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 --> 00:00:45.660 and to find out how you can save 20%, visit thechurch.digital. 00:00:50.760 --> 00:00:56.140 Episode 39 of The Church Digital podcast, and I got to tell you, I am really excited about where this 00:00:56.140 --> 00:01:01.500 podcast is going to end. Check it out. Recently, two organizations got together and created a survey 00:01:01.500 --> 00:01:06.740 to check the state of church online. So we talk about whether churches are engaging or not and 00:01:06.740 --> 00:01:12.360 what's happening. And so they did a survey to see where you, churches out there, and how you are 00:01:12.360 --> 00:01:18.720 engaging and utilizing this church online method. So we got Living As One. Now, they are no stranger to 00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:25.420 the Church Digital. We do a ton of work with Colin Jones and Paul and those guys over at Living As One. 00:01:25.420 --> 00:01:31.420 And also, we're bringing a new to the podcast, Leadership Network. Now, hopefully, you guys are no 00:01:31.420 --> 00:01:36.820 strangers to Leadership Network. By the way, they create some phenomenal resources out there and do a 00:01:36.820 --> 00:01:43.320 number of intensive trainings and things to help the church, you, the church, operate better. 00:01:43.320 --> 00:01:49.940 They came together to create a survey. And now we've got the results in of how you, church out there, 00:01:49.940 --> 00:01:56.080 and your contemporaries, how you're utilizing church online. So this is cool. The survey is out. It's 00:01:56.080 --> 00:02:01.140 public. It's been released. The report has. And so you can download that report. We're going to put the 00:02:01.140 --> 00:02:05.740 link in the show notes. You can just swing over there and grab it from there. But more than that, 00:02:05.780 --> 00:02:12.040 with this podcast, we're able to sit down with these guys and have a conversation about where we are. 00:02:12.320 --> 00:02:19.580 Okay, so we're seeing this, this stat. Why? We're seeing this trend. Why? Where are we going? What's 00:02:19.580 --> 00:02:24.940 next? More than just looking at where we are today, let's be proactively figuring out where we're 00:02:24.940 --> 00:02:31.760 heading for tomorrow and start to move down that road as, as we continue this growth towards church 00:02:31.760 --> 00:02:36.940 online, towards discipleship online. I got to tell you the thing that I was most excited about with this 00:02:36.940 --> 00:02:43.080 report is this idea that discipleship is not just a word that's said in closed doors, but it's something 00:02:43.080 --> 00:02:47.760 that's happening virtually. And we're starting to see more and more churches trend that way and 00:02:47.760 --> 00:02:52.120 understand that. The report shows it, which makes me so excited because it's the stuff that we've been 00:02:52.120 --> 00:02:56.740 talking about. It's awesome. So here's where we are with the podcast. We literally got Colin Jones, 00:02:56.880 --> 00:03:02.420 president of Living as One. We got Greg Ligon, the chief innovation officer with Leadership Network. 00:03:02.420 --> 00:03:08.580 Ray Diarmus, co-host once again, online pastor with Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself, Jeff, 00:03:08.640 --> 00:03:15.320 with the Church Digital, in a conversation detailing behind the screens. Hey, everybody. Here you go. 00:03:15.780 --> 00:03:21.560 I was just curious, like, what were the overall trends that you found in your research? Was there anything 00:03:21.560 --> 00:03:27.160 that, like, what's the theme that was maybe discovered through this research? Well, I think one of the big 00:03:27.160 --> 00:03:35.440 ideas and one of the things that was demonstrated to me that there's a significant growth in this space 00:03:35.440 --> 00:03:43.880 is that those that were surveyed for this project, 47% reported that they had an online campus, 00:03:44.580 --> 00:03:50.980 which is up 28% from when we asked the same question five years ago. In fact, when we asked that question 00:03:50.980 --> 00:03:59.740 five years ago, 62% indicated they plan not to have an online campus. So we're seeing really rapid growth 00:03:59.740 --> 00:04:07.560 in the development of online campuses. What do you think is the relationship? What's causing that shift to go from 00:04:07.560 --> 00:04:13.820 not wanting to do a campus to now? What's been the cultural thing that do you think has allowed more 00:04:13.820 --> 00:04:20.580 churches to get excited about online? Well, I think, you know, in some ways, it just represents the growth of 00:04:20.580 --> 00:04:27.640 social environments online anyway. So I think that that's, it kind of follows that trend a bit. 00:04:27.960 --> 00:04:32.680 I think the other thing is, in five years, of course, technology changes, feels like about every 10 00:04:32.680 --> 00:04:37.260 minutes. In fact, that's one of the things I'll talk about a little bit later. But because the technology 00:04:37.260 --> 00:04:43.240 has improved so much over the last five years, I think more and more people are able to get into the 00:04:43.240 --> 00:04:48.820 game more quickly, because it's affordable and easier to use and that kind of thing. 00:04:48.900 --> 00:04:53.980 Yeah, and I've been surprised by how quick the perspective shifted from, oh, Church Online is going to hurt my 00:04:53.980 --> 00:04:59.280 attendance, people won't come, you know, all those different perspectives. And then now, surveying that on the 00:04:59.280 --> 00:05:06.020 data, that was really surprising to me, you know, 46% disagreed that online attendance, you know, doesn't get 00:05:06.020 --> 00:05:11.100 hurt by it, you know, online streaming, in-person attendance, and then 20% agreed that it hurt 00:05:11.100 --> 00:05:15.660 attendance. So there was, you know, more than double that disagreed with that. And then the rest, I guess, were 00:05:15.660 --> 00:05:26.140 neutral. Yeah, that was a big surprise to me as well. And, you know, I consistently get calls from senior 00:05:26.140 --> 00:05:32.460 pastors, who have that question, they're like, Oh, my gosh, you know, we started an online campus, and 00:05:32.460 --> 00:05:37.740 we've, we've, we've dropped our attendance, you know, x percentage, we're thinking about shutting down our 00:05:37.740 --> 00:05:43.980 online campus. And so I was surprised at the growth and the people growth in the number of people who 00:05:43.980 --> 00:05:47.220 really felt like that, that was hurting their physical presence. 00:05:48.420 --> 00:05:52.500 Excuse me, the growth in people that didn't feel like it was hurting their physical presence. I think 00:05:52.500 --> 00:05:58.660 you mentioned the 46% disagreed that adding an online campus hurt their physical presence. 00:05:59.940 --> 00:06:04.660 So I think that was very interesting to me as well. I think one of the things that oftentimes, 00:06:04.980 --> 00:06:11.400 senior pastors, that it's a, it's an issue in terms of the impact on physical attendance as well, 00:06:11.820 --> 00:06:17.000 really, in some ways has nothing to do with online. There's a, there's a significant decrease in 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:23.260 physical attendance, simply because of the fact that people will see themselves as being a regular 00:06:23.260 --> 00:06:28.380 attender at church, but they may only come one time a month or two times a month. And so when you 00:06:28.380 --> 00:06:34.820 actually begin to look at the actual people, the bodies that are showing up on your, on your physical 00:06:34.820 --> 00:06:40.280 campus, your growth is actually, in many cases, you're growing, you're not declining in terms of the 00:06:40.280 --> 00:06:46.980 number of people that you're serving. There's a, we work with a group in Scott Thumma at 00:06:46.980 --> 00:06:52.280 Hartford Research Institute. And I believe the latest number that they quote is, if you take your 00:06:52.280 --> 00:06:59.800 average weekend worship attendance, you can multiply it by 3.2. And that really gets you to be at what 00:06:59.800 --> 00:07:05.720 the reach is that you have as a church. Just to understand, our church is also taking into 00:07:05.720 --> 00:07:09.880 consideration how this is affecting their decision-making, considering how many people are 00:07:09.880 --> 00:07:14.900 engaging with them online. Do you guys see any shifts in terms of how churches are considering both 00:07:14.900 --> 00:07:19.860 how they're addressing people, like how they're preaching to them, but also how they're making 00:07:19.860 --> 00:07:26.380 decisions in regards to everything from budgets to how, how they're, how they're communicating with 00:07:26.380 --> 00:07:27.320 them in terms of engagement? 00:07:28.640 --> 00:07:34.240 Well, I, probably the thing that is, that jumps out to me when you ask that question is 00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:39.960 Crossroads Church, which is up in Cincinnati, which I think is one of the churches that's really 00:07:39.960 --> 00:07:45.540 leading the way, not just online, but with digital, all kinds of digital things, but on their online 00:07:45.540 --> 00:07:56.020 campuses, you know, they are really working toward having an experience that is when I, that is shaped 00:07:56.020 --> 00:08:02.540 by the physical campus, so you're going to be most likely to attend, to attend. So for example, if I'm, 00:08:02.540 --> 00:08:10.060 if I log on online and my locator indicates that I'm closest to the campus that's in the south side of 00:08:10.060 --> 00:08:16.180 Cincinnati, then I may, I, they're moving toward the place where they'll actually have a physical, 00:08:16.680 --> 00:08:22.160 the stream will actually be, will include the campus pastor from that physical campus, 00:08:22.160 --> 00:08:27.080 and they're really committed to that. In fact, they've even changed the name of their online, excuse me, 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:32.800 for their campus pastors to community pastors, because they're charging them with, them with 00:08:32.800 --> 00:08:37.580 responsibility, not just for the people that are showing up at their building, but those who are 00:08:37.580 --> 00:08:44.060 showing up online in that, from that specific geographic area. So that's one of the ways I see 00:08:44.060 --> 00:08:44.740 that happening. 00:08:45.020 --> 00:08:49.200 Yeah, I think Matt had a really cool quote from that on the report, where he said, you know, he's asking the 00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:54.200 question basically of, you know, from the data in the report, it's the question of what's the purpose of, 00:08:54.240 --> 00:09:00.200 you know, live streaming online. And then I think like, you know, the majority right now is just 00:09:00.200 --> 00:09:05.360 getting people, you know, like still just keeping people connected. Like, but then if you look at 00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:10.420 like the higher echelon of churches, like if you go to like 10,000 plus, their highest reason is for 00:09:10.420 --> 00:09:16.280 outreach and evangelism and just like not, not engagement at all for actually reaching people. And so I think 00:09:16.280 --> 00:09:21.440 we'll start to see more and more of the smaller churches realize that, okay, this is, you know, 00:09:21.440 --> 00:09:27.160 the offline attender, as long as he's still engaging, should count as a church member. And people are 00:09:27.160 --> 00:09:31.300 kind of battling with that question now. I think churches like Crossroads, you know, say stuff like, 00:09:31.860 --> 00:09:37.320 you know, we don't want to convert someone from online to onsite. You know, our goal is to make sure 00:09:37.320 --> 00:09:41.940 they're connected to the church community. Connecting is more important than converting them from online 00:09:41.940 --> 00:09:46.240 to offline for us. And so they're saying, you know, they have other ways of them to connect digitally, 00:09:46.800 --> 00:09:50.780 digital community groups, and that's more important to them than actually becoming into a button seat, 00:09:51.220 --> 00:09:56.100 which is like a huge shift that we see. And I think, you know, Jeff's talked about that a ton on his podcast is 00:09:56.100 --> 00:10:02.300 trying to get pastors and people to think through, hey, don't just think button seats in the old paradigm. 00:10:02.880 --> 00:10:05.900 And we're really seeing that shift with the churches that are doing digital well. 00:10:06.880 --> 00:10:13.360 If it's digital attender, if he's growing in community with others, attending a church body in 00:10:13.360 --> 00:10:17.760 whatever way, then that should count just as much as a regular person that's in the seat. 00:10:18.100 --> 00:10:22.680 Maybe even more so than someone who just comes and watches it every weekend and then leaves and is not 00:10:22.680 --> 00:10:24.100 involved at all after that, you know. 00:10:24.760 --> 00:10:30.900 Yeah, we're going to be talking with Crossroads here in a couple episodes. We're excited to roll that 00:10:30.900 --> 00:10:35.460 out for everybody. They're doing a lot of really interesting things in that digital and in that 00:10:35.460 --> 00:10:42.980 church online scope. One of the things that surprised me with the stats you guys rolled out 00:10:42.980 --> 00:10:51.100 is that you capped the lowest size church at about 800 people. The average church in America is probably 00:10:51.100 --> 00:10:58.960 closer to 72, 73, I think. 80% of churches in America are under 200 in size. I'm not sure on the stats, 00:10:58.960 --> 00:11:04.320 but these are things that I've heard and they sound reasonable. Why did you cap at 800? Like what was 00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:09.860 what was the logic at that size versus maybe even digging into some of the smaller size churches? 00:11:10.140 --> 00:11:15.620 Well, it's really primarily based off of a leadership network bias. We've always worked with larger 00:11:15.620 --> 00:11:23.920 churches. And so our base of churches that participated are primarily larger churches. And so that's really 00:11:23.920 --> 00:11:31.360 what drove that more so than, you know, more so than any intention not to reach into the small group 00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:36.320 market. That's just really been who we've feel like we've been called to serve. So that's, that'd be the 00:11:36.320 --> 00:11:44.880 foundation for that. I think part of the, I think you're part of the reason that smaller churches may or may not 00:11:44.880 --> 00:11:52.320 be involved. I think it's really primarily in some ways it's similar to this is not going to make a blanket 00:11:52.320 --> 00:11:56.360 statement here that I don't mean to be a blanket statement because there's some actually very incredibly 00:11:56.360 --> 00:12:03.120 healthy small churches. But in many cases, small, there's some small churches that they're small 00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:08.720 because there's a lack of vision and leadership. And so I think, you know, that translates then into not 00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:14.480 being willing to take risks, not being willing to, in many cases, not even being exposed to some of the new 00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:16.440 things that are happening in the church. 00:12:16.580 --> 00:12:21.840 They don't have time to get their heads above the water. We talked to like quite a few churches in the, you know, 00:12:22.180 --> 00:12:26.240 hey, we got 50 people attending and we want to stream because, you know, there's a lot of transient 00:12:26.240 --> 00:12:30.560 communities and people, especially in Florida, we hear that all the time. You know, we look at our people in the 00:12:30.560 --> 00:12:37.680 winter, or I mean, we, you know, grow, it's the opposite of the way around in the winter. And then in a lot of 00:12:37.680 --> 00:12:41.820 communities like that, and the smaller churches primarily are driven by reasons like that. Like, they're not 00:12:41.820 --> 00:12:46.300 thinking about it like, well, I want to reach a bunch of people online. But then occasionally now, like, 00:12:46.380 --> 00:12:50.720 especially in the digital world, you'll get really small churches that have just some visionary digitally, 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:56.080 and they'll be doing crazy numbers digitally, and have like 200 people coming on, you know, in their service 00:12:56.080 --> 00:13:03.420 every Sunday, or even just online churches only. And like, because the barrier to entry for a digital church, 00:13:03.660 --> 00:13:06.380 and the amount of people that you can reach without it being weird, 00:13:06.640 --> 00:13:11.740 is so many more people than the old paradigm of having people having to attend and do that. So that 00:13:11.740 --> 00:13:16.240 model is starting to be challenged. And I think that's really interesting, especially, you know, 00:13:16.260 --> 00:13:21.020 you guys have talked about it as a way of church planning, even. And the, and what's cool is like, 00:13:21.060 --> 00:13:24.360 we really love when we talk to those smaller churches, because they just have questions about 00:13:24.360 --> 00:13:27.820 it all. You know, like, how do we do cameras? How do we do, et cetera? And those are really fun for us. 00:13:28.340 --> 00:13:34.860 You're guiding the whole thing. And oftentimes, they're the scrappy ones that are, sometimes now, 00:13:34.940 --> 00:13:38.860 you'll come up, and you'll get like a really, you know, active, understand digital church planner 00:13:38.860 --> 00:13:45.040 that, you know, has some really interesting visions and views on digital. Yeah. 00:13:45.200 --> 00:13:49.360 Yeah, I think, I think that the barrier, you know, just as you said, Colin, the barrier to entry is 00:13:49.360 --> 00:13:54.980 going down. And so I think you will see smaller churches. When I, when I say a smaller church, 00:13:54.980 --> 00:13:59.180 I'm thinking more of a traditional smaller church has been small for a long time. That last little 00:13:59.180 --> 00:14:03.720 piece that you talked about was really around church planters. And I think there is, we are going to 00:14:03.720 --> 00:14:08.820 see, already are seeing this, and we're going to see a growing number of planters that are launching 00:14:08.820 --> 00:14:14.240 with an online, in some cases, maybe launching online first, before they actually put the physical 00:14:14.240 --> 00:14:19.560 campus and building an online community that then becomes the core for launching their physical 00:14:19.560 --> 00:14:24.020 campus. Yeah, we have a lot of people who buy gear for that now. And it was crazy because there was, 00:14:24.160 --> 00:14:28.700 one of them had, you know, 500 people at launch because they've been streaming for six months or 00:14:28.700 --> 00:14:34.780 whatever. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to see more church plans take advantage of 00:14:34.780 --> 00:14:41.280 that. And I've always wondered why there's this rush to get to the physical building, to pay the lease, 00:14:41.760 --> 00:14:48.120 to pay the AV cost, you know, to go with all this when starting in a virtual and then building from 00:14:48.120 --> 00:14:55.180 there, building that core team, getting your DNA out there in the community. That's a lot safer to do 00:14:55.180 --> 00:15:00.580 on a plant side. And I just, I think looking forward, I hope, my hope is that more churches are going to 00:15:00.580 --> 00:15:07.200 start to plant that digital force. Grow physical, sure, but start in a digital realm where people can 00:15:07.200 --> 00:15:12.220 connect to you and can engage with you before getting to that place where you have to start paying 00:15:12.220 --> 00:15:19.580 all the larger fees. Well, one of the things that I loved about the report is you delved in a lot to 00:15:19.580 --> 00:15:24.560 the discipleship piece of this. And a lot of times when we talk with churches and pastors, at least me, 00:15:25.180 --> 00:15:30.240 the extent of Church Online stops with the broadcast. Like the win of Church Online is just 00:15:30.240 --> 00:15:34.920 broadcasting the services out. And obviously, Colin with Living as One, you guys do an excellent job 00:15:34.920 --> 00:15:40.640 with that. But I really respected how you guys asked some more questions to get into more of the 00:15:40.640 --> 00:15:46.800 discipleship angle of how churches are doing more than just broadcasting the services, but actually 00:15:46.800 --> 00:15:54.060 getting into small groups and into next steps and into this discipleship piece. You know, I saw one of 00:15:54.060 --> 00:15:59.360 the stats was it looked like about on average three to six percent of churches are doing that were 00:15:59.360 --> 00:16:05.900 interviewed are doing some sort of discipleship virtually, online small groups, etc. I mean, obviously, 00:16:05.900 --> 00:16:13.120 when we looked at it, I think 10,000 plus people, those churches were more at like 20%. So there's this 00:16:13.120 --> 00:16:18.820 broad range where some of them are, very few are, but then when you get to like the giga level, 00:16:19.220 --> 00:16:24.120 a lot more pick up. What do you think is causing? What are the giga churches seeing that the others 00:16:24.120 --> 00:16:29.900 aren't? What are those hurdles that's stopping some of the other churches from doing more discipleship? 00:16:29.980 --> 00:16:33.520 Well, I think there's a couple of things. I think part of the reason the giga churches are doing it 00:16:33.520 --> 00:16:38.300 more is because they have more dedicated resources to be able to try to figure it out. You know, 00:16:38.300 --> 00:16:43.140 and so they have, you know, they can, they can put some staff who are given primary focus to really, 00:16:43.220 --> 00:16:47.000 you know, developing some of those kinds of things. And that's part of the reason. I think the other 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:55.780 reason that it is, it's not accelerated as rapidly as we might think is, has less to do with online and 00:16:55.780 --> 00:17:03.200 more to do with a paradigm shift that is not yet fully engaged in terms of what it means to do discipleship. 00:17:03.300 --> 00:17:07.960 I think we're seeing many churches, even many large churches are still, you know, thinking about 00:17:07.960 --> 00:17:15.500 discipleship in a very linear, curricular, educational kind of model. Discipleship really at its heart 00:17:15.500 --> 00:17:21.320 is really about transformation, right? And so I think as people can begin to get more and more 00:17:21.320 --> 00:17:25.840 comfortable with the transformational side of discipleship, they're going to get more and more 00:17:25.840 --> 00:17:31.520 comfortable with the opportunities that online provides in terms of being able to actually have 00:17:32.220 --> 00:17:37.520 online. Sure, you have an educational model is actually pretty easy to deliver online. There's 00:17:37.520 --> 00:17:42.060 a lot. I mean, if you're doing, if you've got a curriculum based discipleship program, you can 00:17:42.060 --> 00:17:48.860 deliver that online pretty easily. But I think the ability to really see the online space as a place 00:17:48.860 --> 00:17:54.780 to really truly engage, not just to consume. I think we're still in the midst of that shift. 00:17:55.020 --> 00:17:59.620 Why do you guys think that it is that so many churches are shy to take their services to social 00:17:59.620 --> 00:18:03.800 platforms? Because I saw a significant decrease between the number of churches that broadcast on 00:18:03.800 --> 00:18:07.460 their site compared to how many of them actually take it to the masses on social media. 00:18:07.460 --> 00:18:11.640 Yeah, we're actually seeing like a huge increase in people streaming to social. It used to be where 00:18:11.640 --> 00:18:15.380 they didn't at all. It's pretty difficult to stream to social because you have all these music right 00:18:15.380 --> 00:18:19.660 things. And especially if you're a small church, like you get docked and taken down so they get 00:18:19.660 --> 00:18:25.620 frustrated. But now like the social platforms are handling that a lot better, which is great news. 00:18:25.620 --> 00:18:30.100 And there's a lot more people that we're seeing like we have like last weekend, just for the amount 00:18:30.100 --> 00:18:35.760 of new churches that came on, for example, of all of our platform, we had like a 15% week over week 00:18:35.760 --> 00:18:40.300 increase in Facebook streaming, which is huge when you have that many churches on a platform. So it's 00:18:40.300 --> 00:18:45.280 like that's not new churches coming on. That's like, you know, like people that are already coming on 00:18:45.280 --> 00:18:49.220 that started streaming to Facebook that weren't before, which is really interesting. And the 00:18:49.220 --> 00:18:53.680 however, like at the same time, they're realizing, you know, if you look at Facebook watch times, 00:18:53.680 --> 00:18:57.280 it's like, you know, you'll have, for example, Saddleback numbers, you know, they, I forget the 00:18:57.280 --> 00:19:02.200 exact amount, but it's something like 20,000 views and like average watch time of less than two 00:19:02.200 --> 00:19:06.080 minutes. And that's every church that we talked to, you know, and then you get like watch times and 00:19:06.080 --> 00:19:10.900 the, you know, like on an, on the bed code on church online platform, um, or on your website, 00:19:11.020 --> 00:19:16.340 it's like 45 minutes. Right. Um, and so I think, I think a lot of that is like people realizing that, 00:19:16.340 --> 00:19:20.660 you know, Facebook and, and YouTube and all that are really great for, for marketing value, 00:19:20.660 --> 00:19:24.000 but that it's really difficult to develop community just because of all the distractions 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:27.520 there. And so, you know, there's, there's like the ways that people are doing it that are working 00:19:27.520 --> 00:19:31.720 is like Facebook groups, but then inherently you lose the marketing value of that, you know, 00:19:31.720 --> 00:19:35.800 so you get getting the community, but then lose the growth. So I think people are trying to answer 00:19:35.800 --> 00:19:39.780 all those questions. And that's why I think the building, I think we'll start to see way more 00:19:39.780 --> 00:19:45.560 people start to build, you know, social features that on, on platforms that they control. Um, 00:19:45.740 --> 00:19:49.300 like, like Crossroads did with Crossroads Anywhere and Church Home did with their app and 00:19:49.300 --> 00:19:54.320 lots of churches using actually like social platforms, but that they completely control just 00:19:54.320 --> 00:19:59.240 for that reason. So that they can measure, attract, grow community discipleship. Like there's tons of 00:19:59.240 --> 00:20:04.140 discipleship tools in those ways of connecting people that, that you wouldn't, that would, you know, 00:20:04.140 --> 00:20:06.680 happen kind of naturally on Facebook that are hard to cultivate. Yeah. 00:20:06.680 --> 00:20:13.400 You are seeing a natural trend away from Facebook in some areas. I just even were, I was just previous 00:20:13.400 --> 00:20:18.100 to doing this podcast recording with you guys. I was doing another podcast with a number of, 00:20:18.100 --> 00:20:23.880 of online pastors and, and one of the, one of the pastors in the room was going, um, into great 00:20:23.880 --> 00:20:31.980 detail on why he does not broadcast to Facebook. And the reason, the reason why, honestly, and what we 00:20:31.980 --> 00:20:36.660 talked about in the podcast was I felt like his, his view of it was, yes, he can, 00:20:36.680 --> 00:20:43.400 get far greater engagement on church aligned platform using that embed code because the platform 00:20:43.400 --> 00:20:49.480 itself is meant to generate that next step. It's meant to keep people engaged from a longer, 00:20:49.480 --> 00:20:55.300 there's not as many of those distractions, but it's easy to lose that, that marketing piece of, 00:20:55.300 --> 00:21:00.540 of what, what you're talking about, Colin. You know, so often we, um, we, we feel like, you know, 00:21:00.540 --> 00:21:06.300 you got to count that butts in seats. Uh, you got to count that. And how do we, that, that two minutes 00:21:06.300 --> 00:21:11.520 scroll through that person who sneezed when they're looking at the newsfeed and maybe that counts as a, 00:21:11.520 --> 00:21:17.960 as a, as a view, like, does that count on, on the reporting? Does it not? What do we do with that? 00:21:18.260 --> 00:21:23.200 And instead of actually like figuring out what's best, let's just throw it in there and then online 00:21:23.200 --> 00:21:28.620 goes higher or let's not count it at all. And then, and it's not, instead of looking at more of the, 00:21:28.620 --> 00:21:34.500 the discipleship model of, of what's happening and how the broadcast is helping you get people 00:21:34.500 --> 00:21:39.120 connected either into, into the physical or virtual model of discipleship. 00:21:39.120 --> 00:21:45.780 Yeah, I think it's interesting. I mean, one of the things that I think it was about 20% of those 00:21:45.780 --> 00:21:51.720 that we surveyed indicate they didn't even have the capability to measure their online attendance, 00:21:51.720 --> 00:21:56.120 to really be able to know if it was impacting their physical attendance or the level of engagement, 00:21:56.120 --> 00:22:01.460 or, and I think that's also going to, that's a, that's a big question in terms of what does 00:22:01.460 --> 00:22:06.960 engagement look like? I mean, you, you've compared Facebook and online in terms of the amount of time 00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:13.640 they're there. But, you know, I can, I can be also be online and it appears that I'm online, 00:22:13.640 --> 00:22:19.460 but I'm in the next room, you know, fixing lunch or, you know, whatever. And so it was fascinating to 00:22:19.460 --> 00:22:26.020 me when I talked with the guys at virtual reality church last week, we were just talking about metrics 00:22:26.020 --> 00:22:30.900 and some of those kinds of things. And that was one of the things that he said was he, he thinks, 00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:36.160 I think there's going to be a real difference in the way that churches think about, particularly if 00:22:36.160 --> 00:22:42.680 they're comparing virtual reality experiences to an online experience. He said, because a virtual 00:22:42.840 --> 00:22:48.180 reality experience actually requires greater engagement, right? So, I mean, if you're in 00:22:48.180 --> 00:22:53.500 virtual reality, you're actually interfacing, engaging with the, engaging with the content. I mean, 00:22:53.520 --> 00:22:57.560 you got your goggles on for goodness sake, you know, so it's, and so I think that's going to be a 00:22:57.560 --> 00:23:02.480 fascinating thing for us to try to figure out too, is what does engagement really look like? How do we 00:23:02.480 --> 00:23:07.580 measure that? Is it, is it simply about, you know, the number of minutes that somebody's, you know, 00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:15.660 logged on or are there ways that we can begin to get at actually transformational kind of metrics, 00:23:15.660 --> 00:23:19.580 particularly when you go back to start talking about the discipleship side of things? 00:23:20.180 --> 00:23:23.700 Yeah, I think engagement and discipleship are the two things that we hear the most of churches 00:23:23.700 --> 00:23:27.580 that have been streaming for a while of how do we unlock that? And the thing that probably the podcast 00:23:27.580 --> 00:23:32.000 talks about the most, you know, is how, hey, how do we move to the next level, engage and disciple the 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:37.000 people that are coming and not just have them be passive followers. But the, and there's, there's 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:40.180 so many cool things going on with that, you know, there's church online platform trying to make a bunch 00:23:40.180 --> 00:23:44.520 of updates in their platform to make that easier. And there's streaming providers like us that are 00:23:44.520 --> 00:23:49.720 trying to do cards and stuff that comes up. And then, and I think that too, is like the churches that 00:23:49.720 --> 00:23:56.420 are killing it on the, you know, marketing side of the church aren't, aren't at all killing it and 00:23:56.420 --> 00:24:00.740 probably the discipleship online. You know, it's like very different. Like you have like, like 00:24:00.740 --> 00:24:05.520 everybody wants to do at Elevation does because they have so many millions of views. Right. And 00:24:05.520 --> 00:24:09.500 there's so many, and it's so cool. And what they do is they, they cut up little chunks and they post 00:24:09.500 --> 00:24:12.300 it all. And they do like, if you look at their marketing team, it's amazing. Everybody wants to be 00:24:12.300 --> 00:24:15.660 that. But when you're a small church, it's really hard to mimic that. You know, they do things 00:24:15.660 --> 00:24:21.740 really excellently and have the numbers to where the algorithms work to their favor and do all that 00:24:21.740 --> 00:24:27.420 really well. So it might be good for a smaller church to say, Hey, let Elevation be Elevation and 00:24:27.420 --> 00:24:34.140 God bless them in that way. Like my 15 year old, you know, cousin, you know, whatever nephews just 00:24:34.140 --> 00:24:39.180 watch Stephen Purtick all the time and never go to church, you know? But then does it, if you're a 00:24:39.180 --> 00:24:42.240 small church, do you care more about discipleship online? You know, cause that's your niche. 00:24:42.540 --> 00:24:47.520 It's interesting. The whole influencer, the marketing stuff really is that influence at some level, 00:24:47.520 --> 00:24:52.740 particularly when you talk about Furtick and Elevate Church and those kinds of huge followings, 00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:58.260 but in some other realms that are impacted by online, for example, I do a lot of work in publishing 00:24:58.260 --> 00:25:05.540 as well. And one of the things they're discovering in publishing is you have a great, you have a much 00:25:05.540 --> 00:25:13.820 greater conversion rate, if you want to use that term, when you're actually working with not necessarily 00:25:13.820 --> 00:25:18.640 the biggest number, but with the right number. And so they've begun to talk, use this terminology of 00:25:18.640 --> 00:25:24.520 micro influencers. And so in many cases, you know, there are some of the major brands in terms of 00:25:24.520 --> 00:25:31.780 books and authors are having greater impact by taking a subset of their big fan base. But these are really 00:25:31.780 --> 00:25:36.920 the people who are totally engaged and are really going to be able to, are really champions of the 00:25:36.920 --> 00:25:41.760 product. And so there's probably something for the church to learn there as well, as we think about 00:25:41.760 --> 00:25:46.740 the engagement and the traction process as well. One of the other things that's happening in that space 00:25:46.740 --> 00:25:53.420 is we have a partnership with an organization called Glue. It's a big data subscription platform. 00:25:53.840 --> 00:25:59.840 And one of the things that they're being able to do, in addition to being able to more accurately 00:25:59.840 --> 00:26:04.840 understand who it is in your community, so that your communication, whatever the marking looks like, 00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:10.560 is really hitting, hitting, hitting with connecting with the people that are going to most likely say, 00:26:10.660 --> 00:26:15.200 yeah, that that's what I need. I'm gonna go to your church. The other thing that is really in the 00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:20.860 beginning stages, and that we're actually working with them on a couple of places is developing some 00:26:20.860 --> 00:26:25.180 assessments. And I think that's going to be something that's going to get built into a lot of these 00:26:25.180 --> 00:26:29.600 platforms as well that will help with measuring some of the transformation. So you've got some 00:26:29.600 --> 00:26:34.700 kind of pre and post test. So you have the ability when somebody launches or begins to engage in a 00:26:34.700 --> 00:26:38.220 small group online, there's a some kind of an assessment that they take. And then when they've 00:26:38.220 --> 00:26:42.180 completed the season or a six week series or whatever, there's kind of a post assessment. So 00:26:42.180 --> 00:26:47.460 I think that part of what's happening digitally is really growing as well. 00:26:47.940 --> 00:26:48.500 That's good. 00:26:48.660 --> 00:26:54.180 Yeah, I've been running some betas with glue on that assessment and, and, and kind of the, 00:26:54.260 --> 00:26:58.580 the vehicle engine they're building around that. Arguably for me, and I've told them this, 00:26:58.600 --> 00:27:03.640 this is some of the most exciting things I see, honestly, in the church online today, because it's 00:27:03.640 --> 00:27:11.480 starting to now develop a system that I can build a discipleship process around online. And it's not, 00:27:11.480 --> 00:27:15.440 oh, I got to utilize this platform and get it to integrate with this and this and this. And, 00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:20.120 and the data is all over the place and something breaks and on all these different people are 00:27:20.120 --> 00:27:25.460 pointing at each other. Glue's really starting to figure out how to do that and are putting 00:27:25.460 --> 00:27:31.920 something in place that, that any church relatively easily can build a discipleship process in place 00:27:31.920 --> 00:27:34.340 to get people connected online. 00:27:34.900 --> 00:27:39.440 How many churches are actually thinking through that next step process in terms of, hey, so they're 00:27:39.440 --> 00:27:43.900 watching. Now, what's their next step, depending on what platform they're watching on? Is there 00:27:43.900 --> 00:27:48.200 a unified next step? Is there a bunch of different databases kind of roaming around in different 00:27:48.200 --> 00:27:51.880 churches and they're struggling? How are they kind of managing a lot of the concepts? 00:27:52.180 --> 00:27:56.040 That's a good question. It's a, it's early on, I think, in terms of, I would say they, 00:27:56.120 --> 00:28:02.580 most aren't managing it well. You know, we've, again, kind of our leadership network, primary 00:28:02.580 --> 00:28:08.620 client are really large churches. And even the really large churches, as we've worked within the 00:28:08.620 --> 00:28:15.520 data space, you know, they're, they, before they can even actually begin to effectively engage in some 00:28:15.520 --> 00:28:20.080 of this big data, this third party data, they're just trying to get their first and second party data 00:28:20.080 --> 00:28:24.400 right, you know, get their database to a place they even know who it is that's in their, you know, in 00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:29.580 their own church. And so, but I think that there are, you know, there's a, we work with a group of 00:28:29.580 --> 00:28:34.560 churches, probably about 45 churches that I would say are kind of on the front end cutting edge. They're 00:28:34.560 --> 00:28:39.860 the ones who are building out the resources and the tools. They're figuring out how to use data, 00:28:40.020 --> 00:28:45.120 understand, you know, how to close your back door. You know, what are the indicators that somebody's 00:28:45.120 --> 00:28:51.260 about to leave? In terms of ministry, they're building out some propensity kind of profiles 00:28:51.260 --> 00:28:55.980 to help them to understand who are the people in your congregation that, whose marriages are likely 00:28:55.980 --> 00:29:03.040 in trouble. What percentage of your people are that way or in that, in that scenario? As a result, 00:29:03.120 --> 00:29:09.200 what kind of discipleship and tools do we need to put in place? And so a lot of those conversations 00:29:09.200 --> 00:29:14.100 are beginning to happen, but I would say it's, it's still pretty early in the stage. All the assessment 00:29:14.100 --> 00:29:19.540 process that we talked about, that I talked about previously with glue, those are all built 00:29:19.540 --> 00:29:27.520 in such a way that when you complete the survey, based on your responses, there are customized next 00:29:27.520 --> 00:29:32.660 steps that are developed. So based on kind of where you are in the process. And so I think some of that 00:29:32.660 --> 00:29:36.860 next step process is going to be cooked into the assessment tools. We touched on it earlier where 00:29:36.860 --> 00:29:41.680 Church in Line is great for like a front door. These are our visitors, people that don't even know 00:29:43.080 --> 00:29:47.220 who you are and are just trying to really start to learn more about your church. They're interested 00:29:47.220 --> 00:29:55.260 in the side door approach of, of how, okay, I'm traveling, I'm away. I'm a snowbird in Miami Beach, 00:29:55.260 --> 00:30:01.840 who actually is from Canada, back and forth and able to connect with the church that I'm attending 00:30:01.840 --> 00:30:09.040 from, from a distance. When we start to talk about maybe this digital door, maybe these people who are 00:30:09.040 --> 00:30:15.080 not physically in the space, but this is still part of their church. They are engaging in spiritual 00:30:15.080 --> 00:30:22.820 instruction and discipleship, but not in the physical realm. Like what, what needs to happen for the 00:30:22.820 --> 00:30:27.360 church to see this? When we have this conversation, often, at least I do, when I talk with pastors, 00:30:27.360 --> 00:30:33.880 they're like, Hey, that person on the other side of town or in another country, in another time zone, 00:30:33.880 --> 00:30:40.240 that's not my responsibility. All the discipleship that I do is in the physical realm. What, what are 00:30:40.240 --> 00:30:45.780 some hurdles that we need to do to kind of get past that? What advice could you give for some of us in 00:30:45.780 --> 00:30:50.340 the, in the church online realm that maybe see things differently? How, how can we help change this 00:30:50.340 --> 00:30:55.980 culture? Well, I think anytime you're making a, any kind of cultural, anytime you're wanting to make a 00:30:55.980 --> 00:31:02.280 significant shift like that, it's really a culture shift. Um, and anytime you have, you shift a culture, 00:31:02.400 --> 00:31:08.400 the primary way that you do that is through storytelling and giving examples over and over 00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:13.600 and over again of how, you know, how it actually is working. Um, it's the same thing we talked about 00:31:13.600 --> 00:31:19.340 multi-site all the time. You know, if you really want to become a multi-site church, you know, um, you need 00:31:19.340 --> 00:31:24.220 to be talking about not the fact that you're at opening another building, but you're talking about the, 00:31:24.540 --> 00:31:30.840 why you're doing it kind of goes back to the why as well. Um, Chase Oaks church, uh, where Collins 00:31:30.840 --> 00:31:36.060 did as the pastor, I think when they were a master at it and when they started by launch their multi-site 00:31:36.060 --> 00:31:42.920 strategy, their kind of framework was this value of you have to love where you live. And so they said, 00:31:42.960 --> 00:31:47.200 you know, we're going to really live into that value. We can't have people that are driving in 45 00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:52.100 minutes to get to our campus on legacy. We need to be able to allow people to worship and engage, 00:31:52.140 --> 00:31:57.700 you know, in their community. Um, and so I think some of that translates, um, into online as well. 00:31:58.440 --> 00:32:03.480 Um, so anyway, that's, I think that's a big piece of going back to your question. How do you help 00:32:03.480 --> 00:32:08.420 people get to that? It's telling the stories of transformation, telling the stories of where it 00:32:08.420 --> 00:32:13.940 works, an online campus pastor, a senior pastor, whoever the gatekeepers are and the influencers are 00:32:13.940 --> 00:32:19.800 in the context of a church telling those stories of success, um, is, is really, really important and 00:32:19.800 --> 00:32:25.760 key. I agree with that. And I think, um, thinking about it as a funnel is really, really helpful. 00:32:25.760 --> 00:32:30.560 So the reality is if you, if you, you know, the, the purpose of streaming is there's a lot of 00:32:30.560 --> 00:32:35.740 benefits, but if you do stream, there's, you know, 40% of them is what in the report are irregular 00:32:35.740 --> 00:32:39.440 attendees, people that you don't know that, you know, when Seacoast backed up the number, they said 00:32:39.440 --> 00:32:43.920 every time they run anything, you know, 30 to 50%, um, are people that they don't have any, 00:32:44.260 --> 00:32:48.920 track, uh, don't know, aren't in any member database, never filled out a contact card, 00:32:48.920 --> 00:32:54.160 um, et cetera. And like the, and the, the interesting thing about that is like, that's, 00:32:54.160 --> 00:32:58.480 you know, 40, like for most churches are really concerned about growth. So in that funnel, you have 00:32:58.480 --> 00:33:01.660 some of those people that have never been to your church, they're just watching online, right? 00:33:02.080 --> 00:33:06.300 You have some people that if you ask them at a grocery store, they would say, I'm a Chase Oaker or I'm a 00:33:06.300 --> 00:33:10.980 whatever, but they haven't been in three years, right? But they watch online, um, every however long. 00:33:11.160 --> 00:33:13.920 And so I think the question is of like, Hey, what's your strategy for getting 00:33:13.940 --> 00:33:17.380 those out of the funnel? You know, it's, it's probably okay to say some of those we want to 00:33:17.380 --> 00:33:22.140 attend in person, right? Um, but for a lot of those, that's probably not okay to say for whatever 00:33:22.140 --> 00:33:27.860 reason, um, whether they're out of, um, the city and attendant person or whether they just 00:33:27.860 --> 00:33:31.720 personality wise would never come to a church until they receive more transformation or maybe 00:33:31.720 --> 00:33:35.660 never, you know? Um, and then you have, you have all those buckets of people. So I think as a 00:33:35.660 --> 00:33:41.400 church is thinking through, Hey, let's be honest about, you know, 40%, whatever, um, here's the 00:33:41.400 --> 00:33:47.560 funnel. Um, do we have a plan for those different people in different walks of life? Right. So like, 00:33:47.560 --> 00:33:53.040 are we, are we thinking about and trying to shepherd the spiritual development of people that we won't 00:33:53.040 --> 00:33:58.560 ever see, you know? Um, cause that's, that's ours to steward. Um, and so I think I'll be thinking 00:33:58.560 --> 00:34:02.620 about it of, Hey, that's the reality of what's happening. Um, no matter what you believe, 00:34:02.620 --> 00:34:07.740 you know, um, so how can we steward them the best? Yeah. Yeah. And the other cool thing, 00:34:07.960 --> 00:34:11.960 I'll go ahead. I was going to say, uh, because, you know, we, we used to think in terms of that, 00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:16.460 in terms of Christmas and Easter only, and now there's this whole other category of online. 00:34:16.760 --> 00:34:22.620 Right. And so it's interesting. Uh, you guys chat with any churches that actually have a strategy 00:34:22.620 --> 00:34:24.800 for that, or they're at least they're thinking through that process. 00:34:28.460 --> 00:34:32.120 Good question. None that come to mind immediately. Um, 00:34:32.620 --> 00:34:36.500 Yeah. None that come to mind immediately. Um, 00:34:38.360 --> 00:34:42.700 calling anybody that you're engaged with. Yeah. Jeff would know all their names. I sat in the 00:34:42.700 --> 00:34:47.680 session. Um, but there, we did a session basically that what ended up happening. I don't know if 00:34:47.680 --> 00:34:52.340 this was the session title, but we talked about the funnel of church online and how to get from that, 00:34:52.440 --> 00:34:56.220 um, and how people see that. And there's, it's cool. Cause what I, what I think it's happening 00:34:56.220 --> 00:35:01.500 is like the churches that are between 500 and 4,000 people that are really doing the most in that 00:35:01.500 --> 00:35:04.800 cause they're, they're driven with growth, right? They're not, they're not the 10,000 people churches 00:35:04.800 --> 00:35:07.520 that really care about growth, but they're comfortable. You know, it's like the churches 00:35:07.520 --> 00:35:11.400 that are like, we need this to grow. Our senior pastor sees this as like a strategic difference 00:35:11.400 --> 00:35:14.940 of our church, how we're going to see this differently. So Jeff, you probably, I would like 00:35:14.940 --> 00:35:21.160 if you talk to that. Yeah. So we did, we did, uh, it was at the church IT conference and we did a 00:35:21.160 --> 00:35:26.760 podcast. It's, it's redefining the why of church online. And, um, and it's, it's, it's on the podcast. 00:35:26.860 --> 00:35:31.980 I'm not sure what number, but what we really, the, the challenge is, and it's really the biggest hurdle 00:35:31.980 --> 00:35:39.960 with, with church online is trying to figure out who that person is that's watching. Um, you know, 00:35:39.960 --> 00:35:46.320 and so like you can create code, but there's privacy issues. And so like, we want, we want privacy, 00:35:46.320 --> 00:35:51.640 but at the same time, we want to be able to, to access information and figure out how to do ministry 00:35:51.640 --> 00:35:58.100 with them. By the way, like that issue exists at the physical church too. I mean, how many of our 00:35:58.100 --> 00:36:03.680 people sit in the back of the room, completely disconnected during the message and try to haul 00:36:03.680 --> 00:36:09.340 out of that lobby as fast as possible without somebody even saying hi to them. I mean, there's 00:36:09.340 --> 00:36:14.640 a large percentage of people, unless their kids are actually checked in to the, uh, the children's 00:36:14.640 --> 00:36:21.260 ministry and they, or they give, we have no idea who they are. They're not active, um, in members. 00:36:21.260 --> 00:36:26.660 They're not serving. And so the, the challenge of church online when, when people are like, yeah, 00:36:26.660 --> 00:36:30.720 but I don't know who they are. Well, you don't know who they are in the physical realm yet. You 00:36:30.720 --> 00:36:37.380 work hard to figure out how to engage them. You come up with ways, gimmicks, solutions to get them to, 00:36:37.500 --> 00:36:44.780 to join in a group, to, to meet the pastor, to put a face to a name and, and do that. A lot of that, 00:36:44.900 --> 00:36:48.880 there are some churches that are figuring it out. There are a lot more that are, that are trying and 00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:53.160 experimenting different things. But at the end of the day, it's, it's that same intentionality 00:36:53.160 --> 00:36:59.020 towards, I need to figure out who this IP address is because that, that person, that IP address has 00:36:59.020 --> 00:37:04.800 a soul. And as a result of that, I need to spiritually care for that person. Yeah. At the end of the day, 00:37:05.120 --> 00:37:09.280 people have to raise their hand, right? In the digital world to be able to say, yeah, I want to be 00:37:09.280 --> 00:37:15.060 contacted. So I think, you know, I think some of the churches that are doing a good job of trying to 00:37:15.060 --> 00:37:21.480 figure out how to get, help people raise their hand, um, are approaching it from a little bit 00:37:21.480 --> 00:37:26.200 different perspectives. So again, I'm going back to Crossroads. I've been going back to dipping in 00:37:26.200 --> 00:37:30.700 that well a little bit, you know, but they have a series of podcasts that they do now that are 00:37:30.700 --> 00:37:39.620 specifically targeted at different demographics. So one is targeted at, um, women who are in executive 00:37:39.620 --> 00:37:44.960 leadership. Wow. And it's primarily a podcast that's around, I mean, it's around, you know, 00:37:44.960 --> 00:37:49.900 things serve, things that would serve someone who's a woman and leading in a, in a company in some form 00:37:49.900 --> 00:37:56.880 or fashion. So they're serving that, that person, um, and then weaving in through that, the opportunity 00:37:56.880 --> 00:38:00.920 for people, for them to be able to talk about what they do at Crossroads and why that makes a difference. 00:38:00.920 --> 00:38:07.160 And then people have had that felt need made, have that felt need met, and they're going to be more 00:38:07.160 --> 00:38:12.700 likely to raise their hand to figure out how to be connected with on a, on another level. Um, so I think 00:38:12.700 --> 00:38:17.660 that some of those kinds of things are really key. I think the other thing though, is we do, there are 00:38:17.660 --> 00:38:23.780 a lot of people that show up online that we do have information on. Um, and so it's figuring out how we 00:38:23.780 --> 00:38:30.440 create the system for a digital solution, much like the analog solution that I use back when I was in my 00:38:30.440 --> 00:38:35.980 very first church in a long time ago. And we had, we had this, one of my responsibilities as associate 00:38:35.980 --> 00:38:42.460 was to follow up on the people that were irregular attenders. Um, and so I had this process that I 00:38:42.460 --> 00:38:48.060 developed where I would, you know, regularly call these people. Um, and it was a, it was in some ways 00:38:48.060 --> 00:38:53.700 it was a little bit like a drip campaign. If you put it, if you put it in today's, uh, uh, in, in today's 00:38:53.700 --> 00:38:58.080 vernacular, because it just, every once in a while, they'd get a note from me, or they get a call from me, 00:38:58.080 --> 00:39:02.180 or they get some kind of, I'd drop by their house back in the day when people actually visited, your 00:39:02.180 --> 00:39:08.260 pastors visited your, your, your home and I'd leave my business card or whatever. But over time, um, 00:39:08.260 --> 00:39:13.180 probably some of the most significant ministry experiences I had as an associate in that church 00:39:13.180 --> 00:39:18.240 came from some of those people because I'd had this ongoing kind of contact with them. And whenever 00:39:18.240 --> 00:39:22.680 there was a crisis in their life or something they had, somebody was going to want to get married 00:39:22.680 --> 00:39:26.800 or whatever, there was a big, they knew they had somebody to call. And so I think that that's 00:39:26.800 --> 00:39:30.060 the thing we have to think in another place we have to think about in terms of next steps 00:39:30.060 --> 00:39:37.300 and continuing to nurture people is how do we, uh, how do we help people be exposed to the 00:39:37.300 --> 00:39:40.220 opportunities for next steps for those that we do know as well? 00:39:40.820 --> 00:39:45.940 And I think this is where hiring a digital marketer for that role is really good because they think 00:39:45.940 --> 00:39:50.600 through, you know, buckets of people online. Right. And they think through, and it's all about, 00:39:50.660 --> 00:39:56.500 you know, getting people to interact is all about personalization and workflows. Um, people can do that 00:39:56.500 --> 00:40:00.360 really well. I mean, right now there's, if you hire a good digital marketer, they'll know like right 00:40:00.360 --> 00:40:03.740 now there's something that you can get that it probably won't last very long, but you can get 00:40:03.740 --> 00:40:08.520 the personal email address of like 80% of the people coming to your site. Um, and you can match 00:40:08.520 --> 00:40:12.640 that and you can email them even if they don't give you their info. Um, which is like probably total 00:40:12.640 --> 00:40:17.200 privacy, you know, rule, but then like, that's what businesses are doing. Right. And so you've got to 00:40:17.200 --> 00:40:23.040 decide like, Hey, what's, what's okay for me to do versus whatever. Um, and then break down that law, 00:40:23.040 --> 00:40:27.200 but at least have someone that knows, um, how to connect with someone digitally and, and, 00:40:27.200 --> 00:40:32.900 and workflows, um, and have paths and thought through paths digitally, um, for each person 00:40:32.900 --> 00:40:37.120 that's coming. Cause taking that person, um, that's just, that's just visiting your site. You 00:40:37.120 --> 00:40:40.380 don't, you don't want to do it on the fourth or fifth visit. You want to do it on the first 00:40:40.380 --> 00:40:42.940 visit. You want to have them engaged. Cause you know, that's the only time they might come. 00:40:42.940 --> 00:40:47.460 Right. There's huge drop off rates after that. Um, and so you need, you need someone to think 00:40:47.460 --> 00:40:51.960 through, okay, the first person, this, this person's coming, are they in this, what's the best way to engage 00:40:51.960 --> 00:40:57.740 them? You know, are they in this boat? Are they, um, someone that's, um, elderly in a, in a, you 00:40:57.740 --> 00:41:00.580 know, nursery home? Are they someone that's watching? That's not a believer. That's never 00:41:00.580 --> 00:41:04.460 attended church before. Let's check it out. You know, and then if so, you know, you interact 00:41:04.460 --> 00:41:08.360 with those people in different ways. And, um, and there's, there's a lot of great smart ways 00:41:08.360 --> 00:41:12.880 that churches are doing to, to get those to engage, um, and move. Yeah. 00:41:14.340 --> 00:41:19.300 So let's, let's jump in our, our DeLoreans. Let's get in our time machines and go 10 years 00:41:19.300 --> 00:41:26.280 in the future. 20, 20, 29. What, what trends, what is church online going to look at then? 00:41:26.380 --> 00:41:31.500 What is, um, you know, we're seeing micro churches now we're seeing some start to start with, uh, 00:41:31.760 --> 00:41:37.180 with kids ministry and starting to explore in that space. Um, what's church online going to 00:41:37.180 --> 00:41:45.320 look like in 20, 29? Anybody? Everyone's quiet because everybody will be wrong if we videotaped 00:41:45.320 --> 00:41:52.760 this. I'm okay. Well, I mean, I have a very limited sample size, two conversations I've had, 00:41:53.080 --> 00:42:02.140 actually three, um, two conversations and then one application. So I, I talked with, um, the, uh, 00:42:02.140 --> 00:42:10.060 pursuit church, um, Angela Craig, excuse me, pursuit church live. And it's a totally online 00:42:10.060 --> 00:42:16.640 campus. Um, fascinating things that they're doing. They have, uh, they have an amazing international 00:42:16.640 --> 00:42:22.640 reach, 45 countries, 43 languages, uh, 49% of the people that are logging in are coming in 00:42:22.640 --> 00:42:30.300 from developing countries. And so I think we're going to see some online campuses that, um, that 00:42:30.300 --> 00:42:37.400 are, uh, never moved from being online. Um, they have, uh, they have a reach, they have an opportunity 00:42:37.400 --> 00:42:41.900 to connect in some unique ways. They're, they're beginning to talk about, you know, development of 00:42:41.900 --> 00:42:47.100 their teams. They're putting together an academy to help train people, you know, how to lead in this 00:42:47.100 --> 00:42:53.300 kind of context. I think we're going to see, uh, more and more of those. Um, I also, you know, I, 00:42:53.360 --> 00:42:58.840 I was a little bit skeptical when I, um, uh, went and spoke with, or didn't go and spoke with, 00:42:58.840 --> 00:43:04.660 but I had a conversation with, um, uh, virtual reality church. I'm drawing a blank now on his 00:43:04.660 --> 00:43:05.560 name. Help me, Jeff. 00:43:05.560 --> 00:43:06.560 DJ Soto. 00:43:06.880 --> 00:43:07.520 DJ Soto. 00:43:07.980 --> 00:43:16.520 Yeah, DJ. Um, but I think it was fascinating for me to hear him talk about, um, the, not so, 00:43:16.520 --> 00:43:22.380 not so much the virtual reality side of things and the technology, uh, but just the way they're 00:43:22.380 --> 00:43:29.280 thinking through that. So he was, he's even talking about the different platforms. So there, um, the, 00:43:29.420 --> 00:43:35.860 uh, one of their primary, uh, virtual reality platforms, he kind of equated that to a mega 00:43:35.860 --> 00:43:39.800 church kind of model. Cause it was kind of the most well-developed and you have the ability 00:43:39.800 --> 00:43:44.600 to do all these special, uh, kind of things, event registration and all these different kinds 00:43:44.600 --> 00:43:48.040 of things. It's kind of this mega church kind of model. And then he said, they also have a 00:43:48.040 --> 00:43:51.380 lot of people are on this other platform whose name I don't remember right now, but he said, 00:43:51.480 --> 00:43:55.480 that's kind of more like a house church, you know, kind of model, um, because it's a little 00:43:55.480 --> 00:44:01.260 bit, um, it's a little bit scaled back. It's a little bit kind of more organic. Um, he's talking 00:44:01.260 --> 00:44:06.180 about the new platform. That's kind of the new Facebook, uh, virtual reality platforms. He said, 00:44:06.180 --> 00:44:12.040 we think that will be kind of a new model as well. And he even began to talk about it in terms of 00:44:12.040 --> 00:44:18.800 launching either new campuses or planting new communities, um, by using these different kinds 00:44:18.800 --> 00:44:25.380 of technology. So I think the virtual reality thing, um, has the potential to begin to gain some 00:44:25.380 --> 00:44:30.440 traction over the next 10 years. Um, it was probably 10 years back now, maybe a little bit longer than 00:44:30.440 --> 00:44:35.560 that when Life.Church, uh, Bobby Grunwald and those guys, you know, had a developed, uh, was it called 00:44:35.560 --> 00:44:39.900 Second Life or something like that? Second Life. Yeah, it was maybe more like 15. You know, it was 00:44:39.900 --> 00:44:45.240 pretty, um, it was of course way advanced for its time, but it was still pretty clunky. And, uh, I think 00:44:45.240 --> 00:44:49.500 the advances that have been made in the last 10 years will only accelerate over the next 10. 00:44:49.940 --> 00:44:54.120 I want to, I want to ask a question and forgive me if I'm getting personal because, because I'm really, 00:44:54.180 --> 00:45:00.000 I want to try to figure this out because I'm, I'm all about the digital church and maybe culture isn't ready. 00:45:00.440 --> 00:45:06.340 For us to accept the idea of a digital only church. But I think that from a theological standpoint, 00:45:06.340 --> 00:45:11.180 it's there. It's just going to take time for acceptance. Greg, you asked a question. And when 00:45:11.180 --> 00:45:17.020 you said that you went in a little hesitant, where did that hesitation come from? And at what point 00:45:17.020 --> 00:45:21.300 did that kind of appease for you? Help me. You're a little older. You have a good perspective. I'm not 00:45:21.300 --> 00:45:25.520 dating you. I'm sorry. But you're very kind, a little older. I'll take that. A little older, 00:45:25.760 --> 00:45:31.780 gracious here. Um, but, but tell me about that. Help me unpack here. So like, what was the concerns 00:45:31.780 --> 00:45:35.840 and, and how did it dissipate or, or did it like, where do you stand today? 00:45:36.660 --> 00:45:41.940 Yeah. So I think that it was interesting because one of the things that I, when I interviewed him, 00:45:41.940 --> 00:45:47.560 I asked him what was surprising to him or what was surprising to others whenever they had conversations 00:45:47.560 --> 00:45:53.120 with him. Um, and he said, well, most people think that when they hear about virtual reality church, 00:45:53.120 --> 00:45:58.440 that it's just fun. It's a bunch of, you know, punks that are gamers, you know, that are, that's all 00:45:58.440 --> 00:46:04.100 they, they're living in this virtual reality. And he said, actually our, you know, the demographics of 00:46:04.100 --> 00:46:10.980 those that are participating in our online church, the average age is like 42. And there are leaders 00:46:10.980 --> 00:46:16.800 that, that are actually leading and they're trained to lead are in that kind of forties age range as well. 00:46:17.560 --> 00:46:22.880 I think I just probably in general, I had this perception about virtual reality as being this 00:46:22.880 --> 00:46:31.200 gamer kind of thing. Not really, um, I'm not really real. Uh, I think that, you know, for me, 00:46:31.200 --> 00:46:38.080 it's probably still going to be, um, there's, it's still going to be a process of transformation. 00:46:38.080 --> 00:46:41.880 I don't know that I'll ever get to the place where I'm going to feel comfortable just going to a 00:46:41.880 --> 00:46:46.380 virtual reality church or only going to an online church for that matter. Because I do think there 00:46:46.380 --> 00:46:52.200 are some, um, when, when the opportunity affords itself, there are some things that can happen, 00:46:52.200 --> 00:46:59.460 um, um, in a, in a face-to-face kind of conversation, uh, that don't happen online. 00:47:00.120 --> 00:47:05.760 Um, so that's probably, you know, I may be showing my age, I may be, but, um, I think there's some of 00:47:05.760 --> 00:47:10.180 those kinds of realities. The other thing that was kind of fascinating to me when I talked with, um, 00:47:10.180 --> 00:47:18.480 Angela at pursuitchurch.live, which makes total sense to me, um, because they don't do any kind 00:47:18.480 --> 00:47:22.680 of visual kind of thing. And I think it's, you're just, you're logging on, but you're totally anonymous. 00:47:22.680 --> 00:47:26.940 You may, I think you may have an avatar or whatever that you develop, but you're totally anonymous. 00:47:27.620 --> 00:47:32.840 Um, and so she had actually, she's up in the Pacific Northwest and she had a gathering where she 00:47:32.840 --> 00:47:38.760 invited people to actually come physically, um, into, to come together for a physical gathering. 00:47:39.280 --> 00:47:45.140 Um, and she said, what was so fascinating was the diversity of the people that showed up. 00:47:45.940 --> 00:47:54.660 Um, and people had no idea, um, age diversity, uh, theological diversity, ethnicity, diversity, 00:47:54.880 --> 00:48:00.720 socioeconomic diversity, um, a lot of people with handicaps, you know, that they physically 00:48:00.720 --> 00:48:06.380 couldn't participate in a church on a regular basis. And so this had kind of opened up the world 00:48:06.380 --> 00:48:11.780 of church and a, um, a relationship with Christ and an opportunity and community, um, in some really 00:48:11.780 --> 00:48:18.780 significant ways. And so, um, I don't think, I don't anticipate, uh, that it will ever become the 00:48:18.780 --> 00:48:24.760 only mode for doing church, either of those, but I do think it has the potential to increase as being 00:48:24.760 --> 00:48:30.960 an amazingly effective way to reach people and allow people to be in a process of transformation 00:48:30.960 --> 00:48:36.060 and discipleship. Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate the time, uh, Colin, Greg, in any, uh, 00:48:36.060 --> 00:48:40.500 closing thoughts as we land the plane. Yeah, I think, um, you know, church is historically very 00:48:40.500 --> 00:48:46.100 long behind culture change. And, you know, when you look at the 20 and 30 and 40 year olds, 00:48:46.320 --> 00:48:51.200 just the way their behavior changing is that they go home and watch Netflix, right. Um, and many less 00:48:51.200 --> 00:48:55.820 people are getting out. And so if we think about how church drives change for that, it gets interesting, 00:48:55.980 --> 00:48:59.020 you know, like who knows what it'll look like in 10 years, but it does get interesting. You know, 00:48:59.020 --> 00:49:02.820 when you look at the behavior shifts happening now, and, um, if we want to meet people, 00:49:03.060 --> 00:49:07.440 uh, if we want to reach people, we got to meet them where they're at, you know, um, they're not going 00:49:07.440 --> 00:49:12.100 to come to a building if that's the only place they go to every week, you know, um, that has social 00:49:12.100 --> 00:49:17.440 reaction. I mean, that's just unrealistic to think, you know, that's so scary. Um, so I'm really excited 00:49:17.440 --> 00:49:22.180 that, um, churches are rethinking kind of, Hey, what, what does culture look and what does it look 00:49:22.180 --> 00:49:26.140 like to be Jesus to the culture? And it's, it's really cool to get to see that happen all over the world. 00:49:26.140 --> 00:49:31.280 And, and small examples like virtual reality church and, and bigger examples. And it's just, 00:49:31.280 --> 00:49:36.100 it's evident that God that move in the digital world, and it's really fun to get to get to watch 00:49:36.100 --> 00:49:38.080 it. So if you're, if you're doing it, please continue. 00:49:38.080 --> 00:49:45.640 I think it's a, it's an opportunity for us to, um, it's a tool that God has provided for us to be 00:49:45.640 --> 00:49:51.220 able to engage, um, different groups of people in ways that we haven't been able to do just as 00:49:51.220 --> 00:49:56.360 the other, you know, major technology transformations all the way back to the printing press, you know, 00:49:56.360 --> 00:50:00.840 have done. So I think it gives us the opportunity to do that. I think it's interesting too, to think 00:50:00.840 --> 00:50:07.080 about, um, the fact that I think it would be, I think there could be a natural tendency for us, 00:50:07.260 --> 00:50:12.540 for many churches to say, okay, I've got to have an online campus or online, you know, service or 00:50:12.540 --> 00:50:19.220 online experience. I'm going to do that in some ways they end up, um, not thinking through it deeply 00:50:19.220 --> 00:50:24.800 enough to understand what uniquely has to happen in that online experience. And maybe even how that 00:50:24.800 --> 00:50:31.460 online experience shows up online. That may not be as an online church. Um, it may be in some other 00:50:31.460 --> 00:50:36.900 digital kind of expression, um, where people are living, uh, that, you know, as you said, calling 00:50:36.900 --> 00:50:41.000 people go home and watch Netflix. Um, there's probably not a whole lot of those that are unchurched 00:50:41.000 --> 00:50:44.980 that go home and look for an online, for an online church service somewhere. So I think that, 00:50:45.220 --> 00:50:53.020 that hard work of really understanding how you, um, make an online experience, one that will actually 00:50:53.020 --> 00:50:58.940 intersect with where people are living, um, I think is a really important thing for churches to think 00:50:58.940 --> 00:51:05.600 about as well. Yeah, you got to have a strategy behind it. And so with that strategy comes intentionality 00:51:05.600 --> 00:51:11.880 to figure out who you are as a church and what that representation looks like online. My challenge 00:51:11.880 --> 00:51:17.460 is, is that if you're broadcasting services, you should be considering a discipleship process because 00:51:17.460 --> 00:51:23.140 you're missionally engaging people anywhere around the world. And if somebody gets saved, 00:51:23.140 --> 00:51:27.400 there has to be some sort of an intentional discipleship process, small groups, next step, 00:51:27.480 --> 00:51:31.920 something for them to, to get further in. But no, those are very good words, Greg. Thank you for that. 00:51:32.240 --> 00:51:33.880 Hey, Ray, as we're wrapping, anything on your end? 00:51:33.880 --> 00:51:38.580 Yeah, just to piggyback on what you're saying, Jeff, you know, so many churches don't really think through 00:51:38.580 --> 00:51:42.360 the discipleship process on the onset anyways. It's an important factor. You know, they think 00:51:42.360 --> 00:51:46.600 about having small groups, they think about having messages, and not even just in an online 00:51:46.600 --> 00:51:50.600 environment, but even in their in-person environments. And so that next step, especially 00:51:50.600 --> 00:51:55.400 as we enter a new decade where engagement is really the driving force. And, you know, 00:51:55.400 --> 00:52:00.560 we've talked about that often, um, how churches need to understand better. And we all need to work 00:52:00.560 --> 00:52:05.580 harder at helping people through those next steps, whether it's in person or even through digital 00:52:05.580 --> 00:52:10.260 platforms and thinking about how they are the same next step, no matter which environment they're 00:52:10.260 --> 00:52:15.880 engaging in. And so, you know, my hope and my challenge and listen, guys, great study, very 00:52:15.880 --> 00:52:21.360 encouraging stuff. Um, good things to hear. Our hope is that more leaders, more church leaders take a 00:52:21.360 --> 00:52:25.880 look at their next steps and think through how that can happen on all platforms in person included. 00:52:25.880 --> 00:52:31.880 Yeah. And we don't want to downplay the streaming and what's involved in that. It's definitely a part 00:52:31.880 --> 00:52:35.620 of it. By the way, if you're not, I'm going to do cheap commercial for Colin, because I'm not going 00:52:35.620 --> 00:52:40.500 to give him time to, if you're not involving living as one, uh, in your streaming process, you 00:52:40.500 --> 00:52:45.980 certainly should. Uh, I can't tell you how many hours of sleep I've lost on bad streaming solutions. 00:52:46.420 --> 00:52:51.420 Living as one solved many problems for many, many churches that I work with and others, 00:52:51.420 --> 00:52:56.520 and you should too. Colin, is that where commercial wise you good thumbs up? Yeah. Good. Awesome. 00:52:56.940 --> 00:53:03.240 So living as one.com and of course, leader, leadership network, lead net.org. I think we've 00:53:03.240 --> 00:53:11.560 .org, right. Um, phenomenal organization that's helping push forward, uh, the cause of big C church. 00:53:12.020 --> 00:53:17.880 Um, at very, very impressed. I've loved the stuff that I've done with them in the past and even seeing 00:53:17.880 --> 00:53:22.800 the stuff that's coming out now is phenomenal. So Greg, Colin, thank you very much for being here 00:53:22.800 --> 00:53:26.800 and being a part of this. Ray, once again, thanks for jumping on. This is Jeff with the church digital. 00:53:27.180 --> 00:53:30.760 Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time at the church digital podcast. Y'all have a good day.