How the Church Digital Network Can Help Your Online Ministry

[Tom Pounder] Today we're going to talk about the Digital Church Network and how that can help you in your online ministry. 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] hey heroes my name is tom pounder and welcome to the church digital psychic podcast this is a podcast where i bring on ministry leaders and we talk about how you can do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world and today i'm excited to have on jeff reed jeff is no stranger to online ministry and he's a good friend and i as i said in the podcast that you'll hear in a second uh he's the one guy that i can say that i knew him before Everyone else was friends with him. I knew him before COVID hit, and he was an online minister and helping churches with online ministry. And he was a great friend then. He's a great friend now. And as you know, this podcast is a part of the Church Digital Podcast Network that Jeff set up. So it's great to be linked to Jeff Reed and the Podcast Network, but it's also great to have him on the podcast. And today we're going to talk about a variety of things. We're going to talk about Jeff's history. We're going to talk about a server situation that happened over the Thanksgiving weekend many moons ago that really kind of catapulted him into more online ministry and what that looks like today with the Church Digital Network and how that can help you in ministry. But before we do that, I want to highlight the Church.Digital. At the Church.Digital, associated with Jeff and a bunch of other people. We have tons of podcasts, blogs, coaching, and cohorts, lots of information about how you can grow in your online ministry. We also have information about the Church Digital Network. So I would love for you to check out thechurch.digital there. You can get all the resources there, all the encouragement there, and you get links to all this other stuff that we're talking about in this podcast episode. So go to thechurch.digital today. all right so now let's get in the interview with jeff reed and learn his story and about the church digital network all right with me right now is the one and only jeff reed jeff i all i have to say is that i knew you before everybody else knew you that's what i like my claim to fame is that we were friends before you were like everybody's friend you're like everybody's friend now [Jeff Reed] tom you may have been the first podcast i was ever actually ever on really like yeah no i mean i did i did something with cranda jay cranda before you jay you know i knew when i was working at church and and so when i resigned from from my position jay but jay's thing was not a true podcast it was a it was a youtube video And you, as I recall, you heard the video, the YouTube video, and you asked me to be on your podcast. And so you were actually the first technical podcast I had ever actually been on. Yeah. [Tom Pounder] And now my podcast is a part of your digital network. [Jeff Reed] Yeah, it's awesome. [Tom Pounder] Full circle. The Church Digital Podcast Network. You've got a lot of other podcasts on this network, too. [Jeff Reed] yeah so i mean it's it's a lot of fun and we're even looking at bringing some others on in the next weeks and months and um i mean honestly i've just i've gotten to this place in life where it's you know it's funny like my friends a new thing they actually said it yesterday so jeff the thing that we love about you is you get excited watching fruit helping fruit grow on other people's trees and i was like you know what that actually may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me and so yeah it's tom watching you succeed and chesley and and andy and and so many of these others the the pocket pulpit people you know everything that's going on through the network john uh it's a lot of fun because i'm seeing them develop i'm seeing some of their ideas flourish And I'm seeing them mature through the process. And it's exciting to me to be a part of so many different lives and so many different voices come to maturity and fruition. [Tom Pounder] And you're like the biggest, you are, you're like the biggest cheerleader. Like, again, you are such an encourager. You want people to take something and run with it. Yeah, I would agree exactly with what they just said about you. So I think that's fantastic. okay so just in case anybody doesn't know you've been on my podcast a number of times again your name jeff reed is mentioned all over when it's talking about online ministry but just in case someone doesn't know who you are what would you say that you do because you do a lot of stuff [Jeff Reed] Yeah, I mean, at this point, what I do is I'm actually a 150% introvert that spends all day talking. And so if you really boil it down, that's what I do. But I get the pleasure of working with churches and organizations here in America and around the world, helping them understand digital ministry and championing the idea of digital and metaverse. expressions of church you know and sometimes the if you're ever on a zoom call with me i usually have like a bunch of logos at the bottom of my screen that represents all the different organizations and companies that i'm working with and and it's interesting some we just took off some we're adding new ones on it as as we speak and so sometimes the uh the the sponsor list looks a little different the heart of this is here in 22 while the rest of the you know at least the american church seems to want to go back to the building as quick as possible there are pockets of organizations institutions denominations churches networks corporations there are these pockets of people that are recognizing that you can reach a different type of person digitally than you can with the physical building and and so what we're doing is we're we're championing those ideas we're telling those stories uh you know whether it's through leadership network championing the idea of a metaverse church or a new thing network working on developing a literally a new model of pastor a new model of planter that's more bi-vocational that does not have the resources of an established church because they're doing it digitally in metaverse. Even starting to explore Media Impact International. It's a global organization where we're championing digital marketing, training, digital resourcing for churches and missionaries in the Middle East. Like, it's crazy the organizations that are wanting to be a part of that, that are recognizing that digital plays a part. And while the rest of America wants to go back to the building, or at least their lead pastors think they do, hey, you know what? Go back to the building. We need the buildings, but we don't need the validation of you to do the ministry that we're doing. We're seeing that we can do that ministry without the validation. And so that's kind of it. Let's go with the goers. Let's champion those that are forward-facing. the church digital still championing the ideas digital church network love the idea of helping plant and start movements not just churches networks and movements of churches in digital and metaverse space like that's a mouthful tom that even just scratches the surface of what i'm doing right now and so it's a great place to be [Tom Pounder] yeah it's awesome it's great just seeing you and what you're doing again i think one of your latest podcasts is about reaching african churches and you know what how digital is using that so again it's it's fun to see how people are latching on to it and while again some people are wanting to go back in person which is fine you know but the reality is let's my my thing is let's not forget what we've learned and let's continue to move forward in that rather than let's take go back to the way things were you know So, well, Jeff, I always love having you on the podcast. And, you know, we talk about a variety of different things. But one of the things we always talk about is digital, because that's your passion. That's, you know, now my passion as well. And so one of the things we were talking about on Twitter recently, fairly recently, is I was, you know, just sharing about my frustrations with the website and how a server mitigation was causing one of the websites i was looking at uh to go down for a period of like five days it wasn't just one day it was five days and my whole website was shut down and i could not have access to it and then you got on twitter and said oh let me tell you a story about some servers and churches that i was working on so let's talk about that how your servers went down what what was the issues there but then also what kind of encouragement you would you would give churches when their servers do go down and what kind of help you could do and share with them along the process so share share with us your story jeff i've been dying to hear this ever since you mentioned it on twitter [Jeff Reed] Yeah, you know what, Tom? It's funny. That Twitter post triggered me. I was actually curled up in the fetal position on the couch. I have two dogs. Both of them were licking my bald head, trying to release me from this triggering event because they were so worried. No, but it really is true. A lot of people, they ask. It was funny. I'm going to totally name drop because I can, but I'm sitting down with Dave Ferguson, I don't know, 10 months ago, October of last year, and Dave Ferguson's like, who are you? You came out of nowhere. Nobody knew who you were. You weren't on anybody's radar, and now all of a sudden you're all over the place, and that's not even egotistically for me. If you know, I don't want to be all over the place. I'm like the... I'm the AVL closet guy. You don't see people like me in front of cameras having conversations, sitting down, drinking coffee with guys like Dave Ferguson. But the cold reality is 20 years ago, 20 years ago, I was doing this online ministry stuff. i graduated from college december 1999 and had a vision for digital church um it wasn't called digital church i was with a radio tv film degree not seminary degree i didn't know words like ecclesiology uh my theology was maybe a little suspect or if worse not really grounded But the heart of this was that I saw potential in the digital technology that was there. I can remember reading the word multimedia in an Apple A-plus magazine in 1992 as a college freshman, excuse me, high school freshman, 1992, and just thinking to myself, this is going to revolutionize what the church can do. I want to learn this. now 92 go graduated from high school 95 going into college 95 to 99. man listen when i'm editing on video um it was like vhs it was it was like rocking back and forth when i learned to edit audio i had to buy razor blades because i was literally cutting the tape so like the idea of of technology and computers interfacing with this stuff i was doing all this on the side learning i used to bring guys this is how dorky i was i used to bring guys into the dorm where I had installed on my Mac a cheap version of Adobe Premiere LE, limited edition. And this is where we learned how to edit video non-linear. I watch my kids do stuff like this on their iPhone, and I cringe because the power that they have at their fingertips is stuff that I didn't have access to when I was even much older as they were. And so it's a long story, Tom. Hope you're comfortable. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, no, I'm very comfortable. [Jeff Reed] Yeah, I give you permission to cut me off as we're going through this. [Tom Pounder] I just always like to make reference. I'll just say this. Every time you mention age, the simple fact that I'm older than you just blows my mind because you have just so much better life experiences than I do. And I'm older than you. [Jeff Reed] Dang it, man. okay go ahead keep on going sorry no but um we you know so i graduated from college 99 and literally in my heart god was calling me to do digital ministry and so we survived y2k you know the end of the world did not happen january 1st 2000 when all the computers of the world crashed somehow we managed to escape that catastrophe and so i set out january 2nd 2000 to go find the job as a digital pastor How do you think that went, Tom? Do you think a lot of the churches were interested in digital ministry in the year, I don't know, 2000? No. And so there was a lot of rejection. I mean, a lot of rejection. And so as a result of that, I kind of got my disruptor hat on and said, screw it. I'm going to do it myself. And so maybe I'm Thanos slamming the door shut, grabbing the gauntlet, going after it. But I started a company called eBeliever.com. And the goal was to create an online community where church can happen. Once again, I don't know ecclesiology. I know community. And what I see, and this is in the year 2000. This is before Facebook. This is before, I mean, it's like Napster and MySpace. Napster. Yes, I said MySpace, okay? Like this is what community looked like. And so we started a community at ebeliever.com. And we installed a message board system. It's like a Facebook wall before Facebook was walls. It was called Ultimate Bulletin Board. We were given away access to that, access to blogging. We had like a free website you could set up on there. Movie reviews, music reviews, free email addresses. Like we really created a powerful website, a powerful community with resources through eBeliever.com. and it was successful we had you know over over the span of the the three or four years that it was up we had 30 40 000 people globally the the first uh the first online small group i ever taught was in the year 2000 documented we went through the book of james uh we had 75 people in this message board system called ultimate bulletin board and uh like globally it was i i at the time i don't think i knew where united arab emirates was I don't think I could pick it out on a map, but I had two brothers from UAE that went through this Bible study with us. And I'm employees. Who's got money for employees? My lead programmer was a high school kid. My graphic designer was subcontracted from the Southern Baptist Convention, North American Mission Board. The majority of my content creators were college kids. It was just this ragtag organic group. And we were... I mean, I don't know, 30,000 people in the year 2000 engaging in an online community. I mean, I think that was something special back then, kind of setting the pace for this. Not financially rewarding. ironically like i think we launched the website april 15th in the year 2000 tax day and uh if you actually go back and look the dot com boom that was from the early 2000s it literally died the month before like march 15th uh 2000. you could get anybody would write a check for anything in dot coms and 99s in 2000. oh yeah and it all dried and it all dried up like a month before i launched and so once again jeff's broke got no money uh trying to figure out what to do [Tom Pounder] I was going to say, I had a ton of buddies. Again, I live up in Washington, D.C., and there was a lot of dot coms up here that they graduated college and they were making lots of money and they had lots of perks and all this stuff. And then all of a sudden, just like that, it went out and they were out of jobs and everything. [Jeff Reed] Yeah. and i mean that's so many times uh you just you see that that that economy go up and down and it's and it's in times like that where else hey you know what like the money's not coming i got to figure something else out and so being the guy you know years down the road i think a lot of what i do now with spinning multiple plates really goes back to some of those formative years right out of college where i was doing this really established beneficial ministry globally digitally setting the standard in many ways for what digital church can be what digital community could be but it wasn't financially rewarding so i started ebeliever.net which was a website design company and web hosting company and flash does you remember flash macromedia flash oh yeah not adobe flash macromedia like before um yeah and so and started i started programming uh html websites using i'm gonna go geek out here for a second we were using like uh adobe page mill um uh go uh go cyber studio i want to say was what it was called um adobe like i really tried to be on the adobe suite but they were uh at the beginning there wasn't much of it uh necro something or other i don't know that gross that's you ever use like dreamweaver or something dreamweaver yeah macromedia had dreamweaver then adobe bought it and then that's when i moved over adobe was using a software called cyber studio and then it was page mill was what they created they acquired cyber studio from somebody and then they acquired page maker or i'm sorry what'd you say was dreamweaver dreamweaver from somebody and so i was all in that suite i had guys who was programming like flash animations we were doing it was funny we were cleaning out my house uh just this past week going through some old boxes found a bunch of cd-roms that we actually had programmed uh flash applications on and so like you would put it in the computer and it would automatically open up this flash animation and we would you know parachurch organizations did a lot college ministries did did it a lot and so we it's just we were just being creative with whatever technology we had yeah And what's interesting while doing the community at the same time. So it was this one, two punch up. We're creating community, setting up that as an example, and then trying to get churches to follow suit by creating websites, but then communities for that website and teaching them and coaching them on how to be relational in that space. And so we did that for three or four years. It was crazy work, to be honest. And it was successful. We had, through eBeliever.net, the design side, we had over 100 clients. We were either providing website design for, graphic design for, hosting, CD-ROM development. There was constant work in that space because, really, there weren't a lot of us that were out there. now to the pastor who's like hey you know what why am i going to pay you to do this when my son can build it in microsoft front page for free when my 10 year old son can build it in microsoft front page for free you know if the standards you're looking for is what your 10 year old son can do you're fine go you don't need to talk to me stick with your son But if you're looking for maybe something a little better than your elementary school kid can do in Microsoft FrontPage. If you're around for Microsoft FrontPage, you understand this. [Tom Pounder] I can't believe you just threw out Microsoft FrontPage. Microsoft FrontPage, man. I'm having flashbacks already. [Jeff Reed] Horrible, horrible experiences. FrontPage extensions are the bane of my existence even 20 years later. But it was successful. We were seeing, we were getting traction. and and it was funny summer uh thanksgiving 2003. i did uh the for the first time we had been married three years um and you know we were newlyweds we were broke we were it was tight my wife was going through graduate school and so working a lot of semesters uh working as well trying to put it through and and we were successful with work but ministry you know you're never financially successful we hadn't taken a vacation to be honest in three years And my parents, they were heading up to their house in the Carolinas up in the mountains. And my parents in 2003, Thanksgiving, invited us to go up, no kids yet, to just go spend the holiday weekend up in the mountains. And it was a blast. We flew up there, connected to Atlanta, flew up to somewhere in the Carolinas. And it just spent time with my parents, with each other, having fun. hiking walking around you know looking at the mountains driving around doing shopping at some like auction house that we can't afford it was it was just it was a fun getaway yeah and it was it was it was funny um we we hopped on that plane in the carolinas we flew back into atlanta on on and this is probably sunday or monday so this is that towards the end of the thanksgiving holiday and and and i turned my phone on for the first time in four days because where i was up in the mountains there was no cell signal in the year 2000 we were traveling around up in the mountains i didn't have access to it and so i just i turned it off and i turned it on and all of a sudden thanksgiving 2003 my my voicemails start rattling like crazy now this is before like text messaging was really a thing yeah and so like i'm getting the pings the sms isn't there messaging apple iphones weren't there but my phone's blowing up with with with voicemail messages and so i listened to one well the first thing i did was i tried to get on my email to see what was going on with with my email And it was interesting. I couldn't get access to my email quickly, even through my phone. This is the old school Apple Rocker phone. If you remember Motorola when Apple, when they had that partnership. I'm pretty sure that was my phone in 03. and um i i couldn't get to my email so i finally listened to a voicemail and it was it was a voicemail from a guy on wednesday when i was traveling up the mountain who says hey jeff my website's down hey jeff i don't have access to my email And so I started listening to some others and it's all, hey, my email's down, my website's down, my email's down, my website's down. [SPEAKER_02] You got to remember, in 2003, Google didn't have Gmail. [Jeff Reed] Right. Like you were either Microsoft Outlook exchange server, which was very expensive, or you were housing it through what's called POP3 or IMAP email servers. [Tom Pounder] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] And so all these websites, all this web hosting, that's email as well. And it's down. And so I quickly call. I had 100 websites that were spread across two different servers. server one and server two. We can get into technical names, but really server one and server two. And so server one, I'm looking at, I'm hearing some of the names of the churches calling it. I'm like, something's wrong with server one. So I call the 800 number of the company that I have paid tens of thousands of dollars over the three-year lifespan of eBeliever.net. um to keep it up running healthy i didn't own the server i leased the server from them it was their responsibility to keep it up and running and and i called him up and i said hey server one's down uh for some reason none of my clients including myself can access email or servers or or websites what's what's going on hey hey jeff uh we're looking at the server right now and it's it's running it's running great Like it's run in full capacity. The numbers look great. No, it's not overloaded. It's definitely running. It's been up for four or five days. Well, that's weird because like my personal email, my website's not working. So I don't have a bunch of idiot clients. Like this is affecting me. eBeliever.com. And the person on the other line says to me, he says, what was the name of that domain? And I said, eBeliever.com. And the person says to me, That website is not on this server. And I said, how about blah, blah, blah, church? No. Blah, blah, blah, dot org. No. Blah, blah, blah. No. Okay, hey, are there any websites? No, Jeff. As a matter of fact, this server has no websites currently running on it. over a thanksgiving vacation in 2003 i managed to successfully lose 69 church websites oh my gosh and and the kick of it was was that it was not my fault the well okay god whatever but the heart of this is i had a contract where the organization that i had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lease the server from was backing it up daily and so what i did in the middle of i'm walking around i don't know what the atlanta airport's called but i'm literally walking around atlanta airport um on the verge of a mental breakdown realizing i'm losing 69 websites talking to this tech guy i'm literally at a gate and and i was like you have a backup install the backup i'm sorry sir um we don't seem to have a backup for any of that data Are you telling me that you don't have 69 websites backed up daily over the span of three to four years? Sir, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to hang up the phone now. And if you would like to pursue further communications, you'll probably need to go through our lawyers. Oh, my gosh. That literally happened to me coming off my first vacation in three years. And so I call lawyers. I'm not going to tell the name of the company. I think the company still exists. But the company was based in Dallas, Fort Worth. The hosting company was. And so I call up my lawyers. [Jeff Reed] My lawyers. I'm a 24-year-old kid. I called up a lawyer who was my small group leader in a Bible study I was in in college. It was an older lawyer with more experience and said, hey, what do I do here? And he actually, this lawyer friend of mine, did some research and said, Jeff, I love you as a friend. You have grounds to sue them. With the documentation of your contract where it says that they can back it up, you will probably win the lawsuit. you will spend more on your legal fees than you will on winning the lawsuit. And my lawyer friend gave me a great piece of advice. He said, let it go. Whatever money you're going to spend in legal fees, invest it in your next company and move on with your life. And I had the unfortunate reality of having to call 69 pastors and tell them it's all gone. blogs gone like this is not the world where you're you you're utilizing 15 different cloud services to do what your website is and gmail is always going to be backed up on gmail servers and whatever you're using for blogging wordpress is going to back it up on that and you have like this blog spot whatever like you type had you have all these different cloud services where you're outsourcing it to this is we are installing this all these applications on the server And all their personal emails, all their address books, everything is gone. Photo albums from past retreats, events, gone. And I'm not going to lie. Like, I got F-bombed. by a number of pastors in in those days um we uh i i rebuilt websites for free i promised um free hosting like i i was gushing blood i actually sold gushing is probably the right way to say that for the correct people gushing is you know that's that's the german way the gushing um but the heart of this is is that man i i i lost everything i actually i sold this this organization because i was so sick of technology after rebuilding this thing into 2004 i sold it for pennies on the dollar i'm like for the love of god somebody else needs to take this over i am done with this i don't want anything to do with technology i was a self-proclaimed luddite i actually invested the money for the next business i invested it into a christian bookstore i actually owned a brick and mortar christian bookstore for five years well because it was like i i don't want anything to do with technology i'm allergic to it because it it failed me it failed me in this gross miserable way and instead of helping all of these churches and instead of creating this community and being the model for what could be i lost it all and i saw the gross underside of of churches who honestly i can't blame who lost all this stuff yeah and so uh the but what's interesting was moving on for me hindsight 2020 i have 18 years retrospective coming into this statement buying the christian bookstore was the best thing i could have ever done in my life Because what it forced me to do, a technological savant, a guy who loved exploring tech, it forced me to be relational. It forced me to be conversational. A customer would walk in that door, and I'm not talking about some geeky tech thing. I'm talking about their lives and trying to figure out through the Holy Spirit how I can guide them and walk them into whether it was a book, whether it was a conversation, whether it was a church, whether it was a networking thing to try to introduce them to someone who could help them in their lives. Like it was a master class in people. And it's funny, like even some of the employees, we would joke about it. We met the best in Christian world working at that bookstore. And we met the worst of Christianity in that bookstore. you know there were there were people that would come in uh we would hug we would pray for there were people who suffered great loss and the first place they knew to come to was was to us uh to to get i mean for some people and this is unfortunate but we did diminish we were not a church but for some people that did not have the church or did not have the relationship with the pastors we were that intermediary step Because we were that relational as a group. One of my other businesses, a brick and mortar shop, actually saw over 150 people come to Christ through this, like, it was called C28. It's like a Hot Topic Pack Sun type of thing in West Palm Beach. Like, we were evangelizing. We were connecting people to churches. Like, we really understood the relational aspect. And really, it was that... four to five years, 2004 to 2008, maybe 2009, where we really started to focus on that. And for me, the best thing that I did was not eBeliever. not even the stuff that i did in church ministry the best developmental thing for me was understanding the relational context and and not how technology trumps that but how technology can complement that and that's really you know post 2009 post the bookstore when the economy crashed as a result of um Obama said the word recession during one of his election things. The economy crashed, and things just went down the toilet. But the heart of it was that God had used that season to really not only give me an eye for technology, and he restored that eye for technology. But he also brought in this new dynamic of the relationships. And it's really that merger, that marriage between the technology and the relationships, the tech and the people, that really allowed me to be the digital pastor that I was and the person that I was in the space after that, setting me up for Digital Church Network, the church digital, and all the craziness that we're part of today. [Tom Pounder] i mean i i feel like i'm going to title this uh this podcast the history of jeff reed in the the online world but i mean this is this is great but i love hearing this because again you're talking about digital you know you love to talk about digital but you're you're experiencing digital back in the early 2000s and it's just amazing how again it's a word that we use a lot now but again you were you were combining in person you were combining that with the digital all those years ago and look at all the great things that you were doing ministry-wise with that. I think it's fascinating. [Jeff Reed] And the thing that's interesting, Tom, especially even going back to the triggering effect of me when you're talking about this server failure, is that I would not be, and I am 100% confident of this, we would not be in the seat that we are today. Digital church network, the church digital, understanding the relational component. I, Jeff Reed, would not be involved in this conversation had I not lost everything in 2003. had that thing not exploded because god used that that moment to lead me down a path to teach me the thing that i needed in 2004 to teach me that that relational component And it's funny, sometimes, you know, I talk with people and that, by the way, that's probably not the worst thing to ever happen to me in the span of my history of employment. There have been lots of of of of disrupting events. There's been lots of of turnover and changes. And you're talking to a guy that historically does not hold a job longer than four years. Like there's there's constant disruption and change. And I thrive in some of those environments. Maybe that's a character flaw of myself. But God used the hurt. God used the pain to lead me down a new path and position me in a way to learn the lessons that I needed to. [Tom Pounder] couple decades ago to position me into the place today that i can do what god needs me to do today god uses every bit of our story for a greater good and if we stick with the lord i firmly believe again god uses my divorce in a powerful way that i never would have thought uh all the hurt and pain i went through god uses that for his glory down the road uh yes so i i think it's fascinating okay well here here's the deal jeff i wanna i want you to talk about if someone's listening right now they're like what what does he talk about the digital church um network what what is that how can i utilize that and i want you to talk about the family too for a minute what is the digital church church network and what is the family component of it [Jeff Reed] No, I love that. So often I sit down with people, and it's interesting, 20 years ago, I would say today that Jeff Reed in the early 2000s had missional imagination. He had an idea, even going back into the early 90s, that first time I read. multimedia and understood what that could be the vr books that i read in like 1995 1996 catching a vision for maybe a church in virtual reality honest to god starting to explore this learning how to animate and program for the mere purpose of trying to help churches get into the space i had imagination for what could be and my imagination automatically went towards missional purposes Now, I'm willing to suspect a lot of the listeners out there, man, you may be in a church environment doing the nine to five duty of working at a church. You know, Tom, I know you get a lot of physical churches interested in digital strategy listening here into your podcast. Now, I'm willing to suspect that some of you out there, you're asking questions like, what if? What if our church did this? What if my lead pastor could see this? Maybe we could reach a different type of person by doing something different in digital or metaverse space. Maybe your pastor doesn't even know how to spell the words VR. But in you, there's a vision to do. I always love that joke. In you, there's a vision to do something. different. And that's what we do with Digital Church Network. We've created a community through FAM that helps connect people who have visual ideas of doing something different and giving them an opportunity to do just that. to do something different and so we work with a lot of people that are planting churches in digital and metaverse spaces uh churches that don't really exist with physical buildings uh we're we're helping people understand digital discipleship we're helping people understand understand digital evangelism we're offering training on on metaverse on discipleship on all of these things really trying to empower a new group of people a different group of people than maybe that are using the physical buildings to reach a different type of person on the digital and metaverse mission field and so from a practical standpoint we run an online community you can find it at i tell you if you go to digitalchurch.network you can click some links to go into there or the direct link is fam f-a-m like the first three letters of family dot digitalchurch dot network um and and our hope is to to be the catalyst to be the inspiration to be the training uh we want to help people from a tactical standpoint from a technical standpoint or from a theological standpoint try to tackle the ideas of being a digital church a metaverse church or maybe something as easy or simple as helping my church better understand digital discipleship understand asynchronous communities i just did a talk i posted it on youtube um about missional imagination how churches need to lean into people like you that are that are asking um imaginative questions and maybe the answer is not uh to limit people into the ministry of the physical building but maybe we should be empowering people uh to give them freedom to explore what's happening and maybe even start to create some resources like an asynchronous community for those missional ideas to feed into and so it's a lot of that out of the box thinking that helps churches and individuals like you the people that you know what hey let's lean into this let's learn some things from covid hey we want to be there to help churches and individuals like you to capitalize on that and to celebrate the learnings, the pros and the cons, the wins and the losses along the way. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, and I'll just say this. One of the things I love about the Church Digital Network is that it's a place for me who I am in online ministry, but my online ministry looks a little bit different than someone else's online ministry, whose looks different than others. And so I get an opportunity to learn and process and discover what other people are doing and be encouraged in that because I'm a Lone Ranger at my church. you know i'm the one thinking digital at my church i need to be surrounded by other people who are thinking like this so i can be encouraged because it can be a very discouraging world even though we've made so much progress in online ministry over the past few years it still can be very lonely so i like to hear what other people are doing i love to see the praise god moments i love being a part of the round tables that you guys host on there and the different voices that you have on there and i mean again we you posted this the other day and i wouldn't have known about it because i don't watch the today show but uh jason was on the today show talking about vr church you know and the impact that's happening like god is doing some amazing things in online ministry and you guys are taking it and really running with it i love to be encouraged by that network [Jeff Reed] yeah and i mean the heart of this what we're trying to do with dcn digital church network is we're trying to reach a different type of person than the buildings are going to reach through different methods than what our physical churches are doing discipling them in different ways than how the buildings operate and using this in different spaces than where the buildings are going, digital and metaverse. And so what we're trying to do is not competing with the physical building in any way. But let's acknowledge the fact that the building has lost 25% of its people over the past 25 years. We're now down to 25%. 75% of America is not interested in the brick and mortar church. And so we need to explore other opportunities. And the churches that are leaning into doing something different in digital metaverse spaces, I'm not even talking about broadcasting church online services. I'm actually talking about being the church within these digital metaverse spaces. The churches that are leaning into that are successful in reaching that different type of person. and so we're seeing examples we've already gotten proven examples of that we're really just looking for people that are willing to think outside the box and and help them think outside the box and help them produce that thing be the be the encouragement be the accountability be the resourcing they need to make that happen yeah I love it. [Tom Pounder] Well, Jeff, this has been awesome. I thought we were just going to talk about servers the entire time. And now we're talking about just a great community that we have at our disposal. So, okay. So I'm going to have all these links for it, but just for, as we kind of wrap up, if someone wants to connect with you individually, what's the best place for them to be able to do that? [Jeff Reed] Hey, you know what? I'll go ahead and give my cell phone number. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. We're just let's just go for it right now. Look, look, one condition. Don't be one of these people that actually calls the cell phone number. Who wants to talk on the phone, you monsters? Don't do that. But you can text me. Text me here, 484-324-8724. 484-324-8724. If you speak telephone alphabet, it's number four, the church. And so number four, the church. Go ahead and text me. We'd love to engage. You can find me on social media at DearFedge. It's Jeff Reed backwards, D-E-E-R-F-F-E-J. But all my friends, they just text. So go ahead and text 484-324-8724. [Tom Pounder] Right before this podcast, I actually called you, which I'm surprised you picked up. So I'm glad. Yeah, definitely text the number. Jeff doesn't normally pick up. So yeah, that's good. Well, Jeff, as always, it's great having you on the podcast. I'm glad we were able to make this work and for you to be able to share about the Church Digital Network and the family. So thanks, man. [Jeff Reed] Love you, Tom. Keep doing what you're doing. [Tom Pounder] All right, so what did you think? What was it like hearing from Jeff and being encouraged by Jeff and his story? Anything stand out to you? Anything encourage you or challenge you in a certain way? If so, I would love for you to share about it. Definitely hit it in the comment section below or you can hit me up on Twitter at TAPound. You can also hit up Jeff as well. Tag both of us and we'd love to talk to you a little bit more. We'd love to continue this conversation on online. and specifically on Twitter. So hit us up there and let's continue this conversation and see where the Lord leads us. And again, make sure you sign up for the Church Digital Network. It's a great opportunity for us to grow together in a community, learn from each other, and spur each other on towards that next level of online ministry, whatever that's going to look like. All right, here as well, thanks so much for joining me today. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, subscribe to it. It's on YouTube, iTunes, it's on Spotify. You can find it at thechurch.digital today as well. Go find there, subscribe to it, and you'll get these when they come out every single time. Thanks so much for being with me today, and until next time, have a great one.