WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.800 All right, everybody. Hey, episode 92 of the Church Digital Podcast, powered by Stadia Church 00:00:04.800 --> 00:00:08.980 Planning. Yeah, we're six months in. I still love saying that, powered by Stadia Church Planning 00:00:08.980 --> 00:00:14.520 part. That's awesome. Hey, Jeff here. We got a great episode set up for you. Relevant, 00:00:15.080 --> 00:00:20.460 even as we're heading into late August and September. Here's the deal. At this point, 00:00:20.540 --> 00:00:25.300 I feel like I talk with thousands of churches in this COVID season, trying to help them figure out 00:00:25.300 --> 00:00:30.720 how to do this church online thing, how to be digital, how to utilize the strengths of physical 00:00:30.720 --> 00:00:35.100 and digital to work together, trying to help churches figure out the next norm, blah, blah, blah. We're 00:00:35.100 --> 00:00:41.160 all there. We're all feeling this, right? The number one question I get, undoubtedly, is how do I do 00:00:41.160 --> 00:00:48.780 student ministry? How do I do elementary ministry? How do I do next-gen ministry digitally? I don't 00:00:48.780 --> 00:00:56.960 know that anybody really has a good solution, a good formula, a good in-the-box solution for that. 00:00:57.040 --> 00:01:01.840 Because honestly, right now, a lot of people are trying to think out of the box. They're experimenting. 00:01:02.200 --> 00:01:08.180 They're trying some different things. And there's no real quick, easy answer for it today. And this 00:01:08.180 --> 00:01:14.160 really brings in the conversation that I want to have here. It's here with episode 92. So I get word. 00:01:14.160 --> 00:01:19.320 I can't hear through the echoes. Hey, Jeff, there's like a movement where they're doing 00:01:19.320 --> 00:01:25.260 summer camp online digitally here in South Florida with like a thousand students. Do you know anything 00:01:25.260 --> 00:01:30.200 about this? And I'm like, no, actually, I have no clue. And so I started digging in. I started asking 00:01:30.200 --> 00:01:35.520 more and more people and got connected. And I finally figured out that it's from this movement of a 00:01:35.520 --> 00:01:41.380 network of churches here in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach called Church United, where they 00:01:41.380 --> 00:01:48.460 had really had gotten together, networked 30 plus churches, 40 plus churches together, and did summer camp 00:01:48.460 --> 00:01:56.260 partially online, partially physically, and through it connected with over a thousand students. Some 00:01:56.260 --> 00:02:02.720 phenomenal stories are coming out of this. So we put a blog on it on the Church Digital. Ray DeArmas, 00:02:02.860 --> 00:02:07.260 co-host here, talked about it. And I started, kept digging. I was like, hey, I really want to talk to like the 00:02:07.260 --> 00:02:14.060 people who put this together. So we set up this podcast. What does it look like to network, to work alongside 00:02:14.060 --> 00:02:27.640 digital as well as driving kids to serve in physical? I mean, talking online to offline here, the gospel we 00:02:27.640 --> 00:02:33.100 learn in our online world affects our offline relationships. James 1, 22, don't just be hearers 00:02:33.100 --> 00:02:39.480 of the word, paraphrase online, do what it says, paraphrase in the real world. All of a sudden, man, 00:02:39.480 --> 00:02:45.620 we're literally seeing this happen with a thousand plus students here in South Florida, where they're 00:02:45.620 --> 00:02:52.520 not just hearing the word online through a digital camp, but they're seeing it happen practically and 00:02:52.520 --> 00:02:57.860 they're executing it digitally. Awesome. Phenomenal conversation. So here's where we are. We're 00:02:57.860 --> 00:03:03.660 bringing in two student pastors into the conversation. We're bringing in Javin Shishati here from Calvary 00:03:03.660 --> 00:03:09.040 Chapel, Fort Lauderdale, as well as Angel Garcia from Rev Church in Miami. By the way, Christ Fellowship 00:03:09.040 --> 00:03:14.140 Miami, Ray Diarmus, Christ Fellowship was also involved, Ray Diarmus, digital pastor from CF will 00:03:14.140 --> 00:03:19.080 also be involved in the conversation, co-host as usual here at the Church Digital, in a conversation 00:03:19.080 --> 00:03:26.280 that I am simply calling how to do digital summer camp for students. Okay, everybody, here you go. 00:03:27.280 --> 00:03:34.120 Javon, maybe just a minute or two, and tell me your ministry story, how you started student ministry, 00:03:34.240 --> 00:03:39.200 how you got connected in student ministry down here, why you're a Miami Heat fan, like just give me a 00:03:39.200 --> 00:03:46.840 little bit of the four-on-one of who you are. Yeah, of course. So my name is Javin. It's spelled like 00:03:46.840 --> 00:03:53.280 Javon, so I get that a lot. I get any variation of my name, so don't feel bad at all. I answer to 00:03:53.280 --> 00:04:00.820 anything close, but it's Javin like Gavin. But yeah, so I was born and raised here in South Florida. I 00:04:00.820 --> 00:04:06.620 grew up here my whole life. I was really passionate about sports from a young age and loved playing them, 00:04:06.720 --> 00:04:14.020 watching them, all that stuff. I had a decent high school football career, so it gave me the 00:04:14.020 --> 00:04:18.760 opportunity to go play in college. And that was really all that I wanted to do from the time I was 00:04:18.760 --> 00:04:26.580 young, was to play in the NFL. And so I went to college at Liberty and played quarterback there 00:04:26.580 --> 00:04:32.580 and majored in youth ministry because I was like, oh, that sounds like fun. And God just wrecked my 00:04:32.580 --> 00:04:37.720 world and said, this is what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life. And so I ended up 00:04:37.720 --> 00:04:44.260 leaving early after I got my degree. I had more eligibility left. I was lined up to be the starter, 00:04:44.260 --> 00:04:50.260 and God said, no, you're leaving. And so through a series of circumstances that I won't bore you with 00:04:50.260 --> 00:04:56.340 the details, God called me back here to South Florida, me and my wife. I've been married for 00:04:56.340 --> 00:05:00.540 five years. My wife and I have two incredible kids. I have a three-year-old son, a one-year-old daughter 00:05:00.540 --> 00:05:07.160 and grew up at Calvary. So it's kind of cool to be back at the church where I grew up. So I tell 00:05:07.160 --> 00:05:11.460 our students all the time, I remember sitting in the same seats that you're sitting in. And it's quite 00:05:11.460 --> 00:05:16.360 literally, we haven't changed the seats since I was a student here. So it's very literally the same 00:05:16.360 --> 00:05:20.980 exact seats. But yeah, that's a little bit of my story and how I ended up in youth ministry. 00:05:21.340 --> 00:05:26.620 That's awesome. A homegrown kid coming back to his church to do student ministry. Awesome. Hey, 00:05:26.680 --> 00:05:32.460 Angel, tell me the same thing, man. Tell me a little bit of your story, kind of ministry story, 00:05:32.460 --> 00:05:36.240 how you ended up down here in South Florida and just ministry in general. 00:05:36.680 --> 00:05:43.460 So I'm born and raised down here, born and raised in Hialeah, the good country of Hialeah. 00:05:44.600 --> 00:05:52.540 And so I started following Jesus when I was in high school. And really towards the end of my years 00:05:52.540 --> 00:05:57.820 in high school, that's when I felt like God was calling me to ministry. And after kind of like 00:05:57.820 --> 00:06:03.900 submitting myself over to that call, that's when the door for me to attend Moody Bible Institute 00:06:03.900 --> 00:06:10.760 became available. And so I went to Moody right out of high school. I played football just like Javin, 00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:20.520 but that wasn't as awesome. And so basically, I went to Moody, went in, got my degree from in theology. 00:06:21.360 --> 00:06:28.660 And then after my time at Moody, I came back down to South Florida, took a job at his house children's home 00:06:28.660 --> 00:06:35.840 as a house parent for at-risk teenagers, where basically the boys that lived in my house, 00:06:36.080 --> 00:06:42.580 there was 11 at a time. And basically for them to be in my house, they had to have at least two criminal charges 00:06:42.580 --> 00:06:48.760 on their record. And so we were getting these kids from the juvenile detention centers and putting them 00:06:48.760 --> 00:06:55.200 in a normal home at his house and seeing if that would kind of help them. And I just saw God do 00:06:55.200 --> 00:07:02.580 something. It was that place there that caused for my belief in the gospel to grow to a place I never 00:07:02.580 --> 00:07:08.900 knew. Just the understanding of how the gospel transforms and really, if you take people to 00:07:08.900 --> 00:07:15.460 Jesus, he still changes lives. And so after spending about a year and a half living there 00:07:15.460 --> 00:07:24.680 and with those boys, I took a position at Christ Fellowship back when Jeff Borden, Frank Hopkins 00:07:24.680 --> 00:07:32.960 and just a whole, a whole stew of people were there. And I was, I worked at the Christ Fellowship 00:07:32.960 --> 00:07:38.720 Homestead Campus with Steve Miller. And after, after being there for about eight months, that's when I was 00:07:38.720 --> 00:07:44.460 approached with the idea of our campus becoming its own church. And basically that's when 00:07:44.460 --> 00:07:51.400 we started the process to, to plant core community church, which is now called restoration. I was 00:07:51.400 --> 00:07:57.700 there for close to six years, almost six years. And then that's when I, I was just feeling this, 00:07:57.700 --> 00:08:04.340 this burden to, to really step out of that church. And that's when I took the position here at City 00:08:04.340 --> 00:08:10.580 Rev Church as the student pastor. And so I've been here for about three years now. This camp that we did 00:08:10.580 --> 00:08:17.520 is the 20th camp that I've put together. And I feel like that should be like, like championship rings. 00:08:17.520 --> 00:08:22.460 I wear for every camp. Like, I feel like I should have rap banners hanging up. 00:08:22.460 --> 00:08:31.140 It really should. Every student camp that any minister puts together should be a banner home from his 00:08:31.140 --> 00:08:39.880 household. I agree, Angel. Every gray hair my goatee is, is from a camp. So, so Jeff, I, you've done a lot of 00:08:39.880 --> 00:08:46.480 camps. I've done a lot of camps. God blessed me with many things, but it was very apparent early on in my 00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:53.000 ministry career. Patience with students was not one of them. So I applaud you just at doing 20 years, 00:08:53.080 --> 00:09:00.160 20 different camps, man. We just did the 20th camp. Tell me, like, tell me what made this one unique, 00:09:00.320 --> 00:09:05.020 different. There, there's like, I'm hearing stories of like a digital engagement, physical engagement, 00:09:05.020 --> 00:09:10.600 doing things in the middle of this COVID season. Like, tell me the story of, of SoFlo camp this year. 00:09:11.040 --> 00:09:17.700 Basically, when, when everything with COVID hit or started popping up in March, uh, that's when 00:09:17.700 --> 00:09:23.440 about a few weeks into it, when I was just kind of like, man, you know, I think I might not be doing 00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:28.440 camp this summer. And I was just kind of like, Oh man, what am I going to do with all this time? 00:09:28.600 --> 00:09:33.620 Maybe I'm going to learn how to play the guitar. Maybe I'm going to like work out. I don't know. 00:09:33.680 --> 00:09:37.800 Maybe I'll, I'll learn another language, you know, so I'll do with all my spare time now. 00:09:38.360 --> 00:09:46.100 And, um, and, and the more in all honesty, the more I just started really thinking through, 00:09:46.100 --> 00:09:52.420 okay, what do my students need? And if, man, if, if this goes on, cause at that time we were going 00:09:52.420 --> 00:09:57.780 week to week. And, but I just remember thinking if this goes on until next school year, oh my gosh, 00:09:57.840 --> 00:10:02.820 what are these students going to really be looking like spiritually? And what's their connection to 00:10:02.820 --> 00:10:07.480 this community going to be like? And my heart started breaking for them because in our church, 00:10:07.480 --> 00:10:14.140 at City Rev camp is a huge part of our culture. Uh, we've been creating our own in-house camps for 00:10:14.140 --> 00:10:21.560 years. And it just is a huge part of what our church does. And, and so when I was really thinking 00:10:21.560 --> 00:10:26.820 about, okay, getting ready to announce the fact that we're not doing anything and really what that 00:10:26.820 --> 00:10:32.400 means for our students, that was kind of, that was kind of hurting me. And, um, and as I was bringing 00:10:32.400 --> 00:10:37.740 to the Lord and praying, uh, there was one, I, I, I specifically remember asking the Lord for wisdom. 00:10:38.240 --> 00:10:44.660 And then a few days later I'm on Instagram and something's a page popped up that was being 00:10:44.660 --> 00:10:50.140 sponsored by this, uh, it's called digital camp, uh, something that was happening in Texas. And I'd 00:10:50.140 --> 00:10:55.920 even look at the page. I just saw the word digital youth camp. And when I saw that, my, my wheels 00:10:55.920 --> 00:11:00.180 started immediately spinning. And, and for days I just couldn't get this idea out of my head of like, 00:11:00.220 --> 00:11:07.360 man, why can't we just do it all digitally? And, um, and then so then I, I finally, after a few days 00:11:07.360 --> 00:11:11.820 of even praying about it and really just, uh, talking it over with my wife and stressing about it, 00:11:11.820 --> 00:11:14.460 I started thinking, you know what, let's just do it. Let's just do a digital camp. 00:11:15.460 --> 00:11:23.180 Then, uh, I was one night changing my, uh, my three year old son's diaper. And, uh, for all of us who 00:11:23.180 --> 00:11:30.580 have kids, we know three year old son's diaper is really an unpleasant experience. And, uh, that's 00:11:30.580 --> 00:11:35.620 like, bro, this is, you're too big at this point, boy. Uh, but while I was doing that, my mind just 00:11:35.620 --> 00:11:40.020 disconnected from the moment. And I don't know why I just got this thought thinking, man, you know, 00:11:40.020 --> 00:11:43.840 I know all these guys, I know Javin, I know Tony, I know all these other student pastors, and I know 00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:47.880 they're trying to figure out what to do with their kids, with their students this summer. And as I'm 00:11:47.880 --> 00:11:53.660 changing the diaper, they hit me like, why don't I, why don't I invite them? Why don't we make it 00:11:53.660 --> 00:11:58.800 like a huge, big party? Like for years, I've been praying for something so big that we can all do 00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:03.120 together. For years, I've been hoping for this and we've tried things and they've always crashed 00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:09.120 and burned. But if we're doing it all digitally, this can, this can happen. And so a few days later, 00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:13.640 that's when I reached out to Javin, uh, over at Calvary Fort Lauderdale. That's when I 00:12:13.640 --> 00:12:19.560 reached out to, uh, Tony Cobb over at Christ Fellowship and, and, you know, not, not to embarrass 00:12:19.560 --> 00:12:25.580 you Javin or you Tony, if you're listening, but you know, I knew if, if those two big domino pieces 00:12:25.580 --> 00:12:31.940 would fall, I knew everything from that point would really fall quickly. Um, you, you Javin and Tony, 00:12:31.940 --> 00:12:37.600 if you're listening again, you guys have an incredible amount of influence in our community and you guys 00:12:37.600 --> 00:12:43.260 are, are people that other people really look up to. And so once that, once they were like, yeah, 00:12:43.260 --> 00:12:48.900 we're all in because Javin was actually really funny. Like before I even asked if we, if you want 00:12:48.900 --> 00:12:54.160 to join us for this, he was like, bro, when, when's the next meeting? And, um, and yeah, and it just 00:12:54.160 --> 00:13:00.180 really started snowballing really quickly. Um, and so we created that oversight team of Tony Cobb, 00:13:00.180 --> 00:13:06.100 Javin, and then myself. And then that's when we started the work, uh, to reach out to all the 00:13:06.100 --> 00:13:11.940 churches. Um, we divided the workup of the camp where, where Christ Fellowship was taking over all 00:13:11.940 --> 00:13:19.380 of the services, um, and taking, taking over all the interactive games. City Rev took over all the 00:13:19.380 --> 00:13:25.280 workshops and the communication with all the churches. Uh, Christ Fellowship took over the 00:13:25.280 --> 00:13:31.440 mission projects and the social media promotion. And so we, we divided those big ticket items and then 00:13:31.440 --> 00:13:36.940 all the other churches, uh, we kind of, we kind of let them really worry about their own ministries 00:13:36.940 --> 00:13:42.540 and how they were going to engage with it. And, and so, yeah, that's, that's really how it all came 00:13:42.540 --> 00:13:48.500 to Javin. So you get the call from angel and you go back to your leadership and how are they responding 00:13:48.500 --> 00:13:52.120 to this? Cause I'm sure a lot of people are like, well, that, that sounds like very idealistic, but 00:13:52.120 --> 00:13:55.980 you know, when you're talking about a lot of churches, cross denominations, et cetera. And, 00:13:56.080 --> 00:14:01.080 you know, I love seeing the church work together like that, but not everybody's really down for 00:14:01.080 --> 00:14:06.900 that. So how'd they take it? Yeah. I mean, this was something that I knew going in our church 00:14:06.900 --> 00:14:13.080 leadership has been so bought in to church United and churches coming together to do stuff. And so 00:14:13.080 --> 00:14:18.200 there's always speculation that you have even in your own mind, right? I'm like, could this really 00:14:18.200 --> 00:14:23.400 work? I mean, let's think about logistics of, could this actually happen? And as you start to 00:14:23.400 --> 00:14:29.160 think about it during a COVID season like this, I mean, all of the barriers that would otherwise keep 00:14:29.160 --> 00:14:34.340 you from doing a digital camp together were torn down and say, okay, so what location? And we're 00:14:34.340 --> 00:14:40.060 like, what do you mean location? There isn't one. I mean, location is, yeah, location is anywhere you 00:14:40.060 --> 00:14:45.240 are. And it's like, well, okay. Then you talk about budget, you talk about food, you talk, well, 00:14:45.600 --> 00:14:50.560 all of that has kind of been torn away. And it was, it was literally like God had taken all the 00:14:50.560 --> 00:14:54.220 barriers that would have kept us from doing something like this before. It was like, all those 00:14:54.220 --> 00:14:59.040 are broken down now. Like every wall that would have stood in the way of you doing this is completely 00:14:59.040 --> 00:15:05.460 torn away. And so, um, I think that just opened the door and to see even lead pastors like Doug 00:15:05.460 --> 00:15:10.060 Souder and Roby Barnes talking and being like, Hey, we're all in on this. Like, let me know what your 00:15:10.060 --> 00:15:14.660 youth guy is doing. Cause we're, we're excited about what's happening. Just gave us that much more 00:15:14.660 --> 00:15:19.400 confidence to pursue what we felt the Lord had called us to do. And so it was an easy yes for me, 00:15:19.400 --> 00:15:23.280 like Angel said. I mean, he called me and I said, when are we meeting? When are we making 00:15:23.280 --> 00:15:28.740 this happen? It just sounded like such a perfect fit. We had just, uh, canceled our camp. Like, 00:15:29.060 --> 00:15:31.480 I think it might've been earlier that day. I don't know if I ever told you that Angel, 00:15:31.520 --> 00:15:34.300 but it was like earlier that day we had made the decision, Hey, our camp is canceled. 00:15:34.640 --> 00:15:39.060 And then he called me. And so God kind of worked out the details for all that to come together. 00:15:39.740 --> 00:15:44.600 And yeah, once it started, that snowball got rolling downhill. Um, and it happened pretty quick. 00:15:44.600 --> 00:15:50.220 And from there, like, where did other churches start to find out about this? Because a lot of 00:15:50.220 --> 00:15:54.420 churches, what was it? 40, how, 40, how many churches got, got involved in this? 00:15:54.620 --> 00:15:59.440 We had 40 churches, about 40 churches that signed up saying, Hey, we're gonna have our students 00:15:59.440 --> 00:16:07.780 involved. But we had students, uh, from about 115 churches that signed up. And so that means like 00:16:07.780 --> 00:16:12.480 some of those churches had like two students that signed up, but, but really it hit really 00:16:12.480 --> 00:16:20.180 quite a wide, uh, wide reach. And so now, but the thing was, uh, uh, about it that really worked 00:16:20.180 --> 00:16:26.680 out so well, like what Javin was saying about our lead pastors really being in on, on it. But I think 00:16:26.680 --> 00:16:33.300 too, for years, the years I've been here, there has been these monthly and sometimes quarterly 00:16:33.300 --> 00:16:39.300 gatherings where we were all already becoming familiar with each other. Like I, I didn't meet 00:16:39.300 --> 00:16:45.620 any of these people during SoFlo camp. Like I already had their numbers on my phone and, and it 00:16:45.620 --> 00:16:49.920 was just a matter of reaching out to people who, when I called them, my number was already saved on 00:16:49.920 --> 00:16:55.320 their phone, uh, because of these network gatherings that honestly, when I would go to them, I would 00:16:55.320 --> 00:17:02.420 think what am I, I am wasting my, if this is not at the Calvary grill, I am wasting my time. Like if 00:17:02.420 --> 00:17:08.060 I'm not getting some free food from this, like, but what the Lord was doing, uh, just in that time 00:17:08.060 --> 00:17:14.440 is he was, he was starting to form relationships for something like this. And for so on, even last 00:17:14.440 --> 00:17:20.840 November, when our churches did, uh, the unsinkable series and when, when explore God was done in Miami 00:17:20.840 --> 00:17:25.680 Dade County, you know, all those little things of reminding all of us to the importance of us being 00:17:25.680 --> 00:17:29.600 together, even when, with the Parkland shooting a few years ago, when we're all hitting each other 00:17:29.600 --> 00:17:33.520 up, like, Hey, how's your student industry handled in the houses, all these little moments of 00:17:33.520 --> 00:17:38.520 interactions with each other. We're, we're causing us to be more willing to work with each other down 00:17:38.520 --> 00:17:42.980 the road. Awesome. Hey, we're going to want to get to the networking here in a little bit, but I want 00:17:42.980 --> 00:17:49.800 to get a better understanding. Um, how, what did the camp look like? What were the elements? What 00:17:49.800 --> 00:17:54.740 were the parts? What were the pieces? Give me, give me some granular detail. Like I'm a kid doing 00:17:54.740 --> 00:18:01.020 SoFlo camp in the middle of social distancing. What, what am I actually doing and how am I doing it? 00:18:01.520 --> 00:18:09.060 Yeah, absolutely. So this was a, an online digital summer camp experience. Um, it consisted of seven 00:18:09.060 --> 00:18:14.500 main sessions. So if you think of a main session of a summer camp, you've got worship, you've got a 00:18:14.500 --> 00:18:19.480 message, um, you have some component maybe of small groups. And so we tried to incorporate everything 00:18:19.480 --> 00:18:26.200 that a camp experience would be throughout one week. So Sunday, July 26th through Saturday, August 1st, 00:18:26.200 --> 00:18:31.500 every night at 7 PM was a main session. And what's cool about this, this took place at churches all 00:18:31.500 --> 00:18:37.380 across South Florida. So these were filmed in Miami, in Pembroke Pines, in Fort Lauderdale. I mean, 00:18:38.040 --> 00:18:43.840 all over the place in Broward and Dade County, which was really cool. Um, and so students got a 00:18:43.840 --> 00:18:49.120 different experience, uh, different worship teams, different pastors, youth pastors, lead pastors from 00:18:49.120 --> 00:18:54.020 all across our community, uh, which was, I thought something special for our students to witness the 00:18:54.020 --> 00:18:59.100 unity and the body of Christ come together like that. Uh, there were over 40 different breakout sessions 00:18:59.100 --> 00:19:05.380 or we call them workshops, uh, where students could watch on a YouTube channel as many as they wanted 00:19:05.380 --> 00:19:11.740 over the course of the week. And so it ranged from topics like, uh, how to deal with, uh, sexual and 00:19:11.740 --> 00:19:17.800 gender identity issues, how to deal with, uh, surviving high school. If there was an incoming 00:19:17.800 --> 00:19:22.000 freshman who wanted to just know how to survive high school, um, there was all different kinds of 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:25.700 topics that ranged everywhere on the spectrum. And they all started with the words, how to. 00:19:25.900 --> 00:19:30.720 And so we, we realized that when people search, uh, this generation doesn't really search on Google 00:19:30.720 --> 00:19:35.280 anymore. Gen Z doesn't go to Google to search something. They go to YouTube and they, the first 00:19:35.280 --> 00:19:41.180 two words they type in 90% of the time is how to. And so when you type how to into, into YouTube, 00:19:41.180 --> 00:19:46.420 we're hoping that some of these gospel centered resources, gospel centered workshops, uh, will come 00:19:46.420 --> 00:19:50.740 up on how to handle some of these issues of life. Um, uh, just to kind of point out to Javin, 00:19:51.220 --> 00:19:57.380 those were all done by local people. Uh, those were all done by lead pastors. Those were done by 00:19:57.380 --> 00:20:02.880 student ministry leaders. Those were even done. We even pulled in different, uh, teachers from, uh, 00:20:02.880 --> 00:20:09.420 different schools. And, and that, that was a picture. I feel like that the, the workshops was such a picture 00:20:09.420 --> 00:20:16.540 of South Florida because it was basically all these voices from South Florida teaching the teenagers of 00:20:16.540 --> 00:20:21.040 South Florida. And, uh, and, and I think that's one of the things that they were able to connect with 00:20:21.040 --> 00:20:26.000 it so well, uh, the level of diversity that came out just in those workshop speakers alone. 00:20:26.540 --> 00:20:31.000 Yeah. I think some of the cool components, obviously, you know, engaging with content online 00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:35.680 is an important part of creating a digital camp. You have to have content that students engage with. 00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:38.880 Um, but we started asking the question, how do you go a step further than that? 00:20:39.420 --> 00:20:43.880 Because engaging with a video and watching content is one thing, but actually building relationship, 00:20:43.880 --> 00:20:48.920 um, and even living out your faith through a digital experience is a whole nother ballgame. 00:20:48.980 --> 00:20:52.840 It's just like, how do you create something that students engage with? They don't just watch on 00:20:52.840 --> 00:20:58.920 a screen. And so each church put together small groups for their church. So churches from all over 00:20:58.920 --> 00:21:03.440 South Florida were facilitating small group discussions that followed these breakout sessions and these main 00:21:03.440 --> 00:21:07.840 sessions. And so whatever God did in the life of a student that day, they would get together 00:21:07.840 --> 00:21:13.300 and talk about it. I got to lead a small group that was, uh, students who didn't have a church. 00:21:13.620 --> 00:21:17.320 So if they put on their registration, Hey, I don't have a church anywhere. I'm just kind of checking 00:21:17.320 --> 00:21:22.160 this out. Um, there was a kid from New Jersey in our small group. And I was like, how did you even 00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:27.180 get here? How did you hear about this? This camp was generated from South Florida as a kid from New 00:21:27.180 --> 00:21:31.460 Jersey. One of our, our Calvary campuses had a kid from the Bahamas. There's the same question. 00:21:31.460 --> 00:21:35.420 It was like, how did you hear about this? How did you know that this was going on? And somehow, 00:21:35.420 --> 00:21:41.780 some way from New Jersey to Nassau had heard about what was going on and self-looking up, 00:21:41.780 --> 00:21:45.380 which was kind of cool. And then students had the opportunity to do service projects as well. So we 00:21:45.380 --> 00:21:49.720 had hundreds of students going into South Florida and serving and loving the community well, 00:21:50.280 --> 00:21:54.040 um, which kind of went a step further beyond just engaging with content online, but actually 00:21:54.040 --> 00:21:56.860 being the hands and feet of Christ in our community. So that was really special. 00:21:56.860 --> 00:22:00.860 And what was really cool about those service projects is that we broke them up into two categories, 00:22:00.860 --> 00:22:04.880 things that you can do in your neighborhood and things you can do out of your neighborhood, 00:22:04.880 --> 00:22:11.240 because we wanted to kind of teach the students that just because this virus is, is hitting our 00:22:11.240 --> 00:22:15.840 community, just because of the quarantine and all that stuff, that doesn't put a pause on mission. 00:22:16.460 --> 00:22:22.700 Mission never stops. It didn't stop when Paul was in prison. It didn't stop when there was persecution 00:22:22.700 --> 00:22:28.380 taking place across all the Christians mission, never stops. You just figure out a new way to do 00:22:28.380 --> 00:22:33.180 it. And so for instance, like we were teaching the students, Hey, go to your neighborhood, go, 00:22:33.180 --> 00:22:38.060 go to your neighbor and wash their cars, active service. Hey, go ahead. And from your home, 00:22:38.060 --> 00:22:43.660 record a video of yourself, giving them a message of encouragement to the elderly and assistant living 00:22:43.660 --> 00:22:49.100 homes. Hey, record yourself of doing a video where you're reading a child's story. And we're 00:22:49.100 --> 00:22:55.420 going to send that to local foster care programs and go from door to door and collect canned goods from 00:22:55.420 --> 00:22:58.380 your neighbors. We were just trying to teach them like within your neighborhood right now, 00:22:58.380 --> 00:23:04.140 there's still, and it's a long list of stuff that they were able to engage in. And then the stuff 00:23:04.140 --> 00:23:09.980 outside of the community were just as great where they were able to go to, we were encouraging them to 00:23:09.980 --> 00:23:15.660 go to police stations and fire stations and drop off snacks with, with different cards of encouragement. 00:23:15.660 --> 00:23:19.660 We were teaching them to make posters of encouragement for them to be hung up in their 00:23:19.660 --> 00:23:26.220 local hospital break rooms for the, for the staff members to see. So really teaching our students, 00:23:26.220 --> 00:23:32.940 Hey, listen, all this spare time could be used for something that is incredible as opposed to just 00:23:33.820 --> 00:23:35.980 you waiting for this all to end. 00:23:35.980 --> 00:23:40.060 So all that sounds well and cool, but let's, let's give people some practical stuff. Like 00:23:40.060 --> 00:23:44.540 how many kids actually took part in the offline activities? Because I think a lot of people are 00:23:44.540 --> 00:23:48.620 like, bro, that sounds crazy. Awesome. But what was the end result? 00:23:48.620 --> 00:23:54.460 So for our student ministry, so this is where it gets a little bit, uh, different. And uh, and so, 00:23:54.460 --> 00:23:59.340 so flow camp, and I'll, I'll, I'm going to build to answering your question, right? Uh, 00:23:59.340 --> 00:24:03.180 so, so flow camp, what makes it a little bit different than everything else. So flow camp was 00:24:03.180 --> 00:24:09.900 just providing content. So we were providing the services, the workshops, the service, the serving 00:24:09.900 --> 00:24:14.460 ideas and some challenges. That's what we were providing. And then in each individual church 00:24:15.180 --> 00:24:20.540 was taking that content and applying it in its own specific ways. So there were some churches that 00:24:20.540 --> 00:24:24.300 might be a little smaller than what they did was they said, Hey, we're going to do these, these 00:24:24.300 --> 00:24:29.100 service projects and we're going to do them as a whole. And we're going to go off and do them. 00:24:29.100 --> 00:24:35.100 Where at city rev, what we did was we said, Hey, we're going to give community service hours 00:24:35.100 --> 00:24:41.820 for what you do. And, and so basically whatever you did, you kind of reported it to, we call them 00:24:41.820 --> 00:24:46.460 tribe leaders, which was their group leader. And at the end of the week you get, there's a spreadsheet 00:24:46.460 --> 00:24:51.100 with a breakdown of everything that the student did that week. And then we tally up hours. So we 00:24:51.100 --> 00:24:59.500 have one student that earned 107 hours that week, literally every day for almost 15 hours, uh, just 00:24:59.500 --> 00:25:03.740 gunning it and doing different projects from either in their house. And we, we worked it out where like, 00:25:04.460 --> 00:25:09.500 if you record one video of encouragement, really that's, that's about an hour of service because 00:25:09.500 --> 00:25:13.660 you got to plan the video, you got to record it, you got to email it, all that stuff. And so if you, 00:25:13.660 --> 00:25:20.700 if you write a letter, one of them was to write a, a one page letter with a drawing to a kid in foster 00:25:20.700 --> 00:25:25.740 care. And if you did that, that's an hour right there. And so at the end of the week, we tally all 00:25:25.740 --> 00:25:30.140 up. And so for our church, I can't speak for any other church because our communication was not good 00:25:30.140 --> 00:25:37.020 enough for us to know what everybody's doing. But for our church, I, we, we believe 88% of the students 00:25:37.020 --> 00:25:40.540 from our church were involved in services just because we have it on spreadsheets. 00:25:41.180 --> 00:25:43.340 88% of your students. That's huge. 00:25:43.740 --> 00:25:48.780 But what's craziest about it is it was all on their own. Like you had to go do it yourself. It 00:25:48.780 --> 00:25:54.780 wasn't us busing anybody anywhere. And, and so there was one group that went and did a six hour beach 00:25:54.780 --> 00:26:00.540 cleanup and, and they got an hour for every bag that they filled. Uh, now I don't know if they were just 00:26:00.540 --> 00:26:08.140 went into a dumpster and filled up their bag. Uh, but it was just very, it was all on them, 00:26:08.140 --> 00:26:09.020 which was really special. 00:26:09.020 --> 00:26:14.780 That is cool. Javin, how did, how did the students where you're at in Fort Lauderdale 00:26:14.780 --> 00:26:18.700 experience those offline activities too? Because that to me is kind of the most intriguing thing 00:26:18.700 --> 00:26:21.980 about SoFlo camp. It's not just that it was content online. I think a lot of people are like, 00:26:21.980 --> 00:26:25.820 yeah, we'll, we'll put stuff on the internet. But the fact that you guys were willing to do 00:26:25.820 --> 00:26:32.060 online and offline stuff with students is just where to me, SoFlo camp just kind of took off. 00:26:32.060 --> 00:26:37.820 Yeah. And the opportunity for students to engage in person and something is a lot of what that 00:26:37.820 --> 00:26:41.580 generation was looking for. You know, there's a lot of stuff, like you said, that you can put on the 00:26:41.580 --> 00:26:46.940 internet and engage online. And a lot of that stuff was successful. I think we had close to 18,000 00:26:46.940 --> 00:26:52.620 individual viewers on our YouTube channel over the course of SoFlo camp week. But when it comes to 00:26:52.620 --> 00:26:58.220 actually doing stuff in person, students were craving that something that I can do to get out of my house, 00:26:58.220 --> 00:27:04.540 something that I can do to get out of my room or to engage with my community in a way that I haven't 00:27:04.540 --> 00:27:10.620 been able to do in a long time. And so those type of opportunities is what students loved about SoFlo 00:27:10.620 --> 00:27:16.780 camp. Even something as small as being able to walk out of your house and your youth pastors are there 00:27:16.780 --> 00:27:22.860 with a free T-shirt for you. And that was something that we got to do with our students. I know Angel did 00:27:22.860 --> 00:27:28.860 as well. And to be able to interact in person with people, even behind a mask, even with all the 00:27:28.860 --> 00:27:34.140 regulations to make sure things were safe, for students to see people again, I think built a little bit of 00:27:34.140 --> 00:27:38.860 momentum. And so that's what I'd say to anyone listening is like, how do I gain some momentum and even just 00:27:38.860 --> 00:27:44.300 help those personal relationships that I have with my students? You know, even the digital content that you have, 00:27:44.300 --> 00:27:49.340 you've got to pair it with some kind of in-person connection. There's got to be a relational component. 00:27:49.340 --> 00:27:53.900 And it doesn't have to be you as a youth pastor or a youth leader. It could be their small group leader. 00:27:53.900 --> 00:27:58.460 It could be someone who's investing in their life, encouraging them to show up randomly when they 00:27:58.460 --> 00:28:03.740 don't expect it. Having an opportunity for them even to drive by the church and have some kind of 00:28:03.740 --> 00:28:08.460 in-person interaction that connects them to the online experience goes a long way. 00:28:08.460 --> 00:28:11.660 What was really helpful for us at CityRev was that we just thought, okay, 00:28:11.660 --> 00:28:16.540 what are incentives to keep these students engaged? Because like, I think Javin mentioned it early on, 00:28:16.540 --> 00:28:21.020 we made the camp free. And so there wasn't this feeling of like, oh, I already paid for it, 00:28:21.020 --> 00:28:25.260 I got to stick to it, stay to it. So we just said, hey, look, let's, as a student ministry, 00:28:25.260 --> 00:28:30.620 let's pull in our budget and pull out some money. And every, because what we did for ours was every 00:28:30.620 --> 00:28:35.580 morning, they had a Zoom meeting with their small group and every evening after the service. And so we said, 00:28:35.580 --> 00:28:40.700 hey, every morning we're just going to give one kid from every Zoom group some big prize. Either we 00:28:40.700 --> 00:28:46.060 deliver a pizza to your house or we give you a box or we give you some $20 gift card, keeping them in. 00:28:46.060 --> 00:28:49.420 But then we thought, man, you know what, let's, let's think of some incentives for them to 00:28:50.380 --> 00:28:55.660 engage in relationship. So we made some of the service projects. Hey, if you host a watch party at your 00:28:55.660 --> 00:29:00.860 house for six people or less from the student ministry, you get a community service hour. 00:29:00.860 --> 00:29:05.500 And so we were using these hours as a way of helping them see that community service is 00:29:05.500 --> 00:29:10.380 something like that, right? Inviting people to your home for a way of engaging with service, 00:29:10.380 --> 00:29:14.940 doing it with CDC guidelines in mind, and really thinking through all that or 00:29:15.820 --> 00:29:21.100 delivering a meal to your leader's home. And so all of our leaders had meals delivered to their home 00:29:21.100 --> 00:29:27.580 all week long. The students created meal trains for some of our leaders so that that way they didn't 00:29:27.580 --> 00:29:32.460 have to worry about food, knowing that they were getting hours and caring for somebody who was caring 00:29:32.460 --> 00:29:38.700 for them. And so I think it was just really, because the content was taken care of with Soflow, 00:29:38.700 --> 00:29:44.220 it freed other student pastors to then get creative in their context, because they weren't having to 00:29:44.220 --> 00:29:50.700 worry about everything. Like because Calvary, Javin and all those guys, they did the services. 00:29:50.700 --> 00:29:55.100 That was one less thing for me to think about. And because Christ Fellowship was doing social media, 00:29:55.100 --> 00:29:58.220 that was one less thing for me to think about. And I was able to really think about what my students 00:29:58.220 --> 00:30:03.180 needed. That's so interesting. And that often happens when you're in these like networking type of 00:30:03.180 --> 00:30:08.860 relationships where, and really, this is almost the idea behind multi-site where you've got 00:30:08.860 --> 00:30:14.860 central, that's providing the weekend services and that mentality. And then the campus pastors, 00:30:15.340 --> 00:30:20.460 allegedly, hey guys, connect in the community, do the things that the content can't. And that you're 00:30:20.460 --> 00:30:27.900 able to create that networking relationship across all of the different churches that were out there, 00:30:27.900 --> 00:30:33.420 that are, which is, did I hear 50? Did I make up that number? How many churches really were kind of 00:30:33.420 --> 00:30:39.900 networked together by doing this? Well over 40. I could pull up the final number real fast. I got it 00:30:39.900 --> 00:30:44.860 up here. But, but I know for sure there was over, there was over a hundred students, over a hundred 00:30:44.860 --> 00:30:50.860 different churches that students signed up from, but there was well over 40 that, that were networked 00:30:50.860 --> 00:30:55.980 together for this. Wow. So you even had students volunteer or sign up to be part of this with 00:30:55.980 --> 00:31:02.460 churches that weren't even necessarily connected for whatever reason. So we had, I pulled it up right 00:31:02.460 --> 00:31:13.180 here. We had exactly 39, 39 churches that were networked together for this. And then we had 64 00:31:13.180 --> 00:31:19.420 churches, not including those 39, 64 churches of students that were signed up to be a part of it. 00:31:19.420 --> 00:31:31.020 So what's 39 plus 64? Um, 103, 103, 103. But I love this idea because you're able to help some of these 00:31:31.020 --> 00:31:35.100 smaller churches that would get overwhelmed with stuff like this, or even normal churches. Every 00:31:35.100 --> 00:31:40.700 church in this COVID season is overwhelmed with this and you're able to help them kind of step back and 00:31:40.700 --> 00:31:45.900 say, Hey, we'll take care of, of this piece. You guys figure out how to connect, engage with, 00:31:45.900 --> 00:31:51.580 with your kids, do this specific ministry. And, and, and just to see how that capitalized light, 00:31:51.580 --> 00:31:55.340 like it did is, is phenomenal. But what was really special about it was that there wasn't 00:31:55.340 --> 00:32:00.940 one church that was the hero. Um, like there wasn't one church was like, Oh my gosh, did you see what 00:32:00.940 --> 00:32:07.820 Calvary did? Like it was this, this reality of, because of the workshops, having so many different 00:32:07.820 --> 00:32:13.340 leaders in them because of the services being at so many different places because of the social media, 00:32:13.340 --> 00:32:18.460 almost being anonymous because of us not putting any church names on the website. It was this 00:32:18.460 --> 00:32:23.660 beautiful thing where it was just like, who's doing this? South Florida is. And, um, and it became so 00:32:23.660 --> 00:32:28.620 much more freeing because I've done things like this where then kids from smaller churches, they're like, 00:32:28.620 --> 00:32:34.300 my church sucks. I want to go to your church. And that hurts. That hurts that church. And, um, 00:32:34.300 --> 00:32:38.620 and it hurts that kid in the long run. And so I think because there was no church hero, 00:32:38.620 --> 00:32:45.420 Jesus was the only hero that we, very cool. Would, would this have worked pre COVID? Like if you had 00:32:45.420 --> 00:32:50.780 tried to do this in 2019, is, is, is this a thing? I mean, I think it would have been very difficult. 00:32:50.780 --> 00:32:57.100 I think it could have worked. I think a lot of what SoFlo did was break down some of those barriers, 00:32:57.100 --> 00:33:01.820 like we were talking about earlier. And so, I mean, you guys know the busyness of ministry and this 00:33:01.820 --> 00:33:06.140 rhythm that you get in of just constantly producing and producing and producing a lot of that 00:33:06.780 --> 00:33:13.180 stopped and gave us the bandwidth and the opportunity for God to do a work with a digital 00:33:13.180 --> 00:33:18.700 summer camp and everyone networking together. There were times throughout this, uh, this digital 00:33:18.700 --> 00:33:24.380 camp experience where I felt like I was on the same church team with Angel and Tony and these guys, 00:33:24.380 --> 00:33:29.660 like we, we would meet more often than sometimes I would meet with my own people that work with me at 00:33:29.660 --> 00:33:34.220 my church. And it was cool. There was something about those, like, this is special. And I don't 00:33:34.220 --> 00:33:39.980 know if this happens everywhere. Uh, but I want to keep doing this. And so it was so cool to have 00:33:39.980 --> 00:33:44.540 that kind of experience. And like you said, the barriers that would have prevented this from happening 00:33:44.540 --> 00:33:51.260 before we're taken away. And we got to realize, um, that God can do a work of unity like this 00:33:51.260 --> 00:33:55.420 in any season. And so as we look to the future, I don't know if it could have happened there. It would 00:33:55.420 --> 00:34:02.300 have been very difficult to even think of something like this, to even figure out what this could look 00:34:02.300 --> 00:34:06.620 like pre COVID. But now that it has happened, I mean, we're talking about, man, how do we get 00:34:06.620 --> 00:34:11.500 together in person more? How do churches, students from other churches get to come together and hang 00:34:11.500 --> 00:34:14.700 out and get to know each other and not for the sake of, I'm going to try your church. If you're going 00:34:14.700 --> 00:34:18.700 to try my church, it's not about church hopping. This is about the church, the capital C church, 00:34:18.700 --> 00:34:23.500 the body of Christ, uh, actually getting to know each other and to be on mission together. 00:34:23.980 --> 00:34:27.980 And so, uh, Eddie Copen from church United says all the time, you know, our unity is the greatest 00:34:27.980 --> 00:34:34.220 apologetic we have as the church and John 17, Jesus prays that we would be one as he and the father are 00:34:34.220 --> 00:34:39.500 one and that the world might know him. And so that's what we were all about from the very beginning of 00:34:39.500 --> 00:34:46.300 this. John 17, 21 kind of became our mantra that we wanted to be one. And so I don't know if it would 00:34:46.300 --> 00:34:51.580 have worked pre COVID. Um, but I'm thankful that it did now. And I'm hoping that in the future, 00:34:51.580 --> 00:34:55.260 we get to do more stuff like this together. I mean, I got questions about the future. 00:34:55.260 --> 00:34:59.260 Cause believe me, I know that there's a lot, um, that that's coming out before we get there, 00:34:59.260 --> 00:35:02.220 why don't you tell everybody kind of how the programming worked out? Cause that aspect 00:35:02.220 --> 00:35:07.420 was pretty intriguing to me too, as far as like how you guys handled when worship teams did what, 00:35:08.140 --> 00:35:12.140 who spoke on what day, et cetera, and how some of that worked out together. Cause 00:35:12.140 --> 00:35:18.220 that to me was one of the great things about the sharing aspect of it. So that not one church felt 00:35:18.220 --> 00:35:23.340 like it was being dominant over another. Yeah. So we, we started off with what do we want to teach 00:35:23.980 --> 00:35:29.100 and what is it that we want to communicate to not it's, it's crazy. Cause you think, 00:35:29.100 --> 00:35:32.620 well, I want to teach my students, but now we're thinking, okay, well, we want to teach South 00:35:32.620 --> 00:35:40.620 Florida. And, and, and we knew very early on that this was the idea that will, that's going to give 00:35:40.620 --> 00:35:47.180 birth to a lot of ideas, um, down the road. And, and so what we wanted to, well, we were brainstorming 00:35:47.180 --> 00:35:53.740 the actual service topics. Uh, that's when exactly what Javin was just saying, the idea of John chapter 00:35:53.740 --> 00:36:01.820 17, uh, when Jesus says, when he was praying for us to perfectly be one as he and the Trinity is one. 00:36:02.220 --> 00:36:05.020 And so that's when we were really thinking about, okay, what does that really mean? 00:36:05.020 --> 00:36:11.100 Like we need to help our people and all these people see what it means to be one with each other. 00:36:11.100 --> 00:36:16.140 And so that has so many different more components than just being friends. Like that means there's a 00:36:16.140 --> 00:36:21.580 one gospel, there's a one mission, there's a one body, a one word, one story, one walk, all those 00:36:21.580 --> 00:36:26.700 different concepts. And so that's what gave birth to that, um, to the sermon series, the one 00:36:27.260 --> 00:36:32.140 and everything kind of flowed from there. But one of the biggest things that I feel like I saw 00:36:32.140 --> 00:36:38.140 throughout this was the level of humility, uh, from so many of the guys involved specifically, 00:36:38.140 --> 00:36:42.460 I think, and I know he's not here, but I want to, I want to really highlight it. Tony Cobb, 00:36:43.180 --> 00:36:49.420 like he was just so adamant about not caring about speaking, not being in the front, like being so 00:36:49.420 --> 00:36:54.140 like, Hey, whatever, whatever it needs to be for, for the greater good of making this work well. 00:36:54.700 --> 00:36:58.140 And so we looked at it. It wasn't like, Hey, if you, if you had some kind of role, 00:36:58.140 --> 00:37:02.860 you get rewarded with teaching. It was no, how do we spread this out? Well, how do we make sure that 00:37:02.860 --> 00:37:07.660 angel's not on every night or jab in, or how do we spread it out where there's so many different 00:37:07.660 --> 00:37:10.380 faces from South Florida in these services? 00:37:11.100 --> 00:37:16.540 I would even add just to get super practical. I mean, Angel mentioned the humility and people 00:37:16.540 --> 00:37:22.540 being willing to say like, I want to do whatever it takes for this to be successful. You know, you 00:37:22.540 --> 00:37:27.740 look at, if you can use a sports analogy, you know, the best teams are the ones who have the best role 00:37:27.740 --> 00:37:33.420 players that are willing to give up a starting role or willing to give up the role that they think they 00:37:33.420 --> 00:37:39.900 deserve for the sake of helping the team. And when it comes to SoFlo camp, I mean, worship teams stepped 00:37:39.900 --> 00:37:44.300 up in moments when we needed them to. So we reached out to different churches and said, Hey, would you 00:37:44.300 --> 00:37:49.820 host our third session, night three session? They said, Hey, we're going to make it happen. We're in the 00:37:49.820 --> 00:37:55.500 middle of production for something right now, but we so believe in this that we're willing to, to put this 00:37:55.500 --> 00:38:00.780 aside and to focus on what God is calling us to do at SoFlo camp. And so there's so many stories of that, 00:38:00.780 --> 00:38:07.260 that of church's humility, just being willing to step in, um, and lead and to try to put together, 00:38:07.260 --> 00:38:12.300 you know, seven different main sessions, 40 different workshops over the course of a couple 00:38:12.300 --> 00:38:18.540 months to get ready for this full overload of digital content on a YouTube channel, uh, was a 00:38:18.540 --> 00:38:25.420 crazy task that could only be explained by the grace of God, like that, that much digital content was 00:38:25.420 --> 00:38:30.460 created and filmed and post edited and everything in a short amount of time. 00:38:30.460 --> 00:38:36.460 To be able to be uploaded. It really did take every church like this would not have been able to happen 00:38:36.460 --> 00:38:41.020 if it was just Calvary or just city rev or just Christ flesh of Miami, or just restoration or whatever 00:38:41.020 --> 00:38:47.100 church, you know, it couldn't have happened just one. It took AV teams and production teams and media 00:38:47.100 --> 00:38:53.340 teams from all over South Florida to say, we'll edit this piece and we'll record this piece at our 00:38:53.340 --> 00:38:58.940 church. You know, we'll go down to our downtown Miami campus and we'll do this session here. And there's so many 00:38:58.940 --> 00:39:04.940 different components, uh, that just happened to fall in place. And, uh, we can't take any credit 00:39:04.940 --> 00:39:08.620 for it because if we tried to do this on our own, it would have never happened. 00:39:08.620 --> 00:39:14.460 And the thing about it too, that I feel like it was such a work of the spirit because everybody's 00:39:14.460 --> 00:39:21.340 reward was unity. Like there was no paycheck at the end of this or no hype or, or more follows on 00:39:21.340 --> 00:39:24.940 Instagram or whatever silly things we get caught up with. Uh, everybody was just saying, yeah, the 00:39:24.940 --> 00:39:31.180 rewards unity. And, you know, what was really sweet about the services was that not every service was 00:39:31.180 --> 00:39:37.900 this high production thing. You know, we, we gave a variety of different avenues of worship and 00:39:37.900 --> 00:39:42.460 engaging with God, where even one service was a student ministry band that was put together from 00:39:42.460 --> 00:39:48.140 Calvary Fort Lydon, where they did this acoustic style worship. And then one's like this super high 00:39:48.140 --> 00:39:53.580 production. And then like we gave like a good flow. So that way students from all different kinds of 00:39:53.580 --> 00:40:00.060 church circles felt like they were pulled in and even thought about, um, because it's not, not every 00:40:00.060 --> 00:40:03.180 church is high production. That's just the reality of it. And that's okay. 00:40:03.180 --> 00:40:08.060 That's beautiful. And it's true. Cause I saw the practicality of it. I saw it all work out and it 00:40:08.060 --> 00:40:12.300 was wonderful. And then one of the things that, you know, coming from a guy who used to do student 00:40:12.300 --> 00:40:16.540 ministry that I thought, cause I talked to Tony and when we talked to him, we kind of kind of just 00:40:16.540 --> 00:40:21.500 ballpark the numbers. I mean, you guys really did do camp for all these students for roughly about 00:40:21.500 --> 00:40:27.980 six, $7 a kid. Like when all the costs kind of added up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For every pastor that's 00:40:27.980 --> 00:40:34.060 ever done camp before, when you talk about doing camp for $7 a kid for thousands of kids for over 00:40:34.060 --> 00:40:38.700 a thousand kids, like you, you would think that Jesus, you know, came down and did the five loaves 00:40:38.700 --> 00:40:42.940 and two fish thing, like again, which is just ridiculous. Jeff, you want to speak into that? 00:40:43.500 --> 00:40:48.540 Yeah. I mean, from the very beginning, it was one of our convictions or like, we want to make this free. 00:40:48.540 --> 00:40:53.500 I mean, we knew with the crisis that we're facing in our country and even just the pandemic, 00:40:53.500 --> 00:40:58.220 like financially families are not in a place right now to just dish out a hundred dollars, 00:40:58.220 --> 00:41:03.900 $200, $300 for camp. And so we're like, how do we fight for this? And so the generosity of South 00:41:03.900 --> 00:41:08.220 Florida comes into play here. And so I'm not going to steal any individual organization organization's 00:41:08.220 --> 00:41:14.540 blessing in heaven, but there were organizations that donated to SoFlo camp to say, Hey, we so believe 00:41:14.540 --> 00:41:20.700 in this being free for students in South Florida that we want to help fund this. And so if you look at it 00:41:20.700 --> 00:41:26.300 across the board, you know, a digital summer camp experience, when you look at the cost that's 00:41:26.300 --> 00:41:31.900 necessary to do it, I mean, do you have an internet connection? Do you have a streaming system? Do you 00:41:31.900 --> 00:41:37.580 have YouTube? You know, if you do, like you could pull off a digital camp experience, even the in-person 00:41:38.620 --> 00:41:43.420 expressions, like the missions challenges and the small groups are all motivated and driven by that 00:41:43.420 --> 00:41:49.420 digital content. So the next step from a main session could be, Hey, go right now and bring a 00:41:49.420 --> 00:41:55.660 note to your neighbor. And that's a physical act of service that happens because of a digital 00:41:56.620 --> 00:42:01.420 piece of information. Like how cool is that? And that doesn't cost anything, right? That's not 00:42:01.420 --> 00:42:07.260 something that you have to actually pay for and, you know, get a car or a bus for students to go to an 00:42:07.260 --> 00:42:13.340 outreach. You know, students did a six hour beach cleanup completely on their own. And that was spurred on 00:42:13.340 --> 00:42:18.700 from digital content that was created. And so we knew going in, I mean, the cost was going to be low 00:42:18.700 --> 00:42:24.220 already. We didn't expect it to be $7 a kid low, but we knew that going in, we're like, this is something 00:42:24.220 --> 00:42:29.580 that because of a digital experience, you can do things that you never could have in person. And so 00:42:29.580 --> 00:42:34.700 the, the amount of students that participated absolutely blew our minds and the ways that they 00:42:34.700 --> 00:42:41.260 were able to practically engage, uh, was just nothing that could be explained by our own gifts 00:42:41.260 --> 00:42:45.340 and talents. Cause if it was, it wouldn't make sense. It literally was Jesus multiplying. 00:42:45.340 --> 00:42:49.260 If there's anybody listening, who's kind of thinking, man, how can I do this with my kids 00:42:49.260 --> 00:42:55.020 or my student ministry? We tried to make it where it can be done after self-flow. And so we put 00:42:55.020 --> 00:42:59.420 everything on the YouTube channel in a way that a church can say, Hey, we're doing so flow the first 00:42:59.420 --> 00:43:03.660 week of September. Um, and you just take our YouTube channel, all the services are on there, 00:43:03.660 --> 00:43:08.220 all the workshops around there, and you can go ahead and access, we can send you all the different 00:43:08.220 --> 00:43:15.020 mission ideas and you can read, you can do so flow yourself for free. Um, you know, and, and, and I just 00:43:15.020 --> 00:43:19.900 want to also really highlight the fact that I know I mentioned this earlier, all these different 00:43:19.900 --> 00:43:24.380 networking things that we were a part of that kind of led up to us all being close enough to do 00:43:24.380 --> 00:43:29.740 this. But like, even things like when Tim Keller came down and, and, and down in at Crossbridge and 00:43:29.740 --> 00:43:35.420 slapped us all in the face with unity, like, and just made it like, this was something Tim Keller does. 00:43:36.860 --> 00:43:43.820 I remember you were there and I remember also, you know, and, and, you know, this is all a product 00:43:43.820 --> 00:43:50.460 of the spirit going before us years ago and saying, look, one day you guys, you don't think you will 00:43:50.460 --> 00:43:55.820 need each other that much, but you will see you do. And, um, and so I'm just so grateful to think 00:43:55.820 --> 00:44:01.180 about what's he going to do six years from now from this. So usually after camp there's the camp 00:44:01.180 --> 00:44:05.500 high, right? Like there's the moment where we all take our sticks to the fire, we cry our eyes out, 00:44:05.500 --> 00:44:11.260 we get on the bus, we get home, things change. What has life been like coming out of SoFlo 00:44:11.260 --> 00:44:14.940 considering it was here, it was digital, but it was highly relational and engaging. 00:44:15.420 --> 00:44:20.300 Yeah. I think from an individual youth ministry standpoint, I can't speak for every youth ministry, 00:44:20.300 --> 00:44:25.180 but this has created so much momentum for us. You know, students who otherwise weren't connected 00:44:25.180 --> 00:44:29.980 during the pandemic. You know, I think every youth pastor can relate with, when you think of the 00:44:29.980 --> 00:44:33.740 student that you haven't seen in months and you trace it back and you're like, oh, I haven't seen 00:44:33.740 --> 00:44:37.980 them since the beginning of March ever since this pandemic happened. It seems like they've dropped off 00:44:37.980 --> 00:44:41.740 the face of the earth. I don't know where they are. And so, because they're not coming to church in 00:44:41.740 --> 00:44:45.660 person, you know, you can text them, you can call them and you're like, it seems like they're not 00:44:45.660 --> 00:44:51.020 responding to anything. A lot of those type of students have come back because of SoFlo can. So there's 00:44:51.020 --> 00:44:55.660 something about that expression of unity that intrigued them, that brought them in. And when 00:44:55.660 --> 00:44:59.340 we asked them that question, like, what is it about SoFlo camp that brought you back? We've 00:44:59.340 --> 00:45:03.660 been calling you for months. And I said, I don't know. It was something cool about churches doing 00:45:03.660 --> 00:45:09.660 something together. I was just curious and I wanted to see what it was about. And that was the hook 00:45:09.660 --> 00:45:13.580 that brought them back into the fold of community. And so, like I said, I can't speak for every youth 00:45:13.580 --> 00:45:18.700 ministry, but momentum has been crazy for us on the tail end of this. One of the coolest parts of 00:45:18.700 --> 00:45:24.380 what happened at SoFlo camp that has continued on, which I'm most excited about. We did a panel 00:45:24.380 --> 00:45:29.820 where we talked about what it means to engage South Florida in the mission. And just on a whim, 00:45:29.820 --> 00:45:35.420 we're like, you know, what if we created almost like this grant process where students could submit 00:45:35.420 --> 00:45:40.540 a mission idea and say, I have an idea to reach South Florida with the gospel. I'm gifted in these 00:45:40.540 --> 00:45:46.620 areas. I'm passionate about this. And I've had this idea for a long time and I want to go do it, 00:45:46.620 --> 00:45:52.300 but I've never had the support before. So we've said, you have the support now of 40 plus churches 00:45:52.300 --> 00:45:58.380 in South Florida. So we put a Google form and not very complex. I mean, very simple tool that anyone 00:45:58.380 --> 00:46:03.900 can use. And we just said, submit your idea and we want to support you in this idea. We'll even fund 00:46:03.900 --> 00:46:08.140 your idea. We said, we will, if this is a good idea to go reach South Florida with the gospel, 00:46:08.140 --> 00:46:12.940 we will fund it. And we just sat back and we said, we'll see what happens. We'll see if anyone submits 00:46:12.940 --> 00:46:20.060 anything. And there's been tons of ideas that have been submitted that are incredible. And these are 00:46:20.060 --> 00:46:26.300 students. I mean, seventh graders who are saying, I want to provide hygiene products to homeless women 00:46:26.300 --> 00:46:31.660 and share the gospel with them through hygiene products. Or a senior girl from Pembroke Pines, 00:46:31.660 --> 00:46:36.540 who says, I want to start a painting ministry where we come together and we paint on canvases 00:46:36.540 --> 00:46:42.140 and we tell gospel stories through scripture as we paint together. And that's the way I'm going to 00:46:42.140 --> 00:46:47.340 reach my friends for the gospel who otherwise wouldn't come to church. I mean, these things that are created 00:46:47.340 --> 00:46:52.860 from the minds of students as they think about what their gifts are, as they think about what 00:46:52.860 --> 00:46:59.180 they're passionate about. And then God uses them to go accomplish that idea in the community. 00:46:59.180 --> 00:47:03.820 And so that's one of the coolest things for me that's continued after SoFlo camp is some of these 00:47:03.820 --> 00:47:08.860 conversations with these students and asking them very tough questions too. Like, hey, if you were given 00:47:08.860 --> 00:47:12.780 the money that you're asking for, what would you do with it? Sometimes it feels like ministry shark tank. 00:47:12.780 --> 00:47:20.220 I'm like, yo, this is kind of cool. Like you get to ask questions to me. Yeah. It was like, 00:47:20.220 --> 00:47:25.100 convince me that I want to invest in your company, but it's really your mission idea. And so it's been 00:47:25.100 --> 00:47:30.860 cool to walk a journey with these students and to hear their passions and how really committed they 00:47:30.860 --> 00:47:35.660 are to the gospel and bringing the gospel to their community. And these are students that I otherwise 00:47:35.660 --> 00:47:39.420 wouldn't have known. Angel otherwise wouldn't have known. Now we have this relationship and we're 00:47:39.420 --> 00:47:44.620 really partners in ministry together. You look at the disciples and they, a lot of these guys were 00:47:44.620 --> 00:47:50.380 teenagers and they went and changed the world. And so I feel like God could do that again in South 00:47:50.380 --> 00:47:57.900 Florida. So looking forward, um, into the future, like immediate future. Um, is there like a winter 00:47:57.900 --> 00:48:03.580 version of SoFlo coming? Is there something like that? Cause in my mind I was like, bro, this was so 00:48:03.580 --> 00:48:07.500 amazing. I watched, you know, you guys mentioned Tony Cobb. He's our student guy at Christ Fellowship. 00:48:07.500 --> 00:48:12.220 Like he had so many positive things to say about it. Now talking to you guys here and such positive 00:48:12.220 --> 00:48:19.180 things to me, this is an answer to prayer in regards to a lot of possibilities with retreats. 00:48:19.820 --> 00:48:23.340 Is there something coming next? Yeah. Forgive me for using a double negative, 00:48:23.340 --> 00:48:30.220 but we can't not do something in person after SoFlo. So every English teacher is going to hate me for 00:48:30.220 --> 00:48:36.140 saying that, but it's true. Like we, we can't not come together and do this again. And so we've been 00:48:36.140 --> 00:48:41.340 talking about what that'll look like as things start to open up, as you know, things start to happen, 00:48:41.340 --> 00:48:46.140 even if they don't continuing to use the momentum of SoFlo camp. Uh, what's cool about this, 00:48:46.140 --> 00:48:50.860 like Angel said earlier, because no church was tied to the branding of this, you know, 00:48:50.860 --> 00:48:58.540 the idea of SoFlo logo has kind of created a brand that is not attached to anything. And so students 00:48:58.540 --> 00:49:03.980 will associate themselves with SoFlo and they're associating themselves with the church of South 00:49:03.980 --> 00:49:09.020 Florida. Like, how cool is that? Like I'm, I was a part of SoFlo. Well, what is that? And they're like, 00:49:09.580 --> 00:49:14.860 well, it wasn't really something my church did. It wasn't really something that any one church did. 00:49:14.860 --> 00:49:21.900 It was just all of them. And so now, well, are you a part of that? Like, yeah, I'm a part of all of 00:49:21.900 --> 00:49:26.620 them. I, in some way, like I, I associate with my local church and that's where I grow. That's where 00:49:26.620 --> 00:49:33.260 I'm discipled, but in some way I'm, I'm tied to the church of South Florida. And so for us, as we look 00:49:33.260 --> 00:49:37.980 to the future, that, that name and that branding, but even beyond that, just that community that's been 00:49:37.980 --> 00:49:43.280 built around SoFlo. I mean, I've, I've gotten screenshots into me of group texts that are just 00:49:43.280 --> 00:49:48.660 called SoFlo. And it was like, there's a whole group message of sixth grade girls. That's just 00:49:48.660 --> 00:49:52.920 called SoFlo because they built a relationship over the course of this week and it's continuing on. 00:49:53.180 --> 00:49:58.700 And so, yeah, we, we can't not do something together in the future. We're dreaming about, 00:49:59.000 --> 00:50:04.340 okay, well now is there a space that will be big enough? So we're dreaming about, is there any space 00:50:04.340 --> 00:50:07.740 in South Florida that'll even be big enough to hold all the students that are 00:50:07.740 --> 00:50:12.940 represented in our youth ministry? And we're just praying that God will do big things in the future. 00:50:13.040 --> 00:50:18.500 The thing is that I, I believe, you know, we, we taught these teenagers in that one week 00:50:18.500 --> 00:50:24.740 what's possible with unity. And so if there's something that's not going to happen in the next 00:50:24.740 --> 00:50:29.960 six months, those teenagers that experienced that when they're doing ministry one day, 00:50:30.300 --> 00:50:37.500 when they're pastors, when they're leading a ministry, they grew up watching unity. And so 00:50:37.500 --> 00:50:43.800 that's, that's where I'm excited about what's going to take place 15 years from now when those kids now 00:50:43.800 --> 00:50:50.340 have voices of leadership. And, and I think it's good because I remember when, when my youth group, 00:50:50.380 --> 00:50:54.320 when we thought it was a big deal that we had another youth group come to our service and we're like, 00:50:54.320 --> 00:51:00.540 oh my gosh, the unity. And these kids got such a big picture of it. That's gonna, that, that taught them 00:51:00.540 --> 00:51:05.060 something that's going to echo for a very long time. And so like this weekend, we're doing a little 00:51:05.060 --> 00:51:10.300 celebration with some of the student pastors that, you know, Javin's doing a phenomenal job putting it 00:51:10.300 --> 00:51:15.380 together. And, and like the networking meetings coming out of here are going to be so much more 00:51:15.380 --> 00:51:20.740 meaningful. What ideas are going to percolate from those time together? I don't know. But what we did 00:51:20.740 --> 00:51:28.400 was we, we put some, we injected some steroids into the unity of South Florida. And now the Lord's just 00:51:28.400 --> 00:51:33.900 going to use it in great ways. I love that. John, John three 30. It's not about me, um, you know, 00:51:33.900 --> 00:51:39.860 taking the brand away from it and instead creating a, I mean, a movement. I don't, I don't use that word 00:51:39.860 --> 00:51:45.680 sparingly, but you're starting a movement here with, with kids. It's not branded to one location or one 00:51:45.680 --> 00:51:51.920 building, but instead is, is, is scalable and reproducible on how it's done. By the way, 00:51:51.920 --> 00:51:57.740 my daughter started sixth grade like this week. So she will be in sixth grade in the summer. So like 00:51:57.740 --> 00:52:03.580 we need to SoFlo camp 2021 needs to happen. Cause I need to get my daughter connected into this, 00:52:03.640 --> 00:52:09.620 no pressure, just, you know, make it happen for, for the girl. Um, so, so, so that's the thing. Um, 00:52:09.680 --> 00:52:15.220 Hey, I just, I want to, I don't want to take up a lot of time and this has been awesome. I just want 00:52:15.220 --> 00:52:22.560 to segue a little bit here. Student ministry COVID, like how do we do student ministry in the future? 00:52:22.560 --> 00:52:27.120 I get all sorts of people, all sorts of churches asking me questions. I don't know that there's 00:52:27.120 --> 00:52:33.140 a clear answer of, of how COVID is changing that culture and what it's going to look like even 00:52:33.140 --> 00:52:40.260 2021, 2022 towards that. What tensions, what challenges as, as being student pastors, 00:52:40.680 --> 00:52:43.880 what, what are you seeing the future kind of look like here? When you look at 00:52:43.880 --> 00:52:47.660 even your own student ministry here within the next 18 months, two years? 00:52:48.020 --> 00:52:53.740 Yeah. I think going into COVID, a lot of youth ministry, uh, people, youth pastors, 00:52:54.040 --> 00:52:58.900 leaders kind of expected, Oh, Gen Z are digital natives, right? So we just put everything online 00:52:58.900 --> 00:53:03.500 and they'll engage, they'll connect. And I think a lot of us learn that's not necessarily true. 00:53:03.820 --> 00:53:09.460 Like you can't just produce content and put it online. And because your audience are digital natives, 00:53:09.600 --> 00:53:12.040 they'll know how to find it. They'll connect with it easy. 00:53:12.540 --> 00:53:16.120 And I think we've realized something about Gen Z is although they're great online, 00:53:16.320 --> 00:53:23.180 they need personal discipleship. It can't just be content that's created and posted on a YouTube 00:53:23.180 --> 00:53:29.740 channel, or it can't just be, you know, digital experiences that don't lead to personal relationships. 00:53:30.100 --> 00:53:34.340 And so there's always got to be a connection. I think that's where youth ministry is heading in 00:53:34.340 --> 00:53:38.800 the future. I think a lot of youth ministries have taken this time to create digital expressions, 00:53:38.800 --> 00:53:43.020 which is something that every youth ministry needs. So if you're a youth pastor out there and you're 00:53:43.020 --> 00:53:47.900 listening and you don't have a digital expression for your youth ministry, it could start small, 00:53:48.020 --> 00:53:52.220 take baby steps one by one. Maybe you create an Instagram page and that's your first step. 00:53:52.480 --> 00:53:55.860 Maybe you create a YouTube channel and you start posting content. That's a first step. 00:53:55.860 --> 00:54:00.380 But all of those digital experiences have to lead back to personal relationship. 00:54:00.740 --> 00:54:06.580 If a student stays by themselves in their room watching videos, is that the end goal for their 00:54:06.580 --> 00:54:11.280 discipleship? And I think all of us would say, no, like that's not ultimately where we want them to 00:54:11.280 --> 00:54:16.680 end up. We want them to connect personally with a small group, with community of their peers that 00:54:16.680 --> 00:54:23.280 they can grow with consistently in discipleship. And so any way that your digital expression points back to 00:54:23.280 --> 00:54:27.780 personal relationship is going to be key, I think, for youth ministry in the future. And I think all of 00:54:27.780 --> 00:54:32.660 us have learned that during COVID. If we just create content and post it online, it's not guaranteed 00:54:32.660 --> 00:54:38.100 that teenagers will engage just because they're digital natives. And so the future is shifting to 00:54:38.100 --> 00:54:44.620 that model where as digital content's being created, all points back to the local church expression, 00:54:44.620 --> 00:54:50.600 to getting connected in person, to getting connected to someone who cares about you, someone who wants to 00:54:50.600 --> 00:54:57.020 walk with you, to do life with you. And even if that's on a Zoom call, where you get to actually have 00:54:57.020 --> 00:55:04.060 conversations with people, you can't just engage with content and expect that discipleship is just going to 00:55:04.060 --> 00:55:12.260 happen. I think it's got to be through relationship. I think about in 1 Thessalonians 2, there's a passage that 00:55:12.260 --> 00:55:18.000 talks about this in verse 8, I believe it is, where Paul and Silas and Timothy are writing. They say, 00:55:18.000 --> 00:55:25.540 we cared about you so much that we imparted to you not only the gospel, but also our own lives. And I don't know if there's a 00:55:25.540 --> 00:55:34.500 verse that better sums up discipleship, to impart the gospel of Jesus Christ, but also your own life. And when the 00:55:34.500 --> 00:55:39.560 gospel meets real relationships, I think is when discipleship really happens. 00:55:39.980 --> 00:55:47.260 Yeah, I feel like with this generation, Javin, of course, you're dead on. But if I can add anything to 00:55:47.260 --> 00:55:52.760 it, this is, these teenagers right now, this section of Gen Z that we're dealing with, 00:55:53.420 --> 00:55:59.400 they're becoming more self-taught than any other generation across the board. They're having to 00:55:59.400 --> 00:56:06.480 develop more self-discipline. They're having to really push themselves. And every week is going to 00:56:06.480 --> 00:56:13.280 feel like a month in their development and their absorbing of all that's taking place right now. 00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:21.040 And so I really feel like even come this, even come 2021, January 2021, the whole shift in the 00:56:21.040 --> 00:56:25.880 culture is really going to be extreme. And I think what I'm seeing with this generation is we got to 00:56:25.880 --> 00:56:31.780 make things shorter. This is not a generation of 30, 45 minute sermons. This is a generation of, 00:56:31.900 --> 00:56:36.340 give me a short, give me what I need to know. I don't need your fluff. I don't need your hee-hee. 00:56:36.680 --> 00:56:41.880 If I want to laugh, I'll YouTube laughing. I'm here to get something. So we got to make it shorter. 00:56:41.980 --> 00:56:46.680 We got to make it lean in our teachings of teenagers. And, but not only do we got to make it shorter, 00:56:47.060 --> 00:56:52.740 I think we got to make things easier. Relationships are really hard for this generation and, 00:56:52.740 --> 00:56:58.540 and they, they really struggled to put themselves in it. And so we've got to do our job of making it 00:56:58.540 --> 00:57:05.160 more, not as hard of a step from, for them. And so whether it being the kind of thing where 00:57:05.160 --> 00:57:09.180 with the zoom calls, we actually tell them, Hey, there's a time limit on it. It's not gonna go 00:57:09.180 --> 00:57:13.160 more than 30 minutes. We make it easier by, Hey, here's, here's all the questions that you're going 00:57:13.160 --> 00:57:18.860 to discuss. We give them, we give those out to them two days in advance, kind of making it thinking, 00:57:19.000 --> 00:57:24.380 okay, how do I make it easier for them to be involved in relationships? Because they're not going to, 00:57:24.380 --> 00:57:29.040 they're not going to search those on their own. Um, that has to be something you got taken to it 00:57:29.040 --> 00:57:35.200 as easy as possible. Uh, so I'm, my opinion is I'm, I think the more shorter, the more lean you make 00:57:35.200 --> 00:57:40.640 things and the easier you make things, the more, the more, uh, chance there is of connecting with 00:57:40.640 --> 00:57:47.160 this generation, but not only in making it shorter and easier, you also got to give them more of a voice. 00:57:47.160 --> 00:57:54.040 Uh, this is a generation that has a lot to say and they want to be heard. They don't want to be told, 00:57:54.040 --> 00:58:01.080 uh, they want to process and they want to process with others. And, and so, so I think really putting 00:58:01.080 --> 00:58:06.560 your student ministry in that focus of making things shorter, easier, and giving them a voice. Uh, there 00:58:06.560 --> 00:58:11.820 can be a big win at the end of that. That's awesome. Very, very well said. Hey, uh, this has been a, 00:58:11.820 --> 00:58:20.420 a great podcast, a great time. Um, I want to hear about, uh, so, so flow like Christmas version, 00:58:20.420 --> 00:58:26.200 uh, 2021. Uh, I want updates on this and I love church United, South Florida, you guys working 00:58:26.200 --> 00:58:31.700 together, uh, towards doing this. So looking forward to hearing what's next and having you guys back on, 00:58:31.700 --> 00:58:36.940 um, we'll, we'll bring on, on some others to get, get a full picture, uh, next time, but definitely 00:58:36.940 --> 00:58:41.340 love this path that you're on. Thanks for taking care of, by the way, thank you for taking care of 00:58:41.340 --> 00:58:48.320 and ministering and shepherding and, and, and doing student ministry. Uh, I made a joke earlier about 00:58:48.320 --> 00:58:53.280 how like student ministry is hard and there's a reason why God told me not to do student ministry 00:58:53.280 --> 00:58:58.780 because I am not wired to do that. And I discovered that quickly in my ministry career, but I love the 00:58:58.780 --> 00:59:04.340 fact that people like you are, are out there taking care of like kids like mine who are wrestling 00:59:04.340 --> 00:59:08.780 with tough questions and yeah, we're dealing with stuff at home, but, um, there's, there's always 00:59:08.780 --> 00:59:13.480 someone else can go to that, that can show the love of Christ in that. So thanks for doing what 00:59:13.480 --> 00:59:19.520 you're doing for, for ministry in South Florida, as well as it sounds like Bahamas and, um, I don't 00:59:19.520 --> 00:59:24.100 know where the other one was, Rhode Island, uh, New Jersey, James one 22. Don't just be hearers of the 00:59:24.100 --> 00:59:30.640 word online paraphrase, do what it says in the real world. You, you, you had the, the main sessions, 00:59:30.640 --> 00:59:35.360 you had the small groups for, you know, some accountability and then you had service opportunities 00:59:35.360 --> 00:59:40.060 where they're literally engaging with people. The content that we're hearing online is driving 00:59:40.060 --> 00:59:45.540 towards offline relationships. And if we could figure out honestly how to like bottle everything 00:59:45.540 --> 00:59:49.780 that you did and teach that to every church across America, I think that we would be better 00:59:49.780 --> 00:59:54.280 moving forward, uh, work on it. Give us some time. We'll figure out how to do it. So, Hey, 00:59:54.280 --> 00:59:59.800 once, once again, uh, Javin Angel, uh, thanks for jumping on the podcast. Uh, this has been great 00:59:59.800 --> 01:00:04.640 as we're landing the plane, any closing thoughts from anybody, any last minute zingers, mic drops. 01:00:04.740 --> 01:00:09.360 This is the moment. What do you, what do you all got? Anything? Uh, honestly, man, I would say 01:00:09.360 --> 01:00:14.160 this has been such a joy getting to work with these guys and build these relationships that I never 01:00:14.160 --> 01:00:19.140 otherwise would have had. And so I would say if there's anyone out there listening right now who 01:00:19.140 --> 01:00:23.840 doesn't have a relationship with someone from another church, maybe that's even in your similar 01:00:23.840 --> 01:00:29.220 role, research them, reach out, like don't stalk them. Don't show up at their house late one night. 01:00:29.380 --> 01:00:34.260 That's not a good look, but find out their email address and reach out to them and just say, Hey, 01:00:34.300 --> 01:00:39.840 how can we work together? And maybe it even starts with, how can I pray for you? Like, what are you 01:00:39.840 --> 01:00:44.340 going through right now that I can help support you with? Like I can talk about countless times before 01:00:44.340 --> 01:00:48.780 so flow was even an idea that Angel and I just said, Hey, how can I pray for you today, man? 01:00:49.140 --> 01:00:53.480 You know, Tony, Hey, how can I pray for your ministry? How's your family doing? You know, it starts 01:00:53.480 --> 01:00:58.880 with relationship. And so I would encourage anyone who works in any church role, not just youth 01:00:58.880 --> 01:01:05.000 ministry. If you work at a church, it's important to connect and be unified with like-minded churches 01:01:05.000 --> 01:01:09.240 around you that are centered around the gospel and the mission of Jesus Christ. So reach out to 01:01:09.240 --> 01:01:15.180 someone, send an email, make a phone call. It'll go a long way. Yeah. If I was to give one last thing, 01:01:15.180 --> 01:01:22.320 I think it's very important to remember that prayer that the Lord actually hears us. And the Lord 01:01:22.320 --> 01:01:30.100 listens when we ask him for things that he wants, unity. And when we ask him for people to come 01:01:30.100 --> 01:01:35.380 alongside us in ministry and teach us and give us wisdom, the Lord legitimately hears that. And I know 01:01:35.380 --> 01:01:40.780 sometimes when we think about prayer, we don't think that's very practical. But according to Jesus in 01:01:40.780 --> 01:01:46.740 John chapter 17, before he goes to the cross, that's the most practical thing he did. He took time to 01:01:46.740 --> 01:01:54.200 pray. And, and I think that's so significant to not just push that aside. So flow camp is a result of 01:01:54.200 --> 01:02:01.780 years of prayer together years. And, and we didn't know how that prayer would be answered. But the Lord, 01:02:01.920 --> 01:02:08.000 the Lord answered it on his own time. And so, so I think being mindful of what, wherever you are on, 01:02:08.000 --> 01:02:15.100 on the spectrum of unity with other churches, really focusing on praying and seeking after the Lord for 01:02:15.100 --> 01:02:15.700 this to happen. 01:02:15.700 --> 01:02:21.180 It's amazing. It may not feel like it's necessary at the moment, but you're laying that foundation for 01:02:21.180 --> 01:02:26.280 years that set you up for, for the time when it's necessary. Uh, you're, you're, you're banking that, 01:02:26.360 --> 01:02:30.700 that stuff and building those foundations and that friendships that's going to allow you to do, 01:02:30.700 --> 01:02:37.140 uh, the, the God's work when, when it's necessary in his timing. So well said, well done. 01:02:37.140 --> 01:02:39.220 Hey, Ray, as we're landing the plan, any closing thoughts? 01:02:39.680 --> 01:02:44.260 Yeah. Um, a couple of things. I feel kind of like the grandpa in this conversation to a degree, 01:02:44.260 --> 01:02:45.300 because I'm so happy. 01:02:45.500 --> 01:02:49.560 You feel like the grandpa. Have you, have you looked at my beard? I'm the old bald guy here. 01:02:49.580 --> 01:02:54.800 Well, I mean, you know, having done student ministry, like now what's now like the kids who 01:02:54.800 --> 01:03:00.580 are in my student ministry are now the kids leading student ministries. So that's, that's why it's like, 01:03:00.640 --> 01:03:06.420 oh man. But to see this happen also with guys who are, and for those of you who are national, 01:03:06.420 --> 01:03:11.260 you just got to understand, like, I'm so emotional about this to see local guys doing this because, 01:03:11.680 --> 01:03:15.660 you know, kind of like what Jeff said, the community down here, especially amongst ministers is so 01:03:15.660 --> 01:03:21.560 small. Uh, you just got to understand that Miami has been a tough nut to crack. Like we don't have 01:03:21.560 --> 01:03:25.580 the same kind of thing that you see in Texas or in California where you got like these massive 01:03:25.580 --> 01:03:30.420 churches that are just killing it, like all over the place or whatever else there's. And, and to 01:03:30.420 --> 01:03:35.680 see, especially specifically in student ministry, see churches working together, gives me so much 01:03:35.680 --> 01:03:41.440 hope, not just for the now, but also for the future of how the church is going to continue to push 01:03:41.440 --> 01:03:46.120 against the gates of hell here in Miami-Dade County. And, and even up in a Broward where Javin's at, 01:03:46.440 --> 01:03:50.720 because that's just such a huge, huge deal. We've taken a lot of L's in this area, 01:03:50.840 --> 01:03:57.000 especially spiritually. I mean, you know, we've taken a lot of losses. And so to see the student 01:03:57.000 --> 01:04:01.920 guys kind of pick up and to say, Hey, we can do this and not to leverage it as their own platform, 01:04:02.560 --> 01:04:08.360 but to leverage it as an opportunity for unity and to even humbly allow other people to step up and 01:04:08.360 --> 01:04:13.000 lead. That to me is just one of the things that I got to gush over, you know, from the sense of, 01:04:13.000 --> 01:04:18.620 you know, pride and admiration. And so guys, I thank you for leading, you know, uh, the future is bright. 01:04:18.620 --> 01:04:22.060 The now is bright. And so thank you so much for doing this and for leading it well. 01:04:22.860 --> 01:04:26.420 Yeah. The humility of this conversation is the thing that I wasn't expecting when we started. 01:04:26.560 --> 01:04:30.400 I just wouldn't want to go on the record, kind of echo that. Not that I was expecting anything 01:04:30.400 --> 01:04:34.560 prideful, but even to the place of, Hey, I don't, I don't need to, I don't need to talk. Let's, 01:04:34.600 --> 01:04:37.340 let's come other guys in here to better represent the city. That's where, 01:04:37.780 --> 01:04:43.300 that's where movement comes in. It's, it's let's, let's elevate God above all, but let's let others 01:04:43.300 --> 01:04:49.900 have ownership of this idea and this movement instead of trying to territorialize and control 01:04:49.900 --> 01:04:55.060 everything. And so that I want to thank you for, for just that lesson and echoing that. So this has 01:04:55.060 --> 01:05:00.980 been a great conversation for, for Javin, for Angel, for Ray. Uh, this is Jeff at the church digital. 01:05:00.980 --> 01:05:04.660 Thanks for jumping on the podcast and we'll see you next time here at the show. Y'all have a good day.