EP359: Share the Vision: Digital Missionary Summits

Jeff Reed: All right. Hey, everybody. It is episode I have no idea. You know, I. To be honest, do the episodes actually, do the numbers mean anything anymore? Like, there was a stretch where, like, I could remember what episode 10 was, and I would have a conversation with somebody, and I'd say, oh, yeah, you know what? I was talking about that. We had so-and-so on the show somewhere back in, like, you know, episode 50. Like, you know, there's kind of road milestones that I've had. Episode 50 was Ed Stetzer. Episode 100 was Nils Smith, Jake Miranda. Greg Atkinson, a lot of the OGs that really inspired me back in the day. Episode 200 was, you know, Dave Ferguson. And so the roadmaps, like, what do they call them? The roadmaps? Landmarks? Landmarks? The landmark numbers mean something to me. But episode 359, at this point, like, it all runs together. Jeff here at the Church Digital Podcast. That was way too much of a... Oh, squirrel. So, yeah, trying to get it back grounded. Hey, I am excited to be on the stream today. There is a lot of really cool stuff happening behind the scenes right now with the church digital. I have not even talked about this. I don't know that I've talked about this publicly. Maybe I've talked about this publicly. In 26, we're actually going to stop the Church Digital Podcast. You know, I've done, like I said, 300-something of these things. It's time for somebody else. And so we're moving towards a streaming network and starting to platform some other faces, some other voices. I'm excited about what's coming up. We're going to talk about this much after the conference. But I had this crazy idea today, and I texted some people. I'm like, y'all got to do this. Y'all have to do this. And so... Here's what I got. In 26, the Church Digital, we're going to have Ann Bosarge and Dr. John Harris, arguably the two smartest people in digital ministry. No offense, Jason Morris. Some words close to three. But Ann and Dr. John are going to come on and do a semi-regular show here, part of the streaming network coming out of the Church Digital. And I just got to tell you, Listen, we've got a conference coming up in five days. I'm going nuts about that. But Ann and Dr. John doing a show together, I told them I'm just going to sit back and listen to them talk. Those two, it is going to be incredible to platform and to see what's going to come out of that. So much goodness coming very soon. I feel like I'm screaming. I'm going to turn my mic up a little bit so I can talk softer. I don't know why, but I'm so excited. I don't know that it matters. Hey, everybody. Here's where we are. We've got a conference. coming up right around the corner. The Church Digital. We've got our Digital Missionary Conference. And I want to give you, A, some insights on the conference, but I want to give you a sneak peek. Nobody's seen this yet. We're still building it. Andy Mage is furiously working in the background, clicking mice. Is that the way? Clicking mouses? Clicking icons, clicking whatever UI interfaces to create the user interface, trying to polish some things off. But I'm going to show you right now an inside scoop of our new event platform called Hubula. We rolled a sneak peek. For those of you that came to the town hall, really was not the best experience. We had to, like, you know, work through some of the kinks on it. But we've got a much better experience coming up with that. So some of you, maybe if you've lived under a rock right now, are saying, hey! What's this about a conference? Well, I'm glad you said. Let me show you. And look at that.

SPEAKER_00: It worked. It worked.

Jeff Reed: My voice is cracking right now, so I'm drinking water right here. I have the water right next to a candle, and so occasionally I pick up the candle to take a drink of it. But it's hot, and so sometimes coffee's hot, and it's very easy to get that confused. I think I made that joke last week, but to be honest, that's not really a joke. That's actually close to reality for me. So let me build this out. But we are doing a Digital Missionary Summit series. We're doing four conferences over the next Wednesdays. Four conferences in a row. One, two, three, four. What are the conferences? What are they about? September 17th, right off the bat, Digital Neighborhoods, where we're digging into what the gospel looks like in digital space. and and looking at our neighborhoods recognizing the culture of those neighborhoods and how to engage the gospel inside the digital cultures that exist across these different platforms i i put this conference together this one and and i just i want to tell you some of the other team worked on the other ones and excited about what they're doing this is the one i created the conference that would challenge me That would like, this is going to be deepened. This is not going to be intro level. The brought in people that were currently challenging me and invited them to speak into my life and created this conference in a way that would challenge me. And so come expecting. deep end as we get into digital neighborhoods. September 24th is Control Alt Recover. Stacey and I have been working hard on this one, excited to see what's going to come out of this as we focus on what digital recovery looks like, what Christ-centered recovery looks like in digital space, how to prepare ourselves to deal with people that are struggling with deep, emotional addictions trauma issues but then how also to protect ourselves while we're doing ministry in an addictive space like digital and virtual reality is and oh by the way learning how to be very transparent with our own issues so that we can be more endearing and engaging with people in these digital platforms like this is a very very challenging idea centered around the control all recovery and excited uh to see uh what's coming up we got romans checking in hey man how's it going uh so exciting looking forward to all of these romans has been doing a great job with us coming on, actually talking, working specifically with the care and recovery and Stacey and that team. And so excited to see that happen. Coming up on October 1st, the European Digital Missionary Summit, where we're doing like 15 minute TED Talks. Boom, boom, boom. But 10, 12, 14, like a ton of people. are talking during the Digital Missionary Summit. And the focus of what they're doing in the Digital Missionary Summit is all about what's working digitally in Europe. So, okay, listen, America, we are not post-Christian, post-church society. Church buildings still exist and have a purpose in Europe. Yeah, I mean, those buildings, those cathedrals, those temples are museums. Like Europe, you know, England, for an example, is very much a post-Christian environment. Germany, post-Christian environment. Europe, post-Christian environment. Well, what's the value of digital missionally and even towards discipleship in those environments? We've got the guys and the gals that are working on this in Europe. And so you want to talk about what the future is going to look like in America? Take a look at what's happening in Europe. Bad news. That one is time-zoned in Europe. I think it's Central European CET, whatever it is. Anyway, it's very early in America and beyond. So take a look at all the time zones with this, but recognize Europe's going to be a little different. And the last one, gaming. I'm excited about this one. We got hardcore gamers, people that are doing hardcore ministry in Twitch, inside video games, even some metaverse virtual reality coming in for this and excited to see what this is gonna look like as we dig into... um really the idea of being missionaries in in gaming spaces and on gaming platforms leighton and andy have been working very hard on this one uh simon on on the european i neglected to mention him as well simon and uh mission alliance has been very influential on that one mission alliance has been an excellent ministry partner. And oh, by the way, Control & Recover Project Exodus has been an excellent mission partner along with Regeneration. You know what? That's the really fascinating thing is that organizations are starting to rally around this and see the potential, see the energy, see the possibility. More than the theory, they're seeing what's already happening and they're wanting to be a part of it. To me, that's exciting. To me, that's why we're doing the conferences. To me, that's why we want to drill in and get into it. So, hey, listen, the Digital Neighborhoods Conference is coming up quickly. I'm clicking on the wrong thing. Where is that window? There is that window. By the way, talking conferences, talking sponsors. Take a look at this beauty right here. Take a look at all of these sponsoring organizations that are a part of the Digital Missionary Conference. Crew coming out in a big way. Our friends over at Campus Crusade for Christ. Global church movements. Digital Missionary Conference is brought to you by Cruise Global Church Movements. They are the headline sponsor. We're excited about them. God Tools, Next Steps coming in as well. And then, of course, there's a number of organizations and churches coming in. Cherith, True Center, Christ Journey Church, Digital Missions Project. I mean, I could read them all. Word Revolution, thankful for them. NCMS, Right Now Media, Stadia, Sermon Shots, Alliance Mission, Tapos, Reliant, Church Apps, Venture, I mean, Regeneration, Project Exodus, Taco, TCD Integration, Jay Cranda even coming in from the outside, man. Excited that Jay's a part of this. I got to email Jay, actually.

SPEAKER_00: Touch base with him.

Jeff Reed: It's been a minute. Hey, y'all, listen. There is a... Jay, I love you if you're watching this. It's good stuff. Hey, there's a lot of people that are investing in resourcing the idea of digital missionaries. And so thank you for being a part of this. Here's what I need. I'm going to get to... I want to get to the event platform, which is the fun part of the conversation. But here's what I want to do first. If you're watching this, if you love The Church Digital, you've heard me say this a couple times. I need your help in getting the word out. So we built a shareable resource, a media kit digitally to allow you to share with some people and then bring people into the conference. I want to challenge all of you. bring someone to the conference. Whether this is someone who is a person that you're recruiting to be part of your ministry, somebody you want to pour into and develop, help cast vision to it, that'd be great. Maybe you've got someone that you're asking to invest but doesn't necessarily understand what you're doing and would like some more insight maybe from other perspectives. This would be a great opportunity. Maybe you've got someone in church leadership or denomination that or an organization network that doesn't quite understand you and needs to maybe hear it from a different perspective, there is no excuse to bring somebody into this. And all the wisdom that we're bringing in for these conferences, like there is much value. in having people with you either in the room watching the same screen or on another device. Other device would be great because they can interact better with other people through this conference. And so all of the media kits I'm just going to pick on digital neighborhoods right here. are available you can see the time that the conference starts the confirmed speakers excited about that we've got uh in the topics the speakers are doing uh we've got graphics we've got text copy and paste it into whatever your social media platform is other graphics are available but ultimately the big win here is go to town Save these graphics and help us get the word out to drive attention to all four of the digital missionary conferences, whether it's this one we've got here for digital neighborhoods or the one for Control-Alt-Recover European or gaming. All four of them are available and they've got assets ready to go just for you to help you get people connected and into this. We've got... Doing rough math in my head. Yeah, we've got about 1,400 people, 12 to 1,400 people registered for the conferences at this point. Excited about that. Last time with the conferences, I did a big nations count. To be honest, I haven't had the time to do that with this one. But we are excited. It's a global reach. We're seeing traffic come in. Our ad campaigns are working great. Lots of interest. And you all have been doing a great job in helping us get the word out on the conferences. I'm begging you here. Continue that right now as we're continuing to build out all four of the conferences overall. Yeah, I'm ramped up because Digital Neighborhoods is like five days away. And so that's a big one. But then we've got some other ones lined up with the recovery and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'm excited about it. Now, I tease this and I want you all to see this. I want to show you. Hublot. So we have an event platform that we are kicking off with here in a couple weeks. No, after the next conference. And this is our event platform. Now, I'm going to let you in on a secret. If you are watching this stream, I'm going to tell you something that you're not supposed to know yet. Because the emails, I think, go out tomorrow or Monday. But this, I'm going to give you a sneak peek and invite you to do this. You ready for this? If you want access right now into Hublot, here's what I need you to do. I'm going to push a button here. There's a blank web browser, and I'm going to go to http:// neighborhood.missionary.digital neighborhood.missionary.digital that's going to open up and let me see what it's going to do oh it's going to let me straight in because i'm logged in oh you're not supposed to see that that's what you're supposed to see all right neighborhoods.missionary.digital right now this is the front door if you registered for the conference You're going to go to this webpage for the Digital Neighborhoods Conference and the Digital Neighborhoods Conference is going to let you in. No strings attached, no surprises, no secrets. You go to Digital Neighborhoods right now and you actually have access to it. I'm not sure how far it's going to let you in, but you can at least start to create your account. Well, what's my password? Doesn't matter. Here's what you're going to do. Here on the form where it says email address. Look how good I zoomed that in. That was beautiful. You're going to type your email address. Got you registered for the conference. If you don't know it, guess. If you still don't know it, wait until you get the emails on Monday that'll tell you, hey, this is it. And whatever that email that we sent to you is, that's the email. Or the email you normally get, like, you know, newsletters from me on a regular basis. Or the email that's getting blown up right now because all the conferences. That is the email address that you put in there. And so neighborhoods.missionary.digital is going to redirect you to this page and you can start to build out your profile. Now, why it's important for you to build out your profile and not just be a fly on the wall is because we... We believe in community. We believe in engaging. We believe in talking with people digitally. And as a result of that, you're not going to be able to just be a consumer in this conference. You're going to be an engager in all our conferences. And so create that account. Put a name. Put your photo on there. And roll through it. By the way, once you create the account, through all our events moving forward, it'll work. It'll still be there. If you're like, hey, Jeff, I don't want to create an account. Listen, we're the only people that get access to this. And there's nothing we don't already have access to. It's no passwords, nothing saved. By the way, when you do this, we'll email you a code that proves that you are who you are. Like it's magic link type stuff. It's no security issues or no qualms with that. By the way, you already have the information you're doing when you create the account. So engage with the account that's there. But let me do this. And I probably just screwed this up because I logged out. I want to click through. I did. I did screw that up. Okay, give me a second. It's the jeffatthechurch.digital. And it's gonna say, oh, I gotta do a login code because I logged out just a second ago. So let me pick up my trusty app here and see what my magic, my phone. Hi, how you doing? This is why you should always try stuff in advance. I really don't do a good job tech checking on these streams. But I did, I got, I'm not gonna tell you. I got my login email. Just like, right like that. It's just a Jeff at the Church Digital. My magic numbers are, I'm not going to tell you, but I'm going to type them in. Oh, look, you can see 2623. It's verified. I don't know if you can get in. Maybe you can. Hopefully that'll shut down here in a little bit as those numbers magically showed up. But here I am. Here I am. I am inside Pueblo right now. And so this is the online event where it's got the schedule of the main sessions. 11 o'clock, the main session, Jason Morris is talking. Session two, Jeff Vanderstelt is talking. So excited about Jeff. Session three, Cheryl Boyd. is talking, and in session four, Bekele Shenko is talking. This is the lineup of what we're looking at and details of that. You can get more information on who it is and what the keynote is, the topics, and things like that, all right here at your fingertips. Now, you obviously have access to this day of the conference, and this is the keynote where you click and you watch and you're here and you're engaged. That's not the best part of the conferences. The best part of the conferences are what happens with our digital neighborhoods one. We've got, and look at this as I'm scrolling through here. We've got 16 breakouts scheduled. Right now there's 16 breakouts that are scheduled. Actually, I think there's more than that. 16, but I'm still waiting on a couple more. 16, 17, 18, I think there's 18 breakouts that are scheduled to happen through the course of the Digital Neighborhoods Conference. And so you've got access to that in the time, and you'll come in here and jump in, and it's a Zoom-like conversation where you are talking and engaging with people. in real time. And we've got a great lineup talking about how to create culture internationally, empowering believers, Dr. John Beyond the Pews, and Bo Sarge being a church on social media. Craig Bradley talking about a new digital platform he's developing based on the Bible. Really interesting some of the stuff Craig's doing. Nick Smith is representing Tapos, one of our ministry partners, merging together AI. Beautiful stuff. Micah Bales, planning microchurch networks with APEST, really focusing on APEST. Alan Deschanaux, who is Christian Ninja, talking about why are they in their rooms, reaching the ones who shut the door, how to reach some of the recluse digitally. Cameron Bailey, Digital Missions Project and Google Ads. Lucas Pulley doing an incredible session. I'm excited about Lucas's talking about calling. Wes and Leah Brooks talking about some of the stuff they're doing on AI centered around discipleship. Andrew Jones, tall-skinned Kiwi, talking about... augmented reality. Stacey Knapp talking about recovery. Alina talking about church and virtual reality. Pastor Alina from VRMMO Church. Tim Selleck, another one I'm excited about, not technical, but very powerful, talking about reaching the one. Tim Yee is doing a soul care for digital missionaries. And Liz Anderson's talking about audience mapping. Like I said, we've got a couple others. Incredible lineup. Here, you just come into the room when it's time, click on it, you boom straight in. You're having that face-to-face conversation. This is still not the best part. Come over here to where I am with tables. Oh, my gosh. Look at this. Cool dudes. Yeah, that was funny. We were testing something and it didn't fix it. But we're going to be building out a series of tables that are either sponsor-led or that are open for conversation or have design topics. And let's say you want to sit down and have a conversation with cool dudes. I'm just going to mouse over and click on where this chair is and then say yes to this. Hopefully nothing breaks when I do this. But I'm in. And so now I'm in this conversation talking with people. And if there are other people in the room sitting down, I'll be able to see them. They'll be able to see me. We'll be able to talk and dialogue and interact with it. And so excited to see how the tables are going to develop. Right now, we've got just the one table that's built. That's on my list of things to do today is actually build out the entire table structure and how that's going to look like. And so I'm excited. The tables. may be the best part of the conference because the tables are where you get to interact and dialogue with other people. It's where you're having conversations with people literally around the world. And so I'm excited to see what's going to come of the tables and the conference here with that. By the way, let's talk about this. Yeah, let's leave the tables. That's okay. No one's in here. This is a cool part as well, because in here is where we have all of our sponsors and partners for the organization. Crew Global Church Movements, Cherith, Reliant, The Church Digital, of course, RightNow Media, Crew Next Steps, Crew God Tools, Project Exodus Regeneration, and I still have to add Alliance Mission. uh in europe and germany and so listen we're so thankful and and they're right now they're entering in this data they're creating uh the af the assets let's click into regeneration see what they're doing so i think they got started a little early at least they got the logo in here brooke did and so you're going to build out websites and uh and basically data this is an interest uh what is it interest side it's not a public it's it's on the internet uh this is an internal page with areas that you can find out more information about our vendors and our sponsors watch some videos download some pdfs even talk to some people like i'll just i'll just be honest like the The church digital is operating today because of people. It's funny, I've got regeneration on here, but that's just an example. Regeneration, Crew, Project Exodus, Right Now Media, Reliant, Cherith. We wouldn't be doing anything without these people. And so, you know, take some time as friends of the church digital, as friends of the conference. Engage with some of the sponsors. Learn about some of the stuff they're doing. It's funny, I had a conversation with... Oh, my gosh. Kelly from Sweden who works with Cherith. I think it was in Sweden. Finland or Sweden? I think I'm pretty sure it was Sweden. No, I think it's Switzerland. It was somewhere in Europe. I'm going to go with Sweden. I talked with Kelly who works with Cherith. He lives in Sweden today. And we started talking about all the products that they are specifically designing. digital products that they're designing to help missionaries globally fundraise. So they're not designing products specifically for digital missionaries. They're designing products specifically for missionaries, all missionaries, digital or physical. But they're using digital tools and the digital platforms on how to do it. Like True Center is actually an example of this. And they've got some other things centered around e-commerce and the ability to sell things digitally. Like they're doing some really interesting work, Cherith is. And now the ability to resource that and to drive that into digital is incredible. And so that's just a example. I could talk about right now media that is literally going to give you... You know what? I don't know that I'm going to say that yet. We're going to hold back. There's some really cool things. There's some exciting things that are coming out of all these conferences. And so we want you to stay tuned with what's coming up. So... This is Hublot. This is where you're going to be interacting. This is where you're going to be watching. This is where you're going to be talking. This is where you're going to be learning. This is where you're going to be sharing. This is where you're going to be for the next four Wednesdays as we've got these four conferences coming up. For more information, check your email on that. And so we are excited. We are excited. We are excited about what's coming up on the road ahead. Questions, feel free to holler at me on Discord or WhatsApp. Shoot me an email at jeffatthechurchdigital as well. and so as as we're wrapping up on this stream here let me encourage you let me challenge you let me ask let me beg whatever the language needs to be swing over here to the digital missionary summit series grab some of these shareable graphics that exist on these pages word revolution did such a great job um join me and take time to heal before you lead okay like let's just call that out who in your life needs that whether they're a digital missionary or whether they're just a person maybe there's a safe space for somebody to take some time and get some healing and learn about maybe how you can integrate some of this into your physical and or even digital ministry I'm telling you, there's some really powerful opportunities for people like you to learn and for you to invite others to take the time to learn in a big way. So jump on these media kits. Thank you very much, Word Revolution team. I'm trying to figure out where that tab is at share.missionary.digital. Okay? All right. So, hey, I've got an open office at 2 p.m. Eastern. Right after this, I'm going to hang out. If you all have any questions, you can swing over to church.digital.com. We'd love to have a conversation with you as we're talking more. We can talk about the conference. We can talk about anything. I just have been so hectic. It occurred to me, like, I really haven't spent time in open offices much lately. And so happy to get into that with y'all today. And I'll be also plugging away, finishing up the conferences. Hey, thank you to Andy. Thank you to Word Revolution. Thank you to Amplify Social, who's even stepping in and helping on some things. Like, there's an exciting road for the church digital ahead. These conferences are just the beginning of something much larger and much bigger. And so, yeah. However we can help people like you doing the ministry that you're doing, that's what we want, and that's where we are. All right, cool. You know, for that, I think we're going to roll. Whatever episode I said this was, it is 359. We're going to wrap. So for me, this is me with The Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out with us for episode 359. I'm going to see you next week. Tuesday, last stream before the conference. And then, of course, we kick off the Digital Missionary Conference Summit Series with Digital Neighborhoods on Wednesday, September 17th. All right. Thanks, everybody. Have a good one. Bye.