WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.620 episode 42 of the church digital podcast we get a lot packed into this episode here 00:00:04.620 --> 00:00:10.280 you know some of the most fun we have here on the church digital is when we pack a bunch of people 00:00:10.280 --> 00:00:16.520 on a call or in our room somewhere and basically just talk church online stuff what's working 00:00:16.520 --> 00:00:22.120 what's not working what are we going to try next stuff like that well this is essentially what 00:00:22.120 --> 00:00:27.200 we've done in this week's episode we brought together five people from around the country 00:00:27.200 --> 00:00:34.640 who are doing some sort of church online and let them talk and basically learn from each other 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:40.340 figuring out what to do next the best part is we brought in people from different denominations 00:00:40.340 --> 00:00:47.800 different strategies even different sizes of church together for this conversation from a 20,000 00:00:47.800 --> 00:00:54.380 person giga church all the way down to a sub 100 person church plant we hit on different topics in 00:00:54.380 --> 00:01:00.680 the conversation from creating community discipleship volunteering micro locations and did finally did 00:01:00.680 --> 00:01:06.320 somebody say digital church if you want to skip around the podcast to hear certain topics feel free 00:01:06.320 --> 00:01:12.280 we've included the time code in the show notes so you can dive in there by the way these are the types 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:18.260 of conversations we have regularly with church online people if you're interested in jumping into a church 00:01:18.260 --> 00:01:26.540 online cohort just like this get more information at the church dot digital i'll let the guests introduce 00:01:26.540 --> 00:01:33.520 themselves in a minute but for now let's go ahead and welcome to the podcast andy mage mark brant tj winters 00:01:33.520 --> 00:01:43.020 adrian feldman and joe radicevich in the first of hopefully many church online cohorts hey everybody here you go 00:01:43.020 --> 00:01:47.340 hey mark why don't you take a minute introduce yourself your church online ministry tell us a little bit 00:01:47.340 --> 00:01:52.560 about yourself sure mark brant digital outreach minister for lutheran church of hope in west des moines 00:01:52.560 --> 00:02:03.480 iowa we're a church of around 20 000 plus members six campuses five micro sites about 12 000 annual 00:02:03.480 --> 00:02:09.880 worship or average worship and we started streaming about five years ago which is about the time that i came on 00:02:09.880 --> 00:02:16.360 board with our online ministry and um my real heart has been to start and get people connected uh that 00:02:16.360 --> 00:02:21.700 can't or don't live near one of our current campuses so the idea of those uh micro sites is really where 00:02:21.700 --> 00:02:26.800 my heart beats is just connecting people to the larger church story it's awesome so mark's up in in iowa 00:02:26.800 --> 00:02:34.040 at a arguably giga church up at that level and then we got tj uh down in san antonio san tj why don't you 00:02:34.040 --> 00:02:38.760 just tell us a little bit about yourself yeah my name is tj winters i am at concordia lutheran church 00:02:38.760 --> 00:02:46.440 in san antonio texas and um we have been around for 60 plus years um we've been streaming actually 00:02:46.440 --> 00:02:54.040 very early so we started streaming in 2005 using windows media video and a pc for like 10 people a 00:02:54.040 --> 00:03:00.240 sunday you know and it's just grown since then we've really taken um the church online focus uh 00:03:00.240 --> 00:03:06.120 has become a forefront over the past few years more than just streaming um but we've gone through a lot of 00:03:06.120 --> 00:03:11.820 a lot of hurdles a lot of growth uh challenges you know with with mobile coming into play and stuff and 00:03:11.820 --> 00:03:15.940 it's awesome to be where we are today where we can just hit go and the tech is the least of the 00:03:15.940 --> 00:03:22.620 problems now we get to focus discipleship follow-up community things like that so that's awesome we've 00:03:22.620 --> 00:03:27.940 come a long way from windows media player real networks do you remember that that was i don't even 00:03:27.940 --> 00:03:32.760 know if that was around in 2005 but like that was the the prerequisite to some of that stuff and that 00:03:32.760 --> 00:03:36.900 was that was crazy and some millennial somewhere is like what but that's that's another conversation 00:03:36.900 --> 00:03:45.060 uh then we've got uh adrian who's in kentucky i want to say yeah right yes i did something right 00:03:45.060 --> 00:03:51.560 kentucky a little bit about yourself um my name is adrian feldman i'm at northeast christian church 00:03:51.560 --> 00:03:59.160 in louisville kentucky actually our very first online campus pastor we started streaming our services like 00:03:59.160 --> 00:04:04.080 three years ago but it's really been just pushing play and letting people watch the services for a long 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:13.240 time so my job actually i started as an intern in january uh in bible college and i wrote the plan for 00:04:13.240 --> 00:04:18.820 how we were going to go from just online streams into an online campus and they said hey do you want 00:04:18.820 --> 00:04:26.000 a job and i said okay so i'm here kind of trying to translate that from just streaming to a full 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:30.460 fledged campus and match that with kind of our church's dna so yeah i mean you're beginning to see 00:04:30.460 --> 00:04:35.560 some of the um the the paradigms here where you've got you know some larger established church has been 00:04:35.560 --> 00:04:41.100 doing it a long time then you got adrian who's coming at this literally she was an intern what a 00:04:41.100 --> 00:04:48.600 year ago six months ago yeah yeah and and now she's she's running her own show uh and now we've got 00:04:48.600 --> 00:04:55.780 andy mage from the tampa area so andy tell us a little bit about uh your church down there your 00:04:55.780 --> 00:05:02.400 ministry sure yeah i am the online campus pastor for bay hope church uh formerly van dyke united 00:05:02.400 --> 00:05:09.480 methodist we are a methodist church uh we're uh we've got what three campuses about four micro sites 00:05:09.480 --> 00:05:15.360 uh we run about three thousand to four thousand on a weekend that type of thing like tj we were very 00:05:15.360 --> 00:05:22.080 early into streaming um uh bay hopes been streaming since 2006 2007 right around there like tj the tech 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:26.940 is the least of the worries right now they brought me on actually i was a worship pastor for 10 years 00:05:26.940 --> 00:05:35.320 not 12 years but 10 of them full time and they brought me on um to be the pastor over this this 00:05:35.320 --> 00:05:41.820 brand new wing kind of the they they saw this opportunity for digital discipleship and that's 00:05:41.820 --> 00:05:47.860 kind of where i'm at is i've been in the job six or seven months now and it's uh we're getting to form 00:05:47.860 --> 00:05:52.980 community we're getting to form groups we're getting to form relationships in this weird online context and 00:05:52.980 --> 00:05:58.880 it's so rewarding and it's so challenging all at the same time so and just to continue to develop up this uh 00:05:58.880 --> 00:06:03.240 this cohort here we're putting together i wanted to bring in a unique perspective as well because we've 00:06:03.240 --> 00:06:08.160 got different size churches different places and maybe ministry experience we've got joe radicevich 00:06:08.160 --> 00:06:14.100 coming in from belgium wisconsin i wanted to give joe a chance maybe to set and explain a little bit 00:06:14.100 --> 00:06:20.260 about who he is and where he is in ministry uh so my name is joe radicevich i am the lead and only 00:06:20.260 --> 00:06:27.200 pastor of belgium community church in belgium wisconsin this is a church plant we had 55 people on sunday 00:06:27.200 --> 00:06:34.360 and we use really online tools to extend our reach really all throughout our area this is an area where 00:06:34.360 --> 00:06:41.700 most churches have closed their doors most and most if not many towns have no christian church at all 00:06:41.700 --> 00:06:46.280 it's kind of strange to be in an area where lots of people have never heard the gospel that doesn't 00:06:46.280 --> 00:06:51.360 make any sense to them if they wanted to go to a church there's not a church to go to so we this is 00:06:51.360 --> 00:06:56.500 actually a church that closed its doors we restarted after a year and a half we restarted so as a church 00:06:56.500 --> 00:07:02.300 plant i've just been in conversations with jeff because we kind of function as an online church 00:07:02.300 --> 00:07:06.880 with a physical campus because that extends our reach on our ability to disciple all week 00:07:06.880 --> 00:07:14.000 so because we're small and i'm the only pastor that means that some things that would take a chain 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:18.260 of command to do it we can just say hey it sounds good let's try it so that's kind of where we're at 00:07:18.260 --> 00:07:22.940 yeah i love i love the small church that's being willing to experiment but we've got a really 00:07:22.940 --> 00:07:32.180 kind of rich structure here from a 20 000 person multi-site church uh all the way down to a 66 maybe 00:07:32.180 --> 00:07:39.380 55 person church plant all looking to utilize church online uh and all looking to do online ministry in 00:07:39.380 --> 00:07:45.420 different ways and so i want to open it up i want to start talking through some things and um and just see 00:07:45.420 --> 00:07:50.840 where we get to so there were five topics that we we hit on um that all of you said hey these are the 00:07:50.840 --> 00:07:55.760 goals and as i started to group them together there were five kind of key topics that came up from it 00:07:55.760 --> 00:08:04.040 the first one of it uh was creating community creating community and so adrian um you were one of those 00:08:04.040 --> 00:08:07.900 who said that you were like that was something that you wanted to work on maybe tell us a little bit 00:08:07.900 --> 00:08:15.560 about what you're hoping to do what you're hoping to achieve as a church that hasn't really spent a lot 00:08:15.560 --> 00:08:21.680 of time with an actual online campus we've just been doing streams like i said earlier um online 00:08:21.680 --> 00:08:27.320 community is something well community in general not even online community is not something that we 00:08:27.320 --> 00:08:34.920 have done very well as an online campus so for 2020 we have some really big goals to 00:08:34.920 --> 00:08:39.760 start creating i mean i know a lot of people are doing this but creating facebook groups so that 00:08:39.760 --> 00:08:44.440 we can start getting our people together on a regular basis so that they're talking to each other and 00:08:44.440 --> 00:08:52.260 really starting to get to know each other um and and then from there we're hoping to not far into 2020 00:08:52.260 --> 00:08:58.680 launch some real community groups that exist both in the digital space but also face to face from 00:08:58.680 --> 00:09:04.920 meeting in the digital space so that's where we're headed this year um community is something that is 00:09:04.920 --> 00:09:10.320 vital to the online church you know it's really easy to get in this mode where you're just watching 00:09:10.320 --> 00:09:16.740 church every weekend face to screen and not ever taking that opportunity to plug in and i think the 00:09:16.740 --> 00:09:22.540 online church has a really cool opportunity to connect a lot more frequently than most of our people who 00:09:22.540 --> 00:09:29.340 come every weekend to our campuses really get to do who have you guys who else is working on on community 00:09:29.340 --> 00:09:36.820 um andy why don't you talk a little bit about that yeah so it's funny adrian i um our back when i 00:09:36.820 --> 00:09:43.400 stepped into this position here our social media coordinator uh this brilliant brilliant uh lady named 00:09:43.400 --> 00:09:48.160 jessica she had had that same idea hey we're going to set up a group it was just a it was an online campus 00:09:48.160 --> 00:09:52.820 quote-unquote group and it was around for a couple months and she just started inviting people that 00:09:52.820 --> 00:09:57.760 were normally involved in any sort of chat that we had and it was really rudimentary at the time 00:09:57.760 --> 00:10:02.560 we had like 30 people so it was just like this kind of core group of people i stepped in and i said 00:10:02.560 --> 00:10:07.160 okay that's great we need to really start pushing that and so we've you know we've grown we have like 00:10:07.160 --> 00:10:11.580 just under 300 people right now it's great it's fine it's awesome it is what it is but it's the 00:10:11.580 --> 00:10:17.600 how do we keep them connected throughout the week type of mentality and what i've found and what 00:10:17.600 --> 00:10:26.060 i'm trying to do in 2020 is to be um less intentional about the things i say and more intentional about 00:10:26.060 --> 00:10:31.800 engaging with people on their level because i came in with this sort of blistering mentality hey i'm 00:10:31.800 --> 00:10:36.380 gonna i'm gonna uh bazooka down this wall and everybody's gonna be best friends and we're all 00:10:36.380 --> 00:10:39.960 gonna want to get coffee with each other except we all live all over the country and all over the world 00:10:39.960 --> 00:10:45.840 and what i've found is the organic creation of community will happen you just need to give it time 00:10:45.840 --> 00:10:52.200 i'm not i'm not very time friendly i i like to i'm very type a and very thousand miles an hour 00:10:52.200 --> 00:10:57.080 you know one of the things that i'm trying to be intentional about in 2020 is is letting that that 00:10:57.080 --> 00:11:06.340 community organize itself and then pastoring into that and over that instead of um doing the thing 00:11:06.340 --> 00:11:11.300 that i did so my wife and i and this is gonna be a quick little story my wife and i um back when i was 00:11:11.300 --> 00:11:16.320 worship leading we stepped away from worship ministry to open a non-profit faith-based gym 00:11:16.320 --> 00:11:21.300 and it was kind of this crossfit high intensity type gym and we were very intentional about community 00:11:21.300 --> 00:11:25.500 building then and that's how the gym grew and jim's still around all these other things and so we had to 00:11:25.500 --> 00:11:30.720 force meetings and gatherings and all these other things and we had this very tangible very 00:11:30.720 --> 00:11:35.140 present present thing of hey you guys are doing these intense workouts you're suffering your 00:11:35.140 --> 00:11:39.700 brothers and sisters in arms type thing we don't really have that shared experience in the online 00:11:39.700 --> 00:11:44.240 community realm we have that maybe one hour that everybody's watching something and then we have the 00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:49.300 rest of the week where we need to let things happen and so i i just want to see things bubble up 00:11:49.300 --> 00:11:54.200 throughout the rest of the year and and and respond into that is there is there an intentionality shift 00:11:54.200 --> 00:12:00.820 though when you do something like that like if you want to intentionally like create a community 365 days a year 00:12:00.820 --> 00:12:07.560 but your your main vehicle for creating contents the weekend services that happens you know one hour on 00:12:07.560 --> 00:12:13.760 sunday like you're going to run out of content for that that 365 like how are how are you intentionality 00:12:13.760 --> 00:12:20.460 or how do we intentionality create community 365 days a year so the plan that we've been outlining with 00:12:20.460 --> 00:12:26.740 our comms and our creative team has been to create content such that it creates conversation 00:12:26.740 --> 00:12:34.620 and what i mean by that is we're kind of creating videos podcasts reading blog you know things that 00:12:34.620 --> 00:12:42.320 will intentionally ask one big question each time and that one big question is then does that so i'll 00:12:42.320 --> 00:12:47.820 give you an example um we're making um this entire video series for the none of the above the nuns is 00:12:47.820 --> 00:12:53.760 what we're calling it this this video series on sexuality and and and the bible and spirituality you know 00:12:53.760 --> 00:12:57.780 all the things all the questions that the nuns are answering and we have a we have a couple of really 00:12:57.780 --> 00:13:03.240 brilliant graphic designers um our one of our junior designers she's actually not a believer which is 00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:08.700 really cool uh to have on our staff and she's kind of just fresh out of college and all this other 00:13:08.700 --> 00:13:12.900 things and she loves our church and loves the people and loves but she she lives in that world that she 00:13:12.900 --> 00:13:17.640 doesn't really believe in jesus and yet she still wants to be around us and so we started asking her hey 00:13:17.640 --> 00:13:23.660 what is so um beautiful what do you what do you like about this and so she started answering 00:13:23.660 --> 00:13:30.060 so our director of communications he said huh we can do a thing on that and so we're creating a video 00:13:30.060 --> 00:13:33.640 series on that and i'm i'll be starring and we'll have other people that are kind of answering these 00:13:33.640 --> 00:13:39.020 biblical questions you know that with these questions about budgeting and how to adult and how to how to do 00:13:39.020 --> 00:13:44.920 taxes and why do we listen to this and why i've lived my entire life without a biblical biblical 00:13:44.920 --> 00:13:50.420 community why do i need one now that type of thing three to five minute videos with one big question 00:13:50.420 --> 00:13:54.440 attached to it designed to create engagement so jeff i think you're right in saying there is an 00:13:54.440 --> 00:14:00.880 intentionality there but i don't necessarily want to try to force an answer joe you were you were one 00:14:00.880 --> 00:14:06.140 that i think was looking for a community as well but in in a small church does that look different 00:14:06.140 --> 00:14:10.440 than what they're describing like what what it's the what's the community needs that you guys are hoping 00:14:10.440 --> 00:14:15.900 to achieve there in belgium so one of the differences between us and some of you guys is 00:14:15.900 --> 00:14:22.860 several of you guys if not all of you guys are online campus pastors and so your goal ends up staying 00:14:22.860 --> 00:14:28.380 there although i realize some of you want to do some out um uh connections outside of that we end up 00:14:28.380 --> 00:14:36.520 use online you know and uh an online experience online campus if you will to drive those personal 00:14:36.520 --> 00:14:43.880 connections in our community so we so the purpose for us to connect people is for discipleship throughout 00:14:43.880 --> 00:14:48.760 the week the next step for us which has been to kind of create an online presence if you will an 00:14:48.760 --> 00:14:54.020 online brand for our community so that people can connect with us at any time is not just connect 00:14:54.020 --> 00:14:59.880 people with us but the online community element is can we actually create a community where people 00:14:59.880 --> 00:15:04.760 minister to each other online we're really exploring what is the whole purpose of community groups 00:15:04.760 --> 00:15:12.160 small groups those kind of things and it's relevant to this because oftentimes churches at least in my 00:15:12.160 --> 00:15:19.720 experience at large and small churches has been we create community groups to serve the church our 00:15:19.720 --> 00:15:24.800 church can grow bigger if people have the community connection in a small group and so they'll grow as 00:15:24.800 --> 00:15:30.680 a disciple and our church can grow bigger the description somebody gave is of a toilet bowl where the swirl 00:15:30.680 --> 00:15:36.320 is basically to try and get everything to the middle and that's often how we end up using small groups 00:15:36.320 --> 00:15:43.980 um is to serve the church when the real purpose for any kind of group that we have is how do we 00:15:43.980 --> 00:15:50.060 actually send them out better and so that's kind of in my mind as i think through we want to connect 00:15:50.060 --> 00:15:54.900 people to each other but not just so our church can get bigger or so that we can you know just reach 00:15:54.900 --> 00:16:00.520 more people although those are actually fine goals and fine reasons but ultimately can we make them 00:16:00.520 --> 00:16:05.980 can we equip them to be better disciples by connecting them to each other and so we're actually sending 00:16:05.980 --> 00:16:10.540 them out rather than drawing them in and joe i understand exactly what you're saying and i think the 00:16:10.540 --> 00:16:16.420 goal you know we talk about engagement we talk about these things in in perhaps a the online campus 00:16:16.420 --> 00:16:22.360 quote unquote uh space but that looks very much like exactly what you're talking about that looks 00:16:22.360 --> 00:16:29.960 very much like engagement not for just time wasting sake and not just for hey we got another cool video 00:16:29.960 --> 00:16:36.480 sake but really delving into the discipleship aspect so you know maybe you know the be one make one type 00:16:36.480 --> 00:16:43.240 mentality that i think we all need to have our online campuses everywhere yours included because you know you 00:16:43.240 --> 00:16:49.180 you have an online presence you can technically call it whatever you want but the the online space is such 00:16:49.180 --> 00:16:57.500 that we have an enormous quick rapid response way of discipleship and i think that's so beautiful 00:16:57.500 --> 00:17:01.880 not just for that not just for a large church and not just for a small church but for churches 00:17:01.880 --> 00:17:06.720 everywhere and that should be the challenge for church online in general the word church online and 00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:11.480 we've talked about this before it's lost its meaning the majority of churches that are out there 00:17:11.480 --> 00:17:16.820 that are doing anything in an online community or just broadcasting or just doing that that one-way 00:17:16.820 --> 00:17:21.800 communication billy graham did that in the 90s he preached one message a billion people heard it as 00:17:21.800 --> 00:17:27.440 it was bounced off of 34 satellites around the globe online gives us that two-way communication 00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:33.180 joe i love what you said about connecting people to people that's where the technology is and is now 00:17:33.180 --> 00:17:37.560 well let me ask a question before we shift off of community because i want to hone in here are you guys 00:17:37.560 --> 00:17:44.100 looking at facebook as the main community are you looking to as the platform for community are you 00:17:44.100 --> 00:17:50.180 looking to create communities in other areas i'm just curious like the nuts and bolts of okay so we 00:17:50.180 --> 00:17:55.480 say we want to create a community we want to focus on this how are you actually doing it we are starting 00:17:55.480 --> 00:18:01.920 on facebook um i like to see facebook as a digital church lobby if you will you know we've got all these 00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:06.120 people who are tuning into a service they never get a chance to walk into a service and have 00:18:06.120 --> 00:18:10.660 communication with other people so we're looking at facebook as that place where people are going to 00:18:10.660 --> 00:18:15.700 mingle and people are going to chat and all of those kinds of things but our end goal is to push people 00:18:15.700 --> 00:18:21.120 into those face-to-face groups that are going to be away from the internet or if they're going to be 00:18:21.120 --> 00:18:26.920 participating in any sort of community group that's happening online it's going to happen a lot like this in a zoom 00:18:26.920 --> 00:18:34.360 call or with um other types of messaging technology that's going to get them in a little bit more face 00:18:34.360 --> 00:18:38.320 to face you know a google hangout or whatever that's going to look like so i don't see facebook 00:18:38.320 --> 00:18:44.240 as the uh you know the be all end all the solution that's going to solve all those community problems 00:18:44.240 --> 00:18:49.880 but i think it makes a really great living room for people to start having communication with each other 00:18:49.880 --> 00:18:56.600 start in the church lobby like at actual in the physical locations you get to observe how other 00:18:56.600 --> 00:19:01.440 people act and decide who you're going to walk up to and talk to you can do that on facebook pretty well 00:19:01.440 --> 00:19:07.200 you get to start to see who people are before you make that decision to step into a call with them so i 00:19:07.200 --> 00:19:13.160 like the idea of using both of them because you get these opportunities to observe people from a distance 00:19:13.160 --> 00:19:18.600 before you really engage and i think that's important for people especially our online campus people who 00:19:18.600 --> 00:19:24.680 sometimes need a minute to to observe before they walk in a lot of people use online for that anyway 00:19:24.680 --> 00:19:30.440 well i'll tag on that on the end of that as well we're we're facebook yes we're also um leaning heavily 00:19:30.440 --> 00:19:35.880 into youtube in 2020 we're finding a lot of the the demographic around us the younger demographic 00:19:35.880 --> 00:19:43.240 they're shying away from facebook for very righteous very uh well-known reasons the facebook thing is 00:19:43.240 --> 00:19:48.920 it's kind of one side the youtube side the youtube um um kind of group there is no youtube group 00:19:48.920 --> 00:19:54.360 building tool and so ideally we're funneling everybody just like you said adrian into zoom calls 00:19:54.360 --> 00:20:00.680 into discipleship groups and into um small groups like we are in right now uh but youtube is is very funny 00:20:00.680 --> 00:20:06.760 uh you can it's very powerful and yet at the same time it's very expensive and that's the unfortunate 00:20:06.760 --> 00:20:10.760 part right now it's expensive because you create you're paying for a lot of ads and things like 00:20:10.760 --> 00:20:17.240 that on youtube yeah yeah so that without a group building tool uh without it with you know facebook 00:20:17.240 --> 00:20:22.040 groups is very powerful uh and you know you can do a lot of stuff with it and we're doing things like 00:20:22.040 --> 00:20:28.120 that announcements and uh notes and discussion groups and things like that within a a localized 00:20:28.120 --> 00:20:32.760 group that is branching off of your main facebook page youtube doesn't have that and the only way 00:20:32.760 --> 00:20:37.720 that you lately get any visibility is to throw ad dollars at it we've been running an experiment with 00:20:37.720 --> 00:20:44.600 our um our worship side of the entire church throwing some ad dollars at it and watching the subscriber 00:20:44.600 --> 00:20:51.240 numbers go skyrocketing uh just with not meager amounts of money but enough money to where you get 00:20:51.240 --> 00:20:56.360 clicks and get uh subscribers and things like that now we're going to try to transfer that to our 00:20:56.360 --> 00:21:01.160 actual youtube our actual main youtube page but again the group dynamic is not there so we need 00:21:01.160 --> 00:21:06.600 somebody that can speak into chat and draw them somewhere else so that's kind of the 2020 goal right 00:21:06.600 --> 00:21:12.680 now i had uh and you guys are we've talked about jay crand on the podcast before he's been on recently and 00:21:12.680 --> 00:21:18.920 um jay told me this this quote once and and i'm curious if this is uh relative to you guys if this 00:21:18.920 --> 00:21:25.880 if you connect with it in a in a in a physical church um there was a time where people would connect 00:21:25.880 --> 00:21:32.280 to christ before they would connect to community in in virtual church and church online uh it's easier 00:21:32.280 --> 00:21:38.440 for people to connect to community before they connect to christ i'm just curious like that's that was jay's 00:21:38.440 --> 00:21:44.600 take i've seen it go pro and con within your own church and ministries um like does that do you think 00:21:44.600 --> 00:21:49.240 that relates do you see that what's been your experience it's interesting that people are longing 00:21:49.240 --> 00:21:55.560 for something deeper i think that's the bottom line even in what you ask you know i i get a sense that 00:21:55.560 --> 00:22:01.320 when we look at who's connecting to us online from around the country there's a reason for why they're 00:22:01.320 --> 00:22:06.920 choosing to to connect with us you know even from thousands of miles away versus finding something 00:22:06.920 --> 00:22:10.520 that might be more in their backyard and i don't i'm i'm trying to discover what that is 00:22:11.080 --> 00:22:15.480 because you know if i can find out what that is i think then we can best speak into maybe where 00:22:15.480 --> 00:22:19.720 they're at in life and connect them to a larger story what we're really wrestling with is you know 00:22:20.920 --> 00:22:26.520 how can we create a sense of community that is both authentic you know if it's going to remain 00:22:26.520 --> 00:22:33.960 online or uh opens the door to the possibility of in person you know so that they could find a 00:22:33.960 --> 00:22:38.120 connection in real time where they're at i love the fact that i've got this couple that just joined 00:22:38.120 --> 00:22:43.320 our church from redding california there are no other hope folks in redding california you know and 00:22:43.320 --> 00:22:46.680 so if they're going to be in a small group that's going to happen one of two ways in an online group 00:22:46.680 --> 00:22:51.240 which will work great for a time but i think even online groups have a short shelf life in the sense 00:22:51.240 --> 00:22:54.760 that eventually you're going to want to connect to people that you can have over to your house 00:22:54.760 --> 00:23:00.600 and sit on a couch with you and um and so that's in essence i think you know joe to kind of something 00:23:00.600 --> 00:23:07.240 you were saying you know we're trying to actually use online to to get smaller you know as as a large 00:23:07.240 --> 00:23:13.480 church we want to use online to help people connect smaller um because you know otherwise we're just a 00:23:13.480 --> 00:23:20.440 big church and there's a there's a lot of big churches and being big isn't all it's cracked up to be 00:23:20.440 --> 00:23:25.240 if you're not connected to somebody intentionally in relationship where you can grow for the folks 00:23:25.240 --> 00:23:29.800 that we have watching that we've seen a lot of them are coming for the word they want to hear the 00:23:29.800 --> 00:23:36.360 word you know we skew more traditional in general we're we're more traditional church um you know from 00:23:36.360 --> 00:23:41.800 a liturgical standpoint at least our practices so a lot of those folks there they seem to be less 00:23:41.800 --> 00:23:46.200 engaged in online chat they seem less engaged in the comments they want to hear the word they want to 00:23:46.200 --> 00:23:51.400 connect now they will connect with somebody maybe after the service email they'll reach out things 00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:55.720 like that but in general a lot of the people they want to hear the word they want to hear the gospel 00:23:55.720 --> 00:23:59.320 that's that's why they're there they want to grow in their faith and they do grow in their faith by 00:23:59.320 --> 00:24:04.040 hearing that way if they don't have an opportunity to go anywhere else but i haven't seen as much 00:24:04.760 --> 00:24:10.520 community for a lot of those folks it's it's the word first tj sorry to jump in here are those are 00:24:10.520 --> 00:24:15.960 those we're kind of wrestling with that that same thing right there um are those folks that are not 00:24:16.600 --> 00:24:23.800 engaging in chat and i think chat metrics are kind of a push comes to shove type type um measurement 00:24:23.800 --> 00:24:29.240 uh are those folks already engaged in something locally are they local to your church now like how 00:24:29.240 --> 00:24:33.400 what is the breakdown of that do you know the ones i'm talking about specifically are out of town 00:24:33.400 --> 00:24:39.880 and sometimes they're shut-ins or or snow or you know weather or circumstance whatever um the folks 00:24:39.880 --> 00:24:45.880 locally we have a lot of those folks who yes they love the church community church family um but for 00:24:45.880 --> 00:24:51.400 the those who are out of town they're not there to join a um for the most part they're not saying 00:24:51.400 --> 00:24:56.040 that they're there to join an online small group or to engage and have these conversations in the chat 00:24:56.040 --> 00:25:01.720 they're there for the service the hardest part of church online to to get it to be a justified full 00:25:01.720 --> 00:25:08.040 functioning ministry is discovering the people who are watching the services and get them can getting 00:25:08.040 --> 00:25:14.840 them connected into a discipleship pathway uh into something groups next steps membership you know 00:25:14.840 --> 00:25:21.720 whatever it is that's the thing that that we have to work the hardest on as as online ministers that's 00:25:21.720 --> 00:25:27.960 not different from the physical church by the way the hardest thing from a physical church is as as a 00:25:27.960 --> 00:25:33.800 campus pastor as a multi-site okay we just watched this this message now i need my job as a campus pastor 00:25:33.800 --> 00:25:39.800 is to get these people connected into into ministry and you know they're wanting to run through that 00:25:39.800 --> 00:25:47.000 lobby as quick as possible to not engage to not talk to people to not um and so like that's that's 00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:53.240 the challenge before the church is to really figure out how to create opportunities for people to connect 00:25:53.240 --> 00:26:00.040 in community uh to to get that next step to to get involved in it and that's that's not an online 00:26:00.040 --> 00:26:04.920 problem that's a that's a church problem well not then that's a robust issue you know when you think 00:26:04.920 --> 00:26:11.320 about you know obviously in online we cannot recreate everything that that a brick and mortar church can do 00:26:12.120 --> 00:26:17.880 um and there are certain things that still i think in the church need to be experienced in person and 00:26:17.880 --> 00:26:24.600 yet at the same time we have an opportunity in the online sphere to uh to really care for people in a 00:26:24.600 --> 00:26:30.440 unique way you know so when one of our growth curves for this next year is noticing that you know online 00:26:30.440 --> 00:26:36.280 folks have the same care needs that the folks that walk through our doors have how do we do pastoral 00:26:36.280 --> 00:26:41.800 care for somebody who's a thousand miles away how do we connect with local churches there that might be 00:26:41.800 --> 00:26:48.200 able to provide you know much needed help and resources for somebody who's in need that we can't provide 00:26:48.200 --> 00:26:52.920 from as far away as we are so there's some there's an interconnectedness to what we're trying to do in 00:26:52.920 --> 00:26:59.080 the online sphere as well because we never want to assume that whoever that ip address is that's watching 00:26:59.080 --> 00:27:04.840 us from saskatchewan canada or wherever it might be has has got this wonderful wow isn't it great they 00:27:04.840 --> 00:27:09.480 stumbled upon us this is awesome they must be a perfect person and great have this no there's a 00:27:09.480 --> 00:27:14.520 reason why they're connecting with us and getting to know what that reason is also involves care 00:27:14.520 --> 00:27:22.760 discipleship mentorship it's a big big deep awesome challenge to beyond just hey we're putting something 00:27:22.760 --> 00:27:27.720 out over the airwaves and and i think that's really and i don't know andy one of your goals was was 00:27:27.720 --> 00:27:34.360 talking about that uh discipleship piece but it really comes down to who had the who was who had 00:27:34.360 --> 00:27:40.520 the people in redmond california earlier uh mark okay great mark you got two people in redmond they're 00:27:40.520 --> 00:27:47.240 all by themselves and to your point mark you said hey um at some point they need to get into a physical 00:27:47.240 --> 00:27:52.760 relationship because even talking through a zoom there there's a limit to that and and and i i agree 00:27:53.320 --> 00:27:58.440 which opens up um you know a discipleship relationship where now i'm going to empower 00:27:58.440 --> 00:28:03.480 these two people with redmond california my job is to disciple them to the place where they can start 00:28:03.480 --> 00:28:09.320 their own group you know maybe they want to stay connected with with my church where i'm at and but 00:28:09.320 --> 00:28:15.800 my job is is not to get them addicted to my content my dot my job is to empower them and create a 00:28:15.800 --> 00:28:21.880 a disciple maker who's capable of making disciples in redmond and and if that equals a small group if 00:28:21.880 --> 00:28:27.560 that equals a micro location and some of these other things that that we're talking about then that's 00:28:27.560 --> 00:28:35.160 awesome if that just equals somebody who's dedicated to to god that's pretty cool too um but at the end of 00:28:35.160 --> 00:28:42.840 this it's not a consumer product of church online if anything i think there's more should be more 00:28:42.840 --> 00:28:49.720 intentionality and focus towards creating disciples virtually than there is is physically andy you 00:28:49.720 --> 00:28:54.920 had um you had some questions on discipleship or or a goal like what's the context of what you're 00:28:54.920 --> 00:28:59.880 trying to achieve discipleship uh down there at bay hope i mean it's kind of like exactly what mark was 00:28:59.880 --> 00:29:06.280 just talking about it the idea that well first of all groups then just groups at the base level um 00:29:06.280 --> 00:29:10.120 our church right now we're in a weird transition phase where groups are there but they're not 00:29:10.120 --> 00:29:13.800 really there and it's like well you know what i'm just going to create groups and i'm just going to 00:29:13.800 --> 00:29:17.960 do it i'm just going to rip it apart and that's not really healthy and that's not really team building 00:29:17.960 --> 00:29:23.240 and that's not really team oriented uh we did it i mean we've been uh over the fall of 2019 we 00:29:23.240 --> 00:29:27.720 were doing kind of a test flight in the groups and um how's it going to work and i was just running 00:29:27.720 --> 00:29:32.600 kind of a test group just to see and it was great it worked perfectly fine the technology again 00:29:32.600 --> 00:29:36.360 was never going to be the issue it was always going to be the content and how the content was 00:29:36.360 --> 00:29:41.400 distributed i've led small groups for 10 years of my life and so i know how to lead a small group 00:29:42.120 --> 00:29:48.280 none of that was was the thing it was the actual one-to-one connection with people and what i found 00:29:48.280 --> 00:29:55.480 was um one of the guys that i was in a group with in the group with he and i we just haven't started 00:29:55.480 --> 00:30:00.840 having regular one-on-ones just caught and still do just but actual physical coffee with each other 00:30:00.840 --> 00:30:04.600 um so he would drive from his house and i would drive from my house and we would meet in the middle 00:30:04.600 --> 00:30:08.520 luckily he lived like within 15 minutes of church so it wasn't that big of a deal i think right 00:30:08.520 --> 00:30:14.360 around this time jay cranda put something out about micrositing and i went ah this is the way of the 00:30:14.360 --> 00:30:22.120 the future isn't it and i just kind of unabashedly let my head fall and went okay how do we do that 00:30:22.120 --> 00:30:26.920 how in our context because what jay is doing out on the west coast looks completely different than what 00:30:26.920 --> 00:30:32.840 we're doing on the east coast his his culture his people everybody's totally different deservedly so 00:30:32.840 --> 00:30:40.520 then on our side how do i as a pastor speak into the lives of people with the truth of jesus with 00:30:40.520 --> 00:30:48.040 the mission of the church all with the love and care of the holy spirit how do i then make disciples 00:30:48.040 --> 00:30:52.280 not in the name of bay hope but in the name of jesus how do we do that but i'm finding that 00:30:52.280 --> 00:30:59.160 i'm having to reorient my metrics as well so gone is the hey man we had this many views and this many 00:30:59.160 --> 00:31:04.280 likes and this many clicks and this much traffic gone is that and now it's being replaced by 00:31:04.280 --> 00:31:08.920 three things that every church does number one love god number two love people number three make 00:31:08.920 --> 00:31:15.560 disciples and it's that number three piece that i'm actually starting to put a goal around a a 00:31:15.560 --> 00:31:22.520 numerical quote-unquote goal um because obviously you need you need to have signposts and you need 00:31:22.520 --> 00:31:26.440 to have you need to have goalposts when you're judging effectiveness of ministry or else you're 00:31:26.440 --> 00:31:32.440 just gonna um you're just gonna spin your tires a little bit so i guess for everybody else my question 00:31:32.440 --> 00:31:38.600 to you guys is is how do you judge disciple making and what are you doing to make disciples 00:31:38.600 --> 00:31:43.000 in your online groups right now and i suggest that the question would also be what is a disciple 00:31:43.000 --> 00:31:49.480 which is let's let's do that let's okay very good let's define what a disciple is our discipleship uh 00:31:49.480 --> 00:31:54.440 pastor here uh the phrase he often uses is you look like a sheep from the front and a shepherd from 00:31:54.440 --> 00:32:00.840 the back okay that's you know in the sense that you're following somebody but you're also leading 00:32:00.840 --> 00:32:06.360 others you know and you know every i think everybody has to be false somewhere on that spectrum you 00:32:06.360 --> 00:32:10.840 have to it's a both end relationship but being able to articulate your faith is i think another 00:32:10.840 --> 00:32:14.360 big thing is that you have a story you can articulate doesn't mean it's perfected doesn't mean you get it 00:32:14.360 --> 00:32:18.920 all figured out yet but i think it's something that you recognize you know there's there's a growth here 00:32:18.920 --> 00:32:25.720 one of our core values is uh following jesus is a growing experience you know we haven't yet arrived 00:32:25.720 --> 00:32:31.320 and so i think a disciple is somebody who's also you know constantly in that refining mode 00:32:31.320 --> 00:32:35.320 you know where are my pressure points now where are the things that i need to identify that i'm working 00:32:35.320 --> 00:32:41.480 on in my own personal faith whether that's in your um in your own personal growth and quiet times or 00:32:41.480 --> 00:32:46.920 whether that's in a small group or whether it's in a community group of some way shape or form that 00:32:46.920 --> 00:32:54.280 you're constantly working toward uh knowing jesus more fully go ahead joe what's yours so we really 00:32:54.280 --> 00:32:59.640 wrestled with this um and we define a disciple as somebody that is growing in the character and 00:32:59.640 --> 00:33:07.480 leadership of jesus okay we we use an x and y axis character is the x axis and y the y axis is 00:33:07.480 --> 00:33:13.000 leadership or practices because what we don't want is somebody with high character but no they don't live 00:33:13.000 --> 00:33:18.360 like jesus they're a sweet person but nobody would ever follow them for a moment but we also don't 00:33:18.360 --> 00:33:22.440 want somebody that has all the leadership of jesus but not the character because they can do great damage 00:33:23.000 --> 00:33:27.960 and so we invite people specifically to grow in the character and leadership or the character and 00:33:27.960 --> 00:33:34.360 practices of jesus and we find that that helps people crystallize okay i know that there's character 00:33:34.360 --> 00:33:39.880 i need to grow in i know that there's leadership or practices i need to grow in and so then that helps us 00:33:40.760 --> 00:33:46.680 train them to help others do the same thing so anyway that's how we define it whether it's um a bad mullet 00:33:46.680 --> 00:33:53.080 like a sheep in the front and a shepherd in the back or more of the character and leadership of it 00:33:54.040 --> 00:34:01.320 there's a couple metrics there to look at what's interesting is i don't know that one hour on sunday 00:34:01.320 --> 00:34:07.400 does a really good job of creating that type of person which unfortunately the butts and seats metric 00:34:07.400 --> 00:34:16.120 is probably the most valued metric within a church so what's your attendance on sunday whether you're 00:34:16.120 --> 00:34:22.280 being successful or whether you're not successful is is gauged strictly at least in churches that i've 00:34:22.280 --> 00:34:29.240 worked with is gauged very strongly on that attendance on on sunday do you guys relate to that maybe like 00:34:29.240 --> 00:34:34.520 what are some other metrics that move you away from that one hour on sunday that really start to move 00:34:34.520 --> 00:34:42.680 towards measuring maybe a more holistic view uh 168 hour a week view of of whether your church is 00:34:42.680 --> 00:34:48.040 successful or not just just nickels and noses right you got to get away from that i mean i know but i mean 00:34:48.040 --> 00:34:52.840 that's that's the that's the reality of it let's count the people let's let's count the money and then we 00:34:52.840 --> 00:34:59.080 we just we get stuck because our church there's so much more to the church than one hour on sunday at 00:34:59.080 --> 00:35:04.840 least i hope there is if we're truly out there going and making disciples per matthew 28 we got to do 00:35:04.840 --> 00:35:12.760 something more than that one hour so and actually brady um uh what's the guy's name uh sheer yeah man he 00:35:12.760 --> 00:35:20.120 wrote a great article on this um uh it's on pro church tools we'll include a link on the uh in the 00:35:20.120 --> 00:35:27.320 show notes but for what he said there and he was talking about how we shouldn't be measuring the one 00:35:27.320 --> 00:35:33.560 we should be measuring one hour a week we should be measuring 168 and really what it comes down to 00:35:33.560 --> 00:35:39.480 is is that to effectively measure the 168 you don't count the people who are attending the service on 00:35:39.480 --> 00:35:44.920 sunday you really count like that next step the thing that's after the one hour on sunday because 00:35:44.920 --> 00:35:52.200 your effectiveness in getting creating disciples is hopefully your church has a plan for it it's 00:35:52.200 --> 00:36:01.080 just you need to measure that next step of getting people on that pathway for it because the discipleship 00:36:01.080 --> 00:36:07.880 isn't happening on on sunday um most churches you know are of the size and especially the ones that are 00:36:07.880 --> 00:36:13.800 talking year uh joe aside like you're not going to get the intimacy the one-on-one conversations the 00:36:13.800 --> 00:36:19.720 relational equity out of a of a giga church or a mega church service there's there's pros to that 00:36:19.720 --> 00:36:24.200 there's things that you can do in a mega church service that you can't do in a small but there's 00:36:24.200 --> 00:36:27.640 a lot of things you can do in a small that you can't do in a bit mark i think you were the one 00:36:27.640 --> 00:36:32.120 that said you want a church online to be the effort to make things smaller instead of big that was a 00:36:32.120 --> 00:36:37.400 that was a great line as well what is y'all's discipleship maybe just even for your physical 00:36:37.400 --> 00:36:43.960 church what is your discipleship process look like like what's the goal after the physical church 00:36:44.600 --> 00:36:49.560 service what's next we always encourage people we want them growing in their faith so we want them 00:36:50.280 --> 00:36:54.760 attending more than just sunday morning we want them to go to a bible class and whether that is in 00:36:54.760 --> 00:37:00.840 person or on podcasts we recommend people do that we also recommend and ask them to go to a retreat 00:37:00.840 --> 00:37:07.560 we have uh annual men's women's and youth retreats to grow closer uh with others and to grow closer in 00:37:07.560 --> 00:37:12.520 the faith with god and just kind of have a reset and then we also uh encourage people to be in small 00:37:12.520 --> 00:37:18.120 groups and that's that community connection um and to serve we have a lot of serving opportunities so 00:37:18.120 --> 00:37:24.680 it's it's we don't have a specific step one is always this it's encouraging wherever you are in 00:37:24.680 --> 00:37:30.360 your walk or wherever you feel called to at that moment we we try to provide as many opportunities as 00:37:30.360 --> 00:37:36.920 we can to do all of that for us uh and i haven't seen it yet but it's i think it's almost ready to go 00:37:36.920 --> 00:37:45.880 live our adult team has developed a an assessment tool if you will we offer a ton of things and it's so 00:37:45.880 --> 00:37:52.360 hard for a new a new guest to decide okay where do i intersect with what should i do first and so 00:37:52.920 --> 00:37:57.000 what i'm gathering from what they're telling us is that this assessment tool is really simple it 00:37:57.000 --> 00:38:03.880 takes you no time to fill out and it'll help give you some next steps it isn't a 101 201 301 concept 00:38:03.880 --> 00:38:09.240 it's more of a hey this seems like it's going to interest you and it'll give you some categories 00:38:09.240 --> 00:38:15.560 on under which you might fall within whether it's marriage and parenting whether it's um 00:38:15.560 --> 00:38:21.240 financial planning uh you name it it's going to help them navigate our our class offerings 00:38:22.040 --> 00:38:26.520 in a way that's going to be more helpful to them with where it applies to to what i get to do 00:38:26.520 --> 00:38:31.560 i've asked the adult team then to take that same assessment tool or that those same things that we're 00:38:31.560 --> 00:38:37.480 offering and help me understand how to bring those into the online so i've asked them for a three-tiered 00:38:37.480 --> 00:38:42.920 approach uh with what they're going to offer um the first tier being hey these things should have been 00:38:42.920 --> 00:38:48.520 online yesterday you know and make and do an effort to start to bring those available whether on demand 00:38:48.520 --> 00:38:54.680 or in real time the second tier are the things that we want to bring online in 2020 we're maybe not ready 00:38:54.680 --> 00:38:59.560 yet but we know we want to have them available to our online folks whether they're five feet down the 00:38:59.560 --> 00:39:07.000 street or 500 miles around uh the state that's the next year the third tier are those things um that we 00:39:07.000 --> 00:39:13.480 identify um will probably never go online that are still best experienced in person i can't tell you 00:39:13.480 --> 00:39:17.240 what those are but i've asked them to give me some of those things so that we can develop a strategy 00:39:17.240 --> 00:39:24.680 um to best maximize our our efforts especially with regard to folks that that primarily intersect with 00:39:24.680 --> 00:39:32.040 us online because this this idea that you know we are going to have people show up at a specific time 00:39:32.600 --> 00:39:41.240 you know in a specific place i think is is almost not possible anymore and we have to begin to offer 00:39:41.240 --> 00:39:48.040 them chances to to grow beyond just showing up on thursday at seven o'clock in classroom 201 joe what 00:39:48.040 --> 00:39:54.280 do you do so we really spend a ton of time on trying to define what a disciple is because if we couldn't 00:39:54.280 --> 00:39:58.840 define what it was and people couldn't grab their hands around it then we would just be doing stuff 00:39:58.840 --> 00:40:04.120 which we've done some of but we just said hey let's just go slow and wait until we you know discern what 00:40:04.120 --> 00:40:11.000 does it mean for it to be a disciple in this in this area 30 minutes north of milwaukee and so now 00:40:11.000 --> 00:40:15.560 that we have some clarity around that around who god has made us as a church vision and values 00:40:16.600 --> 00:40:22.040 we've actually now been able to make momentum we we ask everybody who's new to our church 00:40:22.600 --> 00:40:28.840 to go through an eight-week small group it's the kind of thing that could be done in person or online 00:40:28.840 --> 00:40:35.960 but it really helps embed in somebody's life some just life-changing dna that we've seen multiple 00:40:35.960 --> 00:40:40.760 generations of people being changed by it so then we'll recruit somebody from the last generation 00:40:40.760 --> 00:40:45.960 that was really growing and being changed by it to to learn to lead it so that becomes some forward 00:40:45.960 --> 00:40:54.760 momentum in them and then um we have small we call them discipleship cohorts i don't have a good word 00:40:54.760 --> 00:41:00.520 for it i hate all the discipleship words um but it's just three guys that meet with me on thursday 00:41:00.520 --> 00:41:06.600 morning for six months where we're growing trying to grow in the character and leadership of jesus and 00:41:06.600 --> 00:41:13.480 so with the goal that after really some foundational stuff and growing in those ways my hope is to if 00:41:13.480 --> 00:41:21.160 not all three of those guys would then be leading other groups so that's that's our real main discipleship 00:41:21.160 --> 00:41:27.400 pathway yeah with the in between it's more topical small groups because i found in an area that's 00:41:27.400 --> 00:41:33.240 affluent where people can travel and be in all different places kids sports mean a whole lot 00:41:33.240 --> 00:41:38.920 asking somebody to be long-term committed to a group for the sense of the group doesn't really help 00:41:38.920 --> 00:41:44.520 but by saying hey we're going to be spending eight weeks meeting in my home on sunday evening over dinner 00:41:44.520 --> 00:41:50.600 learning what does it mean for me to minister one another ministry kind of to another believer 00:41:52.120 --> 00:41:56.040 you could call it discipleship or counseling or whatever but hey we're going to meet for eight 00:41:56.040 --> 00:42:00.520 weeks around this topic or have somebody hey we're going to be eight weeks learning and looking at the 00:42:00.520 --> 00:42:06.920 issue of sexuality as we raise kids in a world where it feels like you know things are up upside down and 00:42:06.920 --> 00:42:10.280 we don't know how do we talk about these issues how do we think about them from a christian 00:42:10.280 --> 00:42:16.600 perspective people really gravitate towards an a time-based topical thing and so those are kind of 00:42:16.600 --> 00:42:21.240 the three strands to us growing in the character and leadership of jesus well and that's that's where 00:42:21.240 --> 00:42:26.520 you it really gets fun right once you start to get people who are are set free by the gospel that's where 00:42:26.520 --> 00:42:32.760 you start seeing things like volunteering volunteer culture volunteer recruitment skyrocket because they 00:42:32.760 --> 00:42:37.640 understand the personal mission of what's involved in it that's where you start to see people wanting to 00:42:37.640 --> 00:42:44.840 really get interested in in the micro locations and starting to do things in different areas and which 00:42:44.840 --> 00:42:52.680 is another opportunity to create a disciple to the level that they can now start to impact other people 00:42:53.480 --> 00:42:57.640 through a micro location or through a small group or something like that so i know several of you 00:42:57.640 --> 00:43:05.640 part of your goal was was volunteering for 2020 increasing the culture of that as well as maybe creating some 00:43:05.640 --> 00:43:11.160 micro locations and starting to do that mark you're doing micro now why don't you just tell us a little 00:43:11.160 --> 00:43:17.400 bit of that flavor of what micro looks like um up in iowa to be honest with you it's it's so funny how 00:43:17.400 --> 00:43:21.640 god works because we sort of stumbled into it the rock church miles mcpherson and i didn't even know those 00:43:21.640 --> 00:43:27.000 things existed uh when we first started it it was literally a group of folks in a town north of us 00:43:27.720 --> 00:43:32.200 that uh had a connection to our church that were worshiping each uh you know of them online 00:43:32.200 --> 00:43:36.280 uh separately that said what would it look like if we started to get together to do this 00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:41.080 and then when they reached out to me uh i just and i i've known these folks because they were from 00:43:41.080 --> 00:43:46.040 a town that i i did ministry in for a short time um i didn't have a reason to say no but i didn't know 00:43:46.040 --> 00:43:51.000 what i didn't know what it was and i knew one of them worked at the y in this small town and i said 00:43:51.000 --> 00:43:55.080 isn't there a community room at the y you can see if you can you know reserve that and sure enough 00:43:55.080 --> 00:43:59.880 it was available so they reserved this community room there was a screen that they could pull down 00:43:59.880 --> 00:44:06.520 on the wall uh they found a projector they connected it to a computer they put up a couple of speakers 00:44:06.520 --> 00:44:11.880 and boom i had a group of about 20 people in a small town north iowa that were worshiping with hope 00:44:11.880 --> 00:44:18.760 online didn't know what it meant other than the fact that we it just started we didn't have a name for 00:44:18.760 --> 00:44:27.720 it um it just was it was there uh now as i i found out later this is what a microsite was 00:44:27.720 --> 00:44:30.760 you know but we didn't know that we just said here's a group of people that wanted to worship 00:44:30.760 --> 00:44:35.720 with us well fast forward a bit there was a couple in another town uh just to the south of them that 00:44:35.720 --> 00:44:40.680 heard we were doing this and said man this would be great if hope would come to our town 00:44:40.680 --> 00:44:45.080 and now all of a sudden this little you know kind of organic project on the side was starting to gain 00:44:45.080 --> 00:44:49.320 some traction i thought we better get a grasp of of what this means and that's when i reached out to 00:44:49.320 --> 00:44:55.880 the folks that like mclean bible uh church out in mclean virginia and talked to uh the online pastor 00:44:55.880 --> 00:45:00.920 at the rock church in san diego and said you know what is this idea of micrositing and literally it was 00:45:00.920 --> 00:45:06.840 just empowering people to worship where they were you know developing a pop-up church you know where it 00:45:06.840 --> 00:45:10.440 didn't take a lot of overhead you know as far as you know you didn't need to have the 00:45:11.080 --> 00:45:15.800 the huge building to pull this off you didn't need staff to pull it off it literally was a equipping 00:45:16.360 --> 00:45:21.240 the believers to worship together and the fact that we could do it through online was was awesome 00:45:21.800 --> 00:45:27.480 so now we've we've got um currently we have five microsites or local sites is what we call them 00:45:27.480 --> 00:45:31.160 because i'm not a big fan of the word micro that's just a personal thing i think micro feels small 00:45:31.160 --> 00:45:38.360 local just is more friendly i think um and we're hoping this year we to start as many as three or four 00:45:38.360 --> 00:45:46.040 more um and then the goal of those wasn't to launch campuses uh a nice byproduct of that model is that 00:45:46.040 --> 00:45:52.360 we've had one grow to a campus size but we didn't set it up as a numerical you know this is your goal you 00:45:52.360 --> 00:45:57.560 have to get to 120 people you know before we consider you healthy no that wasn't the goal a 00:45:57.560 --> 00:46:04.280 local site can remain a local site for as long as they're they want to be you know while there's 00:46:04.280 --> 00:46:08.200 you know there's still some growth things we've already been talking about discipleship and and 00:46:08.200 --> 00:46:12.440 many of those are happening but our first goal in this was just to develop these small worshiping 00:46:12.440 --> 00:46:16.680 communities we are finding that these are popping up in places where there wasn't another necessarily 00:46:16.680 --> 00:46:22.520 viable you know option for people to go to so uh if we can be a part of that we we're happy to do so 00:46:22.520 --> 00:46:27.240 how do you so you want to launch four or five like how do you how are you recruiting how are you 00:46:27.240 --> 00:46:34.920 training how are you finding like what's what's the plan in 2020 that is a great question because here's 00:46:34.920 --> 00:46:42.120 where where we um kind of run into some interesting uh discussions we're a part of a bigger family 00:46:42.120 --> 00:46:48.040 uh and so in many of these places there have been churches that are within our denomination that 00:46:48.040 --> 00:46:55.000 have existed maybe they're not viable anymore maybe they've closed um but uh regardless there are times 00:46:55.000 --> 00:47:00.520 when there's there's another there's another player in the pool if you will uh so we're trying to be 00:47:00.520 --> 00:47:07.240 so there's denominational concerns within your questions yeah there there are we we definitely 00:47:07.240 --> 00:47:12.760 want to be um good neighbors to our other uh friends uh that are that are within our denomination 00:47:13.400 --> 00:47:18.120 uh so my answer when folks say hey shouldn't hope be here isn't always an automatic yes 00:47:18.760 --> 00:47:25.160 okay we we and in fact the first delineator is we we don't launch a site anywhere where we're not 00:47:25.160 --> 00:47:29.000 first invited where there isn't somewhat of a hope connection it's not like i look at a map and 00:47:29.000 --> 00:47:35.000 point at it and go man let's go there uh it starts by somebody reaching out to us in fact i'll just 00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:40.120 speak really quickly about our the the one that's kind of on the edge right now there's a town that's 00:47:40.120 --> 00:47:46.440 about 45 minutes to the north and west of us and there's a couple that's been driving in she's um 00:47:46.440 --> 00:47:51.880 the wife is one of our small group leaders in our junior high confirmation ministry and they've 00:47:51.880 --> 00:47:56.680 identified that hey there's a bunch of families out in this town that that call hope their church home 00:47:56.680 --> 00:48:01.480 and there isn't a lutheran church in our town right now uh could hope be a possibility and 00:48:01.480 --> 00:48:06.040 my first thought was gosh this would be great let's talk about that some more she and i met met with her 00:48:06.040 --> 00:48:11.640 husband and um they went out and they recruited six other families that have said hey we would love for 00:48:11.640 --> 00:48:16.680 this to happen and so the next step for us is to to get that group together and to start to build 00:48:16.680 --> 00:48:21.240 into them as a launch team you know what does this mean essentially yeah you're you're watching the 00:48:21.240 --> 00:48:26.840 service online but part of doing that location i i hesitate to use microsite now because you don't 00:48:26.840 --> 00:48:31.880 like the word i'm kidding it's fine uh but part of that microsite is that you're you're the these people 00:48:31.880 --> 00:48:37.240 are now at some level spiritually responsible like they're they're shepherding the people that are there 00:48:37.240 --> 00:48:43.240 um like i know people who do micro that would call these volunteers campus pastors like they have that 00:48:43.240 --> 00:48:50.120 that level of of responsibility you as a volunteer are now a campus pastor for the 20 30 40 people 00:48:50.760 --> 00:48:56.200 that are that are at this location so and i and i meet with those high level leaders uh once or twice a 00:48:56.200 --> 00:49:02.600 month uh just to make sure you know my my role for them is to make sure we're staying we're staying on 00:49:02.600 --> 00:49:07.320 on the on the train tracks you know because there is a responsibility there we want to be faithful to 00:49:07.320 --> 00:49:12.040 this and that that's where you know the hope dna is the phrase we use a lot we we infuse the hope dna 00:49:12.760 --> 00:49:18.600 across that that channel so that if somebody shows up to our local site in forest city iowa 00:49:18.600 --> 00:49:23.240 they'll get who we are you know hopefully within that first you know blush you know they'll know a 00:49:23.240 --> 00:49:26.920 bit about who we are as a church you know from the way that these volunteers you know go back 00:49:26.920 --> 00:49:31.240 to that character thing that joe was talking about through the way that they are they're not perfect 00:49:31.240 --> 00:49:35.240 but what we want them to understand that they represent a bigger story than just themselves 00:49:35.240 --> 00:49:38.440 and so we spend a lot of time pouring into those folks to make sure that we have 00:49:38.440 --> 00:49:43.400 the right folks in leadership i know adrian i know you were you were one that also said you're doing 00:49:43.400 --> 00:49:48.680 micro right you're you're considering starting this this would be your first right yeah this would be our 00:49:48.680 --> 00:49:55.000 first um we actually we have the full support of our elder team behind doing the micro site thing 00:49:55.000 --> 00:50:01.560 they're really really really psyched about it because they want us to start going down this micro path as 00:50:01.560 --> 00:50:09.560 like our path toward multi sites but in a little bit of an unconventional way um they're kind of 00:50:09.560 --> 00:50:15.960 disenchanted with the way that multi sites are usually planted by kind of following the money and the 00:50:15.960 --> 00:50:22.120 people that we have already you know we can really put all of our resources behind planting a multi site in 00:50:22.120 --> 00:50:28.360 this place or this place you know and so what they love about micro sites is that we can plant with you 00:50:28.360 --> 00:50:34.280 know 60 bucks right like a chromebook and a tv that somebody already has it's something that is a 00:50:34.280 --> 00:50:38.920 little bit easier to do but one of the things that we have struggled with a little bit in trying to 00:50:38.920 --> 00:50:45.480 figure out what launching micro sites looks like for us as a church is that we have a little bit of a different 00:50:46.120 --> 00:50:53.400 dna than most of the other churches in our area we're really super outreach focused we um we're in 00:50:53.400 --> 00:50:58.840 louisville kentucky we've been calling ourselves the love the bill church and we've got some really 00:50:59.400 --> 00:51:06.280 successful outreach efforts we maybe have poured even a little too much into outreach over the last 00:51:06.280 --> 00:51:11.800 five years or so and so we're trying to kind of pull that back and and pair outreach with a little bit 00:51:11.800 --> 00:51:17.480 more intentional discipleship and so it's been my job to figure out what it looks like to marry our 00:51:17.480 --> 00:51:25.640 really really awesome outreach program with planting micro sites and so our big dream is to and this is 00:51:25.640 --> 00:51:30.360 i mean i don't know if it's going to work we're crossing our fingers and praying a lot but our big 00:51:30.360 --> 00:51:36.680 dream is to launch our first micro site actually in a children's hospital here in town um we know that 00:51:36.680 --> 00:51:40.680 there are a lot of people who are there in the hospital who basically live there you know you've 00:51:40.680 --> 00:51:47.800 got people who are waiting for organ transplants or who are living for months on end doing chemo or 00:51:47.800 --> 00:51:53.320 things like that and there are parents of these kids who just don't want to leave the hospital can't 00:51:53.320 --> 00:51:59.800 leave the hospital never get to go and do church or be a part of a church community anywhere in any way 00:51:59.800 --> 00:52:05.480 shape or form and so by bringing church to them we're going to give them an opportunity to start 00:52:05.480 --> 00:52:11.000 building community around something that is more positive than the medical kind of catastrophes that 00:52:11.000 --> 00:52:18.120 they're facing on a daily basis so our hope is that we can deploy some of our high level leaders some of 00:52:18.120 --> 00:52:25.720 our really strong volunteers to go into the hospital and bring a hot meal and create a venue where people can 00:52:25.720 --> 00:52:30.920 experience both a church service which we think is important to bring to them you know the weekend 00:52:30.920 --> 00:52:36.360 service experience but also community and also love and also outreach and all of those things married 00:52:36.360 --> 00:52:42.840 in one place so that's our big first you know q1 q2 2020 trying to get that off the ground but 00:52:42.840 --> 00:52:50.280 that's our dream for microsites for for 2020 is to marry outreach and the microsite in into one kind of 00:52:50.280 --> 00:52:58.120 really holistic ministry space yeah that's taking a little some cues there it sounds like from tyler 00:52:58.120 --> 00:53:04.520 sampson up at first capital christian their church anywhere program where they're doing they're doing 00:53:04.520 --> 00:53:10.040 that they're going into they're doing their micro locations not in hotels or like ballrooms or 00:53:10.040 --> 00:53:15.800 there are things like that not that it's wrong but they're being much more aggressive towards going to 00:53:15.800 --> 00:53:23.160 where people are in and rehab centers and in orphanages and after school centers and and prisons like it's 00:53:23.160 --> 00:53:28.840 it's amazing what happens when you start to take that environment of of church move it outside of the 00:53:28.840 --> 00:53:35.400 building and get it more engaged to where people are like there there's a model of this from a multi-site 00:53:35.400 --> 00:53:41.640 perspective which is the wind um you know and and i've worked with multi-site churches and i've launched a 00:53:42.280 --> 00:53:48.440 a ton of campuses and it's it's awesome i love the model of multi-site because it puts the power of a 00:53:48.440 --> 00:53:53.720 church in it in the community um and you've got pastors that are running at the campus pastors and 00:53:53.720 --> 00:53:59.640 they're they're doing their thing i honestly i love the micro model more sorry to use the word micro mark 00:53:59.640 --> 00:54:06.280 but we'll figure out a better term i love the micro model more because i think it literally gives the 00:54:06.280 --> 00:54:13.720 power to the person um the the ability for that church to be successful the hero of that micro story 00:54:13.720 --> 00:54:20.600 is not a campus pastor it's not a paid worship leader it's not a it's not even a staff person it is is a 00:54:20.600 --> 00:54:28.440 disciple who is passionate about reaching an area whether that's a neighborhood area or whether that's an 00:54:28.440 --> 00:54:35.320 and uh an after-school center or a a children's hospital which is a phenomenal idea like i'm gonna 00:54:35.320 --> 00:54:39.800 go take that to somebody hey we need to well there's literally this hospital right over here 00:54:39.800 --> 00:54:44.040 children's hospital we need to get in there let's figure out how to do it so if you're in miami don't 00:54:44.040 --> 00:54:49.240 steal that idea it's mine everybody else let's talk about volunteering a little bit briefly here 00:54:49.240 --> 00:54:56.920 because that part of that discipleship process is volunteering and joe i i know you are are are as a 00:54:56.920 --> 00:55:03.320 startup like you are as a church plant i should say you're very limited on resources and so you're 00:55:03.320 --> 00:55:08.760 lending leaning a lot on volunteers we've had this conversation in the past too so just share a little 00:55:08.760 --> 00:55:14.520 bit maybe about how you're utilizing the volunteers this sounds kind of ridiculous as a pastor but 00:55:14.520 --> 00:55:19.400 i have to work hard to pray for volunteers because it can be easy to jump into strategies and the best 00:55:19.400 --> 00:55:26.200 volunteers that we've got we've prayed for them uh hard because we didn't have them but um so one of 00:55:26.200 --> 00:55:33.320 the things that so one we just pray hard for them um and then we kind of do two things one we just tap 00:55:33.320 --> 00:55:37.400 people on the shoulder and say hey will you experiment with this and help us out in this area for a little 00:55:37.400 --> 00:55:45.400 while um you don't have to do it forever if you hate it you know um but we but then the thing that 00:55:45.400 --> 00:55:52.840 really makes a difference is uh leading with vision and the the possibility of what can happen because 00:55:52.840 --> 00:55:58.200 then people will give extra time they will give extra effort they will fall all over themselves to be a 00:55:58.200 --> 00:56:03.320 part of what we're doing because we don't have the budget to pay people to be involved in these things 00:56:03.320 --> 00:56:07.880 i think that's kind of some of what mark's seeing people that are excited about it in a small town 00:56:07.880 --> 00:56:13.000 where they're like this if this isn't here there's not a viable church for people to go to 00:56:13.000 --> 00:56:18.280 and so in our case by leading with vision our people and i always it always surprises me because 00:56:19.000 --> 00:56:24.280 i'm not a type a personality but when i lead with vision then people think that i am a type a 00:56:24.280 --> 00:56:29.240 personality and so they get excited and just about jump across the table and say i want to be a part of 00:56:29.240 --> 00:56:35.320 this i want to use my gifts 167 hours a week to be a part of this and so then we end up 00:56:36.600 --> 00:56:41.480 with people that are really excited and oftentimes people using their gifts 00:56:42.360 --> 00:56:47.800 paired to a passion so that's what we've ended up doing and i want to do more of how many of you have 00:56:47.800 --> 00:56:52.760 volunteers who live in different cities states countries who are not even within the city where you are 00:56:52.760 --> 00:56:56.920 andy why don't you talk a little bit about that we're just now kind of getting the team up off the 00:56:56.920 --> 00:57:00.760 floor after you know six months of being here seven months of being here whatever it's been i feel 00:57:00.760 --> 00:57:05.320 like i'm just now getting my feet under the desk and just now know where the other side of the 00:57:05.320 --> 00:57:10.680 building is in terms of volunteers we have obviously a couple locals a couple people that i've just that 00:57:10.680 --> 00:57:15.080 i'm personally able to meet with but we also have a couple people that are one of them's out in new 00:57:15.080 --> 00:57:22.840 mexico ish that area um and we have a couple that are i mean far enough to wait far enough away to 00:57:22.840 --> 00:57:28.120 where i can drive within two hours but that's not local it's interesting those volunteers i've been 00:57:28.120 --> 00:57:33.080 able to glean have not been you know joe joe was very much saying we kind of have to will ourselves 00:57:33.080 --> 00:57:38.360 to pray for volunteers i'm i'm very much the same way i think we all are to where those two in 00:57:38.360 --> 00:57:47.160 particular one of them the one who lives within an hour and a half of here she is um disabled uh she 00:57:47.160 --> 00:57:51.400 literally can't leave the house type thing got has tube she gets fed from a feeding tube you know it's 00:57:51.400 --> 00:57:58.680 one of it's that and it's a very tragic story and yet i went to her after much prayer and much 00:57:58.680 --> 00:58:02.600 time and kind of training and all that other stuff and i said hey would you help us and she said 00:58:02.600 --> 00:58:07.160 and i quote nobody has ever asked me to help because they knew that i couldn't and it was like 00:58:07.160 --> 00:58:13.240 this world earth shattering moment two months into me being in the position that was like oh we really 00:58:13.240 --> 00:58:19.000 are doing something way different so jeff you talk about engaging people i think we can engage people 00:58:20.280 --> 00:58:25.320 that wouldn't normally be you know i would not have her name's heather i would not have asked heather 00:58:25.320 --> 00:58:30.920 to serve in the kids ministry because her immune system is constantly at negative numbers and and yet 00:58:30.920 --> 00:58:36.120 she can still host a service for us and she can still do content creation for us and she can still 00:58:36.120 --> 00:58:41.880 engage by phone call by text by all these other things minister to people use her god-given pastoral 00:58:41.880 --> 00:58:48.280 heart in ways that i don't even think she's known and she's starting to tap into that potential how do you 00:58:48.280 --> 00:58:54.360 where do you recruit from volunteers where do you recruit the the the pool are you are you looking 00:58:54.360 --> 00:58:59.240 outside of the campus what's the relationship recruiting on campus like what what are the tensions you 00:58:59.240 --> 00:59:03.960 guys feel i just posted in our women's ministry facebook group this week i was like hey they're 00:59:03.960 --> 00:59:08.520 telling me i have to stop having staff host services i need your help somebody please volunteer 00:59:08.520 --> 00:59:12.600 like 15 people were like hey call me call me let's make this happen and i've been meeting with people 00:59:12.600 --> 00:59:17.960 like every hour all week long so we're just happy to our campus volunteers and it's really cool to see 00:59:17.960 --> 00:59:23.720 them get wrapped up in what we're doing with church online and start connecting with our people who are 00:59:23.720 --> 00:59:28.920 shut in or who um we have a lot of people with social anxiety who don't come to church and so 00:59:28.920 --> 00:59:34.680 seeing them start to build those connections is really magical it's really incredible so obviously 00:59:34.680 --> 00:59:41.480 our local site volunteers come from local communities but with our online service i have hosts and those 00:59:41.480 --> 00:59:48.280 hosts uh are kind of half staff and half uh lay leaders um but as you can imagine what we do for our 00:59:48.280 --> 00:59:52.440 hosting is you know we have a live camera where we cut into the service and welcome people we do that 00:59:52.440 --> 00:59:57.240 three different times throughout the service and so you have to have a at least an ability 00:59:57.880 --> 01:00:03.480 uh to to talk off the cuff a little bit because once the red light goes on uh you you have to just 01:00:03.480 --> 01:00:09.960 start talking and um that was a little daunting to me at first because you know yeah it is what it is 01:00:09.960 --> 01:00:14.760 you know we all want to we all want to do over and you can't do that in live uh broadcast so one of 01:00:14.760 --> 01:00:21.160 my recruits that i that i uh got for a volunteer team is actually um he's an emmy award-winning 01:00:21.160 --> 01:00:28.360 uh journalist on one of our local tv stations and so he just hosted for me last weekend and i have one 01:00:28.360 --> 01:00:35.560 of my dedicated you know long-term online viewers uh and worshipers uh reached out to me and said i 01:00:35.560 --> 01:00:40.600 really love when eric is on because he is so good at this which is kind of a backhanded way of saying 01:00:40.600 --> 01:00:45.560 you know you know brand you need to up your game a little bit but you know these are folks though that 01:00:45.560 --> 01:00:51.000 i mean i've known eric for a long time he he's got a heart for jesus and and what he does is you know 01:00:51.000 --> 01:00:57.880 he he's a news uh or he's yeah he's an anchor for our morning uh local news programs well he's a 01:00:57.880 --> 01:01:05.160 professional i mean yeah he is go you're you have delegated responsibilities he brings his own ear wig 01:01:05.160 --> 01:01:09.800 like his own little thing because he's got one i'm like all right whatever eric you're the pro here 01:01:09.800 --> 01:01:15.640 but um but i love you know our other volunteers so our uh i tried to to populate that group with 01:01:15.640 --> 01:01:21.240 people that that bring a wide demographic into it so our our young adult pastor is one of my volunteers 01:01:21.240 --> 01:01:26.280 and she is great she does our um our young adult ministry on thursday nights we have our our sports 01:01:26.280 --> 01:01:33.960 ministry uh guy comes in and and he is one of my volunteers uh our alpha leader she is she's one of 01:01:33.960 --> 01:01:39.640 my volunteers that helps to host and then i also have uh one of my other volunteers is the uh so we 01:01:39.640 --> 01:01:44.120 have two major high schools within about a 10 mile radius of us and valley high school is one of them 01:01:44.120 --> 01:01:49.480 and the the principal of valley high school is one of my volunteers and so you know dave maxwell when he 01:01:49.480 --> 01:01:53.400 gets on there i mean it's that's a big deal for people that tune in online and see oh my gosh 01:01:53.400 --> 01:01:57.320 that's our principal and then those kids are you know we'll go into the high school and they'll 01:01:57.320 --> 01:02:02.280 realize man there's an advocate i have on my side this guy loves jesus and he's our principal 01:02:02.280 --> 01:02:06.840 you know i just love that the dave is one of my volunteers uh plus he's a long-term teacher so 01:02:06.840 --> 01:02:10.360 there's another professional you know he's used to getting up in front of people and talking you 01:02:10.360 --> 01:02:16.200 know off the cuff so he does a great job with that too so um and one of my goals is you know with 01:02:16.200 --> 01:02:20.920 that team i want that to be i want that to be diverse you know i want to have a wide variety 01:02:20.920 --> 01:02:25.880 of voices in there so that you know when people tune into our broadcast they don't just see me 01:02:25.880 --> 01:02:31.000 they see other folks because um it's important to have a multitude of voices in that volunteer pool 01:02:31.800 --> 01:02:37.640 because they all bring a unique perspective to things love it love it love it cool all right so the 01:02:37.640 --> 01:02:42.600 last thing this is going to be tj but i really wanted i want to know this like one of your goals that you 01:02:42.600 --> 01:02:48.360 wrote here was that you were your church is interested in planting digital churches online 01:02:48.360 --> 01:02:55.240 only churches internationally and and i don't i don't see that a lot um but i want to ask the question 01:02:55.240 --> 01:03:00.440 so what does that look like what what are you guys thinking this was something that um we're in the 01:03:00.440 --> 01:03:05.640 very early stages of conversation on it was brought to us by another organization as well that wanted to 01:03:05.640 --> 01:03:12.840 partner so we are still trying to figure out exactly what that looks like i don't have a great answer 01:03:12.840 --> 01:03:18.200 for you right now like we are still wanting to talk through it what does it mean for us what does it 01:03:18.200 --> 01:03:25.560 mean for them um who do we bring in to help us do this and and and what's the goal it's it's early 01:03:25.560 --> 01:03:31.640 conversations but 2020 is the year that we want it we want to hit it um to at least begin starting the 01:03:31.640 --> 01:03:37.640 process of what this looks like in these conversations interesting some just interesting stats uh 60 of 01:03:37.640 --> 01:03:47.560 the world has internet now has access to high-speed internet at some capacity uh dsl cable um lte 4g 01:03:47.560 --> 01:03:54.920 something at least 4g or up um the next 30 of people who get internet in this in the world today 01:03:54.920 --> 01:04:00.280 will be third world countries so like these are going to be people with cell phones because there's 01:04:00.280 --> 01:04:07.960 no infrastructure in place so utilizing the internet uh for church to start to get some churches in front 01:04:07.960 --> 01:04:13.480 of them uh digitally there's several organizations who are really interested in that and so if you're 01:04:13.480 --> 01:04:20.040 interested in that conversation um hit me up hit tj up because i know that uh there are some large 01:04:20.040 --> 01:04:26.920 organizations trying to figure out how to crack that um i have no idea what to say right there 01:04:26.920 --> 01:04:31.960 how to crack that egg that's weird how to crack that nugget how to figure out how to do that that's 01:04:31.960 --> 01:04:36.440 just cheesy anyway i'm going to go ahead and include all that in there because it'll be fun it's been a 01:04:36.440 --> 01:04:42.040 great time and and honestly i think as you guys are working through these goals i know that there are 01:04:42.040 --> 01:04:47.720 people who are doing church online who are listening this who are wrestling with a lot of these same goals and 01:04:47.720 --> 01:04:53.240 maybe hearing some of these things um hearing how you're figuring out how to to do it hopefully is 01:04:53.240 --> 01:04:59.880 is uh is a welcome challenge or a way to complement them to help them with the same process we're going 01:04:59.880 --> 01:05:05.240 to include all your social media contacts and all that in the show notes so they can get all that and 01:05:05.240 --> 01:05:10.200 get connected with you individually uh if they wanted to to kind of compare up but just as we're landing 01:05:10.200 --> 01:05:15.480 the plane here um any last thoughts or anything on y'all's side i think the microsites are actually 01:05:15.480 --> 01:05:21.480 going to be super relevant as churches across the country are closing um i mean i i'm familiar with 01:05:21.480 --> 01:05:26.440 the louisville area because i went seminary at southern and uh that whole area is filled with 01:05:26.440 --> 01:05:31.240 churches but so many of them are dying and the small towns around it and the small towns up here 01:05:31.880 --> 01:05:38.440 uh so the microsite idea how do we use online ministry to then create physical connections and physical 01:05:39.080 --> 01:05:45.000 um churches actually is going to be a super relevant conversation it is i mean you're rural rural 01:05:45.000 --> 01:05:52.040 america is so fascinating because not just not only our church is dying but industries are dying 01:05:52.040 --> 01:05:57.240 schools are dying um you know whole communities you know farming communities even where i'm at are just 01:05:57.240 --> 01:06:03.160 finding that i'm i'm just i'm curious to see what happens but i still feel like the church has a place 01:06:03.160 --> 01:06:09.320 in those in those towns and how can online be a way so if you've got a small church that 01:06:09.320 --> 01:06:15.000 unfortunately cannot afford to call somebody full-time can online be a way to keep people 01:06:15.000 --> 01:06:21.640 connected to the gospel where they otherwise wouldn't be able to do so and um i think that's the real 01:06:21.640 --> 01:06:26.680 awesome opportunity that we have and it doesn't have to be one church i mean that's the beautiful part 01:06:26.680 --> 01:06:32.440 about online ministry is that so many more churches are embracing this idea and and you know so you 01:06:32.440 --> 01:06:37.160 know what tj is doing you know and being able to offer you know a more traditional expression 01:06:37.160 --> 01:06:41.720 especially within our within our bigger family the lutherans there are many folks that that's their 01:06:41.720 --> 01:06:47.320 heart language and that's not something that we as a church offer online right now and so in places 01:06:47.320 --> 01:06:53.240 where that matters i mean here's a church that can do that you know and that can be huge you know as we 01:06:53.240 --> 01:06:59.320 help these remnants you know that are still very viable continue to be the church because it just 01:06:59.320 --> 01:07:03.960 it breaks my heart to think that the opposite would be true that we're going to have towns like what 01:07:03.960 --> 01:07:08.680 what joe is talking about around the country that just don't have a place where people can worship 01:07:09.800 --> 01:07:14.120 because yeah they can connect to to a church online but at the end of the day they need to have 01:07:14.120 --> 01:07:21.080 community too and if and that community is best expressed locally and if we can help that thrive and 01:07:22.200 --> 01:07:28.120 that's that is what my heart is for yeah in in 10 years i don't think we use the phrase church online 01:07:28.120 --> 01:07:35.000 anymore i think it's church um and the the vehicle of church uh for delivery i think you're going to see 01:07:35.000 --> 01:07:42.920 the microsite be very popular uh whether it's uh you know the video being streamed via church online 01:07:42.920 --> 01:07:50.440 methods like today or whether it's just very small churches that are now at a much smaller number because 01:07:51.160 --> 01:07:57.480 persecution because of tax changes because of a number of different reasons bigger churches are 01:07:57.480 --> 01:08:02.600 going to get bigger smaller churches will continue to get smaller that kind of mid-range church is i 01:08:02.600 --> 01:08:09.240 think is going to struggle uh to survive and i think they're going to go to more of this uh multi-site but 01:08:09.240 --> 01:08:17.000 even the microsite model in order to stay uh functioning in order for impact by the way and that's i mean i don't 01:08:17.000 --> 01:08:23.480 want to like die on this right now but that's actually more of a biblical model anyway and so 01:08:23.480 --> 01:08:27.880 we can probably have a side podcast about that we already have you go back and listen to some of them 01:08:27.880 --> 01:08:34.840 along the way but yeah i'm very excited about what micro can do uh in the future and what what i believe 01:08:34.840 --> 01:08:41.560 it will do in the future and and some of you guys now mark adrian like you guys are are paving the way 01:08:42.120 --> 01:08:47.320 for that the one thing anytime i ever talk to anybody who's doing microsites and i've talked to 01:08:47.320 --> 01:08:54.600 dozens of people they all start the conversation with what we're doing now we may not do in three months 01:08:54.600 --> 01:09:03.480 but we're just figuring it out like it if nothing else that one idea has become so experimental in the 01:09:03.480 --> 01:09:09.240 church today because everyone's seeing that there's that there's a need there's a possibility something 01:09:09.240 --> 01:09:14.120 organically is happening and we're trying to figure out if god's calling us to capitalize on it and 01:09:14.120 --> 01:09:19.320 actually utilize it and start to build more um so we're going to experiment with some things and see 01:09:19.320 --> 01:09:25.400 jay crando just had him on um a couple episodes ago he's on version number three of his experiment 01:09:25.400 --> 01:09:29.320 he's actually tried one thing it didn't work he tried the second thing it worked really well 01:09:29.320 --> 01:09:36.200 but it wasn't scalable so he tried number three um out of out of saddleback so yeah there's going to be 01:09:37.000 --> 01:09:41.160 something here there's a model here that i think is going to affect the church of of the future 01:09:41.160 --> 01:09:46.760 uh we just have to be diligent to try to figure out how it works today so well guys this has been 01:09:46.760 --> 01:09:52.040 great i'm looking forward to doing this again um and but we're going to wrap for for mark for adrian 01:09:52.040 --> 01:09:58.120 for tj for joe uh for andy uh this is jeff with the church digital thanks for uh joining in this 01:09:58.120 --> 01:10:00.520 podcast and we'll see you next time y'all have a good day