WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.100 All right, you got episode 84 of the Church Digital Podcast, once again, powered by Stadia 00:00:04.100 --> 00:00:10.860 Church Planting. Jeff here. I love this episode. I love this conversation because we get hypothetical. 00:00:10.860 --> 00:00:17.400 We get theoretical very, very quickly. We're bringing in, and every time I talk with this guy, 00:00:17.480 --> 00:00:22.980 we end up getting hypothetical and theoretical because that's just a bleeding edge tech guy 00:00:22.980 --> 00:00:29.280 that he is. So we're bringing in Christopher Binnick. Now, Chris is actually the lead pastor 00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:38.780 at First Presbyterian Church here in Miami. His facility, his campus is located in the heart of 00:00:38.780 --> 00:00:45.520 downtown Miami, right off of Brickell Avenue. It's a historical landmark building. And so when you 00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:50.500 think Presbyterian Church, no offense to Presbyterians, when you think this historical 00:00:50.500 --> 00:00:58.300 landmark facility, you don't always think a bleeding edge tech guy, which is really the grounding of 00:00:58.560 --> 00:01:04.820 what Christopher is, which makes this conversation so fascinating because as much as he's in this, 00:01:04.900 --> 00:01:11.780 you know, call it an older facility, more traditional facility, he's already thinking and imagining how to 00:01:11.780 --> 00:01:18.340 transition and how to move these things into a digital sphere, virtual reality. And as a matter of 00:01:18.340 --> 00:01:23.220 fact, Christopher was more than just even being the lead pastor of this church, has been working and 00:01:23.220 --> 00:01:29.660 developing virtual reality platforms called churches plus so that other churches can get on board with 00:01:29.660 --> 00:01:35.940 virtual reality and doing a number of other areas involving a company that he runs called co-creators. 00:01:36.160 --> 00:01:40.280 All of a sudden, you're starting to see where more than just a conversation about a church, 00:01:40.280 --> 00:01:47.560 we're talking about some trends of where we are going as a church, which is really the heart of this 00:01:47.560 --> 00:01:54.000 conversation. This is not practical, as much as it is theoretical and keeping yourself in check. What are the 00:01:54.000 --> 00:02:01.680 steps that we the church are doing mid COVID here, maybe coming post COVID, maybe not? What are we doing 00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:07.560 today? What steps are we doing today that can help us to become the church that we need to be for tomorrow? So 00:02:07.560 --> 00:02:12.020 here's who I'm bringing into the conversation. Once again, Christopher Benick, who's lead pastor over at 00:02:12.020 --> 00:02:18.860 First Press Miami, as well as Ray D'Armis, who's co-host once again with the Church Digital Podcast, but also 00:02:18.860 --> 00:02:25.000 digital pastor for Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:31.900 Planting, in a conversation that I'm simply calling, getting beyond the buildings of today. Okay, 00:02:31.900 --> 00:02:40.420 everybody, here you go. Probably, oh boy, it's been maybe a year and a half ago when, well, 00:02:40.620 --> 00:02:47.680 you know, a year and a half ago, maybe, there was an opportunity. So I've written on VR for a long 00:02:47.680 --> 00:02:55.400 time, right? So I've, back when I was doing my, so I have a doctorate of theology, or a doctorate of 00:02:55.400 --> 00:03:01.580 ministry in theology and science from Pittsburgh Seminary. And that program was the first of its kind 00:03:01.580 --> 00:03:06.400 in the world, and I was in the first cohort. I think I was the youngest person in the cohort. 00:03:07.040 --> 00:03:14.440 And so I was, that's where I really kind of got into more intentional conversations about 00:03:14.440 --> 00:03:21.680 emerging technology. And one of the things that I was doing early on was I just started blogging. 00:03:21.820 --> 00:03:28.600 There weren't many people really blogging about the intersection of, you know, science and faith and 00:03:28.600 --> 00:03:35.660 tech at that point. And I wrote a piece on VR. And I had looked at, you know, kind of what existed. 00:03:35.660 --> 00:03:43.580 And I talked about what would that look like for the church to come. And a gentleman who was in Europe, 00:03:43.580 --> 00:03:52.000 actually, somehow stumbled upon this, found this article. And within a week and a half, I was having, 00:03:52.000 --> 00:04:02.400 I was in a YouTube seminar that they were doing. They're supposed to be doing it in VR, but it literally 00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:08.300 crashed the platform they were on. And so they had to move it over to, I don't know what it was at that 00:04:08.300 --> 00:04:12.120 time. I don't know if it was Skype or Google Hangouts, or I don't even know if those were around. 00:04:13.060 --> 00:04:19.780 But Philip Rosdale was one of the guys that had developed Second Life. And so here I was, like, 00:04:19.900 --> 00:04:24.620 just kind of, you know, waxing philosophically on some of this stuff. And all of a sudden, then 00:04:24.620 --> 00:04:31.040 immediately, I'm in a conversation with somebody who's actually done it. There were real limitations. 00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:37.660 If you saw Second Life, there were real limitations to it. And part of the limitations were is that it 00:04:37.660 --> 00:04:44.240 wasn't a stable platform. And part of the thing is, if you actually pay attention to VR, and you're in 00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:52.340 VR, it's the VR world is pretty crazy, right? So if you can, you know, if you can imagine it, 00:04:52.420 --> 00:04:59.560 you can do it. And people can imagine a lot of bad things is what I found out. And so, so I was 00:04:59.560 --> 00:05:04.460 looking at like, well, what would church look like, but it looked to me like there weren't any platforms 00:05:04.460 --> 00:05:12.160 that you could actually do this in without having chaos. And so, you know, later down the road, 00:05:12.260 --> 00:05:19.160 David Soto, DJ Soto, you know, started doing some VR church stuff. And there had been other attempts 00:05:19.160 --> 00:05:23.820 at this. I knew people who had done stuff in Second Life. And it was like, they had a small group, but 00:05:23.820 --> 00:05:29.800 everyone kind of felt like it was hokey. And, you know, you could have somebody just run in and be 00:05:29.800 --> 00:05:34.080 really disruptive, and there was nothing you could do about it. And so it was just like, 00:05:34.080 --> 00:05:40.700 people control your church all the time. Then DJ, you know, got into this and DJ actually came down 00:05:40.700 --> 00:05:45.440 not too long ago, and was in Miami and was talking with me said, you know, it's really interesting, 00:05:45.440 --> 00:05:49.900 because before I did any of this stuff, I saw the stuff you were writing about VR and church. 00:05:50.340 --> 00:05:56.060 And, and so it was kind of prophetic for me. And then and now, you know, we all look at DJ and go, 00:05:56.140 --> 00:06:01.360 man, DJ has done all this great stuff and, and VR and kind of been a pioneer in that space. But he was 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:05.840 really, you know, he was just trying to get his head around what would this look like. And then 00:06:05.840 --> 00:06:09.940 all of a sudden, he got in that space. And we all know, you know, anybody deals with tech knows, 00:06:09.940 --> 00:06:14.780 it's great to like, think about this stuff and what it could be. But actually, in practice, 00:06:14.780 --> 00:06:20.280 it's way messier, right? I mean, it's just, you know, and everyone's looking for the quick fix. 00:06:20.280 --> 00:06:26.360 And it's like, there is no quick fix stuff breaks, you have to learn stuff, because you have to know how 00:06:26.360 --> 00:06:32.480 to troubleshoot, because that's going to be a problem. And so I was looking at this. And, 00:06:32.480 --> 00:06:38.280 you know, I think DJ is great guy really respect him, and the work that he's done. But what I was 00:06:38.280 --> 00:06:45.380 noticing was, is there wasn't a lot of work being done in and reformed churches on this subject. And 00:06:45.380 --> 00:06:51.000 there are some pretty hefty theological issues when you start getting into virtual church. And what that 00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:56.860 means, particularly with regard to sacraments, and, you know, people always raise questions about, 00:06:57.060 --> 00:07:01.740 well, what about incarnational ministry? What does that look like? And I thought, well, nobody's really 00:07:01.740 --> 00:07:07.600 talking about this in reformed churches. So how do we get people in reformed churches to talk about it? 00:07:07.600 --> 00:07:17.540 And so I applied in the, I'm in the Presbyterian Church USA, and the Presbyterian Church USA is 00:07:17.540 --> 00:07:22.080 kind of a mix of people from very liberal to very conservative and everything in between. 00:07:23.060 --> 00:07:29.620 And admittedly, the church was just struggling to figure out how to do new church developments well. 00:07:30.540 --> 00:07:37.640 And so they started this initiative called 1001 Worship in Communities. And anyone could apply for it if 00:07:37.640 --> 00:07:43.220 you had essentially a worshiping community that was getting together and gathering. And I knew somebody 00:07:43.220 --> 00:07:47.040 who was doing that in Charleston and doing a great job with it. And they would give you a little bit of 00:07:47.040 --> 00:07:52.420 money if you did it. And so I did a pitch to him and said, look, I don't have anything yet. But I have 00:07:52.420 --> 00:07:59.980 an idea. And they essentially wrote back to me and said, we'll give you the initial grant to get the 00:07:59.980 --> 00:08:06.040 equipment. We don't think you can do anything with this. But if anybody can make it happen in virtual 00:08:06.040 --> 00:08:09.880 reality, you're the person in our denomination that would be able to do it. 00:08:10.220 --> 00:08:16.500 And so they just kind of took a risk and threw money, a little bit of money at me. And so I was 00:08:16.500 --> 00:08:21.860 able to afford to go out and buy the equipment to do that. So I started going out. And once I started 00:08:21.860 --> 00:08:28.160 looking at it, I'm a sustainability guy. I do not like to build anything without a system behind it. 00:08:28.280 --> 00:08:33.060 I think churches do a terrible job of this across the board. They don't look at sustainability as 00:08:33.060 --> 00:08:37.760 particularly like, and you, you know, this, if anybody does like now that everybody's in this 00:08:37.760 --> 00:08:44.180 digital platform, uh, you know, mode, uh, they're just throwing stuff at the wall. They're not even 00:08:44.180 --> 00:08:48.280 looking at their mission. They're not looking at the, you know, uh, they're not looking at their long 00:08:48.280 --> 00:08:54.400 term. And so, um, for me, I started looking at it and going, well, from a sustainability standpoint, 00:08:54.400 --> 00:09:00.060 this is really difficult to be in VR. And I really, uh, tried to pay attention to what DJ 00:09:00.060 --> 00:09:05.360 was doing and hearing kind of some of the critiques that he and other people had about their experiences 00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:13.420 in VR. And one of the things that we figured out and that was, uh, was that stability of the 00:09:13.420 --> 00:09:20.600 platform was a huge issue. Um, you could go in and be in a, you know, preaching a sermon and just 00:09:20.600 --> 00:09:26.620 mid-sermon get thrown out, which is disastrous for a preacher, right? Like if you're, if you're 00:09:26.620 --> 00:09:32.500 setting up a, if you're setting up a problem and then you cut out, you leave people, you rip their 00:09:32.500 --> 00:09:37.000 tent down and they have no place to live. Right. Like, and so it's just horrible. And then, and then 00:09:37.000 --> 00:09:43.400 the second thing that we saw is look, there were no quality controls on any of this. Um, and then the 00:09:43.400 --> 00:09:49.760 third thing we found was that it was almost impossible to replicate anything in the real world that 00:09:49.760 --> 00:09:55.700 people would have a sacred tie to, uh, to have an expression of it in the digital world. And, 00:09:55.700 --> 00:10:02.840 you know, not everyone, like I, I am fortunate to be part of, uh, uh, to be the pastor at first 00:10:02.840 --> 00:10:08.000 Miami Presbyterian church. We have a beautiful piece of property on Brickell, uh, on, on Brickell 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:14.720 Ave downtown in Miami. Um, but people can't experience that, uh, in any real way if they don't live 00:10:14.720 --> 00:10:22.660 in Miami. Uh, and so what about the person in, uh, Singapore or, uh, you know, Australia who wants to 00:10:22.660 --> 00:10:28.720 actually see something about our church? And so, so all this to say, we, we started getting into this 00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:33.000 deeper conversation and my initial thought was, well, I'm going to create a version of the church, 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:41.060 but then how do I actually have some protection over the sacred site, which we value and have a way that 00:10:41.060 --> 00:10:46.160 it's stable to actually be able to create a message. And so what we started doing is, uh, 00:10:46.160 --> 00:10:51.880 start talking to some people and started talking to some developers. And, uh, we said, well, if you can 00:10:51.880 --> 00:10:59.740 dream it, we can do it. And, uh, we found, uh, the right people to put it together. And we just said, 00:10:59.740 --> 00:11:05.580 we're not just going to build one church. We're going to build a platform so we can have infinite 00:11:05.580 --> 00:11:12.920 churches. And so this conversation goes well beyond reform theology, but it opens up the conversation 00:11:12.920 --> 00:11:18.720 because there's all sorts of theologies that enrich the kingdom. And how do, how do we enable people to 00:11:18.720 --> 00:11:25.180 be in this space technologically to be able to do that? Um, and then beyond that, we are crazy as a 00:11:25.180 --> 00:11:32.740 church, uh, universal, if we're not going to, uh, evangelize online. Um, you know, there's 7.7 00:11:32.740 --> 00:11:40.300 billion people or something in the world, uh, 3.5 billion of them at least are online and 2.2 billion 00:11:40.300 --> 00:11:46.780 of them are gamers. Like, um, you know, I don't know what local re you know, local churches evangelism 00:11:46.780 --> 00:11:53.140 plans are, but that's a pretty big area to be able to pull from. Uh, and even if you just pull in 00:11:53.140 --> 00:11:59.020 percentage odds off that, um, there's a way to build sustainability for your church, uh, in a way 00:11:59.020 --> 00:12:05.180 that, that people haven't thought of before. So, so, you know, looking at that and then I think the 00:12:05.180 --> 00:12:10.160 big thing beyond that is, you know, there's also a lot of churches and we're a historic church. They 00:12:10.160 --> 00:12:17.520 have overhead issues. So if you're church planning, like, you know, what's an easier way to church 00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:23.220 plant than to have a digital version where you don't have overhead, uh, it's in the cloud, your pipes 00:12:23.220 --> 00:12:28.800 don't break, uh, your roof's not going to get blown off by a hurricane. Uh, you're not going to have 00:12:28.800 --> 00:12:35.960 any of those issues and you can make your worship, uh, as dynamic as you can imagine in VR. Uh, so, 00:12:35.960 --> 00:12:40.840 you know, now don't get me wrong. VR is there. There's still some limitations in VR. You have a 00:12:40.840 --> 00:12:46.500 little bit of the uncanny Valley thing still with avatars. Uh, totally get that. Uh, but as far as 00:12:46.500 --> 00:12:53.220 the physical structures that you can make, uh, in VR, I mean, they're unbelievable. They're beautiful. 00:12:53.220 --> 00:13:03.160 Uh, and you know, when we did the first Miami, if you go to, uh, uh, church plus, so it's C-H-V-R-C-H-P-L-U-S.com 00:13:03.160 --> 00:13:08.960 and you look under our services, you'll see that there's a, there's a picture of, uh, the first 00:13:08.960 --> 00:13:14.020 Miami build. And we did it kind of in a medium resolution, almost like a cartoony field. But if 00:13:14.020 --> 00:13:18.140 you look, there's, there's bushes there. And if you actually look online at our church, there's no 00:13:18.140 --> 00:13:23.080 bushes in the front. Well, we wanted bushes. Uh, so we could put bushes, uh, in front of the church 00:13:23.080 --> 00:13:29.340 when you go into the narthex, we have these old, terrible doors that have been replaced forever. 00:13:29.340 --> 00:13:32.660 And they look like they're made of leather and we wanted to put glass doors there forever. 00:13:32.880 --> 00:13:38.880 Well, we made them in glass in VR, right? We can do all our upgrades right now. And, uh, and so 00:13:38.880 --> 00:13:44.060 it's like, it's a pretty awesome thing. So I'm excited. We, we are going to do here in a couple 00:13:44.060 --> 00:13:49.820 months, we're going to do the formal launch in VR, um, of, of that site. It's already built. It's ready 00:13:49.820 --> 00:13:56.260 to go. Uh, but part of this is, is, uh, getting it out there so people know, and this, uh, will invite 00:13:56.260 --> 00:14:01.480 some people to come in and we'll do an initial worship service in that space. Uh, but our hope 00:14:01.480 --> 00:14:07.420 then is to help people to create kind of these stable environments, um, there and, and slowly 00:14:07.420 --> 00:14:12.960 we'll be having people come over. I know DJ has, uh, done some small groups, uh, on our platform 00:14:12.960 --> 00:14:17.400 right now. And, and, uh, and so, uh, it's good stuff. We're really excited about it. 00:14:17.400 --> 00:14:18.400 That's amazing. 00:14:18.400 --> 00:14:25.660 Awesome. So it literally in this world where the buildings are useless, you went and created 00:14:25.660 --> 00:14:32.220 a virtual building church and are getting to roll it out in VR where people can experience, 00:14:32.220 --> 00:14:38.960 um, what, what, what a service, what, uh, what the environment is and feels like at, at first 00:14:38.960 --> 00:14:43.260 pres here in Miami, which by the way, like the building itself is glorious where it's 00:14:43.260 --> 00:14:50.260 at on Brickle Avenue. It is, um, honestly, it's probably one of the most premier location 00:14:50.260 --> 00:14:55.580 churches in all of Miami, just literally sitting on the water. Um, you know, I can remember I 00:14:55.580 --> 00:15:00.220 sat down and had, had lunch with you, um, at a bunch of food trucks overlooking, you know, 00:15:00.280 --> 00:15:04.680 I guess it's the bay right there at the water walking around and, and it's, it's just an 00:15:04.680 --> 00:15:11.660 incredible physical experience, but that you, you've replicated, um, now in virtual reality, 00:15:11.660 --> 00:15:17.700 like the, the church overall, what, what's been their, their take on this so far? What's 00:15:17.700 --> 00:15:22.380 been the reaction? How are the people? Cause it's, it's an, let me ask this question maybe 00:15:22.380 --> 00:15:27.020 even before that, what's the demographic of the church? It's, it's a much older building. 00:15:27.020 --> 00:15:32.440 And I know you've gone through some, some restoration, like, so what's the demographic and how are they 00:15:32.440 --> 00:15:37.620 responding to this new technological approach? Yeah. So our, our demographic is actually, we're, 00:15:37.720 --> 00:15:43.440 we're pretty young. Uh, the average age of our leadership is like 40 in our church, which, uh, 00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:49.360 is, is pretty young from, I think most churches. Uh, but that, that represents, uh, Brickle where 00:15:49.360 --> 00:15:55.440 the average age on Brickle is like 37 years old. Uh, so, you know, at 44, I'm like an old man in 00:15:55.440 --> 00:16:01.320 my church. Right. So, uh, but, but, uh, and, and we're very, probably the best thing about our 00:16:01.320 --> 00:16:06.940 churches. We're very multi-ethnic church. So we have people from all over the world. Um, 00:16:06.940 --> 00:16:13.780 you know, I know, uh, I think at one point we had, we had more than, I don't know, 35 countries 00:16:13.780 --> 00:16:19.160 represented. And this was when I got there about a year ago, uh, you know, just about a hundred 00:16:19.160 --> 00:16:25.140 people, active membership. I mean, uh, not a very big church, small church. Um, we've, uh, 00:16:25.140 --> 00:16:30.860 about doubled that here in the first year. And so, uh, it's, it's really grown. So, so we're 00:16:30.860 --> 00:16:36.180 in Brickle, Brickles, the, for people who don't live in Miami is the financial district, 00:16:36.180 --> 00:16:43.020 uh, in, in Miami, it's, they call it the, the Southern wall street. Uh, and we are literally 00:16:43.020 --> 00:16:47.760 our churches right in the center of the highest population density, South of New York city. 00:16:47.760 --> 00:16:54.240 Uh, so we're, we're in a really interesting place. Uh, and what a lot of people don't 00:16:54.240 --> 00:16:59.560 know about South Florida is it has become like a startup Mecca, uh, in the United States. 00:16:59.560 --> 00:17:04.440 I think it's like second only to, I think it's on Inc magazine, second only to Silicon Valley 00:17:04.440 --> 00:17:08.380 now. So there's a lot of people in startup culture there. And so we have a lot of people 00:17:08.380 --> 00:17:15.020 who, uh, they get that, they get that mindset. Um, you know, I've kind of got most of my press 00:17:15.020 --> 00:17:19.300 actually around artificial intelligence. Cause I talk about automation a lot. And I talk about, 00:17:19.300 --> 00:17:25.960 um, um, actually I talk about automation crisis a lot. And so, uh, the stats on automation 00:17:25.960 --> 00:17:31.720 crisis, uh, projections are that, and the best report in the world essentially says by 2030, 00:17:31.720 --> 00:17:37.840 we'll have 11 to 22% on employment, uh, automation. And it's not that there won't be 00:17:37.840 --> 00:17:43.840 new jobs. It's just that, um, we have to retrain people to do those jobs, but those automation 00:17:43.840 --> 00:17:51.160 percentages only go up. So in like, say a church, you know, most little churches, um, the vast 00:17:51.160 --> 00:17:57.020 majority of churches in the United States are a hundred members or less. Um, and the reality is 00:17:57.020 --> 00:18:01.180 with that automation issue is that, is you're going to have, um, you're going to have all these 00:18:01.180 --> 00:18:04.780 churches that are struggling to even have a pastor. They're struggling to pay for their overhead. 00:18:05.180 --> 00:18:12.080 And if they lose even 11%, okay, 11% unemployment, think about that. So they lose 11% of their income, 00:18:12.080 --> 00:18:16.160 not because people aren't generous, just because they don't have it. Uh, then all of a sudden 00:18:16.160 --> 00:18:19.900 what's going to happen to them. Well, they're, they're going to fold is what's going to happen. 00:18:19.900 --> 00:18:24.620 And it doesn't mean that the church universal isn't going to exist because we know the church 00:18:24.620 --> 00:18:29.840 is not our buildings, right? We, we know it's the community, but, but what is going to happen is 00:18:29.840 --> 00:18:36.600 this overhead that, that, you know, that we, um, that we have these costs that we have, they, 00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:41.520 they are going to kill the institutional church. And so we're going to have to think about new ways 00:18:41.520 --> 00:18:47.060 of being and doing church. And so, uh, I, I have been talking about that all over the world, 00:18:47.060 --> 00:18:51.320 uh, to people. I invited to speak at different places and I go and I talk about this and I talk 00:18:51.320 --> 00:18:57.340 about, well, what are churches sustainability plans? Um, because if you don't have a sustainability plan, 00:18:57.520 --> 00:19:04.200 uh, I mean, 22% unemployment is 3% less than the great depression. And those numbers only rising, 00:19:04.200 --> 00:19:10.260 right? So people think Corona virus is bad. Corona virus is just the taste of what's coming. 00:19:10.260 --> 00:19:15.200 We have hope we now it may be a year, but we have hope that eventually, you know, 00:19:15.360 --> 00:19:20.480 a vaccination will happen and we'll be out of the Corona virus thing, uh, with automation, 00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:24.860 you're not going to be out of it. It's only going to continue to happen and people are going to have 00:19:24.860 --> 00:19:31.000 to continue to be retrained. So, so I say all that is to say last year at Easter, uh, I actually 00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:36.440 pre when I preached the service, I was talking about the church's future. And I said, look, 00:19:36.440 --> 00:19:42.000 these statistics, they're real. Like, as far as we can tell, this is real. And you don't have to 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:46.460 believe me. You guys are all in the finance district. You saw this happening when ATMs happen, 00:19:46.660 --> 00:19:52.320 you go to Costco now, and you saw, you know, uh, or you go to Sam's club. Like we, my wife and I 00:19:52.320 --> 00:19:57.820 had a membership at Sam's club. When we started, there were 13 people on registers. Now there are 00:19:57.820 --> 00:20:04.020 two people on registers and there are 11 registers that are automated with one person overseeing them, 00:20:04.020 --> 00:20:08.600 right? The process is happening and you can look around and there's just example after example. And 00:20:08.600 --> 00:20:12.220 some of these things are great. They're your room, but it's cleaning your floors. You don't want to do 00:20:12.220 --> 00:20:17.760 that anymore, but we can't deny that that stuff is happening. And so I preached about it in my, 00:20:17.760 --> 00:20:23.460 in my worship service and my people, like I had a line, I had more people wanting to talk about 00:20:23.460 --> 00:20:29.740 automation and AI than I did about anything else. Uh, they want to know what's going on. They want 00:20:29.740 --> 00:20:35.200 to have to see what's going on. So my, what my experience has been as far as kind of talking about 00:20:35.200 --> 00:20:41.040 emerging tech is these, these folks in my congregation, they are all very interested in 00:20:41.040 --> 00:20:46.960 this. Um, they understand that this is important. It may not be their wheelhouse depending on what 00:20:46.960 --> 00:20:52.120 they're doing, uh, but they're excited about it. And so when, as I talked about the virtual reality, 00:20:52.120 --> 00:20:57.060 you know, peace with them, they've started to say, well, um, I don't necessarily know, 00:20:57.060 --> 00:21:03.920 I don't know a lot about virtual reality, but I know that it's a thing. And once you give them 00:21:03.920 --> 00:21:10.680 data and statistics and say, look, you know, there's 2.2 million gamers out there. Um, and you know, 00:21:10.680 --> 00:21:17.220 the percentage of people that are younger coming to the church, uh, is continuing to lag. Like, uh, 00:21:17.220 --> 00:21:22.380 they start to that, that they take that data in and they go, yeah, okay. So let's try something, 00:21:22.380 --> 00:21:27.200 you know what I mean? And, and if, if this is a way that we can get engaged and let's figure it out. 00:21:27.340 --> 00:21:34.700 And so the response I've had for people is they want to see their pastors talking about tech. They 00:21:34.700 --> 00:21:39.580 want to see, they want to see technological development, you know, happening in their churches. 00:21:40.160 --> 00:21:44.560 And there's almost an expectation that that happens at this point. And if we don't do that, 00:21:44.580 --> 00:21:50.620 we look like we're, you know, like we're Luddites or something. Uh, and, and, and the reality is, 00:21:50.620 --> 00:21:55.200 is that they're using tech all the time, right? They've got more computing power right now on their 00:21:55.200 --> 00:22:01.340 phone, uh, you know, than, than generations have before. And so for us to just ignore that stuff, 00:22:01.340 --> 00:22:05.900 we'd, we'd be crazy. And so, uh, so, so that's kind of our whole thing is we're saying, okay, 00:22:05.900 --> 00:22:12.660 where can we step this up in real emerging ways? This is good. Chris, these are, this is like next 00:22:12.660 --> 00:22:17.660 level bleeding eggs thinking for a lot of folks, even for some of our audience. And so I, what I 00:22:17.660 --> 00:22:22.840 would ask is, so when you talk about thinking through reallocation of resources towards what's 00:22:22.840 --> 00:22:27.020 next, what are some of the recommendations that you're giving churches in terms of how do we tool 00:22:27.020 --> 00:22:32.200 for the future, considering this automation crisis that you're talking about? Sure. Well, well, 00:22:32.200 --> 00:22:37.540 certainly, I mean, and you guys are, you know, on the front of this, uh, but certainly getting people 00:22:37.540 --> 00:22:44.020 into a digital mindset. Um, and part of what we've tried to do is say, look, this is very contextual. 00:22:44.020 --> 00:22:49.420 Uh, it's not one size fits all. And that's why you have to have conversations about it. I had 00:22:49.420 --> 00:22:54.140 somebody yesterday from a major camp and conference center say, look, we're not gonna be able to do 00:22:54.140 --> 00:23:00.100 any conference programming for youth, uh, this summer. What can we do in virtual reality? And the first 00:23:00.100 --> 00:23:05.620 thing I have to say with them is it's like, look, you're building a digital platform. You're 00:23:05.620 --> 00:23:10.720 digiting, building a virtual platform. Uh, and I think some of that is we have to start training, 00:23:10.900 --> 00:23:15.440 training people to talk about digital and virtual different because we say virtual all the time. 00:23:15.980 --> 00:23:21.540 We're not meeting virtually right now, right? We're meeting digitally. Uh, and, and, uh, 00:23:21.800 --> 00:23:26.780 but if you're talking about fully immersive virtual, virtual reality, right. Or we can make those 00:23:26.780 --> 00:23:31.360 distinctions. And I don't even like the term virtual. I've said that I think it's an alternative reality. 00:23:31.360 --> 00:23:36.720 I, you know, uh, I don't, I don't think it's, uh, I don't think it's actually different from our, 00:23:36.720 --> 00:23:44.040 uh, from our physical reality per se. Right. And so, uh, so, so anyhow, so part of this is, 00:23:44.040 --> 00:23:51.760 is figuring out, okay, how do we, you know, how do we start to, um, build a plan for our particular 00:23:51.760 --> 00:23:58.380 context? And so I think that's different if you're a small church, for example, as you're opposed to a 00:23:58.380 --> 00:24:03.220 large church. So there are large churches around us. They've been streaming for a couple of years, 00:24:03.220 --> 00:24:08.280 right? They've, they have borderline television programming. We're, we're a small church. We 00:24:08.280 --> 00:24:12.660 don't have that tech. When I got there a year ago, they hadn't invested anything in that and 00:24:12.660 --> 00:24:18.180 trying to get them to understand the value of that when they have other immediate needs was not 00:24:18.180 --> 00:24:22.820 really a priority, uh, is the truth. Well, obviously now it's a priority, right? They get 00:24:22.820 --> 00:24:28.380 it why they need it. And so for us live streaming every week, that's not what we're going to do. 00:24:28.500 --> 00:24:33.680 Uh, what we've done is we've created a digital, we call it a digital liturgy and we created all 00:24:33.680 --> 00:24:39.460 the liturgical parts. Uh, and if, if you go to our website, you'll see what that is. And so I do 00:24:39.460 --> 00:24:44.420 certain parts of that liturgy. Other people do certain parts of the liturgy. Our worship person 00:24:44.420 --> 00:24:50.340 sings some songs, but then we let people take their phones and they upload, uh, you know, 00:24:50.340 --> 00:24:56.580 they upload their, their part of the liturgy to the liturgy. And then essentially what happens is you 00:24:56.580 --> 00:25:02.020 see the multi-ethnic faces of our community, right? It's not just a couple leaders doing it, 00:25:02.020 --> 00:25:06.580 but the benefit of that from a structural standpoint is, is then we have built a system 00:25:06.580 --> 00:25:13.300 where we are not trying to fumble with stuff live stream. We're pre-recording everything for people, 00:25:13.300 --> 00:25:18.900 uh, because data is telling us that more people are paying attention to our stuff over time than 00:25:18.900 --> 00:25:24.340 they are just jumping on doing that. So as you look at that, that's a systems thing, right? So if you're 00:25:24.340 --> 00:25:31.280 looking at systems for your long-term, uh, sustainability, the questions are, what are your value propositions 00:25:31.280 --> 00:25:40.000 of your local church? Uh, where are the things that your church can begin to, uh, ideate on, uh, 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.480 what the needs are of your community and how can you create digital solutions? So I think, 00:25:44.480 --> 00:25:50.560 for example, um, there are a lot of things that are out there that churches, churches are good at 00:25:50.560 --> 00:25:57.440 identifying problems and actually coming up with solutions for problems. Uh, tech is good at aggregating 00:25:57.440 --> 00:26:03.360 data and doing things to scale. So if you take those two things together, you can actually identify 00:26:03.360 --> 00:26:09.600 problems, aggregate the data and fix the problems to scale. And churches aren't going through basic 00:26:09.600 --> 00:26:16.000 ideation processes, uh, to do that with their congregations. What's happening is leaders in the 00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:21.280 church are saying, you're going to do this and this is the path we're going to go. But what I don't think 00:26:21.280 --> 00:26:26.560 we're doing is we're not actually looking at the giftings of people and saying, okay, so, you know, 00:26:26.560 --> 00:26:33.520 uh, Bob or Sally is good at X and they're identifying a problem. How could we take what we know about 00:26:33.520 --> 00:26:39.920 technology, uh, and integrate it with that to create something that's sustainable and create a value 00:26:39.920 --> 00:26:45.440 proposition. And so I think what we need to do is we need to start looking more entrepreneurial, 00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:52.880 at, at kind of what is out there for churches and create sustainability that way. So if churches have 00:26:52.880 --> 00:26:58.320 property, that's very valuable, they need to leverage their property. Uh, you know, 00:26:58.320 --> 00:27:02.320 they need to leverage their property to endow themselves quite frankly, uh, at this point, 00:27:02.320 --> 00:27:08.400 if they're, if they're, you know, if they, uh, are tech savvy, they need to start leveraging and 00:27:08.400 --> 00:27:13.120 creating products. If they're, they're service savvy, they need to figure out how do we create 00:27:13.120 --> 00:27:18.720 sustainable service mechanisms, but not be afraid to charge for them because I don't know. I mean, 00:27:19.760 --> 00:27:24.080 ask churches now that they're online, is their plate going to be the thing that sustains them long 00:27:24.080 --> 00:27:29.760 term? And I would say no. Well, it depends, right? Because that, that depends on a systems thing. 00:27:29.760 --> 00:27:36.560 Once again, if they've onboarded people to online, regular giving versus, Hey, like, are you suggesting 00:27:36.560 --> 00:27:41.760 like, Hey, you know, to watch services, like there's a subscriber fee or what are you suggesting there? 00:27:41.760 --> 00:27:50.720 Uh, I, I, no, I think, I think, I think we need to get away from the concept that the church 00:27:50.720 --> 00:27:56.800 shouldn't be entrepreneurial and create and charging for services. So I think if we planned, 00:27:56.800 --> 00:28:06.160 look, if, if 11 to 22%, uh, automation, you know, happens at 11 to 22%, I mean, 11 to 22% of people 00:28:06.160 --> 00:28:13.040 lose their jobs. It doesn't matter if you've online people to, to giving, because if they don't have the 00:28:13.040 --> 00:28:18.960 money, they can't give it to you. And so, yeah. So, so part of what, so part of what I'm getting 00:28:18.960 --> 00:28:25.200 at is I think the church has to start looking at different ways to, to create revenue. Uh, and what 00:28:25.200 --> 00:28:31.120 that, how you do that is going to take a very localized approach, right? Because some churches are small, 00:28:31.120 --> 00:28:36.560 they don't need as much revenue to actually sustain themselves. Uh, but they have to figure out what's 00:28:36.560 --> 00:28:42.880 their value proposition in a real way. And I, I think that we think, um, that what we're doing 00:28:42.880 --> 00:28:49.840 presently is just enough because we're like, well, look, I, I, I preach every week and, uh, you know, 00:28:49.840 --> 00:28:55.360 and I, I make some phone calls, uh, to people to take care of them. And I would say that that might 00:28:55.360 --> 00:29:02.240 not be enough. Uh, quite frankly, um, that that's, um, that's an old model. Uh, and, and it's not that 00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:08.080 preaching the word is not important. It's obviously central, uh, in the reform tradition, right? But, um, 00:29:08.080 --> 00:29:13.120 but it's, how are we preaching the word and what are the mechanisms which we're going to do that? 00:29:13.120 --> 00:29:18.240 Um, and maybe the old way we've been doing it, isn't the most effective way to do it. Uh, and so 00:29:18.240 --> 00:29:23.760 we, we have to, we have to think about that. Um, the, the other way is, is are there other ways to 00:29:23.760 --> 00:29:31.040 spread the gospel, um, than from the pulpit? Uh, and can we integrate those gospel messages into our 00:29:31.040 --> 00:29:36.960 tech? I, I, I have like no time for people who just want to critique Facebook all the time from the 00:29:36.960 --> 00:29:41.760 church. The Facebook is evil, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Well, what have you done as the church to 00:29:41.760 --> 00:29:47.360 actually increase faith Facebook's, uh, virtue ethic? Um, that's on us. You know what I mean? 00:29:47.360 --> 00:29:53.360 That's on us. Like if we care about having virtuous tech, we need to invest in people who are in tech 00:29:53.360 --> 00:29:58.720 to create virtuous tech. Right. And, and so we haven't done those things. So that's a value proposition. 00:29:58.720 --> 00:30:04.160 For example, uh, you, you could have a whole thing where you could, uh, church could set up essentially 00:30:04.160 --> 00:30:10.160 consulting, uh, to tech organizations to help them to create products that, that meet the needs of their 00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:14.720 wider community. And you would say, well, maybe the, maybe the, they don't need that. They can get, 00:30:14.720 --> 00:30:20.080 they can aggregate data on it. Yeah. I would, I would say what I found is, is that the fact that I have 00:30:20.080 --> 00:30:26.960 REV in front of my name means something to people. Um, there it, it still means something to people and, 00:30:26.960 --> 00:30:33.840 and people say, okay, well, he's a pastor. So, um, so he knows something about, uh, questions of 00:30:33.840 --> 00:30:38.720 ultimate meaning. And as that pertains to our products and whether people view those as moral 00:30:38.720 --> 00:30:43.840 or not, you know, when the Pope puts his blessing on something, you know, this big, uh, uh, you know, 00:30:43.840 --> 00:30:49.440 the Pope is working, uh, you know, they put out the Vatican, put out this, uh, statement on artificial 00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:54.000 intelligence. And the thing that everyone was shocked about was not that the Vatican put something 00:30:54.000 --> 00:30:58.320 out on artificial intelligence, but that they were working with Microsoft and big companies. 00:30:58.320 --> 00:31:02.720 Right. And so, and it's like, well, it's because they understand, like, if we're going to shift 00:31:02.720 --> 00:31:06.880 culture, we actually need to be engaged and have real conversations with these things. So, 00:31:06.880 --> 00:31:13.360 so where's our opportunity to do that? So every church has a different value proposition and they, 00:31:13.360 --> 00:31:18.320 it's, it's based on the people that are there. And part of that is we have to evaluate, okay, 00:31:18.320 --> 00:31:23.200 how are we going to pivot in a digital world to bring that value proper proposition close? 00:31:23.200 --> 00:31:28.880 Let me ask something. Cause I love this idea of, of, of the pivoting and the value let's, 00:31:28.880 --> 00:31:34.560 let's go. You're talking, you said 20, 30, 10 years down the road. I would even suggest maybe 00:31:34.560 --> 00:31:39.680 as a result of coronavirus, I think technology has gasoline on a flame at this point. And I think 00:31:39.680 --> 00:31:46.640 we're going to fast forward, but let's use 20, 30 as an example in, in your mind, does every church 00:31:46.640 --> 00:31:53.280 have virtual reality is every church within 10 years, within 20 years is, is it a method just like 00:31:53.280 --> 00:32:01.760 a church online service is broadcasted via live stream? Like what is the role of VR in amongst 00:32:01.760 --> 00:32:05.440 technology at the church level? Be, be futurist. Tell me what's going on. 00:32:05.440 --> 00:32:10.480 Sure. Well, I, I mean, I, if you've seen ready player one, right, you see what the Oasis is, 00:32:10.480 --> 00:32:16.800 right. And so in the Oasis and ready player one starts in a gaming community, it's set up to 00:32:16.800 --> 00:32:24.720 actually be gaming oriented. So the platform we've created, uh, it, it isn't just, we are launching 00:32:24.720 --> 00:32:30.160 it because we want to have a virtue proposition first. So we're launching it with churches, but what 00:32:30.160 --> 00:32:36.240 we can do is not limited to churches by any stretch of the imagination. And so I don't think it's just 00:32:36.240 --> 00:32:43.360 churches that are going to be in VR. I think it's globally, like, I think, I don't think we'll have 00:32:43.360 --> 00:32:50.080 this conversation like this anymore, uh, down the road. I think that when, when we can have VR that 00:32:50.080 --> 00:32:55.920 feels real and is more and more accessible to people, if I can feel like I'm sitting in the 00:32:55.920 --> 00:33:02.480 same room with you and having a sensory experience that way, why would I not do that? If it, if it's, 00:33:02.480 --> 00:33:07.680 it's so we're just on the front end of that tech and that's why we're not using it as much because, 00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:11.760 you know, it's like, it's, it's like live streaming. If you've never done it before, 00:33:11.760 --> 00:33:16.320 people think, Oh my gosh, this is so crazy. It's so hard. Right now is the opportunity. Like you've 00:33:16.320 --> 00:33:21.360 been forced in the opportunity to, to figure that tech out. And so I think, I think there's 00:33:21.360 --> 00:33:26.400 huge advantages to virtual reality that you're, you don't have in your local church right now. 00:33:26.400 --> 00:33:32.320 Uh, and one of them is, is, uh, as far as your physical environment, you can change what it looks 00:33:32.320 --> 00:33:39.200 like, like all the time. Uh, you can, you can change it and radically like, Hey, I want, you know, 00:33:39.200 --> 00:33:45.920 our walls to be different colors, different shapes. Uh, I want, you know, I want, um, you know, 00:33:45.920 --> 00:33:53.280 I want the, uh, choir to, you know, have, uh, a thousand people in it and to be perfectly harmonized. 00:33:53.280 --> 00:33:59.120 Like you can do that stuff, uh, long-term and, and VR. The other thing is, is I think what we're 00:33:59.120 --> 00:34:04.080 forgetting is there's a huge percentage of population right now that, that are homebound 00:34:04.080 --> 00:34:08.960 or they're disabled and they don't have a way to get to church. And if you look at statistics for 00:34:08.960 --> 00:34:15.280 people who are in VR, there's a high percentage of folks who, who have disabilities. Um, and, and so, 00:34:15.280 --> 00:34:20.720 you know, they're able bodied in other ways, but not in ways that the church currently meets their 00:34:20.720 --> 00:34:25.680 need. And so we're able to actually reach out to more people. We're actually to have, uh, more 00:34:25.680 --> 00:34:31.360 multi-ethnic conversations with people because you have different cultural experiences. I mean, 00:34:31.360 --> 00:34:38.080 to me, that sounds a lot closer to, you know, the biblical vision of the kingdom of God, uh, 00:34:38.080 --> 00:34:43.280 than, you know, are, and I've served in these churches, you know, are all white church in rural 00:34:43.280 --> 00:34:49.360 Ohio. Right. And so if you can have that virtual present, and I also think it's long-term, it's not 00:34:49.360 --> 00:34:55.760 going to just be, um, it's not just going to be that people have virtual components. They'll still 00:34:55.760 --> 00:35:01.120 have physical components in many places, but I think those will be integrated with augmented reality. 00:35:01.120 --> 00:35:05.600 So right now you have a lot of churches that have empty pews, right? But if you could actually 00:35:05.600 --> 00:35:10.720 see the people who were online and you were in a physical place and they could see you in a virtual 00:35:10.720 --> 00:35:16.880 reality, but you could see an augmented version of their, of their avatar from, from VR in your 00:35:16.880 --> 00:35:23.280 physical space, your people who were showing up would actually see more of the cloud of witnesses, 00:35:23.280 --> 00:35:29.520 uh, around them. Right. And it would literally be in a digital cloud at that point, uh, projecting into the 00:35:29.520 --> 00:35:35.760 physical space. But, but I think those kinds of things are things that will come over time. Uh, 00:35:35.760 --> 00:35:41.200 right now we, we understand like, you know, um, churches are, there's going to be a lot of churches 00:35:41.200 --> 00:35:46.640 that are, you know, this just isn't for me right now. I get that. Uh, but, but I think it's important 00:35:46.640 --> 00:35:51.680 for us to be leading and pioneering in this area. Uh, and churches that are serious about creating 00:35:51.680 --> 00:35:57.200 long-term, uh, digital platforms for their church. This is space they should be in now because what 00:35:57.200 --> 00:36:02.560 they're learning in this moment was they should have been live streaming five years ago. Uh, that's 00:36:02.560 --> 00:36:06.480 what they're learning right now. And, and if they were, they wouldn't have the problems they have, 00:36:06.480 --> 00:36:11.360 right? They would, they should have had a digital plan five years ago. Any good ministry is going to 00:36:11.360 --> 00:36:16.000 take you three to five years to build. Now's the time to get in and to start learning how to do this so 00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:22.640 that as this develops, you, you can, you can be in this space. And so, so I, I do think it'll be 00:36:22.640 --> 00:36:26.480 pervasive, but I don't think that's just a church thing. I think it's understanding it's a cultural 00:36:26.480 --> 00:36:32.560 thing. The church has, they have, we have been, you know, behind the times, quite frankly, uh, uh, 00:36:32.560 --> 00:36:36.720 you know, even as you and I talk, Jeff, and you're saying a lot of times what you're telling people 00:36:36.720 --> 00:36:41.840 with stuff that people were doing business, you know, 10 years ago, uh, and, and people in the 00:36:41.840 --> 00:36:45.760 church are like, is this going to work? And it's like, yeah, it's been working. You just 00:36:45.760 --> 00:36:50.960 aren't aware of, you know, like, so, um, uh, so part of that is, is kind of getting people, 00:36:50.960 --> 00:36:55.920 what I'd like to see is the church pioneering this stuff as opposed to being behind on it. 00:36:55.920 --> 00:37:01.440 And that's why, you know, our goal is really from a VR standpoint, um, you know, to get ahead of the 00:37:01.440 --> 00:37:05.360 pack if we can. And I think that's what we've, that's what we've created. So love that. 00:37:06.080 --> 00:37:11.040 That's real good. Chris, uh, just as I'm thinking through this and I'm thinking of the 00:37:11.040 --> 00:37:15.440 crowd that you're coming out of and the crowd that you're communicating to, uh, you know, how, 00:37:16.480 --> 00:37:20.400 are the reform community? How is the church? How are the Presbyterian community reacting to these 00:37:20.400 --> 00:37:25.760 things? Cause this is, you know, high church, highly steeped in tradition, uh, you know, in terms of 00:37:25.760 --> 00:37:29.680 the encounters that I've had, and that's not to say that a lot of them, especially now, you know, 00:37:29.680 --> 00:37:36.400 post coronavirus aren't experimenting with digital forms and tech, but man, just in serious opposition, 00:37:36.400 --> 00:37:40.000 even before you came on, Jeff and I were talking about blog posts about, well, you know, 00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.640 church online, cool, but Lord's supper, no way. Like, yeah. Yeah. Oh, we're having that conversation 00:37:44.640 --> 00:37:49.920 right now. I mean, my, my thing is like, look, I, I, my, my wife's Catholic practicing Catholic, 00:37:49.920 --> 00:37:54.800 uh, goes to St. Hughes here and then comes in as part of our worship service. So we have to be pretty 00:37:54.800 --> 00:38:00.560 versed, you know, just in our relationship is the sacramentality. And I, you know, I think that this 00:38:00.560 --> 00:38:05.120 is part of why I wanted to get into these conversations and to push this is, is one. And, 00:38:05.120 --> 00:38:09.680 you know, in my tradition, it's not just for me to say, Hey, here's what we're going to do. 00:38:09.680 --> 00:38:13.920 Uh, we have to, the community needs to be prayerful about that and discern, 00:38:13.920 --> 00:38:18.880 right. But it doesn't mean that people aren't to, to have a prophetic voice into that and to speak, 00:38:19.600 --> 00:38:25.600 uh, about what may be coming and to try to get the community to, to decide, um, you know, 00:38:25.600 --> 00:38:30.000 how they should, they should move. So, you know, our, our, uh, denomination has, 00:38:30.480 --> 00:38:37.200 has actually said that it's possible, uh, for us to have, uh, communion online, but they've kind of 00:38:37.200 --> 00:38:43.120 made it only like only in crisis scenarios like coronavirus. Right. So they've not actually 00:38:43.120 --> 00:38:47.600 addressed it. They've just addressed the crisis. And I think part of what we need to do is say, 00:38:47.600 --> 00:38:51.920 Hey, how are we going to have a conversation about that? And then you really get into like, 00:38:51.920 --> 00:38:56.000 when you start kind of getting into the scientific side of it, it's like, okay, so, um, 00:38:56.800 --> 00:39:01.600 you know, we've talked about like in our tradition, we talk about these are common elements, but they're, 00:39:02.240 --> 00:39:08.000 uh, common elements of bread and fruit of the vine, right? Like, right. So in other words, 00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:13.360 wine or juice is easily what we're referring to. So the question is, is at a molecular level 00:39:13.360 --> 00:39:21.040 or a particulate matter level, what is significant about the, you know, what is significant about 00:39:22.160 --> 00:39:30.400 the constitution or ordering of those elements and the way they are, uh, that matters to us as we do 00:39:30.400 --> 00:39:38.400 this? So, uh, is it significant that Jesus picked out a certain molecular structured object, uh, for us to 00:39:39.120 --> 00:39:45.280 participate in, or, or even in a sub particulate matter, is that significant? No one's having that 00:39:45.280 --> 00:39:51.840 conversation. Um, and, and the question is, is like, well, then, you know, as we think about who we are, 00:39:51.840 --> 00:39:57.920 are made in the image of a creator God, is this the only form that we think we can have as human 00:39:57.920 --> 00:40:03.600 beings? Is this the only way we can be our incarnational? Because as I understand the Trinitarian 00:40:03.600 --> 00:40:11.360 God, uh, at least out of my tradition is you have a creator of redeemer and a spirit God, uh, uh, that, 00:40:11.360 --> 00:40:18.800 you know, are, are, uh, you know, three in one, right. And so you, so what does it mean to be spirit, 00:40:19.440 --> 00:40:25.040 you know, uh, made in the image of a spirit God in a digital world? Like we've not talked about that. 00:40:25.040 --> 00:40:30.800 So, so I think fundamentally we have to start having conversations about the nature of existence 00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:36.880 and who we are, what I've proposed and kind of has, this is what I've got kind of more popularity for 00:40:36.880 --> 00:40:41.920 is like, I, I take it from a perspective of artificial intelligence and you don't even have 00:40:41.920 --> 00:40:48.000 to buy my AI argument to buy this, but I essentially say, we're not God, right? That's most Christians 00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:52.000 are going to agree to that or else they're going to, their pastor is going to set up a time for 00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:57.440 counseling. So we're not God, right? We're not God. And it, that means we're God's AI. 00:40:59.200 --> 00:41:04.080 That makes sense. Like we're not God. That means we're, we're God's, we're, we're something God 00:41:04.080 --> 00:41:08.720 created us. We're God's AI. And I don't like to say we're artificial intelligence. I think that's 00:41:08.720 --> 00:41:14.720 an inadequate word. I think, I think it's better to say alternative intelligence because, uh, I don't 00:41:14.720 --> 00:41:21.600 think my cat is artificial, for example, I actually think it's a living entity, uh, and it shows, 00:41:21.600 --> 00:41:28.320 shows me affection, you know? And, uh, and so I, I think it's an alternative form of, of, uh, you know, 00:41:28.320 --> 00:41:33.920 intelligence. Um, and so if you buy into those two things, then what I would say is all matter, 00:41:33.920 --> 00:41:40.160 everything we experience and, you know, in our existence, uh, all physical matter is divine 00:41:40.160 --> 00:41:46.640 technology. Uh, and we're called to be stewards, caretakers, I would say co-creators like a child 00:41:46.640 --> 00:41:52.400 with their parent of divine technology. Uh, and so if you start looking at that, then when we start 00:41:52.400 --> 00:41:57.520 looking sacramentally at things, it's like, well, what does that mean? Uh, if this is divine technology, 00:41:57.520 --> 00:42:02.720 why does the ordering matter in the way that it is? And some of those things we might have to leave 00:42:02.720 --> 00:42:08.080 that to being a mystery and be okay with that right now and leave that mystery there and say, 00:42:08.080 --> 00:42:13.360 you know what, in humility, we don't know why Jesus said this. Uh, and so, you know, 00:42:13.360 --> 00:42:17.200 we're going to err on the side of caution and that's where I think the community of faith has to speak 00:42:17.200 --> 00:42:23.280 into it. Other things we might say, you know, we don't know why. And so, uh, we're going to move 00:42:23.280 --> 00:42:30.240 forward, uh, in a spirit of love and ask for forgiveness if we're wrong. Uh, you know, I had, uh, 00:42:30.240 --> 00:42:37.520 I had a professor at Princeton who said, uh, he was really sick and he thought that he thought that, uh, 00:42:37.520 --> 00:42:42.960 he saw an angel at his bedside and his, what he found out later was it was his wife. 00:42:43.520 --> 00:42:47.840 And I said, well, professor, how'd you know it? It was your wife. Maybe it really was an angel. 00:42:47.840 --> 00:42:51.120 I mean, you know, and he says, well, if I get to heaven and God said it was an angel, 00:42:51.120 --> 00:42:57.120 I'll just apologize. Sorry, God. Uh, sorry, God. I thought it was my wife. Uh, but, but you know, 00:42:57.120 --> 00:43:02.000 it's, uh, it was actually an angel. Like, like, do we think God is, you know, if we make a mistake, 00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:07.120 God is not loving enough that God's going to take care of us, I, I make mistakes left and right all 00:43:07.120 --> 00:43:12.880 the time. Right. And so, so, so how, how do we have forgiveness in that? And I think when we go into 00:43:12.880 --> 00:43:18.240 that piece, then it's helpful for us to kind of have that balance where we're talking about, okay, 00:43:18.240 --> 00:43:24.080 you know, as a community, are we willing to, you know, are we willing to have, are we willing to 00:43:24.080 --> 00:43:30.240 risk ourselves in this way to have the conversation? Um, or, or, you know, are we going to live kind 00:43:30.240 --> 00:43:34.880 of out of a presupposition of fear? And I don't see the gospel telling us to live, live out of a 00:43:34.880 --> 00:43:39.360 presupposition of fears. So, so yeah, are there going to be things that happen? Sure. We we've had, 00:43:39.360 --> 00:43:43.360 uh, I know a lot of people would have their zoom conversations hacked with inappropriate 00:43:44.080 --> 00:43:48.400 materials. Should that, do they stop having zoom conversations? No, they should learn better 00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:53.520 protocol for how to initiate their scene. Right. Like, uh, you know, and yeah, that's unfortunate 00:43:53.520 --> 00:43:57.920 and they made some fires and they're going to have to deal with that down the road. But, uh, but that's, 00:43:57.920 --> 00:44:01.920 that's part of the learning curve better to learn it now when you don't have a, you know, a thousand 00:44:01.920 --> 00:44:06.960 people trying to pay attention to what you're, you know, you weren't zoom calling and live streaming 00:44:06.960 --> 00:44:10.960 to a million people on Twitch. You know what I mean? Uh, better to find out now while you're 00:44:10.960 --> 00:44:15.680 learning. Right. And it's the same thing. Uh, so, so I'm encouraging people to get engaged. 00:44:15.680 --> 00:44:21.040 The nice thing about VR is there's a younger community that's there. And so it really is an 00:44:21.040 --> 00:44:30.080 investment for people to engage in, in the future for their church. It's, it's a present investment, 00:44:30.080 --> 00:44:35.120 but it's also a long-term strategic investment where a lot of the things I see people responding 00:44:35.120 --> 00:44:39.920 in coronavirus right now, uh, they're, they're a bandaid. And what I ask people is how many of 00:44:39.920 --> 00:44:44.160 the things are you doing right now? Are you doing them in a way that you'll continue once you're able 00:44:44.160 --> 00:44:50.160 to go back to your, your, your, you know, kind of typical situation, are you going to still do what 00:44:50.160 --> 00:44:53.600 you're doing? Are you going to throw all that aside and just say, Hey, that was for a second, 00:44:53.600 --> 00:44:55.520 because if so, you're not building sustainability. 00:44:55.520 --> 00:45:00.080 Right. You know, it's ironic, Chris, is that I think many of them think that this is a bandaid, 00:45:00.080 --> 00:45:02.880 but I think when they return, they're going to see that there's a new normal 00:45:03.440 --> 00:45:07.120 and that they're going to have to go back to some of those structures that they'd established during 00:45:07.120 --> 00:45:11.840 this time period. Yeah. Well, and, and the other thing that I keep, you know, I've, I've got some 00:45:11.840 --> 00:45:16.080 people who kind of deal at high levels with some of this stuff, but the thing that I keep hearing 00:45:16.080 --> 00:45:19.760 is saying, yeah, well, we might come out of quarantine for a little bit, but we might have to go 00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:24.880 in a couple of times to quarantine. Uh, and, and the question is, is what's your game plan, 00:45:24.880 --> 00:45:30.640 you know? And so, um, so if people aren't looking at the sustainability and taking an opportunity to 00:45:30.640 --> 00:45:37.920 do that right now, um, you know, the, I think long-term it, it's, you're going to see the effects 00:45:37.920 --> 00:45:42.880 of this long-term on your ministry. If you don't have that game plan, but I'm telling you by 2030, 00:45:42.880 --> 00:45:47.360 uh, people aren't going to have money to give to you. So if you're not looking at a bigger piece, 00:45:47.360 --> 00:45:52.160 and one of the things that being in a digital environment helps is you look, your audience 00:45:52.160 --> 00:45:57.120 is exponentially bigger that you can pull from, right? So if you can create a culture of giving 00:45:57.120 --> 00:46:04.320 online, even if you lose 11 to 22%, if you, of that, you can engage those people still in giving, 00:46:04.320 --> 00:46:11.040 you're still doing that, but can you pick up 11 to 22% globally among the population that will still 00:46:11.040 --> 00:46:16.720 have jobs? Will they see value proposition in what you're doing? And I think that's really important 00:46:16.720 --> 00:46:20.320 because you're probably going to lose it in your community. You're going to lose it in your current 00:46:20.320 --> 00:46:24.800 immediate community, and you're going to have to find ways to evangelize. So that's, that's not to say 00:46:24.800 --> 00:46:29.280 that people can't evangelize in their communities, but I've been in church. I've seen churches. I know 00:46:29.280 --> 00:46:35.280 churches that are in extremely poor situations, uh, in their community, but they've got flourishing 00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:41.760 ministries, uh, because they reach beyond their community. Uh, and, and what they do is they reach 00:46:41.760 --> 00:46:46.400 outside where, you know, to places where there are money to bring it back into their community, 00:46:46.400 --> 00:46:50.880 to help their community to grow. And that's an opportunity with the, with the digital church, obviously. 00:46:50.880 --> 00:46:57.040 So there's, um, there, there's a, a great potential for churches to reach out into this. 00:46:57.040 --> 00:47:02.080 And, and, and I love, um, you know, I love everything about this conversation, even down to like 00:47:02.080 --> 00:47:06.160 being involved in micro businesses and finding other ways. It's funny when we go overseas, 00:47:06.160 --> 00:47:13.440 uh, when we help churches overseas, uh, we train them on how to create micro businesses and ways to 00:47:13.440 --> 00:47:18.560 generate revenue to come in. Things cost money, but when it comes to here to America, there's often, 00:47:18.560 --> 00:47:23.200 it's, it's taboo where you're not allowed to, to get into that area because it has to be offering 00:47:23.200 --> 00:47:28.640 based. And so I love that the challenge of maybe some of the stuff, uh, hadn't put that together 00:47:28.640 --> 00:47:32.480 and didn't even think I was going to get there in a conversation about virtual reality, but love that, 00:47:32.480 --> 00:47:38.080 that we did get to that place. I wanted to ask this question because you're, you're, you've created, 00:47:38.080 --> 00:47:43.280 my understanding is you've created a separate platform. DJ Soto, you know, is doing his stuff 00:47:43.280 --> 00:47:48.640 on, on all VR. I don't know a lot about virtual reality. I know, I think he's got two or three 00:47:48.640 --> 00:47:53.840 different platforms in all VR that, that he, two or three different churches that are, that are meeting 00:47:53.840 --> 00:47:58.560 in virtual reality due to time zones. Uh, I know there's rec room. There's probably more VR 00:47:59.120 --> 00:48:05.680 type of solutions. Are you utilizing those or are you building a separate environment? 00:48:06.480 --> 00:48:12.640 So we have a separate environment. Uh, but what we do is, uh, so we'll actually have a larger, 00:48:12.640 --> 00:48:18.080 you're going to see, uh, and if people kind of pay attention to what we do over the next, um, 00:48:18.080 --> 00:48:21.680 you know, nine months, you're going to see, we're going to start releasing some other things, 00:48:21.680 --> 00:48:26.560 but we're going to have actually a larger platform launch, uh, in the fall is the plan at this point. 00:48:26.560 --> 00:48:32.240 Uh, and so that's going to actually have other elements that I, I don't want to give away what 00:48:32.240 --> 00:48:39.200 they are yet, but I think that'll be, come on. It's just us and you know, a few, whatever hundred 00:48:39.200 --> 00:48:44.720 people. Yeah. So, but, uh, but, uh, but we're pretty excited about that. We're not worried about 00:48:44.720 --> 00:48:50.240 people being on the platform long-term. Uh, but again, we want to make sure that we are creating 00:48:50.240 --> 00:48:56.880 stable environments. Uh, right now, like what we're, what we're creating is, uh, environments 00:48:56.880 --> 00:49:04.720 that you can easily double. Um, but really we don't think there's a limit to the possibility 00:49:04.720 --> 00:49:09.200 on how many people you can have it. So what happens is in most of these platforms, almost 00:49:09.200 --> 00:49:14.960 every one of them, you can't get more than 40 people in a room, which is really limited. Uh, and so 00:49:15.760 --> 00:49:21.440 then that's a stability issue. And so we've created stability so that that, that number 00:49:21.440 --> 00:49:29.760 becomes kind of X exponentially server based. Uh, so, but, um, but what we're, we're offering to 00:49:29.760 --> 00:49:36.000 people is we can actually create for them a stable environment, and then we can actually create an, 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:42.240 we can create a copy of their church if they want to put in these other, these other platforms. 00:49:42.240 --> 00:49:47.120 Now they, it won't, it won't be as high res. It won't be as nice and the other platforms cause 00:49:47.120 --> 00:49:52.800 they're not as stable platforms, but they'll be able to use those if they want to go do evangelistic 00:49:52.800 --> 00:49:59.600 work and then bring people then over to our platform. If they want stability or they want 00:49:59.600 --> 00:50:04.800 to do things more in volume. And so part, part of that gives them the ability to do, do that. 00:50:04.800 --> 00:50:10.480 And that's why right now we're only focusing on custom builds, uh, for people. Uh, we, we're not, 00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:16.000 uh, you know, just kind of making open, uh, source. Anybody can do whatever they want to do in the 00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:21.840 platform because that stability piece is important. Uh, so it's the way to think about it is, is, uh, 00:50:21.840 --> 00:50:27.520 church plus is really kind of the equivalent of the physical church. And some of these other spaces 00:50:27.520 --> 00:50:33.200 right now are the evangelical, you know, spot, the spots where we go out to do our evangelism. 00:50:33.200 --> 00:50:38.560 Right. Uh, so they, it's kind of like the world and the church. And so our goal is eventually though, 00:50:38.560 --> 00:50:47.200 to, uh, create an opportunity where we create enough services where people like the Oasis. 00:50:47.200 --> 00:50:52.880 Uh, and so that's a little foreshadowing of what's to come. If you think about how that was created. 00:50:52.880 --> 00:50:59.360 Uh, so they're, they're able to come, uh, to the, to the platform because they want to actually 00:50:59.360 --> 00:51:04.400 be able to see the other things that can happen. Uh, and so, so that's what we're excited about, 00:51:04.400 --> 00:51:10.480 uh, is because, um, you know, I've had somebody recently talked to me about, um, what would it 00:51:10.480 --> 00:51:16.160 look like to do? Uh, cause we have Miami fashion week. What would it look like to do a fashion show 00:51:16.160 --> 00:51:21.520 in VR? What would it look, you know, what would it look like, um, if we create all of our camp and 00:51:21.520 --> 00:51:27.520 conference stuff? Uh, so we really replicate our whole camp and conference facility where people 00:51:27.520 --> 00:51:32.240 can play virtually in it all year round, even when they don't come, it doesn't eliminate what 00:51:32.240 --> 00:51:36.640 they're doing. You know what I mean? Those, those kinds of things are building communities where 00:51:36.640 --> 00:51:41.920 people come and they build communities and their space. We want people to be able to grow healthy 00:51:41.920 --> 00:51:47.600 communities, uh, that, you know, they're not just getting trolled all the time. Uh, that's one of 00:51:47.600 --> 00:51:53.920 the challenges of, of current VR. And so, so, so in other words, you can, you can have that option 00:51:53.920 --> 00:51:58.240 depending on what your goals are. So one of the things we ask you is if you want to build a virtual 00:51:58.240 --> 00:52:02.640 church, we ask you what your ministry goals are, um, because some people, they want current 00:52:02.640 --> 00:52:07.760 people they have to be in that space. They want to use it. Some people want to do, um, I've talked 00:52:07.760 --> 00:52:12.880 to a lot of people that are interested in like historically preserving their building in a digital 00:52:12.880 --> 00:52:18.960 way, right? So you have people that have historic buildings and they know that their historic building 00:52:18.960 --> 00:52:25.600 might not be there in 20 years. Uh, so they, they, uh, have decided that, Hey, let's make a virtual 00:52:25.600 --> 00:52:29.920 version. Maybe they want to sell their property. They make a virtual version, uh, and then they 00:52:29.920 --> 00:52:34.880 could sell their property. Uh, you know, so there's all sorts of options for people as they think about 00:52:34.880 --> 00:52:41.040 that, uh, based on what their, their context is, you know? Um, and so, so that, so that's what we're 00:52:41.040 --> 00:52:45.920 looking at, but, but yeah, DJ has been doing, I know DJ has been doing some small group stuff 00:52:45.920 --> 00:52:51.760 and, uh, we love to do like stress testing. Cause we love to see where we can push limits on stuff. 00:52:51.760 --> 00:52:58.320 Uh, we're hoping, um, we're hoping here and a bit, uh, uh, push some world records in VR. 00:52:58.320 --> 00:53:03.440 And so, um, so we've been doing some of that stuff and, and I know DJ and some other pastors 00:53:03.440 --> 00:53:08.160 have actually been helping in that process. So it's, it's really good. So, uh, that's awesome. 00:53:09.120 --> 00:53:14.400 Love, love that you guys are, are, are working together in that. And DJ is a good friend and 00:53:14.400 --> 00:53:18.880 we need to get him on the podcast to talk more about what he's doing, but yeah, his stuff is great. 00:53:19.680 --> 00:53:24.560 So like, if somebody's got questions on this VR, if somebody's interested in the platform, 00:53:25.200 --> 00:53:31.920 somebody wants to wax theoretic about how we are God's AI, uh, which I still just blows my brain 00:53:31.920 --> 00:53:36.960 every time I hear it, just trying to even unpack that. Um, how can people get in touch with you? 00:53:37.520 --> 00:53:43.280 So, uh, the easiest way is, uh, two things. They can go to a church plus if they're interested in 00:53:43.920 --> 00:53:52.080 developing a VR church or kind of putting their toe in the water on that. Uh, so that's, uh, C H V R C H 00:53:52.080 --> 00:54:00.080 P L U S.com. And then, uh, if they're interested in some of the work that I've done specifically, 00:54:00.080 --> 00:54:06.240 they can go to my website, which is Christopher Benek, uh, dot com B E N E K. Uh, and they can, 00:54:06.240 --> 00:54:09.200 they can learn more, uh, that way and reach out to me that way. 00:54:09.920 --> 00:54:14.720 Awesome. Yeah. So we'll include all that in the show notes. And, um, man, this has been, 00:54:14.720 --> 00:54:18.800 you know, I knew when I would bring you on, I knew it would be a challenging podcast just 00:54:18.800 --> 00:54:23.440 because we're not thinking, you know, with that, you have to start thinking with the scientific 00:54:23.440 --> 00:54:28.400 mind and maybe a futurist approach with some of the things that you are wrestling with. And this, 00:54:28.400 --> 00:54:34.000 this was, um, this was right on, on par for that. So, man, thanks for, for jumping on the podcast, 00:54:34.000 --> 00:54:39.600 Ray, just as we're wrapping up any, any last thoughts. Absolutely. You know, I love Chris's 00:54:39.600 --> 00:54:44.240 pioneering spirit in terms of pushing boundaries to where, not just where the church is, but where the 00:54:44.240 --> 00:54:49.280 church should be. And so church family that are out there and listening to this, I want to encourage 00:54:49.280 --> 00:54:54.800 you, you know, to adopt the same spirit, stay open as to where God could take us next, especially 00:54:54.800 --> 00:54:59.360 in this time where we're in the midst of a crisis, all bets are off in terms of where we're headed next. 00:54:59.360 --> 00:55:03.600 And so if we're going to keep reaching people, we need to consider any and all methods. And I think 00:55:03.600 --> 00:55:05.840 Chris is doing a bang up job with virtual reality right here. 00:55:07.040 --> 00:55:11.040 Yeah. So, so true right there, Chris, just as we're, we're landing the plane here and any, uh, 00:55:11.040 --> 00:55:15.440 closing thoughts, uh, just to say, I think it's great. I mean, I think it's great one that you're 00:55:15.440 --> 00:55:20.320 doing the podcast that people are, are, you've got people who are engaged and they're thinking about 00:55:20.320 --> 00:55:27.360 that. Um, you know, to, um, to Ray's point, just, just to say, you know, don't underestimate the 00:55:27.360 --> 00:55:33.760 potential of the church. I think we've, we've for so long, uh, worked from a position of scarcity 00:55:33.760 --> 00:55:39.280 and we need to start understanding that, uh, you know, Abraham Kuyper has this quote that, 00:55:39.280 --> 00:55:46.240 uh, you know, says, uh, something effective, you know, every square inch, uh, of, of existence 00:55:46.240 --> 00:55:51.840 is Christ's dominion over which he cries mine. And, you know, there's, there should be no exception 00:55:51.840 --> 00:55:59.200 for that with regard to technology. Uh, this, this field is Christ. And so, uh, we as co-creators, 00:55:59.200 --> 00:56:05.680 caretakers, stewards of the cosmos, we have to believe that God will equip us, uh, if we're willing to 00:56:05.680 --> 00:56:10.880 listen, uh, to what God has for us collaborate together, you know, use the spiritual discernment 00:56:10.880 --> 00:56:18.480 of the church, uh, uh, to lead the world into, uh, that, that new, uh, redemptive reality that, 00:56:18.480 --> 00:56:24.720 that Christ has called us to participate in. And so I, I think that's, uh, uh, a reason to get excited 00:56:24.720 --> 00:56:31.520 about waking up every day, uh, because it gives us this, this wonderful opportunity of, of bringing 00:56:31.520 --> 00:56:34.880 new creation into the world. And so, uh, pretty awesome thing. 00:56:35.360 --> 00:56:40.720 What, what, what a great challenge. Um, our, our church building structures may be broken temporarily, 00:56:40.720 --> 00:56:48.960 um, as a result of, um, the, the COVID situation. Uh, but, but we, as a church, we've, we've got an opportunity, 00:56:48.960 --> 00:56:55.280 uh, to shift a little bit and God has dominion over it all. That's, that's what, man, what a great line 00:56:55.280 --> 00:56:59.520 right there. So, Hey, we're going to, we're going to wrap on this podcast, Christopher. Thanks for, 00:56:59.520 --> 00:57:04.720 for jumping on this. Appreciate the time. Thanks for having me. Yep. There's certainly for, for Chris, 00:57:04.720 --> 00:57:08.960 uh, for Ray, this is Jeff at the church digital. Thanks for being here and we'll see you next time 00:57:08.960 --> 00:57:10.320 here on the podcast. Y'all have a good day.