They Journey from Search to Execution
Finding what new Christians get excited about in digital discipleship
“Captain’s Logs” are behind-the-scenes snapshots of how things are progressing across the ministry. Leave a comment with your thoughts or if you’d like to know how to get involved!
For every startup, there’s different seasons. At a SUPER high level, I generally think of 3 major seasons: exploration, growth, and maturity. Lots of folks have different models and ways of looking at it. We’re big fans of the Lean Startup model, especially as Alex Osterwalder at Straetgyzer describes it. Their book Value Proposition Design has been a major influence on our process for building our first product.
If there’s any question, we’re absolutely in the exploration or “search” phase:
Identifying our Core Value Proposition
The work for dship in this season has been understanding our users, the problems they face, and what we could create that they want to use and that can actually accomplish our ministry goals for our users [helping them grow as Christians towards walking fully in the way of Jesus].
Last year, we gained a ton of data about their challenges, but we’ve struggled to identify what value props resonate most with new Christians, especially something that will get them excited enough to try it. After a couple design iterations, we think we’re on the right track:
“dship. is your co-pilot for the Christian life. Christianity can be difficult & overwhelming to navigate, especially when you’re new and on your own. dship helps you find and take your best next step on your journey with Jesus through practical guidance, real-life steps you can take, & a supportive community of people like you.”
An ethnically and geographically diverse GenZ and Millenial group of new Christians STRONGLY resonated with this product framing, with over 80% saying they wanted to try it.
This data gives us a great deal of confidence for how to frame & build our next MVP. It might sound incredibly obvious or simplistic, but this statement has already been instrumental in helping us hone what we build next. Especially when we’ve gotten real user qualitative feedback validating this framing for a digital discipleship platform, with several even registering to be early adopters. I’m grateful for tools like Osterwalder’s work that have helped us reduce our risk of failure and costs in this early stage as we aim to create a digital discipleship platform for the next generation.
Exploring Digital Ministry Partnerships
We also had the chance to attend the Exponential Conference last week. We had some great conversations connecting with digital church planters, digital evangelists, and more. It’s amazing to see how much God is at work through these other ministries as well!
Some of our favorite conversations were with the teams at Lux Digital Church and Love Thy Nerd. They’re doing amazing work loving on gamers & nerd culture with the love of Jesus. If you play video games, board games, or just enjoy nerd culture - definitely check them both out. We love their DNA. They’re part of an amazing network called Digital Church Network, led by Jeff Reed - an incredible thinker and workhorse for advancing the digital missions cause.
We got to try out our new product pitch with them to see if it could be of service to their communities, and their excitement was palpable. They shared just how challenging it can be to manage & shepherd online communities in the hundreds or thousands; especially to help each person uniquely. They shared how something like dship could help reduce the load on their staff and community managers for the everyday aspects of discipleship, with opportunities to still bring them into the conversation when it's needed. Lots more to explore here, but we’re very excited about the chance to partner with these teams and their communities. They’re a great group of early adopters that we’re excited to lean in together with to help each person find and take their best next step with Jesus.
Prayer Requests
Praise - Some amazing progress the past few weeks. The light at the end of the tunnel for the exploratory season is getting clearer.
Praise - We’ve also added a few members to the volunteer team with us! Amazingly talented folks in the engineering, design, and social media spaces to help us strategize well in each space.
Wisdom & inspiration as we design, prototype, and test out our platform MVP.
Wisdom for how to partner well with these and other ministries.
Continued health for our family so that we can have the capacity to keep pressing in. Having a toddler in daycare is no joke in terms of sick days!