New Tech Trends to Monitor in Your Online Ministry

[Tom Pounder] Today we're going to talk about tech trends that are happening around the world and how they might apply to our ministry in the near future. Are you ready? Because it's time. [Announcer] You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network. [Tom Pounder] Hello heroes, my name is Tom Pounder and this is the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. This is a podcast where I bring on ministry leaders and we talk about how we can do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world. And today I brought on Marcus Keiler. Marcus does online ministry and he and I have been friends on Twitter for quite some time. But I brought him on to talk about some things that are happening around the world, tech stuff. that are happening around the world that we're seeing in the technology world. And we talk about those things and we talk about, are those things that we can apply into our ministry context? What are some things that people are talking about and how can we apply it into our ministry context? We talk about some community stuff. and we talk about some tech trends that you might think oh my gosh i don't know about that but as you hear the discussion as you hear us talking about it i want you to be open to it and say what does this look like could this apply into my ministry so i'm really excited to have marcus on discussing this with me so without any further ado let's get an interview right now with marcus kyler all right with me right now is marcus kyler marcus how are you i'm good tp man how are you i'm doing good okay so you and i we we kind of have a twitter friendship and i love these kind of friendships i mean twitter is my favorite social network i think twitter is is that your favorite as well oh yeah man i love love twitter just because you you [Marcus Cylar] Okay, how can I approach this? It's a couple of different ways I look at it. Well, one, Twitter, I think, is the most direct way to interface with anybody online, especially if it comes to somebody who you might consider a celebrity or somebody with a big following. You can just tweet them. They may answer, they may not answer, but it's very, very direct. It's the most direct thing next to having somebody's phone number and being able to call and text them. So I think that's a good thing. Also, the other thing that I really love about Twitter is, you know, there's so much negativity that's going on in the world today and especially, you know, online, quote unquote, fake news, you know. E.J. disingenuous ingenuity, however you want to say that it's just a lot of misinformation that's online and it's on every platform and some people think that Twitter is. E.J. You know. worse for that than than others. I don't really think so. Just because of the fact that, you know, you can see something that you disagree with or you can see something that you think is false. And just because of how quick Twitter moves, you can kind of just pass by really easily. You don't have to engage. And I think that's where a lot of us go wrong at times is you don't have to engage in conversation with something that you don't agree with or something that bothers you. or you can say something real quick you can speak your piece and then just keep scrolling because twitter is just so quick that you know you won't even have to think about it a few minutes later because it won't be you know it won't be in your feed anymore it won't be on your timeline so i think that's really the beauty of twitter and so that's kind of the the the the platform where i spend the most time [Tom Pounder] Yeah, I mean, Twitter is great. And again, I've had celebrities, I've tweeted out to them and they've responded to me. Now, again, not all the time, but I mean, I've had, but I like what you said. It's that direct communication. They can choose to respond to you or not. And just like you, you can choose to respond to somebody or not. And I love that. You can't do that on Facebook or on Instagram or other platforms as well. So I love Twitter just like you do. And, you know, I might have to have you back on the podcast just to talk solely on Twitter, because I think there's so much we can dig into. [Marcus Cylar] Absolutely. [Tom Pounder] But you and I, we've been following each other for, I think, a few years now. And again, I know you have a love for college football, just like I do. And absolutely. [Marcus Cylar] Congratulations. Yeah. Congratulations. Yes. Yes. [Tom Pounder] Yes. Thank you. Thank you. It must have been a good year for you following Michigan football this year. [Marcus Cylar] Yeah. You know, it's been it's been tough for for a few years. And, you know, your feelings about things and your reactions to things are kind of a fact of your expectations. And so, you know, for about seven, eight seasons before Jim Harbaugh came to came back to Ann Arbor. You know, we were really down, you know, and it all started, I think, with Lloyd Carr's last year. We had that epic loss to Appalachian State, and the program just kind of declined at that point. And then... you know the the two coaches that we hired you know after that and it it just didn't go well and so when jim harbaugh came in he was supposed to be the one who did restore order to ann arbor restore order to michigan football you know really bring us back to where we used to be and we thought that it was going to happen just like it happened with nick saban at alabama and it just it didn't happen like that And so the prior six years to this year were just really disappointing. And there were some double-digit win seasons in there, but we had trouble beating Ohio State. We didn't even get to the Big Ten Championship. And so that was really tough. And so this year to really be able to accomplish the things that we all expect Michigan football to accomplish and to finally get the Ohio State monkey off of our back. It was just really satisfying and it was satisfying really even more so because we lost to Michigan State a few weeks prior. And I don't know, I guess I'm just at a place in my life now and I've been through some things. And so I kind of like to keep things in perspective, but I just think where I am in my life right now, sometimes I take things a little bit harder than I should. And those of us who love sports, we have to keep things in perspective, but I think that just this season in particular i took that michigan state loss um maybe just because of how emotional i might be just because of where i am right now in my personal life but i took that loss really hard because i just really felt like you know we had a better team than michigan state i just really i just really felt like We were going to beat them this year. And so I had to just get offline just for a week. I just had to just get off the grid and really think about some things and really think, you know, why am I taking this as hard as I am? Why am I taking this so seriously? So I had to really do some soul searching. And so, you know, to really be able to come back and dominate, you know, not just beat, not just squeak by, but dominate Ohio State and then dominate the Big Ten Championship, it was very, very satisfying. [Tom Pounder] Well, it's definitely good for you guys. Again, anytime I think anybody can beat and dominate Ohio State is great. I mean, again, I'm a Penn State guy. And so, I mean, I know Michigan and Penn State have had some battles over the years, but I just I can't stand Ohio State more than anything. [Marcus Cylar] yeah absolutely and i forgot just to mention penn state i think that was a really pivotal moment um just for us because you know um what we got 75 this year but but you know you guys are still a a formidable team yeah of course you would have had a better record if sean clifford hadn't gotten hurt i mean everybody knows that But, you know, I think that was a real turning point in the season just to be able to, you know, because as a Michigan fan, you know, many times before we've gotten down late and we haven't been able to make that big play to be able to come back. And we were able to make that big play. against Penn State this year. And that was really something that I think kind of turned things around. And really, I think it was just a sign of growth for the team in general to be able to be down in the fourth quarter and to be able to experience what it feels like to be able to dig down deep and come back. And so that was a really satisfying win for us right below Ohio State. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, for anybody who's listening and doesn't know that game, Penn State actually took the lead late in the fourth quarter, and Michigan drove down the field and came back and scored the touchdown to win the game. So, okay, well, we could talk about Michigan Big Ten for a really long time. For the rest of the day. Listeners want us to talk about online ministry, and you are an online guy. Absolutely. what i figured for us here today what i love to talk about it's just what are what are some things that we're seeing coming up in this new year um that will be uh something that churches should be looking at in particular towards online and digital ministry what are some things on the horizon what are some things trending right now that are happening that we really need to look at because i i feel like right now 2022 is going to be this year where churches are either going to really decide i'm going backwards we're not going to invest as much in the digital that was just for a time period or they're going to say we need to invest more and so um let's just begin this discussion that says ask where do you see online ministry going and what do you see as some potentials for the future growth of it [Marcus Cylar] Well, I guess just as a bit of a background, I've been doing online ministry actually since before Facebook became public. Back when Facebook was still just for colleges. I've been doing online ministry before that. When I was a student at Morehouse College and then at Georgia Tech, we were using online ministry to organize campus events. And we actually did our own Christian homecoming week. It was something that had never been done before. And I don't even know if it's been done since because I had graduated right after that. um you know we were able to to really use uh digital tools to organize and and and be able to do some different things uh campus ministry wise and so uh you know after that i i um when i was a youth minister back at my home church um you know before i started seminary we we had a a myspace page and and i don't know how many uh youth ministries were doing that at that time and so um you know i've been doing this for a while and um and i was i was even able to uh to study online ministry and church communications as a whole for uh for my doctor of ministry in the project that i did i focused on uh you know building community uh around the shared experience of burnout and pastoral ministry so um as a communicator i have the experience of actually uh you know being on the other side being a pastor and and and seeing the needs that senior leaders have, and some of the concerns that senior leaders have as well, and some of the misconceptions that senior leaders do and do not have concerning online ministry. And I say all that to say, one thing that I've really seen over the years in online ministry and church online is how the conversation has changed in some of the research that I've been able to do over the years. And just, you know, back in the early 2000s, what people thought that community was, you know, back... back when the only online communication you had was kind of through email and through listservs and things like that, people really thought that that was online community and people really thought that, you know, that was, you know, what it meant to build community online was just through email and just seeing how that has changed. The one thing that, one thing I think that was key was There was a conversation in this in this I don't I don't think we had the same conversation too much anymore, but there was a conversation for a long time about whether or not church online was even legitimate. whether it could be considered quote unquote real church and i think that was a debate for a long time and that was something that was i think hotly contested uh for for many years and i think one thing that that covet did uh was was really kind of in that conversation Because I think people began to realize, maybe out of necessity, finally, that Church Online was legitimate. And so now that we've gotten past that conversation, we've been able to go deeper than, OK, so how do we do Church Online? in a way that's authentic, in a way that actually builds community, we can go a little bit deeper than just saying, hey, is it legitimate to stream our services online? Is it legitimate to really have an online presence? And that's one thing I'm thankful for when we're talking about this is that we don't have to have that conversation anymore. And so now that... now that we don't have that debate anymore we can kind of go deeper and we can kind of you know look at what it means to uh build a community and and i say all that to say um i think one thing that that i'm seeing um you know in in 2021 and 2022 and beyond is that um and this is gonna sound weird and i'm kind of parsing it out as i'm talking about it but it doesn't appear that reach as far as from a numbers standpoint, really means as much anymore as it did at one point. And I'm sure you remember, I'm sure you've seen countless statistics and countless articles back 2015, 16, 17, 18 about optimal times to post and doing different things to boost posts and doing different things to kind of... expand your reach. But I think we have so many community building tools now that expanding your reach as a ministry doesn't really mean as much anymore. And I think what means more now is deepening the connections you already have. uh with the people currently in your community and as you deepen those connections then those people you're deepening those connections with will help you to build the community further and so as we you know focus on our core and focus on um i guess replicating as many small groups as possible and and and trying to scale that I think that helps to really build the reach you're looking for, rather than just focusing on building that reach, if that makes sense. [Tom Pounder] dude that makes a lot of sense i completely in agreement with you on that too because i think it's so hard to really um and i've talked about this before um is i think it's really hard for us to quantify exactly who's watching who's involved and whatnot like so you hear all these stories of these churches saying oh yeah we're reaching thousands of people every single week on our live stream And my question is, but who are you really discipling? Like, okay, you're reaching these people, but how engaged are they fully? And that's why I really feel like a really big step in this next process for people is really like what you said, community, deepening the community, investing in life groups, investing in small groups, and that they can happen digitally. whether you're doing old school google groups or where you're doing online bible studies with you version um or just facebook groups or any other kind of text message group or whatnot i think it's really important to really focus on okay so you're reaching all these people now how are you going to disciple them and that's where i think you're where you're talking about community and discipling those people in smaller groups is really important [Marcus Cylar] Absolutely. And I don't want to come off as being, you know, anti one platform over another, but I think, you know, we put a lot of emphasis in past years on, you know, Facebook groups and your Facebook page and, you know, and building that up. But I think that with this emphasis on smaller communities now. And I guess in your church, seeking the smallest community that you can have of like-minded individuals in that in your church and replicating that um to to scale like as big as your church may be like um whatever the smallest group it like if you're if you're in a church of you know 50 people and you have small groups of five or or or small groups of 10 or if you're in a mega church of 20 000 or something like that and you have small groups of I don't know what will be considered a small group in a mega church, but seeking whatever that smallest number is, whatever makes sense for your ministry, and replicating that over and over again on a smaller scale is going to be the way to go. And so that's going to really take the emphasis, I think, off of a lot of Facebook groups and maybe put it more on Discord. as we go along. I think that's a platform that I would recommend people start to look into. It might be a little bit of a learning curve, just depending on how comfortable you are with social media. But I think that Discord is going to be a platform that's going to become bigger as we emphasize community even more and more. [Tom Pounder] Okay, let's go dig deeper into Discord in a second, but let me just get on with something that you said about Facebook. And again, I think one of the stats I saw is like less than 1% of the people on your page or whatnot will see your Facebook post. you know i mean so few people see your facebook post and if you're apt to trying to build community you really have to diversify yourself you can't hinge just on facebook you have to go on to other platforms and that's why i love these apps like discord that is a really i've i've heard more and more about discord and more and more groups starting about discord talk to me a little bit about discord and how you see that building good community groups [Marcus Cylar] So, you know, Discord is, it's a platform where you can kind of create your own, you can create your own group and then you can create groups or topics within groups. And I think the groups are called servers. And so when you create your own server, you can create, and it kind of, kind of do it in in the form of hashtags i guess but you can have like a general group within that server you can have uh an off-topic group um you can have um you know any kind of group that you want you can have an announcement group within that group and so it it's i think it kind of it kind of uh what's the word i'm looking for it resembles a real community because in a real community you have different neighborhoods you have different stores you have different blocks you have you know different groups of people and and and you have you know different places within the community that you meet up and and different activities um that that happen when you meet up and and these type of things happen uh within uh the the the overall um discord server or discord community you have so many things that can happen at one time and and i really think that that's a great model and and you can even in You can even incorporate the voice, the social voice component of that, like we have now with Twitter spaces and Clubhouse and things of that nature. And so that's in there as well. you can have um i think you can do video in there as well and you can go live and there's so many different things that you can do within um discord and it gives you uh the ability to to to be as small as possible to be as granular as possible because within um a church community that you can create in a discord server you may have you know, 20 different topics, and maybe only a couple of them are relevant to you. But, you know, you can, you may have 200 people within your church Discord server, but you may only have 10 people in a particular group or topic within that server. And that's just another way of breaking it down even more, because there's some instances where everyone within the a Discord server is going to want to participate in something. You may have a live event that's going on that's community-wide, or you may just have a conversation that's happening within a particular part of that overall server. And I just think that's a great model that churches can really leverage moving forward. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, and I think if someone's listening to this and they're like, I've heard about Discord, it's like a gaming thing. And I think gamers brought attention, but I see people using Discord and they're not gamers. So it's not just a gaming kind of app. And again, if you're trying to follow along with what Marcus is saying, think of it on a higher level, like your server is like your church. And then you have subgroups and it could be like a student ministry group, a children's ministry group, parents group. And there could be different things that you guys can all keep the conversation on those topics. And your student minister could use it and a lot of different people could use it. So I think Discord would be a fantastic thing for you to look into in this new year. [Marcus Cylar] and if i could add something to that i'm sorry but um one of the one of the great features with that is that you can also assign access with those particular groups within groups you know you if if you have a youth ministry group within your server um you some people may not have access to that some people may not be able to see that you know if if you are um a single 50 year old and you're not a youth ministry worker you don't really have any you don't really have any business being in the youth ministry group that might necessarily not necessarily be appropriate so there's different levels of access that you can have and i think that that's um something when we start talking about um safety and things of that nature that's something that's very important um that that that provides an advantage for that platform [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's great. I'm glad you hit on that because you're exactly right. You are only given access to what the main person or persons give you access to. So I think that's really important. Okay, so we talked about some community. We talked about Discord. What else would you suggest or things that churches should be on the lookout for in this new year? [Marcus Cylar] I'm, you know, I've been thinking about this. I've been thinking about this ever since you contacted me about this conversation. So I don't know how this is going to go over. But I, and I know we have I know we as as the church, we have an aversion when it comes to how we uh how we talk about money and how we deal with commercial things and so i i say this with hesitancy and caution but um i don't think that we as a church should be ignoring um the the the rise of nfts and the rise of tokenization. Now, I don't necessarily, I cannot say for certain right now how a ministry would necessarily be able to, at this point in time, but I say this, whoever's listening to this, I say this to maybe spark creativity in somebody who may be listening or who may be watching that maybe this is something that you can start thinking about. Maybe God will bubble up in your spirit how to implement this. But I don't think that that's something that we should be ignoring. And I don't think we should be ignoring it because there is a gamification. No, not gamification. I want to say this in a way that's going to be faithful to the spirit of God and faithful to kingdom principles. But there's incentive, I think, to participation. And it doesn't even necessarily have to be monetary, but there are ways that we, outside of the church, we recognize and show appreciation for loyalty. And I think that that's something that we can implement, I believe, in the church as well. Maybe not even with NFT. I don't know if you're familiar with the platform rally.io, where you can... Yeah, I am. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, yeah. [Marcus Cylar] Yeah, where you can create your own token. And there are different things that you can do. However you have organized your community, there are different things that you can do in order to earn... you know, more tokens, whatever token you've created. I think that that's something that we could look into using. as ministries and it doesn't even necessarily have to revolve around money but there could there could be certain things that um accumulating a certain number of tokens might give you like if you have a conference or you have something going on in your ministry that costs money to attend um in conferences is the one that comes to mind the the um the easiest but you know you you you may have a conference that you do once a year you may have conferences that you do uh you know throughout the year or or you know you might get together with different churches and do different things like that and some of those things might cause money well maybe if you've earned enough tokens uh that in the currency that you created that might defray the cost of attending that conference or something like that. And I want to be sincere about the things that we do when we share. If we share a broadcast or we share links that are being shared from the ministry or something like that, there may be a certain incentive to sharing that you can earn some tokens that you may be able to use if your church has merch or swag or however you term that, that may be something that having that currency will help you to be able to earn. And I just think that, like I said, I say this with hesitancy because I don't want to, I don't want ministry to ever be, we're just riding the wave of different fads and things of that nature or whatever, but I just think that it's a way to really incentivize and reward loyalty and incentivize and reward participation. Like I said, I want to be able to do it in a way that's really faithful to the scriptures and faithful to the spirit of God. But I just think that that's something that we could benefit from at least thinking about and at least brainstorming. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, listen, Marcus, do not apologize. You're not apologizing, but don't be hesitant about this because the whole purpose of me having you on today is to talk about things for future stuff. And again, if you're on Twitter or if you're on anything, you've heard about NFTs because there's lots of people talk about NFTs. But if you don't know what it is, it stands for non fungible token. And it kind of operates like Bitcoin, but it's a little bit different. in the sense that you can create your own value for it so your church can create a value for this nft if the in like marcus said you can you use it to sell some swag or do some stuff there's lots of different things but the one thing i'll say to this is this may seem foreign to you right now but i will say years ago i at least five or six years ago I was at a conference, and it was about online ministry. And Jason Morris, he's a legend in the online ministry stuff, is that he was talking about virtual reality and virtual reality ministry. And he was just saying, this is something in the future. And I remember sitting and listening to him and saying, okay, dude, that's just not going to happen. not where we're at but here we are we're talking about the metaverse we're talking about virtual reality we're augmented reality it's closer today than it was five years ago nfts may not be very um mainstream right now but it's something we need to pay attention to and it could be very much mainstream in a year or two that will will cause churches to rethink some things [Marcus Cylar] Absolutely. And let me try to see if I can add value with this point. It's not necessarily just about NFTs, but I want us as kingdom people, as Christians, as people who are involved in the church, I want us to change our paradigm and our approach to how we look at, just in general, as an overall principle, how we look at technology, how we look at new things, how we look at advancement as a whole. And I'm sure you're familiar with it, Social Media Examiner. Really one of the reasons that Social Media Examiner became the platform that it's become is because their approach to everything that came out was, ah, you know what, how can we use this to do marketing more effectively? How are marketers using this? Because when certain platforms came out, they weren't necessarily used for the purpose of marketing. I can remember when Pinterest came out, for instance. Marketers weren't using that right out the gate. um it was mostly women at the time were using it um you know as as pin boards as vision boards or as uh boards where they would pin things that they wanted to buy later it became a mechanism for putting together different shopping lists and things of that nature but it wasn't until um you know some marketers became very intentional about thinking how can we use this for marketing how can we use this to drive traffic to our platforms and and do different things and i just think as the church uh we're not always at the cutting edge or we're not always as quick as we need to be. And again, we don't necessarily have to ride every wave of every fad just because it's out there. But just to be thinking and have the paradigm of always want to see when something comes out i just always want to be thinking about how can we use this to glorify god how can we use this to further the gospel of jesus christ and and and maybe it's not maybe it takes several years to be able to really think about and and really begin to implement something but at least we're thinking about it at least where we had the mindset of we're not going to let anything pass by our eyes or we're not going to let anything uh pass us by that we're at least not thinking about from a ministry standpoint and and and i hope that as a principle that that's something that uh as a whole that we can start to uh to to to really grab onto [Tom Pounder] No, I think that's a great point right there. And I think that's really important for us to be thinking about for sure. Okay, so we're wrapping up here. I want to throw out one thing, and you may have been thinking about this too, but one last point of discussion as we look for things for churches in the future. What's your thought on the metaverse in virtual reality, augmented reality? What do you think about that in regards to the church? [Marcus Cylar] I wish... I would have gotten more involved than I am in it right now. I haven't really dug too much into the metaverse at this point in time. The closest connection I have to the metaverse is my 10-year-old who spends hours a day on Roblox. and you know she she she loves roblox she talks about the things that she does in there and just the concept of um you know one thing that she wants for christmas is you know she wants lots of money in robux and and there's different things that she wants to do and uh that kind of concept of you know money that is To me, when I thought about it the first time, I'm like, this is not real. Why am I giving you money to do something that's not real? But then I started to think about that thing a little more and I had to readjust what my concept of real is. The real is, I don't think it's just something that you can touch. You know what I'm saying? Real, and I say that because There's so many things that my daughter is learning. on Roblox. There's a lot of concepts that she's learning and there's a lot of creativity that she's getting to express because she's on Roblox a lot. And I know that that's even on a greater scale when it comes to the metaverse, because it's even more immersive as far as what you're able to do on there. And just one example, my daughter might have to get a job. to be able to earn some more robots. So instead of me just giving her so many, she's able to earn some on her own. And so she is learning at the age of 10 because she doesn't have a quote unquote real job yet, but she's starting to understand the concept of, hey, you know what? You don't get anything just because. The concept of earning something is something that is a big deal and it's something that's going to help you for the rest of your life. I don't even know if I'm really answering your question, but I think as a church, we have to adjust our concept or we really have to rethink our concept of what real is. assess the value that we can take again assessing the value that we can take out of anything and and if we approach the metaverse um from from the standpoint of hey what can i what can i learn from this and then when I've learned something, how can I use it? I think that that can really only help us. How can we build community? How can I bring people into the kingdom? How can I take Jesus to other people through the metaverse? And so I know I'm not really coming from an expert standpoint when it comes to the metaverse, but I do think that, again, as a concept, [Tom Pounder] um just beginning to look at it and to be open to you know how people are using it and how we can use it yeah no listen i think that's the right mindset to have in my in my personal opinion and that's the thing i think when people hear things like nfts um uh uh virtual reality and uh virtual reality church in the metaverse there might be a hesitation saying like what you just said that's not real but the reality is that there are people on it and i love how you just identified that your your 10 year old is on them i have a 15 year old who has those facebook oculus you know vr headset thing and she likes to play in there and be in there and do things in there um and again that's where our younger generations are hanging out they're not hanging out at the malls like maybe you and i hung out with you know or at the pool all day like you and i hung out with when we were younger They're hanging out on these virtual reality places. They're hanging out in online communities. And if we as a church refuse to go into that community, we're missing a great opportunity to minister to people who will never step foot into our physical church buildings. And that's what I love about online ministry. It provides us opportunities to connect with people who won't step foot in our churches. [Marcus Cylar] Absolutely. And there and this blew my mind. And I just as you were talking about, I just remembered there have been artists who have done concerts in the metaverse or the people who have done concerts within the Roblox. platform or within that whole ecosystem. And if artists are doing live concerts in there, then that means we can do what it is that we do in there as well. And we have the opportunity to reach people, especially young people. So again, this is an opportunity that we don't want to pass us by as we go on. [Tom Pounder] Dude, Marcus, this has been a great conversation. I know we could talk about more and more stuff because you and I are, this is how we think and this is how we wire. We'll have to have more conversations on online stuff down the road because you've just given me like three or four other topics that I want to talk to you about specifically. [Marcus Cylar] Absolutely. [Tom Pounder] So this is great. Well, if someone wants to connect with you, what's the best social platform? I mean, we already kind of hit on it, but how can they connect with you on social media? [Marcus Cylar] I am everywhere. everywhere that you can have a presence i'm at least there in some way shape or fashion um at marcus a kyler and kyler c-y-l-a-r so just marcus a kyler everywhere everywhere where you can possibly be i'm there i might not or you may find my page um you know i'm on tiktok because um You know, I have not created any content on TikTok. I love the platform. I just, I'm at a place in my life right now where I don't really have a whole lot of content to share at this point in time. And so, but my daughter created, took my phone and created a couple of videos on my page. And so that's there, but everywhere. that you can be. I am at Marcus A. Kyler. You can find me for the most part on Twitter and Instagram. Those are the two places that I hang out most. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. If you're looking for anybody to help you with your online efforts in a business, My words leave me so often. In a business context or in a ministry context, in a staff ministry context, I'm open to that as well. So just hit me up on any of those platforms. My website is marcusakyler.com. So you can find me there as well. [Tom Pounder] That's great. I'm going to include all those links in the show notes. So if you missed any of that stuff, don't worry about it. Just go to the show notes, click on the links and then connect with Marcus. He's great. And he's fun to follow on social media. So definitely. [Marcus Cylar] I appreciate it. Thank you. [Tom Pounder] All right, Marcus, thanks so much for being with me today. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, so what did you think? Okay, we started you off really quick with the groups and community and building on. And then we started getting into different things like Discord. And we started talking about NFTs. And we started talking about the metaverse and VR. Those are things that are really like out there. People are talking about. people are engaged in, but do they apply into our ministry context? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. What do you think? How do they apply? Are you dabbling with it a little bit? Hit me up on Twitter. I would love to talk to you a little bit more about this and actually hit Marcus up on Twitter. I've got all his contacts information on there as well, but I would love to carry on this conversation with you a little bit more. So hit us up online and we can continue the conversation. All right, heroes, well, that wraps it up for another episode of the Church Digital Psychic Podcast. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, subscribe to it. It's on YouTube, iTunes, and Spotify. But I do want to also highlight thechurch.digital. In fact, go to the equip page on thechurch.digital because we've got some great stuff coming up. We've got some great coaching. We've got some cohorts we're working on. We've got lots of tools and training that is happening at the Church Digital. In addition, we've got new voices coming out. We've got great new podcasts coming out in the month of January, and we would love for you to check that out. Again, you've got my podcast that we're talking about with the Church Digital Psychic podcast. We've got Jeff's podcast, but we've got more voices coming out, and they're being launched right now. So definitely go and check out everything at thechurch.digital. There's so many great resources for you to be successful in this year for your online ministry. We would love for you to check all that kind of stuff out. [Marcus Cylar] all right heroes well thanks so much for joining me today check out the church.digital and i'll see you next time with a whole new podcast have a great week platform i just i'm at a place in my life right now where i don't really um have a whole lot of content to share at this point in time and so um but my daughter created took took my phone and created a couple videos on my page and so that's there but everywhere that you can be. I am at Marcus A. Kyler. You can find me for the most part on Twitter and Instagram. Those are the two places that I hang out most. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. If you're looking for anybody to help you with your online efforts in a business, My words leave me so often. In a business context or in a ministry context, in a staff ministry context, I'm open to that as well. So just hit me up on any of those platforms. My website is marcusakyler.com. So you can find me there as well. [Tom Pounder] That's great. I'm going to include all those links in the show notes. So if you missed any of that stuff, don't worry about it. Just go to the show notes, click on the links and then connect with Marcus. He's great. And he's fun to follow on social media. So definitely. [Marcus Cylar] I appreciate it. Thank you. [Tom Pounder] All right, Marcus, thanks so much for being with me today. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, so what did you think? Okay, we started you off really quick with the groups and community and building on, and then we started getting into different things like Discord, and we started talking about NFTs, and we started talking about the metaverse and VR. Those are things that are really like out there. People are talking about, people are engaged in. but do they apply into our ministry context? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. What do you think? How do they apply? Are you dabbling with it a little bit? Hit me up on Twitter. I would love to talk to you a little bit more about this and actually hit Marcus up on Twitter. I've got all his contacts information on there as well, but I would love to carry on this conversation with you a little bit more. So hit us up online and we can continue the conversation. All right, heroes, well, that wraps it up for another episode of the Church Digital Psychic Podcast. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, subscribe to it. It's on YouTube, iTunes, and Spotify. But I do want to also highlight thechurch.digital. In fact, go to the equip page on thechurch.digital because we've got some great stuff coming up. We've got some great coaching. We've got some cohorts we're working on. We've got lots of tools and training that is happening at the Church Digital. In addition, we've got new voices coming out. We've got great new podcasts coming out in the month of January, and we would love for you to check that out. Again, you've got my podcast that we're talking about with the Church Digital Sidekick podcast. We've got Jeff's podcast, but we've got more voices coming out, and they're being launched right now. So definitely go and check out everything at thechurch.digital. There's so many great resources for you to be successful in this year for your online ministry. We would love for you to check all that kind of stuff out. All right, heroes, well, thanks so much for joining me today. Check out thechurch.digital, and I'll see you next time with a whole new podcast. Have a great week.