Justin R. LesterFounder & AI-Ministry Strategist, TheoXTech · Pastor. Professor. AI Strategist.

Jamal asked me straight up: is your church majority Black because of Silicon Valley, or because you

3 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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Justin R. Lester says his church's Black majority is intentional, not accidental to Silicon Valley. He started the Ditek Pastor Innovation Labs to reach people traditional church misses, like through a drone-training program taught by a tech company engineer that drew youth who wouldn't otherwise come.

Is your church majority Black?
Yes. How is it because of the environment that you're in Silicon Valley, or how did you raise a culture where they felt comfortable in churches where I'm gonna learn how to do a drone? You know what I mean? That's a different kind of sell than the Mississippi club is gonna meet and we gonna figure out where the bus trip is to Sight and Sound. Yeah. And where we gonna eat at. And where we gonna eat.
I got a, and I wanted to start this, it was called the Ditek Pastor Innovation Labs, right? This was way before I, I got out there. And so I said, I wanna do innovative things in our church and I wanna do, one of our values is we will do things that no one else is doing to reach those no one else is reaching. And so I enjoy this stuff. Yeah. My son enjoys Legos and I'm sitting here just like, why are we coloring when I can give you Legos? And then one of, we had a, a mechanical engineer in our church who was like, hey pastor, I do drone training. I would love to teach. I do fly drones. I would love to train people on it. And he works at a company nearby. And we were like, I was like, absolutely. Kids started showing up.