Church closures are accelerating. Church plants are struggling to gain traction. And yet the digital mission field has never been more wide open. Something has to give — and that something is our strategy for multiplication.
Eric Metcalf, NewThing Global Executive Director and veteran church planter, joined the podcast to talk about one of the most underutilized tools in the digital ministry toolbox: apprenticing. Not programs. Not platforms. People intentionally developing people.
Here’s why that matters right now — and what it actually looks like in digital and metaverse spaces.
The Trend Nobody Wants to Talk About
Post-COVID, churches are closing faster than we’re opening them. The numbers aren’t pretty. Attendance is down. Giving is down. Volunteer energy is depleted. And traditional church planting — lease a space, hire a band, mail some postcards — is slower and more expensive than ever.
Meanwhile, digital spaces are exploding with people who will never walk through a physical church door. Not because they’re hostile to faith. Because nobody’s reaching them where they already are.
That gap is the opportunity. But opportunity without multiplication strategy just creates burnout for the few people trying to do everything themselves.
Why Apprenticing Is the Answer
Eric Metcalf frames this simply: you can’t multiply what you don’t intentionally reproduce.
Digital ministry is still in its infancy. Most church leaders are figuring it out in real time. That’s not a weakness — it’s actually the perfect environment for an apprenticeship model. When the expert and the learner are only a few steps apart, the learning curve flattens fast.
Apprenticing isn’t mentorship-lite. It’s structured, intentional, and tied to real ministry outcomes. Think Jesus with the Twelve. He didn’t lecture them about fishing for men — He took them out on the water.
The same principle applies to your digital campus host, your online small group leader, your Discord community moderator. They need someone walking with them, not just pointing at a training video.
What Apprenticing Actually Looks Like in Digital Spaces
So what does this look like practically? A few concrete moves:
1. Name your apprentices before you need them. Don’t wait until you’re overwhelmed. Identify one or two people in your current digital community who show up consistently, engage authentically, and care about others. Those are your candidates. Tell them you see leadership potential in them. Most people are waiting for someone to say it out loud.
2. Give them the mic — with guardrails. In a physical church, you’d let an apprentice leader co-facilitate a small group before leading one solo. Do the same digitally. Let your apprentice co-host a live stream. Have them lead a segment of your online group. They learn by doing, and you coach in real time.
3. Debrief every experience. This is where most leaders drop the ball. The experience without the reflection is just activity. Schedule a 20-minute voice call or video chat after every significant ministry moment. Ask: What worked? What would you do differently? What did you sense God doing? That debrief loop is where transformation happens.
4. Build a pipeline, not a one-off. Apprenticing one person is a good start. Building a repeatable pipeline is multiplication. Document your process. What does Week 1 look like for a new online community leader? Month 3? When your apprentice is ready to lead, they should already know how to apprentice someone else.
The Metaverse Is Waiting — And It’s Empty
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: digital and metaverse church spaces are underplanted. The mission field is wide open, and there aren’t enough trained digital disciple-makers to reach it.
That’s not a crisis. That’s a calling.
If your church is already operating in digital spaces — or you’re sensing the pull to plant one — the apprenticing model is how you scale without burning out your core team. It’s how you move from one digital campus to many. From one online group leader to a network.
Jesus said the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few (Matthew 9:37). The digital harvest might be the most plentiful mission field of our generation. The workers won’t appear out of nowhere — you have to develop them.
The Multiplication Starts With You
You don’t need a perfect program. You need to pick someone, walk with them, and pass the baton when they’re ready. Then watch them do the same.
That’s how digital churches multiply. That’s how the mission moves forward even when the broader trend lines are discouraging.
Eric Metcalf has been doing this work for decades — planting churches, developing leaders, building residency programs that produce more leaders. The playbook exists. You just have to run it.
Ready to go deeper? Listen to the full conversation with Eric Metcalf on Episode 229 of The Church Digital Podcast — then share it with one person on your team who needs to hear it.
