WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.460 episode 45 here of the church digital podcast if nothing else i'm transparent open and honest 00:00:06.460 --> 00:00:12.900 because when i give bad advice to people i at least admit it on public record so that everyone 00:00:12.900 --> 00:00:18.940 everyone can hear it so here's where we are we're bringing in two people into this conversation here 00:00:18.940 --> 00:00:25.600 evan conley who is it director slash becoming online pastor there at lighthouse church as well 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:31.960 as joey santos from christ church now here's where we are both of these guys are doing some unique 00:00:31.960 --> 00:00:40.260 innovative things involving video and worship at micro locations and even multi-site locations and 00:00:40.260 --> 00:00:46.300 so about a year ago uh evan conley asked my advice on something his first time i'd met him and i gave 00:00:46.300 --> 00:00:53.760 him advice and my advice was horribly horribly wrong and thankfully evan and his church didn't listen to 00:00:53.760 --> 00:00:58.920 me and instead did what they wanted to do anyway and then god did something phenomenal with it so 00:00:58.920 --> 00:01:05.300 there's fun stories some awesome conversations centering around video worship video teaching 00:01:05.300 --> 00:01:11.420 and also a level of innovation here in the core of really what church online needs to be about so 00:01:11.420 --> 00:01:17.260 check out this podcast here you go yeah so like i owe evan an apology which is weird to kind of open 00:01:17.260 --> 00:01:23.160 up with but like so a year ago first time i met him maybe it was 15 months ago i was talking with him 00:01:23.160 --> 00:01:29.020 he's you know asking my advice on some things with church online whatever and um and he says to me he 00:01:29.020 --> 00:01:36.220 says yeah we're we're even we're doing like uh looking to like launch some of our our micro site 00:01:36.220 --> 00:01:40.800 basically as you know a smaller campus smaller multi-site campus with with video worship 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:47.460 and um and just in the moment being non-innovative non-creative whatever i'm like i don't think i 00:01:47.460 --> 00:01:50.780 said this but in my mind i was like that's the stupidest idea i've ever heard in my life 00:01:50.780 --> 00:01:58.080 and uh and i can just and i can remember because and i'm pulling that from like i just granger up in 00:01:58.080 --> 00:02:05.000 indiana uh tried this maybe a decade ago with one of their campuses and i just remember the stories 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:11.240 of where their the video delivery system failed launch week they literally had no pastor they had 00:02:11.240 --> 00:02:16.660 no worship and because it was all video based and the streaming system failed and they had a campus 00:02:16.660 --> 00:02:22.280 pastor on stage i don't know doing a song and a dance uh number trying to stall and it never got up 00:02:22.280 --> 00:02:28.160 and so like the first week was this giant flop and so i i had that in my head you know not taking 00:02:28.160 --> 00:02:34.460 the consideration streaming has gotten so much more effective video has gotten so much tighter uh and so 00:02:34.460 --> 00:02:39.960 then like a year later i see evan or you know talking to him and he's like hey that that video venue campus 00:02:39.960 --> 00:02:44.700 is going great and i felt like a total you know jerk for telling him that's the stupidest idea when it 00:02:44.700 --> 00:02:51.660 works all of a sudden i catch up with with joey and hear from him like you're doing church in a bar 00:02:51.660 --> 00:03:00.400 with video and i'm like wait so this whole thing of video worship is working and and i just i want to 00:03:00.400 --> 00:03:05.040 have that conversation i want to unpack a little bit here because we got two different churches 00:03:05.040 --> 00:03:13.380 not connected in any way who are do being effective in creating micro locations small locations multi-site 00:03:13.380 --> 00:03:19.400 locations maybe in context of a video and so i wanted to hear some stories what does it look like how's it 00:03:19.400 --> 00:03:24.820 been how's it been receptive kind of what are you what are you learning and experiencing by doing 00:03:24.820 --> 00:03:32.000 you know the musical form of worship via video evan why don't you kick us off sure yeah so it's funny 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:38.300 you mentioned um the tech issues because that is something we experienced um very early on as we 00:03:38.300 --> 00:03:44.080 were still figuring out our system so one of the things for us that seems to help is the fact that 00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:50.480 we have a saturday service as well as our broadcast campus so what we do is we actually have that get 00:03:50.480 --> 00:03:57.680 uploaded to um a cloud storage server and we download that in the morning okay so that way we have a 00:03:57.680 --> 00:04:04.360 physical copy of a backup sermon we have worship and all that and i think it was our second week in 00:04:04.360 --> 00:04:11.300 we actually had to go over to that backup and there was a little bit um you know where things would be 00:04:11.300 --> 00:04:17.620 referenced to this evening that kind of thing but if we hadn't had that you know second week into the 00:04:17.620 --> 00:04:23.140 campus i don't know what that would have done as far as momentum and the feel of that campus 00:04:23.140 --> 00:04:30.960 so having a backup system um it's been really huge but as long as we've been able to get the signal 00:04:30.960 --> 00:04:37.340 there um everything's been great um we didn't know what to expect and i remember that conversation 00:04:37.340 --> 00:04:44.740 we had so that was in my head going into this too i was like oh i think what you told me was um 00:04:44.740 --> 00:04:49.940 you wanted to be like you know keep me updated on that because i haven't heard of that going well 00:04:49.940 --> 00:04:55.860 i'm curious to hear how that goes and so i've got that in the back of my head yeah because i'm down 00:04:55.860 --> 00:05:00.600 there for the first month and so every week i'm just kind of looking around the audience during 00:05:00.600 --> 00:05:06.080 worship thinking about that i'm like are they into this how's this going and i was blown away you know 00:05:06.080 --> 00:05:12.480 you see hands up during worship and um it just you really feel like the audience is connected with 00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:18.540 what's going on um if the worship leader would pause and pray they'd bow their heads you know 00:05:18.540 --> 00:05:23.840 they'd clap to respond to things it really felt like there was a worship team on stage 00:05:23.840 --> 00:05:32.000 and i was blown away it wasn't what i expected so awesome hey joey what what does it look like what's 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:37.200 you're you're in a and i i said that quickly people may have thought i was joking you're literally doing 00:05:37.200 --> 00:05:43.180 church in a bar yeah so let's unpack that a little bit and kind of kind of share what that what that 00:05:43.180 --> 00:05:51.640 looks like yeah and we we started with the online campus idea uh with a full engagement like what's 00:05:51.640 --> 00:05:57.540 online church will look like by providing full engagement uh to people and we we kind of develop 00:05:57.540 --> 00:06:03.560 this kind of four levels of engagement and the fourth level lands on the one-on-one experience 00:06:03.560 --> 00:06:09.580 that is you know when you go from online to offline and that for us lands on the house campuses 00:06:09.580 --> 00:06:15.920 so the idea is for somebody like this is my church this is where i want to worship uh and if i'm going to 00:06:15.920 --> 00:06:19.840 do this my house i'm going to bring friends i'm going to bring my family and we're going to do this 00:06:19.840 --> 00:06:25.580 together so that's what the idea of house campuses for us kind of as a part of this engagement process 00:06:25.580 --> 00:06:33.660 uh and then do you know we there's this bar like 10 miles from our church uh and the owners of the 00:06:33.660 --> 00:06:38.220 bar go to our church uh and we talked about you know what it would look like to have a church at the 00:06:38.220 --> 00:06:45.880 bar well let's take the house campus model and just take it to the to the bar uh and that's what we did 00:06:45.880 --> 00:06:54.340 it's usually is on in our um second service we have two services on sunday our second service is the at 00:06:54.340 --> 00:07:04.180 the bar uh and our opening day we had 65 people show up to have a church at the bar uh it took a 00:07:04.180 --> 00:07:09.780 little bit though to to kind of like introduce the community the idea i mean we did a couple of public 00:07:09.780 --> 00:07:14.300 events uh at the bar to introduce say hey we're going to meet here we're going to worship here 00:07:14.300 --> 00:07:21.040 um it's about community and that's one one of the focus of the church at the bar is not to try to 00:07:21.040 --> 00:07:28.480 replicate the environment that we have in a physical church it's really to to be a place of community 00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:34.900 people go to the bar to do a drink and talk so we wanted the church at the bar to be a place where 00:07:34.900 --> 00:07:42.240 you go learn the bible and talk uh so that's that's pretty much what we did uh and it's it's going 00:07:42.240 --> 00:07:50.260 pretty well it's uh it goes up and down but we see people come in i was there last sunday um because i 00:07:50.260 --> 00:07:55.940 usually host online every sunday but i have a i'm second second host now and so i had a chance to 00:07:55.940 --> 00:08:03.400 actually worship at the bar sunday uh and i met this young man uh who came to me and said hey i see 00:08:03.400 --> 00:08:07.980 you on the tv all the time but i'm glad you're here we can meet in person and he said i've been coming 00:08:07.980 --> 00:08:13.700 for six weeks now and i made a commitment to never step a foot in the church ever again because my 00:08:13.700 --> 00:08:19.940 experience but coming to the bar has been really good for me uh and you know he's a single father 00:08:19.940 --> 00:08:28.880 bring his daughter with him to the bar and they worship together at 10 30 on sundays uh so has 00:08:28.880 --> 00:08:35.540 been pretty good we i mean let's be to be very strategic uh one of the things i do we now add 00:08:35.540 --> 00:08:43.340 two worship singers to the schedule at the bar they don't they don't stand up front and lead they stand 00:08:43.340 --> 00:08:49.780 up with everybody else and they just lead with their voices okay so you're modeling the behavior 00:08:49.780 --> 00:08:55.520 that's really smart okay so instead of i just like they stand up they're going to be louder than 00:08:55.520 --> 00:08:59.940 anybody else so but they're on the schedule on planning center with the entire worship team 00:08:59.940 --> 00:09:05.160 the only difference is that that's sunday they're going to serve at the bar okay and that's and that 00:09:05.160 --> 00:09:10.160 also helps that to develop their relationship so the bottom line for us is the bar is a place for 00:09:10.160 --> 00:09:14.680 relationships like that's why we created that and we're hoping that you know the combination 00:09:14.680 --> 00:09:19.200 between that and the online experience kind of brings that together yeah 00:09:19.620 --> 00:09:26.640 now so joey you've got the you so this is more of like you mentioned like house church and i've used 00:09:26.640 --> 00:09:33.540 micro church micro location like so this is a more elaborate model of that like you know the average 00:09:33.540 --> 00:09:39.740 house church probably 20 to 30 in an online context yes 65 right so it's it's a house church at a bar 00:09:39.740 --> 00:09:48.020 exactly and i mean that bar if we get really crazy and hopefully we will i can have up to 400 people in 00:09:48.020 --> 00:09:58.920 it so wow i have a space to grow uh but for example like here's a very interesting um thing for our 00:09:58.920 --> 00:10:05.840 community uh as i start to promote uh the church to the bar through social media i discovered one very 00:10:05.840 --> 00:10:15.580 interesting thing i did this a b test with the ads and i i launched an ad with one content and the second 00:10:15.580 --> 00:10:23.040 ad with different content and the first ad i got no engagement at all like no likes no shares and the 00:10:23.040 --> 00:10:29.700 second one i got a lot of likes shares and actually messages in my inbox with tell me more about the church 00:10:29.700 --> 00:10:34.900 the bar and you know what the difference was between the ads the ads that i got more response 00:10:34.900 --> 00:10:37.440 did not have the church branding on it 00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:47.960 okay so uh it's very interesting to see that uh people are willing it feels like people are willing 00:10:47.960 --> 00:10:54.620 to learn more about it to hear more about it but they really kind of there's a perception about 00:10:54.620 --> 00:11:02.920 religion that people actually don't want to be associated with and the church name kind of 00:11:02.920 --> 00:11:09.260 carries that a little bit so i i just removed everything i remove all the church branding from church 00:11:09.260 --> 00:11:16.380 in the bar and and it's part of our cc live what we call our our online church and it's part of our 00:11:16.380 --> 00:11:22.480 it's a house campus uh and they when they walk in they want to watch a church service from sunday from a 00:11:22.480 --> 00:11:29.820 physical church but i think that a first approach is different so and as a here's here's where it gets 00:11:29.820 --> 00:11:35.660 different though uh one things that we're doing now we're partnering with the bar to do community 00:11:35.660 --> 00:11:42.740 events so like this saturday we're doing a friends giving so the church of the bar in the bar are going 00:11:42.740 --> 00:11:50.720 to partner and we're going to offer turkey and ham all afternoon and people are bringing side dish and 00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:54.940 we're going to have this big thanksgiving meal available to the community anybody can come and 00:11:54.940 --> 00:12:00.320 have it oh that's cool uh and we talk about you know it's the church of the bar and during that day 00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:06.380 saturday we're going to put up two christmas trees and people be able to buy christmas ornaments 00:12:06.380 --> 00:12:14.640 uh with uh as a donation for uh to end the the nutrition crisis in local schools 00:12:14.640 --> 00:12:19.720 so what we're trying to do is really using that opportunity of the church of the bar that's an 00:12:19.720 --> 00:12:28.580 online experience to partner with a bar and help have the community kind of go out and be part of 00:12:28.580 --> 00:12:36.040 something in relevance uh it has been a very it's a very like a new for us and organic things happening 00:12:36.040 --> 00:12:39.640 do you know like we we're just testing the grounds and see where it goes 00:12:39.640 --> 00:12:45.060 one more one more question and i'm really anxious to hear kind of evan's angle on this but 00:12:45.060 --> 00:12:53.600 what's the is the end game of the bar church to bar church is the end game more bar churches is the 00:12:53.600 --> 00:12:59.540 end game put all these people together into a brick and mortar campus like what's the strategy move on 00:12:59.540 --> 00:13:05.540 how you're utilizing the micro the same strategy there is the strategy that the bar is the same 00:13:05.540 --> 00:13:12.560 strategy for any house campus this bit they can probably never step foot in the in a in a in a 00:13:12.560 --> 00:13:19.540 physical church as we know ever again we're okay with that wow see in our model of online church 00:13:19.540 --> 00:13:25.860 if my next door neighbor that lives right by the church engages with us online and truly engage 00:13:25.860 --> 00:13:31.220 he's on bible studies he gives he participates he never walks into our building we're okay with that 00:13:31.220 --> 00:13:39.040 because he's he's he that's his community and we're going to make sure to to give him all the 00:13:39.040 --> 00:13:45.780 spiritual nutrition that he needs online and we give him community the way that that fits him best 00:13:45.780 --> 00:13:50.640 uh and we're okay with that so our hope is that the church at the bar are going to grow 00:13:50.640 --> 00:13:56.800 and that's going to be a community a place of community and uh and we're looking into 00:13:56.800 --> 00:14:05.040 possibilities right now in actually like a cigar bar uh where guys can get together have bible studies 00:14:05.040 --> 00:14:11.440 during the week and and uh and do you know what here's the deal it is the cheapest satellite campus 00:14:11.440 --> 00:14:18.720 growth we can put together because i don't have to pay for anything i tell you what i may want to 00:14:18.720 --> 00:14:24.960 like join the cigar bar church that's that's actually not a bad idea i'm gonna i'm gonna write that down 00:14:24.960 --> 00:14:32.240 i might borrow that down here in miami anybody want to open a cigar bar church totally totally in my my 00:14:32.240 --> 00:14:36.240 wife is not a fan of the idea at all but i i certainly am right so 00:14:39.120 --> 00:14:46.400 well done how many so how many right now joey how many micro campuses house uh we have uh we have five in 00:14:46.400 --> 00:14:54.400 the u.s we have four in gunna africa and we have one in pakistan okay wow pakistan let's let's hold on 00:14:54.400 --> 00:15:03.200 that i want to come back okay um evan so centerville um but you guys are grow you use the micro model as 00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:09.520 kind of a a preface and introduction to a a multi-site that was kind of the strategy there right what what 00:15:09.520 --> 00:15:15.520 does that look like yeah so for us it's trying to meet a different need so we're not necessarily 00:15:15.520 --> 00:15:21.040 using it to reach people who normally would come to a normal church service but for us the reason that 00:15:21.040 --> 00:15:27.200 we started that to begin with was with our online broadcast on facebook and youtube we were seeing 00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:33.520 week and week again comments from people who live uh in what's the eastern shore so if you're not familiar 00:15:33.520 --> 00:15:39.280 with maryland we have the eastern and the western shores which are separated by the chesapeake bay 00:15:39.280 --> 00:15:44.800 and then we have the chesapeake bay bridge which especially during the summer the traffic can be 00:15:44.800 --> 00:15:50.160 really rough but we have people who are making that commute on a weekly basis to come to one of our 00:15:50.160 --> 00:15:55.280 campuses mostly to our broadcast campus but we also had a good number of people that we were seeing 00:15:55.280 --> 00:15:59.920 with online connect cards and in the comments who were saying we can week again hey we're watching 00:15:59.920 --> 00:16:05.280 from this area we'd love to have even and even specifically asking like can you guys plant a 00:16:05.280 --> 00:16:10.720 campus over here like we love what you're doing and we want to have this over here but that was a 00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:16.000 challenge for us because we had never planted a campus that far away and it was going to separate 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:22.320 us as far as resources and the personnel that we send down with that kind of commute we couldn't 00:16:22.320 --> 00:16:27.120 support it in the same way that we support our campuses which are closer to our central broadcast 00:16:27.120 --> 00:16:33.520 campus and so we didn't think it'd start quite like it has meeting in a high school originally we're 00:16:33.520 --> 00:16:41.120 thinking maybe a fire hall or a library even we thought we'd have you know if we needed to we'd have 00:16:41.120 --> 00:16:47.920 two or three locations of maybe 20 to 30 people spread around the western eastern shore which is a pretty large 00:16:48.800 --> 00:16:55.680 area but um as we're going through and starting to scout out different locations we held an interest 00:16:55.680 --> 00:17:02.800 meeting and we had i want to say 120 people sign up to attend an interest meeting for this location 00:17:03.840 --> 00:17:07.600 and so at that point we realized it was going to be a little bigger than we thought 00:17:08.560 --> 00:17:15.280 and so we went from looking for a fire hall or a library or that kind of thing to a larger venue more 00:17:15.280 --> 00:17:24.160 similar to what we're used to but unlike our normal game plan we can't rotate our worship team into this 00:17:24.160 --> 00:17:30.000 location in the same way that we could so we had to decide like could we still do video worship even 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:36.160 with a location that resembles a lot more of any one of our of our locations and we decided to give it 00:17:36.160 --> 00:17:40.400 a shot because really it was the only way we could facilitate what we felt like we were being called to 00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:47.280 do and well location over there your centerville campus it has um how many people attending and 00:17:47.280 --> 00:17:50.960 at one point you told me it's like around like 100 i think where are you at now so we're averaging 00:17:50.960 --> 00:17:58.000 around 150 we've peaked around 200 but the average around 150 people and and it's it's at the location 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:03.840 it's going to grow into or is are you is the plan to move somewhere else the plan for now is to stay 00:18:03.840 --> 00:18:08.880 where we're at so we're at a high school which has a pretty good sized auditorium i think we could 00:18:08.880 --> 00:18:16.720 scale to around 500 people per service so just definitely room for growth it's a nice convenient 00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:23.040 location um it's easily accessible and um yeah it's been working really well for us plenty for him to 00:18:23.040 --> 00:18:29.840 grow so for now the plan is to stay there so you guys you literally have 150 people is that two services 00:18:29.840 --> 00:18:39.440 of 75 yeah is that 150 right now one service of 150 people sitting in a room being led musically in 00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:45.280 worship by watching a video screen right so the only time that someone's on stage is we have our host 00:18:45.280 --> 00:18:50.400 spot at the end of service where our campus pastor will come out and greet the audience you know tell 00:18:50.400 --> 00:18:55.120 them what's going on specifically with their location that kind of thing but just about everything they're 00:18:55.120 --> 00:19:02.560 seeing is happening on that projector screen wow i i just you know and and i we see it in church online 00:19:02.560 --> 00:19:08.480 you see it with watching the individual like a person watching and i can totally see that i've even like 00:19:08.480 --> 00:19:15.760 been in the house churches where it's 18 to 25 people worshiping with the tv um you know i i and 00:19:15.760 --> 00:19:22.160 i just i've even i just mentally struggle i'm like wow there's 150 people like the the video technology 00:19:22.160 --> 00:19:28.000 scales out that that large that's that's awesome yeah that's good has there been any like has there 00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:33.440 been any negative feedback has there been any like people asking questions what did your lead pastor say 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:38.400 when somebody like pitched that idea to him i bet you that was a fun conversation you know what um 00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:43.760 he was all in on it um i'm trying to remember you know there are a few of us involved in the initial 00:19:43.760 --> 00:19:50.960 conversations but um i can't remember who necessarily pitched it first but he didn't have any pushback on 00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:58.000 that at all like wow he was all in for that he he's all about um trying new things and trying to break 00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:04.400 away from the traditional ways of doing things and so i know our executive pastor who's more operational 00:20:04.400 --> 00:20:12.800 focused and how is this actually going to work he had more concerns on that but uh yeah our lead pastor 00:20:12.800 --> 00:20:18.800 was all for it um yeah it's been great and i think you know being there for the first month or so as we 00:20:18.800 --> 00:20:23.840 launched it it just occurred to me you know i'd sit in service and go out and see all the community 00:20:23.840 --> 00:20:28.720 happening in the foyer after and i realized that it's not about what happens on the stage you know you can 00:20:28.720 --> 00:20:35.200 have that community regardless of whether you're watching a stream service or whether you have live 00:20:35.200 --> 00:20:40.240 performers on the stage and you can argue like is there a better worship experience you know just 00:20:40.240 --> 00:20:44.400 like any other worship element you know if you have better lights or if you're adding haze or this or 00:20:44.400 --> 00:20:50.640 that like maybe you can create a better environment for worship but you can absolutely do church 00:20:50.640 --> 00:20:58.560 in my opinion you know to a very good amount of quality with a stream service it's the community 00:20:58.560 --> 00:21:05.280 that's happening that's that's the church it's really just interesting to see how maybe some of 00:21:05.280 --> 00:21:11.600 our internal biasness the way from you know it's it's it's an extension of i can't do video teaching 00:21:11.600 --> 00:21:17.760 i have to have a live pastor in the room you know that next step is i really can't do video worship 00:21:17.760 --> 00:21:24.080 i have to have have a live band well maybe do you do you really and it was was funny we had on um 00:21:24.640 --> 00:21:31.120 just a couple weeks ago we had on uh maybe a couple months ago we had uh jim tomberland who's a multi-site 00:21:31.120 --> 00:21:37.200 solutions he's one of the one of the founders of the pioneers of the multi-site movement and so we were 00:21:37.200 --> 00:21:44.880 actually talking a lot with him about this idea of um video teaching and even like what it looked like 00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:50.720 from him back in like the the 90s when he was at willow creek trying to pioneer where he would 00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:57.680 literally put a vhs tape on a bus saturday night and a greyhound bus and it would be delivered to the 00:21:57.680 --> 00:22:02.800 other bus stop and somebody from the other campus would pick up that vhs tape that's how they delivered 00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:09.600 video teaching week in and week out vhs tape on a greyhound bus and a lot of the kickback that he had back 00:22:09.600 --> 00:22:15.600 in and it was a great quote he's he said uh not everybody bought into it and even with what you 00:22:15.600 --> 00:22:21.200 guys are doing i don't think everybody's gonna buy into it but enough people bought into it to make it 00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:27.520 worthwhile to make it effective and and when we look at and that's really has been kind of the the mantra 00:22:27.520 --> 00:22:34.000 for me for church online and micro locations and and what you guys are doing where not everybody's gonna 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:39.120 buy into this and i'm i'm done with the days of thinking that i've got to convince everybody that 00:22:39.120 --> 00:22:44.560 church online oh yeah it never works it's you're not going to get there but you got to convince enough 00:22:44.560 --> 00:22:51.040 people to make it worthwhile and and and show that it's going to impact enough people to make it worth 00:22:51.040 --> 00:22:57.760 the effort and i i think honest to god in my experience that's not hard to show um you're not going to get 00:22:57.760 --> 00:23:03.920 everybody uh and there are theological questions and things like that at least their perception is 00:23:03.920 --> 00:23:09.440 there's theological questions um but at the end of the day like this is a really this is a really awesome 00:23:09.440 --> 00:23:16.480 thing that you guys are doing hey so evan tell me this like what with your strategy um do you have 00:23:16.480 --> 00:23:23.280 other kind of micro venues that are going to grow up using this video or is this kind of a one-time thing 00:23:23.280 --> 00:23:30.720 how is that conversation gone with your with your church your staff now seeing the success of what's 00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:35.520 happening at centerville yeah sure so we're starting to think more and more about what that's going to 00:23:35.520 --> 00:23:43.440 look like um we are definitely thinking about multi-site probably starting at a smaller scale than this one did 00:23:43.440 --> 00:23:48.960 um we just happen to have that big base of people who are watching online or making the commute here 00:23:49.680 --> 00:23:55.760 um so we're exploring the idea of maybe finding someone who wants to host something in their own 00:23:55.760 --> 00:24:01.120 house or a local venue and just giving them a few resources to help facilitate something of their own 00:24:01.120 --> 00:24:06.640 that's not something we're currently doing yet but we're working through that um been reading a little 00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:12.720 bit about what saddleback does um jacranda has a lot of information on what they're doing their 00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:17.200 approach is incredible just the scale that they're able to pull that kind of thing off is just amazing 00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:24.480 so it's our first one and um we've learned a lot from it we're probably going to try to do a similar 00:24:24.480 --> 00:24:31.760 thing but on a smaller scale this one is rapidly becoming um its own campus i mean it's already it's 00:24:31.760 --> 00:24:36.800 been designated a campus so it started as a watch party which would be our terminology for a microsite 00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:43.120 and then i want to say it was like eight or ten weeks um we decided you know we've got over 100 00:24:43.120 --> 00:24:49.360 people who are meeting here this is a campus so it went from the eastern shore watch party to lh centerville 00:24:50.080 --> 00:24:56.480 in that short of a time we don't think though that's going to be the normal process so we're still 00:24:56.480 --> 00:25:01.840 working through like how do you support a group of 20 people or 30 people or that kind of thing we did just 00:25:01.840 --> 00:25:08.800 find out maybe a month ago just in the comments on our online feed we had someone who was watching 00:25:08.800 --> 00:25:13.680 online over the summer she had a friend who just kept inviting her so she's like you know what i'm 00:25:13.680 --> 00:25:21.200 going to watch this um she started watching over the summer and then just about a month ago she works 00:25:21.200 --> 00:25:27.120 in a nursing home and she began sharing the service with her residents and so we're seeing pretty much 00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:33.120 every week now she checks in that she's got the service off for her residents and so that wasn't 00:25:33.120 --> 00:25:38.400 anything we planned or anything that's official but we've got in a way a multi-site microsite location 00:25:38.400 --> 00:25:44.240 right there so we're as we're seeing that kind of thing happen we're like you know i mean if people 00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:48.960 are even starting this on their own even with eastern shore we heard about and this didn't come up 00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:54.880 until our interest meeting that we found out about it but people in this area have gathered in a home 00:25:54.880 --> 00:26:00.640 and watched service together um during a snowstorm that we didn't even know happened maybe 20 or so 00:26:00.640 --> 00:26:06.240 people just on their own organically formed you know microsite locations so we're seeing that it's 00:26:06.240 --> 00:26:12.000 happening even if we don't do anything about it and we're trying to think through how do we support 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:17.840 that how do we do that in a way that's organized where do you draw the line of support because you can't 00:26:17.840 --> 00:26:22.880 give the same resources to a microsite that you would give to a 200 person campus that kind of thing 00:26:22.880 --> 00:26:30.240 yeah well and hopefully the the support's not as needed because the the the resources the model is 00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:35.040 much simpler totally what we're really looking at is making it um kind of equivalent to how we see a 00:26:35.040 --> 00:26:39.440 small group so you know our small groups you've got some content you work through whether that's a sermon 00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:44.000 study or another book or some kind of thing um and you're just really there to host people in your house 00:26:44.960 --> 00:26:49.840 um and so we're trying to see like as much as possible can we just pull the same model that we 00:26:49.840 --> 00:26:56.320 use for small groups and kind of make that our microsite model that's awesome hey joey how's how's the 00:26:56.320 --> 00:27:02.000 model kind of grown from you from you like you've got you got five america you got a couple of 00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:07.680 international uh is it expats kind of down in that or i would love to just kind of maybe hear 00:27:08.320 --> 00:27:14.880 how the idea of of micro grew out of online the gathering clustering to kind of where you are now 00:27:14.880 --> 00:27:20.880 yeah so we we started with um you know pushing for engagement and telling people you know you've 00:27:20.880 --> 00:27:27.200 got to be in community so uh if you're watching at your house and you decide this is my church we 00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:32.720 always say hey just become a house campus uh and invite people in and have community so we 00:27:33.280 --> 00:27:39.280 we kind of like extract the kind of idea from acts chapter two of a where you break bread together 00:27:39.280 --> 00:27:47.520 you worship together and you go out and serve your community uh and and really it really start from 00:27:47.520 --> 00:27:56.400 that idea uh so the the virus the the we we have a seasonal online baby studies right now so we we had 00:27:56.400 --> 00:28:03.440 the fall baby studies and all house campuses usually they join those baby studies they they they either 00:28:03.440 --> 00:28:10.800 like do on their own or some of them just decide to join other people online so they have a bigger 00:28:10.800 --> 00:28:18.960 community but either way uh the discipleship is a big factor into this we we really push for for the 00:28:18.960 --> 00:28:29.120 discipleship piece but i i think for us the expansion of that is really see it grow um from what it is 00:28:29.840 --> 00:28:37.760 we really don't have this big master plan of uh okay when you become a house campus you have to reach this 00:28:37.760 --> 00:28:44.960 goal here so we can transition to the next phase no if if that house is going to always have the 15 00:28:44.960 --> 00:28:50.800 people meeting there but they're growing spiritually they're growing as a community and they're serving 00:28:50.800 --> 00:28:56.000 the community uh we wanted them to keep moving we want to we want to keep them moving forward in that 00:28:56.000 --> 00:29:01.680 direction uh so we we don't have this kind of master plan one thing that we kind of feel yet 00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:10.160 um because everybody that has been baptized through the online church they end up coming here i mean 00:29:10.160 --> 00:29:16.400 even from canada they want to fly all the way here so they feel like at least they've been to the 00:29:16.400 --> 00:29:23.520 physical campus once uh and that's one thing i i think is interesting about the online church is that 00:29:23.520 --> 00:29:31.040 because the current model they feel really attached to the physical campus yeah uh do you know what i 00:29:31.040 --> 00:29:37.760 mean so uh uh one of the things that i've been looking at is uh in you and i kind of chat a little 00:29:37.760 --> 00:29:45.280 bit about that before is should the model of the online church really kind of change uh and i know this 00:29:45.280 --> 00:29:51.440 might be for another conversation but the way i see it the future of the online church may not be 00:29:52.480 --> 00:30:02.080 necessarily just stream the streaming of your sunday service um because that attachment to the physical 00:30:02.080 --> 00:30:10.000 campus can can kind of like stop the online church from real growth because people feel too attached to 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:16.160 the physical campus that they could not be they cannot be in uh so i'm starting to look into that 00:30:16.160 --> 00:30:23.440 right now like i'm i start to have some conversations about uh you know even even at the church at the bar 00:30:24.080 --> 00:30:30.080 uh should we modify the model so people are not attached to the physical campus they cannot be in but we produce 00:30:30.960 --> 00:30:38.320 the content that actually drive the house campuses to create their own environments and and that fits them 00:30:39.200 --> 00:30:44.240 where they are because culturally every place is going to be different that's that's one of the 00:30:44.240 --> 00:30:49.200 challenges that i see for the online churches people can be watching ghana africa but there's some things 00:30:49.200 --> 00:30:57.120 that's gonna it's about ghana africa and i cannot i cannot fulfill that those aspects of with the online church 00:30:57.760 --> 00:31:05.280 so how i make the original responses is i just met another pastor from pakistan a couple weeks ago he 00:31:05.280 --> 00:31:13.040 was here in the u.s and we had a great conversation and he's telling me about the ways to reach out to 00:31:13.040 --> 00:31:19.520 their community and he's thinking about going to the tv you know then i'm thinking why don't you go online 00:31:20.720 --> 00:31:26.800 and the thing that hit me was like well why don't we give you the support for you to start the online 00:31:26.800 --> 00:31:34.000 church right there in pakistan not from here but you right there where you are and you can reach out 00:31:34.000 --> 00:31:40.560 to the entire country yeah and he never looked at that way he right now we can we can stream yours 00:31:40.560 --> 00:31:46.320 i said you know what it's not the same yeah but if you're on on camera you have the same infrastructure 00:31:46.320 --> 00:31:52.080 that i have here but it's there is you and you're part of that culture so that's what i'm saying like 00:31:52.080 --> 00:31:58.000 i'm my brain starts to really start to go to different places right now where what's next for 00:31:58.000 --> 00:32:06.160 the online church uh because i like evan's model what he's doing because he really fits a need that 00:32:06.160 --> 00:32:11.760 they have there and they they grow from it and you see the results of it and you and you just like you 00:32:11.760 --> 00:32:20.400 experience that it's it's made for to meet their needs uh in in in like every online church is not 00:32:20.400 --> 00:32:25.760 made the same it's not created the same right it's it's not the same format you want to feed everybody 00:32:25.760 --> 00:32:35.920 so i think for us jeff is that is it's is looking ahead and see culturally how can we diversify how 00:32:35.920 --> 00:32:42.080 can you make the online campus something that is really effective bring in relevant content to 00:32:42.080 --> 00:32:48.960 people's lives bring jesus to people who don't know him yet uh uh and at the same time at the same 00:32:48.960 --> 00:32:55.280 time allow people to build relevant meaningful relationships through it the the church there's 00:32:55.280 --> 00:33:03.680 a perception that the church online today struggles to meet the perception of what today's church is 00:33:03.680 --> 00:33:12.320 yeah um yeah so there's a lot of money that goes into creating the sound stages to allow you guys to 00:33:12.320 --> 00:33:18.640 produce the video that you do the the lighting the cameras the encoding gear um there there's a lot of 00:33:18.640 --> 00:33:24.800 expense that that's that's involved in that there's a lot of technicality it takes a lot to create the 00:33:24.800 --> 00:33:30.480 environment for the pastor to speak his his message and to do all these things and so it's it's like 00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:36.480 yeah church online struggles to do that not to mention that the way that both our worship and both our 00:33:36.480 --> 00:33:44.160 our teaching are presented and broadcast um it's it's very easy to create a consumeristic identity 00:33:44.160 --> 00:33:51.040 which is what we the church don't want we don't want to create consumers we want to create disciple 00:33:51.040 --> 00:33:57.200 makers who are capable of creating other disciples um but honestly what's interesting at the end of that 00:33:57.200 --> 00:34:03.040 is is we it's not just the church online that has that issue right it's the church overall has that 00:34:03.040 --> 00:34:08.560 issue many of the things that that church online is faulted with and saying that hey you're responsible 00:34:08.560 --> 00:34:13.360 for this so we don't want to do church online because we don't want lazy people sitting on couches 00:34:13.920 --> 00:34:19.840 cool let's not do church online you'll have lazy people sitting on pews um at the end of the day 00:34:19.840 --> 00:34:25.840 you're still it's that's still model just being being reproduced it's my podcast i can say that um 00:34:25.840 --> 00:34:33.200 so yeah just just saying but what in fact what church online is capable of yeah it may struggle 00:34:33.200 --> 00:34:39.520 with what the perception of what usa church is today uh but i think it thrives when you look at the 00:34:39.520 --> 00:34:45.200 biblical model of what church is much of the things that that we perceive as as a biblical standard of 00:34:45.200 --> 00:34:51.040 church i'm reading the bible and it's not in there like when you look at the man standing on stage for 00:34:51.040 --> 00:34:56.880 40 minutes preaching uh there's value to that and i don't want to discredit many of the pastors who are 00:34:56.880 --> 00:35:05.280 out there who uh as their job are the spiritual leaders of these organizations but lead pastor is not 00:35:05.280 --> 00:35:13.520 a biblical position uh the orators that stand on stage actually came more and closer to three or 400 a.d 00:35:13.520 --> 00:35:23.200 and and in fact at the time culturally it was they were these celebrities like it was like the tv star 00:35:23.200 --> 00:35:29.440 who was on stage because they had so much value in the order capacity in those speakers and so a lot 00:35:29.440 --> 00:35:34.160 of the things that it's like yeah church church online struggles with that okay well that's not really 00:35:34.720 --> 00:35:40.480 the core of what biblical is and you know joey some of the the conversations that we've had is 00:35:40.480 --> 00:35:47.200 maybe it's a whole other thing yeah and i just i i i i think you there's a there's a whole other model of 00:35:47.200 --> 00:35:54.880 church yeah that is waiting to be revealed um and once again i don't want to disparage the model that's 00:35:54.880 --> 00:35:59.920 here the church growth model in the big building uh because i think it's done a lot of good it's in 00:35:59.920 --> 00:36:05.440 it's reached people in a big way and it continued and it will continue to do so but i think there's 00:36:05.440 --> 00:36:12.480 another way i think there's another model um it was it was interesting just just today i had a um 00:36:12.480 --> 00:36:19.520 i had a had a a doctorate student doctoral student at a at a seminary call uh to do a zoom thing with 00:36:19.520 --> 00:36:25.840 me hit me up to the website and honest to god the conversation was so i googled how to plant a church 00:36:25.840 --> 00:36:33.120 digitally and and you came up so can you talk to me about what planting churches digitally looks like 00:36:33.120 --> 00:36:40.000 like and and i spent an hour educating like challenging the way his paradigm of how he views 00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:46.320 and it was funny along the way he too was like yeah that's that's completely that's not biblical that's 00:36:46.320 --> 00:36:53.040 not the way that it isn't but it's the standard that we've been so used to over the years oh yeah 00:36:54.080 --> 00:37:00.480 and you guys just to bring it even home even you guys just challenging the paradigm of i'm gonna do 00:37:00.480 --> 00:37:07.680 church in a bar i'm gonna do church in a um uh in a building and we're not even gonna bring a band in 00:37:08.240 --> 00:37:16.160 um we're just gonna watch this via video my gosh if if that type of model worked um and as we continue 00:37:16.160 --> 00:37:22.160 to see the success stories of how god's using these things um could you imagine the opportunities we 00:37:22.160 --> 00:37:27.040 have to expand the gospel and to literally put it in the communities that are reaching people 00:37:27.040 --> 00:37:33.200 that would not set foot in the church building it's i mean there's a phenomenal opportunity here 00:37:33.200 --> 00:37:39.040 honestly if we would just get over ourselves a little bit and realize that god's bigger and it's 00:37:39.040 --> 00:37:44.480 more capable than i think we sometimes give them credit as okay so can i run the risk to look sound 00:37:44.480 --> 00:37:51.840 like a real real jerk for some churches here yeah sure i'll cut this if i need to are you okay with 00:37:51.840 --> 00:38:00.800 that so i had a conversation with a friend of mine yesterday he's a he's a big producer and um he he's 00:38:02.080 --> 00:38:07.600 i mean he produced some big guys and uh he called me because he said hey i want to get your take on 00:38:08.160 --> 00:38:14.320 kanye west and what's going on because he actually might be involved in some production that will 00:38:14.320 --> 00:38:19.280 involve kanye and and so he's like before i jump into these i want to hear from you what do you think 00:38:19.280 --> 00:38:26.960 and we talk about it uh because kanye is doing this worship thing at his house yeah uh and because my 00:38:26.960 --> 00:38:33.920 involvement in the online church he wants my opinion i said you know what i it i sometimes feels that i i 00:38:33.920 --> 00:38:38.000 hope i i don't want to offend anybody but i'm just just hanging there for a second 00:38:38.160 --> 00:38:46.000 sometimes feels that the church today is more like a real estate business than what church really 00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:53.840 supposed to be we build this big infrastructures infrastructure these big buildings and now the 00:38:53.840 --> 00:38:59.520 fight is we got to get enough people in and have enough activities enough stuff going on so people 00:38:59.520 --> 00:39:06.800 can see the value and give them money so we can pay the bills and that's really that's just a real 00:39:06.800 --> 00:39:11.680 estate business so we got to build more right so let's build another building because the business 00:39:11.680 --> 00:39:19.120 is growing and i know this is a very the black and white way of looking at it but that be that becomes 00:39:19.120 --> 00:39:25.680 the priority yeah well and not not to mention sorry to cut you off but there's a ticking time bomb 00:39:25.680 --> 00:39:31.440 right because we keep buying more property we keep building these bigger buildings and at this point 00:39:31.440 --> 00:39:37.360 we're tax exempt when it comes to property tax guess what that's not gonna be that way forever 00:39:37.920 --> 00:39:43.920 well that's what happened that's what happened in north of indianapolis so the county came in and 00:39:43.920 --> 00:39:50.240 said we're done giving licenses to churches we're done that's right because they want a revenue 00:39:50.880 --> 00:39:55.520 so what happened now the churches are trying to buy other churches so to grow their multi-sites 00:39:56.240 --> 00:40:00.640 so they're looking at churches they're like falling apart so they can buy to preserve because they 00:40:00.640 --> 00:40:06.400 grandfather in so they can actually preserve that taxes again i'm not taking away the value of the 00:40:06.400 --> 00:40:13.440 physical church at all i think the value is there has to be there uh exist is real they they add value 00:40:13.440 --> 00:40:18.480 to the community but i think the priorities shift a little bit and again you just read the book 00:40:18.480 --> 00:40:24.960 if you read the book culture trump strategy you you just get to a point where culture is doing that 00:40:24.960 --> 00:40:31.920 right now culture is dead in the church the way we do church is not building value in my life 00:40:32.880 --> 00:40:36.560 and i need to find a someplace else and the place where they find that is the internet 00:40:38.240 --> 00:40:44.080 that's what they're fighting so i don't need to go to my church to hear the message from my pastor 00:40:44.960 --> 00:40:51.360 every sunday because i can actually find that message in the internet somewhere the same thing or 00:40:51.360 --> 00:41:00.560 probably better and i have more options so i think that the sense of value has changed for the culture 00:41:01.440 --> 00:41:07.360 so we got to look at ourselves in the church and ask the question what is the value of someone walking 00:41:07.360 --> 00:41:14.400 into my building and the same thing for us doing online what is the value of someone tuning in online 00:41:14.400 --> 00:41:19.120 and and participating in a church service that's the question keeps coming back to me that's why i've 00:41:19.120 --> 00:41:25.040 been questioning the model we were doing just by streaming our services that's a really like it's good for 00:41:25.040 --> 00:41:32.560 us to ask those questions and trying to discover do you know the answers like what what is it what is 00:41:32.560 --> 00:41:39.600 actually drive people win and why should they come in that's it like why people should come to my church 00:41:40.560 --> 00:41:47.120 because sometimes feels like the back door is wide open and the front door is just this little thing 00:41:47.120 --> 00:41:51.280 that nobody can get in and i think a lot of church in america today are going through this 00:41:52.080 --> 00:41:58.960 i think they're they're asking that question there's less people on the chairs uh they we don't know how 00:41:58.960 --> 00:42:02.400 to manage this we don't know what you're doing guess what we still have to pay the mortgage 00:42:04.320 --> 00:42:10.560 now do you know what i mean and now now it shifts the purpose of the church let's get people in so 00:42:10.560 --> 00:42:14.880 we can keep up with the mortgage i mean that's just the reality of it i mean if we if we can sit in 00:42:14.880 --> 00:42:20.880 the room with no microphones and cameras and have these conversations i think a lot of pastors say man i'm 00:42:20.880 --> 00:42:27.040 going through this right now yeah well let's have the conversations joe joey and i and evan i'll get 00:42:27.040 --> 00:42:32.240 to you one second joey and i we were hanging out in colorado we would say we met each other i don't 00:42:32.240 --> 00:42:37.520 know maybe a couple months ago and uh joey i didn't tell you the story but after i left you guys i hung 00:42:37.520 --> 00:42:42.240 around for a couple days for some other meetings and i was i was uh driving around an uber somewhere i 00:42:42.240 --> 00:42:46.480 don't even know where i was somewhere denver area there's a big giga church over here on the left 00:42:46.480 --> 00:42:52.160 left and uh i'm talking to the uber driver and i just make some comment wow that church is huge this 00:42:52.160 --> 00:42:58.480 is a it must have been like a four thousand person venue this is a giant church um and i was like man 00:42:58.480 --> 00:43:06.400 that's that church is is beautiful what church is that this man starts f-bombing and copping an 00:43:06.400 --> 00:43:11.840 attitude at the mere idea of this church and i'm not going to drop the name of the church i don't even think i 00:43:11.840 --> 00:43:18.320 could remember it but he was not happy about this church uh and the perception at the end of this 00:43:18.320 --> 00:43:26.560 very um um diatribe that was coming out of his mouth was that church has all the money and look 00:43:26.560 --> 00:43:33.520 at what they spend it on this glorious beautiful building and they don't give a crap about me joey 00:43:33.520 --> 00:43:39.520 uber driver whatever his name was he just they don't care but that's perception of this guy it's it's like 00:43:39.520 --> 00:43:47.440 we we build these castles um that go towards yes good is done in the building and i don't want to 00:43:48.000 --> 00:43:55.200 to demean that or or to speak ill of it because it is an effective model but not for everybody and 00:43:55.200 --> 00:43:58.880 there needs to be other models to get out there and help evan you were you were wanting to say 00:43:58.880 --> 00:44:02.640 something earlier yeah you know as i'm hearing we talk about this i've just got this phrase that keeps 00:44:02.640 --> 00:44:08.160 coming to mind that's um different content for different people i think when you look at technology 00:44:08.160 --> 00:44:13.760 companies especially everything is personalized you know when you go into instagram and you're 00:44:13.760 --> 00:44:18.800 scrolling your feed you're the only person who's going to see that exact feed you've subscribed to 00:44:18.800 --> 00:44:23.680 certain things artificial intelligence is learning your preferences and what's best to show you 00:44:24.320 --> 00:44:30.240 you know no one is it's not the same approach for everyone to give them the best experience and i think in our context that means 00:44:30.240 --> 00:44:35.520 you know we're not going to be able to do the exact same thing replicate that at every location 00:44:35.520 --> 00:44:39.600 the more we can personalize things whether that's with a microsite having a different approach for 00:44:39.600 --> 00:44:45.520 a different group of people or online even if we can find different ways to offer content differently 00:44:45.520 --> 00:44:51.280 for different people of where they're at what they're going through i think that's what the technology 00:44:51.280 --> 00:44:56.880 industry probably just the world at large is moving towards and yeah that's where we think i tell you 00:44:56.880 --> 00:45:03.600 what joey like i i would be more interested in hearing about you reaching bar number two 00:45:04.800 --> 00:45:12.480 and finding that niche yeah we're gonna be like the bar church yeah and just i remember what's his name oh my gosh 00:45:12.480 --> 00:45:19.040 um mark batterson out at uh it's actually out in your world evan out at uh was it national 00:45:19.680 --> 00:45:24.960 yeah ntc national community church yeah like back back a decade ago like he was he was the movie 00:45:24.960 --> 00:45:29.040 he was the movie pastor the movie church pastor like i think he actually had that.com 00:45:29.040 --> 00:45:31.760 i think that it was 00:45:31.760 --> 00:45:37.120 something like that something yeah yeah but because it's like okay so we're going to create our content 00:45:37.120 --> 00:45:41.440 we're going to reach people in this and that when that was his stick well you know he's bought coffee 00:45:41.440 --> 00:45:48.480 houses and things have moved on past then but yeah so once you find out how to reach people in the bar 00:45:49.120 --> 00:45:55.840 man knock on every bar in town and just try to replicate this this model well let's see the results 00:45:55.840 --> 00:46:04.720 what we start seeing is out right now is the impact that the church is having on the staff of the bar 00:46:06.400 --> 00:46:11.040 didn't even think of that but you are right and the owners you start to point it out 00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:16.080 so what they they for example the bar doesn't open until noon on sunday 00:46:17.120 --> 00:46:23.040 but he said they start seeing the staff coming early on sunday now and they start moving around but they 00:46:23.040 --> 00:46:30.160 listen the tvs are all on on the service so they start listening to it well recently um 00:46:31.040 --> 00:46:36.480 they discovered that one of one person worked in the bar for a long time uh just discovered has cancer 00:46:38.800 --> 00:46:45.600 and so i you know the bars close to your house we we go there a lot really they have food trucks and 00:46:45.600 --> 00:46:54.320 it's a great place to hang out um it's by the river beautiful location uh so i'm there on sunday night 00:46:54.320 --> 00:47:02.000 to meet some friends and i saw the guy and listen the bar is packed and we're in the middle of the 00:47:02.000 --> 00:47:07.920 patio and i stopped him and said hey i just heard what happened to you uh how can i pray for you 00:47:09.520 --> 00:47:14.480 and he just told me i didn't ask him if he was christian i didn't ask anything he knows me he's 00:47:14.480 --> 00:47:20.800 no i'm the only he knows i'm the only pastor who runs the church the bar deal and so he turned to me 00:47:20.800 --> 00:47:25.840 and said man i if you can pray for peace and i mean he told the things and i just lay hands and we 00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:32.080 pray for him right in the middle of the bar where people are like drinking and having conversations 00:47:32.080 --> 00:47:39.200 all around wow we just pray right there uh and i when i was done praying he got tears in his eyes and 00:47:39.200 --> 00:47:49.680 he's just like so we're we're just doing this like church thing out you know at the bar and we're 00:47:49.680 --> 00:47:55.280 being getting known in the area by you know we have so it was kind of funny because it was not weird for 00:47:55.280 --> 00:48:02.960 the people around to see us praying for him right there in the middle of the bar uh and the staff 00:48:02.960 --> 00:48:10.240 it was a big thing for the staff to see that happening so uh we've been asked about lately to 00:48:10.240 --> 00:48:16.080 like hey our two of the employees are leaving would you guys come and pray for them before like things 00:48:16.080 --> 00:48:21.840 like that wow would you guys come before they leave this is their last day i show up they're having this 00:48:21.840 --> 00:48:29.120 thing oh let's stop let's pray for them you've become the the church of of the bar man exactly 00:48:29.120 --> 00:48:37.440 exactly so uh it is a pretty kind of fun to watch that kind of development because it's something that 00:48:38.240 --> 00:48:45.280 for the for the model we have today these people need to make a decision to step into a church building 00:48:45.280 --> 00:48:53.120 to receive that uh and that's not the case anymore that we are there we're going to pray for you and 00:48:53.120 --> 00:48:58.080 it's no longer like uh would you be okay if i pray for you and then we don't ask the questions like how 00:48:58.080 --> 00:49:04.400 can i pray for you hmm uh we kind of skip that step because this is who i am 00:49:05.840 --> 00:49:11.600 doing me i'm a christian i'm a i'm a child of god and i'm going to pray for you regardless if you like 00:49:11.600 --> 00:49:16.320 it or not i'm going to pray for you so i'm not going to ask you if you want me to pray for you 00:49:16.320 --> 00:49:21.360 i just want to say how how can i pray for you give me something so that i can help that's fine exactly 00:49:21.360 --> 00:49:27.520 and and they and they like it's kind of hard right for somebody to say uh oh no no i don't want 00:49:27.520 --> 00:49:32.480 you to pray for me people are usually not going to say that they have they have the freedom to say it 00:49:32.480 --> 00:49:37.360 but usually they won't say that uh so i think that's that's the one of the impacts for us like 00:49:38.000 --> 00:49:46.160 to me like if we did all this to get this entire bar staff in a direction in a path 00:49:47.040 --> 00:49:52.800 of becoming disciples of christ that's enough that's sufficient for me for us to do all this 00:49:53.680 --> 00:49:59.680 uh but i think god has a lot a lot in store for us there well i tell you what there's there's a lot of 00:50:00.320 --> 00:50:09.680 innovation in these in these conversations um and they're not it's not big innovation like um joey 00:50:09.680 --> 00:50:15.280 you've got bars all over the city finding the relationship networking with the one 00:50:15.760 --> 00:50:20.320 we build a was it his idea or was it your idea whose idea was it to go into the that was my idea 00:50:20.320 --> 00:50:25.120 because we talk about house campuses and i yeah keep going you know i go to the bar and i was like man 00:50:25.680 --> 00:50:32.400 what do we look like to have a church at the bar and they got tvs everywhere i mean yeah so he 00:50:33.280 --> 00:50:37.600 and he literally he was like dude do whatever you want and they go to that bar to the church of the 00:50:37.600 --> 00:50:44.000 the bar the owners now so that's where they attend yeah uh and and here's what happened this last sunday 00:50:44.720 --> 00:50:54.480 they uh broadcast on their facebook page come to church yes so that oh my gosh the bar promotes 00:50:54.480 --> 00:50:59.600 the church on their facebook page and they rebroadcast our services on their facebook page 00:51:01.440 --> 00:51:12.080 that is unbelievable i know so i just but but but i guess my my point is like this is such an innovative 00:51:12.080 --> 00:51:20.080 idea but this is not an expensive idea it's and it's not we're not building anything even evan's 00:51:20.080 --> 00:51:25.280 stuff with with broadcasting worship it's it's a video encoder and using the infrastructure you already 00:51:25.280 --> 00:51:33.280 it's a hundred it's a hundred dollar expense it's a apple tv box okay apple tvs are more like 229 in 00:51:33.280 --> 00:51:39.280 fairness but still you can do a 40 dollar roku i bet if you're really gonna exactly you can do that too 00:51:41.360 --> 00:51:47.040 but it's it's like look at it's it's looking at what you have with fresh eyes right yeah and and it's 00:51:47.040 --> 00:51:52.880 like okay there's a concept there's an idea there's something here that's unique that somebody's that 00:51:52.880 --> 00:52:00.640 nobody's ever thought of in in a way that is is completely new um we recently did a podcast and this is a 00:52:00.640 --> 00:52:05.760 this is a an elaborate story but it gets there's simpler ways to do this we did a podcast with the 00:52:05.760 --> 00:52:12.240 the guys over at uh christ fellowship west palm beach and we talked with um talked with their pop-up 00:52:12.240 --> 00:52:18.000 church pastor which is a weird thing but essentially they used to do like portable church and uh and one 00:52:18.000 --> 00:52:23.120 of their campuses shut down so they still had all this like gear from the portable drawer it didn't shut 00:52:23.120 --> 00:52:30.240 down it became a permanent campus but anyway they had this like excess gear sitting around and uh and 00:52:30.240 --> 00:52:34.480 somebody came up with the idea hey what would it look like if we actually like just drove around the 00:52:34.480 --> 00:52:39.520 different neighborhoods and did church just you know different neighborhoods every week nobody in the 00:52:39.520 --> 00:52:44.160 country is doing pop-up church everybody talks about it there's this room these people are all are 00:52:44.160 --> 00:52:49.520 doing it utilizing for the most part gear they already had upgrading it and yeah christ fellowship 00:52:49.520 --> 00:52:55.440 west palm beach is very over the top production value but what they've developed as a result of that 00:52:55.440 --> 00:53:03.520 is in 2020 next year they're going to launch four campuses they are on schedule to launch four campuses in 00:53:03.520 --> 00:53:10.240 one year because they are curating and cultivating and maturing this audience this city this community 00:53:10.240 --> 00:53:15.520 with the gospel right now so like they're going so fast they're having to tell church some of these 00:53:15.520 --> 00:53:20.640 areas hey we're gonna have to stop because we can't keep up but we're gonna come back and we're gonna 00:53:20.640 --> 00:53:25.440 finish the job here's here's what we're doing here's how we can make it work see what i like about 00:53:25.440 --> 00:53:31.760 this is look how evan is doing look what we're doing here look at west palm beach gardens you can see 00:53:31.760 --> 00:53:41.440 that there is people looking out for the change the innovation uh the new to get the word out that's 00:53:41.440 --> 00:53:49.440 what i like about this because there is there's this word that you know for a long time has been like a bad 00:53:49.440 --> 00:53:56.560 word in church that innovation and we finally we're finally getting to a point where there's enough guys 00:53:56.560 --> 00:54:04.560 enough people get involved they're innovators they're being innovators for god yeah and i think it was 00:54:04.560 --> 00:54:09.840 about time for the church to set that tone man this has been a great conversation i did not i did not 00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:15.120 think we were going to land on innovation when i started this this podcast whatever it was an hour ago 00:54:15.120 --> 00:54:22.960 this is this has been really cool i love this this is great um man hey joey or let yeah joey um any any 00:54:22.960 --> 00:54:28.080 thoughts as we're landing the plane and wrapping up here well man i just thank you so much for the 00:54:28.080 --> 00:54:34.400 opportunity to hang out here i mean kind of kind of miss you from that meeting colorado and we spent 00:54:34.400 --> 00:54:40.240 some time together um it was kind of funny how we we connect through facebook and all of a sudden 00:54:40.240 --> 00:54:48.880 we're in colorado for for that meeting him i don't know where uh but thank you so much i i i really pray 00:54:48.880 --> 00:54:58.160 that god continues to use people like you evan uh all the churches that are like just jumping into 00:54:58.720 --> 00:55:07.040 innovation and be open to what god's doing to what god is wants to do uh to not be just locked down into 00:55:07.680 --> 00:55:14.080 what has been but what could be yeah and he's not afraid to take risks sometimes you just we got to 00:55:14.080 --> 00:55:19.440 be okay just to say hey did not work out but you know what we're not going to sit around but thinking 00:55:19.440 --> 00:55:26.320 what could have been uh we're going to just go ahead and try it out so i'm saying we if i i tell 00:55:26.320 --> 00:55:30.240 people if i'm going to write a book i'm going to write a book about the things that i tried to 00:55:30.240 --> 00:55:36.160 not work out so it's a really thick book uh because that's the things that we usually don't talk about 00:55:36.160 --> 00:55:40.240 right the things that we try and do not work out or people don't know people look at even like 00:55:41.360 --> 00:55:45.520 people might be listening to this podcast and man you got it right for this church in the bar you did 00:55:45.520 --> 00:55:50.000 everything right now you have no idea how many things we try and do not work we change and we 00:55:50.000 --> 00:55:56.560 modify we adjust and we move on so that's the things i think would be great for people to kind of continue 00:55:56.560 --> 00:56:04.000 continue to explore continue to pursue uh but let god take the lead there's so much good like and i love 00:56:04.000 --> 00:56:09.200 having these conversations and meeting with with guys like you i was doing a i was doing an online 00:56:09.200 --> 00:56:15.520 bible study i do an online bible study with online pastors some online pastors and um one of them one 00:56:15.520 --> 00:56:20.800 of them canceled out in in long story short he's like yeah i'm getting pulled into a budget conversation 00:56:20.800 --> 00:56:26.320 and you know vision casting and pray for me and it's going to be an ugly conversation um 00:56:26.320 --> 00:56:32.960 and and i've been there i understand i've sat in that seat i know anybody who deals with online 00:56:32.960 --> 00:56:37.760 ministry has had those conversations because leadership often doesn't see the vision doesn't 00:56:37.760 --> 00:56:44.000 understand the purpose doesn't align necessarily or loosely with what the church overall is doing and 00:56:44.000 --> 00:56:49.600 so there's lots of of questions and in that and so joey you alluded to a lot of it just there know that 00:56:49.600 --> 00:56:55.920 you're not alone and that's that's the one thing just that that when i was that guy when i was in that 00:56:55.920 --> 00:57:03.600 seat when i was the only person out of a a large mega church that thought the way that i did um i had 00:57:03.600 --> 00:57:12.960 nothing but alone in me um i thought i was weird i thought i didn't belong um and and and honestly i managed to 00:57:12.960 --> 00:57:20.000 get myself into this dark place because i i just thought i was different and because these ideas 00:57:20.000 --> 00:57:25.920 were what i had because nobody bought into them it was i can't there's i'm not valid there's something 00:57:25.920 --> 00:57:32.400 strange about me you know fast forward a year or so everywhere i go i meet the online pastor 00:57:32.400 --> 00:57:39.120 who thinks like that and so the answer is you're not alone you're not wrong you may not be the season 00:57:39.120 --> 00:57:45.440 where it's right yet but that doesn't mean you stop uh you keep having those conversations you keep 00:57:45.440 --> 00:57:52.160 casting that vision you keep fighting for for what you can because and i cannot say this the org the 00:57:52.160 --> 00:57:59.520 church big c church has shifted within the past year where it was 2018 versus 2019 absolutely from 00:57:59.520 --> 00:58:04.080 from an outsider perspective i can totally see it and in conversations i have with others they see it too 00:58:04.080 --> 00:58:10.560 and so where we go in 2020 and how we continue to press forward uh man it's it's it's you people out 00:58:10.560 --> 00:58:16.880 there listening to this podcast that are gonna um gonna swing that pendulum you you've got more power 00:58:17.440 --> 00:58:24.720 um than than you organizationally realize it's just how to get the people the church the leadership to 00:58:24.720 --> 00:58:32.000 yeah so man thanks thanks for that joey evan that was a long landing the plane there evan uh landing 00:58:32.000 --> 00:58:36.960 the plane any thoughts man um anything as we wrap up yeah so i mean just going off of what you just 00:58:36.960 --> 00:58:42.800 said you know i think it's so important that we as a community especially those who are trying to 00:58:42.800 --> 00:58:48.640 innovate within the church and the online space like we have to stay in contact and we need to share 00:58:49.280 --> 00:58:54.640 what we're doing because it's so easy to feel like you're alone i remember a few years ago we first 00:58:54.640 --> 00:58:59.760 started having the conversations about offering online expressions of church and broadcasting and 00:59:00.640 --> 00:59:06.560 first conversations about what would a microsite look like like it was much harder to get buy-in back 00:59:06.560 --> 00:59:13.280 then and i did feel largely alone with it um but at the time i don't think there were many resources but 00:59:13.280 --> 00:59:21.200 there was um jay kranda from saddleback and his blog and i pulled so much information from that blog that 00:59:21.200 --> 00:59:27.360 i realized you know here's at least one church who's doing this really well here's you know some of the 00:59:27.360 --> 00:59:33.760 frameworks they use and that really without those resources and being able to see if there's someone else 00:59:33.760 --> 00:59:40.560 doing this i don't know that our church would be doing what it's doing right now so it's so important 00:59:40.560 --> 00:59:45.920 you know your podcast your blog jeff that you've started those resources are just so important to 00:59:46.480 --> 00:59:51.040 constantly just be sharing whatever churches are doing so you can see that you're not alone with 00:59:51.040 --> 00:59:57.520 this and just learn from whatever churches are doing yeah and and we're on my side we're we're 00:59:57.520 --> 01:00:02.880 ramping up 2020 is going to be a great year man this has been an incredible podcast once again i 01:00:02.880 --> 01:00:08.560 just want to thank you guys for taking the time to jump on this um we're going to do stuff again uh 01:00:08.560 --> 01:00:14.000 evan i've loved in engaging with you and uh and joey we're going to have to find some topics and some 01:00:14.000 --> 01:00:19.280 more time i want to i mean there's there's several layers of stuff we've yet to unravel that that are 01:00:19.280 --> 01:00:25.120 still needing some attention so yes but we're gonna we're gonna break for now uh for evan for for 01:00:25.120 --> 01:00:29.360 joey my name is jeff thanks everybody for being here and we'll see you next time here at the church 01:00:29.360 --> 01:00:30.920 digital podcast. Y'all have a good day.