EP369: Jeff Talks What's Next - Streaming Network & Giving Tuesday

Jeff Reed: Wait, am I? Yeah, you can hear me. It just said I was muted, but I'm not muted. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. I tell you what, if you're watching on the stream, could you like give me a shout out? Let me know that you can hear me right now. Because that was really weird. It said on the screen muted, but I'm not muted. And then the meter is moving. So somebody tell me if you can hear me, and that'll be great. But I'm going to go ahead and dive in. It was really funny. Right before we started streaming live on camera, a TCD bot in Discord just generated an error message saying, You've reached your number of free usage. Unlock unlimited users of this AI-based platform. Unlock unlimited users with a server plan. Said another way, we have overstretched the account. What TCD bought on Discord is out of gas. Hate it when that happens. All good here. Dwayne! Dwayne, bud, good to hear you. Good to see you, man. Thanks for jumping on. Dwayne was hanging out with Dwayne a couple weeks ago. Here in Miami, he got together with some friends and did a men's prayer breakfast on Saturday morning. and got to hang out with him for a little bit. It was funny. It was maybe, I don't know, 30, 35 people at this. I maybe knew a third of them. There was actually a lot of people there I didn't know. Miami is so cyclical, and I'm kind of out of the lifeblood of ministry in Miami. People are coming in, and I don't have a relationship. But this guy, the first guy that comes up to me there, I shook my hand out and shook it. Hey, hey, Nicole, I was talking about you earlier. Glad you could jump on the stream. But this guy, this guy shakes my hand. I'm like, hey, I'm Jeff. You know, who are you? And he looks at me. He's like, you don't remember me, do you? First off, I hate it when that happens because, no, I don't. I don't remember anybody. Like, God bless online because there's always the little name in the lower left-hand corner over here, I guess, where it says who the name is on Google Meet because I will forget your name 25 times. in the course of the conversation. And literally, I just, I fall back. And if it's another name there, like if your spouse logged in before, I will call you the spouse name at least twice in the conversation because it's just, so no, I didn't remember my friend here that I was meeting for the first time, I thought. And he says to me, yeah, I went to XYZ Church when you were there 20 years ago. And you taught me a love for production in church. And I was like, well, that sounds like something I do, you know, but I still, it was so funny. I was like, I don't remember. And he went back and started telling me stories and putting it together, and it was awesome. And I was like, well, cool, tell me about your ministry. And he's like, oh, I'm the production director of XYZ Church over here. So, like, you know, 20 years later, dude is, like, running with some of this stuff. No, I didn't, like, he wasn't with me. I mean, I didn't, he was not with me for a long period of time. But he definitely, I do remember as we got into it, I did remember him and, you know, some of the interactions with some people at that time. And I was excited. You know, it's like God uses us in every season. You know, even if it's just planting a seed. You know, there are people that I've invested mega in time-wise. It was interesting. I just discovered the other day the... This is not a ministry story, but the production director for the Florida Panthers, the hockey team here in Florida, the production director is actually a kid that I mentored in a deep way 25 years ago. I kid now, he's probably 40. But, I mean, that's just how life goes, right? You know, sometimes you mentor in a big way with people and make an impact. And sometimes you just plant a seed that someone else can water. And in this situation, I did. I planted that seed in this guy that somebody else, you know, developed and ran with. And so, anyway, Dwayne, thanks for jumping on here, man. Good to see you. I know Nicole is horrible with names as well. Nicole, man, we've got a... i mean you know what i really want to do nicole is we're going to like i almost want to like reorganize all of the church digital uh and this i'm this is going to sound very sarcastic i really don't mean it that way but i i miss the conversations and the involvement of nicole howard inside the church digital because we try to stack everything monday tuesday wednesday kind of with the stuff and you're more available on the back side of the week and it's killing me that that you're not able to engage as much as as you used to be and so listen it's great to see you on here and those of you more that are watching online the stream and part of it hey thanks for coming on being a part of this i'm i'm excited for today's conversation today's conversation with with me i'm i'm talking to you the people that are watching online and people that are watching on demand um i this is this is the last the church digital podcast this is the last show of 2025. No, I'm coming back in 26. There were some rumors of my demise. I may in fact have started those rumors in fairness. I did start those rumors. I said I was going to hang it up in 26. And I was talked into not hanging it up in 26. But we are going to do some things different, and it is going to look different. And so we're going to get more into that here in a little bit. But thanks for coming on the show here as we're hanging out and talking here about what is next for The Church Digital. So Melanie's coming on as well. Hi, Nicole. And if anybody's out there in the interwebs, feel free to just shout out here. And if there's any questions along the way, This is going to be a very random dialogue with me and whoever is watching online. And if you have questions as you're watching on demand, put it in YouTube chat and do it. By the way, of course, if you're wanting to interact with me directly, the best way to do that is to connect with us on WhatsApp. or discord and uh because that's that's where i live that's that's that's my digital home are are the church digitals uh discord and whatsapp communities and so if you're looking for how to get there it's uh you go to the website the church.digital thechurch.digital fam f-a-m first two letters of family the church.digital fam You can follow the links to the platform of your choice, WhatsApp or Discord, and we can go from there. We do actually have a rather large Facebook community, but it's a community of Facebook. Okay, hey, let's get into the, yeah, but it's at Facebook. It's like nobody wants to live at Facebook yet. Let's get into today's show. So, yeah, so we're going to stop for 2025. There's several major things organizationally that are happening. And that's not to say that stopping is a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. It's allowing us to, well, first off, it's allowing us to recover from conference season. I've talked about this publicly. Doing four conferences in one month was overwhelming for all parties involved. It burned some bridges. I may have lost some friendships. Well, maybe not that drastic, but it was pretty drastic. And so we need to regroup a little bit. The digital missionary conferences is something that I'm committing to do in the future. Like what we did in the spring and what we did with the four summits in the fall were incredible and so excited about that. We're going to continue that moving forward. Well, at least the spring model where it's one conference for a day or two days. The idea of doing four over the span of the month. It was my idea. We hadn't even done the first conference where I was like, this is a horrible idea. It didn't pan out. We wouldn't do it that way again. What we're actually doing, the next Digital Missionary Conference is going to be May 12th and 13th. It's a two-day conference. And so the first day is going to be a mega track that everyone will want to be a part of. And then day two is going to be several tracks simultaneously that are more niche targeted and aimed at particular people doing particular ministry in particular spaces. I am already, honestly, I'm already whiteboarding a lot of that stuff right now. I actually started a couple months ago. We're excited about where we're going. But May 12th and 13th are going to be the days of the next conference. But recovering from the month-long conference season, Andy can tell you, Andy Mage, we're enjoying some downtime. Barbara and her team are finally able to get some rest and things there as well. So we are kind of breathing, but we're also moving forward in some changes and some new relationships and some new opportunities moving forward. And so like in many ways, I feel like I do say this every end of the year. It's going to be a new The Church Digital. Like how The Church Digital jumped from 24 to 25, jumped again from 25 to 26. Like there's going to be some changes. it was funny i was in a leadership meeting just earlier today i think there were uh i don't know five countries represented half a dozen three three four continents half a dozen uh time zones probably more than that uh represented on the call and um uh layton in the meetings like yeah beta is jeff's favorite word dude i'll try anything once Was it, oh my gosh, Craig Rochelle, anything short of sin for the kingdom? Let's do it. Let's do it. Throw crap against the wall. No, what is it? Throw pasta against the wall. See if it sticks. Crap is a bad word. Watch your language. But just try it. Iterate. Learn from it. Try again. Quicker failure is quicker success. Fail fast, fail forward. There's a pastor I work with right now who says that. I love this guy. If you're going to fail, fail. Fail quickly. Go shoot big enough that you're failing quickly. But learn something from that so you're still propelling yourself forward. It's the failures where it's three steps forward, two steps back. That's not good. It's fail so that you're learning something. Shoot for the stars. If you get to the moon, that's still a lot better of a view than here on Earth. And so that's the opportunities that we're looking at here moving forward. So some of the stuff we're working on here in the fall. One is we're bringing on a new agency. We talked about this. Barbara and her leadership. Barbara is transitioning off of the church leadership. Friends, things are going well. Andy is still actively involved within the organization. We're excited about the work that Barbara is doing with the Word Revolution team. But we are moving into a new season, working with an organization called Amplify Social. You can check them out at AmplifySocial.media. If you know people online, especially in Christian space, this is Nils Smith's organization company that he works with. And so he he owns the company and we're excited to partner with Mills and the team and handling a lot of our our communications. And so Andy is heading up now connections and community and working with that. And so now, you know, hey, these graphics really look different. And, you know, some of the stuff they're doing on on Instagram right now with the social media with like the carousels. Oh, my gosh, it's so good. I love organizations that take the random musings and stuff that I throw out there and amplify it, run with it, make it better than what I even intended. And some of the stuff that I've been seeing lately come out of Amplify Social has just been incredible. It was funny, they keep sending stuff to me to proof. and it's like you know i'll proof it but it takes me two to three days to see it to reply and and like and it just slows down the process i told him recently just like if you want me to see it and say this is great like i'll see it when it's posted and say that it's great But, you know, you've been sending me three weeks worth of social media posts and I haven't given back any negative feedback. So at this point, I trust you. You know, once again, fail fast, fail forward. Rather you be aggressive and let's correct something rather than be hesitant like we were. And so anyway, it's very fun moving towards that. We're moving towards, and this is kind of boring. We're moving towards a database. We're moving a new database, moving our CRM over to go high level. We were with another one. But to really empower our outpost leaders. I know database is boring. Nobody cares about database, Jeff. But to empower the outpost leaders, to enable them to do ministry within our ecosystem, we need to give them access to information. And really, we had not figured out how to give people access to the information. And we needed to walk away. And we needed to shift. Nobody wants to move databases. Nobody wants to move to a different CRM. But we had to. Now, unfortunately, this may be the fourth or fifth CRM in 18 months. It's been an interesting journey for us over the years. trying to find the right fit for little money but it feels like now with go high level high level we we found the right solution and so excited uh anesh is is really doing a lot of work with that for us uh purpose as well uh is is doing a lot of work project managing that oh my gosh there's so many people involved with the church digital and it's so many different names like the the people the new people that are coming on board and running the things it's so exciting about what the future can be And the fact that I'm on this call with like, I don't know, 20 people from like half a dozen, nine different time zones, like we're scattered all over the planet. There's no way all those people are going to be in the room at the same time. Yet, thank you. Thank you, digital technology. We can find ways to do it. And it's just an exciting place to be. And so new database, new communication channels, new vision for some of those things. And to be honest, one of the things that we really have been wrestling with is the show. What are we doing with the Church Digital Podcast? This is episode, I thought it was episode 370. YouTube thinks it's episode 369. Either way, it's a really big number of shows. I was telling the volunteers earlier today, I was like, I can remember having a conversation with Ray D'Armas. Ray D'Armas was the co-host of the show for a while. It was me and Ray. And Ray was really the impetus for me starting the Church Digital Podcast. It's like, Jeff, you've got a lot to say. Suck it up and say it. And I just, I had low confidence. I wasn't sure I could pull it off, if I'm honest. And it's like, okay, Ray, let's do it together. You can co-host with me and we'll start to line up some people. And I remember Ray and I having a serious conversation whether or not we could actually get more than 10 shows. Like, did we have enough to say that, for 10 different shows or are we going to run out of gas somewhere before 10 and uh and i'm this is now episode 369 370 300 something and so yeah i think we pulled off 10 shows and a little more But for the future, I mean, to be honest, I'm questioning even myself, what does this look like? Part of what my cycle at this point, creatively, so I'm producing this show on a regular basis. I'm producing these conferences, which is a... a creative suck I mean that in a good way like it just it takes a lot of creative out I'm also you know writing blogs and e-newsletters and and all sorts of of of creative and and to be honest like I'm in this I'm in this kind of of, okay, if I have this really creative idea, do I do it as a show? Do I do it as a conference? Do I do it as a breakout, as a keynote? And it's weighing of like, okay, what do I do here? And that's where I was like, okay, we're going to quit the Church Digital Podcast. I'm shutting it down. January 1st, it's DOA. We're going to put it in the casket, throw some dirt on top of it, and we're going to put some flowers on top. It'll be pretty. And people around me, once again, listen to the people around you. Some people around me suggested, hey, Jeff, that's probably not the right idea. And Andy Mage was right. And so we are not killing the podcast. We're going to continue it on. Now, it's going to look different. It's going to be seasons. It's going to be more topical themed. Maybe more co-hosts that are coming on. More, not one-on-one podcasts, but one-off podcasts, but more of a deep dive on certain topics. And so, like, I'm... I'm wrestling through some ideas right now and what that could look like. And we're going to roll that out in January. But really, one of the things that I'm most excited about on January is this, is that we, the Church Digital, are launching a streaming network. Now, we've been to Church Digital Podcasts, and some of you may remember way back, maybe 22, 23, we were actually doing 21, 22, 21, 22, 23. We were doing the Church Digital Podcast Network. where we had, oh, I don't know, half a dozen people that were creating shows regularly that we were promoting and distributing through the Church Digital and bringing... awareness to these shows and and uh you know i'm thinking chesley had a show andy had a show tom had a show um oh my gosh they're i'm calling them kids they were not kids but it was the couple uh dr uh reverend john pile is it dr john pile dr john john pile Oh, my gosh. It's Dr. John Harris. And now in my head, I want to call him Dr. John Pyle, but I'm not sure that Dr. John Pyle is a doctor or a reverend. Anyway, Pastor Pyle, I love you, sir. I just can't remember what the three letters are in front of your name. And so, like, there were so many good shows and good content that was created, but it was aimed in the environment. At the time, we were more aimed at physical churches than digital ministries. And so a lot of it shaped more towards that mindset. Well, I think as we're now leaning more towards digital missionaries, I think it's time to bring around some more voices. Now, listen, I... Ego not aside when I say this, I'm intentionally going to sound like a jerk. I love the sound of my voice. Like, I can talk all day long into this microphone in front of people like you and be completely fine doing that. But I, as a white American bald with a beard, have a perspective on context that may not necessarily fit other contexts. And so if we want to talk about gaming, well, I really don't do much in gaming, so I'm probably not the best voice. If we want to talk about urban gaming, African American, I definitely am not the best voice. If we want to talk about international global, man, there's a limit to what my capacity is in those environments. I can speak to some, but certainly not to all. And the Church Digital, my approach, has never been about being the influencer of the Church Digital, but instead, we talked about this in the last stream, Decentralizing, distributing, breaking it up. By the way, if you didn't listen to the last stream I did, it was two weeks ago. I'm guessing on YouTube now it's episode 368. Decentralized, what's next? The decentralization of TCB. That's my heart. It's not to make this jeffreed.com, but instead to give the platform, to give the influence to others. This is not collecting it for myself as much as it's distributing it and empowering others in their context. And what we did, you know, Simon in Europe is a great example where, you know, we gave the influence of the church digital when we produced the European Digital Missionary Conference. Yotope, we helped him create a discipleship conference in Nigeria. Right now, we've got one of our other Outpost leaders, Tariq, is actually not in Pakistan. He's in I believe right now and is doing missionary work and is speaking at a conference and doing work in Thailand. And so for us, it's it is very important for for me. not just to be the main influencer where it's all about me, but instead it's very important for me to empower others in what they're doing. Because I believe that's what Christ would have me do, is not collect that power, fame that influence that clout but to distribute that among others which is one of the reasons why i love the decentralization model so much because i believe that we the church digital can do that in a decentralized manner john 3 30 he must become greater i must become less so even in the midst of um this this moment like it's john you know tells us in that in john 3 30 that Actually, that's where John the Baptist is. I need to step back so that Christ can be. And through that, I'm even reading of myself. We need to draw attention to Christ. We need to platform others in their attempt to help others draw closer to Christ rather than myself. And so what happens, you know, even in a streaming show influence type is that, you know, we get to platform guys like DeMarcus Battle. who I'm very excited to say is one of the first people that are going to be part of the TCD streaming network. Like, listen, I... Hey, Jeff, what do you know about black African-American urban context? That much. I know nothing, bro. I live in Miami. Like, Jeff, what do you know about Hispanic culture? I do know a little bit about Hispanic culture because I've spent like 30 years of my life, 35 years of my life living in Miami, which is basically northern Havana. And so there is some stuff I can tell you, but African-American, very little. And so there's an opportunity to look at, okay, how do you use digital to reach people in urban contexts? His context is going to be much more different than I will, which is why I'm so on board with platforming others in this space to speak into it. Because the people that DeMarcus is going to be speaking to, the people that DeMarcus is going to be reaching, is a different audience, is a different mindset than what I'm doing. Layton, Layton's been doing this for a while. And even Layton, like we're taking his Gaming Outpost podcast and we're rebranding that. And it's going to look different in 26. It's not a bad thing. It's a great thing. We're going to be adapting it. And he's going to be one of these streaming shows as well because gaming is speaking. Layton is speaking. Blackhawk is speaking. Sez is speaking. That guy has too many names. Sez. I just did it again. It's Sez. Size is speaking on so many from a gaming context. Like, I don't know anything about gaming. I kind of mock my son when he plays. He plays a lot these days. But he had his birthday, his 15th birthday. And for the past five years, he's had the same birthday party. he invites a whole bunch of people over to the house we set up a bunch of tvs in the living room like up to four different tvs four different game consoles and everybody just plays video games And my gosh, they were at 15, a bunch of high school freshmen, 15-year-olds, 14, 15-year-olds. They were screaming at the TV. I thought one of them was getting murdered. The loudness that all of these kids had at the same moment, I don't understand. And it's not for me too. And it's not my job to say, well, they need to do this because I'm not of that culture. And so we need people that understand these different contexts to help lead into that space. internationally we're having conversations right now with some of our our leadership as well as some of people that we're beginning to invite into the conversation about speaking into that what does the i'll tell you one of the hot spots for me in 26 like this is the um i'm trying to figure out what adjective i want to say to like adequately get my point across I have a, it's not a vision, I have a dream. There's a huge opportunity for us to reach the people in India, for digital missionaries to engage in India. India, and talk about different contexts. India, you know, I think India and China are the two largest countries on the planet. China one, India two. I'm pretty sure that's the order. India is population wise. India, there's, you know, I always say a number and people tell me it's bigger than that. I thought it was 1300 dialects. uh but i'm understanding it's actually probably closer to 1800 dialects don't quote me on that but either way you're looking at an incredible cultural uh imbalance and incredible cultural differences uh among the the community of india not to mention i'm understanding now like um being part of a christian church is is legal in india but uh evangelizing is actually in some areas of India, like that's where the persecution comes. It's not in your belief. It's in sharing that belief. And so how can Christians share their belief in India digitally to maybe avoid some of that persecution? I mean, this is some of what we're beginning to wrestle with. and to try to figure out how we can help missionaries in India be effective digitally to reach people for Christ. By the way, I know nothing. It was funny. There's really only two cultures I actually do know in India. Bengali and Hindi. I know Hindi is the largest. Bengali is pretty up there. The other thing I know about India is they like curry on their food. That's not to insult or to downplay the Indian culture. That's to say, we want we, the Church Digital, I, Jeff Reed, I want to learn more about the Indian culture. I want to find leaders who can help me understand the Indian culture and how to impact people to share Christ in India. And to figure out how to share Christ in India, given some of the upcoming persecution that is beginning to happen in physical space. This is where it's not about jeffrey.com. It's about the church digital. And now finding people and empowering those people. By the way, I would love, I would love to have an Indian version of this show. I have no idea what that looks like. I don't even know if it's legal. I would not even expect it to be. This is the fun part of where we're going with the Church Digital. I told Andy the other day, I was like, I want shows on the Church Digital's YouTube in different languages. Simon comes on and he wants to do a German show. More power to you, Simon. Utope wants to speak in the native tongue or in the dialect of where he is in Nigeria. Cool, bro. Go to town. And that's because, well, first off, I think that we can use the platform of the church digital to reach people that don't look like us. But we may have to do something that is different. we may have to be okay with including others into the conversation. And I would rather, you know, I don't get into algorithms. It makes more sense, I believe, to launch an algorithm, one account that has multiple languages than a different account per, at least I think so at this point. I don't want to get too crazy into the algorithms as things change too quickly. But the streaming network, Demarcus, Leighton, and me, we'll be kicking it off in early 26. Look for the Church Digital Podcast kicking off strong in January. And I'm really excited. I'm working right now on the first kind of show season. I was trying to tease it. I did not get it. I wanted to get some details like lockdown. And there's one particular co-host I was trying to get locked in before. And we're trying to get the scheduling figured out, like when we can actually do it. So we're going to, we'll be having the Church Digital Podcast. We'll kick off in January. And then, thanks, Nicole. Very excited for Demarcus and Leighton to kick on with that as well. Another thing is EDM, Equipping Digital Missionaries, and a lot of our equipping. By us not doing the show, we're actually funneling a lot of the energy into our equipping and getting some stuff built out there. There's a new whole group of project managers that are coming on and working there. And I'm so excited about some of the energy and ownership that we're seeing at the department level. But Jason Morris and Nash are very active right now. in building out the church, uh, equipping digital missionaries in multiple languages. Um, sharing Jesus online is getting translated into multiple languages. Um, we're, uh, we're already building out more courses in, uh, on different topics. We're launched, we're, we're baiting right now a, um, a digital church planting course. We're beta-ing right now a, um, uh, or we're, we're building out right now a, oh my gosh, I'm blanking on the word, fundraising course. And so there's a lot of energy that's going into developing our equipping library as well. By the way, Nobi has been an incredible find. Real excited about how Nobi's come out. But now it's a matter of putting more courses on that. We were even talking with organizations like Taco that have a very quality course, and they give it away for free. And then I was like, hey, why don't we partner together? Like, still give it away for free. But, you know, let's put it on a more stable platform. And then let's, you know, let's use the church digital funnel more people your way for the course. And so, you know, I think more partnerships are going to be happening in the weeks, in the months to come in 26. Excited about the opportunities and to create trainings for that. The last thing that we're going to do in 20... This is going to be a shorter stream, by the way. I'm looking at the time, and it's like I've got some other things going on these days. One of the last things that we're going to do in 25... is our Giving Tuesday live stream. Now, some of you may remember, it's funny, internationally, Giving Tuesday has no context. So let me back up from our international friends. So we have a holiday Thursday, November something, at the end of November. And on Thursday, it's Thanksgiving. And this is where we as Americans, we gather in families and places, stuff our face with turkey and stuffing and ham and mashed potatoes and all sorts of fat food. We gorge ourselves. We overeat, you know, to celebrate our American freedom. And then Friday is known as Black Friday, which is a reference to businesses, retail businesses getting into black because so much money is spent because everybody the day after Thanksgiving goes out and starts spending a bunch of money on Christmas gifts. And so we gorge ourselves on day one, Thursday, Friday, Black Friday, we spend a bunch of money. And then there's small business Saturday, which is where we spend a bunch of money, not at the brand stores, but at like the small businesses and local business, small business Saturday. Once again, buying a bunch of money for gifts and for other people and buying stuff for us. And then Sunday, everybody goes to church. Monday is Cyber Monday. And this is where you've already spent money at the brand stores in your neighborhood. You already spent money at the local businesses. Now you spend a bunch of money online for Cyber Monday to buy whatever is left and finish off your gift shopping. And then Tuesday, this will be Tuesday, December 2nd. We call that Giving Tuesday. So after you've gorged yourself with food Thursday and had at least three major days of shopping, Friday, Saturday, Monday, you know, because God actually did arrest Sunday. I never understood why they never came up with a name for Sunday. But Monday being Cyber Monday and then Tuesday is Giving Tuesday. This is where it's like, hey, whatever money you have left that you haven't like spent on gorging yourself with food or buying a bunch of gifts for everybody else or for yourself. Yeah, let's go ahead and give that to others in need. And so I'm being somewhat facetious of American culture, although let's be honest, that really does fit American culture. We are doing a, there's a Giving Tuesday on Tuesday, December 2nd. We, the Church Digital, we are doing a 12-hour live stream. This is the Church Digital's... Second annual 12 hour live stream. We did a live stream previously last year and it was so much fun. I literally got on this camera in this environment with this mic and talked for about 12 hours straight. We had close to 50 people cycle through on the interview. basically having conversations about how digital ministry, digital discipleship, digital evangelism, how this stuff is working, and how we, the Church Digital, are helping to make it happen. And so it was a lot of fun. It's a huge opportunity, A, for the people of Church Digital to jump on and to celebrate what they're doing, in the space and and you know through through the 12-hour live stream there's two things really that that we want three things we would love to see happen with that number one we want to see exposure to the ministries of what's happening through through the church digital Number two, through that exposure, if any of our ministries, if anyone would like to support those ministries, we would love to see that happen. And then number three, we, the Church Digital, would love to see some funding happening as well. We got, you know, financially, the Church Digital, we're doing very good this year. Hashtag, there's still room to grow. Organizationally, the two conferences have really elevated our game towards what is possible, but we're still under budget moving forward for what our operating level is. And really, it's interesting. We're working on this premise for 26 of, hey, let's 2X our budget for 10X the impact. And how can we make minuscule financial increases, minuscule financial outputs that are actually 10x, that'll greatly scale and multiply what our reach is. And so excited to see some of that roll out in the weeks and months to come. But we will be doing that live stream Tuesday, September. No, I'm sorry. Tuesday, December 12th. Second, 8 a.m. Eastern, U.S. Eastern, which is UTC minus five now. UTC minus five. We'll be doing it for 12 hours. So 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. U.S. Eastern, UTC minus five. If you want to be on that. Hey, Jeff, if you've got some ideas of something you want to talk about on the show. Hey, Jeff, if you've got something digitally you want to promote, let's talk. Let's figure it out. Let's find ways. It's incredible the amount of influence and touch points that the church digital has developed. You know, it's so funny. I'll tell this story several times, I'm sure, on the stream. So, you know, I mean, maybe you don't know, but I actually have basically a full-time job at this point. Outside of the church, digital was not paying my bills. And giving Tuesday the conferences, I have no expectation for our desire, really. I have no desire for the Church Digital to be a full-time job for me. I have no expectation for the Church Digital to be a full-time to pay myself. I just don't. Even as the founder, if I were to get a six-figure check, I'd be finding ways to distribute that among other people and amplify the ministry more than I would bring it home as for me personally. And so in order to pay my bills, I got a mortgage. i had to get a job and so one of those jobs is is actually with a a church partner church supporter uh that's known as uh it's a church in town here in miami called called christ journey and uh and so i i was this is the one this is one of the funniest conversations their executive pastor uh his name's ryan and um maybe maybe a year ago at this point a year and a half ago I was talking to them about financially supporting the church digital. And Ryan was somewhat interested. And he's like, hey, you know, send me some paperwork. Let me look at it. And so funny, this was a year ago. I'm actually not remembering more context than five years ago. And so I sent him the paperwork and he is reading it over. And in the next meeting, I get on the call with him and he's like, hey, I looked over the paperwork. I got a question though. He says, it sees here is that you're trying to raise an annual budget of $75,000 a year. Like that's what your annual budget is. And I was like, yeah. And he says, Jeff, I don't understand. How can you be in as many continents and countries as you are? How can you be developing and resourcing all of these people? How can you be involved in all of these conversations, doing all of the work that I see you doing only on $75,000 a year? And this was a year ago. And I laughed. I literally, I laughed when I said it. I was like, okay, well, hold on. I said, I think you're missing your savings. I was like, my, that 75,000 number, that's the number I'm hoping for. That's the number I'm driving for. That's actually, we right now, the church, we're about $75,000 a year right now. But to be honest with you, our operating budget at the time It was about maybe 2015. We were less than $2,000. It was funny when he said it. We were on a payroll freeze. We weren't paying any of the contractors. We weren't paying any of our leadership. It was the season after Lizana. We were broke. Our last dollar went to Lizana. and it was like we just we don't we don't have any money we're not spending any money and so um and so this guy's like how are you all these places and it's like man you know the secret is i guess you get a bunch of people that are excited about something cast vision and create a model of how you can make it better and then invite them to be a process give them uh give them ownership of it you know i'll tell you simon yetope tariq Steve, Layton, these guys drive me. Which is why I love this new model of being decentralized. Because now, they're in control. Steve Reed is the new boss of the church. Come on. Just like Tariq is. Just like Hitope. Layton finally has the keys. He keys me right. But that's the goal, right? It's by decentralizing our role of the church digital to empower their ministry to go out and to go on. And so how can we do that more effectively? That's the heart of this. And this is the hang up, you know, that takes funding. So the church digital, you know, our goal is for 2X the budget. We're about $75,000. Our goal is to get to $150,000 annually. And with that, we don't want to see a 2X increase. We want to see a 10X. We want to see this stuff scale because literally these things that we've built have been designed to scale. We need to get to the place where they can scale. And we just need a little bit more to pour that gasoline on. And as we're looking into Giving Tuesday, the stream, and even into the 26th calendar year, our hope as a ministry is to 10x what we're doing with just a 2x increase. And to be honest with you, some of you, and I hate talking about money as a language, But some of you have benefited in a big way from the church digital. And as much as possible, I'm actually trying to think. I don't think we've done anything at this point that we've charged for. Very little have we. And so we're trying to do everything possible to keep it free on the trainings, on the shows, on the conferences, all of this. I mean, so many people have said, Jeff, create a paid community. Jeff, why are you giving community away for free? Make people write a check for that. Community is the most beautiful part of what the Church Digital does. It's like, we don't want to pay for that. I don't want to put a paywall on that. If the Church Digital has benefited you in any way, I want you to take some time and pray about supporting the Church Digital in 2026. Own the ministry of what's happening here. Like, make a monthly... Listen, I don't want to... Listen, you want to write me a six-figure check? That's great. Thank you. You want to write me a four-figure check? Thank you. That's great. Don't write... Who writes checks? You write me a six-figure check, but a four-figure check, you can make it online. If you want to give me five bucks a month, thank you. Set that up and do that because that five bucks is going to make a difference. That five bucks will help somebody get connected. And what we're really starting to do is drill down and get into the metrics of, hey, you know what? You want to pay for somebody to do that equipping digital mission, of course. This is how much it's going to cost. Hey, you want to help somebody create some content or pay for one of these shows? This is how much it's going to cost. Yeah, you know, Melanie's even saying who writes checks. I know, I know, I know. I'll be honest. Actually, we have one donor right here that still writes checks for the church station. So somebody still writes checks, but not that many people. Actually, I need to write a check to my mom. And I'm like, I don't have any checks. And I'm like, well, I can buy her the money, but she's not comfortable with that. It's a whole thing. Look, I want to invite some of you. Those of you that benefit from the Church Digital, I want to invite you to support it. Be praying about it in the month to come. You're going to be hearing more about it in the month to come, but as we head into 26, pray about owning the ministry of what's happening here and making a difference in the life of how the Church Digital is operating moving forward. I'm telling you, Jeff's salary is not Jeff's payment. Jeff is... Yeah, I'll go and say it. Publicly, I'm saying this. I will not get a salary increase through Q2 26. I'm not asking for myself. I am asking because I see the potential of what this ministry can do. But we need a little more. And with a 2x increase in our operating budget, I really do believe we'd get a 10x impact. And I cannot wait to see what God does in digital and virtual spaces. And with that, we're going to wrap. I really don't think I'm going to be around much in the month of November. I may surprise y'all and get bored and jump on to do a stream. I may say hey in the communities. I'm sure I'll be around. in the communities, create some videos over there. But we're going to be pushing forward with the Giving Tuesday live stream on Tuesday, November 2nd. Tuesday, December 2nd, 8 a.m. Eastern. And you're going to be hearing a lot from TCD in the weeks to come about that. So for episode 369 and 2025, wrapping up here, this is Jeff with The Church Digital. Thanks for watching any and all of these podcasts. And looking forward to the new TCD in 26. All right, y'all. Have a good one.