EP372: Jeff is Not Dead Yet!

After a year away, Jeff Reed is back behind the desk. Episode 372 is the first Becoming theChurch.digital in ten months — and Ecamm told him exactly how long it had been when he opened it: the last time he went live was December 2nd, for the Giving Tuesday stream. This one is less a teaching session than a homecoming, and it is unscripted in the way only a first stream back can be. He does not skip the hard part. Jeff talks openly about being released from a church role the week before, what that cost, and the conversation with a youth pastor in a Starbucks that happened to fall on the same afternoon. He calls it the unfiltered version, and it is — but it is not the point of the hour so much as the ground the rest of it stands on. The line the episode turns on is this: "You're not wrong. You're not weird. You're still early." Jeff's argument is that the people doing ministry in digital spaces are pioneers rather than oddities, paving a road where there isn't one — and that after years of being dismissed, a wave of early-adopting physical churches is finally willing to lean in. The room agreed in real time; you can read the chat alongside the transcript below. He gets concrete about what digital actually did. People who found a church through search, read a blog, walked in the front door, connected, served and gave — all inside twelve months. And what AI is doing now: seventeen SEO-oriented pages off every English sermon, a 250-person church carrying a thousand-page website, roughly 2.5 million words this year, with Jeff reading, proofing and editing behind all of it. Then the part he refuses to hand off. Jeff has sat in rooms with digital missionaries the wider church has never pastored — people who told him plainly that nobody else cares about what they are doing as much as he does. His conclusion is that where no one else is providing pastoral care and support, theChurch.digital has to. Bivocational, not slowing down, and openly looking for people to jump in. Full episode page — transcript, chapters, and the live chat alongside it: https://thechurch.digital/shows/becoming-thechurch-digital/ep372-jeff-is-not-dead-yet/ CHAPTERS 00:00 Back on the air 12:17 I'm not dead yet 19:37 What happened last week 24:02 You're not wrong, you're early 29:55 Sunday faith into a Monday-through-Saturday life 33:00 What the AI actually does for a 250-person church 45:00 EDGE, and why it takes time 45:51 Pastoral care for the pioneering crew 55:01 One family of sites, theChurch.digital first 1:04:22 Bivocational, and not slowing down ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ JOIN THE FAM 💬 Discord — https://discord.thechurch.digital/ 📱 WhatsApp — https://whatsapp.thechurch.digital/ MORE FROM THECHURCH.DIGITAL 🌐 Website — https://thechurch.digital 📺 Subscribe — https://www.youtube.com/@bethechurchdigital FOLLOW Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/bethechurchdigital/ Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/bethechurchdigital ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ theChurch.digital exists to empower the rest of us to make disciples. Beyond the building. The great commission, but digital. #DigitalMinistry #DigitalMissionary #ChurchOnline #BecomingTheChurchDigital #DisciplesMaking #ChurchTech Full notes, chat and shorts: https://thechurch.digital/372