EP368 Live Recording: What's Next? Decentralizing TCD

Alright, hey everybody. Welcome to the Church Digital. This is the chill music. I, um... I always get relaxed with this music. You know, the stream beats, Harris Heller, I think is his name. Hal Howler, Harris Heller. Hal Howler is a church planter. Harris Heller is a musician, stream beats. And so this is like, kind of gets me in the chill mode here a little bit, which is great for Jeff post Digital Missionary Conference. This is actually the first week after Digital Missionary Conference where I felt normal again. I was actually doing, I didn't talk too much about this. I was doing two or three projects at the same time. I was doing a, I was obviously doing the four conferences, three that I was active with, and then gaming being the fourth. And then I was also very involved in a physical church revitalization replant. Worked with them for about three months, and it was all during the conference season. And so it just was an exhausting stretch. But I'm feeling much better now. I was drinking coffee. Actually, no, it wasn't coffee. It was hot chocolate. That's how good I'm feeling. Hot chocolate in October. November's right around the corner. Excited. Excited about the road ahead. Actually, I was working on goals. Organizational goals. We've got a big meeting on Friday in Church Digital. Really excited about that. I've got my new job is kicking off. Some of you know, I'm actually going back to working in the physical church environment. And some of you are saying, wait, Jeff, you said hell or high water. You would never do that again. I did. I did say that in probably worse things. But you know what? God heals wounds. And God restores people. And so I am very excited. It's not the word, but, you know, it's just the word I use too often. But I'm really looking forward to leaning in and getting back in the physical church environment. I'm going all the way back. I'm a physical church production director. And so the church that I'm working with, Christ Journey, who is a sponsor, a valuable, valued sponsor here at The Church Digital. uh christ journey uh is launching a new campus here in the south miami area and so i'm literally going to be running the avl technology for a uh a new building set up and no it's not set up in town a new building that's in the south miami so me area and so christ journey so me i'm gonna be officing out of there. You'll see some streams probably closer to the end of the year or early next year out of there because I'll be working in the building and they're cool with me doing the church digital and so I'll be going back and forth. Lots of fun things. I keep staring at my phone for the record. I'm expecting my iPad. I'm getting a new iPad for the new job, new iPad with the little keyboard and the mouse. And yeah, in the church world, I can run everything on an iPad. Like it's all just like communication stuff. and uh but that's gonna be uh getting delivered today and you know an app they don't leave stuff like on your doorstep like apple requires a signature and so like forgive me if i keep staring down it's that m5 uh ipad you know what was funny thing is if that actually shows up while i'm streaming uh i will be exiting the stream to go pick up the said package so that it doesn't get is that it gets delivered today because that that you know those guys will bounce very very quickly. So I should be getting a push notification to my watch and my folk when somebody rings that Ring doorbell, and that'll be great. You know, funny story, actually, now that I'm thinking about Ring. Somebody actually hacked Jay Kranda's Ring doorbell. No, was it Ring doorbell or was it Nest? I think it was Nest. Somebody hacked Jay Cranda's Nest thermostat and actually figured out how to talk through the Nest thermostat to Jay. Like they didn't know it was Jay. The guy was just, or guy, whoever it was, was just being a jerk, like trying to troll some people, but totally reversed engineered it. I don't even, I'd say it was a Nest thermostat. I don't know if there's a speaker in the Nest thermostat. So this story may not be accurate. but totally hacked the IoT internet of things and actually was using it to kind of troll Jay. Fun story, we'll have to get Jay back on the stream soon and get him to relive that. I remember talking with him about that a number of years ago. And so, hey, it's always good to go back to the stories. Hey! So today's been good. It was funny, like even leaning into today, walking into the stream, there was some interesting conversations on, oh my gosh, IT is freaking incredible. All right, so I am, you know, we have an IT, the Church Digital, we have an IT. We call it Lex. You know, Lex, Luther, you know, we're going to take over the world. It's funny, I've even got like the pinky of the brain Funko Pops here mounted on my desk. The same thing we do every night, Pinky, try to take over the world. And so, you know, for the gospel, for the kingdom, one person at a time, digitally, we're going to figure it out. Maybe. But, you know, kind of that take over the world type of scenario. So we've got Lex. You can visit Lex. You can have a conversation with Lex. Lexlex.thechurch.digital. Lexlex.thechurch.digital. Lex has been in beta. Lex will be in beta for a while. We're still trying to... clean up some loose ends, working with some of the vendors, and very excited about Tapos, about Live AI. If you've been involved with our conferences this year, you've met both of those organizations, and they are... okay let's see and they are very excited and we're excited to see them kind of come together these two different organizations and start to um develop a solid product and so we the church digital works we're leaning in and we're going to take advantage of that technology as best as possible and and to that end like we've encoded i don't know 900 hours of programming of content 600 blogs you know three or four books all on digital mission work digital ministry digital church like we have just enveloped a ton of resources into this and so you know it's interesting i was i was on discord this morning in general chat and And somebody asked the question, you know, he's more of a digital guy than a physical, but he asked the question, Jecht did, if I'm pronouncing that right. Hey, what does digital engagement, what does outreach, what does digital outreach look like for a physical church? And I kind of scoffed because I spent, not scoffed, but I kind of chuckled under my breath because I've spent years of my life. you know, trying to help churches answer that question. Like there's hundreds of hours of content recorded on that exact topic. And, you know, I could not even start to fully answer that question. But I know Lex can. And so it's funny, over here on the side today, I've just been running prompts with Lex, trying to get Lex to like give me the content the way that I wanted it. And, you know, with some of the LMSs, Google Notebook, for example, you can do like tell it to create a podcast and it creates, you know, an audio podcast with AI voices that simulate a conversation on the topic you're wanting. And so Lex, the topos AI, it has, you know, one of the options is create a podcast. And so I clicked it thinking that it was going to be like an audio podcast it was generating. Instead, what Lex ended up doing is scripting out the podcast with the guest that Lex wants to invite and the ways to get in touch with that guest, who's actually Justin Herman, he's a friend, is with, Justin's with Mariners? i want to say and then um and then also like podcast tips on which podcast mic i should buy how it should be wired into the computer the settings and the eq levels that should be with that particular like like lex you know did not actually give me the audio thing that i wanted but Dang, I have a whole script here. I talk from a guy who creates content podcasts all days long. I won't use this, but part of me is like, that's actually pretty impressive slash scary that Lex can do that. I'm telling you, the end of the world is going to come as a result of this AI. That doesn't scare me. That just tells me that we should lean into it now before things go crazy. Like, either way, someone in some, you know, unforsaken garage, not nation, garage, is going to weaponize this thing and enjoy it while we got it. Because all this is going to go down the drain at some point. And on that note, you know, I don't know that the calm, chill music is really setting in today, because now that I'm talking about the end of the world. Hey, so there's some things coming up here with The Church Digital. By the way, if you're watching online, feel free. Oh, Steve's saying, do you have music playing in the background? Just trying to figure out whether it's you, me, or my head. I do have some. It may not be that loud. boom boom boom boom boom boom so you know if that if that's in your head great if that's not in your head it is now so have fun uh with that one judy hey judy uh love knowing that the lex v lex is loaded with information i'll be using that yeah we're actually in the next week or so i think lex is going to be incorporated on the church digital website we'll have a chat bubble like you know the way that that stuff works we'll have it actually to be on the left side over here not the right side over here i have to go backwards and so you'll see that interestingly we're also uh going to be creating a an ai for the digital missionary conference and so all of the conferences we're going to ingest that material into i think a separate implementation of lex and so anything that you've heard or seen at the conferences um will be able to be interacted with in the in lex even to the point that we want and it's not going to be lex uh we've got to come up with another name because i don't get it's going to get confusing But... We want to start like breakouts and other things. Like actually getting video off of that. Yeah, it's good. I... I was actually having this conversation with one of the, I'm working with the church right now. It's a 400-person Presbyterian church. It's like a re-transcriptions. Okay, Judy is saying here, transcriptions available. That's a good question. I don't know. Go find out. You can probably, I'm trying to think, Lex will give you the link to a particular episode based on video, based on the prompt. Like if you ask it a question, it'll give you that link and then maybe it can do a transcript off it. If not, there's more than one way to skin that cat. Oh, for the conference material, Judy's saying. Yeah, I don't know. Judy, when we get there, we get there. My hope is to have that in place by the end of the year, if not sooner. And so we gotta crawl before we walk. And so doing the church digital one before the conferences. You know what, just speaking of that, Judy, I would say this, and I've been convicted of this in recent years, Hours. Honestly, since the recovery conference. We worked really hard. And that recovery conference was the best material I've done that no one ever saw. And that's not a knock. Well, there's a couple of things. One, recovery is a very sensitive, there's a topic, there's a lot of stigmas around that. People are afraid to engage in that because of how it may seem to appear. So there was a layer of that. Secondly, the technology, obviously it had to hiccup at the beginning. If you remember, and it's interesting, the stuff that happened yesterday, Monday and Tuesday with AWS, Amazon Warehouse Services. That's actually the same issue that Eventbrite ran into like a month ago or two months ago when we were doing the conference. And so it just hit a larger, AWS is much larger than, I said Eventbrite, I meant Hublot. And so, yeah, so I feel that pain. We're trying to figure out how to make the conferences more accessible. Like in many ways, you know, we feel that I'm wrestling with this tension because we are about relationships and doing relationships, doing connection, doing community in the Hublot platform was a huge success. But once again, getting people into the Hublot platform is hard as opposed to getting them into something like watching a YouTube stream where it's very easy and people will do that, but people can go in and out of YouTube and they're not engaged or we don't even know who they are, not meeting them and... Like there's this weird tension. And we're trying to figure out how to have her. If you know me, I never like to say no. I always like to say yes. And I'm a big fan of having my cake and eat it too. And so we're trying to like, honestly, just trying to... rewrite the online conference playbook and try to figure out what we can do uh with that and so anyway help us and pray for us in that uh digital missionary pod uh digital ministry utope i'll be chatting with lex on one question someone asked me about applying acts to 42 to 46 interesting response i got uh yeah i mean there's a lot in there on the on the um the great commission And so, no, no, no, Acts 2 is, that's the, go and talk, yeah, baptize them in the name of the Father, teach them in the name of the Father, and they will flow with you always into the end of the age, right? There's that Matthew 28, 19 to 20. It's Matthew 28. Acts 2 is the Bible, that's the church, the ecclesiology, the biblical functions. uh prayer teaching you you look at 36 to acts 2 36 to 47 is the 10 biblical functions of the church yeah biblical community and church yeah sorry i was stuttering through that trying to get my mind correct uh yeah there's there's a lot in there i talked about that a lot the Acts 2 stuff back in maybe 22, 23, when we were doing the hard press on COVID 21, 22. So when I was at Stadia, we were doing the hard press on digital church planting. And so, yeah, there's a lot in there about re-imagining. You know what I would do at the time? Yotope, you may have to double up with me. I'd have to find the slide deck. But I adapted... Oh my gosh, E3, No Place Left. I adapted No Place Left's church circle. So they would take the, they would draw a circle, a church circle, and they would take the ecclesiology, the biblical functions of Acts 2, 36 to 47, and they would map it all out in that circle. Worship, teaching, mercy, care, um evangel outreach you know what what makes a church a church according to acts 2 36 to 47 there's 10 things that the early church did in acts 2 36 to 47 And then, so I would take those 10 things that was established by a non-digital organization, No Place Left, and then I would ask the question, can the church do this? What would it look like for the church to do this? A digital church. Could a church do this that was not meeting in physical space? And to be honest, the only two that were somewhat weird in digital space was baptism and communion. What would communion look like? And personally, I don't think communion's weird at all. I think communion is three or four people watching a stream that are doing something in their own without being part of a larger corporate body, or they're engaged corporately via the network, the video network, and not in the same space. My son's first communion was done via an online church service where we gave him Coca-Cola instead of grape juice. Sorry, that's all we had, God. And it was a cauliflower wafer. No. Yeah, it was a cauliflower wafer. Don't judge. He was... lactose intolerant or something. And so that's what we had in the house. And so that's what it was. Yeah. You know, yeah. You know, Utopia, you know, the no place left circle. Yeah. So like, but it was, it was totally re-imagined. I use that as the foundation. And then it was re-imagining that in a, you know what? I, I, I think I did an interview. with scuba steve scuba steve is uh steve scuba steve's name he doesn't scuba and his first name's not steve it's the weirdest thing but he's one of the one of the leaderships in no place left last i saw he was over latin and south america he's based out of here in florida he's a friend And but I think I had that conversation with him literally going through and just talking about what that what that means in no place left world, which is much more of a decentralized, you know, small micro church model and how to adapt that into into a digital environment. you know scuba uh no place left is like four people meeting under a palm tree in a park is is constitutes a church so the idea of thinking outside of the box of a microchurch non-content driven heavily relational model like that's the stuff that they do um and uh yeah so so good I read a post from Rob Wagner recently in their sub stack. You know what? I haven't. I haven't. I need to look into that. I haven't been following. I've been following their podcast. Rob is with Casey Underground. We are, I'm excited about this. This is one of the things that I want to explore more in talking about church. This is not where I wanted to go, but we'll actually get to my topic here in a little bit because this is great. We are, we're leaning back into church planting more. and this is funny this is as a result and we're actually the reason i brought this up is we're working with underground network tampa underground which is uh lucas pulley and those on that crew rob wagner is a child under the underground network But we're working with Lucas Pulley, Brian Sanders, and those guys and gals into developing a micro church, a digital model based on their micro church model. That actually came off of the town hall. I talk about how we do these town halls like once a quarter. This is really a great way for us to listen to you. What are you seeing? What are you feeling? How can we help your ministry and give us some feedback and insight? What's working? What's not working? I forget who it was, but one of the questions that we had was one of the questions we had on that stream was, hey, Jeff, how come you don't like do anything with digital churches anymore? Like you shifted all your language to digital missionaries and you're really not acknowledging churches at all. What what can you do on that? It's funny. I'm reaching to grab something. off my desk. This was actually a cup that someone made for me. I have no idea if that's, yeah, you can read this on the screen, I think. And so it says, get it up close if it's in focus. No, it says the Godfather of Digital Churches. And, you know, there was a season, 2021, 2022, where when you Googled digital church, digital church planting, I was like number one, two, three, four, five, six. Like it was all about that. And so like, and especially my work with Stadia, like it was all centered around planting. And, you know, there's a balance between planting and hybrid. Thank you, COVID. But now, you know, we had gone to this missionary working with individuals and not necessarily wrestling into the ecclesiology of planting churches in digital space in recent, over the past year, really since Liz on. And so somebody brought that concern up back at the fall conference, I think, the fall town hall. in August. And so I reached out to Micah and was like, hey, Micah, who runs a digital micro church of sorts. And so I said, hey, Micah, why don't you help me out here? Would you be interested in maybe starting an outpost with digital church plants, people that are part of a digital church? or want to plant a digital church? And he said yes. And then I reached out to Lucas Pulley and was like, hey, how does somebody start a microchurch? And Lucas was like, hey, yeah, there's this 12-month... course that we ask people to go through they meet once a month so it's basically a full year and people jump in whenever they can they do the they did to rolling 12 months and 12 months later 12 weeks 12 sessions later you know they're they've gone through all their training it's just in time training kind of thing and and that's that's how they do it And so I said to Lucas, I was like, can we get that material? And can we adapt it? Can we shape it? Lucas is like, here you go, bro. Dude, he gave me his Google Drive that had a ton of resources on micro. And so, yeah, we're excited to lean in to that. And the good news is Micah has already adapted that material for digital. And he's running it through his outpost now. They're test driving it right now. I think for September and October, they've already met on it. And so two months in, I think they've already met in October. I saw that come through recently. You know, one of the things, this is actually one of the talk about with the Church Digital. And it's funny, Utope's talking about planting and some of that now. And I'm talking about how Micah's doing something. And to be honest, I'm not keeping up with it. And, you know, Steve's doing, Steve Reed is not my brother, Steve Reed. I don't have any brothers, but Steve Reed's not my brother. My brother from another mother, Steve Reed, you know, just did an EDM outpost, an EDM. And I haven't really connected with people or connected with how that went. But it's funny. I'm now having conversations with people that did that outpost. And people, there's a guy who's interested in launching an outpost in India that went through Steve's thing. And it's like, okay, cool. Let's have that conversation. Let's go on that. And we're starting to move more and more into this idea of the church digital being decentralized now um for for many like i've said the church digital were decentralized we're decentralized we're decentralized but the the reality was is that for since it's like start it's been a top-down organization um i have been the I don't want to say the brains because I'm not the smartest man on the team. I'm not the brawn. I'm not the hardest worker. I don't necessarily have all the money. So I'm not funding this thing, or at least I can't afford it anymore. And so we're having to move in different directions. And so it's come to this place where... One plus one doesn't equal two, it equals far more. And it's one of the reasons why I've been so strong in saying like TCD's gotta get bigger than us, than me, because I'm a limiter, I'm a lid. To what's happening. And I'll just throw this up here as example. It'd be great to see how to plant digital churches. I'm planning to run an outreach. To people who don't know Jesus. And hopefully start a disciple making movement. On digital. So that's Utope. Utope is in Nigeria. And you know. I got. Yotope, man, I love you. I'm happy to help you how best I can in that. And I've got some ideas that I and the team would love to share with you. And, you know, for the most part, we already have. But a lot of this is really what can you do with this and how can you make it work? How can you adapt these ideas into a Nigerian and Sub-Saharan South African context? Similar conversation I had today with the man I was talking about starting this in India. He is in Eastern India, which is more the Bengali. I know very little about the Bengali, even less about the other 1,100 dialects that are currently being spoken in India, not including the other countries and regions that are in Southern Asia. And so like, you know, there's a lot that I don't know about Sub-Saharan South Africa. There's even less that I don't know. There's even less that I know about whatever the negative way to say what I just said is. There's even less that I know about Southern Asia and India. And so it's not about... you know, me coming in to save the day and tell everybody what they need as much as it is, is how can we empower them to like do it? And how can we resource them and guide them and give them freedom to contextualize and adapt this to work in their space? You know, it's interesting. I've had a couple of people actually tell me, you know, Jeff, we appreciate the fact that imperialism is a big thing that I don't want to get into, where it's really about adopting and adapting what we're learning, what Utope is talking about here, as opposed to me coming in and driving and demanding. Uh, now it's, it's interesting because I've had a couple of the people that are in startup mode, you know, Utopia has been hanging out with us for like, I don't know, 2019, 2020, early COVID, if not before. Um, and so like, it's interesting dudes on another continent. I feel like I've got a good relationship with them. I don't talk to him every day, but you know, we're a, we're a DM away and, and, you know, I've, I've had plenty of FaceTime with him, even though he's on a different continent. Um, But the challenge that I'm hearing for some of these others that are in startup is, Jeff, we need you to buy in more on telling us what to do at the beginning and then kind of releasing and allowing us to contextualize. Because I've been so loose, it's not really... doable because i'm telling people to like i'm giving people freedom when they don't want the freedom they want direction um and so it's it's something i've got to wrestle with with the team over the next couple i've had enough people tell me that i think i've had two or three conversations like that over the past month and it's like okay we may be i may be too fearful of you know trump's president I may be too fearful about white man coming to save the day. So I do need to be a little more involved and forceful in some areas. But then decentralized and empowering at others. And there's a really intricate balance. And that works in digital. That works definitely in digital work. There's an interesting tension centered around that. Even with physical churches. It's really interesting right now. So I am... i'm working with a physical church i'm starting christ journey like next week uh going basically full-time employee there and still managing a couple other consulting and a couple other things around and still doing the church digital like you know i Back in 2018, I really adopted the idea of multiple revenue streams for the church digital and other things. And so it's wearing a lot of hats, so to speak. But for a physical church doing digital ministry, The idea of decentralized is very challenging. The idea of, you know, a lead pastor relinquishing responsibility and empowering others to make decisions at a high level, there's a very small percentage of churches that operate that way. You know, the majority of churches in America, so to speak, have a high-level decision-maker that passes decisions responsibility down and to be honest that's what the church digital was i was high level ceo founder and i was you know i had a team around me that i would listen to I mean, Barbara Carnero, she really helped shape the Church Digital over the past couple years. Barbara's stepping out of relationship now with the organization, but even as she's going, like, we're so thankful for her work over the past couple years and how she helped us understand who we are and helped us shape this new digital missionary model. But that was her saying, Jeff, you should do this, and me saying, yes, you're right. We should do that. an interesting wrinkle develops even beyond that of, okay, I'm still listening to people. I'm not being an a-hole, but it still is coming through me. And the challenge of me is what do I know about what Yatope is going through in Africa? You see, it's not about me. You know, it's funny, I've got a, literally, I can't get to it, but I've got a bumper sticker, John 3.30, that's right over here on my desk, a little black bumper sticker from my C28 days. If you don't know what C28 is, Google C28 store, Colossians 2.8. But it's John 3.30, he must become greater, I must become less. And so, which is, it's not, the bumper sticker says, it's not about me referencing John 3.30. And so the idea is not Jeff needs to be the lead. The idea is really, the win is not Jeff gets everything that he wants. The win is Yotope creates a discipleship movement in Nigeria. The win is we start multiplying missionaries in India to reach the Bengali people, which is the number three unreached people group. on the planet. The win is we start to see a revival in post-Christian Europe. The win is that we help gamers get connected to God. Gamers who have given up on the church because of years of rejection and persecution from the church go back to, ooh, can the church persecute? That's an interesting idea. Go back to God. Yeah, like that's the win. And so rather than putting myself at the top in saying, y'all do whatever I say, this is gonna be funny. I don't know that Utope realizes this, but Utope is the boss of the organization, bro. Like Utope, Simon, Layton, Steve Reed, Micah, Micah Bales, the other Outpost leaders, it's funny. I've been interested in hearing to hear what you're going to present today. It's interesting. I read a couple places recently. He meant to he meant us to collaborate with each other in all that we do. Yeah, it's funny. New things. Steve actually talks about the great collaboration. about how, you know, you've got the great commission and it's the great collaboration. And there's, Yotope may remember those verses off the top of his head better than I do. But that's really is the challenge that God called us to collaborate with each other. Lazon is very strong in the collaboration ideology of that. But... The idea is, how can we help Steve reach the people that Steve's called to reach with Legacy? How can we help Utope, Simon, all of these people? How can we start new movements in areas like Sub-Saharan, excuse me, in Southern Asia or like in Oceania or East Asia? We've gotten so much interest recently in East Asia. What would it look like to start something and who can we find to lean into that? And what does it look like to grow and empower them to reach those and to multiply themselves into others. The guy asked me today, he's like, what's a win for the Church Digital in India? And I said, the idea that you're gonna multiply yourself into other people. I'm like, I'm not putting a number. God's gonna be God. I was like, but I only wanna train people that are gonna multiply these ideas. We've made the mistake historically of reaching out to people and recruiting people that were very influential in their area and asking them to rep TCD in the area as well. And what happened is, generally speaking, we became a tool on the tool belt. And not necessarily as funny, I actually made the joke. It's like we're a bumper sticker on the back of the NASCAR. I mean, we're one of 57, 37, 24 different ideas, 24 different methods, and the person wasn't or the persons weren't really excited about what we were doing just in situations where they were able to, hey, oh, this is a good fit. But we didn't see the multiplication because it wasn't a big deal to the individuals. I want to see... I mean, I'm literally talking about making these people like the top bill of the organization. And so I am actively hoping that people are going to respect the authority that I'm giving them of this organization and utilize the resources that we have for the purpose of equipping and multiplying missionaries globally in their context. Steve's boss. I feel like we need to start the hashtag stevesboss.com or something, you know, hashtag Steve's boss. Launch a new website, whateverstevesays.com and just make it because that's what I want to do. You know, if we're not, it's maybe the simple church in me. Thank you, Eric Geiger. But if it's not effective in making disciples, if it's not effective in multiplying missionaries, I don't want to do it. and and if it is if it is effective then i want to do more of it and to really know what's going on we got to hear from the people on the front lines uh and figure out how we can equip and mobilize more effectively in that space yeah brian brian i don't think i know you man thanks for jumping on the stream here yep love it we may have met somewhere along the way i apologize but thanks for being on um it is and so this idea of decentralization is is huge it's organizational flipping I as founder, I as, you know, it's funny, the board told me, Jeff, you know, I say founder because founder has said that founder implies I started this idea, but I'm not the boss. And my board, you know, says to me, Jeff, you need to be... you know, executive director. Like, people need to understand that you're, that this is your, you know, tower and your power. You're in charge. Like, you're the influence. And I'm, I'm still wrestling with that. I think I've said executive director two times in the past five months since they told me that just because I've been like, you know, I say it sometimes just to kind of shop it around and see what people's responses are to it. Because ultimately, I don't want that power. I want to give that to somebody else because this is not jeffreed.com. This is the church moving in digital space in a global environment or in a global space in a digital environment. And that I think is crucial. So it's flipping that script where we've got these outposts, we've got these missionaries that are operating in a global way in our departments, Andy with connecting and community, Jason with the equipping, myself with mobilization, Stacy with care, like how can we resource people the Steve's, the Simon's, the Yotope's, the people that are operating at a global level, the Layton's in their context, the Micah's in their context and environments doing digital micro or gaming. How can we better equip and mobilize people in that space? How can we share resources and connect them along? These are the questions that we're heading into. It's, I mean, listen, I love, I love doing the conferences. The conferences were incredible. Like for 25, the five conferences, the people, the thousands of people that we've connected with across 95 countries, I did the math, 95 countries is, that is an exciting takeaway, but we are not a conference organization. Like, if the only thing we are doing is the Digital Missionary Conference, where we are celebrating what's happening in digital mission, but we're not equipping and mobilizing, that's not something I want to be a part of. I don't want to talk about this. The battle is not in Who Below. The battle is not in webinars. The battlefield of this is in... uh discord it's in uh whatsapp it's in web browsers it's in relationships it's in it's on the discipleship field it's on the mission field and and i want to be part of the battle i want to be i don't know i don't know what that was a battlefield general to be honest i don't even want to be a general I've actually been thinking about, you know, in the midst of all the 90 things that I'm doing, what would it look like to go back and actually start a digital church? I'll be honest. Actually, I had this thought this morning. If somebody comes to me and presents a solid idea or even a weak idea but is teachable to do a church to reach deaf people, ASL or otherwise, I may drop everything and go be a part of that. No, I'm not going to drop everything. But like there is an incredible opportunity there. And I've seen some people come and go with it. I've seen some startups kind of peter off. I've not seen anybody really own and run with the idea at the church level. But there is an incredible opportunity to do digital church to reach deaf people, hard of hearing people globally. And these are people that literally will never make it to a physical building because so few physical churches are doing deaf ministry anymore. Conversation for a different way, different day. Flipping the script, essentially myself, the board, we're in a servant position. We are in a servant position supporting the staff, the departments. The departments are in a servant position supporting the outpost leaders who are in the mission field doing what they're doing. that is the call that's the drive that's the desire for where we're going now now what's interesting is there is i can talk on a stream here for 42 minutes so far telling you about how that's that's what we're doing we're not doing that yet and and actually doing that Takes a lot of time. Yeah, this is an upside down kingdom model. An upside down kingdom. It's funny. The lead pastor of the church that I start working for Monday, Bill White, actually wrote the book called upside down kingdom and where he talks a lot about this this philosophy and so it's interesting talking about how like they get me and i get them and i'm going to go work for them it's because the philosophies of what we're doing actually are not that that different and uh this is not the church that i grew up and that's actually another church here in miami this is this is a new relationship here uh with uh with this particular church over the past three or four years So it's a very servant-minded opportunity for us. Hey, tall, skinny Kiwi, good morning. It's a very servant-oriented mindset where we're flipping the script on how we are serving people. Now... The reality of that is it's going to take some time to kind of flesh that out. And here's what I'm saying today. The Church Digital is going to take a little break. Next week is actually going to be the last stream that I'm going to do here this year. uh where and we're gonna be circling the wagons doing some reduced streams uh some of the reduced um uh emails like we did a huge push for uh into the year excuse me huge push for the conferences And as a result of that, Barbara is shifting out. Word Revolution, who has served us very well for a couple years, is heading out the door. Barbara's actually launching a new agency to reach another audience group as well and excited about some of the work that she's got planned and what she's trying to do. We're bringing in a new agency that's going to come on board and support us moving forward. And there's going to be more work that there's a lot of even on top of all the superficial stuff with the connect and community. there's there's a lot of behind the scenes work that we the church digital leadership that we need to do because i need to move from a a method or a model where i've been pulling people up and telling them what to do and getting them at a higher level to instead getting to a place where they're asking and leading and we are supporting on what they're doing. This is some of what we're talking about is actually going back through some of the goals we had established and saying, okay, when we created these goals, in many ways, it was my goals and I was getting you to own them. Let's flip it. Let's talk about them being your goals and me on it. So if this is your goals, what do you need to do to own and reshape? Who else do we need to bring into this conversation? How do we need to shift in order to be more effective in some of these spaces? What other areas can we start to tap into? Who else do we know? that can come on board and start to lead an outpost? What does it mean to onboard people into EDM? And what else can we do to make that a more effective process? Even things like our database, our CRM is an unfortunate nightmare right now. And we need to get that kind of cleaned up and rebuilt and shuffled around. And by the way, who's gonna own that in the future moving forward so that it's not a nightmare. These are just like top of the head struggles that we're looking for. And for that reason, we're circling the wagons here a little bit, working with our outpost leaders, working with senior leadership, working with the board on a number of topics. And so we're not going radio silence, not saying that, but we are going to limit what we're doing so that we can be more effective to do a Relaunch may be too strong of a word, but to come back with a new focus and a new strategy in 2026. And part of that also, and it's worth noting, we're going to talk more about this next week. By the way, I love this, Brian. Discipleship 101, build stages for others. I'm going to get back to what I was going to say here in a second because that's good. I've been convicted of this, and this is something that... this is something that the church project guys taught me um and i've had this conversation with uh the underground the tampa the kc underground network because like i just i i i wasn't thinking this way and and i am now because i see it in the work that they're doing building stages for others as brian said here is such an interesting phrase because to really create a decentralized movement This is something that Jason Shepherd taught me from Church Project. A decentralized movement is actually very centralized. The processes are centralized, but there's guidelines and there's freedom to explore once you get past quality control, once you get past the guidelines and the standards. So, you know, Tampa Church Project is very centralized because there's ways that they look at metrics and measurements, and there's a very centralized process into that. Tampa Underground is is incredibly decentralized where they're doing like, you know, different churches and different environments, business, workplace, whatever, homes, public areas. Like it's just it's very free in what it looks like. But there is a level of centralization when it comes towards onboarding process, when it comes towards mission, vision, values, when it comes towards analytics and successes, language, terminology. And so which is interesting. This gets back to like the what two or three of our our new outpost leaders or potential outpost leaders are saying, Jeff, you're given too much freedom. There's so much freedom, we don't know what to do. Can you lean in a little stronger and be a little more finite? Like, to at least help us get our grounding. Now, which I'm okay with, but I need people to, once they get their footing, I need people to like, you know, break out of that egg. Like, you know, I'll put them, you know, if I'm the, this is gonna be embarrassing, I can't believe I'm gonna say this on a stream. I'll be the mother bird. That was actually, it was funny, my nickname. It's a true story right here. My nickname on the high school football team my senior year was Mother Goose. Because I was kind of like the shepherd, pastoral person on the team. And some of the team appreciated that, some of the team didn't. But when I would get upset about something, like when I would really get ticked off in football and I started ripping heads, the linebacker, Mike Ortego, friend, he would look at me and say, yo, Mother Goose, don't get your feathers ruffled. He said that to me once. Dude stuck. It stuck for like a year, man. I couldn't believe it. But ultimately what I'm saying is, is that you need people to be stable, but you need people to be able to crack out of the egg. Because they've got, at least us, they've got to own that idea enough to work through contextualization. If Yotope stays in the egg and doesn't adapt this, I'll just tell you, it wouldn't have worked. The version one, version two, maybe even version three, Utope, I don't remember how many different versions we did of EDM, but it wasn't until Utope broke out of the egg and said, guys, I don't want to do it the way you're doing it. I want to do it this way instead. We gave him freedom. But it took him a couple drafts to get it to where he was comfortable enough and he understood it enough to do it his way. And it worked with us. It's actually a great story. Simon, some of the work that he's doing, I mean, he's pushing us to get into different languages. What did he tell me this week? He got somebody that is going to translate and to translate EDM. No, translate... uh sharing jesus online simon's getting sharing jesus online translated into german and i'm hoping french i really want french um to to translate the book into that somebody's translating it for free and i think design is going to be free or reduced cost and and so but like there's a That's him adapting it for his context and then being able to push that and use that in different ways. He's seeing the resource and saying, hey, it's gonna be really effective if we can. And they're running with it. When I wrote Sharing Jesus Online, at no point did I ever think, hey, this would be great in German or French, but Simon has that vision and wants to run with it. And for the love of all, please, yes, let's go. So we're gonna be taking a break. to circle the wagons, get our departments, our leadership. We brought on some project managers to help manage relationships and we're developing volunteer teams. You're gonna be hearing more about that in the coming months as we're looking to really empower this movement at a global level. But it's not centered around me working 50, 60 hours a week on it like it was historically. You know, I've put in a lot, and there's no regret in this. I've put in a lot of hours in making this happen, which is why it still is a Jeff-centric organization. And I want to see the Church Digital grow beyond a Jeff-centric organization. And I feel like God is best glorified when this is no longer a Jeff-centric organization. Yotope mentioned earlier in the stream the idea of, or maybe it was Steve, I think Steve actually said it, the idea of collaboration and to see that come to fruition. where we can continue to contextualize, adapt, learn from each other, collaborate for kingdom purposes globally. Oh, what a sweet opportunity we have in digital spaces to even build on this conversation where we've had people from at least four continents on this stream that I've managed to feature and bring into the conversation. And so this is a incredible opportunity. You know, it's funny, I'm seeing Brian feeling the Holy Spirit all over the shift. Yes, I am too, my friend. It's funny, I'm gonna start crying. It's letting, what I'm doing right now, letting go, empowering other people, positioning others, moving to decentralized instead of centralized. This makes no sense in a digital environment. Like, no one teaches you at influencer school to empower other people and give up your platform. Give other people your followers. They don't say that. They don't say decentralized. They don't say, they say a million person stream is better than 100,000 streams of 10. And we've, you know, God has just convicted me over the years. You've heard me say flip the script. Man, we're just gonna keep flipping the script. because i would rather be a hundred thousand churches of ten than a million person church i to me i i i haven't talked about this too much i met um i met rick warren through um uh jay kranz is a friend over at saddleback but i met rick um doing some work uh globally it started when i was at uh stadia but through an organization called Finishing the Task. Actually, that's where I met Bekele Shenko. Bekele Shenko was actually who spoke at the Neighborhoods Conference. Bekele was actually a key, he was in the room with this conversation. And Bekele, Rick, and a couple others, hey, Jeff, how do we get one church for every 100 people on the planet globally using digital tools? How do we do that? And I drew up the plans literally like overnight. I was asked that question on a Monday night. It's a true story. I was asked that question on a Monday night in 2022. And I drew up the plans for the Church Digital in its current iteration and presented them Tuesday. I sent an email to Bekele and one of Bekele's, one of the guys I was working with that Bekele was over. And, you know, maybe four hours after that, I sent that in via email. I get a tap on my shoulder and looked up and it was Rick's right-hand man. Rick is the leader of finishing the task. But I get a tap on the shoulder and says, hey, Rick and some of the leaders are going to be in this room in about 30 minutes. I saw your design. Can you come over and tell them about it? Maybe get them to ask some questions, answer some questions. Yeah, sure. How long do I have? Maybe 10 minutes of time. Is there any technology in the room? No. No slide decks, nothing. Just come in and talk for 10 minutes. Can I get a whiteboard? Yes, you can have a whiteboard. And so I got a whiteboard. I mapped out the church digital. It was funny. A week later, I resigned from Stadium 22 and went down the road towards building out what this is today. And that's where I can design the framework. I can design the systems. But if we really are going to get to the place where we're going to get one church for every 100 people on the planet globally using digital tools, if we're really going to reach people in unique contexts in the 95 countries that we're currently engaging in. White bald dude with a beard. What the crap do I know about the Bengali people? I hadn't even said the word Bengali this year until this morning. look, it needs to get beyond me. It needs to get owned by others. And if God's going to be glorified, if the Holy Spirit is going to move, we need people that are going to be able to question environments, contextualize and shape the gospel, not rewrite the gospel, but shape it in such a way digitally to make it effective to reach people in the unique context. Jesus doesn't change. Jesus stays the same, but that doesn't mean our methods need to stay the same. And to be able to invite that freedom, to encourage that mindset and do something different to reach someone different globally. Yes, please. So that's what we're doing. The entire body growing by what every joint supplies. I'm sure that makes sense in the context there, my friend. But I love the idea of the body growing together, working together to do this. God knew what he was doing. And to be honest, even as we look at what's happening and not happening digitally, it'd be very easy to be discouraged here in the US looking at how physical churches are struggling with digital ministry, reverting back to physical in the building. But we've been fortunate enough to be a part of some incredible global movements. to have some incredible conversations and see how God is doing work globally, digitally, and that we are laying a foundation today for what is moving forward. Culture changes, and so we shape the gospel in order to keep it the same, same impact, same story told in different ways through different eyes. I love it. Thank you for that, Kiwi. Great to have you on. um in the middle of the morning for you hey look so here's what's going to happen i'm going to stream next week not going anywhere we're going to stream i i you know what it's on youtube i think it's wednesday next week let me let me actually make sure i don't want to lie here on the stream um i can click that tab i can do that As of right now, I'm streaming Wednesday, no, Tuesday, the 28th at 2 p.m. I am going to be streaming. Now, here's what I'm doing next week. I'm going to talk about this show. The Church Digital, we have done over 370 episodes. This is episode three, no, it's 369. 370 will be next week of the Church Digital podcast. And that is 370 episodes of me monologuing or me interviewing and dialoguing, having other people on. And just like, hey, we're going to flip the script and things are going to change, we're going to start to do some of that change next week. Or no, we're going to talk about the change that's coming next week. And so January will be the launch, give you the tease, will be the launch of the Church Digital Streaming Network. what that means, what it's gonna look like, and what the future's gonna be. We're gonna talk about that next week, and we'll get more into the weeds on that and a lot of the changes that are coming on the content side and on the community side. We'll get more into that next week. And so come back, we'll put the information in FAM. Watch, of course, on demand as you're able, but we're excited. Be praying about the road ahead. I really do feel like God's behind these moves. And it's us taking the hands off the wheel. You know, I hate to really go play the pun here. Jesus, take the wheel. Like, you know, drive in this situation. I have been told my, I live here in Miami. My name is Jeffrey Dale. If you know me, Jeff is my first name. And my middle name is Dale. Don't call me Dale. Don't call me Jeffrey. But the Spanish equivalent, some Cuban people told me this, is el jefe dale, which if you know Spanish, el jefe dale is pretty much the boss screaming at you, do it and do it now. That is el jefe, the boss, dale, do it now. And so Jeffrey Dale, el jefe dale, that was my motivation for years. and god is moving me to not drive but to release and uh and trust the trust him to go through this and so pumped i appreciate that i'm brian hey man thanks for chiming in and joining us today being part of the stream uh and it was really cool to uh to engage with you and the others today Thank you for all the amazing video content and time. Maybe a few months off will be refreshing. Expect you to return with new vision for a new chapter. I think I do have a new vision for the new chapter. It's just going to take us some time to implement it and to refresh. I will say that taking some time off is good. The conference is being in May next year. The next Digital Missionary Conference, May 12th and 13th, gives us time January, February, March to kind of ramp up. We're even restructuring how the camp, the conferences are being managed. We'll get more into it. But I hated the fact that the conferences took so much and we really kind of shifted away from empowering digital missionaries for probably five or six months. I hated that we fried out the creative team. I hated a lot of the cost of the conferences. And we're restructuring some things to make sure that we don't get there again. But yeah, I see this from Judy. Excited about the future. We'll be praying. And so be praying for us in the days... In the weeks to come, as we're heading into the new year with 25, I'm getting a phone call. I'm going to have to go. But for Jeff, this is Jeff with The Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out with us today. We'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good one.