WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.960 There's a lot of digital tools on the tool belt, but I got to tell you, one of my favorite right now is a software called Altar Live. 00:00:08.060 --> 00:00:12.740 Hey, everybody. It's Jeff with the Church Digital Podcast, once again, powered by Stadia Church Planning. 00:00:13.320 --> 00:00:16.680 There's a lot of talk about Altar Live. You see it in the Facebook groups. 00:00:16.760 --> 00:00:23.160 There's a lot of interest, a lot of traffic on the website trying to figure out what this thing is and is it actually effective. 00:00:23.160 --> 00:00:30.160 And I want to tell you, I am super excited about what I'm seeing coming out of where they are now and where they're coming. 00:00:30.260 --> 00:00:33.460 If you've never heard of Altar Live, check out the website, altarlive.com. 00:00:33.540 --> 00:00:37.120 We've got a link in the show notes, a couple of thumb clicks, and you're good to go there. 00:00:37.600 --> 00:00:41.500 Altar Live, otherwise, is basically Church Online Platform. 00:00:42.020 --> 00:00:45.340 If Church Online Platform and Zoom had a baby, it would be Altar Live. 00:00:45.340 --> 00:01:03.660 And while that's incredibly exciting in context of your weekend service, it's going to revolutionize your church once you start thinking of everything beyond Sunday and you start using this platform, Altar Live, to have conversations centered around discipleship. 00:01:03.840 --> 00:01:09.520 Let Altar Live be your disciple-making communications platform. 00:01:09.520 --> 00:01:13.520 It's not just for Sunday, honest to God, you could use this thing seven days a week. 00:01:13.580 --> 00:01:17.260 And yes, I did just say honest to God on a church-based podcast. 00:01:17.700 --> 00:01:19.060 We'll go ahead and let it slide. 00:01:19.360 --> 00:01:21.060 This is an incredible conversation. 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:22.000 It's an incredible platform. 00:01:22.160 --> 00:01:25.700 So we brought in Stephanie Leaf, who's the CEO of Altar Live. 00:01:25.860 --> 00:01:31.700 Literally, this company was born in this COVID season and already out of beta providing a solid product. 00:01:31.700 --> 00:01:38.780 We brought in Andy Mahone, who's got a great title, Marketing and Technology Evangelist. 00:01:38.840 --> 00:01:41.480 I want that title, Marketing and Tech Evangelist. 00:01:41.580 --> 00:01:44.000 And he's doing a great job getting promotion out. 00:01:44.080 --> 00:01:45.860 We wanted a church perspective, too. 00:01:46.420 --> 00:01:49.340 And so with the Stadia Futurist, we've talked about that before. 00:01:49.420 --> 00:01:57.680 One of these cohorts that we work with through Stadia that's really championing this idea of church innovation and even going multimodal, embracing digital. 00:01:57.740 --> 00:02:03.720 We brought in Rob Perry, digital pastor from LifePoint Church over in the Carolinas. 00:02:04.260 --> 00:02:08.980 Because Rob's been experimenting with it for a couple months through the Stadia Futurist group. 00:02:09.200 --> 00:02:10.400 And I wanted his perspective. 00:02:10.520 --> 00:02:11.260 I wanted his insight. 00:02:11.500 --> 00:02:14.520 What are you learning here as you're going through this platform? 00:02:14.700 --> 00:02:23.620 And so with the conversation with Stephanie, with Andy, with Rob, we're really starting to get insight to how churches can use Altar Live. 00:02:23.620 --> 00:02:31.380 Once again, more than the Sunday service and start to use this to effectively make disciples digitally. 00:02:31.720 --> 00:02:32.900 Love this conversation. 00:02:33.080 --> 00:02:34.040 You're going to love it. 00:02:34.160 --> 00:02:37.620 And you need to check out that link, altarlive.com as well. 00:02:37.760 --> 00:02:44.140 So, Stephanie Leith, Andy Mahone, Rob Perry from LifePoint, Altar Live, coming in for the conversation. 00:02:44.260 --> 00:02:54.440 Myself, Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning in a conversation that I'm simply calling Altar Live, redefining engagement throughout the digital church. 00:02:55.040 --> 00:02:55.560 Okay, everybody. 00:02:55.820 --> 00:02:56.160 Here you go. 00:02:56.540 --> 00:02:57.360 Hey, Stephanie. 00:02:57.760 --> 00:02:59.940 Why don't you tell us a little bit about Altar Live? 00:03:00.020 --> 00:03:01.440 Maybe where did this idea come from? 00:03:01.580 --> 00:03:13.480 Well, so Altar Live was really born out of helping a local pastor friend of ours get his live stream online back in March, April last year when the pandemic had first hit. 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:28.820 And as we started to get his broadcast up and going, we quite quickly realized that while live streaming was, you know, had its bumps and bumps on the road, really the harder challenge was how do we actually now engage people online? 00:03:29.080 --> 00:03:34.120 There's an audience of people watching, but what does it actually mean to relationally connect with them? 00:03:34.820 --> 00:03:37.640 So, Altar was really born out of trying to solve that problem. 00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:50.140 So, our team of software engineers, Andy and myself, have put together a platform really trying to address the need to turn one-way broadcasts really into a two-way conversation. 00:03:50.780 --> 00:03:51.240 That's awesome. 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:54.860 So, you've been doing this really just since the COVID season. 00:03:54.860 --> 00:03:59.580 Have you guys, what have you learned in a very short amount of time? 00:03:59.660 --> 00:04:03.280 So, like, the idea was born March, April 2020. 00:04:03.640 --> 00:04:05.680 Like, the software is now public. 00:04:05.800 --> 00:04:06.720 It's no longer beta. 00:04:06.840 --> 00:04:10.520 So, like, what has that growth process looked like for you guys? 00:04:10.900 --> 00:04:15.900 Well, it has definitely been a learning experience right alongside churches through this wave of innovation. 00:04:15.900 --> 00:04:27.640 So, yeah, we launched into beta officially last October and out of beta with about 700 churches on the platform this past April, which has been really exciting to grow and learn alongside churches. 00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:29.940 So, what have we learned? 00:04:30.440 --> 00:04:32.380 Andy can jump into this as well. 00:04:32.540 --> 00:04:45.480 I mean, we have definitely learned – you know, I like to say that this is probably the biggest innovation wave that has come to churches since maybe the projector entered church buildings. 00:04:46.700 --> 00:04:48.120 Maybe the smoke machine, too. 00:04:48.440 --> 00:04:49.480 But, you know – 00:04:49.480 --> 00:04:51.260 Whoa, the smoke machine. 00:04:51.600 --> 00:04:53.020 That's a deep cut right there. 00:04:53.180 --> 00:04:54.060 That's good stuff. 00:04:54.680 --> 00:04:59.600 So, the overhead projectors of the 80s, that was the challenge to overcome. 00:04:59.980 --> 00:05:00.260 Well done. 00:05:00.300 --> 00:05:02.480 Church websites were also a big thing. 00:05:02.760 --> 00:05:10.240 But less – church websites had less to do with the actual, you know, core meat of what makes church, church. 00:05:11.220 --> 00:05:24.140 This last innovation wave of moving things online, and not just live streams online, but entire communities, what is it – you know, a lot of churches that we've worked with in the past year have started out just live streaming and realizing, 00:05:24.140 --> 00:05:34.280 all right, we have an audience online, but now we have people connecting with our church who don't even live in our state or live in a different country, or it's my sister's mother who's connecting. 00:05:34.760 --> 00:05:44.600 What does it mean now that we're going back in person to be able to not just minister and work with the people in our building, but also those online? 00:05:44.800 --> 00:05:50.080 And how do you treat them as more than just an audience, but an actually thriving part of your community? 00:05:50.780 --> 00:05:52.680 So, things we've learned along the way. 00:05:53.360 --> 00:06:04.260 Online is not just a secondary standard for how church can be done, but it's a place where real community and real church can thrive. 00:06:04.860 --> 00:06:14.940 It's more than just something that you throw up, but a place where people can be reached and community can be built in some of the same ways as physical, 00:06:15.200 --> 00:06:19.320 and some ways that are actually even better or more enhanced than what you can do physically. 00:06:20.200 --> 00:06:21.860 So, it's been a fun ride. 00:06:22.220 --> 00:06:26.340 Andy can probably jump in and share some of the lessons along the way there, too. 00:06:26.700 --> 00:06:40.320 Yeah, well, one thing that we have heard early on was that the leadership and pastoral staff really concentrating on content, we've got to create more engaging content, that the content itself will be engaging. 00:06:41.080 --> 00:06:46.360 But what we, with almost every single church, the engaging part is people talking to each other, right? 00:06:46.460 --> 00:06:48.160 It's not necessarily responding to the content. 00:06:48.300 --> 00:06:52.760 So, you can have really great reflection questions, and that's a useful thing during a sermon or something. 00:06:53.220 --> 00:07:01.080 But it's people having side conversations, maybe during the church service itself, and certainly, like, in that coffee hour afterwards. 00:07:02.660 --> 00:07:05.320 But not just in some big group. 00:07:05.440 --> 00:07:08.140 Like, I don't want to get a pretty bunch view of 50 people. 00:07:09.400 --> 00:07:16.760 Actually, I'm a good talker, so I'd probably be one of the three or four people who talks a lot, and all the others would be like, oh, my gosh, he's still talking. 00:07:17.040 --> 00:07:18.240 I want to talk to my friend. 00:07:19.340 --> 00:07:35.340 So, allowing people to congregate and just live with that one-on-one or in a small group of people, not necessarily a formal small group, but just as you see them organically at church and connect with friends, meet with your community, just feel that there's a sense of belonging. 00:07:35.600 --> 00:07:36.620 Like, this is my tribe. 00:07:36.740 --> 00:07:39.860 These are the people that we're unified by our faith. 00:07:40.500 --> 00:07:53.020 That kind of engagement, that kind of interaction is really missing in the basic live stream where it's mostly just looking at content and then really trying to get people to talk and chat. 00:07:53.380 --> 00:07:57.820 But even the talking and chat is sort of talking to the leaders as opposed to talking with each other. 00:07:58.100 --> 00:08:12.460 You know, Andy, I've heard you say, you know, in the past, even, like, comparing Alter Live to maybe, I don't know if even competitive is the right word, but, like, Church Online Platform Chop, the platform that comes out of Life.Church. 00:08:12.460 --> 00:08:25.320 You've talked about how Alter Live is really more of a deeper relationship type of platform as opposed to, like, what Life.Church is doing with Chop, where it's a much broader reach. 00:08:26.200 --> 00:08:32.120 And so, man, like, what problems were you trying to solve with this software? 00:08:32.380 --> 00:08:34.880 You've got Chop that's doing something. 00:08:35.660 --> 00:08:36.920 There's things that did us great. 00:08:37.060 --> 00:08:38.740 There's things that maybe are some challenges. 00:08:39.100 --> 00:08:49.100 So, like, when you're creating this software, this platform for Church Online Services and other things, like, what are the things that you guys set out to kind of solve? 00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:49.820 Yeah. 00:08:50.240 --> 00:08:51.240 Oh, so many. 00:08:51.800 --> 00:08:53.360 And, yes, I agree. 00:08:53.480 --> 00:08:55.460 Church Online has gone broad, certainly. 00:08:55.680 --> 00:09:01.000 Alter is really trying to go deep, not just be a platform for your Sunday services, but seven days a week. 00:09:01.520 --> 00:09:09.820 Because what happens in an online environment, too, when you're thinking about building online communities and discipleship, it's not just about those two hours on a Sunday morning. 00:09:10.040 --> 00:09:14.860 It really is about what happens on the other six days of the week, too. 00:09:15.340 --> 00:09:17.760 So two things that we, you know, set out to solve. 00:09:17.760 --> 00:09:28.220 The first was the common thing we've seen a lot of churches do, which is join us online here on Church Online Platform, Facebook, or YouTube, and then join us afterwards for a time of fellowship on Zoom. 00:09:28.680 --> 00:09:44.900 We said, what if we could build a platform that combines those two experiences together where people don't have to jump between software, they don't have to jump between links, but you actually can facilitate everyone on the same platform and deepen their experience of that hour or two hours they might have on a Sunday morning. 00:09:45.040 --> 00:09:59.940 And then on top of that, also be able to use the same platform to host Bible studies, to host midweek events, church movie nights, small group sign-up fairs, church budget meetings, staff meetings. 00:10:00.440 --> 00:10:06.880 Really, the life of the church could happen instead of split between multiple platforms on the same platform. 00:10:07.480 --> 00:10:10.240 So that was one of the first things we were trying to address. 00:10:10.360 --> 00:10:19.520 The second was, as Andy mentioned earlier, really trying to, like he said, the chat, really most platforms right now do a few things. 00:10:19.640 --> 00:10:20.440 They live stream. 00:10:20.800 --> 00:10:21.840 They have a chat box. 00:10:22.320 --> 00:10:23.960 They might have some individualized chat. 00:10:24.100 --> 00:10:28.320 You might have some moments or announcements that you can send out. 00:10:28.480 --> 00:10:31.200 But that's really the extent of which engagement happens. 00:10:31.400 --> 00:10:45.540 On top of that, then, from the staff side, how you measure engagement becomes likes, shares, comments, which in and of themselves, you know, and attendance, you know, views, how many people viewed, which in and of themselves are not bad metrics. 00:10:45.920 --> 00:10:51.720 But it doesn't give you the full picture of how engaged are people actually with your service. 00:10:51.720 --> 00:10:54.220 Are they making meaningful connections with other people? 00:10:54.740 --> 00:11:00.920 Have they found other people that they connect with, not just with the content, but with each other on a peer-to-peer connection? 00:11:01.800 --> 00:11:08.180 So what we tried to do in Alter is really build a platform that allows that peer-to-peer connection to happen. 00:11:08.480 --> 00:11:16.300 So on Alter, you can do things like sit in a row with somebody else and be on video conferences together while you're watching the live stream. 00:11:16.300 --> 00:11:21.640 And you can jump between rows or between tables to be able to go see other people and say hi to them. 00:11:21.800 --> 00:11:25.300 You can also watch at a distance if you don't want to be participating in video conference. 00:11:25.720 --> 00:11:41.860 But for those, you know, first-time visitors or anonymous people who are joining your event, instead of just either jumping into just a straight on-demand live stream or a room full of Zoom people that you don't know, you now have the ability to actually slowly get to know people. 00:11:41.860 --> 00:11:46.580 I'll give an example of a church that we work with in Canada, Elam Church. 00:11:47.080 --> 00:11:51.420 They had somebody who's been following, a few people actually, I'll give two. 00:11:51.660 --> 00:11:54.700 One has been following their posts for a while now. 00:11:55.080 --> 00:12:02.780 They're a PhD candidate in Brazil, moving to Canada soon, looked up their church online, hopped into their altar service, 00:12:02.780 --> 00:12:09.400 and was able to go meet people at the church that he's going to come see, you know, when he moves to the States. 00:12:09.400 --> 00:12:12.000 And he now actually knows what they look like. 00:12:12.420 --> 00:12:17.700 He has a friendly face when he gets there because he was able to actually interact with people. 00:12:18.260 --> 00:12:25.260 Another lady who filled out a Connect card on their website ended up coming to a service, sat down in a row with a pastor. 00:12:25.820 --> 00:12:33.960 And again, same thing, was able to actually go that one step deeper than just becoming an audience member to actually becoming a community member. 00:12:34.160 --> 00:12:41.140 I love these ideas of trying to, I mean, what you're talking about is creating community in digital space. 00:12:41.140 --> 00:12:47.520 So often, the weekend services, the challenge is really, who are these people that are watching these services? 00:12:48.080 --> 00:12:52.440 And, you know, with Church Online Platform, and once again, I don't want to disparage that, 00:12:52.540 --> 00:13:01.000 but it's really centered around that text-based chat that sometimes as little as 10% of people are actually engaging in. 00:13:01.740 --> 00:13:06.680 And so very few people are active in chat, and it's a lot of work to kind of get to that point. 00:13:06.680 --> 00:13:12.560 Or it's the connection card, which oftentimes people aren't wanting to give that much information, 00:13:12.680 --> 00:13:15.900 especially if they're cold to Christ or even cold to the organization. 00:13:16.740 --> 00:13:27.400 And so really, by kind of merging this webcam, you're helping pull people out of that isolation and starting to create better experiences. 00:13:27.600 --> 00:13:33.880 You're starting to get people connected into the community and pulling them out of that church in isolation piece. 00:13:33.880 --> 00:13:42.640 And I love that because now there's – you're starting to chisel away at a lot of the challenges that has come around that have been – 00:13:42.640 --> 00:13:46.240 people have been working through that church have been struggling with, looking at this digital church. 00:13:46.380 --> 00:13:53.080 Now, Rob, through LifePoint, you've been experimenting with AlterLive. 00:13:53.080 --> 00:13:59.480 And then Rob's part of a futurist group of Stadia, some of the churches that we do a lot of specific, real deep coaching with, 00:13:59.540 --> 00:14:03.940 trying to help fidgetal and multimodal and a lot of the crazy stuff that we talk about here on the podcast. 00:14:04.360 --> 00:14:05.240 Rob's a guinea pig. 00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:15.440 And so really, just with this AlterLive, we wanted to see, like, how it worked and what were maybe some of the use cases for it. 00:14:15.520 --> 00:14:18.660 So, like, with you specifically, what have you seen? 00:14:18.840 --> 00:14:24.700 How has AlterLive connected and helped within your church expressions? 00:14:24.860 --> 00:14:25.640 How are you using it? 00:14:25.920 --> 00:14:26.140 Yeah. 00:14:27.280 --> 00:14:33.280 I was thinking about that as you were asking, Andy and Stephanie, like, what problems were you trying to solve? 00:14:34.420 --> 00:14:44.560 And I guess around March or April, you know, experiencing the virtual world using lots of different technologies and conferencing software and all this 00:14:44.560 --> 00:14:50.000 and realizing where we are, like, a milestone in church history. 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:53.500 Like, we're going to get to do things and innovate like never before. 00:14:53.600 --> 00:14:59.280 It just got me thinking, one, the immediate thing was get up online quickly. 00:14:59.680 --> 00:15:01.420 And we're able to do that with CHOP. 00:15:01.560 --> 00:15:06.060 And you already talked about that, Jeff, and just the huge gift it is to the kingdom. 00:15:07.340 --> 00:15:14.120 But then quickly realized we had lots of viewers but not engaged people. 00:15:14.980 --> 00:15:19.600 And that was the driving thing for us was how can we create more community? 00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:27.080 How can we get the folks that, yes, we're, I think, Stephanie, you said, like, a metric will be how many viewers, you know? 00:15:27.640 --> 00:15:28.240 All right. 00:15:28.300 --> 00:15:29.300 Well, that's a big number. 00:15:29.980 --> 00:15:36.560 But I'm only seeing in chat, like, you know, maybe a handful of those that are engaging. 00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:42.140 So how can we get folks that are doing church out of isolation and engaging? 00:15:42.140 --> 00:15:51.780 And that's, you know, I think I originally saw Alter Live, even before Jeff given us the opportunity with the futurists to be able to experiment. 00:15:52.380 --> 00:15:57.000 I believe you were running some Facebook ads at some point in the fall. 00:15:57.000 --> 00:15:59.940 And I saw those and clicked on that. 00:16:00.020 --> 00:16:01.800 And then timing-wise just saw Jeff. 00:16:01.800 --> 00:16:11.840 And so that requirement of looking to engage our people who are coming but get them to get into community was a big thing for us. 00:16:12.280 --> 00:16:12.440 Yeah. 00:16:12.520 --> 00:16:25.520 And one of the cool things, I think, Rob, that we've seen you guys do on the platform, too, is your block parties and how you guys are trying to create, again, smaller intentional groups. 00:16:25.520 --> 00:16:36.880 The way that small groups have become a really important heartbeat of a church community, the same, you know, you guys are trying to see how can we do these online, even going forward? 00:16:37.240 --> 00:16:44.360 What does it look like to help people not just connect with our church and its content, but our church and its people? 00:16:44.920 --> 00:16:50.780 Yeah, I think you're talking about, like, we've got, I guess, two big use case buckets that we have. 00:16:50.780 --> 00:16:54.140 A church, we call our church on the block environment. 00:16:54.580 --> 00:16:57.620 These are expressions of the church throughout the community. 00:16:58.060 --> 00:17:00.380 Austin Abney's leading that up here for us. 00:17:00.560 --> 00:17:03.680 And so there are a few of them meeting now. 00:17:03.780 --> 00:17:05.200 There are going to be a whole lot more. 00:17:05.820 --> 00:17:07.040 And it's leveraging. 00:17:07.300 --> 00:17:10.720 So there's that physical, they're meeting physically, and we've got digital content. 00:17:10.900 --> 00:17:13.520 And how do we leverage this? 00:17:14.480 --> 00:17:21.240 And so, yeah, altar live, that's a big thing for us is how we've got gatherings of people. 00:17:21.340 --> 00:17:22.360 How can we facilitate? 00:17:22.980 --> 00:17:28.000 Yes, show the content, but how can we get the community getting around tables or rows? 00:17:28.900 --> 00:17:31.160 And that's definitely an area. 00:17:31.280 --> 00:17:37.300 The other big use case for us is we have our women's and men's ministries that have been meeting online. 00:17:37.300 --> 00:17:44.140 So everybody's online, and then slowly, late fall, early beginning of the year, they're starting to meet. 00:17:44.280 --> 00:17:48.800 Some of them are feeling comfortable meeting in a home, but then others are staying where they are. 00:17:48.860 --> 00:17:50.500 So we've got physical and digital. 00:17:50.640 --> 00:17:52.300 How are we going to combine that? 00:17:52.380 --> 00:17:58.640 And so, again, I'm thinking, okay, if we can get a camera in one of them with a live stream going to altar live, 00:17:58.640 --> 00:18:07.160 and we can make this multimodal experience where they're in community and they don't have to worry about technology. 00:18:07.360 --> 00:18:09.900 So that's the experiment side of this. 00:18:10.060 --> 00:18:15.140 And I think that's probably about when Jeff said, hey, how about if we allow you the experiment? 00:18:15.280 --> 00:18:17.080 We'll take care of the first two months. 00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:25.240 And I was like, oh, these two big use cases for us are really, really helpful beyond looking at it for our worship experience as well. 00:18:25.740 --> 00:18:26.880 Yeah, I love that, Rob. 00:18:26.880 --> 00:18:33.260 I do think small groups is going forward, when we think about online ministry and online engagement, 00:18:33.820 --> 00:18:43.440 there's always going to be room for thinking about content, algorithms, SEO, all those things that are a part of the world of online. 00:18:44.200 --> 00:18:58.640 But beyond that, the small groups, how do you then turn those audience members into people who engage in some of the other activities or opportunities that they have to connect relationally? 00:18:59.180 --> 00:19:05.300 I think one of the other cool things, use cases, that I don't think we actually ended up using altar for this, but we've had a few other churches do this. 00:19:06.140 --> 00:19:11.360 You can think of so many things that our world has now learned to do online. 00:19:11.800 --> 00:19:15.240 One of them, a few that just come to mind, memorial services. 00:19:15.740 --> 00:19:27.420 So we actually just had a church do a memorial service on the platform the other day, where people, you know, they had it in the building, but they also had about, it was a very well-known member of their community. 00:19:27.420 --> 00:19:39.720 And about 40 people also joined on the altar live side, who actually got to see people that they knew and have a deeper interaction, besides just viewing it alone in their own home on a YouTube page. 00:19:39.800 --> 00:19:48.180 Instead, they really got to feel like they could honor this person by being together and, you know, talking in her memory on this event. 00:19:48.780 --> 00:19:49.780 That was a really cool one. 00:19:49.780 --> 00:20:02.380 I've seen churches do movie nights on the platform, so they might show an episode of, like, The Chosen and invite their church to come and watch together and then use the lobby afterwards as a time of discussion about what they're seeing. 00:20:02.480 --> 00:20:08.460 Something that you can invite other people to, again, because it's low barriers to entry, is one of the beauties of online. 00:20:08.820 --> 00:20:23.320 I've seen others do youth group on the platform, some fun things there when it comes to allowing youth to not just be on one giant Zoom call, but really also, you know, connect with each other more interpersonally. 00:20:24.080 --> 00:20:36.040 Conferences, small group fairs, things like that we've had on the platform as well, where, again, really thinking about creating an intentionally meaningful time with other people. 00:20:36.300 --> 00:20:46.620 I was just going to say, you mentioned a memorial, and I had, you know, sadly, I had to do one over Zoom mid-summer. 00:20:46.840 --> 00:20:48.760 And that, I mean, it was fine. 00:20:48.840 --> 00:20:55.560 The family was so happy to have that technology so others in other states could be viewing. 00:20:56.260 --> 00:21:02.060 But we had a case, and Andy was, I texted Andy on your chat line one night. 00:21:02.120 --> 00:21:13.140 I was like, hey, if the family's okay, I'm thinking about using Alter Live so that it just feels better than a Google Meet or a Zoom memorial. 00:21:13.540 --> 00:21:15.940 And we didn't get to use it in that case. 00:21:16.040 --> 00:21:18.160 The family didn't decide to do it. 00:21:18.160 --> 00:21:25.400 But it was the fact that it was different because you all know, like, everybody's tired of Zoom and Google Meet. 00:21:25.700 --> 00:21:38.360 But then add to that this significant event in somebody's life, family's life, that just the simple fact that it looks different is huge. 00:21:38.360 --> 00:21:49.500 Like, and you're not trying to be immersive, but there are elements of what you do that get to that a little bit of an immersive experience. 00:21:50.360 --> 00:21:55.660 And so that was why I was like, ooh, this is another way we could use this. 00:21:56.120 --> 00:22:01.800 Yeah, I mean, that immersive part of it is definitely a big thing we tried to aim for. 00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:13.520 You know, in Zoom, you've probably had the experience, like Andy said, of you're kind of, once you have more than five people, you're mostly listening to other people talk instead of participating in the conversation yourself. 00:22:13.640 --> 00:22:26.420 So on Altar, we really tried to intentionally allow people to choose where they want to go, who they want to talk with, and really recreate some of those organic side conversations that happen when you just happen to bump into somebody in the hallway. 00:22:26.660 --> 00:22:31.080 We lost a lot of that when we went online because it became a unidirectional conversation. 00:22:31.620 --> 00:22:41.200 But really, you know, democratizing, as we like to say, or flattening the hierarchy of conversation has really helped deepen levels of engagement. 00:22:41.200 --> 00:22:46.140 And ultimately, people come back to events where they feel personally connected. 00:22:46.920 --> 00:22:49.760 That's a, you know, we know that about in-person experiences. 00:22:50.080 --> 00:22:58.180 We spend a lot of time thinking about how, you know, first impression experiences, how we make someone feel known and seen when they come to our church. 00:22:58.460 --> 00:23:00.780 The same thing has to happen in an online space. 00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:02.660 People need to be known and seen. 00:23:02.900 --> 00:23:08.520 You also allow people to not be known, which is also good for, you know what I mean? 00:23:08.520 --> 00:23:19.480 Like, in a meeting space, a digital meeting space, in those technologies, it's boom, you're there, unless you, you know, shut off your camera and then you're like, oh, what do people think? 00:23:19.480 --> 00:23:32.500 You know, but you allow, you know, your software, just having that ability to enter in and be unknown, but allow myself to be known when, or to look around the lobby and see who's there. 00:23:32.600 --> 00:23:36.260 Oh, I see a friend, I'm going to go up there and virtually tap them on the shoulder. 00:23:36.380 --> 00:23:38.560 You know, the equivalent of that in the digital space. 00:23:39.120 --> 00:23:39.980 Yeah, exactly. 00:23:40.320 --> 00:23:48.160 The balance of anonymity, being a fly on the wall, while also, you know, taking that first step to actually meet someone and be known. 00:23:48.520 --> 00:23:55.220 Ultimately, I think the more that we give people control in those situations, I think the more comfortable they are engaging in that. 00:23:55.340 --> 00:24:02.520 Like, even in some use cases that I've done, I'm attending a church plant and starting to get involved with a church plant down here in Miami. 00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:11.640 So they're not even doing physical services, they're still kind of doing pop-ups and things, but the core group has been getting together for a Zoom call. 00:24:11.640 --> 00:24:23.700 And so it's been 30 to 50 people on Zoom where there's like a master teacher format we're actually going through, or we were going through Pete's, Cazero's, whatever, healthy relationships. 00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:29.660 You know, great material, great stuff, falling like a baby, it's hilarious, just personally, like it's just really good. 00:24:30.120 --> 00:24:44.400 But coming out of that, it's, you know, you're together with like 50 people, and 50 people in a Zoom call is the worst of Zoom, because it's only, I'll say it, like there's only one person talking, maybe two. 00:24:44.400 --> 00:24:55.380 But you can't open up the mics for all 50 people, because if four people try to talk out of the 50, and it's so big, you can't read body language to know who's getting ready to talk and who's not. 00:24:55.500 --> 00:24:57.900 And so all of a sudden, it's just sheer pandemonium. 00:24:58.420 --> 00:25:09.080 And we were setting up for the small group, they were playing like a jam track in the background, and there's like a slide, they were trying to, you know, create this vibe, doing the best they could with the Zoom tool. 00:25:09.560 --> 00:25:14.860 But it's funny, it's like, I want to talk to that guy right there. 00:25:14.920 --> 00:25:16.540 I want to talk to square number 17. 00:25:17.120 --> 00:25:18.920 I want to see what's going on in his life. 00:25:18.920 --> 00:25:26.560 I am not in his, when we break out into the breakouts of Zoom, I'm not in square 17's group, so I don't know what's going on. 00:25:27.040 --> 00:25:28.720 I want to, I want control. 00:25:29.240 --> 00:25:31.060 I want to have that side conversation. 00:25:31.320 --> 00:25:36.380 And dang it, the little like, I am via text thing, that's not good enough. 00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:37.580 The year's 2021. 00:25:37.840 --> 00:25:39.520 I should be able to have a conversation with the guy. 00:25:39.660 --> 00:25:41.200 Yeah, that's so 2020, Rob. 00:25:41.400 --> 00:25:42.960 Jeff, that's so 2020. 00:25:43.580 --> 00:25:44.800 Get that out of here. 00:25:45.680 --> 00:25:50.140 But, and that's what, by giving control, you're allowing people to do that. 00:25:50.220 --> 00:25:50.860 Rob, what are you thinking? 00:25:51.320 --> 00:25:56.120 One of the things I missed was, in the physical space, as a pastor, I would walk the lobby. 00:25:56.120 --> 00:26:09.560 Yes, I'm not, like, no, and I can't be anonymous, but I missed being able to go and see a person who maybe is just hanging off to the side, and I want to be able to go and talk to just them, not the whole group. 00:26:09.560 --> 00:26:17.840 And so, having that kind of capability is so important, because it helps bridge that gap into the physical world, where I was used to doing that. 00:26:17.980 --> 00:26:27.840 Even in the auditorium, to be able to go and see people that are sitting on the row and go and speak to, say, two or three of them, versus standing on stage. 00:26:28.400 --> 00:26:29.440 I don't want to do that. 00:26:29.480 --> 00:26:30.620 I'm going to be teaching in a little bit. 00:26:30.660 --> 00:26:34.220 I just want to talk to Jeff, you know, Jeff and Andy and Stephanie. 00:26:34.440 --> 00:26:36.160 So, yeah, I missed that, too. 00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:37.280 I wanted that control. 00:26:37.380 --> 00:26:43.080 Yeah, we see that, Rob, almost, I would say, every church service, so there are basically two parts of it. 00:26:43.100 --> 00:26:54.360 There's the live stream event, where people sit in pews, if they call them pews in their church, and then afterwards, and sometimes even before, what we call the lobby, where people sit at tables. 00:26:54.720 --> 00:26:58.460 And so, there's no big video screen that everyone's watching together. 00:26:58.740 --> 00:27:03.060 Instead, they're just like us here, where they're looking at each other, seeing each other, and having a normal conversation. 00:27:03.620 --> 00:27:06.460 You can name the table something, right? 00:27:06.860 --> 00:27:10.440 Every single church service has a table called Meet the Pastor. 00:27:11.300 --> 00:27:15.340 And so, it's either one mode of the pastor sits there, and then people stop by. 00:27:15.560 --> 00:27:16.920 It's like, hey, pastor, it's good to see you. 00:27:16.980 --> 00:27:19.440 And maybe it was the one who gave the sermon or not. 00:27:20.040 --> 00:27:24.240 Or, just like you like, Rob, the pastor goes around to all the tables, right? 00:27:24.320 --> 00:27:25.420 And they don't have names. 00:27:25.480 --> 00:27:27.680 It's just, oh, there's, okay, there's Stephanie sitting at that one. 00:27:27.720 --> 00:27:28.660 I haven't talked to her in a few weeks. 00:27:28.740 --> 00:27:29.240 Good to see her. 00:27:29.700 --> 00:27:31.680 You know, so, that sort of dynamic. 00:27:32.160 --> 00:27:38.000 We see, there's some churches who are kind of breaking the rules, or I should say writing some new rules. 00:27:38.340 --> 00:27:41.600 My favorite one is what I call Sunday on Monday. 00:27:42.180 --> 00:27:45.860 That there's a bunch of people who don't make it to the live live stream. 00:27:46.360 --> 00:27:50.800 And so, they'll watch the worship service and the sermon on demand later. 00:27:51.500 --> 00:27:52.940 But, of course, they're watching it solo. 00:27:53.300 --> 00:27:54.360 They can't participate in the chat. 00:27:54.440 --> 00:27:55.440 The chat's old now. 00:27:56.980 --> 00:28:00.020 So, what, but the thing is, there's more than one person. 00:28:00.200 --> 00:28:03.320 There's quite a few people who go see it on demand later. 00:28:03.660 --> 00:28:04.500 Some of them are working. 00:28:04.760 --> 00:28:05.800 Some of them are visiting family. 00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:10.540 Dare I say it, some of them are in their soccer league or some, not during COVID. 00:28:10.540 --> 00:28:15.440 But, you know, I know my church has fought Little League, new tooth and nail. 00:28:16.460 --> 00:28:19.840 But they're regularly missing Sunday service. 00:28:20.320 --> 00:28:25.700 And so, what these churches are doing is like, well, we're going to have the exact same service. 00:28:25.820 --> 00:28:26.720 It's now recorded. 00:28:26.860 --> 00:28:28.100 So, it might have been live at the time. 00:28:28.380 --> 00:28:29.120 Now, it's recorded. 00:28:29.500 --> 00:28:33.200 We're going to do it again on Monday night at 7 p.m. or whatever day or time. 00:28:33.980 --> 00:28:34.920 And that's it. 00:28:35.040 --> 00:28:35.680 It's an event. 00:28:36.060 --> 00:28:36.960 It's not on demand. 00:28:37.020 --> 00:28:37.760 It's another event. 00:28:37.760 --> 00:28:38.880 And so, go at that time. 00:28:39.220 --> 00:28:43.420 And all the other people who missed, they can now sit in rows together, sit at tables together. 00:28:43.580 --> 00:28:44.840 And now, they have community. 00:28:44.980 --> 00:28:47.100 So, they didn't have to sacrifice community. 00:28:47.480 --> 00:28:49.500 They're doing more than on-demand live stream. 00:28:49.640 --> 00:28:52.360 They're still part of the life and rhythm of the church. 00:28:53.060 --> 00:28:55.340 So, that's one I really, really like. 00:28:55.480 --> 00:28:56.980 I call it Sunday on Monday. 00:28:57.480 --> 00:28:58.720 I wrote that down, Andy. 00:28:59.180 --> 00:28:59.800 That's beautiful. 00:29:00.100 --> 00:29:06.960 Another one I've seen, too, is some churches do a panel discussion with the pastors or church staff about the sermon. 00:29:06.960 --> 00:29:12.300 So, thinking about how to really take what's happening on a Sunday morning and stretch it farther. 00:29:12.300 --> 00:29:16.340 Like, it doesn't just have to sit on Sunday only. 00:29:17.000 --> 00:29:20.580 Like Andy said, Sunday could actually be a different day of the week that this happens. 00:29:20.780 --> 00:29:21.920 That's one of the beauties of online. 00:29:22.040 --> 00:29:28.040 But I've seen some churches do panel discussions on the platform where they'll have a Q&A with the pastor or several people. 00:29:28.220 --> 00:29:41.200 And, again, move people between kind of that auditorium room and then to the lobby where they can actually, you know, talk with each other and then back into the auditorium to facilitate some of that inner dialogue between members as well. 00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:49.500 I wonder if we'll ever get at a point where you can have, like, a flash worship where people are going on demand and all of a sudden you set a metric. 00:29:49.680 --> 00:29:51.800 Like, there's 14 views going on. 00:29:51.860 --> 00:29:56.300 If we can all assemble them together and get in a worship space, I don't know. 00:29:57.000 --> 00:29:58.560 That's exciting to think about. 00:29:58.780 --> 00:29:59.560 It is exciting. 00:29:59.740 --> 00:30:05.440 I mean, that's one of the beauties of digital is you can have church anywhere. 00:30:06.100 --> 00:30:10.320 You don't have to have even necessarily a highly produced event either. 00:30:10.320 --> 00:30:19.440 I think that's going to be a really cool thing that comes out of post-pandemic, you know, is realizing what is it that people come for to church. 00:30:20.180 --> 00:30:27.400 They sometimes come for the content, like how great your preaching is or how great your band is, but they really stay for the people. 00:30:28.140 --> 00:30:31.820 And I think that aspect of it is what people want. 00:30:31.900 --> 00:30:38.140 They want to be able to connect and have a personal connection with somebody in this space. 00:30:38.140 --> 00:30:45.780 So having tools that actually allow you to throw that up a lot easier and with less headache is, I think, where technology is catching up to now. 00:30:46.120 --> 00:30:47.980 Well, I was just going to double down on what Stephanie said. 00:30:48.220 --> 00:30:49.300 Why do people go? 00:30:49.800 --> 00:30:55.700 And about two months ago, I saw a Barna study on prayer, about online prayer. 00:30:56.500 --> 00:31:06.860 And the part that really struck me, it was that 30-something, 32% of people of non-Christian faith, they have faith. 00:31:06.940 --> 00:31:07.920 It's just not a Christian faith. 00:31:08.480 --> 00:31:15.720 Would consider going to your church online, but not for Sunday, but yes, for prayer. 00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:20.620 If they went there and someone prayed with them, for them, presumably for them, right? 00:31:21.000 --> 00:31:30.180 And that 24% of people of zero faith, agnostics, atheists, or maybe spiritual but not religious, would also consider going to your church. 00:31:30.220 --> 00:31:36.800 They would never go to your church building, ever, probably not even for prayer, but they would go online for prayer. 00:31:37.320 --> 00:31:47.560 And so that's something that we're exploring with a number of churches of really using Walter Live, and mostly in the lobby side of it, for prayer, like a prayer chapel. 00:31:48.040 --> 00:31:51.960 It might be before service, during service, after service, maybe a totally different day of the week. 00:31:52.600 --> 00:31:55.000 And so what they'll do is they'll have their service. 00:31:55.140 --> 00:31:58.760 They have a lot of people watching on Facebook, where they've been watching for months and months and months. 00:31:59.860 --> 00:32:04.560 And then somebody says in the chat, if anyone would like prayer, click here, and then bring them over to Alter Live. 00:32:04.820 --> 00:32:09.200 And then a face-to-face, in a one-on-one, intimate setting. 00:32:09.400 --> 00:32:16.460 Probably someone they don't know, but that's the power of prayer, is you don't necessarily have to seek out somebody you know, 00:32:16.560 --> 00:32:19.000 but someone who's going to intercede for you. 00:32:19.760 --> 00:32:20.860 That's been very powerful. 00:32:20.860 --> 00:32:28.460 So personally, I'm moved by that, that we have a platform that is helping let that take root. 00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:34.080 You can start to see here where this tool, and I want to call Alter Live a tool. 00:32:34.180 --> 00:32:41.300 It can be used in many different ways, but it's taking you in a deeper place, in a deeper relationship with people. 00:32:41.300 --> 00:32:51.520 I mean, we're talking about doing prayer meetings, and we're talking about doing, using this for, to do master teacher, small groups, staff meetings, 00:32:51.640 --> 00:32:54.780 just different relational tools that's not. 00:32:55.200 --> 00:33:01.140 These are unique use cases, really, in context of what church online would look like. 00:33:01.200 --> 00:33:07.180 The majority of people would look at a tool like Alter Live and be like, oh, it's a church online platform competitor. 00:33:07.580 --> 00:33:09.420 Let's just play our service in there. 00:33:09.580 --> 00:33:10.740 Just do it as is. 00:33:11.060 --> 00:33:12.360 And people can then talk. 00:33:12.840 --> 00:33:20.180 But really, if you're not, even when it comes down to the programming, if you're not willing to adjust and change to be more conversational, 00:33:20.300 --> 00:33:26.860 to be more relational, more open-ended questions with some of this content, you're not going to get the engagement. 00:33:27.560 --> 00:33:32.460 And it really gets down to, actually, one of the first Alter Live services I attended was that. 00:33:32.560 --> 00:33:38.060 It was a physical church that was just streaming their service, and it was basically the same type of thing you would see on CHOP. 00:33:38.180 --> 00:33:49.520 And I sat next to this lady in a row in Alter Live for, you know, 55, 65 minutes, and it was awkward because there was no interaction points. 00:33:49.660 --> 00:33:50.060 There was no dialogue. 00:33:50.880 --> 00:33:56.140 There was no opportunities within the service programming for me to even say, hey, I'm Jeff. 00:33:56.220 --> 00:33:56.860 Tell me your name. 00:33:57.060 --> 00:33:58.700 I would have been willing to do that. 00:33:59.100 --> 00:34:00.740 She would have been willing to do that. 00:34:00.740 --> 00:34:14.120 But because it didn't fit within the program, like because there wasn't an opportunity for us to dialogue together, for us to pray together, for us to challenge each other spiritually. 00:34:14.340 --> 00:34:16.580 And this is what the tool can do. 00:34:16.980 --> 00:34:25.440 But it really just needs churches to be willing to maybe look at what the offering is, at least in context of the weekend service and even beyond that, 00:34:25.440 --> 00:34:27.400 and realize it's much more dialoguing. 00:34:27.400 --> 00:34:28.960 Well, I mean, that's the big thing. 00:34:29.120 --> 00:34:31.260 Like we say that, you know, there's been a big shift. 00:34:31.400 --> 00:34:33.260 And of course, oh, we're all online now or something like that. 00:34:33.340 --> 00:34:42.240 But what you just described would, at least any church that I've been to, it would never happen in the pews, in the rows. 00:34:42.380 --> 00:34:46.260 It's not like the pastor doesn't say, okay, everybody, let me stop talking. 00:34:46.900 --> 00:34:49.720 And now everybody talk amongst yourselves, right? 00:34:49.880 --> 00:34:52.440 And some people might not be comfortable with that. 00:34:52.500 --> 00:34:53.860 The pastor might not be comfortable with that. 00:34:54.340 --> 00:34:58.460 But that could be perfectly normal and better online. 00:34:59.220 --> 00:35:04.820 So rather than replicate, you know, what we've always had, trying new things. 00:35:04.900 --> 00:35:06.360 So like I said, writing some new rules. 00:35:06.820 --> 00:35:09.160 So I'm encouraged by what you say, Jeff. 00:35:09.760 --> 00:35:14.520 I haven't seen too many churches change that yet, even in altar life. 00:35:14.700 --> 00:35:20.180 It's usually the things outside of the Sunday service where you see a little bit more of new formats. 00:35:20.820 --> 00:35:21.880 But I do think it's coming. 00:35:22.040 --> 00:35:23.480 I mean, I think you're spot on, Jeff. 00:35:23.620 --> 00:35:31.380 I mean, what do Andy and I see as challenges in transitioning churches when they are coming to the platform? 00:35:31.640 --> 00:35:33.860 It's always a two-sided thing. 00:35:34.040 --> 00:35:35.780 One is the technology side. 00:35:36.200 --> 00:35:39.280 Anytime you introduce new technology, it's a behavior change. 00:35:39.640 --> 00:35:42.580 Even if you change your phone number, it's a behavior change, you know. 00:35:43.440 --> 00:35:46.960 And then the other side is the actual strategic. 00:35:47.280 --> 00:35:50.380 What does it mean to do discipleship online? 00:35:50.680 --> 00:35:53.860 What does it mean to have a service online? 00:35:53.980 --> 00:35:55.400 What does it mean to do prayer online? 00:35:55.960 --> 00:36:02.100 The playbook of in-person isn't necessarily a one-for-one correlation to how you do online events. 00:36:02.600 --> 00:36:04.260 And it does require some creative thinking. 00:36:04.500 --> 00:36:07.600 I think that area is where the church is starting to get caught up. 00:36:07.760 --> 00:36:09.760 I love what you do, Jeff, in that space. 00:36:09.860 --> 00:36:17.340 I think there's a lot of great churches that are getting creative in that space and consultants doing the same. 00:36:17.780 --> 00:36:23.320 That, I think, is sometimes where we feel the tension of altar being a little bit further ahead of churches and like, 00:36:23.320 --> 00:36:24.760 this is what we could do. 00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:25.980 Now we just got to get there. 00:36:26.900 --> 00:36:33.920 On the other side, I mean, the very practical side that we see go really well is the behavioral change when it comes to technology. 00:36:35.160 --> 00:36:38.020 The good news about that is it's not rocket science. 00:36:38.220 --> 00:36:43.080 It's just time and, you know, having a strategic vision in the right direction. 00:36:43.620 --> 00:36:50.440 So when we onboard churches to altar, usually it takes about 30 days, really, to take the training wheels off. 00:36:50.440 --> 00:36:55.860 Because if you think about the number of, you know, of your members of your team that need to really get on board, 00:36:56.320 --> 00:37:02.760 we usually do a few dry runs or parallel to a Sunday service to start getting it a little bit more acclimated. 00:37:03.480 --> 00:37:10.100 By, you know, in those first 30 days is really where people are starting to dip their toes in and start running on the platform. 00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:15.080 With any platform, the most important thing is social momentum. 00:37:15.080 --> 00:37:23.480 You need to have critical mass as well as people who are going to take that first step to kind of set the norms. 00:37:23.480 --> 00:37:36.800 Like you, Jeff, said on that call or on that altar service you went to, you know, ones that I, altar services that I see go really well are ones where there are specific online hosts that have become a little bit more familiar with the platform. 00:37:37.040 --> 00:37:39.500 And they're the ones like hopping between tables or rows. 00:37:39.600 --> 00:37:43.460 They're kind of setting the behavioral standards of what you can do on this platform. 00:37:43.600 --> 00:37:46.400 Because when anybody comes, I do this in Facebook groups. 00:37:46.400 --> 00:37:51.500 When I come to a Facebook group for the first time, I'm like looking to see, all right, how much do people share? 00:37:51.820 --> 00:37:53.200 What's a too long of a post? 00:37:53.780 --> 00:37:55.940 You know, how should I act in this space? 00:37:56.160 --> 00:37:58.740 The same thing has to happen in online environments. 00:37:58.740 --> 00:38:00.420 And so that's why it takes a little bit of time. 00:38:00.820 --> 00:38:06.900 But it is something we do with a lot of churches when we onboard them to the platform. 00:38:07.460 --> 00:38:25.220 Stephanie and Andy, do you guys find that as you onboard people and they bring in other staff and maybe key volunteer leaders, as they start to experience something new, do they start to come up with ideas themselves and start to go, oh, we could use this in this way? 00:38:25.640 --> 00:38:26.660 Do you see much of that? 00:38:26.660 --> 00:38:29.340 I'll tell you, I was just on a call with the church the other day. 00:38:29.440 --> 00:38:30.920 We were doing the demo of the platform. 00:38:31.440 --> 00:38:36.480 It was actually my second demo with them because I talked with the lead pastor and then the lead pastor brought his volunteers on. 00:38:36.580 --> 00:38:43.580 And then in the middle of the demo, one of the volunteers was like, wait, wait, wait, let me go grab our, and I forget what her job title was. 00:38:43.620 --> 00:38:45.140 She was like, let me go grab this lady. 00:38:45.280 --> 00:38:49.500 And she did something on their team related to, I think it was marketing and other things. 00:38:49.520 --> 00:38:51.860 And she was like, quickly, could you just repeat that part? 00:38:51.900 --> 00:38:54.260 And then they had a side dialogue in the middle of our demo. 00:38:54.260 --> 00:38:56.860 They were like, oh, and we could use this for this and this for this. 00:38:56.860 --> 00:39:08.520 And it just gets people's brains spinning of both a pain reliever when it comes to what you described, Rob, using all these different platforms to try to patch it together. 00:39:08.700 --> 00:39:13.920 I mean, when they described to me how they run their Sunday services, I was like, oh, that sounds like a lot of work. 00:39:15.080 --> 00:39:25.060 And then the second is, how do you actually do, get to do the thing that you signed up to be on church staff for, which is minister to people? 00:39:25.300 --> 00:39:33.140 You know, that's, I think, one of the most rewarding parts for me is when people light up realizing, oh, yeah, there's some technology here. 00:39:33.240 --> 00:39:37.700 But more importantly, I actually get to connect with people. 00:39:38.140 --> 00:39:42.260 I could empower members of my community to engage with one another. 00:39:42.460 --> 00:39:49.420 I could actually feel like I'm using my skills and gifts to make people feel welcome or to go to that next level. 00:39:49.540 --> 00:39:54.440 I could actually pray with people if I'm somebody who is really a prayer warrior in my church. 00:39:54.840 --> 00:39:58.880 So some of those things, I think, are really exciting to see when people's brains start going. 00:39:59.620 --> 00:40:03.400 Yeah, I actually think you're going to see a movement in the coming months. 00:40:04.100 --> 00:40:13.040 You know, somebody the other day asked me, a pastor friend, hey, Jeff, are you disappointed that, you know, buildings are starting to open up and people are starting to go back physical? 00:40:13.520 --> 00:40:18.340 Like, and this is this is the end of digital and digital and hybrid and all this, because we're all going back to the building. 00:40:18.900 --> 00:40:20.960 And my response was, I'm ecstatic. 00:40:21.240 --> 00:40:23.520 I love the fact that people are going back to the building. 00:40:23.800 --> 00:40:36.740 But we we still got a long way to go, because for for months during this entire covid season, the digital has had to play the role of physical and digital for the established church. 00:40:36.980 --> 00:40:48.620 And in trying to be everything for everyone, it challenge has been it's really been nothing for no one because you can't do digital specific things because and I don't want to like overstate here. 00:40:48.760 --> 00:40:50.920 But the physical people, they don't understand. 00:40:51.580 --> 00:40:54.880 And you're trying to reach the ninety nine instead of going after the one. 00:40:55.460 --> 00:41:00.080 And I think you're going to see a renaissance of digital ministry because you've got staff. 00:41:00.240 --> 00:41:08.020 I mean, and Rob's a great example of this, where he's understanding this now because he's had an 18 month intensive in digital ministry. 00:41:08.180 --> 00:41:09.220 Thank you very much, covid. 00:41:09.640 --> 00:41:19.420 And coming out of this, the churches that are still leaning in and realizing, hey, digital is more about relationships and disciple making than broadcasting that service. 00:41:19.560 --> 00:41:23.940 And if we can really embrace that ideas now, I think you're going to see churches. 00:41:24.140 --> 00:41:26.900 Some will go back to the building and wipe their hands of it. 00:41:26.960 --> 00:41:30.200 I've already seen churches trying to sell off the video encoders. 00:41:30.320 --> 00:41:34.500 They bought, you know, gun to their head in the covid season because they want to go to the building. 00:41:34.760 --> 00:41:35.500 And that's great. 00:41:35.840 --> 00:41:36.620 Go back to the building. 00:41:37.020 --> 00:41:39.480 But those of us that want to run, let them run. 00:41:39.720 --> 00:41:46.500 And that's what I love about Altered Live is it's a tool perfectly designed in the right season to allow a church that wants to run. 00:41:46.840 --> 00:41:55.480 It's you're giving them the power to run at a depth in a relationship level that that I don't know that there's many other tools out there that actually do this. 00:41:55.840 --> 00:41:56.020 Yeah. 00:41:56.180 --> 00:41:56.860 Well, thanks, Jeff. 00:41:56.940 --> 00:42:03.540 I mean, that is exactly why we created the platform, really to try to beat the algorithms of just comments, likes and shares. 00:42:03.720 --> 00:42:04.600 But go deeper. 00:42:05.180 --> 00:42:06.380 That's what church is about. 00:42:06.880 --> 00:42:10.760 I mean, that for us, it's no different than any other church. 00:42:10.760 --> 00:42:11.860 We're trying to make disciples. 00:42:11.860 --> 00:42:16.440 And we just say the phrase and help people follow Jesus, live like Jesus and help others do the same. 00:42:16.840 --> 00:42:22.360 Well, I want to look for tools that I can put in the hands of our different environments that are going to help multiply. 00:42:22.480 --> 00:42:26.020 The energy is going to multiply disciples in our area. 00:42:26.260 --> 00:42:30.700 And so love that I get to experiment with Altered Live and we'll continue to look at that. 00:42:31.380 --> 00:42:32.760 So what's next for Altered Live? 00:42:32.900 --> 00:42:33.740 Like I'm looking. 00:42:33.880 --> 00:42:36.360 OK, yeah, I am looking for like insider tip here. 00:42:36.480 --> 00:42:37.560 Some mic drop something. 00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:41.820 I don't want to get a dev mad at me or anything, but what's on the roadmap? 00:42:41.960 --> 00:42:42.720 What are you guys working on? 00:42:43.280 --> 00:42:44.280 Oh, what is next? 00:42:44.360 --> 00:42:48.840 Well, you can imagine our product roadmap has been very long since the day we launched. 00:42:49.240 --> 00:42:53.660 There is just so much cool stuff that is coming out down the road. 00:42:53.660 --> 00:43:00.380 So I'll say for those who have tried the Altered platform or are looking at it, what's coming? 00:43:00.540 --> 00:43:05.500 So first and foremost, feature for feature, we are matching Church Online platform. 00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:11.460 I think that is there's a lot of great features on there that we have learned from and we've seen churches use. 00:43:11.460 --> 00:43:25.820 So you will be seeing things like announcements, our equivalent of moments coming to the Altered platform, polls and Q&A, more moderation for the chat, as well as for your hospitality team. 00:43:26.140 --> 00:43:36.380 You can imagine on a platform like ours where there's video conferencing too, there is a sense of wanting to create some facilitation. 00:43:37.080 --> 00:43:40.840 So hosts will be able to assign people to seats, remove people from seats. 00:43:40.840 --> 00:43:47.580 So you could imagine, I've had some churches do this, actually even without this feature yet, but their online team will be in the lobby. 00:43:47.740 --> 00:43:52.660 I was sitting at a table with someone and one of the online hosts was like, oh, talk to a lady. 00:43:52.820 --> 00:43:55.360 She's like, Bethany, you should really meet this other person. 00:43:55.440 --> 00:43:56.300 Let me go introduce you. 00:43:56.400 --> 00:44:04.220 And then they went and left to a different table and this person introduced them to each other and let them talk and then left and did the same. 00:44:04.340 --> 00:44:05.840 She was just like floating around the event. 00:44:05.840 --> 00:44:13.400 So imagine that kind of like being an usher and taking people to their seat, really helping take the first step so that people feel welcome. 00:44:13.900 --> 00:44:18.820 So you'll be able to do that with more and more tools on the platform. 00:44:19.640 --> 00:44:23.260 Then we have some other things coming out, bigger picture. 00:44:23.520 --> 00:44:24.720 So small groups. 00:44:25.100 --> 00:44:31.700 The day after we launched Alter, the biggest request that we've gotten on the platform is increasing row size and table size. 00:44:32.440 --> 00:44:33.800 Did Rob, was Rob one of those? 00:44:33.880 --> 00:44:34.920 I think he might have said that. 00:44:35.020 --> 00:44:35.780 Did I say that? 00:44:35.860 --> 00:44:36.040 Me? 00:44:37.140 --> 00:44:41.660 Yeah, so we've been working on increased size since early fall. 00:44:42.180 --> 00:44:44.800 So that will be coming out over the summer as well. 00:44:44.900 --> 00:44:46.240 It'll come out in a few ways. 00:44:46.640 --> 00:44:52.100 One is going to be ability to do small group video conferencing on the platform. 00:44:52.260 --> 00:44:54.360 So essentially replacing how you use Zoom. 00:44:54.820 --> 00:45:00.120 So you can spin up just standalone video conference events where you can share your screen. 00:45:00.300 --> 00:45:01.120 You can have videos. 00:45:01.120 --> 00:45:10.180 You can do breakout groups from there into the lobby state and back, and you can use that for your Bible study, small groups, leadership team meetings, all of that. 00:45:10.860 --> 00:45:17.640 The second that will come out will be the ability to have meetings from inside an auditorium style event. 00:45:17.640 --> 00:45:30.300 So now you can imagine you could have spinoff classrooms where you could have a before service Sunday schools, like literally like classrooms, as you would probably send people to before a service in real life. 00:45:30.460 --> 00:45:37.860 You could do the same on Altar, where they enter in the event, they go to the classroom they want, and then back to the auditorium where they can watch the service together. 00:45:38.860 --> 00:45:42.040 Then thirdly, you'll see increased row and table sizes. 00:45:42.040 --> 00:45:48.460 So our number one most requested feature will be, you know, it'll first go to eight and then 12. 00:45:48.960 --> 00:45:54.800 So you'll be able to accommodate bigger groups on the platform as you go. 00:45:55.240 --> 00:46:01.260 Obviously, there's no limit to people who can join events on the platform, but the amount that are doing video conferencing will increase. 00:46:01.820 --> 00:46:03.240 Then we've got lots of other fun features. 00:46:03.360 --> 00:46:11.700 I mean, I could keep going on what's coming down this roadmap, but definitely on the analytics side, there's going to be a lot of cool things there about engagement. 00:46:11.700 --> 00:46:17.100 So not just attendance and time watched, but how many people talked to other people? 00:46:17.480 --> 00:46:19.080 How many people sat with other people? 00:46:19.300 --> 00:46:20.940 Who are your most engaged members? 00:46:21.060 --> 00:46:22.540 Who are your least engaged members? 00:46:23.200 --> 00:46:28.700 You know, we're not going to give you data on, you know, did Jeff talk to anybody this service? 00:46:29.460 --> 00:46:31.120 And did Jeff talk to Rob? 00:46:31.220 --> 00:46:32.100 You know, yes or no. 00:46:32.100 --> 00:46:46.260 But you will see general analytics to be able to, as a host team online, know, well, for those who really are engaged, who actually might be good candidates to join your host team or to find a more, you know, find a new role in the church. 00:46:46.900 --> 00:46:56.880 And on the other side of the spectrum, who's somebody who's kind of a fly on the wall that needs to, somebody needs to take initiative with them to really get them more engaged into the event or into your services. 00:46:57.720 --> 00:47:00.060 So those are some of the analytic things. 00:47:01.480 --> 00:47:03.380 Yeah, those are all that come to mind. 00:47:03.520 --> 00:47:05.100 Andy, any fun ones that I missed? 00:47:05.640 --> 00:47:06.860 Oh, those are all the fun ones. 00:47:09.200 --> 00:47:10.640 Yeah, no, those sound great. 00:47:10.720 --> 00:47:15.340 And definitely speaking to some of the use cases I'm thinking of provide for a much more richer community. 00:47:15.520 --> 00:47:15.980 That's great. 00:47:15.980 --> 00:47:26.720 Yeah, the goal is really, I mean, we are trying to be a seven day of the week platform, a one stop shop to ease the church's need to have to send everybody to multiple different links, 00:47:26.740 --> 00:47:34.280 but really get the most out of your online events with tools specifically designed for how churches are doing online ministry. 00:47:35.020 --> 00:47:35.160 Love it. 00:47:35.280 --> 00:47:36.520 Love the road you're on. 00:47:36.620 --> 00:47:42.820 Excited to see what's coming here in the near future and what the long term looks like. 00:47:42.940 --> 00:47:44.120 So let's do this. 00:47:44.140 --> 00:47:47.440 So somebody out there, a church out there, they're wanting to experiment. 00:47:47.680 --> 00:47:48.620 They're wanting to try it. 00:47:48.680 --> 00:47:50.860 They're wanting to find out next steps. 00:47:51.120 --> 00:47:52.400 How does somebody get started? 00:47:52.780 --> 00:47:54.460 How does a church get started on Altra Live? 00:47:54.900 --> 00:47:55.660 Great question. 00:47:55.660 --> 00:47:57.280 Well, you can create an account for free. 00:47:57.420 --> 00:48:01.320 So our free tier essentially matches feature for feature, the church online platform. 00:48:01.420 --> 00:48:04.900 So if you are just looking to make that basic switch, you can start there. 00:48:05.440 --> 00:48:10.880 All of our video conference side of the platforms, you can create an account again for free. 00:48:11.040 --> 00:48:13.300 And there's practice events to just try it out. 00:48:13.420 --> 00:48:15.300 See what it's like. 00:48:15.460 --> 00:48:16.680 Invite some other people in. 00:48:16.820 --> 00:48:17.820 Toke all the buttons. 00:48:18.300 --> 00:48:19.480 Have fun with it. 00:48:19.480 --> 00:48:21.060 And really play around with it. 00:48:21.400 --> 00:48:23.980 Then from there, churches looking to get started. 00:48:24.080 --> 00:48:24.840 We do a few things. 00:48:24.940 --> 00:48:27.080 So one is schedule a demo with us. 00:48:27.160 --> 00:48:33.720 We're happy to take you through as a leadership team and talk through use cases and specific needs for your church itself. 00:48:34.180 --> 00:48:42.880 The second, again, is just to create that account, upgrade to the video conference tiers, and you can get started from there. 00:48:43.060 --> 00:48:47.140 You can literally run an event 30 minutes after you create an account. 00:48:47.300 --> 00:48:50.220 So it does not take a lot to get set up and get going. 00:48:50.880 --> 00:48:54.040 The third thing is we do something called Altar Academy as well. 00:48:54.240 --> 00:49:01.520 Altar Academy is an opportunity for churches that are really not just looking for the tool, but the instructor to help them along the way. 00:49:01.520 --> 00:49:10.240 So Altar Academy is an opportunity to, it's a four-week workshop series where you create a digital ministry strategy with your entire leadership team. 00:49:10.800 --> 00:49:25.640 So that is, Jeff is actually going to be doing a workshop in there as well, but it's really on models of online ministry, discipleship and engagement online, resourcing your online team, as well as growth and launch. 00:49:25.820 --> 00:49:47.080 So we bring together people who have actually done digital ministry themselves, pastors who have grown their own online platforms and discipled online to share best practices and then individually do consulting with a church to figure out their opportunities and needs and challenges to get them up and running. 00:49:47.260 --> 00:49:51.260 Definitely excited about Altar, is it Altar Academy, Altar Live Academy? 00:49:51.400 --> 00:49:52.260 I want to get the branding right. 00:49:52.340 --> 00:49:52.920 Altar Academy. 00:49:53.020 --> 00:49:53.800 Altar Academy. 00:49:53.800 --> 00:49:54.240 Awesome. 00:49:54.240 --> 00:49:58.000 It's not live, it's the Academy, but we're doing it live or something, I don't know. 00:49:58.200 --> 00:50:07.800 But listen, any chance I get to help churches figure out how to do this better, churches that are serious about doing this better, I love having those conversations. 00:50:07.800 --> 00:50:10.780 So it's an honor to work with you guys on that. 00:50:11.120 --> 00:50:17.160 And I'm sure there's many other things down the road as we just get some of this stuff figured out. 00:50:17.400 --> 00:50:18.520 But awesome. 00:50:18.580 --> 00:50:21.380 This has been a great conversation, really excited about Altar Live. 00:50:21.380 --> 00:50:25.120 I want to thank you guys for jumping on, but we're going to land a plane. 00:50:25.640 --> 00:50:26.660 So this has been great. 00:50:27.200 --> 00:50:29.900 Check out, we'll put links in the show notes to Altar Live. 00:50:31.400 --> 00:50:36.400 And Rob, is any of your stuff with Altar Live, it's not public. 00:50:36.860 --> 00:50:42.220 No, I'm still experimenting and some of those features that are going to be coming in, I get to use stuff. 00:50:42.420 --> 00:50:46.200 We can just send all of the church digital audience to your inner office. 00:50:46.380 --> 00:50:47.740 Like that would not be a problem, right? 00:50:47.860 --> 00:50:49.120 No, no, yeah, okay. 00:50:49.740 --> 00:50:50.640 Well, maybe next time. 00:50:51.180 --> 00:50:51.780 Not this month. 00:50:52.220 --> 00:50:52.900 Not this month. 00:50:53.500 --> 00:50:54.520 Do it, not this month. 00:50:54.660 --> 00:50:55.980 Kind of keep it quiet this round. 00:50:56.420 --> 00:51:03.760 So we'll link off to Altar Live so you can get more information there, the Altar Academy and everything else. 00:51:03.760 --> 00:51:07.600 But hey, audience out there, thanks for listening and jumping in the convo. 00:51:08.060 --> 00:51:11.880 For Rob, for Andy, for Stephanie, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. 00:51:12.600 --> 00:51:14.360 And State Interest Planning, thanks for jumping on. 00:51:14.420 --> 00:51:15.520 We'll see you next time here at the show. 00:51:15.780 --> 00:51:16.280 Y'all have a good day.