WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.980 Jeff here. We'll get back to the podcast in a second, but I wanted to let you know of an 00:00:07.980 --> 00:00:13.180 opportunity to help you further develop your church online. Here at The Church Digital, 00:00:13.380 --> 00:00:18.300 we found some of the best ways for churches to grow their ministry online is to work alongside 00:00:18.300 --> 00:00:25.080 other churches. To that end, The Church Digital is opening up some coaching cohorts in January 2020. 00:00:25.080 --> 00:00:29.560 Through our cohorts, you'll be connected with churches with similar goals in place in ministry, 00:00:29.740 --> 00:00:34.040 and work through these goals together over the six months under the guidance of the crew 00:00:34.040 --> 00:00:40.460 here at The Church Digital. In 2020, invest in your church online, invest in you. For more information 00:00:40.460 --> 00:00:47.380 and to find out how you can save 20%, visit thechurch.digital slash cohort. 00:00:50.900 --> 00:00:56.180 Episode 30 of The Church Digital podcast. Okay, well, let's pause here for a second. I just want to tell 00:00:56.180 --> 00:01:02.120 you, I can't believe we've done 30 of these things, and I want to thank you listening audience for your 00:01:02.120 --> 00:01:07.620 reception and the comments and a lot of the shares that we've been getting here on The Church Digital 00:01:07.620 --> 00:01:13.980 podcast. I hope this has been rewarding for you, as together we wrestle with what this idea of church 00:01:13.980 --> 00:01:19.200 online and digital church, what this essentially is, because I don't know that we all have the answers, 00:01:19.360 --> 00:01:25.220 but together I think we can get to the answer. So here's where we are with episode 30. I was doing 00:01:25.220 --> 00:01:30.560 an online Bible study with some online pastors a week or so ago and just was asking the question, 00:01:31.040 --> 00:01:36.460 hey, tell me something great that happened this week. And one of the pastors, Andy Mage from Bayhope, 00:01:36.720 --> 00:01:41.720 raised his hand. That's weird, an online environment. But he started telling us a story about all the 00:01:41.720 --> 00:01:47.960 success that he's had through his church or his church has had in context of TikTok. Well, and that brought 00:01:47.960 --> 00:01:53.440 me pause because, you know, I don't hear a lot of church success stories in context of TikTok. And I'm always 00:01:53.440 --> 00:01:58.580 interested to talk to a church that's doing something different. So I reached out to Andy afterwards and 00:01:58.580 --> 00:02:03.020 said, hey, let's get on a podcast and just dig deeper into this. So here's where we are. We're bringing in a 00:02:03.020 --> 00:02:11.740 conversation on TikTok, throwing in some YouTube and just a lot of, call it unconventional video 00:02:11.740 --> 00:02:16.460 strategies in context of church and church online. So we're bringing in Andy Mage, who, like I said, 00:02:16.500 --> 00:02:23.640 is the online pastor over at Bayhope Church in Tampa, as well as Jessica Spivy, who is the social media 00:02:23.640 --> 00:02:29.180 director there for the church. Coupled with Ray DeArmis from Christ Fellowship Miami, once again, 00:02:29.380 --> 00:02:34.860 co-hosting the show myself, Jeff with The Church Digital, in a conversation that I'm calling the 00:02:34.860 --> 00:02:42.260 TikTok revolution. Hey, everybody. Here you go. So I started the TikTok roughly about a month ago. 00:02:42.360 --> 00:02:48.980 Actually, on Friday is our one month anniversary. Hey, happy anniversary. So back in the summer, 00:02:49.060 --> 00:02:53.380 my daughter, who was seven, went to a cheerleading camp and she came home talking about TikTok. I was 00:02:53.380 --> 00:02:57.440 like, what in the world is she talking about? She's like, we really got to watch the videos and make 00:02:57.440 --> 00:03:02.120 the videos. So I was like, okay, I'm going to make an account so that I can monitor. Obviously, she's seven. 00:03:02.200 --> 00:03:06.100 I'm going to monitor what she's looking at. So there are certain people that we follow that she can 00:03:06.100 --> 00:03:12.380 watch only the following page, not the For You page and that kind of thing. So we did that. And as I was 00:03:12.380 --> 00:03:17.600 scrolling through, these Christians started to pop up in my feed and they were, hey, here's the verse 00:03:17.600 --> 00:03:23.920 of the day or, hey, let's pray together today. Really cool, positive things. And I was like, wait a 00:03:23.920 --> 00:03:29.940 second. There's a spot for a church here. And so I came into work and I said, hey, I want to do this 00:03:29.940 --> 00:03:34.620 thing. I want to start this TikTok. And our communications director was like, okay, but don't 00:03:34.620 --> 00:03:41.260 like waste a lot of time on it in case it flops. Okay. Not exactly what he said, but pretty much. 00:03:42.400 --> 00:03:48.020 And so here we are a month later, we've been repurposing content that we already had existing 00:03:48.020 --> 00:03:53.880 quotes from messages, bits of our Bay Hope worship team, various different bits that we've been 00:03:53.880 --> 00:04:00.280 repurposing for TikTok to not spend too much time on it. And we have 3,500 followers as of this morning. 00:04:00.340 --> 00:04:08.420 Which is crazy. Amazing. We have one video in particular of our, of the Harbor pastor, him giving, 00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:14.080 it's a bit of his sermon that he gave a month or two ago. And that video has seen over 40,000 views. 00:04:14.580 --> 00:04:20.580 So that's incredible. This is, this is one of the benefits I think of not being maybe first to 00:04:20.580 --> 00:04:26.900 market, but maybe one of the first as far as a lot of that's concerned. So tell us, I know you said 00:04:26.900 --> 00:04:31.680 you're taking some quotes from messages. What else are you guys leveraging for content and how often 00:04:31.680 --> 00:04:38.520 are you posting content? So I'm trying to post roughly once a day and I'm experimenting with does 00:04:38.520 --> 00:04:42.280 morning do better? Does afternoon do better? A lot of people are on their phones at night, 00:04:42.280 --> 00:04:46.580 TikTok rum. So we're seeing if I'm posting in that three to four o'clock afternoon range 00:04:46.580 --> 00:04:53.320 that we see more views through there. Unfortunately, with the analytics not being what they should be for 00:04:53.320 --> 00:04:58.920 brands yet, I know that we will, it's difficult for me to see, you know, does the time of day matter? 00:04:59.160 --> 00:05:05.860 Do the hashtags that I use matter? Do, so it's, it's a very labor intensive process to see why did 00:05:05.860 --> 00:05:10.000 this one do better than this one to go back to the day of time, you know, the time of day that I posted 00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:16.100 because that's not something that TikTok holds. They do hold what day you post, but not what time you 00:05:16.100 --> 00:05:20.260 post. So it's, there's some tracking that you have to do manually currently that I think they'll get 00:05:20.260 --> 00:05:23.900 better at as they, they branch out into these, you know, brands and companies using TikTok. 00:05:24.260 --> 00:05:28.160 I'm a bit of a nerd on TikTok. Like I, I see something funny and I'm like, I want to do that. 00:05:28.220 --> 00:05:33.100 Like I want to have, you know, a song and like, it's the thing from the Guardians of the Galaxy and 00:05:33.100 --> 00:05:36.620 people are jumping into pools and like, I want to be one, you know, I want to be one of the Avengers 00:05:36.620 --> 00:05:43.700 type thing. But, but she has kind of tempered that and she has, she has been able to show that like, 00:05:43.860 --> 00:05:49.660 hey, if we post, you know, simple standups of me or some of our younger people saying, hey, it's like, 00:05:49.720 --> 00:05:54.440 we just posted one on Monday and it was me standing in our coffee house saying, hey, it's Andy, 00:05:54.500 --> 00:05:57.800 the online campus pastor. And I just want to, you know, it's Monday. You know, it's going to be a 00:05:57.800 --> 00:06:03.500 long week. How can we pray for you? That type of thing. And people filling up the comments and liking 00:06:03.500 --> 00:06:08.200 the thing. And, you know, it's not as much as we'd like, like this video of our, the Harbor Passer, 00:06:08.260 --> 00:06:15.280 Chris, 40,000 views. It's got, I don't know, 4,000 hearts or likes on it. I mean, something it's 00:06:15.280 --> 00:06:20.720 ridiculous numbers and the engagement, the, the, the surface level engagement, the comments, and she's 00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:27.420 pulling it up right now so we can actually get it. So it's 11. Oh my gosh. 11.1 thousand likes 00:06:27.420 --> 00:06:34.740 and 114 comments on it with 47,000 views on just one video from less than a month ago. Um, and people 00:06:34.740 --> 00:06:39.460 are commenting and like, amen. And Hey, I needed to hear this. And you know, that type of thing. Uh, 00:06:39.900 --> 00:06:46.600 we, you can see in snap in the development of Snapchat to started as like this thing for 18 to 25 00:06:46.600 --> 00:06:53.640 year olds, maybe 16 to 25 year olds. Then the brands caught up to it and it expanded. And now everybody 00:06:53.640 --> 00:06:59.840 else is on board. So old people like us are on board. Um, so young people, brands, everybody. 00:07:00.380 --> 00:07:06.120 And that's kind of what's happening with TikTok right now. It's, it, it went from being this, 00:07:06.120 --> 00:07:11.320 you know, her daughters wanted to download it. My daughter, she's 12. Well, she's 13 now when she was 00:07:11.320 --> 00:07:15.520 12, she came home and said, I want to download this app called musically, which musically ended up 00:07:15.520 --> 00:07:20.360 turning into a form of TikTok. Right. And my wife and I said, Nope, absolutely not. Like we, 00:07:20.500 --> 00:07:23.520 cause I was scrolling through and it's like, well, there's girls in bikinis and there's dudes 00:07:23.520 --> 00:07:27.180 without their shirts on and they're singing Will Smith songs. And then there's like chingy and all 00:07:27.180 --> 00:07:33.160 sorts of stuff. Like, no, we're, we're not going to have that. Right. But, but we're watching 00:07:33.160 --> 00:07:42.820 TikTok evolve from just this lip sync thing. Like, Hey, we're going to have fun into almost this other 00:07:42.820 --> 00:07:46.800 social media platform. And I'm interested in, I know she has the social media coordinator. I know 00:07:46.800 --> 00:07:52.920 she's interested to see how we can actually start to draw not just analytics, but engagement out of that 00:07:52.920 --> 00:08:00.040 more than just a one way conversation, me talking to you. How can we enter into a conversation that 00:08:00.040 --> 00:08:02.760 isn't, is more than just a heart on a, on a, on a screen. 00:08:03.440 --> 00:08:08.280 That's good. Are you guys engaging people with next steps through TikTok? Like, Hey, you know, 00:08:08.320 --> 00:08:11.220 catch this clip, watch it on YouTube or how does that work? 00:08:12.160 --> 00:08:15.920 So yes, there's a couple of ways that we're doing that when they, uh, our faithful worship team 00:08:15.920 --> 00:08:21.780 recently released a new song. So yes, I, I directed them to YouTube. However, TikTok wants you to stay 00:08:21.780 --> 00:08:28.140 in TikTok. Yeah. You can't link outside. Right. Basically, basically you're telling people to go 00:08:28.140 --> 00:08:34.180 search for something on YouTube. Now you can connect your Instagram page and your YouTube page in your 00:08:34.280 --> 00:08:39.820 profile. Um, so those, you can say, go to the, you know, go to our YouTube channel, our profile. So 00:08:39.820 --> 00:08:44.980 those, those two things are nice, um, to have, but you can't direct them to a specific video. It's not 00:08:44.980 --> 00:08:49.180 like Instagram where you can say link in bio or, or that, you know, it's not a direct link. So it is 00:08:49.180 --> 00:08:55.200 several steps, which I, as a marketer don't love because the, the fewer number of steps means that, 00:08:55.200 --> 00:09:00.360 you know, they're like, they're actually going to get where you want them to get. Um, so you were 00:09:00.360 --> 00:09:05.600 trying to, especially on like Saturday, I post a video clip or a music clip and I'll say, join us 00:09:05.600 --> 00:09:10.900 someday, you know, the next day, hoping that people see it overnight at nine 30 or 11. And I include 00:09:10.900 --> 00:09:16.500 our website, um, in text over the video, um, of where to go see, because they can't click it anywhere 00:09:16.500 --> 00:09:21.560 that I post it. They're not going to click it. So, um, that I hope that that changes, but I understand 00:09:21.560 --> 00:09:23.380 TikTok wanting everybody to stay in TikTok. 00:09:23.860 --> 00:09:29.220 And she's the real genius behind all this. Like Jessica has been, she spearheaded it. She's 00:09:29.220 --> 00:09:32.960 been the one kind of talking about all this and she's coming up with all these bright ideas and 00:09:32.960 --> 00:09:38.340 I'm going, yeah, man, like this is your, you're the genius in all of this. I'm just along for the 00:09:38.340 --> 00:09:39.880 ride. It's great. It's awesome to watch. 00:09:40.220 --> 00:09:43.860 That's great. And I'm glad that you guys are working together as a team on this, Jessica. Let 00:09:43.860 --> 00:09:48.980 me ask how, how much, uh, I don't want to call it like overproduced, but like really produced 00:09:48.980 --> 00:09:52.380 content are you guys doing? Are you just taking, you know, moments of the sermon or are you 00:09:52.520 --> 00:09:57.600 literally holding up your device and recording on the spot for a lot of this content? 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:02.060 No. So I'm downloading our, and I, and I do this for our social medias as well. So basically 00:10:02.060 --> 00:10:06.280 it's kind of a repurpose of the content. Um, I download our service from the stream, from 00:10:06.280 --> 00:10:10.720 stream monkey and I chop it up and I pull, you know, quotes from this past weekend. Like 00:10:10.720 --> 00:10:14.040 I have a quote that's that I've pulled that I'm getting somebody to add text to, cause I 00:10:14.040 --> 00:10:18.280 don't know how to do that yet. Um, I, I do, but they don't trust me yet. I guess it's 00:10:18.280 --> 00:10:22.800 the short version. Um, it's better off to hand that off anyways. You're good. I don't 00:10:22.800 --> 00:10:27.360 have time for that. Um, so, uh, but, so I pull the clips and then I'm using them that 00:10:27.360 --> 00:10:31.540 way. I'm also posting them on our Facebook and our Instagram as video clips with a, you 00:10:31.540 --> 00:10:36.080 know, provoking question or whatever to say, you know, what was the key point from the weekend 00:10:36.080 --> 00:10:40.320 that you caught? So I'm using it in multiple different ways. I'm assuming on TikTok that they 00:10:40.320 --> 00:10:43.900 probably don't go to our church. So I'm not going to ask that, that question of how did you 00:10:43.900 --> 00:10:47.820 reflect on the weekend? I'm saying, here's a clip from our weekend message. Go watch the 00:10:47.820 --> 00:10:50.940 full version at bayhope.com. That's how I'm using it on TikTok. 00:10:51.700 --> 00:10:56.860 That's great because not all of us, and this is even speaking, you know, at a large mega 00:10:56.860 --> 00:11:00.060 church with a lot of sites, not all of us have that kind of swag that we're getting the swipe 00:11:00.060 --> 00:11:05.420 up feature on Instagram, like seriously. And so this provides to me, just based off of this 00:11:05.420 --> 00:11:10.080 conversation, this provides another method to help draw young viewers and to push them to 00:11:10.080 --> 00:11:15.060 some of those next steps. Now, out of curiosity, the clip that's got all this crazy amount of 00:11:15.060 --> 00:11:16.880 views, what was the subject matter? 00:11:18.220 --> 00:11:22.860 The subject matter, he starts off this quote and he says, get along with God. You know, we 00:11:22.860 --> 00:11:28.140 spend more time on SportsCenter than we do in the Word. And he carries it on a little bit 00:11:28.140 --> 00:11:33.040 further from there, but basically he's challenging, you know, this notion that, you know, all these 00:11:33.040 --> 00:11:37.200 other things are important. You know, we'll wake up earlier, we'll stay up late for a game 00:11:37.200 --> 00:11:39.960 or whatever, but we won't wake up 30 minutes early to read our Bible. 00:11:41.480 --> 00:11:45.840 That's, that was the challenge. And so I think because it was more of a challenge than it was 00:11:45.840 --> 00:11:51.780 just a passive quote, I think that's part of what it, what it did. I also, in that particular post 00:11:51.780 --> 00:11:57.620 used a, um, whenever you post a video, it shows you the top three hashtags. So I, one of those 00:11:57.620 --> 00:12:05.360 hashtags and it was make it awesome. Not exactly related to our content, but, um, so every time that 00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:10.140 I post one, I try to use one of those top three, making sure it makes sense with our content so 00:12:10.140 --> 00:12:15.800 that that engagement is a little higher, figuring out what the rhyme or reason behind the algorithms 00:12:15.800 --> 00:12:19.280 and TikTok is, is, um, a little bit of a mystery right now. 00:12:19.300 --> 00:12:19.680 Cool, Zarin. 00:12:19.940 --> 00:12:20.080 Yeah. 00:12:20.340 --> 00:12:24.900 So tell me about that because this right here is, is an interesting conversation to me because 00:12:24.900 --> 00:12:31.280 hashtags can either be very insider focused or you can leverage them to help reach, uh, folks 00:12:31.280 --> 00:12:34.940 within content that they're driving towards. And so tell me a little bit more about how you've been doing 00:12:34.940 --> 00:12:35.060 that. 00:12:35.060 --> 00:12:40.160 And I agree. And actually your question challenges some of the hashtags that I've been using. Um, 00:12:40.160 --> 00:12:43.920 you know, if the goal on TikTok, we're assuming that this audience is younger, probably doesn't 00:12:43.920 --> 00:12:48.540 attend our church. That's the direction that we're the audience that we're speaking to. If I'm using 00:12:48.540 --> 00:12:53.360 hashtags like faith and Jesus, the people that are probably searching those probably already know 00:12:53.360 --> 00:13:00.720 Jesus. And so it may be, you know, uh, using whatever that the popular ones are, but even thinking through 00:13:00.720 --> 00:13:05.780 having a rough day, you know, I mean, thinking through those other hashtags that could be used, 00:13:05.780 --> 00:13:13.640 um, to really reach that audience, um, is a good one. I always use hashtag Tampa, um, because that's 00:13:13.640 --> 00:13:17.220 physically where we are, but that doesn't mean that obviously we can't connect with somebody outside 00:13:17.220 --> 00:13:24.340 of that. That's great. Have you guys seen an increase? So like the sermon you, you posted the 00:13:24.340 --> 00:13:32.560 clip for 40,000, 47,000 views, uh, reference YouTube, uh, to, to watch the full sermon. Have 00:13:32.560 --> 00:13:37.240 you guys seen an increase in traffic on like YouTube on some of the others? Are they following 00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:43.380 through? So YouTube's a different thing for us right now, because we have two different YouTube 00:13:43.380 --> 00:13:48.020 pages. We have one for the main church and then we have one for our worship team. Um, 00:13:48.020 --> 00:13:52.540 and the worship team, and we can talk about that in a second. We've seen an enormous increase in the 00:13:52.540 --> 00:13:57.460 worship team, but I don't, that's not from TikTok. That's from some advertising and some other things 00:13:57.460 --> 00:14:01.100 that we've been doing. We've had some marketing dollars to push behind that. And she's been, 00:14:01.100 --> 00:14:04.900 uh, spearheading that. And I've just been able to be like, Hey, I'm going to look at these 00:14:04.900 --> 00:14:10.140 conversations because these are great. Um, but in terms of actually looking at the stream monkey, 00:14:10.260 --> 00:14:15.060 the video on demand views, they've upticked slightly. I mean, maybe I'm talking to the 00:14:15.060 --> 00:14:21.300 tune of maybe 10 to 20 a week. Um, I can't tell if that's because we're also growing the online 00:14:21.300 --> 00:14:27.460 campus community around it. I can't tell if that's directly related to TikTok. There's no one-to-one 00:14:27.460 --> 00:14:31.620 that I can look at inside stream monkey. Well, because there, because there's no way to link 00:14:31.620 --> 00:14:38.420 in TikTok, we can't throw up a live.bayhope.com slash TikTok to track any of that traffic to see 00:14:38.420 --> 00:14:42.420 where are they actually coming from? Yeah. That right there is interesting because TikTok right now, 00:14:42.420 --> 00:14:46.740 it's actually young in demographic. I saw somebody tweet this out yesterday. You know, yesterday, 00:14:46.740 --> 00:14:51.060 Ellen DeGeneres posted her thing about, Hey, how we can get along with diverse perspectives. 00:14:51.620 --> 00:14:56.380 Somebody tweeted this out. They said the people on Facebook are mad at George Bush for hanging out 00:14:56.380 --> 00:15:00.320 with Ellen. The people on Twitter are mad at Ellen for hanging out with George Bush. And the people on 00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:08.560 TikTok have no idea who either of those people. And it's funny. I read that same thing and I laughed, 00:15:08.560 --> 00:15:13.360 like I laughed so hard because it was like, Hey, you're absolutely right. B, if you look at the 00:15:13.360 --> 00:15:18.320 demographic of TikTok and the interesting thing to me is that the video that has that we're referencing 00:15:18.320 --> 00:15:22.240 here, Chris is a, you know, he's a good looking dude. He's a young guy. He's what? 28, 29, 30, 00:15:22.240 --> 00:15:27.240 right around there. Charismatic, all that other stuff. He's 35. Okay. So he's just a little, 00:15:28.020 --> 00:15:35.060 whatever. Uh, I look weathered cause I'm bald. Um, he, uh, he, you know, like I said, a decent 00:15:35.060 --> 00:15:41.340 looking dude, the demographic of TikTok is what? 16 to 22 year old girls. I mean, for the most part, 00:15:41.380 --> 00:15:45.240 that's what you see when you're scrolling through the, or these quote unquote thirsty guys that are 00:15:45.240 --> 00:15:50.380 trying to, uh, yeah. Like trying to hook up with these girls. It's like, man, you are on the wrong 00:15:50.380 --> 00:15:55.460 platform for this, my friend. Like you, uh, talking about how good you look with your shirt off. It's 00:15:55.460 --> 00:16:00.300 like, um, no, I'm silly. Like get out of here. Um, but so that, that's the interesting thing. But 00:16:00.300 --> 00:16:05.720 the flip side as a pastor for me is, and this is the thing that has gotten me fired up. And I think 00:16:05.720 --> 00:16:10.360 got her fired up too. I'm, I've just, I'm going back through James Emery White's, uh, Meet Gen Z, 00:16:10.900 --> 00:16:15.260 a brilliant book. Um, if you've never read it, James Emery White, it's like, it's a, I want to high 00:16:15.260 --> 00:16:19.880 five that dude and give him a bear hug all at the same time because he's touching on this back in 00:16:19.880 --> 00:16:26.160 2017. He's touching on something that I don't think churches for the most part are recognizing 00:16:26.160 --> 00:16:31.240 and realizing. Uh, and she referenced it just a second ago. We're not worried about the people 00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:35.280 that are already saved. The hashtag faith people that are Googling and searching hashtag faith 00:16:35.280 --> 00:16:39.780 are for the most part died in the wall or, you know, they're maybe newer believers and stuff like 00:16:39.780 --> 00:16:44.520 that. That's fine. I'm not worried about them. TikTok, we're not worried about them. We're worried 00:16:44.520 --> 00:16:51.700 about the people that we can, we can feasibly take and start having a conversation about 00:16:51.700 --> 00:16:57.220 God because what the, and James Emery White talks about this, the Gen Z generation, so the 00:16:57.220 --> 00:17:05.640 generation just behind, uh, she and I is, uh, is open to spiritual conversations. They're 00:17:05.640 --> 00:17:12.780 not like millennials where it was just this antagonistic, atheistic or atheistic stroke agnostic, 00:17:12.780 --> 00:17:19.480 uh, view. They're open to spiritual conversations. And that I had this like brainwave a couple of weeks 00:17:19.480 --> 00:17:24.560 ago. Um, Apple released a new iPhone. I don't know if you guys knew that, but I it's, it's iPhone 00:17:24.560 --> 00:17:30.700 season. This is my favorite time of the year. Um, I've had every iPhone since the first one. I missed 00:17:30.700 --> 00:17:36.520 one. It was the three GS. I missed it, but every single one I've had because I'm a nerd and I was in 00:17:36.520 --> 00:17:41.740 the AT&T store trying to figure some stuff out. And I was talking with a 25, 26 year old sales rep 00:17:41.740 --> 00:17:46.840 right after I finished this meet Gen Z book. And he was, we were just sitting there rapping a little 00:17:46.840 --> 00:17:51.960 bit and he said, what do you do? And I said, well, I'm a, I'm a pastor and at a church just up the road. 00:17:51.960 --> 00:17:58.440 And he, his eyes like lit up and he, he turned to me and he said, Oh, you are, huh? And I said, 00:17:58.620 --> 00:18:03.080 yeah, like, you know, if you want to talk something spiritual, then I was just kind of throwing it out 00:18:03.080 --> 00:18:07.080 there joking. Um, cause I've got tattoos and stuff. And I was like, yeah, if you want to talk about 00:18:07.540 --> 00:18:12.480 spiritual and he looked at me dead in the eyes and we had a 45 minute conversation in the Apple store 00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:19.080 or in the, uh, AT&T store, excuse me, about his faith journey, about the fact that he had tried 00:18:19.080 --> 00:18:24.180 Catholicism and he was a, he grew up Baptist, but then he turned Catholic and then he was Hindu. 00:18:24.180 --> 00:18:29.360 And then he, he looked at Buddhism and then he gave me the whole, you know, I think, uh, every 00:18:29.360 --> 00:18:34.240 religion is looking at different parts of the same God, you know, that, that apologetic. And I'm sitting 00:18:34.240 --> 00:18:39.020 here going, wait a minute. These are the people that we can reach on Tik TOK. If we can just figure it 00:18:39.020 --> 00:18:45.260 out, this, this guy right here, um, and his generation are being represented on this app that 00:18:45.260 --> 00:18:51.880 you can get are in 15 second sound bites. How do we do something with that? That's good. And so you 00:18:51.880 --> 00:18:56.840 guys aren't necessarily pushing the people inside your church to follow you on Tik TOK. You guys are 00:18:56.840 --> 00:19:01.840 leveraging this for more missional work. Like, Hey, we're just, we're throwing out a big promotion on our 00:19:01.840 --> 00:19:06.400 social medias or anything else about, we even have one. The only discussion that, that we've 00:19:06.400 --> 00:19:11.920 had is internal, um, with a few of the youth to go, are you on it? Are you just to ask? Because 00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:16.940 half of the time, you know, I'm, I'm 34. So, you know, my teenager, I have a 20 year old 00:19:16.940 --> 00:19:20.860 stepdaughter. She doesn't even have Tik TOK. So it's this weird, some of them are on it. Some 00:19:20.860 --> 00:19:27.540 of it see it as cringy. Um, it, it's kind of a mixed bag, but that's that right there is 00:19:27.540 --> 00:19:32.300 already a shift in thinking, uh, because you know, most of the time, whenever we launch something and 00:19:32.300 --> 00:19:37.060 maybe I'm looking a little too internal in my space, we think, Oh, well, we're going to promote 00:19:37.060 --> 00:19:41.700 this internally as well. You know, you guys aren't really saying a word. You guys are allowing this 00:19:41.700 --> 00:19:47.000 to just continue to spread virally, literally like, uh, through different channels, through this channel 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:50.460 channel and allow it to just kind of organically take on its own, its own life. 00:19:50.880 --> 00:19:55.200 And, and that might be, it's funny. I had a, I had a one-on-one with our, um, her boss, 00:19:55.380 --> 00:19:59.900 our communications director yesterday, and we were talking about a number of different facets of 00:19:59.900 --> 00:20:04.980 online and, you know, Tik TOK and social media and all this other stuff. And, um, just kind of 00:20:04.980 --> 00:20:11.980 talking about where we could line that up within the online campus realm. But what I drew from that is, 00:20:12.040 --> 00:20:15.640 I think one of the reasons we're not promoting is that we're a little scared of it. We're a little 00:20:15.640 --> 00:20:21.800 scared of the behemoth it could become or the flop that it could be. And, you know, I think the, 00:20:21.800 --> 00:20:27.540 the innovator, you know, uh, who, who was it? The light bulb was invented 99 times before it was the, 00:20:27.540 --> 00:20:34.800 the hundredth time was the correct one. Like we, we don't want to be, but we're results oriented 00:20:34.800 --> 00:20:38.980 people. We're, we're a results oriented society. And we want to be able to hold this thing up to 00:20:38.980 --> 00:20:43.000 everybody and say, look, look how awesome it's doing. We don't necessarily want to fail, but I think on 00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:49.760 the flip side too, she more than anybody else is taking a huge risk. I mean, like I said, she's the, 00:20:49.860 --> 00:20:55.140 she's the brain, the brains behind this entire operation. She's taking a huge risk in this by 00:20:55.140 --> 00:20:59.440 even bringing it to her boss and say, Hey, I want to try this. Um, the cool part about the church 00:20:59.440 --> 00:21:03.240 culture we're in is that there's a lot of spaghetti being thrown at walls and seeing what sticks. 00:21:03.240 --> 00:21:08.500 And so we're allowed, we're, we have the opportunity and the resource and the time and the, 00:21:08.500 --> 00:21:14.260 um, managerial capacity over us to say, yeah, go ahead and try it. Just make sure that, you know, 00:21:14.260 --> 00:21:19.660 you're staying on track as well. Sure. Uh, one of the things that, you know, as Jeff and I have 00:21:19.660 --> 00:21:24.060 talked to different folks, uh, we see this in so many different spaces. And so that's where, 00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:28.920 you know, I want to encourage you guys. And I think it's wonderful that you're trying that out is, 00:21:28.920 --> 00:21:33.680 you know, a lot of us are trying to just throw the spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks. 00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:38.640 Uh, we have, we're riding a wave. We don't know where it's going to take us, you know? And I think 00:21:38.640 --> 00:21:45.260 it's wonderful that you're doing that. Um, as you ride this wave, um, in thinking, I mean, I know that 00:21:45.260 --> 00:21:51.300 it's difficult because you guys are looking at this in purely evangelistic form. Um, has there been 00:21:51.300 --> 00:21:55.100 somebody who's like, Hey, how can I take a next step with your church? Has that happened yet where 00:21:55.100 --> 00:22:00.420 somebody's turned a corner on this? It's not yet. Um, we've had several that have commented that, 00:22:00.500 --> 00:22:04.200 you know, um, I went back through last night and saw several of my grandmother passed away. 00:22:04.720 --> 00:22:08.940 Um, I'm interviewing for a scholarship and I'd love prayers for that. Several different comments 00:22:08.940 --> 00:22:13.320 of that nature. The first one popped up today, or was it last night? If I remember, um, the first one 00:22:13.320 --> 00:22:18.300 popped up recently that was, Hey, I'm in Trinity and I love seeing this in my, in my for you page, 00:22:18.420 --> 00:22:24.240 which was really cool. Trinity Tampa is literally like 15 minutes away from where we are. So, um, 00:22:24.360 --> 00:22:30.140 super excited. Now, of course, um, I had, I did open our messaging option. Um, cause I was a little 00:22:30.140 --> 00:22:34.160 hesitant to do that. I didn't know what would, what would come through. Um, and I did message her and 00:22:34.160 --> 00:22:38.500 just say, Hey, do you have a church home? You know, if you do, you know, she hadn't responded yet, 00:22:38.500 --> 00:22:43.280 but if you do great, awesome. Don't, you know, we're not calling you to leave there. Um, but if you 00:22:43.280 --> 00:22:48.440 don't, we'd love you for you to be part of our, they hope family. Um, so I think, um, kind of 00:22:48.440 --> 00:22:53.900 there's, there's twofold, um, listening to those comments and then responding to them if possible, 00:22:53.900 --> 00:23:00.100 um, is going to be very, very interval because to receive a comment or a, um, somebody asked for 00:23:00.100 --> 00:23:04.540 prayer. Um, and so, and I haven't done this yet, but I think the next step in this prayer journey 00:23:04.540 --> 00:23:08.880 right now, I've just been commenting, we're praying for you right now. Please follow up with us or, 00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:12.940 you know, we'd love to hear how this situation turns out. Um, but it's to send them a message 00:23:12.940 --> 00:23:18.480 with a prayer, like literally what I'm praying written out for them. I think that would be 00:23:18.480 --> 00:23:23.200 incredible, incredibly powerful. Um, so I think that's kind of the next step in this engaging 00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:28.040 these folks in this sphere. I've, I've had a lot of conversation and it's funny, she brings that up. 00:23:28.040 --> 00:23:33.340 I was having this conversation with, uh, somebody I was meeting with yesterday and they're distrusting 00:23:33.340 --> 00:23:39.060 of the, um, Carrie Newhoff just released a podcast and they were, they were bringing it up of how 00:23:39.060 --> 00:23:44.780 the guest that was on Newhoff's podcast was saying that, um, you know, he's come full circle on online 00:23:44.780 --> 00:23:50.260 church and how it can't actually be a, an online thing because you know, how can you, when it comes 00:23:50.260 --> 00:23:54.640 down to it, how can you really buy somebody a cup of coffee online, that type of thing. Um, which I 00:23:54.640 --> 00:23:58.940 think is a completely spurious, I understand what he's saying and I understand the full circle he's 00:23:58.940 --> 00:24:05.260 come on, but at the same time, uh, and I, I grew up as an online gamer and some very good friends of 00:24:05.260 --> 00:24:08.860 mine that I still talk to, uh, live across the country. And that's just from playing, you know, 00:24:08.920 --> 00:24:15.280 world of Warcraft when I was, I was younger. Um, so all that to say what we were talking about with, 00:24:15.280 --> 00:24:19.840 with this idea about the prayers and stuff. Um, we were actually talking about it in the church 00:24:19.840 --> 00:24:25.120 online platform that we use, um, provided by life church and all that. We, we stream into that and 00:24:25.120 --> 00:24:30.040 there's a live prayer button and that's become more and more active over the last couple of months as 00:24:30.040 --> 00:24:34.200 we've started to put a little bit more engagement into our chat room and say, Hey, all you gotta do is 00:24:34.200 --> 00:24:38.740 click that live prayer button and people honestly feel like they're being prayed for because as I'm 00:24:38.740 --> 00:24:43.080 sitting there typing out prayers or as even when she was handling it up, she's sitting there praying 00:24:43.080 --> 00:24:49.160 this prayer that she's typing out and people are more apt in today's day and age to receive that as, 00:24:49.280 --> 00:24:54.620 Hey, there's an actual person there that's caring for me and loving on me than I think they would have 00:24:54.620 --> 00:25:01.000 maybe five years ago. And so the idea of an 18 year old or whoever this was in Trinity, I'm saying 18 00:25:01.000 --> 00:25:08.200 because that's just the kind of demographic I have in my head. This person in Trinity, if she can, if, 00:25:08.200 --> 00:25:12.000 if Jessica can open a conversation and open a dialogue and, and, or with these prayer requests 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:16.220 and actually pray for those people, how much more are they going to feel the spirit of God upon them 00:25:16.220 --> 00:25:21.580 even just through a text chat than they had five years ago? I think we're in an interesting 00:25:21.580 --> 00:25:25.080 environment right now and I'm interested to see where it goes. 00:25:26.040 --> 00:25:31.640 So do you guys remember, I think it was a, um, Stephen Curtis Chapman song was let us pray. 00:25:32.440 --> 00:25:38.840 I grew up in a Baptist church. I song was like on repeat for us. Um, so, but I think in this day 00:25:38.840 --> 00:25:45.820 and age, um, people say, especially in the church, great, I'll be praying for you. Do they really? 00:25:45.880 --> 00:25:49.240 Are they really? Yeah. And then, you know, follow that through with, uh, you know, I'm sending you 00:25:49.240 --> 00:25:56.440 positive vibes and like there's a whole culture of, yes, I'm, I'm sending you positive things, but until 00:25:56.440 --> 00:26:01.520 we actually do it, doesn't mean anything to them. We may be going back to pray for them, but if they 00:26:01.520 --> 00:26:06.520 don't know it, the value is not there for them. And I, and I think that it was really uncomfortable 00:26:06.520 --> 00:26:11.040 the first time I did online campus and somebody clicked in the prayer was like, I don't even know 00:26:11.040 --> 00:26:17.240 what to do. Um, cause I am not pastoral background. That's not where, not, it's just not what I'm, 00:26:17.340 --> 00:26:27.080 what I'm good at. Um, but so typing out a prayer was strange. Um, it was weird for me. I don't know 00:26:27.080 --> 00:26:32.100 on the receiving end how that feels or what that feels like, but it was weird for me, but doing it, 00:26:32.180 --> 00:26:38.020 it caused me to stop and pause to, to think about, okay, am I praying what, am I praying what they 00:26:38.020 --> 00:26:44.080 would want prayed for them? You know, am I, am I really directing my prayers in the, in the, the way 00:26:44.080 --> 00:26:51.300 that, you know, am I really representing their request accurately? Yeah. It's, it's not surprising 00:26:51.300 --> 00:27:00.260 that a guy in going back to the Newhoff podcast, um, a man who is very popular in context and very 00:27:00.260 --> 00:27:06.080 knowledgeable in church growth is not going to identify with church online. Yeah. Cause church 00:27:06.080 --> 00:27:15.020 online is a, I think it's a new model of church. It's, it's a whole other thing. And, and the thing 00:27:15.020 --> 00:27:22.600 that, that really struggles for church growth is, or for church online is that we're trying to get 00:27:22.600 --> 00:27:28.380 these organizations that are used to, and church growth first to identify with this completely 00:27:28.380 --> 00:27:36.360 separate model. You just prayed with somebody online by typing into a text box in a web browser. 00:27:36.360 --> 00:27:42.560 And the person who's watching, utilizing the chop church online platform is engaging with that and 00:27:42.560 --> 00:27:47.500 receiving that you're, you are connecting on a spiritual level and making a difference in that 00:27:47.500 --> 00:27:53.620 person's life. And none of that is reconcilable by an organization that's counting butts and seats as 00:27:53.620 --> 00:28:02.020 the, uh, model for success. You know, a lot of the, a lot of the tensions that you're even like trying to 00:28:02.020 --> 00:28:11.000 figure out in context of, uh, uh, tick tock, like tick tock for a church growth organization. Um, it's not 00:28:11.000 --> 00:28:16.700 gonna, you can't reconcile that. It's kind of like your, your communications director saying, Hey, just, 00:28:16.700 --> 00:28:22.000 you know, don't waste a lot of time on it. Okay. Because at the end of the day, the metrics to try 00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:27.260 to figure out, okay, was this a success? Did it get butts in seats? Did it get people into the next 00:28:27.260 --> 00:28:34.200 steps like that? It's hard to reconcile that because the platform is so, um, young, new, right? 00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:41.640 Right. And the numbers do help and they give you the context for it. But really, I think it's going 00:28:41.640 --> 00:28:45.940 to come when we find that those people that maybe they're physically here, maybe they're not, but they 00:28:45.940 --> 00:28:50.620 start connecting with our online campus. They join in and say, Hey, I found you on tick tock. Or we, you 00:28:50.620 --> 00:28:55.620 know, what the conversations, the messages, even within tick tock, when those start to show results of life 00:28:55.620 --> 00:29:02.600 change, I think that's going to be our, our, um, it's not a number and that's what's different. Uh, but 00:29:02.600 --> 00:29:06.640 that's going to be our, our proof in the pudding, if you will, that's going to be the, okay, this is 00:29:06.640 --> 00:29:12.140 working. We're really reaching people and people are really seeing, uh, Jesus, you know, in what we're 00:29:12.140 --> 00:29:12.480 posting. 00:29:13.420 --> 00:29:18.780 The thing that I love about all of this is that it's a great way to, to one, we've got to ask 00:29:18.780 --> 00:29:24.620 ourselves, what is the real mission? And two, how are we efficiently accomplishing that? Because you 00:29:24.620 --> 00:29:30.300 guys are repurposing content. What's more efficient than that? Like, it's not like you are spending 00:29:30.300 --> 00:29:36.320 money. I went through my phone, um, and I uploaded, you can upload videos as a draft. 00:29:36.520 --> 00:29:40.240 So I went, I found all of the videos that we had done in the last six, eight months, 00:29:40.240 --> 00:29:44.560 and I just uploaded them as a draft. So they're all sitting there in this bucket. All I have to do is 00:29:44.560 --> 00:29:53.040 make a, you know, create a caption for them to push out. That's it. Like it, if a church is looking to 00:29:53.040 --> 00:29:58.140 move in this direction, even if it's just as an experiment, um, you know, there's a lot of really 00:29:58.140 --> 00:30:02.640 cool features. The drafts is really cool because you can even in the draft, you can already put in 00:30:02.640 --> 00:30:07.660 the caption. I didn't happen to do that. You can set up the, the hashtags and all of that in the 00:30:07.660 --> 00:30:12.260 caption. You can set the, what are called a cover photo. So the photo that people will see when 00:30:12.260 --> 00:30:17.200 they're scrolling through. Um, so you can set all of that, have it in there. You do have to manually 00:30:17.200 --> 00:30:21.960 push it. Obviously there's no scheduler for Tik TOK yet. Um, but I mean, I kind of hope there will 00:30:21.960 --> 00:30:27.560 be one day. Maybe Hootsuite has integration later. That'd be great. All right. So Hootsuite, 00:30:27.560 --> 00:30:32.100 if you're listening, you know, make a note. And we get a cut, we get a cut too. 00:30:32.420 --> 00:30:36.660 And Instagram stories. We're TMing. Oh yeah. And stories too. We're TMing all of this right now. 00:30:38.460 --> 00:30:41.200 We're going to mail this podcast to ourselves. Please do. 00:30:42.140 --> 00:30:47.740 Awesome. So, and this has been a, been a lot of Tik TOK, which is awesome. Where, where are you guys, 00:30:47.840 --> 00:30:52.460 how are you utilizing YouTube? Like what, what are some takeaways from that? What successes have you 00:30:52.460 --> 00:30:58.320 seen in that area? Well, okay. So we have two lanes of YouTube right now, three technically, 00:30:58.320 --> 00:31:04.960 but one of them is, is my own personal one. So the first, the two church ones, we have our regular 00:31:04.960 --> 00:31:11.120 Bay Hope church YouTube page, and it doesn't have a whole lot of followers, maybe 300, maybe less than 00:31:11.120 --> 00:31:19.160 that, maybe 400, not a whole lot for a church our size. So that is, you know, through Stream Monkey, 00:31:19.360 --> 00:31:26.700 we, we stream services to CHOP, Church Online Platform, to Facebook, and to YouTube. And it's just a way 00:31:26.700 --> 00:31:33.420 to kind of catch all. And then on Mondays, either she, or it's usually you, right? Go in and chop up the 00:31:33.420 --> 00:31:37.100 sermon and just make sure it's there with a hashtag live or something. Hey, this is our live service. 00:31:37.460 --> 00:31:43.840 Go look at it. And that provides long form content. It also is a land, the main church page is also a 00:31:43.840 --> 00:31:48.440 landing place for a lot of our short form stuff. So we're doing Bible stories with our, our curriculum 00:31:48.440 --> 00:31:54.740 developer, who's this amazing lady named Lynn. We're using it for what, stories of care and things 00:31:54.740 --> 00:31:59.400 like that. Yeah. Anytime that there's a story that's shown on our weekend, in our weekend message, 00:31:59.400 --> 00:32:04.340 I generally like to share that on our social medias, YouTube included. So that's a two to three 00:32:04.340 --> 00:32:08.440 minute video that tells a story of somebody here at our church. So we just recently did a, a care week 00:32:08.440 --> 00:32:12.740 basically is what we called it. And we had five different stories for five different days, exactly 00:32:12.740 --> 00:32:17.920 what it sounds like. And every single day I posted a new care story. It was how they, they were reached 00:32:17.920 --> 00:32:24.060 via the care ministry or how serving on the, on a care team has impacted their lives. So those stories are 00:32:24.060 --> 00:32:28.220 there. We've got some of our kids ministry stuff there as well. It kind of lived there before I 00:32:28.220 --> 00:32:34.140 came on board. Um, and that's the, the milestones. So the things that they, um, Bible presentation, 00:32:34.440 --> 00:32:40.820 baptism, those kinds of steps that kids take through the kids ministry process. Um, those are all live 00:32:40.820 --> 00:32:45.360 there and I had different playlists for them. Um, but yeah, I mean, every Monday I come in and I 00:32:45.360 --> 00:32:50.780 change the title because it's just a big live stream or whatever stream monkey pushes through. I change 00:32:50.780 --> 00:32:55.560 it to the title of the message, title of the message. Um, you know, who, who spoke it? And I always put 00:32:55.560 --> 00:33:00.700 hashtag live because that's how our, um, executive director of creative, he pulls all those reports 00:33:00.700 --> 00:33:10.280 for, um, the actual live, um, audience views. Okay. And so there, there's that lane. So that's the, the main 00:33:10.280 --> 00:33:17.560 church visibility lane. And then we have a separate, uh, YouTube page for our worship team and Bay Hope 00:33:17.560 --> 00:33:22.920 worship is becoming a thing. And it's been a thing for a little bit, uh, for a couple of years, they've 00:33:22.920 --> 00:33:28.140 been recording music and recording albums and all this. Uh, but recently, so what, back in March, 00:33:28.280 --> 00:33:33.400 back in March, they did a gigantic worship night. And it was the kind of the first real genesis of 00:33:33.400 --> 00:33:37.000 this type of thing. And this is, you know, every church in the last 15 years, I've every big church 00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:41.880 in the last 15 years has done an album and all this. There's been special for our, for our church, 00:33:41.940 --> 00:33:45.940 though, and special for our, our congregation, special for particularly my family, because my brother 00:33:45.940 --> 00:33:52.040 and sister are, uh, kind of leads in the worship area. So for us, it's been great, but for the 00:33:52.040 --> 00:33:56.700 church, it's been even more edifying because now they're able to chop all these songs up. We're 00:33:56.700 --> 00:34:01.680 releasing them one by one every two weeks or so it goes up on Spotify, it goes up through, uh, YouTube 00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:08.020 and then it goes into where into Apple music as well, I believe. Um, and then through YouTube, 00:34:08.020 --> 00:34:13.060 we're just cutting these, uh, videos and, uh, we've got an amazing kind of videography team and, 00:34:13.060 --> 00:34:17.700 uh, you know, everything's getting mixed down and it looks real professional and we push that out 00:34:17.700 --> 00:34:23.520 and there's big promotion and who rod and festivals and all that behind each, each single that goes 00:34:23.520 --> 00:34:30.440 out. But we're also, and this is, and she can speak more to this. We're putting money behind that 00:34:30.440 --> 00:34:37.640 worship page specifically because worship music is huge. Obviously, uh, it's one of the most searched 00:34:37.640 --> 00:34:42.720 Christian things on YouTube, uh, Christian sites, you know, have the rise of Bethel and Jesus 00:34:42.720 --> 00:34:48.300 culture could be intimately tied to the rise of YouTube as well. I can sit here and make a case 00:34:48.300 --> 00:34:53.760 for that. I'm not going to. Um, but that there is that case. And so I don't know how much money 00:34:53.760 --> 00:34:58.880 we've been throwing at it, but enough. I don't know. I did not create the ads. Um, our video guy 00:34:58.880 --> 00:35:02.760 really kind of wanted to lean into the YouTube, all of that. And I'm like, this is not my area of 00:35:02.760 --> 00:35:08.120 expertise. Um, I don't mind learning, but if you want to give it a try. And so he's really, um, 00:35:08.120 --> 00:35:13.820 been leaning into it, he's promoting specific videos, um, as the suggested video after you 00:35:13.820 --> 00:35:17.660 watch something. So, and I don't, I don't, I've never seen the backside. So I don't know if 00:35:17.660 --> 00:35:22.620 there's criteria that you give it and you know, I'm sure there, I'm sure there is, um, criteria 00:35:22.620 --> 00:35:27.300 that you give it to then, you know, it's going to follow something of a light content. It's not 00:35:27.300 --> 00:35:31.320 going to follow something that's super inappropriate. I don't know. Maybe it should. Um, 00:35:31.320 --> 00:35:38.140 the most recent video that got released, what two Fridays ago has upwards of 50 or 60,000 views on 00:35:38.140 --> 00:35:45.720 it already. Um, and it's jumped, it's jumped hundreds of subscribers. Uh, we're over a thousand, 00:35:45.920 --> 00:35:51.420 well over a thousand, I think. So you're doing it on a separate page organizationally. Why not do it 00:35:51.420 --> 00:35:57.060 on, on the church pages as well? So that's an interesting, interesting question. And I, 00:35:57.060 --> 00:36:03.640 I raised that as, as well. Um, because that was created before I was here, that split. Uh, 00:36:03.640 --> 00:36:07.440 and I was actually probably before you were here. This, the split was there before me. And so 00:36:07.440 --> 00:36:11.580 I have operated in this space of like, our students have an account of their own. 00:36:11.820 --> 00:36:16.860 Do they really need one of their own? I don't know. Um, so our, but when I came on board, 00:36:16.940 --> 00:36:20.860 there were multiple accounts, all these things. So we've really tried to curtail that down because 00:36:20.860 --> 00:36:25.740 if you're, if you're throwing this, you know, if you're pushing out content on 10 different places 00:36:25.740 --> 00:36:30.240 with these little teeny tiny audiences, the, your reach is obviously less, but if you've got 00:36:30.240 --> 00:36:36.980 one place. And so I would say we're doing that because it is before we arrived. I think ideally 00:36:36.980 --> 00:36:40.700 it would be a conglomeration. If a church is looking to do something like this, that it would 00:36:40.700 --> 00:36:46.820 be one channel, all of that, that you'd have a playlist that would be your music stuff. Now I do have, um, 00:36:47.080 --> 00:36:54.080 a playlist on our main page that reflects the videos that they posted as well. So we're kind of 00:36:54.420 --> 00:36:56.480 literally, um, pointing that. 00:36:56.920 --> 00:36:57.300 That's good. 00:36:57.300 --> 00:37:02.820 If I'm putting on the online campus, um, the church online hat, if I'm putting on the church 00:37:02.820 --> 00:37:08.700 online hat, now I'm thinking, okay, well, if I can use these paid music ads to get them to subscribe 00:37:08.700 --> 00:37:14.480 to the main campus, uh, to the main feed, and then from there funnel them into next steps or something 00:37:14.480 --> 00:37:21.420 like that. So, um, yeah, that, that would be ideal. And, and, you know, of course, everything's a work in 00:37:21.420 --> 00:37:26.040 progress, right? When you come on, um, you know, and Andy, you've been there four months, even, 00:37:26.300 --> 00:37:31.520 even Jessica at two years. Like, I know that that's, um, it's a slow process sometimes to, 00:37:31.580 --> 00:37:38.160 to work through fun stories involving myself where, um, I came on, I was working for another church and 00:37:38.160 --> 00:37:42.260 I'd been there like six months. And the executive pastor called me in and said, Hey, Jeff, you're 00:37:42.260 --> 00:37:47.720 doing a great job, uh, changing culture around here. And we never really thought that you'd be able to 00:37:47.720 --> 00:37:53.260 change it as fast as you are. So thanks for, for doing a great job. And if you make another woman 00:37:53.260 --> 00:38:00.240 cry, um, over something, you know, if I hear about that, you're fired. Oh, nice. Yeah. So, uh, 00:38:00.240 --> 00:38:06.320 sometimes, you know, valuing people in the process and, and going slowly is better than just cramming 00:38:06.320 --> 00:38:12.120 change down there. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but that's completely separate podcast. And I actually loved 00:38:12.120 --> 00:38:17.040 working there. Um, so it was a, it was a great church. What are your next steps? So you're, 00:38:17.100 --> 00:38:21.640 you're doing the thing with, with YouTube and pushing in that direction. You're doing the thing 00:38:21.640 --> 00:38:26.840 with TikTok three months from now, six months from now, like, where do you see yourself going with 00:38:26.840 --> 00:38:34.320 these platforms? Oh boy. The interesting thing is that, and this is a quick little inside baseball 00:38:34.320 --> 00:38:39.820 story. When Jessica made the TikTok page, we actually had a conference like three days after 00:38:39.820 --> 00:38:43.680 that. Uh, and I was helping lead worship at a conference and helping do kind of set up and 00:38:43.680 --> 00:38:47.740 tear down. It was about an hour or so away from here. And she came up and she's like, Hey, I'm doing 00:38:47.740 --> 00:38:51.520 this TikTok thing. I, and I was like, Oh my God, let's like, I'll help you whatever you need. 00:38:51.520 --> 00:38:55.900 Like, let me know. I love, this is fantastic. And I made some short little crappy little video and it 00:38:55.900 --> 00:39:03.260 was fine. But, um, the, so it's been, it's been kind of this seat of our pants type stuff until 00:39:03.260 --> 00:39:09.120 really the last two weeks or so. Uh, when we, she and I met probably last Monday in my office and said, 00:39:09.160 --> 00:39:13.400 okay, let's codify this a little bit. Hey, I need you to do this. I'll take care of this, et cetera, 00:39:13.400 --> 00:39:24.000 et cetera. I think once we figure out the follow-up aspect to TikTok, once we start deriving a little 00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:29.280 bit more conversational tools out of it, um, like she said, she just opened up the conversation stuff 00:39:29.280 --> 00:39:33.880 what last week, maybe? Yeah. I just opened all of that up in order to sign up for the pro account 00:39:33.880 --> 00:39:37.980 and have the messaging that you have to be able to connect it to an actual phone number, um, that has 00:39:37.980 --> 00:39:42.000 to, that has text messaging. So we have a Google number. That was how I was able to open all those 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:47.600 things up, um, for us, but otherwise you can't message people. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the, 00:39:48.360 --> 00:39:53.680 if, if we can continue to work the conversational tools and then work them depending on where they 00:39:53.680 --> 00:40:01.540 are. Um, but I'm a bit biased and I have a, a ministry that would love to reach people all over 00:40:01.540 --> 00:40:07.740 the country and all over the world. And it is doing so. Uh, I think our best bet is to start to funnel 00:40:07.740 --> 00:40:15.480 them to the online campus. Um, simply because of the time investment that is not needed for somebody 00:40:15.480 --> 00:40:21.140 to log into a website and join us in a service or join us in on a Facebook page, you know, or in a 00:40:21.140 --> 00:40:28.900 Facebook group, that type of thing. Um, I think that could be the largest next step that we take. Um, 00:40:28.900 --> 00:40:33.460 I think to get there though, we need to open those conversations in whatever avenue possible. 00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:39.520 Um, and so that's going to take, she says she doesn't have a pastoral heart, but she definitely 00:40:39.520 --> 00:40:45.660 has a pastoral leading, uh, which is a pastoral heart. And so that takes a pastoral heart to really 00:40:45.660 --> 00:40:50.160 reach out and say, Hey, I am praying for you. I do care for you. Once people can feel that, 00:40:50.240 --> 00:40:52.940 I think the ball starts rolling a little bit more downhill. 00:40:54.140 --> 00:40:57.260 Yeah, absolutely. And I would say in the next couple of months, one of the things that I'd 00:40:57.260 --> 00:41:01.380 like to explore, once you hit a thousand followers on Tik TOK, you, it opens up the door for live, 00:41:01.520 --> 00:41:05.260 kind of like the swipe up on Instagram. Now this feature is unlocked for us, which is a really cool 00:41:05.260 --> 00:41:11.520 thing. Um, so does that mean that we live stream one of our services? The difficult technical thing 00:41:11.520 --> 00:41:15.880 is, okay, great. We're going to put it somewhere, but how do we comment back with people? And like the, 00:41:15.880 --> 00:41:20.420 the logistics of that are going to be interesting, but it may be something to explore this, you know, 00:41:20.460 --> 00:41:26.420 what is a live service look like on Tik TOK? Now there are two other gentlemen that are doing what 00:41:26.420 --> 00:41:31.820 they call Tik TOK church, literally Tik TOK church. They do music, they'd have a word and then they pray 00:41:31.820 --> 00:41:37.300 for people. Um, there's a guy that does it at seven o'clock, I think central time. Um, and, uh, 00:41:37.300 --> 00:41:44.080 he does it every single week. So it's happening. Um, kind of, I do think that we're on the forefront of 00:41:44.080 --> 00:41:47.340 it. There are other churches. Cause that was one of the questions that our communication director 00:41:47.340 --> 00:41:50.720 asked me, he said, what are other churches doing? What other kinds of content are they doing? 00:41:51.160 --> 00:41:57.460 Um, and some of them, and I, I found one church in particular that is posting videos, 00:41:57.460 --> 00:42:03.240 but they have the comments turned off. And I was like, what, why? That's death. 00:42:03.240 --> 00:42:10.840 Let's look for, um, why are you here? Um, sorry, that's, you can cut that part out. 00:42:10.840 --> 00:42:16.600 Um, but I mean, if, if the goal is not to engage with people, what are you doing? You're wasting 00:42:16.600 --> 00:42:21.280 your time. Um, or you're wasting somebody's time that's posting a video. So, um, there are other 00:42:21.280 --> 00:42:25.480 pastors out there that are on there. Um, Stephen Furtick, but he does the same thing we're doing. 00:42:25.480 --> 00:42:32.040 He's repurposing videos from their message series on Tik TOK. So, um, I would say some, uh, curated 00:42:32.040 --> 00:42:37.440 content. So some content that's specifically for Tik TOK, whether we're using the fun, new sounds, 00:42:37.440 --> 00:42:43.580 putting a spiritual twist on it. Um, that, that would be fun. The hard part is that those sounds 00:42:43.580 --> 00:42:50.120 are popular for about 37 seconds. By the time that we see they're popular, we come up with an idea. 00:42:50.120 --> 00:42:53.960 We're working with the videographer to get it shot. It's probably not popular anymore. So that's, 00:42:53.960 --> 00:42:59.160 you know, we're, um, not compromising quality, but it may be something that we look at, 00:43:00.040 --> 00:43:05.320 you know, let's create a couple of, um, original content videos that may be shot just with our 00:43:05.320 --> 00:43:10.440 phone and they're not shot with the big fancy cameras so that we can experiment to see if they're, 00:43:10.440 --> 00:43:15.400 if they're valuable. Um, I do think the live option is something that we should look into. Um, 00:43:15.400 --> 00:43:19.640 you know, we've never, we've not done a live on there yet. Unfortunately, the videos disappear. 00:43:20.360 --> 00:43:25.160 Once you're done with them, they don't live anywhere. Um, so being able to go back and pull 00:43:25.160 --> 00:43:30.040 and conversate with those people, I'm not sure how that would look. Um, but I think those are two 00:43:30.040 --> 00:43:34.360 things that we need to look towards. Finally enough, I'm doing, I'm teaching a class tonight 00:43:34.360 --> 00:43:39.880 on campus here and I'm doing just setting my computer up Facebook live and then setting my phone 00:43:39.880 --> 00:43:45.320 up and doing Instagram live or just my own personal one for the teaching. So I almost wonder if we can't 00:43:45.320 --> 00:43:49.080 try something like that just to do an hour and a half class, just to see what happens. I mean, 00:43:49.080 --> 00:43:52.360 it might not be the best entry point, especially for TikTok. Nobody wants to sit there and listen 00:43:52.360 --> 00:44:00.040 to me talk about Gideon for an hour and a half, but who knows? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love the idea 00:44:00.040 --> 00:44:05.400 of, of experimenting with some of this stuff. You just setting up a, a camera with a tripod. Part of 00:44:05.400 --> 00:44:11.080 me is even trying to figure out, okay, how can I gain like computer access to the phone so I can be 00:44:11.080 --> 00:44:16.760 typing on my laptop screen? Like I know there's like software SDK stuff. I think that can do some of 00:44:16.760 --> 00:44:21.640 that. And, uh, forgive me for putting on my technical hat, but I've already been down that 00:44:21.640 --> 00:44:25.800 road. There's a, uh, there's a, an Android emulator that I'm almost wondering, like, how can we 00:44:26.360 --> 00:44:32.680 bust that open and start using some of these tools? Yeah. So that we can live stream the service 00:44:32.680 --> 00:44:38.200 and, but then also be interacting. Absolutely. I think that those tech items are, are extremely 00:44:38.200 --> 00:44:42.760 important to talk about. Yeah. I started to be a smart eye. I can be like Android, what's that? But 00:44:42.760 --> 00:44:49.400 Apple and I are having a small feud right now. It's okay. Yeah. Let's say it's a later conversation. 00:44:49.400 --> 00:44:54.600 So, um, Hey, but this has been, this has been really good. I love, I love how you're experimenting. 00:44:54.600 --> 00:45:00.600 I love how you're, um, being on the edge of a lot of this stuff. And, and you're right. Sometimes 00:45:00.600 --> 00:45:05.960 when we try to do something professional and try to get to that perfection level, a lot of times, 00:45:05.960 --> 00:45:11.160 especially in online environment, like the fads already passed, the messaging opportunities gone. 00:45:11.160 --> 00:45:16.120 And so had a guy on a podcast, uh, a couple, Seth Muse a couple of weeks ago, and he was quoting, 00:45:16.120 --> 00:45:22.520 uh, Gary Vee, you know, version one is better than version none. Yeah. And so whatever you can get, 00:45:22.520 --> 00:45:28.440 you know, get it, um, throw it out, throw it out there and let it be used. Mark Vinci quoted a guy 00:45:28.440 --> 00:45:32.600 last week that said, if you're not embarrassed by your first version, you've waited too long, 00:45:32.600 --> 00:45:37.400 just get out there, um, and, and do something with it. So church out there, while we're trying to 00:45:37.400 --> 00:45:44.680 figure out, you know, the full completion of how, uh, TikTok can fit into your overall strategy, 00:45:44.680 --> 00:45:49.720 you're missing the opportunity to connect and engage with people, get out there, uh, 00:45:49.720 --> 00:45:52.360 do something with it and, and figure out how it fits later. 00:45:52.360 --> 00:45:57.400 The beauty of the digital world is yes, people can screenshot things and so forth, but 00:45:57.400 --> 00:46:02.680 worst case, if it's really bad, you just delete it. Like, even if it, if it implodes and comments 00:46:02.680 --> 00:46:07.560 go crazy and because you can't delete comments on TikTok, if it just goes down this rabbit hole, 00:46:07.560 --> 00:46:09.320 that's not good. You just delete it. Yeah. 00:46:09.320 --> 00:46:13.080 You know, and it's even, man, I would, there's a whole other conversation about 00:46:13.080 --> 00:46:18.360 if bad comments or good comments, how, how to handle that. A lot of times I've seen that, like, 00:46:18.360 --> 00:46:25.480 the crowd will defend the bad comments. Like they will circle around, uh, the wagon and protect you. 00:46:25.480 --> 00:46:30.840 You don't even need to protect yourself. So, um, you know, church, get out there and do some things. 00:46:30.840 --> 00:46:35.080 Well, Jessica, Andy, this has been a, a great podcast and I really appreciate the time. Any, 00:46:35.080 --> 00:46:37.480 any thoughts as, as we're landing the plane here? 00:46:37.480 --> 00:46:43.800 Yeah. I think you said it best. Get out there and do stuff. The, the, the, the fact that as a church, 00:46:43.800 --> 00:46:47.240 sometimes we get so stuck in, well, our outreach looks like we're going to have somebody say yes 00:46:47.240 --> 00:46:49.800 to Jesus. And then we're going to do this. And then we're going to have them walk through this 00:46:49.800 --> 00:46:54.120 class and do that. I think the time has, that's still there. And there is still a necessity for 00:46:54.120 --> 00:46:58.760 that. But I think also the time has come upon us where we need to be quicker, more agile, 00:46:58.760 --> 00:47:02.680 and we need to be less of a cruise ship and more of a speedboat as we're turning things around. 00:47:02.680 --> 00:47:07.080 Well, cool. Hey, thank you, Jess, uh, Jessica, Andy, thank you for being on. Um, 00:47:07.080 --> 00:47:11.960 love what I'm hearing, uh, from, from Bay Hope and, and looking forward to hearing more in the 00:47:11.960 --> 00:47:18.760 coming, uh, days, weeks and months. And I'll be, uh, um, I will have to, how, how do I find you on 00:47:18.760 --> 00:47:21.480 TikTok? Do I search for Bay Hope and you just pop up? 00:47:21.480 --> 00:47:26.280 It's at Bay Hope Church. It's like, like the other social platforms. 00:47:26.840 --> 00:47:31.720 All right. So I'm going to download my account. I'll get my phone set up. I I've, I've got the 00:47:31.720 --> 00:47:37.800 account at dearfedge, Jeffrey backwards, but I will, I will take the time to reinstitute it on my phone 00:47:37.800 --> 00:47:42.120 and keep an eye on what's happening at Bay Hope Church on TikTok. It's not going to be the old man 00:47:42.120 --> 00:47:47.080 on TikTok. It's fine. I will be the old man on TikTok, the quiet old man over in the corner 00:47:47.080 --> 00:47:52.760 on, on, on, on TikTok. There's an older gentleman that he's been doing like dance moves from the 00:47:52.760 --> 00:47:57.720 seventies and eighties. And he's, I mean, he's not old, but he's older and he's getting a huge, 00:47:57.720 --> 00:48:02.040 I mean, it's, so there's a place for, that's what I think I'm learning is that there's a place for 00:48:02.040 --> 00:48:09.320 everybody. I have no response to that. Okay. Hey, so it's been a great podcast for, uh, for, 00:48:09.320 --> 00:48:13.640 for Jessica, for Andy, for Ray. Uh, I'm Jeff with the church digital. Thanks for jumping on. 00:48:13.640 --> 00:48:16.760 And, uh, we'll, we'll see you next week. Have a good day.