WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.040 It's hand now. Hey, we are, we are live. Hey, welcome to, uh, to beta episode one. We did beta 00:00:08.040 --> 00:00:14.240 episode zero double O last week. This is beta here with the church digital podcast. I am Jeff 00:00:14.240 --> 00:00:18.920 Reed. And of course, once again, joined by Ray D'Armis. Uh, I'm guessing Ray, you want to say 00:00:18.920 --> 00:00:25.100 hi to somebody? Uh, hello to everybody out there that is sending their kids back to school today, 00:00:25.100 --> 00:00:29.980 specifically in South Florida. We are with you. Oh my goodness, man. Good luck to all of you. 00:00:30.580 --> 00:00:36.640 Yeah. Traffic was interesting. Um, needless to say that I was kind of enjoying having like peace 00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:42.060 and quiet in my morning drive and all that is now gone. Thank you very much for that. But we, 00:00:42.300 --> 00:00:47.040 we don't need to talk about like Miami traffic or wherever you are traffic. We want to, 00:00:47.360 --> 00:00:52.560 we want to talk about your question. So beta, this is a new thing for us here with the church digital. 00:00:52.560 --> 00:00:57.320 And of course we've got the podcast we've done almost a hundred episodes with coming up on our 00:00:57.320 --> 00:01:03.120 hundredth here in a couple of weeks, but we wanted to move away from heady theoretical philosophical 00:01:03.120 --> 00:01:08.000 conversations and try to get more practical in the midst of COVID season, try to find some sort of 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:12.840 practical application, even in the midst of all of this chaos. So, uh, to this end, we're doing this 00:01:12.840 --> 00:01:18.040 live stream here beta. Here's what we want to do. We're going to get to the topic here in a second, 00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:24.360 but moving forward, if you've got questions on, on church online, on digital church, on online 00:01:24.360 --> 00:01:29.040 discipleship, on digital church, on digital church, planting, any of this sort of thing involving 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:34.240 ministry in digital space, uh, avatar space, even talking to the virtual reality stuff. Hey, 00:01:34.240 --> 00:01:40.080 we want to hear those questions as my dog barks. I love Ray. I love you too, Ray. And the other Ray, 00:01:40.720 --> 00:01:47.040 uh, text your questions to, for the church, four, eight, four, three, two, four, eight, seven, 00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:51.760 two, four, four, eight, four, three, two, four, eight, seven, two, four. I started to say good girl, 00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:58.640 Ray, but then that would just make this podcast even weirder. Hey, is it more effective to create a church 00:01:59.040 --> 00:02:05.200 service exclusive for online or to live stream a physical service? Is it more effective to create 00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:10.480 a church service exclusive for online or live stream that physical service? Ray, you want to take the 00:02:10.480 --> 00:02:16.160 first shot? Yeah. Um, I'm, I'm a bigger fan for exclusive for online. Um, for so many reasons. 00:02:16.160 --> 00:02:20.960 Number one, you're talking to a specific audience and you're creating a unique experience. It's just for 00:02:20.960 --> 00:02:27.520 them. It's catered for them. Also, uh, just keeping in mind, uh, something as basic, but as important as 00:02:27.520 --> 00:02:32.160 the length of a service, we're much more forgiving in person than we are watching through screens. 00:02:32.160 --> 00:02:37.680 That's just the reality of the situation. Many of you will watch, uh, you know, even an hour message 00:02:37.680 --> 00:02:42.240 live and in person and jive along with your pastor. But when you are either listening to the podcast or 00:02:42.240 --> 00:02:45.920 whether you're watching it through a YouTube channel or something else later on, and especially the 00:02:45.920 --> 00:02:51.440 smaller the screen gets the less length of time that you're willing to forgive. So I'm a bigger fan 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:55.440 of catering the specific experience for the online audience. 00:02:56.720 --> 00:03:02.160 Yeah, I, I would agree with that. Try to create that, that online experience, even if it's things 00:03:02.160 --> 00:03:09.520 like a host talking, a campus pastor, one of the pastors talking direct to the, to the online 00:03:09.520 --> 00:03:16.640 audience. Maybe it's a sermon where the pastor is looking direct at that lens and engaging with it 00:03:16.640 --> 00:03:22.720 at a way that maybe that pastor is not able to do when he's trying to preach to, to an entire room. 00:03:22.720 --> 00:03:29.120 There's an opportunity to really dig in to that online environment. Now, keep in mind, 00:03:29.120 --> 00:03:34.800 and this is where the COVID season really just gets messy for us because pre COVID you had physical 00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:38.960 audience and you had digital audience and, and sometimes they overlapped, but for the most part, 00:03:38.960 --> 00:03:45.520 it was kind of, kind of separated. Now here COVID mid COVID post COVID coming out of it, wherever we are 00:03:45.520 --> 00:03:51.840 in the season, we're seeing people try to go back to the building, but a lot of our physical audience 00:03:51.840 --> 00:03:57.760 pre COVID is still watching online. So just keep in mind that you're going to have these mixed, 00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:04.880 these hybrid, uh, kind of services towards that. And, and our ones are people who are cold to Christ. 00:04:05.360 --> 00:04:12.160 They're not looking for that 60, 70 minute service, that 40 minute sermon. If, if you're really true, 00:04:12.160 --> 00:04:18.560 trying to dig into evangelism, you're, that's not the presentation that the online people are looking 00:04:18.560 --> 00:04:23.600 for that, that are cold to Christ. So create that, that shorter, that more succinct environment, 00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:28.320 which is actually going to lead us here into question number two. Question number two, 00:04:28.320 --> 00:04:35.920 is it easier to get better engagement in five to 15 minute segments rather than a full 40 to minute 00:04:35.920 --> 00:04:41.280 service? So we're talking engagement, two way conversations, chat, uh, likes comments. Uh, Ray, 00:04:41.280 --> 00:04:46.240 what are you thinking off of that? Man, I got a hot take here. Uh, so good content is good content, 00:04:46.240 --> 00:04:51.360 no matter what the length, uh, that's, that's my hot take. So, and I think that's going to require 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:57.040 a lot of honest feedback, especially to you content creators, pastors specifically that are 00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:01.120 writing your messages. So you might, might want to make sure and kind of pitch a few people to make 00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:07.040 sure that all 40 to 60 minutes of that content is truly engaging because if it's not, guess what? 00:05:07.040 --> 00:05:12.480 It can be chopped up into those five to 15 minute bits and redistribute it on social media or even in 00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:17.520 your online service, shorten it up. It's okay to trim it down to the best of the best of it. That's totally 00:05:17.520 --> 00:05:22.400 fine. Uh, in the same way that when you go to a high end restaurant, you know, you're not getting 00:05:22.400 --> 00:05:27.680 like six sides with your main course. No, you have to order every piece that you truly want. 00:05:27.680 --> 00:05:31.120 Why? Because it's going to be the best of the best. That steak is going to be the best version 00:05:31.120 --> 00:05:34.640 of it. They don't need to dress it up with extra sides because they know they're serving you something 00:05:34.640 --> 00:05:39.440 that's quality and a one directly off the bat. And so it's going to take a lot of hardcore feedback, 00:05:39.440 --> 00:05:44.400 but if your content is truly engaging, just like, Hey, Avengers end game. Yeah. We sat there for three 00:05:44.400 --> 00:05:49.600 hours for three hours. Why? It was great. And because we knew what we were going to, 00:05:49.600 --> 00:05:53.040 and we would have sat there for four because we believed it was going to be that good. 00:05:53.840 --> 00:05:58.880 But you know, for our messages, we got to reconsider. Yeah. Pastor, that is not an excuse 00:05:58.880 --> 00:06:04.080 to preach a three hour sermon. Don't, don't write that down. Those guys on that crazy thing 00:06:04.080 --> 00:06:08.640 where they screwed up the first slide, they said we should preach a four hour sermon. That is not, 00:06:08.640 --> 00:06:14.320 that's not where we're at. Uh, but, but definitely have that good content and, and, and really, 00:06:14.320 --> 00:06:18.080 really beat that down. If it's, if it's 15 minutes, if it's 10 minutes, if it's five minutes, 00:06:18.080 --> 00:06:23.600 if it's, if it's 30, it has to be engaging, captivating. And, and, and as a communicator, 00:06:23.840 --> 00:06:29.920 let me say the, even the talks that I do, I don't judge whether it's, it's effective in that it's, 00:06:29.920 --> 00:06:34.720 for me, it's a, it's a much better conversation to allow others to speak into it. We actually did a 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:39.040 podcast just recently with, uh, with Patrick up at Nouveau church where he was talking about that, 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:42.800 where he was letting others speak into the sermon and getting some of that, some of that feedback. 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:49.600 So pastor be open-handed with some of this stuff towards it. The end game for us, uh, if we're 00:06:49.600 --> 00:06:56.160 really interested in doing online in context of reaching people with evangelism comes down to 00:06:56.160 --> 00:07:03.760 shareable content. What can you do that is going to make that bit of, of media, a sermon, 00:07:03.760 --> 00:07:10.640 a worship clip, a testimony video, what does it look like to make it shareable? Best practices 00:07:10.640 --> 00:07:16.160 would be shorter, the better. Or if you're doing a larger service, pastor, wrap up your service by 00:07:16.160 --> 00:07:21.360 physical service by saying this, was your, was this service impactful for you? Do you know somebody 00:07:21.360 --> 00:07:26.960 in your life that needs this message? Our sermon is completely on Facebook right now. Why don't you 00:07:26.960 --> 00:07:32.800 take a moment, just as you're walking out to the car, share this service on Facebook with people that 00:07:32.800 --> 00:07:39.520 that need to hear it. Ask your 99, ask the people engaged to your church to share and start to create 00:07:39.520 --> 00:07:47.120 assets and resources. It's true. 60 seconds can be more impactful in somebody's life digitally than 60 00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:54.320 minutes can. And the ability for us to generate this content, to make it shareable, to get people, 00:07:54.320 --> 00:07:59.200 even within the service and with the service, get them connected into an engagement pathway is a 00:07:59.200 --> 00:08:05.280 phenomenal opportunity that we have with the church today. Hey, so let's roll into question three 00:08:05.280 --> 00:08:10.320 here, kind of stream rolling. How does the church engage? This is a hard one. Like this is, let's 00:08:10.320 --> 00:08:15.040 kind of back up here a little bit. I don't know that anybody's got the answer. How does the church engage 00:08:15.040 --> 00:08:21.760 the public while heading back to the building for in-person gatherings? How does the church engage the 00:08:21.760 --> 00:08:26.800 public while heading back to the building for in-person gatherings, right? What are you thinking off of 00:08:26.800 --> 00:08:32.000 this? Well, I mean, the first thing I would say is that's something that's got to just, it can't just 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:36.480 be your services. It's got to go beyond your services. You got to serve your community. And mind you, 00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:41.200 if you missed out on that opportunity during COVID, you missed out on a big opportunity, but it's not 00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:46.320 too late. Today, you can still get involved in some way in your community, find the needs that are going 00:08:46.320 --> 00:08:52.080 on and find ways to engage them. But the reality of it is, is that people don't care what you know 00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:56.720 until they know what you care, right? They know that you care. That's the thing that's important. 00:08:56.720 --> 00:09:03.280 And your community needs to know that you, church, that you care about them, that they matter to you. 00:09:03.920 --> 00:09:07.600 And then there's the age old question that many churches have asked. If your church disappeared 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:12.240 from your community, you had to shut those doors. Would they care? What is it that you provide 00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:16.800 for them? That's what matters. And so in the same way, don't just dream of the big online space. 00:09:16.800 --> 00:09:21.520 I love what Kerry Newhoff says. He says, "Nobody should out-local the local church." And that should 00:09:21.520 --> 00:09:28.000 be true of your church and true of mine. Yeah. Kerry's so good, man. And he talks about this idea of 00:09:28.720 --> 00:09:33.840 the church online, the digital church. And he talks about it actually being hyper-local, 00:09:34.720 --> 00:09:39.920 instead of glocal and global and going over. He says, "Church, we've got an opportunity with 00:09:39.920 --> 00:09:46.000 our digital to be hyper-localized into certain areas." And I would challenge it in this season. 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:51.040 For us as church, as much as we're interested in reaching the world, let's understand that through 00:09:51.040 --> 00:09:56.240 digital, through church online, we've got an opportunity to be hyper-sensitive to the communities 00:09:56.240 --> 00:10:01.520 around us. We know this. And you talk to any online pastor, they'll tell you this. People connect to 00:10:01.520 --> 00:10:08.240 community before they connect to Christ. And so even at least in online circles, and I would suggest 00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:13.440 coming out of this COVID season, I think culture is shifting more and more that way where we're not 00:10:13.440 --> 00:10:20.880 necessarily embracing this idea of the organization of the church as much as church. We need to allow 00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:27.920 individuals an opportunity to speak into that. And so having that happen, giving individuals an 00:10:27.920 --> 00:10:33.440 opportunity to speak, that is the true engagement point where it's not a nameless organization trying 00:10:33.440 --> 00:10:38.880 to tell people how to live their life, but it's individuals telling the story of what Jesus has 00:10:38.880 --> 00:10:44.720 done for them through the Holy Spirit in their own individual lives. 00:10:44.720 --> 00:10:49.680 Yeah. And touching base on that, social media outlets now, Facebook, YouTube, and others are 00:10:49.680 --> 00:10:56.080 really trying to figure out on how to build those communities locally too. And so everything from, 00:10:56.080 --> 00:11:01.600 hey, in your online broadcast, it's okay to throw in a few local jokes, things that only your community 00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:06.240 would get, things that are unique to your niche area. Like Miami, we have a lot of these things. 00:11:06.240 --> 00:11:11.280 Last week, we celebrated reopening. And so we took out pots and pans and we banged them together. 00:11:11.280 --> 00:11:14.480 Why? Because in Miami, that's a hilarious way that we celebrate all of our sports 00:11:14.480 --> 00:11:20.400 teams. Folks show up at the local Cuban restaurant on 40th Street and 87th Avenue called La Careta and 00:11:20.400 --> 00:11:23.920 they show up with pots and pans and they bang them around. That's how we celebrate championships and 00:11:23.920 --> 00:11:28.080 all sorts of other ridiculousness. And so those are like small little details that you can throw 00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:32.880 into your service that guess what? Yeah. Only your local audience is going to get that. Nobody else is 00:11:32.880 --> 00:11:37.920 going to get that, but that helps bring that community even more together. Why? Because guess what? 00:11:37.920 --> 00:11:44.240 My people on Facebook are connected to people on Facebook in Miami more often than not. Yes, they will touch 00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:48.880 the person in California or the person in Spain. But most of the time when they smash that share button, 00:11:48.880 --> 00:11:56.400 people in Miami are checking. That's awesome. Let's be honest. We're in Miami. We really don't 00:11:56.400 --> 00:12:00.880 celebrate our sports teams that often. So in the grand scheme of the number of times you would expect to 00:12:00.880 --> 00:12:06.400 see the pans and pots. Yeah. Like the heater down three to one. It's over. So, um, you know, 00:12:06.400 --> 00:12:16.400 we celebrate more than Cleveland and that matters. So Cleveland shots to that out to the people in 00:12:16.400 --> 00:12:20.400 Cleveland that are watching this right now. I'm sorry. I'm actually going to be up, up in the Ohio 00:12:20.400 --> 00:12:27.280 area here in a couple of weeks. So Phil Underwood, the pastor who asked these questions. Um, you know, 00:12:27.280 --> 00:12:31.120 these are great questions, by the way, Phil, you're doing ministry in the Florida keys. 00:12:31.920 --> 00:12:36.480 So hats off to you. You are the true winner, whether or not your question got selected, 00:12:36.880 --> 00:12:43.040 sitting alongside the beach, doing the work of God, uh, Phil, I'm envious of you in this season. 00:12:43.040 --> 00:12:48.560 So thanks very much for this. Remember people out there, if you've got questions, we want to answer 00:12:48.560 --> 00:12:53.360 them through shows like this, that will be better structured. And my dog Ray Skywalker, 00:12:53.360 --> 00:13:00.960 hopefully won't be barking as much. So text those questions in 404-324-8724. It's literally 00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:06.880 alphabet on the keyboard for the church. Check that out. Hey, we've got beta as well as other free 00:13:06.880 --> 00:13:13.600 resources, of course, over at the church.digital. Uh, and this show beta will be seen on, I think 00:13:13.600 --> 00:13:18.320 it's on Facebook and YouTube right now. We'll get it on all the social media networks on the website. 00:13:18.320 --> 00:13:23.040 And of course, on the podcast, if you're not listening to the podcast, check this out. It's 00:13:23.040 --> 00:13:28.400 got our church digital podcast, which is far more theoretical future driven. And then of course, 00:13:28.400 --> 00:13:32.560 beta here, which gets more practical. So, Hey, Ray, as we're landing in the plane quickly, 00:13:32.560 --> 00:13:35.520 any closing thoughts? No, just keep those questions coming. 00:13:35.520 --> 00:13:39.600 And I love the thought of now that many churches are considering reopening. 00:13:39.600 --> 00:13:43.920 Don't forget online matters. The majority of people are going to join you outside of the room. 00:13:44.800 --> 00:13:51.200 Yeah. Online matters. Church culture is shifting away for us. As much as we want to go back to 00:13:51.200 --> 00:13:57.200 the way that it was February, 2020, we go back there. There's nobody there. And so learn lessons, 00:13:57.200 --> 00:14:02.720 keep fighting for this direction of it. Not, not even embracing this idea of, of digital being the 00:14:02.720 --> 00:14:07.760 end game, combining the two together, but ultimately comes down to creating that, that disciple maker 00:14:07.760 --> 00:14:13.200 and letting that person be the focus of our ministry moving forward, post COVID and into 00:14:13.200 --> 00:14:18.400 the next normal. So, Hey, thanks very much for jumping on this for Ray. I'm Jeff with the church 00:14:18.400 --> 00:14:23.360 digital. Thanks for being here. And we'll see you next time here on beta. Y'all have a good one.