Latest / Eurasia Region Podcast / Regional Conference 2025 - Chad Gibbons & Cezi Glendenning | How to do Discipleship in a Digital Age

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Regional Conference 2025 - Chad Gibbons & Cezi Glendenning | How to do Discipleship in a Digital Age · Eurasia Region Podcast

• 0:07
  Welcome to the Eurasia Region Podcast channel.
• 0:10
  In this podcast episode, you can listen to the sermon from
• 0:13
  Eurasia NDI Coordinator Chet Gibbons and FFC Central Europe
• 0:18
  Jessie Glendenning. The sermon took place at the
• 0:21
  Eurasia Regional Conference 2025 in Albania.
• 0:25
  Chad and Chessy spoke about the team, how to do discipleship in
• 0:29
  a digital age. Good morning, everyone.
• 0:32
  Good morning. My name's Chad Gibbons.
• 0:35
  I'm the discipleship coordinator.
• 0:36
  And I'm Chessy Glendenning, the FSC for Central Europe field.
• 0:40
  And we were asked to share a talk today.
• 0:44
  Yes, I'm doing church and discipleship in the digital age.
• 0:48
  I woke up this morning a couple hours ago.
• 0:53
  I couldn't, my throat was closed, I couldn't speak a word
• 0:59
  and I thought I may still have to leave so Chezy will take
• 1:05
  over. But I love this song.
• 1:07
  That said, with every breath that I am able, I will sing over
• 1:13
  the goodness of God. And so I'm going to preach until
• 1:17
  my voice won't allow me to preach anymore, and then Jesse
• 1:21
  will take over. So he's the older generation,
• 1:24
  I'm the younger generation. Amen.
• 1:32
  Because we're talking about church in a digital age, I was
• 1:35
  going to read the scripture from my phone.
• 1:38
  I thought what a blessing it is to have your scripture on your
• 1:40
  phone with you. And then Jim came up last night
• 1:46
  and said we ought to bring our Bibles.
• 1:50
  So I took Jim's Bible. This is Jim's Bible.
• 1:56
  I don't know what Jim's using now, but if you could open up to
• 2:00
  Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 through 20, you should all be
• 2:08
  familiar with this passage. Then Jesus, this is the
• 2:13
  resurrected Jesus as he is ascending into heaven.
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  Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven
• 2:21
  and on earth has been given to me.
• 2:24
  Therefore, Church, go and make disciples of all nations,
• 2:30
  baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of
• 2:35
  the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I
• 2:39
  have commanded you. And surely I am with you always
• 2:44
  to the very end of the age. This is the word of the Lord,
• 2:50
  this is our Commission from our Lord Jesus, and it's also the
• 2:54
  mission statement of the Church of the Nazarene to go into the
• 2:58
  world and make Christ like disciples in the nation's Amen.
• 3:04
  This is our job. This is what we're doing
• 3:06
  recently. In recent years, the church has
• 3:10
  taken a low view of technology and technological advancements.
• 3:18
  It seems like the message we hear from the church is that
• 3:21
  it's more holy to just stay away from technology.
• 3:25
  We hear of someone that doesn't watch television, that doesn't
• 3:27
  subscribe to Netflix, that doesn't have a Facebook account,
• 3:30
  doesn't have an Instagram account.
• 3:31
  We think, wow, how holy they must be because it's more holy
• 3:36
  to just stay away from that stuff then to utilize it.
• 3:40
  But historically, that is not how the church operated.
• 3:45
  From the beginning, the church has always used technology to
• 3:48
  advance the gospel message of Christ.
• 3:51
  Think of the the Roman road infrastructure that was new in
• 3:55
  the days of Jesus and Paul and the sea network that Paul used
• 3:59
  to travel the Mediterranean to spread the gospel.
• 4:02
  They used that technology to advance the gospel of Christ.
• 4:07
  When the book was invented, when it went from scrolls to books,
• 4:11
  the Christians were the one group in all the world that
• 4:14
  embraced the book and say, let's use this to put all of our
• 4:17
  sacred scriptures together. And because of Christians, the
• 4:21
  book was adopted. And what we have now, we now
• 4:24
  have books. They use that technology to
• 4:26
  advance the Gospel. In the Middle Ages, when
• 4:29
  architectural advancements were made, Christians built
• 4:32
  cathedrals to glorify God. When the printing press was
• 4:36
  invented, Christians printed Bibles and theological books,
• 4:40
  and we embraced all these technological advancements.
• 4:43
  When microphones were invented, we preached the gospel louder.
• 4:47
  When broadcast and airwaves were invented, Christians took to the
• 4:51
  radios, radio waves, and broadcast the gospel message
• 4:55
  everywhere. Well, now we have these devices
• 4:58
  in our pockets, we have the Internet, we have connections
• 5:01
  everywhere. And for some reason, the message
• 5:05
  we get from the church is let's stay away from it, hope it goes
• 5:09
  away. Let's ignore it and try to go
• 5:12
  back to the good old days. We were told by Jesus to go into
• 5:17
  all the world and make disciples, right?
• 5:20
  Well, Jesse and I've been doing a lot of research on this and we
• 5:23
  wanted to show you where the people are in this world.
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  I have a graph here that we can look at hopefully.
• 5:30
  Here's some social media stats. I don't know if you can see
• 5:33
  these. There are 3.6 billion people on
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  YouTube, 2.5 billion people on Instagram.
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  TikTok has 1.6 billion users. If you imagine these are
• 5:47
  churches, these are massive churches, right?
• 5:49
  What an amazing attendance these churches have Facebook 3
• 5:53
  billion, WhatsApp 3.2 billion users.
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  Now I included the Church of the Nazarene statistics on there.
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  Did you know the Church of the Nazarene is the largest Wesleyan
• 6:03
  Holiness denomination in the world?
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  We have 2.7 million members. Amazing you say?
• 6:15
  OK well where's the I don't see the graph.
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  It's. Right there behind.
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  Can anybody see where's the bar? Well, I, I did it to scale, so
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  2.7 million. The LED screens don't show the
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  line. There's a sliver.
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  I don't think you can even see it.
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  But that's to scale how much we have in the Church of the
• 6:35
  Nazarene compared to all these other church attendances we
• 6:38
  have. I guess my point is we can't
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  afford to just ignore it and hope it goes away.
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  We have to go into all the world and make disciples.
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  If we had 1000 more Church of the Nazarenes, when not not 1000
• 6:56
  more churches, 1000 more of our entire denomination, we just
• 7:01
  about get to Instagram levels. We wouldn't even yet be at
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  YouTube or Facebook. If we had 1000 more Me's and
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  Chessies and everybody in this room and every other Nazarene,
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  thousand more of them, we still wouldn't reach that level.
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  So what are we going to do about the situation in the world that
• 7:14
  we're living in? The subject has not something
• 7:19
  that you and I came up with and we wanted to give you a history.
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  Why are we talking about this? Actually, this subject came from
• 7:26
  many of you. It started actually at the Luzon
• 7:29
  Congress, where Luzon Congress is a, it's, it's a Congress or a
• 7:34
  movement where a lot of the evangelical leaders meet
• 7:39
  together in order to dream and to have conversations and to
• 7:44
  envision ways that we can fulfill the Great Commission.
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  And in 2024, before that, they did some research in order to
• 7:53
  identify some of the gaps that the church has today in order to
• 7:58
  fulfill that Commission. And in fact that they identified
• 8:02
  40 plus of those gaps. And then they chose, they send
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  it all over the world in all the nominations and said, can you
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  identify the top 25? And then they identified the
• 8:15
  twin, the top 25. And some of our leaders,
• 8:18
  including our regional director, Mark Lowe was at, was it Luzon
• 8:22
  Congress and some of other leaders I know have been, have
• 8:26
  been there. Then Mark came to us and says
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  OK, among these 25 what are important to our region and so
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  he send it to all of you leaders around some of you probably have
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  filled that that form that he asked and doing discipleship in
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  the digital area was a priority for our region.
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  And that's why every day we have a different gap that we are
• 8:50
  treating as as a church in order to continue.
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  These will not exhaust our conversation today will not be
• 8:57
  fulfilling that. You say, oh, now we have the
• 9:00
  answers and we we're going to go and do it.
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  But we hope that they are conversation starters for all of
• 9:06
  us because there are 5 billion people online every day.
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  And it is a mission field for the church that we cannot easily
• 9:16
  ignored. And so the church must go to
• 9:19
  meet people where they are. I remember I was in Zagreb.
• 9:23
  I, I worked when I moved there in 2021.
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  I pastored the church with refugees and that meant that one
• 9:31
  Sunday I could have 5 people in the church and the next Sunday
• 9:34
  will be 100 people in the church that were on the move.
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  And there was one of these days where there were five people in
• 9:41
  the church and I said, Lord, where are the people?
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  And then after that discouraged as a pastor because the Sunday
• 9:48
  before we had had such a beautiful service, I went for a
• 9:52
  run and I saw all people in all. Zagreb was at the park, they
• 9:58
  were barbecuing, they were having family time and I said
• 10:02
  that's where the church should be.
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  And since that, if there was good weather, as a church, we
• 10:07
  went and did our church service in the park because we wanted to
• 10:10
  deal with where the people are. And I think it's the same with
• 10:13
  this digital era. This is where people are, but we
• 10:18
  not everything, it's flowers, OK, Not everything is so shiny.
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  We do want to talk also about the limitations because while we
• 10:25
  have a generation that is very much informed information does
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  not 'cause transformation and the social platforms where
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  they're great to pass that information, they do not and
• 10:40
  cannot substitute the church, the people coming together, the
• 10:47
  embodiment of the presence of each other.
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  But the truth is the traditional ways of doing discipleship have,
• 10:56
  are not reaching, are not being effective anymore in the younger
• 11:00
  generation. And so we want together, we want
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  to have a conversation in today and even after, after that, when
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  you have the GOB discussions, what does it mean to fuck a good
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  balance in meeting people where they are, but not letting them
• 11:17
  where they are. Because while we can again do
• 11:20
  information, the true discipleship shall lead, must
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  lead to community life because that's where lives are changed.
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  That's where we have influence for each other.
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  And so let's have this conversation today.
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  And I know the question now, it's not if we are going to be
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  online, the question is how can we be online keeping in mind all
• 11:47
  the risks that that entitles and we we want to have that
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  conversation. As we were talking with churches
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  and people that are doing real digital ministry, we found
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  there's kind of two broad philosophies are two main ways
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  churches can reach people in the online spaces using digital
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  tools to affect real change. The first way churches use is a
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  ministry of online presence. This is where your church
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  creates a website or a Facebook page or uploads your sermons
• 12:22
  that are preached on Sunday to YouTube, where we're putting the
• 12:26
  information from our church into these digital spaces to have a
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  doorway or a window into our local church.
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  And this is very important for churches.
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  I mean, unless you're in a creative access area where you
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  absolutely shouldn't do this, we encourage everybody to have some
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  kind of online presence for your church.
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  If you think I don't know anything about websites or I
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  don't know anything about Facebook, do like Trino did and
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  grab some young people and say, could you create a website for
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  our church? If you're a young person or a
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  person in your church and you say I wish our church had
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  something like this, that is then up to you to do something
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  about it. You find the right person in
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  your church and within minutes you can be online and have a
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  presence. And this is so important in this
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  day and age, so many people before coming into your church,
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  we'll figure out, we'll try to find out a little bit about what
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  your church is all about. We have a couple that started
• 13:27
  coming to our church in boozing and maybe a year ago, a little
• 13:30
  over a year ago. And they said before we came in,
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  I was just talking to him a couple Sundays ago, right before
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  we came here. They said before we came to the
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  church, we saw the Church of the Nazarene in our town.
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  And we said, what in the world is that?
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  Is that some kind of, is that a cult?
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  Is that some kind of sect? And we looked for hours online
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  to try to figure out, is this a legitimate church or is this one
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  of those crazy goofball? I don't know how you translate
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  goofball. Is this one of those weirdo
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  weirdo groups? And they've since come, they've
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  come to our membership class, they've become members.
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  They're starting to lead our worship.
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  And it's just so incredible. But without good online presence
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  and materials, we would have never reached them.
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  People would have just stayed away.
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  So this is the first way churches can engage in the
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  digital place, a ministry of online presence.
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  But the problem with this is it's limited.
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  As Chezzy said, it's just content.
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  It's just more content in a world, in an Internet that is
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  already flooded with content. And content does not equal
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  discipleship. We have more content than we've
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  ever had before and discipleship is at an all time low.
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  I think we could all agree. So what's the other way?
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  Some churches do digital ministry.
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  And this is a ministry of online, not just online
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  presence, online engagement. This is where some churches will
• 14:59
  go into digital spaces, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram,
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  TikTok, you get, you're thinking, oh, you're getting
• 15:08
  TikTok. That sounds really not holy.
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  But they're going into these places and they're bringing the
• 15:15
  gospel with them and they're engaging with people in those
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  spaces without the expectation that they will ever come to a
• 15:23
  local or to your local church. You're engaging with people
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  because that's where discipleship really happens.
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  It's not content that makes the discipleship happen.
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  It's people that make discipleship happen with other
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  people. So this ministry of online
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  engagement, they see the social media platforms and the Internet
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  the way Paul saw those Roman roads.
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  This is something that I can use to get to the places and the
• 15:51
  people that I need to be and I can engage with people there.
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  In our district assembly, Doctor Sundberg chaired about a pastor
• 15:58
  in Oxford, NS. A little church in Nova Scotia,
• 16:03
  great church that when COVID hit, we all remember COVID.
• 16:10
  When COVID hit, they said what are we going to do?
• 16:13
  How what is church going to look like?
• 16:14
  Now? The church can't do what the
• 16:16
  church does best, best get together.
• 16:19
  So they rethought what church could look like.
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  They went and created a Facebook page, a Facebook group for their
• 16:26
  church to gather where they're not just posting something.
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  They're creating a place where real people are gathering in
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  digital places. And they're not just posting
• 16:35
  sermons, they're interacting with people and praying with
• 16:38
  people. And before a few months passed,
• 16:41
  they had to take on a online pastor.
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  They had to include an online pastor on their staff, not an AI
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  pastor, A real pastor doing real ministry with real people using
• 16:55
  the digital roads that have been made available to us.
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  And this way, real discipleship can happen because you're
• 17:01
  engaging with real people. Yes.
• 17:05
  So you know, it's, is it true? It's it's really true.
• 17:09
  In talking about this this hybrid though, we want to talk
• 17:12
  about a hybrid because being completely online, I think takes
• 17:16
  away a lot from the church, but also the just footprints.
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  It's not enough. While it is really good, it has
• 17:24
  positive. We want to talk about the a
• 17:26
  hybrid way of how we can do church and we also want to go to
• 17:30
  the risk because the reality being completely online today,
• 17:35
  it it kind of give us a sense that everything needs to be
• 17:38
  speedy. Everything needs to be
• 17:40
  convenient, everything needs to be individualistic, but
• 17:45
  discipleship is almost the opposite of this.
• 17:48
  It's about surrender is about slowness, it's about community.
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  And so it is important for us as a church.
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  While we want to meet again people where they are, we want
• 17:59
  them to join to healthy communities in in our local
• 18:04
  churches. And I know that now technology
• 18:07
  keeps being more and more sophisticated from now with the
• 18:11
  entrance of the AI. In fact, you are in Albania that
• 18:14
  just this year or last year elected the first AI minister
• 18:20
  that manages all the administrative part of the
• 18:23
  country. So the world is changing and we
• 18:26
  cannot function without technology.
• 18:28
  Our education is technology. When we travel in our phones, we
• 18:33
  have our tickets, we buy our tickets, we communicate with
• 18:35
  each other. We want to be able to have
• 18:38
  access to all of this. But we do not want to be there
• 18:42
  because then we don't want, we don't want to create a false,
• 18:46
  false sense of community. And we see although we are so
• 18:51
  connected today, we have more people who are disconnected, who
• 18:56
  feel lonely. In fact, Jonathan Haddock wrote
• 18:59
  this book, The Ancient Generation, and he talks about
• 19:03
  how the digital era has isolated the young people more than ever.
• 19:09
  There is this false sense of likes and community online, but
• 19:13
  they are so disconnected. So we want our churches to be
• 19:17
  online. We want, we want us to use all
• 19:20
  these, but to do it wisely as a church.
• 19:24
  And here are some of the risk, I think that we find this
• 19:27
  embodiment again, the false sense of community.
• 19:31
  I tell people in my church that if, if doing, if transformation
• 19:36
  was possible online, Jesus would have come as a hologram, not as
• 19:41
  a not as the body becoming flesh.
• 19:44
  Because there is power. There is power when the people
• 19:48
  of God come together. Now look at us today.
• 19:52
  How, how would you imagine this service or this time?
• 19:56
  Would it be the same if we did it on Zoom?
• 19:59
  It wouldn't because there is power in physically.
• 20:03
  There is also a sense of mystery that happens when we physically
• 20:07
  connect with each other. And so embodiment having, having
• 20:12
  these spaces where we reflect the physical body of Christ, the
• 20:16
  material body of Christ, is essential not only for our own
• 20:22
  growth and transformation, but also in the participation of
• 20:26
  healing a broken world. So.
• 20:29
  Like in many cultures there is the same similar to, you know,
• 20:33
  all the roads lead to Rome or in in Albania we say you can go to
• 20:38
  Istanbul asking questions. And so like we all have been.
• 20:42
  So should it be also for the church as it engages it online,
• 20:46
  it shall meet people there and then move them to healthy
• 20:50
  communities. But also this requires and
• 20:53
  questions us as churches. Are we ready?
• 20:57
  Are we healthy communities where people who are struggling,
• 21:01
  lonely and with anxiety, are they, are we open to welcome?
• 21:08
  Are we ready to welcome them? We see also an identity crisis
• 21:13
  among the young people, their identity, it's form of how many
• 21:16
  likes they have, how they look. We have so many influencers from
• 21:21
  all types of influencers, including Christians.
• 21:24
  And somehow it feels that that we find our self worth most a
• 21:31
  lot of time more on those interactions that we do in
• 21:34
  Christ. And so this is the role of the
• 21:37
  church to educate, to invite people into the space where they
• 21:41
  meet Christ and their identity. It's formed by the presence of
• 21:44
  each other. There was a psychologist that
• 21:47
  said one time and it's it it it's stuck with me.
• 21:51
  It says nobody has ever seen their face, we only see a
• 21:56
  reflection of it. And the.
• 21:59
  Reflection of it is the people you interact with.
• 22:03
  Our identity is formed by the people.
• 22:06
  When you come to a young person or to me and you say Chessie, I
• 22:11
  see this in you. I've had people in Anthony
• 22:14
  Holloman wasn't the first who said, Chessie, I think you
• 22:18
  should consider ordination. And I know I had a call.
• 22:22
  My church had told me I had a call to ministry, but pastoral
• 22:25
  work was like, no, that's too much work and I have 0 patience.
• 22:30
  I told him for nonsense and pastors need to have a lot of
• 22:33
  patience with it. But in that community,
• 22:36
  reflecting back that God has gifted me with the gift and
• 22:39
  graces it just formed my identity.
• 22:42
  That's why being an embodied community is essential for all
• 22:47
  of us. Then we have cultural
• 22:50
  imbalances. We found in our data also that
• 22:54
  most of the content today, it's is generated in the Western
• 22:58
  world, but it is spread all over the world.
• 23:02
  And there is imbalance because our, our values or the, the
• 23:06
  values of the West and the morals of the West are impacting
• 23:11
  values and morals of in the East or in, in the South or anywhere
• 23:16
  else. And so that has created a lot of
• 23:19
  disparity. There is not a good
• 23:21
  representation of, of content from all cultures.
• 23:26
  And we all have to learn from each other.
• 23:29
  The last one that was very important is that again,
• 23:32
  information does not equal transformation.
• 23:36
  And so I know we do education online, we do meetings online,
• 23:41
  We're going to have a prayer globally on Zoom, which I think
• 23:44
  it's amazing. All of these are all all really
• 23:48
  good. But the truth is that they will
• 23:51
  not, if they're not done in community, they will not bring
• 23:55
  transformation. And so we as a churches must
• 23:59
  create those spaces. The last but not least that I
• 24:03
  wanted to talk about, it's also we have to find a balance
• 24:08
  because it's, it's scientific today that there is a thing and
• 24:13
  it's real that it's called digital addiction, where a lot
• 24:18
  of young people, including maybe ourselves can scroll for hours
• 24:23
  even without realizing. There is dopamine that is being
• 24:28
  produced in our, in our minds and in our body and we look for
• 24:31
  more for it. And the addiction is real.
• 24:34
  And so the question, though I do not have an answer, but I think
• 24:37
  it's a question worth asking. We need to be present online,
• 24:42
  but not to the point where we contribute in the addiction
• 24:46
  issue. That is a real issue today with
• 24:50
  a generation that is really, really struggling.
• 24:53
  And as I said, science. It's really connecting.
• 24:56
  A lot of the mental health, The increase of mental health issues
• 24:59
  are not just because there is more awareness, but there is
• 25:03
  also a lot of rewiring on our brain that is being done by eye
• 25:07
  devices. So it's important that we
• 25:10
  practice Sabbath. I say practice Sabbath.
• 25:13
  We talked also creation care practice is a a form of
• 25:16
  resistance. Digital, digital Sabbath,
• 25:20
  consumerism Sabbath. Let's lead the way as a church.
• 25:25
  Let's invite our people to fasting time so we don't become
• 25:29
  dependent. Let's educate our churches.
• 25:33
  You know, there is kids are exposed today in such an early
• 25:36
  age to things that they shouldn't be seeing.
• 25:39
  Let's talk about delay exposure to digital.
• 25:42
  And so a lot of parents allow it to happen because there is not
• 25:45
  much information or they are not very informed, at least in a in
• 25:49
  a lot of countries. And the church can fill that gap
• 25:53
  because it's part of the discipleship.
• 25:57
  So for all of us today, yes to the digital world.
• 26:02
  Let's do it with wisdom though. Let's be present, yes, in the
• 26:07
  digital world, but without never sacrificing the coming together
• 26:12
  as the body of Christ. So what can we do in this room?
• 26:18
  What can we do as a Church of the Nazarene?
• 26:21
  When we looked at those numbers that were just, the task is so
• 26:26
  large ahead of us and we're such a in the scheme of things, we're
• 26:30
  such a small group of people, but what are we known for as
• 26:34
  Nazarenes? Let me rephrase that.
• 26:36
  What should we be known for as Nazarenes in the world?
• 26:42
  We put the slide up already. Holiness unto the Lord is our
• 26:47
  watchword and song. I don't know what watchword is.
• 26:51
  I don't know how the translators are going to translate that
• 26:53
  word. We are a people known for our
• 26:57
  holiness. So what can we bring into this
• 27:01
  conversation that is distinct and special that no other
• 27:05
  churches and that no other person is doing?
• 27:07
  I think we need to bring in what Jesse and I are calling digital
• 27:11
  holiness. We need to introduce digital
• 27:14
  holiness into these online spaces because I I don't see it
• 27:19
  very often. Part of what holiness means is
• 27:22
  to be set apart, for something to be distinct, to not look like
• 27:27
  everybody else. And it grieves my heart when I
• 27:31
  see my brothers and sisters in Christ acting like the rest of
• 27:36
  the world online. For some reason, we think when
• 27:39
  we get onto our Facebook boards, we think we are justified in
• 27:44
  acting and posting the exact same things that the rest of the
• 27:48
  world does. We are called to be holy and our
• 27:51
  entire sanctification shouldn't just mean our real flesh and
• 27:55
  blood life. It should mean the words that we
• 27:58
  speak and the words that we post.
• 28:01
  The word was with God and the word was God.
• 28:05
  Our words need to be holy. What we post online needs to be
• 28:09
  holy. But so often I see instead of
• 28:13
  digital holiness, I see digital Pharisees in the church, digital
• 28:18
  Pharisees in the Church of the Nazarene.
• 28:20
  Excuse me, I'm getting a little bit passionate.
• 28:23
  I'm thank you, Lord, that my voice is, is staying.
• 28:27
  Shut me down, Lord, if I need to be shut down.
• 28:30
  What were the Pharisees known for?
• 28:32
  The Pharisees we're known for separating themselves from those
• 28:36
  sinners, separating themselves from the dark places because we
• 28:39
  don't want that sin to infect our fragile holiness, where
• 28:44
  Jesus was exactly the opposite. I'm going to go into the dark
• 28:47
  places. I'm going to go to the sinners,
• 28:50
  the tax collectors, because I'm not worried about their sin
• 28:53
  infecting my holiness. I want my holiness to infect
• 28:57
  their sin. We don't need more digital
• 29:00
  Pharisees saying let's just stay away from it all and put our
• 29:06
  heads in our sand and say it's more holy to just stay away.
• 29:09
  What else were the Pharisees known for?
• 29:11
  The Pharisees were known for arguing about points of the law,
• 29:16
  heaping up great burdens on people, polishing up the outside
• 29:20
  of the cup while leaving the inside dirty and full of dead
• 29:24
  bones. Doesn't that describe how
• 29:28
  Christians act online? Isn't it?
• 29:31
  Are are you also not embarrassed when you see other Christians
• 29:34
  doing the exact same things the Pharisees did online and giving
• 29:39
  themselves a justification before it because they're in the
• 29:42
  right? I'm a little bit tired of it.
• 29:44
  I think we as Nazarenes need to abandon digital Pharisee ISM and
• 29:49
  embrace digital holiness. What does that look like?
• 29:53
  Do we have? There was a picture of Jesus
• 29:56
  that we had up. Yeah, look at this picture of
• 29:59
  Jesus, this cool picture of Jesus.
• 30:03
  See all this junk that's on stage in front of Jesus?
• 30:07
  You can't see Jesus. This happens a lot in Christian.
• 30:10
  I was just at the West Med field.
• 30:12
  We were just talking about this. Who is at the West Med family
• 30:15
  camp? Oh, more than that.
• 30:19
  OK, We were at the West Med family camp, Beautiful screen
• 30:23
  everything. And then all this stuff,
• 30:25
  Nazarenes put all this stuff in front of Jesus.
• 30:28
  And I feel like this is how Christians live their lives
• 30:32
  online sometimes We have this beautiful picture of Jesus that
• 30:36
  we've been given the glorious message of the King of the world
• 30:40
  who gave himself for us, and that, well, my relationship with
• 30:44
  the Father was broken. The Son of God came to heal it
• 30:47
  and adopt me into the family. What an amazing message, but
• 30:51
  nobody can see it because every time we go online we post more
• 30:54
  things about how oh, you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't
• 30:58
  smoke, oh, you got to stop. You got to stop talking like
• 31:02
  that. You need to vote the way I vote.
• 31:05
  You need to agree with me on every social issue that comes
• 31:08
  in. And all of our posts clutter the
• 31:11
  one thing that we should be showing the world.
• 31:15
  And before long the people online just look and they see
• 31:18
  all of these Christian opinions and they think, well, I can't
• 31:22
  agree with any of this, so I guess I don't get to Jesus.
• 31:26
  Jesus seems nice, but look at all these Christian opinions
• 31:30
  that I just don't agree with. Why are we?
• 31:33
  Spending our time online, cluttering the stage in front of
• 31:37
  Jesus. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we,
• 31:39
  as Nazarenes, we're known for the people that cleared away all
• 31:43
  that stuff? Forget about that.
• 31:46
  Forget about this. I don't.
• 31:47
  Whatever you do, I want you to see Jesus get rid of all this.
• 31:51
  I'm sorry for the musicians that are going to have to put it all
• 31:55
  back. I know we need it for the music,
• 31:57
  but here, get the pulpit out of the way.
• 32:00
  Crying out loud. We go into our churches and we
• 32:04
  put the pulpit up in front of Jesus and we're preaching things
• 32:06
  that distract people from Jesus. Lift up the name of Jesus Christ
• 32:11
  online. We need digital holiness.
• 32:14
  Amen. Amen.
• 32:17
  OK. I worked really hard for that.
• 32:23
  But I know, I know because I think then to myself, whenever I
• 32:27
  hear a pastor preach, I always think I always have a dialogue
• 32:30
  inside my head. And I go, yeah, but yeah.
• 32:32
  But. But don't you care about sin?
• 32:35
  I mean, don't you care about these cultural issues?
• 32:37
  Don't we need to speak into these social issues?
• 32:40
  Don't we need to correct some of the wrongs?
• 32:43
  Well, OK, yes, I care deeply about sin.
• 32:48
  I care deeply about these cultural issues.
• 32:50
  And you should too. But here's the thing.
• 32:53
  There's only one thing in all the world that is going to bring
• 32:57
  about real change in a person's heart.
• 33:00
  I mean, if we want to see revival happen, if we want to
• 33:03
  see opinions change, if we want to see lives change, if we want
• 33:07
  to see hearts changed, there's one thing in the whole world
• 33:10
  that can do it. And it is not your Facebook
• 33:12
  post, it's not your Instagram real.
• 33:17
  It's an encounter with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
• 33:21
  So if we want people's lives to be changed, if we want people's
• 33:24
  opinions to be changed on a particular issue, the best thing
• 33:27
  that we can do is lift up Christ and get out of the way and let
• 33:31
  Jesus change the hearts if he needs to.
• 33:34
  Amen. We need.
• 33:37
  Digital holiness, not more digital Pharisees.
• 33:39
  I'm going to give the pulpit back.
• 33:44
  Yeah. And to conclude today, and I
• 33:46
  want to invite the worship team as we finish today.
• 33:52
  Good luck, Good luck. Yes, I'm giving you some extra
• 33:55
  time. You know, the Italians have the
• 33:59
  saying that says a tree that falls makes more noise than a
• 34:04
  forest that grows. We live in a society where there
• 34:09
  is a lot of trees that fall and a lot of them are on social
• 34:13
  media, are on digital platforms, and it has grabs the attention
• 34:18
  of the church, but it has not been balanced with the attention
• 34:23
  that we must give to a forest that is growing.
• 34:27
  God is doing incredible things in our neighborhoods, in the
• 34:31
  communities, the places where we work, and God is desperately
• 34:37
  asking the attention of the church to see and be part of
• 34:42
  that growth. But we are so obsessed with the
• 34:45
  tree that falls. And I'm not saying we must not,
• 34:50
  but I feel like it's 95% to the issue and 5% maybe to the
• 34:58
  growth. But we, we must, we must switch
• 35:01
  that. And so as we engage in digital
• 35:05
  discipleship, let's remember this.
• 35:08
  There is a forest that is growing and we are all invited
• 35:12
  in it. We are invited to be part of
• 35:15
  that slow, not immediate that that that work that God is
• 35:20
  doing, that maybe we won't even see the results in our lifetime.
• 35:27
  We must show up into those. Places, and those are not always
• 35:31
  places in the digital world, but are in our interactions.
• 35:36
  We must move from digital media to the tables and to reclaim
• 35:42
  again Jesus Great commandment. Go and eat together.
• 35:49
  Meet. Together Share.
• 35:51
  Life together, and that's our invitation.
• 35:53
  Whatever you are doing makes sense in your culture, and
• 35:57
  digital holiness and digital engagement will look differently
• 36:01
  in every part of the world. But I hope it will all lead us
• 36:05
  to one place, the table of Christ.
• 36:09
  Stand with me as we pray. We.
• 36:19
  Want to thank you for your. Presence here today.
• 36:22
  Thank you for your invitation to be holy people.
• 36:26
  And Father, we know that the subject today is complicated.
• 36:31
  There's so many opinions and many ideas of how to do well,
• 36:36
  and some of us have succeeded in doing so, and some of us have
• 36:40
  failed on doing so. But Father, we come today as a
• 36:44
  church, those who are here and those we represent.
• 36:48
  Father, we pray that the power of the Holy Spirit will be with
• 36:53
  us to grant us wisdom, to grant us to to, to grant us the
• 37:00
  thoughts that we need, the methods that we need to help us
• 37:05
  engage in in, in holiness that is digital or personal or in the
• 37:10
  community. Father, we pray that we as a
• 37:13
  church will never fail to reflect of who you are, a God of
• 37:19
  love and transformation and change and healing and
• 37:25
  redemption. We thank you for meeting us here
• 37:28
  today. May you give us wisdom as we
• 37:31
  engage in more conversation to do the Great Commission you have
• 37:35
  called us to do, to make Christ like disciples in all nations in
• 37:40
  a way that it honors you and it reflects you and bring healing
• 37:45
  to a broken world. We pray this in the name of the
• 37:49
  Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
• 37:52
  Amen. Thank you for listening to the.
• 37:54
  Euratia Region Podcast Keep in touch with Everyday Stories to
• 37:58
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• 38:02
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• 38:06
  Euratia region, go to our website, euratiaregion.org.