EP241: A Digital Missionary Strategy That Works with He Gets Us & Alpha

You see, there's an opportunity for a digital missionary to be humble in posture and to be able to listen to the people that we need to listen to. Digitally in a metaverse, you know this, it's better to ask questions than make statements. It's better to use question marks than periods. And for the love of all, don't use an exclamation mark. Gee, I could have went strong there, but don't use an exclamation mark. Keep it calm. The fact is, is that many times when we as Christians were guilty of not listening, but waiting patiently for our turn to speak. And if we're really going to discover the people that we're reaching to, we need to build that credibility. And if all we're doing is telling them what to do, that's not building credibility.

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church. But more than tech 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, friends. We are streaming live here. Jeff with the Church Digital, Digital Church Network. Wanting to talk with you about a digital missionary, about a volunteer structure that I've come up recently. I was speaking at a conference last week, and we had some questions centered around digital evangelism. And I just happened to be like, hey, you know what? I'm actually writing a book on that. Let's start to talk about that. And so, that's where we are. And I wanted to share some of this with you. We're literally going to whiteboard a session of this and start to walk through how some of these free, I'm not kidding, all of this stuff is free, some of how these free digital tools can revolutionize your church moving forward.

As in, hey, you don't have to spend a penny, and oh my gosh, things will be different. You ready for this? This is going to be great. By the way, we're going to be basing a lot of this on He Gets Us. And you may be aware of He Gets Us. We've talked about it before. But He Gets Us is an ad campaign centered around connecting spiritually seeking people, spiritual explorers, people that have spiritual questions, and getting them connected to churches. And so, it's through the church digital. We're offering 12 months of He Gets Us for free. That's thechurch.digital slash He Gets Us. You've seen the ads, NFL, Major League Baseball, World Series, basketball. You've seen them on social media. I just found out, I just read the article, they're doing two Super Bowl ads.

The Super Bowl is actually going to have two ads driven towards He Gets Us, which means there's two opportunities, even with the massivity of, is that a word, massivity? The massiveness of what the Super Bowl is, we're going to be driving spiritual explorers and trying to get them connected to churches like yours, okay? So, and by the way, we're going to be doing a webinar to talk more about this. So, Hope Among Sobering Statistics with He Gets Us, The Church Digital, Blue, we're doing a webinar Thursday, November 17th, 10 a.m. Eastern, thechurch.digital slash webinar. We'll talk more about that here in a little bit, but let's, hey, Mike Funkhouse is jumping in here. Mike, it's been a couple decades, bro.

Hope things are going well, and that's awesome. It was E-M-I-C-M-G, as I recall. Mike, I used to run a Christian, actually, I used to run a physical brick and mortar Christian bookstore. If you know me, Jeff, where were you smoking? But it's Mike. Anyway, it's great to see you. That's fun, Mike's a friend from back in the day. Hey, look, so actually, I told you we're going to whiteboard. Boom, I actually got like my iPad set up right here, and we're going to walk through some of this stuff, and hopefully, it's going to be good. So, hey, we've got this thing called He Gets Us, right? And so, we've got dozens of churches. I can't even spell. I don't know what's going on in my life right now. But we've got He Gets Us, and the goal of He Gets Us is to get people connected to churches.

And hopefully, that works, and we're seeing it work. The problem is, is that when we try to do He Gets Us and do it straight to a church service, well, it doesn't necessarily work that quickly. And actually, the engagement, the follow-through, the chances of people actually showing up to a physical church service is low because there's not a lot of relational equity that's built up. There's not a friendship. There's not trust. And so, we need to get to the place where there's more trust in this relationship, which gets into some of the stuff that I want to talk about because, and I would love this if there's somebody else in the room, I would love for somebody to help me wordsmith this. Because what I would say is, hey, you know what, friends?

You know what we need to do? We need to boil the frog slowly. And to be honest, there's only like, boil the frog? That's kind of disgusting. Like, is that really the imagery you want to use? It's 2022. You can't just say what comes to your head. And so, I would love some help maybe wordsmithing that and figuring out how to do it. But the goal is, is we need to build relational equity with these people before we invite them into the church service. This is, some would say that's hard to do digitally. As digital ministers, as digital pastors, it's not. We know how to do it. It just takes time. And so, what I want to do with you is I want to share some things that will help in this process to help things go quicker, smoother, quicker, clearer, faster.

So, we've got He Gets Us right here. We're going to get leads sent to our inbox from He Gets Us. And then at this point, instead of saying, hey, why don't you come to our church building Sunday morning? Which is the convenient answer. Well, what I said last week was that we wanted to get people connected, not to our church services, but instead we want to utilize Alpha. And Alpha is a great option. If you don't know anything about Alpha, and it's alphausa.org is the website that's listed here. Alpha is a online, they offer it online, but it's also physical. It's evangelism. They actually, they offer these like eight to 10 week small group courses that are centered around answering questions, spiritual questions that people have.

And it's a safe environment. And it was all physical pre-COVID. COVID, they moved it digital and they had immense success with it digitally. And Nicky Gumbel actually was a digital skeptic pre-COVID. As a result of COVID, he's become a digital supporter. And yes, they're moving back to doing physical and we're talking about doing some other things with Alpha. And they've modernized some of their materials. And, but I've got friends that are doing, there are churches within the digital church network that are doing Alpha in digital, but we've got churches that are doing in virtual reality, Alpha, and they've had immense success with the dialoguing of the material that's coming as a result of it.

But here's what I want to talk about because we've got, he gets us. And the idea I suggested last week was that he gets us is going to drive straight to Alpha. It occurred to me, and actually I had some questions about that over the week, that the problem with driving straight to Alpha, and yes, it does work, like I don't want to mince words here on this, but there's an opportunity for us to build more relational equity, to build more relational credibility, to get more trust with people. Just like we don't want to pass people off to a church service, well, it's an event. And Alpha, of course, whether offered physical or digital, is still just an event. And there's an opportunity here to do more than just an event, but to really start to look at building a relationship and building credibility with people.

And this is where I wanted to start to get into maybe an idea of going from he gets us and handing that off to a digital missionary. Maybe this is crazy, but the idea is I think we've got digital missionaries in our church. You know, right now in online, in a physical church, hey, why don't you serve online? You can be a chat host for us on a Sunday morning, or maybe you can lead a small group. I think this is another category. And so what I want to do is I want to start to define what a digital missionary can do or what the framework is. But the idea is that they would get somebody from he gets us and build a relationship with that person to eventually hand off into an Alpha course. But where there is equity and trust, as opposed to just throwing them over to the Alpha course and seeing what sticks.

And so the idea of digital missionaries, we've talked about that a lot lately through, well, just a lot of space, leadership network, new thing network, really starting to unpack maybe what the blessed practices is. And Dave Ferguson and Dave we trust. Dave is probably my boss two or three times over through leadership network, through new thing network. He's the lead pastor at Community Christian Church in Chicago, exponential leader over there. And so Dave, we're talking about digital missionary. And Dave says, hey, why don't you do blessed practices? What they call blessed practices, do that digitally. Now, blessed practices, B-L-E-S-S, this is not new. Blessed practice has been around for a while and Dave's been doing a great job with it digitally, or excuse me, physically.

He's been doing a physical space. He wrote a book on it, published it, I believe, a year or two ago. And it's phenomenal, but it's the simple framework that turns an everyday person into a missionary within their physical community. And so what Dave's idea was for blessed was to begin in prayer, was to listen, was to eat together, was to serve, and was to share. So what Dave would literally do is he would have volunteers who would adopt these blessed practices and start blessing people within the physical neighborhood of the church in Chicago, where they would, and the idea was that these volunteers, before they would do anything, they would start the conversation in prayer. Like, between them and God.

God, bless this relationship. God, do something in this relationship of beyond what I can do. God, I am not dragging you into this conversation. God, lead me in this conversation. And Holy Spirit, do something in this space. Like, it is a holy moment where we are confessing, God, we don't have the answers. We are positioning ourselves in humility. God, help this relationship grow so this person can better know you. And after that prayer moment, we shift to listening, where we build that relationship with that person. But instead of standing on a platform and immediately telling them how Jesus is this answer to all of their problems, we actually need to listen to what their problems are. And instead of interjecting what Christ needs to be or what Christ was from my life, I need to listen to them and discover maybe what Christ needs to be in their life.

You see, there's an opportunity for a digital missionary to be humble and posture and to be able to listen to the people that we need to listen to. Digitally in a metaverse, you know this. It's better to ask questions than make statements. It's better to use question marks than periods. And for the love of all, don't use an exclamation mark. See, I could have went strong there, but I don't want to use an exclamation mark. Keep it calm. The fact is, is that many times when we as Christians, we're guilty of not listening, but waiting patiently for our turn to speak. And if we're really going to discover the people that we're reaching to, we need to build that credibility. And if all we're doing is telling them what to do, that's not building credibility at all.

And so we're beginning in prayer. We're listening. We're going to do this. And you can begin in prayer. You can pray digitally. You can pray to God. God, even with the virtual reality headset on, you can be wearing a freaking headset and God is still hearing your prayers. I hate to tell people that because it's like, that's so violating to what they actually think. But the truth is God's in the metaverse too. So you can begin in prayer. You can pray for people, no matter the format you're in. You can listen to people, no matter the format you're in. Virtual reality people will listen all day, or they will talk all day long, which gives you plenty of time to be praying for everything they're saying quietly while hearing it.

And then now we get to step number three for the E of the blessed practices, eat together. Okay, so maybe I could eat like virtual reality food. How do I eat in a Facebook group or on social media? How do I do this? So it was very obvious that eat probably wasn't going to work. So what I did was, so I'm trying to figure out how to port this over because they've asked me to. Okay, what am I going to do? What is eat together? So I brought together 15 digital and metaverse pastors, physical churches, church plants, digital, metaverse, the entire gamut. And I explained to them, so what are we going to do for eat? They said, well, what do we do when we eat? When we eat together, the idea is that we're intimate.

We're not pushing an agenda. There's no slide deck. There's no presentation. You're having a conversation. You're building relationship. You're building equity. You're building trust. I don't actually go to restaurants with people just where I am in life. I'll go with my family. But for me, it's not eating together. For me, it's having a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Or maybe I shouldn't say this on social media. It's going to a bar and just hanging out with a friend for a while and talking. That's the relational equity for me. That's where I build those relationships in those types of environments. And yes, Zoom, of course, as I'm Zooming and catching up with friends all over the place. But when we started talking with...

I remember Mark Lutz from Lutz Digital Church was actually the first guy to say it. He's like, Jeff, my eat together is when I play video games. When I have a chance to actually sit down and talk with somebody and learn about what's doing in their life, I do it while I'm playing whatever video game Mark's playing. And somebody else is like, oh, yeah, no, I do that in virtual reality. When I just go up to people and I start talking to them and invite them over to a world, and we share that experience together. And it was funny, after those words of shared experience were said, they were said maybe a dozen times. And so E has quickly become experiences shared. And this is a great opportunity to do this in Digital Metaverse where maybe it's playing a video game.

Maybe it's jumping on a Zoom call and drinking a coffee together. Maybe it's going into a virtual reality experience or a virtual reality bar even. Listen, online church services can be an experience shared. Now, I don't know that it's a good one, especially if you do not have much relational trust with these people. Because, I mean, it's a lot of effort to get somebody to watch a 70-minute anything online. So find an experience. Maybe it's sending a YouTube video to them on an interesting topic that, because you've listened to them, you know what they're looking for. And so now you can dialogue with them on that specific thing. I don't know what it is. This is where missional imagination kicks in.

And maybe even being attuned to the Holy Spirit, God, what can I do as an experience in Digital Metaverse space to really connect with this person? This is where I think there's a huge opportunity to start to connect with people relationally. So we begin with prayer. We do that in Digital Metaverse. We listen. We share an experience together. As the Lord leads. And then we get to number four here. We serve. Now, physical space, serving's easy. Hey, I noticed your yard wasn't mowed. Let me mow it. Hey, you know what? Why don't you let me watch the kids tonight? And you and your wife can go, you and your husband can go on a date. Hey, you know what? It's Saturday morning and here's, you know, two dozen donuts.

Don't eat them all at the same time. You can do stuff like that very easily. Now, I can tell you, Digital, in the Metaverse, it'll look different but can be as impactful. In the COVID season, when I've had COVID, I had candy, I had Gatorade, I had food randomly delivered to my house by people I've never met. They just, hey, we heard you were sick. How can we help you? And they would not accept, no, thank you. And so random stuff just would show up. As a matter of fact, you know, a lot of you have seen the Funko Pops behind me. There's a percentage of these Funko Pops I didn't buy. They've randomly showed up here at the house because somebody found out I like Funko Pops. As a matter of fact, the first set of Funko Pops I've ever owned, they're right back there.

It's Ghost Iron Man with the girl, his daughter from Endgame. It's a, you know, a very nice set. To be honest, I have no idea who sent it to me. It just showed up here at the house one day. First set of Funko Pops. And then everything blew up afterwards because I'm kind of obsessive when it comes to life. That's a whole other conversation. Somebody served me by sending me a Funko Pop. Now, I probably lost in that equation off the money that I've spent because now I'm addicted to Funko Pops. But the heart is, is that they had care in their heart when they did that. And subsequent, people have sent stuff to me that's awesome. That is even a level of serving. By serving, we're showing that we have heard what these people are talking about, what the explorers are talking about.

You'll notice here by beginning in prayer, by listening, by experiences shared, and by serving, this is a posture of humility. Listening is not getting on top of a soapbox and telling people what to do. Serving is not demanding. Serving is posturing them, the person, at a higher level than you are. Is this not a great opportunity for volunteers? Is this not a great opportunity for maybe even you as a pastor or church leader to serve, to listen, to begin with prayer, to share experiences with people? And as you can bless your volunteers, maybe then empower them to bless people from He gets us. And so as you go through this, begin with prayer. As you go through listening, as you go through experiences shared, as you serve, you eventually get to the place where now you can share Jesus because you've got relational equity.

Could you share Jesus before? Sure. If the Spirit leads you to do it after listen or during listen, who am I to say, No, don't do what the Holy Spirit tells you to do. My point in this is saying, though, is that as we're scattering seed, there's an opportunity to till the soil, to water it, to make sure that it's not thorny bush, thorny bush or, you know, path. And that, I think, is the opportunity. Maybe it's some people call it pre-evangelism, whatever you, because I'm not losing sleep on that. But the heart is, is that we can do some people, we can do some work on some people's hearts before we get to Jesus. And in 2022, 23, where nobody trusts the church, maybe it's an opportunity to restore that trust before we get to Jesus.

For what it's worth. So that this would be the goal. Get your volunteers to roll through this digital missionary pathway of beginning of a prayer, of listening, of sharing experiences, of serving and sharing Jesus. And now, after you go through that, maybe it makes sense to get them connected into a church service. Maybe it makes sense if they still got spiritual questions. Maybe it makes sense to connect them to Alpha. By the way, we still haven't gotten to the place where this costs money. Like, He Gets Us is 12 months for free, right? We talked about that. At the church.digital slash He Gets Us. Gets you 12 months for free. Alpha USA, everything there is free. And of course, your digital missionary pathway that I literally gave you, the volunteer hours that are implied are free.

Okay, maybe you buy my book when it comes out in January. So maybe it's $9.99. That's so cheap, I'm not even going to write it in there. The heart of this is that you've got an incredible opportunity to empower digital missionaries and to release them and start to utilize some of these free resources that are in place to help your church start to process and evangelize and create disciples even in digital metaverse spaces. Now, look, the opportunity here is not just for He Gets Us. There's your entire church, right? Your church has relationships. And maybe you start to empower your entire church to be these digital missionaries. Or maybe you start to funnel relationships through your church into these digital missionaries.

And you start to go through that same process, not just for He Gets Us and at least if He Gets Us, but maybe it's for your entire church. You've heard me say this many times that the best resource our church has today are the people in our pews. It's not the checkbook. It's not the LED screen. It's not the haze machine. It's the people in the pews. What does it look like if we get them activated and if we get them released on mission? And that's the opportunity that I'm talking about here. By training them to be digital missionaries and connecting with their circle of influence as well as with the people that are funneling into the church, you have opportunities to start to mobilize digital missionaries, even coming out of your own church, reaching people in their circle of influence as well as the people that are coming into your building.

You want to talk about revolutionizing your church? Learn how to activate the physical church people. Get them excited about being on mission and releasing. By the way, you know, I had the unfortunate reality that I got to tell this to about 15 African American pastors yesterday. I'm sorry to say this, Pastor. Your influence has never been as little as it is today. It is continuing to shrink. We see more and more reports. Most recently, or at least one of the more recently ones would be Barna's Digital Evangelism, December 2020, where people have spiritual questions. They're not coming to a building. They're going to Google to find the spiritual answers, which leads to YouTube. And so how's your church service showing up on YouTube?

Chances are not good. And they're going to their friends who they think may have spiritual answers. So yes, we need to, as a church, we need to figure out a digital strategy and we can help you with that. But the larger piece is, is that you really want to effectively reach people. You've got to reach our people, disciple them, release them, and then help them reach theirs. And the framework that I'm talking here about being a digital missionary and doing the blessed practices that I've shared, begin with prayer, listen, experience is shared, serve, and share Jesus. I'm going to write Jesus here just to be clear. Share Jesus. This is a very simple, easy, memorizable, repeatable framework that is perfect for volunteers.

So I would definitely check that out. And that's on the house. I'm not even charging you $9.99 for the book. But do that. Hey, let me put this up big, nice, and clear as you can see it. But we want to get people through, he gets us, we want to get them connected to digital missionaries in your church, where you can disciple them, answer their spiritual questions, and get them fed into an alpha course, which will feed into a church service, or get them fed into a church. We want you to help people. We want you to help people meet Jesus and get connected into a biblical community. And whatever that order is, is irrelevant, I think. But the heart of this is, is that you have to be relational with people, which is where the digital missionary course kicks in.

Well, cool. If there's any other questions on that, you can hit me up on social media. You all know where to find me. Just to remind you that there is a webinar we are doing Thursday, November 17th, 10 a.m. Eastern, talking about hope among sobering statistics. We'll have, he gets us there. I'll be there at Church Digital and Glue will be there as well for the webinar. More information at thechurch.digital slash webinar. And if you're interested in signing up for He Gets Us for free, there's He Gets Us for 12 months for free, thechurch.digital slash He Gets Us. And with that, I'm going to land the plane. This has been fun. I appreciate you all coming on. If you got any questions, hit me up on whatever social media channel that you're on right now.

Throw in any questions or comments there, or you can, you know, I'll give you my cell phone number. I don't have it as a slide, but it's 484-324-8724. Feel free to text me at the number 484-324-8724. That's number for the church and telephone out. But all right. Hey, I'm going to land the plane with that. This has been great. I'm Jeff with the Church Digital, Digital Church Network. Thanks for jumping on here with this live stream. We'll see you here next time. There's always something. Podcasts, streams, would love to connect with you however possible. Reach out. Thanks, y'all. Have a good day.