The world is changing. It’s time for the church to as well. Like it or not, we’re moving into a post-christian society. As a church, we can lament what was, or we can adjust our strategy to better work with the world around us.
Church, this digital disruption we’re experiencing is a huge opportunity for us to reach beyond our walls digitally and start assisting people in their personal mission to reach their coworkers for Christ.
ON THE SHOW
Host: Jeff Reed
THECHURCH.DIGITAL
Twitter // Facebook // Instagram // LinkedIn
Co-Host: Rey DeArmas
Christ Fellowship Miami Online
Twitter // Facebook // Instagram
SHOW NOTES
- "The greatest opportunity for evangelism in America today is in our workplaces." - Rey DeArmas
- Lifeway Christian Resources, 2016 Unchurched Survey: 66% of people are unlikely to attend your church service (Slide 21).
- Focus on second place: your workplace.
- Omar Giritli: Finding Rest in Christ
- Christ Fellowship sharable content using Dropbox: cfmiami.org/share
- Workplace Ministry: Saddleback Works
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THECHURCH.DIGITAL
TRANSCRIPT
Jeff Reed: 00:00 Hey everyone, welcome to TheChurch.Digital Podcast. My name is Jeff. We're at Episode 15, can't believe how quickly these things are flying through and we've got a great one here! The other day, Rey DeArmas, Online Pastor over at Christ Fellowship in Miami. He and I were sitting together at a Shake Shack and he dropped this knowledge bomb on me and when he said it, I just needed to unpack it. This is what he said. He says, "The greatest opportunity for evangelism in America today is in our workplaces." And once I picked my jaw up off the table, I said, "Rey, tell me more." And at the end of that conversation I said, "Hey, you know what? We've got to record this and get it public and get it out there so that others can hear this." See today, Church, we've got the opportunity to reach people within our buildings, but we have the opportunity even greater so I would suspect to reach people outside of our buildings and what better place to do that then through the workplace, where our attenders, where Christians, where people, spend other than home the majority of their time. And so church, what an opportunity for us to resource, to train, to empower people, to share their faith, to get them connected, to be comfortable in speaking in spiritual things, to be able to engage people within the workplace for the good of God, for the sake of the Gospel. I don't know, it sounds like a fun conversation to me, and that's exactly where we are. We've got Rey DeArmas on how to impact the workplace for the Gospel here at TheChurch.Digital Podcast. Here you go.
Rey DeArmas: 01:28 Each and every one of us that are on church staff, we're building relationships with our folks on a regular basis and, hey, we're enjoying it becomes like family and that becomes one of the harder things, right? Like whenever you have to transition out of church, it's not just that you're leaving your church, but you're leaving this microcosm family that you've been spending hours and hours and grabbing coffees and breaks and sharing videos and having fun and laughs and you're doing life with. But what we underutilize is equipping our people to reach their friends and their coworkers inside the workplace. They're spending 50 to 60 hours with these folks, each and every week. And there are genuine relationships that they're building here, where they're in each other's lives, they care about each other. And so just to give you like a little insider, so over the last few weeks, just for funsies, we've been doing some stuff with CF Online where we've been working with Baptist Hospital and we've got some of our content there for folks who are receiving chemotherapy treatment to be able to watch services while they're receiving their chemotherapy.
Rey DeArmas: 02:35 Great way to encourage folks and it's a great way to reach them for Christ. And so I was like, all right, so what are some other opportunities that we can do to take this to the next level? And so I've been shadowing my sister who works in the ER, the hospital, and I've seen the kind of relationships that she's been able to build with these people and she's only been working there for five years and it's just incredible the kind of family that they've built there. This isn't just unique to my sister, this something that each and every one of them, they're talking about their families. They're talking about what they're doing on the weekend. They're talking about belief systems, about all sorts of stuff. And it's fantastic. I've met a lot of these folks whenever my sister and brother-in-law throw a Super Bowl party, who do they invite? They invite their coworkers and so they're bringing them into their house, but then they're also bringing in pastors. They're also bringing in other people that are connected with them. Why? Because they want to surround them with other believers so that maybe it'll start more spiritual conversations. Even though it's watching Tom Brady chuck a ball into the end zone, we can all laugh and cheer and boo together and have some fun. But at the same time, these folks, they don't know Jesus, but they're not in a judgmental situation in which, "Oh, well I, I can't like you because of your beliefs." You know, sometimes those of us who work in church, we put more of a stigma of what the workplace is like than what it actually is.
Rey DeArmas: 03:58 And the truth is, is that this is a great opportunity for our folks who are already connected with people. And don't forget, it's just like scripture says Ephesians, right? Our job is to equip them to do the work of the ministry, not to do the ministry for them. And so, so often we tell our folks that ministry is done at church when the reality is the ministry can be done, where? In the workplace where they're spending constant, nonstop time around nonbelievers, given an opportunity to witness to them, not just by wearing their, and in my case, not just by, you know, flashing a CF invite. There are different ways that we can equip them in Church Online, especially in digital tools are made for this.
Jeff Reed: 04:41 I love that. You know, there was some research that backs this up, but we've talked about it in the past or I know I've blogged about it, but like Lifeway Christian resources, 2016 did a survey. It was either 63% or 66% of people, are not interested in coming into your church building. They're just not. They've already established or they think they've established where they are and they're not going to be proactive in attending some service. And so the majority of people out there today are not open to the evangelical model where they go to a building. I'm looking for salvation or going to find salvation.
Rey DeArmas: 05:22 That's correct.
New Speaker: 05:23 That same survey will tell you, 80% of people will have a conversation about faith, as long as, they see that the faith is important to their friends. So they'll talk to their friends about faith if they see that faith is important to their friends. And so the ability for us as Christians to live out the Gospel, to be able to come be confident to have those conversations in the workplace is so important. I don't know if you remember this Rey, like maybe 10 or 15 years ago, like there was the desire, there was all this talk about the third place. Do you remember this? So like, first place is like your home, where you spend the most times cause you sleep there, so like at least 8 to 10 hours a week, even like crazy people, you know, the majority of your time is spent in the home. Second place was always your workplace, you know, cause that's where you spend to your point, 40 to 50 hours a week and there's this awesome community, this body of people that exist there. And it was funny, like the drive for the church was, should church be the third community, the third place? And we've kind of turned that on its ear a little bit now by saying, "Hey, the church can be third, can be forth, can be fifth, it doesn't matter." But really the effectiveness of the church in evangelism isn't what happens at that third place. We picked the wrong place. We need to get more involved in the second place.
Rey DeArmas: 06:56 Well, and part of that, Jeff, is isn't our mistake in turning Church into the place? Isn't church supposed to be the people? Like we say that a lot, you know, and so if church isn't supposed to be the place, if it's supposed to be the people that really, if there is a modern diaspora Monday through Friday, right, of like the church being spread out and in their workplace, you know, where they're supposed to be and not just cause they're making money to tithe, right? But the reality is that they're there to build relationships. And so much of this, you know, think about we're missing like millennials and Gen Z and some of the folks that are coming behind us. They're looking for workplaces where they can have real relationships with others. You know, like it's not just about the job, but it's also about the relationships that they have. And we didn't really think about this a whole lot recently until we started getting into shows like the office, right? Where all of a sudden we realized, oh my gosh, I care about Jim and Pam the same way that I care about like some of my other coworkers because yeah, that's a shared environment, you know, and we're sharing so much space with these folks.
Jeff Reed: 07:59 I love that. And I'm a radio TV film major, so like you just lit me up, like in the eighties. The eighties it was Cheers and Cosby show. It was first place, it was not workplace. And so having that come more to an awareness of we've got this community, it's not just the drudgery of, let me, you know, serve the man, let me work for the man, let me just get my paycheck but it's become more of that community, that friendship, that's really cool.
Rey DeArmas: 08:30 So because I love TV so much, we can take that even further, right? In the 90s, it became the coffee shop at Seinfeld and Friends for King's Coffee Shop like that was a place to gather around. Even Starbucks was fighting for the third place cause they started to see that they were losing that battle into the 2000s why? Because really work and play and life are kind of just expanding. And so things like Door Dash or whatever else, like Starbucks is more of a convenience place where you go to pick up stuff and go. You don't necessarily go there to hang out unless Starbucks is the office, right? Even then, it's not really the place where people go to gather for a whole lot of events or whatever else. This is the same way that movie theaters are struggling and now, even churches, like we're struggling, right?
Rey DeArmas: 09:11 Because a lot of folks are either doing life at home or they're doing life at work and then they've got digital spaces that they do life in between. But with the workplace, we've already got great content that we give away for free in churches, right? And so why not encourage our own people - Hey listen, we're resourcing you. We're creating all this stuff. If you've got a friend at work who is going through a hard time, why not take that two minute clip, that three minute clip, and text it to them, airdrop it to them, show it to them? It just creates a great conversation starter because you're already in their life. We're even taking the work out of your hands in that you don't even have to know exactly what to say. You can just tell them, hey, you know what? My pastor talked about that exact same thing this week, man. I'm going to send you a two minute video. Why don't just watch it and then let's talk about, and it just creates that conversation. And I know that there are HR concerns, but really a lot of the HR concerns aren't so much that you can't be a follower of Jesus in the workplace. The HR concerns are you can't put up your Christian flag and blast your Carmen CD, you know, or your DC Talk CD, while you're in the workplace. Yes, you cannot be an annoying Christian to other people in the workplace, but you can still be very much who you are. And if we as believers, continue to place a stigma on that, then we're creating a cloud in our own mind. My wife is a public school teacher. If her students engage her in conversation, she's allowed to talk about Jesus, Church, whatever else. She's not allowed to initiate the conversation. And so when people start saying, "Well, God's not allowed in public school." I'm like, the Christians are, they're in administration. They teach, they're there and they're very active with their faith. What are we talking about? God's not allowed in public school. The church is in public school. It's already active. It's already there. We don't have to worry as much about whether or not "we're teaching it from the classroom" when we've got believers who are already there and being solid teachers where they're at or being solid administrators.
Jeff Reed: 11:02 That's great stuff. Yeah. By the way, DC Talk is going on tour.
Rey DeArmas: 11:05 I'm so excited for that.
Jeff Reed: 11:07 Oh my gosh. Yes. Like that's got to happen. Moving on.
Rey DeArmas: 11:11 Do we get free tickets if we promo it? Does this happen?
Jeff Reed: 11:16 So somebody get Toby Mac on the phone, call them up. We deserve some tickets. All right. Hey, so Christ Fellowship is doing some of this and I know they're exploring in this area and trying to do more. Christ Fellowship down here in Miami. So you're talking about the sermon, cutting it up into smaller pieces, maybe having some clips that are available highlights, mic drop moments, things like that create easily shareable content. Walk me through a scenario like that. So, I'm in the workplace, or you're in the workplace, your sister is in the workplace, talking to somebody. Choose your sister, that'll be fun. Walk me through how a scenario like that would look with giving some of this, using the shareable content.
Rey DeArmas: 12:04 So, for instance, depending on when you're watching this, you know, I'm referencing a sermon from the past, right? So this last week, Omar Giritli, one of our teaching pastors talked about the importance of rest and the importance of why God established rest and how a lot of that works. Now we live in a workaholic society, right? And so as we're talking about work, work can go bad. Work is a good thing. Work is established by God, but so is rest, right? And so we've got a lot of folks and especially in the ER that are pulling like 16 hour shifts and they're grabbing more shifts because hey, they're trying to pay for that next vacation or they're trying to do some of the same stuff that we're trying to do. Right? And so they're overexerted with that, but then they're not taking in consideration, hey, but what about taking some time to just breathe?
Rey DeArmas: 12:45 What about taking some time to just be, because I'm so concerned with being the world's best mom or the world's best dad and so concerned with being the top earner and the top this that all of a sudden I'm just freaking out and I've got so much anxiety in my life. You see that's not just unique to Christians. It's not. And so if we take like a two minute blip, which we have and we put it out there on Instagram, right? We put it on IGTV or whatever else where the intro is just on the post. My sister works with folks who are way overworked, right? I mean they've got doctors and nurses there that are just cranking it out and by the time that they're done working on their shifts, they've got a chart galore. They've got to document everything and none of that they're getting paid for it because they spent so much time with patients that they've got to spend the back end doing the admin stuff. And so then after that, I mean they're just burnt. And so of course they're going to need a moment where they're saying, you know what, I'm just freaking out. Insert the conversation. "Hey, you know what? You know what, Pastor Omar was just talking about that this weekend, my church, in fact I was watching it online." My sister, right now, because she's got a five month old child, CF online is like prime time for her. And so it creates this instant opportunity where she can be like, hey, this exact thing that you were talking about, Dr. So and so, it's exact thing that you're talking about Nurse so and so (don't want to use names). She can just go ahead and forward it over to them.
Rey DeArmas: 14:09 She can show it to them and she can encourage him to watch it. And it creates that conversation. In fact, she's already done this kind of thing with them and it just creates great conversation that leads to Gospel conversations. You know, when I worked at Apple, this happened for us, like almost a decade ago, and this is when Jeff, you were still here on staff at CF and this was a time where before even I was on staff, I was working at an Apple Store coming straight out of seminary and it was a great environment. We actually had a coworker come to Christ simply because we would constantly share content with her. We would constantly just tell her, hey, listen, that exact thing that you're talking about. Like check this clip out. She's tech savvy and you know, she's working with us at the apple store. Now, she's still working for Apple Corporate. But guess what? In the time that's happened since in the last 10 years, she's been coming to our church. She met a great man of God, they got married, they're starting their own family, they're part of our Miami Springs campus, and she's still working for corporate and doing her thing in the workplace and being a solid believer and growing as a believer there. Now a lot of folks think, oh well, the great end of that story is, wouldn't it be great if she came on staff at CF? No, wouldn't it be great if she was a great apple employee, right where she's at. That right there if she's a solid believer while she's there at apple, working for them doing a great job and at the same time reaching more and more of her coworkers for Christ, that's the win.
Rey DeArmas: 15:31 That's a huge one. And so why not continue to resource our folks with content in order to do that? Jeff, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier. One of the ways that we're doing this, and I wanna encourage folks to check this out and think about this methodology is now we opened up a Dropbox and we made it publicly accessible for all of our folks in which we're posting full quality social media content and we're now going to be encouraging our people to go there to download it in full quality so that they don't have to use apps like repost or whatever else. We've tagged that cfmiami.org/share. And if you go there, it's basically like a Wix structured website with direct access to our Dropbox in which they can go just grab full quality photos, series content, event content, whatever else. We're giving it away and we're encouraging them to share it because what I'm hoping and what I want to see happen is not just our own social media account talking about us, but everybody in our church talking about us as well and doing it right.
Jeff Reed: 16:23 That's great, Rey. That was a good move. The algorithms have shifted, especially with Facebook within the past, I don't know, probably three or four months. It was even referenced recently, earlier this year at the F8, Facebook Dev conference, where what an organization says on a Facebook page it really doesn't matter anymore. Like Facebook doesn't value page level information. Organization, if you really want to make an impact, create a group and then do it within the group and invite people into the group, that's what's with the algorithm is pushing. But to your point, there's actually has been talk, you know, earlier this year of the ROI, the return on investment, of we pour, as a church, all this effort into social media and then we drop it on a Facebook or on an Instagram where Facebook or Instagram really limits who's seeing it because of how engaged it is or isn't.
Jeff Reed: 17:29 And there was actually talk about should we even give up on social media. That was a very popular conversation around the water cooler. But the idea of giving it away to people, because while Facebook doesn't care about what your organization says, it cares about what your Aunt Ruth says.
Rey DeArmas: 17:48 That's right.
Jeff Reed: 17:50 And the more that you can get, the Ruth to talk about it, the whoever it is within your community to use in and to talk about your church or organization, the better off that you will be. So the ability to crowdsource some of that and get it into the people so that they can be cheering for you, that they can be your, I mean, back in the day used to be Brand Ambassadors. Now we say use the word Influencers. Ultimately, you want them to be the hero of the organization to encourage others to access and share it. I mean, social media at some level, is like entry level evangelism. Now it's not completely deep and it doesn't take you to the finish line, but at least it's the one that's gonna get you off the starting line.
Rey DeArmas: 18:39 But even then and look at that shift, and this is where the church should have made the shift a long time ago where corporations did. So yeah, corporations, I'm not saying that churches should pay brand influencers or ambassadors to do it, but the reality is, we should be encouraging our own people to make their own recordings, to take their own photos and to begin sharing them and doing that. So, you know, being in Miami and being a large church, we've got some folks who have a lot of influence here, both in Miami but also globally because of Hispanic television and movies and different folks. And so, you know, I'm more excited when they do an Instagram story then when we do an Instagram story and they don't do it well, right? Like just cause they're a star doesn't mean that they're great at video or they're great at photo but I know that more people are going to see their story, more people are going to see their photo or their post about our church for the positive than anything that we create. And we've got a great following on social media, it's not that, it's just that it opens us up to this larger environment. Now, once again, that's them leveraging a channel that they received. Why? Through work, through what they do for a living and now they're leveraging this great thing that they received through their workplace. Boom. They're leveraging it for the Gospel. Listen, anybody out there, anybody out there who's tuning in for TheChurch.Digital, I just want to encourage you, whoever is in your congregation, however many people, it doesn't matter how many people there are, the point is that you can resource them to reach their coworkers. And that reached can be much larger than just your Sunday morning reach. The influence that they have there is amazing. So encourage them, give them shareables, give them ways to do it. Tell them to take it. And even if they're friends never actually show up on Sunday morning, if they heard the gospel or if they heard the message, man, that's a discipleship win on a part of your congregant and also that's an evangelism win on the part of the person who heard.
Jeff Reed: 20:41 All right, so let's keep going down this conversation. I love this idea of shareables and as a, hypothetically here, as a new Christian, somebody, I'm passionate about helping reach people. I've got friends in the workplace. I can definitely tag somebody on a Facebook image or upload a graphic or a video, share an online service, that part's easy. What resources or coach me through here on, "Yeah, but what happens after the video? Like, I actually have to talk to this person. What do I, how do I talk to them? What do I talk about?" From a pastoral level, how do you coach people through that?
Rey DeArmas: 21:29 I think the first easy question is, "hey, what'd you think?" Just start with that and hear them process whatever it was that they heard. Man, I completely disagreed with it. Okay? Don't get instantly offended, believer, don't get instantly offended. You know, oh, I completely disagreed with that guy. Then, why not? Why? Why did you disagree with him? Why did that happen? And keep the conversation going. Keep the conversation going. Now I understand, not all content is PC. Sometimes your content that you might be sharing, "Hey, Jesus is the only way to Heaven." Man, I completely disagree with that. Why? That just opens up the channel for conversation and you don't have to be Ravi Zacharias. What you need to do is, you just need to be a good relational person in that person's life. You just need to be somebody who cares. So just open up, "Hey, what did you think? What did you think about that clip?" I'm going through a hard time. Here's a clip of encouragement from my pastor. Hey, what did you think about it? Man, I needed to hear that right now. Here, is where I'm at. I'm going through a hard time. My wife's left me or this has happened and all of a sudden, "what did you think?" Just opens up conversation. It just does and then the next natural question can be, "Hey, would you ever like to join me in person?"
Rey DeArmas: 22:55 "Would you ever like to come with me to church?" I'd be open to that, or no, that's not really my thing. Okay, well then let's work down the workflow. If you get to a "no", all right, that's cool. Would you ever be down for at least coming over to my house and watching the rest of this talk? That just creates another opportunity or just maybe it's not even a personal invite like that. Maybe we don't want to bridge the work environment like that. Maybe we're uncomfortable with that. Hey, do you want to see the rest of this talk? Don't even call it a sermon. Don't call it a message. Just call it a talk. Do you want to see the rest of this talk? I'll never forget when I was doing youth ministry, I had, for some reason, this guy who was of the Islamic faith loved coming to our student gatherings. He just loved it and he wouldn't call it the sermon. He wouldn't call it the message, he would call it the speech and be like, "Man, you know, I really liked the speech" and I had to pause because I had to take off my Christianese hat and I had to reflect. Oh yeah, that's, what he would call it and so I have to just tweak the language a little bit to relate to them a little bit more. So if you have to call it the talk, the speech, whatever, the message. Use language that they're going to be comfortable with and then encourage them to just watch a little bit more, watch a little bit more, watch a little bit more. Hey, if enjoyed a two minute clip, you got to hear the other 30 minutes. How can I engage with it? Aha! Now this is where digital platforms come into play, right? Hey, we've got a youtube channel. Let me go ahead and send it to you. Hey, we've got a podcast. You can listen to it on the way home. I'd like that, but leave them with a next step, but then send it to them. Send it to them. Don't just wait and don't encourage them to go find it. No instead, you have a link, share it with them, and make sure, church leaders, give your people handles on how to do this. Make sure that they're equipped with the stuff. Okay? Don't just have people come to our website. Share your content as much as possible. Okay. Disseminate as much as possible and don't be afraid of where it lives. If it's in youtube, great. Youtube is the largest search engine we got, period. It's outpaced Google and Google owns them. Put it out there on your Youtube channel. Okay. Put it out there on podcast.
Rey DeArmas: 25:02 Oh, there's a zillon podcasts, right? Okay. There's room for one more. There's room for yours. Go ahead and give your people handles on how to share content and then encourage them to do so. But if you don't tell them how to do it, they won't do it. Or as Craig Groeschel and Andy Stanley and Rick Warren have always reminded us, our people will only go to where we lead them. They can't go to a place where we've not led them to. So if you're not saying this from the pulpit, your folks aren't thinking about it on a regular basis. So give them handles on how to share content.
Jeff Reed: 25:33 I'm even going to push on that a little bit of a step further. You've got to model it. Have people, Pastor, even yourself, go, as far as, to show them specifically what this looks like, model this with your own accounts and have that be a reference. It's not an ego thing. It's using it to connect with people and utilizing the content that exists from our services in Rey's context, to impact and to change lives outside of the building. The value of what we're creating is not just the 40 minutes in the building. It's not just in the online broadcast. There's opportunities for that content to go even farther and be far more effective if our people see it and to see it, it needs to be modeled. People don't want to be the first. And what we're talking about here, while it sounds like it's simple, it's within church realms, it's not often done. And so this is an opportunity for you, Pastor, you, Communications Director, to model and experience what this is firsthand so that others can replicate it. Once they see it, they'll understand it better.
Rey DeArmas: 26:48 Before you think that this is just for anybody out there who's listening to us and they think, "Oh, well this is just kind of a young people thing." No, it's not. My Dad engages with youtube more than anything else nowadays on television. He's constantly sending me links and sharing stuff and my dad's 63. Jeff, I've heard you talk about how your parents both engage in different social media environments and how they're constantly like sharing things, as well. This isn't just a, oh this would be great for student ministry. No, this is an everybody thing at this point. Okay. This isn't just for a particular young age group. Now we're talking about the spectrum, here. Now we're talking about folks who are empty nesters and, yes, we're talking about their college student. By the way, the empty nesters in your church, they want to reach their college student for Christ too, okay, they see what's coming behind them. They don't want a generation without Jesus. Why not give them the same handles? Hey son, pastor so and so talked about this this week while you're away at college, man, even if you've not connected to a church yet, why don't you see what he said about it? Instant shareable. This isn't just a young people thing, guys, this is an everybody thing, so let's take advantage of the sharables. Then, I don't want to get too much off of this, let's please take advantage of the workplace. Let's take advantage of the workplace and encouraging our folks to share content there because they've got the people around them and relationship is there.
Jeff Reed: 28:17 So what are some other options or ways to really target the workplace? I know we've got our sermon content, you know, there's always the RightNow medias and stuff like that to throw out to use, as hook it up to an apple TV, do a small group or a conversation there in like a conference room. What are some ways that we can start to impact the workplace for God?
Rey DeArmas: 28:46 The Workplace Small Group, to me, is like the biggest ideal. That's something that we stole from Saddleback a long time ago and really we just started to equip some of our folks to take 15 minutes at lunch once a week, have a devotional, pray and invite anybody who wanted to be part of it, wasn't a forced kind of a gig. It was anybody who wanted to be invited to it could come and make sure you go through the right channels, go through HR and make sure you get all your checklists and what you can and can't do, etc., and go for it. We've partnered with organizations at schools, like FCA or First Priority Bible clubs, where this has happened for teachers, as well.
Rey DeArmas: 29:28 Now it doesn't just have to be at the lunch hour. It can be before work, it can be after work, but, however you want to do that. It's not just, you'd be surprised, it's not just a place for Christians to have a holy huddle. Now, if you keep it that, if you never invite anybody to that or if you never encourage anybody to attend that, that's all it will be. But if you encourage the people in your congregation, hey, listen, this creates opportunity. We've got great content that we've already made for you so you don't even have to worry about creating a Bible study or whatever else, we've made that for you. Why not take a small clip and even, listen, pastors out there: just write three discussion questions for your folks or give them three standard discussion questions like the ones that I gave you. What did you think? Would you like to see more? Would you ever come with me? Those are just three easy questions that you can give them to just start the conversation, keep the conversation going and see what happens because the workplace it's needed. Now you can always encourage them to continue to be and they need to be. Each and every believer in our congregation needs to be a great worker. It doesn't mean that they have to be the best worker at the place? They might not be talented enough. They might not be gifted enough. They might be number two or number three in their office. That's okay. They can be the person who loves. They can be the person who encourages. They can be a person of integrity. They can be a lot of things where they're at, but we've got to teach them how to do it.
Rey DeArmas: 30:49 We've got to preach towards that. We've got to encourage them to live that out. And also we have to model that as well. Something that we do at CF that I love, we'll encourage some of our own pastors to go and have lunch at the person's job. So not too long ago, I went to go visit Chuck Fraidy. He's a member at our Coral Gables Campus and, Chuck works with Royal Caribbean. I went to go down there and see him and I got to see him in his environment. I got to talk to him about how God uses him at work. It was awesome and I even got to give him some more ideas about what God can do with him at work. I love that. One of the ways that I started engaging with Chuck, Church Online. He's always, even though he attends in person, when he's out there in Royal Caribbean, out there on the crew stuff, he's also engaging with us on the go.
Rey DeArmas: 31:34 And so it's great ways to encourage people. Just do it. Visit your folks, encourage them. Work is the mission field. It is. Do it.
Jeff Reed: 31:43 Rey, what else you got?
Rey DeArmas: 31:44 Jesus loves your coworkers. He does and you've got to remember that, Jesus loves the coworkers that are out there. The mission field in ministry is not just our folks coming to church on Sunday and we can't just talk about it in the sense of, hey, give invites to your coworkers. That's not enough. We've got a lot better content now that we can encourage our people to share, so let's not be afraid to give it to them. Let's give them handles on how to do that. Let's show them how to do it. In some cases, if you want to do a workshop online and record yourself on youtube, as far as, how some of these things go. Even if you want to share this episode and just send it to somebody and say, Hey, look, they talked about how you can reach Jesus in your workplace. Why don't you take some of these ideas and just see if any of them work for you and then talk to me about it and let's see if we can equip you to go. Go for it. You'd be surprised as to what could happen. Just give it a shot.
Jeff Reed: 32:32 Awesome. Hey man, this is great. Hopefully there's some lessons here that we can take away, Church, so that we can help empower people to create disciples outside of the Church building and impact them in the workplace. The number two spot, don't try to make church the number three spot, the hub. Help whatever number two is, be the spot. So work towards that. Rey, man, thanks for this, this has been a been a great session and looking forward to what's next. Rey, 20 seconds as we're landing the plane?
Rey DeArmas: 33:11 Give it a try. Folks, you'd be surprised how many people you can reach at work. If you've got questions about workplace small groups from Saddleback, I'd Google it. Take a look at what they've done at their workplace Small Groups. Look up Steve Gladen stuff. It's been phenomenal. They've already done the leg work, as far as, researching HR practices and everything else. So just check out what they've done and run with it because it's been phenomenal. And don't forget you already make content. Tell your people to share it. Just do it.
Jeff Reed: 33:38 Awesome. For Rey, my name is Jeff with TheChurch.Digital. Thanks for joining us and we'll catch you next time here at TheChurch.Digital Podcast. Y'all have a good day.
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