What’s up Brothers my name is Nick Meyer with Exodus and super excited for a huge announcement today uh that we want to share with you all especially if you haven’t heard it already of course confetti is necessary for big announcements but to today you may notice if you’ve hopped into the app
Already that there’s a brand new feature that we’ve launched called community and we’re super excited about it it’s going to be I think a game changer for so many men who are looking for brothers who are looking for Fraternity who are looking for community and so we want to share
With that share that with you today and to do that best we uh we have Doyle Baxter our head of product here at Exodus to come and share the great vision of what it is and actually give a demo of it Doyle welcome hey Nick how’s
It going man oh great how about yourself gosh I’m I’m super super excited about the launch of the new communities feature in The Exodus app um no joke this has been something that we’ve been thinking about dreaming about planning for over three and a half years now and
And finally here in at the tail end of 2023 going into uh the 2024 Exodus 90 season I’m so pumped to to be able to release this um you know Exodus 90 starts on January 1st this year and so it’s been very much kind of like a new
Year new Exodus kind of vibe around here and boy do I feel that way uh with the launch of this feature too yeah I love it and you know just talking about that too in terms of the excitement around it and I think I did say I think it’s can
Be a game Cher for a lot of men because you know I talk to men all the time around the country and one of the things I so frequently hear is hey is there a fraternity around me that’s a question guys ask all the time to me whether
They’re new or whether they moved you know they’re going places and and that that that’s part of what the this is trying to solve for men is helping to bridge that Gap yeah absolutely absolutely you know and and I think you know to your point there’s there’s really three fundamental underlying kind
Of reasons why I think that this feature is such a game changer and the first is the one that just like you’ve mentioned you know um a lot of guys are invited to exodus by people that they know but not everyone and you know I I can imagine
Just how intimidating it would be to you know discover something like Exodus and be like yeah I really want to do this I this needs to be my year I need to break free from my pharaohs and I need I need freedom um and then you know to get super um you
Know convicted and then to not be able to find anyone like maybe they don’t may they don’t want to do Exodus with you or you don’t just don’t have uh good you know friends that are Faith aligned with you that they would want to do it with
And um the community’s feature I think you know first and foremost is going to help that Uninvited man just locate um you know the hot beds of Exodus uh that are already everywhere around the country I mean we’re in every single City every single state um you know over 70 countries around the
World and just uh now having a geographical communities feature alive um is going to help that Uninvited man so much you know secondly we know that there are already super super active Community leaders at Exodus that are coordinating service projects coordinating work for their dases and parishes well beyond the scale of just
You know a 6 to8 man fraternity um and right now all of that work being done by really fantastic guys all over the country is completely um you know done by hand manually and the app doesn’t help them at all scale their impact in their broader communities um and so with
The with the Exodus feature just being able to know that oh my gosh there’s five there’s 10 there’s 15 Exodus fraternities right near me and I didn’t even know um just imagine uh how those those groups of groups and and large numbers of men can come together uh and
Uh um you know and and and scale the the impact of exodus in their community and lastly I think that that’s the that’s the last reason why is that this is this is about scale you know um the freedom that Jesus offers us is so so important
And our culture and our world is is is constantly putting up roadblocks and barriers um to prevent us from from achieving that freedom and gosh I just know that um in these in these local communities with real people near you um that’s where you’re going to be able to
Really Break Free enter into good Christian Brotherhood um and yeah encounter that freedom so so with those three reasons why out of the way I just I’m super amped I think we gotta we got to show the feature now yeah let’s pull it up and the last thing on top of that
Jo I just I can’t so many people are like um Go technology you know bad good bad or the other it’s like no like this is a great means to connect men right to accomplish the mission of the gospel and you talked about scale and I just think
About connection as this is a way to help accomplish that as well so um you know John Paul II you know St John Paul II would talk about the new evangelization new ways new ERS new methods and I think this this is a way to help accomplish that today in our age yeah
Absolutely well perfect so I’m going to share my screen now um if you’ve been around uh The Exodus app before um and even if you haven’t you will notice that uh now in the bottom right hand corner um of our app um we’ve got a new uh Community tab
So when you come over to this community tab um there’s just a brief explainer and and I think that even um for for existing Exodus guys a little bit of you know definitions or terminology is useful a a a community is a collection of Exodus fraternities right so it’s not
Just the six or eight guys that you might meet with on a week- toe basis while you’re going through a spiritual exercise but rather this is meant to be groups of groups so this could be dozens uh you know maybe even a hundred or more uh depending on uh how many active
Exodus men you have in your Parish or in your town um and that’s really what a what an exodus Community is it’s public it’s public to everyone that’s in your area um so that you can all come together and coordinate um so uh the first thing you’ll notice is on the new
Community tab is that we’re lighting up uh location services um so you hit the add my location button uh it won’t show on the screen share here but I can hold it up to my camera you just get the standard um operating system request uh for permissions uh you can turn precise
Off if you want um and you can uh hit allow once uh we just query that location and then simply we’re going to surface the list of communities that are nearby so up at the top of this list we’ve got those communities that are within 10 miles um of you and then um
Down a little bit lower we’ve got those communities that are within 10 to 25 miles of view and and really you know the the distance here is important we wanted the the the location of the community to theoretically be something that would be within driving distance of
Of of you so that um you know you could actually go in in real life uh to the parish um where the Exodus Community is located uh meet these guys and then and then join up so um I’m gonna uh hit the Riverside Catholics East End here I live
In uh Cincinnati so uh this is you know a couple couple minutes down the road from me um but I’m going to join this one up I’ll get a little popup confirmation asking me to to join and then once I’m going to come in here I am
Just going to be uh locked into this uh community so the first thing that you’ll notice is that there’s a couple of different Community tools the first um is what we call our fireside chat okay and so this is um just a standard um kind of group chat CH just like we have
On The Exodus app only like I mentioned it’s got some specific features that are designed for you know conversations between dozens and and hundreds of guys rather than uh just six six to eight like you might have in your fraternity group chats um so um all of the members
Of of the community will be able to come in here um and message one another so you can just imagine like if you’re a brand new guy you download The Exodus app you don’t know anyone um but you see that you know a couple you know at the
The parish know down the road you’re able to join their community and then come in here and introduce yourself um and find an exodus fraternity that way um the second thing that we’re also so doing here is publishing a directory of all of the men that are in the community
And and this is another thing that we thought was really important and you’ll see that we’re persisting on the side here different badges so that you can kind of know who’s who so um if you see the new man badge then they’re probably like you just trying just trying to get
Started with Exodus and um you know may be looking for a fraternity themselves so if you’re a new man and you see other new men you can send them a message and say hey uh could we start a fraternity together you know alternatively we’ve got the community leaders which are the
Ones that are really uh responsible for the community at large so they’d be a great person to reach out to for things like um how to get involved uh service projects or or or other things that Exodus men are doing kind of at the at the scale of the community and then
Lastly of course we’ve got badges for Fraternity leaders um so if you wanted to just pop in there and ask a guy hey when does your fraternity meet where do you guys meet could I could I maybe uh join up after introducing yourself you can just tap on any of these names um
And then and then send a direct message to to that fraternity leader um and then lastly we thought it was super important to also introduce clergy badges um so that you can see the the priests and deacons that are involved in in your community and maybe reach out with whether it’s um again
Just trying to figure out how to get involved with Exodus or or maybe even to you know set up an appointment for a confession time or or something like that um we wanted to to make that that kind of um interaction possible as well um so that’s the overall Community it’s
It’s actually a rather simple feature set but there’s a lot going on under the hood to help guys get connected and put together and then the last thing I just wanted to mention is that anytime you can just hit the bar at the top right now where it says Riverside Catholics
East stand for me that’s the name of my community I can hit that bar up here to get to a menu um that will allow me to at any time get back to that list of other communities in in in my area and frankly I would encourage guys to get uh
Involved in in as many communities as they think that they can um even if that means getting involved with uh you know a parish that might be a town over getting involved with your Parish um you can belong to as many communities um as you want um and i’ yeah definitely just encourage
Uh joining as many as you can um and then lastly um at any time you can create a new community as well um and so you know one of the things that’s just really exciting about this is I think that there are you know we call them use
Cases in the tech world but there are situations where uh you might want to create like a special purpose Community right so it’s like maybe um you’ve got your community at your Parish set up it’s active and you know the five or 10 other kind of community leaders in your
Deery or in your dicese and you want to set up a community for kind of a larger group to even coordinate um you know much larger scale uh kind of uh kind of efforts uh you can create that uh new community at any time um and then just
Kind of in the efforts of you know helping to fill out these uh communities any man in the community can add um other um other men to them uh that’s that that’s the nature of them being public so once you either create um or join a community in your area I highly
Encourage you just tap this orange invite button uh right there you can connect your contacts to um use your phone contacts to uh make the invitation process easier I’m really really proud about the the privacy and security Centric way that we’ve lit up this uh contact feature so it doesn’t compromise
The even the contact information of the men that uh you’re sending the invites to we don’t actually see the phone numbers uh we just see um an encrypted hash of the phone number um and then you can come in here and and add uh other other guys who you know are in your
Parish or in your community and get them uh involved uh in your community as well so Nick that’s the that’s the tour of the feature I think you know ultimately uh the call to action here is you know head to start my exodus. comom Exodus 90
Begins on January 1st this year like we mentioned up up at the top uh which is super exciting but it’s also you know only a couple of weeks away so um as you’re starting to get uh you know guys uh excited about joining fraternities setting up communities um you know Now’s
The Time to really start uh running that running that ground game so I had to start my exodus. comom you can download the app um and uh tab over to the new community Tab and Creator join a community in your area yeah I I love it
Doyle crush it man this is so good and I full disclosure I created my community here in Indianapolis St John the Evangelist and downtown uh Catholics just yesterday after we launched it and um I went in and added a bunch of guys straight from my contacts you know who
Were already had the app but then I the other thing that was really cool is that I could also um invite guys to the app straight from there as well so it was it was really beautiful and Powerful to be able to do that so well done to you and
To Brock who’s um our software engineer just just crushed it and I know it was a ton of work to develop this so well done yeah thank you thank you I um like I said I’m super excited about it and I I hope that um that the guys were able to
Get as much out of it as as we’ve put into it um yeah cool man well great well I definitely have a couple questions I want to follow up on with but um you before I jump to that I just I want to double click on if you’re a new guy if
You’ve never done Exodus before um and you’re and you’re viewing this and watching this we want to invite you come and join us come be a part of this I um if if you’re just looking for a way to grow in your relationship with God I I
Just don’t know a better way than to than to do this uh the impact is real and um you’re not you’re not gonna be perfect you don’t need to be perfect that’s not the point the point is progress and to start we can never start
We can never run a marathon if we don’t take that first step and the first step in Journey towards the Lord is just to make an action item and then to you know to do it um and we’re right here to help you do that to guide you along that way
So uh come come join us and find a find a couple guys to do it with you and just I was just talking to a guy earlier this morning Dole and uh he he told me his story of Exodus and how he found us and
Um he he said Nick I’m not the man I am today without Exodus and um just the way that the Lord has worked through it is has just been beautiful so just an encouragement for all all men watching and and the last thing is invite a guy who’s a guy that
You that comes to mind that you’ve thought man maybe I should invite that guy do it take it take pray for him take it to prayer and then go and ask him and invite him so okay now that I got that out of the way I just I just feel so
Convicted by that and um yeah we’ll drop a couple questions for you okay so the the one thing that um for guys who’ve been around and been in the app or could be just new guys I I see there’s a fraternity uh button at the bottom and then there’s
The community and you mentioned earlier that the community is like a group of fraternities so could you just give a quick uh explainer of what’s the fraternity and the purpose and then secondly you mentioned that the the community chat has might have some different things in it on the chat to be
Better for tens to hundreds of guys versus six to eight so if you could just give us a little bit more insight on that that’d be awesome yeah absolutely I mean at the end of the day fraternity is one of the three pillars of of Exodus and you know fraternity is really about
Walking shoulder-to-shoulder with other men um that also deeply desire the freedom that Jesus offers and and walking with them and and helping uh them along their way and being helped as well and you know as a result um we wanted really to make it possible for
Those those small groups of six to eight guys that you might be meeting with on a week- toe basis while you’re doing our Advent program while you’re doing Exodus 990 and and doing our Easter program and Beyond um we wanted to have a place that was Secure and private um you know
Really built with security privacy and encryption um for you and the sensitive conversations that we know happen uh in small groups um so that’s what the fraternity tab um is all about you know kind of like technically speaking or logically speaking a fraternity in The
Exodus app is just a group chat um and it’s a group chat for the the six to eight of you um that we’ve developed you know just a a quick note on on the privacy and security um element because I think it’s super important um you’re not going to find uh
A software team that cares about your security and privacy more than the Exodus team um it deeply deeply matters to us I I had a as a as a young man before uh before working at Exodus I had an exceptionally negative experience um on Facebook m messenger where I was
Sharing struggles um that I was going through um in what you know appeared to me to be a private chat with another individual and literally that evening and the next day following and for days thereafter Facebook started advertising to me the very vices that I was trying
To overcome and had shared in confidence uh in a in a Facebook messenger chat um I think that is unacceptable and think that Facebook is absolutely complicit in evil um for letting that happen on Facebook Messenger letting that happen on WhatsApp as well they changed their
Uh terms of use to allow them to advertise against the content you’re discussing uh in WhatsApp group chats so um yeah and that kind of thing is all too common um from you know a big Tech that wants to keep you enslaved and um I get super passionate about this and I
Just want you to know from you know from the the bottom of my heart somebody running product strategy that kind of thing is not even possible on The Exodus app um everything we do um all user generated content is stored encrypted um and so even if I wanted to you know pop
Into the database and try and read it it’s just encrypted I can’t I can’t decrypt it and read it myself so um you know whether you choose to use the Exodus uh app for your chat or or some other tool just you know just please please please um if it’s not encrypt at
Rest or encrypted and to end um it’s just not you know suitable to the kinds of things that that that men discuss you know here so um that’s that’s just a word about uh about our fraternity uh group chat uh technology uh this year we’re also super pumped to have
Announced it’s a small thing but we uh but we launched uh things like reactions um in chat as well so even that experience of of a fraternity group chat in addition to the privacy and security which is the number one one value ad um we’re now kind of bringing in a kind of
More modern complement of of chat features as well so so that’s what a fraternity is the community like I said earlier is that kind of group of groups so it’s more about uh the guys in your region there might be a couple of dozen maybe even a hundred guys um in your uh
Community and you know so as a result like a really just kind of natural question is well how do I use the community tool here um to form uh a fraternity and so at the end of the day at any time you can come here onto the
Fraternity Tab and hit the orange new message bubble um hit start a new fraternity um you’ll be able to just create a new group chat um for your um for your fraternity so I’m just going to call this test fraternity uh here oh and then once I’ve created this
Fraternity um uh you’ll see that there’s an invitation button at the top and I can just go grab that uh like Nick mentioned if you’ve got guys that are in your phone that are already on the Exodus app you can just add them uh with
The orange ad buttons um but even if you don’t and you want to use the community feature what you can do is scroll down to the bottom and just grab the invitation link to this fraternity and then you’ll be able to come back to your community uh and you
Can either share that directly in the fireside chat and say hey guys I’m starting a fraternity that meets at you know 7:30 at uh at the McDonald’s downtown um and you know then guys will be able to click that and join that group chat you know or um if you want a
More intimate setting uh like I mentioned earlier you can just tap on any of these guys that you may have been uh connecting with in The Exodus app before um and send them a direct message with the with the link to join your fraternity as well so um yeah so that
That uh using the community tool to kind of um get members uh coordinated for small fraternities was a was a big big part of and important part of what we’re doing here yeah I love that and do thanks so much for the security aspect I know um I appreciate that I know many
Men will uh as well so thanks for the intentionality and the work on on that front um so the other thing about communities that you mentioned was being a part of many and so I think about that of like okay let’s say there’s 10 around
Me that show up on my on my list what would be the benefit of me joining 10 you know what can you see uh for me of that because my initial hesitation is like man that’s just a lot to keep track of sure yeah totally you know I I think
There’s a couple of different you know situations where being a part of you know multiple uh make sense you know the first is that um like I said you can create many communities and there’s really no limit to the number of fraternity or the number of communities
That could be set up in your area so so um a lot of this will probably depend on what kinds of activities are happen locally and then what kinds of situations would it be relevant but just you know off the top of my head um my
Parish where you know I go for mass is um you know pretty far away from me so I want to be involved with that but I also know that there are really active fraternal organizations in my town um and so it could be the case that you know a local fraternal organization uh
Sets up a community um if they got if they’ve got Exodus guys and so that might provide additional opportunities to get involved um you know at different uh levels of locality so fraternal organizations setting up communities makes a lot of sense to me um setting up communities for parishes you know makes
A lot of sense to me um but other things too um especially just geographically based you know so I live in Claremont County Ohio which is a rural County um you know it might be you know because it’s a rural area you know just having a a countywide Exodus Community make sense
As well so just you know it’ll it’ll depend the the number of communities that are in your area and the different situations will obviously just depend on your locality if you live in a you know very densely populated urban area it’ll probably be a different situation than
Uh than for me out here in the sticks yeah absolutely yeah I think about where I grew up in uh in northwest Ohio Defiance County is very much described to what you are describing there’s like five parishes they’re all spread out it’s a very rural County so it’d be
Great to see um some collaboration you know of Guys across the county as well so makes a lot absolutely absolutely you know and then the other thing that’s there too is you know it’s not uh uncommon now for parishes to be um grouped together in families or clusters
Uh in order to kind of share the resource of The Limited resource of priests across many parishes um so that’s another you know that’s another one so my Parish here um the one that I’m showing on the screen is is a situation like that so there’s actually
Five parishes um that um you know are are coming together here yeah it’s so crazy um I know a priest uh the little side note who is the who oversees 12 parishes in rural Nebraska like oh it’s so crazy you know that’s unbelievable that’s so many so
Many so anyways that’s awesome um okay the other it’s a very practical question so I see that there’s Badges and that I see one that says new man okay OB that obviously I’m I’m just new so it automatically tags me as that um I see fraternity leader I see Community leader
And then I know you mentioned one about clergy could you just tell like do I need to do something to get those how do I get those do I have to apply for it yeah yeah super good question so some of these are just granted automatically uh
Based on system information so new man like you mentioned um if your Exodus account is uh two weeks or younger two weeks old or younger uh than a new man badge will show on your community um if you have set up at any point in the past a fraternity um then the fraternity
Leader badge will show on your community and then if you either created a community um you therefore kind of get the community uh leader um permission by default but the community leader can also assign it uh to other people um so that’s how you get that and that that
Kind of comes along with a shared responsibility to really Moder um the goings on of the community like I mentioned earlier because of our you know dedication to privacy and security um all these messages are encrypted so we don’t have a way for uh The Exodus
Team and then this is a a feature not a bug we don’t have a way to flag potentially inappropriate content um and so that’s ultimately up to to you as a community leader you have the ability to delete um uh any messages or posts uh in your community and you can share that
Responsibility by granting the community leader permission to others when you tap on their name here um uh when you tap on your name their name here you’ll just be able to hit a toggle and toggle other people uh to be a community leader but to your question the clergy badge is
Something that you have to uh request so that isn’t uh granted automatically um so if you are priest Deacon um in the Catholic church or any even in another Faith tradition you can just reach out to support at Exodus 90.com and uh request that clergy badge um and
They’ll work with you uh towards getting that done it’s it’s a super simple process but we just wanted to make sure that uh that the men that we give the clergy badge to have had at least some interaction with us uh with a human on
The Exodus team um so that we can just ensure that that um you know goes goes smoothly um so so yeah so if you uh want to want to claim a clergy badge all you have to do is reach out to support at Exodus 90.com and we’ll work with you to
Get that lit up yeah love that that’s awesome uh great okay I think there was one other thing that came to my mind is as you were going through everything and I I love the community’s aspect right now Fireside you know I’ve got this chat way to communicate with all these guys
Connecting them together uh I think it solves a huge challenge that’s often been in par like in parishes that have many fraternities of fathers like man I’d love to how do I communicate with everybody it’s like oh well roundabout ways so I love that fact um but are
There are there like is there anything next for communities joyle yes yes there are things next I I want to hold off maybe on the specifics of an announcement but the we are and this is just the beginning of of the community feature set for for us um you know and
You know ultimately group chats are great for the coordination of some kinds of things and the sharing of certain kinds of information um but even what I was just talking about with um setting up fraternities um you know and having you know like somebody like a community
Leader who knows that he’s going to need 12 fraternities in his parish and help guys get involved you know so we’re um we’re working on a couple of tools for um helping get fraternity set up more more easily it’s obviously possible with the with the way I just showed and
Discussed but even just a way to kind of reduce the friction of that a little bit more um as well as different kinds of information sharing and getting the guys praying for one another as well um one of the the community features I’m most excited about is the prayer intentions
Board um where you know if you’ve got an intention um and you know you just need the prayers and support of the guys in your area you’ll be able to post that up so so we work on a couple of different things and and those will roll out in
You know the coming weeks and months as well yeah love it love it that’s the beauty of um having an app is that we can continue to learn and grow and and add and refine things as um as it makes sense for for the men and for the mission
Yeah awesome all right Doyle I’m out of questions did I miss is there anything you’re like n Nick I wish you would have or you prompted Nick your questions prompted diss in me no I think I think I think that this is um yeah no this is
Great and and I’m just so thankful to to everybody that does pop in here and set sets up a community um I think that’s super important you know it it comes with some responsibility like I mentioned um but um if you can take that step and set up a community in your area
Then the next guy who comes along who doesn’t know anyone um will be able to join your community um and get set up with you and find that Christian Brotherhood that that all of us long for uh so much yeah amen awesome Doyle thank you so much for for doing this walking
Through and answering all my uh some probably obvious questions but uh just really helpful to have a good understanding of what this is how can I use it um and then I think uh yeah just for for you guys who are watching take oils yeah hop in create one so that men
Can find can find you and can find one another um so important for that connection uh point and uh and then also if if you’re new go to starty exodus. comom come join us come be a part of it we start January 1 but you can start
Today hop on in and we’ve got uh readings and Reflections and guidance for you right now as we continue to go towards uh right now Christmas through Advent and then even into Christmas leading up to January 1 so uh Doyle anything else well I mean I think just
You know one final plug on on Advent um our Advent program is going on like Nick said you can jump in right now we were really blessed to work with Bishop Thomas ppri of the Springfield Illinois dicese um so he’s walking through uh with us throughout Advent as our
Spiritual guide um so in addition to a daily reading from scripture and a reflection um um on Advent themes that you can both read or listen to uh this year so that’s another new uh Exodus app feature that we launched this year um so in addition to reading or listening to
Uh the daily reading from scripture and reflection we’ve also got uh Bishop ppri in there uh with an exhortation each week on you know what it means to to live a good Advent uh as a man and um you know one of the things we’re super
Excited about going into to Exodus 90 is that the spiritual guide who will kind of continue in that same capacity that that uh Bishop proy has been with us for for Advent uh father bonfice Hicks uh Benedict and monk from from Pennsylvania spiritual director author uh is going to
Be doing something very similar uh throughout the 13 weeks of Exodus 90 and lent um and we’re just so so blessed to be able to get to work with him s getting super practical on you know what it really means to uh enter into fraternity with other men how do you be
There for them how do you um get support from them um and how do you you know ultimately how does prayer and acts of self- Deni and fraternity how does that all fit together in order to make us better men and and help us grow closer
To God so we’re super you know blessed and excited about about father bonfice as well yeah amen I love it yeah it’s such a good it’s such a good addition uh as as layered on top of the readings and the reflections every day and the guidance that we give um yeah just from
His experience as a as a priest and as a monk so it’s a it’s a great addition super excited about that all right men thanks so much again for joining us and for being a part of this conversation and this presentation by Doyle Doyle thanks so much for all of it um it’s
Beautiful it’s well done and God bless you guys come join us and invite a brother to come and start and continue his journey with the Lord to become a better man to serve and love others around you all right take care God Bless
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