EP362: Final Preview - Jeff Talks CTRL+ALT+Recover Summit

Jeff Reed: That is real live exhaustion. Hey everybody, Jeff with The Church Digital checking my volume. I think I'm a nice strong level. I have been running. I've been running today. Today has been the type of day I looked at my phone at 9 o'clock. Actually, I put this on Facebook. Looked at my phone at 9 a.m. this morning. It was fully charged when I left my house. And at 9 a.m., it was like at 67, 68%. I have been... Let's see. Oh, you know what? I've actually been charging it for a couple minutes. But right now, it's at 48, even before lunch. Like, well, you know, I guess it's after lunch at this point. But it has been a solid... Solid day for multiple reasons. First off, been doing some consulting, working with a church. I like this church. It's a small, it's a Presbyterian church, but they're not thinking like Presbyterians. No offense to Presbyterians, but it's been a lot of fun kind of working with a different church environment. and of course we got the uh control of recover conference happening tomorrow so i'll be getting into that here in a little bit but right now um wanted to uh you know first off literally like ran into the car uh the road that i was on was under construction and tried to detour the tesla got me around and you know normally i try to get like 20 30 minutes to prep and i had like less than 10. uh so much so forgot to make a cup of coffee and uh yeah it's uh it's been that been that kind of day muscle milk for lunch but i am excited i am excited to get with you and talk about coverage coming up control all recover we had digital neighborhoods was last week it was six days ago it feels like so long ago because we've been as an organization focused on on their on the recovery conference but digital neighborhoods we had jason morris jmo was on uh thursday last week talking about it and uh we also had um oh my gosh jay live is in the house hey jay He's got his streamer voice on. Ha ha ha. Jate! Man, it's good to see you, my friend. I'm excited. Jate is actually one of the keynote speakers for our gaming conference on October 8th. And so I cannot wait, Jate. It's been way too long, my friend, since I have seen and had a conversation with you. And so I'm going to show up in Discord on October 8th. Kick back and watch you, my friend, with the keynote. I'm looking forward with European Conference on October 1st and the Gaming Conference October 8th. I have, like... Very little to do with those conferences. Like, I will be a pretty face and maybe tech support in the background, but Simon Dirks in Europe and Andy and Leighton, man, they've been running with those respective conferences. And so, man, I'm so looking forward to that. Jay and some others are speaking at the gaming conference and the European. They've got, I don't know, 15 conferences. Actually, it was funny. Last night, I actually had a conversation. First time I've had a phone call conversation with an artificial intelligence agent. I filled out a form on a website. We were trying to figure out how to do live translation for the conference. And so there's a company that Hublot recommends, or at least they've worked with. And so I reached out to the company, filled out the form on the website. So I would hopefully get a call back. I literally, when I press send, less than 30 seconds later, I get a call. And it's like 8 o'clock at night. And I'm like, that's weird. And it was a call from Temple, Texas. I didn't know anybody from Temple, Texas. I normally screen calls. But for some reason, I just decided to pick up that call. And I literally had a 20 minute conversation with artificial intelligence from this company. It was gathering information about me, trying to figure out what my needs were, how urgent it was. Like, it was funny. I texted Jesse Carbo right after it happened. I was like, dude, like artificial intelligence, phone call, artificial intelligence agents to collect and disseminate and traffic cop me to the right people. Incredible. I would do that. Excuse me. I would do that anytime. That was lunch coming back up in case you were curious. I do apologize. So we're all about artificial intelligence agents. Just a little tip here with the church digital. But I probably can't afford it. But hey, it was kind of cool to talk to AI. You know, it really only made one mistake out of a 15, 20 minute phone call. My wife, it's funny, she was sitting next to me, and she was like, was the person you were talking to, do they have a learning disability? And I laughed. I was like, no, why would you say that? She's like, because you didn't talk like you normally would talk. You talked very clear, and you talked in very precise language. Normally, I was not conversational talking with AI. I was very... a precise making sure i gave it the correct props and she says yeah you were you were not natural at all in the conversation but either way i think ai got what it needed to get out of it but it was cool like it was it was interacting with me like i said something and it's like it was asking follow-up questions like that's a great idea how long were the speakers going to talk and what languages like it was it was literal conversation it was not filling out a form it was a literal conversation which i thought was was awesome But that has nothing, nothing to do with the Control All Recover Conference. Digital Neighborhoods, which doesn't have anything to do with it either, but I just wanted to say it. Digital Neighborhoods, we had a great conference September 17th, last week, last week Wednesday. uh and so had 400 400 plus people show up day of the event we had close to 700 register was excited about that but 400 people showed up for the conference throughout the entire uh throughout the entire day four or five keynotes jmo and i we we broke it down on Thursday, so check out the last episode, whichever number it was, 381, I guess, or 361 for more information. On that, we also showed one of the keynotes. I just blanked on which one we showed. Which one did we show? Jeff Vanderstelt. Jeff Vanderstelt talking about... um gospel uh fluency and so really really fascinating conversation if you registered for the conference you're going to get access to the videos on demand when we when we publish them probably in the next week or so uh so you know uh if you registered good for you if you didn't register what the crap Like, come on, bro. Why do you hate me so much? Like, I take it personal at this point. We've talked about the conferences so much. You're watching me on the stream. And so if you're not actually signed up for the conference, just sign up for one of the conferences. Here's the deal. Go to missionary.digital www. dot missionary dot digital. I'm going to go ahead and go there right now. I'm going to push the magic button and I'm going to guilt trip you. You need to sign up for the conferences at www.missionary.digital. Yeah. So sign up for that. We've got four conferences coming up. We've got, why is that cut off? Let me see if I can get that to look better. Nope. Not that let's do that. I have no idea. Grab. There you go. For some reason, it was cut off on the screen. So we've got four conferences coming up. Obviously, we did the September 17th. It is done. But if you want access to it on demand, just register for one of the other three. September 24th, October 1st, the European Conference, European Digital Missionary Summit, and October 8th, the Gaming Summit. Tomorrow? We're going to be talking a lot about recovery, about what Christ-centered recovery looks like in digital. But on top of that, let's just acknowledge we are doing ministry in an addictive platform with people that are addicted to said platform, likely addicted to said platform, or are more likely to show addictive tendencies on those platforms because people are more transparent digitally. And we're inviting volunteers to minister alongside us in these addictive platforms. The reality is that as digital ministers, as digital pastors, as digital missionaries, we are so likely to get burned out. I can even just burn, damaged, fried, done. Listen, if you know my story, you know me. 2023 was a horrible year. where I was physically broken, emotionally fried, spiritually bankrupt. And really, it was coming to terms with that, in that brokenness, and God finding me in the midst of that and restoring me and bringing me back. really is the reason that I'm here today and the reason that I'm so passionate about helping others that are in said position. So, like, listen, I'm going to be transparent with you here in this moment. If you're broken, if you're struggling, if you're frustrated, if you're damaged, if you're fried, if you're burned out, if you are something other than, like, glorifying God, like, we want to help you, A, figure out how to help your restoration begin. One. Two, we want to help you figure out how to get to the point where you can help others that are in this. And so if we're really going to help others, we've got to shine the light on ourselves. If we're going to shine the light in the darkness of the digital, in the darkness of the metaverse, then we've got to be comfortable shining that light on ourselves. And if we've got lingering issues, if we've got doubt, if we've got lingering sin that's in place, we've got to work that out. We've got to shine light on that because it's amazing when we shine light on ourselves, God does something with that transparency. And digitally, that is so attractive. Digitally, to be open and transparent, vulnerable in digital spaces, it's amazing. The Beatitudes, blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the persecuted. Like, if you implement the Beatitudes in your digital ministry, The amount of people you can reach. The amount of people that are going to engage and connect with you. Because you are broken to the point that God can use you in digital space. And I'm getting too much into the conference. I don't want to give it away. So here's what I'm going to say. You want digital neighborhoods. You want to sign up for Control Alt Recover. Sign up. Save your spot. Scroll down here. Actually, I think it's right up here at the top. somewhere in here there's a button that says register now we're 19 hours away can you believe it 19 hours away click that button and register for the conference we've got a bunch of keynote speakers we got a bunch of things coming up we got a ton of sponsors i am so excited about the sponsors that have showed up for this conference that have showed up for all the conferences and that are strongly endorsing the road that we as digital missionaries are on. Like really, as I look at all of these sponsors, I'm going to be honest, I see organizations that are endorsing the idea of digital evangelism, of digital discipleship, of vulnerability in digital spaces, of doing something different to reach someone different. And you know what? It freaking makes me excited because there's opportunities today digitally that we've never had before. And here's a list of organizations and sponsors, and you're going to meet more of them at the conference. Here's a list of organizations and sponsors that are like, we want to be a part of what you're doing. We want to see the vision of reaching people in digital space happen in a big way. And so sign up for these conferences. But this, this is what I want to do. I want to give you a sneak peek. of what's coming up for the conference. And so you should have gotten, I think, an email with, if you registered, an email went today, out today. There was some confusion on the link, if I'm honest, where we sent out a wrong link to get connected into the conference. But right now, if you go to recovery, recovery, R-E-C-O-V-E-R-Y.missionary.digital, recovery.missionary.digital, it'll redirect and it's gonna get you into the conference listing page. And so this is the page where we've got all the information, A, for the website, for the conference, but B, tomorrow morning, like when the conference starts, 11 a.m. Eastern, U.S. Eastern, UTC minus four, when that starts off at 11 a.m., you're gonna go to control, you're gonna go to recovery.missionary.digital. Slide over something in the frame. And when you're in here, you can start to dig in. You can see all the keynote speakers. Conrad Cooper is speaking. Shepi Mufuking. Shepi, I'm sorry. I butchered that. Shepi Mufuking. I'll have to get better at that for tomorrow. Nate Graybill talking. Shepi, we'll get into here in a little bit. Nate's doing a keynote. Let's see who else is. Oh, there's the button there. Laura Howe is doing a talk and Andy Mage is doing one as well. Here's all the speakers. Look at this. Andy Mage, the Church Digital's own Andy Mage is wrapping up talking about what recovery looks like for digital ministry and why, to be honest, vulnerability is so important to any digital minister, to any digital pastor, and how attractive it is digitally to be vulnerable, to be transparent, to be honest. Conrad Cooper is the founder and executive director of Project Exodus, an organization that we are partnering, we at The Church Digital are partnering with to do recovery. He's in South Africa and so excited to be working closer with Project Exodus. And Shepi is actually one of the people that has gone through Project Exodus. And Shepi's going to tell her story about how she went through recovery. She was damaged. She was fried. But the recovery process actually amplified. it strengthened her ministry opportunities by recognizing the vulnerability of the situation that she's in. Great story, phenomenal story. Can't wait for you to hear it. So Shepi and Stacey Knapp, TCD's chaplain and... Director of Care. They do a conversation. My good friend Nate Graybill is coming on as well. Nate is the National Director of Regeneration, Watermark Church Dallas. Regeneration is an incredible recovery process that's working globally. And so Nate's coming on and doing a keynote. I think Nate's talk is going to be centered around, what is Nate's talk on? On the church and how the church needs to recognize what the church needs to know, what the church needs to learn. The Big C Church needs to learn about recovery. And then we've got Laura Howe. Oh, my gosh. Mental Health Summit, Church Mental Health Summit. She's going nuts this week. They've got a huge conference coming up Friday. We're big fans of the Church Mental Health Summit. And if you are familiar with them, or if you're not, go Google them. They've got a massive conference happening Friday. But we were so good, even in the midst of that, to get Laura Howe. to speak. Laura Howe is the founder and executive director of Hope Meets Strong, which is an organization that helps churches and individuals understand recovery. She's basically a networker and connector of church recovery. She's actually in Canada, way up north in Canada. But she's talking about, hey, if we're going to shine the light externally, we really got to be prepared to shine that light internally. And so what does it look like to shine that light on ourselves? Y'all, I mean, I was really excited. I crafted the conference for missionaries, digital missionaries, digital neighborhoods. I mean, I that was I was really excited about that. I knew the message that that I wanted to portray. God did something incredibly different with that conference. And I was so blessed by what happened. But in large part, it was stepping back and letting God do his thing. And in similar ways, I'll just be honest with this recovery, because I'm I am not a recovery expert. If anything, I'm a novice. You know, if the hair club for men, I'm not just the president. I'm also a client like I am. If you don't know what hair club for men is, never mind. But the fact is that I came into this thing really. hands off asking a lot of questions and saying even in the creative process okay god what do you want to do here what message do you want to tell what is the takeaway how can a recovery a digital missionary recovery conference how can that help people today And working with Stacey, working with Andy, working with Laura Howe, working with Nate, working with Project Exodus, working with so many of these people, Conrad Cooper and the Project Exodus team. It has been so exciting to see how the ideas have developed and formalized. I was really excited about the conference last week. selfish level because like that was my brain child and and i really wanted those ideas to to come out i may be more excited about the conference this week than that one because i believe god's gonna do something really phenomenal in in the time that's about to come up and so stay tuned all right stay tuned don't I don't know what, but come to the conference. If you haven't signed up, go to www.missionarydigital to get signed up for that. Let's swing by here and see what else we have on the conference page. I have lost my mouse. Is anybody, my mouse is down on an iPad. How the garbage did my mouse get on the iPad? And now it's gone. Everything's gone. I am so confused right now. Seriously, my mouse got to an iPad. Oh, there it is. And I don't know how. All right. Technical issues that should have been resolved in advance, but we did not. That is on me, okay? All right, let's look at what else we got here. Oh my gosh, all the sponsors. Y'all, straight up, I'm asking a favor. Click in these virtual booths. Check out the sponsors that are here. Download their stuff. Have conversations. All of these people, one, they buy into digital mission work. Two, they buy in and they're supporting us to help us help you. three the stuff that they are promoting the tools that they're getting out there are so helpful they're so beneficial they're so meaningful to you their stories are so encouraging for you there is incredible opportunities for you all to dig in here. And so check out Global Church Movements, TCD, of course, Jesus Film, Promoting Next Steps, an incredible tool there. God Tools, an incredible tool. True Center is coming up for this one. I'm excited to get you all connected to True Center. Right now, media. Come to the conference and we're gonna give you a RightNow Media account for free. I'm gonna go ahead and tell you right now, thechurch.digital slash RightNow Media, thechurch.digital slash RightNow Media. Go and sign up for your free RightNow Media account. By the way, True Center, take your free True Center account, thechurch.digital slash True Center, thechurch.digital slash True Center. People are giving stuff away. Can you see what I'm doing here? This is an incredible opportunity for you to get resources. to help you do ministry better and to have your team do ministry better. Or if you don't have a team, let's recruit a team so you can do ministry better. Like, you see how this is working? Like, dig into this conference. Invest in the people with what's here. Right on Media, Reliant Fundraising, Cherith BAM Portals, excited about them. Regeneration, we talked about earlier. Project Exodus, we talked about earlier. Mission Alliance is one of the primary sponsors for the European Conference coming up. Lots of opportunities, y'all. Lots and lots of lots of opportunities. All right, I'm gonna see if I can do this. Let's see if I can do this on camera. You ready? I'm gonna try to do, oh, yeah, I gotta push the button back. I'm trying to do the exact same. You ever do that where you're like, how, what was I doing? to come up with that on the thumbnail. Like, I don't understand what I was doing. That's me talking naturally, okay? Like, I'm doing this, like, it's a two-minute long video, and it decided to freeze me on itself. When I'm doing this, what was I saying that this is my visual response that I would do this? By the way, if you're listening on audio podcast, you are so lost right now. I just want to draw attention to that. You should totally be watching this over on YouTube. So come over to YouTube, youtube.com slash the church digital. By the way, subscribe when you're there. Follow like, you know, like do that. And I'm much more enjoyable on YouTube than I am audio podcast. Check this out. We didn't dig into this much with the last conference, but we're going to for this one. Leaderboard. I like to goof off. I'm a competition guy. With the conference, the more that you engage with people, the more that you chat, the more meetings that you have, the longer you spend in keynotes, the more points you get, and there's going to be a winner at the day. Right now, I'm in the lead because... I built a conference, I guess. And I built it under my login, which is why I'm in the lead. But I totally want to give it over to somebody else. I'm trying to think. I don't actually remember who won the last conference. That's a great question. Don't know. Hey, listen, if you go to... Oh, let me show you this, this one last thing. All right, this is very important, all right? Tomorrow, when you sign up, when you show up or tomorrow, at any point, if you have tech issues or if you have questions on schedule or you're just lost in general and don't know what to do, down here at the bottom, there's this little red-orange chat bubble thing. You can start to see it right there. Go ahead and click on that. It'll open up. And there's an opportunity to chat with some of our volunteers in tech support. And so some TCD volunteers will be manning the chat bot and happy to answer questions as they come up. And so feel free to dig in, ask questions. Chances are me and some of the others, you know, our pockets may be vibrating with the mobile app or we'll be able to engage with it. I just found out it's cool. Like this actually automatically translate multiple languages. And so next week with the European conference, we get to have, you know, I'll be able to have conversations with Spanish and Portuguese and all these different languages via text chat AI. really cool man i'm excited about some of the audio translation stuff that's come out even um i haven't done this yet in miami but having the um a live translation in the airpods these are the twos not the threes but i i think with the firmware update it still works so lots of cool opportunities coming up with the conference tomorrow remember like this is what's coming up if you've got questions feel free to click the chat thing down at the bottom but there's a menu bar up at the top That's going to give you all the directions that you need. Receptions, kind of an overview page of everything that's happening and a video from me to tell you kind of what's up. There's the schedule you can click on. And the schedule gives you a full-on listing of each keynote and the sessions and the times. There's no breakout, so primarily everything's either going to be scheduled. or in tables. There's a sponsorship, sponsors, where there's a section with all the sponsors. Once again, you can access everything that they got working on here with the sponsors. You can click on the tables, and there's sponsor tables. There's prayer tables, prayer tables here. There's general conversation tables, open tables. Like, you know me, the Church Digital. The way to maximize the conference is to talk to each other, engage, learn something. And so we really want to maximize the conferences that are happening here by having conversations with people. And so you can just simply click on, this may break something, we'll see. But you can simply click on, and I'm just going to join real quick. And so right now I'm sitting at this table, and it's just me. But if somebody else was in here, let me see if I can change the view. No, I can't change the view. If somebody else was sitting at this table, then I would be able to see them. It would pop up like at a Google Meet type view, and I could have a conversation with them. So yeah, engage with people, dialogue, learn things. Here's the chance. Be open, transparent. Learn a little bit. Talk with somebody in maybe a unique way. Happening now, everything that's happening in real time. Hey, I'm lost. Where am I supposed to be? Happening now is a great place to do that. And then the engage is that competition where you get points for chatting. And so we want to... want to see people chat uh there's some things across the top here um if you want to with each of that on the schedule you can a check this out on the schedule tab with the keynotes you can add it to your calendar as in google cal let me zoom in on this so to make it bigger You can actually like add it to your calendar, like Google Cal. And so click on it and put it on the calendar to remind you. You can take a note or you can add it to my schedule. The app has a built-in scheduler right here. And so if I were to say, hey, I got to remember to add this to my schedule, click on that. Down here, it's saying agenda added to the schedule calendar. And now if I click on it, oh my gosh, here it is in 11 to 12. And I've got the place to go to it. Now it says join as host. It's because you're not cool like me because I'm a host and you're not. It'll just say like join as a normal person. I don't know, whatever it would say. You got notifications. Hey, some people have been checking me out. Alexander, Jesse. Here's an opportunity for me to check them out back. Jesse Velez, excited. My friend here in Miami, excited about that. He's even got some meeting slots where he's open to meet with people and wants to do that. And so there's lots of opportunities to... engage people as as we've said these conferences are all about meeting other people and dialoguing with them and so mr pete coming in saying greetings uh you know mr pete in vr uh big space and so once again i mean this is a great opportunity uh even to to connect with people like like mr pete Hey, Mr. Pete, tell me about what you're doing in VR and listen to some of his stories. And I'll tell you, I mean, this guy's like the godfather of ministry and virtual reality. There are so many people that I've talked to in VR. And, you know, I don't think I heard of Mr. Pete until the spring conference when he bootlegged. the Spring Digital Missionary Conference. And as I've talked with others in the space, Mr. Pete is so prevalent. Sir, you are doing a phenomenal work in virtual space. I know it's hard work. VR is hard work. We're going to talk about that at the conference tomorrow. But what you are doing, sir, is so important. And so be encouraged in that. And so, hey, look, we've got my schedule. We've got notifications here and we got messages, DMs. All this is set up and we are good to go. Hey, Mr. Pete, are you going to broadcast our conference tomorrow on big screen? I'm actually fine with that. We need to get you a login if you do want to. I'm trying to figure out how to do that. Can you connect with Andy Major, myself, offline? If you're interested, 11 to 5 tomorrow. It would be, okay, good. It would be a good one tomorrow. Mr. Pete is saying yes. He is going to broadcast tomorrow. So we're excited about that. Mr. Pete, make sure Andy gives you the hookup. You should be good to go with that. So we'll be in big screen. I think we're also going to be in Twitch tomorrow. We were in Twitch last time, which is fine. And I mean, I'm fine. I'm excited about it. So check out those platforms if you want to engage in that. Tomorrow's talk is going to be a lot of keynotes, not a lot of breakouts, keynotes and tables. And so we'll have to help facilitate some of that in VR and some of the other spaces too. Okay. I'm trying to think. I don't know if there's anything else I wanted to talk about today. Like, really, I'm excited about the conference. I hope you are, too. We've got five keynotes that are coming up tomorrow. And so looking forward to seeing those fives happen in real time. And even beyond that, we're going to celebrate. I'm doing a stream on Thursday. Doing a stream on Thursday with Stacey Knapp to celebrate the conference. And we'll highlight one of the keynote talks on that as well. And so if you've not signed up for the conference, one more time, just to reinforce for the person that's like, wait, I didn't hear you. I'm not sure. Go to missionary.digital. Push the button. I got so many buttons. Forgot which button. Missionary.digital. come down here to recover missionary.digital recovery will get you there as well and you can just click that register now button be sure to do that before the next 19 hours and 23 minutes and 59 seconds Doors open 10 a.m. Tables will be open. Keynotes start at 11. Doors open at 10 a.m. Tables will be open for conversation, for meetups, and sponsors will be in place. And then keynotes will start at 11. Are we clear? Are we good? Is there anything else? Be praying about the conference tomorrow. I feel a weight on this one that I haven't felt with the others. I feel a tension. I feel a burden. I just, I feel... Yeah, I guess I can say this. I feel more out of control in this one than I have the others that I've produced. Honestly, I've done work outside of the Church Digital. I feel less in control for this conference than any other conference I've worked with in my career. um and and that's that's okay it's intentionally that's okay god what are you gonna do like i i can as as a you know long time producer i can make stuff happen um but um my my prayer for me and maybe the prayer for for you if i can ask so nicely Pray that God is going to do something incredible through the Control Alt Recover conference tomorrow. Pray that God is going to do something incredible through the Control Alt Recover conference tomorrow. All right. I think we're going to wrap. Short one today. Excited about this. We've got Control Alt Recover on the 24th. We've got Europe coming up October 1st. And we've got gaming on October 8th. More information at www.missionary.digital. It's funny. I'm actually Monday, I think. I'm meeting with my church digital leadership. We haven't met in, it feels like, a year. It's probably only been a couple weeks. But conference, conference, conference, conference, conference is just kind of enveloped to everything, which I don't like, to be honest. We've got to fix that moving forward. I've been so focused on conference, and the organization has been so focused on conference. We haven't been focused on other things, and I don't want to be in that position again. Don't want to be in that position anymore. We got to get where we're a missionary sending agency, equipping and mobilizing missionaries at those conferences. You can't let the tail wag the dog. The dog's got to wag the tail. All right. That's the lesson. That's the leadership lesson for today. tail does not wag the dog the dog wags the tail remember that although when ray my dog wags his tail like the entire butt swings and so i'm not sure that is actually scientifically accurate with my dog but uh hey What are you going to do? So we're going to land the plane. Listen, I've enjoyed hanging out with you today. Missionary.digital slash recovery is the conference coming up tomorrow. 10 a.m. doors open. 10 a.m. Eastern. 10 a.m. U.S. Eastern. UTC minus four. Doors open 11 a.m. U.S. Eastern. UTC minus four is when the keynotes kick off. Probably go for five hours or so. And then we'll call it a day. See you at the conference Wednesday. See you at the stream highlighting what's happening on Thursday. And then we'll gear up and do it again for Europe. So for everybody in Europe, and everybody who needs recovery, basically everybody on the freaking planet, hey, this is Jeff Reed with The Church Digital. Thanks for jumping on the stream today. We'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good one.