Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1157: The Digital Fast: Dr. Darren Whitehead

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Originally from Australia, Dr. Darren Whitehead has lived in the United States for over 25 years.  He is the founder and Senior Pastor of Church of the City with several locations across Nashville. He earned his Doctorate from Capital Seminary and Graduate School. Darren lives with his wife, Brandy, and their three daughters in Franklin, TN. Darren recently released his book The Digital Fast: 40 Days to Detox your Mind and Reclaim what Matters Most, which you can read about on: thedigitalfast.com Darren is currently taking the mega church he pastors through their second 40 day digital fast!  Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, I want to let you know that I have a book coming out in March of 2024. It's called Exiles, The Church in the Shadow of Empire. If you've been listening to me for more than like five seconds, you've probably heard me use the phrase exile or, you know, that we are exiles living in Babylon. And, you know, that's something I've said for many years. And so this book is kind of the culmination of my thinking through the question, what is a biblical theology of a Christian political identity? So this book does just that. It looks at how the people of God throughout scripture navigated the relationship with the various nations and empires that they were living under in order to cultivate a framework for how Christians today should view their relationship

with whatever state or empire that they are living under. So I invite you to check it out. It's available for pre-order now. Again, the name is Exiles, the Church in the Shadow of Empire. Check it out. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology on the Round. My guest today is Darren Whitehead, who is the founding pastor and leader of Church of

the City in Franklin, Tennessee. pastor and leader of Church of the City in Franklin, Tennessee. He's also the author of the recent book, The Digital Fast, 40 Days to Detox Your Mind and Reclaim What Matters Most. Darren is a pastor of a very large church. He is a megachurch pastor. And last year, he helped lead his church into a 40-day digital fast. I'm laughing because I'm like, how do you get thousands of people in a mega church to stay off their phones for, uh, 40 days? And he wrote a book kind of documenting this. He also has, uh, created a website called, uh, the digital fast.com. If you are a church leader or just anybody who wants to, um, learn more about how to do this, I would encourage

you to check out thedigitalfast.com and his book, The Digital Fast. And yeah, that's what we talk about. We talk about physical fasting from food early on in this conversation. And then we talk about how in the world he was able to pull this off and all the many benefits that came from staying off of our phones. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Darren Whitehead. Darren, thanks so much for coming back on Theology in Raw. Super honored and excited to talk to you again. Thanks for having me, my friend. I always love hanging out.

Yeah, I was just with your brother, John Tyson, the other day in New York City. And you probably get this a lot. When I talk to you guys, you guys are so similar. Obviously, that's not just the accents, but your ministry style and stuff that energizes you. Well, he and I have been best friends for 35 years 34 years and neither of us thought that we'd move to america or become pastors or so you know there's there's an old idiom that says uh you can make new friends but you can't make old friends and uh you know he's he's been in my life for you know about 60 of my entire life and so uh uh we've just been through so many eras i mean i've known him since before he was a christian oh really before wait did you were you a christian before him i was i

was and uh we met in high school okay and we met at a christian camp and his he had like a road to damascus kind of experience i mean he was a kid that got in trouble and um you know he was funny it's like a funny silly teenager i want to know i want to know pre-christian john tyson that's what i was oh man he it like he i mean he wasn't serious like like he's got such a serious part of his personality now and uh he was he was always in a different fad like i i called him fad boy like he was into surfing until he wasn't and then he was into jean-claude van damme and he was into kickboxing and he would wake up early every morning at 6 a.m. to get his splits until he was able to do his splits.

This is like 15-year-old John. And he managed to be able to do the splits, and he was just like Jean-Claude Van Damme. He was just a different fad. It's basketball and skateboarding and all of this. So whatever he does, he's all in. He goes full boy. That makes sense.

He is all in. He goes full boy. That makes sense. He is all in. And when Jesus gripped his heart at, I think he was 16 or 17, I mean, he's been all in ever since, honestly. Like the intensity, since he became a Christian, the intensity that he has. The kingdom endeavors is really, it's real distinctive of his. You guys are both crushing it in ministry. I mean, for him to be that long in New York City is pretty remarkable and the stuff he's doing.

You're in a very different context, but doing things that are just equally remarkable. Well, I mean, that's the segue, I guess, into what we're going to talk about. I mean, so you pastor what would be called a megachurch. Didn't plan on doing that. I don't know if people remember the last time I had you on, you told your story about how you just kind of fell into this kind of massive church that you're pastoring. things in this congregation that most mega church pastors wouldn't dare to do because it's not easy to get people on board with something like a 40-day digital fast. And you've done other lengthy, you just came out of a three-week eating fast as a church where thousands of people are doing, saying no to something that is not easy to say no to let's go back to the digital fast where did this what what what would take us to the initial moment when you're like i think i want to take seriously

you know be more disciplined with our all these distractions we have in our pocket yeah well i i think you know the iphone was invented in 2007 uh it was in june and i actually bought one on the day that it that it was released um i i mean i didn't camp out the front of the apple store i'm not that guy but i i did go because i wanted to hold one and uh and so you know me and my iphone have been almost inseparable ever since uh 17 years later. And I think that there was a collective consciousness, certainly I feel this with myself,

that this digital technology has seeped its way into our lives. It didn't begin like this. It wasn't social media on your phone when you first got a smartphone. It has become more and more insidiousious and we've become more and more attached. And now it's not even surprising to go stand in line at Starbucks and every single person is on their phone and every single person in the store is staring at their phone. That's not even surprising anymore.

You know, it's just normal. And somehow we have just accepted this addiction to these little devices as somewhat normal. And so I was having lunch with a friend and he was telling me that he was about to start seeing a family therapist with his entire family. and then he said this family therapist would not even meet with us until we did a 30-day blackout no screens for 30 days and so he had two young kids and uh and he was about two weeks into it and i said how's it going and he goes honestly unbelievable like my kids are better behaved they're you know much more attentive they're They're outside playing, you know, like, and this therapist was kind of like, if you do 30 days off screens before we start meeting, a lot of the problems might be solved. Certainly, you're able to engage a whole lot more as a family. So, I was listening to this and we were getting ready to start a 21 day um fast prayer and fasting you know in our church

and and i really started to think about adding a digital detox digital fast kind of component to it but i i honestly thought they're two different ideas they're two different things fasting biblical fasting it's probably the most neglected spiritual practice in our modern day, right? No one wants to fast. It's uncomfortable. You get hangry and irritable. And yet, the Bible says in Mark 9 that there are some things that will only happen through prayer and fasting when Jesus delivered the demon from that little boy. And the disciples are like, how come we couldn't cast it out? And Jesus said, some of these things can only happen through prayer and fasting.

So that means that prayer and fasting unlocks some things that wouldn't ordinarily be unlocked or wouldn't any other way be unlocked. So going into a season of fasting as a church, I did not want to say, hey, we're going to do a digital fast and we're going to do a food fast because some people would choose one or the other. And I really wanted people to begin the year by having a biblical New Testament fast, you know, like what Jesus did 40 days before commencing his ministry. So I wanted to separate the ideas, but they both seemed valid to me. And so what I did with the church is I said, I'm going to start teaching on this. I'm going to start really showing how the enemy is using these devices in our lives. You know, John 1010, you know, the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. And I think that the enemy is using smartphones to steal our time, destroy our peace, and kill our relationships with one another.

It's like a pretty good strategy of the enemy, right? And somehow sort of seems obvious it's like in plain sight you know and uh and so anyway i did several messages talking about the impact of technology i used you know neuroscience i used scripture and i used uh the most persuasive ideas i could possibly come up with and and invited our church to do it together. Social scientists call this a collective action problem. And this is the idea that everyone kind of knows that social media and digital devices are having a detrimental impact on our mental health. And yet no one wants to step back

from them because they're afraid they're going to get left out. It's fear of missing out. It's FOMO. You know, these devices have become the doorway to our relational world. And, you know, they don't want to get off social media or forget someone's birthday or, you know, miss out on scrolling cat videos or something, you know? And so, no one wants to do it. What's interesting is that to address a collective action problem, you can do it with collective action, like a large group of people doing it together. So, you can do a digital fast by yourself, but you're kind of the only one that's getting left out, right? If you do a digital fast with

your family or with your small group or with your entire church then it's sort of like your friend group is doing it as well you like experience the whole thing together as a community and it's actually a lot easier to do so it's a little as you said so yeah if yeah if all your friends are fasting too then you're not by definition, you're not, you shouldn't have much FOMO other than that kind of doom scrolling on, on X or Instagram or whatever. I mean, there's those kinds of distracting things, I guess. So, so can you tell us exactly, cause when I hear a digital fast, part of me is like, okay, there's several things I could probably go without. But there's other things that I just, the nature of my job, the nature of my life. Like when I'm traveling, I'd use my Delta app and I, you know, get in my rental car and I need my Google Maps, you know, like there's, there's several things on my phone that for good or for ill, I'm not going to bring some paper map with me to Dallas, Texas to figure out how to get to the church I'm supposed to be at, you know?

So what was the nature of the digital fast that you orchestrated? Yeah, so that's a great question. And this is where the real key principles come in. You need to look at the apps on your phone through the lens of distraction versus utility. So all of the apps either serve as a distraction. is utility. So all of the apps either serve as a distraction. So think social media, news, games, email, honestly, Amazon, you know, like shopping apps, YouTube, anything where you find yourself getting just sucked into a wormhole of distraction. Get all of that off of your phone and turn your phone into a utility device. So when you're flying Delta, you don't open your Delta app

and then spend the next 45 minutes doom scrolling on Delta app. You're not playing with your calculator. You don't doom scroll on your chipotle ordering app you know like like all these apps are utility apps and they're not apps that end up sucking your time and attention they end up being ways of of facilitating your life so many uh devices so many pieces of technology so much about our legitimate interaction is using a smartphone so we want to get your smartphone back to being a place where you make phone calls you send text messages and um you know use it as a camera use it as a flashlight use as a calculator like all

of these things you got to get the distraction stuff off, reduce it back to a utility device. And then what happens is when you are mindlessly grabbing your phone to unlock it to start doom scrolling on something, you're going to realize that there's nothing cool to be looking at. And then you just put it down again. That's what I mean by a digital fast. So it's not even computer screens. It's specifically smartphones distracting apps on smartphones. That was the fat hook.

Yeah. I mean, I would certainly encourage people to, you know, sort of the main things I encourage people to do. First of all, turn off all notifications. So these are the things that are constantly interrupting your day. Turn off all notifications except for your phone ringing and maybe if you want to be interrupted with texts but you can also turn those off as well right so uh the second thing is don't have your phone sleep in your room next to you right so so many

people most people the last thing that they look at before they roll over and go to sleep and the first thing they reach for in the morning is their phone. And you think about what that's doing is you're starting your day. You unlock your phone, you see you've got six emails and so you hit on that. You're barely awake and you're already having a rush of responding to emails and things that are going on um so don't have your phone by your bed now everyone says everyone says well i use my phone as my alarm clock and so i would challenge you to try to solve this very complicated problem. Buy an alarm clock. Or at least have your phone out of reach. If you still want to use it, have it out of reach, right?

Or have it in a room that's next to your bedroom or whatever, right? So I would say that the next thing is you make your smartphone dumb, which is what I talked about, take distraction versus utility. And then basically anything that you can do on a computer screen, try to move it to that. You see, the problem is the frequency that we have. You know, the number of us who when we pull up at the stoplights while we're driving, we reach for our phone and start just scrolling, right? If you don't have that on your phone, you won't do it.

Yeah, yeah. And so the problem from my vantage point is if you want to go on Facebook on your laptop or your desktop or you want to go on Instagram, it's unlikely that you're going to burn hours and hours and hours in that context. You burn all this time because it's with you all the time. And so I'm definitely encouraging people to get all that stuff off of their phone. Certainly, some people are on social media for their jobs, you know, and part of how they spread their word about meaningful ideas or is using social media. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

But there is a difference between contributing content and consuming content. And I think that the way that you consume content, if you have it on your phone, it's very difficult to regulate the amount of time that you spend on it if it is available to you absolutely all the time. So I think that the best first step is to do a digital fast and then evaluate what you want to come back after the digital fast. In the book, I talk about Marie Kondo. Marie Kondo has got this whole idea of simplifying your life and cleaning out your closet.

And she has this idiom where you pick up a piece of clothing and you ask, does this spark joy in me? And if it doesn't, you throw it out. And if it does, you keep it. Well, I'm suggesting you do the same thing with the apps on your phone after 40 days of getting your head clear of removing all of the visual junk food from your life then ask yourself the question do i want instagram back on my phone and for me the answer has been no i've actually permanently removed social media from my phone it doesn't mean i'm not active uh at different times on social media i just not on

my phone it's just it's just not good to have that access all the time how do you upload of if you do post something on instagram do you do it on your computer or you can do it on your computer you can do it on a uh you can have a designated uh ipad oh okay oh yeah as as another option or or there are times where i will put it on my phone post something and then delete it off my phone oh really okay wow yeah why not just keep it and be and just say i'm not gonna look at it or is it just it's too tempting it's just easier to keep it off well everyone's got to come up with that themselves right so i i have found that if i have distraction apps on my phone i am not as good dad not as good a husband i am i am more likely to numb myself with this device and and what i, generally, if we have an unpleasant feeling, I feel ashamed of

myself for something. I feel anxious about something. I feel afraid. I feel like a lot of stress about a certain situation that I've got to handle. That's an unpleasant feeling. If I've got a device where I can distract myself, then I generally, rather than feel that unpleasant feeling, I'm going to look at something that is going to numb my brain from that pain. And that's how generally people are using these devices. And so we end up being less aware of how we're really doing, let alone the fact that we're not asking the Spirit of God to speak to us in this moment. We're looking at trivial things. We're filling our heads with clutter.

It's like eating a bunch of visual candy, you know? And what happens? candy, you know? And what happens? When you eat a bunch of junk food, it temporarily satisfies your hunger. But at the end of it, you're kind of like, what am I doing with my life? You kind of feel shame. And so, a lot of people are trying to soothe themselves. But if you use social media to do that, instead of bringing relief, it generally brings regret because you kind of lift your eyes after 46 minutes and you kind of go, what am I doing? What a wicked waste of time, you know? So that's why. And honestly, I don't even feel FOMO about social media on my phone anymore. I feel JOMO.

I feel it's the joy of missing out. And so it's a better life not having social media on my phone. It's JOMO. I am delighted to be missing out on all of that junk. I see it like when I go on Twitter. Is X really going to – I don't know if anybody is ever actually going to call it X. Anyway. Time will tell, I guess.

I don't know. It's just – yeah, that was a dumb move, I think, the rebrand. It's so funny because everyone says the same thing. They go X formally known as Twitter. It hasn't worked if you're saying that. When I say I tweeted something the other day, I didn't even say I X something. That's just so – I can't – I don't I didn't want to say I X something. That's just so awkward. I don't know.

We'll see. Time will tell. Anyway, when I go on, I look at Twitter. It's like a window into this world that is not real. Or it has the scent of realness. But it's its own thing. And when I go and I talk to my neighbor or i drive down the street or i go to this store like go to the coffee like when i live a normal embodied life it just looks and feels and sounds so vastly different than this weird

world of twitter that's filled with mostly real people and some you know russian bots or whatever you know and it's hard to sometimes tell the difference um but it's like every time i go in it just feels like it's just like is this why am i even here like you you get angry within seconds everybody's yelling and screaming it's the same people over and over there was that study that came out of that i think it yeah i think it said something like 25 i don't quote me on this – 25% of Americans have a Twitter account. But like 80% or 90% – or no, like 7% of users are responsible for like 90% of the tweets or whatever. So you're this world.

Everyone else is just watching. Yeah, yeah. So it's like all these voices represent like a tiny percentage of actual humanity and then there's people that think like this is the real this is like a mirror of the real world like it's actually not not at all like it's just you know yeah it's it's honestly it's it's like a modern day roman coliseum right it's getting people to fight with each other for the entertainment of everyone else. And so the social media companies are incentivized to get people fighting. Fighting is what breeds traffic and an audience and entertainment, and then they sell advertising as a result of that.

But, I mean, it's Twitter especially. Twitter is a cesspool, bro. I don't think I have ever gone on Twitter and felt better afterwards. We all know that. Like that's such a well-known thing. And yet, do people that are so active and they just kind of live their life on Twitter,

do they not know it or they just don't care? It's just so funny. I want to tell people, you know, we all joke about you right right right well i i mean some people uh uh they just thrive on conflict yeah and so they they really love it you know um and other people make a living from twitter you know i mean they're all different, right? Twitter, Twitter, it seems to be a lot more anger. Instagram is, is, is decimating teenage girls.

You know, the research is in, it's interesting, uh, up until that 2020, there was not conclusive research on the impact of social media on society, particularly on teenagers teenagers but that is not true anymore there is now clear research there that that that shows that social media especially is having very big impact on the mental health of teenage girls it's teenage girls and boys but girls the research is so specific and a lot of this is from uh cited by jonathan height he's one of the leading uh voices on on the impact of social media and society right now and he says that what is most dangerous is if a teenage girl goes through puberty with social media that that sort of moment in time being accompanied by social media is is very very destructive so his whole thing is that there should be no social media before the age of 16 that that is his suggestion based on research and he says you should have a smartphone before 14, which is high school.

The first phone that a parent should give is not a smartphone. Now, I didn't do this. This advice wasn't around when my kids were entering these years. And so I did what a lot of people did. When my eldest daughter was old enough to be able to do after school sports or have sleepovers at friends' houses. I found an old iPhone in a junk drawer and I reactivated it and gave it to her. And so if I had my time over, I would give a flip phone, a dumb dumb phone a light phone um a gab phone like there are these other uh devices that are out there a child is going to be excited to get any kind of

device even to make phone calls and texts let's not give them the most powerful piece of technology that's ever been created as their first device adults have a hard time regulating their behavior on these smartphones give them to to a child whose brain hasn't even developed yet it's it's sort of madness when you step back from it a little bit we we did notes we do no social media till 18 i i rarely if ever get parenting advice unless people drag it out of me i just parenting such a it's so hard it's so hard it's a wild west and every kid's different every adult's different every dynamics different so i just i resist saying all parents should do this whatever except for this one this is one area and i don't want to shame parents that

like kind of like you said like like, gosh, I've already downed that whole rabbit hole and I can't go back. It is hard to go back. You give me Instagram and take it away a year later. That'd be a lot harder. And I, you know, but the one parenting advice I would say is if, you know, before your kids are teenagers, don't give them social media. social media. This episode is sponsored by Green Chef. Green Chef is a CCOF certified meal kit company that delivers whole food for your whole body. They're committed to providing a holistic

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would that be yeah how do you get a decent percentage of that population to go 40 days on a digital fast maybe just take us back when did you do this and how did it go? Did you get pushback? What was the feedback like? So we did it for the first time last year in May. We're actually currently doing it right now for a second time in the season of Lent leading up to Easter. So I didn't get significant pushback. I mean, obviously obviously people can participate or not participate i'm not monitoring their apps or anything like that but i was i was definitely trying to be persuasive that if not now then when you know almost every person i would say

if you've ever have you ever done a digital fast almost every person says the same thing no but i need to and so then my thing is like well it's easier to do it if we do it together so join us you know and and give people guidance on on what to do some people don't watch television at all either um and so this sort of like get off all of the screens. It depends on what people do for a living as well. I mean, most people are going to need to do email for their job. I take email off of my phone for the digital fast. I have no email on my phone right now. That was the most anxiety producing thing to begin with for me. And that is because I feel like I get a ton of email, and most people do. And I thought, man, if I don't check this multiple times a day,

if I'm not doing inbox maintenance, then by the time I sit down to look at email, I'm going to have so many in there and it's just going to take me forever and I'm going to be late responding to people and all that. And for me, that has proven not to be true. It is so much more efficient because we all get emails. We get spam emails. We get newsletters that we may or may not be interested in reading.

We get sales things. We get people that are just sending stuff FYI. You don't need to respond. get people that are just sending stuff fyi you don't need to respond well imagine highlighting all of those at the same time and hitting delete rather than checking your inbox 65 times a day every time you stop to do something you just flip it open and you check it it's actually way more efficient to check email like twice a day rather than 60 times a day so that ended up being really helpful the way i persuaded people to do it the way i invited people to do it really was to show the impact of smartphones on our society and no one's disagreeing with me you know

a hundred percent of people who do it are glad they did no one's going man i really wish that i i really miss all those hours um scrolling on reels you know like i like no one misses that stuff it's it's it's like eating clean it's like not eating junk food you know when you when you don't eat junk food and everyone else is afterwards you're like happy with your decision. You're not feeling like you missed out. This is what boggles my mind is we all know that it's stealing our joy. It is not good for our mental or spiritual or even physical health because I think it's all intertwined. We've all seen the social dilemma.

We know that we are like pawns in a greater machine that's using us for our – it's using our fear and our attention for the sake of somebody else's pocketbook. We know all these things. And we're all like, yeah, I haven't done it, but I should. I've said it, dude. I said – and even earlier we're talking about Twitter. Like there's times when I get sucked into that vortex, even though I know it's not the real world, you know? Right.

So why? Why? Is it just the nature of addiction? Addictions often win out when it comes to willpower versus something that's really addictive. It's just most times the addiction is going to win out. Or why don't we do? I think it's a number of things. I mean, I can explain it from scripture and I can explain it from science.

So scripture, I think, go all the way back to Genesis 2 and 3. Let's go back to the fall. The lie was you can be like God, right? And so God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. God is all-present. He is all-knowing, and he's all-powerful, right? A smartphone technology simulates these attributes. You see, you get all of this knowledge, right? You get knowledge of what's happening all over the world. You get knowledge of what's happening with your friends that you went to

high school with. You used to have your relational world used to be for almost all of human history. It has been your family or the village that you're in or the tribe that you're in. your family or the village that you're in or the tribe that you're in. What's happened is because of social media, because things like Facebook, you accumulate from different eras of your life, all of these relationships. And to try to maintain them is exhausting. Having all this information is exhausting. It trying to be god but you're not god so that's just the knowledge side the the all present side is you know your physical location

has never been less relevant in history than it is right now i can send my brother who lives in australia a text and he gets it instantly I can send a picture of what I'm doing. You know, like these devices give us an ability to be able to see certain things and we're not even there. You can check cameras and security cameras and all that kind of stuff. It gives an extension. It gives an illusion of omnipresence. And then there's so much power with these devices as well. There's power to cancel

people on social media there's power to control technology in your home you open your garage door you board an airplane you start your car you know like so we have we become powerful as andy crouch calls it magic we have this this magic with these devices. The reason that these are having a detrimental impact on our mental health is that there is a temptation going all the way back to the fall to try to be like God, but we're not God. And trying to be like God when you're not God is exhausting. I think that that is part of it. I think secondarily, like I mentioned earlier, the thief comes to steal,

kill and destroy. He's stealing our time. He's killing our relationships. He is destroying the peace that we have and he's using it through a device. So I think there's a legitimate opposition. The enemy is using this. And the enemy is legitimately killing children, by the way. The numbers of suicide that come from a result of a new kind of crime called financial sextortion.

Financial sextortion is the idea that someone impersonates a boyfriend or a girlfriend, they reach out to an underage child, they trick them into sending explicit photographs or video content, then they extort them for money, and then when they don't have the money or they can't pay or whatever, these kids have killed themselves. There was a judicial hearing recently where they had the social media company's CEOs there, and there was a bunch of families holding up photographs of their kids that have taken their own lives.

It's really awful. It's devastating, literally taking our kids. From a science standpoint, social media uses the same scientific algorithms as slot machines in casinos it's called the variable ratio schedule that's what the technology is called the the pulling down on a slot machine and the clicking hitting refresh on your phone it's the same action but what it is is it's not that it's that the results are predictable it's that it's the same action. But what it is, is it's not that the results are predictable, it's that it's unpredictable. And that's what makes it addictive. So just like walking away from a slot machine, you have that conscious thought like, what if the next time I pulled

on that arm, I was going to be a millionaire and I missed it. People keep doing that. Well, the same thing is true with content on social media. It's like, man, I just saw some magic trick on an Instagram reel. And then I'm looking and I'm seeing someone hang gliding. And then I'm seeing someone, a clip from Seinfeld. And then I click and I see something. It's the variable ratio schedule. It is all of this content that is that the algorithms from the social media companies have specifically designed to be the most tempting to your particular feed it is it is designed to exploit your weaknesses individually no two feeds are the same yeah the one that you will have will be the most tempting for you then just add that to the fact that we have these devices with us all the time, all the time. And it's just far too tempting to be able to regulate.

That is true of adults and that is true of children. That's the eeriest thing. When I go on Instagram, I swear, and I will have had a conversation with somebody about visiting an island or something that I've never searched. I've never – I haven't actually typed anything in. And I will get advertisements that's related to something that I had a conversation about. And I just talked to a buddy of mine. Oh, yeah. He can hear you. I mean it knows what you're talking about.

That's terrifying, isn't it? It's terrifying. And it's angry because what you're talking about and that's that's terrifying it's terrifying and it's angry because i i just i don't like i'm the type of probably a lot like you and you know like i don't like to be put in a box don't tell me how to think don't tell me what to do don't don't use me as part of some cog in your wheel like but i i get sucked in but i am being used you know and and luckily because most of my doom scrolling is like surfing videos and and otters on instagram so right now if i i've got to pull up right now no yeah if i went to my search i've got oh a bunch of dodgers too because the season's gonna start up here yeah tons of shohei otani um actually it's mostly dodgers now there's some health stuff that's pretty much all dodgers

it used to be all surfing and then the last like few weeks i've been like looking at more dodgers stuff and now it's all there's some boxing videos that's weird taylor swift which she i think taylor's just probably on everybody's feed anyway um but that's so yeah it is follow is trailing me like who are you like how dare you right right so so it is a it is an unfair strategy right i mean like they're playing dirty yeah and well no it's not hidden this is not not hidden. No, no. And the outcome is, you know, I was watching my daughter play volleyball a few weeks ago. And when I walked into the room where she was playing, I looked up on the bleachers and every single parent was staring at a phone. And, you know, I don't say that to shame people i've been one of those parents i've been one of those parents too and i've been one of those parents too so something

as big as this it's difficult to know what to do and and so i'm suggesting a digital fast is a good start because it will reboot your relationship with technology. And so the Digital Fastbook is really, it's 40 days. It's four movements of 10 days. The first 10 days is detach and we're like helping people detach from their devices. And what invariably happens, you delete all this distraction stuff off their phone and it's a little unpleasant. I mean, it is some form of addictive behavior. And it's unpleasant. And just like if you're

withdrawing from sugar or alcohol or something else, it's uncomfortable before it gets better. So the first 10 days is detached. And we have devotionals in the book that walk through all 40 days, helping sort of guide people through it. The second 10 days is discover. And what will happen is when you are detached from your device, you will discover all kinds of things that you've not noticed. So it's like rebooting your senses. You know, all of a sudden you smell things, you see things,

you taste things, you feel things differently, and you pay more attention to yourself, how you're doing. These devices have us so numb when someone says to you, how are you doing or how are you really doing? A lot of us, the answer is like, I don't know. I have no idea. I don't have enough discretionary thought to check in with myself to even know how I'm doing. So you learn more about yourself. You learn more about the relationships. You sort of reawaken to the people around you. And I think there's really a great opportunity to turn up the voice of God as well. When you're turning down the distraction of these devices,

you can turn up the voice of God. And it really becomes a spiritual practice. So that's the way it is. It is detach, discover. The third 10 days is delight. And generally, after you're in this about 20 days, you start to prefer it. It becomes delightful.

I remember last time I did this my 13 year old daughter was jumping on the trampoline and when she wanted me to come watch her and at this point i wasn't even carrying my phone around with me anymore i used to carry it around with me everywhere i had it in a drawer and i had it closed you you know? And so I went outside and it was an amazing experience. It was like my senses had all been reset. I could feel the grass under my feet. I could look and see that the sun was about to set. It was about 70 degrees. It was a cool breeze. The air smelled sweet. And I could just hear the squeal and the delight in my in my daughter as she was bouncing up and down and flipping and saying watch me daddy and I had this conscious thought this is a better life

it's better so that's the the third movement is delight the fourth movement is determined you need to determine what things are going to look like after you get through this season. And that's the Marie Kondo. It's what am I going to bring back after these 40 days? What is the result? So you did this last May with your church. Do you know what general percentage of people in your church did it or intended to do it? I have no way of knowing percentage-wise.

I can say anecdotally thousands of people did it, and they did a variation of it. Some people threw away their smartphone for the entire month and bought a flip phone or bought a light phone and used a different kind of phone. Thousands of people did it. No one says they don't need to do it, which is really interesting for me. What also is interesting is there's sort of two groups of people did it no one says they don't need to do it which is really interesting for me

what what also is interesting is there's sort of two groups of people who reflect since doing it uh one the first group uh i'm amazed that in three days i put all the stuff back on my phone and i'm equally as absorbed in it again. Sort of like, this is so addictive. My habits were great for that 40 days, but now I am submerged in this stuff again, right? So that's the first group. It's sort of like you do a digital detox and then they have a digital retox and they've got it all back in but a surprisingly large group of people have permanently adopted some things as a result of the digital fast for example lots of people have not put social media back on their phone okay and and a lot of people didn't put email

back on their phone i put email back on my phone and i have a love hate relationship with email I put email back on my phone and I have a love-hate relationship with email, mainly hate, but maybe it's a hate-hate relationship. But particularly when I'm traveling and I've got to pull up details and all of that kind of stuff, it's not easy to not have email. So generally what I do, I have an iPhone and I've deleted all the apps I can delete and then there's two apps I can't delete, Email and Safari. And so I go into screen time, and I turn those off so I can't even see them. Oh, really?

Okay. I didn't know you could do that. You can turn off so we can't see. Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there are certain – the email would be tough.

There are – you know, John Mark Comer, mutual friend, I think he checks his email once a week or something. I know. I know if I email on Tuesday, I'm not going to get a response until next week. Well, and he's not much better on texting either. But what's funny is all of us who are friends with him know that. So, you know, like if I text him and I don't get back for three days, I'm not even surprised. Yeah, totally.

But even he would say like, I there's certain people that um they have certain jobs but it's just that's not possible there there has been several times when you know whether i was away from my computer or something and there was just some last like some not crisis but like i needed to email this like today otherwise it was other people were going to be really affected with work you know so there are yeah there are that'd be hard for me to permanently delete like email other things obviously social media could definitely get away with that you know um and i go back and forth i'll delete them from my phone then put them back on i kind of had this you know back and forth and

yeah for me it's the information i just like and we talked about this last time we talked about this topic but uh you know for me it's the it's the information it's being in the know it's which could be like you know it could be twitter like hey what's what's the latest kind of like blow up on on twitter or you know what's going on the news or what's going on you know or how much you know how far do birds fly south for the winter you know you know i'm constantly just just random information my mind constantly just have all these questions and I'm like, you know, how many steps did I take today? And when is it my next flight? It's just, but even that can be just that kind of, well, you said like that,

just that, that endless flood of information can be addictive. Even if it's not just doom scrolling, even that, even that can be super addictive, you know? Um, that's, that's where I, I think I struggle the most with. So the, but so the the the book is going to help it helps people um is this primarily for like church leaders to do this with their church is that your kind of your primary audience um i want people to do it as a church because i think that the church is uniquely positioned to lead society at large with this and it's easier to do it as a church so um the book is not written to church leaders the book is written to christians okay i mean it is

it is making the case for why we should do this it's describing what it is and how to do it and then there's a 40-day daily guide on devotionals and so forth as you make your way through it. And then there's a guide on how you create your own digital rule of life coming on the other side of it. Like what does that look like? It gives some guidance on all of that as well. So it's not written to pastors.

It's written to believers. And, you know, we gave a book out to every person for free in my church so that they could participate for the season of Lent. We just gave them away. That's a lot of free books to your publisher. Wow. Yeah. Well, we had a donor who really believes in this.

I said that they wanted to pay for it. So that's what we did. Awesome. My buddy, Evan Wickham, pastors a church out in San Diego. He's because of your book. I don't know if it's, I think he was, it was something he was already interested in. Your book came at the perfect time.

So he's taking this church, I think for Lent actually right now through, through the 40 day fast. So yeah. Well, yeah. Well, dude, thanks so much for being on the show again, man. Always love talking with you. And I really hope people will take this seriously. I'm already convicted just by talking to you again. I feel like I'm constantly, I go back and forth. It's like, I know it's not helpful for me. And I go through

periods of time where I'm disciplined and other periods of time where I'm weak and I'm not disciplined. And so it's just yet another good reminder to let's pursue joy. Let's pursue delight. Let's pursue human flourishing you know we know that being addicted to our phones is not producing that so we've built this into the into the rhythm of our church uh you know annually we're doing this now it's sort of like it's not sort of a one and done i feel like people need to do this every year you know absolutely so we're choosing the season of lent but you could do it in the summer. You could do it in January. You could do it in the fall. You can do it anytime you want, really.

But we're using Lent as a season to turn down distraction and turn up the voice of God as we get ready for Resurrection Sunday. Awesome. Awesome, man. All right, dude. Thanks for being on the show, man. Really appreciate you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.