EP357: Jeff Talks Digital Missionary Confererence

All right, hey, everybody. Jeff with a special Thursday stream. Special Thursday. It's interesting. Stacey is out there watching. Knock, knock, anyone here? Check one, two. Okay, yeah. I'm a little late jumping on the stream. 11.06. You know what, guys? I have been, guys and gals, I have been burning it on both ends this week. And so I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is a typical Jeff Reed this week. And it's unfortunate it's the week heading into the Digital Missionary Conference. It's coming up right around the corner, which is why I went through the stream to talk about... All the cool stuff that's coming up because I just, I'm excited. I am excited about what's coming up with the Digital Missionary Conference this fall. And we need your help to get people connected and get them in. So we're going to talk a little bit about, especially the Digital Neighborhoods one, the first one. It's coming up on the 17th of September. And so, hey, before I get going, just so thankful and appreciate. You know what? Forget it. Let's just get going. Hey, you know what? This fall, the Church Digital, we are sponsoring this. four digital missionary conferences. Yes, some would call it crazy, and those people were correct, but hey, you know what? You only live once. So we are doing four digital missionary conferences. The fact is, is that we, I, I really wanted to go after a niche audience. Instead of trying to reach everybody, I wanted to reach somebody, and I wanted to get some representation for some of the niche audiences that are out there. I love what's happening in the European space. I love what's happening in the gamer space. I am so passionate about, you know, the recovery space and seeing that move into digital and virtual spaces. And so I was like, hey, let's just do everybody. And by the way, let's just do a general discipleship, digital discipleship, digital church planning conference as well. And so next thing you know, we're sponsoring for... digital missionary conferences in between September and October. People told me I was crazy. Some people advised me. Literally, I've had conversations with some organizational leaders that said, hey, Jeff, that is probably too much. And in response, now I see that those people were correct. But it's cool because it's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to have a great time. There's a solid lineup that's coming in, and we're going to have an incredible experience to give people exposure. It was funny. We've got the chat bot on the Missionary Digital website. I'm the guy who gets the chat. And yesterday morning, okay, this morning, somebody was like, hey, would you get your fat head off the screen so I could read the text? I'm not actually sure what that was about. Sometimes there's hate. in the you know in that space but this yesterday morning it was a good conversation there was a guy who asked i assume it was a guy that may be on b but somebody asked um what is a digital missionary And so I had a really interesting conversation with someone that was in the Asia area who was interested in exploring the idea of what a digital missionary was. And that's why we do these digital missionary conferences is to get people exposed to the idea of being a digital missionary. Let them recognize that they have influence in digital space and that digital can be used for evangelism and or discipleship. So super cool. And all these are the themes that are resonating with our digital missionary conference, the digital neighborhoods conference that's coming up September 17th. All right, so I'm gonna try to do something here. I confess, normally I do a check on this and I didn't push my magic button to make sure it was set up. So we're gonna see if it's gonna work. Let's hope for the best here. No, it's not. But I think I can fix that real quick. Yeah, give me one second, everybody. Oh, this is awkward. Oh, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah, you're right. It's been that kind of a thing. Where's my switcher? Nope, I'm not here. Tom says he's not here, which is nice. You know what? I'm just going to talk about it. We're not going to use that. That's cool. Hey, the Digital Missionary Conference, we've got a great lineup coming up for the Digital Missionary Conference. The first one, Digital Neighborhoods, like this is the most... broad like i said earlier it's not the niche audience of the of the one two three of the the europeans what they're doing of the uh the gamers what they're doing and it doesn't have a really tight topic like recovery does instead um what it is it's very much centered around what the gospel what the gospel looks like in digital and virtual space we're gonna have a lot of conversations centered around um centered around the idea of platforms as places recognizing that there's different cultures on these platforms platforms as places that's really the heart philosophy of the church digital where it's like the platforms that we are going to the church digital they're like places they're like countries they're like communities and so since they're like communities since they have cultures let's use those cultures let's recognize those cultures and use those cultures to our benefit when when sharing the gospel oftentimes we do see that that cultures actually trump of platforms trump the cultures of places tick-tock culture is tick-tock culture whether you're in pakistan or whether you're in and in america virtual reality culture vr chat culture is the same whether you're in africa or whether you're in europe and so as a result of these things It's important for us to recognize the culture of the platforms that we're in. This is really what we're going to be talking about in the Digital Neighborhoods Conference. We've got Jason Morris kicking off the conference. He's going to be talking about rethinking the digital map, platforms as places. So excited about this. Fluent faith, speaking the gospel into everyday life. Jeff Vanderstelt. Okay, the second speaker, the guy right after Jason Morris. I have been waiting. for this talk to happen to the Church Digital family for a very long time. Jeff Vanderstelt is a pastor here in America. I have loved sitting down with him and having many conversations centered around digital, and he's a supporter of what's happening in digital. He does a lot of work centered around discipleship and microchurch movements and runs an organization called Saturate. But he wrote a book called Gospel Fluency. It talks a lot about how people find Christ and the experience of recognizing Christ. the gospel in all of our lives, just not in the conversion period, not just in finding Jesus and recognizing the sin in our lives, but how we, the gospel, is in our lives every day. And every day we draw closer to God through discipleship. And his ideas here on gospel fluency, as it ties into the work that we're doing for digital evangelism, digital discipleship, is truly beautiful and so i'm excited for god fluency for jeff vandersvelt to share here in this conference moving forward there's another talk we've got coming in the third talk at a digital neighborhoods conference on september 17th cheryl boyd from crew Coming in and talking about audience mapping. Now, audience mapping, this may be a new concept for some of you. You've heard about the Engel scale where, you know, understanding where people are in their faith. And it's like, okay, an atheist is as far away from God as possible because they don't even believe that God exists. An agnostic believes there is a God, but that's not them. But they don't know who it is, so at least they recognize there is a God. The God just doesn't care. And so there's varying degrees, all the way up to the missionary who moves over to Africa or the fully devoted Christian, whatever that looks like. That's all fire for Christ. And so that's the line that most of us have to have, you know, as we look at and talk with people and help them understand who Jesus is. That's the journey. You know, some would say that's almost the customer journey in understanding who Christ is and then growing beyond that to understanding. what Christ has for their life. And it's interesting, Cheryl Boyd, and actually this came from some of our TCD friends, Wes and his wife, they have started working with this idea that it's not a straight line as much as it is recognizing, hey, there are some people that if they believe this, their next step is gonna be this or this. So an atheist, I mean, really, the biggest challenge is to help them find Jesus or help them discover there's a God. And that... that's a huge challenge in itself, just that small little step. But if there's somebody that is going through a divorce and going through a depression, a hard season, there's limited steps that they can actually take away from God or close to God, closer to God. And so this audience mapping is all about the gospel. and discovering how audience mapping works in digital and virtual spaces. What is that path for your audience, for the people that you're trying to reach in digital and virtual space? How are you helping people take those next steps, your audience, and what are the pathways they can go? The purpose here is not to understand a large culture as much as it is your culture. The people that you are reaching. Who is your audience? And let's map the path of how they are going to find Jesus through your ministry. And where are the distractions? Where are the divergence? Where are the issues going to pop up? And in the... average customer journey the average christian journey the average discipleship journey to help them get there it's gonna be great and i'm excited about number four um bakely shanko uh so bakely shanko also with crew it's interesting we actually have a lot of crew in in this conference didn't necessarily mean it that way it organically happened but crew uh pakely shanko is coming in he is um one of the high up leaders within crew global campus created for christ global i want to say is responsible for, oh my gosh, I heard the stat at one point. I actually want to make sure that it's right. I think it was 2.4 million churches planted or 2.4 billion churches planted. Honestly, I don't remember. But this man has a huge undertaking uh that he's working with crew where he is trying to see one church for every thousand people planted across the globe globally and we're talking a massive movement he he works his his organization with crew is global church movements and so he's trying to create churches on a massive scale globally. It's phenomenal the work that he's done. One of the first conversations I had with Bekele Shanko was through Rick Warren's finishing the task and Bekele sits me down and says, hey Jeff, how do we get a one church for every hundred people on the planet globally using digital tools? hey jeff how do we get one church for every 100 people globally using digital tools by the way the answer to that question is now the church digital um coming off of that and with finishing the task i actually was so moved by it i built it and you all are now operating inside it with the church digital on how we're creating a disciple making movement globally, utilizing digital tools and teaching church planting and things like that. It's an early step, but it is a very important step in this movement to create a digital and virtual movement. But Kelly Shanko, who literally is is responsible for millions, if not billions of churches, is responsible for billions of people finding Christ historically over time. Yeah, I don't think it's billions because not that many billions of people on the planet. It was two point four million. It was. But as he's doing that. Bekele's coming on to do a talk on apprenticing, apprenticing in the wild, reproducing leaders for digital mission. How do you apprentice? How do you multiply yourselves? What is the challenge? to multiply and now to have both working simultaneously in the same or diverging and starting to plant and do something else. What does multiplication look like in a digital missionary or a digital church's life? You know what? Digital churches have grown. I mean, I look at some of the stuff that we're doing and what we're seeing, you know, among our brothers and sisters that are out there planning globally. Digital churches through the church digital have grown. I don't know that they've multiplied yet. I don't know that we've created a really good example of multiplication at this point. And McKellie is going to have a hard conversation with us that it's not just about growing. It's about multiplying through that. And so these are the four keynote talks we've got coming up. Platforms as Places, Rethinking the Digital Map. Jason Morris kicking off with that. Jeff Vanderstelt, Fluent Faith, Speaking the Gospel into Everyday Digital Life. Cheryl Boyd from Crew, audience mapping, tracking spiritual thresholds online. And then Bekele Shanko, Dr. Bekele Shanko, apprenticing in the wild, reproducing leaders for digital mission. It's interesting, all of these talks. These are not just talks. I've actually asked all of them and there's time. There's an application. There's a strategic step. There's a lab. There's something that is going to be done off of each talk. to have you start to process through and to take home with you an action step a a first step and any intermediary movement towards applying what you're hearing in this talk this is not like a conference where hey la la la everything's great this is more of a summit where you're getting some dirt underneath your fingernails and you're going to start to see some work happening uh in in your ministry now we can't do it all for you of course But we can help you get started on that. And there's plenty of time and opportunities for follow-up and the like with that. So I would say check out the conference. The conference, Digital Neighborhoods Conference, is one of four conferences we're doing. There's more information for the Digital Missionary Conference, the Digital Neighborhoods Conference. at missionary.digital slash neighborhoods missionary digital slash neighborhoods it is you know what we might as well rename this thing and call it it's all about the gospel digitally this conference is going to be all about the gospel digitally wednesday september 17th uh kickoff at 10 a.m eastern excited about what's coming up with that now um coming off of that uh we do have uh other conferences uh on september 24th we have our recovery conference. September, excuse me, October 1st, we've got our European conference. And October 8th, we have our gaming conference. All information on all the conferences is at missionary.digital, www.missionary.digital. All the conferences are free. Just sign up, register, show up. Once again, we did this last time. All video on demands are only available if you register. So if you're like, hey, I can't be there. How do I, I'm gonna just watch it on YouTube. Sorry, you're not going to. We're not gonna release the conferences, but the talks. But you can publicly, but you can register. And by registering, you'll have access to the talks privately. OK, awesome. So check out more information at www.missionary.digital. Now, also with and I will say this, we'll highlight this later, but there's a lot of breakouts that are happening with the conference. We're doing a lot of breakouts. I'm excited about this. It's gonna hit the website next week. So I'll be able to do a screen share and show you some of these. But I just, I wanted to hit some of these breakouts that we've got coming up. There's a lot of really creative people hitting a lot of really fascinating topics on this. Okay, like Keegan. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this one. Let me see if I've got to do something here. How do I freeze that column to make that? Okay, I was just gonna have to make this really big. Oh no, I can do that instead. I hate spreadsheets. Does anybody else hate spreadsheets as much as I hate spreadsheets? You probably don't know that, but I do hate spreadsheets. Okay. Keegan West and Bevan Ginder. I'm excited about this one from Create International. They're talking about how to communicate, how communicating cross-culturally with honor, authenticity, and humility. What a great topic. Dr. John, Dr. John Harris coming on empowering believers beyond the pews and Bosarge talking about being the church on social media. Craig Bradley. Craig's a new friend. Executive director of AO Lab is talking about introducing the seed Bible. There's a new digital Bible platform he's been working on, and it's really cool. I'm excited for you all to see this. Nick Smith, our friends from Tapos, is coming on to talk about From Sermon to Search, Discipleship Powered by AI. Micah Bales is talking about planting microchurch networks, microchurch networks utilizing APEST. And so, um, very, very good. Alan, uh, Alan, uh, excuse me, Christian Ninja. Uh, I can tell you, I don't know that Christian Ninja has got his name public. Is it? I don't know. Uh, Christian Ninja is coming on our friend from taco. Uh, why are they in their room reaching the ones who shut the door? Cameron Bailey, Cameron's with Digital Mission Project. Unlocking Google's secret ad toolbox. Dr. Tim Yee is doing soul care for digital missionaries. Lucas Pulley, excited with this one. Lucas Pulley's from Tampa Underground, Underground Network. doing a talk on being called. Called, trying, risking, planting, and leading from a growing awareness of calling. Wes and Leah Brooks coming on and doing a talk on their company, Venture AI, from scalable follow-up to personalized discipleship for everyone. Liz Anderson is with crew and she's doing a follow-up on the audience map. She's gonna do a lab in one of the breakouts and is gonna walk everyone who attends the lab on how to do, create their own audience map. Andrew Jones is gonna be talking, you know, tall skinny QB. I was like, who's Andrew Jones? He's tall, skinny. He's Kiwi. Kiwi's doing a talk on augmented reality. Stacey Knapp is doing a talk on recovery. Alina Delp, Pastor Alina in VRMMO, is doing a talk on real faith in virtual reality spaces. And, of course, Tim Selleck, who's, I mean, Tim Selleck, actually, as listed on here last, but he's going to be a solid talk. solid talk right here talking about reaching the one and and helping you understand who your one is y'all this these are some phenomenal breakouts that we have and we're only offering the breakouts through the 9-17 conference. We'll have the times of these on the website here very soon, but we are excited about what's coming up with the keynotes and the breakouts that'll be represented at the 9-17, the September 17th conference. All right. And so you can check out more information on the 917 Digital Neighborhoods Conference and all the conferences at www.missionary.digital. But here's what I need you to do. I need you to bring somebody with you. If you're watching this stream, that means that you are, you're friends of Jeff at The Church Digital. You've been hanging around for us a while. You've seen the stream. You know the inside route. You know what's going on with fam and everything in between. I want you to bring somebody with you to the Digital Missionary Conference. Remember when I was like, hey, you know, we really haven't multiplied much as digital missionaries. We really haven't multiplied much into digital churches. This is our opportunity to find somebody and say, hey, you know, I'm really passionate about this thing about sharing Jesus online. Would you maybe want to be a part of that? Why don't we go to this conference together and see what it looks like? Why don't you even put it on your social media channels or in your communities? Hey, I'm going to this thing. I'm really excited about this. Who would want to come with me? Who's interested in learning more and start to get the word out on our digital neighborhood? conferences on our digital missionary summits. and start to get people included into that. So here's what we did. We, the Church Digital, actually Barbara's Word Revolution team, they've been working around the clock to get this conference off and going. It's been a hard push, but love the work that they're doing and love them for doing it. They created a series of media kits that are available to download now for each conference. Each conference is available at share.missionary.digital. Share.missionary.digital. There's graphics. There's pre-written out posts. There's a lot of resources. There's a list of speakers and themes for each conference right there on the page that you can easily grab them, download them and share about them in public environments. You know what? I'm looking at all the the hate on on forum. spreadsheets i would even say you know tom tom says he hates uh spreadsheets more than me melanie says she hates them more you can even put these graphics in spreadsheets i don't know why you would but you could you could put them in a spreadsheet and then you could email that over to someone and say i don't the one thing i probably hate more than spreadsheets is email um so that just got weird Yeah. And so we're excited about getting the word out with the share. And so help us get it into, you know, a lot of you connected into other networks, into other things. And this is an opportunity. This is an opportunity to get the idea of digital missionaries into maybe some of these other networks, some of these other organizations, maybe even your own church. Hey, you know, invite your pastor that doesn't understand or doesn't know how to support you as a digital missionary or thinks all the stuff that you're doing online is weird. Invite them to the Digital Neighborhoods Conference. I guarantee you between Jeff and McKellie. His mind's going to be blown. Never mind Jason Morris. Oh, my gosh. And the audience mapping of Cheryl. Like, the first conference is mind-blowing. The second conference is going to be gut-wrenching. And then we haven't even gotten to, like, the European and the gamer stuff. Like, it's going to be boom, boom. And so this is a great opportunity to get people connected. By the way, we've got... We got Nicholas chiming in here. Oh, darn. That's the first day of my local crew staff conference. Folks might be tired. Man, there's this thing called coffee. Nicholas, that'd be great. No, I know. And you're on the other side of the planet. The conference starts 11 a.m. American, Eastern. And so I'm pretty... It's like 10 p.m. your time. Yeah, like, get a hot chocolate. Kick back. I mean, hey, and also, Nicholas, I mean, if that's crew, it's Bekele Shanko, bro. You got Bekele Shanko speaking. He's like one of the, I don't know, the top five crew bigwigs. Like, this is not... Ain't nobody to, like, sniff that, man. That's huge. I could not believe... We got Pakely Shanko to line up. Jeff Vanderstelt and Pakely Shanko at the same conference is mind-blowing to me. And so I'm so thankful for that to happen right there, which is why you need to be at the 9-17 Digital Neighborhoods Conference. I'm working on somebody for the next one. And I'm not going to say who it is publicly, but if this one comes through, I may just retire just outright. I'm done. I am going to not do any more conferences because I have just hit the conference peak if what I want to do lines up next year works. i don't know that i would actually do that i'm not gonna quit but um it's it's there's some really big names some interesting ideas that that were kicking around next year and um i would i'm looking forward to talking about and getting out there as soon as i get confirmations so hey listen um this is going to be a short stream today because I got a lot of work to do and I got stuff I gotta do to make sure these conferences are gonna happen. And I'm working hard, working my networks to get the word out, to get people to show up and register for these conferences. And so I'm gonna go. But here's what I need you to do. I need you, one, to register for the conferences, www.missionary.digital. Number two, I need you to invite somebody. There's some shareable resources and assets for you at missionary.digital. Excuse me, share, S-H-A-R-E.missionary.digital. You can download a ton of assets at those two websites. And then three, I need to see you 9-17 for the Digital Neighborhoods Conference. All right. Sounds good. We're going to talk more about this in the conferences and in the streams to come beforehand. But I love I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this more on the Thursday. I think for a stretch, I'll probably be Tuesday and Thursday through the conference season. hyping up the conference, teasing the conference on Tuesdays, celebrating the conferences once we get them done on Thursdays, and kind of do a go-between in there. You know me. I like to mix it up. And so I think that'll be a good way to do it. All right. But at this point, I'm going to land the plane. I think I'm the only one who's been talking. And by the way, thank you, everybody who's been in the audience. I'm even seeing Sonic. Sonic showed up to do an open office with me this morning, and I was not there. Yeah, I actually had an appointment in the physical world, Sonic, and I couldn't make my digital appointment with that. And so I do apologize for missing that. My open offices will be spotty over the next couple of weeks as I'm just focusing more on conferences. And actually, I was doing a contract job for a physical church here in town. And so I just... Honestly, I forgot. And came home after the very early meeting that I had and went unconscious, sleeping for a while. As you can tell, I'm kind of tired. Burning it. You know, I started to say I'll rest when I'm dead. Not the right approach. Probably not the most mentally healthy approach. I actually tell my daughter all the time, you're no good to us dead. Not that she's suicidal. She just really works hard. She gets that from me. Man, I'm worried about her burning herself out. And so I can appreciate the people saying to me right now, hey, Jeff, take it easy. You're no good to us dead. I'm saying it to myself. I appreciate that. Thank you. But... We got a couple more weeks to push. And then the conferences will go on cruise control. But until then, we got to keep pushing to get there. So thank you. And thank you for helping us get the word out through share.missionary.digital. All right. Hey, we're going to land a plane for everybody else that other than me that was on the show, which was nobody. So for me, this is Jeff with The Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out with us on the stream today. And we'll see you next time on the show. Have a good one.