June 17, 2026

Going Offline | Glitch | Menlo Midweek Podcast

29 minutes

We have reached the finale of our Glitch series, a month-long conversation about what it truly means to be human in a machine world. After exploring awe, agency, and identity, host Matt Summers sits down with teaching pastor Phil EuBank to tackle the final, most vulnerable layer of this cultural moment: intimacy. Reflecting on the real-time feedback from the Menlo Church lobby over the last few weeks, Matt and Phil unpack how living in a hyper-optimized, digital environment has quietly exposed a profound undercurrent of loneliness and exhaustion in our community.

This episode dives deep into the weekend message, "Going Offline," moving past abstract fears of AI companions to look at the immediate reality of how technology is actively retraining us. When we become accustomed to frictionless, digital interactions, our tolerance for real-world relational messiness plummets. Phil challenges us to consider a sobering reality: relationships that never push and pull only take and never give. By looking at Jesus' invitation in Matthew 11 and Paul's words on being "fully known" in 1 Corinthians 13, this conversation serves as a beautiful, practical roadmap for recovering our humanity through the slow, messy, and restorative work of real community.

📍 In This Episode:

The Retraining of Relationships: How technology isn't just replacing human connection, but actively altering our expectations, making us less patient with the natural friction of real-life intimacy.

The Push and Pull of Intimacy: A breakdown of why authentic relationships require vulnerability, inconvenience, and the willingness to be stretched rather than simply mirrored or tracked.

The True Definition of A.I.: Unpacking the double meaning behind the entire series—how the modern world constantly offers us artificial awe, artificial agency, artificial identity, and artificial intimacy.

The Cross-Shaped Human: Exploring the beautiful imagery of the four directions of humanity (awe up, agency out, intimacy across, identity within) and how the cross forms the true shape of a whole, thriving human being.

💬 Discussion Question:

In what areas of your life have digital connections or screens started to replace real, face-to-face relationships?

#MenloChurch #MenloMidweek #GoingOffline #Glitch

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