Theology in the Raw - 779: #779 - Is Technology Enslaving Us? Jay Kim

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

Preston talks with his friend Jay Kim, who’s a pastor at Vintage Church in Santa Cruz, CA, and the author of the forthcoming book Analogy Church. Jay has been rethinking how we go about using technology in church and how we can break free from being enslaved to technology. Jay and Preston also talk about the unique, post-Christian, hyper progressive context of Santa Cruz and the challenges and opportunities his church faces in this context. Jay Kim serves on staff at Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, CA, overseeing leadership and teaching, and on the core leadership team of the ReGeneration Project. He also co-hosts the ReGeneration Podcast. Some of Jay's written work has been featured in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, and Relevant Magazine. He is a graduate of Fuller Seminary. Jay's first book, Analog Church, is set to release in March 2020. The book addresses the challenges and opportunities churches face in the digital age, offering a new and hopeful way forward. About Analog Church What does it mean to be an analog church in a digital age? In recent decades the digital world has taken over our society at nearly every level, and the church has increasingly followed suit—often in ways we're not fully aware of. But as even the culture at large begins to reckon with the limits of a digital world, it's time for the church to take stock. Are online churches, video venues, and brighter lights truly the future? What about the digital age's effect on discipleship, community, and the Bible? As a pastor in Silicon Valley, Jay Kim has experienced the digital church in all its splendor. In Analog Church, he grapples with the ramifications of a digital church, from our worship and experience of Christian community to the way we engage Scripture and sacrament. Could it be that in our efforts to stay relevant in our digital age, we've begun to give away the very thing that our age most desperately needs: transcendence? Could it be that the best way to reach new generations is in fact found in a more timeless path? Could it be that at its heart, the church has really been analog all along? Connect with Jay Kim (@jaykimthinks) Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaykimthinks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaykimthinks/ Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I will be in Orange County on February 9th and 10th. I will be in Northern Colorado, specifically Greeley, Colorado, March 5th and March 6th. I'll be in Nashville March 10th and March 11th. And I will also be in Seattle, Washington, March 15th, Philadelphia, April 30th, and May 1st. Please go to centerforfaith.com forward slash events to look up how you can register for these events. If you want to attend one of these talks, I think all of those talks have something to do with faith, sexuality, and gender. So please check out centerforfaith.com for more info on those events. My guest for today is a friend that I've gotten to know over the years, Jay Kim. Jay Kim is on pastoral staff at Vintage Faith Church in Santa

Cruz. Vintage Faith Church is also where Dan Kimball has served for many, many years. And so you might have heard about the church through reading about or listening to Dan Kimball talk. Jay Kim is one of the main teaching pastors there and is passionate about discipleship and about specifically about how technology relates to Christian discipleship and how we do church. He's the author of a forthcoming book called Analog Church, Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age. I love the way J. Kim thinks.

He's incredibly humble and wise and pastoral and is very in tune with the intersection between faith and culture and is just an all-around cool dude. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Jay Kim. All right, I'm here with my friend Jay Kim. As I said in the intro, Jay is a pastor, a writer, a speaker. I came across you, Jay, when we talked about the Regeneration Project and the podcast and everything. And I want to get to that because what you guys are doing with Regeneration is, I think, amazing. And I want to see 10 more movements pop up throughout the nation doing something similar but why don't you just give

us a background of who you are for our audience and um uh what you're doing now and then we can kind of go go from there maybe talk about your book yeah totally well first of all thanks preston for having me on i'm a big fan and i love the incredible work you've done and are doing. So this is a thrill for me to be chatting with you. Yeah, man, I'm a husband to my best friend, Jenny, and dad to two little rambunctious kids. That's probably the first thing. But my day job, I serve and help lead a local church in an eclectic, very post-Christian, very weird place called Santa Cruz, California, a little beach town. Um, that's an incredibly beautiful and strange and challenging place for a variety of reasons. And I help serve and lead at a church

called Vintage Faith, uh, church here that was actually launched by Dan Campbell, a mutual friend of ours. And so, yeah, I essentially co-lead the church here with him. And I also try to write a little bit. And so that's part of our conversation today. Just finished up my first book called Analog Church, which actually was deeply informed by our community here and what I've learned here from our people and what it means to be the church in particular in the strange time in which we find ourselves, you know, in the digital age where so much is changing so fast and actually redefining for us in ways that we may not even be aware of what it means to be

not only the church, but what it means to be human and what it means to be together and in community. And so there you go. That's kind of my life. It's good times and yeah, I'm grateful for it. Why don't you give us a quick overview of the book? So it's Analog Church, Why We Need Real People, Places and Things in the Digital Age. Great, great title, by the way. Yeah, give us a snapshot of what the book's So it's Analog Church, Why We Need Real People, Places and Things in the Digital Age. Great, great title, by the way. Yeah, give us a snapshot of what the book's all about. Yeah, you know, I've grown up, my entire life has been lived in the Silicon Valley, which is the epicenter of technology, for one, and the epicenter of the digital age, right? This is where the decision makers and the creators who have essentially established and launched into the world this sort of new template for

human interaction called digital technology. This is where they are primarily. And, you know, they're all over the world, but this is in many ways the epicenter. So I've grown up around it. And as a follower of Jesus and as a leader in the local church, I've seen in particular in recent years the intersection between the rising tide of the values of the digital age and how they are influencing and shaping, deconstructing and reconstructing our ecclesiology. And it's been helpful in some ways and sort of maybe some supplemental ways, but I've been primarily concerned with the ways in which it's been harmful. Sort of our unrelenting, I would say often careless and reckless sort of leaning into all things digital for the sake of relevance and for the sake of reach and impact and all those

things, the language, cliche words that we church leaders so often use. I just don't think, at least on a wide scale, I just don't think we've been thoughtful enough about the subtle and maybe even not so subtle ways in which our digital proclivities are deconstructing and undoing what it that and to speak to church leaders first and foremost, and just Christians, followers of Jesus at large, to help us sort of reconsider and be more thoughtful in our engagement with digital technologies. So you would see the cons outweighing the pros in terms of the impact of digital technology, digital communication, social media on the church? The cons outweigh the pros, would you say? Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, what I'm not trying to say is,

hey, let's become Luddites and, you know, get rid of all digital technology. I mean, you and I are chatting right now, you know, thousands of miles away because of digital technology and people are listening to this because of digital technology. So I am a fan and a supporter of digital technologies. I think more so than pitting the two against each other, digital versus non-digital, what I'm interested in is placing all things in their proper place, right?

So I'm more interested in putting digital technologies in their appropriate place. And I think what's happened often in the local church, and we can get into this in as much or as little detail as you want, but I think we've misplaced digital. We've put it on a pedestal in unknowing ways often where it's no longer helpful and it's actually harmful. So that's what I'm trying to get at.

I'm not saying, hey, get rid of your phone and your laptop and go live like the Amish, you know. But I am saying, you know, what are some ways in which we've leaned into digital that are actually deconstructing for us our understanding of what it means to actually be the church. Can you give us a couple examples of where you've seen technology really hinder maybe kingdom advancement or genuine discipleship, some real concrete kind of habits or practices that you've seen Christians do? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'll, you know, I get into a lot of this in a variety of ways in the book, but I'll just give you one that's sort of probably the most, I don't know, hot topic, you know, hot button issue when it comes to church leadership. And that would be like the rise of video venues, you know, and video teaching and online church and that sort of thing. Again, it's not monolithic.

I'm not saying anything digital, sermons online are evil. But I think what we've seen in recent years, particularly in the megachurch movement, but then bleeding from the megachurch movement, even into smaller churches, medium-sized churches, and even small churches, where there is this sort of reckless abandon toward the way we're going to grow, the way we're going to expand, is to put our most gifted communicator in as many places simultaneously as possible. So because we have these digital technologies, let's videotape the person. It's

not even tape, right? It's like video, digital video, the person, and just put that sermon in as many rooms throughout our city and country and even world for some churches as possible and call that the gathered church. And for me, I think, you know, I get into this again in the book, but we have to then ask the question, we have to ask all sorts of questions at that point. Like, okay, you know, what is a sermon, for example? Like, in that mode of thinking, a sermon is something you watch. But I would argue a sermon and preaching and the proclamation of the gospel is not something historically that we primarily watched, but it's something primarily that we witnessed. And there is a difference, you know, to witness something is to, in an embodied,

spatial, theological word would be incarnational way, be present with another and a community of people who are experiencing in an embodied way, the reality of that, which is unfolding before you. And I think that's, for example, that's the sermon at its finest. And yet now in the digital age, what we've rendered the sermon into, what preaching has become in sort of the video venue model, is just a 30-minute informational monologue from a really compelling dynamic speaker. And we're losing something there. You know, we're losing the idea that, no, no, no, the proclamation of the gospel in the midst of the gathered community is a much more embodied, much more dialogical rather than monologue sort of reality. And we're losing that. And we're not thinking

about it. So that's one example of many examples. I mean, I can get into how this is influenced in the way we understand community and scripture, but there you go. That's one concrete. community and scripture, but there you go. That's one concrete. How is, how have your ideas that are in the book reshaped how you guys are doing church over a vintage or does your church look a little bit different maybe for in terms of how it integrates technology than maybe your average larger church? Yep. Yeah, yeah, totally.

What are some ways? Yeah. Well, for one, we're not a multi-site church, so we haven't had to wrestle with that question yet. How are we going to gather people in different locations and teach and gather around the word and the bread and the cup and all those things? We haven't had to deal with that, but we have talked about it. If we ever moved into that model, which is something we've explored, we would certainly lean into the development of, and we're doing that now regardless, the development of multiple communicators and multiple leaders who can be, again, embodied in that particular geographic location with that particular people to truly lead and guide and serve and pastor them.

But I also, I think, you know, a more general broad way of sort of differentiating what we're at least trying to do here at Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz is if you walk into our church, I think viscerally one of the differences you would feel or experience, at least in a worship gathering, I mean, our church is so much more than our Sunday gatherings, but at least in a worship gathering is, and these might not be the words you use, but they would be the words I use to describe maybe the difference you might feel in many, I don't want to say all or even most, but in so many large to medium-sized evangelical churches today, when you walk in, what you typically experience, in my opinion, is sophistication and spectacle. The latest and greatest in technological advancement, whether that's sort of the level of video or the lighting or the tens of thousands of dollars worth of sound system equipment, whatever it is.

And I'm not saying that stuff is bad. I think what you would experience being emphasized here, though, isn't sophistication and spectacle, but rather creativity, artistry, and hopefully an invitation to participate. So we gather in 1938 red brick Presbyterian building. We have our building, not just our sanctuary, but our office space and the coffee shop we have here is the walls are covered in artwork that's been created by people in the life of our community. Not, you know, stuff we bought at target or whatever,

but like art pieces that came to life in our worship gatherings from our people. We have, you know, paper cranes that we folded that are flying overhead in our high-stealing sanctuary. And those are prayers that people wrote for Santa Cruz that we have. So, you know, symbolically, it's visually, it's a reminder of why we gather and the mission that we're on together. So we try to emphasize those sorts of things, things that feel tangible, spatial, embodied. You know, the theological word, again, is incarnational, things that are in the flesh and real and stuff that you have to show up to see and experience and feel. I mean, all the high production stuff, I mean, does that even work anymore? I mean, it's, it is a little, I mean,

and if it, if it does work and I guess we could define what, what do we even mean by that? But I don't know what I'm at churches that have still, they kind of still have that and put thousands of dollars into pulling that kind of stuff off. I just, I don't, it seems a little bit dated to me. Like maybe Santa Cruz, especially since you're on the, on the cusp of where culture is headed and everything. Maybe you guys are kind of beyond that now to where even if you did put tens of thousands of dollars into high production stuff, you know, high quality lights, amazing sound system, all this stuff and bells and whistles.

I would imagine in your context, it probably doesn't work. Right. I mean, no. Yeah. It would not work here at all. It would actually here in Santa Cruz, that sort of approach in many ways would feel, um, you know, uh, many would be apathetic. They would be unimpressed at best. And some I think would even be repulsed. And I'm not, you know, that's not hypothetical. That's stuff we've heard.

Even at our church, stuff that we feel like is not high production. There've been some moments where we've done some things in our attempt to lean into creativity, where in hindsight, we look back and we say, Oh, that was a little bit. We were just trying to kind of lean into spectacle a little bit more than we thought. And we heard back from people like, Oh dude, what was that? That just didn't feel genuine or authentic. And you know, what's really fascinating to me, Preston is almost,

and this is a big thrust for me in thinking about these things. It's almost always from younger generations. So when you ask the question, is it effective anymore? The reality is, you know, I actually heard this from Andy Crouch, you know, he said this fascinating thing. He said, as he thinks about the future of the church and sort of the intersection between digital and the church, he said, he still thinks there is a world in the coming years where every city or town will probably have like one big mega church that is still doing the hyper spectacle, crazy lights and all that thing. But that on the whole, that church will begin gathering sort of a really homogenous group of people who, and he would say, and I would agree with him, who aged with that movement. So when I think about reaching younger generations, from my experience,

not just in Santa Cruz, but in my conversations and the research for this book and experience with friends of mine who are younger, former youth ministry students, they truly, I think, are looking for something else. And the way I would define it is the leaning into digital in our churches and all the spectacle and show, that's a leaning into relevance. We're trying to make our churches look and sound and feel like everything else in the world, like American Idol or whatever, you know? And I think younger generations are exhausted and tired by that. I think when they take the risk to step into a community of faith, they're not looking for relevance, they're looking for transcendence. They're looking for something that is viscerally,

experientially different than everything else they experience in their digital world, which is their everyday world. They live on their phones, you know, and everything surrounding them is spectacle, trying to capture their attention. And I think in our churches, rather than capturing their attention, we need to try to capture their imagination, which is a different path. It's a different path. It's so good. Do you think, just kind of thinking out loud, I mean, you know, we all talk about the, especially younger people addicted to social media, and that's their primary community. But at the end of the day, they don't like it. When when they're relieved of it they go to summer camp for a week they all talk about how awesome this is you know yeah um so it's like but that's how addictions

work right it's like deep down you know it's destroying you and it's not the real thing um so do you find and i people i say younger people i i see my people my parents age addicted to so you know the second their phone pings or, you know, like, so I don't, yes, maybe younger people, maybe more, I don't know. But I think this is a human problem, not just an age problem. But do you find that, to your point, that this addiction to social media is cultivating a deep down longing for something more authentic and real so that if the church could actually cultivate that, when they see it and taste it, they immediately are attracted to it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's spot on, Preston. I'm 100% with you on all of that. You know,

the MIT professor Sherry Turkle, she's written a couple of fantastic books, Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversation. She digs deep into this stuff in really profound ways. And I love the title of her book, Alone Together. That is the digital age, you know. And I actually think everything you said is spot on. And I think what it leads me to, because, you know, everything we read about like social media and where people are at with it is like so depressing. We're just so, we're more disconnected than ever. And all of that is true. And I think, but I think the hopeful thing is what it does

for the church. It actually gives us like one of the most, like a tremendous opportunity leading into the future in that the church one should be must be and and now we have the opportunity to be um a transcendent community where we put down our digital devices where we invite people to come out from hiding behind their digital walls and be human with one another and that sort of community is like really inconvenient and really hard. And it takes time and energy. And it's, you know, it's actually jarring for us because the digital age is like rewired, how we think about human connection. So we, in the digital age, I don't think anybody would argue with me on this.

We're like more impatient than ever. We're shallower than ever. And we're actually more isolated than ever. And so to detox from that stuff is really difficult. So by no means am I saying it's going to be easy, but the church is perfectly positioned and leveraged to consistently over and over again, week after week, day after day,

invite people into these human spaces where they can connect in the ways that God has designed them to connect in truly incarnational ways. That's really hard work. And we are going to subvert that work the more we as church leaders just lean into digital. So the more we say, you know what, everyone's on Instagram. So let's just put all of our energy on being really present on Instagram. I'm not saying your church shouldn't have an Instagram. Our church has an Instagram. But the way we think about our Instagram and all of our social media is that it is a place to exchange information. But we also believe that the exchange of information is not primary. It's just, it's, it's an initial exchange.

What we're really after is the exchange, not of information, but the exchange of presence and that can't happen on social media. And so even in the exchange of information, but the exchange of presence. And that can't happen on social media. And so even in the exchange of information, we're inviting people to show up to exchange not info, but to exchange presence, which is hard. And we admit that. But the invitation is open and it's constant. And I think that's really important for us as church leaders to do, particularly in light of social media. This is, I mean, it seems that churches often are, you know, we always say the church is kind of behind culture, you know, culture's five years ahead and that the church kind of gets on to something and they kind of follow in suit. And again, I don't have like a study to go off of

or whatever, but just anecdotally, it just seems that the church is kind of blindly following culture. And I mean, it kind of was not what you just said, like culture is so social media focused, which becomes very polarized and you throw in politics and all that and everything, or just the latest and greatest and celebrity driven this and celebrity driven that. And then the church seems to have like a baptized version of all that. But I just feel like all that stuff is kind of collapsing in on itself. And we know, you know, anxiety, depression, suicide rates are through the roof for teenagers. It's been linked to at least, if not caused by social media addiction. And what a great time for the church to be holistically and comprehensively counter-cultural. Because at the end of the day, I think people are really longing for that. They're longing for less outrage, more

nuanced thoughtfulness, more sustained, embodied, authentic relationships. And when the church just kind of follows the latest cultural trend, I just, I don't know. And I just, okay, here's another question, I guess. In your book or even in your church, do you provide some avenue for helping people, like discipleship in social media use? And let me, I guess, quickly, I mean, I've talked to some really amazing godly leaders who all kind of say, yeah, my teenager, totally addicted to social media, and I don't know what to do, you know? And I'm like, man, how did this, how did we get there? And I remember one person saying, we were never discipled in this. Like, I could lead a church of a thousand, but no one ever taught me how to like have a parental discipleship conversation like kids on social media. You just kind of blindly all of a sudden woke up one day and my kids on their phone eight hours a day. needs today than for Christians to have help from church leaders to disciple them in how to live

humanly in a social media saturated world. It's like the elephant in the room. We know it's destroying us. We know it's wrecking havoc on our faith, our attention span, all these things. And yet, why are we still addicted? Like, why don't we talk about this all the time at church? If it's kind of this, this toxicity, this kind of poisoning everything. Yeah, no, totally. I'm with you. I think, you know, one of the hopeful things for me is getting back to your point. This is, it's, it's a bummer in one way because it's an it's another example of what you said

earlier the church sort of catching up to culture rather than leading and creating culture but at least the church seems to be recently starting to slowly catch up to what has been happening in culture in recent years which is a deeper sort of assessment of a stepping back and a deeper, more thoughtful assessment of what our digital realities and social media and all this stuff is doing to us. So I, you know, it's been really encouraging for me to meet pastors and church leaders recently, sort of all over the place who, when I say things like, you know,

when I cite sources like Sherry Turkle's books or Nicholas Carr or Cal Newport or Adam Alter, these, you know, they're not Christian, but they're all sort of diving deep into this idea. I'm encouraged by how many church leaders are like, Oh dude, I just read that too. And it's like reshaping the way I think about my own life first and foremost, but also how I serve and lead our church. So we are playing catch up, but I do think that it's at least beginning to happen where there's a growing awareness for us here at vintage. You were asking that earlier. Yeah.

We've tried to tackle that. So we've offered, and they were really well attended, we've offered classes on going for parents, and for anybody really, going through Andy Crouch's book, The TechWise Family, and we had incredible response from that. And for anybody who's read that book, you know that it gets really pragmatic. Andy gets really pragmatic in that book about

ways to sort of create boundaries with technology in our homes and with our families. So little things like that. We've done teaching series here. We did a teaching series here a couple of years ago called Return to Analog, which in some ways was the genesis of this book for me, but it was getting into some of those ideas. Like what does it mean to truly be human in the way God designed us to be human and to be the church, the way God designed the church to be in light of the time in which we find ourselves. And so we're trying to do that. And I'm encouraged by the fact that I think more and more churches seem to be

trying to do that as well. Yeah. You mentioned some names. I mean, I'm familiar with Sherry Turkle. Now, her Alone Together book is several years old, right? Is it outdated or has it been updated? It hasn't been updated. Yeah, it's several years old. And then she has a more recent book from a couple years ago called Reclaiming Conversation. But I think Alone Together is broad enough where it still has legs today. I cite the book quite a bit. Besides Andy Crouch, who are some Christian leaders? Like, what are some other books out there? I mean, I'm shocked that, you know, when I look around, I mean, yours doesn't seem to be crowded out by a bunch of other books. No, no. Which is shocking. It's like, there should be like at least a few dozen books on this topic right now. Totally. Totally. Besides Andy Crouch. I mean,

who are the other, who are some others that are? Well, here's the thing, man. I think it's pretty minimal. I think we're on the, we're sort of the wave is cresting. So I think we're going to see more Christian leaders riding along these lines, but I think, and I'm sure there are many out there, some out there that I'm not aware of, but not too many come to mind. I would say, you know, Andy Crouch, TechWise Family is a big one. I actually don't think there are really any books that I know of that deal with, in particular, the digital age and our ecclesiology, the way I'm attempting to do in this book. But some other books that come to mind, you know, you, our mutual friend, John Mark Comer, who you just recently spoke with, I love his new book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, which delves into some of this stuff. I know Jefferson Bethke just wrote a book, I don't know

how much he gets into the digital stuff, but it is about, you know, it's called To Hell with a Hustle. It's like fantastic. But same deal. It's about, you know, slowing down in the midst of our go, go, go world driven by, fueled by social media. author, but there was a book a year or two ago. And I think it's connected to the Gospel Coalition. Some of those guys might've been out on crossway, but it's about in particular our phones and sort of a gospel perspective on what our smartphones are doing to us. So another book that's been really helpful for me, a couple of books actually, not super specific on the digital age, but they dig into some of this stuff and its symptoms and how we can detox from it is a book called The Common Rule that came out last year that was really helpful for me. And then our mutual friend Drew Dick has this fantastic book from last year,

Your Future Self. Well, thank you. Incredible stuff. So those are some of the Christian resources that come to mind. But I'm hopeful that in the coming years more and more thoughtful uh christian leaders will begin writing along these lines yeah yeah it's shocking i i you know i thought about writing oh this is funny i just thought about this right now um i way back when I was exploring the possibility of writing on sexuality, I remember there was like three topics I was thinking about writing on.

One was sexuality and one was technology. This is back in probably 2012 or 13 or something. And I remember Scott McKnight, Scott, we're going to throw you under the bus here. I mean, he said, he was kind of like, eh, nobody's going to read that. Like, he's like, like oh yeah of course it's relevant it needs to be written but like no one's gonna want to be read a book about being you know shamed into not using social media anymore or something like that i'm like what yeah i don't know but i took his advice and ended up right on sexuality and here we are today but um yeah

just side note about scott he's amazing, like theological hero of mine. When I first sent him the manuscript for Analog Church and requesting the forward. No, he didn't shred it. What he said, his first response back, again, you know, we love Scott, but his first response back was Analog Church. What does that mean? I don't really get it. All right, man. If I want an honest opinion about whatever i go to scott oh totally yeah pulls no punches yeah that's awesome hey all right let's talk about your context okay so you

live in santa cruz and you kind of alluded to it earlier but for people that don't know i mean santa cruz is like a slight window into the future i mean mean, you guys are in just on the cusp of where culture is going. Describe to us some of the unique challenges and let's just say opportunities that you have doing ministry in a place like Santa Cruz. Give us a snapshot of that culture. Yeah, absolutely. So for people who don't know Santa Cruz is an eclectic artsy spiritual but not religious beach town on the coast of Northern California just about 30 30 minutes south of Silicon Valley so it's really interesting you know it's not physically an island but people call it

the island of Santa Cruz because the short little 30 minute drive from like google apple facebook takes you into literally like a totally different world and it's really strange so you know santa cruz um is again it's really eclectic it's uh it's really artsy it's um it's really eclectic. It's really artsy. It's super hyper progressive liberal in every way imaginable. In 2016, you could not drive more than 30 seconds without seeing like, you know, feel the burn posters somewhere. And so that tells you a little bit of the politics of Santa Cruz. I'm not saying, you know, one way or the other, but it just gives you a picture. And here's what's really, you know, maybe the most important thing based on the question you're asking. Santa Cruz is highly, again, it's highly spiritual, like everything is spiritualized, but it's also just as highly antagonistic to religion as a whole and

Christianity very specifically. And that's something we actually feel and experience in a very palpable, tangible, real way on almost a daily basis here at our church. We have a coffee shop that is a part of our church called the Abbey that's open seven days a week. It's open during our Sunday worship gatherings and it's just, you know, open to the public and it's chock full of like 90% of the people in the Abbey at any given time are not Christian. And, um, but it's connected to the church building, right? Or it's on the property and people are turned off by that. Totally. No. Yeah. And most people know that it's, it has some connection to the church. Um, it's,

it's a ministry of our church. What that does is it, it, this happens all the time, probably on a monthly basis, we'll get some email or some message on our website asking if the Abbey is connected to, um, a homoph a homophobic bigoted church, you know? And sometimes they'll cite things that Dan Kimball wrote like 10 years ago, take it totally out of context and say, look at this. You guys are bigots and we're going to boycott you. And that kind of thing happens all the time.

And they almost always lead to, hey, you know, there's a misunderstanding. We a misunderstanding we love you let's grab coffee we love to buy you a cup of coffee so therein lies both the challenge and the opportunity you know we get to sit with folks who have one particular caricature of what it means to be a christian and hopefully we are imaging god in a in a different way without compromising what we believe to be historical orthodox christian faith and that's a challenge and it's a balancing act and we feel like we're walking on a tightrope all the time but it's super exciting and most of those challenges clashes tensions do do the majority surround questions of sexuality? Is that largely what ends up coming up? Yeah, I'd say like 80% surround sexuality. Your work has been super helpful actually for us

along those lines and the resources you put out there. Yeah, I appreciate that. When I'm thinking of my audience when I'm writing and speaking, it typically is not Santa Cruz. So I know you guys are in a different kind of unique culture than the majority of, well, the majority of people that aren't in like a major urban kind of center. I mean, yeah, I just talked to John Mark a couple hours ago. I mean, I would imagine Portland's very, very similar to you guys or even San Francisco, even some of the bigger cities, East Coast especially. So have you seen, how do you break through that kind of barrier?

Or have you seen some success where people say, oh, you're the homophobic Christians because you're a Christian, therefore you're homophobic, whatever. Are you able to have some conversations and break down some of those misconceptions? Yeah. I mean, you know, success is hard to measure. I think there's a sliding scale. You know, on one hand, it's like uber success would be, I have a conversation with someone who thinks we're hateful and bigoted. And by the end of that hour long coffee, they, you know, profess faith in Christ. That would be like uber success. That has not yet happened. However, there have been instances where the person walks away from our conversation holding, you know, tightly to their position. They're like, you know, I'm not convinced. I think you're a bigot. I think your church is bigoted. I'm never

coming back to the coffee shop. And that's tough. But we, you know, just try to continue to provide a space of love and openness to them while holding true to our convictions. But that's actually rare. I'd say most of the time, this has been a fascinating sort of learning experience for me. Most of the time, those conversations are successful in my assessment. What I mean by that is that the person doesn't necessarily, they don't walk away convinced that their view is wrong and our view is right or something. But most of the time, the overwhelming majority of the time, people walk away from our conversations having let go of the caricature of our church and of Christians as to describe that is essentially what we're trying to do is help people who have a particular view of who Christians are and who we are as a church. You know, they base the view primarily without knowing us, without conversation against this, us without conversation against this, this gets back to analog, you know, they base it on what they perceive to be our position on a particular matter. And when we get face to face, and when I

can buy someone a cup of coffee and ask them their story and, and show them that I care first and foremost about them as a human being and that there is primarily the ethos here is love while still holding to our convictions. What usually happens is they become convinced not of our position, but they become convinced that our posture is not what they thought it was. And usually without human interaction, the caricature is built on their understanding of our position on a particular topic. And then they just,

they assume our posture toward them in the world is driven by that position. And to deconstruct that has been the most beautiful thing for me, those experiences where they realize, you know, I disagree with this church or this person on this topic, but man, their posture is not what I thought it was. They're actually kind and generous and loving. And I think that's been success to me. You know,

if that can sort of push them along on their journey of faith, hopefully where they see Jesus and they see his followers in a new light, I think that's a win. That's a kingdom win. So we try to do that as often as possible. Curious, in your experience, the ones that are, you know, maybe begin very hostile with all these kind of assumptions about what you guys believe. I'm curious, specifically with the the sexuality conversation would most of them be actually like gay or straight like are these allies or it's a it's a miss yeah it's a mix yeah it's a mix i'd say it's probably a 50 50 mix yeah so um it's it runs the gamut yeah and as you

know better than i do it's it's you know it is truly a gamut so Yeah. And as you know, better than I do, it's, it's, you know, it is truly a gamut. So many different, even growing, increasing sort of, uh, identifications. And, um, so that keeps us on our toes too, so that we can be sensitive and informed in our conversations. Um, so yeah, it's a gamut. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. And so your, your role at the church, you're one of the primary teachers, right? You teach about 30, 40% of the time or? No, I teach probably 50, 60% of the time. And then Dan Kimball who's incredible communicator, obviously,

and author and church leader. He he teaches we teach almost the same, but he teaches probably a little bit less than me and that's by choice and design he you know he funny enough he's spoken on every big stage you can imagine sort of in the evangelical world but um teaching if you ask him teaching is not actually like his thing so um so yeah i do i do a little bit more teaching than he does about half the time i've heard that i've heard that's not his really main he would much rather write right or is he more introverted and and yep yeah that's exactly right he um he'd much rather write put out content yeah and uh sort of he's an architect he was actually an architect before he was a church leader and really he approaches ministry that way yeah his his greatest joy comes from architecting things you know and uh so it's

fun to watch him do that he's incredibly gifted obviously interesting interesting um so you so you said you grew up in the silicon valley or not in santa cruz no so So San Jose and all over San Jose, the San Jose area. Do you have an opinion on some of the stuff, the conversation surrounding big tech and censorship and what's going on there? I mean, I just had this conversation with John Mark Homer.

I just deleted Twitter off my phone. Oh, really? Well, I check it a lot for news and whatever. And John Mark's like, it's not news. It's propaganda. They're just feeding you stuff, which I kind of knew. But I mean, I'm like, yeah, you're probably right. Why go to Twitter for this little echo chamber of a perspective,

a slow trickle into my brain. Do you have any thoughts on that from kind of inside the beast perspective a bit um is that really a thing are they really um trying to push a specific agenda point of view or yeah you know i'm not the most informed but but from what i've read and and heard in conversation um i would wholeheartedly agree with that last sentiment there it is not what is happening in silicon valley and the stuff that is coming out of this place um and i'm not trying to say every tech company and every person in tech is like insidious or something yeah but generally speaking there's an agenda. Yeah. And algorithms, machine algorithms

that create the sort of echo chambers that you're talking about. So like when you scroll through Twitter or even Instagram or whatever, man, that is, it's not random. You know, when you scroll through Facebook, that's not random. It's not just sort of like an arbitrary order of things by which we see stuff. There are machine algorithms that are highly, highly shockingly sophisticated that are curating a digital experience to an end. You know, there are ends to this. And like any business, any company, the end is to make money for an organization or a company. So I think it's important to be aware of that. I agree with John Mark, Twitter is not news. It's a machine algorithm, curated digital experience designed to keep us scrolling and clicking and refreshing but why is my why is my news feed in

twitter um is there a reason why it's completely one-sided like it's all very far left you know um across the board is that is that because they they think i'm on that camp or something or or they're trying to convince me of it or like why, why, why can't I get some just moderate or both? And like, you know, CNN and Fox news or whatever, but you know, but no, it's all like, you know, Trump is the antichrist. You know, if he sneezed, that's an expression of evil and the earthquake in China was caused by Trump. And, you know, it's just, and it's just exhausting. It's, and it's almost like, and this is what I told John Marr, I think John Mark, or you're my third podcast today. But I, it's almost like it's and it's almost like and this is what i told john mara i think john

mark or you're my third podcast today um but it's almost like it's it's it's it's having a reverse effect like when everything is so one-sided on anybody to the right left center whatever it's like it almost makes me like sit back and say well that can't be true like you got to be making some stuff up and then when i do a little digging i'm like yeah you kind of fabricated this and twisted that and i don't know so so is that like is that just is all twitter news feeds far left or is it they're trying to or they think i'm of that camp and that's why i get it or yeah yeah well again i'm not you know i'm not the go-to source here but from what i know and and have read in conversations yeah, it comes back to the algorithms that are trying to curate your experience in such a way that they can monetize as best as they can. So it's all,

from what I understand, it is primarily based on getting you to continue scrolling, continue clicking, continue to look, continue to have you come back over and over again. It was fascinating research. John Mark and I actually both cite him. There's a guy named Tristan Harris who used to be a design ethicist at Google. And now he has this organization that gets into the ethics of digital design. And he has this fascinating research that he's done where even the design of how we refresh things on our smartphones, it's actually connected to psychological research that has its origins way back in the early 20th century when they were initially creating slot machines for casinos. So if you think about a slot machine, you know, typically now they're digitized now,

and a lot of them are buttons. But if you think about a classic slot machine, like in a casino, you walk in, you sit at this machine, and what do you do? You pull down on a lever, you let go of the lever, the lever pops back up, and then something on the screen or in front of you spins, right? And then the spinning stops and it gives you some sort of variable reward. Well, it's not random that the means by the mechanism by which we refresh our screens is to pull down, release the lever, and then there's a spinning little thing. And then something pops up, maybe it's the red button saying you have a new notification or a new like or a new news story or whatever. That's not random. It's not random that almost every application you have on your smartphone refreshes that way. It's actually based on a

psychological research of how the human mind works to get us most addicted. So again, that's an example of the fact that it's not random. There is an agenda. And the ultimate agenda is not to inform us in the deepest, most significant way possible. It's to get us to pull that digital lever again, to see the little spinning wheel come back to sit at our digital jackpot casino slot machines over and over. That's – we just have to be aware of that. That makes me so angry. Like how did somebody smuggle a crack pipe into my pocket and tell me it's good for me? into my pocket and tell me it's good for me.

Like, how did I allow that to happen? And how dare them, huge companies that are making tons of money off me that don't know me from Adam, don't care about me, are actually causing my humanity not to flourish. Yeah. I feel so used. I'm throwing away my phone. I'm going to flip phone today. My wife says that like every other day.

She's always like, but Google Maps, how am I going to get around? I know, yeah. And I listen to podcasts while I drive. Totally, totally. What about the light phone? I never saw where that went. Have you heard about that? Yeah, it's still going.

I have some friends who have it. They love it. Yeah, it seems awesome. I wish it wasn't so expensive. No, it's still going i have some friends who have it they love it yeah it seems awesome i wish it wasn't so expensive no it's pretty pricey i think in their early phases so you know it's pretty pricey hopefully if they can sort of uh scale it a little bit more we need a billion dollar philanthropist to like subsidize it like what if that thing was like 20 bucks a pop or something which i understand i mean i don't i understand how things cost money and whatever but like that's just such a good thing for human and i think a lot of people would actually get it like when i've seen them talk and everything i see people get excited because they know they're enslaved yeah and they want freedom absolutely yeah absolutely but even without the light phone

even if we can't afford it you know i love some of the stuff that andy crouch says and tech wise family some of the really practical stuff it's like There's stuff we can do with our smart devices right now. I love his idea. I think John Mark talks about this in his book as well. to bed before we go to bed and we should wake up before our phones wake up the way we do with our kids like i don't go to bed before my four-year-old goes to bed that'd be you know disastrous i don't know what she's doing you know and but we don't do that like we go to bed with our phones like so many of us just like scrolling and scrolling and refreshing until we fall asleep and then we wake up with our phones in our hands and man, that kind of, that's just disastrous. So there's little things like that, like rules of life we can put in place.

I think that would be tremendously helpful. I think, yeah, for me, there's a certain apps. I mean, Twitter is a big one. That might be the only one. Yeah. I am kind of an information junkie. So like if I'm sitting there in my, in my boredom or going to the bathroom or something, I'm like,

I want to learn a new fact in the, in the, you know, um, so that's, that's what's so I don't like I, but I almost want to, if we have to live with this thing, if, if we have to live with this crack pipe in our pockets, I almost want it to be next to my, this thing, if we have to live with this crack pipe in our pockets, I almost want it to be next to my, you know, people say, don't put it in your bedroom, put it downstairs. But I do, I don't know. And I know Stephen Sinek said, just go buy an alarm clock. They're five bucks. I don't know. It's just convenient to have my phone with the alarm clock. I listen to podcasts. Well, you you know while i'm going to sleep sometimes um

yeah i would almost rather have the discipline of having it right there next to my head to wake up and not touch it till noon that's what john john mark says he doesn't touch his till i think 11 o'clock is when he first checks his phone i'm like i almost want the the rather than lock it away so i can't touch it i almost want to cultivate that the habits of looking at it right there and saying yeah i'm not going to touch it until 11 or whatever. Yeah. I think, I think that's where we're trying to go. Right. Where we, again, like you said, we don't have to physically lock it or ourselves away because the pull is so

strong. I mean, it's, you know, it's funny. You're calling it a crack pipe, but like in reality, that's when you, that's when, you know, you've sort of really beaten the addiction is like, man, you could see the crack pipe right in's when you, that's when, you know, you've sort of, um, really beaten the addiction is like, man, you could see the crack pipe right in front of you. You're like, you know what? I don't need it, you know? And yeah. So I think that's where we're trying to go. And I just think for every person, we've got to develop steps. Like what are those steps we've got to take to sort of detox from this thing and, and lose our digital addictions. And it's probably going to look differently, you know, for most people.

and lose our digital addictions. It's probably going to look differently, you know, for most people. Yeah. Depending on the stage of life. We need more training. I mean, gosh, again, it's like if this is such a significant piece of our spiritual formation, then I just think we need to be talking about it a lot more. I mean, I often encourage parents. If I wrote a book on my failures as a parent it'd be a

multi-volume set okay so um the one area that i feel like oh i'm glad we made this decision is you know we have three teenagers three teenage girls and they have phones but there's no social media we we don't allow they do have this one app that's kind of social media-ish or whatever, but not real. It's not, doesn't have the same kind of, and I'm like, man, that, that, if any parent with a preteen, pre-phone kid asked me one piece of parenting advice, that, that would probably be it. Because once they have it, it's really hard to take it away.

And parents out there listening and saying, yeah, I wish I didn't. I, sorry, I don't know. I don't know what to say. I mean, it's really hard to take it away. And parents out there listening and saying, yeah, I wish I didn't. I, sorry, I don't know. I don't know what to say. I mean, it's really hard to take it away. It probably going to backfire, probably going to push them away relationally from you if you say no more Instagram, but you can tell a 10 year old, 11 year old, 13 year old, whatever they get the, you know, you can disciple them in, into that. And I just, I, I've seen so much more life, lack of depression, anxiety, comparison, all this stuff in my kids. Specifically because of this, they don't, they're free from it. They don't have to battle that. It's really liberating.

And now they, I think at first it was kind of hard. All my friends have Instagram, all this stuff. But now it's like, they're kind of like, look at it like, yeah, all my friends are depressed, anxious, lonely, and addicted to their phones. And thank you for sparing me from that. No, that's awesome. Yeah. I think we have to be, especially for parents, you know, I'm a parent of a four and a half year old and one and a half year old. We just have to be aware of how, um, insidiously addictive these things are and how quickly they become addictive. So my wife and I actually, our whole family,

my wife and I and our two kids, we just took a trip and there was about a five-hour flight. This was just a few weeks ago. And we don't give our daughter, our four-and-a-half-year-old, either of our kids, they don't have access or any experience with digital devices hardly ever really let them yeah we don't let the ipad so here's the thing this was the longest flight we were going to take with our family we'd never taken a flight this long before

so my wife and i you know we're panicking we're like how are they going to handle a five-hour flight it's going to be disaster so we bought an ip. We actually didn't own an iPad until a few weeks ago. Bought an iPad. I downloaded a couple of movies for her. And then I downloaded this Dr. Seuss. She loves reading. And so I downloaded this Dr. Seuss library where all the Dr. Seuss books are on there. So we're on the flight. And on the flight there and on the flight back, she spent probably an hour on each flight reading Dr. Seuss books. When we got home, it like, I literally, I saw my four and a half year old have to detox from an iPad four and a half

where she's like for two days, she's just like, I want Dr. Seuss on the iPad. I want Dr. Seuss on the ipad and it's you know it sounds harsh but it really is that crack pipe mentality where it's like oh my gosh like my daughter from just two little flights became addicted now thankfully she's detoxed she's not asking for it anymore and we like packed the ipad away and we actually haven't touched it in the last couple weeks but um it's real man that's a real haven't touched it in the last couple of weeks, but it's real, man. That's a real thing. You know, it's the design of digital technologies and the machines by which we access digital. We just have to be aware as parents.

Even without social media, my kids are on, they're on their phone, you know, watching this or do they do a lot of photography or pictures or just, or even YouTube, they do get on YouTube, which can have its own problems. It's just that the social component isn't there, or I guess it could be, but it's not nearly like Instagram or something like that. So yeah, man, gosh, parenting in 2020 is knocking us faint hearted. So again, your book, Jay, comes out in March, Analog Church, Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age. Also, you can find out more about Jay at jaykimthinks.com, right? Is that the best place to find you for speaking podcasts and all that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. I co-host a podcast, part of the Regeneration Project. You've been a part of that with us. And so everything I do, our church and sermons and speaking things in the book, it's all right there. You still do it with Isaac, I see. That's awesome. I do. Yeah, man. He's my partner in crime. I love him. Oh, he's so awesome. I got to have him on the podcast. Yeah, absolutely. He's the best. He's, you you know one of my smartest friends so anything smart i say 75 chance i just got it from isaac i love that that he's a i love it when i hear about

pastors that are just incredibly intelligent widely read and they're not sucked away in the academy somewhere that's isaac is just such a thoughtful dude that's right yep and he's still have dreads that's even better that he's got. He does. Yeah. That's, that's his trademark. You know, I can't imagine him without it. So, Oh man,

Jay, thanks so much for being on the show. Really appreciate it, man. Preston. Thank you.