Hi. This is the Compass Podcast, finding the spiritual in the
everyday. We're doing something a little bit different in this episode.
I've just come back from a trip to Virginia. I'm very excited
about because we were exploring some really innovative expressions
of church out there. And I'm looking forward to sharing the stories of those
ministries with you as well as kind of bringing an answer to the question of,
like, what are we talking about when we're talking about
church, with some great stories. I also brought back a case of
COVID. So not a 100%, and then my voice sounds weird.
That's the case. And with that, I've I've not been able to work
up a and with that, I've
I've not been able to work up a episode for this edition of Compass. So
here's what we're gonna do. I'm actually gonna borrow a topic
from my other podcast that I produce called the Micon
podcast. And this is, actually we're borrowing a
full interview. It's with Reverend JJ Warren and it gets into
that question of what are we talking about when we're talking about
church? What makes something church? And in this
episode specifically, we get into talking about
online expressions of church and how we can
live into the call and practice of church, the fully
online community. AJ is somebody that I think a lot
of people should get to know. Very exciting
person, a young leader in the church, the founder of the Young Prophets
Collective. And of course, you can check out more about
JJ Warren at jjwarren.org
or find out more about the Young Prophets community at young
prophets collective.org. So we're gonna get
into where the church is
present in digital spaces on this interview borrowed from the
Mycom podcast, which I encourage you to check out sometime as well
here now on the Compass podcast.
How it goes with your soul today? Thank you. Thank you so much
for having me. It is well with my soul. It is always
good to talk to another United Methodist and,
especially good to do so from here in Vienna. Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you making the commitment to, bridge
the gap of space and time to be with us as we're recording in
Nashville, Tennessee. You may actually be the 1st
Gen z voice that we've had on this podcast. I
I realized that's a little bit of an an indictment. So
and maybe maybe a little more responsibility than you wanted to take
on, but we're gonna ask you to, with a bit
of a wink and a nod, be a voice of a generation.
Is there something that you wish that the older generations, say
my generation, Gen X, understood about your
generation's online presence? That's a great question.
And emphasizing the wink and the nod on this. A
lot of times when I'm visiting churches around the connection, they say, what is the
answer to get young people? Right. And I always have to caveat
that, well, in my experience, and this is not speaking for all young
people, is I I wish
that older generations, and I think this has changed since the pandemic
to a certain degree. But I wish certain older generations
that didn't grow up with social media as an ingrained part of our lives
understood that online spaces, like social
media and virtual churches are real and
authentic communities for many of us. And so sometimes
I think there's this, not a grudge
per se, but this sense that an online
space can't be real and you young people need to get off
your phones, and get outside because that's where the real world
is. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. I had kind of a
watershed moment with my son, who is now 16 years old,
and, and he was this was a
number of years ago. He was playing Minecraft, and we were asking him
to to turn it off. We had some place to go. And
so finally, in frustration, I just ran into his room, and I shut the
Xbox off. And it it it elicited an emotional
meltdown, not because I took something away from him,
but because as he put it, I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to
my friends. And at that point, I realized that, oh, in the
same way, like, he wants me to leave the church
building right after service is done. And and I wanna hang on
and socialize. Like, this is what he was doing. And in his mind, there
was no difference between that narthex time and this time saying
goodbye in that digital space. This is That is a beautiful parallel.
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I I have
particularly enjoyed some of the ways that you have platform
discussions around the online expressions of church that
that you've looked at. So, I wanna borrow a question
that you ask of of your readers in in your book
where 2 or 3 are are connected. And that question is
what needs to occur in order for a church to be
a church? That is
I can't say that's a great question since I asked. You asked. Yes.
But it is a great question. That's why we're trying it back out. It's a
convicting question in many ways. Yeah.
And, you know, some of this, it's always been
my fascination ever since I was a child with the church and,
playing communion, which, you know, maybe isn't okay, but I
enjoyed it in the backyard and I'd set up with my younger brother.
We would set up little plastic chairs, in the weeds
and that would be our congregation. And, we would have our
mom sit there. She was great. And she sat through our little services
and he would process with a little stick and twine cross and I would go
behind him. And we had our own little church services
together because we just loved creating church. Right?
What? Of course. That's the most fun game for you. Right?
Left lane. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I didn't maybe
necessarily do that. But And so it
this idea of what is the church has has always been something
that's fascinated me. And so I
think as I think about
what does it require to be a church? The pandemic threw us
into asking that question in ways that we should have been
asking all along, but had the privilege of
not having to ask in a lot of communities. Now, of course, there are great
churches out there and Umcom was doing a great job of this, of
saying, well, what what does it mean to be the church? And let's have articles,
about how we do certain parts of our church life online.
What are the best ways that we can facilitate, that?
But I think for me,
being the church online requires and I
talk about this in the book in where 2 or 3 are connected. They say
researchers of digital religions, specifically Meredith Gould and Tim
Hutchings, say that to for an online community to
be a real community for participants, it requires
time, energy, and emotional investment on the part of the participants.
And I think we see that in real life, not real. I try to get
away from that language in physical life as well. That in our
physical lives, our communities for them to be real to us, they
require us to put time into these relationships, to invest our
emotions and, to put our energy into this
community that it's something that matters to us. And so
those those parallel online that we need time, energy, and
emotions so that, you know, layperson 367
isn't just a random person I'm commenting or chatting with,
but that's John in Australia, you know, whose
life story I have come to know and whose daughter is
my, you know, Instagram friend who goes to this coffee shop
that we both happen to know the owner of. And it's those
connections and that time and that energy and those emotions that
make a community real online. Now for a
church, then I'd have to say you have to read where 2 or 3 are
connected because I believe that the four marks of
the church, from our creeds, right, that the church
is 1 holy Catholic and apostolic, that
these four marks are important for us, and not
just for me as a nerd, as a theologian here at the University of
Vienna, but for all of us to understand
that when we say we are the church, we are
inheriting 100 of years of tradition that
inform the way in which we understand it, whether we are
continuing certain traditions and even in our protest of
certain traditions, but everything, our embodiment and our
protest, our continuation and protest rather, is
all playing back with and against tradition,
And so understanding those four marks in a digital age is essential for
us to say, yeah. What does it mean for us to be one
online? What technology is the most conducive to oneness? What
does it mean to be apostolic, to be sent in new ways? What
does it mean to be sent on Instagram? How do we do that well? How
do we do that ethically? And questions such as that.
Yeah. Well, I wanna tune in a little bit to what you mentioned
about emotional connection that that's one of the aspects of what
creates, I guess, a a relationship or a community,
and as you put it as a church community more
specifically. So for many of us,
we are attracted to online spaces because they offer a sense
of anonymity. And that can be awful sometimes. Right? Because people
will hide behind that anonymity to
say some of the worst inclinations of their hearts.
And that in itself can put up a bit of a
barrier to building emotional connections
in digital spaces. So are there some
ways or some platforms that you have found it
helpful in creating an emotional bond
or connection with people in digital spaces?
Yeah. And I I think that's a fascinating point that
on the one hand, there's this idea of, I think maybe in the, you
know, early 2000 nineties, if I can remember way back then when I was
even younger than I am now,
There's this idea that, communicating online
is totally anonymous. Right? I remember when a chat room, was
first starting and my sisters would be using chat rooms and messaging with
people that I can't remember if they knew or not. And to a certain
degree Oh my god. Right. And to a certain degree, I
that still happens. But I think with
not only the amount of data that all of these websites are tracking, they know
who we are, but also for me, social media platforms.
And for I would, guess a
lot of gen zers social media platforms are intimately
personal. They're necessarily personal because it's, that is
an extension, of ourselves. And that is part
of the, realm in which we live, that it is not
discontinuous with our offline life. And Deanna
Thompson talks about this in her book, virtual body of
Christ from Abingdon Press that the in many ways,
online spaces can be more incarnational, may allow us to
encounter each other's humanity more deeply
because they allow us to share parts of our stories that, you know,
maybe we wouldn't feel as comfortable sharing if you and I were sitting down at
a coffee shop surrounded by people right now, that we have some
intimacy in this space that allows us, to
communicate more deeply. Sometimes that anonymity,
in a different sense, sometimes anonymity allows people to go deeper
more quickly. So in a lot of the couple virtual churches that exist out
there, they some some of their,
testimonies have been that if folks participate without
using their real name, or their image, that
sometimes they feel more comfortable sharing more about
themselves more quickly because they have that safety of being
anonymous. That isn't necessarily my experience because I
don't use platforms anonymously. And most of the church, that I
work with in our virtual church, church of the young prophets,
is is using and inviting
people's personalities themselves from social
media, and to gather us together in a virtual space. And I'm not sure
if this is the right time to talk about that or a little bit later
on. You let me know. Yeah. Well, you can if you had more
to add there, we can complete that thought, and then we'll get into the practicalities
of, the Young Prophets collective. Yeah. So
I I think that your your question about platforms that
are conducive to fostering relationships,
in a way where we often think of being online as being anonymous.
I think that question is really key to
the question of is online church really church,
or can online communities be real church
communities? And I think that question that you asked
is the better question. Is what
about the ways in which we're gathering online
are conducive to fostering authentic relationships, not can
technology do it. Because during the pandemic, almost all of us
were forced online. So we did experience having church
online. So I think that that first question is it's out the window for
me taken for granted, the answer is yes. So the
second and more interesting question is, yeah, which
platforms allow us to engage more authentically? And I
think that that that requires more two way
communication, so platforms like Zoom as opposed to a simple
live stream that's only one directional. If you're using a
one directional platform, you know, utilizing the chat and whatnot,
but finding platforms that allow for more communication
both ways and aren't just, one directional, will be
key for us to creating authentic communities and
real churches. Well, Church of the Young Prophets,
this organization that you've started in in conjunction with
the Young Prophets Collective is an online
church. As you were founding that, were there certain
aspects that or I don't know. Did we can
think programmatically, like, programs that you felt like it
was necessary for us to identify how we're gonna do
this in order for us to be a church? And you you
mentioned 2 two parts of it. So on the one hand, Young
Profits Collective is a 501c3 nonprofit that I founded in
the aftermath of general conference 2019.
For those of you that are watching the visual here, you'll see the pink blazer,
and that became my beacon of during that general
conference sharing a few words of my story, and that
resonating with a lot of young people around the connection. And from
that space, realizing that even when our church
is making decisions that exclude a lot of people, there are still a lot of
people in the church, especially young people who say
we're still here. We we still have something to contribute.
And so to me, that's the prophetic voice that says we
know something's not right here. We're not going to leave though. We still
have something to say. We feel God is calling us to prophesy love into
this context, of division. And so that's where
Young Prophets Collective started and that was before the pandemic and we were
always online simply because we were young United
Methodists around the world. So we had no other option. And so we'd
meet on Zoom. We met over Slack for notifications
for, you know, talking about different topics and
education. And slowly that evolved,
into a worshiping community, which is now supported by the New England
Conference of the United Methodist Church, Church of the Young Prophets.
Yeah. When you were starting that Young Prophets collective,
did you envision that you were gonna move into it being a
worshiping community, or did you have any initial alright. There was
no vision for that. Okay. Not at all. At first, we were just
a hodgepodge group of young people from around the world,
who said we how how do we help churches in this time? How do we
show that young people have a voice in the church? How do we help
shape, the future of the denomination? Because we're not
only the church of tomorrow, we are the church of today. And even, you know,
as a young person who was at general conference, a lot of the
conversations about the future of the denomination didn't include young
people. And so it was important for me for that to happen.
But then in the process of writing this book,
and to do that, I interviewed United Methodist pastors around the world.
So United Methodist pastors in Kenya, in,
the Philippines, in Singapore, in,
across Europe and the United States to ask them
how how their understanding of church had changed because
of the pandemic. And through those interviews, through the
wisdom that they shared, and that I got to collect for this
book, that gave me the feeling of, ah, okay.
Something something feels right here. This
this feels like the groundwork of perhaps a next
ministry for Young Prophets Collective is to say, yeah. How can we
use these insights that everyone has shared with us,
to create a space where folks feel welcome, feel affirmed,
and feel like they have a church that's accessible to them. In conducting
those interviews, what were some discoveries you
made that were really surprising to you? Or was there one in
particular that stuck out that you were like, I did not anticipate
that being the reality? Yeah.
If I think I was most most fascinated
by, the district superintendent
I spoke with in the Philippines, because she
was telling me about how a lot of the cultural practices,
like blessing of a house or a car, were moving
online. And so if someone was, getting
a new house during the pandemic or, a new car, they would
still they made sure to have an online service so that they
could bless that car, or that house. And
that in her experience, she said, and I
share this in one of the chapters, that it it made the church
more contextual and more personal for the members.
That they felt like it wasn't just a place and a
community that existed at one time in one place. But
now the church, you know, it's happening in their homes as they're
watching the live stream or in the Zoom meeting. And it's
it's not only being in worship, but it's also blessing the
car together with more people, in their home
and involved, so many different ways that
brought them deeper into the community to provide meals
in ways that they weren't doing before, to provide for their neighbors who weren't part
of their worshiping community. So I think that was really interesting to me.
Okay. We're talking with JJ Warren, author of Where 2 or
3 are Connected on the Mycom podcast. JJ,
again, going back to this, collective that that you've helped
give life to, the the Young Prophets Collective and specifically the
the Church of Young Prophets. What
inspired you to make the turn or
make the addition of a worshiping community to this
group that sounded like it was it was pulled together just as a, like a
meeting place for people who shared a common interest
and common passion. How did that give rise then to
this need of wanting to or this need
of becoming a a worshiping community, something
that we might identify as church?
Yeah. And as I as I was thinking about this,
really, it and I I hate to be self promotional, but it comes back
to the title of my first book, Reclaiming Church with the United Methodist Publishing
House. I've been impressed. And seeing you
know, I had no idea that that really was, as we've
already talked about, the idea of church has fascinated
me, ever since I was a child. And so reclaiming
church and what it means to be church, has
been the path, that's brought me to where I am
and the way in which I understand my ministry now as a
provisional elder in the United Methodist Church is we
are reclaiming, meaning to take the power
away. This is the prophetic edge here, to take the power away from folks
who use the church to harm. So, you know, Methodists
reclaim the term Methodist. Methodist was a slur. Right? It was
something that was used against us, as well as bible moths. I'm
glad bible moths isn't the one that we reclaimed. Right? That
doesn't go so well on a t shirt or a logo. Yeah.
So to reclaim, to take the power away from those who use the church to
harm and then to find something inherently affirming and
liberating in the idea of church itself. That, hey. Wait a
second. Church ought to be a community that as Jesus said
is defined by our radical love for one
another. And so Church of the Young Prophets grew
as I recognize that a lot of young people,
are turned off by the church, you know, don't are not religious
because of so much harm, that has been done in the
name of the church. And so even entering a physical church
is a barrier, not only physically for persons with physical
disabilities, but also emotionally and spiritually
for folks who have had those bad experiences with the church.
So creating a space that sort of
eased and lowered that tension as much as possible
to say, okay. You don't have to step foot in that building that
is physically and viscerally triggering for you or inaccessible.
You can come to a place where you have more
agency. So you have the opportunity at Church of the Young
Prophets. We meet in a platform called Gather that I'll show you in a bit.
But in this space, you have the opportunity to decide, will I turn
my camera on or not? And that's totally okay to
not. Will I turn my microphone on or not? And it's totally
okay to not. Will I chat in the chat? Will I
move my avatar close to other people, or will I stay on my
own? There's a lot more agency for the individual
intentionally to relieve that stress and that
pressure and that anxiety that oftentimes comes with,
okay. You know, even when I go home to visit my mom in Nashville,
am I gonna go to this physical church, where I'm locked in
then for that good hour or more, next to folks? And
I'm I'm I I feel like I can't leave, and I
have less agency in this space, which for me as a gen zer,
you know, and as a queer person and a pastor is just not as
safe for me. Whereas here, it says, okay. If
I'm uncomfortable, if someone says something harmful, or if I
simply need a moment alone, I can close the tab. I can
turn off my video. I can leave, and it's
okay. Well, let's get into that digital space a little bit
because I think one of the barriers that we face in
trying to transition our existence of
the church community into a digital space is how we facilitate
a sense of proximity to one another. And I I think that you've come
up with some ways of beginning to to
bridge that together. So let's take a look at what
that looks like in in your context with,
Church of the Young Prophets, if we can. Yeah. And I I love how you
said proximity, and you can see Church of the Young Prophets now.
Right? Mhmm. I can't. Okay. For the folks
listening, you are now in my virtual office.
It is a cartoon kind of style. Our
folks say it's somewhere between Pokemon go
and or Pokemon style and sims, that sort
of vibe. And this is
my virtual office here in Church of the Young Prophets. And what I
love about the way that you frame the question is you said
proximity. And to me, that's that's essential. This
feeling that we are somehow, though we are in different
places and this comes back to the church's oneness, that
somehow we are in the same place. Somehow we are
next to one another. So this is my little office where
folks come in throughout the week, and it offers
this privacy. So, I can still have 1 on 1 meetings
and pastoral care with folks just like I would in a physical church.
And I feel like that's important to note out that you can actually like,
one of the the barriers in some,
virtual meeting spaces is that they are completely open air. Right?
And so within this space, you're able to say, okay. We can pull
people aside and have a more intimate,
conversation in that space. That's very cool. Yes. Exactly. And
that's that's what I love about Gather Town,
over a platform like Zoom, for instance. And I don't get
commissions from Gather Town here. I just love the platform.
Is that it provides intimacy. So you'll notice when I step into
I'm stepping into a little, seating area at
our lobby, and so anyone who, joins
into our church here, our church campus, and the
link is available on our website, young prophets collective.org,
You'll find yourself here in our lobby and when you step into
an area like the seating area, the rest of the screen gets dark and
it highlights only this area. That acts as a
private space so that you only see and hear and can
communicate with the folks who are also in your private area.
Much like in a physical space, how we can go off into a corner and
talk and the folks on the other side of the room, you know, don't hear
what we're talking about so that we can have that intimacy that's
required for a community, where multiple people are in
the same place at the same time. I always hated logging
into a Zoom webinar, and seeing just all those
faces, you know, maybe 50 folks. And how do you there's no
way to do small talk well with 50 people staring at each
other. Yeah. Or even to in some cases, I find myself
holding back on a question because it's a question that's relevant simply
for me and not to the entire group. So this
offers the opportunity to to, I guess, in a sense,
not involve, invite, or,
or waste other people's time getting an answer to a
question that may not specifically be relevant to them. Yeah.
Yes. Exactly. And this what I also love is that
we've, reclaimed a lot of as I said,
I'm a nerd, and so we've reclaimed a lot of historic Christian
traditions and repurposed that. Yeah. Yes. For an
online space and which for folks with physical disabilities
for whom a labyrinth maybe isn't accessible, now you can
do prayer labyrinths here at Church of the Own Prophets. So we
have different, quotes and links
and scriptures linked into each candle, and you can walk
the labyrinth and you press x here, and it's an
interactive platform. And so things will pop up all
throughout the platform, and it's it is meant to
be a church. It is meant to be a spiritual space
where you can come and be renewed and meditate and
do a prayer labyrinth and anything that you would ever want to do at a
church, but wherever you are in the world, which I just
absolutely love. Do you hold consistent office hours
within this space? So somebody popping on, say, at
11 o'clock would, you know, count on seeing pastor
JJ at that time. Yes. So, normally,
I do office hours, and it's interesting with all of our time zones
since I'm here in Vienna, and a lot of our folks are in the US,
but also Kenya and Europe, and Australia. That's most difficult time
zone for us right now. Is I'm here on
Mondays, for 2 hours and Thursdays, and then we
have, different services to try and accommodate
different time zones. So our weekly worship, and I'll walk you up to our
sanctuary here. We're in the sanctuary now sitting
by a fireplace that's glowing yellow because if you press x,
it will give you the link to watch our last week service while you're sitting
here at a cute digital fireplace. Right? And,
there are virtual dogs that will come with you wherever you
like. And this is where our
worship happens here in the sanctuary,
every Saturday at 12 PM EST, 11 PM CST, and 9 AM
Pacific time. And so we gather here in this virtual
sanctuary, and we've repurposed the Methodist small
group model. So during our worship,
we are about 40 minutes because online research
shows that 40 minutes is about the attention span of folks online.
And so our worship services are about 40 minutes. And during the
service, I only share I say, a 5 minute mini
sermon. It's usually 7 ish minutes of a mini
sermon to introduce Faster time. That's 5 minutes. Right? Exactly.
Right? Yes. And so I just introduced
the topic. And then most of the service is spent
around these virtual couches, which is our way
of repurposing the Methodist small group model. So you can
talk to the folks who are also around your couch.
And so keep in mind when you're here, you're talking with folks
from around the world. So you're talking with, folks from Uganda and
Kenya and California, during worship, and
we reflect on 3 questions, as part of our worship
and that's the majority of our time is talking together, sharing the
wisdom from each person's experiences, and
discussing how the theme of the day. And, normally, we use the
lectionary. United Methodist, Discipleship Ministries offers us great
resources, which we often use, and to talk
about how that theme is not only applicable to our spiritual
lives, but in real Methodist Wesleyan fashion, how it
calls us deeper into our communities wherever we are around the
world. One of the things I know you've thought through is how you involve
people once they kinda enter into the space. Can you take us
through that journey a little bit? So say for example, I decided
that I'm gonna come and,
fishbowl in a sense to the, the next worship
gathering. What would that look like for me?
Thank you. That is a really great comment. So
we we try to be along with our call to be as
accessible as possible and to give more agency to each
person who worships with us, that means creating
intentional space because I know for me, at least, when I enter
a church, whether it's physical or digital, I feel like there's the
expectation that I need to be present, meaning I need
to participate. And so I would feel the burden
of, yeah, I need to turn my camera on. I need to unmute.
And so if you're like me at all in that way, then we
also have created spaces. Is is that a yes? I see
some Yes. Yes. Yeah. Slightly.
Yeah. Even past the the fishbowl, I guess, experience. That was the wrong term
for it. But if I'm looking to if it's my first time, I'm a first
time visitor in your worship space. Yeah. What does that journey look
like? Yeah. So once you get in
here and you choose so you click the link on our website, youngprofitscollective.org.
It says click here to access our Gather, campus.
Once you click that, you enter your name, your
pronouns, you can edit your avatar to reflect any features that you
would like it to have, including mobility devices like a wheelchair.
And once you've done that, it'll say welcome, who would you like to
see, and you click on anyone who has greeter in their name.
This is only for your first time in. If it's your first time visiting, that's
how we keep the space safe from zoom bombing, for instance, something
like that. And so you click on someone who has greeter in their
name, you're admitted, and you're welcomed into the space. And at
that point, you can either turn on your camera and mic or
not and just put in the chat, hi. Thank you for admitting me or
whatnot. Glad to be here. And we have lots of
tours of the space on our Instagram to try and give folks an understanding,
but normally the greeter will put you right here in the sanctuary.
And if at that point you'd still just like to be present but not
participate, you can come to this couch in the middle that says
quiet area. And so if you step here with your avatar,
no one will bug you and you can no social expectations
to participate whatsoever. We're just happy you're here, that you're
present with us for worship. There was another cool feature that I I saw lifted
up on your website that once your avatar comes in
close proximity with somebody else's, then an additional
window appears. Can you tell us about that a little bit?
This is the other thing I love about this, and it come it comes back
to that proximity and intimacy that you talked about. So
if someone else is in the space, you'll see my r two d
two bot here. I'm a Star Wars nerd, so, we had to
name it r two d two. Once r two d two comes close
to me, right now, I'm in a private space. So
r 2d2 can't see or hear me, and I can't see or hear r 2d2.
But if r 2d2 steps in here, now
we can see and hear the camera's off, but you see the face of the
avatar here. And so you would see and hear
and would be able to talk to one another in a private space much like
in a physical church if you wanted to chat after coffee hour. Now if
you're not in a private space, for instance, if r two d two and I
were walking outside here just in the sanctuary,
when we get close to each other, his image gets bigger,
and, more colorful. When I
walk away like a physical space, it starts to fade
out and then you'll notice it disappears so that it
mimics the, spatial aspect of a
physical gathering in a way that Zoom or Facebook live
just can't. And I love that about this space. Yes. That is very
Do you get a sense of how people are discovering the young prophets
collective in in the church of the young prophets?
You know, it's a lot of word-of-mouth right now for our the folks
who have gone through our young prophets cohort program,
and have been part of our community for a while. Instagram
is our main area. You know, we say we have several campuses
at Church of the Young Prophets. One of them is gather, and for
me, this is this is a bias that
I have that I also had to check that for me when I think of
my virtual church, this virtual church, I think of it as gather. I
think of that as the the main campus.
But church is beyond a space, whether that be
a physical or a digital space, and I had to check that for a digital
space as well. So, most of our
another one of our campuses is our Instagram account with Young Prophets
Collective, and we try to post resources
and links, and just content that's specifically
designed to engage people's spirituality on Instagram. So that's another
way that folks are finding us, and how we are trying to navigate
that. And we've used a couple other chat platforms as well,
specifically Discord. Have yeah. Which was new to me. Yeah.
Okay. And it Discord can be cool because
it's, it's kind of the ever present space. So it
seems that the the gather is kind of been marked by, well, you
know, we have certain hours in which that space is occupied by
other people, but the discord is the always present. Is,
is that kind of how you're using that that discord space now
to kind of maintain some asynchronous
conversations? Yes. And I love how you said
ever present. That that was my my difficulty
with Zoom worship was that you join it, and then it's it disappears.
It's gone. There's no sense of space that I can come back to.
And that's one of the reasons I love gather is and a lot of our
folks will use physical language of, yeah, I'm going to church.
I I'm entering the sanctuary. I and it it is a
space that is always there. So even if we don't have a worship
service happening or office hours, everyone, once you're
admitted the first time, you become a member and you're able to come
back whenever you'd like so that you can, you know, go to the
labyrinth. You can play games on our rooftop lounge with a friend who happens to
also be there, to give that sense of ever
present, space to go to. But then for the asynchronous
conversation, like you said, Discord has really become
our 2nd primary campus. And
I did not know Discord. So if you have not heard of it, folks, that
is a okay. I am new to it. People in the community
said, yeah. We have to have Discord because we have a lot of gamers.
And so I had to learn very quickly how to use it, but it it
really is that is one of the spaces, where
we experience church the most, where we have conversations throughout the week,
where the worship questions are shared and people can chat in a thread, where we
have a prayer channel. We have spiritual resources so folks can find,
different activities online and, can just chat and
share what's going on in their lives with one another in a
way that is intentional so that it's not random
online strangers, but we intentionally have an
introductions channel where once you're added to our Discord
server, you're invited to share a little bit about yourself in
a designated channel for introductions so that if a new
person comes in, they can look through this channel and say, yeah.
I, you know, I know Ryan. He's that guy that works at
Umcomm, that really cool pastor that's in Nashville. And questions can
become more personal and more intimate of, oh, you know, how's the weather in
Nashville instead of, oh, you know, hey,
Discord user 76. That was
about you. Mhmm. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Well,
I appreciate you leading us through the the whole experience.
I do have one more question for you, JJ. If if,
JJ of 2024 were to
send a message back to JJ of of 2019 or 2020, the
JJ who was kind of lifting off the ground, the Young Prophets
collective, what is one piece of advice that you might give
yourself? You know, maybe, avoid
doing this. It's not fruitful or, you know, definitely
get to doing this as soon as possible. Yeah.
I think I think I would tell myself
to rest, that it is okay and
that things things will evolve and that communities
will take shape naturally. It takes intentionality,
but it doesn't take all of my energy. And I think that
that has been a really powerful lesson for me in this
virtual church experience is to say creating
these communities or extending your physical church online
in a in a real, multidirectional way.
It takes energy and intentionality, but it it
doesn't have to be exhausting that I I can
just bring myself and we can just bring the relationships we
have to this space. And if they are
healing and if they are filled with love, they will resonate
with others, and that is enough. Okay. So
I'm making a liar out of myself because this leads to another question
that I have for you. And it's one that I think a
lot of people can relate to because, first of all, ministry in
and of itself can be exhaustive. It can be hard to set up boundaries.
Digital ministry can be a little tougher to set
up some of those boundaries because of the always on
aspect of it. Right? What are some ways that
that you kinda set those boundaries around yourself
so you do have purposeful time of rest?
That's fantastic. And now you sound like my board of ordained ministry.
Wonderful that they are asking that question, though. Right?
Yes. Yes. As we talked about How are you gonna do more? It's how are
you gonna rest more? Yeah. Yes. Yes. And
right. The the potential pitfall of,
okay, as a gen z or most of my life is online and
now church is online. Where's the separation
here? Is there any separation? How do I, how do I still set
boundaries? Whereas before maybe it was, you know, I
I'm not gonna go to the church office on these days, but
maybe you'd still get phone calls and emails. But in this
way, what I've tried to do is to identify platforms
that are mostly for ministry for me,
and platforms that are more private. So for example,
most people in the church community don't have my phone number,
so that is not an option for texting. The way
that they can contact me for church related or ministry related
things is email or Discord. And for
Discord, I also try to keep certain hours. So
I will not be on Discord, most times, you know,
at 11 PM. I will be offline, and they know that
that's okay, that they I will get back to them in the
morning my time. And so that's that's been a boundary. And
another is just maintaining a Sabbath. So they you know, the community knows
that on Sundays, I am totally offline since we meet on Saturdays
so as to not interfere with in person churches folks might attend.
And so on Sundays, I'm totally offline. I try to get away from a
screen, get outside. And, that's that's a way
that I've been setting boundaries for myself. Cool. Alright. And
if you wanna see the video for that, it's available on YouTube.
It has all the, well, cool displays that JJ took us through so you can
peer at that stuff there. More episodes of compass
are on the way again. We're gonna be talking about the excursion that I
had to Virginia. Also gonna be sharing about rage prayers, some
exciting things of flood. So stay tuned for that. We'll be back in 2 weeks
time. Hey, if you're interested, check out the Mycom podcast. If you're a
church leader who wants to know more about how we're developing tools
for the digital age and building our digital ministry toolkits, that's the
place to go. My name is Reverend Ryan Dunn. Look forward to talking to you
again soon. Peace.