PODCAST 002: Six Things You Wish Pastors Knew About Church Online

INTRODUCTION

There's no way around it... Church Online is a new concept. With the newness comes uneasiness and doubt, especially from people carrying organizational responsibility. How is this going to hurt attendance? Giving? Things right now are good with our church. Are we sure we want to try a massive paradigm shift like Church Online can be?

To that end, Rey and I got together and compiled a simple list. Six Things We Wish Pastors Knew About Church Online. Maybe you want to take notes and have this conversation with them. Maybe you want to do the subtle copy/paste, and send this podcast to your pastor. Either way, this podcast is meant to help you start the conversation with your church on the effectiveness of a healthy Church Online.

ON THE SHOW

SHOW NOTES

Six Things We Wish Pastors Knew About Church Online

1. The people online are still part of your church.
2. What works in physical locations doesn't always work online.
3. Just because this scales well doesn't mean we should be cheap.
4. Church Online doesn't replace meeting in physical locations.
5. Effective Church Online is more than just content.
6. Church Online is a reflection of our church strategy.

References from the Podcast:

• Who Really Attends Church Online?
• Wired.com - This Pastor is Putting His Faith in a Virtual Reality Church
• USA Today, The Lonely Teen, and the Reaiming of Church Online
• Jay Kranda - Online to Offline
• Church Online does not replace Physical Locations
• The Difference between Digital Communications & Digital Missions
• Ed Stetzer quote: "When we build Worship Centers to look like theaters, don't be surprised when participants behave like show-goers."
• Eric Geiger, book: Simple Church

Jeff Reed: 00:00 Hey everybody, welcome to the church digital podcast. My name is Jeff Reed. Thanks for joining us today. It's episode two. We've made it through episode one. Now we're on number two. Yes, we have made it. Life is good. Hey, so in the future we will have guests and, and different people from across church, online across the country. Kind of jumping on the podcast and sharing and dialoguing through this. But really what this episode, once again we wanted to bring in, Rey is our cohost Rey DeArmas Is in here, uh, from Christ fellowship Miami. Uh, he's the online pastor there and we really just wanted to dialogue a little bit more about us, let you get to know who we are and what we're about here. Uh, doing this church, digital podcasts. And so, hey Rey, man, you just want to tell him a little bit about yourself.

Rey DeArmas: 00:46 It's so great to be back with you guys. I'm very excited. Uh, failures, what God is doing both with, with what we're doing here at church, online over at Christ fellowship, God has really opened doors and expanded in a lot of ways. Not just the type of people that were able to reach, but really even just to kind of community that we're able to create and the people that were able to engage. It's just fascinating how we're helping, uh, just bridge the gap between the physical and the digital space. And God has given us a lot of great things here. But on the personal side, I'm thrilled, you know, to tell you guys about my wife and my kids and got a wonderful wife, Lauren. We've got two beautiful girls and God has just blessed us with an overflowing ministry and we're glad to share a heart and whatever we can with you guys. And so glad to be here with Jeff and we have a lot of fun things to share with you today.

Jeff Reed: 01:31 That's awesome. Way To totally call me out for not talking about my kids, but you, you go ahead and doing that in bragging about how awesome they are.

Rey DeArmas: 01:39 I had to take my shot out there, man. I gotta get that romance points where I can.

Jeff Reed: 01:43 Very good. I talked about my kids in episode one, so we'll just ignore that. And just keep it moving for what's next. And I'm sure no one, my kids, they're going to come up down the road, Hey, well I'm excited about this episode today. We're going to unpack some things. And so Rey and I were dialoguing, trying to figure out, hey, what do we want to talk about in this space? How best can we can encourage people out there that are, that are considering doing church online that are there may be starting to do church online. Um, maybe just trying to kick the tires and figure out what to go, where to go, how to do this thing. And so here's the topic that we wanted to come up with. So Rey and I sat down and we figured out six things that we wish pastors knew about church online.

Jeff Reed: 02:25 And so the goal here is we're talking through these, or maybe these are things that these are conversation starters that you can have with, with your, with your pastors at your church, your leadership teams. You know, whoever's kind of over that. Or, or maybe you are one of these guys and you're trying to figure out how to connect with an online audience that you're a pastor. You're trying to figure out how to engage more in that, in that field and so collectively between Rey and I we've got a lot of years of experience and in Church Ministry as well as on a digital side. And our takeaway from that are these items, six points that we wish pastors would know about church online and so I'll go ahead and read them and then Rey we can just dialogue and kind of work through it. Go for it. Number one, the people online are part of your church. The people online are part of your church. Hey Rey, you want, you want to tackle that?

Rey DeArmas: 03:21 Yeah they are. First of all, yes they are. They are very much part of your church. You know in episode one Jeff talked about three different door environments to which people engage. He talked about the front door, which is Kinda like your first time guests and you're outsiders and people who are just looking in. He talked about the side door, which are your folks who attend on a regular basis, or maybe they consider your home, your church, their home church, and for whatever reason, the digital spaces where they engage when they can't be there physically in the room. And then there's the people that this is their only means of connecting now in all, in all three cases. Okay? They are your responsibility as a shepherd. Uh, and you know, just like the person who comes in as a first time guest in a physical environment, well, they may never come back. They're just an Easter or Christmas only person. Okay. But they're your responsibility. Okay. They are your responsibility both in that moment and even over the haul. You've got to do everything you can to engage you, engage them, and to get them engaged and your discipleship process. And so whether they're engaging your church purely online, whether they're attending once in a while and engaging the rest of the time online, or whether they're on the outside looking in, I'm telling you, they are under your care. They are part of your church. It's a big deal.

Jeff Reed: 04:30 Okay. Yeah. That, that's so good. You know, it was, it was fun. It was, was talking about this with a pastor recently and I was like, church online isn't fake news in any, and he looked at me and he's like, what? And I was like, Hey, like we don't sit around and make this up. Like, and so, you know, Rey. So if somebody, so let's, let's hone in here. Let's, let's break you down. Specific somebody out there right now as a person has a, has a pastor who doesn't know this, how can that person out there really convey, um, hey, we're still part of the church online as part of the church. What steps do they need to do? How do they approach that conversation

Rey DeArmas: 05:08 from, from what I've seen over time and, and you know, we've grown through this process here at Christ fellowship and Jeff, you are part of that because we asked a lot of these questions early on and we didn't know necessarily, we stumbled through a lot of these spaces. And so, you know, if you're a lead pastor and you're listening to this, you're like, well you guys, you know, I don't even know how you arrived at this thing. Just know that we struggled with all the same theological questions and with all the struggles and with all the love and heartache that you did as well. And what worked for us was just gathering stories. Um, just pure stories of not just people coming to know Christ, but people growing in Christ over time. Uh, people engaging in, serving people, engaging in, giving people, engaging in a lot of the same spiritual disciplines that we would ask them to engage in a physical space happening online.

Rey DeArmas: 05:55 These are phenomenal things that we're doing it. And it's not just tools. These aren't just tools that we're developing. The tools are part of it. But really it's a means of a growing community and it growing spiritual community in which people are taking real, tangible, physical, spiritual steps. Now, they may not be in the room with you, but they are growing spiritually. And so you have to keep this in mind and Pastor if you're out there. And you're struggling with this. I just want to encourage you, okay? It's, it's okay to struggle with it, but you must ask some hard questions about what you're going to do for that individual that comes to know Christ by either listening to your podcast, by consuming your content and some kind of way by listening to your podcast, by watching your message, you've got to ask what's their next step? And if you already come up with step one, you're already giving them a discipleship pathway.

Jeff Reed: 06:41 Yeah, that's awesome. Hey, and it's important here to remember that analytics lie, and so we're going to talk about this a lot, but you know, I'm a pastor at a small church. I got 250 people that come and I got 2000 views on Facebook live. He reality of this guys, those Facebook live views are based on three seconds. A person's literally scrolling through the phone, watching that pop up in their newsfeed and they pause to sneeze. It keeps scrolling. That person is, is through here. I'm not saying that the person who sneezes while scrolling through Facebook live as part of your church. But it's, it's important to really hone in who the important people are, who are the people who are connected to your church are. And so, and, and by Rey, what Rey saying with the stories is so important, but the numbers like lie, they, they give the appearance that things are, are much grander and much bigger when really embrace the smallness of it, embrace the individualism of these people that are and, and solve their problems and to getting them plugged in, getting connected, getting them discipled, like solve it on the small level, create those systems so that it will grow with you as your ministry in a physical space as well as in the digital and the virtual space as they both grow together.

Jeff Reed: 08:08 And that interestingly segues very well into number two. What works in physical locations does not always work online. And so I'll take it into this one a little bit. And, and I, I have produced, uh, I've been, I've produced thousands of church services. I have been production director for four churches four years. I've been, we can experience director, creative director. And so like I've been danced all around this environment and I've seen it from, from many different angles. And what's important is, is that you have someone who stops and pauses and says, is this going to work in context of online? Yeah. So like I'm going to give you a, um, uh, just several examples of, hey, you know what, if, um, if the announcements that you're doing in the service are all aimed towards serving locally in your community, that doesn't mean much for the guy who's watching your service on the other side of the country does not take it even a step further.

Jeff Reed: 09:11 If you've gained, and Rey was talking about the front door side door, a digital door, if you've got somebody who is, um, maybe sick at home with a sick kid and not in the service they're watching, but the only way to sign up for your local service project in the coming week is in the lobby. That doesn't do anything for me either. And so it's, it's, it's making sure that you've got systems where people that want to engage with your church to be part of your discipleship process, to be a serving, to be part of a small group, to be part of, of giving, making sure that you've got systems and you're communicating to those people's how, how to do that. You know, just the, even in my experience like, um, as, as online pastors, sometimes the application point would make a lot of sense in, in the, in the room and have of a message like, you know, the pastor's landing, the plane has done this really creative thing where you write down the name of people that you're praying for, what you want a witness to and you come up and you nail it on the cross.

Jeff Reed: 10:12 And, and all of this, this elaborate, you know, all it gives chills in the room and everybody's excited and you can just feel the Holy Spirit, um, you know, coming down. But as a viewer online, there, there's a level of, of disconnect to that. Absolutely. And so trying to figure out, make sure not that you can't do the creative stuff for the room cause you don't want online to hold back the room, but don't forget them or turn them into the, the redheaded step child. Start to kind of create some of those environments or figure out how they can be part of it, what they need to do to get those same application and touch points with.

Rey DeArmas: 10:50 Yeah. So I think the big deal there, Jeff, is his just representation, right? Like acknowledgement of the fact that they exist, you know, so if you are going to do those big creative elements, maybe designing something that's unique to them or for them, um, you know, we're going to talk to Jay Kranda eventually. I love what Jay does for communion, you know, um, before Saddleback does community and online, you know, he lets them know in advance. He tells them the materials to buy. He, he, you know, gives them a list of, of instructions to kind of take part in so that they can be part of the experience as well. That's so crucial and so important. And you know, many people would look at community and say, well that that's unique to a physical space. Well, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. If you make it that way or if you design it that way, but if you design it in such a way that it can be inclusive of your people online, you can have something special.

Jeff Reed: 11:39 Yeah. And so, and I want to really hone in on this in a later episode, but like the power of online is this was, this got cut off my list. This would be my number seven. I'm just going to tease it and we'll, we'll do it later. The power of online in our pastors, the power of our church online is in the people you know, and using church line to empower the people with that. But that is a much richer conversation. So that's a tease for something that'll be coming up here very soon. Okay. Hey, let's, let's get into number three. Uh, just because this scales well doesn't mean we should do it cheap. Just because the scales well doesn't mean we should do church online cheap. Right? You want to, you want to tackle, tackle that one.

Rey DeArmas: 12:25 Yeah. And, and mind, you know, it's funny, as Jeff and I were putting this list together, we wanted to make sure that everybody understood, none of this are, none of these are like shots at like, uh, at any organization we ever worked with or anything like this. Really this is just what we've, what we've encountered as we talk to different people who engage these spaces and you have to do this. And so church online does scale well. Listen, you can reach the masses with Kirsch online and you can do it for pennies on the dollar. You know, you can either go and rent out a huge amphitheater and have like a bunch of people come to your amphitheater and spend, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on, on a big event. Or you can leverage church online people consistently every week and dues and hit a lot of the same numbers of people over time and really engage them in a lot of different meaningful spaces.

Rey DeArmas: 13:13 Now keeping that in mind, um, my heart breaks sometimes when I've seen massive churches. I mean characters with unlimited resources and then the content that they're putting out there online, the, uh, the way that they're showcasing their services, and mind you, that's on the content side, but then even on the community side, the fact that they're not resourcing it, well, the fact that they're not staffing it with volunteers or even putting any kind of effort or emphasis towards this, uh, it shows very little value for what's going on there. Now, I can't speak into what all those churches do and what's their aim, but I can't tell you that those people, uh, whether you value them or not, it's still being communicated across the board. And so, you know, if you've got a church online experience and in the room is just a phenomenal mix, but online, I mean, your audio's terrible. You're getting bad camera shots. Uh, the camera falls over and hits the floor and nobody picks it up for half the service. There's all sorts of things going on there. And so, yes, this scales very well. It doesn't take much to get up and running, but if you keep it that or if you continue to just do it on the cheap, uh, over time, you're going to get called out on it. And that's not necessarily something that's good.

Jeff Reed: 14:24 Yeah. And so it's, it's kind of doing it and you know, not on the cheap making the investments, you know, bill going with what works on the small and expanding and will we talk with David Urzi, uh, with Cape first and in a future episode and he really pours into this idea of start small, create systems that work on this small and then build off of that, build off the success of, of the small rather than going huge and trying to, um, you know, maintain off of that. And so allow your, uh, and, and honestly, and I've had this conversation before where it's like you allow the staff to grow your leadership to grow with you. Confession of my life. And I've talked about this actually on Jay Kranda's youtube channel in an interview with him about a year ago where I, I, I've ran, you know, and quickly I found myself literally at the end of the dock, a metaphysical doc getting ready to jump in the water and nobody's behind me because I hadn't brought the leadership team and other staff behind me.

Jeff Reed: 15:33 I carried the weight of everything on my shoulders and then turned around and nobody understood the basics. And so allowing it to scale effectively is very important in context of, of online. And so man, Rey, hey, thanks for sharing that one. Let's get into number four. Number four, church online does not replace meeting in physical locations. Church online does not replace meeting in, in physical locations. So, and so let me breathe on this a little bit and then, and then I'll hand it over. Now there are listen in and somebody is going to be like bored about that. That virtual church, uh, Vr church that I saw on wired magazine. Okay, look, here's an and, and we're gonna hopefully get DJ Soto. I've on this podcast. Uh, I've, you know, had lots of conversations with them. And so there are exceptions to this and I know people who are trying to create digital church in, in, in context of exclusively online, not going to lie.

Jeff Reed: 16:36 Um, I've thought about it myself, uh, but at the end of the day, and we see this a lot, like, and this has been a, it was actually in a USA today article. Uh, you can check out the church that digital, we'll link to it in the, in the show notes, but I blogged on this, that students are lonelier today than five years ago. Sorry, something like s, uh, s I think it was seniors high school seniors reported 13% more high school students. Seniors reported being lonely now than even like five years ago. Yeah. And a lot of it equated down to this idea of social media. They're, they're engaging people, but they're not relationally connecting with them. And so the one thing that I really want to hone in on and while the point of putting on my blog was like, hey church online, this is why we shouldn't do church on it.

Jeff Reed: 17:27 This is what people have have said. People are lonely, technology isn't physical community like, and I would actually say no, that's why you do church online. That's right. Age with people and pull them into physical community. The end game of church online is not to be a self contained ecosystem. Uh, and, and Vr church. And what I know of Dj Soto, he believes the same thing. You know, and we'll talk about this idea of online to offline where the message that we hear online impacts our offline world. If the only place where I wear my Christian hat, okay, I don't have a Christian hat, but if I did have a Christian hat, it's the only place that I wore that was in virtual environments. If the, my friends who knew me in real life didn't know me as a Christian, that doesn't make me a very good Christian does it?

Jeff Reed: 18:16 And so it's and so it's, it's living it not only in the, in the virtual world cause the same thing he said virtually as it is in the physical. And so church online does not replace the physical world. It's, it's not that what a, what I believe it is. It's meant to compliment it and to help it help the physical and the virtual. And so we're going to be talking a lot. Hey and Rey do you want to just like give like a 30 second overview Omni channel cause you're so good to know you're passionate about that.

Rey DeArmas: 18:46 You know when folks talk to me about this, I always give the personal story of the fact that my wife and I were long distance in our relationship for about a year, year and a half while we were dating. And you know this is like the introduction of facetime, right? And so we had the benefit of that. We don't have to do letters, we didn't have to be there on the phone. We are able to engage face to face. But if you were to ask me, hey, which is better, my wife next to me in the room or at the time, my girlfriend next to me in the room or having her via facetime, I would tell you I would, I would throw my computer out the window every day of the week if you would tell me that I could have her here in the room with me. There is no question about it.

Rey DeArmas: 19:18 And so the reality is it because that was our primary means, the only way that we could meet on a regular basis, face to face. We took advantage of the technology that was given to us at the time and so we used it for everything that it was worth. Now in the same way a technology is great. Technology can, you know, can allow for you know, community and for relationship to take place. It's, it's a great platform. However it, we're still physical beings, we're still tangible beings. We need to be around in the physical presence of other people and we can't sacrifice that. We can't say the church online is going to go ahead and take over for that for folks. No, no, no, no. We still believe in scripture where it says that we should not forsake the gathering together of the saints. And sure at Church online is a medium for that but it's not a replacement for physical spaces for that. And so for folks out there who are expecting us to say the opposite, you know, uh, no we don't believe that either. You know, we believe that this is a way to take, to transfer people into community and, and we've seen that happen over and over again online.

Jeff Reed: 20:20 That's awesome. Well said. So, um, let's roll to number five because we are hammering these things through and I want to spend some time on this one cause this is, this is right here. Um, effective churn number five. If you're keeping score at home, effective church online is more than just content effective church online is more than just content. Let me say this one thing and then Rey, I'm going to give it to you cause I know Rey is like the content God. There is a difference. A pastor, there's a difference church online person between digital communications and call it digital mission called digital discipleship. Digital Communications is essentially marketing and communicating a message to a group of people. A digital mission. Digital discipleship is utilizing technology to look at the world, to a digital mission field lens to the end of where you want to disciple them.

Jeff Reed: 21:19 Hmm. And so if you as a church believed that discipleship cannot happen virtually, it can only happen within a physical space. Uh, your church campus, an office, a home. If you can only do discipleship there, then what you're really wanting to do is, is digital communication. But if you're, if you're interested in taking a step further and you want to impact and change lives virtually, not just within the physical realm, then you need to also not only look at it as digital communication, but look at ways that you can disciple and help people grow deeper in their faith. That's right. In the virtual realm. So Rey, you want to dig into some of that? Yeah. You know, for so long, um,

Rey DeArmas: 22:06 we've seen and we've heard great things about pastors in what takes place not just on Sunday morning but in come in spaces like Sunday schools or small groups. And the thing that we've all struggled with is, um, is there a difference between content and then community? And I think that's, that's a hard thing for all church leaders to wrestle with content and community in terms of what changes lives and how the tour supposed to work in relationship together. Now listen, church leaders, the worship music and the, the sermon, they are a very spiritual items. Uh, they're very important, uh, to our spiritual walk. But that's still content at the end of the day. And content without community doesn't necessarily transform lives. And so I think it was Ed Stetzer, I think I'm going to be paraphrasing Stetser when he talked about how, you know we want our people to be missional, but we're building our churches like theaters in that even people who are sitting in the room, you know, we've got one guy on stage and the majority of the people are there watching him and act his spiritual gift.

Rey DeArmas: 23:00 And meanwhile everybody else is a consumer. Everybody else in the room, as a consumer of watching one person enact their spiritual gift and so effective church online and an effective church ministry in general isn't just, hey, we're going to watch content. You've got to give people handles. Okay, it's got to be teaching and content that leads somewhere that gives them an action step that challenges them to take it to that next level. And then you have to provide a discipleship pathway through which people can experience community, grow in relationship with others, take part in spiritual disciplines. That can happen both in social media and in person. So if you're thinking, oh, that's just church online where that happens, no, that's not true. Even in our physical church spaces, we can be great about content distribution, but terrible about effective discipleship if we're not careful.

Jeff Reed: 23:47 So true that that was golden. Thank you for that. That was Ed Stetsor. We'll find it in the show notes. I'll try to link to it. I know I've heard him say that several times in messages. Uh, um, I'm willing to bet he's got it in writing somewhere. I don't know if he pulled it from a book, so, but yeah, we'll, we'll dig into that and we'll link to it in the show notes. And so it's, it's, you have to be very careful if all we're doing is creating content and sometimes, honestly, like we may, we may think we're doing more than we are. Maybe we need to just stop and analyze with what we're doing is actually what we mean to do, what we set out to do. But I, I would say this like church online and we will, we'll just talk about this later as well.

Jeff Reed: 24:26 Church online is a mirror, uh, for the, for the physical church. And so if you're, if you're angry and you're frustrated with your church online, that all it's doing is just generating content. Um, maybe pause and look and see was that happening at the, at our physical church? Is that happening? And we just haven't, um, or because what happens online drips from the physical and sometimes the, um, the, the actual church online is just mirroring the, the values that you, that you're showing intentionally or even sometimes unintentionally. So pastor that's out there, pause, look if evaluate, maybe ask around, get input from other people that, that are outside. And because the, the end game of our, of our church biblically is to go and make disciples and, and yes, you know, content is a way to do it. Uh, but if content, you know, is, is not the end church online is not the end.

Jeff Reed: 25:27 It's the means to creating a discipleship model in place. So pastors be able to be aware of that. So let's, let's land the plane here. Number six, church online is a reflection of our church strategy. Well, it kind of let the cat out of the bag there. A church online is a reflection of our church strategy. A little bit there about talking about the mirror, but, but that does, that does hone in true that you cannot do something, um, separate from the church. We've seen this time and time again, we'll bring these guys on the podcast to really unpack it and break it down. But what, what happens when you do that is, is the, you, uh, you create two different hemispheres and they don't talk to each other and there is self implosion. It's, it's inevitable that that will happen. And so utilizing your church online to create a unified structure from your campus, from your church is vital. Rey, you want to unpack some of this?

Rey DeArmas: 26:27 Yeah. It's just so important, you know. Um, now, now we're going on over like 20 years since our former executive pastor released his book simple church, right? Like it's been, it's been a good while at this point. Um, Ma, maybe not quite 20 just yet, but, but it's one of those things where, you know, we need effective an effective church strategy in order to make disciples. And it has to be clear, it has to be concise and it has to be something that even makes sense doing in digital spaces as well because so many people are engaging in your church and not just in a physical space but also in a digital space. And so you need to be sure and have flexible options for them because so many people are living in two environments. Anyways. Uh, here, uh, where I'm at in my context, Miami's a very transient city and so people are in and out of town all the time.

Rey DeArmas: 27:15 In fact, even though they call Miami home, the reality is is they may do life between two or three different cities just in a given week or in a given month. And more and more because our world is getting smaller thanks to advance travel, uh, thanks to advancements in communication and even in energy in every other area that we're seeing in tech. Um, right now people are able to live in multiple physical spaces, but they still want to engage in that same spiritual space. They still want to have their same church home. And so whatever effective strategy you're utilizing a at your church in a physical space, you need to make sure and have a plan as to how it's going to reflect in your digital space as well. Because Church online, it is a reflection of your church strategy. Uh, you know, we, we talk a lot around here and a Christ fellowship about if we reach Miami and we really have the capability of reaching the world because so many people are from so many different spaces, but Miami is not the only unique space like this anymore. New York, La, Chicago, all these cities are becoming these great hubs of international communication and even not far from us, Orlando, where Mickey Mouse calls his home. It's more and more becoming this international melting pot where people from different countries are coming together and they're calling it their home community, but they don't just stay in Orlando. They go about and around. And so for churches over there, it's becoming crucial for them to have a reflective strategy for church online that also reflects what they doing, their physical spaces.

Jeff Reed: 28:39 That's awesome. By the way, Rey was, when you referenced executive pastors, you're referencing Eric Geiger, uh, current, uh, was at mariners mariners church out, right

Rey DeArmas: 28:50 all the way out there at Mariners. Is there still lucky to have you as a senior? Yeah.

Jeff Reed: 28:54 Yes, yes, they are. So in Eric is a, I'm working details right now, uh, with, uh, Eric joined in the podcast, so he'll be on at some point. Uh, he wrote up a followup on the Omni channel that was very good. And so I'm looking forward, uh, to Heaven, heaven reign him on to, to unpack that even more so, and to help us apply it to our churches today. Uh, but it's, it's a, it's not an either or. It's an and, and so I think that's, that's really the, uh, where this is going to land. Like it's not, uh, online church or physical church. It's a both in the organization who can interweave themselves, um, to the point where it's the same, whether it's virtual or physical man, those organizations are going to win. Uh, and those are the ones that are going to be, uh, ready for what the future holds as, as God continues to unravel and show this digital mission field that's open for us in the future and so be, be ready, be flexible.

Jeff Reed: 29:57 Remember, it's not just creating content and having our content available online. It's creating a discipleship system so that you're utilizing online to impact lives to help people grow deeper in their faith, regardless of where they're located, whether that's next door to your church or whether that's on, in another hemisphere. At the end of the day, we are as, as the church are called to create disciples of these people. And, and rather than saying, that's not my responsibility, church, it's time to pick it up and to utilize technology in this tool to just reach out. You know, it's in, it's funny, like I was talking in this conversation, I want to, when a close on this the other day, or at closing this today, but had this conversation with a pastor in and just made the statement, could you imagine what, what Billy Graham would do with the Internet? Oh my gosh. Yeah. And he's like, could you imagine what Paul would do with the Internet?

Jeff Reed: 30:53 And, and, and it's like, Eh, and, and suddenly it's, it's my, my joke, uh, you know, in passing was yeah, but, but we do fortnight. I mean, come on, come on. We got, we got gaming. There's always like yelling at each other on Facebook. Like we've got the power to do so much with it. Absolutely. And instead, we're, we're, we're, we're squandering it on things that aren't, aren't kingdom impacted. So, Hey, pastor, chop that up as number seven, and we're going to close with that. Uh, the power of the Internet, uh, for the kingdom is ready and ripe and ready to go. It's just a matter of catching that vision and, and running with it. Hey, um, we're going to close up the podcast right here. Uh, hey, church leader, church, volunteer church staff person who's out there fighting this battle. Um, continue fighting, uh, testimony on my side.

Jeff Reed: 31:47 There's been seasons in my life where I felt so isolated and alone because nobody out there saw what I saw. Nobody saw purpose and vision behind this. And literally I felt like I was alone. I felt like it was weird. I was weird. And it felt like I was wrong because nobody else saw it. And so I want to take a moment here and just encourage you. You're not alone. You're not, well, you may be weird, but as in this context, you're not weird. Um, and, and, and you're not wrong. It's, it's helping getting leadership, getting people to see, to understand the vitalness of this. And we hear what the church digital, we want to help create a resources to encourage, to inspire, um, and, and to, to help you have these conversations. So check out the website, thechurch.digital, thechurch.digital For more of that.

Jeff Reed: 32:42 Uh, and you can find this on social media. Rey is a, where are you on social media radio? I Miss Ruy, uh, for Rey r. E. Y. D. E. A. R. M. A. S. You can catch me on almost every social media platform come talk. Awesome. And I'm deerffej, uh, as in like Jeff Reed backwards and that's weird. So you may want to check the show notes to get that, but you can find either one of us, uh, there. And Man, we would love to dialogue. Uh, we'd love to share with you, and more than that, like we just want to hear your story. So hit us up and let's talk it through. Uh, but for Rey, uh, my name is Jeff and it has been a pleasure to be with you guys here on the church digital podcast. And we will see what the next episode a featuring Jay Kranda from Saddleback, which is going to be awesome. So see you guys then.