WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.080 All right. Hey, we are live with the beta show episode 41 here. I'm Jeff with the church digital 00:00:07.080 --> 00:00:11.960 podcast. Once again, all of this is powered by stadia church planning. Hey, we got a great 00:00:11.960 --> 00:00:16.480 episode. We are, we're wrapping up the beta show here a little bit. We haven't made this public 00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:21.460 knowledge. Talk about it here a little bit, but here with beta 41 here, we are going to be talking 00:00:21.460 --> 00:00:28.560 about why your church needs to be thinking digital first, why your church needs to be thinking at 00:00:28.560 --> 00:00:33.160 digital first. If you've got ministry questions, digital ministry questions, we want to answer 00:00:33.160 --> 00:00:41.300 them here on the beta show. Go ahead and text us 484-324-8724. That's literally my cell phone 00:00:41.300 --> 00:00:45.120 number. And so I don't have my phone in front of me. One of those weird times in life right now. 00:00:45.180 --> 00:00:50.060 So go ahead and text me, minister questions. Maybe we'll answer on beta show or something else coming 00:00:50.060 --> 00:00:56.500 up along the way. Hey, like I said, we are, we're wrapping up the beta show. This is one of the last 00:00:57.120 --> 00:01:01.600 episodes we're going to be doing for a while. You know, as we iterate, experiment, try, 00:01:01.720 --> 00:01:08.400 things change. And as a result, season two is coming. Excited about the church digital season 00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:14.500 two. We're turning the page, a new outlook for the church digital. So keep your eyes open for that 00:01:14.500 --> 00:01:19.660 starting right around the corner, September 13th. By the way, speaking of September 13th, 00:01:19.660 --> 00:01:24.380 I'm going to be hanging out with my exponential friends at some regional conferences. I'm going to be 00:01:24.380 --> 00:01:29.400 meeting Tom Pounder for the first time in real life. I'm going to be in Washington, DC looking 00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:34.320 forward to hanging out there. We're going to be doing a pre-conference. Stadia is doing a pre-conference 00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:40.920 track on physical and digital, how those work together. So if you're interested, if you're in 00:01:40.920 --> 00:01:46.120 the DC area, September, we're going to be there September 13th and 14th. Go ahead and check out the 00:01:46.120 --> 00:01:52.900 website, exponential.org. And be sure to sign up for the Washington, DC, but also the pre-conference. 00:01:52.980 --> 00:02:01.500 Going to be in other areas, Houston, Chicago, a couple of spots in California. I will be at all of 00:02:01.500 --> 00:02:05.560 them. So be sure if you're going to be out at that area, interested in going to the conference, 00:02:05.680 --> 00:02:11.880 stop by and say hello. Would love to hang out with you at these conferences. By the way, 00:02:11.940 --> 00:02:16.560 42, as we're wrapping up the next beta show here, we're going to be talking about the secret 00:02:16.560 --> 00:02:21.080 to online small groups. Yeah, there's something I may have been holding back on. We're going to be 00:02:21.080 --> 00:02:26.920 talking about that here in the near future. But hey, you know what? Here's what I want to get into 00:02:26.920 --> 00:02:35.580 today. Episode 41, this idea of what does it mean to think digital first. Beta 41, what does it mean 00:02:35.580 --> 00:02:41.400 to think digital first? And I want to give you all out there a couple tips right off the bat. So tip 00:02:41.400 --> 00:02:47.700 number one, why you need to be thinking digital first? Well, let's just be honest. Digital has too 00:02:47.700 --> 00:02:52.180 much potential to get scraps. Okay. Maybe I'm speaking a little bit from ego right up here off 00:02:52.180 --> 00:02:58.820 the top. I confess that, put it up here openly. But the idea is that digital just has an immense 00:02:58.820 --> 00:03:04.840 potential just to be left over and getting the scraps. Here's the reality of it. Where we are in this 00:03:04.840 --> 00:03:10.840 mid-post-COVID season, and I'm not getting political, don't send me hate mail. Not everyone, 00:03:10.920 --> 00:03:17.680 the reality is not everyone, has come back to the building. You know, it seems like the average 00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:24.400 consensus that I've heard is about 60 to 70 percent of pre-COVID attendance is back in the building. 00:03:24.400 --> 00:03:30.240 And remember, where we were in the building, February 2020, we were at a 20, 25-year decline 00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:36.900 where organized religion, organized Christianity lost something like 25 percent over those 20 years. 00:03:37.360 --> 00:03:44.300 And so, listen, we were trending down. And COVID, listen, Delta variant, I just read something about 00:03:44.300 --> 00:03:48.880 the Mu variant. Everybody keeps talking about all these Loki variants that are around. Okay, 00:03:48.880 --> 00:03:54.040 maybe Loki's a different thing. But the heart of this is wherever we are in this COVID journey, 00:03:54.040 --> 00:04:00.520 wherever you think we are, there is not a general consensus among the public. And there is not 00:04:00.520 --> 00:04:06.040 churches that I'm hearing that are saying, "Oh yeah, we've got 90, 100 percent. We've even grown 00:04:06.040 --> 00:04:15.160 in this season." So we need digital to continue to engage. We need digital to still be on task reaching 00:04:15.160 --> 00:04:20.760 these people. Realize this, and let me throw a slide up here. Yeah, 40 percent of your people are still not 00:04:20.760 --> 00:04:26.040 in your building. So let me ask this question. Why is digital getting less than four percent of your 00:04:26.040 --> 00:04:33.240 budget and four percent of your energy or attention? We need digital to be on task. And oftentimes, 00:04:33.240 --> 00:04:38.280 well, putting it as second, yeah, we're all, well, we'll get into more of that here in a little bit. But 00:04:38.280 --> 00:04:45.320 we need digital to still be that connection point with people that are not yet in your building. If you 00:04:45.320 --> 00:04:50.920 think that buildings are important for discipleship and your strategy leans that way, you still need 00:04:50.920 --> 00:04:57.560 to be reaching out to people that have not made it into your building. Second reason why digital is 00:04:57.560 --> 00:05:05.880 important, why we want to think digital first. If you don't think digital first, you likely won't think 00:05:05.880 --> 00:05:12.280 digital. Now, there's a lot of reasons why here. I mean, let's be honest, after several hundred years 00:05:12.280 --> 00:05:20.920 of doing church physical only or physical first, the majority of us as staffs, as leaders, as pastors, 00:05:20.920 --> 00:05:25.720 we don't think digital. Let's get back to that building. Let's get back to normal. Let's get back 00:05:25.720 --> 00:05:33.480 to the way that it was as quickly as possible. But the practicality here is that by thinking digital 00:05:33.480 --> 00:05:41.080 first, we are able to work through issues upfront with digital. We're able to instead of, you know, 00:05:41.080 --> 00:05:47.560 okay, let's just get it done as quick as possible. By paying that attention upfront, we are aggressively 00:05:47.560 --> 00:05:54.600 working through digital challenges as opposed to neglecting it and limiting it as more of an afterthought. 00:05:55.240 --> 00:06:02.280 So that's the challenge number two with that. Number three flying through here. Thinking digital first 00:06:02.280 --> 00:06:12.840 will help your organization scale. Think complement. Think multimodal. Think different. By forcing 00:06:12.840 --> 00:06:20.200 a harder conversation at the beginning, digital first, you're making, you're moving away from this idea 00:06:20.200 --> 00:06:24.760 of physical first. And that's making you, when you're fresh, when you have that 00:06:24.760 --> 00:06:30.040 attention Monday and Tuesday and not when you're exhausted on a Thursday and Friday, 00:06:30.040 --> 00:06:34.680 trying to rattle through this. Look, you know, and I'm not much of a gym guy. I have been in my life, 00:06:34.680 --> 00:06:40.840 but it's like leg day. It's very easy to ignore leg day. And you've seen these guys at the gym where, 00:06:40.840 --> 00:06:45.800 you know, they're huge up top, muscles ripping, but their legs look like Q-tips. 00:06:45.800 --> 00:06:52.840 And there's this intentionality of, hey, you know what, we even need to make leg day work for the digital 00:06:52.840 --> 00:06:57.720 church. Somebody tweet that out there. You need to make leg day work for the digital church. 00:06:57.720 --> 00:07:06.200 I had a pastor tell me here. This is a good friend, Ray Hudson from City Center Church in Berkeley, 00:07:06.200 --> 00:07:11.400 California. Our church, this is what he says. He actually did this at an exponential, some stuff 00:07:11.400 --> 00:07:17.880 we're doing for exponential. Our church does five things really well. You know, weekend services, 00:07:17.880 --> 00:07:25.720 to be honest, are number five. It's the fifth thing overall in priority. Hey, yeah, the service plays a 00:07:25.720 --> 00:07:33.160 part. But for Ray Hudson, lead pastor at City Center Church in Berkeley, it's number five. There's other 00:07:33.160 --> 00:07:40.120 things that come first before you get to it. Why? Because you want everything to be in balance. You 00:07:40.120 --> 00:07:47.400 want everything to be strong. You don't want that strong upper body and weak legs. You don't want 00:07:47.400 --> 00:07:55.880 a strong weekend service and weak discipleship. You need to be thinking multiple facets. You know, 00:07:55.880 --> 00:08:01.400 there's lots of adages kind of in the COVID season where the queen, that weekend service, 00:08:01.400 --> 00:08:07.080 the strength of the church was gone. And we need to be using other body parts. We need to be growing 00:08:07.080 --> 00:08:11.960 strong in discipleship in groups. We need to figure what our mission had looked like. And there was 00:08:11.960 --> 00:08:18.120 all this challenge to do things differently in COVID. And yes, the buildings are important. And yes, 00:08:18.120 --> 00:08:23.720 for many of us, we need to get back to them as quickly as possible, but not to forsake the things 00:08:23.720 --> 00:08:30.440 that we've learned along the way. Ray, thank you for this. What great insight there on this quote. 00:08:31.080 --> 00:08:36.680 By the way, number three here, it's not like leg day. Thinking digital first will help your 00:08:36.680 --> 00:08:42.680 organization scale, complement, think multimodal. Ultimately, it's going to help you 00:08:43.400 --> 00:08:48.360 force those muscles and grow those muscles to think differently. All right, let's go. Number four, 00:08:48.360 --> 00:08:54.520 I promised you three. I'm going to give you four just because I can. It's not that digital needs to 00:08:54.520 --> 00:09:01.160 be your number one priority. It's that physical church services can no longer be your number one priority. 00:09:01.720 --> 00:09:10.920 And so the heart of this idea of thanking digital, of thanking digital first, is really this muscle 00:09:10.920 --> 00:09:17.720 reaction that we need to move away from the church service being number one. Our buildings are losing 00:09:17.720 --> 00:09:26.840 influence. Our services have not the evangelical outreach potential that they once had, yet there's 00:09:26.840 --> 00:09:32.920 a ton of people in those pews ready to be activated and mobilized for the kingdom and church. We've got 00:09:32.920 --> 00:09:38.280 to figure out how to do that. And oftentimes, and I'm not talking about by thanking digital first, 00:09:38.280 --> 00:09:43.160 we need to broadcast our church services online. That's not the solution I'm getting to. Instead, 00:09:43.160 --> 00:09:47.880 maybe it's more of we need to figure out what to do with these people and how we can get these 00:09:47.880 --> 00:09:54.120 consumers activated to the place where they're being on mission. By the way, we, Stadia, we wrestle 00:09:54.120 --> 00:09:58.920 with this all the time. We talk about Fidgetal. We've got Fidgetal learning communities. 00:09:59.960 --> 00:10:05.560 We actually did the trademark, but if we're even thanking digital first, maybe Fidgetal, which is 00:10:05.560 --> 00:10:10.520 physical and digital, maybe that's the wrong word. Maybe we should have instead, maybe we should be 00:10:10.520 --> 00:10:16.840 calling it Digical. Maybe I'm joking. Actually, somebody out there needs to buy, just go buy 00:10:16.840 --> 00:10:22.920 digical.church. Oh, wait, I already did. So, never mind. But the heart of this is, listen, 00:10:22.920 --> 00:10:27.160 whether you're saying Fidgetal, whether you're saying Digical, the heart of this is we need to be 00:10:27.160 --> 00:10:33.320 thanking digital first. We need to be thanking different first. We need to be breaking this rhythm 00:10:33.320 --> 00:10:39.320 of it's all about the weekend service. And instead, realizing that weekend service is part of what we're 00:10:39.320 --> 00:10:45.640 doing. But your church may be doing five different things. And for you, the weekend service is just a 00:10:45.640 --> 00:10:51.720 part of it. And even like I said, maybe it's the fifth part. Maybe it's the pinky. And some of your 00:10:51.720 --> 00:10:58.920 other muscles within your church need to shake the atrophy off and start to be more involved in this 00:10:58.920 --> 00:11:06.680 thing. Hey, I love this quick beta show right here for the weekend. Beta 41, why your church should 00:11:06.680 --> 00:11:15.800 think digital first. Beta 42 coming up next week. We're going to be the best kept secret to your 00:11:15.800 --> 00:11:22.280 online small groups. We're going to hit that. And do not forget, we, Stadia, we want to hang out with you at 00:11:22.280 --> 00:11:29.560 that exponential regional conferences, exponential.org to find times and locations. When you 00:11:29.560 --> 00:11:35.640 register, we'll be in DC, Southern California, Northern California, Houston, and Chicago. I'm 00:11:35.640 --> 00:11:38.840 going to be doing a lot of traveling here before Thanksgiving, and it's going to be a blast. Can't 00:11:38.840 --> 00:11:43.640 wait to meet a lot of you in person. And when you sign up for that conference, sign up for the 00:11:43.640 --> 00:11:50.840 pre-conference, the Stadia track, talking physical and digital, and we will see you there. Hey, 00:11:50.840 --> 00:11:56.280 season 41 coming up real quick around the corner. See that in a couple of weeks. Next week is the 00:11:56.280 --> 00:12:02.280 last beta show. I'm saying it publicly right here. Beta 42, and then we're calling it quits. This is 00:12:02.280 --> 00:12:06.120 Jeff at the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning. Thanks for jumping on here. We'll see you next week. 00:12:06.120 --> 00:12:09.640 Y'all have a good day.