EP360: Final Preview - Jeff Talks Digital Neighborhoods

Jeff Reed: all right hey everybody welcome to the church digital podcast it's funny the music faded out in my ears right in time and i wanted to make sure i didn't mess anything up but hey jeff here founder of the church digital excited about the conferences we've got coming up right around the corner. We, the Church Digital, we're a digital missionary sending agency. We want to equip and mobilize people to be missionaries in digital space around the world and through our equipping courses and communities and resources that we're sharing and even mobilizing people into outposts for relational accountability and coaching. Man, it's so much fun. I love my job. I love getting to do what I do on a regular basis. And it is so much fun. You know, I was having a conversation. I was working today at a physical church. I'm doing some coaching right now with a physical church that is... It's transitioning. It's on the older side of the equation. They're getting ready to like, you know, they're moving towards more of a generational thing. And, you know, I was telling them a little bit. It was funny. I mentioned. World of Warcraft. I mentioned World of Warcraft. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, let's talk about churches and video games. And one of the ladies said, oh, you're not in World of Warcraft, are you? And I smiled because it's like, yeah, I know some guys that are in World of Warcraft. Actually, yes. Yeah, XP Church is all about. Wow. And it was like it was a triggering mechanism because her husband evidently in college played a lot of World of Warcraft. Well, a lot of us played World of Warcraft a lot, you know, back in the day. and so it was fun it was like i had to like coach her through but oh my gosh so excited about the digital missionary conference this next season kicking off tomorrow literally like right around the corner tomorrow uh here with the digital neighborhoods conference you know what i heard an interesting tidbit that i haven't even validated one of my one of my team andy we were just previous to this call i came on this call late i apologize But came on the call here late today because we were doing a tech check with a lot of the sponsors, breakout leaders, and the people in play. And so just wanted to, oh, cool. Yeah, so we are about right now, the Digital Missionary Conference, we're right at about 600 people. 600 people right now are walking into, are signed up for the Digital Laborers Conference that's happening tomorrow. Excited about these people, the global reach that's involved. Here, the heart of this conference. I'm going to give you some inside scoop right here. The heart of tomorrow's conference is centered around recognizing that these platforms, they have a unique culture unto themselves. And if they have a unique culture... Well, then why are we not treating them like neighborhoods? Why are we not recognizing the personalities and the cultures that exist in those spaces? And if we're talking about different cultures, by the way, what does the gospel look like in those spaces? How can we be reaching into those cultures, into those unique people groups, to better represent the gospel digitally or even virtually, or even in games like World of Warcraft? Listen... Hey, the guy's talking crazy. Well, listen, if you've met me, all I do is talk crazy. But we're excited. I scratch my head when I'm talking crazy. But we're excited about the Digital Neighborhoods Conference coming up. So let me tease a little bit. I'm going to show you the venue. We're going to bring you in. We're going to show you what the Hublot experience looks like as well. We're going to talk about some other things. But let's kick this off first. And let's talk about what this experience is going to look like. Who's going to be at the experience and what did the schedules? Let me push this button. Oh, look, everything works so magically. It's like I rehearsed it, which I did not. You would think I would have done a tech check in advance, but no, sorry. I've kind of been running all day today, but we're excited about this. And so for more information on our Digital Neighborhoods Conference tomorrow or what's happening, Digital Christ-Centered Recovery next week or our European conference, uh in two weeks or in the gaming conference in three weeks four conferences across four weeks go to www.missionary.digital that's www.missionary.digital here you go digital neighborhoods uh control out recover uh which is christ centered recovery uh addiction recovery european digital missionary summit on october 1st and october 8th gaming Registration is available for all of these by simply clicking on Save Your Spot right here. Get you registered for it and to sign up. If you've registered in the past, by the way, it's good to see Bible with the Battles. Demarcus is excited about the conferences coming up. Yay, Demarcus. Thanks for jumping on, my friend, and sharing that. But we are excited about the experiences that we've got coming up across all of the conferences. We're going to be talking. I've been talking a lot about digital neighborhoods. You're going to hear me Thursday. We're going to talk a little bit about neighborhoods, but we're going to pivot because we're going to celebrate. We're going to start to tease what's coming up with the Control-Alt-Recover conference, et cetera, down the road. Oh, my gosh. European? It's going to be crazy. Gaming? not sure how gaming's gonna work like like that that one that conference is gonna be 100 in discord and uh i don't know that i've ever seen a conference executed 100 in in gaming and and flat cap you know flat caps jumping on here dm cons let's go um the gaming conference uh that's that's flat caps baby and that's that's andy's baby so i'm excited about it but even even when they're talking about this i'm like got faith in you guys because because i ain't a discord user like you guys are dem's power users i uh i'm i'm really more just a pretty face in that but we're gonna move on hey look i just i just i constantly i just want to bring more and more attention this list keeps getting bigger and bigger would you just take a look at all the sponsors that we got on this thing like you know yay sponsors i But these are people. These are organizations. I feel like I just need to constantly keep pushing this. You got Utope chiming in from literally another continent. 24 hours to go, much less for you. Actually, it doesn't matter. It's still the same distance regardless. That was bad on my part. But look at all the people, look at all the organizations that are excited, that are backing, that want to connect and resource digital missionaries like you. It was funny, even at this older legacy church that I'm helping work through, the pastor looks at me and he's like, Jeff, you're the future. the stuff that we're working on right now, you know, I'm saying, hey, it's not today, it's tomorrow. But for a guy that's at a legacy church, he's saying, hey, like he's even recognizing the stuff that we're talking about here. This is where we're going. This is where things are pivoting more and more that way. So be encouraged in the road that you're on and realize that we, the church digital. are representing and working with all sorts of organizations like the ones listed on this page to get the idea of digital missionaries out there in a massive, massive way. So let's do this. Let's dig in to what's happening with the Digital Neighborhoods Conference. Specifically, we're going to be kicking doors open 10 a.m. Eastern. That's U.S. Eastern. That's UTC negative four for our global friends. But we're going to be opening this conference in. Tomorrow, 24 hours away. I started to say next week. I wish instead it's going to be tomorrow, 10 a.m. Eastern. And so you can jump on here, Missionary Digital, missionary.digital, www.missionary.digital slash neighborhoods. And so learn more about that. You can see Jason Jamo, one of our first keynote speakers, our first keynote speaker for this season. He's doing an incredible talk. Excited about that. Look at this. The digital gathering begins at 19 hours, 36 minutes. My heart just my heart just bumped on that 19 hours away from this 10 a.m. Eastern doors open. First keynote is 11. Now, you know. When you come to a digital missionary conference, this is not a webinar that you just sit back and play in the background and consume content. Who wants to consume content? That's so boring. We want you to lean in. We want you to dialogue. We want you to ask questions. We want you to sit around a table, meet some other people. We want to create communities centered around supporting digital missionaries. And I can't wait to show you some of the stuff we've got coming up with Hublot. And so we're going to get to it. We're going to walk through the platform here in a second. But check this out. Mark your calendars. Invite your friends. 10 a.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. CET. Excited about kicking this off. Tomorrow, register for free there. And here's your lineup. Platforms as Places, Jason Morris, rethinking the digital map, kicking the talk off great with that. And then we've got 12, and that's from 11.15 to 11.40 Eastern. And then we've got a number of talks coming up, breakouts. Mehret and Melissa Emel from Jesus Film Project talking about creating interactive spiritual journeys with a software called Next Steps. Communicating cross-culturally with honor, authenticity, and humility. Keegan West and Bevan. Empowering believers beyond the pew. Dr. John. being the church on social media, and introducing Seed Bible, a new digital Bible platform. Excited about this. Craig Bradley, Nick Smith, talking about the power of AI for discipleship. Micah Bales, planting churches, microchurch networks with APEST. We're talking Alan Taco, why are they in the room? Reaching one, shut the door. Unlocking Google's secret ad toolbox, Cameron Bailey. So, that's just scratching the surface, what we got on breakouts. Fluent Faith, Jeff Vanderstelt. I've been waiting for Jeff Vanderstelt to share this talk with y'all for a year. for a year scheduling conflicts one after another either him or on me like back and forth and i was like no no i don't want to do this as a podcast i want this as a conference like this is this is this is a heavy hammer the man's going to be swinging and i can't wait for you to hear it audience tracking your mind's going to get blown because mine was First time I heard audience tracking was beautiful. I'm going to see that come on. More, more breakouts. Dr. Tim Yee, Soul Care for Digital Missionaries. Lucas Pulley, Talking on Calling. Underground Network talking about how to be called or what your calling looks like. By the way, digital friendly organization. Can you be called to like a digital platform? I think so. Let's find out. Wes and Leah Brooks talking Venture AI. Liz Anderson doing a deep dive on audience map. Andrew Jones talking augmented reality. Why we need recovery from Stacey Knapp. Alina Delp just talked to her a couple minutes ago. Real faith in virtual spaces. My friend Tim Selleck. This is going to be another one. Good another one too. Reaching the one. Excited. Excited about these that are coming up. Maybe the best talk of the day, as excited as I am for the others. Dr. Pakely Shenko, talking about apprenticing in the world, reproducing leaders for digital mission. I want to see, oh, you know what, the text, they cut it out. Who's Pakely Shenko? This guy is... I mean, I want to say directly responsible, indirectly responsible. Let's say directly responsible. Because even as you're apprenticing and multiplying leaders, at some point you get indirectly. But this man started it. But Kelly Shanko, through Crew and global church movements, responsible for something like 2.4 million churches planted globally. That's 2.4 million with an M. 2.4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0. It's a lot of churches. And what does it look like to reproduce leaders? Well, how do you reproduce leaders for 2.4 million churches? I don't know. You maybe start one at a time. Well, how do I start one at a time? He's going to tell us. And so excited about the idea of reproducing leaders, reproducing churches, starting a movement that grows beyond us. Y'all, this is going to be a challenging conference, live keynotes and breakouts, an incredible amount of connections, table, meeting peers, processing through times together with always, if you know any of the events that I do, always viable, powerful, real-time engagement. Super, super, super, super excited about the road that we have starting tomorrow for our digital neighborhoods conference. So what's it going to look like? What are we going to do? I want to walk you through that process right now. You are going to go to... Let me see if I can fake this. Jeff, can you fake this? I can fake this. You are going to go to... If you've registered for the conference, which I hope you have, you're going to go to Neighborhoods, Neighborhoods, You're not going to see that because I'm faking it. Instead, you're going to see this page pop up. which is going to give you a place for you to enter your email address. You'll get these instructions via email. You probably already have today. As a matter of fact, if not, you will soon. But you're going to type in your email address that you registered for. Chances are it's the same email address that you get blown up with all the church.digital email addresses. I'm going to type my email address in there. And then you're going to get a login code. This is probably going to get sent to your email address. I'm going to just accept cookies and get out of the way. But this is what's going to be sent to your email address. Get that code and paste that four-digit code here in Hublot. And that's it. It's going to let you in super easy, super simple. And you're going to see a page that looks like this. Well, it may ask you some biographical questions. It's going to like tell you to upload a photo of yourself and who you are and what your title is and what you do and what some of your interests are. I would encourage you lean heavily into creating that profile because what you're going to see here with this online conference, it's not a webinar where you sit back and talk. You know me. We lean in, we talk, we dialogue, we two-way conversations to maximize the benefit of this conference. You're not an outsider. You're somebody who's sitting, you're leaning in to the conversation. So I want to encourage you. to build out that profile and get ready to come in and lean into the conversations. But this is where we are here with the reception area. You can see some stuff about the conference. You can see our schedule of what we got for the keynote speakers. And the sponsors and other things. And we're still building out a lot of these sections. And then you're also going to see some things move forward. Some of our keynotes we've got here. You can come forward and see that. You won't have the join as host button. Because I'm cool and you're not. but you'll be able to join that session when it's time. You'll also be able to see the breakout rooms and you can scroll through all the breakout rooms that we have. And so you can see more of that. Just give me a little taste of that. There's a digital summary intro video. You can play that back and listen to that. That's great. And then there's a leaderboard down here. It's got all sorts of, oh my gosh, I'm kicking everybody's butt. I got 123 points. I think that's because it's the amount of time I spent in tables and in breakout rooms. But the more that you interact with people, the more that you can win the game. And so I encourage you to try to win the game. Evidently, Meharet over at Crew is, in Jesus' film, is winning the game. Dr. Tim, love, love, love me, Dr. Tim. dr tim is is winning the game too and so here at the reception when you log in this just gives you an overview of what's going on in the conference but what you really want to lean into is really this menu bar up here okay it's going to give you the schedule of what's going on which doesn't i mean it looks this is really the schedules how you access the keynotes the breakout rooms by the way is the next tab here This is where you see all the rooms. And so when it's time to join the rooms, you can choose the one that you want to. They're all labeled with like the name of the speaker, the topic and the organization they're with. And so you've got all sorts of access to that. you click on the tables and and have a conversation a lot of our tables are sponsor based so you see global church movements right up here at the top next to the church digital and then we've got crew we've got god tools we got jesus film next uh steps We've got Right Now Media. We've got Reliant. We've got Cherith. We're going to have a prayer table here. Meet somebody new. We're going to have different topics that are going to be on the tables. But listen, this is all set up for you to engage in the dialogue with somebody. Let's do ministry globally. Find people, learn from them, ask questions, dialogue. Like, hey, in the world of square pegs that don't fit in round holes, it's time to get the square pegs together and get them to connect. That's what we're trying to do here with the conference and specifically with the tables is get a way to connect in the dialogue. The breakout rooms, this is a great way to talk, to learn something on a specific topic and to ask questions in the dialogue. The keynotes. are a great place for your head to explode because i know these particular speakers on these particular topics make my head explode and if my head's exploding chances are you're going to be to yours as well but the tables the tables are designed for you to interact and to dialogue directly with people So go meet some people. Have some conversations. Lean into it. Hey, check this out. I'm excited about this. Our sponsors booth. We have a virtual booth set up with all sorts of resources for Jesus Film, Next Steps, Cruise Building. There's our global church movements. I talked with someone in Albania today. uh about building this out i'm excited to see this crew god tools you know let's let's lean into the jesus film when i want to see what jesus film next steps and so they got a video up here at the top i'm hearing that i'm not sure if you guys are Yeah, I'm not sure if that's working to you, but hopefully you heard a little bit of that. That was fun. And so you can learn more about them. You can interact with their social media. You can take a next step on how to do that. You can watch videos. You can see some of the services that they're offering. You can, oh my gosh, I want to talk to Melissa. I'd love to. And so you can even click on chat and you can have a direct one-on-one conversation with Melissa or with Meharet, who's going to be on the stage. Or maybe, hey, I'd love to, like, maybe is Melissa available for a quick face-to-face conversation? Click on me and go ahead and do that. And if she's available, great. And if she's not available, she'll say no. Like, once again. reason we do these conferences are for you to meet people and so maybe just maybe it's an opportunity for you to meet some people ask some questions and learn about some of the software learn about some of the the functionality learn about some of the features learn about some of the opportunities you'll you'll have uh how these organizations can help you be a better Digital missionary. I hope you're getting excited about this. And so we've got, oh man, they've got all sorts of videos up here at the top. I'm curious how they built that. Is that YouTube? I guess so. This is, I didn't know you could do this. This is cool. You see all the different Jesus films up here at the top. Maybe I should do that. Cool. God bless the people at Hublot for building this platform out. And so you can see, once again, all the sponsors that we've got here. Alliance Mission, Project Exodus, Regeneration, BAM Portals, Reliant, The Church Digital, of course, RightNow Media, Crew, God Tools, Next Steps, Jesus Film, and then Crew Global Church Movements. There's a lot of energy coming into here, a lot of resourcing that we want to see happen at the global level. And then there's the happening now where, okay, like what's open right now? So there's a breakout room that's open. It's our test room because we have an official conference. But you click on this Happening Now tab, and it's going to show you all the breakout rooms that are currently open or the schedule, what's happening on the keynotes or what's happening, what tables, who's actually sitting down at a table right now that I can join. And so the Happening Now is like, I want to join something. How can I get in? Where am I? I'm coming in late. I don't want to be awkward. How do I find the action? And so Happening Now is going to be that. And so this is just an overview of the menu that's up on the top. Some other things to highlight, the schedule. What things are coming up on your schedule? What do you want to be a part of? By the way, if you're over here, I believe that I have joined as a host, but I'm pretty sure you guys have a button here. Oh, you see where it says right here, add to your calendar, take a note or add to my schedule. You see that? So you wanna put this on your Google Cal, click that and put it on your Google Cal. You wanna take a note that put it into your account. You wanna add to your schedule. You can do that. And that is already now added to my schedule. And now I'm going to come up here to my schedule and click. Oh, look. Look how cool that is. Jason Morris is on my schedule. So I know I'm not going to forget it. Take advantage of the platform. The Church Digital is going to be working with Ubalo for a long time to come. So lean into this platform. Get at home. Because if you love the Church Digital, you will be getting used to Ubalo. It's going to be a good, good thing. There is notifications and things, people that are viewing your profile, notifications that people are wanting to chat or talk with you. You'll see a lot of things in this space and push notifications that we'll send out throughout the conference. And then, of course, there's messages. My friend Cameron Bailey reached out a minute ago. But a lot of the DMs that you'll see are going to be through the messages. And so this platform, you're seeing how this is not a typical webinar, y'all. Like, you will never hear me say they market this as a webinar platform. And I'm like, why are you insulting your platform so much? This has nothing to do with webinars. Webinars is like... whole other thing than what this is. This is an online experience. And so joining the Digital Missionary Conference is a great way for you to get connected into the online experience that we're offering this week. And we're going to be using the same platform for the Christ in Recovery next week and the European Conference in two weeks. But realizing in three weeks the gaming Gamers like Discord for whatever reason. So we're going to go over to Discord for that one. We've got Utope. This event is packed with very, very relevant topics. I'm excited. I'm actually curious, Utope, take on some of this because we're challenging a lot of things here when we're talking the digital neighborhoods conference specifically. It may make some people uncomfortable. If you know me, I'm okay with that. But it's very, very exciting where we're going to be. Okay, listen. So here's what I need from you in the short term. We are... Let's pull up the webpage. As of me recording the video, we are... 19 hours, 18 minutes, and 41, 40, 39, 38 were seconds away, 19 hours away from this conference happening. We've had a spike of people register, which is very exciting. Excited to see the spike come about. And just obviously want to see that. It's so funny. You plan for months. You communicate for months. And everything, everybody signs up for everything the last minute. i love it it's cool no problem here's what i need you to do um i want you to help get the word out and so we've we've built a lot of you've heard me talk about this uh some media kits some shareable graphics that you and some social media posts that you can help us get the word out so clicking on the digital neighborhoods gives you some information once again the cost on all of our conferences uh is is free it gives you a list of keynote speakers but if you want speaker graphics the kelly shanko cheryl boyd jeff vanderstelt our own jmo opening up the the keynotes for that you can you know copy these and put them into so and paste them into social media platforms you can save them and reuse them use them i i often put graphics and stuff like this as to text to invite people to join online events or even like physical things too Or we've actually created complete shareable graphics that you can just copy everything, copy and paste it in. And so there's a number of pre-written social media posts that are available for that. Or other graphics that you can copy and utilize. Download the whole thing all in one fell swoop. Help us get the word out. First off, I do believe within your own social media networks, within your own influence, there are people that can utilize these resources. And so please take the opportunity, download some of these resources, get out there. One, just scatter seeds, see what sticks. Because there's probably some people within your influence that might be interested in being a digital missionary like you, that might be interested in learning what sharing the gospel looks like in digital and virtual space, what the gospel can be, what discipleship is in digital and virtual space. I want to challenge you with this. And I said this previously. Find somebody who can join you and personally invite them to this conference. Find someone who you want to mentor, to disciple, to train, to come alongside you. Cast vision with that person and ask them to sit through this conference with you so that they can better understand your ministry. Find the person that's going to come alongside you. If you're Paul, find your Timothy and join them in the journey. Find someone who can financially back you. Maybe it's a donor. Maybe it's someone in the family. Find someone who has financial resources that maybe doesn't understand what exactly you're doing. Or maybe it's not like a major donor. Maybe it's just a family member that might be interested. Find small, simple ways to start in this. But if you're really trying to have a conversation about, okay, what does it mean to be a digital missionary, and you're having a hard time explaining it to this person, let the conference do the work for you. And third to that, maybe invite somebody that, whether from your existing church or somebody who doesn't understand. Not that is angry or bitter or judgmental, but maybe someone in your life that you've just, you know, like one of my close friends, like to this day, he'd say to me, he says, Jeff, I still don't understand what you're doing. Like the mind doesn't click for him. He's in ministry. He's incredible. He's very helpful as a person, but he just doesn't get it. And so conferences like this, this may be an opportunity to see a light bulb go off in somebody's eyes. And so take this opportunity to invite two or three people. Find that person you want to apprentice to mentor. Find that person that can help you donate and help fund the work that you're trying to do. Maybe find that person that would be helpful if they were a part of it, he or she were a part of it, but they're not quite there yet. Personal invitations for them. Scattered seeds, yes. Personal invites, yes as well. I wanna challenge you both to do that. So, scattered seeds, personal invites. Some of you, I wanna personally invite to this, and I don't have a URL to this, and so, ooh, that's the wrong thing, I didn't mean to do that. Some of you, I wanna ask if you can serve us by That was a very roundabout way. Oh, you know what? You didn't see any of that. That was funny. I thought you could see the window I was working in, but I wasn't screen sharing. That's funny. Totally, totally screwed that up. That's funny. It's not the right URL. I'll just do this this way. I want to ask some of you to join us. to help serve in some of these areas. I'm looking for volunteers that are capable of serving for a couple hour slots throughout the conference. You can still watch the conference and be a part of it and serve. I'm looking for people that are capable of praying. I'm looking for people that are capable of providing some tech support. And I'm looking for people that are willing to be a greeter. in some areas and just a relational voice. And so if you can help me by praying with people at a table, if you can help me pray with people that can greet people at tables, or if you can help me with tech support, three very simple basic things, but would go very far in helping the conference go. That would be a major help for us. Okay? All right. I think that's it, y'all. I'm excited. We are. Let's bring the countdown back up again. Push the magic button. We are 19 hours, 12 minutes, and no seconds. 19 hours, 11 minutes, and 55 seconds. And counting. Down to making this thing happen. I'm excited. I hope you're excited. I hope you can share your excitement with somebody else someday. Great things are ahead. Join me in praying for this event, that people get excited for the gospel in digital and virtual spaces, and we can see God continue to move digitally and globally. using the tools and efforts and the resources and the commitments that we have. My prayer, honestly, is that another wave of digital missionaries is called out of the conference and out of the effort of the conferences that's coming from this. So join me in that prayer. And yeah, let's see what's happening moving forward. All right. Hey, I'm going to wrap up the stream today short and sweet. But thanks for this. Evidently, I'm doing a lot of talking tomorrow. The next Digital Missionary Conference, Digital Neighborhoods, kicking off Tuesday, Wednesday, 9-17, September 17th, 10 a.m. Eastern, doors open. See you there. If you haven't registered, go to www.missionary.digital. Thanks, y'all. Have a good one. See you all on Wednesday.