The Church Misdiagnosed the Problem: It Was Never the Internet

: when I say distance, it doesn't mean disconnection. I can have somebody be a missionary in their context, not showing up at the building, but they are a part of our culture. They have gone through our membership class. They are engaged in a group life. They are connected to us via digital platform and via personal relationship. And they never step foot in a building. And I don't care because Jesus is being preached and they're getting support and care as they're being a missionary and an extension of us. And while they're going, they're still staying. And you could not do that 20 years ago. Literally could not do that. We can today. So the fear is founded based off of an old paradigm. And the more we see that and understand that we're able to grow and restructure our church as a community rather than a centralized event system. Control Alt-Redeem is for anyone called to ministry in the digital frontier. Gamers, streamers, and everyday believers navigating life online. Each episode equips you to live on mission and the real stories of lives being changed. Reset your expectations, reframe your mission, and redeem the space you're already in. This is where digital ministry gets practical, creative, grounded, and hopeful. One episode at a time. Welcome in to Control Alt-Redeem. We are resetting the culture, redeeming the space. And I have the privilege of having Chestly Lunday on the podcast with me today. Welcome in, Chestly. Good to see you.

: Doing pretty good, man. How about you? Doing well. We connected when you were back at the church digital. And now you have moved in some new directions. And so I'll tell you what, I was really excited when I saw the title of your book to know that you're still thinking innovation and innovation within the church ecosystem. Because I really feel like, you know, for the next generation and in 20 years from now, we've got to be preparing for what's on the horizon. Yeah, I think, you know, when I started down this road with Jeff, you know, years ago, my whole thought was, how do I help the Capital C Church take this step? I've been thinking and working in digital spaces since 2015 as a church replant. And then I really wanted to figure out like, hey, how do we help pastors of, you know, prevailing model churches learn how to minister and develop people in the digital age? Because it's not going to be the same. And, you know, we felt that COVID. We all got excited about it. I remember talking to my wife. I say, you know, we'll actually see the real shifts after everybody gets back to the building. I was not under the impression, like, as people were going, like, yes, we got to dig in. I'm like, as soon as they can get back in, they're going to change tune in. And they

: did, you know. And so I remember having conversations from a consulting perspective, you know, and some of the best consultants in the church world saying, hey, we know digital is important, but the market is saying there's no market for it. Meaning that pastors of prevailing model churches, as much as they're giving lip service to it when they needed people to come and watch them online, as soon as they get back in the building, they're like, oh, we're done trying to figure digital out. And I'm going, well, that's a problem. And they said, we agree. I said, but if you know this in this world, if nobody's going to buy, then you don't have a business. So I'm like, what that means is there needs to be a whole lot more education. And so what I did is I went down the rabbit hole with research, two national research studies on Gen Z technology and the future of faith in America. We're talking Pew level, Barna level research. And that's where the book started coming from. It's like, I need to, I need to share with you what church as a community looks like rather than church as an event. And some of these things, the methodology behind it, you know, might look a little different, but the principles behind it have been around for over 2000 years, you know? And so. Yeah, absolutely. The, the shift there, you know, was somewhat forced, but see, and people are going back to the building, but I've kind of seen

: it is they missed what the problem was. They've misdiagnosed what the problem has been. And so I love how you're talking about these, there's these principles that are applicable. We had somewhere got off. I mean, there's culture shifts that have happened and they creep in over time and there's slow shifts from one generation to the next generation of some of the stuff that we've done, but we somewhere along the line made it event focused. You have to come to the event that happens in the building. And that's the thing that is all important. And the only thing that counts. And we lost relationships with people because we don't live next to the people that we go to church with. We don't work with the people we go to church with. So how are we actually engaging and building community if we only see people for a couple of hours, one day a week? It's really difficult. Yeah. So I say we theologized our methodology. Yeah. Say more on that because I like how you talked about that. Yeah. I really believe like you look at 500 years ago when the printing press came out, like to be honest with you, we needed to centralize preaching because we had lost the message, the mission in the pomp and circumstance of traditionalism through the Catholic church. And so that shift from preaching to become central because we need to explain the word of God in

: clear terms was actually needed for the Christ. And they had to do it because they were speaking to an agrarian society who just so happened to start getting this thing called the printing press that allowed them the need to read. And so they had to come from their spaces as a community. You think about Marchetti's constant for willing to travel 30 minutes. Well, at that point, it was by foot or by hoof, right? And so looking not very far. But what also happened is that being in an agrarian society, it didn't last an hour or two. It lasted six, seven hours Sunday. But you came and you had to hear the word because they didn't know how to read it for themselves. So this centralized paradigm of a building and somebody preaching the gospel and preaching through scripture was absolutely needed. So for 500 years, absolutely. But then we have a new technological shift that is creating new disruption. And it's what I really am. I mean, Jeff said it all the time ago. He's like, I don't know if you're a digital guy, you're an innovation guy. And I would say he's partially correct. I'm actually a disruption guy. I study disruption. I think innovation is awesome. But really, I don't really

: care about like all the new tools and toys. And I actually care about from a sociological perspective, what does disruption do to the things in our society that we trusted in a way we interacted with each other? These institutions, which were good for a season in the form that we needed. But somewhere along the line, they got corrupted because they got bloated. They saw power as commodity rather than a current. And so what ends up happening is they try to hoard it for themselves rather than stewarding it and channeling it. And when that happens, over time, people on the bottom lose access. And when they lose access, it's only a matter of time before something new appears. So technology democratized a lot of this stuff, communication, relationships. You know, what really happened to the church was not the internet. We still had churches going just fine in the mid-nights and they were getting bigger and bigger and bigger. What happened was Facebook, Facebook and MySpace with the social network, decoupled relationship from geography. And that's when we had the big disruption. And so we democratized relationship and decoupled it from geography. So now, distance didn't mean disconnection. And so that was the thing that caused us from an intellectual and institutional perspective,

: specifically the church, is what caused us a lot of heartache. You see the decline start going really fast, right around the time of the iPhone and Facebook. And the reason why is because the first thing that uh, the first thing that we say matters in church is community. And when you longer needed the church to build your community, why would we go? I would say the church has actually done itself service by saying it's community. It's not. It's actually personal spiritual growth. That is the number one product of the church. You know, we want to use fancy words like discipleship, but most of our people in the world that are, you know, working a nine to five, no clue what that means. And honestly, if you ask pastors, if you ask nine of them what this session meant, you probably get 13 different definitions. And so when we have that problem, we're not actually having the conversation we need to have. And what we, what we end up seeing is a fragmentation of our, of our models that we've relied upon. And then we start actually trying to hoard even more or demonizing. And all the while what's happening is you're being disrupted because people are finding new ways to connect, new ways to do things. And before you know it, they can have a full spiritual life on the internet without ever stepping foot in a building and still being connected with each other. And people don't know how to handle that because that doesn't work

: in our ecclesiology. And I say, you know what, God might doing a new thing and he's using technology to do it. And he's sitting on the throne and every molecule in the universe is his. So he's not scared or put off by this. Maybe the spirit is in the system, just like Marshall McLuhan said. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much that you just, you know, put in there, but I think there is that you're one of the mistrust of things. The church often is mistrusting of the culture, of technology, of things that come along. I love pointing out things that are so prevalent in the church today that at the time were a disruption or they were, they're so prevalent in mission work today, but were taboo and not a part of things when they were coming along. People think about, oh yeah, radio ministry. Oh yeah. Television ministry. No, no, no. Those were fought tooth and nail to, to go to the radio, to go to television. And so to go to internet, same thing. Like it's the disruption pieces. We don't like disruption. We want, you know, one piece in our life that feels like we've got control. And some reason we've decided that it has, it's got to be with our church services. When we gather together, I just want everything to remain at this spot where I joined in. I don't want progress on

: some level. And I don't mean progress from, we have to get better, but a progress of letting anything change what we're doing and how we're doing it. Yeah. And I think what's happened is that very thing. I mean, you look at Isaac Watts and all the hymns, that in of itself was a disruption to the church because they were chanting, they weren't singing. And then you add the, you add the print press because there's distribution now for the songs. And if you had a worship war before the worship war, like people like would threaten Isaac Watts to kill him. And honestly, being in America with being through a pastor during some of the worship war stuff, you're like, I could totally see that. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I totally. Well, I'm like, yeah, let's take you behind the woodshed and we'll only one of us will come out, you know? Right. Oh yeah. I'm like, I've seen people that act that way. If they can get by with it, like they did back in the day, they actually think they probably would. Yeah. Well, it's, it's like, so that being the case, then let's look at the other side of it, because we know that there's going to be disruption. There are things that are coming in and you gave a couple of examples in your book about some of the things that are disruptive or they're ahead of their time. And you Spotify as one of those shifts, as an example of moving, you know, over to Spotify, it was disrupting what was already in place.

: And I think that's a really applicable analogy because it's kind of like, how do we disrupt what we've been accustomed to and how do we move into the new thing that God is already working with some people that he's been leading for the last dozen years or so? Yeah. I love this Spotify analogy because I talked about, there's like these three different ages in church world right now. They're all vying for, for, for everybody's attention. Um, I would say it's the attractional model, the, the, you have the mental micro model, and then you have this whole digital, like hybrid thing. Um, I would say, listen, all models are flawed. Some are useful. And I think what's actually gonna help us make disciples, because that's actually what we're supposed to be doing, not planting churches. We're supposed to be making disciples. Now, out of that, churches are a great tool to do that. But, um, we're gonna need all of those models to some degree, working synergistically to make it work. But I like to equate those type of paradigm that the paradigm, the thinking around it as Motown, highly centralized. Everybody's got to come through us. We're going to be the people that determine what gets out there and does it. And all the flow of resources are going to come through us. That is the big prevailing model, church denominational,

: in some regards, take that place as well. Highly centralized paradigm. And then you have like this missional micro, Alan Hirsch, forgotten ways, very much Napster. You know, let's just burn it all to the ground. We don't care. Leadership doesn't matter. You know, just get rid of it all. Let's, you know, they're trying to rage against the machine or rebel against the man. That is Napster. Like, we're just gonna undo it all through the highly decentralized mechanism. And what we found, you know, when you look at history of this segment is that all didn't work. Jobs sanitized the centralization model using some principles of the decentralization model and, and kind of rescued the Motown model, but he became the gatekeeper at that point. So they had to give it all up to him, which he wanted, right? So Jobs, as innovative as he was, was still a centralized paradigm guy. And he became the villain of the Spotify story in such a way, in that way. What Spotify I love did said, Hey, nobody cares about owning music. Everybody cares about experiencing music. You keep thinking they want to own their music. No, they just want to listen when they want to listen to it. That's why

: Napster was so successful. It was a little illegal. So he had to figure out that, that piece Daniel acted. And what he did, like, you know, obviously distribution was a problem, but he still happened to have a friend, Sean Parker, who was part of Napster that went to Mark Zuckerberg, who Sean was a angel invest in and said, dude, this will work. And this will, this will get Steve Jobs to shut up. And it worked, right? So Spotify, what they did is they took the best of the old and the best of the new, and they hybridized it and made it available for everyone. And when it happened, like it was gangbusters. You couldn't put it back in the, you can put it back in the bottle, you know? And so I say, hey, when you think about that thing, there's this framework that I like to talk about with my mentor, Bruce Bucknerby, which is in the book as well. And he says, you have to learn must be centralized so that you can remain decentralized without fragmentation. And that was the issue that Napster didn't solve. And Steve Jobs thought he solved it by creating a payment gateway. And it was actually, no, streaming is the way and streaming with payment so that artists still get royalties. Now it's changed. It's changed the industry so much. But you can hear people, they're struggling

: with the fact that they're in between these two institutional norms. My friends, that is disruption. We have obliterated the old and not quite figured out the new. There will be a new institution where everybody feels like we stabilized. Oh, thank God. And for years, it'll work. And then there'll become a time that it won't work anymore because, you know, there'll be new things that come out. And so we're just, we live in this liminal space. Spotify is a great opportunity to see like the metaphor for what we're going through. And I think it's perfect. And I do, I think a digital by itself is going to be helpful. No, but you and I both know if you have a really great digital relationship, chances are you're going to want to meet face to face. So you can try as best as you can. And that's community because there is a connection between you and me, regardless of the fact that I'm talking to a camera right now. I still get to see your facial expressions. It lights up certain chemicals in my brain and we can have those conversations. So I think Spotify is a great metaphor for where we're at it. Yeah, I really think that makes a lot of sense too, because it is adapting to the current climate, moving towards what the future is going to be. And the whole motif there of centralized, decentralized, that's always seems to be the rub is when we get to who's controlling it. And I'm

: not saying there's not a reason and a rationale for this. I have a friend of mine who, when he talks about the Reformation and the, you know, the preaching model that we inherited for 500 years, he says essentially that model was to teach ex Catholics how to be Protestant. And so he's a little bit more dogmatic in that way of this methodology is to correct something. And so there's that thing that we inherit that's like, well, we have to worry about heresy. We have to worry about wrong teaching. And I'm not saying there's not a place for that, but I don't want to do everything that I do, starting with, okay, let's make sure there's no heresy because, well, then we can't do anything. Because then we have to figure out every possible, we have to run every scenario through it. We have to figure out every piece of theology before we even turn the camera on the first time. And I just don't see that what happens in the book of Acts. I see, you know, God is moving people to go do stuff. And then the church has to figure out, was that okay? And if so, how do we frame doing those things? And that's what I've, you know, you and I have been witness to for the last five years in digital spaces is those people who are out there being led and blown by the spirit. And it's like, I'm not sure

: I know what they're doing or if it's going to last or if it's going to be impactful, but I'm glad to see they're being obedient to where they're being called. Yeah. I, I think we got to trust the work of the Holy Spirit in each individual's life. I mean, we, we do have in scripture what's called the priesthood of all believers. You either believe it or you don't. And if you do believe it, you got to start acting like it. And so I love, I say this all the time, because I know it'll get, it'll hurt some people and break their brains. But the reality, the Holy Spirit was moving faster than Peter's theology and he had to catch up. And so did they, so did the rest of the disciples when they're in the Jerusalem council going, apparently Romans are cool. Who knew? Yeah, no. And so now we're sitting, you know, we're dealing with some of that. I think less so now, obviously you and I both know it was out of fever pitch 2020 and 2021. You know, people were having a hard time, but my concern is that they see digital as, uh, as broadcast rather than shepherding. Like there's a lot more shepherding that can be done digitally than people really give it credit for. And so I think that's part of what I'm trying to explain is like, no, this isn't mass communication. In fact, it's scalable one-to-one communication for the first time. So understanding what, and you have to get really nerdy on some of this

: stuff like parasocial relationships and understand community dynamics. Like when you've grown up and understood church as event, you don't understand, like all the things that I talk about are a byproduct, not the product. And I'm going, no, no, no. The product is this, and the events are byproducts. And so the culture has to shift and it's a, it's a mindset shift and some people get it naturally. Some people don't. My goal is to kind of help bridge the gap and say, Hey, there are better ways. I'm not trying to tell you to get rid of your model. I'm not, I'm also not trying to demonize the micro church model. I think there's, again, all models are flawed. Some are useful. My mind is how do we use all of them to further the kingdom in a way that's going to be effective. And so I don't see this as a theological debate so much as a good luck. You, you want to fight that fight. That's fine. Disruption will eat your lunch. It doesn't care about your theology. It doesn't have a theology. It literally just is. And so what will end up happening is the world will move on by and you'll be a vestige of a year. You will be the new Amish and some of you will be okay with that. But the reality is a lot of us are like, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what we wanted, but that is what we will be. And so we've got to think through how do we be faithful to the

: gospel, faithful to relationships, faithful to, to each other and the great commission and great commandment this new age. And you said something about the power struggle and who gets control and stuff like that. The most important chapter of the entire book didn't make the cut into the book. And so I put it out of the free chapter and I thought it was so, and the reason why it didn't make the cut is because I went really academic because the reality is I went, Hey, there's a cycle of power shift that we call disruptive innovation, but it's really a cycle of a power shift and power power is relational authority. That is it. And so we've got to understand the nature of what power is. Every governmental segment institution on the planet, any of our institutions are, our institutions and have relational authority specifically because the people give it to them. That's not an American ideal. That is just the way things are. And what happens is there's two ways of looking at power. Power is commodity, meaning I store it, which means to get it, I have to steal it, or it's as currency. So the more we channel it and let it go and be open handed and pass it, actually the more powerful, the more of it comes. I think Jesus talks about the law of reciprocity

: in Luke 6:38. Give and it shall be given. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall men get back to your, you know, what you would call bosom, which they're, you know, we Americans call something different, but I use King James. It's like pulling out this big like knapsack and like trying to hold it out the bushel and trying to hold it so you can have room. And you say you won't have room enough to contain it. That is power, relational authority as currency. And so there's two ways to look at it. And the world's way is very much you hoard it, I steal it. I hoard it, you steal it. And it takes time, you know, it takes time to steal it. And so that, but the reality is, if you hoard it for long enough, you know what happens to stored up power? Have you ever seen a battery without having a channel? It corrodes. A lot of corrosion, yeah. Yeah. And so that is the issue. You want more healthy power for longer term? Move it. And if we understand that, we understand the disruption occurs when the trust breaks enough that the dam breaks because there was too much corruption. And so this is the cycle of power shift. And so what we're feeling in the church and what every institution known to man is feeling right now is they've had power for so long that has begun to corrode. We have new

: technology that now democratizes access to a wider swath of people that did not have access before, that now they have it. So they don't have to play the old game. Mind you, like one of the ways we can talk about that is the seminary system and ordination. I don't know what denominations are going to do about it because they gatekeep for forever. Right. But let's not go down that path because I have no idea where that's going to go. One of the things you, well, because it'll be solved when it's solved, you know? Absolutely. Totally. So I'm not like whatever that is, is whatever will happen. But what I think that is more is more applicable to more churches right now is the problem that we have with volunteers and filling roles. But if we shift our thinking and you talk about this instead of looking at slots that we need to fill with activating every believer. And this is the thing that I really see within the shifting model to going digital. And then hybrid model is, is right along where the, so when I, when I say digital, it's like, it's just one component of everything that people are doing. Yeah. I think we should call it decentralization, like a decentralized model. Yeah. Because the reality is the tools are going to be the same. Like you could have a group space, micro church, you could have digital. Right. But I,

: I think it's a decentralized paradigm of how church should be designed now. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it, you know, it's getting at is, is going into activating people into their calling. And, and I've been seeing this for longer than I've been seeing digital as, as a tool where it was like, you know, I had a friend who summarized the, the reformation this way, that it took the Bible out of the hands of clergy and it put it in the hands of people. The laity. And, and I really see that's what we're on the cusp of right now is ministry being taken out of the hands of clergy and put into the hands of people. And, and so that's really what I resonated when you were talking about activating people into their calling, because, you know, let's to back up to the, how do you have a million member church? Well, it's not going to work if it's top down, you have to have people activated in, in different levels. So why don't you kind of explore what you're seeing that be viable and how we could implement that? Yeah. Yeah. I actually think that's the primary purpose of the church is to activate believers in their calling. It is not to teach them doctrine. Jesus, if you look at how Jesus taught the disciples, you know, they get to, they're like, why haven't you taught your people how to confess? And he's like, they don't need it yet. Jesus didn't care about, and this is where I go. I don't know how,

: when I talked about the denominations, the reality is this is the thing, you know, because there was a couple of our friends that they didn't know how to handle it because the reality is they could just turn on a cell phone and talk to 20,000 people. So they had the largest quote unquote audience, if you want church, you know, in the denomination. And they're like, you're not, you haven't gone through our system for us to approve you, you know? And the reality is who cares? They're activated, you know? And then you see Jesus saying, you know, with his disciples, they're like, Hey, teacher, there's guys talking about your stuff. We're going to shut them down. And he's like, no, he's like, what matters is the gospel is being preached. They're activated. Cool. That's great. That's what we want. Jesus didn't, you know, have to, you know, see, he did not see what he was doing as I need you to think and say the things correctly. He said, and his whole thing was, I need you to be formed into what God has created you to be. That's what I'm here for. And in doing so, all those other things will happen. There will be fruit of the tree being connected or the branch being connected to the vine, right? So for us, theologically, like the primary product of the church is love God,

: love people, and develop them into their calling. How did God wire them? What is God calling them to? What are the good works that they get to discover on the way as they grow in intimacy with Jesus? And we focus on so many other things. Hey, we were teaching, we were saying things in your name. And the indictment on those people, Jesus said, would be, no, get away from me. We're strangers. I didn't know you, you know? And so I looked at where we're at now, this moment that we live in. Activation and calling can only happen through intimacy with Jesus and his community and the community calling out the gifts of the person as their walk with each other. And that is the primary piece of the church. And so why is not every system in our church, in our communities, built in such a way to lead towards that end? That's the question that I keep having. So in the book, I talk about breaking bottlenecks. People need to be able to get on the pathway without our permission and without our knowledge. Like that is going to be so important. And then secondly is what would be the number six, virtue number six is empower your people. You know, after you break the bottlenecks, cool. But then you

: actually need to give them explicit permission to go do stuff. And if they fail, great, you learned. There is no such thing as failure in the kingdom of God. There is only learning. But in a centralized paradigm, failure is, it's final. It's not good. Failure is failure. And the reality is not, there is no such thing as failure in a decentralized paradigm. There is only learning. And we, that is a paradigm shift for us. And so we got to empower our people. We have to trust the Holy Spirit works through them, guides them into all truth. We don't. The Holy Spirit does. When we do it, we get the boomerang effect. So I think we just empower your people. What is God calling them to do? What is their passion, gifts and personal style? Find out. It's not going to be digital for everyone. It's going to be baking cakes for people on the street corner. Cool. What happens out of that? Cool things. It's great things, you know? And so that's the beauty because the reality is we're called to the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. And when those things are happening in the lives of others, what did Jesus say? They'll see your good works and they'll pray with the Father in heaven. That's the goal. So I don't know. I get it. I'm on my show box now. So I'll be quiet. But that's the point of empowering your people. That's really good. You mentioned the different virtues there. Why don't, why don't you just kind of go through those virtues for everybody who, who hasn't read the book?

: Because I think those are good things to think about because what we're, what you're, you're trying to say overall is there's principles we can apply so that this is not about what the current technology is in 2026. It's in 30 years, it's going to be vastly different. So how do we continuously hold onto things that are going to be key points for us to be in ministry going forward? Yeah. Virtues to me are commitments to the principle. They're not just the principle itself, but it's a commitment to hold dear to it and work at it. So while the methodology with technology right now is going to be a certain way, the reality is you, like you said, man, five, 10 years with the AI and where it's headed. Like I, I, I know that this is the reason why when I wrote this book, I didn't put a lot of technology in there. I was talking a lot of principle because I knew everything that I'm going to write down by the time it gets to the publisher's office is going to be obsolete. Yeah. Um, you know, the first virtue is shepherd the one, I think because of digital and where we're at for the first time in our lives, you can stay with the 99 and go for the one all at the same time. And so I think that's very important because the old way is, you know, we want to go for the one, but we got to stay with the 99. I mean, that was the like, dang, we'll call at them and hope to hope

: they'll come back. No, we can actively go seek out and I use starts. I use a lot of business stories in here because the business has been having to, they have to engage this space. So they've had to adapt to some of this stuff. Churches don't like to adapt and they've had a past for a long time, but what we're seeing is some of the old stuff isn't working anymore or working as neatly and as seamlessly as it used to. And it's only going to keep getting worse. You know, so shepherd the one is the first virtue. The second one is after you go, stay. You know, the church doesn't end when people leave the building. Discipleship follows them into everyday life. And so, you know, Sunday morning isn't enough. You know, you had 168 hours a week and guess what? YouTube and the people on there are with them every single moment of the day. Why are we not? Why do we have a system that says, hey, we need you to come back every week? I believe in structure and rhythm. I think that's very important. But I think what's also important is asynchronous learning as you go in real time. And if you don't have it, you're not going to disciple your people because the people that do have it are the ones that are 10x spending more time with them and teaching them than you are. And so that's where what I mean by staying after you get them, stay with them, you know, and so use digital technology

: that we have right now to be able to do that. Yeah. Well, with with phones in people's hands, somebody is discipling them every day, every day and every day they're being discipled into something. Whatever it is, whatever they're exposed to, whatever they're watching, they are becoming disciples, followers of that. So there are tick tock trend followers. That's through there. They are paying all of their attention to is whatever the tick tock trend is. And I'm not saying you jump on the trend and do that. But if you're not competing for eyeballs because you're just waiting for one hour on Sunday, like you're never going to reach some people because they don't even know you exist. Yeah. Well, and I will get one a little bit more old school for those that are listening that are like, yeah, those tick tockers. But the footclock news, what do you think it was? Like they learned pretty early run. If it bleeds, it leads. Why? Because you'll pay attention to them. And so they became forming, they began forming you. And then we got cable news network. And then you can kind of like delineate between I want my brand of news that is a little bit more like me than this one over here, who's a little bit more like them. And so now my news is not only bleeding. If you whatever bleeds leads, it's also what pisses us off, you know? And so it's like my brand of news, you know, and then now it's like, we talk about misinformation, maybe,

: or maybe it's just propaganda around a certain event that actually wasn't misinformation. It's just from the different viewpoint of another person. And now you have 100,000 of them, you know? And so I go, we've been doing this for a long period of time. It's not just young people. It's just now it's so prevalent that there was three voices. Now there's millions of voices. And so we've now splintered, you know, and go, you wonder why is nominations a big thing? We're watching it in real time. We're watching it socially without it ever being about religion. We're watching about politics. It is, this is how you get, this is how you get a bunch of different denominations because a bunch of different people have a bunch of different opinions. So yeah. And so I think, you know, we have, we have a responsibility to be in the marketplace of ideas and put up our little soapbox and start spreading the message. And some people will like it and some people won't. And I think what's cool, Leighton is, you know, this as well as I do, you and I could say the exact same thing. And because you wear a flat cap and you have your own spin, we could literally say the same thing and we would get two different types of people. That's called collaboration, not competition. I do not have to compete with you because nobody's come watch you that watches me. Well, that's not true. You and I

: would have overflow just because of who we are. But what I'm saying for the most part, I'm going to reach somebody that Craig Groeschel can't reach. And the people that are Craig is reaching, they don't care about Chestly. They don't resonate with Chestly. I think resonance is so important in the digital age and allows me to stay with our people. And that's where I go, Hey, this isn't a competition. This is about getting the message out and who hears, let him, this is Jesus, right? Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear. He was speaking for resonance. He wasn't speaking for defense. And so that was what, that's stable after you go stay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that really connects with several other places where I operate and work. I work with John 17, 23, which is really focused on Jesus' prayer around unity and bringing us together. And one of the things that I see within Twitch culture, because that's where I spend the bulk of my time, is there is this spirit of collaboration. And I don't know if you've heard it called, there, there are the three things, the great commission, the great commandment. And then the third one is the great collaboration. And it's like, you know, in my ministry, you know, sure. I, I, I lived in several different places. They had a ministerial association. We would come together, but what we came together was unlimited social engagement

: activities. Or we would gather together with some who theologically we could gather together and we could do some joint worship services together. But that was the extent of what we were able to do. Now, really with digital, this whole ability to collaborate with, hey, you know what you do really well is as you really break down the gospel. So I'm going to tell people to go over and listen to you break down the gospels. But you know, I got another friend who really is great with the Pauline epistles. I'm going to send them over to another friend with the Pauline epistles. Like we have the ability to decentralize even our own theological framework of where we're, we're sharing and learning. You know, I'm a podcast binger, so I have lots of people in the background of my brain, you know, speaking into me from different theological vantage points. Even one that I never thought I would be listening to is the Lord of the spirits podcast, which I don't know if you've heard of that. It is a Eastern Orthodox pair, uh, podcast. They, they actually have a live call-in show. That's three hour call-in show. And I like, I'm binging that I like, there's years of it. So in three hour podcast, I still got probably another, I think I'm in 2023. Cause I love starting at the beginning of

: a podcast to work on my way forward, but it's like, yeah, I want more voices in the, the, the church world speaking into me so that I can connect with more people so that I can collaborate more and, and be able to be really discerning better of what the spirit is up to. Yeah. I love that. I think that's, I think that's the right route. I often say that, uh, unity in the body of Christ isn't, you is, you know, people say it's not, uniformity is not unity, but I would say it's, it's actually more like a symphony. Yes. We're, we're synergistic moving in and out. We have harmonies. We have different parts. Some people are playing the melodies at different times. That's what unity should feel like in the body of Christ. And I totally agree with you. You know, when I was in ministry and working with, uh, teenagers, I realized really quickly that I actually really love parts of the discipleship process and I'm really bad at other parts. And somewhere along the line, we have made this, uh, conversation about making disciples about you do, you have to do it. But Jesus didn't tell individuals to go make disciples. He told a collective to go make disciples, knowing that we've got to work together. So there's handoffs. And when we started actually seeing that and putting that into place, we actually discipled more kids better, faster, because there were parts of this that I should really struggled at. And it was in the middle, you know,

: but I had a couple of people that were really good at the middle that were not good at where I was. And so we learned how to hand off. We learned how to go back and forth because sometimes kids take steps back. And some, sometimes you got kids running really quickly. So, you know, it's like, Chestly, you take them, you know, which was great, you know? And so I think what happens is when you begin to see the gifts, uh, in other people, then you can go, Hey, you need to go and hang out with that person, you know, because you, you need to be developed in that. And I don't have the ability to develop you there, but that person does. And so, and then when you're ready for like leadership, come back, like that's where I'm great, you know? And so we just started building that way. And it worked, you know, some of the things that's where I say, you know, when, when you're in this place, you got to start building for becoming. So that was virtue, virtue number three. Oh, I was going to bring it. Yeah. Yeah. So we brought us right back to the virtues. Awesome. So that's number three. Yeah. You got to design the community and the structure in a way that allows people to grow. So you got to build for them to grow and you have to help your, your volunteers and your, you know, the systems to work towards that end. And so build for becoming, uh, the next one is move the pulpit. You know, we moved the pulpit in the 500 years ago,

: the pulpit now is in the marketplace. It is in the social media platforms. Like you got to preach there. And I don't just mean like just preaching the gospel. There's a whole thing of like, what has God called you to? How do you know what's uniquely yours to say? And so we talk about, uh, the power of finding your person of peace, which is a Luke 10 principle. The way you find your person of peace on digital is different than you would find it if you're walking from house to house. And so we talked a little bit about that. Um, and then of course, uh, yeah, go ahead. Let's just stay on that one. Move in the pulpit because one of the things that in the last couple of years seems to be the trend within the church is fallen leaders who maybe they were narcissistic. They're self-centered. Their focus was on them, whether it's power or whatever it is that they're false. I'm not pointing a finger at that, but just saying, as we're moving into digital, what are some ways that we don't make the moving the pulpit into digital all about me and my followers and my influence? How do, how do we fight that tension of it being leader centric and it instead being more diverse with the body? Yeah, that's a very good question. Virtue number seven is obsessed over character. It's the last one. Cause for me, it's like a crescendo. And so the very, the most important

: one was the last one. Like, um, I believe that obsessing over your character and I do it different. I'm not talking about white knuckling, sin management. I am not talking about that. I'm talking allow, allow the gospel to undo you so it can redo you. And the only way that does that is allowing the love of God to permeate you so much that it heals the broken dark pieces of you. You cannot do this by yourself. And so I walked through a process that I do, um, to help me do that. And I'm obsessive about it because if I don't, I'm a really bad person. I'm really messed up, broken person. You know, God is in process. God is working on me. And I, I say, so that's the first thing. But in that also, there's this idea of false humility and, and this asceticism and a way of thinking about yourself that I'm pious because I don't do that. And I would say, well, Jesus didn't hide his light under a bushel. You know, Jesus did not say certain things in front of a crowd. So you can obviously be both because he was, I know he was God, but he was also man and he was our model, not just our Messiah. So if he can do it, we can do it. That's what, that was the whole point of him being on the earth.

: Like if, if he can do it, which he was showing his disciples, you will have greater works than me. Well, okay. What was his model? I would say he made the message, the main thing and not himself. If you are the point and you're sitting there and you're going, well, I don't want to do this because of me, then you're actually still making yourself the point. And that's the problem. The message is what matters, not the messenger. And so the message stays forefront. And I'm just a guide to help people to see the message and apply it to their own lives. That's the goal. And so I say, obsess of your own character. Don't take yourself too seriously. And, but keep speaking the message, get out there. What we know in this day and age from the data and the research that we've done, you pastors have to have personal brands, personal brands, 68% of people that are open to faith say, if my pastor does not have a personal brand, I'm likely not going to show up to church. I trust them more if they're outside having a brand that seems so counterintuitive, but it's just, just to clarify what, when you, when you mean that, that they're more likely. So they see them as a brand, as I see you over here doing this. I see you doing this. I know who you are. I, yeah, that, I just wanted to clarify that.

: Yeah. So we talk about personal branding. Yeah. And this is good. This is good stuff because the reality is I, I use this term because I knew it would cause a problem, but it's the world that the marketplace calls getting what you're doing right now on a podcast, talking to me, that that's part of personal branding. It's building a platform. But what it really is about is this thing that Google talks about talks about seven, 11, four in the digital world, you have to create trust and they have the seven, 11, four principles. You need to spend seven interactions on four different platforms, 11 hours, totally to build trust with someone. And trust in the digital age is the most important currency. And the higher, the need for trust, according to Gen Z and millennials and the trends and personal branding study from brand builders group says the higher the need for personal trust or the higher the need for trust in your industry, the more important a personal brand becomes. And so we found that within Gen Z and millennials in our second study with engagement trends among Gen Z and millennials in the digital age, we found that that, that is absolutely the true truth, even in the church. And so when I talk about moving the pulpit, it's this, the paradox is they don't want somebody that is a

: narcissist and arrogant, but they do absolutely want somebody that is out public saying what they need to say to gain trust with them. Oh, that's, that's really good. I'm glad we dove a little bit deeper there and we probably could, could keep going there, but yeah, the, the brand can still be Chestly Lunday. You know, that's, that, that's still the brand as opposed to, you know, I have a, I have an online persona, flat cap dapper pastor, you know, it's like, so it's like, I'm building the flat cap brand. And, you know, you know, anybody that wants to have a sponsorship, if you're a flat cap selling company, I will take it. Like, I'll just say, yes, actually, actually what I've, I've joked around, cause people have asked me like, would you want to do, I go, what I would really love to do would be to design and develop what I call the Jerry Garcia of ties, but with flat caps. That's, that, that's my image in my head is if someone ever says, we want to give you and we want you to do it. I'm like, I already know what it's going to be. I know how I'm going to do it. I'm going to work with you. I'm going to make these Jerry Garcia type style fabrics for, for flat caps because you know, they're not always so flashy, but I really would love some flashy ones. Well, you should. I mean, I'm, I know maybe two or three people that would buy them that I know of. So, and when I'm on the golf course trying to be paying

: Stewart, I would too. There you go. There you go. That's so good. Yeah. No, I, you know, and that's the, that's the beauty is people don't follow organizations. They follow people. And so this is why the personal brand matters so much right now is because they, Gen Z and millennials see personal branding as an extension of you. It's called a parasocial relationship. And so it's actually real relationship and previous paradigms that are more centralized may not understand this because it was the brand that mattered, but now it's the person that matters. And so this is why these people that are falling are falling because the person matters now more than the brand and the brand protected the person because the person was charismatic. But if you are not obsessed over your character, good luck, people will eat you alive because trust is so important. And you, you, your name or flat cap dapper pastor, which everybody will know you as flat cap, right? Right. The reality is you're still you. It's the face. It's not, you know why T-Mobile grew so much? Because John Laguerre got on T, got on YouTube and started doing slow cooker Sundays, not even talking about T-Mobile talking about food. He was creating, creating, he was creating community.

: And people saw that parasocial relationship and said, if this is the guy leading this company, I want to join. And Verizon doesn't understand it. T didn't understand. I was, I was going to use the, the Dave Thomas, Wendy's. Yeah. Because before Dave Thomas took over doing the ads, Wendy's was only so big when Dave Thomas took over and he had his foundation and he was doing all of that stuff. And he talked about the, I, I, I started this store for my daughter who I adopted, like, boom, it took off. And I would say since he is no longer the person, it is, it is dramatically declined because I have, well, I'll just speak personally. I've lost trust in them because I had trust and credibility with him as a person as head of the company. Yeah. I trusted Dave. Dave was still operating out of a centralized paradigm, not understanding what he was doing. So he couldn't institutionalize the trust across board so that when he left, it would still be able to happen. So there's still challenges in this model for sure. But the reality is right now, this is the way moving forward and it will change at some point in the future. I don't know when that actually will be the case, but it will change. And so we've got to keep, we got to keep an eye out for the shift. And that's the beauty. This is what I end up the book on,

: you know, and I hate talking about the book. I like talking about the other stuff, this stuff that we're talking about. But I think we need to care about experimenting more. Jesus talks about two wineskins and the reality is the point is we got to try new things and be okay with trying new things. Don't try to make the new thing that's being created look like or feel like or be adhering to the old ways of doing things. Because otherwise you'll break the wineskin of the old, holding the old wine, which is still good. You will also break the new and you'll destroy both in the process. And I think that's some of what some people experienced during COVID. They were trying to take the old and move it online, but there was no place of engagement and community and relationship building by just putting your service online. Some people got closer if they were doing zoom groups, or if they were doing zoom groups after the service or some other place in in the week, they were doing some of those things. But without implementing new to going online, it's partly why, you know, I continue to hear people say, well, we just got to get back in person or we got to maybe we should stop doing online so people will show up again. It's like you still aren't looking at

: the thing. From the right viewpoint, you've got old goggles on or blinders like a horse. And this is the only thing you can see is in the building on Sunday. Well, and because of that, you know, probably the number one question you get is probably the same question I get when we start talking about this. What platform should we use? What's the type of technology? And I'm like, that is the, that's the, that's honestly that question right there tells me what paradigm you live in. Because, you know, there was a couple pastors that I knew that were totally anti-digital. But when, when, when COVID came around, they began to start showing up on streaming like YouTube and TikTok streaming every day for an hour to still connect with their people. And it was a massive success. Yeah. And they didn't know why. Then they go back to the building and they're like, okay, something's missing here. So what they didn't realize is they had began to start creating real community because it wasn't polished on a stage. It was like, we're talking in real time about things that we're all going through. And yeah, I got to come up with some things to have a conversation, but it's not that hard. You and I, I've been going at an hour for for right now. And it doesn't even feel like it, you know? And so, but what ended up happening is

: people are like, man, I love that. Don't keep doing it. Like, and that is the beauty of podcasting. I think the reason why love him or hate him, Trump won because he got on podcasts. People are so done with short form, you know? And he was the only politician I know of at that point that allowed himself to be grilled for an hour and a half. And so you got all these uncut moments. And people are like, finally, I got to see this guy for an hour and a half and not a two second clip. And I think more politicians are getting on with it. But the reality is the magic of having a real conversation. People go, well, their, their attention span is too short. No, it's not. They're just, you're too boring. Like I can say something, you know, if I say something that fights something that you're going to put on social, you're going to be like, who is that idiot? Then we're going to go and watch him and go, well, he is an idiot, but he's not as big of an idiot as I thought. I didn't get to hear his whole thought process, you know? And so I think that's the rally, reality of these things that we're doing. It's actually creating real community, real relationship. Well, yeah, I guess. And I, I listened to a lot of podcasts. I have no problem with a three hour long podcast. I mean, I'm, I'm cool with that. What I'm streaming, I'm, I'm often doing three hour podcasts as well on, on Twitch. But, but the, the decision for that was the platforms designed for going

: long. For that stuff. Yes. Yes. I'm on a platform whose intent is to go on and stay on with the same person for a length of time. In fact, going three hours might even be a little bit too short, short for the platform. I mean, I wear out after about three hours. I think the longest I've done is a five hour podcast. That was, that was a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. But I, but I had, um, a, a couple that was on. And so I knew them both individually. I was there when they met each other the first time in person. And so it was this really long conversation, bringing in a whole bunch of that stuff, which was just super fun. And, and to know some of those things, but. But Leighton, you know this, like you've been doing this for years. Like, I mean, even the conversations that we had over the years at DCN, when we were there, like, I consider you a friend. Like we haven't, when we get to hang out each other every once in a while in person, uh, like an exponential and stuff. But, um, like, you can't tell me, like, I would love to hear your idea. Like, you know, like, what do you see when you're looking at this stuff and you go, okay, I've heard this, but you've experienced stuff that I, you know, I try to write about it, but you're, you've been doing it. Like, so what do you see when I, when we're talking about this?

: Well, I mean, one, I'll just go back to the title of your book, the, the million member church. And yeah, there, I don't know if you, I'm sure if it was your idea or, you know, the publisher's idea, I don't care, but there's a little bit of provocativeness in there to go. And then to go, really, you really think you could, how in the world could you? And it's like, I already got, you already, you already got them at that point. You've already got them because they have to think about the possibility of it. And it's limited by physical, like, how could you actually have a million people gather in one space? It's already impossible to do that because you can't have a conversation with people. So what, what I have seen, and, and this is just the fascinating thing. Like when I go look at my numbers on Twitch, the most exciting number for me is really going to sound weird. It is the lower my North American number is the more excited I am. So yeah, it's like, I, I don't know what everybody else's numbers are. I don't, I don't study everybody else's, but I rarely am above 80% North America. I am 20% global when I go live and I can push that number down sometimes to being 40% global. That really gets me excited when I can push it down. And it's not happened all the time. It,

: it happens because somebody raided me from another country and brought in their friends. So I'm not, you know, saying it's me, but it's the interconnectedness of, I have ongoing relationships and people I talk with that are in Africa, that are in Europe, that are in Asia, that are in Australia, that are in New Zealand. And I get so much interaction with them and what they're doing. And frankly, it's more exciting sometimes to hear about what God is up to in their lives that to be able to just say weak, like the 24/7 reality of digital space means that when I'm not on, I have a hundred other friends I have on this continent, another hundred friends on that continent, another hundred on another continent, or just pick time zones and say, it's going to be a continuous growth thing where it's at the point where I don't know how long it's going to take me to have every friend I know on the podcast, but I'm sure going to do my darndest to try. And if it takes me years, I've still got lots of people that haven't been on here yet. And it's not about anybody's one particular doing it the right way. It is finding their voice in the thing that they're doing. And I love trying

: to bring on as much variety as I can on here. So I've had a friend who bakes cakes. That's what she does. She bakes cakes on stream. That's it. I love it. I was right. I was right. You said baking cakes. Yeah, it totally makes sense to me. Yeah. I have other friends who do art on stream. You know, they're comic book artists and they're drawing on stream. It's like, there is no end to what you can do to connect with people. So good. You know, it's, it's a matter of whatever I love. There's a group of people that love that. Whatever game I love, there's a group of people that do that. I was just on a meeting on Tuesday and we're talking about, cause we're always trying to get better as streamers with Twitch. And it was Jate live talking about, Hey, one of the things I do is I go, when I look at a game, I'm thinking about playing and see how many people are following it on Twitch and then see how many people are streaming it. And what he's found is sometimes when there's nobody currently streaming a game, but there as a people that are followers of that game, when he goes live in that game, he'll have people that thank him for showing up and playing that game. Cause they love the game, but there's no community that's there for that game yet, or it's moved on because people have moved on to other games that some people got left behind with, I love this game and I want to continue

: to play this game. So there's, there's yeah, there's just so many different things. And I, I love that concept of a million member church from the standpoint of it could happen in the digital space. And the fact we talk about numbers and, and, and gaming all the time of there being, you know, 3.3 billion gamers on the planet and it's growing exponentially every year. So maybe we could have, you know, a million member church within a digital space, absolutely interconnected. And it's, but in order to do that, I think we have to move into the, I know these many people. So there's plenty of people in, in organizations or, sorry, these connected networks I have who know me, but have never actually watched me because I watch somebody else who they know and they know me because I watch them too. So we can build community when I'm not the person in front of the camera. We can build community when I'm in the channel, having a chat conversation with people. So there's like the nuance of all these things. That's what I just like all of the different levels that you're bringing out in the book. I'm witnessing other people doing it in real time space all throughout Twitch. Yeah. And I, so the name, I was listening to Pat Gelsinger, the former CEO of Intel and Scott Beck, the CEO of glue. And he's,

: he's been in charge of blockbuster and, uh, Einstein bagels and Boston market. He scaled them and then sold them. And then he's a billionaire now. So he gets to do what he wants. And that's why he created glue, which is a church faith tech, uh, organization. So between the two of them talking there, I heard him on Kerry new off podcast a few years ago. I think it was, I think it was 21. And Pat talks to the four, four innovative, uh, things that have happened in the last 20 years that now enable the world to have probably, uh, probably he said in my lifetime, you'll see the first million member church. He said church, the first church of a million people. And he was saying it in context of the fact that Intel had just had an event, a TEDx event. I got to meet the guy who pulled it off, believe it or not, which was really cool. Um, that they had 200,000 people from all over the planet. He's like, I could not, I, there's no, uh, there's no, uh, uh, thing large enough to be able to fit all of them in one building, but we were able to do it from a digital perspective. And, uh, I was, I was like, this is Pat talking. He's like, I was thinking, he's like, oh my gosh, this could literally happen. There could be a church that figures this out. And he was saying

: in the internet of things, cloud computing, AI and robotics, like those are the things that are creating an opportunity for us to have an alien member church. And I'm like, uh, yeah, I see it. So that that's where the name came from. Cause I started realizing like his church has a network, the Ecclesia and the diaspora together at the same time without having to choose between the two. That is what we're doing. Uh, church is a network and a community. If you think his church is a community rather than an event, you need to realize, well, that's what Phoenix is 6 million people. You're saying that if I do this and think as a community leader, then I could create something. wind distance is not disconnection because I don't know everybody in Phoenix, but I know a lot of people and those people know people and somehow we're intermingled in this one geographical location. But what, what if we're not bound by location anymore? And we have the technical tools to be able to build an infrastructure that still keeps us together. Remember centralizing what must be centralized so we can remain decentralized without fragmenting. That's the goal. And so if you can do that, and you could build this community infrastructure and you can lead community rather than lead event, you and I both know you have something like that. You're going to have more

: events, not less, you know? Absolutely. Well, and, and even, even along that, the lines there of the diaspora, um, you know, I don't, I don't know what you do when you're going to exponential or other things, but as a streamer, one of the things that I often do as I'm going around the country to whatever conference I'm going to is I post and I say, I will be here. If you live in this area, let me know so that I can meet up with you. I just did that in Colorado Springs was at a conference and somebody like saw my post and I had not seen them in like three, four months. And they're like, where are you at? And I told him, and he's like, I just literally drove past there. And he's like, what are you doing for dinner? I go, well, making plans right now. I'll let you know. I told him where it was and he showed up at the restaurant and got seats for us so that he could come hang out with me for, for a little bit. And, and I was like, man, this is like, we're scattered, but when gathering comes close, you go out of your way to be able to gather together. I've had that so many times when we were at the church digital and we're creating fam at the beginning, like that was so many, so many people all over, like, and I do the same thing, but it was also having the infrastructure there. Like we had a learning and development piece that we were

: working on. And you remember the eight weeks to starting your digital church, you're part of that cohort. You know, I talked to almost every one of those guys still today. Yeah. How long ago was that? Five years? Five years. You know, and I'm sitting there, I'm not actually active in the community anymore because I'm doing a bunch of other crazy stuff. But the reality is I still talk to the guys that went through that stuff. And there was a, there's a learning piece of this that I think is very important for the community to, to grow legs and connective tissue. And so I see, and that stuff is important. And so the way you build this is different than the way you build an event, but the event is still part of the equation. And so I don't say get rid of the event. I actually don't. The event is the rally point. It's not the only point. And so we want to make sure that we are building something that can stand community. And in the process, we can have stronger relational ties because of it. Yeah, right. And the thing that I don't know that the physical church, the big C church has figured out yet is if you develop online relationships and they're real and genuine relationships, then the physical barrier or distance becomes smaller of what you're willing to do in order to gather together. I have a friend from

: England who came to the U S who was five hours away, but invited me to go to a gathering with a five hour drive. I said, yes. So I drove five hours to hang out for two hours to drive five hours back home. That's what online relationship development leads to. And I've heard of other people too. When I was at Exponential West was talking with some, some people and they had figured out doing online relationships with their physical church, you know, they were doing. So when the COVID happened, they, like you were talking about, some people started actually building relationships, not just broadcasting. Well, they had a couple that was from Montana that started watching their services, started coming and building relationships. They decided for Easter, they were going to drive down so they could be in person. Well, if you didn't build a relationship that drive from Montana to San Francisco, that's a too long of a drive with the relationship. It's not. Once you develop the relationship, the distance doesn't matter anymore. Yeah. So true. So true. That is, yes. But you get enough of those and then a million doesn't seem so big anymore because it's also, I'm not carrying the weight of it. This is the anti-personality church,

: you know. Right. It couldn't be. You've got to multiply through the people to have all the connections and have all the relationships and be building the disciples on a smaller scale to get to that larger of a number. Yeah. So we got to think of ourselves as relational architects rather than just talking as in thought leaders. I still believe in thought leadership. I still believe in teaching. I still believe in that stuff. I don't not believe in it. I think we need to have it. I am not somebody that is against the big mega church. I'm not. I still, weirdly, I still like the light in the show. I still know that sometimes digital is really difficult for people to have kids, you know. So there are flaws and there are limitations to every piece. And micro is hard to do for people that have kids. I just, they have talked about it. Multiple people have talked about it, you know. And so there are pieces that all of this can work. And I go, you know, it's really hard. It's, I, I'm going to be moving from Phoenix to Phoenix from Ohio. And I'm considered a missionary of my church in Ohio, you know, still my home church, you know. But that's going to be really interesting. Because right now, what we have is broadcast. And what I'm teaching them is there's so much more than broadcast, you know. Right. And once it is,

: then I'm cornerstone, whether I'm in Phoenix or I'm in Cleveland, it does not matter. And so once we begin to think that way, and then go, you know what, what if I had a couple people in Phoenix that started hanging out with us? Could they become cornerstone too? You know, those are different conversations now that we can have if we think from a paradigm that says distance doesn't mean disconnection. It's about churches, community and relationship. It's not about geography and event. Yeah. Right. Which, which kind of, I think maybe it doesn't fully, but I'm thinking of the, the, the Disney band analogy that you used of making things frictionless. And that's one of the problems that we did not, or a lot of places didn't do is we just put online and then we want you to come in person. There's a lot of friction. We need to have frictionless barriers and frictionless places to do as a next step. Instead of you're in Montana and you're watching us online, but it doesn't count unless you show up in person in San Francisco because you found us. No, we have to have more steps in between that meet people one more step closer, one more step into discipleship, one more step in faith relationship so that it becomes frictionless to say, yeah, I'll drive all the way down there. Yeah. So that is the question that I often ask as we're doing this

: with people. Can somebody in Montana be as totally engaged in the church and what you're doing inside the church as somebody that lives in your community? And most people go, no, no. Why? Because they have to show up in a building. The reality is they're giving, they're serving. Now, maybe it's the serving piece that you have an issue with. Okay. How do we get them to be able to serve? And the reality is them serving looks a lot different when they're in Montana than when they're in Cleveland, right? So they're in Cleveland. Serving means passing out a piece of paper or wiping dirty bottoms during service. Right, right. But in Montana, in Montana, it might mean hosting, like digital hosting. It might mean going into their community and opening up a coffee shop so that they can meet unwed mothers. You know, I'm just spitballing here, right? Yeah, right. You know, but the reality is, wait a minute, that one sounds a lot more interesting. And I think that's the volunteer issue that we're having today. Right. Even people that are at their places, when you actually get down to it, you go, well, they can't be as engaged. Actually, that's a lie. They are as engaged as 90% of the people sitting in your service because they're doing the same thing that they're doing. You know, and the reality is that once you actually become as engaged and go, well, how can they serve? You realize, oh, geez, we need to open the

: door for things that we've never thought about even inside of our organization because they could become a missionary in their context in Montana. And we probably need to get our people sitting in our pews physically as missionaries in their context, which we always talk about, but we never, never seem to facilitate. And so, and we don't seem to facilitate it because we think in terms of geography and event, and we've got to, we've got to feed the event. And I go, actually, you don't have to. Right. And often the, the default is invite them to an event we're having, you know, not go spend time with them one-on-one versus, you know, the person who is remote. And if they're not engaging because we're trying to expand into their neighborhood, but they're trying to engage with what's happening with the church. Well, now they're going to have to engage with how do I join in what's happening on the service? I could be a part of it. I could engage in chat and actually make an engaging conversation happen live while the service is happening. Instead of sitting there watching, I can stop being passive and I can go to being active and participating in that way. And that could just, you know, step after step after that. And then, you know, so I'm saying there's lots of avenues and there's lots of ways we're the ones that are the limiting factor usually. Yeah. And I, I think, uh, you look at like the growth track of most

: churches, it's, uh, gather, grow, give, go. And we do gather, give, grow pretty well. We actually say go, but we really don't. What go means is really stay, do the chore that the family chore we need you to do. Don't really go away because if you go away, I I'm disconnected to you now. And that to me is like, that's a fear based expression of a centralized paradigm. When I say distance doesn't mean disconnection. I can have somebody be a missionary in their context, not showing up at the building, but they are a part of our culture. They have gone through our membership class. They are engaged in a group life. They are connected to us via digital platform and via personal relationship. And they never step foot in a building. And I don't care because Jesus is being preached and they're getting support and care as they're being a missionary and an extension of us. And while they're going, they're still staying. And you could not do that 20 years ago, literally could not do that. We can today. So the fear is founded based off of an old paradigm, but it's unfounded because we don't live in that old paradigm anymore. And the more we see that and understand that we're able to grow and restructure our church as a community, rather than a centralized event system, which was important for the time we had lived in, in that paradigm,

: we can do it differently. And we'll get more engagement, not less. Right. And I think that also helps solve one of the other complaints and problems is people aren't available on Sunday because culture has changed and shifted of the, you know, well, church is on Sunday, so we've got to make it available to people. So since that's not the case anymore, and there's like, if you're young in the industry, or if you're in certain service industries where you're caring for people, you're not available on Sunday. So we need to shift to being with them when they are available. All right. So I'm going to interrupt this episode here just to let you know, Chestly had an incident happen in his neighborhood. He lost power. He was able to get back on the, but the rest of the podcast, it's really choppy. So if you're listening to this, it may just be time to turn it off. It's going to be hard to listen to and catch everything. If you're listening to higher speed, you're going to have to tone that down. But if you're watching it, you should be okay. The transcript will be there. You'll be able to read it, but apologize for the rest of it. So if you want to just get the transcript, read the rest of it, it's probably a great idea, but try to schedule a time to re, you know, shoot the end of it. Wasn't able to work that out. Tried to use AI to, you know, fill in the gaps.

: It's the best that it is. I figured rather than just cutting it off, I would give an explanation. And then you can make a decision yourself. If you want to just read the transcript, if you want to read it and listen to it, or if you just want to try to work your way through listening to it. But anyway, here's the rest of the podcast. Hey, there we go. So you lost power. I've never, I've never had that on the podcast. We were before that going through all of your principles. I don't think we got through all of them. We talked about empowering the people and eliminating actually empowering people. We did talk about that. Move the pulpit. Build for pickup and obsessive character. So we're, we did talk about obsessive character a little bit as of, uh, move the pulpit. So I'll talk a little bit about empowering the people and then breaking the bottle. So those are the two that we related to diving. So yeah, I think empowering the people is, is really an important thing. I really think that's the thing that I see digital as an avenue that we may not have had a need to. In some cases, when you lived in a small community and you had, everyone went to church and everyone knew each other where, you know, you just stepped in and did things when they were needed. Then we moved, we moved away from it with industrialization

: and we haven't adapted since then. And now I think we really need to empower people. And we've probably known it. We just didn't know how or where to decentralize and be able to do that. So I'd love to hear more on what your thoughts are on that. Yeah. When you talk about empowering your people, the biggest thing that I see that is a struggle for most of us grown up in the industrial age is that we're really good at direction. We like to direct people. We like to tell them what to do. We want to leave a narrow bay. Um, and when people don't do that, get frustrated. And the problem is, is nobody does that. Cause that's not how people are. Why? So we have this idea about the way we wish people were. And we have built a system around what we wish people were, but we actually have a problem because that's not actually how they work and they operate. Don't do what you tell them just because you tell them. People need help on learning how to do what you tell them. And so I call that leadership. But leadership is just work direct. But what I've found in general that people want to do is they have a heart to help people discover their purpose. We say it all the time, discover their calling. And then we help them

: do this thing and this task. And they do it. And they're still left wailing in the wind because well, I told you what to do. Well, the problem is, is coaching is what matters. Community is actually, but, uh, confirms, get the thing in the call of God because watch you in action and they know what you think is actually supernatural and don't recognize all the time because you're just doing what you do. Well, the community is an outside look at that, but actually that's what you're gifted at. But I'd be gifted, but I'm inside of my area of passion and enjoyment. And so that's still an aligned issue with that. Or, um, I have a person's style that doesn't work in this sort of environment. And so there's alignment there. And then there's spiritual and emotional maturity. So all of those four pieces play a part. And what is required is a coach. And usually when the organization is trying to figure this out, and we talk to them about coaching, the first thing to go is coaching. They do not. But why? Because it's hard and it's not needed to scale. That's why Jesus hung up for three years. Guess what? Oh yeah. And, and he's living side by side with them. You know, we don't, we don't get to do that with

: most people. I mean, at least, you know, any church that I've worked in, I haven't got to do that. Now, being in digital space, I'm getting a lot closer to the reality of being able to spend daily time with people. It's not, it's not there, but there's avenues where it can happen. Like in the pulpit ministry, no, there's no expectation, no possibility. Uh, you know, at most, a staff person, I might say Monday through Friday, that would be the closest that I could get to it. So that's actually how I've had to do it. I discipled staff because I was preparing, I was preaching, so I would actually take staff and I would try to develop it. Now, coaching is not eating. Coaching is really hard. Like my son played basketball over and over and over again. We're trying to, here's your performance, how you shoot a basketball, your hands to go here, not here, you're not here. And he's a good kid, you know, then you're looking at your elbows, your elbow out too far, or is it too far, you know, or you're shooting like with two hands rather than in right and launch. You know, these things are hard to do for time because you feel unnatural when you begin, but that's the point. You don't know what you don't know. Then you realize, you know, you don't know. And that's the most vulnerable spot to be at for a disciple, you know? And so to empower somebody, because you've got to

: sit there with them and go, Hey, we're going to do this together. I'm going to teach you as a dude. We're going to put a kid with you to help pull this stuff out of you. Hey, uh, try this approach or, Hey, do this thing. Um, if you look at shooting and that ball, I'm a basketball fan. I'm like, not everybody has the name, full form because their body is different. So some things shift based off of how you design. It's still the same 90% of the function, but a coach taught an NBA parachute this way because of this guy is putting it that worked very cool for him. Oh, as you know, I had one of the shots, you know, man, he was one of the best three point shooters alive. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so I'm like, there is coaching involved that Reggie to where was that to be extraordinary at the skill that he developed. So cutting it as a part of that. And because we don't like time and the effort it takes, it's the hardest part of element. We just don't, but it's the first to go to empower people. Well, you have to cook your people. You don't that they go do this. And then they don't, or, you know, I hope they do, but they don't, they really don't. And so you're left going, Oh, we'd be safely like discipleship, but none of it working, didn't working. When you keep telling

: them make disciples, they go, I don't know what you're talking about. So I'm not going to do anything. They come back. You got to make disciples. They're still guilty because you told them to go make disciples, but they don't really do it. And probably you don't either. That's why you're saying it, but you don't keep telling it or you're too busy, you know, and so you're not actually doing the work that instead would be done. You're too busy prepping to tell them to go make disciples again. Next week. Rather than showing them how to do it, take a couple people with you, show them how to do something. Like them. Don't be mean to them. Like really teach them. Model, assist, watch, leave. That's the other thing. So once we get away from coaching, we move into the guide level three of the relationship, which is I'm unconsciously competent and do the right things, but I know why I'm doing the right things. And so I don't know that blocks is a hot shift and rules, but I don't know when to become a why, but that's when you get the master key artists. You know, that's when the Michael Jordan, he's self mentally sound playing basketball can break certain rules and actually is helpful for his game, not hurtful, but he knows exactly what he's doing it. So he can move outside of jazz. Like when he comes to the jazz, you know, scales so well, you know, the beaters so well, they can move and

: be within the system and not actually be outside the lines, even though you broke rules, if that makes sense. Right. Right. You know, and totally. And so empowering your people guide level three, the catalyst. And if you can get past the first three stages, this one seems to be the hardest stage outside of stage one to stage two. Moving from stage three to stage four seems to be the hardest phase outside of the first phase outside of the first one. And because people don't like to leave. They want to be needed. They want to be needed. They want to be known. And though we don't actually catalyze. And catalyze a leader means giving your platform, you know, you want to be known. And so we don't actually catalyze and catalyze a leader means giving your platform, you know, you know, you want to give them your resources and give them your love and put them off the platform and you go away. Yeah. And so we do that well. We begin to have our job is done. We do not be with them forever. Jesus was not his people forever. He was done for a season. And this is the other problem of discipleship. The discipleship in America is not designed for empowerment. It's designed for enablement. I need you to do that. I need you to do that. I need you to give them your resources and give them your resources and give them your love and put them off the platform and you go away. Yeah. And so we do that well. We begin to have our job is done to not be with them forever. Jesus was not with his people forever. He was with them for a season. And this is the other problem of discipleship. The discipleship in America is not designed for empowerment. It's designed for enablement. I need you to do that.

: You know, have to do better at that. That means we've got to actually develop our leadership muscles and go, how do I catalyze these people once there? But the whole system is built on, I need you to stay, not I need you to go. And so to power your people, that that's what you have to do as a leader. Right. The other side of that is people who have been in that system their whole life, I mean, I, I, I struggled with this when I was trying to get people to go and move in and do things would be, well, I don't know as much as you as a pastor. Like you've been in Sunday school. You've been in sermons for 50 plus years as an adult. Okay. What is it that you need me to do that you don't already have? Like you need to start doing, like you need to apply. You need to go and like, there's not going to be, Oh, you have like 10 more lessons. And then you'll be ready. Like you already have everything. So we've created even a system where the people sitting in the pews haven't felt empowered and enabled to, to go forward. They think they're not yet ready. That their whole role is like what they watch their parents do. Just sit in the pew and wait. Maybe, maybe you have some that, well, I serve on the board and that's a part of what I do. Or I, I teach Sunday school, or I go serve at the food pantry and I do a act of service. But we're really not engaging in, in making disciples with others. That's not really a part of what they ever had happened to them. And so they don't know that they can go and do it because it's outside of what they've seen or experienced themselves.

: Yeah. So I think this is a system issue that we've been. Yeah. System is. And again, it's not, it's not the pastors don't want to happen. I don't do that. I'm sitting in the pastors, but we're saying, I want it to happen. I just, you know, and you can't admit, you don't know how to do it. So the system is built for a different age and a different paradigm. And so what ends up happening is, uh, they try and they get discouraged because the whole thing is against it. And they don't know that they have to, they really, they have to redesign the system. They have to have new metrics for success. I think metrics, and talk about empowering your people. And the most important thing you have to do is find metrics because we're going to default to the thing that we sell all the time. And it's so easy to say bucks and deeds and bucks in our, in our, our, our, our, they're easy to measure, they're tangible. They're important. I'm not saying they're not important. They are important. But if those are things we default to, everything that we build is going back to that. And I go, well, you're not even recruiting your own people that show up on Sunday. Well, if that is your measure for success, because I can bring you at 1.7 times per month regular attendance, the people show up in your building, you're missing 60% of your congregation just by attracting attendance alone, which means you're not each jeopardy from the people you have well, let alone the people you could have. And I think about growth that scale that is astronomical, whether it's going to a million people or not, I don't care how they deal with that at the very beginning.

: I know. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the reality is you can have more, you have the tools to be able to steward your congregation and it's going to require us to have the better metrics. And so I feel a little bit about how I might measure things. Right. And if, if what you want is the same that we've got, then we measure the same things. We measure the same things. If we want new things, we have to create new measurements so that we will work toward, like, it's one of those arguments, which, well, you're teaching to the test. Yeah, I'm teaching to the test because I want you to do well on the test. So the test is first. Now I teach to the test. So what are we going to measure? And then we teach so that people can go do the things that we want to measure. So if that's have gospel conversations with people that we're going to measure, we've got to come up with a way to measure it and ask people. And boy, digital tools make that a little bit easier to be able to do that. If you had a weekly scan this QR code when you show up in person or put it on the screen and say, did you do this this week? Yes, no, boom, you could have a reply instantly in the middle of what you're doing and measure weekly and be able to see, yes, I had a gospel conversation.

: No, whatever your measurements are, I'm just saying that is an easy one. And I'm trying to create a thought of how you could easily do that. You're, you know, grabbing it on a weekly basis because the next thing is, is like, and I've had these conversations recently within the denomination of what are we going to measure? Because the denomination has always asked us to measure these things, but we want to do things differently. Yeah. Well, then how are we going to measure them? Are we going to wait and do the annual thing? If you wait and do an annual measurement, which is our denomination's way of doing things, nobody's going to do the new things. You've got to have a weekly or monthly measurement at minimum, or nobody's going to be thinking about it. Nobody's going to be measuring it. Nobody's going to put those things into practice. Just last, last thoughts that you want to share with people. I just think, you know, you think about a million members. I don't want me to get hung up on the numbers. I want you to sit there and go, really, how do we shepherd and lead our people well in the digital age? There are new things and you may not understand all of it. That's okay. You don't have to. That's why I think empowering your people is probably the most important thing you can do. If you can start there and start in the north side of how I'm doing with Jesus, like from an organizational level, start with empowering people.

: On a personal level, how do I continue to grow in my relationship to Jesus? Sin management, intimacy. And from there, what do I help my people to do what God called them to do? And begin, the other pieces will begin to, I won't take care of themselves, but you'll begin to do the obstacles. I'll come one at his time and you'll, you'll go, if we're going to, you're going to keep this north star, we need to change this piece. Okay. And you'll get a far, you get a little further along and then, and I like, oh, another obstacle, but this is the north star. Okay. We're going to do this piece. Before you know it, it changed like 19 things. And you'll look and go, we are not even the same that we, that we were like, when we start this process, you know, and people will go, what did you do? You guys just did what I knew to do. You're just not even recognizing things. But I would say, if you can compare your people, if you just keep that at the main thing, to develop a calling God on every person in life. If you go, how to build an organization around that, you'll begin to find a whole new world of possibilities. And honestly, in times of disruption we live in right now, that becomes fun rather than fearful. And so that's, that's exciting for me. And I would say, take a step of faith, have a little bit of fun, try something new, fail fast, learn from it, fail it, then learn from it.

: And actually, in this time, when you do it, become a scientist. And the whole point of scientist is to personally try to make your hypothesis fail. And if your hypothesis can't fail, you just found the new best practice to go. You're the next Rick Warren. You know, I just play with it. But the reality is like, do that. And you'll be glad to where you're supposed to go. The goal here is guiding you to just get scared. Step up and fake. That's not the name. Awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate the time. I, I will, uh, double check everything. Make sure that our quality came through with the inner disruptions and all of that stuff. But it is a privilege to have you on. Uh, best of luck with moving and all of that. Once you get settled, let's, uh, you know, connect again after that. Appreciate it.