How to Escape Digital Distraction in Ministry : Joey Odom

Full-Text Transcript

Jason Daye
Hey, friends, welcome to another episode of FrontStage BackStage. I’m your host, Jason Daye, and every week, we tackle a topic with a trusted ministry leader, all in an effort to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you really thrive in both life and leadership. If you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We love getting to know our audience better, and we’ll be praying for you and for your ministry. Whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe or follow so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. I’m excited because today I’m joined by Joey Odom. Joey is the co-founder of a technology platform, a technology company called Reclaimwell, and they focus on the hopeful and helpful side of technology and help us kind of overcome some of the harmful things of socio-technology, especially around the usage of our phones. Joey is a sought-after speaker, speaking about really kind of the way that we view technology and how we can look at the impact of our phones on our relationships. So, we’re super excited to have him with us today on FrontStage Backstage. Joey, welcome to the show, brother.

Joey Odom
Jason, so good to see you. So good to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Jason Daye
Yes, yes. So, this is one of those topics that is so incredibly practical, and it’s a problem, an issue that probably all of us would say exists. Like, you’re not coming up with some big surprise, Joey, that, hey, our phones are taking a lot of time out of our lives. We all feel that in some way, however, we don’t always know what to do with that. So, what I love about the work that you and Reclaimwell do is really creating this actual wellness benefit for church teams and ministry teams to help overcome this tendency and this pull that we have towards our devices and our phones. So, to start off, I would love for you to kind of talk to us a little bit about that phone relationship and how that impacts our other relationships. So let’s start there.

Joey Odom
Well, Jason, it’s funny. This is, to be honest, I think about this all the time. We talk about it all the time, and to the listener, I understand that this topic feels probably a little bit tired in a way. It’s almost like, Oh, great. Another one on technology and our screens. Kind of what you said. But I think it’s worth a reframe, despite all the information we know, despite all of the good we know, our phones, our screens, add to our lives, because they do, let’s be honest, these are great things in our lives, but at the same time, we also see the flip side of that. So I would encourage the listener to stick with us, because I think there’s a reframe here that’s super, super helpful. It goes to the word that you said, Jason, and that’s relationship. We’ve developed this relationship with our phones. We have a relationship with our phones that’s getting in the way of our most important relationships. But, even prior to that, let’s take a step back and realize that I just said something that’s so bizarre that basically no one has thought about is that we have a relationship with an object. Which, for adults, is something that’s typically reserved for other humans or other living things, your animals, maybe for some of you, not me, your plants, right? It could be that maybe you feel like you have relationships, but to have a relationship with an inanimate object is a very odd thing for an adult. So, let’s think through other objects in our lives, like my lawnmower, for example. I can see my front lawn from my home office here. I don’t have a relationship with my lawnmower. We do see each other once a week, nine months out of the year, but when a conversation gets boring, I don’t sneak out for a quick mow. You know what I mean? Like I do with my phone. So this is the same thing here, and it’s a little bit odd, but when you really break it down, you think about infants. They have relationships with objects. I think about little Poppy, your little grandbaby, two years old, probably at one point, maybe still, has a blankie, a binky, or a pacifier, right? These things that children cling to in the absence of their parents. They cling to these security objects. They’re called transitional objects, or comfort objects, and they cling to these objects in the absence of relationships. So our phones have reverted us back to this odd childlike state of relationship with an object. So, instead of us clinging, where kids will cling to an object in the absence of relationships, we cling to our phones in the presence of relationships. We will be at the dinner table with people that we love, looking at our phones, which is a little bit crazy, but it’s all because there is an actual relationship that we have formed with that. Now, that may not be a good or, inherently, is that good or bad? I don’t know. I wear clothes 24 hours a day, right? So, that’s not a bad relationship I have with clothing. But for our phones, it’s because they’re getting in the way of the things that are more important to us. It’s not me saying things that are more important to you. It’s all of us. We know, I know my family is more important than my phone. Yet, that allure, that pull that is caused by the constant presence of my phone, that’s what’s getting in the way of it. By the way, there are very interesting ways that we form this relationship. It all begins. Our defining characteristic in our relationship with our phone is proximity. Statistically, 91% of us have our phones with us 24 hours a day. And it’s that relationship that begins to trump all these other good things that we want in our lives. But it all comes back to the fact that we have a relationship with an object, which is a little bit bizarre.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s fascinating to think about that proximity piece, really. Because there was a time when, like, if you left the house without your wallet, right? You know, you’re like, Oh my gosh, I forgot my wallet, you know? And my kids, your kids, the only world they know is this idea of leaving home without your phone. It feels that much of a loss. I mean, people turn around and drive back because they left their phone, right? I mean, it’s that sort of a thing. So, it’s interesting to think of technology. And, as you said, it’s a helpful tool in so many ways. I mean, obviously, like, I can FaceTime my grandbaby, and see her, and it’s a beautiful thing. So, there are so many good things with technology, and it helps us maybe be more efficient in certain things we do. Yet, there’s this reality that we need to name and that we need to say, Okay, this probably isn’t healthy, right? Not just probably, we know this isn’t healthy. So, what do we need to do about it? One of the things I find interesting, Joey, is in the work that you do specifically with Reclaimwell, is you guys do actually offer, as I said, this wellness benefit that is a very practical piece that helps church teams and ministry teams kind of move beyond getting caught up in this, in a very hopeful and positive way. Again, not a negative, negative, negative, but just a reality check, and then, okay, how do we frame things more positively? I love the reframing that you’ve talked about. So, one question I have is, as church leaders, as ministry leaders, you’ve shared that we might fall into this trap a bit more than others, or it might be a bit more tempting to be kind of tied to our phones. Why is it that in the role that we have as church leaders and ministry leaders, why is there kind of maybe a higher degree of us getting engaged in this way with our screens?

Joey Odom
You know, it goes back to, and by the way, our technology business has been around for several years, and we were originally very focused on families, families of all faiths, and of all backgrounds. We really felt the Lord, about 18 months ago, start tugging on us and saying, Let’s go into the church. Because, I think, and Jason, all of this, by the way, it’s easy to get very, very negative on this topic. We’re super excited and hopeful about this because we believe, and for any church leader listening, and you know this, everybody’s gone through a SWOT analysis. When you go through strengths and weaknesses, they’re often tied together. You go through opportunities and threats, those are often tied together. And the larger the threat, the larger the opportunity. There’s an equally big opportunity to the size of the threat. So for us, this is where, when we started looking at it, we started saying, Gosh, what an amazing opportunity for the church to lead with clarity on this topic. Jonathan Haidt is amazing. Jonathan Haidt is an NYU professor who wrote the book The Anxious Generation, and he gave us some brilliant data last year in his book, The Anxious Generation, that helped lead this discussion. Jonathan Hite is very, very friendly to the church, but he himself is an atheist, and we appreciate his voice. But I also think, what if we as believers began to lead with clarity on this in a similar way that Jonathan Haidt has for us? So, we see this as a major opportunity. We see this, I think, with church leaders. I do think there is an even higher level of susceptibility to this. And by the way, you’re talking to somebody who is a believer. My business partner and I met in church. My grandfather’s a pastor. My brother’s a pastor. So I’m surrounded by pastors, but it’s a unique perspective that I have, being in the technology world, serving church leaders, but not myself, being vocationally in the church. Jason, it’s so apparent that church leaders are susceptible to this in a unique way for a couple of reasons. One of them is, everybody in society is susceptible to this already. On top of that, you are so driven by mission. You’re so driven, and as a result, you want to be available to your people. You want to be available to your people, often to the detriment of your backstage, right? You know, to the people at home, you’re very, very susceptible to that. The other part of it is that it’s just virtually impossible to not succumb to a little bit of the comparison trap, too. To get caught in an Instagram feed to check numbers on likes, and to all the things that are pulling on you on your phone. So, I think that recognition that, hey, I’m susceptible. And by the way, let’s spiritualize it. Gosh, I will tell you that there is an enemy we all know of our souls that wants to take you down, church leader. Absolutely. I mean, what a target you are. And, again, I don’t want to get too deep in spiritual warfare, but believe me, there is a plan, and I don’t know that these overt sins are going to be the ones that are going to draw you in. I think it could just be like the Screw Tape Letters concept of just that little distraction. Let’s just distract your mind a little bit, and there’s no greater way. By the way, we have some deep theology on this that we’ve thought through. But the point for this point right here is, I believe that when we recognize the size of the threat and we recognize our own susceptibility to it, we can then tie it to like, oh, well, how cool is it if I do overcome this, if I do provide clarity on this to my people. We’ve heard pastors of major churches, when they hear this message, they say I’ve wanted to talk about this, and I’ve not known how to talk about it. So, the best minds out there still don’t know exactly how to lead with clarity. And I think, this is our thesis, is if we begin with the relationship side, we begin looking at it as I have a relationship with this thing that’s getting in front of the bigger relationships in my life. And the cool thing is, you’re actually not as far away from a solution as you might think you are.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s so good. I think just, again, helping us, not just raise awareness on this topic, because, as we said, we kind of know it exists, but what does that really mean? What does that mean on a relational level? What does that mean for us as the people of God? What does that mean? And then, how do we approach this? It’s interesting because we think about spiritual disciplines, right? Spiritual practices. We’re like, okay, these are disciplines that can help us draw closer to Christ, to become more Christ-like, and to be more sensitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit, and those are fantastic and amazing. It’s almost like, and again, I love your perspective. It’s very hopeful, and you recognize that there are good things about technology. Because, yes, we can listen to a daily devotional on our phone while we’re walking around the neighborhood or whatever. So, there are those positive things, but there is this piece of the phone, this relationship, as you said, with the phone, that can almost take up the space and the time of those spiritual formation things, those spiritual disciplines, right? So it’s almost competing in ways as well. So, Joey, talk to us a little bit about, because I love the concept you have about the parable of the sower, thorns, and how that relates to all this. So, walk us through a little bit, really, kind of what’s underneath this when we do this?

Joey Odom
Well, this goes to this idea of, kind of, why is this a problem? And it’s because it’s making us unfruitful. When you think about Jesus talking about the parable of The Sower, talking about all the different types of soils. Then he speaks specifically about the thorns. And with the thorns, he said, what that does is the seed falls among the thorns, and it chokes it out, making it unfruitful. Then he says something that’s so interesting.  This almost jumped off the page at us when we read this. Jesus talks about the three things that the thorns represent. Again, this threat can make us unfruitful if it chokes out the seed and chokes out the word. He says that the thorns represent the deceitfulness of wealth, it represents the worries of life, and it represents the pleasures of life. So, when we break all those three things down, I don’t know that there’s a more perfect picture today of what our phones do to us than those three things. So, you begin with the first one, the deceitfulness of wealth. Let’s just say, church leader, you just had a great Easter Sunday, right? And you’re feeling great about it. Bunch of salvations, more people than you’ve had before. Some people may be sitting in the overflow. That feels kind of good, right? And then you go to Instagram, and you see your buddy’s church, and they 2x-ed you in attendance, and all of a sudden, that joy you felt, or that elation you felt, it kind of dies away because of the comparison trap. Specifically to the wealth part, let’s just say you’re on a family vacation. Let’s say you’re on a vacation, you’re really enjoying yourself, and you see a friend on a more luxurious vacation and all of a sudden, you don’t feel so good about your family vacation. So what that is, living in our Instagram feed, is that constant comparison trap. And so when he says wealth, I believe that that wealth is you saying that if I had that kind of money to go on that kind of vacation, then my life would really be happy. That all lives, that deceitfulness of wealth, on our Instagram feed as an example. The worries of life, this is something that we’re constantly, we’re not even aware of the deluge of information coming at us all the time, whether that’s hearing about Middle East conflicts, looking at stock prices, or even our emails, Twitter feeds, or whatever it is. These constant worries of life are coming at us at all times through our phones. What they’re doing is they’re making our minds unfruitful. That all of a sudden, we can’t quite focus on the quiet time we intended to have. Then the pleasures of life. This one’s pretty obvious, but all the ways that we escape the reality we’re in, whether that’s gambling, gaming, Netflix, pornography, or whatever that is. These things have the potential to lure us into these pleasures of life, and, again, the end result of this is making us unfruitful. And Jesus says something so interesting at the beginning of that parable. He said, A seed falls among the thorns. And, Jason, I think that by virtue of these things being with us 24 hours a day, and by the way, I’ll clarify again, I have an iPhone. I’m not getting rid of my iPhone. So this is not a demonization of technology. But when that thing is in my pocket, I believe I am living among the thorns. All of us walking around, we are living right now among the thorns that have this constant threat when they’re with us to choke out the good things in our lives, making them unfruitful. That can be your quiet time with the Lord. That can be your family time with your wife on a date night. That can be your time with your kids, which we all know is limited. All of these things that we intend for our lives, we would say we want good things. Of course, I want to be fruitful there, yet I’m carrying around this thing that has the potential to make me unfruitful. Now, that’s the reality. The fact is, I believe that our phones, to some degree, are kind of an indispensable piece of our lives. But as long as we have them constantly with us in the important moments in our lives, as long as they’re constantly with us, they have the threat to make us unfruitful. That’s personally, professionally in ministry, and whatever that is, we now live among the thorns when we have our phones with us 24 hours a day.

Jason Daye
Hey, friends, just a quick reminder that we provide a free toolkit that complements today’s conversation. You can find this for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. In the toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. This growth guide includes insights pulled from today’s conversation, as well as reflection questions, so you and the ministry team at your local church can dig more deeply into this topic and see how it relates to your specific ministry context. Again, you can find it at PastorServe.org/network.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s so good and such a great way, I think, to frame it, not only for us to receive that as ministry leaders, but also you’re really helping us, Joey, put some language around how we can help disciple others. To share this with the people God’s entrusted to us, right? So, that’s a huge help, right?

Joey Odom
It’s interesting. In this situation, Jason, it’s very, very easy. And I love the word used there, which is disciple. Because if you think about discipleship, let’s think about that as you learn, you live it out, then you lead. We, I’m going to say we, not just ministry leaders. I’m going to say that just as men, if you’re a man listening, and maybe us as humans, when we learn something, we kind of want to skip the live part, and we want to just go to the lead part. So we want to learn it and then lead it. We want to, and we think we delude ourselves into thinking that leadership is making declarations versus actually living something out. So, what I would encourage is as people, and we’ll get into some practical ways to go about this. But, this idea, as you’re learning some of this and getting some language, I really would encourage you to let that kind of internalize. Think about it. Back to the soil. Think about yourself as soil, and let that plant and root very deeply in yourself, before you start mandating on others or declaring, hey, here’s what we’re going to do. I’d encourage people to really think, How can I begin to live this out? And language is so important. You know this. Okay, now I have some words for it. I understand the threat to it. And now, before I really go make a bunch of proclamations, I want to really live this out myself and do this really, really well. Here’s the cool thing, is that the other side of our phones is a lot better than our phones, and I can tell you this from experience. But there’s a study by Dr. Gloria Mark at UC Irvine. She says it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus after you’ve been distracted. I learned that before we started our business, and I told my wife, I said I don’t think I’ve done anything other than sleep undistracted for 23 minutes and 15 seconds in the last decade. And I will tell you, as you build this muscle, and I want you to think about it that way, building a muscle as you get a good practice in here that takes years to do, and that’s a good thing that you begin to see, oh, that’s a lot better than what I was. You know, we’re far too easily pleased. Like CS Lewis says that I was probably allowing myself to be far too easily pleased with what was living on my phone versus the life that was living all around me.

Jason Daye
Yes, that’s awesome. I love that. I think there’s great wisdom in what you’re saying there, Joey, as far as thinking about this, reframing this as a ministry leader, as a pastor, to what does God want to do in me? What of this is for me? And sit with that, as you said. Allow yourself to walk into that before you turn around and start thinking about, okay, how am I going to preach this? I think that there’s a lot of wisdom there, specifically with these types of practices, because if you’re not living it and experiencing yourself, you don’t have a whole lot to talk about, and you can’t have super high expectations of others if you’re not practicing it yourself, and that’s where we kind of get in trouble. So, it’s interesting, when you were talking earlier, I was thinking over this past year. I like to take photos. I like photography. That’s been something, and with the advent of the iPhone, it became very, very easy. You have a phone in your pocket all the time, and so I would take a lot of photos of experiences when I was traveling and different things. That was just something I really enjoyed doing. I was actually challenged this past year, just in my own heart, in my own walk with God, about really experiencing what is around me. And so this past year, I’ve taken fewer photos, and I’ve intentionally stopped and said, I’m not going to take a photo of this. I’m just going to enjoy this moment for what it is, right? And that was just something that, in my own walk, just kind of came about. I just felt impressed in that way. It changed things, and actually opened up some conversations, even with my kids, who might be with me on a trip or might be with me experiencing something, and I had the opportunity to say, You know what? I’m not pulling my phone out to take a picture. Let’s just sit in this for a moment, and let’s just take it with us. Let it be a memory. So, it’s kind of interesting how it really does change something about who we are as people.

Joey Odom
And it’s just the whole idea that God is with us, right? That whole idea of God being with us and that idea of presence, and our phones have acted, they’ve tricked us into thinking, and this comes from Dr. Darren Whitehead at Church of The City in Nashville, that they’ve tricked us into thinking that we can be like God, right? And this is the oldest trick in the book. This is Satan’s oldest trick in the book. You can be like God in the way that they make us believe that we’re omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. So, let’s think about the omnipresence. That you’re with your kids on a vacation, and all of a sudden, you’re on your phone. You can be anywhere on your phone except for the place you’re in, right? So, you have this mimicking of omnipresence, that Oh, I’m everywhere, but if I’m but if I’m everywhere, I’m actually nowhere. You’re kind of like in no man’s land. It’s the same feeling as being around. Dr. John Deloney talks about this. The feeling that kids experience when their parents are looking at their phones is a very similar experience. What they feel when their parents are inebriated, is that you have a you have the visual of your parent that you know, but you don’t have the full presence of the parent that you know. Again, I think it’s important, as we talk about this, to talk about some of the threats, but again, hear that as an opportunity. Holy crap. What great thing could I do tonight when I’m with my daughter? If she wants to do a puzzle. I can be fully there with her. Again, in some ways, they say we’re co-creators with Christ. I can create that moment. I can be dad with Gianna, right, just like God is with us. This is where it’s the opportunity with the belief that that’s good for her future. Andy Crouch talks about how generational change, true change, happens over three generations. More than ever, I believe that as you, the person who is listening, as you begin to create these moments, you begin to create physical distance from your phone and be in the presence, that you begin to initiate generational change. That what you do will reverberate in your grandchildren will reverberate in your great-grandchildren because of these small, little decisions that you make today. James Clear calls them atomic habits, these small, little things, small changes, that begin to have exponential results over time. And that’s the key. Over time. You’re not going to fix it all today. It’s all going to happen as you build in these disciplines, these slow things you start to build into your life that, again, are not as difficult as you might think, but have unbelievably outsized results.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s so good, man. Joey, as we look at this, and probably those listening or watching along are probably like, yeah, I see this. I see this. I understand this. Again, cognitively, we’re like, yes, yes, yes. But, how do we go from nodding our heads and saying yeah, to what I love about you and your team at Reclaimwell is, and you said multiple times, the hopeful slice of this? Not just being naysayers and nagging about the whole issue, but you guys really help point pastors and ministry leaders, and people as a whole, to a positive, hopeful way to begin to do what you just said. Make those changes that will have those generational impacts. So what does that even look like for us, Joey?

Joey Odom
Jason, it’s going to sound so small to the listener, and it’s so massive. So, I’ll give you, when I go speak at a bunch of churches, parent nights, and corporate events, and we’ll walk through five different ways you change your relationship with your phone. I’ll give you a couple right now. I’ll give you three of those. One of them is for, and it may sound apparent, but it is for you. And we start with S’s. So we’re alliterative here. The first one is to always start with yourself. Well, I kind of alluded to it earlier that it’s easy when you hear this to go tell your spouse to do this differently, or tell your kids to do this, but we really do have to start this with ourselves as parents. We call this the 3M Parent Trap, where we model a bad relationship with our phones. We give our kids a phone, they mimic what we’ve modeled, but then we have the audacity to get mad at them for mimicking what we modeled, right? You follow me? But, this has to always start with us. So, that’s one. It’s just to look at this internally for yourself, and then the action step to that, and it will sound so basic, is to spend time physically distant from your phone daily. I’m talking physical distance from your phone. Now, 91% of us, I said it earlier, have our phones with us 24 hours a day. So, when you spend any amount of time physically distant from your phone today, you join the 9% club of people who have done that that day. So, this may sound very basic, but it is so profound, and it begins truly with five minutes a day. Now, I want people to work towards a goal of two hours per day, if you’re not already doing that, just kind of in bits and pieces, all throughout the day. For your quiet time in the morning, for you to engage in work during the day, if you have family time at night, or whatever that may be. Finding your build-up to spending time physically distant from your phone. The reason that physical distance is important is because you begin to break a cycle. We only look at our phones because they’re with us. 89% of our smartphone usage is self-initiated. It’s us initiating that contact with our phone, and when they’re physically distant from us, we can’t. Now, I say five minutes. Again, that may sound so simple and silly, but that’s five minutes today, and then it’s 10 minutes tomorrow, and then it’s 15 minutes the next day. And it’s looking at this as a habit that you slowly build over time. When you achieve that two hours of physical distance from your phone daily, if you do that throughout the course of a year, two hours per day, you will gain back one month in your life. So, you’ll experience a 13-month year by spending two hours physically distant from your phone. Now, a lot of people ask the question, What do I do when I don’t have my phone? Well, think about it opposite. If you’re at a family dinner, do you need your phone? Probably not. Hey, I’m going to go on a walk with my wife around the block. I’m going to leave my phone here for 15 minutes. My daughter wants to talk to me. I’m going to go put my phone in a different room so I can sit there and talk with her when I do that. So, that spending time physically distant from your phone, I’m telling you, it sounds so simple. It’s so unbelievably powerful. How about this? Watch a family movie without a second screen. How many times have we done that? By the way, my daughter, this was May 8, 2020. My daughter and I watched a movie. I know this because I wrote it in my journal. We watched a movie together. She turned to me and she said, Dad, that’s the first time we’ve ever watched a movie and you haven’t had your phone. She was 10 years old at the time. This is right when we were starting our business. Four years later, I read that journal entry, and I asked Gianna. I said, Gianna, do you remember when you said that to me four years ago? That was the first time I watched the movie without my phone. And she said, Yes, and Dad, it would be so weird if you had your phone with you during a movie now. So, you can change the reality of the people around you by doing that. So, that’s the second one. So, the first one is to start with yourself. The second one is to spend time physically distant from your phone daily. Work up to two hours per day. Then the third one, and this is the unfair advantage you have as a church leader, is to surround yourself with other people who are doing the exact same thing. This is where we say to begin with your staff. This is the power you have. Jonathan Haidt, again, author of The Anxious Generation, says religious communities have this magical ability to set new norms and culture, and that’s because we do it collectively. It’s that you’re all doing it together. Before you, again, preach a message on this, do this as a staff, whether your staff is 5, 50, or 500. Whatever that is, do this together. You’re all working. Our platform makes it competitive, and it makes it encouraging, and competitive, but it’s something that, as a group, you have such an unfair advantage because of the principle of collective action. The principle of collective action says that it’s something that everybody recognizes as a problem, that you can’t self-select out because you’ll be excluded from the group if you’re the only one doing it. But if everyone does it together, it is basically natural that it becomes cultural, and it becomes very, very easy when you can all do it together. So start with yourself, spend time physically distance with your phone, and then surround yourself with others who are alongside you.

Jason Daye
At Pastor Serve, we love walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders just like you. If you want to learn more about how you can qualify for a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, please visit PastorServe.org/freesession. You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. That’s PastorServe.org/freesession.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that, Joey. So, it’s very cool. The first two, we can kind of understand. The third one, we understand the concept, but how to actually make that happen. If I’m a pastor, and even if I might have a smaller church. I’m a pastor, I might have some staff, paid staff. I might have some other staff who are key volunteers, or whatever, or I might be at a large church with a large staff, whatever that looks like. Joey, how does your platform, Reclaimwell, actually make this happen? Because I think that’s the rub. We’d like to do it. But, how do we actually practically make that happen for our team, right?

Joey Odom
Yeah, when a church onboards with Reclaimwell, they get access, and everybody on the team. It is a super simple onboarding that people get all access to the Reclaimwell app, which measures the amount of time that you’re away from your phone. So, think of it as the opposite of screen time. Screen time tells you how much time you were on your phone. This measures the amount of time, through the app, how much time you were away from your phone. Then, it allows you to categorize the things that you were doing while physically distant from your phone. So, right now, before we started this podcast, I hit the Reclaimwell app. I flipped my phone over, and now it’s measuring the amount of time that I’m away from my phone. So, I’ll put “podcast” in the app afterwards. So what’s cool about it for church staff is, we see three common tags. Hey, here’s what I did with my time physically distant from my phone. The first one is working, which is interesting, that people are using this to engage in deep ministry work apart from their phones. The second one is family time, and the third one is quiet time, some kind of daily devotion. So, think about the compounding effects of a great 20-minute quiet time, undistracted per day, apart from the thorns. You’re really engaging, being able to engage in the word, listen to God’s voice, pray, and intercede for others. And that’s what we’re seeing other people doing. Now, you do this together. So, obviously, we have the leaderboards internally as well. So, there’s a church, Auburn Community Church in Auburn, Alabama. Miles Fidel is the lead pastor. There, they have 110 staff or so. So, they are a very competitive group, especially the fellows on staff. They get really competitive. So they are, in a very light-hearted way, cutthroat, competing with each other to see who can have the most time apart from their screens per day. Then you have a group guy like read more, read more as a pastor at Gwinnett Church, North Point campus in the Atlanta area. They have a culture of prayer, and the one thing he said was, I want my people to engage in deep quiet times. Samer Massad in Atlanta, another at North Point Church. He’s the lead pastor, and he says it’s the most important thing they’ve ever done for their staff, not because they’re spending less time on their phones, but because they’re replacing that with intentional things that they want to do. Samer wants his people to have great family times and to be healthy. I mean, this is what PastorServe does is it makes churches and leaders healthy, and that happens. It’s preemptive. This is not you. We’re not necessarily out there solving a bunch of phone addiction problems. What we are doing is giving vitamins to people to make sure that it’s preemptive that we’re getting you creating distance between you and your phone, and doing that as a collective group is the real power there. So, to succinctly answer your question, it effectively gamifies the experience of being apart from your phone. What’s neat about it for church staff is that it’s not just the staff that gets it. It’s all of their families as well. So, every family of a church staffer gets this as well. Then, a really cool thing, we have one other program that I’ll mention is, we have a bunch, fortunately, we have a bunch of larger church staffs. We have churches that are paying for this for their staffs. But then we see this need for church plants, for smaller churches who are at such a nascent stage, they’re probably very susceptible, and this has the potential to make them unfruitful. These phones make them unfruitful in the growth of their church, or in the life of their family, and their individual lives. So, we’re fortunate to have a program called the 13:32 Seed Program. This comes from Matthew 13:32 about the mustard seed, starting small and growing large, and that is for church plants. So if you have five or fewer staff, we give the Reclaimwell platform absolutely for free, no questions asked. And that’s because we’re fortunate to have churches that are paying for it. So that is available. We want to make sure that every church leader has access to this. We want every church leader to be fruitful in their ministry, whether they’re part of a small church or part of a large church. So, if you have a staff of five or fewer, this is no questions asked, absolutely for free to you.

Jason Daye
Wow, that’s awesome, Joey. I just love that. What a cool thing. It reminds me of one of my, I mean, I love everything about God. But one of my favorite things is I love that God is a redeemer. And I’ve said this a million times in my life, like God redeems things. Your platform, Reclaimwell, is actually redeeming something that, as we said, the enemy can use to distract us. I love The Screw Tape Letters. I mean, that’s something that we all think of. That he doesn’t have to convince you to go worship satan. He just has to distract you a little bit, right? So, the distraction factor, the phones, but just this idea that there is a way, a platform that can help us do this, that can make it practical as opposed to being theoretical. As opposed to being, yeah, it’s something to do, and just the hope-filled aspect of it, what you gain from it. It’s all the good things that you experience in your life because of that. Absolutely incredible, man. I love the fact that you’ve allowed, you and your partner have allowed, God to help redeem this crazy instrument that is part of our lives and has some positive aspects, but can so easily distract, and have redeemed that in such a way that it’s not just breaking that negative piece of it, but it’s inviting people into this massive hope-filled, meaningful life-on-life piece of it as well. I mean, that is worth celebrating. So awesome. So cool, brother. As we kind of wind down, I’d love to give you the opportunity just to share some words of encouragement with pastors and ministry leaders. What would you like to kind of leave them with as far as where they find themselves on the front line of ministry?

Joey Odom
I woke up. This is one I can probably count on one hand how many times this has happened. But, I woke up from a dream the other night, and I really did feel like this was the Lord speaking to me. And it’s a message that you read in Genesis, God in creation, and He said, And God saw that it was good, it was good, it was good. So, six times it was good, right? And I had this thought that God is the only one with the authority to say it is good. So, maybe to somebody right now who is really struggling in ministry, or struggling in their marriage, or wondering, what is this all about? Or did I even have a calling in the first place? Or I’ve made a catastrophic mistake, and I’m never going to recover from it, whatever that is, or you just could be having a bad day. I’d encourage you to just recognize that God’s the only one who has authority to say it is good. If it maybe feels bad, maybe God’s saying, Hey, I’m going to make this good over time. You’ve mentioned the word redeem, and this idea that God makes everything beautiful in its time. So, I believe that if you are in the middle of something and it may not feel that good, just recognize that God’s the only one who can say that. So, that’s been really strong on my heart lately, and just knowing that he sees a much greater context than we do. I do think this opportunity is massive to do something really, really good here which may seem small when it comes to changing our relationship with our devices. And I would just encourage you to hold on to the hope there. Don’t make this a bigger thing than it needs to be. I think Satan would love for us to believe that this is such an insurmountable obstacle that we can’t get over, versus saying I can do something about this today. So, that’s a couple of different messages. The “it is good” has been on my heart, that’s kind of apart from any message here on the technology side of things. But, I hope that’s something that is useful for somebody out there. And then the recognition of technology is what a cool opportunity we have to get this thing right for ourselves, to get this thing right alongside others, and then lead culture well when it comes to this massive topic that everybody feels.

Jason Daye
Absolutely. Good word. I love that idea of leading culture because so often we allow culture to shape the church, and this is an opportunity for the church to help shape culture, and in a very significant way. I think you’re deeper into it than I am, and probably most of us listening, so you might see this more, but I think that it has the opportunity to impact culture in an even more significant way than we could even imagine, honestly.

Joey Odom
I mean, everybody, whether you believe in a risen Savior or not, you feel this tension. So, what a cool opportunity for us because what’s going to happen is, as we get this right, as we disciple, back to that word disciple. So, good discipleship always leads to evangelism, right? Effective discipleship always leads to evangelism. When we disciple well, it always goes back to evangelism, which then leads back to discipleship. So, we have an opportunity. So what will happen is people will say, Hey, I don’t know if I believe in a risen Savior, but gosh, I love how that church, Woodstock City Church, is leading their families. Gosh, I know they had a really cool parent night on technology. I thought that was really, really good. You may not even say the name Jesus there, but they just get drawn into the church and they get to know who Jesus is, because you’re providing clarity on a pain point that everybody feels. So, back to opportunity, not just the discipleship side, but the massive evangelism side, to show people who Jesus is by addressing the things that they hurt with.

Jason Daye
Yeah. That’s so good, brother. So good, Joey. Well, awesome. This has been a great conversation. Lots there. Again, thank you for taking the initiative and allowing God to lead you guys into creating something that helps us hit this pain point that we’re experiencing personally and that the world’s experiencing as a whole. For those of you who are listening or watching along, we create a toolkit, as maybe you might know, for every single episode. You can find that toolkit for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. So, in that toolkit for this episode, not only are we going to have some insights that we pulled out, the Ministry Leaders Growth Guide, with questions for you and your church staff to wrestle with around this topic, which I think is going to be super beneficial. But, we’ll have links to Reclaimwell, the technology platform that Joey and his co-founder created and is made available to churches, and you can learn more about that, learn more about how you can really embrace this, and how you can not only lead your family and your church, but your community in really reclaiming this time that we often lose in meaningful ways. So, be sure to check it out at PastorServe.org/network, so you can get all of those details. Brother, it has been good to hang out with you. What a joy just to spend some time. I love what God is doing in you and through you and through Reclaimwell. Really look forward to continuing this conversation and seeing where God takes all of this.

Joey Odom
That sounds great, Jason. Man, thank you so much. Appreciate y’all’s work at Pastor Serve. As you know, I’m a raving Pastor Serve, Jimmy Dodd, and Jason Daye fan. So, believe me, I’m in the fan club. So, thank you all for the way you’re serving the church and leaders.

Jason Daye
Awesome, brother. I so appreciate that. Thank you so much, Joey. God bless you.

Joey Odom
Thanks, Jason.

Jason Daye
Here at Pastor Serve, we hope you’re truly finding value through these episodes of FrontStage BackStage. If so, please consider leaving a review for us on your favorite podcast platform. These reviews help other ministry leaders and pastors just like you find the show, so they can benefit as well. Also, consider sharing this episode with a colleague or other ministry friend. And don’t forget our free toolkit, which is available at PastorServe.org/network. This is Jason Daye, encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well.