WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.240 Hey friends, Jeff here with the Church Digital Podcast. 00:00:03.380 --> 00:00:06.260 We've got another podcast takeover episode. 00:00:06.380 --> 00:00:07.640 As many of you know, the Church Digital, 00:00:07.720 --> 00:00:09.140 we run a podcast network. 00:00:09.580 --> 00:00:11.080 We've got a number of episodes, 00:00:11.320 --> 00:00:13.420 a number of shows that we've been featuring here 00:00:13.420 --> 00:00:16.280 on the Church Digital Podcast for the past month or so. 00:00:16.360 --> 00:00:20.240 And we've got another great show that we work with here 00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:21.980 that we wanna feature today 00:00:21.980 --> 00:00:23.780 here on the Church Digital Podcast. 00:00:23.920 --> 00:00:25.640 And of course, I'm talking about my friends 00:00:25.640 --> 00:00:29.160 over at Online Church Blueprint. 00:00:29.160 --> 00:00:30.340 So here's the deal. 00:00:30.660 --> 00:00:32.940 We've got Andy Mage, we've got Mark Lutz, 00:00:33.220 --> 00:00:34.860 and we've got, hopefully I pronounced the name right. 00:00:34.960 --> 00:00:37.560 Sorry, Mark, if not, I think it's probably Lutz. 00:00:37.780 --> 00:00:38.520 I don't know. 00:00:38.780 --> 00:00:39.940 At this point, I give it up. 00:00:40.360 --> 00:00:43.160 And we've got my friend, Tyler Sansa. 00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:46.020 We've got these three guys that individually, 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:49.380 they are incredible with digital ministry. 00:00:49.520 --> 00:00:51.520 But when you unite them together, 00:00:51.980 --> 00:00:54.120 when their forces combine, they are Captain, 00:00:54.360 --> 00:00:55.700 well, not quite Captain Planet. 00:00:55.700 --> 00:00:58.320 Okay, maybe they are better than actually than 00:00:58.320 --> 00:00:58.960 Captain Planet. 00:00:59.100 --> 00:01:02.620 But these guys are incredible together. 00:01:02.780 --> 00:01:05.720 And it's a great show that really mixes together 00:01:05.720 --> 00:01:09.520 this balance of physical church doing digital ministry, 00:01:09.520 --> 00:01:11.020 like many of us are doing. 00:01:11.340 --> 00:01:15.460 But it also brings into attention a lot of the potential 00:01:15.460 --> 00:01:18.840 that's centered around digital church planting. 00:01:19.060 --> 00:01:21.300 Like it's not just physical, it's in church, 00:01:21.380 --> 00:01:22.980 it's not just digital church planting. 00:01:22.980 --> 00:01:25.640 It really unites the two together. 00:01:26.120 --> 00:01:29.680 And in what I believe is a really special way. 00:01:29.940 --> 00:01:36.980 And all three, Mark, Andy, and Tyler are incredible digital pastors 00:01:36.980 --> 00:01:41.420 with a ton of experience that they bring into the conversations at hand. 00:01:41.520 --> 00:01:47.020 And so if you've never heard Online Church Blueprint digging into digital ministry 00:01:47.020 --> 00:01:50.760 from a practical standpoint, you need to listen to that. 00:01:50.860 --> 00:01:53.360 So go check out Online Church Blueprint. 00:01:53.540 --> 00:01:57.620 You can find the link at thechurch.digital slash podcast. 00:01:57.980 --> 00:02:01.100 And also while you're there, check out a number of the other shows 00:02:01.100 --> 00:02:07.480 that we have at the digital, thechurch.digital slash blueprint. 00:02:07.880 --> 00:02:10.700 You can ignore the fact that I just screwed up my own branding. 00:02:10.980 --> 00:02:11.900 That was horrible. 00:02:12.120 --> 00:02:13.160 But we're going to leave it in. 00:02:13.560 --> 00:02:14.120 It's going to be great. 00:02:14.180 --> 00:02:15.280 That's what podcasts are all about. 00:02:15.380 --> 00:02:17.720 It's all about the nuances and the screw up. 00:02:17.880 --> 00:02:20.840 So check out Online Church Blueprint and the other shows 00:02:20.840 --> 00:02:25.620 at the Church Digital Podcast Network at thechurch.digital slash podcast. 00:02:25.620 --> 00:02:27.720 All right, hey, I'm going to get out of the way. 00:02:28.180 --> 00:02:29.520 Andy, why don't you take it over? 00:02:36.500 --> 00:02:39.820 Well, welcome back to the Online Church Blueprint. 00:02:40.020 --> 00:02:43.700 This is kind of the holiday special, if you want to call it that. 00:02:43.860 --> 00:02:47.280 And just a little bit of a warning going into this one. 00:02:47.900 --> 00:02:48.820 It's long. 00:02:49.140 --> 00:02:49.760 I'm Andy. 00:02:49.820 --> 00:02:50.760 I'm one of the hosts here. 00:02:50.760 --> 00:02:57.240 And Mark and I really sit down for a chat on, kind of building on the last couple of 00:02:57.240 --> 00:03:02.700 episodes, we start to talk about how to run online services. 00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:09.520 And it turns into a philosophical debate about, not really even a debate, just to talk about 00:03:09.520 --> 00:03:15.180 online church and, you know, things that we can do during online church and best practices 00:03:15.180 --> 00:03:15.780 and all of that. 00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:21.420 But then it quickly evolves into talk about church on the whole and, you know, the difference 00:03:21.420 --> 00:03:25.480 between physical church and online church and the difference between running services in both 00:03:25.480 --> 00:03:28.100 of those and kind of the things that cross over. 00:03:28.460 --> 00:03:32.940 Mark and I both have a very long history with, you know, doing physical church. 00:03:33.040 --> 00:03:35.280 I've been a pastor for 13 or 14 years. 00:03:35.380 --> 00:03:39.040 He's been, he was a pastor of a physical church for 10 or 11 years. 00:03:39.040 --> 00:03:44.580 And so we've got a lot of experience in this and we both have kind of differing viewpoints, 00:03:44.580 --> 00:03:47.660 but, you know, it's a, it's a fascinating conversation. 00:03:47.660 --> 00:03:50.460 And so I just invite you along for the ride there. 00:03:50.460 --> 00:03:53.920 And like I said, this is a long one and I apologize. 00:03:53.920 --> 00:03:55.760 We don't typically go this long. 00:03:56.380 --> 00:04:02.540 But I was trying to kind of cut around some of these things and really, I just, I thought 00:04:02.540 --> 00:04:04.580 it was all going to be worthwhile and all beneficial. 00:04:04.580 --> 00:04:09.400 So whoever you are, whenever you're listening to this, I would love to hear any thoughts on 00:04:09.400 --> 00:04:16.500 your ideas of church and your thoughts on how to run services, both physical and online, 00:04:16.640 --> 00:04:17.400 either or. 00:04:17.800 --> 00:04:21.520 We're always looking to improve and we're always looking to form up with our community. 00:04:22.060 --> 00:04:24.820 Now, before we also get going, two quick things. 00:04:24.940 --> 00:04:30.400 Number one, Altar Live is really the best place that you're going to be able to find 00:04:30.400 --> 00:04:35.520 all of the handy dandy tools and engagement tips and tricks, and really a platform that 00:04:35.520 --> 00:04:41.260 is going to encompass every single thing that you want to be doing with your online church. 00:04:41.360 --> 00:04:47.300 You can head over to altarlive.com for a free 14 day trial, and you'll be able to try 00:04:47.300 --> 00:04:53.380 out things like our meetings and our rooms and our amazing lobbies that really open up before 00:04:53.380 --> 00:04:54.540 and after online services. 00:04:54.540 --> 00:05:02.040 And then, oh, by the way, we also have a fully fledged, fully built out digital church 00:05:02.040 --> 00:05:08.000 area and, you know, streaming live services into Altar Live is extremely simple. 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:12.200 Like I said, head over to altarlive.com for a free trial there. 00:05:12.400 --> 00:05:16.440 Also, if you're on our YouTube page right now, youtube.com slash altarlive, you'll be able 00:05:16.440 --> 00:05:20.860 to see kind of all of the use cases and the things that Altar Live is used for. 00:05:20.860 --> 00:05:24.280 The links will be below as well, so you can kind of check those out. 00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:30.000 Number two, we will have our handy dandy checklist of the five main items that we talk about. 00:05:30.180 --> 00:05:33.120 That's also going to be linked below if you are watching this on YouTube. 00:05:33.720 --> 00:05:38.960 And if you're taking us along for your, let's say, your holiday journey, let's say you're 00:05:38.960 --> 00:05:43.440 traveling or something like that, everything will be available in the show notes as well. 00:05:43.900 --> 00:05:44.800 Don't do it while you're driving. 00:05:44.920 --> 00:05:45.720 Don't look while you're driving. 00:05:45.820 --> 00:05:49.860 Maybe wait until, you know, you get off the plane or somebody else is driving or you get to 00:05:49.860 --> 00:05:50.660 where you're going to get to. 00:05:50.820 --> 00:05:58.860 But hey, buckle up for a kind of intensely long episode of the Online Church Blueprint. 00:05:59.080 --> 00:06:01.140 And oh, by the way, Merry Christmas. 00:06:08.520 --> 00:06:09.160 All right. 00:06:09.240 --> 00:06:12.680 So we are back for episode three of the Online Church Blueprint. 00:06:12.680 --> 00:06:17.900 And as you can see from Mark's festive setup, and I've got, you know, lights, but I don't 00:06:17.900 --> 00:06:21.220 have the actual, like, Christmas light setup that Mark has. 00:06:22.160 --> 00:06:24.160 So it's very Christmas here. 00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:26.400 Well, does it smell like Christmas in that studio? 00:06:28.980 --> 00:06:30.500 No, it should, though. 00:06:30.580 --> 00:06:36.060 I could get, like, we have one of those, like, wall-mounted heater air conditioner combo rigs. 00:06:36.160 --> 00:06:42.860 And if I just hung some, like, pine-scented car fresheners in front of it, though, it would 00:06:42.860 --> 00:06:44.020 reek of Christmas. 00:06:44.580 --> 00:06:46.660 Maybe, like, one gingerbread, one pine. 00:06:48.180 --> 00:06:50.000 One side of the studio smells like a pine tree. 00:06:50.080 --> 00:06:51.880 The other, it smells like a gingerbread house. 00:06:51.960 --> 00:06:53.060 I think that would be dope. 00:06:53.200 --> 00:06:53.280 Yeah. 00:06:53.720 --> 00:06:55.880 Do you guys have in your grocery store... 00:06:55.880 --> 00:06:56.660 So, by the way, welcome. 00:06:56.800 --> 00:06:57.920 I'm Andy, and that's Mark over there. 00:06:58.500 --> 00:07:02.480 I am in Tampa, and Mark is up in Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh area. 00:07:02.480 --> 00:07:08.940 And I don't know about you guys, but, like, when it hits September, October, you walk into 00:07:08.940 --> 00:07:13.860 your grocery stores, and all of the grocery stores have those, like, cinnamon broom things 00:07:13.860 --> 00:07:14.680 out in the lobby. 00:07:14.780 --> 00:07:15.720 Do you guys have that up there? 00:07:17.280 --> 00:07:17.720 Cinnamon? 00:07:17.860 --> 00:07:19.080 What's a cinnamon broom? 00:07:19.100 --> 00:07:19.640 So... 00:07:19.640 --> 00:07:20.460 Is it, like, the... 00:07:20.460 --> 00:07:24.000 Is it the shape and size of a standard broom? 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:24.060 No. 00:07:24.520 --> 00:07:25.600 So, it's, like... 00:07:25.600 --> 00:07:28.480 And maybe this is just a Florida-Georgia thing, but, like... 00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:34.400 It is essentially a picture, like, a three-foot thing of, like, branches that are tied to 00:07:34.400 --> 00:07:35.180 look like a broom. 00:07:35.460 --> 00:07:38.920 So, it's, like, tied at the bottom and kind of fans out and then goes straight up, and 00:07:38.920 --> 00:07:39.840 there it's tied off. 00:07:39.900 --> 00:07:42.580 You know, like, let's think of, like, an old-school medieval broom. 00:07:42.720 --> 00:07:43.320 Like a broom. 00:07:43.380 --> 00:07:44.260 Yeah, like a broom. 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:45.140 We're thinking about a broom here. 00:07:45.140 --> 00:07:46.900 But it's also cinnamon-scented. 00:07:47.040 --> 00:07:50.560 And so, you walk through the lobby of these... 00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:53.540 You know how the grocery stores have, like, the outer door, like, and then the airlock 00:07:53.540 --> 00:07:56.220 type thing, and then the inner door, and then in the airlock is, like, where 00:07:56.220 --> 00:07:58.400 the carts are and all that stuff? 00:07:58.700 --> 00:07:59.000 Sure. 00:07:59.120 --> 00:08:01.180 In there, it will smell like cinnamon. 00:08:01.320 --> 00:08:06.140 It will reek of cinnamon for, like, two months, maybe three months. 00:08:06.200 --> 00:08:08.620 And, like, the first couple of days, like, ah, cool. 00:08:08.920 --> 00:08:10.080 We're in the holiday season. 00:08:10.440 --> 00:08:14.600 And then by, like, mid-October, it's like, man, I hate the smell of cinnamon. 00:08:14.780 --> 00:08:16.600 I can't believe you guys don't have that up there. 00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:19.800 So, you're saying if, like, if you're an individual in Georgia or Florida and you're 00:08:19.800 --> 00:08:21.960 allergic to cinnamon, you literally can't... 00:08:21.960 --> 00:08:22.540 Oh, that's... 00:08:22.540 --> 00:08:22.700 Yeah. 00:08:23.100 --> 00:08:25.220 Like, you die on your way to get food. 00:08:25.220 --> 00:08:25.620 A hundred percent. 00:08:25.720 --> 00:08:25.880 Yeah. 00:08:26.040 --> 00:08:27.940 You got to go in through the pharmacy area. 00:08:28.320 --> 00:08:33.560 Like, I don't go out or do things with around... 00:08:33.560 --> 00:08:35.900 Like, I talk to cameras over microphones. 00:08:36.440 --> 00:08:42.380 So, um, if that is a thing, like, if we've started a cinnamon broom transition, it's happened 00:08:42.380 --> 00:08:43.620 in the last couple of years here. 00:08:43.720 --> 00:08:48.000 You probably, I mean, if your wife went out to go get food, you would have smelt it on 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:48.180 her. 00:08:48.320 --> 00:08:50.260 It's, it hangs on them, like... 00:08:50.260 --> 00:08:50.560 It's that bad. 00:08:50.560 --> 00:08:51.060 Yeah, dude. 00:08:51.060 --> 00:08:51.980 It's like a cheap robe. 00:08:52.120 --> 00:08:53.380 It just kind of hangs off of them. 00:08:53.460 --> 00:08:54.860 It's, it's gnarly. 00:08:55.060 --> 00:08:55.700 Um, yeah. 00:08:55.720 --> 00:08:59.400 My wife does, my wife went to, uh, the grocery store today and she did not come back reeking 00:08:59.400 --> 00:08:59.840 of cinnamon. 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:01.300 So, I think we're in the clear here. 00:09:01.400 --> 00:09:02.600 No cinnamon brooms in PA. 00:09:02.840 --> 00:09:02.960 Can't do something. 00:09:02.960 --> 00:09:08.180 In, uh, in the comments below, let me know if you are in a, an area where you have the cinnamon 00:09:08.180 --> 00:09:11.420 broom scourge of, uh, of the grocery stores. 00:09:11.520 --> 00:09:15.820 And I don't know, maybe we can get like a change.org petition to get, you know, ShopRite 00:09:15.820 --> 00:09:18.860 and Publix and Meijer and Kroger to get rid of those things. 00:09:18.980 --> 00:09:21.340 Cause I think, you know, I'd be all over that. 00:09:21.420 --> 00:09:26.220 Hey, um, we, uh, we are in the holiday season and before we get going on with the online church 00:09:26.220 --> 00:09:30.240 blueprint, uh, I, I realized throughout our last, our first couple of episodes, which 00:09:30.240 --> 00:09:34.040 you can check out in the comments below, we, uh, we were all business, man. 00:09:34.140 --> 00:09:37.780 It was just straight to the, straight to the business talk, straight to the church talk. 00:09:38.100 --> 00:09:38.480 No banter. 00:09:38.480 --> 00:09:39.300 There was no banter. 00:09:39.380 --> 00:09:39.980 There was no filler. 00:09:39.980 --> 00:09:45.800 And I have started doing this thing in all of the podcasts I host of the many, and it's 00:09:45.800 --> 00:09:49.720 just essentially this sort of like, I ask a question or two of the day. 00:09:49.840 --> 00:09:52.120 None of that, like, Hey Mark, how's your day been, man? 00:09:52.360 --> 00:09:52.840 None of that. 00:09:52.880 --> 00:09:54.720 Cause that's like this open-ended crappy question. 00:09:55.180 --> 00:09:58.940 Instead, I have a question I want to pose to you and then post everybody listening and 00:09:58.940 --> 00:09:59.920 you can answer in the comments. 00:10:00.040 --> 00:10:01.080 You can do whatever you need to do. 00:10:01.180 --> 00:10:07.320 But Mark, question of the day today is when does Christmas music get old? 00:10:07.840 --> 00:10:09.200 Like, when are you done with it? 00:10:11.200 --> 00:10:13.340 Uh, it only takes a couple of days. 00:10:13.560 --> 00:10:15.840 Like it, yeah, it's like, it's like, oh, okay. 00:10:15.920 --> 00:10:16.100 Yeah. 00:10:16.140 --> 00:10:20.320 We're after the holiday, after Thanksgiving, we turn on Christmas music in the house. 00:10:20.460 --> 00:10:24.900 Now I will say this, there is some, there's like, because it's just rinse and repeat, 00:10:25.080 --> 00:10:25.220 right? 00:10:25.280 --> 00:10:30.400 Like it's, it's the same exact freaking five songs and four of the five songs suck. 00:10:30.640 --> 00:10:34.060 So, but there's two albums that never get old for me. 00:10:34.160 --> 00:10:35.380 Michael bubble Christmas. 00:10:35.380 --> 00:10:36.460 I love that. 00:10:36.540 --> 00:10:37.600 I love that Christmas album. 00:10:37.720 --> 00:10:38.400 Very good. 00:10:38.760 --> 00:10:45.060 And, uh, and there are now three or four Christmas albums put out by stream beats, um, which are 00:10:45.060 --> 00:10:50.340 just like lo-fi, no vocals, just chill background Christmas music. 00:10:50.660 --> 00:10:53.560 And I do really, really enjoy those. 00:10:53.600 --> 00:10:54.840 So I'll listen to those. 00:10:55.080 --> 00:11:00.260 Um, but the thing that I love most at Christmas time when it, when it comes to media is, uh, 00:11:00.260 --> 00:11:04.120 the fireplace on YouTube, uh, the, the live fireplace. 00:11:04.120 --> 00:11:05.800 It's the only time of the year that I do it. 00:11:06.140 --> 00:11:12.200 Uh, if I wake up before my kids, which is literally almost impossible to do, it happens 00:11:12.200 --> 00:11:16.820 once a Christmas season now where my kids don't figure out what time I'm going to wake 00:11:16.820 --> 00:11:21.780 up and get up five minutes before me to ensure that they ruin my morning and prevent me from 00:11:21.780 --> 00:11:23.120 reading my Bible in peace. 00:11:23.800 --> 00:11:30.760 That one time that it happens though, I turn on the fireplace, uh, in the living room and, 00:11:30.880 --> 00:11:33.340 uh, and yeah, I feel, I feel rich, man. 00:11:33.340 --> 00:11:37.360 I feel like a person who can afford a fireplace one morning a year. 00:11:37.540 --> 00:11:38.560 Let this be a lesson, everybody. 00:11:38.680 --> 00:11:42.520 YouTube.com slash fireplace people or whatever the, whatever the channel is. 00:11:42.600 --> 00:11:45.180 Uh, and it's going pretty much like the whole season, right? 00:11:45.520 --> 00:11:46.200 It's live. 00:11:46.340 --> 00:11:46.480 Yeah. 00:11:46.500 --> 00:11:48.020 It's like live right now. 00:11:48.020 --> 00:11:52.300 Like as you're listening to this, unless this is well after Christmas, it's live. 00:11:52.380 --> 00:11:53.100 So perfect. 00:11:53.560 --> 00:11:55.700 And you can tell that Mark is an actual streamer. 00:11:55.800 --> 00:11:59.980 He's like a professional gamer and professional streamer because one of his top two Christmas, 00:11:59.980 --> 00:12:03.760 uh, songs is by Harris Heller, uh, from stream beat. 00:12:03.860 --> 00:12:04.980 So there you go. 00:12:06.240 --> 00:12:06.760 Congratulations. 00:12:07.120 --> 00:12:07.920 You nerd. 00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:09.740 Uh, I'm a real pro. 00:12:09.940 --> 00:12:10.740 Yeah, you are. 00:12:11.020 --> 00:12:12.580 I'm a, I'm a real pro guys. 00:12:13.140 --> 00:12:13.660 All right. 00:12:13.700 --> 00:12:16.940 Uh, we're going to take all our professional experience and we're going to turn to episode 00:12:16.940 --> 00:12:17.540 three today. 00:12:17.540 --> 00:12:22.660 And we have done a lot so far with talking about the digital experience, the digital church 00:12:22.660 --> 00:12:27.140 experience, kind of what needs to happen in your online church, uh, talking about groups, 00:12:27.240 --> 00:12:28.680 talking about raising up group leaders. 00:12:29.060 --> 00:12:30.800 And that's really the community aspect. 00:12:30.960 --> 00:12:32.100 We're going to get back to engagement. 00:12:32.260 --> 00:12:36.000 We're going to talk a little bit more about community and, you know, everything that you 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:38.920 can do to help form community in later episodes. 00:12:38.920 --> 00:12:44.900 But we wanted to shift to kind of program aspect because when people think church, they 00:12:44.900 --> 00:12:49.620 automatically think a couple of songs, a guy yelling at me from a stage, maybe somebody 00:12:49.620 --> 00:12:52.920 asking me for money, and then I'm going to go eat lunch or go home. 00:12:53.000 --> 00:12:54.840 That's automatically what most people think of church. 00:12:54.960 --> 00:12:57.400 And that's positive and negative. 00:12:57.580 --> 00:13:04.500 Uh, there are connotations to both sides, but the idea behind holding online church services 00:13:04.500 --> 00:13:07.460 is one of those things that we need to kind of get a grasp on. 00:13:07.460 --> 00:13:12.580 We need to get a hold on because you do need to have a linchpin every single week. 00:13:12.820 --> 00:13:17.040 And for Western church, that is our church services, whenever we're going to hold them Sunday 00:13:17.040 --> 00:13:19.240 morning, Wednesday evening, Thursday evening, yada, yada, yada. 00:13:19.420 --> 00:13:23.720 So Mark and I today wanted to have kind of, kind of a candid conversation and give you the 00:13:23.720 --> 00:13:29.840 lovely listener and or watcher of this show, a couple of tips on how to best hold your online 00:13:29.840 --> 00:13:30.380 services. 00:13:30.380 --> 00:13:33.920 So first and foremost, and you'll be able to follow along with the handy dandy checklist 00:13:33.920 --> 00:13:35.640 that we've been providing below. 00:13:36.100 --> 00:13:41.180 Literally, it's going to be five points with boxes that you can check off as you establish 00:13:41.180 --> 00:13:42.920 whatever you're doing with your online service. 00:13:42.920 --> 00:13:48.680 Step number one, and this is going to be a repeat of everything we've told, talked about 00:13:48.680 --> 00:13:51.540 before, is to clarify the why. 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:57.120 Why are you doing online services in the first place? 00:13:57.280 --> 00:14:00.580 What is the thing that you are kind of gathering around? 00:14:00.880 --> 00:14:05.480 Are you just holding online services because that's what every other online church does? 00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:10.080 Or are you trying to fulfill some mission, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 00:14:10.440 --> 00:14:17.800 Mark, with all of your expertise with Lux, why do you hold Wednesday night online services? 00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:21.180 That's a really great question. 00:14:21.540 --> 00:14:29.100 And I think this has a certain amount in which this changes based off of your setting, right? 00:14:29.100 --> 00:14:33.920 If you're listening to this and you're the online pastor at your physical church, which 00:14:33.920 --> 00:14:40.480 Andy is, he's a director with us with Lux and a digital expression church, but he also 00:14:40.480 --> 00:14:46.240 works full time at a church where he's the online pastor of a large physical church, right? 00:14:46.440 --> 00:14:51.840 And so I think the why do you do an online service changes a little bit depending on where you 00:14:51.840 --> 00:14:55.700 are, because one of the reasons you might do an online service is because your senior pastor 00:14:55.700 --> 00:14:59.500 told you you were doing an online service and you don't, you don't know that's, that's the 00:14:59.500 --> 00:14:59.840 answer. 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:02.500 So it's like, okay, well, even if I don't want to do it, guess what? 00:15:02.540 --> 00:15:03.140 I'm doing it. 00:15:03.180 --> 00:15:05.140 So I got to make the best of that situation. 00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:12.980 I think there are legitimate reasons to not do a live stream service to explore on demand 00:15:12.980 --> 00:15:13.780 expressions. 00:15:15.140 --> 00:15:20.340 And I think honestly, in most cultures, when it comes to digital expression, I think that 00:15:20.340 --> 00:15:26.580 actually makes more sense, uh, in a lot of cases because people genuinely don't like they 00:15:26.580 --> 00:15:29.000 flick through their phone at all different times of the day, right? 00:15:29.020 --> 00:15:31.840 They watch stuff on their computer at all different times of the day. 00:15:32.200 --> 00:15:36.700 Very, very rarely do you have something where it's like everybody gets on to do this thing 00:15:36.700 --> 00:15:37.840 at the same time. 00:15:38.520 --> 00:15:43.460 Now that's different for the church that I serve and lead because our culture is different. 00:15:43.460 --> 00:15:48.980 Our culture is baked into Twitch culture and Twitch is a live streaming platform, evergreen 00:15:48.980 --> 00:15:49.440 content. 00:15:49.640 --> 00:15:53.580 So like YouTube content, stuff that's going to stick around that people can watch later 00:15:53.580 --> 00:15:54.880 doesn't even exist there. 00:15:54.940 --> 00:15:56.820 And that's not even why people go to it, right? 00:15:57.100 --> 00:16:01.980 People go to Twitch because they want to interact live and see how people respond to them and 00:16:01.980 --> 00:16:03.780 talk to streamers, all of that sort of stuff. 00:16:04.100 --> 00:16:06.320 It's a very unique culture in that way. 00:16:06.680 --> 00:16:09.280 And it, that's what's expected, right? 00:16:09.280 --> 00:16:12.260 And so for us, why are we doing services? 00:16:12.400 --> 00:16:15.040 It has a lot to do with identifying who, who our person is, right? 00:16:15.060 --> 00:16:19.280 Who's our one, who's our Saddleback Sam or, or Saddleback Sally, or I don't, I don't 00:16:19.280 --> 00:16:21.980 know, whatever it is that, you know, your church might call it. 00:16:22.040 --> 00:16:24.800 If you're unfamiliar with that terminology, you can find it anywhere on the internet. 00:16:24.800 --> 00:16:25.820 So go look it up. 00:16:25.900 --> 00:16:28.040 You're probably not unfamiliar with it though. 00:16:28.120 --> 00:16:32.420 And so our one, like the person we're trying to reach watches live streams. 00:16:32.420 --> 00:16:33.680 Like that's where they are. 00:16:33.740 --> 00:16:34.820 They're part of Twitch culture. 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:37.960 They've probably replaced TV with Twitch for the most part. 00:16:38.300 --> 00:16:41.100 They're usually watching a stream in the background while they're gaming at night. 00:16:41.220 --> 00:16:46.280 And so for us to reach people, like I'm, I'm talking to people, we're talking to people who 00:16:46.280 --> 00:16:47.100 are very used. 00:16:47.240 --> 00:16:50.700 It's common for them to watch three, four hours of Twitch a day. 00:16:50.920 --> 00:16:51.360 Right. 00:16:51.420 --> 00:16:58.420 And so because of that, it just makes a whole lot of sense for our culture, for our church 00:16:58.420 --> 00:16:59.660 to have live services. 00:16:59.800 --> 00:17:02.540 The flip side of that is you have to work with what you have. 00:17:02.540 --> 00:17:02.880 Right. 00:17:03.140 --> 00:17:08.520 And so when we left the church that I was at, it's, it was, it was pretty clear that one 00:17:08.520 --> 00:17:13.480 of my personal primary giftings is in the leader of this, this new church was going to 00:17:13.480 --> 00:17:16.560 be my ability to speak my ability to preach. 00:17:16.680 --> 00:17:23.120 And so we didn't want to take what we felt like God had gifted me most in and sidelined 00:17:23.120 --> 00:17:25.800 that just because we were doing something different. 00:17:25.960 --> 00:17:29.000 And so for us, it was like, no, it makes a lot of sense. 00:17:29.060 --> 00:17:30.480 And who's, who's your target, right? 00:17:30.500 --> 00:17:32.740 So our target is de-churched for the most part. 00:17:32.820 --> 00:17:37.320 It's people who left the church 10, 12, 13 years old, haven't been back for a decade. 00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:43.520 So for us, a church that's structured in such a way that has a live service, it gives them 00:17:43.520 --> 00:17:45.720 something that's very fresh and new and different. 00:17:45.720 --> 00:17:50.160 And so it draws them in because it feels like it's of their tribe, but at the same time, 00:17:50.160 --> 00:17:51.620 there's some familiarity with it. 00:17:51.620 --> 00:17:55.940 And they're like, I understand this a little bit and grasp a bit of what to expect. 00:17:56.100 --> 00:17:58.680 So the, the buy-in isn't super, super high. 00:17:59.060 --> 00:18:02.600 Um, they can kind of come and, you know, become part of the community pretty easily. 00:18:02.600 --> 00:18:07.700 And they kind of understand, you know, even if they come from a vastly different background, 00:18:07.880 --> 00:18:08.780 theologically speaking. 00:18:08.780 --> 00:18:12.020 So that's one of the, that's some of the reasons that we do it, but I am kind of curious as 00:18:12.020 --> 00:18:17.240 to why, you know, why Bay Hope has a digital service because you, you know, you guys have 00:18:17.240 --> 00:18:18.740 a whole digital branch to your church as well. 00:18:18.920 --> 00:18:20.960 That was very professionally done. 00:18:21.040 --> 00:18:22.680 Are you sure you're not a pro internet guy? 00:18:24.360 --> 00:18:26.400 You're, you're, you're a professional at internet. 00:18:26.560 --> 00:18:29.860 I, I, I thought about a lot of these things. 00:18:29.940 --> 00:18:34.600 I'm really bad at the internet, um, but I thought about a lot of these things. 00:18:34.600 --> 00:18:36.420 That was a, that was a, that was a great setup. 00:18:36.420 --> 00:18:43.560 Uh, it's so different from, well, the easy answer and the answer that most fidgetal, physical, 00:18:43.700 --> 00:18:47.560 digital, I hate that term fidgetal, but we're just going to kind of live in it right now. 00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:53.260 The, the reason we do it is because that's what the church has done for umpteen thousand 00:18:53.260 --> 00:18:53.660 years. 00:18:53.660 --> 00:18:59.180 And the advent of the internet is a sneeze on the timeline of what church has been doing. 00:19:00.080 --> 00:19:07.320 So there's a long list of the online service, the reasons to do an online service. 00:19:07.320 --> 00:19:11.460 It is typically when all of the saints gather together, if we want to use the biblical term, 00:19:11.540 --> 00:19:14.900 all the saints gather together on the Lord's day or on a Saturday evening or whatever. 00:19:15.520 --> 00:19:18.640 Uh, it helps to promote community coming together. 00:19:18.640 --> 00:19:23.040 It's easy to easier to invite somebody to a church service than it is to a scary small 00:19:23.040 --> 00:19:23.400 group. 00:19:23.400 --> 00:19:28.180 It is, you know, you can go down the list of all of the typical physical reasons for an 00:19:28.180 --> 00:19:29.640 online service like ours. 00:19:29.760 --> 00:19:37.660 We are, I'm, I am constantly trying to push Bay Hope and push our department and push our 00:19:37.660 --> 00:19:41.520 team into how can we make this unique? 00:19:41.740 --> 00:19:46.840 Because the why behind it is, okay, well, we kind of have to do it because most of the 00:19:46.840 --> 00:19:50.000 people that are joining us are used to Sunday morning services or whatever. 00:19:50.900 --> 00:19:55.360 But as we're going to explore in just a little bit and talking about engagement and time constraints, 00:19:56.400 --> 00:20:01.820 the, the actual things that happen inside of that can be a little different. 00:20:01.820 --> 00:20:06.600 So we're almost piggybacking on something that has been happening for a long time. 00:20:06.660 --> 00:20:14.020 Anyway, we're different than Lux Lux has the beautiful opportunity to establish when and 00:20:14.020 --> 00:20:17.020 where and how it wants to do things, which is a blessing. 00:20:17.020 --> 00:20:21.760 It's kind of a curse at sometimes as I'm sure Mike and Mark can attest to, but it's a blessing 00:20:21.760 --> 00:20:28.000 in that there's a more agile, agile response to how you want to do things. 00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:32.520 Which kind of leads us into our second, second thought here, and you can follow along with 00:20:32.520 --> 00:20:33.400 your handy dandy checklist. 00:20:33.620 --> 00:20:37.400 But after you've clarified the why, now you need to clarify the who. 00:20:37.840 --> 00:20:40.460 And so this, for a physical church, this is pretty simple. 00:20:40.640 --> 00:20:45.900 The who is everybody that's going to normally attend a Sunday morning services, service, usually 00:20:45.900 --> 00:20:54.860 adults, usually, you know, post-millennial adults or Gen Xers, boomers, that type of person. 00:20:55.040 --> 00:20:59.280 The people that are used to attending on a Sunday, that's pretty simple. 00:20:59.700 --> 00:21:03.100 But what if you want to do church services like during COVID? 00:21:03.220 --> 00:21:07.660 And even now, Bay Hope is experimenting with student services. 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:11.060 How do you do an online service for students online? 00:21:11.260 --> 00:21:11.820 It's pretty different. 00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:14.520 How do you do an online service for youth? 00:21:14.720 --> 00:21:16.880 How do you do an online service for college kids? 00:21:17.120 --> 00:21:20.060 How do you do an online service for singles and for care groups? 00:21:20.220 --> 00:21:25.220 And we've kind of sorted some of those out, especially with care groups and those things. 00:21:25.960 --> 00:21:27.300 Students, we still haven't figured out. 00:21:27.480 --> 00:21:29.280 Mark, you would have a better handle on that. 00:21:30.100 --> 00:21:39.440 But by clarifying the who, we've kind of been able to form our community or our services around 00:21:39.440 --> 00:21:40.520 that just a little bit more. 00:21:40.620 --> 00:21:43.680 We've been able to tailor some of the engagement stuff that we'll talk about in a minute. 00:21:44.040 --> 00:21:49.420 Mark, when we, you talked about your, you know, your one, your Saddleback Sally, or I don't 00:21:49.420 --> 00:21:51.860 know, we need to come up with a different name for Lux. 00:21:52.660 --> 00:21:54.820 Like, is it going to be the Lux Luthor? 00:21:55.040 --> 00:21:55.280 Yeah. 00:21:56.620 --> 00:21:58.000 Lux Luthor is kind of funny. 00:21:58.120 --> 00:21:59.080 That's actually pretty dope. 00:21:59.200 --> 00:21:59.300 Yeah. 00:21:59.400 --> 00:22:04.360 So for the Lux Luthor, like what, who is, who is the who for Lux? 00:22:06.200 --> 00:22:06.560 Yeah. 00:22:06.740 --> 00:22:10.300 Well, I mean, I mean, we can get deep into that. 00:22:10.400 --> 00:22:15.880 And I think that maybe even in a future episode, we can have some conversation around like, how 00:22:15.880 --> 00:22:19.800 do you actually form that and sit down and be really intentional about the person you're 00:22:19.800 --> 00:22:20.580 trying to reach? 00:22:20.800 --> 00:22:26.560 I think that when it comes to clarifying the who, I think the more interesting, because 00:22:26.560 --> 00:22:30.140 you can look like, I would just say this, like pick up the book, Intentional Churches, 00:22:30.580 --> 00:22:31.780 read through it. 00:22:31.840 --> 00:22:33.700 That'll really help you define some of that stuff. 00:22:33.820 --> 00:22:38.220 And so like, you know, we have a 27 year old male who's working a dead end job who comes 00:22:38.220 --> 00:22:40.220 home and games most nights. 00:22:40.880 --> 00:22:46.200 He's not really involving his life in a whole lot of anything, but he's semi passionate about 00:22:46.200 --> 00:22:50.060 the LGBTQ community because he feels like that's the thing that he should defend in today's 00:22:50.060 --> 00:22:50.540 day and age. 00:22:50.800 --> 00:22:57.140 He's probably, you know, leaning left politically, but doesn't honestly could, could really care 00:22:57.140 --> 00:22:57.480 less. 00:22:57.560 --> 00:22:59.880 It just doesn't, you know, just doesn't want to get in arguments. 00:23:00.120 --> 00:23:04.320 And so, you know, that's kind of the person he's not really on a deep spiritual journey, 00:23:04.420 --> 00:23:08.080 probably spent some time in the church at one point, but has left the church, found it 00:23:08.080 --> 00:23:10.440 to be either irrelevant or hypocritical and hasn't been back. 00:23:11.220 --> 00:23:16.760 Now, the way that we do church directly tailors to that person, right? 00:23:16.800 --> 00:23:18.260 That's who we're trying to reach. 00:23:18.440 --> 00:23:23.000 And I think that it's important to ask, but I think on a larger scale, specifically if 00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:27.260 you're a physical church, who's looking at what is our digital footprint actually look 00:23:27.260 --> 00:23:27.580 like? 00:23:27.720 --> 00:23:33.200 I think the larger scale picture is to ask who, like, not just like the details, but 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:37.420 like, let's get 10,000 foot and answer like some really, really basic questions. 00:23:37.600 --> 00:23:44.360 Are we, are, is our job, are we trying to reach and provide a service for people who would 00:23:44.360 --> 00:23:46.280 be at church, but can't be right now? 00:23:47.060 --> 00:23:54.720 Because the way you structure a service for that person looks, I believe, I believe very 00:23:54.720 --> 00:23:59.980 different than how you would structure a service for say, I'm trying to reach somebody who's 00:23:59.980 --> 00:24:05.160 out there on the other side, who would, who would maybe they're getting a chance to get 00:24:05.160 --> 00:24:07.160 to know Jesus for the very first time. 00:24:07.300 --> 00:24:08.980 They've wandered into my stream. 00:24:09.840 --> 00:24:12.220 Now, let me just unpack that very quickly. 00:24:12.780 --> 00:24:18.500 For example, Sally, who can't make it to church this week because Sally's a shut-in or Rob, 00:24:18.600 --> 00:24:22.500 who can't make it to church this week because he lives in Western PA and he's at camp every 00:24:22.500 --> 00:24:26.060 single weekend all summer, but still wants to be at church. 00:24:26.560 --> 00:24:28.820 A, they're not watching on their phone, probably. 00:24:29.060 --> 00:24:32.100 They're probably not doing it in a way where they can actually interact with you. 00:24:32.160 --> 00:24:34.200 So engagement is really terrible. 00:24:34.660 --> 00:24:36.320 Two, they don't actually want to engage with you. 00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:38.920 They're not super interested in engaging with your online host. 00:24:39.280 --> 00:24:41.560 They're probably threw their thing up on the TV. 00:24:42.040 --> 00:24:45.480 And so they don't even have the opportunity and they can't even see your chat, right? 00:24:45.580 --> 00:24:49.680 The next thing is they're not, they're not looking to get something that's outside the 00:24:49.680 --> 00:24:49.900 room. 00:24:49.980 --> 00:24:53.840 They don't want something that's been prerecorded, produced and provided for them, 00:24:53.840 --> 00:24:54.100 right? 00:24:54.200 --> 00:24:56.840 They want to feel like they're actually at church. 00:24:56.840 --> 00:24:59.960 And so they want to be in the room where you are. 00:25:00.160 --> 00:25:03.500 And so simple, easy to set up, easy to do. 00:25:03.660 --> 00:25:07.100 The flip side of that is like, you're looking to reach this person who doesn't know Jesus. 00:25:07.400 --> 00:25:10.060 The way that you structure your service looks way different. 00:25:10.180 --> 00:25:13.400 This is like, hey, we have to be able to interact directly with these people. 00:25:13.480 --> 00:25:15.640 We want to be able to ask questions and have conversation. 00:25:16.100 --> 00:25:18.840 All of those things become a heck of a lot more important. 00:25:19.240 --> 00:25:23.940 And the way that you go about having that interaction and structure your service looks different. 00:25:24.040 --> 00:25:25.160 You might have a polished service. 00:25:25.240 --> 00:25:26.500 It might not be from your stage. 00:25:26.500 --> 00:25:29.800 You might not want your camera on the other side of the room from the person that you're 00:25:29.800 --> 00:25:30.060 filming. 00:25:30.240 --> 00:25:32.600 It might be a lot more work and a lot more staff time, you know? 00:25:32.680 --> 00:25:33.180 That's interesting. 00:25:34.300 --> 00:25:40.100 You, when you're talking about the, excuse me, you're talking about the who, it's almost 00:25:40.100 --> 00:25:40.520 interesting. 00:25:40.760 --> 00:25:42.520 And I don't know if Lux has run into this. 00:25:42.640 --> 00:25:49.280 Have you ever thought about doing separate, separate services or separate large scale gatherings 00:25:49.280 --> 00:25:50.820 for different types of people? 00:25:51.300 --> 00:25:57.080 So, for example, have you ever thought about doing something a little bit more expository? 00:25:57.180 --> 00:26:00.720 We're going to go deep into a thing and we're going to open it up to a large group for those 00:26:00.720 --> 00:26:02.920 that know Jesus and have been following Jesus for a little bit. 00:26:03.000 --> 00:26:06.080 And then we're going to, and I'm going to use the term seeker and I don't mean it, you know, 00:26:06.100 --> 00:26:09.280 I hate the term, but like, are we going to do something a little bit more seeker friendly, 00:26:09.360 --> 00:26:13.080 a little bit more Christianity 101 and kind of do that regularly? 00:26:16.720 --> 00:26:17.700 Yeah, that's a good question. 00:26:17.700 --> 00:26:24.700 I don't, I don't think that we've ever kicked around like doing other large scale services 00:26:24.700 --> 00:26:30.100 like, okay, this service is for the advanced class, right? 00:26:30.140 --> 00:26:31.720 And this service is for beginners. 00:26:31.880 --> 00:26:32.560 Welcome to church. 00:26:33.040 --> 00:26:39.360 I think like most churches who are intentional about reaching people who don't know Jesus 00:26:39.360 --> 00:26:45.200 or far from God, especially digital expressions that are trying to reach people that maybe have 00:26:45.200 --> 00:26:47.400 literally never been to church before. 00:26:48.220 --> 00:26:53.340 Because like the digital expression allows you to dip your toe into communities that no 00:26:53.340 --> 00:26:55.980 physical church has the ability to dip their toe into, right? 00:26:56.460 --> 00:26:59.100 And I think that there's something really cool about that. 00:26:59.220 --> 00:27:03.660 But the unique thing is, is that those people do not come with any sort of an intact biblical 00:27:03.660 --> 00:27:04.260 worldview. 00:27:04.820 --> 00:27:07.860 And so even when they come to faith, they have just literally no idea. 00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:10.940 And that's been one of the experiences that we've had, right? 00:27:10.980 --> 00:27:15.940 We've had someone who came from a Muslim faith who came to like, just no, no basis for it. 00:27:15.980 --> 00:27:16.960 Just didn't know, right? 00:27:17.460 --> 00:27:21.260 We have people from other countries who've like come into faith and they're primarily, you 00:27:21.260 --> 00:27:22.060 know, a Hindu country. 00:27:22.180 --> 00:27:23.600 Like, I don't have no idea. 00:27:23.760 --> 00:27:24.340 And that's okay. 00:27:24.460 --> 00:27:26.300 Like, we got to start with the basis. 00:27:26.560 --> 00:27:29.900 And then I think like most churches who are really intentional about reaching the lost, 00:27:30.380 --> 00:27:32.300 their live service, their event, right? 00:27:32.340 --> 00:27:34.760 Their thing that they're trying to invite people into. 00:27:35.060 --> 00:27:42.000 It always, it is built to keep the cookies on the bottom shelf and challenge the people 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:43.740 who are reaching for the top shelf, right? 00:27:43.960 --> 00:27:49.360 Because in this case, you put the thing that I don't like about what church does very typically 00:27:49.360 --> 00:27:55.600 is they, they take information and they put it on the top shelf and then they take responsibility 00:27:55.600 --> 00:27:58.560 and they put it on the bottom shelf for everybody, right? 00:27:58.620 --> 00:28:01.280 And so they come to this extra Bible study, come to this extra. 00:28:01.340 --> 00:28:03.540 And so there's all of these additional things that you have to do. 00:28:03.540 --> 00:28:08.260 And for us, it's like, how can we take the info, like the, the, the education? 00:28:08.440 --> 00:28:12.360 Can we put that on the bottom shelf and can we take the responsibility and let's put that 00:28:12.360 --> 00:28:13.440 on the top shelf, right? 00:28:13.480 --> 00:28:16.480 And so we're always calling our people to apply stuff. 00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:20.720 Most people in church don't need more expository preaching. 00:28:21.340 --> 00:28:23.900 They need to apply preaching that they've already heard. 00:28:24.760 --> 00:28:29.600 And especially people who are in week in, week out, they don't need another aha moment. 00:28:29.780 --> 00:28:31.760 They need to act on the aha moment they had. 00:28:32.020 --> 00:28:37.760 And so for us, that happens primarily through then the context of relationship and small groups, 00:28:37.920 --> 00:28:38.120 right? 00:28:38.240 --> 00:28:42.760 Community nights, um, discipleship meetings, like those sorts of things where we're trying 00:28:42.760 --> 00:28:45.480 to help people then grow to become more like Jesus. 00:28:45.620 --> 00:28:49.940 But so it's so often we just believe that growing to become more like Jesus just has to do with 00:28:49.940 --> 00:28:55.000 more information about scripture that you have and more Greek that you've heard preached about. 00:28:55.000 --> 00:29:01.100 And in my experience, becoming more like Jesus has to do with acting more like Jesus and acting 00:29:01.100 --> 00:29:05.880 like Jesus is actually not terribly complex, right? 00:29:06.340 --> 00:29:10.840 Um, that's something that somebody who's brand new to the faith and someone who's been walking 00:29:10.840 --> 00:29:14.400 with walking, quote unquote, walking with Jesus for a really long time can do. 00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:19.440 And so, uh, I don't think we've ever really explored the idea of like, Hey, how do we, 00:29:19.540 --> 00:29:21.860 how do we split this up? 00:29:22.420 --> 00:29:24.800 Um, it's an interesting concept. 00:29:24.800 --> 00:29:25.840 It's an interesting concept. 00:29:25.840 --> 00:29:27.240 It's just not one that we've really entertained. 00:29:27.500 --> 00:29:31.220 Um, let's move to kind of topic idea number three here. 00:29:31.220 --> 00:29:35.460 Uh, and it has to deal with the overall service itself. 00:29:35.680 --> 00:29:40.880 Um, the big headline I kind of wrote here is clarify the engagement and engagement is that 00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:46.020 big buzzword that we've been taught to throw all of our metrics and all of our money behind. 00:29:46.020 --> 00:29:48.360 And most people don't actually understand what engagement is. 00:29:48.360 --> 00:29:52.940 Most people think that engagement is a statistic that is reported back to you by Facebook or YouTube. 00:29:53.580 --> 00:29:58.400 Um, most people don't realize that engagement is actually just kind of what Mark and I are 00:29:58.400 --> 00:29:58.940 doing right now. 00:29:58.960 --> 00:30:00.480 And that's talking together. 00:30:00.820 --> 00:30:02.600 That's just really engagement. 00:30:02.740 --> 00:30:06.880 Uh, it's tough to talk one-on-one when you've got hundreds of people lined up with their cameras 00:30:06.880 --> 00:30:11.480 off or the ability to not even turn on your cameras, which I need to plug right now, alter 00:30:11.480 --> 00:30:17.220 live a place that you can actually do digital services and all of the things and allow people to 00:30:17.220 --> 00:30:21.400 turn their cameras and microphones on and actually have one-to-one conversations with people during 00:30:21.400 --> 00:30:21.820 a service. 00:30:21.980 --> 00:30:25.400 It's this wild concept that actually works in practice. 00:30:25.880 --> 00:30:30.660 Um, but when you're clarifying the engagement, taking it back to the why, you need to kind 00:30:30.660 --> 00:30:35.760 of ask yourself and ask your team and leadership if it, if it comes to that, the serious questions, 00:30:35.760 --> 00:30:40.780 those questions being like, do we just need to parrot in the physical sense? 00:30:40.840 --> 00:30:43.780 Do we just need to parrot what the church itself is doing? 00:30:43.980 --> 00:30:45.360 Do we need three songs and a message? 00:30:45.580 --> 00:30:48.200 Do we need an extended announcement time? 00:30:48.280 --> 00:30:51.400 Do we need, you know, the boring quote unquote things for online? 00:30:52.120 --> 00:30:58.600 Why are you doing those things when most people are just simply a click away from watching a 00:30:58.600 --> 00:31:02.700 football game at the same time or going to YouTube and having you pulled up in another 00:31:02.700 --> 00:31:07.040 window and, you know, they're watching, I don't know, Casey Neistat or something like 00:31:07.040 --> 00:31:07.240 that. 00:31:07.280 --> 00:31:09.360 Like, you know, it's, it's one of those things. 00:31:09.720 --> 00:31:15.740 Um, how, how can you structure your service so that people are actually talking to you? 00:31:15.800 --> 00:31:21.100 Mark, when, when you are designing a luck service, especially when you first started really, 00:31:21.240 --> 00:31:25.500 cause I feel like, you know, you're 92, 93 weeks into luck so far. 00:31:25.620 --> 00:31:29.740 And I only know that because I have access to the Google drive and I literally just was working, 00:31:30.060 --> 00:31:33.540 cutting, cutting a video that said week 92 on 93. 00:31:34.160 --> 00:31:38.820 Um, but, uh, but, you know, so you've done this 93 times and then some, 00:31:38.900 --> 00:31:44.380 how did you guys clarify the engagement when you were first designing a service? 00:31:46.780 --> 00:31:50.440 You know, Twitch gives us some stats that are really helpful, I think. 00:31:50.980 --> 00:31:55.780 And I don't know that I don't stream on other platforms, so I don't know these things other 00:31:55.780 --> 00:31:56.260 places. 00:31:56.660 --> 00:32:02.100 The, the hard part about digital is we think we can equate reach to attendance, right? 00:32:02.440 --> 00:32:04.900 And then we can equate, I don't, I don't even know. 00:32:04.900 --> 00:32:10.340 Like, and then we say, okay, engagement is, and we think that engagement in some way, 00:32:10.360 --> 00:32:15.900 shape or form is like, okay, X amount of people said something or responded or raised their 00:32:15.900 --> 00:32:18.620 hand or signed up for something or filled out a connection card. 00:32:18.620 --> 00:32:23.280 And I'm, I'm just not convinced that that's engagement and, and you're not structuring 00:32:23.280 --> 00:32:29.800 most people, most churches do simply just do not structure, um, their services in a way 00:32:29.800 --> 00:32:31.900 that actually provides for engagement, right? 00:32:31.900 --> 00:32:37.560 They are broadcasting what's happening in a room where people were there physically and 00:32:37.560 --> 00:32:38.880 still not engaging, right? 00:32:38.920 --> 00:32:44.020 It's not, you know, it's like, why would you expect people in the online world to engage 00:32:44.020 --> 00:32:47.980 while you're preaching when you don't even expect the people who are physically in the 00:32:47.980 --> 00:32:49.860 room to engage with you in any capacity? 00:32:50.500 --> 00:32:55.340 And so I think that there's, there's some challenges there when it came to structuring 00:32:55.340 --> 00:32:59.800 a service for Lux, we really studied what a just chatting stream looked like on Twitch. 00:33:00.020 --> 00:33:05.820 And we said, why is it that somebody can sit in front of their computer and stream to four 00:33:05.820 --> 00:33:13.420 or 500 people, sometimes 15, 25, 35,000 people and see hundreds of hundreds and hundreds and 00:33:13.420 --> 00:33:18.680 hundreds, thousands of messages in a couple of hours come through and see people actually 00:33:18.680 --> 00:33:23.880 really genuinely engaged emoting, like crazy responding, like nuts. 00:33:23.880 --> 00:33:28.680 Like to the point that once a stream grows to a certain point, like the streamer literally 00:33:28.680 --> 00:33:29.680 can't even engage with it. 00:33:29.900 --> 00:33:33.260 The problem is not that there is the, it flips, right? 00:33:33.300 --> 00:33:36.740 Because originally it's like, we, we have people to engage with the people who are out 00:33:36.740 --> 00:33:41.880 there, but none of them will engage and actually flips in, in Twitch where it comes to the point 00:33:41.880 --> 00:33:46.660 that there are so many people watching, trying to engage that the streamer actually can't 00:33:46.660 --> 00:33:47.300 engage with them. 00:33:47.300 --> 00:33:51.140 And he has, they have to completely disconnect from the chat and just allow it to be what it 00:33:51.140 --> 00:33:52.580 is and have their mods run it. 00:33:52.900 --> 00:33:54.820 And so we said, what do those things look like? 00:33:54.900 --> 00:33:59.820 And so that's why for us, our structure is our first 15 minutes of service is dedicated 00:33:59.820 --> 00:34:03.100 to just sitting in a chair and talking to chat. 00:34:03.500 --> 00:34:05.140 We just interact with chat. 00:34:05.340 --> 00:34:05.780 That's it. 00:34:06.140 --> 00:34:07.340 Sit there and interact with chat. 00:34:07.400 --> 00:34:13.000 And we give a couple of announcements and we laugh like humor is a staple and a major 00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:14.080 part of our church. 00:34:14.240 --> 00:34:19.740 That first 15 minutes have to be engaging and funny, like, and it's not skits. 00:34:19.940 --> 00:34:21.280 It's not, it's just us, right? 00:34:21.340 --> 00:34:27.180 It's just us making light of ourselves, enjoying the company of the people in the chat and just 00:34:27.180 --> 00:34:28.180 hanging out with them. 00:34:28.640 --> 00:34:31.660 And that's welcoming people, all of those sorts of things. 00:34:31.700 --> 00:34:35.860 It's saying hi to first time guests, all of the stuff that you would think maybe would 00:34:35.860 --> 00:34:38.740 happen before a service that happens in the first 15 minutes of our service. 00:34:38.880 --> 00:34:40.720 And then we do one worship song. 00:34:41.640 --> 00:34:44.140 I'm not saying that we wouldn't like to do more in the future. 00:34:44.280 --> 00:34:48.040 We might not change that, but at least for the first two years, we've done only one. 00:34:48.040 --> 00:34:52.840 And the real reason for that is because I don't know if you've ever sat at home while you watched 00:34:52.840 --> 00:34:54.100 worship happen on your TV. 00:34:54.340 --> 00:34:54.920 It sucks. 00:34:55.220 --> 00:34:55.860 You don't sing. 00:34:56.160 --> 00:34:57.040 No one's singing. 00:34:57.320 --> 00:34:59.960 Like, I'm not saying that we shouldn't sing. 00:35:00.200 --> 00:35:01.240 I think we should. 00:35:01.680 --> 00:35:09.100 I'm saying that the reason behind why we worship and why we sing, if we're honest about most 00:35:09.100 --> 00:35:14.620 church services, is to move people into a place where they can receive the word, right? 00:35:14.780 --> 00:35:18.840 And that might be a terribly Calvinistic thing for me to say, right? 00:35:18.880 --> 00:35:20.960 That might be like super Calvinistic. 00:35:21.400 --> 00:35:27.740 But I think that that was like, that's my understanding of one of the main reasons that we worship and 00:35:27.740 --> 00:35:28.900 why we sing. 00:35:28.900 --> 00:35:31.100 I think that every aspect of life can be worship. 00:35:31.680 --> 00:35:36.480 And I think that as long as we're giving honor to God and glorifying him with our lives, and I think 00:35:36.480 --> 00:35:42.260 the aspect of singing and reflecting is also this part of moving us into a place where we can receive 00:35:42.260 --> 00:35:42.860 from the spirit. 00:35:43.480 --> 00:35:46.780 And so we thought that a song was good for that. 00:35:47.140 --> 00:35:51.740 And that's what we use it for because the longer it gets awkward online, just to be honest with you. 00:35:52.300 --> 00:35:53.520 And then from there, we do prayer. 00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:58.500 Every week, we have people raise prayer concerns live in chat, and then we live actually pray for those 00:35:58.500 --> 00:35:58.680 things. 00:35:58.760 --> 00:36:01.080 It's not just like a, hey, guys, thanks for raising your prayer concerns. 00:36:01.200 --> 00:36:02.920 Here's a pre-recorded prayer by the pastor. 00:36:04.060 --> 00:36:08.400 We actively read those things and pray for each and every one of them. 00:36:08.680 --> 00:36:12.700 And then engagement during the sermon looks different because it's harder to be engaged 00:36:12.700 --> 00:36:13.720 and preach. 00:36:13.840 --> 00:36:17.740 But we try to structure it in such a way where we're asking questions during our sermon and giving 00:36:17.740 --> 00:36:18.320 other times. 00:36:18.720 --> 00:36:23.460 For a while, we did a thing where like in the first third of my sermon, I actually asked a 00:36:23.460 --> 00:36:29.760 question, and then I had my team copy the responses and send them to my phone over texts or over 00:36:29.760 --> 00:36:30.560 Discord DMs. 00:36:30.860 --> 00:36:35.380 And then in the second half of my sermon, I would read them at some point, and it would 00:36:35.380 --> 00:36:36.700 enable us to really engage. 00:36:36.800 --> 00:36:40.040 They would pick out some of the best ones for me, and then it would actually feel like I was 00:36:40.040 --> 00:36:42.640 engaging with them in a slightly deeper level. 00:36:42.640 --> 00:36:46.220 And then in our post-service, like after we're done with everything, you know, service is 00:36:46.220 --> 00:36:49.480 over, Lord's Supper's done, whatever for that week, I'm back on the couch and we're just 00:36:49.480 --> 00:36:50.380 answering questions. 00:36:51.020 --> 00:36:53.520 And I will take breaks from a sermon to welcome somebody. 00:36:53.640 --> 00:36:57.200 I will take breaks in the middle of a message to answer a question that comes in, because 00:36:57.200 --> 00:37:00.960 my goal is to engage with the people who are actually at church live that week. 00:37:02.200 --> 00:37:06.900 One of my favorite times in all of the week is the first 15 minutes of a Lux service. 00:37:07.080 --> 00:37:11.600 And if you have never had a chance to join, I invite you to twitch.tv slash Lux Digital 00:37:11.600 --> 00:37:17.140 Church or, well, we don't ever put the, it's in VOD, so if you want to go to twitch.tv slash 00:37:17.140 --> 00:37:18.760 Lux Digital Church, you can watch it anytime you want. 00:37:18.820 --> 00:37:19.360 It's not on YouTube. 00:37:19.540 --> 00:37:23.360 We clip out the sermon and put that on the YouTubes. 00:37:23.480 --> 00:37:28.240 But it's one of my favorite things in the world, and actually I started, and it was one 00:37:28.240 --> 00:37:32.680 of the things we were doing at Bay Hope for a while, kind of opening up, so our service 00:37:32.680 --> 00:37:38.460 is kind of bog standard, not bog standard, it's, you know, a song or two and then announcement 00:37:38.460 --> 00:37:42.200 time, you know, it's your typical Sunday morning church service. 00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:48.740 But I got hired in June of 2019 and kind of took a couple of months to get my feet under 00:37:48.740 --> 00:37:52.660 me, figure out the lay of the land, figure out the community and the culture and all those 00:37:52.660 --> 00:37:58.140 other things, and then this fun little virus called COVID-19 hit, and it shut everything 00:37:58.140 --> 00:38:03.540 down, and it kind of accelerated all of the plans that I had already been in process and 00:38:03.540 --> 00:38:07.120 progress to really start to derive a bit of engagement out of our services. 00:38:08.180 --> 00:38:14.280 Through that, our church went from meeting about 800 or 900 online every single Sunday to 00:38:14.280 --> 00:38:21.640 5,000 online, just in the blink of a hat, drop of a hat, and it slowly started to settle 00:38:21.640 --> 00:38:24.960 down, as COVID settled down, and once we opened back up... 00:38:24.960 --> 00:38:25.800 I want to blink a hat. 00:38:26.280 --> 00:38:27.120 You can try... 00:38:27.960 --> 00:38:28.600 It might hurt. 00:38:29.680 --> 00:38:30.520 I think it might hurt. 00:38:30.780 --> 00:38:31.200 I want to blink a hat. 00:38:31.200 --> 00:38:32.140 Yeah, I think it might hurt. 00:38:32.220 --> 00:38:33.280 Well, it's like Mario. 00:38:33.380 --> 00:38:34.320 Do you ever play Mario Odyssey? 00:38:35.280 --> 00:38:36.580 I think he had a blinking hat. 00:38:37.200 --> 00:38:37.560 Yes. 00:38:37.720 --> 00:38:38.720 Yeah, the one... 00:38:38.720 --> 00:38:39.240 It's a great... 00:38:39.240 --> 00:38:39.760 Yeah, it's a great game. 00:38:40.760 --> 00:38:41.380 Where was I? 00:38:41.460 --> 00:38:42.700 Yes, so, blinking hats. 00:38:42.860 --> 00:38:51.420 So, when we opened up the church again, we actually, our lead pastor, rolled up into our 00:38:51.420 --> 00:38:57.120 kind of leadership team and essentially, like, said, hey, before we open, we need to build 00:38:57.120 --> 00:39:00.180 a TV studio, which I was like, oh my gosh, yes. 00:39:00.180 --> 00:39:01.480 Like, this is what I've been asking for. 00:39:02.500 --> 00:39:04.020 So, and then just walked away. 00:39:04.160 --> 00:39:07.120 Like, I was essentially just rolled this hand grenade into the room and then walked away. 00:39:07.460 --> 00:39:10.500 And meanwhile, left all the finance people just flabbergasted, like, how are we going to 00:39:10.500 --> 00:39:13.580 pay for this money, supply chain, all this other stuff. 00:39:14.200 --> 00:39:14.820 God blessed it. 00:39:14.880 --> 00:39:15.340 It happened. 00:39:15.600 --> 00:39:17.440 Spent a lot of money on a TV studio. 00:39:17.440 --> 00:39:19.600 And that's where my office is, is in this TV studio. 00:39:20.160 --> 00:39:28.880 And we, over the last year and a half-ish, have gained the ability to run a one- or two-man 00:39:28.880 --> 00:39:35.160 show in this TV studio to where we can live drop in and drop out whenever we want during 00:39:35.160 --> 00:39:36.260 a Sunday morning service. 00:39:36.900 --> 00:39:41.740 So, typically, what we are doing is we're spending the first couple of minutes doing exactly what 00:39:41.740 --> 00:39:42.240 Mark was doing. 00:39:42.240 --> 00:39:47.140 Less laughter and less sort of in-jokes and less, you know, gamer talk because we're talking 00:39:47.140 --> 00:39:50.240 to anywhere from 25-year-olds to 70-year-olds. 00:39:50.360 --> 00:39:52.940 And so, a lot of them have no clue who I am most of the time. 00:39:53.520 --> 00:39:55.420 But we're on camera. 00:39:55.580 --> 00:39:56.660 We're talking with the chat. 00:39:56.780 --> 00:39:57.760 We're engaging with people. 00:39:58.100 --> 00:39:59.580 We're going to live worship. 00:39:59.780 --> 00:40:06.360 We're coming back into the studio to do announcement time and communion time and any other, you know, 00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:11.280 there have been a couple of Sundays where I've had to write a message in 15 minutes and preach 00:40:11.280 --> 00:40:14.840 because all of our camera equipment, all of our switcher equipment died. 00:40:14.840 --> 00:40:20.720 And so, it's just me preaching to 2,000 people with a message that I prepared on the way in, 00:40:20.840 --> 00:40:21.820 which is totally fun. 00:40:22.640 --> 00:40:23.420 Stuff like that. 00:40:23.480 --> 00:40:25.400 But we have that ability. 00:40:25.800 --> 00:40:29.660 And my exhortation for people is what I'm always telling churches that are doing this. 00:40:30.140 --> 00:40:35.580 Find some way to get somebody to talk to a gosh darn camera. 00:40:36.060 --> 00:40:39.020 Find some way to do exactly what Mark and I are doing. 00:40:39.360 --> 00:40:43.760 Look into the lens of a camera and talk to the people that are on the other side of that. 00:40:43.820 --> 00:40:47.800 Because you're not just, you're not talking to a house full of people that are looking back at you. 00:40:48.060 --> 00:40:53.320 You are talking to a glass eyeball that may have 1,000 people on the other side of it. 00:40:53.560 --> 00:40:56.280 And if your service is not structured to do anything about that, 00:40:56.320 --> 00:41:00.740 and if you are not used to engaging people on the other side of a glass eyeball, 00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:02.020 you are going to be lost. 00:41:02.180 --> 00:41:04.640 You are going to lose your people and they're going to go do something else. 00:41:04.980 --> 00:41:06.800 They are going to completely write you off. 00:41:08.140 --> 00:41:11.120 The engagement portion of that, clarifying the engagement, 00:41:11.320 --> 00:41:12.940 clarifying the people that are behind that. 00:41:13.120 --> 00:41:16.140 It's this building block of the why behind the service, 00:41:16.380 --> 00:41:17.440 the who you're trying to reach. 00:41:17.620 --> 00:41:19.720 And now you can look into that camera and you can say, 00:41:19.800 --> 00:41:22.440 man, it's so good to have you look down at your laptop, 00:41:22.680 --> 00:41:26.620 see that Dorothy and Timmy and the Thomas family are online. 00:41:26.760 --> 00:41:29.480 Man, Dorothy and Timmy and the Thomas family, good to see you guys. 00:41:29.620 --> 00:41:30.560 Thanks so much for being here. 00:41:30.880 --> 00:41:31.520 How was your weekend? 00:41:32.060 --> 00:41:33.340 Ask them some stupid question. 00:41:33.420 --> 00:41:35.260 Hey, do you like ham or turkey at Christmas dinner? 00:41:35.400 --> 00:41:35.680 Both? 00:41:35.780 --> 00:41:36.340 That's awesome. 00:41:36.420 --> 00:41:36.860 I do too. 00:41:36.940 --> 00:41:37.480 I love meat. 00:41:37.480 --> 00:41:38.920 Okay, we're going to go out to our service now. 00:41:39.000 --> 00:41:39.720 See you in a little bit. 00:41:40.480 --> 00:41:40.820 Boom. 00:41:40.980 --> 00:41:43.200 You have now made a personal connection with somebody. 00:41:43.360 --> 00:41:48.780 You have now designed your online service to give you a quick and easy win. 00:41:49.040 --> 00:41:50.860 You have looped those one or two people in. 00:41:51.080 --> 00:41:53.320 And here's a little fun little tidbit. 00:41:53.700 --> 00:41:57.360 You have actually made a number of people jealous in a good way. 00:41:57.500 --> 00:41:58.540 And I don't mean jealous like, 00:41:58.620 --> 00:42:00.540 oh, that person didn't talk to me and it was on the camera. 00:42:00.780 --> 00:42:04.080 But now people are going to be more incentivized to type into the chat, 00:42:04.080 --> 00:42:07.460 hoping like, hmm, maybe Pastor Andy's going to say something to me next time. 00:42:07.480 --> 00:42:11.940 Maybe I should put a funnier, wittier, maybe I should put my prayer request into the chat 00:42:11.940 --> 00:42:13.200 or something like that. 00:42:13.620 --> 00:42:15.960 Somebody else is going to see that in the chat and respond to it. 00:42:16.040 --> 00:42:17.200 Somebody else is going to respond to it. 00:42:17.280 --> 00:42:20.000 It's going to take a long time to build up that snowball. 00:42:20.160 --> 00:42:22.020 But I tell you what, over three and a half years, 00:42:22.420 --> 00:42:25.700 we have way more active chatters than we had when I first started. 00:42:26.040 --> 00:42:29.460 And that's simply because I took the time to clarify my engagement 00:42:29.460 --> 00:42:34.600 and clarify who I'm talking to and clarify the big why vision. 00:42:34.600 --> 00:42:37.960 Mark, any response so I can kind of step down off my soapbox here? 00:42:39.540 --> 00:42:43.440 No, I think that when it comes to working with physical churches 00:42:43.440 --> 00:42:45.740 who are asking some of these questions, 00:42:45.880 --> 00:42:47.560 some of these ideas can just be really overwhelming. 00:42:47.720 --> 00:42:49.020 Like, where am I going to find the team? 00:42:49.180 --> 00:42:50.680 We can't build a TV studio. 00:42:51.140 --> 00:42:53.380 And it's like, that's okay. 00:42:53.840 --> 00:42:54.700 Like, that's okay. 00:42:55.020 --> 00:42:56.680 I think there's two pieces. 00:42:56.860 --> 00:43:00.920 One, you don't need a TV studio to actually create engagement, right? 00:43:02.420 --> 00:43:05.760 You don't really need a lot of fancy tech to do it either, to be honest. 00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:06.700 You need a little bit. 00:43:06.800 --> 00:43:07.700 Like, you need a little bit. 00:43:08.700 --> 00:43:11.560 You know, there is a way to get a camera set up in a separate room 00:43:11.560 --> 00:43:14.700 that, you know, end up with a mic and somebody can sit there 00:43:14.700 --> 00:43:16.780 and they can actually talk and chat with your folks 00:43:16.780 --> 00:43:21.560 and get them to respond and have conversation there prior to service. 00:43:21.960 --> 00:43:23.980 And I think if your goal is engagement, 00:43:24.160 --> 00:43:26.680 then you have to get away from the online host thing, right? 00:43:26.720 --> 00:43:29.460 Not like the person on the other side of the camera, 00:43:29.520 --> 00:43:31.340 like the person on the other side of the keyboard host. 00:43:31.680 --> 00:43:33.680 The person is just not going to prompt people to message 00:43:33.680 --> 00:43:36.180 because most of them aren't looking at the keyboards. 00:43:36.320 --> 00:43:37.460 They're not looking at the chat. 00:43:37.460 --> 00:43:40.860 And so, um, if you're trying to drive engagement, 00:43:40.860 --> 00:43:45.020 like you have to show that you actually care that those people are there 00:43:45.020 --> 00:43:48.380 and you on the camera care that those people are there. 00:43:48.500 --> 00:43:50.220 And it's got to be more than like, 00:43:50.520 --> 00:43:55.680 Hey everybody, welcome to new generations church and online family. 00:43:55.780 --> 00:43:57.120 We're glad that you're here with us too. 00:43:57.200 --> 00:44:00.120 Now let me never look at the camera again and talk to all these people. 00:44:00.200 --> 00:44:03.980 And in some capacity, it even has to be better than like the Craig Groeschel. 00:44:04.100 --> 00:44:05.740 Like, man, that guy's drilled in. 00:44:05.740 --> 00:44:08.020 Like he looks at this camera for these three lines, 00:44:08.240 --> 00:44:09.700 that camera for those four lines, 00:44:09.840 --> 00:44:13.500 that camera for that line back to this camera for six lines, right? 00:44:13.600 --> 00:44:16.320 Like he knows exactly what he's doing and it's done so well, 00:44:16.380 --> 00:44:18.580 but you don't have to compete in that space, right? 00:44:18.960 --> 00:44:37.500 If you are organic and natural and it doesn't, it's actually so it's, it's just not even super expensive anymore because COVID one of the things that COVID did was put insane pressure on companies who are making microphones and cameras because there were new competitors in the space who were making more efficient and cheaper products. 00:44:37.640 --> 00:44:43.000 And so like, there's a lot of equipment out there that you can learn about and get your hands on that works really, really well. 00:44:43.120 --> 00:44:46.320 That comes from not the online broadcast world. 00:44:46.420 --> 00:44:47.740 It comes from the gaming community. 00:44:47.740 --> 00:44:53.500 It comes from the streaming community because you don't know this, but you know, you don't need a giant soundboard to do this. 00:44:53.580 --> 00:45:01.580 You need a GoXLR mini or a Rode podcast interface and, you know, a half decent microphone, right? 00:45:01.640 --> 00:45:06.480 And a boom arm and you could do a lot of stuff and someone can run your stream in a way that's actually engaging. 00:45:06.720 --> 00:45:14.840 The flip side of that is sometimes it's like, if you're a pastor and you're feeling pressure to do online ministry and you're like, I don't want to do it. 00:45:14.920 --> 00:45:16.120 I do not care about it. 00:45:16.380 --> 00:45:17.400 I think it's stupid. 00:45:17.400 --> 00:45:21.660 And my church is still trying to figure out if they're doing a traditional or a contemporary worship service. 00:45:23.460 --> 00:45:24.060 Fine. 00:45:24.680 --> 00:45:25.340 Like, that's okay. 00:45:25.440 --> 00:45:32.060 Like, I think it's genuinely okay for some churches to come into this segment and just say, this isn't us. 00:45:33.080 --> 00:45:38.760 And I think it's going to have to be every church that really wants to thrive with the next generation. 00:45:38.920 --> 00:45:40.020 I really believe that. 00:45:40.380 --> 00:45:48.920 But I also don't want to put a bunch of undue pressure on pastors who don't have the time, energy, or desire to learn any of this. 00:45:49.640 --> 00:45:56.040 And their churches – I don't want to encourage a bunch of pastors to go into another battle to build a TV studio, right? 00:45:57.000 --> 00:46:01.280 I think that there's ways that you can do engagement really well without all the bells and whistles. 00:46:01.620 --> 00:46:04.780 And I think there's some churches that just need to have a really honest conversation. 00:46:05.020 --> 00:46:09.440 And just because everybody has their service on the internet does not mean that my service has to be on the internet. 00:46:09.920 --> 00:46:14.360 And there's some extent where that's okay, too. 00:46:15.900 --> 00:46:29.240 Because I think this – just the idea of how do I structure my online service is overwhelming to a lot of pastors that might be in smaller mainline denominational churches that just feel very overwhelmed by the prospect of even dipping their toe into this. 00:46:29.240 --> 00:46:30.240 That's good, and that's – 00:46:30.240 --> 00:46:31.740 But you're probably not listening to this podcast. 00:46:31.740 --> 00:46:45.880 Well, and maybe, because there is a number – there are a number of pastors and leaders that I've talked to that are – have gotten the directive from their online pastor, hey, we need to – or from their lead pastor, hey, we need to do this online thing because everyone's doing this online thing. 00:46:46.580 --> 00:46:50.960 And then you're right, they get super overwhelmed and go like, well, I can just set up my iPad and broadcast to Facebook Live. 00:46:51.040 --> 00:46:53.460 And it's like, well, no, I mean, you can. 00:46:53.740 --> 00:46:54.560 You're not wrong. 00:46:54.640 --> 00:46:56.660 That will get you on the internet pretty quickly for free. 00:46:57.180 --> 00:47:00.600 But there's no – we're not deriving – there is no why behind that. 00:47:00.680 --> 00:47:03.220 There is no who behind that, and there's no engagement behind that. 00:47:04.340 --> 00:47:20.220 The other side of that, kind of everything, is that we then get the chance to – when we talk about these things, we get to use some of these free and some of these paid tools to do good. 00:47:21.040 --> 00:47:24.880 In ways that I don't think they were originally designed to do. 00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:25.520 So, like Twitch. 00:47:25.600 --> 00:47:31.060 Twitch was not designed to minister to people around the world, right? 00:47:31.160 --> 00:47:31.960 But it's free. 00:47:32.600 --> 00:47:34.520 It's a free platform for us to use. 00:47:34.880 --> 00:47:37.400 Obviously, some of the tools are not free, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 00:47:38.120 --> 00:47:43.560 AlterLive, not free, but definitely cheap compared to other things that you could be using. 00:47:43.960 --> 00:47:54.040 These tools are out there to where now we can start to have these conversations of, okay, so let's move past just the – let's innovate just a little bit. 00:47:54.100 --> 00:47:54.760 Okay, cool. 00:47:54.860 --> 00:47:57.120 So, I set up a camera in the back of my worship center. 00:47:57.220 --> 00:47:57.380 Cool. 00:47:57.760 --> 00:48:06.000 Now, how do I, with minimal amounts of money, buy a $200 switcher and talk to this camera and then talk to these people? 00:48:06.620 --> 00:48:09.400 That's a conversation – that's a cool conversation to have. 00:48:09.540 --> 00:48:19.700 That's a conversation that's actually driving the mission forward instead of, how do I add another song to the end of my worship set to get people to respond by doing X, Y, and Z? 00:48:20.140 --> 00:48:34.600 Because I think you're moving away from what you actually need to be doing as a church, which is community, which is engagement, which is making people understand that they are disciples of Jesus, meaning followers of Jesus, meaning students of the Master. 00:48:36.080 --> 00:48:47.100 So, I think you're right to point out, and I get a little overzealous when I start talking about the studio, and I forget that, like, hey, most churches aren't going to go build a TV studio because they're just – they're not going to. 00:48:47.600 --> 00:48:54.700 Most lead pastors, if you're one of those out there that has a lead pastor that does not see the value in digital, I'm very sorry. 00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:56.220 There are those out there. 00:48:56.780 --> 00:49:01.480 They are slowly going away, which I think is a good thing. 00:49:02.540 --> 00:49:02.980 Sure. 00:49:03.100 --> 00:49:06.680 There's some shift in perspective there when it comes to the digital space. 00:49:06.820 --> 00:49:11.680 I think some people are seeing – I may have said this on the last episode. 00:49:12.100 --> 00:49:16.900 Did I talk about the church that's doing communion only in person in the last episode? 00:49:17.520 --> 00:49:18.340 I don't think that I did. 00:49:18.380 --> 00:49:26.220 I had a conversation with a really large church on the other side of the country, and it was really interesting because I'm having this conversation with this pastor. 00:49:26.340 --> 00:49:28.360 It's really, really big, right? 00:49:28.360 --> 00:49:35.040 And a bunch of their people left during the pandemic, and they went to other states. 00:49:35.300 --> 00:49:42.520 And he said, I know that the online world is working because these people continue to give, and they continue to be here every week. 00:49:42.660 --> 00:49:45.160 So their hearts are still in it in some capacity. 00:49:45.820 --> 00:49:51.720 And he said, but what we're doing is we're doing the Lord's Supper every week, but we're only doing it in person. 00:49:51.860 --> 00:49:57.840 So the people who come in person feel like they have that special perk, that opportunity. 00:49:58.920 --> 00:50:05.560 And it was like – for me, it was this moment where it was like I see a guy who something is clicking, right? 00:50:05.620 --> 00:50:07.260 Something about the digital space is clicking. 00:50:07.400 --> 00:50:07.740 He's seeing. 00:50:07.860 --> 00:50:08.660 He's like, this is real. 00:50:08.740 --> 00:50:10.100 This is actually impacting people's lives. 00:50:10.180 --> 00:50:12.480 I didn't think it was going to, and it wasn't my jam before. 00:50:12.680 --> 00:50:13.760 But now I'm seeing it. 00:50:13.840 --> 00:50:15.060 It's impacting people's lives. 00:50:15.200 --> 00:50:16.020 People are still committed. 00:50:16.500 --> 00:50:23.860 But I still really want everyone just to come back to the building because we have this building, and I would really like it to be full of people. 00:50:24.440 --> 00:50:27.920 And I think that there is a lot of that going around, right? 00:50:27.960 --> 00:50:34.020 I think there are – when it comes to lead pastors, there are lead pastors who are just coming out, and they're saying, we need to put our church on the internet. 00:50:34.680 --> 00:50:35.400 I don't care. 00:50:35.480 --> 00:50:36.280 Put our service on the internet. 00:50:36.360 --> 00:50:45.600 They're not really interested in having a conversation about changing what you're doing or changing the structure of a service or doing something very different, which all are going to be necessary in order to do this effective. 00:50:45.600 --> 00:50:57.080 If you want to do this effectively, and it's not just for Sally, who's a shut-in, to be able to watch your church service on Facebook on Sunday mornings, if you want to do this effectively and actually reach people who don't know Jesus, then you have to completely restructure. 00:50:57.240 --> 00:50:58.220 Like, it has to look different. 00:50:58.280 --> 00:50:58.980 It can't be the same. 00:50:59.060 --> 00:51:00.040 It does not work online. 00:51:00.180 --> 00:51:01.040 It just literally doesn't. 00:51:01.080 --> 00:51:04.620 It's like planting a church where you're speaking the language that no one can understand. 00:51:05.180 --> 00:51:11.420 And at the same time, there's also these pastors now who are kind of like they're getting it, but they're also really not, right? 00:51:11.420 --> 00:51:13.400 There's – it's like, oh, I understand. 00:51:13.720 --> 00:51:18.880 Like, I think I see the value, but every day I'm immersed in this fill the physical building thing. 00:51:19.400 --> 00:51:21.700 And so, like, what can we do to get people to come back? 00:51:22.460 --> 00:51:29.800 And instead of like, oh, people's lives are being transformed and they're still bought in even though they're not here, there's something unique about this. 00:51:30.360 --> 00:51:31.840 How do you actually lean into that? 00:51:31.860 --> 00:51:37.780 Because there actually may be a chance for us to have reach in thousands of communities instead of this community. 00:51:37.940 --> 00:51:39.600 And what does that actually look like? 00:51:39.880 --> 00:51:47.220 And I think that it's been really interesting to watch different senior pastors at different stages in this journey of what does digital industry look like for our church. 00:51:47.220 --> 00:51:51.480 And that's not to vilify those pastors that are saying, like, I don't see value of digital. 00:51:51.740 --> 00:51:56.400 I don't – you know, they're – oftentimes their community has not lent itself towards that. 00:51:56.400 --> 00:51:58.320 And they might have an aging congregation. 00:51:58.480 --> 00:52:02.820 They might have a congregation that just has no digital prospects whatsoever. 00:52:04.120 --> 00:52:11.160 Also, a lot of pastors just – that's just what they've been doing since the beginning of their pastoral ministry. 00:52:11.500 --> 00:52:14.340 And a lot of them only know one or two ways. 00:52:14.540 --> 00:52:20.120 And getting a pastor to kind of change midstream is tough, man. 00:52:20.240 --> 00:52:22.500 It is one of the toughest things in the world. 00:52:23.140 --> 00:52:29.440 It's like getting – you know, you need an act of Congress to get certain pastors to do things to, like, even change the carpet or to spend money. 00:52:29.440 --> 00:52:34.400 And that stinks, but it's also like, okay, well, work with it. 00:52:34.560 --> 00:52:38.580 If you're a guy or a gal that sees the necessity of digital, keep pushing. 00:52:38.740 --> 00:52:39.560 Keep knocking on the door. 00:52:39.720 --> 00:52:43.940 Keep telling them, like, hey, we can do online services this way and this way and this way. 00:52:44.640 --> 00:52:46.040 But we're – 00:52:46.040 --> 00:52:51.260 Well, I think the reality is a lot of it isn't senior pastors who are midstream, right? 00:52:52.120 --> 00:52:54.380 In midstream, you're navigating rapids. 00:52:54.500 --> 00:52:58.740 You're communicating with your team, and you're trying to make changes as you go down to keep the boat up, right? 00:52:58.820 --> 00:53:05.120 And we got a lot of pastors who are – some of the only ones that lived out COVID are in the delta, right? 00:53:05.160 --> 00:53:06.060 They're at the end. 00:53:07.800 --> 00:53:10.340 It's calmer waters where we are, right? 00:53:10.380 --> 00:53:12.360 And we're not looking for rapids, right? 00:53:12.500 --> 00:53:21.880 I can't tell you – I've talked to a lot of pastors who have just flat out said – and I don't know – I just – I'm trying to remember where I heard this, and I just want to be really careful. 00:53:21.880 --> 00:53:24.440 But I – there's another pastor. 00:53:24.560 --> 00:53:26.600 It's a really large, influential church in our country. 00:53:27.120 --> 00:53:30.760 And he just said, I don't – like, I know that this is important. 00:53:31.760 --> 00:53:33.300 I just don't care. 00:53:33.500 --> 00:53:34.820 Like, I don't want to learn it. 00:53:35.360 --> 00:53:41.840 I'm just at a stage in my ministry where I know this is important, but it is the next generation's thing to figure out. 00:53:41.940 --> 00:53:42.740 It's not mine. 00:53:42.900 --> 00:53:49.040 And I think there's a lot of pastors who are in that stage who are finishing well, who are finishing really well, right? 00:53:49.200 --> 00:53:53.080 They're in their – you know, they're in their last handful of years of leading. 00:53:53.540 --> 00:53:55.880 They've shepherded their flocks very well. 00:53:55.980 --> 00:53:57.680 They've grown really influential churches. 00:53:57.800 --> 00:53:59.040 They've done really amazing stuff. 00:53:59.180 --> 00:54:05.060 And they're literally just saying, like, I know that this is a switch, and I just don't know that I'm built to make the jump. 00:54:05.480 --> 00:54:08.100 And it's got to be the next generation that has to be able to do it. 00:54:08.380 --> 00:54:10.220 And I think we'll see transitions. 00:54:10.540 --> 00:54:18.400 We're looking right now at the generation of boomers and older gen Xers who are handing their churches off to millennials right now in spades. 00:54:18.460 --> 00:54:23.520 Some of the biggest churches in the country and most influential churches in the world are in the processes of doing that right now. 00:54:23.520 --> 00:54:37.100 And as they're working towards their transitions, I think we will see more creativity and engagement in digital space than what we have before because I think there are pastors who genuinely know that this is necessary. 00:54:37.320 --> 00:54:39.580 It's just – they just don't feel like it's their calling. 00:54:39.900 --> 00:54:43.440 And I've talked to a lot of senior pastors who are in that vein. 00:54:43.520 --> 00:54:44.540 That's where they are right now. 00:54:44.800 --> 00:54:45.100 That's good. 00:54:45.300 --> 00:54:48.640 We just took a long road around what we were actually talking about. 00:54:48.640 --> 00:54:51.080 So I appreciate the time there, Mark. 00:54:52.220 --> 00:54:55.260 Again, going back to what Austin said about you, that guy knows his stuff. 00:54:55.720 --> 00:54:56.740 So that's you. 00:54:57.080 --> 00:54:57.960 You know your stuff. 00:54:58.160 --> 00:54:58.740 Thanks, Austin. 00:54:59.160 --> 00:55:00.800 He listened to it last episode, too. 00:55:00.900 --> 00:55:04.000 I didn't get any notes from him, so he hasn't gotten his red pen out yet. 00:55:04.640 --> 00:55:05.020 He will. 00:55:05.400 --> 00:55:08.300 Well, he thought I knew my stuff episode one and episode two. 00:55:08.440 --> 00:55:10.520 He was like, yikes, bro. 00:55:10.640 --> 00:55:11.460 Too quick a call. 00:55:11.620 --> 00:55:12.420 It was too quick a call. 00:55:12.440 --> 00:55:13.060 Yeah, you're not wrong. 00:55:13.240 --> 00:55:17.920 The last little point here, and then this is the easiest one, but you need to clarify your time constraints. 00:55:18.420 --> 00:55:19.620 That's just pretty simple. 00:55:20.920 --> 00:55:23.280 For a lot of churches, it's an hour. 00:55:23.480 --> 00:55:35.940 I think a lot of churches, a lot of physical churches, the fact that they're doing online services, just kind of putting up a camera in the back of their house or, you know, producing an online broadcast, it's way too long for a digital service. 00:55:37.080 --> 00:55:41.540 Because, like Mark said, listening to three worship songs, that's a long time. 00:55:41.620 --> 00:55:42.320 Most people are bored. 00:55:42.400 --> 00:55:45.100 By the end of the first song, you're not singing along. 00:55:45.560 --> 00:55:48.040 It's just, you're watching a musical performance at that point. 00:55:48.120 --> 00:55:49.300 There is no connection to the Lord. 00:55:50.500 --> 00:55:55.160 Sermon, you know, I've heard differing statistics about sermon length that can be anywhere. 00:55:55.380 --> 00:55:56.760 It should be, you know, 15 minutes. 00:55:56.860 --> 00:55:58.100 It should be 35 minutes. 00:55:58.200 --> 00:56:03.080 You can go an hour because if you're engaging the camera and talking to chat, like all those things. 00:56:03.400 --> 00:56:07.080 Mark, where do you fall on that, by the way, the sermon length argument? 00:56:07.560 --> 00:56:13.140 Once again, this has to come back to your other answers, right? 00:56:13.140 --> 00:56:15.200 This has to come back to your why and your who. 00:56:15.780 --> 00:56:20.820 So our why is we want to reach people who are gamers for Christ. 00:56:20.900 --> 00:56:22.180 We want to reach the Twitch community. 00:56:22.680 --> 00:56:24.460 Like, we want to be a light for every dark place. 00:56:24.600 --> 00:56:26.180 And that starts with our community at Twitch. 00:56:26.280 --> 00:56:27.720 That's our tribe and our language. 00:56:28.620 --> 00:56:32.120 And our who is people who are watching streams for three, four hours a day. 00:56:33.700 --> 00:56:37.520 Therefore, the length of our service doesn't bother you nearly as much, right? 00:56:37.560 --> 00:56:45.320 I'm actually okay with our service being relatively long because my people and my one is used to watching long. 00:56:46.680 --> 00:56:50.060 If your one is on Twitter, they're not. 00:56:50.200 --> 00:56:57.820 They're not used to reading bodies of texts that are longer than a handful of characters, let alone tuning in for a long period of time for a service. 00:56:58.200 --> 00:57:04.860 If your one is a Facebook user who's flicking through stuff, like thumb flickers, if your one is a thumb flicker, right? 00:57:04.900 --> 00:57:07.340 And that's where you're trying to catch their attention is through thumb flicking. 00:57:08.320 --> 00:57:10.320 A long service might not be the bet, right? 00:57:10.480 --> 00:57:12.040 On YouTube, that might be different. 00:57:12.300 --> 00:57:17.060 If you're doing YouTube live, there are people who watch a lot of YouTube, right? 00:57:17.280 --> 00:57:21.340 And yeah, people don't always click through long videos, but sometimes they do. 00:57:21.480 --> 00:57:23.540 Like, it's more likely there than it is on other platforms. 00:57:23.920 --> 00:57:27.120 So I think it has a little bit of a question about, like, what platform are you on? 00:57:27.160 --> 00:57:28.340 What are you actually trying to accomplish? 00:57:28.340 --> 00:57:38.440 What I love about Twitch is that I feel as though we could stream for two hours, two and a half hours, and I don't think we would lose people just because they're used. 00:57:38.640 --> 00:57:42.160 As long as we are consistently engaging with chat, we're not a talking head. 00:57:42.300 --> 00:57:52.180 As long as they're able to respond and we're able to read and interact with them throughout, I don't think our time is nearly as limited as – I don't think our time is as limited as the physical church's. 00:57:52.520 --> 00:57:56.320 I think people will give me more time on my platform than they will in your physical world. 00:57:56.320 --> 00:57:56.820 That's fascinating. 00:57:59.060 --> 00:58:04.360 But that's a unique, a very unique aspect of the culture and the person that I'm trying to reach. 00:58:04.640 --> 00:58:06.160 That isn't true of every place. 00:58:06.600 --> 00:58:09.940 And so I think that that's just an important thing to have in the back of your head. 00:58:10.180 --> 00:58:19.580 Like, the why and the who have to really define the engagement, the time constraints, the structure, all of the order of service, all of those things. 00:58:19.640 --> 00:58:20.080 Yeah, that's good. 00:58:20.740 --> 00:58:26.100 Yeah, I echo all those things and just say, hey, if you're in a physical church, shorten your services. 00:58:26.540 --> 00:58:27.520 Just trust me on this. 00:58:28.160 --> 00:58:30.840 Twitch is a different animal, like Mark just said. 00:58:32.040 --> 00:58:36.120 Maybe you need to start thinking about some ways that you can shorten your service. 00:58:36.740 --> 00:58:44.640 Maybe that is, if you figure out a way to drop in on the third worship song, maybe just float that around and play with it. 00:58:44.740 --> 00:58:46.160 Just saying. 00:58:46.300 --> 00:58:47.300 We can have those conversations. 00:58:47.980 --> 00:58:51.400 Mark, anything to add before we get out of here on episode three? 00:58:53.180 --> 00:59:00.560 The only thing I'll say is pre-plan in your order of service that you are opening opportunities for people to step into conversation and share their story. 00:59:01.300 --> 00:59:09.500 So, part of the structure of your service needs to be, if you're in altar live, the service doesn't end when the live stream is done. 00:59:09.700 --> 00:59:11.220 It goes to the rooms, right? 00:59:11.440 --> 00:59:14.720 If you're on YouTube or Facebook, it goes to Zoom calls. 00:59:14.920 --> 00:59:23.040 It's whatever it needs to go to, like there needs to be an expectation that the party's not over just because the worship service is done, that now we're moving. 00:59:23.140 --> 00:59:29.100 So, we move into Discord afterwards and we have conversation there and we hang out after church and we have our prayer rooms and all of those things. 00:59:29.560 --> 00:59:33.340 A live stream service isn't just hit live and then hit end, done being live. 00:59:33.620 --> 00:59:34.820 Your service isn't like that either. 00:59:34.940 --> 00:59:43.600 People come into church and they mingle and they talk and they find a place to sit and then afterwards they leave and they grab coffee or they hang out with people or they chat with someone they wanted to catch up with. 00:59:43.660 --> 01:00:02.160 You need to give people room to do both of those things as well and that 15 minutes of conversation, 10, 15 minutes at the beginning where you're engaging directly with them and then the chance to come and be face-to-face with you over calls and voice chats afterwards are really important elements of what it means to be a church and what it means to get to know people and drive engagement as well. 01:00:02.560 --> 01:00:08.120 So, you need to open up opportunities for those two things on the front and back end and those aren't in addition to what you're doing. 01:00:08.120 --> 01:00:10.880 These are part and integrated part of your service. 01:00:11.460 --> 01:00:17.820 Stop thinking about church on Sunday morning in your physical building as when we start at 8.30 and when we end at 9.30. 01:00:18.040 --> 01:00:19.480 That's not when your church starts and ends. 01:00:19.620 --> 01:00:26.080 Your church starts before 8.30 when people start showing up and your teams are here and your church extends an extra half hour as people are making their way to the parking lot. 01:00:26.200 --> 01:00:27.040 That's your church service. 01:00:27.400 --> 01:00:33.620 How do you embody the parking lot, the coffee stand, the conversations, the tall tables, the next steps area? 01:00:33.840 --> 01:00:36.760 All of those things have to be part of your digital service. 01:00:36.760 --> 01:00:39.800 If not, you're giving them a portion of your service, not your service. 01:00:41.460 --> 01:00:45.500 All of those things have to be part of your service. 01:00:45.500 --> 01:00:47.680 All of those things have to be part of your service. 01:00:47.680 --> 01:00:48.820 All of those things have to be part of your service.