EP210: Chestly Lunday's Launchpad to Digital Ministry/Church

As we are doing this, it's got to be for discipleship and building a community, not for building your own brand and an audience so you can exploit yourself for notoriety. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church. But more than TED for Tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciple making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? Oh, and where does the metaverse fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church, or a startup church plant, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church, digitally and physically.

Our heart? That churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now, here's your host, Jeff Reed. All right. Hey, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. This is episode 210. My name is Jeff, and it is a pleasure to be here today. We are broadcasting live on social media right now with all of the Church Digital Podcasts for this season three. We are broadcasting live and trying to get that feel. So if you're watching on social media, feel free to tag us, throw some comments there within the chat, engage with us, and we'll be talking here in a little bit. I've got a special guest. We'll get to there in a little bit. By the way, we have done something really cool.

Like, we talk about the Church Digital so much, and we've got all this content, but when we do Digital Church, we talk about how content has to lead to community. Hopefully, you know this. Our services, they have to lead to community. The content has to lead to community. And what we've done is we've launched the Digital Church Network. We've launched the community through the DCN that's called FAM. So here's what I want you to do. Go open up your web browser right now. Even if you're watching on demand, you can pause it. It's cool. If you're listening on the podcast, don't die in the car. Make your way over to fam.digitalchurch.network. And let's get you connected over there. Join the community.

It's free, and there is a ton of people with some really innovative, interesting ideas in there. So if you're one of these people that are doing digital ministry or metaverse, maybe you're a pastor, maybe you're a staff person. Maybe you're a high-level volunteer. Maybe you're somebody who's got dreams and just trying to figure out even how to get started with some of that. There's plenty of people over in the FAM, in Digital Church Network, to get connected with there. So do it. And we're going to be talking a lot here about Digital Church Network, continuing on here within this episode. I want to introduce to you my guest who is currently looking away, and I want to wait and stall until he can come back to the screen.

I want to introduce Chesley Lundy. I'm here. Chesley, where were you going, bro? I'm like looking at the little thumbnail on the screen. I noticed that I look like an angel behind me, and so I was trying to close the shutters. So, but, you know, what can I do? That was awesome. Just the moment where I'm like, hey, let's bring Chesley Lundy into the conversation, and he's now off camera. You're usually more wordy. And so I thought I had time. Yeah, I'm trying. And Garrett Silgy, producer of the podcast here, has been like, Jeff, you need to shut up. You need to talk less. So I'm working on it. I'm working on talking less here. So which means here for this podcast, Chesley, you're going to have all the fun.

We're just going to let you talk. Yeah. For the next hour. And so that's great. But really the heart. Actually, Chesley, just even set it up here. I'll shut up. Talk to us a little bit here. Tell us who you are, what you're about, and how you ended up here. Hey, most of you guys probably watching know me. I'm Chesley Lundy. I am helping Jeff lead the Digital Church Network. And so, again, that's fam.digitalchurch.network if you want to join us. And we are helping digital missionaries, digital pastors, digital church planters on finding community. And also, how do you do this digital thing? The reality is none of us are pros. We're all veterans. And if you want to be called an expert, you just got to be two steps ahead in an age of disruption.

And so that's what we get to do, which I'm excited about. And we're excited to help you do what God's called you to do. And if you want to be a part of that community and hang out with people that are like-minded, we'd love to have you there. Awesome. Yeah. So this is going to be a great conversation. We're talking a little bit on the Digital Church Network side. Now, by the way, Chesley Reed, Verde Soto, says hello. Hey, what's up, man? Evidently, Reed's looking, watching over at LinkedIn. Yeah. So there you go. So Reed is with, he's like a programmer with Subsplash. He's amazing. If you guys need some help doing just about anything with websites and stuff, he's the man. Awesome. There you go.

Hey, Reed, we love our friends over at Subsplash. So Subsplash, feel free to make the check payable to digitalchurch.network. That'll be great. No, Patrick Lencioni does that on his podcast. He's like, it's an unpaid sponsorship right here. We just did that. There you go. It doesn't get any... Let's just be honest. They're all a little unpaid at this point. But hey, we got to work on that. So hey, listen, here's what we're talking about here today. We're talking about how to launch a digital church and or a digital ministry. Like so much of when we talk with people, they have great ideas. Maybe it's a planter wanting to start a new church, or maybe it's even somebody that's a digital church at a, or excuse me, it's a digital pastor at an existing church.

And they just, they have an idea to do something different, maybe with leadership support, maybe not with leadership support. And so what we've come up with, and Chesley's been, man, this is like his baby. This is the thing he's been working on so hard is to create really this launch pad, this start to help people formalize and get started in doing something new in digital space. And so I get the pleasure to like facilitate a conversation and hang out with you guys. And by the way, now Spencer Rogers says, hey guys, from LinkedIn as well. So LinkedIn is like the platform of choice here with the DCN, with this conversation on the Church Digital Podcast. So Chesley, like just a little bit, let me ask you this question, just even to set up the conversation.

Why are you so passionate about this, about helping people get started, about helping people launch in to something like this? Yeah, I think when you look at the landscape of church, we are all now on a level playing field. And the reality is church is somewhat behind the times. And if you, I think Erwin McManus said this, if you want to be a futurist in the church space, you just got to look at what's already being done. And so I think we have... It sounds like Erwin. Yeah, it does. It really does. And so I think you can look at what's happening in the business world and you can look at how online businesses have launched over the past 20, 25 years and really see a formulaic pattern. And I don't believe that the church world is much different than that because they are looking at how do you gain attention?

How do you build relationships? How do you share permission marketing to begin to cultivate a community? And so if we take those principles, we can apply them to the church world and begin to plant digital churches or faith communities that have an online presence. And so I'm excited about that. I think the church has an ability to be global like never before. I think we're actually flipped. We used to be the global ecclesia or the global diaspora with local ecclesias. Now we're a global ecclesia with local diasporas. And so that's really exciting for me. And I want to be on the front edge of helping others find out what their passion is and the people that God's called them to reach and to serve and help them do that in a way that will expand the gospel.

That's awesome. And there's so much of that that's happening within FAM. And it's been such a joy to even start to meet these people. But I can digress. We're going to talk about FAM throughout this entire thing, I'm sure. But let's get into this launch pad. If we're launching something new digitally, what do we need to be looking at? And so I've got here, Chesley, from his list, from his launch pad, number one, rely on the Spirit's leading. Number one, rely on the Spirit's leading. So Chesley, talk to us a little bit here. What are you thinking here with this one? Yeah. So a good friend, Chris Caputo, says, you can go, but you might not be sent. And so we want to make sure that the Holy Spirit is sending us.

And that takes time in prayer and listening to the Holy Spirit's leading. And obviously, with those of us that like to build things that are new, we oftentimes start going and say, hey, God, we need you to get in on the goal. And I have that same propensity to do that. And so I have realized over the years in church planting, replanting churches, when I do that, God doesn't bless it. And we need to begin in prayer and in fasting and in seeking God's face and be willing to sit and wait and be patient until the Holy Spirit tells us what to do. Jesus wasn't slow. If you look at his ministry, he was not slow. He was on the go most of the time. But he had instilled in as a discipline in his ministry, the busier he got, more often and the longer he got away with the Holy Spirit to commune with the Father to figure out his marching instructions.

And as somebody that was in the military, if you don't have your orders, you're not going until you do. And so if we are somebody that is supposed to reach people for Jesus and plant churches, those are orders from heaven. That's called apostolic ministry. Apostolic means sent ones. It was literally a government official on orders from the Caesar, if you will, in Roman times. And so we need to have that same posture when it comes to the Holy Spirit. Awesome. Let me ask you just a follow-up question on that. So we're following the Spirit. We're trying to engage, but we're doing something different, something that the people that we normally look to for spiritual guidance, the church, the pastors, maybe they don't see and they don't understand.

Like so many of these conversations I've talked to with people within the established church and even planters wanting to do something different, where it's like, is this okay? Is it okay to have these thoughts? My leadership, my family, my wife, my friends, nobody understands this. What does it mean? Like how do we find the Spirit, rely on the Spirit when those around us that we normally fall back on don't necessarily even understand this? Yeah. Another friend, Rob, he says, prayer is the work. And I'm pretty darn sure he stole it from someone else because I think it was Oswald Chambers that wrote that. Prayer is the work. And the reality is when the external world doesn't understand something, our job is not to get mad and to get angry and said, I'll show you.

The job is to go back to the Holy Spirit, submit, be still, know that he's God. Don't do things in an act of vengeance and an act of, I'm going to prove it to you, but just have the silent confidence that this is what God has called me to do. When you have that, you'll have peace. If you don't have peace in when you're going and you're moving out of anxiety or moving out of this emotional space of, well, they don't understand, so I've got to show them, that's probably when you need to take a step back and listen and wait on the Holy Spirit. And when he tells you to go, go. If he doesn't tell you to go, don't go. Like just wait. And internet's going to be there tomorrow, right? So God wants people saved more than you do.

And so if that is the case, he knows what you should be doing, and we should always be in step with the Spirit. That's what Paul said. Walk in step with the Spirit. Don't get out ahead of him. Don't be behind him. Do both. And if your people and your friends and your leaders, they don't get it, be humble, be gracious, keep praying. Love it. Getting grounded in prayer and having him guide in those steps, that's so crucial. Especially as the innovator. And that ties really well into just even the theme here with season three on the podcast. This idea of being the humble innovator, the humble disruptor, where we're not trying to upset the dance card for a purpose of destroying an old model to do something new.

But it's we're helping others see a new opportunity. And we're leading out in that space with it. And so love the idea here. Number one, relying on the Spirit's lead. Number two, we've got clarify your missional identity. Clarify your missional identity. What are we digging into here, Chester, with number two? Yeah, clarifying your missional identity. This is who has God called you to? What is God calling you to say? And how is God calling you to be different? And so when you're looking at a community, the reality is the church is going to look similar no matter what. But God has called you to reach somebody different. Paul said, to the Jews, I was like a Jew. To the Greeks, I was like a Greek.

I was willing, this is Paul writing, I was willing to be what I needed to be for the cultures that I was set in so that by all means, I might win some. And so the goal is to find out who has God called you to? Paul wanted to be called to the Jews, knew he was called to the Gentiles. Like he wanted to be called to the Jews. I want to say that he wrote that in Romans. I want to tell my brothers about Jesus and I want to show them. But the reality is God had called him to the Gentiles to be the apostle to the Gentiles. And so there is somebody that God has called you to. You need to know who that is. And then you need to know how to express the gospel in a way that they will understand. If you look at the way Peter talked to the Jews in Acts 2, and then you look how Paul talked to the Athenians later on in Acts, you see two very different presentations of the gospel.

Paul understood the Greek culture. He understood the religious landscape. And he understood their philosophical DNA. And so he used all of those to communicate in a way that was specific for the Athenians. The reality is I can't talk well to certain groups of people. I am not going to connect with them. But there are some groups of people that God has called me specifically to. And I know who they are. And you know who yours are. That's a missional zeal. Who has God given you passion to reach? Missional uniqueness. When you're building a community and mission, how are you unique versus everybody else out there? And what are you going to communicate in a way that those people understand? That's missional message.

That's beautiful. Now, let me ask, because what you just said actually probably flies counterculture to a lot of what we find in the church today. The established church, you know, they're trying to reach everybody within a neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. Now, sometimes there's narrowing that the, you know, the demographic or the type of people that are in the neighborhood. But, you know, we're trying to be everything to everyone in the physical church environment is more practically, we're going to try to blend away all the contextualizations. The contextualizations don't exist. We're just getting a message out there hoping that it's going to stick. What you're actually talking about is a much more narrow scope.

You know, Seth Godin talks about creating a message. He's not Christian. He's Jewish. He's a marketing guy, though. And he talks about creating a message in a way that it's specifically for someone and getting them to own that message. Now, in a digital space here with this, with the missional identity, like, it sounds like you're talking about really narrowing that down. Is that where you're going? Yeah, the riches are in the niches. So, yeah, I think that is absolutely, I'm unapologetically saying that. And the reality is the churches that do this in a physical space actually are more successful as well. When they hone in on who God has called them to reach, they're more successful. Now, if you want to unleash disciples where they live, work, learn, or play, now you can be for anybody.

Because the reality is you're not for anybody. You're for leaders. You know what I'm saying? As an organization, when you're like, we want to reach everybody, but we can't. We're going to instill and invest in people that are leaders so that they can reach the people that God's called them. And in that way, I'm going to be for everyone. But the reality is, as an organization, I can only choose one type of person to go after. Am I going to go after a leader? Am I going to go after young professionals? Am I going to go after skateboarders that hang out on a Saturday afternoon and a half pipe? I don't know. It's up to you. But as an organization leader, you have to know who God's called you to. Yeah.

Now, if people are listening at home, scrub back the past two minutes, listen again, and start to recognize the decentralized mindset where it's not, well, I may be giving away too much. Let's keep going. Number three here. Number three here, design your community structure. What's a community structure? Talk to me a little bit here about this. Yeah, every community has levels. Every community has levels. And mostly, they're five levels. Some of you in the attractional legacy of church with Rick Warren, you might have heard the community, the crowd, the congregation, the committed, and the core. That's five levels right there. The truth is, every community has at least five levels. There may be more depending on, and there may be informal.

But communities have levels of insiders versus outsiders. And as a community leader, you don't need to leave those up to chance, because they will be built for you. Whether you do it or you don't do it, they will be built. And you should have, as a leader, some intention in making sure you design what those five levels look like. And the reality is, as a church, Jesus has kind of given us a template. You know, we have the city we're reaching. We have people of peace. We have the people inside the church that are our family. Then you have the diaconate, the deacons, the ones that are serving the people in the body. And then we have the elders, those who are protecting the community. The reality is, as well, we have people we send out.

And oftentimes, in a centralized context, like a building where people go to, when we send out, we lose connection with them. But we don't have to do that anymore. We actually can put those in another ring in our community as well. Those who are on mission who can be us. But that's a teaser for a little bit later. The next one would be bridges. Like, in these rings, the people that are inside those levels need to know how to go deeper into community without you being the bottleneck. And so you've got to create these bridges over these, what I call gates. The gates are boundaries in a community that keep outsiders from another level of community. And so each level has a gate around it. And they need to know that they're part of the community, but they're not as far in as they could have been.

And that's what we need to create. We need to design a community structure that shows that we have an intentional pathway into each deeper level of community that has qualifications. And this is what I call it, consider bridges. Qualifications to get in, standards to stay in, rites of passage that says, I crossed the bridge and I'm letting everybody know. Tokens so that we remember that day. And rituals that say, once you're in, this is how we do things here. And so those are what I would consider bridges into deeper levels of community. Okay. Now, let's back up. Like, when I typically talk community, you know, when we talk about it here on the show, it's more community like in social media, community like within metaverse and some of the worlds there.

You're defining community a little bit different here. So maybe unpack that here a little bit. Yeah, metaverse, Facebook, these groups are groupings of people, but groups of people don't make a community. They might just make an audience. And so we want to create some levels that they can travel to belong more. When you begin to systemize a space that says, hey, you can belong and be a part of us and have an identity that says, you are us and we do things this way. Now you move from audience. You move from a crowd to community. And that's what we're trying to do there. So community is a tightly knit group of relationships that say, we are in this together, whatever this may be. Yeah. What's the benefit?

Okay. So like a church would cluster people within a Facebook group and they would call that community. You know, and it's using your words. It's more of an audience as opposed to what's the benefit of getting a structured community like what you're describing? How does that pay off for a church, a planter or an established church long term? Yeah. People need to be needed and known. And in a world where we can pull up a Facebook group and build somebody that watches our stuff and call that a community, that's not a community. A community invests in the lives of others that are a part of it. They're going someplace together. This is why a mission is so critical in a community. You can't have community for the community's sake and it actually stay together.

You have to have the tension of mission alongside of it. So there's got to be a purpose. But the reason why this is so important is because people don't grow without relationship to others. It is not knowledge by itself that transforms people. It's knowledge, relationships, and experience together that transforms people. And Jesus knew this. This is why Jesus structured community. 72, 12, 3, 1. He knew what he was doing. He had deeper and deeper and deeper levels of community. And we've got to, Jesus modeled this for us. We've got to do the same so that we can help people belong more and grow in what God's called them to do. And you cannot do that outside of community. And we have fooled ourselves so often in thinking building a crowd is good enough.

It is not. That's solid. You can look at John 6 as a perfect example of how Jesus chased away the crowd to get down, filtering out the crowd to get in the place of a community. That was actually the start of the 72. So well said. Well said with that one here. Moving on, number four, build a healthy team. Build a healthy team. Ironically, Angela Craig just wrote a blog today for the Church Digital on part two of how to build a healthy team. We'll link to it in the show notes. But for your context here, Chesley, what does building a healthy team look like for a digital church, a digital planter, somebody in an established church? Yeah, I think first off, it's understanding as you recruit people, you're not actually recruiting them to help you do your thing.

You're recruiting them to help you figure out what they're called to do and launch them into that. In the process, there's things that got to get done. I know that. I understand that as a church planter, there are things that got to get done and you need a team to do that. But the reality is so often we, I'm trying to say, choose my words carefully here. We burn people out because we're so towards the mission and forget about community and those things need to be intentioned. And even on a team, they need to be intentioned. And so we need to be very aware of the fact that people have emotions even on a staff. And so there's ways to do that. Chris Caputo with said Discipleship Network talks about building relationships with the three to five space so that we can honor each other, learn, instill joy.

So those things are important. Recruiting is important. And there are ways to do strategy well inside of a team that will cause people to feel like they were heard and validated and understood. Not necessarily that they'll agree. And so many leaders, when they build teams, they build from a top-down. Jesus said, the leaders of this world rule with authority and a top-down structure. They use power to oppress people. And he told his disciples, with you, it will not be so. He's not talking about a hierarchical model. He's talking about a mode of leadership, which is saying, I'm not going to lord over you. I'm not going to oppress you with my power and abuse my power. Well, the only way to do that is to understand how to use influence and relationships to infuse strategy into an organization.

And to build a healthy team, you have to have a system that will allow you to do it. There is a system that will allow you to get where you need to go as a leadership team in a way that is emotionally healthy, where you're shepherding people along the way. And that is very important. That system is long. You should hang out with me to find out more about that. So I'm not going to go into all the details here. But there is a clearly laid system that helps you do that. And finally, the visionary integrator relationship. I just had a conversation with Bill Hoyt and Bruce Bugbee. Both were instrumental in the converged denomination. And Bruce is who I call the godfather of spiritual gifts in the church.

He worked at Willow Creek and some of the other larger churches in the nation. And we were talking about the fact that everybody always misses the thing that actually caused organizations like Mars Hill, organizations like Saddleback, organizations like Willow Creek. They forget why these things grow. They think it's the power of the visionary, and it is not. It is the combination of a visionary with an integrator. Walt Disney would have been in jail had it not been for his brother, Roy Disney. Bill Hybels had Don Cousins. And so often, we look at the visionary and say, hey, this is the guy that has it all. When you're building a healthy team, those of you that are visionaries need to have an integrator.

You have to have somebody that is the yin to your yang that can manage as you lead. That's the special sauce here. And so often, organizations don't do that. Church planters think it's the heroic. And our culture builds up the visionary leader as the end-all, be-all. And the reality is that's not the truth. So if you're going to build a healthy team, you need to find somebody that is opposite of you. As you are a leader, you need to find a manager. And there are rules to how you relate to each other. And so those are a couple of the things when you're building a healthy team. How do you build it? You've got to have emotionally healthy strategic practices. And you have to find an integrator to your visionary.

And if you are an integrator, you have to find a visionary. Yes. That's beautiful. Let's unpack some of that. On the emotionally healthy practices, you talked about helping people find their thing as opposed to your thing. In digital context, just paint a picture. What does that look like? Yeah. So I'm always asking, if you could do anything that brings you joy, what would that be? I got friends that play on Call of Duty. They like to hang out with their friends, play Call of Duty, and pray for each other. You know, on a team, though, I'm looking at, hey, we've got all these tasks. Like, what are you best at? If I've got somebody over here that loves just hanging out with people and walking with them through a proven process to grow them, I'm going to let them come over there and start playing around with that.

I'm going to say, hey, why don't you jump in there and see if you like that. If you are great at, I love just talking to people and welcoming people into the organization. Like, okay, you're going to be there. And then I have an empowerment framework through that that says, hey, as we grow and trust with each other, I want to give you more authority. So, I'm giving you more responsibility as I give you more authority. I'm not giving you all responsibility and no trust to do anything. So, in a digital setting, via Facebook group, via Metaverse community, you have roles. And I call, well, I don't call this traction. Gino Wickman, who wrote Traction, calls it the accountability chart. And when you're doing these things, it's finding the roles in your community that need to get done and then plugging people into a role, not necessarily a title.

Say, hey, these are roles with these responsibilities. As I get to know you, as we do assessments, as we build trust, look at these roles and see if you have a passion for these things. Awesome. And so, building that emotionally healthy, you're starting to see where that's starting to come together. And by the way, this is all baked and things that we're working through with DCN. And so, once again, fam.dcm.network. If you've got questions, we can start to unpack stuff over there within that space. But here with the visionary integrator relationship, I hear what you're talking about. Like, paint for me a picture here. Integrator versus maybe the typical executive pastor. Like, is this, is it similar?

Are there differences? Like, what? Because we're probably more used to a senior pastor and an executive pastor. You're using some different language. So, like, just maybe compare those and contrast. Yeah. I don't enjoy the titles nearly as much as I understand the roles. So, a visionary role and the integrator role. And what we know as the lead pastor, executive pastor, like that combo, that's usually a visionary integrator. And so, what you'll find in the integrator role is it's, their job descriptions are usually very different across the board. And the reason why is it always is complementing the leader. The best way I can explain this is Captain Kirk and Spock. They were the yin to each other's yang.

Like, Spock is the quintessential integrator and Captain Kirk is the quintessential visionary. They're completely, utterly different than each other. But together, they provide a stability in leadership and a power in leadership that allows people to move forward. They're very different roles. And they're very, they're like almost polar opposites. Kirk is an emotional leader. He goes with his gut. He's intuitive. Spock doesn't have emotions. He has to go looking for them most of the time. And he's a great manager. He can lead for short stints, but he's not actually a great leader. He's a great manager. Whereas Kirk can manage for short stints, but he's not a good manager. He's a great leader.

And so, if you want things done and executed, you want Spock. If you want things moving forward, you want Kirk. And so, those are what we're looking for. In the ministry role, usually that's lead pastor and executive pastor. But I don't want to get caught up in those titles. I want to say there's a visionary role and there's an integrator role. And if you are a visionary, you need an integrator if you're actually going to see your vision succeed. Okay, we've managed to go 210 episodes before a Star Trek reference was dropped on this podcast. Look at me, man. That's awesome. Thanks for ruining the, I'm so not a Star Trek fan. Nerds out there are celebrating. Yeah, like this, that's, we're going to announce the retirement of the Church Digital Podcast.

I'm going to have to launch something new. There we go. Just so we can regain it. I'm kidding. No, that's very good. That's a good, it's a good parallel with the integrators. By the way, Reid is out there, your friend from Subsplash, our friend from Subsplash. Amen to integrators. So, evidently, he's a fan. And Reid would definitely be an integrator. That man is legit. Way to go, bro. Awesome. Very cool. All right. Hey, number five, develop your engagement engine. Develop your engagement engine, excuse me. What are we looking at here? So, what is an engine? It is a compilation of systems that work together to convert energy into motion. That's what it is. There are systems in every church. There's a giving stewardship system.

There's an event system. There is a volunteering system. There are digital systems. There are HR systems. There are multiple systems that have to go into working together to convert energy, the work that you're putting in, into motion. So, that things are actually moving in the right direction. And so, online, what that means is building marketing funnels for assimilation and also building a discipleship, a development process. You have to have a clear process. I love talking about Dave Ramsey and how he built his company. Dave Ramsey built the quintessential digital company before internet was a thing. And he did it with books and mail and CDs. And now he's moving into digital products. But the reality is he built a community around a development process.

Everybody looks at his products and go, well, that's it. That's not what he was doing. He gets on a podcast or a radio show every day. And he preaches the seven baby steps, that framework, that development process. And he has marketing funnels to get people in on social media, anywhere you go. Like, you can be in a relationship at church and as a champion or as a practitioner or as an endorsed local provider to get people into the system. You can do this in the metaverse. You can do this on Facebook. You can do this in Call of Duty. You could do this in World of Warcraft or Fortnite. You can use your people, if they know the system and they understand the system, as a means to invite people into a process which will actually end up in community at the end.

That will create a movement. We're always so worried about movement that we don't understand the process of building the right funnels. And so that is why I like talking about Dave. But you got to know what are the seven core practices of following Jesus or what are the five ways to transform your life? I don't care what it says. I don't care what it says, but you've got to have a clear one. And if you bring people down the clear one, you attach them to a relationship, you help them experience knowledge, experience relationship, and you create transformation. On top of that, as you do that, as you're building them through that process, helping them move from an insignificant life to a significant life, whatever transformation language you like to use, attach it to an asynchronous community.

This is important online because it's not just the digital gathering that creates a community. It is the ability to talk and connect with each other no matter where you're at, at any time, day or night. And the only way to do that is through an asynchronous community. It could be a Facebook group. It could be Discord. It could be any of these. It could be a private social network. But you need to have an asynchronous community for this to work on a digital platform. And then lastly, and the most overlooked and probably the most gold you'll ever need when you're doing this, is build your email list. Your email inbox is your equivalent to your house online. Nobody likes people peeking into their inbox.

Why? Because it's private. It is my home. And so when you get somebody's email, you are invited into their house as a guest. And so it creates the beginning of a real digital relationship with them so that you can begin to provide value that starts transactionally, moves them into value where we build as a coach, and then builds value into the community where they want to grow in relationship with you, relationship with Jesus, and relationship with others to perpetuate a movement. And you have to build an email list. And you have to build an email list. I cannot stress that enough. That is the number one most important. If you don't get anything out of this whole show, it is get emails and begin to communicate with your people via email.

More than any social media platform, more than the metaverse, anything. Emails are key. That's interesting. There's a couple questions there. But let's lean into the email first. So, you know, the typical church is sending something on MailChimp or Constant Contact or something. They're getting an open rate of 27%, 34%. The majority aren't looking at it. You know, it's funny. I actually had a church I worked at. It's been a minute since I was at this particular church. But I had a guy walk in my office and say, Jeff, I received 10 emails from this church over the span of a week. And the one email I actually cared about, I didn't see because of all the other mess that was happening in my inbox.

And so many churches are actually devaluing the email. You're actually taking the reverse approach. You're leaning into it. Why? I'm leaning into it because churches don't know how to use email. Every business leader on the planet that does digital business, online business, knows that email is the most important thing. What churches do wrong, which they tend to do wrong in every environment, is they think online communities are basically online bulletin boards. They think email is another way to post a flyer in your inbox. It is, you know, when you send out those mass mailings that have like the postcard where you spend a ton of money. And then, you know what happens when I get one? I throw them away.

That's basically what we're doing. All we care about is advertising our next event or giving information that nobody cares about. The reality is when you use an email, what you need to do is you need to provide value for the daily lives. You need to build content that will help them become more like Jesus, love Jesus, solve a problem. So blogging, podcasting, like those are the things that you need to use your email for. It is nurturing that relationship through, I'm going to give you content that, hey, think about this today as a devotion. And don't do it every day. Do it maybe twice a week. You can even do a five bullet Friday like Tim Ferriss does. He curates things that are happening that he's thinking about.

You could even have event lists on there. But don't like kill them, overkill them with information. Give them value. Use that space to actually build a relationship with them by saying, hey, I was thinking about this scripture today. And let me tell you what it did for me. Hopefully, it'll do something for you. Use email that way. And I bet you, your open rates will go above 20% because people actually start caring about opening them to get value. Right now, you're not providing value. You're just asking for stuff. You know what it feels like to me is the more that we talk about, especially like this engagement stuff and the email and the asynchronous. This is not just for a digital church or a digital ministry of a physical church.

The physical church engages from this as well and benefits from taking advantage of these tools as well, right? Yes, absolutely. I'm helping a megachurch right now rethink digital strategy. And the reality for them is they have tens of thousands of emails that they've never used. And so what they end up doing is they go, well, I don't need those emails anymore. Well, actually, that's not true. You could actually grow your church by engaging with them to go, hey, we're praying for you. We've got somebody online. If you want to call here, we will set up a Zoom even to pray for you. You've got to have call to actions too. But what I'm thinking is if you're going to do something like this, it needs to be 80% value add, 20% ask.

We end up doing 95% ask and 5% value add. And so we've got to shift our paradigm in the email space so that we can actually make it work for us rather than against us. But it is the most overlooked, most wrongly utilized part of the digital strategy. And we need to begin to see emails as people's digital houses. That's beautiful. Actually, I wrote that down just now. 80% value add, 20% ask. I think that's a great takeaway. Hey, listen, if you're watching on social, you've got questions, feel free to throw them in whatever the thing is. It'll pop up, whatever the chat on Facebook or on YouTube. We'd love to engage or ask some of those questions here in a little bit. But just to summarize here, so the six steps towards launching a digital church, a digital ministry, something new with digital.

Number one, rely on the Spirit's leading. Number two, clarify your missional identity. Number three, design your community structure. Number four, build a healthy team. Number five, develop your engagement engine. And then number six, we've got launch your community. So, Chesley, what's your perspective here with this one? Yeah, I think if you look at every movie known to man, they have a launch strategy. And they're putting out trailers, they're putting out teasers. And what ends up happening is it becomes an event to go to. It's something to be a part of and experience like Batman a couple weeks ago. Like I got to even sit in a Batman showing before they launched it everywhere else in the nation.

And it was amazing. I had a lot of fun. And it was wonderful. But they had a sequence that was built specifically for mass appeal and attention. They had stories around it as they're building a community. And they had triggers in that as they're sending me emails as well. And so, as we think through what it looks like to launch a community, it's not just start day one and go, hey, we're here. And then crickets. No, there is an intentional way of doing this that digital businesses have been doing for 20 years. There's a way to gain attention and have people build relationship enough with you that they're actually going to want to be a part of this because it feels like something important. It feels like something I want to be a part of because it might actually transform my life.

If you understand how to sequence emails to do that, to get you going somewhere, if you understand how to utilize stories that help people validate their own emotional buy-in to this, that'll help. And triggers that will help you allow them to move into their story through this. And that's why I say you always got to be around discipleship as well because these triggers, these things are amoral, but they can be good or bad. It's not like they're powerful and they could either be used for evil or for good. They are potent, just like a gun is. It's useful in the right hands. It's dangerous no matter whose hands it's in. And so as we are doing this, it's got to be for discipleship and building a community, not for building your own brand and an audience so you can exploit yourself for notoriety.

And so build your list, launch your community through sequences, stories, and triggers. And triggers. Very good there. Yeah, it's very easy for digital to fall back on the brand. It's very easy for digital to take more of an influencer or, and I don't mean influencer as a pride or as a negative there necessarily, but it's more of a word of pride. And of, hey, we want to, we need to keep that, the humility of this. And that's why I think it's so great that right off the top, it's rely on the spirits leading and keep this whole thing baked in prayer and the humility of that. And so definitely, uh, Chesley, man, this, this is a, this is a great list. Um, how, how, how long did it take you to come up with this?

Like what's, I'm just curious, what, how did this, what's the story of how all this stuff happened? Yeah. So I've been a replanter and a church planter. So I've been going through this for like 10 years and I'm never done training. Like, I, I mean, honestly, I'll show you a book right here, sequences, stories, and triggers came from my, uh, like my foray into learning launch is a book that I've used that I've learned a lot of this stuff from. Um, I, I've done marketing on, in the digital space for about seven years. I've helped other people, other businesses with messaging. And then when COVID happened, I realized, oh, this is how you launch large in a digital space. And then I realized launching large will only build an audience if you don't actually help people develop.

And digital is about max communication to one, not mass communication to many. Although you can do that, you should do that. So branding in and of itself isn't bad, but it's always to develop the individual so that they will go and do what Jesus called them to do so that you'll build a movement of community leaders that are also doing that thing and on and on and on. Um, and so, um, I have been in the church space my entire life. I've always wanted to know how it works. And, uh, and then digital has been a desire of mine because I love new technology. I mean, you know, I got my glasses that you can't stand. I'm just an early adopter about all that stuff. And, uh, so yeah, I'm just a student and knowing church planting and realizing like nobody's actually figured out how to do this well.

And I took the principles I've learned in business over 15 years. I've took the principles I've learned in church planting for the last 10. And I took my experience that I've had doing digital ministry with, uh, students and I combined it all together and said, this is what I think will work. Now, obviously, if you're a digital church planter, there's some other things that you're going to need like, uh, fundraising and stuff. But that's part of your engine that you'll build in this as well. And so, yeah, that's a quick synopsis of the story. Dude, that was, well, even this whole thing, uh, less than an hour flying through six steps to do something, uh, to launch a digital. Like, this was all very quick.

And so, man, Chesley, thanks for jumping on here. By the way, I'm coming around to the whole Snapchat face, uh, Facebook glasses. So I met, we'll offline, but there's some really fascinating stories that I've been running into, uh, with those glasses. I may, I may have to get one. I'm not a Snapchat guy, so I don't think that's going to happen. That's fair. They make a Facebook version, right? They do. I have the Facebook version. Yeah. I don't, I don't do Snapchat. I, I, I may, I may do that. We'll have, we'll have to see. I can move that stuff in the house. My wife will be like, not in the house. So that's fair. That's fair. Dangerous. Awesome. And, but that's a whole other podcast for another day.

But hey, we're, we're going to wrap up the plane. Uh, by the way, uh, you know, fam, just another connection point. We're wrestling with all of this stuff in, in offering trainings and, um, in opportunities to dialogue and engage on this. And so that's fam, fam.digitalchurch.network. And so head over that way. Chesley, as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts? Yeah. Um, you can do this once, or you can do this a thousand times. If you'll multiply your reach through actually discipling someone else and teaching them how to do it with you, that's called apprenticeship. Like that's when a movement starts. Don't do it by yourself. Hope other people do it. And so I, I'm excited about, uh, doing that with you guys on fam.

And maybe just maybe, um, you'll see some of this stuff roll out pretty quickly. So. Yeah. Hint, hint, wink, wink. Uh, it's a good time to jump in fam. Ben Stapley just texted me while we're having this conversation. Why Ben Stapley? Ben Stapley is, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm going to call Ben publicly. Ben, you're supposed to be fasting from social media. Why are you watching social media right now and texting me a photo of that? I'll read the text here in a little bit, but Ben, I'm disappointed in you. Hey, listen, this has been, I'm kidding. I love Ben. Ben's great. Ben hug, Ben right now. We're hugging on the camera. Ben, this is great. Hey, listen, uh, it's always fun. I love doing this stuff live.

Uh, but Hey, for Ben Stapley, who evidently will never talk to me again, uh, for Chesley Lundy jumping on, this is Jeff with the church, digital, digital church network, and so much other fun stuff. Jump in fam. Be a part of the conversation. We'll see you next time here on the podcast. Y'all have a good day. Peace.