WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.720 Episode 75 of the Church Digital Podcast, once again, powered by Stadia Church Planting. 00:00:05.140 --> 00:00:10.480 Jeff here, and I am excited about this episode. I seem to be excited anytime we talk about 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:16.800 microlocations or watch parties, and so this is a great episode here. COVID's crazy, right? 00:00:17.140 --> 00:00:22.780 Like some buildings, some states, churches are meeting, and everything seems to be getting back 00:00:22.780 --> 00:00:29.340 to normal. Other areas are slowly starting to kind of open the doors again, and there's lots 00:00:29.340 --> 00:00:34.380 of stringent rules about how we can gather, and then there's other areas that it's like, 00:00:34.420 --> 00:00:39.700 yeah, the governors, there's no way. We can't even meet like five people in space because 00:00:39.700 --> 00:00:46.320 the governors are more stringent on what the rules are. Needless to say, it's a very confusing 00:00:46.320 --> 00:00:52.340 time for the church, and even if we can meet, churches find themselves asking, well, just 00:00:52.340 --> 00:00:58.320 because we can, should we? Is it the socially responsible thing for us to meet in those 00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:03.680 gatherings, and we're seeing the reports, the news reports coming in where COVID is continuing 00:01:03.680 --> 00:01:09.180 to spread as a result of some of these churches that are still gathering in this season? It's 00:01:09.180 --> 00:01:16.240 a confusing time, but we feel called, we feel drawn to meet together physically, and to this 00:01:16.240 --> 00:01:21.040 end, I wanted to bring this conversation into play because I think there's an option for us 00:01:21.040 --> 00:01:26.320 to missionally connect together into smaller locations, micro locations, watch parties, 00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:31.660 house churches, use whatever vernacular you want, but it's an opportunity for the church to stare 00:01:31.900 --> 00:01:38.520 step to meet physically without having to go all the way back into the building, and to get our people on 00:01:38.520 --> 00:01:43.720 mission, connecting relationally with people in maybe ways that they hadn't done before. 00:01:45.260 --> 00:01:50.700 And to this end, I'm bringing in Adrian Feldman into the conversation. Adrian is an online pastor at 00:01:50.700 --> 00:01:56.820 Northeast Christian Church, and really, just in a very short amount of time, has spun up these 00:01:56.820 --> 00:02:04.100 micro locations. As a matter of fact, this week, they have just launched with almost 100 micro locations 00:02:04.100 --> 00:02:10.440 at their church, with even more coming up down the road as things get better in Kentucky when it comes 00:02:10.440 --> 00:02:17.640 to the COVID season. Phenomenal stories coming out of this. And so, if you are interested in micro locations, you're 00:02:17.640 --> 00:02:23.220 interested in watch parties, if you're not wanting to open up the building yet, and you're trying to figure out 00:02:23.220 --> 00:02:29.600 what's next, what you can do in the meantime, take a listen to this episode. I think you'll get a lot out of it. 00:02:29.660 --> 00:02:36.100 As a side note, I tell a couple minute story at the beginning about my caffeine addiction. You can skip past that if you 00:02:36.100 --> 00:02:42.240 want, but really, really stay around to hear the heart of what this podcast episode is going to be. 00:02:42.600 --> 00:02:46.880 So, for this conversation, I'm bringing in Adrian Feldman, once again, online pastor from Northeast 00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:52.120 Christian Church up in Kentucky, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning, 00:02:52.540 --> 00:02:58.340 in a conversation that I'm calling Launching Watch Parties Quickly. Okay, everybody, here you go. 00:02:58.340 --> 00:03:06.120 So, I wanted to tell you just real quick, this is my dirty chai latte story. I didn't make this up. Like, 00:03:06.120 --> 00:03:13.220 you did say your favorite Starbucks drink is the dirty chai? Yeah. Okay. So, there is, I'm doing bad 00:03:13.220 --> 00:03:22.520 math in my head. Go back a decade. 2010, 2011, the dirty chai is my favorite drink. Like, I'm drinking 00:03:22.520 --> 00:03:30.060 at minimum one, if not two to three of these a day. Okay. And so, it's a venti, dirty chai, chai, you 00:03:30.060 --> 00:03:38.300 know, hot, chai milk, chai tea, with quad, four shots of espresso. And I would get at, like I said, 00:03:38.380 --> 00:03:44.280 at least one, if it was a hard day, two, if it's like midnight, three. And this is when I was working 00:03:44.280 --> 00:03:49.900 crazy hours for a church production director, multi-site, crazy, just crazy lifestyle. If you know me, 00:03:49.900 --> 00:03:56.780 I don't sleep at night, that drink was what kept me running. Well, I was living in Miami at the time 00:03:56.780 --> 00:04:05.280 and I took a church job in Austin, but I just, I got really sick. And like, I was coughing and always 00:04:05.280 --> 00:04:12.620 phlegm and always cold. And like, just for like almost a year, I was going to doctors and they 00:04:12.620 --> 00:04:20.980 couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. And what it came down to was I had esophageal reflux. 00:04:21.180 --> 00:04:30.560 I had so much chai, so much espresso that it burned a hole in my throat and stuff's coming up into my 00:04:30.560 --> 00:04:35.400 system. And like, and they were like, Jeff, you got it. You got to give up. You got to give up 00:04:35.400 --> 00:04:44.080 Starbucks. You got to give up to try latte. I'm like, what, what, what, what? And so cold, 00:04:44.220 --> 00:04:51.280 I mean, cold Turkey. And it was, was amazing. Cutting, cutting Starbucks out cold Turkey. 00:04:51.280 --> 00:04:55.240 I dropped like almost 30 pounds right off the bat. 00:04:55.240 --> 00:04:59.520 I bet. Also that drink costs $9. So that's a lot of money. 00:05:00.200 --> 00:05:06.260 Oh yeah. Well, I mean, my wallet kind of got heavier, I guess, going, going through. But when I drink that, 00:05:06.260 --> 00:05:13.340 when I drink that dirty chai now, I don't sleep for like 36, 48 hours. Like the amount of caffeine 00:05:13.340 --> 00:05:19.880 that's in that, it keeps me up like multiple days straight, straight through. It's crazy. 00:05:19.880 --> 00:05:25.020 I will. So I always, that's, that's my, like, whenever I have a free drink at Starbucks, 00:05:25.020 --> 00:05:29.720 that's what I get. Cause I don't like spending all of the money on it. It's like really frustrating 00:05:29.720 --> 00:05:37.460 to me. So I've started drinking the blonde espresso. Um, but just as an Americano. So it's just only 00:05:37.460 --> 00:05:45.260 caffeine and water. I can't even feel it anymore. What's wrong with me? 00:05:47.480 --> 00:05:55.040 Well, Hey, we, I wanted to, I want to talk about, uh, the, the home gatherings, the micro locations. 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:56.480 What, what, what do you guys call them? 00:05:56.480 --> 00:05:59.900 We're calling them watch parties, watch parties. Okay. 00:06:00.120 --> 00:06:05.760 Yeah. And we were really intentional with that verbiage because it was starting to get really 00:06:05.760 --> 00:06:11.460 muddy. You know, you can call it a house church, you can call it, um, micro campus. We can call it 00:06:11.460 --> 00:06:18.640 a million different things, but watch party was not intimidating. And so what we are, our messaging is 00:06:18.640 --> 00:06:23.500 very, it's as easy as pressing play, invite your people over and press play. So watch parties. 00:06:24.020 --> 00:06:29.260 Well, and you know, and it's the, the language is interesting because there's even some, some, um, 00:06:29.580 --> 00:06:34.780 implications, even in the language of a, the house church versus a watch party, the complexity, 00:06:35.020 --> 00:06:40.300 the expectations. You got, you were thinking about doing this, this, this house gathering, 00:06:40.300 --> 00:06:43.060 the watch party stuff pre COVID, right? 00:06:43.640 --> 00:06:50.460 Yeah. You know, it was on my docket. It's part of my like vision board for 2020 was to start trying 00:06:50.460 --> 00:06:56.760 to get these off the ground. The coolest thing about 2020 for me personally, as an online campus 00:06:56.760 --> 00:07:04.540 pastor is that 2020 saw everything in my five-year plan delivered, um, within six months. So, um, 00:07:04.800 --> 00:07:05.360 it's a big win. 00:07:05.360 --> 00:07:09.760 So that means six month vacation. You're, you're done. You can kick back and relax. 00:07:12.060 --> 00:07:14.400 It doesn't work that way. Darn it. 00:07:14.400 --> 00:07:17.420 You know, I kept thinking it did, but apparently it doesn't. 00:07:18.800 --> 00:07:27.140 That's awesome. So like what, so you, what, why, why did you guys want to do, um, the, 00:07:27.180 --> 00:07:32.660 the watch parties? Like what was the thing, even pre COVID, this was not on people's radars pre COVID. 00:07:32.860 --> 00:07:37.360 You, you were already trying to track in that way. What was it about your church and kind of the 00:07:37.360 --> 00:07:42.040 culture that kind of got them thinking about this? Or even what was the view of, 00:07:42.060 --> 00:07:47.420 of online, even before COVID? Like tell me your church's story, how you guys have grown through 00:07:47.420 --> 00:07:48.240 this COVID season. 00:07:48.920 --> 00:07:55.100 So it actually starts a few years ago with a really, really brilliant videographer on our team 00:07:55.100 --> 00:07:59.620 who went to leadership and said, Hey, we got to start putting our church services online. 00:07:59.620 --> 00:08:06.300 There is such an opportunity there and we really, we need to, to make it happen. Um, so they started 00:08:06.300 --> 00:08:15.600 streaming services and it was a very, it was very much just streaming. There was no full church experience. 00:08:15.600 --> 00:08:22.980 It was just a stream. Um, and, and it was good and people were watching it and that was great, 00:08:22.980 --> 00:08:32.220 but about, I guess a year and a half ago now, maybe before that they started dreaming about it becoming 00:08:32.220 --> 00:08:39.600 our online experience, becoming a campus, becoming a true expression of the church online. So actually 00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:47.220 they, they didn't hire me. They brought me in as an intern last January. And my project as an intern 00:08:47.220 --> 00:08:53.760 was to write a plan. What does it look like to take us from a stream to an online campus? What do we need? 00:08:53.840 --> 00:08:58.860 What do we need to implement? What, what needs to change in the way we see church online for this to 00:08:58.860 --> 00:09:05.340 be a full expression of the church online as opposed to just something that people can consume. So I 00:09:05.340 --> 00:09:11.020 started working on that project and when I was done, I'll put that in air quotes, but when I was done 00:09:11.020 --> 00:09:18.200 with my project, they said, great, do you want the job? And I said, um, yes, of course I had no idea 00:09:18.200 --> 00:09:24.200 that this could ever be a thing. So I set to work in kind of implementing this plan the best that I 00:09:24.200 --> 00:09:32.120 could inside our existing structure to start building out actual church online, not just something that 00:09:32.120 --> 00:09:38.940 people watch. And so as I studied, and of course, um, getting in touch with people as shout out to a 00:09:38.940 --> 00:09:44.360 church it network conference and getting together with people and learning what that looks like, 00:09:44.360 --> 00:09:49.900 right? What does discipleship look like online? What does community look like online? Started having 00:09:49.900 --> 00:09:56.600 those conversations with people and realizing that our absolute goal was for people to connect with each 00:09:56.600 --> 00:10:01.020 other because that's the best way for people to connect with Jesus. And so whatever that was going 00:10:01.020 --> 00:10:06.120 to look like, whether it was, you know, zoom rooms, which were not as popular then as they are now, 00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:13.460 um, or, you know, face to face watch party gatherings, all of those things needed to take off. So actually 00:10:13.460 --> 00:10:18.560 here's a fun story. There is this challenge going around on social media right now where people are 00:10:18.560 --> 00:10:24.020 posting their pictures of the last thing that they took when life was normal. Have you seen this 00:10:24.020 --> 00:10:28.680 challenge going around? No, I haven't. I haven't seen this. Well, it's amusing because you see pictures 00:10:28.680 --> 00:10:32.960 of like concerts people have gone to, or, you know, a whole bunch of kids on a crowded playground, 00:10:32.960 --> 00:10:38.880 things that we're just not doing right now. Um, the last picture I took before everything changed 00:10:38.880 --> 00:10:49.120 was actually a picture of my computer screen with our very first online group gathering. So we were just 00:10:49.120 --> 00:10:55.340 barely ahead of the curve, not, not far enough that we had full systems in place, but we had started down 00:10:55.340 --> 00:11:02.440 that path and boy, thank goodness we had already started to get our minds around what it was going to look like 00:11:02.440 --> 00:11:06.420 to build out church digitally because boy, it's a different world than it was. 00:11:06.960 --> 00:11:12.240 Wow. But that's an interesting challenge. I just, I went back myself while you were talking, I shot a video of 00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:18.260 my daughter playing basketball. She did like this no look shot behind her back and made it like it. She did like 00:11:18.260 --> 00:11:24.460 18 tries, but I got the video of one of the 18 where it didn't even look and she like freaks out. So that 00:11:24.460 --> 00:11:31.240 was my, and then everything went downhill from there. Like it was just even small groups you weren't doing 00:11:31.240 --> 00:11:37.860 really, it was in your plan, but you hadn't really implemented it, uh, pre 2020 or even what sounds like 00:11:37.860 --> 00:11:44.260 even pre COVID. All this has been kind of drinking from the fire hose quite literally for you spinning this 00:11:44.260 --> 00:11:50.460 up, uh, and, and, and Northeast Christians starting to, uh, address this. How, how has that been for, 00:11:50.540 --> 00:11:56.240 for your church and, and, and leadership and the body? Like what, what, what's, tell me some stories 00:11:56.240 --> 00:12:02.780 there. Well, the coolest thing about our leadership and I just, I could shout out to them all day long 00:12:02.780 --> 00:12:09.420 is that they are very, um, I don't know if I want to use the word vision. Yeah. I mean, they're, 00:12:09.500 --> 00:12:14.240 they're pretty visionary when it comes to leadership and they're really willing to try new things. 00:12:14.260 --> 00:12:19.960 And see what sticks and see what happens. And so one of the things that I did early in 2020, 00:12:19.960 --> 00:12:25.980 again, way before COVID was a thing was I brought in my plan and I laid it out. And of course it was 00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:31.400 like, um, project manager's dream, right? This camp chart that plots out all of the things and how I 00:12:31.400 --> 00:12:36.780 want them to work in the calendar. Um, and I said, I want to launch virtual groups and I want to launch 00:12:36.780 --> 00:12:43.640 watch parties and I hope to have, um, public micro sites that we're working with. You know, 00:12:43.640 --> 00:12:48.400 there were all these little pieces that I put in there and instead of saying, Whoa, wait, hold on. 00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:56.980 And I said, okay, go. And so when this time came, it wasn't a big challenge for them to wrap their 00:12:56.980 --> 00:13:02.780 minds around all of these ideas, but what they did, which has turned out to be a really huge blessing 00:13:02.780 --> 00:13:07.600 for me personally, what they did was they kind of took all of those things that we've talked about 00:13:07.600 --> 00:13:13.780 doing and they broke them up and they put them out to other teams and got things going. And it has 00:13:13.780 --> 00:13:20.740 been amazing. Absolutely incredible watching our entire church staff get their heads around online 00:13:20.740 --> 00:13:27.540 ministry and just do it. I mean, we've been talking for years and years and years about how in the world 00:13:27.540 --> 00:13:33.660 are we going to get kids ministry online? And you better believe our family teams were online within a week 00:13:33.660 --> 00:13:42.020 because that's what we do now. Um, and so leadership has been overall just extremely supportive and 00:13:42.020 --> 00:13:49.620 extremely, um, just open to trying stuff and seeing what works and seeing what sticks. And then as we 00:13:49.620 --> 00:13:56.420 started to, to move forward into what are things going to look like now, you know, because right now we're 00:13:56.420 --> 00:14:01.400 talking about watch parties and launching all of that and what that's going to be, we had to have the 00:14:01.400 --> 00:14:07.120 conversation. Like, are we going to open our building or are we going to see what we can build out in 00:14:07.120 --> 00:14:12.120 this? And this is your term. They, um, you know, what does digital look like for us? You know, how are 00:14:12.120 --> 00:14:18.360 we going to marry the physical and the digital to give people the full actual experience of church, 00:14:18.360 --> 00:14:19.620 wherever they happen to be? 00:14:19.620 --> 00:14:25.000 The idea of, of digital trying to get the two, the physical and the digital to work together 00:14:25.000 --> 00:14:29.760 pre COVID, you know, if you would have told me, Hey Jeff, how do you, how do we staff the church for 00:14:29.760 --> 00:14:34.960 the future pre COVID? I would have said, yeah, I want to move away from you using the language 00:14:34.960 --> 00:14:41.140 online campus. Cause online campus even box away from the physical campus. Cause so there are people 00:14:41.140 --> 00:14:45.280 at your physical campus. The lady who lives across the street from your physical location 00:14:45.280 --> 00:14:51.860 can benefit from church online, small groups online, uh, online sermon series or sermon archive. 00:14:51.860 --> 00:14:56.800 Like there's resources online for them. So let's stop using online campus and let's start calling 00:14:56.800 --> 00:15:03.300 them a digital pastor. And, and, and really what COVID did, uh, for me was it really fast tracked 00:15:03.300 --> 00:15:11.080 this whole idea of, yeah, online is more than one person's job. It's all of our jobs. I never 00:15:11.080 --> 00:15:17.100 would have imagined that pre COVID I was doing pot. I asked within Facebook groups and all over the 00:15:17.100 --> 00:15:22.340 place. Hey, who's been doing kids ministry online? You were talking about kids ministry. I asked the 00:15:22.340 --> 00:15:27.000 question, who's done it. I want to do a podcast. I've done kids ministry. I can tell you, we did kids 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:31.880 ministry online maybe four or five years ago was really cutting edge, bleeding edge kind of at the 00:15:31.880 --> 00:15:37.400 time. It wasn't, wasn't well received. And so it's like, Hey, who's done it recently? Nobody. It was 00:15:37.400 --> 00:15:44.940 crickets. And now all of a sudden COVID like the pendulum has swung. And instead of the perception 00:15:44.940 --> 00:15:49.220 of online, Oh, well, that's just, you know, this one guy's job over here to kind of maintain, 00:15:49.420 --> 00:15:57.780 it's really become more of, this is our church's job to, to do all of us are buying in and owning 00:15:57.780 --> 00:16:04.120 to that. Now in this COVID season, it's been very digital first mindset. It's going to be really 00:16:04.120 --> 00:16:10.540 interesting as we get back to whatever the next normal is when things level off to wherever it's 00:16:10.540 --> 00:16:14.880 going to go. You know, when we get back to our buildings, are we still going to have that digital 00:16:14.880 --> 00:16:21.580 first mindset or are we going to kind of find ourselves going back to the way that it used to 00:16:21.580 --> 00:16:27.260 be where physical is, is King and online is that kind of redheaded stepchild. Yeah. So anyway, 00:16:27.260 --> 00:16:32.140 within context of Northeast and Northeast Christian, as you're feeling that tension, 00:16:32.680 --> 00:16:39.020 do you, where, where do you guys talk about the future going to be? Is it more centered around 00:16:39.020 --> 00:16:45.900 physical, digital, fidgetal? Like what has your approach been? What are you wrestling and learning 00:16:45.900 --> 00:16:52.520 with in this season? Well, so we actually just started talking about those long range plans 00:16:52.520 --> 00:17:01.060 today. So that comes out all theoretical. Um, in fact, I have an assignment to come back with, 00:17:01.060 --> 00:17:09.080 with plans for what does this look like forever? Um, but actually I said the word fidgetal in one of 00:17:09.080 --> 00:17:15.020 our meetings last week and our lead pastor thought that was like the coolest thing he's ever heard in 00:17:15.020 --> 00:17:22.600 his entire life. Um, because we are really interested in this idea of that marrying a physical and the 00:17:22.600 --> 00:17:30.700 digital. And so first of all, for us on a normal weekend, we see somewhere between three and 4,000 00:17:30.700 --> 00:17:39.000 people. So we know in a COVID season where things are reopening slowly, it's not going to be safe for 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:45.280 all of our people to be in the room all at the same time for who knows how long, right? Like, you know, 00:17:45.280 --> 00:17:51.200 we can open gatherings to 50 people or a hundred people. And that's still a 10th of the people who 00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:57.720 would normally be in our room on a weekend. And we're trying really hard to put the commandment 00:17:57.720 --> 00:18:03.180 to love your neighbor ahead of any ideas of like, yeah, legally we should be able to gather, but we 00:18:03.180 --> 00:18:08.660 believe in loving our neighbor. And sometimes loving your neighbor means doing everything you can to 00:18:08.920 --> 00:18:16.200 stop the spread of disease. So we have that piece there. Um, and so we knew that we had to come up 00:18:16.200 --> 00:18:21.460 with something for the really long term. And I hate to say really long term, but at least for several 00:18:21.460 --> 00:18:31.360 months that looks like doing something that is digital. Um, we have, we have talked about, well, 00:18:31.480 --> 00:18:37.020 and our lead pastor said this in his sermon this weekend, he said, if we were to reopen right now, 00:18:37.020 --> 00:18:43.860 we would bring all of these people into our room. It would take nine services to get people 00:18:43.860 --> 00:18:48.760 appropriately distanced with the number of spaces that we have. We wouldn't be able to open the 00:18:48.760 --> 00:18:53.700 bathrooms. We wouldn't be able to have any kids ministry. We wouldn't be able to, um, to mingle 00:18:53.700 --> 00:18:58.540 in the lobby. There would be no coffee and that would be tragic for our people. Uh, there are a lot of 00:18:58.540 --> 00:19:02.900 things that we just couldn't do. And then we'd have to sanitize it all in between. And he said, 00:19:02.900 --> 00:19:09.040 I've got a lot of energy, but I can't preach nine services every single week. So you would be coming 00:19:09.040 --> 00:19:14.120 into this room and watching a screen. How is that better than what you're doing right now? 00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:18.140 He said, it's not better. It's not better than what you're doing right now. And when you start 00:19:18.140 --> 00:19:22.960 to gather in smaller communities on top of it all, you're going to be able to build relationships with 00:19:22.960 --> 00:19:29.620 people that you may never have been able to build in the room. So going forward, we're looking at the 00:19:29.620 --> 00:19:34.740 very real potential that a lot of our watch are not a lot, but at least several of our watch parties 00:19:34.740 --> 00:19:41.580 will probably continue. We, we see the potential for people who are not interested in attending a mega 00:19:41.580 --> 00:19:49.980 church being interested in gathering with a community of believers. And I mean, we, it's in Matthew 18, 00:19:49.980 --> 00:19:55.380 20, right? Where two or three are gathered. Jesus is there. So there's no reason to believe that what 00:19:55.380 --> 00:20:03.980 we're doing in these watch parties can't be as spirit filled and as impactful to discipleship as our 00:20:03.980 --> 00:20:11.380 gatherings on the weekend. Wow. So like when, when you're starting this off, how many, how many are you 00:20:11.380 --> 00:20:17.120 launching with? Are you cataloging them? Is it more organic growth and movement? What's the, 00:20:17.120 --> 00:20:20.020 what's the infrastructure surrounding these watch parties? 00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:27.980 Right now, the messaging that we're pushing to our people is just press play. It is as easy as just pressing 00:20:27.980 --> 00:20:36.360 play, gather your people and press play. But if you sign up, then we will provide you with resources every 00:20:36.360 --> 00:20:42.980 week and encouragement every week. That's going to make this a little bit easier on you. So we have created a form where 00:20:42.980 --> 00:20:48.760 people are signing up and letting us know if they plan to host a watch party. And we know some of the people 00:20:48.760 --> 00:20:54.900 who are signing up are actually, I heard today, it's about 50, 50. Some of the people are not going to 00:20:54.900 --> 00:20:59.360 start straight away. Some of them aren't ready. They don't feel safe yet. They don't feel like, 00:20:59.760 --> 00:21:07.700 like they can until the 1st of July or whatever, but all of them are signing up. And then after that, 00:21:07.760 --> 00:21:12.000 every week we're going to provide, I mean, I said that already, we're, we'll send out an email that 00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:19.440 says, these are the current CDC guidelines. Here are some tips for sanitizing your house. We can get 00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:25.600 you masks if you need them. We've got communion for you. All of those things that we, that we want to 00:21:25.600 --> 00:21:29.720 provide for them, we can do because they have signed up and they've provided us with a little 00:21:29.720 --> 00:21:35.100 information. One of the things I'm really pumped about is we have put together an encouragement team, 00:21:35.300 --> 00:21:42.320 and it's just a whole mess of staff people who are getting in touch with these watch party leaders 00:21:42.320 --> 00:21:47.840 every single week. So they're calling them, they're saying, how many people came to your watch party? 00:21:47.980 --> 00:21:53.140 What can we help you with? What questions do you have? How can we troubleshoot that? And then we're 00:21:53.140 --> 00:21:59.100 going to, in some cases, show up at the watch party and surprise them like, Hey, we brought you a 00:21:59.100 --> 00:22:05.260 goodie box, snacks for everybody, you know, and one of the things we're excited about is that this becomes 00:22:05.260 --> 00:22:12.000 a real opportunity for this person who stepped up in leadership in a really difficult time to have a 00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:20.040 personal relationship with a pastor to start growing that way so that they're ready to lead well, and then 00:22:20.040 --> 00:22:27.120 they can start helping other people learn how to lead. And that's such a great model of discipleship. 00:22:27.120 --> 00:22:35.540 This is, this is so cool. And never your, your, your hype party, you know, the staff that are making 00:22:35.540 --> 00:22:42.160 the calls, the, the showing up, like, I'll be honest, as I've talked about micro for years, it's never 00:22:42.160 --> 00:22:48.380 occurred to me to do something like that. So like your spin of that is awesome. And I bet that's going 00:22:48.380 --> 00:22:54.400 to pay off. And what's interesting is you're getting, you're getting other staff people excited about this, 00:22:54.400 --> 00:22:59.220 this idea. It's not, this is really the challenge with, with even like the online pastor where the 00:22:59.220 --> 00:23:04.200 online pastor's over here doing his thing and the rest of the churches is oblivious to it. Like I 00:23:04.200 --> 00:23:08.260 used to joke that I was like one of the best kept secrets of the church where I was online pastor 00:23:08.260 --> 00:23:14.320 because nobody had a clue of what I was doing. I was kind of like working in a silo. And as a result 00:23:14.320 --> 00:23:19.760 of this COVID, we're tearing down the silo. And as a result of it, like the, the church is getting, 00:23:19.820 --> 00:23:24.740 getting excited about this. Now this isn't, it's not about numbers. And, and if you listen to the 00:23:24.740 --> 00:23:29.640 podcast, you know, we really never talk about numbers, but I want to, I want to ask this question 00:23:29.640 --> 00:23:36.400 because I want us to give context. So like you said, 50, 50, 50, 50% of people are like ready to 00:23:36.400 --> 00:23:41.420 launch 50% are like, Hey, you know what? I'm excited about the idea. I don't, I don't trust COVID. So 00:23:41.420 --> 00:23:46.300 we're going to wait next week is week number one for you guys, right? How many churches are you going to 00:23:46.300 --> 00:23:52.400 be launching with? How many of these micro, how many of these watch parties will you be launching 00:23:52.400 --> 00:24:02.100 with? As of this afternoon, during our meeting, we had 188 people signed up. Wow. Yeah. Isn't that 00:24:02.100 --> 00:24:09.100 great? So if we take 50% of them, then we're looking at, hold on. I'm a pastor, not a mathematician. 00:24:09.840 --> 00:24:21.660 Uh, 50, 70, 72. Yeah. The answer is 94. Oh man. I'm so bad at math. Way, way off. Way off. I'm not even 00:24:21.660 --> 00:24:25.220 going to edit that out just for this year. No, I'm kidding. I'll edit. Actually, I'll probably leave 00:24:25.220 --> 00:24:32.780 it in. I don't know. Um, so 94 times two is 188. So you had 90, you're going to launch with almost 00:24:32.780 --> 00:24:38.540 a hundred churches right off the bat. Yeah. That's exciting. That doesn't include our plus 00:24:38.540 --> 00:24:44.480 seven audience who hasn't seen the service yet and chosen to sign up. So we should be, 00:24:44.480 --> 00:24:52.160 yeah, looking at close to a hundred. Wow. And so like you said, the expectations initially is more like 00:24:52.160 --> 00:24:59.040 if you can press play, do this. If you're, um, you know, as you're going, maybe doing more, 00:24:59.040 --> 00:25:05.180 some of the people you're providing resources for, like, talk to me a little bit, like, okay. So 00:25:05.180 --> 00:25:09.560 a lot of times when I have these conversations, people are like, Hey, this is just, it's, it's a 00:25:09.560 --> 00:25:13.480 small group, right? And I'm like, well, it's a, it's a little different, I think. And it really 00:25:13.480 --> 00:25:18.240 depends upon how you're, you're spinning in it and what the, what the church is expecting to get out of 00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:24.000 it. Um, so just tell me a little bit, how are you preparing in the short term or maybe even long 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:28.280 term? How are you preparing these people? Um, and what resources are you providing for them? 00:25:28.280 --> 00:25:31.920 Cause the churches out there are, are wondering there. So they're thinking is, Hey, how can I 00:25:31.920 --> 00:25:38.740 create a hundred micro locations to launch with? So how are you helping these people to do this once 00:25:38.740 --> 00:25:44.860 they understand the vision? Well, so first of all, just to share a cool vision piece that we got to 00:25:44.860 --> 00:25:49.820 share with our church this weekend, it was really, really cool. Um, we had a whole service where what 00:25:49.820 --> 00:25:55.860 we talked about was just really how biblical the model of gathering and small groups in people's 00:25:55.860 --> 00:26:02.180 homes is. And so we wanted to make sure that people understood this is not a lesser version of church. 00:26:02.280 --> 00:26:08.960 In fact, this is exactly what the church is. And it was so cool for me as an online pastor, who's 00:26:08.960 --> 00:26:15.120 been beating this drum for so long to hear that from the stage and to hear all of our people hearing 00:26:15.120 --> 00:26:21.280 that and responding to it. So, so well. So a very, very first thing that we had to do was make sure 00:26:21.280 --> 00:26:26.680 that we cast that vision really clearly so that people could get behind it and would want to learn 00:26:26.680 --> 00:26:34.120 more about what to do. And then beyond that, um, our training takes on basically two tiers and we are 00:26:34.120 --> 00:26:40.780 not even calling it training because we don't want it to feel that formal. It doesn't have to be that 00:26:40.780 --> 00:26:47.480 hard or that prescribed. So we put together a quick video that says, Hey, it really is as easy as inviting 00:26:47.480 --> 00:26:54.880 over people who maybe, you know, the person you keep wanting to invite to church, but you think they'd be 00:26:54.880 --> 00:26:59.540 intimidated in a room with a thousand people, you know, inviting them to your house is way easier than 00:26:59.540 --> 00:27:05.400 that. Bring some people together, set up in your driveway and then put the sermon on. Now, if you 00:27:05.400 --> 00:27:11.640 want to do more, we'd love to encourage you to do more, but you don't have to. We want you to get 00:27:11.640 --> 00:27:18.120 together. Bare minimum is, um, you know, be in the word and pray together and take communion. We want 00:27:18.120 --> 00:27:23.680 that for all of our watch parties. And then beyond that, I've mentioned it a couple of times before, 00:27:23.680 --> 00:27:29.800 but what we're sending out is a guide that is timestamped with the YouTube version of our sermon. 00:27:30.040 --> 00:27:36.080 So in each section of this guide, it'll say like, at this point, we're doing worship. You can click on 00:27:36.080 --> 00:27:42.300 the timestamped part of the worship and watch what we've provided for you. But if you want to do worship 00:27:42.300 --> 00:27:47.180 on your own, if you've got people in your space who play instruments or who sing, or who can plug 00:27:47.180 --> 00:27:53.000 in a karaoke track and you want to do your own worship, it's, um, here's a video of our worship 00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:57.960 leaders walking you through how you could do worship in this space. And so there's a training video that 00:27:57.960 --> 00:28:02.780 they can access that teaches them how to do that. Same thing for communion. Here's where you can find 00:28:02.780 --> 00:28:07.300 communion in the service, but if you would like to lead communion in your own space, we believe that 00:28:07.300 --> 00:28:13.580 you can do that. And here is a video of one of our pastors walking you through how to lead communion 00:28:13.580 --> 00:28:20.220 and how to do that communion meditation. And so what we're trying to do is empower people to take on 00:28:20.220 --> 00:28:25.820 as much as they're comfortable with to really pastor the people who are there to participate in their 00:28:25.820 --> 00:28:31.980 watch party, but to not make it so that they absolutely must. And our hope is that over time, 00:28:31.980 --> 00:28:36.780 these groups of people who are gathering to do church together will start taking on some of that 00:28:36.780 --> 00:28:41.540 leadership and really making it their own. I mean, this gets down into the theological kind of point 00:28:41.540 --> 00:28:46.460 of the priesthood of all believers where, um, you know, the job of the church, at least in this 00:28:46.460 --> 00:28:51.880 theological line is the job of the church isn't to do it, but to empower and mobilize others to do the 00:28:51.880 --> 00:28:58.580 ministry and these acts. And so even things like communion, uh, 29% of churches right now, we know this from 00:28:58.580 --> 00:29:04.820 bar now, 29% of churches will not do communion even online. And so the idea of, Hey, we're doing 00:29:04.820 --> 00:29:10.900 communion online where we're going to step further and we're, we're empowering and training people to, 00:29:10.980 --> 00:29:17.420 to lead these communion elements in their own home and to be the pastor, to be the shepherd for others. 00:29:17.580 --> 00:29:23.420 Like there, there, there are some churches whose, you know, brains just exploded mere, merely at the suggestion of this. 00:29:24.140 --> 00:29:29.400 Um, when, when working with, with your, your, your church, what was that kind of priesthood of all believers? 00:29:29.400 --> 00:29:35.540 Was that already in place? Did the, did the church people, did they already understand that kind of coming 00:29:35.540 --> 00:29:40.000 into this or was this a new concept maybe before as a result of COVID? 00:29:40.280 --> 00:29:46.080 So yes and no, yes, they did kind of believe that, but no, we weren't really practicing it 00:29:46.080 --> 00:29:53.460 to that complete extent up to this point. Um, we are a church that is very, and we've been saying this 00:29:53.460 --> 00:29:58.860 for five years, you are the church, you are the church, you are the church. Um, we want to empower 00:29:58.860 --> 00:30:03.800 you to lead. We want to empower you to start ministries. We want to be behind you. We want 00:30:03.800 --> 00:30:09.760 to help you, but we want you to be the church. You know, I, um, I've been at Northeast at just 00:30:09.760 --> 00:30:15.780 attending for six years. And so I've been hearing them beat this drum for, for several years now, 00:30:15.780 --> 00:30:19.260 but they'll say, you know, if somebody calls the church and says, Hey, we need somebody from the 00:30:19.260 --> 00:30:23.440 church to go solve this problem. The response that people get is great. When, 00:30:23.440 --> 00:30:29.200 can you show up to help them? You are the church. Um, you know, so we have started kind of, of 00:30:29.200 --> 00:30:34.820 casting that vision for people and saying like, like church is going to be where you are. And so 00:30:34.820 --> 00:30:41.140 this weekend we took it a little bit further by, um, actually our, our lead pastor did like an 00:30:41.140 --> 00:30:49.460 ordination prayer over all of these watch party leaders. And he basically unleashed them to go and 00:30:49.460 --> 00:30:55.120 pastor these groups. And he's, I mean, it was, it was incredible. This, this idea kind of taking root 00:30:55.120 --> 00:31:01.780 all of a sudden for everybody like, Hey, our role as pastors is to empower you. That's what we believe. 00:31:01.780 --> 00:31:07.600 And we believe that that's biblical. So it's, uh, I think it was the next step in a journey that we've 00:31:07.600 --> 00:31:12.780 been taking for a long time. Can I get a link of, of that sermon? I'd like to actually hear that 00:31:12.780 --> 00:31:17.560 myself. And I want to include it on for others. Cause I know like, even how does leadership spin 00:31:17.560 --> 00:31:22.860 that? That's, this has been a conversation that I've had a lot of in recent weeks or months. Well, 00:31:23.240 --> 00:31:29.360 um, so if, if it's in the DNA, um, and you're giving this a shot and I know you're trying to 00:31:29.360 --> 00:31:33.680 figure out the longterm, but like, and you, but you're wanting to do this even pre COVID like this, 00:31:33.680 --> 00:31:41.100 uh, the, the, the micro model and the watch parties and stuff like that. And so this is going to, you 00:31:41.100 --> 00:31:46.180 think this is going to extend on, is this something that, that gets worked into the strategy moving 00:31:46.180 --> 00:31:54.260 forward? I really hope so. I really hope so. So right now we are, we have two campuses plus our online 00:31:54.260 --> 00:32:01.400 campus, our Northeast anywhere. Um, and our main campus is massive. That's where we're seeing, you 00:32:01.400 --> 00:32:07.580 know, 3000 people on a weekend. Um, I know not the biggest churches that you talk to, but, but we're, 00:32:07.700 --> 00:32:15.820 we're not small. Um, our second campus is actually very small and they have a very different culture. 00:32:16.220 --> 00:32:23.320 And one of the things that's been really cool to see is that people who really appreciate say the 00:32:23.320 --> 00:32:31.200 type of worship and the sermons that we have in, in the larger campus context, but prefer to be in a 00:32:31.200 --> 00:32:36.480 smaller campus are going to that other campus because we believe that all kinds of churches can reach 00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:43.900 people. And so what I'm excited to see as we go forward is us kind of opening up this arm of this 00:32:43.900 --> 00:32:48.340 other expression of the church that really connects with people. I mean, it's such, 00:32:48.500 --> 00:32:56.540 such an opportunity for us to reach people who don't like the small church, like a small town church 00:32:56.540 --> 00:33:01.560 feel and they don't like the mega church. What they like is being in somebody's living room. 00:33:02.340 --> 00:33:06.880 So, yeah, I mean, I, I see it going forward and I think that it very much matches who we are as a 00:33:06.880 --> 00:33:11.420 church. It'll be interesting to see. And I've seen different churches take a different spin on this, 00:33:11.480 --> 00:33:17.700 like the, the role of small groups, how small groups like exists either within the watch party 00:33:17.700 --> 00:33:23.400 or separate from it or ways to kind of incorporate it in. And you're right. I do think you reach a 00:33:23.400 --> 00:33:32.560 different type of person. And so the ability to have some of those is just to reach that different 00:33:32.560 --> 00:33:37.560 sort of person. Daniel M talks about, you know, having the different classifications, you know, 00:33:37.560 --> 00:33:43.740 like a large group of gathering, medium-sized group gathering and individual gathering. And he has 00:33:43.740 --> 00:33:49.840 this thing called social space that he calls, but it's basically that's that 20 person, that 10 to 20 00:33:49.840 --> 00:33:56.760 person group that, you know, and in his words, the church never really has reached that 10 to 20 00:33:56.760 --> 00:34:02.100 person group. Well, we're really good at the massive, we're really good at the like tiny, but it's that 10 00:34:02.100 --> 00:34:07.280 to 20, which is what I really think this watch party, you know, post COVID when we can actually 00:34:07.280 --> 00:34:14.300 gather together. Really, I think that that watch party has that interesting possibility of reaching 00:34:14.300 --> 00:34:19.600 those, those 10 to 20 people. Well, let me ask this because, because there are people, I mean, shoot, 00:34:19.660 --> 00:34:24.240 I had conversations today where people were like, yeah, watch parties are the thing that we're trying 00:34:24.240 --> 00:34:31.860 to figure out. So you've done this. So tell me this, what challenges have you overcome in this 00:34:31.860 --> 00:34:36.920 season? What was difficult? What was easy? Like, what were the challenges that you had to face 00:34:36.920 --> 00:34:43.340 in getting these watch parties launched? Biggest challenge. And I think that we rose to this 00:34:43.340 --> 00:34:48.460 challenge really well. And I mean, all the credit to the, first of all, the leadership that went before 00:34:48.460 --> 00:34:55.900 me and our senior leadership. But I think one of our biggest challenges was vision casting. There are a 00:34:55.900 --> 00:35:01.380 lot of people out there. I mean, I live in Kentucky. People are dying to get back into the churches. 00:35:01.620 --> 00:35:08.500 We are the kind, I mean, this is the God's land and we get into the church and it's hard for people 00:35:08.500 --> 00:35:14.820 that we're not gathering together. And so the, I mean, just weeks of beating that drum that says, 00:35:14.960 --> 00:35:25.020 hey, this is church. We are together. I think that the hurdle was people are desperate to get back to 00:35:25.020 --> 00:35:31.420 church. But I think that we were able to kind of circumvent that by being real intentional about 00:35:31.420 --> 00:35:37.380 that vision casting. It couldn't just be a simple, hey, just have a watch party and then not talk about 00:35:37.380 --> 00:35:44.280 anything else. Like I think our lead pastor said, sign up right now, go to this website right now, 00:35:44.400 --> 00:35:49.640 sign up, sign up a hundred times in the service last weekend, because that's how important it is. Like, 00:35:49.640 --> 00:35:56.600 it really is not important that we gather. But that emotional experience that people are having right 00:35:56.600 --> 00:36:01.680 now about just desperately wanting to go back to their church because it's what they know and that's 00:36:01.680 --> 00:36:07.480 where they feel like they have to be to encounter God. I think that's been one of the biggest struggles 00:36:07.480 --> 00:36:16.340 because some people only know experiencing God inside a mega church. And so when you kind of rip that away 00:36:16.340 --> 00:36:22.920 from them and say, your choice is to do church at home, that's been kind of painful for people. And so 00:36:22.920 --> 00:36:29.680 we're trying really hard to collect the stories of successes. We have had, we've heard a lot of feedback 00:36:29.680 --> 00:36:36.200 from parents who are getting an opportunity to disciple their adult children who wouldn't come to church 00:36:36.200 --> 00:36:40.940 anymore, but now they're at home together and starting to call their parents and say, mom, when am I coming 00:36:40.940 --> 00:36:45.680 over to watch church on Sunday? We're going to eat breakfast and do church. And what a gift for these 00:36:45.680 --> 00:36:50.840 parents to, who have been praying for these kids for who knows how long, right? To all of a sudden have 00:36:50.840 --> 00:36:56.580 this opportunity. But if we hadn't ever made it past the hurdle of, it's just devastation that we're not 00:36:56.580 --> 00:36:59.720 getting into the building, we wouldn't be able to hear those stories back. 00:37:00.860 --> 00:37:09.660 Wow. Once again, like the, the, the adult parent discipling the adult child, I've not heard that 00:37:09.660 --> 00:37:15.320 story. I mean, that that's a phenomenal opportunity for the, for people to utilize the gospel, to catch 00:37:15.320 --> 00:37:20.640 this as, as an opportunity to maybe connect with people that, that they haven't connected with 00:37:20.640 --> 00:37:25.580 before. It's, it's been a while. That's great. You know, when you said vision, I was actually 00:37:25.580 --> 00:37:30.320 expecting you to be, man, it was really, and I'm not, I'm not calling your lead pastor out, but I 00:37:30.320 --> 00:37:35.120 would say it was expecting more of, man, it was really hard to cast this vision because our lead 00:37:35.120 --> 00:37:40.060 pastor, you know, really wants to get back in the building and he's wanting to try to, you know, get 00:37:40.060 --> 00:37:44.900 things back to normal. And he really just wants to preach into the room and to see people. And he's 00:37:44.900 --> 00:37:49.220 trying to, trying to get back to that. And so the fact that you, you, the, the vision wasn't 00:37:49.220 --> 00:37:53.740 directed towards leadership, but it was more getting people to catch the vision. That's just, that, 00:37:54.100 --> 00:37:59.500 A, that speaks very highly of, of, of your church and your pastor who has maybe some forethought 00:37:59.500 --> 00:38:06.260 into empowering the people instead of trying to get back to the, to the old normal with that. 00:38:07.200 --> 00:38:12.120 That's really exciting. Have, has that been with the lead pastor? Has that been like a constant kind 00:38:12.120 --> 00:38:18.480 of thread with him where he's, he's wanting to engage and empower and taking a more missional 00:38:18.480 --> 00:38:26.260 approach maybe with, with ministry? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I have, um, so we actually have 00:38:26.260 --> 00:38:33.480 co-lead pastors, our executive pastor and our, um, I don't know, our senior pastor, they are like 00:38:33.480 --> 00:38:39.220 on the same level and they are both those kinds of people who are all about empowering the church to 00:38:39.220 --> 00:38:45.520 be the church. And so whenever, whenever it comes up, anything that is about casting that vision 00:38:45.520 --> 00:38:52.260 and encouraging people to go out and, and do it, it's very natural for them. None of this has seemed 00:38:52.260 --> 00:38:56.540 foreign coming out of their mouths, which is something that I think helps our people get behind 00:38:56.540 --> 00:39:02.200 it. Right. None, none of this sounds weird. None of this sounds unexpected. We are walking around 00:39:02.200 --> 00:39:07.060 saying we're the love the bill church. And if we were chomping at the bit to get by back into the 00:39:07.060 --> 00:39:12.040 building, no matter how many people that hurt, it wouldn't, I mean, it, it would damage our witness 00:39:12.040 --> 00:39:19.560 that we have been so intentional about building. It's exciting to me to hear a church that wasn't 00:39:19.560 --> 00:39:26.120 even doing online small groups pre COVID or was just ramping it up right, right at the midst of COVID, 00:39:26.740 --> 00:39:32.500 you know, starting to get the whole community online thing figured out has gone, not just the 00:39:32.500 --> 00:39:39.620 doing community online, but taking it a step further and figuring out how to do a community 00:39:39.620 --> 00:39:44.900 through online and in physical space. Like, I mean, essentially your, your church online is spinning 00:39:44.900 --> 00:39:51.920 up locations, physical locations around where people are gathering together. And as a two campus multi-site, 00:39:51.920 --> 00:39:57.800 you know, people who go down this road, like the, the, the Jay Cranda saddlebacks, the elevations, the, 00:39:57.800 --> 00:40:04.700 the, the, the, the crossroads up in Cincinnati, like the, the, the common theme for, for years was, 00:40:04.700 --> 00:40:10.100 okay, we're going to cluster these micro locations together. We're going to spin up an eventual campus, 00:40:10.100 --> 00:40:15.460 maybe in the area. Once we get critical mass, you know, and even I, uh, in my time at Christ, 00:40:15.460 --> 00:40:21.060 Celsia, Miami, we, we, we tried that where we tried to, and, and, uh, for some people that worked for, 00:40:21.180 --> 00:40:27.380 for a lot of others, it didn't. Um, and so for a while, the, the micro location, the smaller locations 00:40:27.380 --> 00:40:33.200 really took a hit because people were trying to say, oh, this is going to launch our future campuses. 00:40:33.460 --> 00:40:40.380 So therefore it has to do that. That's the judge of, of being successful. But what's interesting, 00:40:40.380 --> 00:40:46.220 you know, even in your context, getting a person to understand their missional responsibility, 00:40:46.220 --> 00:40:54.940 to invest in their neighborhood and into their friends, to be a shepherd to their, to their family 00:40:54.940 --> 00:41:00.660 and the people who live around them, even to the point of like leading communion and being that 00:41:00.660 --> 00:41:06.720 pastor voice, that's exciting. That's a win into itself. And as you get that to replicate and 00:41:06.720 --> 00:41:11.400 multiply, you know, that, that's where I think Northeast Christian sees a movement happening 00:41:11.400 --> 00:41:17.040 through this hundred plus, not even counting the second hundred, that's going to come on 00:41:17.040 --> 00:41:22.640 gradually over time. Once those people get vision of this and can move forward. I mean, yeah, I'm, 00:41:22.800 --> 00:41:26.980 I'm really excited about what's happening up in Kentucky evidently. So well done. 00:41:27.500 --> 00:41:33.140 Oh, thank you. It's a, it's a big, big team working to make it happen. And it's just incredible 00:41:33.140 --> 00:41:34.960 to watch. It's really, really incredible. 00:41:36.020 --> 00:41:40.320 Hey, so if somebody wants to get started, let's, let's, let's assume a couple of things. 00:41:40.460 --> 00:41:44.460 Let's, let's assume it's a, it's a small to medium, medium-sized church. We don't have to 00:41:44.460 --> 00:41:49.480 put a number on it, medium-sized church. They are doing something in context of small groups online, 00:41:49.480 --> 00:41:55.940 whether it's moving physical over the church like that. Hey, they're really interested in, 00:41:55.940 --> 00:42:00.640 in learning about this and doing this. Like where do they start? Point, point them in the right 00:42:00.640 --> 00:42:01.020 direction. 00:42:01.240 --> 00:42:06.460 Oh, the right direction is that Facebook group called online plus digital church leaders. 00:42:06.720 --> 00:42:13.900 That wealth of information. Um, everything you could ever possibly need to know is, has already 00:42:13.900 --> 00:42:22.200 been said there. Like, um, I, I have learned more and I have passed along more to leadership from that 00:42:22.200 --> 00:42:29.280 community of people who are already doing this than, um, probably any other place. I just have 00:42:29.280 --> 00:42:35.860 been so blessed by that collective, um, not just that, that collective, that, that group of people 00:42:35.860 --> 00:42:41.380 who are willing to share their resources. I know I keep coming back to my own leadership and saying, 00:42:41.500 --> 00:42:48.280 the thing that I love the most about working in church online is that it seems like people who 00:42:48.280 --> 00:42:55.920 lead in church online are very open-handed with everything that they have. I haven't needed to 00:42:55.920 --> 00:43:04.240 fight and, and stress and work to find information or to, to network with people who can help me get 00:43:04.240 --> 00:43:12.200 to where I need to go. Um, and that has been so important. And, um, in the end, when I needed 00:43:12.200 --> 00:43:17.580 people to pour, well, when I needed people to pastor me at the beginning of COVID, that's where I turned. 00:43:17.580 --> 00:43:22.540 And, you know, I mean, you heard it, Jason Morris preached a whole sermon to me in the comments 00:43:22.540 --> 00:43:29.240 because I was just losing it. Right. So just find somebody who's doing it already and start asking 00:43:29.240 --> 00:43:34.300 the question. And consequently, that is what we're telling a lot of our people. We know that they're, 00:43:34.720 --> 00:43:38.860 when they start hosting their watch parties, the biggest thing that they're going to ask us is how 00:43:38.860 --> 00:43:44.400 do I get the sermon on the TV? And one of the things that we're coaching them is find your person, 00:43:44.520 --> 00:43:50.580 find your person who understands the tech, because you can build that relationship with someone 00:43:50.580 --> 00:43:56.660 because they will be able to walk you through what you need to learn. Um, and you'll be able to get 00:43:56.660 --> 00:44:01.520 more specific answers to what you need. And so reaching out to somebody, making a connection, 00:44:01.640 --> 00:44:06.000 building a relationship with somebody who is a step or two down the road, or who is doing something 00:44:06.000 --> 00:44:08.980 that you really admire, I think is the best way to get started. 00:44:09.640 --> 00:44:16.440 No, I, I, I love that. And, and what I really love is that you guys launched, you know, it's so, 00:44:16.600 --> 00:44:21.360 so often in the, in the church land, it would be, we got to get this perfect. We got to coach, 00:44:21.400 --> 00:44:25.720 we got to overdevelop, we got to overtrain. This has got to be the perfect environment. They've got 00:44:25.720 --> 00:44:31.660 to be able to do all of, all of these things. And there's value in being prepared. Uh, but there's 00:44:31.660 --> 00:44:36.960 also value and, and I'm going to quote the, the great theologian, Gary V. I actually don't think 00:44:36.960 --> 00:44:42.020 he's a theologian, although it was a joke, but version one is better than version none. Um, you 00:44:42.020 --> 00:44:45.340 know, therefore don't worry about tomorrow for tomorrow. Worry about itself. Each day is enough 00:44:45.340 --> 00:44:51.380 trouble for its own. Matthew 634. I, I can't quote that. That's biblical. So, but getting started, 00:44:51.380 --> 00:44:59.580 like actually doing it. And once the boat's moving, steer as you're going in this COVID season, 00:44:59.580 --> 00:45:04.780 it's very easy to look and say, Oh, we can't do this. We can't do this. We can't do this. And it's 00:45:04.780 --> 00:45:10.200 funny, they can't, they overwhelm and they pile on top of, and you feel like you're stuck. You know, 00:45:10.220 --> 00:45:15.020 sometimes I, myself, I get in this cyclical loop where it's like, I don't, I don't know how to get 00:45:15.020 --> 00:45:20.920 out of this because I'm overthinking the situation instead of analyzing and saying, okay, 00:45:21.020 --> 00:45:27.460 what can I do today? How can I win today? And then figuring out how to build from there in the 00:45:27.460 --> 00:45:33.160 fact that, yeah, you know what, at this point, let's just press play on the proverbial technological 00:45:33.160 --> 00:45:38.140 VCR. That's all I need you to do. Press play, um, and, and clean your house. Cause I'm guessing 00:45:38.140 --> 00:45:43.460 probably some level of cleaning your house is involved. Uh, but then, and then after that growing 00:45:43.460 --> 00:45:48.320 and, and, and developing with it, which sounds like from the DNA of your church, you're, you're, 00:45:48.380 --> 00:45:55.160 you're not that, that far away from as continuing to cast vision for what these smaller locations, 00:45:55.160 --> 00:46:00.180 for what these watch parties can be centered around Kentucky. Like this is super awesome. 00:46:00.520 --> 00:46:05.660 I I'm excited to, I want to hear the sermon. I want to get updates. I want to see what's going on. 00:46:05.820 --> 00:46:12.700 You, you had some, and I saw this in that Facebook group. You've got some resources that, uh, that I 00:46:12.700 --> 00:46:17.020 think you're providing. It's, it's like, uh, was, it was like a chat host. And then the other thing, 00:46:17.020 --> 00:46:21.100 I, you know, I'd love, if you've got an updated copy of that, I'd love to share that. Cause I'm 00:46:21.100 --> 00:46:26.380 sure some, some other churches would be interested in getting that as well. Hey, as, as we're landing 00:46:26.380 --> 00:46:31.360 the plane, any, any closing thoughts on your end, Adrian, you know, I, my biggest closing thought 00:46:31.360 --> 00:46:37.560 is everything is changing. Like everything might be different in six months than it is right now. 00:46:37.620 --> 00:46:42.220 Everything might be different in three weeks than it is right now. Um, you know, we, we had an 00:46:42.220 --> 00:46:47.760 announcement. What was that last week? That was like all places of worship are essential. They must be 00:46:47.760 --> 00:46:53.960 open right now. Um, everything is changing over and over and over and over again. And so we just have 00:46:53.960 --> 00:47:00.660 to be patient with ourselves and we have to be, um, willing to be agile because it can be really easy 00:47:00.660 --> 00:47:06.880 to get fixated on what your plan is. And I don't, first of all, I don't think God works that way, 00:47:06.880 --> 00:47:14.240 but, um, but when you get fixated on one really specific plan, it makes it really hard to adjust 00:47:14.240 --> 00:47:21.260 with the changes. We did a Facebook live to explain our watch party model last week. We took our, 00:47:21.380 --> 00:47:25.680 our team of people who've been developing the whole thing and we just answered questions and we talked 00:47:25.680 --> 00:47:30.620 about what we were doing. And one of the things that I got to say to our people was the beauty of 00:47:30.620 --> 00:47:36.140 all of this is that we're doing it with you. We're in watch parties too. And so we're going to keep 00:47:36.140 --> 00:47:40.900 learning and we're going to keep adjusting and we're going to update all of your materials so that you 00:47:40.900 --> 00:47:47.840 know more as we know more. And so my big encouragement to everybody would be just hold on, 00:47:48.040 --> 00:47:54.180 trust that God is going to do something amazing with this season and be willing to make changes as 00:47:54.180 --> 00:48:01.760 necessary. Yeah. Agile is such a, it's such a good word and actually, uh, dropping names. That was, 00:48:01.760 --> 00:48:07.280 uh, Carrie Newhoff referenced that as like one of his seven effective churches post COVID. The word 00:48:07.280 --> 00:48:11.620 was agile. And it was funny. I, I thought that was weird for a second. I was like agile. That's, I mean, 00:48:11.620 --> 00:48:17.480 that's like software developer code, but in it, but it really does come down to, we can't, I mean, 00:48:17.660 --> 00:48:23.340 people, churches, I think are going to struggle if they're locked on the models in this season and 00:48:23.340 --> 00:48:30.400 real and thinking that the model is the finish line, as opposed to the go and make disciples, 00:48:30.560 --> 00:48:36.900 Matthew 28. Um, and, and, and every church needs to be analyzing whether or not what we're doing is, 00:48:36.900 --> 00:48:43.640 is effective for the, for the season. Um, not, not tradition, uh, not what we were in the past, 00:48:43.720 --> 00:48:49.720 not what we were February, 2020, but what, what's effective moving forward. And so, but even that 00:48:49.720 --> 00:48:56.520 goes back to Matthew, or excuse me, Matthew six, that, uh, do not worry about tomorrow. Um, and agile 00:48:56.520 --> 00:49:01.860 church is, is just going to tackle what it's got in front of us. Uh, it's not going to try to adjust 00:49:01.860 --> 00:49:06.560 for, for tomorrow and the stresses and the struggles of that. It's going to, it's going to launch with, 00:49:06.660 --> 00:49:12.580 with what it can. So that, that, that's a, that's a very good word to wrap up. Well, Hey, I'm excited 00:49:12.580 --> 00:49:18.560 about your church. I'm excited, uh, about this, this, this door that you're on getting ready to open up. 00:49:18.560 --> 00:49:23.480 And so we'll have to have you back on at some point, even just to celebrate what's going on, 00:49:23.480 --> 00:49:28.040 to learn, uh, what you're, what you're learning through this season as, as you're, you're growing 00:49:28.040 --> 00:49:34.700 your church and heading hundreds ish plus or minus micro locations, watch parties right at launch. 00:49:34.700 --> 00:49:39.600 That's awesome. So for Adrian, this is Jeff with the church digital. Thanks for joining us. And, 00:49:39.600 --> 00:49:41.600 and, uh, we'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good day.