:43.880 --> 00:29:50.820 you know, and then just keep it very simple. And, and you could do like, if they're on Facebook or 00:29:50.820 --> 00:29:54.620 whatever, a lot of folks are doing, you know, Facebook live or whatever. Well, Facebook gives 00:29:54.620 --> 00:29:59.880 you a ton of tools, whether you're talking about Facebook message, you can call them up 00:29:59.880 --> 00:30:05.680 with Facebook using the Facebook tools. You can do a video call, video chat, group chat, 00:30:06.240 --> 00:30:12.600 group video call using all the Facebook tools right there for you. And so I would just stay within that 00:30:12.600 --> 00:30:18.160 environment and try to stay native inside whatever environment that you found the person in or that 00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:24.820 Jesus brought you to them in whatever environment that happens to be. So if it's in Twitter, then DM them 00:30:24.820 --> 00:30:30.820 if they come to you, you know, using the church online platform, pretty much all you've got at your 00:30:30.820 --> 00:30:39.720 disposal is an email address. And so use that, do whatever you need to do to actually have, begin a 00:30:39.720 --> 00:30:45.560 conversation. Because what a lot of times happens in the, especially in the, in the online space, 00:30:45.560 --> 00:30:53.260 is that everything feels like a download instead of a conversation. But church in its, in its best form 00:30:53.260 --> 00:30:59.600 is really not a download experience, or at least it shouldn't be, in my opinion. It should be a 00:30:59.600 --> 00:31:05.520 conversation. It's the one another's of ministry. It's the community that people really long for. 00:31:06.100 --> 00:31:11.460 And what you might get them initially with like a download or a content or whatever that happens to be, 00:31:12.560 --> 00:31:18.380 real church happens in community. And those are conversations. So the sooner you get to a 00:31:18.380 --> 00:31:24.140 conversation, the better when it comes to their discipleship or whatever. And, you know, we can 00:31:24.140 --> 00:31:29.800 talk about systems and stuff all day long, but really nothing beats the one-on-one conversation 00:31:29.800 --> 00:31:35.360 that you can have with people and to pray with people and to find out, you know, what's going on 00:31:35.360 --> 00:31:40.840 with them and where they feel like they need to grow and then create these individualized maps for 00:31:40.840 --> 00:31:48.580 them. The only reason why we're creating algorithmic based discipleship pathways is because of the 00:31:48.580 --> 00:31:53.260 scale that we're at right now. And not because it's really better, because, you know, we're going to 00:31:53.260 --> 00:31:59.260 spend a whole lot of time creating all this stuff, you know, that we could be just with people. 00:31:59.460 --> 00:32:03.920 But what we've learned over time is, is if you, if you're with people enough, you start to notice 00:32:03.920 --> 00:32:11.080 patterns and that helps inform whatever kind of algorithm you wanted to make. So some of the 00:32:11.080 --> 00:32:16.600 things that we found is, is that the big things that if you have someone who believes in a personal 00:32:16.600 --> 00:32:23.460 God and the authority of the Bible, those are linchpin beliefs that affect everything else. So, 00:32:23.460 --> 00:32:29.060 you know, if you can get them in scripture, then dude, do that. I mean, it's just like, 00:32:29.140 --> 00:32:32.900 if you led somebody to Jesus, what would you do? You tell them to start reading scripture. Well, 00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:36.360 if you lead someone online to Christ, what are you going to do? You're going to tell them to read 00:32:36.360 --> 00:32:40.840 scripture. And one of the great things, even YouVersion has some really great tools to have 00:32:40.840 --> 00:32:46.760 daily reading plan groups where you do that together. I've got one of those. So I invite them into a 00:32:46.760 --> 00:32:52.420 daily plan group and I go through the scripture every year. So I'm on, you know, I'm on my 20th time 00:32:52.420 --> 00:32:57.280 going through scripture. Right. And so I invite them into that. And there's ways that we can interact 00:32:57.280 --> 00:33:02.860 with each other and kind of encourage each other, but just getting them in the scripture by itself, 00:33:02.860 --> 00:33:08.980 there is no close second. Like when you do the data and we've got all this data now, but the funny 00:33:08.980 --> 00:33:15.100 thing is, is that the data tells us what we already know is that, um, Bible engagement is the greatest 00:33:15.100 --> 00:33:20.420 force for someone's spiritual growth with no close second. There is nothing out there like Bible 00:33:20.420 --> 00:33:25.640 engagement. So you get someone in the scripture that will change their life way more than anything else you 00:33:25.640 --> 00:33:30.620 could do. That's the biggest lever you can pull. So for me, it's just like, okay, get them in a YouVersion 00:33:30.620 --> 00:33:37.120 group and encourage them that way. You know, get them in the scripture. You know, I gotta tell you, I was, I 00:33:37.120 --> 00:33:42.980 wasn't expecting a global innovations pastor to walk on and say, yeah, just Bible engagement. Like that, 00:33:43.060 --> 00:33:50.240 that's the, right. I mean, it's, it's like, I was kind of expecting the, the, Oh, we got to do this 00:33:50.240 --> 00:33:55.480 and this and this and develop this system and API. Well, what you've really done here is you really 00:33:55.480 --> 00:34:01.280 just made it very, very practical. Like it's, it's, it's not about designing all these systems. And, 00:34:01.280 --> 00:34:06.120 you know, I think you use the word over engineering a couple of times in there. It's, it's the relational 00:34:06.120 --> 00:34:11.760 aspect. There was a book maybe 15, 20 years ago with kind of the, the, it was a business book, 00:34:11.820 --> 00:34:17.220 but it was high tech, high touch. And this idea of the more technology that we, we have and we utilize 00:34:17.220 --> 00:34:24.000 the more important that, that, that touch is. And, and we, we, we lose the word engagement. We use it 00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:31.380 so much that I think it's really lost. It's, it's meaning in context of engagement is a two-way 00:34:31.380 --> 00:34:38.660 conversation. And as much as we're pushing content one way, we're having a conversation where it's 00:34:38.660 --> 00:34:45.440 coming back to us. And, and, and we lose that in social media and we lose that in economy of scale 00:34:45.440 --> 00:34:50.420 and all of these things where we're somewhere along the way, it really does come down to a, 00:34:50.420 --> 00:34:58.860 a discipleship oriented relationship where we're helping people take these steps of faith where, 00:34:58.860 --> 00:35:03.620 wherever they are. You know, I, and one of the things, and you said it earlier, I love the fact 00:35:03.620 --> 00:35:09.840 that, that for you, the discipleship process doesn't happen at evangelism. It happens before that. 00:35:10.200 --> 00:35:15.380 And so that, that you're tracking and you're building those relationships as, as you're going, 00:35:15.500 --> 00:35:20.900 utilizing online and physical and, and melding and meshing them all together. And, and, and honestly, 00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:26.380 Jason, you and Westside, man, you're, you guys are, man, more cutting edge, I think, 00:35:26.380 --> 00:35:32.980 than I realized that you are, but cutting edge in the simplicity of, man, it's not about systems. It's 00:35:32.980 --> 00:35:38.580 about relationships. And that's something that I think is, is very needed when we're looking at 00:35:38.580 --> 00:35:40.580 churches and church onlines today. 00:35:41.420 --> 00:35:48.340 Well, you also have to, um, I think one of the things about being innovative is not necessarily 00:35:48.340 --> 00:35:57.400 being technological there. There, there is a sense in which, you know, the, the goalpost is moving 00:35:57.400 --> 00:36:05.300 constantly. And one of the things that after doing this for a long, long time was back in 2010, when 00:36:05.300 --> 00:36:11.840 we were first starting the tools that we had to actually follow up with people, weren't nearly as 00:36:11.840 --> 00:36:19.900 personal as they are now. So before we had to do things a little bit in an impersonal way, because 00:36:19.900 --> 00:36:26.820 there wasn't a good way for us to do it in a digital fashion. But today, man, I mean, look, 00:36:26.900 --> 00:36:30.000 we're having the zoom call, we're having a face-to-face conversation for crying out loud, 00:36:30.240 --> 00:36:35.280 you know, that kind of stuff wasn't really readily available. And it wasn't ubiquitous, 00:36:35.280 --> 00:36:42.540 like it is now in 2019. And so all of these new things are appearing, giving us new tools 00:36:42.540 --> 00:36:48.880 to be more, um, more focused on the community side of church instead of the content side of church, 00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:55.380 because the truth of the matter is today, we do not live in an information scarce environment, 00:36:55.380 --> 00:37:03.880 like we did back in 1950, when people would drive for miles to get content that they could not get 00:37:03.880 --> 00:37:11.220 anywhere else. But what people will do, they will, they will go through all kinds of hoops to get to 00:37:11.220 --> 00:37:17.480 true authentic community. Because while we live in a content rich environment, we live now today in a 00:37:17.480 --> 00:37:25.140 community starved environment. And so our church, and I think most churches, if they were, if they were 00:37:25.140 --> 00:37:30.200 thinking about where society is headed, and if they're thinking about how they can meet the needs 00:37:30.200 --> 00:37:38.560 of society, they could pivot from a content based ministry to a community based ministry, and really 00:37:38.560 --> 00:37:44.960 meet a whole lot more needs than by giving them this fancy sermon or whatever, which don't get me wrong, 00:37:45.080 --> 00:37:52.180 sermons are great. But if you spend all of your time on content, and not on community, well, you know, 00:37:52.300 --> 00:37:57.260 you're going to be competing with everybody else that probably has better content than you anyway. 00:37:58.080 --> 00:38:03.160 So, and at the end of the day, that's a consumer. I mean, what you're doing is if the only thing you're 00:38:03.160 --> 00:38:08.240 doing is you're creating, and I've been talking about this and blogging content and having 00:38:08.240 --> 00:38:13.980 conversations, whatever. But at the end of the day, church online is a mirror of your church. 00:38:15.300 --> 00:38:21.800 And if your church online is guilty of just creating content, you're creating consumers, 00:38:22.200 --> 00:38:28.600 and chances are you don't like church online as a result of that. But truthfully, it's probably 00:38:28.600 --> 00:38:34.140 because all you're doing is creating content, and not actually creating that community in your own 00:38:34.240 --> 00:38:41.300 physical spaces. If you value the community physically, it's going to drip down to your 00:38:41.300 --> 00:38:46.660 online spaces. If all you're doing is creating content, that is going to drip down to your online 00:38:46.660 --> 00:38:54.860 spaces. And so it's having that wisdom to push community, to reinforce the gospel in that context. 00:38:54.980 --> 00:38:57.780 Jason, man, that's so good. Ray, what are you thinking? 00:38:58.400 --> 00:39:03.120 This is a fantastic word, Jason. And especially, you know, for the future, as we talk about content, 00:39:03.740 --> 00:39:08.480 you know, and it's funny, because, and I don't think you're saying this at all, Jason, they're not 00:39:08.480 --> 00:39:10.040 against each other. You know, a lot of folks... 00:39:10.040 --> 00:39:11.120 No, they're synergistic. 00:39:11.700 --> 00:39:15.800 Right. A lot of folks think, well, we have to focus and get like the best content out there. And they 00:39:15.800 --> 00:39:22.760 don't see the link between the two as far as how content and community can work together to drive, 00:39:22.760 --> 00:39:27.300 you know, the discipleship that's supposed to take place in the church. And so this is where, 00:39:27.440 --> 00:39:32.960 you know, a lot of churches nowadays, you know, and many of us, we may get lambasted for, well, 00:39:33.000 --> 00:39:36.180 you guys seem to be so much about, you know, the production of the show. And what they don't 00:39:36.180 --> 00:39:41.220 realize is, no, no, no. If the content that we are producing doesn't drive people towards the 00:39:41.220 --> 00:39:45.580 community that we're looking for, then really, this is where we're missing out on church. And it's 00:39:45.580 --> 00:39:48.840 been that way since, you know, Jesus preaching at Sermon on the Mount. 00:39:49.160 --> 00:39:54.660 Right. Yeah. Yeah. And even he said, look, you're only sticking around because I fed you last time, 00:39:55.160 --> 00:39:59.940 you know? So it's like, there are, there is a consumer mentality that happens, but that didn't 00:39:59.940 --> 00:40:07.500 stop Jesus from putting the majority of his focus on the 12 and on the three. So you have different 00:40:07.500 --> 00:40:13.460 scales and different sizes of groups that are better for different things. And there's a really great 00:40:13.460 --> 00:40:18.020 book that really helped me to understand this, especially with a lot of the church planning 00:40:18.020 --> 00:40:22.740 movement stuff that we're doing all around globally, was to understand that different scales, 00:40:22.840 --> 00:40:28.440 different sizes of groups do different things better. So when you're talking about, you know, 00:40:28.500 --> 00:40:32.180 teaching and, you know, healing ministry and stuff like that, like you see in Jesus, 00:40:32.440 --> 00:40:38.120 that's for the thousands. But when you're talking about prayer, that's 120, like the group that met, 00:40:38.460 --> 00:40:44.500 you know, before, before, before Pentecost. And when you're talking about training, like church 00:40:44.500 --> 00:40:51.040 planner training or ministry training, he did that in groups of 70. And when, when he did discipleship, 00:40:51.040 --> 00:40:56.540 he did that in groups of 12, but he didn't do accountability in groups of 12. He did accountability 00:40:56.540 --> 00:41:04.800 in groups of three. So the three saw Jesus at his best, the transfiguration, and at his worst in the 00:41:04.800 --> 00:41:10.060 garden of Gethsemane. And the 12 didn't see that. They got discipleship. They didn't get accountability. 00:41:10.820 --> 00:41:18.320 So part of our discipleship strategy is also looking at, okay, what size group is better for what? And try 00:41:18.320 --> 00:41:24.160 not to fool ourselves into thinking that we're doing discipleship on Sunday mornings with thousands of 00:41:24.160 --> 00:41:30.620 people. It doesn't work that way. Discipleship works in those groups of 12. And we try not to kid 00:41:30.620 --> 00:41:36.100 ourselves into thinking we do accountability in those small groups of 12. It doesn't work that way. 00:41:36.300 --> 00:41:42.460 It works in those triads. And so we, part of our discipleship strategy as well, when we're talking 00:41:42.460 --> 00:41:49.420 about people really digging down deep into what they're really struggling with, we look at the size of 00:41:49.420 --> 00:41:55.880 the group that best matches what type of, uh, movement that we're looking for, whether it be 00:41:55.880 --> 00:42:01.480 accountability or discipleship or training or prayer or teaching. Does that make sense? 00:42:02.000 --> 00:42:06.380 Absolutely. I, you know, this is the Ted talk that I think people need to hear as far as these 00:42:06.380 --> 00:42:11.980 environments are concerned, because so often, uh, you know, depending on who you talk to and 00:42:11.980 --> 00:42:15.820 especially, you know, there is kind of an old school and new school mentality in this. When you talk to 00:42:15.820 --> 00:42:20.440 folks about where does discipleship happen and where do, where do people get that in-depth teaching 00:42:20.440 --> 00:42:24.360 the person who's a little more expository oriented may say, well, of course they get it on Sunday 00:42:24.360 --> 00:42:28.620 morning, but what, what's tough to recognize. And even they'll agree with is not everybody's at the 00:42:28.620 --> 00:42:34.440 same place wrestling with the same questions or even on the same level of obedience in terms of, 00:42:34.560 --> 00:42:39.240 right. I'm here in the passage. I'm digesting this. Amen. Pastor, this already applies to my life. 00:42:39.280 --> 00:42:44.820 And this is the next level that I'm ready to take it to. Some are still on step one. And so that can 00:42:44.820 --> 00:42:49.480 be very frustrating for a lot of people to hear. What was the book? You said that was based on a 00:42:49.480 --> 00:42:55.880 book, by the way, I love that talk. Like if, if there's anything people hear today, it's that there's 00:42:55.880 --> 00:43:02.160 different types of, of messaging. There's different types of communication for different sizes. And, and, 00:43:02.160 --> 00:43:07.400 and that, that thread, as, as you were describing it, like I could spend the whole episode just talking 00:43:07.400 --> 00:43:13.060 with you. But like, what was, you said it was based on a book. Yeah. It's, it's church 3.0 by Neil 00:43:13.060 --> 00:43:19.240 Cole. Church 3.0. One of the chapters in that book. And it actually, when you're talking about 00:43:19.240 --> 00:43:29.020 micrositing, that book has been super helpful for me to help orient myself, um, into what, uh, a smaller 00:43:29.020 --> 00:43:36.620 sized group could look like in a microsite environment. Um, because a lot of, a lot of churches that do church 00:43:36.620 --> 00:43:43.780 online generally do it from a larger scale to begin with. So they're broadcasting the big scale. 00:43:44.280 --> 00:43:49.520 And because that's what they broadcast and because people kind of imprint when they first, their first 00:43:49.520 --> 00:43:57.760 experience with that particular church is at the big scale, they have a harder time, um, getting down 00:43:57.760 --> 00:44:04.060 to the little things. Because if you notice the way that Jesus did it, he called his disciples before he fed 00:44:04.060 --> 00:44:09.120 the 5,000. So a lot of times we get it a little bit backwards where we show them the big scale first, 00:44:09.120 --> 00:44:14.480 because it's a lot harder than to have people, you know, we, we think it works, but it generally 00:44:14.480 --> 00:44:21.200 does it. Well, you know, it's, it's, it's fun. You, uh, you, you said the average is all the stats, 00:44:21.340 --> 00:44:27.300 there's flew by really fast, but you said that church planning training goes in groups of 70. 00:44:27.640 --> 00:44:32.600 I think the average church in America, I may be quoting the wrong stat, but I'm pretty sure the 00:44:32.600 --> 00:44:40.540 average church in America is 78 people. And so this, this idea of let's not just hoard these people in 00:44:40.540 --> 00:44:45.640 buildings, but let's literally kick them out of the building and empower them with the gospel to do 00:44:45.640 --> 00:44:50.940 these things and plant the little micro locations or whatever you want to call it. Yeah. It's a 00:44:50.940 --> 00:44:56.620 little radical ideology. And sometimes it was funny. I used to feel like I was being subversive when I 00:44:56.620 --> 00:45:00.960 was talking about this, but I realized like, I'm not, I'm not, it's not subversive. It's biblical. 00:45:01.180 --> 00:45:06.920 Like we just, we just suck at this idea of trying to, you know, get people out of the buildings and 00:45:06.920 --> 00:45:11.280 you need to talk about it. So. Well, it's interesting too, where even the groups of 70, 00:45:11.880 --> 00:45:16.800 um, as I think it was like earlier this year when I was going through the scripture again, 00:45:17.360 --> 00:45:22.980 um, I, it never hit me before, but there was also, there's these two groups. You have like 72 and 00:45:22.980 --> 00:45:28.700 one and like 70 and another. Um, and somehow I came across scripture where I talked about Jesus, 00:45:28.880 --> 00:45:35.300 you know, had another group of 70 and I was like, Oh, so there were two groups. So instead of having 00:45:35.300 --> 00:45:42.060 150, which would be like, you know, or 142 or whatever, um, where, where the pastor would think, 00:45:42.160 --> 00:45:47.580 Oh, there's more people. Jesus intentionally split the groups up to do what he needed to do. 00:45:47.980 --> 00:45:53.640 So we had two groups of set one with 70, the other was 72, but the point being, and I think, 00:45:53.640 --> 00:46:00.700 you know, Jeff, you're right on it is that most churches are primed to do some real church planner 00:46:00.700 --> 00:46:07.220 training to do training at a level that, um, most churches, if they're in the thousand range, 00:46:07.220 --> 00:46:12.020 like, you know, the upper 5% or whatever, that, um, it's really difficult to do that on a, 00:46:12.020 --> 00:46:17.300 on a Sunday, but a church of 70 can do that on a Sunday. And that's a little bit of the, 00:46:17.300 --> 00:46:22.580 the, the mind shift that can happen is that when you're dealing with different scales of groups, 00:46:22.580 --> 00:46:27.760 it's better for different types of things. So if your group tends to be smaller, well then just do 00:46:27.760 --> 00:46:33.740 with that, what is good for that size group. And then, you know, if it gets bigger, then you multiply 00:46:33.740 --> 00:46:38.860 it out into, if you want to keep training, well then that means that you need to split off that, 00:46:38.860 --> 00:46:45.560 you know, group into two groups of 70 instead of one big one of 150, because if you go to 150, 00:46:45.840 --> 00:46:48.880 you're not going to get church planner training done, you're going to get a lot of prayer done, 00:46:49.120 --> 00:46:54.380 you know, and that'll be great for that, but it just won't help you with the training stuff. 00:46:55.320 --> 00:46:59.580 You gotta, you gotta get them, you gotta subgroup it if that's what you want to do. And you know, 00:46:59.600 --> 00:47:01.120 the book kind of details that a little bit too. 00:47:01.800 --> 00:47:05.240 By the way, like those, and you're just getting back to the audience that's listening, 00:47:05.460 --> 00:47:12.560 like smaller church people. Some of you guys are at smaller churches and are trying this church online, 00:47:12.560 --> 00:47:18.500 and some of you are struggling with budgets and why and vision and some of that. I mean, 00:47:18.500 --> 00:47:24.340 I just want to encourage you guys to keep going. I'm more excited about the idea of a smaller church 00:47:24.340 --> 00:47:30.700 doing church online than I am a mega church. And just coming from a guy who's literally working 00:47:30.700 --> 00:47:37.400 in with churches in both environments, a mega church has red tape, it has leadership teams, 00:47:37.400 --> 00:47:43.460 it has different vision, and it's a very long, in-depth conversation. A smaller church, though, 00:47:43.760 --> 00:47:49.400 tends to be more of, let's give it a shot. Let's adjust. Let's see what happens. They're more hungry. 00:47:49.940 --> 00:47:55.060 They're more interested in doing something innovative. And yeah, the budgets may not be in 00:47:55.060 --> 00:47:59.560 place. But honestly, and just calling out, you know, some of the stuff that's Jason saying, 00:47:59.900 --> 00:48:06.380 it doesn't require a massive budget to do some of this stuff. It just requires a different way of 00:48:06.380 --> 00:48:10.660 thinking. Hey, listen, I could sit around here all day and just continue this on. I don't even know 00:48:10.660 --> 00:48:15.240 how this conversation's been going lengthwise. But I know we're longer than what I said we were 00:48:15.240 --> 00:48:21.940 going to do. Jason, thank you very much for that. I pray for the day where we actually get global 00:48:21.940 --> 00:48:28.680 saturation in context through church online. That was beautiful. Ray, hey man, thanks for joining us 00:48:28.680 --> 00:48:35.120 again. My name is Jeff. This has been the Church Digital Podcast. Thanks for the time, and we'll see 00:48:35.120 --> 00:48:36.760 you later. Have a good one. See you next time.