Why Wards Struggle with Zoom Church & How Leaders Can Fix It | An Interview with Dan Duckworth

Dan Duckworth is a changemaker, teacher, and community-builder. He founded Crux Central to facilitate his mission to make deep change accessible to the masses—not just to executives. He writes and podcasts at danduckworth.net and hosts high-intensity leadership workshops at cruxworkshops.com. He’s also a member of the Leading Saints Board of Directors. Highlights 7:30 The struggle with virtual church: Dan’s experience as a youth Sunday School teacher moving to once-a-month teaching opportunities, then to no church, and then to virtual church 10:00 The realization that came from creating an online transformational learning community: This can actually work 13:10 Switching your mindset into humility, self-awareness, and acknowledgment of your own mediocrity: “Broken but Brimming” 14:30 For an individual to intentionally have a transformational experience, it requires connecting with others 15:25 Current You has to go into the refiner’s fire in order to transform into New You. What we want students to do is want to go into the fire, and feel safe enough to do it. 18:00 Do the people need the leaders or do the leaders need the people? 19:10 Dan’s experience * Learned from his previous teaching experiences that community is key and leads to people wanting to leap into the fire * 21:00 His key belief that was wrong: You can’t develop authentic community virtually. He enrolled in an online workshop and realized he was connecting with strangers. * 26:15 Creating his own workshop and struggling to get past the focus on the content and getting it “right” * 27:30 “You’re giving me content. What I came for was the conversation. The magic was the community and the conversations that we had. That’s what changed my life.” * 29:45 The conversation started to change and people started to care about each other * 31:30 Of the people who participated, 100% has a transformational experience 32:50 Experiment with his Sunday School class * Texted a video inviting them to class, including one principle and a story * 34:55 The error was his investment, not the students 35:45 Principle 1: Curate people * Let people self-select * 37:50 Get the right people into the room in the right mindset: it’s your job to protect your guests from the “party spoiler” * Your goal is to get people to want to be there * Set the expectations of the group: turn your cameras on no matter what you are doing, so we can be ourselves * 42:28 People want to be part of something awesome. Focus on creating something magnetic, not on controlling them. 45:08 Principle 2: Connect people * What am I doing to connect them to each other? (not to the lesson content) * 46:50 Stop the “lesson” and get one person to share their story * 49:30 Start with your own authenticity: share your truth without being plastic because everyone recognizes plastic * Break the rules and show others that they can, too 53:20 Principle 3: Create arguments * An argument is making a claim that can be proven wrong * Inspire them to engage in the wrestle: let go of the need to be right and create cognitive dissonance, planting questions (not about the doctrine) about our experience * 56:10 It’s never appropriate to be a devil’s advocate in the church setting; this is an argument for the sake of arguing, which only entrenches beliefs instead of creating transformation * People should walk away having shared their truth, heard the truth of others, and looking to change