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The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 795 | A 100% Digital Church: What Mark Lutz Learned That Physical Churches Are Missing
01:13:41
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- [00:01]
A
The Art of Leadership Network. This is going to be controversial. The Internet has not ruined younger generations. They know how to navigate it. Right now, the Internet and social media is ruining past generations. People who don't know how to identify if something is AI. People who don't know how to determine if something is real or fake. There is a reason why scammers do not target kids. They the people who are scamming predominantly target people who are elderly.
- [00:33]
B
Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast. I'm so glad you joined us and I hope our time together today helps you thrive in life and leadership. Welcome to all of our new listeners. And we got a topic that we haven't covered in a long, long time. In fact, I don't think we covered it ever. What about a 100% digital church? No physical expression? Is that really a church? Is that actual ministry? Are we just pretending that that's church? Well, my guest today is Mark Lutz. And with Mark, he started Lux Church in going to go through that story and they minister to gamers. So a couple of things, I went into this like, brand new. Don't know anything about this, man. It was fascinating. Do you know that almost half the global population games and that's heavily weighted toward the west. That means the majority of people in your church probably are gamers and some of them don't go to church at all. Mark is reaching them. So what does that actually look like? We're going to look at that and I think, like me, you're going to learn some new things. You may not agree with 100% of what he talks about, but I'll tell you, they're doing real ministry. And he's got some lessons for you on how to minister online better. Most of what we're doing is not online ministry. So Mark is the lead pastor and founder at Lux Digital Church, a fully digital church expression that exists on platforms like Twitch and Discord. Yes, we will go into definitions and make sure everybody can skate along. Mark's desire is to help the church connect with the next generations, especially those who will never step into a traditional church building. Hey, just a note. We had a camera malfunction about three quarters of the way through this conversation, so you'll see the video changes. For those of you watching inside the Art of Leadership Academy or on YouTube, well, I think the interview is worth it. Anyway, we kept going, but now to my conversation with Mark Lutz. Mark, welcome. Really glad to have you on the podcast.
- [02:26]
A
Gary, thank you so much for having me on the show. Someone who has listened to it a lot. It is kind of wild to be recording with you today.
- [02:35]
B
Well, we found out about you, and I'm like, I know absolutely nothing about this, so I have to have Mark on because you're doing some really cool stuff you're doing. And I want to just prime leaders. Too often, you know, digital versus in person church is divisive. But I think you're going places nobody goes, or a lot of people don't go. And you're reaching people that a lot of people don't reach. Hence I'm very interested. So even if you're like, we do everything in person, I want you to listen to this episode because Mark is reaching people who attend your church, but who are part of a very different world. So you have a 100% digital church for people, I guess, in the gaming community. Right. Can you tell us a little bit about what led you to start that?
- [03:22]
A
Yeah. So there was a couple of catalysts that I think really were the things that ended up leading us in the direction that we are. So I worked in a local church for 11 years. I did six years in physical ministry as their youth pastor, five years as their. Their head of discipleship. Got to be part of just an incredible. I'm in a really rural section of western Pennsylvania. So, like, we're in a small town of 1200 people. We were a church of a thousand, like, really having great impact and loved, loved, loved my time in ministry there. At the same time, I was paralleling that with, like, I've been a gamer my entire life and not just like a video gamer, like a gamer in all senses. Right. Whether it be Star wars miniatures games or board games, or Dungeons and Dragons video games. Like a nerd through and through. And repeatedly had sort of tried to remove that from my life. Just really feeling like, you know, honestly, it was like, if I'm not. If I'm playing video games, I'm not listening to the latest Carrie Newhof leadership podcast. Right, Exactly. That's my point exactly. I'm not being as good of a leader as I could be, a good of a pastor as I could be. And so in, like, 2019, I actually randomly started a podcast about a video game that doesn't even exist anymore. And I had a real simple prayer. God, would you redeem my love for gaming? Would you use it? Either that or it has to go. And at the time, we were sort of in the heyday, at the height of Fortnite, which is a really popular third person battle royale shooter for A while. And at the time, there was a guy named Tyler, his screen name is Ninja, who is streaming. He was the biggest streamer at the time. And alongside him, he would stream with a guy named Dr. Lupo and a guy named Tim the Tatman. And between the three of them, they were pulling in 150 to 200,000 viewers, 40 plus hours a week, six days a week. And I was recognizing. And when we're talking about a concurrent 200,000 viewers throughout 40 hours, we're talking millions of people, right? These guys are broadcasting their unfiltered worldview. Right? There's no one catching them. There's no one stopping what they're saying. Everything is live. And in the second, there's no editing, nothing. Right? As they're doing this on a platform called Twitch tv, I recognized they likely had more influence over the next generation's worldview than any pastor on the planet. Now, I have no way to quantify that, but I was like, it certainly
- [05:39]
B
seems 200,000 current viewers. You're probably right about that.
- [05:44]
A
Yeah. And so I'm like, man, the church needs to have a voice here. At the same time, the biggest category on Twitch at any given time was a category called just Chatting. So Twitch TV is a live streaming platform. It was originally Justin tv. It was a guy live streaming his life, turned it into Twitch, got bought by Amazon, and it became the biggest live streaming platform for people playing video games. But the biggest category, 24, 7, 300,000 to 500,000 people watching this category all the time back in 2020, 2019, was just chatting. So it was hundreds of thousands of people coming to a platform to watch people play video games who are watching people not play video games. And I was like, there's people are searching for something, and these are my people. And so at the same time, I started this podcast. I started just doing simple, reworded proverbs at the end of this video game secular podcast for all intents and purposes. And then I would ask my guests at the end, is there a way that I could pray for you? We're done recording. Can I pray for you? I'm a pastor. And God started answering those prayers, like supernaturally, like people getting pregnant in New Zealand who couldn't get pregnant. I'm watching the Holy Spirit move and cause people to weep who I've never met before, who are hundreds of miles away from me. And at the same time, I was reading Henry Blackaby's book, this is the third catalyst experiencing God. And of course, a paraphrase, it says, don't just do things and ask God to bless them, but look and see what God is up to and go partner with him in it. And I couldn't deny the fact that God was answering more of my prayers in this online community around a podcast that had a very small listener base than was happening in my church that I had been working for for almost a decade. And then I just. We opened up a Discord server and I started to tell people at the end of the episode, if you're out there and you're listening and you need someone to talk to, I'm willing to listen. That was all that it was. And young men from all across the world started reaching out to me who just needed to talk. And all that we shared in common was a silly digital card game. And so I started counseling a kid in the Czech Republic. I met with him every week. He's 17, just wants to ask a girl out. Didn't have a dad in his life to help him with that, so I just started helping him how to ask this girl out. I met with a guy named Levi, whose girlfriend was pregnant in Missouri. Started walking through with him what it meant to become a dad. I had just become a dad the year before. Started meeting with this other guy in Iowa who was, you know, 23 years old, going through a divorce and just had no one to talk to. Felt completely isolated from his church. And I was just meeting with him. And so I was actually discipling people online more consistently from this video game community than I was in my in person context at my church, where I was mostly just sort of like running teams and managing systems and. And man, that was really the catalyst that. That began to reshape my heart and lead us towards planting Lux.
- [08:35]
B
So for people who don't know what Twitch or Discord is or don't use it, I believe I have a Discord account. I'm pretty sure I go in it once every two years, whether I need to or not. Can't figure it out and then shut it down for another couple of years.
- [08:49]
A
Yeah, that's a lot of people's experience with it.
- [08:50]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's a very different experience. I know a lot of, like, AI people use it and software developers use it, but so do gamers. So for people who might not have experience in Twitch or Discord, can you just give us a real quick. Like what these forums do?
- [09:08]
A
Yeah. So, I mean, Twitch is, is just a live streaming platform. And so like YouTube has live streaming. Facebook used to have live streaming. They were all mimicking what Twitch was doing. And they've just had like the lion's share of the Internet worth of live streaming. 100 million unique viewers a month prior to, prior to the pandemic. And so.
- [09:28]
B
Right. Like Twitch was a lot of teen majors or not.
- [09:33]
A
You would, you would be surprised. No, not really. The average, the average hardcore gamers my age at 37, most of them are millennials. And so. And, and it really does range. I mean, you see anything from people who are live online broadcasting who are in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Recently, like a legendary streamer. I think it was Grandma. Grandma Games who recently passed away. She was like 80. She played like Call to Duty, which was just like people would just show up to watch her, like click heads and Call to Duty, just wild. And so, you know, it really ranges. The. The gaming community is insanely diverse and, and way more diverse than, I think, what the church often thinks. I think we sort of categorize gaming as. As it being kids, but it, it honestly, it's pretty divers.
- [10:19]
B
So when you're live streaming on Twitch, I've never seen this. And again, I'm happy to be the rookie here and ask the questions on behalf of all the people who aren't familiar with this world, because I'm not. Is that like you got a webcam that's streaming it or you're just streaming your screen of the game you're playing?
- [10:36]
A
Yeah. So it would just depend on the streamer and, like what they're doing, but most of the time you're. And it's changed, it's evolved over time. I would say the most common setups that you're seeing now is somebody who just has a webcam that's on the screen. So you're watching them and then you're also. They're also capturing all of their video gameplay.
- [10:55]
B
So you're capturing their screen picture type thing?
- [10:58]
A
Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. They'll be kind of in the bottom corner. Some streamers don't use a webcam. There's this whole other thing called vtubers, which uses kind of like an animated character that's stitched to their camera. So the way they move, the character moves. And so they. There's a huge category just for vtubers now. And it's. It's quite massive. And so it, it ranges and there's variety to it, but at its core, it's people sitting on a camera with a microphone talking to people who are in a text chat and they're reading the text chat while it's happening and interacting with them live. Now, Discord is a platform that's more akin. I think most people in the church world have at least dabbled. Downloaded at one point. Slack, it's a lot. It's very similar to Slack with the exception of it has a lower floor and a much higher ceiling. So there's way, way, way more that you can do with it. But it also is a lot more complex. And so it's sort of like the free or open market version of what Slack might be.
- [11:57]
B
Oh, okay, great. So you decide to set up a church. How do you even go about that? Like 100% digital church?
- [12:08]
A
Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I really was struck. One of my main goals in life is to meet Jesus one day and not have done anything heretical. That's like just a big. I don't know, I don't. Hopefully that's most pastors goal in life. Right. And so when, when I initially. We initially kind of caught the vision for a fully online church, I thought it was heretical. In fact, if you would go back and watch sermons from the church I used to work for, you can hear me saying God's plan A is the local church and he doesn't make a plan B. I said that. Religiously I was the small groups guy, far more the microchurch dude. I played video games to escape people, not to connect with them. I still don't have a social media presence like our church does, but it would be hard to find me on social media. I just don't like it. But what I did end up loving was these really impactful relationships that I was developing with people that I was seeing real practical life change happening. And I knew their stories. Like I took the time to actually get to know people and I began developing relationships and I began to realize that if I can build genuine relationships digitally, then I can make disciples digitally. If I can make disciples digitally, we can certainly be the church now. At the time I was really going through sort of like a whole what actually is a church, right? We were coming out of the pandemic. This was 2019 going into 2020. So we weren't coming out of the pandemic. We were heading into it initially. And I was really deconstructing my idea of what actually is a church. What does the Bible have to say? And I remember it was between Christmas and New Year's. 2019, going into 2020, God didn't seem to want to talk to me about anything except this digital church, which I consider to be Heretical and refused to talk about. And then I remember in between there, I began taking long walks in my town and I just said to God, okay, fine, you want to talk about it, let's talk about it. Let's. Let's dream. I'll entertain it for a week. And through that, he began walking me through scriptures. And I began to realize that my understanding of what a church was had a lot more to do with what I was comfortable with than what was actually biblical. And as it turns out, the Bible isn't actually very prescriptive in terms of the actions and the form of the church, but it's terribly. It's very, very prescriptive about its substance. Right. The substance of the church matters a great deal. And like every good church planner, I ended up just deeply fascinated with Acts 42 or Acts 2. 42, 47. And realized in there, it says that the church devoted itself. And it has six devotions and the word in Greek for devoted. There is the Greek word to steadfastly continue in. So they steadfastly continue in the apostles teaching, prayer, sacraments, community worship, and sacrificial generosity. And I began to see if the church, if a group of people can do these things, doesn't matter where they are, they become a church. And if you're not doing these six things, it doesn't matter what steeples above your building, you're not being the church. Because what makes a church a church is not that we gather in a building. What makes a church a church is what we collectively devote ourselves to, which is why a coffee shop isn't a church and a gym is not a church. It is a grouping of people who collectively follow Jesus and steadfastly continue in these what I believe to be six key devotions of what makes a church a church.
- [15:28]
B
This episode is brought to you by Victory beyond the Cup. So, church leaders, this summer, as you may know, the World cup kicks off. And that's when more than 5 billion people are paying attention to the same moment. When that happens, it's not just a sports event. It's a leadership opportunity. And Heather Reddy from CRU is here. So, Heather, what's Victory beyond the Cup?
- [15:48]
A
Yeah, well, Victory beyond the cup is really about helping churches and believers recognize
- [15:53]
B
that this is a rare cultural moment
- [15:55]
A
that can be used for kingdom impact. Your neighbors, your co workers, your communities
- [15:59]
B
will already be gathered and watching.
- [16:01]
A
And so Victory beyond the cup helps
- [16:03]
B
pastors and believers steward that moment. Well, not by creating or launching new
- [16:07]
A
programs, but by using simple gatherings like Watch parties to build relationships and open doors for gospel conversations.
- [16:14]
B
So, I mean, most church leaders kind of get this when it comes to the super bowl. We think that's a big event, but this is like exponentially bigger. So how can church leaders lean into the World Cup?
- [16:24]
A
Yeah.
- [16:24]
B
So we've created two free kits.
- [16:26]
A
They're free and there's a pastor's kit
- [16:28]
B
that helps you cast vision and equip your church.
- [16:31]
A
And then there's a host kit that can be used to open your home and gather friends and create space for meaningful conversations. It's really about making it simple for people to live out their faith in this incredible moment where people are already gathering.
- [16:44]
B
Well, that's good news for churches. And if you're ready to help your people step into really what truly is a global moment with intention and purpose, here's what you can do. Visit victorybeyondthecup.com and download the free kits that is victorybeyondthecup.com so what does church actually look like? Is it just conversations with people in Czechoslovakia and Houston? Is it. Do you have services? Like what goes on? Because I think people in their minds, the metaverse had a moment a few years ago, second life. You can think, okay, these holographic churches in the metaverse where people could meet. We've talked about that on the podcast before. Other people imagine a live streamed experience. Like a lot of listeners have church online and expression. You've got to be something different. What. What do you have?
- [17:33]
A
Yeah, so we're actually more akin to the live stream experience than we are the Metaverse experience, but. But vastly different as well. And so we have service. We just don't do it on Sunday mornings. We don't have a Sunday morning gathering. We. We actually now have a once a month Sunday morning gathering that's very different than what we've ever done before. But we have a Wednesday night gathering every week and we've had it ever since we started in 2021.
- [17:55]
B
Why Wednesday?
- [17:57]
A
We picked Wednesday quite honestly because of the people that we're trying to reach. And so we're trying to reach people who are frequenters to Twitch are one. Like the person, to use my intentional church's language, the person that we're trying to reach is someone who's. We call him shadow slayer329.329 is enneagram numbers. Shadow Slayer is working a dead end job. He's not particularly passionate or interested in anything. He plays video games and hangouts like hangs out in discord every night until he's too tired to think because he doesn't want to ponder his life whenever he lays down his head on his pillow. And so this is the person that we're trying to reach. And we've really developed what is motivations and where is he. And so for him, midweek, he's hanging out on Twitch. Sunday morning, he's asleep because either he had to work on Sunday morning or he was up late Saturday night gaming with his buddies. And he's not waking up early on Sunday morning to go to church. And so for us, we owe a
- [18:48]
B
life until noon on Sundays.
- [18:49]
A
Yeah. Or, or yeah, or just if he's awake, he's like not cognitive. Right. He's just like, he was up late. Like, a lot of people were up late on Saturday night. And quite honestly, a lot of people who aren't gamers are up late on Saturday night. And that's one of the reasons they don't show up to church on Sunday morning 100. They get in their pajamas and sit down and watch you on tv. Right. And so we decided Wednesday night was kind of our midweek. That was our opportunity. A lot of churches have like every Sunday they have a service, then they have a midweek once a month. We have the opposite. We have a Sunday once a month and we have a Wednesday night every week. So we got live at about 8 on Twitch. Now, one of the main differences is we have no physical audience, right. So we're entirely digital. So our people, unapologetically, we're there for the people who are online. And you cannot be part of our live stream at any point if you can't read chat. And so we are live interacting. Even when I'm teaching, I'm live interacting with chat. But a service looks very similar to what you would experience in any physical church. We have an opening where my wife and I are sitting on a couch welcoming people by name, which what you would have is people coming to your narthex or your fellowship hall on their way to your sanctuary. We have a moment of announcements, which you would have at your church. We have live worship where we have somebody on a guitar who's just leading a worship song with our church. After we go from that, we have a time of prayer. People raise up their prayer concerns live in the chat. We have someone who comes on live from a bunch of different places in the world and they will pray over those things. I teach, and believe it or not, we don't teach like a short, like segment. Most people think online people's attention Spanish short They probably need a short sermon. I actually teach longer at Lux than I ever have done anywhere else.
- [20:22]
B
How long would a typical message be?
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A
Yeah, I teach usually for about 40 minutes, something like that.
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B
Is that live into the camera mic kind of thing?
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A
Yeah, I'm sitting, I'm usually sitting about two and a half feet from the camera. I have a TV screen next to it where I'm seeing chat live. I am actively welcoming people live while I'm teaching. I'm also actively interacting with the chat while I'm teaching. I might actively answer questions that my team pulls and sends to me over my phone live while I'm teaching. Not always, but quite frequently. I'm live interacting with chat. And then we have our worship team, which we can get into maybe later in the show. Um, those are prerecorded so our worship team gets click tracks. They record separately wherever they are. And then we put those things together in videos. Um, and then, and then I sit on a couch and I answer questions at the end of service. And we interact, have a benediction. And then we open up about a dozen video chat rooms over in Discord. Everything from prayer rooms, meet the pastor, next steps, and then a whole bunch of places where people are just hanging out and gaming. And then we as pastors all go over, jump into those voice chats. We're hanging out in video chats, like zoom calls with people. Um, and we pop from one to the next and hang out and say hi to people. Someone needs prayer, pop into a private room and pray with them. All the same stuff you would do at a church, except we usually hang out. I usually hang out to 11:30 or midnight. And we have our team. Volunteers sometimes are there till three or four in the morning.
- [21:39]
B
So this is like a four to eight hour kind of experience. Six hour experience.
- [21:44]
A
Yeah. It's not, it's not short. And then, you know, we have a network of small groups that meet all week and Bible studies and a co working chat that happens almost every single day during the week. And so like, like the, we're, we're really not like a service centric model. We have a Wednesday night service, but we are actively in the life of our church, in relationship, in community with them every single day.
- [22:07]
B
Okay, and do you make that available on demand or. It's sort of. No, you got to be there live.
- [22:13]
A
Yeah. So we do release the video of our sermon and the worship. Not the opening and not the closing. That goes out on YouTube every Friday morning. And we actually tell people who are part of that that they're part of our on demand family and ask them and welcome them to come over and join us in Discord. We're really the heartbeat of our church is Right. Like, whether you show up live on a Wednesday night or not doesn't really determine your capability of being able to be part of our church family.
- [22:37]
B
Okay, so YouTube is sort of your streamer, and the church happens inside Discord.
- [22:43]
A
Well, Twitch is where we live stream to.
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B
Twitch is where you live stream.
- [22:46]
A
Yeah. So picture Twitch is our live stream. So picture Twitch is our sanctuary. Right. Okay. That's our. That's our worship center. Discord is every other part of our church building. And YouTube is, in some ways, we're really positioning it differently right now. But at least originally when I was the only one on staff, it was our archive.
- [23:05]
B
Okay, so how does the word get out? How do people, like, I think most of us have some idea about how to share on social, how to gain traction on the Internet, on YouTube, et cetera. But like, when you're inside Twitch or Discord, how does a movement grow?
- [23:21]
A
Yeah, well, you know, Gary, it's really no different. What I'm going to say a lot is it's really no different. Like the skill set that I use, the way that we grow, the way that we interact, the way that we make disciples, is no different than what you would do in a physical church. It's the same skills, it's just different tools. And so people find out about our church by word of mouth. Because as it turns out, digitally native gamers have friends who are digitally native gamers, and they invite their friends who are digitally native gamers who don't know Jesus to come to church with them. And so our church has grown by word of mouth. We have done one ever paid social media campaign for our first Easter, and we've never paid anything for social media or advertisements. Again, we have a couple of platforms that we post on that we kind of view as road signs, which is like our Instagram account, our TikTok account. We don't. They don't have the tools to build community there. And so we, we view those places as road signs. Whereas things like YouTube or Facebook, we're very. We're careful with what we do there because we view them as future cities that we could plant a church in. And so those are future church plant sites. Whereas some of our platforms are just potential locations, some of our social platforms are more like advertising opportunities. So some people find us through that the same as they would drive down the street and they might find your road sign and say, hey, I forgot about that church. Let's go check out that church this weekend for us. It just that something got road signed through their algorithm on Instagram. Potentially. Wow.
- [24:48]
B
Okay, I'm getting a picture now of what you're doing, which sounds really cool. What are some of the key similarities? Because you led a church for years in a traditional sense, Right. Contemporary traditional. So when you think about comparing the two models, the dominant model of church and then your model, what is the same and what is different? You've already hinted at a little bit, but I want to go deeper. What's the same? What's different?
- [25:14]
A
Yeah. So the same as people. They have the same problems. They're going through the same things. They have the same spiritual questions. They do the same good things and bad things in a physical church as they do in a digital church. And so in some ways, the people is very similar. The, the function is very similar as well. Like, right, I'm leading small groups, leading Bible studies, writing sermons. You know, I am sitting in pastoral counseling calls. We're caring for people. Right. In some ways, like, all of that remains the same. I'm still a pastor in all of the ways that I was a pastor before. What's different in some ways is efficiency. Right. I'm capable of being wildly more efficient because nobody can hijack my day because I have a little bit more control over it. I. I have to be exceedingly more intentional. Right. And so one of the things that happens physically that you underestimate and you take for granted is like, if I am at the end of service and I'm standing up front and somebody comes up because they just lost their husband and I need to pray with them, the person waiting in line behind them to talk with me as the pastor is subconsciously and sort of subtly being discipled by me. On how you care for someone who just lost their husband. That doesn't happen for me. Me, nobody is eavesdropping in on.
- [26:32]
B
Conversations are private.
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A
Yes. Far more private.
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B
Maybe on Sunday morning, perhaps in the chat on.
- [26:39]
A
Yeah. On our live services. Not as private. They might see how I interact with people publicly, but a lot more of my time is spent in intentionality. I'm not going to bump into you at Walmart. Right. Because we don't live near one another. So you're not going to bump into me. And I'm going to remind you, hey, we would love to see you at church this weekend if I want to tell someone. We'd love to see you at church on Wednesday night, I need to intentionally pursue that person. And so the online space requires an insane amount of empathy and a crazy amount of intentionality way more than what the church right now. What we do online is almost the opposite of that. What most churches are doing online is actually an extreme lack of empathy and intentionality versus what the digital space actually.
- [27:22]
B
Stream. Stream. Broadcast. Broadcast.
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A
Which is not true. People join.
- [27:26]
B
Yeah, interesting. So do you ever. Because I know this question will come up if I don't ask it. Do you ever encourage people to meet up online in like, the people who you're meeting? Do you ever encourage them to meet in person or get connected to a local church or is this their church in your view?
- [27:46]
A
Yeah, so occasionally, yes. And so for some people, it's really clear to us that like, like, they're not really digitally native. They don't really know how to use the tools. They're not very good at building online relationships. And in that case, sometimes, like, they get plugged in here and they experience Jesus in a fresh way and they haven't been to church in a really long time. And it's clear that they should probably find a local physical congregation to get plugged into. And sometimes we help people find those. But we don't view our church as sort of like. And I don't, I'm not, I'm not taking any shots, Gary, as any sort of like in. In quotations that we're a church. We view ourselves as fully being a church. And so if your church expression is with us, we believe that you can fully experience what it is to be part of the body and Bride of Christ through Lux Digital Church. And so we're not constantly trying to channel people out and into physical churches. There are times when that's appropriate. Now, do we encourage people to meet up? Absolutely, yeah. There are times when we have met up with people. There's a decent number of people that I've met up with. We have a lot of time. I spend a good. Well, not a lot of time, but I spend some time in Africa. And so I've led two missions trips from our church in Africa. We've done some local missions trips with friend of ours who lead an organization called Love Thy Nerd that does mission strips in a board game and anime conventions and things. And so we've led. I've gone with team members and people from my church I've met for the first time pick them up from the airport going on mission with them. But we've been in ministry together for Two or three years before I've met them in person. So we just pick up, up right where we are. They're just relationships that I already have. And then we do. We. We have had some, like, meetups. We did a Pittsburgh meetup. We did an Atlanta meetup. We do a meetup every year right now in Colorado Springs called the Nerd Culture Ministry Summit, which is more of like a. It's a conference for us, but we also have people who come in from our church will come and gather just to come and be part of that and be. Be there, meet the pastors and things like that. And so, yeah, we do encourage people to meet up physically, but. But more importantly, we encourage people like in your direct physical vicinity, like, if. If Lux is impacting your life, you should change the way you live locally and physically. Right. There should be a noticeable difference. Right. So when. When a pastor preaches on a Sunday morning at a physical church, he hopes that his people are changed and transformed by that interaction. So much so that they don't go home and act like a bozo on Facebook book. Right. So you're hoping that your physical presence transforms the way they interact digitally. Same is true for me. It's just flipped. So our digital interaction is changing and transforming the way that people are living physically.
- [30:23]
B
Okay, fascinating. What would you say. You mentioned the term digital native a few times. What are some key characteristics of digital natives? Because. And I'm asking the question in part because I'm curious about where. What you're doing, but I'm also thinking about the tens of thousands of church leaders listening who have a bunch of digital natives actually in their congregation who are engaging in physical church. So what are some of the signs, the characteristics of being a digital native?
- [30:51]
A
Yeah, I think the number one sign is that this is where some of your key and most important relationships are. These are the people that you confide in the most, people that know the most about your life. You know, there's people in our church who met the best man in their wedding on the day they got married, but they had been on Xbox Live with them for 12 years, years, almost nightly prior to that.
- [31:08]
B
Wow.
- [31:08]
A
It is their best friend. It is the closest confidant. That is a genuine real relationship. That's not void. It's not fake. It's not. Just because it happened online doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. And so I think digital natives naturally build relationships online. That being said, I also think we're coming into generations right now that aren't that are predominantly, if not entirely, digitally native. And so I have a hypothesis, and that is that depending on the age that you were when the Internet came out, has deeply impacted the way you view online space. And so the older you are, the more likely you are to see the Internet as a tool. The younger you are, the more likely you are to see the Internet as a place. And so, for example, as a sixth grader, I was taught how to use encyclopedias in the library. As a seventh grader, we got taken to the computer room and I got taught how to put parentheses around Yahoo. Search bars and search for specific things. I've never used an encyclopedia again in my life. Never once have I ever opened one, because the Internet was an amazing tool. At the same time, in seventh grade, I would come home, I would come home from school, I would log on AOL Instant Messenger, I'd hear the creak of the door open and I would begin messaging back and forth with kids at school that would tell me more about what was going on inside their homes over aim. And they would never have even spoken to a Dungeons and Drag nerd like me in school. And that was actually my first opportunity for ministry. I was actually ministering, unknowingly, ministering to people using AOL Instant messenger in seventh grade, just reaching out to people, caring for people, being Christ, to people who would never have talked to me physically, had no interaction or relationship with me there, but were developing relationship with me using entirely digital tools. So for me, the Internet was a tool and a good one, and it was a place and an awesome one. And as I've grown, I have learned to exist more and more inside of digital places. Now the next generation, my daughters, like I, have a six and a or six and an eight year old. The YouTube algorithm is learning them as they are learning them. They're not forging a digital personality or a digital identity separate from a physical one. I can remember recreating myself online. My daughters will likely never have that memory because they will form their digital and physical identity simultaneously. The younger people are, the less likely they are to depend on anonymity on the Internet, the more likely they are to be totally transparent about who they are because they formed these identities together. So the reason why it's so important for the church to learn how to exist powerfully, impactfully and biblically in digital space is because the emerging generations are going to live fully in both worlds.
- [33:47]
B
It's almost like Ready Player one. Here we are.
- [33:51]
A
In some ways, yes, but in some ways it isn't right. And so in some ways I agree with you. It's like this, but Ready Player One really leans into almost this sort of like retro version of what a technological future would be like, right? Where it's almost intrusive, right? Whereas technology instead has become such that it wants to fold seamlessly into our world. It's why VR had its heyday four or five years ago, and why AR seems to be something that's far more popular and more prevalent in technology and being invested in by companies today. Because we actually want technology that doesn't. It doesn't change, and it doesn't inhibit our ability to interact physically. We want it to fold seamlessly into our reality so we can walk hybridly between one and the next. It's why the iPhone goes to the edge of your screen. It's why your Apple watch subtly gives you notifications on your wrist. Because it doesn't want to intrude on you. It actually wants to augment and allow you to walk seamlessly between those realities.
- [34:48]
B
Today's episode is brought to you by my Art of Leadership Academy. One of the key insights I took away from my recent podcast conversation with Les McEwen is this. If the church can only move at the speed of one leader's insight, a church is always going to be limited by that leader's capacity. I love having great guests on the podcast. Les was one of them. Put another way, church growth accelerates when leadership is shared. So my Art of Leadership Academy is designed to help you and your team think, decide, and lead at a higher level together. Your whole team is learning the same language. When you join, imagine that you share values. Imagine that your leadership frameworks are actually shared and you stop relying on one voice because you feel the pressure as a leader, right? And you start building a leadership culture that lasts. That's what can happen when you join the Academy. So here are a couple of simple ways to get started. You could, for example, read an article that we post in the Academy and talk about it together in a staff meeting or a Slack chat channel. You could download my Preaching cheat sheet and bounce sermon ideas off each other and really move to team collaboration when it comes to your weekend services. Or you could sit down and work through a course like the Art of Preaching or fund the future and get moving on your future together. So if you want to get started completely free, just go to theartofleadershipacademy.com or click the link in the description of this episode. Remember, don't just Grow as a leader, grow as a team. Click the link in the description and you can get started today for free. What do you make of research? There's so much out there, but let's just name Jonathan Haidt. Gene Twenge about time spent online. And they do a lot of work on social media and the negative psychological impact that that seems to be having on a generation. Like the data, all the research suggests the more time you spend online, the greater your mental health challenges will be. The more lonely you are, the more isolated you feel. Agree, disagree. What's your take on that?
- [36:51]
A
Yeah, I agree. I think chronically digital lifestyles are really unhealthy.
- [36:56]
B
Okay, but that's primarily who you're dealing with in your church.
- [37:01]
A
Yes and no. Okay. And so you have some people who are chronically online and that is the case. And we do have those people, but you know, we also have Corey who is a scientist and works in a lab and has two boys and one on the way and his wife is a teacher in Wisconsin and they love the Lord and they're not chronically online. We also have a negative and positive cpu. Or Becca and Joey, who are father and mother of two boys in Michigan who are both gamers. Joey streams quite a bit, but they also have a local physical family and digital and physical connections. They frequent a physical church in addition to being major members and contributors and really our church being their home and she's like a toy and play expert for a toy store and Joey works in it. And yes, they're part of our church family. But you would be surprised at how many people are gamers but have just totally normal lives.
- [38:08]
B
Sure, no, I totally get that. But I'm thinking about the emerging generation digital natives and more and more time online. Do you have a particular prescription for them or recommended course of action? Are you suggesting more in real life experiences or you think that is just an old way of looking at things and the new has come and yeah, some people are just going to live online and we're going to have to deal with that and the mental health challenges. Like, you know, there's the data that's coming out that I think it's 31% of teens prefer conversation with an AI chatbot over an actual human being.
- [38:48]
A
Well, that's not a surprise. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [38:51]
B
So why is that not a surprise to you?
- [38:53]
A
Well, the AI chatbots right now are super supportive and theoretically rewarding to talk to and largely super helpful.
- [39:01]
B
Addictive. Yes.
- [39:03]
A
Yeah. And, and I, and I also think it's just super experimental right now. Right. Like it's, it's new and, and I, I AI is here. It's not going anywhere. Like it is going to radically transform the way that we interact.
- [39:14]
B
Working on it. It's like I've been a deep dive for over a year and it's insane.
- [39:18]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's not, it's not like it's going away, it's going to continue to deeply, deeply impact culture and society probably in ways that, that we can't possibly imagine right now. You know, I, but for us it's like can the online world be a dark place? Yes. But we're not talking about thumb flicking through an endless stream of TikToks and social media reels here. Like that's not what we're doing. And so what we're doing is really deeply investing in and getting to know people. What we're doing is deeply investing in relationships as our Dalton, our community and discipleship pastor. This last year year had over 900 hours spent in voice chats. Over 900 hours spent with people in voice chats, just him himself alone. We saw over 12,000 hours that were spent by people in our church in voice chats. But those aren't just like, those aren't people like using online space to slowly become jealous of their neighbor and some other influencer somewhere and becoming slowly dissatisfied with their life. We've actually seen people detach themselves from some of the toxic elements of the digital space and attach themselves to really healthy life g discipleship, relationships. And so yes the Internet can be difficult but that doesn't mean it's useless, nor does it mean it's evil. But it could mean the way in which we have historically used it in order to try to build influence or gain followers has not been very good for the human race.
- [40:41]
B
It's not been very good for the human race to say the least. And I'm not anti what you're doing, I'm just genuinely curious and trying to raise questions that I think most of the listeners would have. So a couple of scenarios. Mark. I'm a 24 year old guy, not attached to anybody either. Living alone in my parents basement or small studio apartment somewhere, marginally employed, lonely, no girlfriend, no. In real life friends and I start coming to Lux Church. To your church? Sure. What would your prescription for somebody like that be?
- [41:22]
A
Prescription like yeah.
- [41:24]
B
In other words, this is what you need. This is what we would encourage you to do. You're going to encourage them to read their Bible. You're going to encourage them to Pray you're going to encourage them to connect with one of the pastors, with some other people. But do you have any life advice on top of that? Or, like, I'm just curious because I know what Jonathan Haidt would say.
- [41:40]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, we would have the same life's advice. I think that a. This is going to be another one of those where it's like, yeah, the same as any other church. And so, like, we preach against video game addiction and being chronically online and. And the same things that any other church would see is being like, no man. Like, this seems super unhealthy for you. Like, you should probably make some changes to how you're living. But. But sometimes I think that we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Right? It's just like, oh, this thing has had some sort of level of negative impact. Therefore there cannot be anything that is redemptive or good about it. And quite honestly, I've seen the exact opposite. I have seen the Holy Spirit work so powerfully in people's lives that I have never met physically and likely never will. We say all the time, like, I'm not going to hug a lot of our members of our church until heaven. And that's okay with me. Like, it's okay with me. The fact that I. That doesn't mean that I have. That we haven't had impact on each other's lives. That doesn't mean we haven't done life together. That doesn't mean that I don't care deeply, deeply for them. That doesn't mean I don't know their stories. That doesn't mean we haven't done ministry together. That doesn't mean we haven't impacted the kingdom together. All of those things are still true even if we haven't physically gathered together.
- [42:55]
B
Can you give us one of those life change stories and sort of the two minute baptismal version that we're used to seeing on video? Like, what's one or two of the big cases of transformation that you've seen?
- [43:07]
A
Sure, I got permission to share this once. I'll share you. JT and Catherine, which is their screen names, not their real names. But JT came to our church through the podcast community. We actually launched the church out of the podcast community. I built our planting team out of it. And so he came over with that team and he came to us. He's on the edge of divorce. His wife had deconstructed. Extremely liberal. He had become more right wing than he was Christian. He self proclaimed knew that he was Drinking too much, was just trying to prove her wrong. Working a dead end job in a Georgia factory. His wife was in school, trying to figure out life. He started coming to church, he started attending, he started participating. He joined a small group, became challenged, decided to give up drinking, started working towards getting sober. He alienated himself from some friends and communities that were pushing him in a very specific direction. Eventually, he decided to take a season of his life and try to care for his wife rather than prove her wrong wrong and just see if it changed their relationship. Over time, Katherine became cared for by her husband. He joined our team, started serving with us, joined a small group, was challenged to tithe, began tithing. And then one year we did a whole series, a whole year on things the church doesn't talk about. We did 13 weeks on heaven, hell and the apocalypse. And what we didn't know was that this was Catherine's major pain point from growing up in a church. There was a lot of hellfire and brimstone. She started listening over her husband's back over shoulder to the services, mostly because his life had changed and he was treating her differently. Then she started engaging in chat. And the first time she engaged in chat, I responded to her by name because I knew who she was. I knew her by her screen name, had memorized her screen name to her actual name. Now, she had been a bit of a difficult person to have in our community. She was hostile, sometimes openly. We had conversations about what that meant for our community and how to protect it. And I insisted that we just, just loved on her, loved on her, loved on her. While she was sitting at her home in Georgia, she began to, we, we. Because these people that she had not treated well knew her name and cared enough to answer her question. And then every week she started asking questions. And every week I would sit on the couch and we would just wrestle through and I would answer questions that she had. And then I met, met JT for the first time in person. He landed in Pittsburgh, I picked him up and we went out to Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio together to serve with Love thy Nerd as a mission partner there. And that week, while we were there on Wednesday night, his wife showed up to church without him. A couple weeks later, we went into a series on discipleship and we were looking at practicing the way. The first night of that series, they got done watching church and his wife came to him and said, hey, jt, I don't think I've ever actually tried following Jesus and I'd like to. And that Night they kneeled beside bed together and they prayed. And she accepted Jesus and came back to faith. Faith. She now serves on our our prayer team. He serves on our commands team and a couple of others. They are each individually in a small group and then they're collectively in a couple small group where they're being discipled by our community discipleship pastor. And his wife James serves alongside me in my men's ministry as well. And we have seen their life radically changed. If you look at Doc and tell Corey and Chantel couple I had mentioned before in Wisconsin, two boys, one on the west. They had left the church. Corey was a scientist. He believed in God but wasn't actively participating. Chantel would tell you she had never really heard him pray before. Came to our church, joined our planting team, began to get into a small group, started getting discipled, joined our prayer team. Now, the first time I met him was getting off a plane in Pittsburgh and the next day we got on a plane in D.C. and flew to Africa for two weeks together. But I picked him up in Pittsburgh and it was like we had been friends for two years because we had been friends for two years now. Not only does he pray and lead his family, his two boys with one on the way, but he also is one of members of our prayer team and he actively leads prayer live during our services once a month. He's been serving on our elders board for the past two years and leads our church and helps us make decisions about our future. And so these aren't like these are the stories that any church would celebrate. Any church would celebrate these stories. The fact that we haven't met with these people before. I've never met Catherine in person. I've never met Chantel in person. I've only ever met JT once and I've been in Africa twice with Corey. It's the only times I've ever been with them in person. But their lives have been radically transformed and they would tell you they have been.
- [47:37]
B
You mentioned serving opportunities, couple of new phrases. Command team. What are some of the unique like prayer team. I think we all kind of get okay, we get it right. Or if someone's helping you out with some of the tech or logistics or welcome admin. What are some of the unique serving opportunities you've got at luxury church?
- [47:55]
A
Yeah, so all of our teams actually look just a little bit different. So like our welcome team, for example, every person who joins our Discord server gets usually a video message from a member of our welcome team within about 24 to 48 hours in a DM. Welcome to our community and offering to help them work their way in. We have a team called the Vanguard, and they're just people who help vet new people who are trying to join our teams and they just walk them through the process and the trainings on coming onto our teams. And their job is to guard the culture of our church. Alongside of me, our worship team looks way different than a normal worship team because they can't do it live. And so our creative pastor, Andy Mage, he sends out click tracks and vocal tracks to all of our our musicians and our artists, our singers. They all record separately and send them all back to him. And then he pieces them together both in video and audio and releases worship tracks that we use as part of our live worship service so that the members of our worship team can use their skills, gifts and abilities in order to lead worship, even if they don't live close enough to our Pennsylvania studio in order to do that. Our commands team, these are people who are, they're helping during our live services on Wednesday nights in Twitch, there's a way to set up so that if you hit exclamation point and then type a specific word, it will immediately respond with a specific prompt. And so if you had exclamation point prayer in our chat, for example, it'll respond by saying, hey, if you raise your prayer concern in chat, we'll pray for you live tonight. But if you have a private prayer concern, here's a link to our website that you can raise a private prayer concern that just goes to our prayer team and our pastor. Or, you know, we change our commands out every week and then we send a list of them to our commands team. We have a Twitch mod team and their job is to kick or ban or timeout people who are being disruptive or they're there just to troll us on a Wednesday night. And so we have a lot of the same teams that you would expect. They just function differently and they same skills, different tools.
- [49:42]
B
I think I have my notes that you became self funded pretty early on, you know, new venture digital space. Do you want to talk a little bit about the journey to sustainability? Mark?
- [49:56]
A
Yeah, Carrie? I don't know what the working definition of sustainability is for church planners. I feel like you're sustainable one week and then you're not the next. You know, I'm not really sure what that means, but at the base level, what it means is that at some point in 2023, with the tithes and offerings that were coming into our church, Church, we could have continued to function with me on staff and a couple of part time people. And so the working version of our church in 2023 was sustainable. The working version of our church in 2024 was not the working version of our church in 2025. It kind of was again. And so we've had a couple of different streams of income that have come in from like, you know, going out and fundraising like any other church planner would. I raised a couple hundred thousand dollars as a church planter just to make sure that we could cover all of our bases, build our first studio, do that sort of stuff all. But you know what? Once again, it's the same. It's the same as any other church. How do you get people to God to give and to tithe? You build relationships with them, right? You invest in their lives, you get to know them deeply, you know their families, you baptize their children, you do their weddings, right? All of the things that you would see. And people get invested and then they want to see the church grow. You cast a compelling vision. You bring people in, in vision team meetings where you tell them where you're headed next. You do all of the things that you would do in any other church. I think that the thing is, a lot of the church thinks that digital is this, like, foreign entity that is so different. It's not because the church is people. The church is just people. And people are the same, whether they're gathering in your building or they're gathering online. And so for us, like, it's just like, no, we just do the same things once again, same skills. They're just retooled.
- [51:31]
B
In what way? You've talked about the strength of digital relationships. We've had Nikki Gumbel on this podcast before, and he was talking about doing alpha online, which they never did prior to Covid. And he was shocked at how deep people went quickly, maybe more quickly than they would in real life. How deep do the relationships go that you're seeing through Lux Church?
- [51:53]
A
Yeah, I have developed deeper relationships faster at Lux than ever before in physical ministry. I mean, it is staggering how quickly people will step into a call and tell you everything about their life on your first meeting with them. Some ways it's almost like oversharing. Like, hey, you should probably be a little careful. I am a person on the Internet. But they, they do just tend. They do tend to trust you. And then people are just. Why indigenous natives are really honest, right? Like, they have relationships here, they've already developed friendships here. They don't think there's a boogeyman. Like they are aware of him, but they also know how to navigate it really well. And so. And so for. For us, yeah. Relationships develop very, very rapidly and can get deep very, very quickly online. In fact, I have found it easier to build relationships digitally, as long as you're intentional about it, than I ever was able to physically.
- [52:45]
B
Hmm. I want to go back and put your dad hat on. You said something that really caught my interest. When you were talking about your daughters. You said their identity is being formed at the same time in real life as it's being shaped by the YouTube algorithm.
- [53:04]
A
Yep.
- [53:05]
B
Did I get that right?
- [53:06]
A
I said that they are learning who they are as the YouTube algorithm is learning who they are are.
- [53:11]
B
Right. That's a really deep observation algorithm forming us. One of the arguments I'm sort of making this year is the reason it's so hard to be a pastor right now is because we're all being discipled by the algorithm. Hat tip to JD Greer for that insight. And I think that's very, very true. But how much of that. What's your perspective about that as a dad as you. I know your daughter were born in the 2000 and tens or the 2000 and twenties, and so inevitably, this is forming them, just like TV formed my generation or et cetera, et cetera. But what do you think that is doing positively and negatively?
- [53:53]
A
Well, I don't think anybody knows yet. Just as much as nobody knew what the Internet was doing to my brain. As a millennial, I would say this. I'm cautiously, really optimistic about my daughter's capability of navigating this digital world. My experience is that the Internet. This is going to be controversial. The Internet has not ruined younger generations. They know how to navigate it. Right now, the Internet and social media is ruining past generations. People who don't know how to identify if something is AI. People who don't know how to determine if something is real or fake. There is a reason why scammers do not target kids. The people who are scamming predominantly target people who are elderly because they didn't grow up in the digital world. They don't know how to navigate it, and they don't know how to discern it. Well, I believe that my daughters will be better at discerning it than I will be. I think they'll be able to navigate it far more efficiently than I will be able to navigate it. I think they'll walk between it seamlessly where I have to be intentional in the way in which I work, walk between it. I think they will actually be healthier than I was as somebody who had to adopt it. I don't know if you have seen, I think it's the third Batman movie where Bane talks about how Batman adopted the dark and how he was born in it. In some ways I've adopted the dark. I love it. I've enjoyed being part of this world and it's definitely life giving to me. I've seen God do miraculous and amazing things in it. But my daughters were born in it. They live and breathe it. They're a fish in water. They don't know anything different and they will probably, short of a world war, never know anything different. And so I'm cautiously optimistic about their capability of navigating that in a really healthy way. I think they'll actually be less prone to compare themselves on social media. I think they'll be more prone to own to build genuine, deep, life giving relationships.
- [56:00]
B
I've never heard that take before. That is really interesting and definitely a hot take, Mark. Definitely a hot take.
- [56:05]
A
There's a lot of doomsday around the Internet and emerging generations and I think we have to be really intentional. I'm super intentional with having conversations with my kids about the worlds that they're observing and about the worlds that they're participating in.
- [56:18]
B
So when you compare, and I don't want to pick on your daughters, but I take it they have a ton of friends. And so you're getting a nice sample of. How old are your girls?
- [56:29]
A
Eight and six right now.
- [56:30]
B
Eight and six. Okay. So you're getting a good sample of other eight and six year olds through their friends and family members, et cetera. But when you think about your childhood and how kids were adjusted 25 years ago and how your daughters are adjusting relationally, what are the similarities and differences you notice?
- [56:53]
A
That's an interesting. That's something I've not really pondered, honestly. Well, certainly. Right. And I think every kid is unique and so that is challenging. I think there's a certain amount of socialization challenges and I think that is in part due to access to the Internet. But I don't think it's entirely because of access to the Internet. I think it's also culturally because we have become more aware as parents of dangers and we've become more guarded with our kids kids. And so therefore our kids have less ability and cap and opportunity to interact.
- [57:25]
B
Hence Jonathan Haidt's work.
- [57:26]
A
Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, one of the things that just like, just real practically like this is not as a pastor, this is just his dad. Right? Like love my daughter, my 8 year old is a really anxious kid. She has been since the day she was born. And like my wife Jen and I, like one of the things that we do is we just have to challenge her. Like, honey, things can be scary and even if they're scary, you can still do them. And so we've had to really challenge her and push her to do things that are scary because she needs to know that even when something is scary, you can still do that thing. And so I do think that it takes a guided hand in parenting. But it certainly man, especially when it comes to our kids digital footprints. I think we need to protect them. I think that we need to be careful. My kids aren't running rampant on roadblocks without any supervision. They don't even have roadblocks. Right. I don't think that we should lie, lack wisdom, or lack discernment. I'm not encouraging that in any way, shape or form. I'm not saying that kids should just be able to run rampant on the Internet. I think that's extremely unwise. I think they need guidance. I think I saw, I can't remember what I read. It was a comparison and I wish that I remembered it so you could source it. But I don't remember exactly where it came from. But the idea was, oh, it's actually my friend Bubba from Love Thy Nerd that if you just put a group of kids in a field and gave them a football, there would be anarchy, things would get broken, kids would get hurt. That's just reality. What happens though, when you apply adults and wisdom and discernment to the situation is you can develop a really awesome football team because they're able to give discipline and direction. If we allow our kids to just get together with other kids on the Internet and run rampant and do whatever they want, we should not be surprised when people and things get broken. If we as adults are not actively engaged in the discernment process to help them in wise ways be able to navigate it. And the wise way to navigate it is not take it all away and you don't have any opportunity to engage with it because it's not going away. They need to learn how to navigate it and walk in it. And they will eventually be better at it than I am. Just the ways that I am better at walking in those worlds than my parents are, in the same way that my parents are better at walking in those worlds than my grandparents.
- [59:37]
B
So I think the thing that really hit me is every generation gets formed by something, right? Like if you think about it, Mark, the Great Depression formed some people. I'm old enough to remember people who lived through the Depression and they didn't waste a thing. World War II shaped people, Vietnam War shaped people. Industrialization shaped people. Like a lot of people get shaped by different things. And what you said, do we know what's really going on with the next generation? The answer is, is we don't. We really don't know. But we're going to find out, right? In the same way that social media had a lot of unintended consequences. Maybe you're right. Maybe it's going to get better with Generation Alpha and beyond Generation Beta. What can church leaders who lead a more traditional church, the kind of church you used to lead, what can they learn from Lux Church and your experience? What do we need to do better? What do we need to do differently?
- [60:33]
A
Well, I actually, I just wrote an article. The last article that I wrote for Exponential was called Surviving the Upside Down A Pastor's Confession. And I compared what we've done for the last five years to living in the Upside down from Stranger Things as my whole church watches Stranger Things. And so I, I gave a word to pastors who feel this, this pressure and I, I think that's pretty universal soul. And whether that's because of a podcast episode that they listen to, whether that's because of a pastor had a really good viral moment, whether that's just because they've been told that they need to be online, I think that every pastor doesn't know what to do. But they have this sort of nebulous, hard to, hard to figure out pressure about the Internet and that they need to be doing more there. And my heart really has been to help relieve that.
- [61:22]
B
Okay.
- [61:23]
A
And to say you don't need to be, in fact, maybe you shouldn't be. I think there's a lot of churches who are doing stuff on the Internet that is a waste of their resources right now.
- [61:33]
B
Give us some examples.
- [61:35]
A
I think there are churches who are trying to improve and maintain livestreams and they're trying to get it as best as they can possibly get it. And what they don't realize is that Life Church is one click away away. It's not a multi state driveway. It is a click away. It's. And so they, as soon as you put yourself on the Internet, you are competing for the attention of people with Life Church, Elevation and any other church out there that is doing a really freaking good job and has significantly more resources than you. And so for some churches, they don't need to throw their streaming rig away, but their intentionality, like what they're doing, needs to change, and they cannot feel the pressure to do more on the Internet. They don't need the Internet to remain relevant. They don't have to just focus on what it is that you're called to focus on. And I want to give you permission to say, like, that's okay. The Internet requires an insane amount, once again, of intentionality, empathy, time, investment. It is not a quick fix. And all of the resources out there that are saying, we'll get your stream up quick and that'll be all that you need. You'll be able to assign someone to a chat. They can sit at home and do it. All of the quick fixes of the Internet are absolute bullcrap. If you want to do genuine and real ministry online, it takes the same, if not more investment than it would be for you to do it in person, because people remain people, whether they're on the Internet or they're not.
- [62:52]
B
Not. So are you saying shut down the live stream then for most churches, or what are you saying, invest differently?
- [62:58]
A
No, not necessarily. I'm not telling anybody. Prescriptively, this is what you should do.
- [63:03]
B
Okay.
- [63:03]
A
But I do think I. I say this. I don't think there's an answer, an exact answer for every church and what they should be doing online right now. But Covid killed the time that you could do it without knowing what you're doing. Like, whatever you're doing, do it intentionally. So I tell church leaders, I think there's three good models out there. There's a goods and services model. You're providing an amenity for your church. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a good thing. Sundays aren't sacred anymore in our culture, and having a live stream and a recording of your service is a really good thing for your people. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think that's a good thing for you to do. But don't play that off as a church. It's not a church. The bride of Christ is way too sacred for us to call that church. It's just not. Not help. Help people find churches. The moment you make yourself available to the Internet, you also make yourself available to people in the Philippines. And so recognize the fact that if people's lives are being impacted, but you're not giving them the opportunity to devote themselves to what the church is devoting itself to, then you're giving them the opportunity to consume content, not be the church. So have a strategy in place to help people find and get connected to churches, a local church. There's broadcast evangelism. It's kind of replaced TV ministry, right? Yeah, yeah. I think there's something really powerful and good, and there should be churches that are doing that. It's the most expensive model, but it's a really good model. And there's churches who can do it super effectively and reach a lot of people. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but unapologetically be that. If you're not giving them any opportunity to join a small group to get invested in relationships, to be cared for, if you have no way to physically care for their needs, then then help them connect with a church instead of just consuming your content. Content. A lot of the complaint inside the church right now is that Christians are too consumeristic, yet the only thing that we provide to people most of the time on the Internet is the most consumeristic part of your church.
- [64:49]
B
Well, one thing I've heard loud and clearly over the last hour, Mark, is, you know, it's sort of reading between the lines, but you and your team, your volunteers, your staff are very relational. You've said again and again, you know, long conversations, long video chats, long chats with people to really go into the details of their lives. And you've got small groups. And I think one of the takeaways of this conversation for me there are many is most churches online, it's just a broadcast model with a little bit of chat, and it's sort of like, you know, their creative director, you know, and other duties as may be assigned. They kind of have the responsibility to stream it and then that's it.
- [65:32]
A
Yeah, get somebody in the YouTube chat to say hello with the name host next.
- [65:35]
B
That's right. Say hello. What did you have for dinner last night and move on and. And you're doing something very, very different. Anything else that they could take away from it? What would you say about. Maybe it's like, don't even try. But, you know, you think about it, there's a certain percentage of any congregation represented in the audience here that is just going to have. Have the. What do you say, the physicist, the scientist, and, you know, his wife. They're going to have hardcore gamers in their church. Is there anything that a more traditional, physical church could be doing to do a better job serving the gamers who are part of their church?
- [66:16]
A
Yeah, don't demonize it. Please stop Doing that.
- [66:22]
B
Stop doing the stereotype of living in your basement playing video games and, and having.
- [66:26]
A
Stop talking down about it. Yeah, stop talking down about it. And especially stop doing that from the pulpit. If you're going to do that from the pulpit, then talk down about golf from the pulpit as well. And so offender. Yeah. And I think it is, you know, like when I sit down with my friends around a table to play Dungeons and Dragons for three to four hours, I get a lot of times the same thing out of what somebody else gets from going out and playing 18 holes. Course of golf. I'm wasting the same amount of time. But I'm also finding ways to invest in relationships in a similar way. And the same way that I do when I sit down to play three or four hours with my buddies over a discord call. And we're all playing the same game together or maybe we're all playing different games. And so my biggest thing is like, please, there is, there's legitimacy in calling people out of gaming addiction. There's legitimacy in calling them out, of refusing responsibility, of extending adolescence, of not growing up. Like there's legitimacy in all of those things. But to flat out say that everything that a group of people love is evil or wrong or stupid isn't helping. And what you don't realize is there's a billion more gamers on the planet than there are Christians. This is not a small demographic of people.
- [67:38]
B
So there's like 3 billion gamers, 2 billion gamers.
- [67:41]
A
There's almost 3.7 billion gamers right now. That's self proclaimed gamers. Yeah. The gaming industry itself right now economically is larger than all the major sports, movies and TVs together. It is one of the largest economic engines in cultural connectors that we actually have access to as a church.
- [68:05]
B
Okay, I had no idea. I had no idea. Wow. This has been a good education for me. I gotta tell you, Mark, I'm learning stuff. That's why I wanted to have this conversation. So there's a huge opportunity. So I'm thinking like single digits people are gamers. It's probably more like half your church.
- [68:21]
A
Potentially most.
- [68:23]
B
Potentially most of your church. Right. Because that's heavily skewed toward the developed world rather than the developing world. Right. The 3.7 billion gamers. So potentially most of the people in your church game.
- [68:37]
A
Okay, yeah. In some capacity. Now that could be in varying degrees. Right. Not everyone is a gamer the way that I am a gamer. Not everyone's a gamer as a daily gamer. But like just to give you an example, like my good buddy's mom, she's in her 60s. She has like three or 4,000 hours logged into Animal Crossing on a Nintendo Switch, right? Like, and so, you know, like, this isn't, it's not, it's not just for, like, man, we just have to get out of the stereotypes of what the gamer is. And then I'll give one other just little. Because I don't love the piece of advice that I necessarily gave to all church pastors, like, shut down your live stream. That's not what I meant. But if you're listening to this and you're like, man, man, I really want to understand how these, this digital space works. And I want to, I want to, I want to try to grow in this. Give you one piece of advice. And this comes from the lead pastor of XP Church, which is another online church in the gaming community, Matt Sousa's lead pastor there. And this is the piece of advice that he gives to church leaders. And I think it's really solid. Find one person that's listening into your live stream or connected to you on social media, your church that you cannot meet with physically and meet with them once a week and disciple them for six months and then determine if that relationship is real and if that. Because relationships are the key to ministry for a pastor, right? That's what they've depended on. And a lot of times they don't think digital is real because they don't know how to access relationships. They just see platform and they don't like it. And be honest with you, I don't really blame them for not liking it. I don't like it either. And so take the time to build one relationship, impact one life, and I promise you, it'll be the keys that unlock so much more.
- [70:15]
B
Mark, this is great. Anything else we didn't touch on that you want to touch on before we wrap up?
- [70:20]
A
I know that my team really loved questions 11 and 12.
- [70:24]
B
What's different about your church than most online churches? What do you say to leaders who think digital church is just content or consumption? So let's go. Go ahead and riff off those.
- [70:34]
A
So you know, most online churches, to be entirely honest with you, like, there aren't churches, like, they're not being the church. But like I said before, like, our online church isn't second for people. It is. We are unapologetically there for them. And so when a lot of people look at, say, man, I don't really like what's going on online right now. I don't like the church even being online right now, I actually agree with you. I remember when I was on, I met Doug Parks online for the first time as the president of Intentional Churches and he has been openly pretty critical of live streaming and online church in general and literally realized we actually shared all of the same opinions. So I actually came on his podcast and we talked through that because we actually shared a lot of the same opinions about the online space. I think that we do need to be way more intentional about it. And we have had to go pretty outside the box on some things. Like I'll, I'll give you an example. This year we launched Lux Kids and this has been one of the biggest critiques. How do you do children's ministry? To be perfectly honest with you, I'm 37 and you don't want me coming through your computer to talk to your 8 year old daughter. That's creepy. Even if you do, trust me, I don't want a car, I don't want you coming through to talk to my 8 year old daughter. And I trust you. Right. And so how do we actually. And so one of the things that we did was we just said, okay, how do we really go back to the basics? There's nothing biblical about children's ministry in the form that it takes. There's something biblical about raising children in the way that they should go. But there's nothing in the Bible that says that you have to use orange curriculum or that you have to use that curriculum and that you have to gather for this amount of time and you do that. Right. But there is something really biblical about parents raising their kids. And so we launched a children's ministry this year in which we just equip parents to raise their own kids in the Lord. So we give them everything that they need, resource wise to engage with their kids for about 45 minutes to an hour every week in their own spiritual growth. We give them seven prayer prompts, three table talks, we give them activities videos that they can watch with their kids that we actually pull out of the back end with Right now media because we use Right now media and our church has access to that. And then on top of that, because parents are busy and they don't have time to get stuff, we offer a subscription box where we will ship them everything in the mail they need every month to do all the activities with their kids. Their kids get their Lux Kids box in the mail. They're excited to open it up. Throughout the month they go through the prayer prompts and the Bible discussions and the worship videos alongside their parents and we resource them with a podcast that's just for the parents, that's from our pastors to help resource them better. And so like getting outside the box and doing things, that is more than just a live stream, but actually thinking about a house. How do we actually be the church in digital space, not just offer service like our? Your service is the tip of the iceberg on what you do as a church. So actually I think the last thing that you should be thinking about is how do we get our service online? If you're wanting how to do digital ministry, the first things that you should be thinking is how do we actually connect with people? How do we build relationships with people? How do we hear people's stories in the same way that we want to inside of our physical building?
- [73:23]
B
This has been a good conversation. This is a topic I'll wanna revisit from time to time time. I really want to thank you. So Mark, it's called Lux Church. Where can people find you online? Obviously Discord and Twitch, guess what? And, and, but give us a couple of websites where people can track or other resources that you want to point people to.
- [73:44]
A
Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is. And so everything that we've done and I've talked about is the importance of relationships online. And I don't want you to just come and spectate us. So I'm going to give you my personal email. Email. And so if you'd like to reach out to me, my email is Mark M A R k@lux lux digitalchurch.com and if you want to throw me a text, my number, 724-650-5432. If you're out there and you're listening in right now and you would really like to get connected and talk more about digital ministry, we're setting up a learning community on a slightly more palatable platform called Slack. And if you would like to check that out, all you have to go is to luxdigitalchurch.com backslash C A R E Y. And if you really want to know what we're doing in Discord and you want to check it out, it's easy to find. We're@luxdigitalchurch.com or you can go to Discord GG LuxDigitalChurch. That'll plug you directly into our Discord server. If you've never used Discord before, be prepared to be overwhelmed. But we're already preparing to have a space Just for people who are coming in from the show to be able to get plugged in with one another and also be able to understand and experience what we're doing at Locked.
- [74:50]
B
Well, I gotta tell you, I'm sure some people are gonna take you up on that offer. Mark, it's been a delight to spend some time with you. I've learned a ton and just thank you for what you're doing. Thanks for blazing new trails. You know, you mentioned Life Church earlier. Craig said it for years. But to do things that nobody else or to reach people nobody else are reaching, we have to do things nobody else are doing. And that's exactly what you're doing. So thank you so much on behalf of the whole church. I appreciate your pioneer.
- [75:21]
A
Thank you, Carrie, thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.
- [75:24]
B
Well, we talked about a number of things that you might be interested. We've got show notes for you. You can get them at the Art of Leadership academy. Go to theartofleadershipacademy.com, join. Well, almost. I think it's 18,000, 19,000 leaders. I don't know. It's a lot inside the academy right now. Set up a free account and we have some great discussions on topics just like this. Plus you'll find at Treasure Trove of research, including the show notes. So all that's inside my Art of Leadership Academy. I'd love for you to move from the crowd to the community to the core this year and you can do that@theartofleadershipacademy.com if you enjoyed this episode, maybe share it with a friend. Shoot them a text to the link, leave a rating and review. That makes a really big difference. Next episode on the podcast, you're going to hear from me on a topic really close to my heart. But also also coming up, Arthur Brooks near Al, Christine Cain, John Acuff, Todd Wilson on the history of the megachurch and the large church in America. It's fascinating. So thanks so much for listening. And hey, if this conversation was helpful, let a friend know. Let us know. We would love to hear from you. Don't forget to share it with a friend. And I hope that maybe this helped you rethink your online ministry and potentially break a growth barrier that you're facing. We'll catch you next time.