Jeff Reed
Some people are still asking if digital ministry is real.
Jeff Reed stopped asking that question in June 2000.
That month, he led his first online Bible study. Seventy-five people scattered across the planet. The book of James. A text-based forum called Ultimate BB. No livestream. No app. No category for what he was doing. He was a digital missionary before the church had a word for it.
Twenty-five years later, he is still building the thing the church has not yet decided to take seriously.
Jeff is the founder of theChurch.digital, the community for the church’s outside-the-box thinkers. He launched the organization in 2018 after a twenty year career on local church staff in production, creative and communications. In 2024 he and the TCD leadership team made the shift official. theChurch.digital became a 501(c)(3), backing the people planting church into the places the rest of the church has been calling “not real.” Six continents. Decentralized regional outposts. Native leaders running native experiments. A movement built on the conviction that platforms are places, that experimentation is faithfulness rather than rebellion, and that the people gathering there are not waiting for a permission slip.
The work runs on three rails. Connect: conferences and the Digital Missionary Summit Series at missionary.digital, sponsored by CRU Global Church Movements. Four summits. Eighty-five countries. Nearly a thousand pioneers identified and called out. Equip: a six week digital missiology cohort that trains the trainers, with revenue shared back to the Outpost Leaders who teach it. Care: peer support groups for the missionaries themselves, because the people building community for others are too often building it alone.
That is the work. That is the mission. That is who he is.
Before theChurch.digital, Jeff started eBeliever.com, one of the earliest expressions of online community for believers on the public web. He served two decades on staff at local churches, learning the inside of the building before deciding the building was not the assignment. He has written two books on the subject. VR and the Metaverse Church: How God is Moving in this Virtual, Yet Quite Real, Reality. And Sharing Jesus Online: Helping Everyday Believers Become Digital and Metaverse Missionaries. Both are field manuals for the people who already know the mission moved, and are tired of being told it didn’t.
Jeff still serves the local church. He is Director of Digital at Christchurch Miami and Director of Production for the South Miami Campus of Christ Journey Church. He is also the founder of Humble Disruption, a consulting practice that helps churches and ministries do something different to reach someone different. The pattern is consistent across every role. Build the on-ramp. Validate the pioneer. Refuse to play it safe.
Through theChurch.digital, Jeff has partnered with Resi, Pushpay, Gloo, He Gets Us, Media Impact International, Stadia Church Planting, Exponential and other gospel-centric organizations committed to multiplication. Google the phrase “digital missionary.” Four of the top ten results come back to theChurch.digital. That is not an accident. That is twenty-five years of saying the same thing until the rest of the church started listening.
He still believes the most important shift is the smallest one. Stop asking if digital counts. Start asking who is already waiting there.
Jeff married his high school sweetheart Amy. They have two kids and two dogs. They live in Miami, Florida.
This is who he is.
