Ma'am, or sir, please find a way to have reels to spark engagement because in having reels, then we can go out into further places and make the Lord's name great where it is. 

  There's lots of great tools out there that will help you create these things. And it's just you experimenting. I didn't know what I was doing the first time I created a short and I look back on them and I'm like, Oh, these are so terrible, but you learn, you grow and you figure it out and, and you'll reach the people that God wants you to reach with this.

And again, it's all in the name of discipleship.

  

 How are you 

feeling today, brother? 

I'm doing good. I called you my friend and I'm like, you know, I think DK is like everybody's friend. I've, I've seen you on a lot of different podcasts and I see you all over the place.  

What, you know, we are called as believers to be friends, be a friend of God.

So being a friend of people, in this space has been kind of like my thing. And I enjoy meeting new people, having conversations with people. And hopefully, you know, impacting your algorithm in a positive way to bring good people to your, your situation. 

Yeah, 100%. Well, DK, I know you, I've listened to you on podcasts and, uh, you know, we've had, I actually, you've been on my podcast before, so I know what you do, but just in case someone else doesn't know who you are and what you do, give a quick little description of what you do. 

Yeah, man. I am by trade, a director of it and systems, system in terms of operation and process. Uh, it in terms of hardware, software and scrum master, as well as project management. And so I kind of bring all of that into this world of the cycling people and trying to find the most seamless way. To make sure operationally and systematically, we are moving people to the hand voice of God, uh, and, and then discipling them in such a way that they can go out and be servants of God to the people of God.

So, that's kind of who I am husband of of 1 wife. Not many wives, just one, Aisha. And I have four lovely children here in Dallas, Texas. 

That's awesome. You and I are the same. We have four children. Uh, so are you, done having kids? Are you still having kids? 

Listen, man, I am so done with kids. I don't listen.

Some people want grandkids. I respect that. They want grandkids. I'm a dad is not ready for grandkids yet. I kind of want to go  gallivanting throughout the world doing podcasts by the seas and things of that nature. So I can't do that, uh, with grandkids. So yeah, I'm, I'm cool with my kids being adults.

They're all adults. So I love that. 

Yeah, that's awesome. I think, uh, I'm more looking forward to being a grandfather than a father, because, you know, again, the father, you have to, you're so hands in it, you know, you're, you, whereas as a grandfather, I get to play and hang out with the kid and then pass them off back to my kids,  man, a lot of time.

Dk. Thanks so much for being with me again. Uh, for the podcast Today, we wanna talk about digital discipleship. so let's, let's, we will get into it a little bit quickly, but why are you a big proponent of digital discipleship? Ah,  

yeah, man. Um, so a little bit about my back background.

I come from a church that's actually their name at the beginning. It's Disciple Central Community Church. Or better known as DC three and under Marcus King, I was able to learn the importance and tentacles of being a disciple of God. And so for me, taking what I've learned in the past from various pastors, especially Marcus King, I'm able to now say, how can we translate that into a digital space? 

And in translating that to a digital space, now I'm able to see how people getting saved, baptized. people getting being a part of the membership people even serving in their local communities. Because they're a part of this digital community, uh, and fellowship. And so now I'm starting to see it more in, in, in ways.

And I know we're going to talk more about what I'm starting to see in terms of trends, of other ways that we can do that. So that's kind of how I got into it. I also see it as, I'm a person who can identify the gaps in churches. And that's a major gap. because at one point in the early nineties, we had discipleship pastors, a lot of pastors have kind of gone away from the discipleship pastor model, and I would say that may not be the most, the smartest thing to do.

It is now that your, your discipleship pastor has morphed into this person needs to be technologically savvy because you're discipling people both in the digital and the physical.  And so that's why I've gotten very involved in that because I love to see people save lives change altered and discipling them to grow from a babe in Christ into a mature disciple.

is the best thing in the whole world. 

Yeah, no, I, I agree completely with you. you know, as we, we talked about probably ad nauseum at times, you know, COVID pushed everyone into the digital space, whether they wanted to or not. And I felt like there was a lot of resistance early on that a digital ministry or digital discipleship is not real discipleship.

And I, I heard that over and over again that where I was like, that's not what we're experiencing at my church. We're, we're, we're seeing that digital people are growing in their faith because of what we're doing digitally and whatnot. And so it always kind of discourages me truthfully when I hear people say.

Hey, we don't really do digital discipleship. And I'm like, you're missing a huge opportunity to connect with people every single day with digital, when you just don't in person, you got to arrange a meeting, you've got to organize. I sometimes you got to organize childcare and all that stuff, but there's so many different formats of you could do digital discipleship.

That I think it's really important for us to continue down the pathway to say, Hey, let's evolve with this and let's continue to use digital tools. So what have been some areas that you have done digital discipleship? Give me just some general places like, or how you use digital discipleship in your context.

Yeah, man, you know, what's funny as you were saying that I thought  people want plan your visit.  But they never want to prepare for planning for the site.  And here's what I mean by that  plan. Your visit is a digital platform  that we are onboarding people into the assimilation or the adult ministry process. 

So where is that same intentionality  behind discipling people?  And so. I think 1 of the things that I've seen used,  that you can decide with somebody is if you have a good texting program  and I'm going right off my head. Yeah. I have no notes, but if you have a good texting program, it allows a person to interact with the real person. 

Gauge where they are,  get them set up, get them partnered, connected to, which is the next thing in the small group  or a discipleship group, or however you want to call it, a smaller context that can provide accountability, love community,  on that level. So, the push for discipleship from adult ministry is.

Into  the small group, so texting allows us to do that provide information, things of that nature. I think the next thing I've seen, is the creation,  or the reintroducing of,  uh, us producing our own documentation to disciple people in church.  at 1st, we went away from that. We were buying like, think orange, which I'm not against.

I think they have great material. we're buying lifeway material. We're buying other Bible study material, but now we're at a place where we can create our own material to disciple people within our church. So now we have material that has caught up to us. Now we have texting that is equally caught up to us.

Uh, and now I think the last component that we're going to start to see, brother, is the learning management system be introduced into the local church. Now, I've worked and built learning management systems outside of church. And so what those systems are, those way allows me to put the class, the information, the discipleship piece into this digital piece, and I'm able to monitor and adjust and disciple people in scale. 

And so now they get the same thing, the same experience every single time. So let's say. Somebody wants to be a member. What's going to take you through the foundations of faith, if you will, or the basic criteria to become a member, and you can watch it on video and then have a followup class that gets you going.

Right. And you can do this birth in the physical and the digital. And so now we have this process that impacts both and allow us to scale it in numbers. And so that's what I'm seeing being used. I'm seeing the churches become more intuitive. That we are putting out content and we should use that content.

I'm seeing the explosion of the texting aspect. And I'm seeing the learning management system just really take off in certain churches.  Okay, let's 

break down some of these as you were talking around. Let's talk about the texting because I, I hear again, we use texting a lot. And one of the things that I do with texting is I'll, I'll ask for, Hey, how can I pray for you today?

And you know, if they're already part of a group, I'll ask how I can pray for it. And I'll be honest, we've gotten back such great responses and people have said, wow, you, We appreciate you caring for us like this. So the prayer thing has been one. The other thing is we do a lot of Bible study reading plans and where we'll text out devotionals, scripture references and encourage people to do that.

how have you seen texting being used in that discipleship thing? Do you have anything other than, than those that I do share?  

I think what you just shared is super, super critical. Uh, as it relates to that, because the basic core tenant of discipleship. Is doing like basic core tenant definition of discipleship. And that is doing life with one another. We can do that digitally. We can do that physically, but we're doing life with one another. And so texting, when I say, how can I pray for you? That allows me to step into your world, not be intrusive, step into your world and just simply say, I'm here to serve you.

How can I add value to your life? And now this person has opened up a corridor of their lives to us. And they feel like you care. And this is how we do  life with each other. Or maybe it's not prayer, but maybe is, Hey man, share a testimony. That is doing life with someone. And you can do that both physically and digitally.

You know, back in the day, Tom, when I grew up. We used to have testimony service. We set aside time for people to tell about the goodness of God. Now they use that in a text application, or they use that on a prayer board, or they use that in an email apparatus where they're sharing about the goodness of God.

If we take that away, we fail sometimes. I feel to overcome because the Bible talks about. We overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. So the testimonies through texting, help us the prayers through texting, help us what is really happening here. There is an engagement.

There is an exchange. That is happening relationally. That is allowing us to do life together. So I think that's why texting is so valuable.  

Yeah, I agree. I actually, I wasn't even the one who was signed on for our, uh, we, we use texts and church as the platform.  Uh, and I wasn't even the one who signed on initially.

And I was like, what do we really use this thing for? But as I started experimenting with it, I really discovered that there are lots of things that you can do with it. And so if you're not using texting, because a lot of church management systems now come with texting, right? Yes.  I 

want to add this too, bro.

Yeah. Um, with a lot of church management systems, they do have texting.  And what I think like texting church gives you is what I'd like to call automations.  So let's say  we can send how we can pray for people. We can send newsletters. These things can be automated to our advantage. Whether it's creating an engagement, even for members and non members alike to get involved, to become a part, to serve, to show up to class, to show up to prayer service or whatever the case may be, this can all be done through automated processes through texting.

And so that's the other most important piece to texting that we can use at a moment's notice is the ability to automate.  

Yeah, you're right. And I remember our last conversation, you're really high on automation and how that question. It saves you a ton of time, 

time, like, for instance, there is an application through, uh, I.

G. I want to say it's mini chat or something like that. Yes.  Okay. Many chat. and many chat allows if a person uses a keyword,  I can send them information. So let's say you say, Hey, how can I pray for you? And the person say, pray for me here. And now I can send them an email link or information to read just to disciple them through automation.

It didn't take me any money additional to do that. It just took me effort to understand here's how I can continue this process. And if we're talking about interpretive journey or journey as a believer, sometimes you need both. You need both an automated hand. And you need a real human touch hand that allows the person to engage you at that next level.

So both are absolutely needed in this space. 

Yeah, we, we started using many chat for our platform and that has been really cool to help walk people through the process. And again, there, there are people smarter than me doing this, even though I'm the online guy, it's good to have other people who really help you.

So. If you're listening to, you know, DK and I talk about this stuff, Hey, you don't have to figure it out all by yourself, get a team of people around you to really, because it is a churchwide process. 

Yes, it is definitely a churchwide process. Get you a team inbox, one of us, so we can just kind of talk through it.

And maybe you need that to kind of help spearhead that I think glue. Also is another application that that's out there to be used. That's a free texting app that you can use. I'm not sure about the automation. Maybe you have to go to the plus side of glue, but you can definitely use that to have engagement, to evangelize outreach and, and manage people that way. 

Well, there's lots of things that we could kind of dig into texting, but I want to talk about the other thing that you mentioned, the learning management systems. I, what's, what is that? I think I might know, but I'm not 100 percent sure. So talk us through that.  

Yeah, man. So many years ago, when in the tech space, one of the things that we created for our customer support agents, which was called a knowledge base. 

And this knowledge base allows that customer support agent to pull information of reoccurring issues that have happened to help support them while they were on a phone call, a conversation in email.  Right. And so we saw the, the use of that, because then we could automate that into a chat bot  and it could do the answering for us.

Right so I'm kind of going through the process so you can see it. So now you have knowledge base. You have the chat bot, but what complements both of them, you have what's called a learning management system.  So, ultimately, like, any,  it's like, or it allows you to have the certain classes in this.  And with his classes, I'm able to then provide discipling information at one time repeatedly.

One of the things that pastors, at least that I know, they absolutely don't care for, and that is repeating themselves. So imagine if I sat pastor down and say, pastor, I want you to record a video about baptism,  video, videos, 20 minutes, and he goes through the whole thing about baptism.  Now I can show baptism digitally and physically the same thing from our pastor.

Okay, pastor, can you talk about what is evangelism to you? Now I can do that and have it in the same place so that if a person comes in a year behind,  they can be caught up and be at the same level as person that's been there five years. And we're providing this information in one place. At one time that provides study guides information material for them to go deeper into the word, and they can learn all these different styles that meets them.

I think it's, it's going to be very game changing because I see churches kind of moving that direction because a lot of churches would like to have their own school or university. Well, guess what the allows you to do. It allows you to be a school or university. Without having all the other stuff that comes with having a schooling. 

So that's what the LMS is. It is a housing place for all information to be disseminated at scale, whether it be 1 or 20. And we can use that in the Christian sector as well.  

I really like this, because again, what I see is there might be a lot of work on the front end of this, but once you get it recorded and done and uploaded, It's going to save you time and it's going to save you a ton of time, 

ton of time, a ton of effort.

Now, pastor can talk about things that are really deeper that most disciples would like to have a conversation about, but may not want to pull pastor over over in the hallway or send them an email. Hey, we're going to offer this class, let's say on the spiritual gifts. We're going to offer this class.

Let's say on the peace of God. We're going to offer this class on the synoptic gospels. And now you can even bring in people to teach these classes and these classes are yours. This information is yours, and we can disciple people and take them through a journey if you will. Of being disciple and watch this.

The process never ends. We'll always be uploading information there. A podcast here, a video here to make sure that you have good discipleship  information at a moment's notice. 

Yes. And people can do this on their own time. You know, it's like, how many times do you want to do a discipleship class? I like, Oh, I wish I could do it, but I've got this, this and this that night.

I can't come. Well now with this learning management system, you take away that completely.  

You take away that excuse. Absolutely, man. You get to automate it. I love this scenario. This is perfect. Let's say a person wants to be a member. Cool. We'd love for you to be a member of our church.

Come be a part of glass house, church of the cathedral, whatever you want to call it. Come be a part, right? That person says, you know what, man, my kids got sick. Couldn't join your next email to them is, Hey, we know you couldn't come,  but we were looking out for you. Here is the video class. Please watch this  please log into his account, watch it.

And then if you would like to have any questions. I have open office hours for the next hour to that person can ask any questions. Would you like to become a member? I absolutely.  And you didn't lose anything, whether they came or didn't come, you were able to use that discipleship piece now as a follow up methodology to get people to still come.

Right? And so I think that's a huge piece.  To following up in this ministry business that we can easily add to just this simulation process because the simulation impacts the discipleship piece, right? And so if you understand both of them, you understand this part, man, it'll be groundbreaking for you because now that text message of the person who didn't show up, Hey, we love you.

We're praying for you. Here's the link to the class. Let me know when you've watched it. Let's talk about it. now we're right back on track again.  

Well, and the cool thing about this too is, I was just thinking as you were talking, I'm like, You know, I said earlier that there's a lot of front end work on it, but there is, but the reality is if you're already offering these as in person classes and, or  you've already created the content, you just got to record it now.

You got to put it up on a video or an audio thing. So it's our, the work is already done. You just got to do it one more time.  

That's it. And if you do it that one more time, if you want to do something high productive value, okay, cool. I mean, get into it. Do it as much as you need to, but you can go in there and record that new membership class, that class is an hour.

You can send it off to be edited or not edited. You can send that video off here. The top 10 things we want you to know when you become a member of our church.  Now, you have that and I won't need to sit in a class for an hour. I can just kind of plow through this for the next 30 minutes and I got everything that I need.

Yeah. 

Yes. Right. And, and the person that's in California and the person that's in Florida. Get the same experience as you provide it. And that's the most important piece, man. 

Yeah, this is awesome. My, my mind's gone in many different directions.  We don't have this at our church and I'm thinking, okay, how can I get this at our church right now?

So  

yeah, I think, I think like, okay, so there's I think it's talent elements that allows you to start one and just play with it. And literally I have one, I would share it, but it's a customers, but I have one I've already built to just kind of test.  And I was able to just add their document, add a video,  add the additional stuff.

And three things right there gave me a learning management tool. They never have to repeat this conversation again. It's always available, right? Or let's say you don't want to use the LMS. Let's say you just want to use the video links.  That's cool too. Well, if you have a Google, if you have a Dropbox, You can take that link, put it in there and take that link and put it in Bitly, make it a short link, put that short link in text or email and you send it right out.

It's the same exact thing. Yeah, okay. Let's say you don't have any of that.  You take that video and upload it to YouTube and make it private  or. Unlisted where only those people can see it and now you have this information. So, there's a, there's a myriad of ways to do this. That fits every financial construct.

To make sure that you can scale this to the level you need to scale it. But I really think the church is going to really incorporate that a lot more. So that pastors can then not necessarily always have this conversation about. Retooling replanting. Hey, I want you to go to this class. Here's another thing.

Let me add this, bro, because you got, you got me excited now.  Okay. Let's say that you create the discipleship piece, digital discipleship piece.  The, the end parts of digital discipleship  is that this person becomes a leader.  We don't talk about that enough.  If I get you from adult ministry and I move you to membership and I move you from membership into discipleship, the end goal is that when you come out of discipleship. 

That you're ready to lead.  And so what a lot of churches don't have either on the end component, we've trained people to be good believers. We've trained people to be secret friendly. We don't train people to disciple them to grow and we don't train them to lead. This gives us an opportunity in two places to train people for ministry, school of ministry, Pastoring evangelists, whatever the case may be on the back end of it.

And so now you have a complete cycle. And so now I have people to send out to disciple. I have people coming in and wanting to be disciple. And the process is always ongoing.  Leadership is the end of that.  

I'm actually glad you said that. I didn't even, uh, you know, to be honest, I'm like, what is the end goal of discipleship?

And, you know, it, it is like to get that person to become a leader and again, even be then discipling other people as well. But it is really yes, really important, uh, on that, that level. Okay. We could go down the rabbit hole a a lot on this more. Um, we'll leave it at that. And if you wanna talk about this with DK Moore, I'm gonna include all his links, that you can connect with him.

Absolutely. But before we wrap up for good DK, what, give me like another idea or two of digital discipleship stuff that you've been seeing that is kind of working right now, that has been really good.  Man, 

digital discipleship. I've seen  YouTube really  take a huge jump this last year. Yeah. On top of social media.

Let me also add the importance of adding TikTok. To your conversation to disciple people digitally. Yeah. I think a lot of churches are kind of a little bit skeptical because they don't know if they're going to shut down or not. I don't think that they will, in my opinion, but tick tock and YouTube are getting massive  numbers.

I have a client that I use for sick, particularly, he only posts two reels a week and each reel that he posts, it gets 800 views every time he posts. 

Wow. 

That's the consistency nature. Of the power of the next thing I'm going to talk about in terms of digital and that is having reels, ma'am or sir, please find a way to have reels to spark engagement because in having reels, then we can go out into further places and make the Lord's name great where it is.

Yeah, so if you add those couple of things, you'll start seeing these people come into your church be introduced to it. And wanting to know what is your pipeline, if you will, um, to train and develop people to become better human beings and disciples. So, those 3 things is what I see critically that will change your ministry.

If you have somebody working your social media, please give them a hug, extra cookies and more money because that. It's work every single week that they have to prepare for. But if, if they already have reels and they only really have to prepare for the clips, the carousels and things of that nature to kind of make that social media piece really blend.

Yeah. So in using your social media, let me add this too. We want to use social media that is faith based and that is about our lives.  If we got social media about the past, all a whole lot of sales. And so what I've saw under the most attention. Is when I've posted or generated a photo and that person could identify that that was me.  And so if you're doing that, you'll see that able to spark membership, a part spark assimilation, assimilation, sparks, membership, membership, sparks, discipleship, and discipleship sparks leadership. 

Yeah, I'm really glad you hit on that. Um, we, we've invested in YouTube significantly since the start of COVID and we've even, we've gotten even more into it where we post daily devotional shorts. We just do shorts a lot. We'll do long form too. And we're not quite up to 800 views a week, but we are, we're up to 400 views.

Like that's where we're kind of every one. And. When I look at the analytics, most of the people who are watching our YouTube shorts are not members of our, are not subscribers of our current. So we're reaching another generation for the big church. We're reaching, we're helping people for the kingdom. Now again, hopefully they might, if they're ever looking for a church, they'll check out our church.

But the point is that we, kind of like what you said, they're seeing on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, All sorts of stuff, entertainment stuff. Why not  the message of Christ on it and give people hope, you know? And so that's, we've been really into YouTube a lot and, and TikTok and reels as well, because kind of like you said, I mean, Instagram really wants to promote reels.

So if you're creating a reel, they're going to, they're going to want to promote it and get it out to people.  

Absolutely, man. And I would say, I wish I had time because I would tell people. Especially this is for leaders. I would tell leaders to invest in the application called TechSoup. If you have not invested in TechSoup. 

TechSoup is T E C H S O U P and the reason why I'm telling you that this is a, this is a nugget of truth.  TechSoup gives you discounts on emails and a plethora of, they used to give you free email accounts through Microsoft, but they stopped doing it and charged like a dollar for emails.  And the other thing that TechSoup does that Google does direct, they used to just do it through TechSoup.

And that is, they give you, I think, the 10, 000 to promote through Google ads. It's something to that nature. 

Yeah. 

when you're a nonprofit, you get that money through AdSense to use, to promote your church. And Google is a part of YouTube, so you can easily probably. Petition people to kind of be pointed that way.

So take that tech soup, use that application. It has various discounts. Whether it be a sauna, Photoshop, um, the whole nine yards drop box, even to give you, to discount your services that you have. So you can then take that money and then use it in other places like the YouTube, the Facebooks. So you can then promote even more.

Okay. I've never heard of TechSoup. So I'm writing that one down. I mean, there are lots of, there's lots of great tools out there that will help you create these things and it's just you experimenting. I didn't know what I was doing the first time I created a short. And I look back on them and I'm like, Oh, these are so terrible.

But you learn, you grow and you, figure it out and, and you'll reach the people that God wants you to reach with this. And again, it's all in the name of discipleship. And so I think it's really, really important.  Well, DK, this has been awesome as always. I always love talking to you and you have so much great insight.

If someone wanted to get in touch with you and connect with you outside of this, how, how would they do that? Please visit 

my website, dk consults.org or dk hammonds.com. Either one leads you right to my website, various social medias. I am DK Hammonds, or if you wanna see me and my friends come together and talk about this various same topic, usually Social media, church podcast.

You can definitely catch this there too.  

It, it's a great podcast. They have such great camaraderie together. Just hearing them talk about Twitter threads. Tick tock and all this stuff. Their, their episodes are great. I love listening to them. So they're awesome. So thank you, bro.  Well, DK, as always, thanks so much for joining me today.

I really appreciate it.  Yes, sir. I appreciate you brother.