WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.660 episode 46 of the church digital podcast jeff here once again and i gotta tell you i'm excited 00:00:05.660 --> 00:00:10.700 about this podcast i do say that a lot i think i say that about every episode i'm excited i'm happy 00:00:10.700 --> 00:00:17.140 i'm something but this is a really cool episode where we dig into mobile apps and whether or not 00:00:17.140 --> 00:00:23.060 it's effective and worthwhile in churches and for the conversation i'm bringing in matt welty who's 00:00:23.060 --> 00:00:29.980 technology pastor is that not like the coolest title ever technology pastor for crossroads 00:00:29.980 --> 00:00:36.960 church a large uh multi-site church in cincinnati ohio now kentucky area and they're doing some 00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:42.780 great things not only within the church not only with their church online but with their mobile app 00:00:42.780 --> 00:00:48.040 and arguably some of the best things that i've heard in a church mobile app towards creating community 00:00:48.040 --> 00:00:54.180 that i've i've ever heard of is going to come up in this conversation so right off the bat um we're 00:00:54.180 --> 00:00:58.500 going to put the link to the show notes to the mobile app you guys should take some time download 00:00:58.500 --> 00:01:04.940 the mobile app we'll include the ios the google all that so grab that download the app look through it 00:01:04.940 --> 00:01:10.880 while you're listening to this podcast because this is an incredible app they have some incredible 00:01:10.880 --> 00:01:18.820 functionality in here that's really moving beyond just the the reach component but developing engagement 00:01:18.820 --> 00:01:23.860 towards creating community which is far more effective in the mobile scope and we're going to have tons of 00:01:23.860 --> 00:01:29.840 conversations through this love where we're going here uh we've got ray de armis once again co-host uh 00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:35.520 online pastor with christ fellowship miami in the conversation matt welty tech pastor pastor of 00:01:35.520 --> 00:01:41.340 technology for crossroads church up in cincinnati and myself jeff with the church digital in a 00:01:41.340 --> 00:01:48.580 conversation that i'm calling community via mobile app hey everybody here you go did this is new i've not 00:01:48.580 --> 00:01:57.320 seen these in you right what's what was the story when did you okay so um like i had lost my headphones 00:01:57.320 --> 00:02:04.660 um a while back i had the bose ear you know earphones and stuff and they were great i like i still got my 00:02:04.660 --> 00:02:09.640 cups but these were like my regular drivers on the regular and so i was like well maybe it's time for a 00:02:09.640 --> 00:02:15.460 change let's take a look at my brother-in-law got the airpods pro so i was like well uh let me ask him if i 00:02:15.460 --> 00:02:19.800 could borrow him because everybody i knew who had them was talking about the noise canceling was talking 00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:24.000 about how much you know they enjoyed it in transparency mode and a whole bunch of stuff so 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:28.260 i was like well let me ask thomas if i could borrow them for a weekend try online stuff and see if they 00:02:28.260 --> 00:02:32.580 work out well for me because 250 bucks still something i mean to me it's a ton of money to invest in 00:02:32.580 --> 00:02:37.800 in the set of headphones it was a lot to splurge but i had a i had a i had a bunch of uh like christmas 00:02:37.800 --> 00:02:43.300 money and stuff that i was like all right well if i wanted to i could so um i tried them out and 00:02:43.300 --> 00:02:49.240 one day within one day i was convinced because i'm there at a starbucks and i'm doing church online 00:02:49.240 --> 00:02:54.520 people are coming up to me from my from the campus to talk to me i turn on transparency mode in a full 00:02:54.520 --> 00:02:58.220 pack starbucks and maybe i have a full-fledged conversation with them with the things in the ear 00:02:58.220 --> 00:03:03.920 and uh and it was just next level technology i was like this is probably the most innovative 00:03:03.920 --> 00:03:08.580 and jeff and i always talk about this all the time because we have a love hate relationship with 00:03:08.580 --> 00:03:13.080 apple in terms of their lack of innovation lately but this right here is probably the most innovative 00:03:13.080 --> 00:03:17.900 thing they've come out with since the phone i'm gonna go ahead and say that you really think so 00:03:17.900 --> 00:03:25.380 thanks for ruining my airpods for me i'm sorry i love it i'm sorry yeah i mean i'm told and jeff 00:03:25.380 --> 00:03:28.600 you'd be proud of me i'm totally nerding out i got a little silicon case for it and everything 00:03:28.600 --> 00:03:36.900 oh my gosh yeah so matt are those are those version one or version two what are you floating 00:03:36.900 --> 00:03:45.820 um i've got version ones version ones yes so i've got version ones i splurged for my wife and got her 00:03:45.820 --> 00:03:53.300 the wireless charging ones and then the pros came out and i'm similar though ray everyone who has them 00:03:53.300 --> 00:03:59.760 has said they're worth it and i've i've this is the most i've ever spent on headphones in my life 00:03:59.760 --> 00:04:05.920 so i i'm not i'm not a music guy or an audiophile where i had all this stuff before but even hearing 00:04:05.920 --> 00:04:10.700 more stuff like what you just said because man this is how we work now though okay matt you've got 00:04:10.700 --> 00:04:16.580 version one awesome i had version one too yeah i lost version as well i lost version one i literally i 00:04:16.580 --> 00:04:22.000 lost the airpods for like six weeks and the day version two arrived i found the version one airpods 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:27.360 fun story it's on facebook you can find it but at the end of the day i've got version two which is like 00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:31.760 this much different than version one there's like no difference maybe a better battery life 00:04:31.760 --> 00:04:37.720 and siri which i never really use on my earpods shut up siri siri is now like on my ipad 00:04:37.720 --> 00:04:47.460 so i have this going on why why didn't they come out with the whole thing the the pros for version 00:04:47.460 --> 00:04:52.760 two would have made so much more sense but not more money and that's the difference apple is screwing 00:04:52.760 --> 00:04:58.580 you around because they just want people to buy their crap so they're gonna buy version one they're 00:04:58.580 --> 00:05:02.980 gonna buy version two and then they're gonna upgrade to the to the pros and at the end of the 00:05:02.980 --> 00:05:09.440 day man there's only so many checks i can write to apple yeah so yeah yeah i'm at the point now where 00:05:09.440 --> 00:05:14.180 i just firmly believe that they slap early adopters you know what i'm saying like they come out with new 00:05:14.180 --> 00:05:19.300 products and if you're an early adopter you know you may as well just kind of hang around because you 00:05:19.300 --> 00:05:24.740 know the best version of it is literally like a year away right to say it like that i mean that's how i 00:05:24.740 --> 00:05:29.860 thought about the watch you know i bought apple watch i bought version two i bought gen two and it was 00:05:29.860 --> 00:05:36.240 just so bad you know like i was like this has none of the lte capability it wasn't even offered then i was 00:05:36.240 --> 00:05:41.560 like this is it's so dependent on the phone itself that it didn't it didn't feel like it improved my 00:05:41.560 --> 00:05:46.320 life it just made it worse it just all i did was bring more notifications in my life which i also had 00:05:46.320 --> 00:05:51.040 a pebble which if you know if if you're a fan of wearables then you already knew about the pebble 00:05:51.040 --> 00:05:56.380 which it was just a color version of that so it wasn't really like a big deal so now i'm just not even 00:05:56.380 --> 00:06:01.300 an apple watch fan i'm just like no that's that's a terrible idea it's a terrible device and mind you 00:06:01.300 --> 00:06:06.800 it's been the same thing with apple tv and and matt i'm actually a former like apple store employee so 00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:12.360 like i was like in the religion i worked for the temple it was great it was awesome but there's so 00:06:12.360 --> 00:06:16.500 much of that that you know even for those of us who work there we were like yeah man they slap early 00:06:16.500 --> 00:06:22.140 adopters so hard it's really bad to an outsider it feels like it's changed so i'm curious what you 00:06:22.140 --> 00:06:27.060 would say right as someone who was in it at the beginning i 10 years i mean i was a i was a mac 00:06:27.060 --> 00:06:34.720 fanboy so i i lined up for the first iphone the second one the three the 3g that like i and i still 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:43.220 have them there's a box in my basement yeah oh it's awesome hold you that's like um at some point in the 00:06:43.220 --> 00:06:49.420 last 10 years i think you're right the first versions the headliner pieces that they released 00:06:49.420 --> 00:06:55.580 the early adopters went and got them but they were you're paying an early adapter tax but that wasn't 00:06:55.580 --> 00:07:01.160 the case originally you were no you were on the edge using really useful products back in you know 00:07:01.160 --> 00:07:08.160 probably a decade ago 100 yeah i couldn't agree more um that's that's kind of the something that 00:07:08.160 --> 00:07:13.340 jeff and i have lamented on on the pod even um just kind of discussing it as far as where apple is and 00:07:13.340 --> 00:07:18.300 where they've gone and it's tough because it's so easy to want to blame just the shift from steve to 00:07:18.300 --> 00:07:22.620 tim to say it like that like it's just you know like that's the most visible change that you can 00:07:22.620 --> 00:07:28.240 kind of latch on to but a perfect example of this is for instance the new apple tv streaming service 00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:32.820 show by show it's the most expensive streaming service out there yeah you're only paying five 00:07:32.820 --> 00:07:38.740 dollars a month but for eight shows total like that's it and yes you know eventually it's going 00:07:38.740 --> 00:07:42.800 to get better and whether or not you know there's all sorts of rumors like hey they might make a play 00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:46.360 for sony they might make a play for this company yeah you know one of those eventually down the line 00:07:46.360 --> 00:07:50.140 is going to fall and they're going to go through on that and it's going to be a great streaming 00:07:50.140 --> 00:07:55.180 service but in the meantime for everybody who's early adopting it stinks it is terrible and it's a 00:07:55.180 --> 00:08:00.800 bad experience yeah um and so tim i know you're listening right now uh and i know that there are 00:08:00.800 --> 00:08:06.860 different algorithms on this and so please don't crash my my old macbook air but um but it's just one 00:08:06.860 --> 00:08:12.560 one of those things where it's a bad experience early on did you ever watch c that that that show 00:08:12.560 --> 00:08:20.400 c um s ee arguably the worst television i've ever seen in my life you know i'm a i'm a radio tv film 00:08:20.400 --> 00:08:25.660 major that actually produced television like in college and i'm used to like the college projects 00:08:25.660 --> 00:08:30.900 like it was i i'm watching this i'm like this is the worst writing directing acting top to bottom 00:08:30.900 --> 00:08:37.820 starring um your aquaman whatever that guy's name is momoa yeah momoa and and and alfre woodward like 00:08:37.820 --> 00:08:43.500 there's a it was a this really rich cast and and i'm like they have no idea what they're doing 00:08:43.500 --> 00:08:49.680 yeah somebody got fired on that though oh my gosh yeah it was horrible somebody lost too much at stake 00:08:49.680 --> 00:08:55.940 for apple to to you know hone it in like they are here at this beginning level yes as a product guy i want 00:08:55.940 --> 00:09:00.140 to empathize with people behind the scenes because you you know i would apple is still 00:09:00.140 --> 00:09:05.760 if you want to go make a product like to be in that environment how incredible you have to imagine 00:09:05.760 --> 00:09:10.540 like you were saying ray to blame it on you know the steve to tim transition is the most visible one 00:09:10.540 --> 00:09:15.740 there's got to be crazy complex supply chain issues and regulatory like the 00:09:15.740 --> 00:09:21.920 the last decade of change has probably made it harder to make hardware and software and streaming so 00:09:21.920 --> 00:09:28.360 you know and yet you have amazon and alexa or amazon and google who i think are acting way more 00:09:28.360 --> 00:09:34.600 competitively in that arena but they're they're avoiding it on devices so they can pivot and change 00:09:34.600 --> 00:09:40.540 way quicker i think so with with all this being said the day that apple releases the ar augmented reality 00:09:40.540 --> 00:09:48.980 glasses i'm 100 every innovative crack i've ever said i will be the bleeding edge tax guy 00:09:48.980 --> 00:09:54.020 buying that and i will be completely happy like give us eat it apple give us eat it yes 00:09:54.020 --> 00:09:59.580 yeah and oh and it's going to cost you a thousand dollars i'll probably write the check i'll find a way 00:09:59.580 --> 00:10:05.700 um like i am i am a hundred percent in on that my family does not make but you don't wear glasses 00:10:05.700 --> 00:10:12.100 glasses no you don't understand they're not what's happening here yes i i will wear glasses for that 00:10:12.100 --> 00:10:18.780 uh yeah yeah i'm good that's right so apple come on man bring it home forget the car forget all this 00:10:18.780 --> 00:10:24.940 this side crap like bring me the ar goggles google glass was ahead of its time you know right right that 00:10:24.940 --> 00:10:29.680 wave and do it right this time awesome that was an incredible side track before we get started really 00:10:29.680 --> 00:10:34.560 into that man just tell us a little bit about yourself who you are crossroads the the ministry of what 00:10:34.560 --> 00:10:40.380 what you guys are doing give us the heart kind of uh of who you are yeah a little background so we i'm i'm 00:10:40.380 --> 00:10:45.320 honored to be on here and just in among probably the hundreds and thousands of people are just 00:10:45.320 --> 00:10:49.320 co-learners along the way because we're i think we're all standing on the edge or feel like we're 00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:55.780 standing on the edge of something and figuring it out together so excited that any of the small 00:10:55.780 --> 00:11:02.140 experiments or successes or failures of crossroads could be used and abused by other people is is a really 00:11:02.140 --> 00:11:06.340 exciting thought to us i've been at crossroads for eight years crossroads has been around since 1996 00:11:06.340 --> 00:11:13.000 though we are we're based in cincinnati ohio so we're right in the heart of of the midwest and 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:21.420 um brian tome our senior pastor he's a guy from pittsburgh he has been founding pastor still senior pastor 00:11:21.420 --> 00:11:30.320 who are really for us the the heartbeat of leading us as a long time kind of pioneering adventurous 00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:38.220 church so you know back at the very beginning the descriptions of you know we want to do church for 00:11:38.220 --> 00:11:45.440 people who have given up on church but not on god we want to go after um seekers who you know are open to 00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:50.620 the idea of god but don't know the language of church don't know the rules of church and and really 00:11:50.620 --> 00:11:58.640 remove every barrier um in a way of someone hearing about jesus in a language they understand so you 00:11:58.640 --> 00:12:04.600 know early on in the 90s that that was great music free coffee casual environment you could bring the 00:12:04.600 --> 00:12:10.160 coffee into the auditorium you know those things are really common now yeah in cincinnati in the 90s 00:12:10.160 --> 00:12:15.900 that was revolutionary that was on the edge and and you know the same way with you know brian's sermons 00:12:15.900 --> 00:12:22.000 you know you would come in and you wouldn't feel you were learning about the bible you were hearing the gospel 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:27.120 but you weren't doing a bible study you were learning about how god applies to your nine to five 00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:32.460 you know and so that too at the time just seemed edgy and different from what people were experiencing 00:12:32.460 --> 00:12:37.300 and i think it created room for people to invite their friends so we've grown we're a multi-site church 00:12:37.300 --> 00:12:43.620 we're an online church we um we've taken on a lot of different forms of church we have 14 different 00:12:43.620 --> 00:12:51.600 campuses now physical locations in ohio and kentucky we just recently uh a few weeks ago launched in 00:12:51.600 --> 00:12:59.420 columbus ohio so that was sort of a our last sort of city push um we've we have three campuses down in 00:12:59.420 --> 00:13:05.880 lexington kentucky um we merged with a church that was also called crossroads down there a few years ago 00:13:05.880 --> 00:13:11.440 that made the name that made the merge that aspect of the merge was very easy as a result nice um other 00:13:11.440 --> 00:13:17.560 parts of it were really challenging but um at least branding was good branding yeah the church was still 00:13:17.560 --> 00:13:23.080 called crossroads so um it's good and we in the last you know four or five years have really tried 00:13:23.080 --> 00:13:28.520 to step into what does it look like to be culturally current in a digital way so that for sure includes 00:13:28.520 --> 00:13:34.980 um the native app that we've developed and has taken many forms online church community building 00:13:34.980 --> 00:13:42.100 starting to merge out on the edges what does movement look like what does church plan how does church 00:13:42.100 --> 00:13:46.400 planning meet home church meet watch party you know so we're and we're trying to learn from as many 00:13:46.400 --> 00:13:55.020 people as possible but um it's good yeah that's that's a bit of crossroads yeah so let me ask and a lot of what i want to dig 00:13:55.020 --> 00:14:00.620 into with the podcast is a lot of the kind of the mobile strategy of what you do sure we do a lot of 00:14:00.620 --> 00:14:07.460 church online here in the podcast and so it'll it'll kind of i'm sure bleed into this but um why did you 00:14:07.460 --> 00:14:12.900 opt to go in-house development with with the mobile app there's there's lots of other developers that 00:14:12.900 --> 00:14:18.160 are out there i'm just kind of curious your heart when digging in mobile why did you decide to go in-house 00:14:18.160 --> 00:14:23.100 we'd love and at different points in our history partnered with almost all of those uh players 00:14:23.100 --> 00:14:30.400 they're doing incredible things we when we decided to develop our own mobile app we wanted to have a 00:14:30.400 --> 00:14:37.960 unique purpose driven by the mission and ministry of crossroads so you know it's it's um what what what is 00:14:37.960 --> 00:14:45.920 the compelling reason to be natively on someone's phone and and not just re the gives us permission to 00:14:45.920 --> 00:14:51.160 win in that space but most apps on people's phone don't get open so what what is inside of our app 00:14:51.160 --> 00:14:57.860 that uniquely is worthwhile for someone to open a couple days a week you know which is a lot in the 00:14:57.860 --> 00:15:03.380 mobile app space and so for us it had to have a very particular utility and a lot of the more 00:15:03.380 --> 00:15:09.100 templated app services do a great job of making your weekend content your group content there's it's it's a 00:15:09.100 --> 00:15:12.740 content management system wrapped up in a native app and it does that exceptionally well 00:15:12.740 --> 00:15:18.300 that same content for us is available on mobile web and we do a great job of making it awesome on mobile 00:15:18.300 --> 00:15:26.720 so we needed a reason beyond that a real utility um and and to create that and i can explain what that 00:15:26.720 --> 00:15:33.100 is for us but to create that we had to go we had to go it on our own yeah so dig into it here what what 00:15:33.100 --> 00:15:38.160 are some of these features because we hear we hear this we have this conversation all the time you know 00:15:38.160 --> 00:15:43.880 and i've heard it church mobile app adoption is is less than 10 percent usage of the church actually 00:15:43.880 --> 00:15:50.180 uses the mobile app that they're releasing um you know stats that i've seen in my role as digital 00:15:50.180 --> 00:15:56.100 pastor and communication directors mirror that in real life where we get a lot of that traction on 00:15:56.100 --> 00:16:02.260 sunday because people want to take sermon notes in it or they'll want to access the the sermon audio 00:16:02.260 --> 00:16:07.780 or video on monday which you can also get on a podcast you can also get through church online or 00:16:07.780 --> 00:16:13.720 the website like there's a lot of repetitive so it's it's not as it doesn't have as strong of a 00:16:13.720 --> 00:16:19.060 strategy point what have you done with the mobile app there at crossroads to kind of start to work 00:16:19.060 --> 00:16:24.900 through that monotonous stuff that they get other places and really get to the core of making the 00:16:24.900 --> 00:16:33.260 yeah well our our starting point was for the mobile app to be an engagement platform so it wasn't meant 00:16:33.260 --> 00:16:39.280 for reach it while you could share it with someone and that could be a way to introduce someone to 00:16:39.280 --> 00:16:43.960 crossroads or jesus for us it was an engagement platform so for people who are already at crossroads 00:16:43.960 --> 00:16:51.140 we zeroed in on this phrase of how do we help someone create a habit of connecting to god and other 00:16:51.140 --> 00:16:59.400 people so we many of us who've grown up in churches or had people disciple us we we have maybe a rhythm 00:16:59.400 --> 00:17:05.400 of a quiet time or morning scripture and prayer we've learned that and sometimes so long ago that we 00:17:05.400 --> 00:17:11.900 forget how that was a habit that was established in us and most people in our churches today are not 00:17:11.900 --> 00:17:19.000 reading their bible they they don't know some of what um some of us professional staff christians we 00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:27.000 sort of can take for um um take for advantage and so we went let's let's create an app that is as habit 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:32.140 forming as some of the things that happen in social media and is as helpful as some of the things 00:17:32.140 --> 00:17:37.880 happening in the fitness world and is as user centered as some of those same industries and let's do that 00:17:37.880 --> 00:17:43.700 around bible reading prayer reflection and so our the core action inside of our app is just that so you can 00:17:43.700 --> 00:17:51.400 um read a new chapter of the bible with the entire church together um each day you can journal on it 00:17:51.400 --> 00:17:57.380 publicly or privately one of the key draws of that is that brian tome reads that same chapter as you 00:17:57.380 --> 00:18:03.320 you you you get invited into his living room and at 6 a.m in the morning if you will as he spends time 00:18:03.320 --> 00:18:08.820 with god he's going to journal and his journal is public and so you get to scan this chapter of scripture 00:18:08.820 --> 00:18:13.300 imagine if you've never done this in the bible before you scan this chapter of scripture you read 00:18:13.300 --> 00:18:20.160 the senior pastor's reflection and prayer based on that and suddenly the bar gets lowered for what 00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:24.720 spending time with god looks like you you realize like oh that's what he noticed you go back up to 00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:28.900 the chapter of scripture and you you're getting reps doing this kind of thing and you get we have 00:18:28.900 --> 00:18:34.740 oh gosh 30 40 50 or so many experiences we call them some of them are gratitude or prayer 00:18:34.740 --> 00:18:41.420 thankfulness or worship we're giving people these small reps in these spiritual disciplines and then 00:18:41.420 --> 00:18:48.100 allowing them to pray for each other and either anonymously or very directly and so together those 00:18:48.100 --> 00:18:54.940 three things we alternate them we build variety and streaks all kinds of things to very intentionally 00:18:54.940 --> 00:19:00.940 help that become habit for me um because we that's that's what we want um we do have the weekend in 00:19:00.940 --> 00:19:07.440 there there's group materials in another section there's there is content in the app that's helpful 00:19:07.440 --> 00:19:13.440 to users but the core action is really about connecting them with god and other people that's 00:19:13.440 --> 00:19:18.160 really good and it's something unique i'm looking at the app right now on on my device and first of all 00:19:18.160 --> 00:19:22.320 the the user interface it's very simple so i applaud you guys for that because one of the hardest 00:19:22.320 --> 00:19:27.020 things i think to do is to keep the menus and some of the different things happening simple especially 00:19:27.020 --> 00:19:34.800 for somebody who's coming in fresh um but it it seems very outsider friendly which i think is awesome 00:19:34.800 --> 00:19:41.020 from a church perspective because somebody coming in new to your church or even hey like my mom or my 00:19:41.020 --> 00:19:44.360 friend sent me this app and told me to download it on my phone if the first thing i'm seeing is a bunch 00:19:44.360 --> 00:19:47.600 of information or a bunch of stuff about why i should go to your church i'm probably automatically 00:19:47.600 --> 00:19:54.080 rejecting it so talk through some of the strategy in that oh man well so we is it encouraging to hear 00:19:54.080 --> 00:19:59.900 that it's seems easy easy to use if i showed you i mean we've come a long way we've been at this for 00:19:59.900 --> 00:20:04.540 four or five years and so we've been learning along the way just functionally in our church for you 00:20:04.540 --> 00:20:08.660 know we we feel this way about the weekend you know it's uh it's not our phrase but the you know you 00:20:08.660 --> 00:20:14.600 don't you you can belong before you believe like we you're fully welcome here and can engage 00:20:14.600 --> 00:20:20.160 before you fully grasp on to what it means to follow jesus and figure all this stuff out and apply it to 00:20:20.160 --> 00:20:25.860 your life thankfully or i i would have been excluded um so that we want the app to function in the same 00:20:25.860 --> 00:20:31.680 way we do realize that just most people don't have the the reps and the track record of following god 00:20:31.680 --> 00:20:37.760 this way and so it's gotta it's gotta be a layup it can't be too simple it act because it it has to 00:20:37.760 --> 00:20:44.080 meaning it has to believably i have to believe that it's going to meaningfully help me so if i open up 00:20:44.080 --> 00:20:50.240 my nike club fitness app or my fitbit app or what it has to be simple enough that i can grasp it 00:20:50.240 --> 00:20:55.820 and not so hard that i immediately believe that i'm probably i'm probably not disciplined enough to do 00:20:55.820 --> 00:21:02.100 this and and so we want to help people build momentum um and we think there's a funnel i mean 00:21:02.100 --> 00:21:06.700 even old school church had one you know you get invited by your friend that you probably get invited 00:21:06.700 --> 00:21:11.100 by your friend again and again and again eventually you come and then you might get in a group and 00:21:11.100 --> 00:21:17.120 you growth and giving and all those kinds of things well the all the things we're doing on digital now 00:21:17.120 --> 00:21:22.280 and just expanded that and and changed it from being a straight line if it ever was one to a really 00:21:22.280 --> 00:21:26.860 squiggly line but in the app i don't i don't need you to sign up for the 10 things right away 00:21:26.860 --> 00:21:33.440 i need you to have one great moment with god that leads to the next one that becomes more 00:21:33.440 --> 00:21:39.000 transformed and we early on we would use the phrase you know if you don't if you don't count if you 00:21:39.000 --> 00:21:43.660 don't count it you can't grow it so in old school church metrics obviously and they're still critically 00:21:43.660 --> 00:21:48.220 important because they're such a big part of the movement you know butts in seats and um you know 00:21:48.220 --> 00:21:53.180 giving and groups those are key metrics and they are still i think really good indicators of the health 00:21:53.180 --> 00:21:58.960 of the church but they're incomplete they're becoming more incomplete there's other ones to have in there 00:21:58.960 --> 00:22:03.880 and so when we started down the digital route it's really uncomfortable but you start talking about 00:22:03.880 --> 00:22:08.800 minutes of engagement or session lengths and they're usually shorter than an hour church service 00:22:08.800 --> 00:22:15.220 and um or daily active users or monthly active users and so um retention rates all these things 00:22:15.220 --> 00:22:19.840 are foreign to us but as we get to know them we would just always say if you don't count it you can't 00:22:19.840 --> 00:22:25.720 grow it so if i don't count your very minimal first experience as being valuable to you then i can't grow 00:22:25.720 --> 00:22:30.900 it into more deeper engagement so even if you just open the app and you just read scripture and then 00:22:30.900 --> 00:22:37.120 you close the app and your quiet time so to speak was a minute and a half long today i want to count 00:22:37.120 --> 00:22:43.740 it so that i can partner with you to grow it um and that's what we try to do inside the app and and make 00:22:43.740 --> 00:22:47.700 it repetitive in that way you know uh there's a lot of questions right now because there was like 00:22:47.700 --> 00:22:53.640 the app craze right like um apple releases in the app store google play becomes a thing and then every 00:22:53.640 --> 00:22:58.220 every church has the capability of getting an app and getting on your phone now i kind of hear the 00:22:58.220 --> 00:23:04.040 pendulum swinging the other direction uh one of my biggest concerns always is creating separate 00:23:04.040 --> 00:23:10.900 databases how have you guys made sure that both the app and your church database have played in the 00:23:10.900 --> 00:23:21.060 same ballpark oh man so we get to get a little technical well um it's challenging so we um 00:23:21.060 --> 00:23:27.760 that becomes a challenge because most churches us included want to build and move fast and so when 00:23:27.760 --> 00:23:32.520 you do that to deliver value to people like it's just it's not immaturity it's just we want to have 00:23:32.520 --> 00:23:37.940 as most impact as quickly as possible so your database is usually diverge instead of coming together so 00:23:37.940 --> 00:23:45.140 um we have done a little bit of that over the years we are actually just starting as a church where 00:23:45.140 --> 00:23:49.440 uh there's a thing called master data management so we've just found ourselves like many churches 00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:54.160 we've got our what happens in the app what happens in our church database we use hubspot for marketing 00:23:54.160 --> 00:24:00.020 communications we've got you know there's maybe three or five other places where data can both be 00:24:00.020 --> 00:24:07.620 created and stored and so there's a complex process to figure out where the source of truth is and how to 00:24:07.620 --> 00:24:14.660 keep that data really clean we we're learning how to do that we have mostly kept the data from the app 00:24:14.660 --> 00:24:19.400 and the church management system up to this point as separate and part of the why behind that is it's 00:24:19.400 --> 00:24:24.040 been two different types of data so because we've limited what happens inside of the native app 00:24:24.040 --> 00:24:31.920 that's mostly what's called click stream or behavior data the activity that someone is doing but it's not 00:24:31.920 --> 00:24:38.640 collecting a whole lot of like form responses or demographic data things that would typically be 00:24:38.640 --> 00:24:44.800 stored in the church management system signing up to serve joining a group and so we've been able to live 00:24:44.800 --> 00:24:51.440 with the separation um but we've along the way whenever we want we can sync that data up because users have 00:24:51.440 --> 00:24:57.040 unique identifiers and we we've we've set ourselves up so we're not too far behind when the time comes but 00:24:57.040 --> 00:25:03.920 we're actually about to switch over shared authentication so that both systems are sharing the same um 00:25:03.920 --> 00:25:09.280 authentication that'll help us connect the data in the background we're gonna get lots of value out of that 00:25:09.280 --> 00:25:14.400 so really and the and the point is not so much to make that easy on us though that's great because we can use church 00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:21.840 resources really efficiently it's so we can know you as a person no matter where you show up in the church 00:25:21.840 --> 00:25:27.440 um it's good and honor you um yeah so i want to follow a rapid trail i don't want to go too deep here 00:25:27.440 --> 00:25:33.760 what are you specifically using hubspot for i love hubspot and i'm trying i hear occasionally churches 00:25:33.760 --> 00:25:39.360 using it and so i'm just curious practicalities what's what's hubspot look like yeah hubspot is our 00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:45.120 predominantly it's our um email tool so all of our church email communication goes through hubspot 00:25:45.760 --> 00:25:50.640 so that includes you know pink marketing emails but also just here's your here's your quarterly 00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:57.280 statement all of that flows through hubspot um it is used a little bit for lead generation as well 00:25:57.280 --> 00:26:05.120 so subscribe to the weekly digest the content digest um fill out this form for to download a resource or 00:26:05.120 --> 00:26:11.520 something and so then we can put you on a um a drip campaign for lack of better and and so we've used 00:26:11.520 --> 00:26:18.320 it for that we just recently did uh the 90 day tithe challenge test lots of this is lots of churches 00:26:18.320 --> 00:26:23.280 have done this and it's it's really we we just did this as a church and so we used hubspot was a key 00:26:23.280 --> 00:26:31.440 part of after someone signs up for the 90 day tithe test they were in an email campaign that helps 00:26:31.440 --> 00:26:36.080 engage them with resources and encouragement and so it's it's a tool that helps us stay engaged with 00:26:36.080 --> 00:26:43.120 people for sure it talks great with other systems too so we use a system called intercom for our what 00:26:43.120 --> 00:26:47.680 we would call community care so if you go to our website and you want to chat you want to pray you 00:26:47.680 --> 00:26:53.360 want to know something about crossroads or how to get connected the people using that system use intercom 00:26:54.400 --> 00:26:59.200 that flows with hubspot like in the whole goal being how can we know and care for you better 00:26:59.200 --> 00:27:04.400 and these are these are systems that they take time to set up but they help you do that especially at 00:27:04.400 --> 00:27:10.000 scale when churches are trying to do this when they can't see everybody yeah and so that that intercom 00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:15.280 that's intercom io it's the thing that's the little like help thing down at the bottom of the website 00:27:15.280 --> 00:27:21.920 bottom right i i love that like i'm i'm curious towards this what this is so not mobile app but this 00:27:21.920 --> 00:27:30.560 is just such a good conversation with like do who who responds on intercom io is it your staff is it 00:27:30.560 --> 00:27:35.680 front desk like what's the interaction point yeah so some folks that used to be on what would have 00:27:35.680 --> 00:27:42.160 been called the front desk team are now on the community care team and so staff respond and some 00:27:42.160 --> 00:27:47.200 volunteers so we have some trained vetted volunteers and it's really when you think about online church or 00:27:47.200 --> 00:27:53.280 distributed church when you can when you can train and trust volunteers no matter where they are what 00:27:53.280 --> 00:27:57.520 time of day it is it's an incredible serving opportunity where they're they're meaningfully 00:27:57.520 --> 00:28:01.760 they're needed and known and they're and they're they're doing some incredible work so it is staff and 00:28:01.760 --> 00:28:06.880 volunteers but then sometimes the great thing about those systems is we'll we can help someone 00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:14.720 best through a bot so we can predict i mean so we set this up every week tiara wade who runs this team is 00:28:14.720 --> 00:28:22.320 brilliant so the announcements that happen on the weekend are built into that chat module on on web 00:28:22.320 --> 00:28:26.880 and so when someone starts a chat we we can assume that a lot of those people are coming with questions 00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:32.240 about baptisms because we just talked about it on sunday so instead of having to make someone engage 00:28:32.240 --> 00:28:36.960 with someone which some people love to do but a lot of people don't we we meet them right there with uh 00:28:36.960 --> 00:28:41.680 do you have a question about baptism oh yep i do and so we're very quickly getting people to the 00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:47.280 information they need through those i mean you say it's different than mobile and it is but it's all 00:28:47.280 --> 00:28:54.400 one user experience so i you can't silo them for the people who we're trying to serve because we 00:28:54.400 --> 00:29:00.720 we're one crossroads to them so there's an expectation for all of this to kind of work seamlessly together 00:29:01.360 --> 00:29:06.800 to the person in the seat that's good so let's let's dig into that because it all it is all one 00:29:06.800 --> 00:29:13.040 experience but you want to what you want to i assume what you want to try to do is separate and so 00:29:13.040 --> 00:29:18.000 some platforms have some responsibilities some platforms have the others and and yes you want 00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:23.360 them to try to align towards the common goal and campaigns there's there's overlap towards that but 00:29:23.360 --> 00:29:28.960 in context of of website in context of mobile app and uh and even in social media as you're looking 00:29:28.960 --> 00:29:34.880 at some of the digital communication pieces there's different components and different parts towards 00:29:34.880 --> 00:29:41.280 that how do you separate like what's what's a mobile app functionality versus you know mobile web 00:29:41.280 --> 00:29:47.440 or website in general like how does that kind of intermix and play together yeah i don't i think 00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:53.440 there's more than one right answer to this question but for us i i think about it is every platform or 00:29:53.440 --> 00:30:00.080 tool has to have a primary purpose and then it can have secondary benefits so the primary purpose of 00:30:00.080 --> 00:30:05.280 the app is to help someone create a habit of connecting with god the secondary benefits are they can also 00:30:05.280 --> 00:30:10.080 catch the weekend and they can read an article and they can follow some people like there there are many 00:30:10.080 --> 00:30:17.760 secondary benefits on the on the web the mobile web which is how most people are experiencing the web so 00:30:17.760 --> 00:30:23.200 i guess that's why i qualify it to mobile web um it's it's it's great for setting things up so i so 00:30:23.200 --> 00:30:28.800 i personally think about signing up to serve especially for the first time registering for a camp um 00:30:28.800 --> 00:30:34.720 volunteering um there's all kinds of giving even and if i'm setting those things up web is great at 00:30:34.720 --> 00:30:42.000 guiding people through those experiences um and managing myself in a sense happens really nicely in the web 00:30:43.360 --> 00:30:50.560 but many of the secondary benefits overlap between platforms you for me you then start to look at 00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:58.880 what what can uniquely happen in one platform better or worse than another and so for sure in a native app 00:30:59.600 --> 00:31:08.640 you can create way more tightly controlled immersive experiences than on the web um it's it's a it is a 00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:14.160 coded box where you control everything that happens in it on the web you're dealing with lots of moving 00:31:14.160 --> 00:31:18.880 standards depending on the browser someone's in the phone they're on the font package they have whatever 00:31:18.880 --> 00:31:24.640 it might be so you have to be really flexible and resilient on the web in the app i can build an 00:31:24.640 --> 00:31:31.120 exceptionally tight morning quiet time with god experience that includes a song and then form 00:31:31.120 --> 00:31:37.920 completion around thankfulness and um walk someone through the lord's prayer and teach them how to 00:31:37.920 --> 00:31:44.800 pray in a in an immersive way but on the web you compromise you can do it there 100 but you you have 00:31:44.800 --> 00:31:49.040 to make some compromises in the experience of it it's not different from why many of us 00:31:49.920 --> 00:31:58.080 now build our auditoriums in large black boxes they're not they're not standard church um sanctuaries 00:31:58.080 --> 00:32:04.160 anymore that are static and hard to change we want control over the whole experience when we switch 00:32:04.160 --> 00:32:09.600 to the next weekend series people walk in and the entire thing might look different where there's 00:32:09.600 --> 00:32:13.840 that moment in service that you want the music and the lights and the teaching and the whole thing 00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:20.160 to come together that i i sort of equate that to there's something similar that you can do in a native 00:32:20.160 --> 00:32:25.760 app but you can't do it just for fun you have to have a very expressed purpose for it just like in a 00:32:25.760 --> 00:32:30.800 weekend service you got to be doing something on purpose to move someone forward and if you do then 00:32:30.800 --> 00:32:37.680 then those platforms work really well for it yeah so having that level of of control probably in that 00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:45.120 immersive experience uh that takes resourcing that takes content that takes buy-in from leadership 00:32:45.120 --> 00:32:49.280 i mean you you just some of the things you mentioned having uh articles that that would be included in 00:32:49.280 --> 00:32:56.960 that you was i understanding that your pastor literally journals in the app daily it makes it public so 00:32:56.960 --> 00:33:03.440 people like so you have a lot of buy-in towards this what what is that what is that how did you get there 00:33:05.200 --> 00:33:10.560 i can give you names of people who have been down this road and not have that success so dude what's 00:33:10.560 --> 00:33:21.440 the secret oh man uh uh brian tome i mean so our our senior pastor brian like we we're just an 00:33:21.440 --> 00:33:27.920 aggressive church like the it's it's in his dna and he's reproduced it in us and so whatever it looks 00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:33.680 like to introduce people to jesus in a language they understand what it looked like 20 years ago was one 00:33:33.680 --> 00:33:38.320 thing what it looks like today is you're in their pocket and you're with them in the moments where 00:33:38.320 --> 00:33:44.560 they want to engage with you and he's incredibly permissioning so even before he got it and understood 00:33:44.560 --> 00:33:50.720 it i think this is how he would explain it to you he was very trusting to a group of us to go okay 00:33:50.720 --> 00:33:56.480 there's there's something here there's a way that we can get in front of people and not just talk at 00:33:56.480 --> 00:34:04.880 them but actually engage them and so it for sure took time but over time as that even the app reviews 00:34:04.880 --> 00:34:12.000 the app reviews read more like testimonials which is just to to how like i mean you can you can ready 00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:16.480 the horse for battle and the victory belongs to the lord you can build that mobile app but you can't 00:34:16.480 --> 00:34:21.920 make it change anybody's life and so there's a there's a there's a god factor here thank goodness where he 00:34:21.920 --> 00:34:28.720 comes in and he uses it in the exact moments that people need it but we started seeing life change 00:34:28.720 --> 00:34:34.960 and we started seeing deeper engagement and so that gets buy-in and it takes time and it often feels 00:34:34.960 --> 00:34:39.200 like two steps forward one step back for all of us because you're in you're up on the edge like we 00:34:39.200 --> 00:34:44.480 talked about and you're not always sure if what you're doing is the right thing to do um is it 00:34:44.480 --> 00:34:51.360 especially because so many of us have just been so steeped in a particular way of engaging in church 00:34:51.360 --> 00:34:59.200 and growing spiritually that trying some of these new things can feel like is this healthy for people 00:34:59.200 --> 00:35:03.680 is this nutritious for people is this good for them i grew up so totally differently how would we do this 00:35:03.680 --> 00:35:10.000 and so it takes trial and error but he does he's he's in there every morning and he it's also though 00:35:11.040 --> 00:35:17.200 what an incredible opportunity if you could if you could help disciple thousands of people at once 00:35:18.320 --> 00:35:23.920 if you i i had a guy who brought me in to his morning routine showed me how he read the bible 00:35:23.920 --> 00:35:31.520 i got to do it with him for a while brian can't do that with 10 000 people but now he can and and so 00:35:31.520 --> 00:35:37.920 there's the modeling that can happen that that we we want to lead to real relationship too but you're you're 00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:43.760 you're leveling people into that experience to go like i feel like i belong at this church i'm i'm i'm 00:35:43.760 --> 00:35:48.880 given a level of access and transparency to the senior pastor guy i like what he does on the weekend i'm 00:35:48.880 --> 00:35:53.600 getting his morning routine these people i haven't even met yet are praying for me i get to pray for 00:35:53.600 --> 00:35:58.560 them i've already contributed to the community maybe before i've ever joined a group or done a bible 00:35:58.560 --> 00:36:06.400 study or given a dollar so i people can belong and increasingly because we count it we can grow it 00:36:06.400 --> 00:36:12.800 and we can we can walk with them and guide them towards deeper levels of engagement in the church 00:36:12.800 --> 00:36:17.520 that then that look like now i'm attending on the weekend i'm in a group i've started to tithe 00:36:18.080 --> 00:36:24.720 all those kinds of things um but it begins we just recognize now it's not church specific it's everywhere in 00:36:24.720 --> 00:36:30.400 our culture it begins in these very small micro moments where people are they're testing they're 00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:36.080 trusting you they're can i trust you is this going to work for me i've tried things like this before 00:36:36.080 --> 00:36:40.240 is this one different enough that i believe it might actually help me tell me about the content 00:36:40.240 --> 00:36:45.360 creation side on that is your senior pastor legitimately is brian like every day writing 00:36:45.360 --> 00:36:51.440 into the cms and it's direct out to the people is there like is he like a week ahead and then it's 00:36:51.440 --> 00:36:55.920 like hey we're going back and i'm not trying to you know duck behind and like reveal the wizard 00:36:55.920 --> 00:37:01.760 behind the curtain or anything like that it's just um it's really powerful it's really powerful 00:37:01.760 --> 00:37:05.760 to see that somebody would share this much of their own personal relationship with the lord with 00:37:05.760 --> 00:37:12.960 their congregation and you know honestly even if we were like because there's the i'm not even a 00:37:12.960 --> 00:37:16.560 perfectionist but there's the part of me that's like man i'd rather be a week ahead so i could review 00:37:16.560 --> 00:37:20.880 it you know take a look at like the grammar structure blah blah blah blah there there's that 00:37:20.880 --> 00:37:24.640 part of me but then there's the other part of me of oh man but this is vulnerable and transparent 00:37:24.640 --> 00:37:34.480 and authentic and powerful so yeah um i love that question the he brought so brian so if we play this 00:37:34.480 --> 00:37:40.720 out brian is a user in the app like everyone else so i have that same ability to make my journal 00:37:40.720 --> 00:37:46.480 public and every community pastor and every community member has that and so brian's not 00:37:46.480 --> 00:37:51.360 going into a cms brian's going into the app the same way someone what you guys who just downloaded 00:37:51.360 --> 00:37:57.760 it this today you could go do a public journal reflection now we have set it up so that brian 00:37:57.760 --> 00:38:03.680 in particular and then our community pastors if they journal publicly they'll always sort to the top 00:38:04.720 --> 00:38:08.480 because these are the shepherds and leaders of our community and so we want people to catch them 00:38:08.480 --> 00:38:14.400 then first it's entirely unscripted and it's in the morning so what so brian was just on a bike trip 00:38:14.400 --> 00:38:19.680 he was out west and he couldn't do it he didn't have cell service no problem he's gone for a week 00:38:20.240 --> 00:38:26.320 which is also awesome because it's him authentically doing it it's it's it's not a content stream 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:35.920 it's the guy doing spending his time with god um and i think that's what makes it real and not um 00:38:37.920 --> 00:38:43.680 it's it's not like a quote that comes across twitter it's it's actually him participating what 00:38:43.680 --> 00:38:48.480 i think is powerfully in the same exact way that you would so you can actually you can you can model it 00:38:48.480 --> 00:38:55.680 which is great it means though that the grammar is bad and words are spelled wrong and which is great 00:38:55.680 --> 00:39:00.720 about that is is it's him like yeah it's and it's right for the it's right for the platform like you 00:39:00.720 --> 00:39:07.040 you know so we he has an editor for his books but this isn't a book this is you know him spending time 00:39:07.040 --> 00:39:12.000 with god some communications director somewhere is freaking out i'm sure but uh his name's ben 00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:18.720 stapely and he's pulling the ripcord on the airplane right now this is where i go like okay so get some 00:39:18.720 --> 00:39:26.080 of this buy-in go download crosswords anywhere read a screenshot a few of brian's journals because i 00:39:26.080 --> 00:39:33.600 think it is it's a powerful example of a leader not being in a black box not being inaccessible 00:39:33.600 --> 00:39:39.120 and we desperately need that when you think if you could just rewind in your minds what it was like 00:39:39.120 --> 00:39:45.520 when you first met jesus and we're trying to figure this stuff out you need someone who's able to just 00:39:45.520 --> 00:39:53.120 pull the curtain back and so often in our just the the way the system is kind of stacked against us 00:39:54.000 --> 00:39:59.040 in terms of communities and people who are trying to lead lots of people there's so much expectation 00:39:59.040 --> 00:40:04.720 for polish and there's so little room for mistake and i think we get into the spot where we we start 00:40:04.720 --> 00:40:10.800 performing more than we start giving access and really helping people grow it's good the app again 00:40:10.800 --> 00:40:16.960 is this it's not private by any means but it allows that kind of intimacy which is great one of the 00:40:16.960 --> 00:40:22.480 coolest things that that i've ever heard in context of a church mobile app you guys are doing and and it 00:40:22.480 --> 00:40:28.960 was it was this in context of close the loop thing where you were talking about the uh how you guys handle 00:40:28.960 --> 00:40:35.840 prayer requests can you can you just detail for the podcast like how prayer requests work in context of 00:40:35.840 --> 00:40:41.280 the app there at crossroads um again probably the best experience to jump in and try it but what we did 00:40:41.280 --> 00:40:47.120 and it's happened in stages we created a way for people to share anonymous prayer requests 00:40:47.120 --> 00:40:53.280 and then anyone well actually stage one was we created a digital pace list is what we call it brian 00:40:53.280 --> 00:40:57.840 this interview taught us about pace lists a long time ago it's the post-it note of people you're praying 00:40:57.840 --> 00:41:02.640 for that you put by your toothpaste mirror so when you brush your teeth you're praying for people 00:41:02.640 --> 00:41:08.080 um which is great it's a day it's an easy way to daily pray for the things you want to see god move in 00:41:08.080 --> 00:41:12.160 so we just took that same concept and we said let's give people the ability to create a prayer list 00:41:12.160 --> 00:41:19.360 face list inside the app the next phase was let's let people send those prayer requests out to the 00:41:19.360 --> 00:41:25.280 community they could do that anonymously we started to have people pray for each other and when you 00:41:26.320 --> 00:41:33.440 would when your prayer was prayed for you would get a push notification that said someone just prayed 00:41:33.440 --> 00:41:42.400 for your prayer request which is this incredibly simple on the surface but incredibly meaningful moment 00:41:43.840 --> 00:41:50.320 to suddenly realize that you have access to thousands of people who could pray for your thing and even if 00:41:50.320 --> 00:41:56.640 you don't know them it's a connective experience that can lead to belonging and real relationship so 00:41:56.640 --> 00:42:01.520 then we we just up to the game from there and there so then you were able to share it publicly with your 00:42:01.520 --> 00:42:07.840 name and face and you know your profile picture we we added the ability to friend and follow people so i have 00:42:07.840 --> 00:42:13.600 prayer requests that are sent directly to people in my guys group they're private the things i'm asking 00:42:13.600 --> 00:42:17.520 for god but i send them directly to those people i have prayer requests that i share to the whole 00:42:17.520 --> 00:42:21.680 community because i want as many people as possible to pray for these things and sometimes i have prayer 00:42:21.680 --> 00:42:26.800 requests that are anonymous they're not connected to my name or face but i want to take the risk of print of 00:42:26.800 --> 00:42:32.160 praying for those things perhaps and those same push notifications were happening and we were seeing more 00:42:32.160 --> 00:42:38.160 and more and more people pray but the the moment that we started hockey stick growth is an exaggeration 00:42:38.160 --> 00:42:44.000 but we saw a jump in a number of people engaging in prayer was when jeff we closed the loop that was 00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:49.760 just the name we gave to it we created another push notification so now i have the ability to mark a 00:42:49.760 --> 00:42:57.360 prayer request as being answered when i do that every person who has ever prayed for that prayer request 00:42:57.360 --> 00:43:02.640 whether it was a day ago or a year ago gets a push notification in that moment saying a prayer you 00:43:02.640 --> 00:43:08.960 prayed for has been marked as answered closing that loop skyrocketed prayer requests and so there's 00:43:10.080 --> 00:43:21.040 115 or so thousand prayers prayed each month now inside the app wow wait wait wait wait 115 000 how big is 00:43:21.040 --> 00:43:28.160 is crossroads um we've we right now we're probably at 24 000 people physically inside of our buildings 00:43:28.160 --> 00:43:35.120 another 7 000 online yeah so let's assume all of them on average three prayer requests per that's 00:43:35.120 --> 00:43:41.520 still at a substantial and i know it's not everybody but that's awesome it's not everybody it it but that 00:43:41.520 --> 00:43:47.520 even knowing that it's not everybody because it's true not everyone's active in the app it means for the 00:43:47.520 --> 00:43:52.080 people who are active in the app prayer is one of the most used most connected and one of the most 00:43:52.080 --> 00:43:59.520 the biggest reasons people come back in and continue to engage um and it it is it's you you then start 00:43:59.520 --> 00:44:06.400 to hear stories of people getting that notification you you feel like god used you and you know that's true 00:44:06.400 --> 00:44:12.000 when you pray and it's crazy to think that we would ever need validation from a push notification on your 00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:19.360 phone but it is incredibly powerful to do that and um we get funds i mean incredible stories god stories 00:44:19.360 --> 00:44:23.840 of them you know i send my prayer requests i'm sitting in the office of the doctors waiting for the 00:44:23.840 --> 00:44:28.160 diagnosis and i start getting push notifications saying my prayer is being prayed for my prayer is 00:44:28.160 --> 00:44:33.840 being prayed for my people are with you even though you might be in an entirely different state 00:44:33.840 --> 00:44:43.600 or place um it is we found one of the main reasons when people download the app if they start doing 00:44:43.600 --> 00:44:55.680 prayer they stay in the app and we're using really god is at work and you can see how we're mirroring 00:44:56.880 --> 00:45:03.440 all the same reasons other apps bring people back in it's not for it's not just for content because i 00:45:03.440 --> 00:45:07.520 can go back in the app whenever i want to see the content the content will always be there i go back 00:45:07.520 --> 00:45:14.480 in the app because my friend jeff just sent a prayer request or because ray's like ray's prayer request 00:45:14.480 --> 00:45:19.840 was marked as answered do i want to go back in and pray for more prayer requests you bet i do let's hold 00:45:19.840 --> 00:45:28.240 hold on i'm going to jump back in so it's it's users people creating value for each other not just the 00:45:28.240 --> 00:45:37.280 church pushing content out to people and people come back for people that's what i mean that's why the 00:45:37.280 --> 00:45:43.680 church is the community um that's right and to have that happening inside of a digital platform even in 00:45:43.680 --> 00:45:51.360 this very infant stage that it's in is really promising for how the church can continue to live in 00:45:51.360 --> 00:45:57.680 to this technology future in a way that doesn't sacrifice but might actually enhance and make more 00:45:57.680 --> 00:46:04.640 accessible so many of the great parts of being in the church yeah there's definitely i mean we use the 00:46:04.640 --> 00:46:11.200 term high tech high touch the more technology that we use the more that we need to respond with a 00:46:12.000 --> 00:46:20.080 tangible personal non-automated response this idea of the notifications can within prayer requests 00:46:20.080 --> 00:46:27.520 driving continue to driving hey our prayers matter and they're being effective um whether it's you know 00:46:27.520 --> 00:46:32.720 one to two weeks or a year or whatever down the road that's that's that's phenomenal one of the 00:46:32.720 --> 00:46:38.640 things that i love and seriously i i think that's the coolest thing i've ever heard in context of a church 00:46:38.640 --> 00:46:44.800 mobile app because it does continue that that engagement in an area where we don't you know 00:46:44.800 --> 00:46:50.400 we can pray for a prayer request a year ago and not and and forget about it it's almost like out of 00:46:50.400 --> 00:46:56.320 sight out of mind uh and to know that there's a conclusion to that story to to close the loop on 00:46:56.320 --> 00:47:03.520 it yeah it's just just phenomenal well i just think as a community pastor of one of our sites where there's 00:47:03.520 --> 00:47:08.480 thousands of people like when to your point with the best of intentions someone comes up to me with 00:47:08.480 --> 00:47:12.800 a prayer request i would i'm not a community pastor but if i put myself on that spot i'm gonna pray for 00:47:12.800 --> 00:47:18.400 him right in that moment because if i don't i'm gonna forget and even having done that which is 00:47:18.400 --> 00:47:23.840 exceptionally caring and meaningful i'm likely to forget about that a week later or a month later 00:47:24.640 --> 00:47:30.320 what what the app allows us to do is do that high tech high touch i can now grab that prayer request 00:47:30.320 --> 00:47:35.360 put it on my pace list i can even ask that guy okay can i put this in here and then send it out 00:47:35.360 --> 00:47:40.240 anonymously can we get some other people praying for you now as i get those push notifications the next 00:47:40.240 --> 00:47:45.920 time i see that person in the atrium i get to walk up to them and my my memories jogged i haven't done 00:47:45.920 --> 00:47:49.920 all i haven't spent all the calories trying to keep the top of mind the app has brought it back and 00:47:49.920 --> 00:47:54.720 allowed me to very meaningfully and thoughtfully care for somebody in the moment and that's what 00:47:54.720 --> 00:48:00.240 that's what we want the technology should reduce the friction to the people on people the real 00:48:00.240 --> 00:48:07.600 connective part of part of the church yeah but what what's really interesting in this is you actually 00:48:07.600 --> 00:48:15.040 told the story in context of going all the way back to your toothpaste lists and and how there's a 00:48:15.040 --> 00:48:20.240 process of growth so somewhere out there someone in the audience right now is thinking because this 00:48:20.240 --> 00:48:26.880 would totally be me if i was on church staff i want this this feature in my app as soon as possible 00:48:26.880 --> 00:48:33.360 so i'm going to go now walk into my leadership and say hey we want to scratch xyz templated app 00:48:33.360 --> 00:48:37.840 instead we're going to do this thing completely in-house we're going to hire developers and and 00:48:37.840 --> 00:48:42.000 you know let's get this in place by easter because you know you have to have it in place by easter 00:48:42.640 --> 00:48:47.600 absolutely yeah i mean you might as well wait you might as well wait until next year then you might 00:48:47.600 --> 00:48:52.000 as well wait till next easter and there's like 52 weeks in between then there's because that and 00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:56.080 then honestly like that that's who i am and and there's a reason why i don't work on church staffs 00:48:56.080 --> 00:49:02.320 anymore it's related to that so but here's here's here's my thing how long was it from the toothpaste 00:49:02.320 --> 00:49:10.240 list to today to when that rolled out like what what's the span of time because an idea grows it's it's not 00:49:10.240 --> 00:49:17.440 like curled oh well and it has to if if we tried to build what we have today the first time we would 00:49:17.440 --> 00:49:22.160 have built it wrong we we wouldn't have we would have solved the wrong problem so we taking it in 00:49:22.160 --> 00:49:27.920 steps also greatly minimizes the risk of solving the wrong problem or not doing anything a user wants 00:49:27.920 --> 00:49:36.160 anyway so starting with the pace list validated that people wanted to pray and there was friction in in 00:49:36.160 --> 00:49:41.680 in the process of remembering to pray for people giving people the ability to send autumn an anonymous 00:49:41.680 --> 00:49:49.360 prayer request validated the fact that people would would do that and so we we built on that so my team's 00:49:49.360 --> 00:49:53.840 going to listen to this and probably correct me i it was probably at least two years 00:49:54.800 --> 00:50:02.640 um and in part because that wasn't the only thing we were working on but also intentionally because 00:50:04.080 --> 00:50:10.080 if you get ahead of your skis and spend money before you've really learned 00:50:10.640 --> 00:50:17.840 what what what the user needs you're likely to spend a lot of money unnecessarily it would be unwise to go 00:50:17.840 --> 00:50:25.680 try to build this before easter that's good that's real good and it's it's important too because you 00:50:25.680 --> 00:50:30.800 know you guys have done such a good job in taking in you know when most of us think of an app we're 00:50:30.800 --> 00:50:35.440 thinking just about content distribution that's this legitimately it we're thinking okay how can we get our 00:50:35.440 --> 00:50:41.440 our sermons in people's pockets you guys have taken a step further i mean i want to say one step further 00:50:41.440 --> 00:50:47.760 i mean you guys have charged down the field in terms of creating community uh with this app so much so 00:50:47.760 --> 00:50:53.200 that i mean i'm looking at these prayers i mean it's just so compelling to see how people are being so 00:50:53.200 --> 00:50:59.360 vulnerable and sharing their stuff and the fact that you can instantly get feedback that people are praying for 00:50:59.360 --> 00:51:06.000 you that that's just powerful in a whole other way that i've not seen from any other church in terms 00:51:06.000 --> 00:51:10.640 of what we're doing with church online that matt i'm challenged i'm challenged just looking at this 00:51:10.640 --> 00:51:15.280 in a way of not that i need the system tomorrow but just all right what am i doing to to push the envelope 00:51:15.280 --> 00:51:20.640 in terms of community building with my church and making sure that people are taking a step beyond 00:51:20.640 --> 00:51:27.120 just engaging with the platform and engaging with each other big one i mean it's it's this humanistic 00:51:27.120 --> 00:51:33.920 approach engagements that that two-way communication the app is the thing that facilitates the communication 00:51:33.920 --> 00:51:40.480 and something as simple as praying for the prayer requests and allowing the person with the prayer 00:51:40.480 --> 00:51:46.160 request to be ministered to but then turn around and minister to others once the prayer request is 00:51:46.160 --> 00:51:56.320 completed or answered i mean that that is such a beautiful idea of of closing the loop of of making 00:51:56.320 --> 00:52:02.960 both sides be ministered of engaging in this prayer request it's it's awesome we think about spiritual 00:52:02.960 --> 00:52:09.600 growth especially for adults i'm no expert in either spiritual growth or adult learning so all i'm doing 00:52:09.600 --> 00:52:16.240 is connecting dots and parroting what people way smarter than me have told me adults only grow 00:52:16.240 --> 00:52:22.000 or learn something new when they need to use it so we don't do well as adults just learning facts for fact's sake 00:52:22.000 --> 00:52:29.440 and we typically in the terms of betterment when we want to make ourselves better we we grow best and 00:52:29.440 --> 00:52:33.520 fastest when we're actually contributing to someone else's growth so this is that old adage of like you 00:52:33.520 --> 00:52:40.960 know the best way to learn something is to try to teach it the prayer in the app is a simplified example but 00:52:41.520 --> 00:52:48.160 i'm i'm i'm contributing to someone else praying for them doing something that is maybe a simple act but 00:52:48.160 --> 00:52:54.800 maybe it's the first one i've ever done it it's happening for me there you're learning something 00:52:54.800 --> 00:52:59.280 along the way and the same this is the same thing is true in the in the bible portion very intentionally 00:52:59.280 --> 00:53:06.320 you're able to contribute something and get something at the same time and so you're you're doing ideally 00:53:07.120 --> 00:53:15.760 we're tapping into learning and growth at the moment the user wants it not the moment that is scheduled 00:53:15.760 --> 00:53:22.320 by the church that's good or or determined by the church what the learning should be right the user has 00:53:22.320 --> 00:53:29.920 some choice and these platforms are good for that and also we need some of the other church platforms 00:53:29.920 --> 00:53:35.360 like a weekend service where the church is actually following through and it's biblical duties to teach 00:53:35.360 --> 00:53:40.000 the whole canon of the bible and we want to you might not know you need this but we want to teach this to 00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:46.640 you and we that's critically important to my development as well but having both together are two pieces 00:53:46.640 --> 00:53:52.240 of the same puzzle and when they fit together you get the bigger picture i think yeah yeah that's that's 00:53:52.240 --> 00:53:58.160 so important that the one hour on sunday is necessary i don't want to paint the picture i never want to 00:53:58.160 --> 00:54:03.440 paint the picture that it's not it's a great opportunity to gather together in a physical community 00:54:03.440 --> 00:54:08.560 uh and drive forward but when when that one hour is the only thing that that's where it becomes 00:54:08.560 --> 00:54:15.280 problematic you're missing out on a lot yeah there i mean there's there's 168 hours a week and 00:54:15.280 --> 00:54:21.200 great we took care of one uh bad news is that attendance is is going down and we're missing 00:54:21.200 --> 00:54:26.880 some of these other tentpole opportunities to help disciple someone and get them to another level 00:54:26.880 --> 00:54:33.040 and that rich level of discipleship is not happening in a in a larger you know experience like like 00:54:33.040 --> 00:54:40.240 that's something that is one-way driven communication as opposed to a conversation or interaction even via 00:54:40.240 --> 00:54:45.120 um a mobile app where you've got multiple people communicating you know back and forth with 00:54:45.120 --> 00:54:49.680 each other so matt man this is this has been beautiful by the way i just totally want to 00:54:49.680 --> 00:54:56.720 acknowledge that the whole apple uh podcast or the earbuds totally tied back in i didn't mean that 00:54:56.720 --> 00:55:03.760 way at all but this idea of it took versions of it to get to it and the problem that we needed to get to 00:55:03.760 --> 00:55:10.720 like it's all so you know tim if you're out there i apologize for yelling at you towards the airpod 00:55:10.720 --> 00:55:16.080 i don't i don't i don't i don't i love my airpod pros good job tim and i'm gonna keep yelling at you if 00:55:16.080 --> 00:55:23.040 it keeps making good things i apologize for nothing awesome so hey let's let's let's land the planet and 00:55:23.040 --> 00:55:29.120 wrap up um ray just any any thoughts as we're landing here this is so powerful and matt i want to 00:55:29.120 --> 00:55:33.200 applaud what you and what crossroads and what your leadership have done this is phenomenal 00:55:33.200 --> 00:55:37.680 and really this is just even coming from somebody as simple as not just the pastor but as a member 00:55:37.680 --> 00:55:44.400 of a small group so often in groups somebody gives a prayer request man and and i've been convicted of 00:55:44.400 --> 00:55:48.560 this i've done a better job of this lately there's no follow-up you know what i'm saying there's no like 00:55:48.560 --> 00:55:54.800 hey so how did that go or or was it answered what matt and crossroads church what they've done 00:55:54.800 --> 00:55:59.280 is they've created this wonderful app where not only are people giving prayer requests not only people 00:55:59.280 --> 00:56:03.760 are in community but they're getting followed up with in a practical way so that people can rejoice or 00:56:03.760 --> 00:56:09.360 mourn together or and carry out all the commands of scriptures in the digital environment and this goes 00:56:09.360 --> 00:56:14.480 beyond just creating content and it drives towards what church online is supposed to be about which is 00:56:14.480 --> 00:56:19.440 about building the community not just building compelling content but building a community 00:56:19.440 --> 00:56:23.520 that's you know that's enveloped in the gospel that's going out there and it's changing it's 00:56:23.520 --> 00:56:28.080 practically changing people's lives and so so grateful to have seen this matt thanks for introducing 00:56:28.080 --> 00:56:33.200 this into our lives and i hope much more more and more churches and even church app developers 00:56:33.200 --> 00:56:38.800 continue to think towards this direction as we move forward awesome matt any thoughts on your end 00:56:39.600 --> 00:56:44.320 i'm so thankful for you guys the way that you're helping all of us connect with each other 00:56:44.320 --> 00:56:50.960 learn at the same time there's there's there's there's no way to do this on your own you can't you can't 00:56:50.960 --> 00:56:56.400 be a lone wolf person now i'm a pioneer trying to create the future and so we we need each other 00:56:56.400 --> 00:57:01.920 to do this and it's just exciting to be a part of it awesome hey man matt we're thank you for that 00:57:01.920 --> 00:57:07.280 by the way but then uh it's been a really good podcast there are vendors out there that need to build 00:57:07.280 --> 00:57:14.160 this this prayer functionality into their prayer into their mobile apps uh there are churches that need to 00:57:14.160 --> 00:57:22.800 to start to request features and drive some stuff towards the the vendors just to get more um feature 00:57:22.800 --> 00:57:30.000 sets and more engaging um features in place let's let's get beyond that one hour on sunday and realize 00:57:30.000 --> 00:57:38.640 that the mobile app has far more features 168 hours uh a week you're the the thing that that nailed this 00:57:38.640 --> 00:57:45.440 entire podcast for me was was your phrase matt of engagement versus reach and that with the mobile 00:57:45.440 --> 00:57:52.560 app we we are we are pushing for engagement as opposed to reaching it's not the website let the 00:57:52.560 --> 00:57:58.320 website reach and that's easy but with engagement with the mobile app getting people to interact 00:57:58.320 --> 00:58:06.320 getting them to talk to getting them to um engagement such a bad word we're after a conversation not just 00:58:06.320 --> 00:58:11.440 a one-way conversation with our people but a two-way conversation with them and and that's what you 00:58:11.440 --> 00:58:17.120 guys have so you've done such a great job in creating is you have a way to not just talk at your people 00:58:17.120 --> 00:58:23.120 but to receive stuff back from them and to interact with them in such a great way so job well done man 00:58:23.120 --> 00:58:30.000 awesome guys so we're gonna wrap thank you for kind of setting the tone with that and and i i hope and 00:58:30.720 --> 00:58:34.400 pray you guys continue to do so we're gonna have to bring you back down the road and hear what else 00:58:34.400 --> 00:58:39.760 you guys are working on uh with that and crossroads is a great church so we're excited to see everything 00:58:39.760 --> 00:58:45.600 that you guys are doing uh in the cincinnati ohio and now kentucky you slipped that one in too you're 00:58:45.600 --> 00:58:52.240 now multi-state multi-site yeah church which is a whole other thing too but that's right for for 00:58:52.240 --> 00:58:56.640 matt for ray this is jeff thanks for uh jumping here on the church digital podcast and we'll see 00:58:56.640 --> 00:58:57.920 you next time y'all have a good day