Where Mission Meets Momentum - Ben Elmore | Faithly Stories

00:01 - Speaker 1 We have to say wait, what is it that we want done? And how does what we want done fit within our biblical worldview of how community and relationships between each other and God should be? And making sure that we put that constraint on technology. Don't put the constraint on technology. It will do what it's naturally made to do, which is to drive towards a really consumeristic self-service model, and that is where we can get lost, because we lost it because we just didn't pay attention. 00:31 - Speaker 2 Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys, through their ministry work and everyday life Brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders. Learn more at faithly.co. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired on the Faithly Stories podcast. 00:58 - Speaker 3 Ben Elmore, welcome to the Faithly Stories podcast. 01:02 - Speaker 1 Thank you for having me. 01:03 - Speaker 3 Yeah, it's a real pleasure, Ben. You've built nine different startups with over $20 billion of value, and now you're the CEO of Servant, which helps amplify the impact of kingdom organizations. I'd love to start with this question what was the moment you realized that God was calling you to bridge that gap between technology and the kingdom? 01:26 - Speaker 1 That's a fun question. There was a period of time where I was just pursuing kind of the next big impact project for my prior company, so all my work over those nine startups was done as a consultant to these organizations. And so, and what I found is I had a moment in time where I just got so focused on what I was doing and in my first part of the year, my quiet time and just seeking God, what do you have for me? He gave me a strong word. He says, Ben, look up. And when I did, he says I have so much more I have for you to do. And that was a moment that just really reset the trajectory of what I was working on and helped me understand the seasonal shift that was coming. 02:22 And over a period of a couple years, and as I started to really lean into what he was calling me to, I had the opportunity to start to serve these different ministry leaders that are out there in a purely advisory way way. And as I'm serving them, what I recognized is that there was no organization inside of the faith ecosystem, no consulting organization that had made an exclusive focus on the church and when I think of church, I think of parachurches and nonprofits and churches and faith, tech companies and Christian marketplace leaders, folks that really have a Christ-centered vision. I looked around and said there's no one here. And then every other industry that I've worked in, you had these elite firms like a McKinsey or a IDEO or a Silicon Valley product group or Teviti, my other company, that were just partnered with organizations and helped them really accelerate their growth and impact. And I looked around, so there's no one inside of the church space that was doing that. 03:37 And that's when that moment of realization, like well, Ben, this is what I have for you to do. And you know, it's almost like my eyes were fully opened, you know, after a two-year journey of just being obedient and serving, and I looked around and said we don't have these institutions and if not me, who? And what I found is that the power of platforms to attract talent together and to then bind them together through that shared reputation and shared mission that creates such a unifying effect and an application effect that that need for that became really obvious. And so that's what we're trying to do with Servant. 04:17 - Speaker 3 Wow, that's really cool and that really resonates with me as someone who sort of transitioned from you know, a very sort of secular job to one that is entirely kingdom focused. So that pivot though, let's talk about that pivot from traditional tech to serving ministries it's not typical, right, Like you and I may have done it, but it's not the typical story. How did you find that transition, Not necessarily professionally, but like personally and spiritually? 04:49 - Speaker 1 Yeah Well, I found it to be one of the most satisfying things I've ever done. God has wired me to really pursue. Excellence is to go after the hardest problems I can find and almost prove myself against my ability to do it. It also makes me a glutton for punishment at times, and so here I am. 05:17 Made this way, and I grew up in a time period where the moment you said I'm a Christian business, that was basically permission to be mediocre, and so these were second rate, third rate companies, and I had this disdain at the time. I'm like I don't want to be like that, and so I. This is flawed thinking, by the way, so I'm acknowledging that. But this was the bias that all of a sudden, that set in and snuck in on me that I didn't realize, and so faith has been a big part of my life since my early 20s. I described it as being fantastically lost and fantastically found in a moment, and so I try to live my life as a leader, as a father, as a husband, out of that gift that I feel like I've received. And so I ran a company that wasn't Christian but was run by a Christian, but I really was careful about like I didn't want to run a Christian company because my perception was that that was meant, that I would be second rate and perceived that way. And that wasn't the way that I was built. And in this transition over, what I found is God has reset so many of so much of that bad thinking that I carried into it. I, in one of my times with him, he, I in one of my times with him. He, in the spirit, speaks to us in different ways and he's like well, redeem it, Ben Go show what an elite firm that is proudly and boldly Christian looks like. And I had that moment where all of a sudden I was like that is the most obvious thing that I'd never thought about. And that's sometimes when you're not in that flow. 07:08 It's easy to kind of build up these walls or scales on our eyes that I've found as I've pursued God's calling in my life in this area, I feel like I'm just those are shedding in such a constant way and because servant has it chosen and this is for us, I don't like everyone has to find out I say that we, I encourage people to be obedient to what God's calling them to do and for us it was exclusive to the church. 07:34 What I'm able to do on a near daily basis is sit down and say what is the inspired vision that God has given you, and to hear the stories of where that vision came from, what God is asking you to carry, and then say how do I then, with every ounce of my being, support you in the pursuit of that, whether that's through encouragement, because we all need it, whether it's through connecting you with people that I know to be able to sort of give you the relational equity or the relational lift you need, whether giving you insights from my experience from working within the church or working outside the church. 08:09 And then, in some cases, it's like whether you say, hey, Ben, can you get on the field with me and run a play or two and own something with me, I just get to go and just freely lean into those moments, and that is such a deep well to pull from, and so that transition over it's been one of those things where I feel like the scales on my eyes have been lifted and my heart, on a regular basis, is just full of awe and wonder of what God is doing in and around the world. 08:38 - Speaker 3 Wow, that's so beautiful. Thanks for sharing that, Ben. Can you give us maybe a couple of examples or case studies of where you've been a part of this transformation, of bringing about this kingdom impact with a ministry or with an organization that's hired you? 08:58 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so there's. Let me give you a few of them, and what I found in working in the private markets is that there's no greater way that we scale and scale efficiently. So that's you know. So I had the front row seat of helping people scale. I had the front row seat of watching them think through new, entirely new ways of doing work and opening up whole new revenue streams. You know, productizing things that they never thought about before, and so that's the power that I've seen technology and emerging market trends bring. 09:47 And when I come alongside a leader, I'm trying to hear what's that inspired vision and saying, okay, given what you have and given what's now available in the digital space and the technology, now AI, how do we apply? What are the different strategies and vision? What's the different strategies that we can use to be able to help you pursue that? And so that's what we've called in the industry, the digital transformation, which is when you take these new tools and you bring it into the way that you work as an organization, and you typically do that either in terms of how do I scale, which is all around, how do I streamline the way I run the business and drive efficiency to free up resources so I can deploy them to other places, typically towards growth driven, which is the other half of the equation and so I just had taken a very similar framework into the churches, and so a couple of the organizations that I've worked with one of them is in the marriage space so part of my fantastically lost and fantastically found moment was when God found me and found my wife. We got married very young and a moment brought us back together and us back to Him, and so I just am in a place of constant gratitude for the way that he stepped in, and he stepped in through, actually, one of my old employees of my first company, which ended up being just a really phenomenal story. So me and my wife and I have a real passion for marriages, and so that's allowed us to really work deeply within the marriage ministry spaces. So we're working on a project right now called the Association of the Marriage and Family Ministries, with a stated goal of saying how do we put a marriage ministry in the side of every church in America? 11:34 Now, that's a massive goal, and so you can't do that purely by just hiring more and more people. That will not scale. What you have to be able to figure out is how do we sort of think about it in a new way of helping marriages, and the reason why is that I'm a very research-driven person. I believe in intuition and I believe in research as a way of sort of honing and refining ideas, so that what we do is we don't fall in love with our own, we fall in love with the things that the market needs, and so our research showed that when couples are in crisis, if another couple walks alongside of them, you reduce divorce by a factor of four. Wow, which is stunning. Yeah, my wife and I had someone that walked alongside of us. Our story was an employee challenged me, which caused me to repent, and then said why don't you come spend a weekend with me uh, with your wife and loved on us for a weekend? That reset our trajectory. So I'm on that stat, um. So we found that factor four. 12:38 We also found that when, when people are in crisis, they go to churches 50% of the time, they'll turn to clergy as the question of what do I do with my marriage and relationships? And then, finally, what we found is that 80% of the churches do not have a formal marriage ministry and know what to do when that quest comes to them. Now that's, and so if you look at this scenario, it's like, well, if you want to be able to then affect marriages and reduce divorce rate and we know that half of those in trouble will come to the clergy first and 80% don't have the tools or training or capabilities to do it if we can go ahead and help churches be equipped, that means that half the time that people show up, they'll have an answer, and we know that three quarters of those people will have, statistically, will have their marriages restored. It's the most phenomenal way in which we can look at how do we actually go after the real goal, which is, how do we reduce divorce rates inside of the church, so which I'm very passionate about. And so this is an example of walking with someone and saying how do we actually look at these big goals that have been given? 13:48 And Dr Les and Leslie Parrott are just a phenomenal couple, with God's given them this incredible vision that they carry, and it's been such a pleasure to come alongside and really think through the problem and say how do we partner with you? It's their vision, not mine. Like we, you know all like we are simply servants inside of this mix. But that's an example of how do we do that. And we do that by creating this association and then creating a series of tools that allows because I recognize that churches it's really like they have so much that demand on them and if you say, go, do one more thing, that's a hard thing to do. 14:23 But if we can create a series of tools that allow them to kind of create a marriage ministry in a box where they can configure it and it's all integrated together and they can choose their style that fits their church, with resources that are proven and that is theologically aligned with them, we give them an ability to sort of take on this additional responsibility, but without necessarily having to sort of take on a huge cost to do so of time and money, and that's what we're really trying to do. So that's an example of a ministry we've worked with, all the way from the idea into some of the building, the actual tools, you know, whether it's an assessment tool or it's an online portal, whether it's an access to an approved counseling network. So ultimately we can serve the ministry, the churches that are then serving the parishioners. So that's an example of one of the ministries that we did and how we have really grabbed hold of their vision and really made it ours. 15:21 - Speaker 3 Wow. Well, the kingdom impact of something like that sort of proliferating through the church is clear and powerful. That stat that you shared that 80% of churches don't have a marriage ministry, that is that's. I mean, that's mind-boggling when you think about. If you were to look at how many churches have a youth or a children's ministry, I bet it's the reverse right Like probably 80% of them have a children's or youth ministry. Meanwhile, marriages are the linchpin of the family, and so, wow, the need for this couldn't be more clear. That's really good. Thank you, Ben. Is there another example that you would share with our listeners of how you've worked with ministries or organizations? 16:03 - Speaker 1 Yeah. So we worked with a very large church in Texas that is going through lives in a very modern town, and what I find when I recommend people are saying, Ben, we want to really do something new and innovative, is that I have the saying which is you aren't your customer. And I know that it's weird when I've come from, because you know, just like yourself, Alicia, we've come from the private market, so we're used to the customer marketplace language, but everyone's serving somebody. You know like it's funny because of kind of how my crossover from the church to marketplace, I'll use words like who are you serving? And they're like what are you talking about? I'm like your customer. They're like I'm like, yeah, we serve people, whether you're in the marketplace or on the ministry side. So I'm like what I say is we're not our customer, and the reason why we need to realize that is that we have a bias towards what we like and that's inside the box, thinking. And so what? Instead, I say is like I need you to pull yourself out and think who do you serve, who is your audience, who is your customer and what do they need? Because we should always be responding to the felt needs of those that God has put in our care, and there's two types of felt needs. There's those that they realize they have and as you get to become more and more intimate with those, you serve the ones that they can't quite articulate, those needs they can't quite articulate yet, which is called latent needs. And so when I'm sitting down with, the first thing I say is who are we serving? And then how can we serve them and what is the felt needs that they're expressing? That should inform what it is that we decide to do, Not necessarily what we think they want, but actually what they want, because otherwise you're billing for a customer of one which is yourself, and it's hard to really make a sustainable business model off of that. 18:00 So in this case of this church in Texas, it was to sit down with them and to say you have a very young audience that is looking to say how do we engage in a more modern way? And so now the question was how do we engage in a more modern way? And so now the question was how do we engage in a more modern way? And the first question is who are you serving and what are they asking for from an engagement perspective? And so that's allowed us to sort of help give them a strategy of where is this group of people that you are serving at, what is your community that you're talking to doing that we can then say, if we go, we can go deeper and attract more people to our church because we're actually starting to meet their needs as well as serving our existing ones. 18:44 So that digital we call it the digital ministry strategy was a way that we're able to help them, because every CEO, every leader, has limited resources and they say leadership is deploying the scarce resources of the organization in the most effective way possible. That's our challenge as leaders and church leaders experience the same thing, and so by helping you be able to think in a different way, we can then deploy those resources, and that might be. I only have a budget of 100 grand or 10 grand to. I have a budget of a hundred grand or 10 grand to. I have a budget for 5 million. 19:20 It's still a finite and so that's sitting with them to sort of think through a common frameworks that give tailored responses, you know, unique responses. That's another example of the type of work that we do, and most of the time with churches we don't build anything custom, like we did for the marriage ministry. It allows us to say now that you know what you need, let's go out and find the right tools that are already in the marketplace that you can then incorporate into what you're doing, so that you're taking the advantages of other people's thinking and incorporating them in, as opposed to have to take the burden of building that yourself. 19:50 - Speaker 3 Wow, there's a lot of wisdom to unpack in what you've said. One thing that I was struck by is, it seems to me, that you help your customers to identify what matters. Whether you're a church or a para church or a nonprofit, when you're building something, you can become very passionate about building it and sort of lose sight on what matters, right? Yes, I also loved what you said about you know, you're not the customer. I find myself falling into that trap all the time at Faithfully, I think. I mean I am a Faithfully customer. I'm a leader of the church and I built Faithfully in part because I felt like I needed it. But I'm not the only one. We have a lot of different customers and I built Faithfully in part because I felt like I needed it. But I'm not the only one. We have a lot of different customers and I find myself sitting there going well, like I would prefer this button to be here or I would like this to be, but I mean it. Just that was great advice and I'm going to take it to heart. 20:47 - Speaker 1 It's one of those things we all recognize. We all have a bias, and the challenge of building great products for the marketplace that people love is to recognize that and really force yourself to sort of like, have provocative statements like I am not the customer Right To shake ourselves up. In Amazon, there's an infamous orange chair that sits in every room. It's always left like open and it says the customer has to be in the room and it allows them that visceral reminder like those in the room are still not the customer, and so it's things like that and we can't ever play a shame game. It's like yep, get it, and so it allows us to do it. And some because I've done a lot of zero to one startups you hear zero to one. 21:41 It's that idea of creating something out of nothing which I loved you and when I come alongside really innovative leaders that that exposure of this isn't right. As you said, Alicia, like I needed this very common. The best products I know start with that seminal moment where someone looks around and says it shouldn't be this way. Servant had its own man. There's no one doing this. I should do that moment. We all have that. But then we have to very quickly start to say is like why? How do I go ahead and understand what the broader market wants? Take that intuition in that moment, if I want to build it for more than just myself, and go find that out, because success that found typically is one or two degrees adjacent to the original idea. 22:17 - Speaker 2 Not math. 22:18 - Speaker 1 But you know that last 10% is 100% Outside of hand grenades and horseshoes. There is no near. You know close enough. You either got to get it or not. And that is the discipline, which is what takes a good idea, that's spoken intuition, and actually makes it a great idea that the market will accept. 22:36 - Speaker 3 Ben, I'm going to remember that, I'm going to write that down and I think ministry leaders are going to benefit from hearing that. I've heard so many, including myself, say but this was the vision the Lord gave me, this is the idea that God gave me. I think what you just said might just give people permission to go one to two degrees adjacent. I love that. Well. So, Ben, you're known for posing this question how do we activate vision? How do we navigate a digital first world without losing our spiritual DNA? I love that question. 23:27 - Speaker 1 Without losing our spiritual DNA? I love that question. Can you unpack that tension for us? A have a very unique perspective on how people should be served and a unique perspective on a very unique worldview. And here's another provocative statement that I like to say is like technology is biased because it's written by people. It also technology is simply just an automated way in which the way work should be done that's aligned to what the goals of that organization has. And so just because I say work should be done this way, it means I'm bringing bias into the equation. 24:06 And what I'm trying to get done in many cases is like I want to reach as many customers as I can and I want them to buy as much stuff from me as I can, and I want to be able to sort of have them do that on their own as much as possible. That's my goal, and so a lot of the technology decisions that are being progressed are really supporting in this consumeristic point of view, self-service, consume mindset. Now, I'm not faulting people. I mean the value I've created, you know, came from people buying stuff, you know. So I get it. But it's important to recognize like that is a worldview that is being promoted, and so, as Christians, we have to step in there and say, okay, how do we understand that? And how does that worldview, or the technology that's built to support that worldview, how can we incorporate that into ours? But making sure that we are telling that technology how we want it to work. And so, as we're moving into a digital first world, we have to kind of look at to say is like, what is the you know, the spiritual DNA piece, is to say, is like, how do we view discipleship? What is our point of view in the context of relationships? So I believe that God has created us to commune with Him directly and Him through others. There's two ways that I just happen to know, because He'll speak to me through you, sharing with me, Alicia. He'll speak to my wife, sharing with me, he'll speak to a friend and he'll speak to me directly. 25:40 So if I need to make sure, therefore, that as we are moving to digital, that it's a very natural thing for us to then say, well, here's a tool, go, do what you want, do it on your own and take the relational side out, because the technology is there for you to use. But then, all of a sudden, that concept of the communion and the community that God has ordained, he's structured for that to do. All of a sudden, we realize it's because of the convenience and the natural movement of what we've seen in a digitally connected world how easy it is to see the relationship piece come out. And so that's an example where we have to say wait, what is it that we want done? And how does what we want done fit within our biblical worldview of how community and relationships between each other and God should be? 26:34 And making sure that we put that constraint on technology. Don't put the constraint on technology. It will do what it's naturally made to do, which is to drive towards a really consumeristic self-service model. And that is where we can get lost, because it and we lost it because we just didn't pay attention, because we just didn't. And that's why I'm trying to pull people up and saying it's biased and I use that provocatively, I know, but it helps people be able to say oh right it, it has a natural way it wants to roll. In some cases it's very helpful, but in many cases it's not. 27:10 - Speaker 3 Right, Well, so I I couldn't agree with you more. This is the moment to pay attention, and I think you know the next question I'm going to ask, which is about AI, Right? So like, let's talk AI. Do you think that AI can be a tool for relationship-centered ministry? 27:27 - Speaker 1 I think it can. One of the things that is, from a technical point of view, one of the hard challenges that we've had to solve over the years is to translate human speak into computer instructions. Right, and so you're like well then, how does that actually look? Well, it's the form fields that you fill out before you hit the submit button. That is the interface between the human world and the computer language, like traditionally, you can look at. If you go back, you know AI is changing the game. Now, a lot of the apps, a lot of the screens that you would navigate, go to any website, go to any app you download, up to half of the things that you touch are really just a form of search where I'm trying to understand, Alicia, what do you want to get done so that I can then help you do that? And that's that translation. Sometimes through text, you know, fill in a form, sometimes through user navigation, to understand what is it that you want done so that I can serve you, and that creates a flow through the system. What AI has done is it's breaking down that barrier. There's this ability for us to determine intent. Structured language is really powerful. It's the breakthrough moment of what we have. If you say I can go ahead and understand if I give you a list of ingredients that you're trying to go ahead and make a meal when before, if I didn't and I can do give you a list of ingredients that you're trying to go ahead and make a meal when before, if I didn't, and I can do that through the context of the conversation that I have or even the sequencing of what I have in there. You know one cup of flour, you know a quarter cup of sugar. If I just had that list, the probability that you're looking at a recipe is really high, and so I can understand. Oh, Alicia looking to cook. I didn't have to say what do you want to make? Do you want a recipe? Now, simple illustration, right, we can do that inside of a chat. And then I can say now I understand what you want to get done. I can then determine the question that you have around that which is like what can I make with this? Well, if I hadn't actually gone ahead and said, all right, here's a what to make with my ingredients in my fridge application, where I had you list all the ingredients in a structured way and all that sort of stuff. There's no way I could have actually served you up that question. 30:06 And what AI is allowing us to do is really it's to take that, it's to kind of close that gap between the way you naturally talk and think and the way the computer can understand. What is it that you, what are you interested in doing? And that is just massive, like that's why we love these chat interfaces, because we can ask it literally anything and it can then say all right, based upon the probability of what you asked, here's answers. Now it's restricted to text and video and audio right now, but there is a large language models which would generate text messages. There's a large action models that are coming that says now that I understand what you want done, I can then take action on your behalf, which is the whole movement into the agents world that we see. But I don't have to like. 30:51 So think about how amazing that actually is in what it's allowing us to do. So now, that's the technology for it. Now, because we know technology has this natural bias of self-service. It's like, hey, Alicia, just go take this and just go do it all on your own. 31:06 What we have opportunity now for us to say is that we can choose to say this is allowing Ben and Alicia to have closer relationships, because I can sort of surface up the needs of what's going on with Ben to Alicia and then she can start to answer that in a very person-to-person, human-to-human way. And so that's where I start to see AI being such an incredible thing, because I can get so much more from our ongoing dialogue about who Ben is, what his personality is, what is his obvious needs and maybe one of the things that are likely going to be his unrealized or latent needs needs, that's the power of what, of what that technology has been able to kind of give for us and that can give clues to the person that is mentoring or discipling or is walking someone through the question of faith in a really powerful way and doesn't totally lean on that person's ability to sort of deduce that itself or try to have some sort of form, structured form, that you have to fill all this sort of data out in. 32:12 - Speaker 3 Yeah, that's good, thank you. I think we're all still trying to understand what it is in some ways and the implications, and I think hearing those types of analogies and sort of where it fits into the broader sort of tech evolution is really helpful, Ben. So thank you for that. So you know, you looked at the church ecosystem and you said there's never been a McKinsey or consulting firm specifically for the church. Do you think we need AI for the church? Like, do we need AI tools that are built specifically for the church ecosystem? 32:48 - Speaker 1 I do. I think that because it's such a powerful accelerator and AI is used in terms of the way you engage and the way that you run something. So I tend to break most of my things into those two categories. Am I coming in to help you streamline the way that you're working so you have more time to deploy elsewhere, or am I looking at this as a way for you to talk to somebody new or to engage with people more effectively? So that's kind of the growth side and the operation side, and so the church has constraints, like anyone else's. There's only so many limited amount of time. There's more and more demands being put on, so the AI use of being able to help you become more efficient is absolutely needed. 33:29 Now, the one thing that the church does need is to understand that when these is like, how do I trust, especially in something that is generative, which means that it's using probability to determine the next set of likely phrases? Is that? How do you make sure that what's being generated is aligned with values and a biblical worldview? Because a lot of these models that are created, they don't. They're not trying to weight. It's called weighting, but they're not biased. They're really the sum of like you saw this first AI when it first came out and everyone would be like, oh my gosh. Like, for example, like, why is it so much male-dominated language? Because that's the average of all of our human. You know. Material out there it is weighted, masculine versus feminine, and so if you let it simply be based upon the weighting, you're going to get that, which isn't necessarily true, because statistically we're kind of, even in terms of the population, and so they've gotten better to realize like, oh, we got to start taking that out. But by and large, it's really just the average of all information that we know. And so, but we don't want the average of all information we know because if we look at it, it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. It's a first order principle, you know. 34:41 And for data without data with context is information. Information, context is becomes wisdom for us or comes insight, and insight with context is wisdom for us. Our insight with context is wisdom. And so we know that, as you keep going up, the context between insight and wisdom is whether or not you're doing secular or whether or not you're doing godly wisdom, and those things conflict. If you read Proverbs, that gives you that construct. 35:08 And so I look at that and simply say like, okay, we need something that is ensuring that the information that is generated has that concept of first order principle, which is a God, the fear of the Lord has to be the constraining factor in which all generative content is produced from. 35:26 That is uniquely an interest of the church. The broader market doesn't have that context. It actually is more of a you know, it's a worldly worldview, is what you look at it. And so the church has to have that so that it can understand like, so it can have those guardrails in place to say we want to make sure the first order principle is actually sits, you know, sits within the context of the fear of the Lord, as opposed to conventional wisdom. So that's why things like that we do need to go do, because if we don't make our needs known, if we don't build some of those things for ourselves, the market won't do it for us or it'll do it very late. You don't typically move into niches until later in a cycle when you're trying to specialize. Right now it's a land grab, and the land grab is not coming from the lens of human flourishing and biblical worldview. That's not what they're trying to go. They're trying to get everybody. 36:18 So, I got a little technical there, but it's why I'm so passionate about staying in these conversations, because what we do now matters. 36:25 - Speaker 3 Absolutely no. I'm glad you got technical, because it's something I'm trying to learn more about and get deeper in. I think we all need to in this moment. Like you said, it's time to pay attention, right? So I know that Glue is at the cutting edge of AI innovation for the church right now, and I believe you also recently announced that they made an investment in Servant, which is very exciting. An investment in Servant, which is very exciting. Correct me if I'm wrong, but these sorts of partnerships between mission-driven organizations it hasn't always been the case, right Like these kinds of partnerships are new and they're transforming the landscape of Kingdom work. I'm just curious if you have a thought or two about what this means for the future of ministry technology. 37:14 - Speaker 1 I'm really excited by it and I've had a privilege of knowing Scott for six years now. My partner, ranji, has known him for 20. And I've just seen him to be such a faithful man of God, someone that has been burdened by his convictions in all the great way and has a desire to really leverage his influence and his own resources to sort of see the church be successful, and that has to be at the core of anyone that's coming in to serve the church. We have a very strong set of principles that determine when we will work with somebody and when we won't, and one of them is we won't work for someone that's trying to own the church market, because we believe that the church is someone that you can serve. You can't own her and, as opposed to conventional wisdom, which is monopolies and duopolies like how do you become dominant and try to own the market, I'm like you can't, you have to give it away. That's that goes back to the conventional wisdom versus godly wisdom. If you want to be first, be last. You know whoever values his life, you know that whole losing your life to save your life, and so I take that really seriously in the way that we come alongside and Scott has, and that team has demonstrated that passion for the church for so long. 38:28 Reason why we have to be able to see folks like glue and others come in there is that building technical infrastructure is expensive. It takes a lot of r&d because you don't get it right the first time. You know building uh, you know building something might be in the neighborhood of 50 million or 100 million. So for one organization to do that, you're like probably listening saying there's no way I can spend amount of money. But if one person does it and then everyone else becomes a customer, you get that $100 million investment for $500 or $10,000. Because what we're doing is we're sharing the load through the idea of one customer, one person, one technology company making the investment and we're all benefiting from the collective wisdom and insights from other people in the same industry. 39:19 And so, as the church hasn't done that for a long time, and so this is a new motion for it to figure out, how do we sort of make these strategic investments together? In some cases that's partnerships, but some cases that's partnerships, but some cases that's the commercialization of it. And that's what Glue is doing. And that's a healthy thing for us to do, because, the way I like to say it, it's like it allows us to start later in the race. So instead of everyone having to do step one and step two and step three on their own, we can start at step 10 and we're already further ahead. 39:51 And so that's what gets me excited and why something like that is so transformative, and we should all be excited by it. Because that, putting those guardrails in place where we're like, hey, how do we make sure the biblical worldview goes through all of our generative content that's going to take a lot of expertise and a lot of capital to do right, and if someone doesn't do it, it doesn't get done. So our ability to sort of watch that people coming together should get us excited, because now those big institutional problems that plague all of us have a chance of being solved. And then you just look at all right, well, who's solving it? Is it someone that has a heart for the church or someone that doesn't know the church? And what I love about Scott is that he has a deep heart and deep love for the church. 40:38 - Speaker 3 That's great, I mean. I think that thank you for sharing all of that, and I think that serving the church has to be done collaboratively, and that's what I heard resonating in your answer. All right, so we have gotten really technical, right. So I do I want to like, maybe pull it back a little bit and ask you this. So we have a lot of pastors and ministry leaders who listen to this podcast and phrases like digital transformation to them sound nice but not necessarily like urgent for them in their day-to-day and also kind of intimidating, especially when you start throwing things like AI and all of that into it. For church leaders, do you have any practical advice for how they can pursue digital transformation, maybe just like a first practical step? 41:29 - Speaker 1 Yeah Well, I will apologize on behalf of the whole consulting industry for making these nonsense buzzwords exist. I'm like guys, like we just purposely make it complex so that everyone thinks we're smarter than we are. So that's my, that's my apology from from the world. That's the secret, you know. So digital transformation really is trying to help people see it through the lens of, like, how do we leverage these new digital tools that are out there to be able to allow us to be more effective in the way that we serve people or the way that we run our businesses? And so the process of going from one way of doing things to a new way of doing things is called. That's the change management or the transformation an organization goes through, and so we just created that fun little buzzword. So what I would do from a standpoint is like so, first off, it is urgent. 42:24 I can't stress to anyone that's listening to this one it is important that you think about this, and why? It's because you, we, as a church, are built to serve the world. We're meant to serve our communities, and part of serving is meeting them where they're at. I can't serve you if I haven't actually come up and met you, and the digital space is where there is so many people, and so we can't afford to be on the sidelines and say, hey, you can only see me on a Sunday because you got to come to the church in order to be served. We have to meet them where they're at. We go to their homes, like. This is not a new way, it's not a new concept. 43:07 What we might sometimes, though, I see, is we dismiss the digital world as a place of meeting, as a place of serving and the, the and. So why does that matter? One is because if we're not meeting them there and serving them, someone else will, and typically other people, not other churches that time will be stolen and robbed from them. They'll go find some secular organization, they're going to go find some public company to do that, and we got to be out there saying we recognize that people are looking for information available to the real time. They want to be able to talk to a pastor about the things that matter to them, and so it's important. 43:48 There's an urgency that I plead you with to be able to say is like that's where your people are at. Make sure that you're in their life more than just on a Sunday. The other thing, like your lives have gotten far more complex than ever before. I've never met a pastor that says man, I have so much time on my hands, I just wish there was more to do. Maybe you have Alicia, but I haven't yet. 44:14 And so the whole idea of leveraging this digital world is to say man, is there a way for me to actually get the work done more efficiently than before, to give me more time back? And so what we've done in AI is we'll sometimes we'll sit down with an organization and say what is the most repetitive, mundane, soul-sucking task you have to do, and let's just figure out how to automate that and give you back that time, or just give you back that energy and these tools that are coming out now. When I do that, that's digital transformation. If I have something that this simply says, I have to go ahead and take data, you know information out of one system and put it in this other system. Cool, what if we just automated that? All of a sudden, that whole time comes back to you. It comes back to your staff members. So it's this meet people where they're at, and it's like give yourself the time that then, in some cases, you need to then go ahead and meet people where they're at or in the needs of the day. 45:20 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, that's good and very accessible, Ben, I appreciate it. No, it's clear we're not going to accomplish the Great Commission without digital transformation. It's clear we're not going to accomplish the Great Commission without digital transformation. It's very clear. Well, thank you, Ben. So much for your time today. I've learned so much. I've taken a ton of notes, sort of beneath the screen. I don't know if you could tell I was writing things down. There are things that I'm going to be applying in building my business and in my leadership. Don't be surprised if you see an orange chair somewhere in the background of my screen. 45:51 - Speaker 2 It's important, it really is. 45:54 - Speaker 3 Maybe I can ask you this one final question, which is, if one of our listeners is a nonprofit or a parachurch or a church that's looking to build something new and they're looking for advisors to come alongside them in what they're doing, how do they get in touch with Servant? 46:10 - Speaker 1 Well, I'll just drop my email you can reach me directly, benservantio and then what we'll do is we'll bring my team alongside me and we'll just lean in. You can also visit us at servantio. Online there's an ability to sort of see a bit more of some of the work that we've done. And, yeah, we'd be happy to sort of kind of hear that vision that God's given you and seeing what we can do to make that come to pass. 46:36 - Speaker 3 Beautiful. Thank you again, Ben. I really enjoyed our conversation. 46:40 - Speaker 1 Thank you, Alicia. 46:41 - Speaker 2 Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. The Faithly digital platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly Podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.