Welcome to the for the gospel podcast. My name is Costi Hinn and I am excited today about the guest we have on, who's really not much of a guest. He's sort of a family member of For the Gospel. Reagan Rose, welcome to the For the Gospel podcast. Thanks, Costi. It's good to be here with you. Yeah, and I get the joy now of giving a bit of backstory on you. So if you don't know Reagan, you should. If you already know him, you recognize him from our early episodes and as a contributor on For the Gospel. Reagan was actually instrumental in getting all of this launched when we went official this last fall and was putting in early mornings and late nights with web development and digital platforms technology. And then recently, if I can tell them all, Reagan, sure. Just go for it. And you are, in my opinion, one of the most productive, faithful, gospel-centered Christian brothers that I have. So we're grateful to still have you a part of for the gospel, but also cheering you on with redeeming productivity. You want to tell everyone a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_00Appreciate that, brother. Yeah, Redeeming Productivity is just a project I started probably five or six years ago. And I was just saw the gap between, you know, us knowing that we needed to grow in our faith, knowing that we needed to be sanctified, and the need for kind of practical advice of how do you manage your time? How do you steward your life so that you actually stay on track with your devotions? How do you steward your life so that your priorities stay clear? And there was a lot being written and talked about in the secular sphere. And I thought I would love to talk about, basically approach it from a sufficiency of scripture standpoint. How can we as Christians get really, really practical with time management, with goals, with priorities, with just trying to glorify God as much as we can with these short lives? And so Redeeming Productivity was born. It's a blog, podcast. I'm trying to get into doing videos now as well. And it's just been a joy to get to do that.
SPEAKER_01I'm fired up, man, because we talk a lot together, especially and with our team. We've talked about being a productive Christian, not being afraid of time management structure, not being afraid to embrace various aspects of what we would call workflow or organizing your life in such a way that you're you would maximize efficiency. Nobody in their right mind would just cruise through marriage and go, well, whatever, we don't need a schedule, we don't need structure, uh, we'll figure it out along the way. When people do that, they end up in conflict or not achieving the goal. Same thing at work. So for some reason, though, we tend to over-spiritualize the structural time management aspects of gospel living when the reality is, I think Paul the Apostle was a great example of maximizing his time, his talents, his energies. He was always strategizing of where he would go and how he wanted to be here or there and everywhere for the sake of the gospel. So, man, keep it up. And if you're listening to this and you don't know all about redeeming productivity, uh go to Twitter and go to redeemingproductivity.com, right? And dot org, Reagan? Yeah, yeah, dot com. Awesome. Well, we want to talk a little bit about some aspects of online church live streaming, using media as outreach. It's something, again, that Reagan and I are really passionate about and we talk about a ton. And so, Reagan, I want you to start. Uh, where are we now in terms of using online technology, various innovative creativity that we've seen because of COVID, and what COVID did to drive churches into more online use of media?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's, you know, I think that when we look back on this time as the church and look back on all the impacts COVID's had on the church, I think one of the stories we'll be telling, and one of the stories we'll be looking at is how the church embraced technology in a unique way. And the biggest thing I think we saw was churches going online with live streams that had never done it before. Um, if you're part of a bigger church, your church may have already been doing live streaming on Sundays, but uh I just was talking to lots of pastor friends, many, many people were forced to figure it out for the first time how do you stream this. I I was actually working at Grace to you at the time, and people were calling us left and right. I got emails almost every day saying, How do I do this? What, you know, how do I get on YouTube? Wow. And uh I think it's been a neat thing, but not without its pitfalls. You know, there there are um there are questions, ecclesiological questions, you know, doctrine of the church that come along with when you try to put the service online and churches have gone kind of different directions, and there's been uh you know conflict at times too and disagreement about what's the best way to do this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, that makes total sense. I think of one of our friends, you know, Mark Dever and guys like Jonathan Lehman, great, great Bible teachers and men who run Nine Marks and have been so helpful with the doctrine of the church, which is that word ecclesiology. Um, and a lot of them were hesitant to go to an online streaming option. It's not because they were bah humbug, you know, fundamentalists about it, not at all. Uh to be fair and even understanding of their position, so many men like them who have a high regard for the church and they love the church, were very careful and very cautious that people would develop the habit of not gathering in person, but they would develop the habit of just going online, hanging out in their jammies, eating their pancakes, watching a service, shutting it down and being done in COVID culture, only to then continue in that habit when it was time. And people might say, Oh, come on, Costi, come on, Reagan, it's not actually gonna be that way. But I'll be honest with you, on this side of things, and you know it too, we've watched as people have grown very comfortable with online service options. They have grown very comfortable with just watching from wherever. So you go to the lake, you go to the river, you do your thing, you jump on the boat, you watch a service, and it's like church, just like COVID. What's the big deal? And so a lot of those guys had a really good point in saying we really want to be careful not to build in a habit of not gathering. We want people to miss the church. If this was like the early church, they would miss the gathering, they would miss being together and they would long for the Lord's table in that way. So super helpful for us to understand and be fair with all that because naturally humans swing to extremes. But talk about some of the other aspects. First of all, what is online viewing or live stream useful for? Let's talk a little bit about that, and then um maybe talk about some reasons why churches should continue doing online ministry post-COVID and how that should not and and does not need to affect their physical assembly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. Yeah, and I I am 100% sympathetic with uh some of our brothers, and I think there's wisdom in what they were saying about people kind of becoming dependent on this or it becoming a replacement for church. And I'm I'm in agreement in a lot of ways because I I fundamentally believe that live streaming, this is the way I say it, live streaming is a supplement, not a substitute for the in-person gathering of the church. That's so good. You know, the as we know the the word church biblically means assembly. Like that that doesn't mean a chat room. It means getting together. There's there's something special with fellowshipping in person with other believers. But I think that we've seen, especially during COVID, but even before that, um, with churches that have been doing live streaming, a lot of churches with a sound, with a good ecclesiology, a good doctrine of the church were doing it specifically for their older members of their congregation who perhaps actually physically couldn't come to church, um, members uh of their church that maybe were on the mission field but still wanted a connection to their home church, um, and other people as well. I mean, there's even examples of churches that are broadcasting into prisons and uh into places like that. So there are benefits to it beyond it being a replacement, which I think would be the wrong way of thinking about it. But I do know, and and this hadn't even occurred to me, but I I'd been talking just a couple weeks ago to a group of pastors, and they were asking the question kind of what date, what at what point should we turn off the live stream permanently? And that's what got me thinking about this, because I didn't realize people were thinking that way. But I understand why, because they've seen some people, well, haven't seen some people in over a year in some cases, and they're wondering, are they gonna come back? And I think that my my thought on that would be that's that's more of a shepherding issue than a technology issue. If you can help your people understand the importance of the church, of being together, if they are um truly believers, there's gonna be a desire. You know, we see in 1 John there's a love for the brotherhood that compels you as a Christian. You want to be with Christians if you're a Christian. Amen. Um so I think that there are other ways of handling it and getting that people back into the physical church without kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because there are so many advantages to online ministry in general and especially with live streaming.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, talk about the aspect of mission or outreach, because that tends to get overlooked, and we get into the weeds of well, technology and the assembly and the ecclesia, you know, the called out ones, and it's a physical assembly of people, and we need to come together. And so all of this online technology is going to replace that, and we want to be careful. So that is one argument and a valid one, and you've made that very clear. Online media is a supplement, not a substitute. But if we were to maybe shift out of that box and into a completely different form of argument, if you will, talk about the missional idea behind using online media.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this is costy. This is what I know you and I both get so excited about, and this is what you guys have done so excellently with for the gospel and and so many more things planned there. But I I think that for a lot of churches, it's not even on their radar. And this idea of using technology makes sense. Of course, our church should have a Facebook page. We should be doing video stuff. And there's the element of how you use technology to serve your your church and your congregation, which is you know the purpose of the church. That's your main thing is you're trying to equip the saints that are there locally. But another thing we do is outreach and world missions. And I think speaking globally for the church, we have barely scratched the surface of what's possible through technology to reach the nations for Christ. Like it's it's almost abysmal when I think about it. Maybe that's not fair, but uh there are a lot of great ministries doing it and ones popping up there trying to do it. But to me, I just see the fact that there's all these local churches producing great things, of you know, great pastors, of great people that are gifted, that that know the word, can explain the word. And if we can capture some of that and start putting that online, imagine just flooding the internet. Imagine if your Instagram feed just had so much just solid biblical content, so much stuff that glorified God, so much stuff that answered questions that people were asking about the faith, instead of just, you know, goofy TikTok dance videos or something. Uh like that. Uh to me, it's if if churches and individual believers really took up the mantle of using what we have with technology and the internet to reach the world, I think it it would just be basically be a game of volume. We would just dump all this quality content onto the internet. And you know, when I talk to people about this, sometimes they say, well, there's already ministries doing that. It's like it's and and praise God for them, I'm thankful for them, but it's not enough. It's it's not gonna be enough until every single person's feet is just flooded with the name of Jesus Christ, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01I well, I'm with you, 100% agree on that. And this is the thing we need to be really, really careful about to say someone else is doing that. And so we've got that covered. You know, it's enough. I think is one of the maybe greatest mistakes or one of the greater mistakes that we could make when we're having a conversation about this particular subject as believers and those of you listening, if you're church leaders, you know, don't be tempted to let yourself or your church off the hook, or even lose the ambition or the drive to do some of this simply because somebody else is doing it. In fact, we've talked about this internally. If for the gospel is the only gig in town, so to speak, or one of the few, we've failed. The goal would be to inspire people and go, hey, look, with a little bit of money, some cameras, and a couple of people getting together, you can pull this off. Hey, with a little bit of help, this can happen. Reagan, you know this as well as anyone. For about four months, all of us did this behind the scenes for free, early morning and late at night. We had no money to even pay video editors. It was like guys just doing things because they loved it. You built the website. It was like, thanks, Reagan, and your wife was so kind to let you do that. We were all just running and gunning. Um, had never even asked for a donation or asked for people's help with any of it. And we were able to pull some stuff off by the grace of God and his kindness, which basically proves it wasn't that difficult. It was just a matter of doing it. And sometimes as Christians, we are content to let John MacArthur do grace to you and John Piper do Desiring God. And since there's already this or that or Devra with nine marks, you know, we we don't we don't need to do anything. They have that covered. There are seven plus billion people on planet Earth. There are 500 million users plus on TikTok. There are over a billion people, well over a billion people on Facebook. I think it's a well over two billion, actually. And Facebook is giving away phones in the third world that have the Facebook app on it. They're giving phones away to people for free so that they have Facebook. They're sending satellites up into the sky so the world will have internet. People that barely have huts to live in will have smartphones and access to online media. And for some reason, and this is a loving soapbox rant, we're content to have John MacArthur grow old doing it, and John Piper will handle it with desiring God. And Stephen Furtick can pound the airwaves with his creative team and grab the attention of everyone on Instagram feeds. But we're gonna sit around and go, well, that's good for them. We're just gonna focus here. Look, we are called to shepherd the flock of God among us, but outreach and missions is you're allowed to do this. It's okay. So we should free ourselves up a bit. So I'm with you.
SPEAKER_00Let's go. And it doesn't have to be the best either. That's I that's why I think where people kind of choke up sometimes about it, is they say, I don't want to start a blog or I don't want to post stuff, right? You know, I our church couldn't possibly do it at that caliber. I mean, look at the stuff that it that's on that's online. It's people just holding their phone. You can do that, you can hold your phone. Like this, it's it literally the ability to do it is in the palm of your hand. And the reason it matters, and this is this is something I've thought about a lot, but like, why why is it that God uses individuals to preach the gospel or to teach his word? Like, don't you think God, you know, having all the power had the ability to make you know fiery sky banners with the gospel, even you know, in the first century if he wanted to, and say, here it is, I took care of it, Paul. You can go relax. I I've got this covered. No, there is something about God's appointing individual people to go and proclaim the message, and you have a take and a personality and a God-given kind of way of presenting and talking about the truth of God's word that nobody else on earth has, and there are people out there that will connect with how you deliver it more than they would with all the other people that are out there. And so that that's how I think about it. It's you are called to minister to the world, and there's a unique way God's gifted you to do that.
SPEAKER_01Amen. We need the body of Christ to operate like an ecosystem in that way, and there are different personalities, different contexts. There is even an aspect of camaraderie and cheering each other on and sharing ideas. I think of recently a couple of videos you put out on redeeming productivity, and I remember texting you, I think it was either late at night or early in the morning, but I was just lit up. I think it was 10 p.m. or something when I saw the video and I was like, yes, and I was sending you the text messages. The way that you created that short video about gospel hope and about heaven and this eternal perspective, it was this moment where I'm going, Yes, that's invading somebody's feed, and I might not be able to invade their feed, or I may be on vacation when you made that video, or I might be doing something else because I'm an accountant somewhere, and I'm thankful that somebody's doing that. I remember a conversation with somebody that I had not long ago who was doing some great work, helping us out with some stuff, and you know, we're just we're talking about the way that different people have different gifts and abilities, and if we use those to proclaim the gospel and advance the gospel, we are for fulfilling our calling missionally. Um, I I want to go even further than this. Talk about the because we all know our job in the local church for our local church, that's clear, but also talk about the importance of using online media and resourcing for our brothers and sisters in the third world or other places where they actually can't do this yet, and they don't have maybe a media team or a creative team or the ability to even afford some of these technologies, but we do, and not that we're, you know, the great white hope. That's you know, in missions, that's such a a poor way to look at things. But maybe in America we have access to things that our brothers and sisters don't. Is there a moral or a biblical obligation even to use what we have to bless them with resources for free?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, I I think I think absolutely it's an opportunity that um I don't think I would have been aware of this as an opportunity if it hadn't been for my time at Grace to You. Because that's that's often, you know, we'd get emails about stuff, and people would say, uh, we had nothing here, we had no books, we had no um no digital resources, we didn't know what to do, and you have all this stuff in our in our language. And I I don't think I would have realized how much people wanted that and needed that because, like you said, we're just we have an embarrassment of riches here. Like I how many English translations of the Bible do we have? Like a couple of zillion. But it's not just that. The like you'd mentioned, you know, Facebook um, you know, basically giving people free phones. Like if you go to the to a third world country, they might not have TV, they might not have a car, but everybody has a phone with internet access these days. Yep. And to give people solid resources for themselves, but also the pastors in these countries that are often under-resourced, to give them things that they can use to help shepherd and disciple their congregation, I think that there's absolutely a um a mandate on us to uh take from the riches the way that God has blessed us here in the Western world and give it uh back to our brothers and sisters um who have not been similarly blessed in their in their context. Yep. Love it.
SPEAKER_01Let's swing the pendulum back again, though, because we're soapbox ranting and we're all about it. But also, what are some of the dangers if we're being fair and we're being honest? What are some of the dangers or the slippery slopes with online media resourcing and that sort of thing? Or is there one? Um maybe there isn't. Maybe it's a like who would ever ask, hey, what's the slippery slope with global missions and sending these missionaries and focusing on going? Um, I've never heard a lot of people ask that question, but for some reason, because social media and because online addictions and because uh platforming and all that, I think there's more conversation around that. Um but speak to some of the slippery slopes or maybe some of the dangers or cautions you would encourage people on this particular subject.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think that there is with any kind of technology or resource, there's there comes with it certain dangers. You know, we've talked with the live stream. There are there is a legitimate danger there of people using that as a crutch. I think in the same way there are people who um have been for a while taking advantage of resource ministries in place of a church. They might not even be live streaming a service. They're just, oh, on on this week I listened to this sermon, on this week I listen to this sermon. I'm reading these books like I'm my own church. Um so I think that that that danger could be um grow even more. More so as there's more resources available, people kind of feel like, oh, Costi's my pastor because I watch his his Instagram stories. But Costi's not your pastor. Your pastor and your church is your pastor. Right. So I do think that that's a danger. I think that there's also a danger in that we could easily keep be canceled off of all these platforms. Yeah, that's really good. We could pour a lot of resources into this and have it all gone overnight. But uh I and I've heard people make that objection and to that. I just say I would very willingly be a digital martyr if we could, if we could get these resources out there for even a short period of time. And then, you know, they they ban us into oblivion. Oh, that's okay. We we we ministered while we could. I mean, Paul moved on to the next town when he got kicked out. You know, you dust off your shoes and you move on. That's not a reason not to go. That's so good.
SPEAKER_01And we could honestly offer more and more like we do, and the goal is for free. And I know you do this with Redeeming Productivity. Our goal with for the gospel is literally to give away everything for free. The only thing we can't is books if the publishers require those to be paid for, which that's just publishing in general. But we're trying to give away as much as we can. And then if people want to buy stuff, like they we've had people email in and say, Hey, can we buy t-shirts to support what you guys are doing? Like, sure, okay, that's fine. Um, but overall, the goal is to give and give and give, and these are free resources. People can download those onto their laptops, onto their cell phones. I don't care if they pirate our stuff, and then they will have that if we get shut down and if things don't work, you know what? We hopefully will have given people anywhere from 500, maybe a thousand, maybe two thousand videos by then. And good, they have a library now, and so they can keep referring back to them, and you and I are in digital prison. Okay, great. Um, but in the end, I totally agree. No one would ever hesitate to send missionaries to the mission field physically, which we we should totally do, and we agree with. And this doesn't replace that, too. I just want to say that. I'm not I don't think either of us are advocating that. No, not at all. But nobody thinks through, well, why'd we send that guy? All he did was get killed in the first three weeks, or why do we bother sending a team when you know they just got kicked out of the country? You still make the effort to get the gospel to where people are, knowing that there's gonna be opposition. So just like physically we send and we go and we give, in a digital way, we still make the effort, we still buy the cameras, we still put out the material, and then yes, when the government tightens the reins, it is what it is, but that's not gonna stop us for now because our lives are not our own. These resources don't belong to us. They're God's medium, if you will, for proclaiming his gospel through us as vessels. So, Reagan, what does this look like? Um, online ministry, online resourcing. Let's say a church leader or a lay person is listening to this, or somebody who God is blessed with wealth and means, and they have heard their church talk about wanting to do more and their pastor wanting to do more, and and they've thought maybe before, uh, you know, I probably could pay for that with one check. I mean, maybe we should do that, but uh, nobody's asking me. All of that, okay. Let's say there's a church person listening, and they are fired up and they think, man, let's do that. We could do what Reagan and Redeeming Productivity is doing, or what for the gospel's doing, and we'll we'll put our cards on the table too. What does this look like? What are some next steps for online ministry in the local church and through the local church as outreach?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I I think um like the simplest place to start is with d what I call derivative content, which is if if let's say you're somebody, I'll speak to the person who maybe you're a young person listening to this and you know how the technology works, and you're like, uh, I could really help them because they, you know, they don't know what they're doing because it's old guys like me and you. And I would say to you, go and talk to your pastor about it, talk to your elders about it, but see if maybe you could take the the video or even the audio of the sermons and chop out clips of that. There's there's usually a lot of a couple really good points that would really be excellent standalone content for for maybe your church's Instagram, or maybe your church needs to start an Instagram and you can help with that first. Um so I think there's opportunities there for people who have these skill sets and don't even realize that it's a unique skill set because it's just normal to them and their generation to really come alongside their church and serve in a unique way. Um so I would start with derivative content. Another thing you can do too is um written content. My my wife did this for the longest time was take a take the pastor's sermon and take a single point from it and turn that into like a blog post, send it back to the pastor and say, Hey, can you run this over, make sure that it's in your own words? And you're basically reducing down what they already said in their own words, and you're acting as an editor to turn that into something that's gonna have legs that can go much farther than just the Sunday service. And so all your pastor's work in the study now has a whole second life to it. Um so so I think there's a lot you can do with derivative content. I think there's a lot you could do with original content, um, asking uh questions, producing stuff like you're doing with For the Gospel, of answering questions that people have about the Christian faith, um, online discipleship type stuff with video clips or audio, or even maybe your church could start a podcast that f focuses on a specific topic of Christian living or evangelism. Um and if you're somebody who has means, uh financial means, you can help support that effort because there is expense as as you know, you get it get that sort of ministry off the ground. You gotta, you can start on your phone, but did eventually you probably want to move if you if possible to getting some cameras, getting some better audio equipment, that kind of stuff. And that costs money. And so that's a way you could help uh in the context of your church. Or if uh if your church doesn't want to go that route or or isn't doesn't have the people to do that, that's that's okay. There are ministries online who are seeking to do this, like for the gospel, and there are ways you can help support some of those and prop up their ability to get this kind of stuff out there. So the opportunities are are almost limitless as I see them. And those are just a couple of ideas that come to mind.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, none of those would be difficult, depending on who you are. In other words, if you've already got sermons being preached and resources being put out in the sense of somebody studying and delivering God's word, it's there it's very likely that somebody in the congregation has the gifting and the ability, because we're a body and God does this through spiritual gifts and people, to take that material and do what you've suggested derivative content. And then um, it's not unlikely that somebody could put together some resources to put out different things. But even the idea of less is more churches could do um a podcast where each month maybe they put out a resource or recording, or they pull. I I've seen guys do this now more and more. What if they just took the sermons that the pastor's preaching, the audio, and it was a preaching podcast, and the sermon was simply duplicated, and so people could listen to that in their car, they could share it with a friend. There's no reason in today's world for us not to be able to multiply what God has given us. And I've heard you say this before. I know that there's a lot of challenges with online media, I know that social media can be a black hole, I know that people can be addicted to these things, and I know that there could be a lot of platforming for clicks and likes and all that junk. But there is a huge benefit and a blessing, and you could say, I've heard you say this before, that we should view online technology, at least in the gospel missional sense, as a gift from the Lord. Speak to that element as well with our perspective and needing to see it that way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I think I think it's a matter of shifting your perspective. A lot of times when you think about the internet or social media, you kind of a lot of Christians we write like a uh, I mean, it's just so much junk out there. It's just great vast darkness. You know, I I get you know stuck on my phone and it it distracts me from what I should be doing. And often there's there's genuinely bad and wicked content out there. And so we might kind of initially say, uh, I I let's stay away from that. But I think shifting your perspective from a consumer of media online to someone who's helping to create it makes you think, wait, wait, wait, wait, that darkness, that that emptiness, that that that there's so much bad stuff out there is the reason we should go there. It's the reason we should insert ourselves into that and proclaim truth and try to, you know, almost, as it were, force out the darkness by by putting more and more good stuff out there so that you you you aren't you aren't a consumer of the bad, you're a creator of the good. Maybe that's a way to put it.
SPEAKER_01That is such a great way to put it. And just to reiterate what you said earlier, the temptation is to think that enough is being done already by other ministries. It's not. Um we won't be done until every smartphone, computer, tablet, all of it is bombarded with the glory of God through the gospel. And so, Reagan, thank you for the way you do what you do. Thank you for your approach, and thanks for pushing us all further and further into this.
SPEAKER_00I appreciate you costing. I appreciate for the gospel. It's what an exciting time to be alive. Let's just keep praying that the Lord blesses our efforts and and raises up more people to do these things. Amen and amen.
SPEAKER_01If you're listening to this and you want to do what we do, do it. Let's go. Copy us, plagiarize, customize. We don't care. We want to spur you on and inspire you. We need more for the gospels, more redeeming productivities, more next generation Christians putting out excellent resources as missions, outreach, and still continuing to put energy, passion, and your gifting and everything into the local church. Uh, but stay active and stay on mission and keep living for the gospel. And if you're listening to this and you're somebody who uh doesn't have an interest in doing it, but you'd like to give and support or be a part of uh platforming, if you will, meaning putting out resources in other ways, uh be a gospel patron, be someone who supports through generosity, fuel the ministry and free resources for people both locally here in the US and around the world. You can do that by giving at forthegospel.org. To learn more about what Reagan is doing, again, go to redeemingproductivity.com or dot org. We'll see you on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and wherever else we can push the gospel out. We love you guys. We're back next Monday with another episode. Keep living for the gospel.