Digital Ministry & Physical Ministry Can Work Together – Interview With Jeff Reed

Jason Hamrock: Hey, Jeff, thanks so much for jumping on our podcast with us today, so glad to have you. You are a leader in the space of how to use digital tools to actually grow a church, disciple people inside of a church, and I’m real excited to kind of pick your brain today. So thanks.

Jeff Reed: Awesome. Thank you for the invite. It’s great to be here.

Jason Hamrock: Yeah. So we’re kind of talking about all things digital speaking, you know when it comes to a church, and church growth. And certainly, I think your world has been turned upside down a little bit the last few months, tell me what you’ve been up to.

Jeff Reed: Yes. So pre-COVID, well actually going back to 2018, I started a company called The Church Digital. Helping churches try to figure out how to do this church online, thank God. I’ve always just had a passion in me to help churches figure out how to utilize technology. I was doing online small groups, and online Bible studies all the way back in 2000. Before we were even doing like webcams, it was all like text-based communication back then, and all around the world. And so, like, I’ve always been that leading-edge guy. And about 2018 I started this company, The Church Digital, blogging, podcasting, consulting, which we were OK. Like, you know, it wasn’t crazy busy, but then, you know, CCOVID hit. March, we saw our traffic on our website shoot up a thousand, literally, a thousand percent, five times the average listeners to our podcast now.

Jeff Reed: The previous like maybe a couple of months, a month previous to COVID, January 2020, I actually got hired by a company called Stadia Church Planting. Who is passionate about this idea of planting a digital-only expression of church. Which was like hugely controversial, pre-COVID, like I’ve had pastors tell me, Jeff, you are actually sinning by taking people out of the Bride of Christ, the church, by doing church online, and by planting digital-only churches. You know, that was pre-COVID. Of course, COVID, those pastors are now calling me up. Hey, Jeff, how quick can you help us stream? Like, we’ve got to get this going. Because, you know, a lot of the theological concerns that we really have, are really more of opinions when you really came down to it, at least in light of COVID.

Jeff Reed: And so, yeah, it’s been helping churches, and this is really the heart, existing churches, helping them figure out how to do ministry digitally. We’ve been doing physical ministry for a couple hundred years here in this country, we’ve got it down. We know how to utilize the building to the T, like, we’ve nailed the building. But there’s this whole, like, online scope. The majority of churches, man, we’ve been throwing crap against the wall for, I guess, 120-130 days at this point.  Next year, we’ll really have it all figured out. I think we’re putting too much stock in one thing, maybe not really valuating enough of the other piece, but I’m sure we’ll get into all that as the conversation goes. But it’s been a lot of helping churches figure out how to do ministry effectively in this COVID season. But also coming out of this COVID season, what is ministry going to look like Post COVID?

Jason Hamrock: You know, I had the same kind of experience when I talk to churches. Back when this thing, you know, like mid-March when it kind of broke, every church was going, uh oh. And, you know, one little virus caused every church to do 180. And I think that caught a lot of churches and pastors off guard, some were equipped for it, a lot of them were not. So they put their efforts into…And, you know, thank goodness for companies like Facebook and YouTube because without that they would have been in deep trouble. But they were able to kind of spin, and create at least an environment where they could do a church service. The question I think a lot of pastors are wrestling with is, first of all, when we can get back in person, whenever that’s gonna be, what does that look like for the online experience? How do we navigate doing both at a high level, in-person and online? But then deeper than that, this is where I think you as an expert, I’d love your opinion on this. How does a church actually disciple their current congregation, and outreach to people that are maybe far from God, unchurched people, but yet still have a desire to connect and still are seeking answers? And how does a church do effective online ministry?

Jeff Reed: Yeah. Great, great questions right there. And once again, I’m on the bleeding edge guy. Like I’m the guy that says radical stuff that people are like, you did not just say that, and then they send hate mail to Jason Hammrock. So if you want to send, if you’re really angry at what I’m about to say, please send it Jason’s way. You can just find him on social media, [inaudible] you can tag me as well. But look, here’s the core of it, the church really is not even using the strength of the Internet, the average church in this COVID is not utilizing its strengths of the Internet well.

Jeff Reed: Here, I like to tell this story. 1995, Billy Graham preached one sermon, it was bounced off of 30 satellites all over the world, translated in real-time into multiple languages. One sermon from Billy Graham in 1995 was heard by one billion,  that’s B, billion people. One sermon in real-time, that was 1995, that was 25 years ago. I was a college freshman, Texas Christian University. My now wife, then girlfriend, she was a high school senior in Miami, Florida. Do you know what the long-distance rates were for me to call from Texas to Miami on a landline, not even a cell phone, but a landline. We were paying thirty-five, forty-five cents of a minute. Now I’m able to jump on a Zoom call, I’m interacting with you, Jason, we’re having this conversation face to face. And I guarantee you, neither of us are really paying thirty-five cents a minute for this phone call right now. So you see, 25 years ago what Billy Graham figured out to do…By the way, huge technological vision that Billy had, was called reach. He was able to get his message heard, but it’s a one-way communication. We’ve really been doing that for 25 years, but even before that, television has been doing this one-way communication for a long time. The strength of the Internet is not one-way communication, yes, it can do it cheaper, it can do it maybe a little more efficiently. Some people, like we don’t have to have the satellite set that Billy had to do. But the strength is really in this two way communication, where we can dialogue, where we can engage with one another.

Jeff Reed: And I tell this story of Billy to kind of segway to this, that as a church, we’ve really been killing ourselves in this COVID season to create content, to create services. And then do you what, the first three, four weeks, I was on a church today. Hey, Jeff, do you know what? March, man, we were getting 20, 30 thousand IP addresses, we were skyrocketing, it was great. Easter hit kind of around April, May, afterwards, that 20 thousand dropped to three. Largely because, maybe there’s some digital fatigue in that, but it’s digital fatigue because it’s just content. You see, in the physical church, we know that the church is more than the one hour on Sunday, at least I hope we know that. You know, they’re small groups, they’re serving opportunities, are getting people on mission, there’s disciple-making, discipleship, whatever that pathway looks like for your physical church. You’re very intentional about what that looks like in physical space, a lot of churches today have not figured out, they’ve not gotten to the place of, how do I make that disciple-maker?  How do I do evangelism in this COVID season? And as a result of it, unfortunately, when I look around, I see a bunch of churches that instead of focused on the one…Instead of the Parable of the ninety-nine sheep, where the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one, instead of being focused on the people who are far from God. We’ve really turned our services, which really isn’t that good of an evangelical tool anyway online, we’ve really turned it to more of an inward focused, spend time, let’s try to get the ninety-nine engaged, let’s try to do that. And as a result, our ninety-nine are disenfranchised because they don’t have a purpose right now, and our one is actually not anywhere near the church because we haven’t gone after them. We haven’t helped our ninety-nines find their ones in this process. So church we’re doing the wrong thing, by focusing so much on these services, we’re actually trying to create content for people to keep them engaged. But content is not the thing that keeps anyone engaged, content doesn’t change lives, one-way communication does not impact people in 2020, two-way communication does. And by forcing our services, and putting all of that in an online environment… Well, you talk to an online pastor, they’ll tell you, people connect to the community far before they connect to Christ. And so it’s within the community, it’s within the relationships that we actually start to see life change happen.

Jeff Reed: Let me ask you a question, Jason. I’m going to be completely stupid when I ask this, just for kicks, right? What’s the last Netflix show that changed your life?

Jason Hamrock: I’ve never had one.

Jeff Reed: Anything? I mean, listen, I am Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’m a geek at that stuff. Right?  But does it change my life? No, it doesn’t, content doesn’t change lives, community does. And so as a result, we’ve been focusing on…And listen, I’ll be honest, March 2020, I’m one of those guys, there’s actually videos of me doing online conferences saying, create content seven days a week, this is our chance, we could beat Netflix. And you know what I found?  Really, just to be completely truthful, it was just more noise. And the approach wasn’t let’s create that content seven days a week, but let’s teach our people to engage their circle of influence in a new way. You see, the thing with ones is we have, as a church, we have organizational, institutional ones that we can reach, and there are opportunities for a church to influence and grow that way. But if you want to multiply, if you want to grow exponentially, you start getting your ninety-nine out there.

Jeff Reed: Here’s what I know, Twitter, and I’ve learned this, Twitter has their…We’re in this cancel culture right? Where at this point organizations, it does not matter what you say, you can have the best intentions of the world. But the power is no longer in your voice, the power is in the voice of others and what they say about you, and so that can be used for negative in context of Twitter’s cancel culture, but it can also be used for good as we ask our people, we challenge our people, to get out and influence their circle of influence, and share with them about Christ.

Jason Hamrock: Yeah. You know you said something that really caused me to think. Because a lot of the things that we do at Missional Marketing, it’s all about creating content. Because, you know, let’s just face it, churches have done a horrible job of getting their content online to be found in Google. But there is a shift in something that we’ve always thought through, it’s great to feed somebody if they’re looking for any kind of felt need help. And it could be marriage support, addiction stuff, or it could be they’re looking for forgiveness, faith related, all kinds of different felt needs. You have to first show up, and so that is kind of one-way communication. But it can’t stop there if it stops there, it’s dead. It has to turn into two-way conversations. So calls to actions to engage with a church. But I really love what you said with the ninety-nine going out, we have to feed, but we have to spark engagement back and forth. And I think that’s where digital, a true effective digital ministry, can really get gain some ground when it has that two-way communication. And seems like some churches, I feel like they are doing a decent job, at least trying to do this. But in my opinion, it’s like online ministry isn’t another ministry. To me, it’s almost like it’s another church, it’s a church inside your church. It can’t just be one little segment, oh yeah, one guy that’s overseeing that, we call that good. That to me, it seems like just from this conversation I’m learning that’s not enough, and churches have to think differently.

Jeff Reed: Yeah. So you’ve got, I mean a typical model, pre-COVID, was you’re hiring this online pastor. And you’re like, hey, you’re responsible for the online campus. And what that really meant, pre-COVID, was this, so you’re responsible for everybody who lives 30 miles outside of our physical area. Anybody within the 30 physical miles, you don’t touch that person, because that person’s responsibility is the physical building. No, no, no, online is a way, it’s outside. And so pre-COVID, we were really trying to disciple and reach those people who were far away, leading the church probably further away than what they were really prepared to do.

Jeff Reed: Mid-COVID, we really saw a lot of the digital pastors come into play. Where it’s okay, now, I am responsible for utilizing all of the church’s website, digital communications, social media. I am pastoring and shepherding the church, our physical church, in an online environment, and it’s whatever the tools, whatever the methods. And so we saw a lot of these digital pastors honestly burn out in the first couple months, at just the weight of, hey, we’re not just talking about a small number of people here, the entire church is, really they were carrying that weight. What does the kid’s ministry look like? How can we reach students better? What are we gonna do for it for some of our senior, or our older congregations? How do we care for them in digital space? And many churches we’re really pouring all of this on one single guy. this digital pastor, who was basically frying himself out.

Jeff Reed: And then the third model, this is really where I feel like we’re landing post-COVID, wherever we are now, whatever the next normal is, is this idea of a digital champion. You know, the digital champion is basically saying it’s all of our responsibilities, anybody who’s on staff, even the church overall, digital is part of all of us, it’s who we are. Any person has a physical, as well as a digital, footprint. Whether they’re on the other side of the planet, or they’re across the street from your main campus or your broadcast facility. They’re a single mom who lives across the street from the church, is going to benefit from an online small group. So don’t put undue restraints on her, by having her only be a physical church person, if she desires to interact with that. But let’s figure out how online can reach her as a single mom, and can also be responsible for helping her disciple and grow her kids. And so it becomes a much more holistic view. Actually, do you know what I’ve heard more recently is, churches are starting to wrestle with this idea of digital, almost in the same breath as local missions and global missions. Where it’s this idea that it’s all-encompassing, it’s for everyone, it’s not for a pocket, they’re even budgeting and treating it kind of that way. I’ve seen a couple of churches, it’s intriguing to me just to see how churches are really wrestling with it, okay, it’s bigger than what we actually thought it was. Like, that’s the lesson of this COVID season, is to really figure out how to let it grow, let it thrive, and not necessarily put the limitations on it that maybe we were wanting to do several months ago.

Jason Hamrock: Well, it seems like just conversations I have, I’m sure you have the same conversations, it’s kind of thrilling to hear churches talk about restructuring their budget to go a lot deeper into this thing called digital. Which I think is a great thing because it’s just causing them to think. I mean, we’re talking sharp people leading churches, they’re going to figure this out. And it’s fun to hear these churches that we’re talking to that they’re going, yeah, we need to reallocate, we need to think differently, and think bigger, and more strategic, so that’s pretty exciting. You mentioned to me that there are some churches, or maybe church plants, that are just digital, they don’t even have a physical space. Can you share a little about that?

Jeff Reed: Yes. So that’s actually, this is why Stadia hired me back in January to be the organization that helped Stadia become the organization that really plants this digital-only model of church. Now, there are some of these that do exist. Now, D.J. Soto leads a church in virtual reality, they actually have three or four, what they would call church plants or churches at this time in virtual reality. VR is their main platform, they do the time zones of North America, Europe, and then Asia Pacific. They’re also, I think they’re on VR Vroom, and they’re trying to get onto to Sony, so they’re trying to get into multiple platforms. But at this point, they’re reaching hundreds of people any given week in virtual reality. And by the way, what they’re finding is like the people who are engaging, I think I heard 80 to 85 percent atheist or the lost that are engaging in virtual reality. In other words, lost people are checking out church through the safeness of virtual reality because, hey, I don’t like what you’re doing, I can just turn off the headset and get back to life. So it’s hugely evangelical services there.

Jeff Reed: Jate Earhart’s another guy, he’s a video gamer, and so he’s created this in discord, which is like a gaming version of Slack or WhatsApp. But he’s created this discipleship church, disciple making movement, where they’re going through, it’s called E3 4 Fields, 3/3’s, kind of their discipleship system, where he’s training kids how to evangelize, using video games. And literally, they’re playing these like massively long campaigns with like normal people, not Christians, and through these like 8-10 hour long games, witnessing, sharing Christ, bringing people to Christ while playing video games. And then introducing them into the [inaudible] church called Love Clan, where they start to train them on what it means to be a Christian, what their story is in Christ, and then empowering them to go out and tell others.

Jeff Reed: There’s a kid, this is one of my favorite stories, Daniel Aaron. Daniel Aaron is a college probably a freshman or sophomore at this point, so 19 or 20 years old. Eight years ago he started a digital-only church in a platform called RobLox, it’s like a mix up of Lego and Minecraft. And essentially eight years ago, do back math, he’s 19 or 20 at this point, he built this thing. It kind of feels like Presbyterian, his dad’s a Presbyterian pastor, he’s connected with and influenced over twenty-four thousand people that we know of, utilizing this platform, completely in virtual reality. And so with Stadia, it’s our desire to help others plant more of these digital-only churches.

Jeff Reed: Look, is the digital-only expression of church for everyone? No, not today, tomorrow may be a different thing. Today, let’s get the physical churches back going. Let’s teach them how to be phygital, P.H.Y.G.I.T.A.L. Combine the physical and digital together, utilize their strengths to do ministry. But there is enough people that would buy into that digital-only model of church, to make it worthwhile. And I think if you really look, the biggest challenge to a digital-only church, and I’ve heard it hundreds of times. Jeff, digital-only, it’s not biblical, the Bible calls us to gather together in person, do not abandon gathering together. You’re right, we do see those words. However, when you look at the digital communities where we are, we see them, and they see themselves as gathering together. And so, like this whole thing of we’re not challenging banding and gathering together. We actually when we look at scripture, look at Acts 2, look at Acts 8, you see the church spread out of Jerusalem into different areas with that. I believe COVID is doing an example of that, where it is breaking, it is splintering up our churches into smaller areas, and we’re going to see more types of church grow out of this. Digital-only expression of church, a church that meets the biblical functions as set out by Act 2, Acts 8, and really allows us to do a different spin on church, to reach a different type of person. Yeah, I think that’s coming soon to, ironically, to a church near you.

Jason Hamrock: Yeah. Just because you’re engaging somebody online for the very first time, doesn’t mean that’s the final step. It might be where they come to Christ through that experience, and then maybe they find a local church to plug into. And, you know, I love this idea of a digital church, and who knows what God’s gonna do with it. Right? That’s like just saying we’re going to limit what God’s going to do through us in this digital space, it’s like he created this technology for a reason. And I think that if we put our best foot forward, we’re gonna probably fail nine times, but it only takes that one time to figure out, oh, that’s going to work. And if it goes, and it reaches one person, that’s what we should be doing. So it is really exciting. So tell me what kind of other things are you involved with, with helping churches? Like, give me some examples of what you’re doing too, in this space and this time right now, are you consulting with churches? Are you helping them spin up a digital platform, or a digital ministry? What does that look like?

Jeff Reed: Yeah, so the individual consulting when COVID hit, all that kind of went by the wayside, just because of demand. But in working with Stadia, we’ve really been working towards this idea of helping churches thrive, grow, and multiply. As I said earlier, phygitally, P.H.Y.G.I.T.A.L.L.Y. Phygital is actually a business term, but it’s coming from this idea of physical and digital working together. You know, I buy a rake from Home Depot. I don’t tell you if I buy it at Home Depot dot com, I don’t tell you if I bought it from the Pine Crest Home Depot, or the South Bay Home Depot down in Miami. I just say I bought it at Home Depot, the location is actually irrelevant. Similarly, when we sit down with churches, we give them the advice of physical is actually irrelevant, digital is irrelevant as well. Those are not the end, those are the means to get to the end. So we help churches figure out what their endgame is, what their model is for church. Some have it figured out, some think they have it figured out and they need to add to it. But it really comes down to helping churches figure out how they’re going to multiply in this season, and how physical ministry as well as digital ministry can work together to help them get to the place of where they’re multiplying into others. And so we’re leading some learning communities to that end. Right now, Stadia has taken about 70 different churches through this process. We are about halfway through, and it’s going amazingly well. So much so, we’re actually opening up a second learning community cohort, and getting ready to spin that up. If you go to https://stadiachurchplanting.org/phygital/ you get more information on there. I think it starts in August, so we’d love to have some conversations with you and get you introduced into those.

Jeff Reed: But between the learning communities, which not only…You know, the strength of the learning community isn’t…The content solid, we’re bringing in churches from like Saddleback, and Church Home, and Crossroads in Cincinnati, big churches, small churches, you know, different paths to really help like the learning community understand and be inspired with some things. But the thing that I think sets these learning communities apart is, we also provide coaching and accountability. We get you connected with other churches that are in a similar place as you are, and coaching to help you figure out what’s best for your church. In this whole COVID season, there is no silver bullet, there’s no secret sauce, there’s no, you know, contra code if you’re like me. There is no, up, up, down, down, a, b, select, start. That’s not the code, you’ll have to Google it to actually find what the code is. But there is no magic to this, right, it’s you got to figure out what works for your church, what your church is trying to do, and then build the structure around it. And that’s what we’re doing really well with Stadia right now, is helping these churches figure out where their endgame is, and then build the physical and digital structure around it so that they can grow and multiply in this season. So doing that, doing blogs, podcasts like crazy, feels like every other week I’m asked to speak at an online conference from some new place. And it’s just, it’s lots of people asking questions. And the more that we’re able to help in this season, and then help churches not only figure out the technology piece, but maybe some multiplication. You know, the church will be better not only today, but it’ll be better tomorrow as a result.

Jason Hamrock: Oh, I completely agree. And I think it’s probably pretty exciting, especially when you work with a church that, they’re all in, and they understand that we’re not going to get it on the first try. But we have to a.b. test things, and it might take us a year, but eventually we’re gonna get there, and on the other side of that is going to be a lot of people getting to know who Jesus is and what he’s done for them. And I love that you guys are leading the charge in this. And it’s thrilling for a company like us because we get to serve a lot of churches in the space of digital, using digital tools to engage people. So as people are searching or whatnot, they find a local church. But that’s all relative now, I mean, you can use like Google Ad Grant to reach people all over the country. But getting that next connection, and that engagement, that’s the key. And so that stuff that you guys are working on, it’s super exciting for us because we’d love to hear, what’s the end result of that? What’s a typical game plan look like for a church, where we could introduce that to our churches? They are probably overlapping with the churches you’re working with. But it certainly is exciting for us, because, man, that’s our heartbeat as well. As, you know, we care about that lost one person, you know, they’re desperate. That mom across the street, she’s single, she’s got kids, she’s at her wit’s end, she needs help, she needs a community, and she hasn’t found one. And yet, go online and you could find one, and it’s right there at your fingertips. And so for you guys to be kind of pioneering that, is really exciting for us. So thank you for that. Thank you for your input, and for Stadia, just for stepping out and doing that. I’m really excited.

Jason Hamrock: So, you mentioned that you’re working on this stuff. Is there a timeline for when you’re going to have some of the testing done, or the examinations of the research? What does that look like?

Jeff Reed:  For that for the digital-only churches?

Jason Hammrock: Yep.

Jeff Reed: Yeah. Yeah. So we’re, Stadia’s, we’re hoping, like we’re aiming, to launch digital-only churches in 2020. We’re actually finding that the digital-only churches, the ones that are already going…When a physical church launches, you want to get all your i’s and your t’s crossed, you want to get everything perfect.  You’ve got to have this massive team together because you’re going to invite a whole bunch of people in, and hopefully they stick, and that’s how you like, you grow a physical church, you’ve seen it time and time again. And we call that hardware mentality, it’s kind of like the iPhone, an iPhone comes out once a year. And so Apple works on everything over the course of a year to get that iPhone perfect for the next release, and hopefully they make it on time. Or like this year, it looks like they’re gonna be delayed, and so it’ll come out eventually because, you know, they’ll get there. What’s interesting, and so that hardware thinking is kind of prevalent throughout the majority churches today. When you look at digital-only churches, they’ve actually been more like, hey, we’re gonna launch as soon as possible, and we’re gonna iterate. We’re gonna come up with, you know, versions. We’re gonna, we’ll figure out the problems as we’re going, but it’s better to get started than kind of sit around and not do anything. So, like, they’ll start with three people, and then grow to six, and then grow to 12, and then grow to 15. Or they’ll have, you know, in the case of Jate Erdhart, they’ll have like a thousand people that are in this community, and then start to build his core team out of that community and a kind of disciple out of that. And so it’s been much more of a, hey, we’re gonna experiment, we’re going to explore, we’re gonna test this thing out, we’re gonna see if it works or if it doesn’t, and we’re gonna learn lessons from that. And so whether, and even if you’re a physical church, I think there’s an option to think that way. Yeah, but for us, like we’re starting our digital-only cohorts in September. And so if churches are interested in that, if church planters are interested in that, you can go to https://stadiachurchplanting.org/digital/, and then that’ll get you connected into the cohort. Honestly, we’re talking to planters literally around the world, obviously a bunch here in America. But South Africa, I’m trying to think, Kenya, Indonesia, Philippines, Canada, it’s been…And honestly, I hadn’t anticipated that, I hadn’t anticipated the guy in the Philippines Googling, plant a digital church, finding me, and then randomly calling me up and saying, hey, I want to plant a digital church and you’re the expert. So I’m like, I’m not the expert bro. And he’s like Google yourself, you are the expert. You know, can you help me with that? So this is really where we are, it’s helping us figure out how to do this stuff in the digital realm. And then figuring out how to replicate it because, in the end, we’re looking to plant churches. In this COVID season especially, where property costs are weird, economy is going up and down. Churches, shoot, how many churches have lost their buildings due to schools, or previous leases that didn’t want to renew? I mean, I can think of several that I know that just off the top of my head. You know, having some different models of church in the coming seasons, may actually be helpful for us as we’re trying to figure out how to not only survive in this season, but really thrive.

Jeff Reed: I had a pastor that really sums it up best. Jeff, we’ve paused ministry at our church for the past three months, and we can no longer pause, we’ve got to actually figure out how to do this. And so whether it’s, you know, a digital-only plant, whether it’s helping your church learn how to do things digitally, combining the physical and the digital. Like that’s the endgame for Stadia, for any church is really, don’t feel like you have to pause ministry. There’s ways to thrive in this season, it just may take some work on your side, and some philosophical shifts to get there, but you can certainly pivot and be effective in ministry today.

Jason Hamrock: Great advice. Well, thank you. Man, that’s so good. Thank you so much for sharing that, with a lot of the churches that we work with, they’re in that right now. So hopefully we can bring some more traffic your way, of these ministries that are trying to figure it out, and that’s just exciting for us. So I can’t wait to connect with you again, to hear about…Maybe on the other side of this, on what’s been happening, and what you’ve learned. And so I’d love to have you back on the podcast again, so that we could go…Look, you know, whatever next version that is. And maybe at that point we’ll have a little bit of a better defined new normal, for whatever it’s going to be for the church. It’s been a crazy time.

Jeff Reed: Yeah. Here’s hoping. I mean, if we could at least see where we’re going, right, but that’s always the God thing. You don’t get to see where you’re going, you just got to take those steps of faith. Matthew 6:34, you know, “Don’t worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will worry about itself.”  Let’s just, you know, take care of where we are today. So, hey, there’s is a bunch of free resources online at https://thechurch.digital/, there are tons of blogs and podcasts. So if you, or your church, is wrestling with, you know, how to how do even get started? What questions to ask. How do I get started doing this church thing, this online church thing, this digital church thing? Hit up https://thechurch.digital/, there’s plenty of resources there, as well as links to Facebook groups that I’m a part of and those kinds of things. But https://thechurch.digital/, let that be really the place where you start in there. And then Stadia Church Planting as you are getting more serious about actually doing some of this stuff, and are needing the help to turn the corner.

Jason Hamrock: Right on. Well, thanks, Jeff. I appreciate your time, super informative. And God’s using you, so it’s pretty cool to see what he’s doing through you. And just, it’s exciting. It’s obviously, you know, it’s a silver lining thing. We don’t want a huge disease that’s taken the lives of many, many people. But at the same time, it’s caused the church staff to shift and pivot, and that’s a good thing I think. So, thank you.

Jeff Reed: My pleasure. Thanks for the invite.

Jason Hamrock: All right. Talk to you soon.