WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.040 Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. My name is Jeff Reed, and once again, 00:00:05.140 --> 00:00:10.600 I am glad that you are joining us today. Here on the Church Digital, we talk a lot about church 00:00:10.600 --> 00:00:16.420 online and really focus upon the ministry opportunities, the discipleship, the production, 00:00:16.560 --> 00:00:22.560 the different parts of what it takes to make church online happen each week. And so I'm joined 00:00:22.560 --> 00:00:28.540 once again here by Ray DeArmas, our guest host here at the Church Digital. Ray's online pastor 00:00:28.540 --> 00:00:32.960 from Christ Fellowship. Ray, you want to say hey to everybody? So good to be with you again. I hope 00:00:32.960 --> 00:00:40.340 everybody's well. Awesome. And we've got a guest here today, David Erzie, who is with Cape First 00:00:40.340 --> 00:00:47.040 Church. And Dave, man, why don't you just tell us a little bit about Cape First and the ministry and 00:00:47.040 --> 00:00:53.980 what exactly you do up there? Because I know it's a long, long list. So we are a multi-site church 00:00:53.980 --> 00:00:59.500 about halfway in between St. Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee. So somewhat what you would 00:00:59.500 --> 00:01:05.780 call rural. We're a town of about 50,000 or so. We've got four locations, two in that direct city and 00:01:05.780 --> 00:01:12.560 then two in outlying areas about 30 miles in each direction. And so multi-site church, few thousand 00:01:12.560 --> 00:01:18.560 people on the weekends. And I came on board here really just to help out. My wife works here. And so 00:01:18.560 --> 00:01:22.880 I was kind of behind the scenes just helping out here and there. And then decided, hey, I'm going 00:01:22.880 --> 00:01:30.240 to come online and help this online thing. And realized there was a whole lot more than just 00:01:30.240 --> 00:01:33.840 church online. That's what the leadership wanted me to do is, hey, fix church online. And then I 00:01:33.840 --> 00:01:41.540 realized, hey, we've got a whole lot more to fix besides just what happens via computer on a Sunday 00:01:41.540 --> 00:01:47.640 morning. The previous guy before me had kind of just launched every different way of church online, 00:01:47.940 --> 00:01:55.060 YouTube, Facebook, church online platform. And so it was like, okay, we're doing a ton of stuff 00:01:55.060 --> 00:02:01.920 really poorly. Let's do one thing really well. And so for years, I've been involved in church online 00:02:01.920 --> 00:02:09.080 through Seacoast Church and other avenues. And so when I came here, I'm really the last few months 00:02:09.080 --> 00:02:17.300 having to prove my theories correct or prove them wrong and restart. And so we have completely torn 00:02:17.300 --> 00:02:24.580 everything down, like no Facebook Live, no YouTube Live, going straight to chop. Even we were broadcasting 00:02:24.580 --> 00:02:30.540 multiple services. Now we're just doing one. Like this is, let's go back to one service. Let's do it 00:02:30.540 --> 00:02:37.020 well. Let's get the right volunteers in place. Let's coach them. Let's train them. And then let's go back. 00:02:37.020 --> 00:02:44.060 Let's grow a step at a time. And so that's a little bit of what I do. In addition to, I oversee the 00:02:44.060 --> 00:02:50.580 construction facilities. We're in a remodel. We're in a $3.2 million expansion. We're doing a lot of 00:02:50.580 --> 00:02:57.240 different stuff. I do some stuff with staffing. And so I get to wear a lot of different hats. And so my 00:02:57.240 --> 00:03:03.740 title here is communications director. So that's really how we narrow it down is what happens in 00:03:03.740 --> 00:03:10.420 the worship center. The auditorium on a Sunday falls under our creative pastor. And then anything 00:03:10.420 --> 00:03:16.500 outside of that, basically from the lobby to the end of the earth, falls under me. He is, what are we 00:03:16.500 --> 00:03:22.700 saying? And I am, how are we saying it? And so he gets, he's saying, hey, this is what the sermon says. 00:03:22.700 --> 00:03:26.960 This is what the worship set list says. And I'm saying, okay, now that we've said it, how are we 00:03:26.960 --> 00:03:32.320 saying it to the world? And so that's a little bit about what I get to do. That's great. I've never 00:03:32.320 --> 00:03:37.600 met a communications director that's in charge of a $3.2 million construction project. But hey, 00:03:37.660 --> 00:03:42.220 we'll go ahead and pretend. Communications directors out there who are listening to this 00:03:42.220 --> 00:03:48.160 broadcaster, like, thank God, that's not my responsibility. Yeah, man. And, and what's 00:03:48.160 --> 00:03:53.820 interesting is, and we find this so much in church online, right? Like the online pastor is always 00:03:53.820 --> 00:04:01.640 online pastor, plus something else. Like it's an online pastor plus worship or online pastor plus 00:04:01.640 --> 00:04:07.060 students or because, you know, anybody who deals with students understands technology and but in our 00:04:07.060 --> 00:04:13.200 online or plus creative and different things. And so, yeah, there's always different, like I started as a 00:04:13.200 --> 00:04:19.480 production guy slash online, and kind of grew from there. Ray was, Ray, like, what are some of the 00:04:19.480 --> 00:04:25.860 responsibilities that you've carried in addition to, to be an online pastor? So originally, I launched one 00:04:25.860 --> 00:04:30.640 of our physical locations, as I was coming into the role with church online. And Jeff, you were there for 00:04:30.640 --> 00:04:36.460 that entire transition help and lead me through it, which was great. And it was a challenge because I was 00:04:36.460 --> 00:04:41.140 for sure managing to what felt like two different campuses. But at the same time, it was the entire 00:04:41.140 --> 00:04:45.700 church overall, and that I was overseeing one physical location. But at the same time, I was responsible 00:04:45.700 --> 00:04:51.380 for, for something that the entire church body interacts with. So in a way, and I'm sure this is 00:04:51.380 --> 00:04:55.840 something that we're going to unearth a lot more. As Dave Adamson talked about the Omni Channel, 00:04:56.340 --> 00:05:00.460 I became the entire church's campus pastor in kind of a way because everybody started to recognize 00:05:00.640 --> 00:05:05.320 me and I and it became something through which I started having to manage and pastor everybody in 00:05:05.320 --> 00:05:09.660 that kind of sense. Or, as is the case in so many options, people started complaining to me about a 00:05:09.660 --> 00:05:13.460 tool that was just one of the many things that I oversaw, whether it was working for them, or it 00:05:13.460 --> 00:05:18.680 wasn't working for them. And it became a heavy responsibility and caring in that kind of way. And so 00:05:18.680 --> 00:05:23.280 for those of you out there who are carrying multiple roles, and at the same time, you're carrying church 00:05:23.280 --> 00:05:28.460 online, believe me, we hear, we hear you, we understand you. And in many ways, we're still carrying a lot of 00:05:28.460 --> 00:05:33.200 that because even though I'm still, I'm primarily focused on church online, I'm also overseeing all 00:05:33.200 --> 00:05:39.020 digital tools at our church, which is just a rapidly, rapidly expanding thing. And so we hear 00:05:39.020 --> 00:05:44.640 you and we feel you as far as how a lot of that goes. Yeah. And that was my role when I joined at 00:05:44.640 --> 00:05:49.880 Seacoast as online pastor. I was, Jeff, we were talking on the phone a few weeks ago and I mentioned 00:05:49.880 --> 00:05:56.600 how there's, maybe we should take a poll, but I'm guessing there's maybe 20 churches in America that have 00:05:56.600 --> 00:06:01.560 a full-time online pastor that that's all they do. Like, I feel like I'm being generous saying 00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:06.960 20 because I mean, and I mean like literally that's all you do. You wake up on Monday morning and that's 00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:12.080 all you do all week till the next Sunday. And so that's what I came on board at Seacoast as, is like 00:06:12.080 --> 00:06:20.200 literally this is all you do church online. And even within less than six months, we hired a, we were 00:06:20.200 --> 00:06:26.440 able to work the budget out where we hired an online service pastor where it was, his role was 00:06:26.440 --> 00:06:34.000 facilitating the services. And it freed me up to also do a physical location, just like Ray, where I provided 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:40.000 pastoral oversight for church online, but the online service pastor, he was the one that pastored those 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:48.120 people during the live broadcast. Wow. That's, that's an interesting concept. I like that. So what we want 00:06:48.120 --> 00:06:54.740 to talk about today, and we've used the word online pastor, online campus pastor, throw in online director, 00:06:54.740 --> 00:07:01.780 you know, something like that. We want to talk about what exactly do these people do? And actually 00:07:01.780 --> 00:07:07.860 like for me, when, when I'm looking at like outside social media, outside emails, I can't tell you how 00:07:07.860 --> 00:07:13.600 many emails I've gotten from people saying, Hey, do you have like a job profile for an online pastor? 00:07:13.900 --> 00:07:18.260 Actually Ray, God bless you. I've shared your job profile with probably a dozen churches 00:07:18.260 --> 00:07:22.660 because yours is like, you know, I helped write it and I'm like, yeah, this is the only one that 00:07:22.660 --> 00:07:26.720 I've got. So here, and you know, I've made some notes and I've blogged about it just to throw it 00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:33.900 out there. But like, that's the, people are like, what exactly do these online campus pastors? What 00:07:33.900 --> 00:07:39.140 exactly does an online pastor do? And so I wanted to kind of unpack that a little bit, which is why I 00:07:39.140 --> 00:07:45.600 brought these two online pastors together to, to wrestle in this space. What, what's effective, 00:07:45.860 --> 00:07:52.820 what's effective ministry? What, what's not, what are, what are things that, that we actually do in 00:07:52.820 --> 00:07:58.560 these spaces to, to pastor people virtually. And so, and David, let's, let's just pick up exactly where 00:07:58.560 --> 00:08:06.140 you, you left off of. So you were online pastor, but you had someone that you were an online service 00:08:06.140 --> 00:08:11.820 pastor who was more responsible for like the, the weekend stuff, but you were oversight and 00:08:11.820 --> 00:08:15.880 responsible during the week. Like, how did you set that up? That, that's something I've never really 00:08:15.880 --> 00:08:23.740 heard before. Okay. So first would be how I came into that role is when I was interviewing with 00:08:23.740 --> 00:08:30.420 Pastor Josh Luratt and the crew at Seacoast, when they said, Hey, we really want you on the bus. 00:08:30.420 --> 00:08:39.000 This is a seat that we have. What, what do you think? And I said, well, I've never done, I've done a 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:43.660 little bit in church online. I kind of get it. Like, what do you think? And I was like, but at the end 00:08:43.660 --> 00:08:49.760 of the day, I'm not an IT guy. I was like, I'm not a tech guy at all. Like people think I can fix their 00:08:49.760 --> 00:08:55.280 phone and computers, but a lot of it is just like trial and error. Like seeing, like, I don't actually 00:08:55.280 --> 00:09:02.340 know how to hook up servers and run IT equipment. That's just not my gift. And Pastor Josh, I'll 00:09:02.340 --> 00:09:06.200 never forget it. We were sitting at a restaurant. He looked at me and he goes, that's okay. We have 00:09:06.200 --> 00:09:13.240 those people's input, those people in place. We need a pastor. And so I'm a pastor first, IT tech 00:09:13.240 --> 00:09:19.480 guy second. And so everything that I've ever done in church online, it comes from a pastor's heart 00:09:19.480 --> 00:09:25.040 first. And if you're not a pastor first, that's okay. You might be the church online guy and you're 00:09:25.040 --> 00:09:29.860 an IT guy first. That's okay. You just got to find those people that complement your strengths. 00:09:30.680 --> 00:09:36.020 And so we had a great IT team at Seacoast that was able to, I would say, hey, I want to do this in 00:09:36.020 --> 00:09:44.560 church online. How do we do it? And they would help me with the tech side of it. And so basically, 00:09:44.660 --> 00:09:48.300 what do we do all week? The short, because I still get that question, just like you, Jeff, 00:09:48.340 --> 00:09:52.040 people ask me all the time, what does an online pastor do? And I always respond with, okay, 00:09:52.040 --> 00:09:57.020 if you're a pastor and you're overseeing a campus, what do you do all week? You're talking 00:09:57.020 --> 00:10:01.140 to people, you're meeting with people, you're finding out people are in the hospital and you're 00:10:01.140 --> 00:10:06.800 seeing how you can pastor them through that. You're finding out someone's daughter just got 00:10:06.800 --> 00:10:11.120 admitted to the hospital and you're figuring out how you can get someone there to visit with 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:16.340 them. And you found out someone passed away and how can you pastor their family? I was like, 00:10:16.420 --> 00:10:24.520 I'm doing all of that virtually. Like I'm finding out someone 60 miles away, their daughter just went 00:10:24.520 --> 00:10:29.140 into the hospital. So now I'm saying, okay, do I need to drive or do we have a member that lives a 00:10:29.140 --> 00:10:33.840 little bit closer? That's maybe a life group leader that, or a high capacity volunteer that I can trust 00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:42.200 to go minister to them. And so that's the pastor side of it. And then the other side is, hey, 00:10:42.200 --> 00:10:47.820 are the notes ready. Uh, we, we actually scaled back from you version. I know a lot of people are 00:10:47.820 --> 00:10:53.720 using you version notes, nothing against them at all. Great product. Uh, we just found that we could 00:10:53.720 --> 00:10:59.380 do notes through our app. And if people are giving through our app, like let's make the app a one-stop 00:10:59.380 --> 00:11:06.420 shop for everything. Um, and so it's, it's updating the notes and, and making sure every tool that people 00:11:06.420 --> 00:11:12.120 use, like what Ray said earlier of it becomes this tool that everybody in the church is using. And all 00:11:12.120 --> 00:11:19.340 of a sudden you are everyone's pastor. It's making sure those tools are ready for the weekend so that 00:11:19.340 --> 00:11:26.020 everybody experiencing them, uh, will experience them at an excellent level. Uh, I tried updating our 00:11:26.020 --> 00:11:31.540 app a few days ago, a few weeks ago, and I did it on a Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday afternoon. I knew 00:11:31.540 --> 00:11:35.060 it was going to take me a full day or a day and a half. So I was like, well, I'm going to do it like 00:11:35.060 --> 00:11:42.960 Tuesday to Wednesday afternoon when nobody's using the app. No joke within a couple hours, I had three 00:11:42.960 --> 00:11:48.120 emails of people telling me the app isn't working right. The Bible reading plan is off. The dates 00:11:48.120 --> 00:11:52.980 are wrong. And I'm like, I'm trying to fit, like I was trying to make it better. And I thought no one 00:11:52.980 --> 00:11:59.140 was using it. I was completely wrong. Tons of people were using it even during the week. And so 00:11:59.140 --> 00:12:03.380 you're making sure those it's, it was the same thing they're using on Sundays. I had no idea they 00:12:03.380 --> 00:12:09.300 were using it on a Tuesday afternoon at three o'clock. Yeah, that's good. And it's, it's funny 00:12:09.300 --> 00:12:14.140 how that works. Isn't it David? Because you know, here it is. It's not that you think that, and a lot 00:12:14.140 --> 00:12:20.500 of people I think assume that, you know, first of all, especially for lay people, like overcoming the, 00:12:20.600 --> 00:12:25.880 hey, what do you do besides Sunday is kind of a leap. And then amongst pastors is, okay, so what do 00:12:25.880 --> 00:12:30.100 you do if you're not preparing a sermon? If you're not, it's almost like the same conversation I had at 00:12:30.100 --> 00:12:34.700 first with just even becoming a physical location campus pastor. Okay, so you're not teaching. So what 00:12:34.700 --> 00:12:39.740 else are you doing? And I think what a lot of people don't realize is how much ministry and how much 00:12:39.740 --> 00:12:45.060 logistical work there is that actually goes into this. Yeah. And we're actually, so a little bit 00:12:45.060 --> 00:12:51.480 of background on Cape first of where I am. We have a pastor who's about to celebrate his 30th 00:12:51.480 --> 00:12:59.380 anniversary. He's in his early 60s, mid 60s. And we've, when next year will be our 100th year as a 00:12:59.380 --> 00:13:09.440 church. And nothing against him, but his staffing has typically been pastor heavy, because that's the way 00:13:09.440 --> 00:13:17.320 most people through the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, even maybe early 2000s. It was very pastor heavy, like the 00:13:17.320 --> 00:13:22.620 pastor carries the load of the church. You preach every sermon, you're visiting hospitals, you're doing 00:13:22.620 --> 00:13:28.480 the, you're doing the funerals, the, the weddings, the baby dedications. And whereas now we're seeing a 00:13:28.480 --> 00:13:34.940 trend of you have support staff that can go and visit and you have campus pastors that can minister to 00:13:34.940 --> 00:13:41.040 these people too. And so even since, since I've come on board and my wife has come on board, we've hired 00:13:41.040 --> 00:13:48.200 two extra facilities, people, three extra front, not extra there, they were needed, uh, three more 00:13:48.200 --> 00:13:55.880 front office administration staff, uh, because all of these so much day-to-day logistical duties were 00:13:55.880 --> 00:14:01.900 weighing down our pastors. Whereas like, let's free them up to do ministry. Cause there is so much stuff. 00:14:01.900 --> 00:14:06.760 And nobody had just sat down and said, Hey, what are our pastors doing every day? And what can we take 00:14:06.760 --> 00:14:11.620 off their plate? And so once we were able to look at that on paper, we're able to say, Hey, we need to, 00:14:11.700 --> 00:14:13.280 we need to get some more support staff in here. 00:14:13.780 --> 00:14:19.500 Mm-hmm. And let me, let me dig into something. Yeah. Let me dig into something here, David. One of the 00:14:19.500 --> 00:14:26.740 things that you mentioned was as, as online pastor, like you get a phone call or you get an email or a 00:14:26.740 --> 00:14:31.660 Facebook message. I would get Facebook messages like crazy, 60 miles away. Somebody's in the hospital 00:14:31.660 --> 00:14:37.180 like walk in. You've, you've never met this person, physical space. It's, it's always been, 00:14:37.220 --> 00:14:42.240 you know, through virtual walk me through a scenario like that. Like, like, tell me that story, what it's 00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:49.000 like to go be pastor for somebody in a different city that you've really never had like a physical 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:51.040 interaction with. What's it like to be that pastor? 00:14:51.740 --> 00:14:59.620 I'll tell you two situations. One, a very serious one, one, a not as serious one, still serious to 00:14:59.620 --> 00:15:06.540 that family. Uh, one was a lady about three hours away. Um, I got a message one day. She said, 00:15:06.600 --> 00:15:14.300 can't talk right now. Really bummed out. Just lost our child just before birth. Uh, and so 00:15:14.300 --> 00:15:20.240 made miscarriages are no fun. My wife and I have had one, but the later it goes, the closer you get to 00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:25.180 that nine months, it just, it's, it's harder and harder. Um, and they were, they were right on the 00:15:25.180 --> 00:15:31.360 verge of that. And so, um, they're three or so hours away up in the mountains. And I was like, man, 00:15:31.360 --> 00:15:37.020 I don't know when I can get to them. Just, I actually had newborn twins at the time. And I was 00:15:37.020 --> 00:15:41.940 like, I felt for them. I knew exactly where they were at, uh, emotionally. And I was just like, 00:15:42.140 --> 00:15:46.300 gosh, I want to be there, but I just, I can't. So I was able to call one of our campus pastors 00:15:46.300 --> 00:15:53.360 that was in a, about a 40 mile driving distance to them. And I was able to continue email conversation. 00:15:53.500 --> 00:15:58.100 She didn't want to talk on the phone yet. Cause she was very bummed out. Um, and I said, Hey, 00:15:58.180 --> 00:16:05.200 I want to connect you with, uh, with this guy. He's one of our campus pastors at a location closer to 00:16:05.200 --> 00:16:11.100 you. I would love for you guys to sit down and talk. And so it was like, boom, we had someone in 00:16:11.100 --> 00:16:16.740 our organization right there, uh, ready to go to help them and pastor them. And it was pastoring 00:16:16.740 --> 00:16:22.400 them through the grieving process. And then, Hey, we're going to have a little family. We're not 00:16:22.400 --> 00:16:26.800 going to have a huge funeral, but Hey, let's do something for the family and, and celebrate the 00:16:26.800 --> 00:16:33.080 life of what could have been, um, that was in a womb for eight months. And, um, and let's be there 00:16:33.080 --> 00:16:40.560 for them and pastor them. Uh, and they were viewed on online. Um, and then the less dramatic one, um, 00:16:40.560 --> 00:16:46.940 would be, we had a volunteer, uh, who was remote. They were about four hours, but they were one of 00:16:46.940 --> 00:16:54.280 my remote volunteers that served at church online. Uh, and she called me one day. She said, Hey, 00:16:54.420 --> 00:16:58.600 my son out in Denver, we were on the East coast. She's like, my son out in Denver was in a car 00:16:58.600 --> 00:17:05.000 accident and my health. I can't get out to him. What do we do? How can I want someone to pray with 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:11.180 him? Um, and so thankfully we're a part of our association of related churches. I got on there 00:17:11.180 --> 00:17:17.360 searched. I said to find who was the closest our church to that hospital, made a phone call to that 00:17:17.360 --> 00:17:23.020 pastor. And I said, Hey, here's what we've got. Here's, here's what's going on. I said, can you help 00:17:23.020 --> 00:17:26.940 me in any way? Can you go to that hospital and pray with him? And he's like, man, I'm out of state 00:17:26.940 --> 00:17:31.800 right now. I'm out preaching somewhere, but will you call this guy? And he gave me the name of 00:17:31.800 --> 00:17:38.720 another pastor. And that pastor was able to go and pray, take a selfie with him, send it back to 00:17:38.720 --> 00:17:43.640 me. I sent it over to the mother and said, Hey, just want to let you know that Jeff, uh, that was 00:17:43.640 --> 00:17:49.020 the guy's name. Jeff is there praying with your son. Uh, your son says, Hey, he said he's doing all 00:17:49.020 --> 00:17:52.880 right. He's a little bruised up. He'll be there for a couple more days. And they were of course in 00:17:52.880 --> 00:17:57.840 communication to the mom and son. Uh, but just reiterating, Hey, he's doing all right. 00:17:58.060 --> 00:18:03.960 And, uh, of course she was over the moon. I mean, how, how could you not be in love with that 00:18:03.960 --> 00:18:10.040 situation that God orchestrated? Yeah. Uh, and so to answer your question, to be a pastor in that 00:18:10.040 --> 00:18:19.880 situation is saying, Hey, what can I do? And if I can't do something, my self will go through these 00:18:19.880 --> 00:18:26.360 relationships that God has given me. And so that's why networking is just so important. 00:18:26.420 --> 00:18:32.480 That's good. That's really good, David. It's, it's powerful how, how you were able to take a 00:18:32.480 --> 00:18:37.900 situation like that with pastoral care and just make it so practical in terms of leveraging your 00:18:37.900 --> 00:18:42.400 resources. How often do you find that you've got to think outside of the box in order to help minister 00:18:42.400 --> 00:18:49.100 to people? Uh, and, and how different plans may not always look the same. How often really depends 00:18:49.100 --> 00:18:54.760 on, I mean, it's like a church of 200 people versus a church of 2000 people. You're going to have way 00:18:54.760 --> 00:19:01.140 more care for more people. Um, and so right now in this season where I've scaled down a lot of stuff 00:19:01.140 --> 00:19:06.920 is it's maybe once a week where I'll get a message and I have to think through, okay, how are we going 00:19:06.920 --> 00:19:15.220 to pastor this person? Uh, whereas other seasons of ministry, it's been, uh, once a day, twice a day, 00:19:15.220 --> 00:19:21.780 whereas like, okay, we're constantly thinking on our toes. And luckily with a larger organization, 00:19:21.780 --> 00:19:27.400 a lot of those, you can quickly funnel off into other ministries of, oh, Hey, this is a single mom. 00:19:27.540 --> 00:19:32.620 Great. We have, we have an entire ministry for single moms. Let's, let's put this straight to them. 00:19:32.620 --> 00:19:37.020 Um, cause I don't want to get too deep into a rabbit hole, but, um, that 00:19:37.020 --> 00:19:47.320 me is a part of casting vision for church online is not, we are our own ministry center, but Hey, 00:19:47.320 --> 00:19:54.160 if we have someone that just got out of prison, uh, and they need pastoring, I'm not going to be 00:19:54.160 --> 00:19:58.280 the first person. What I'm going to go to is our outreach pastor that deals with those guys on a 00:19:58.280 --> 00:20:03.400 daily basis that actually runs a home that the church owns that four men live in that just graduated 00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:09.320 a drug rehabilitation program. I want to say, Hey, we got this guy fresh out of prison, plug him into 00:20:09.320 --> 00:20:14.800 the life of these other four guys and let them have their own life group and you lead it. And so it's, 00:20:14.800 --> 00:20:21.260 it's not like that works trying to pastor everybody as we funnel them in when that pastor sees, oh my 00:20:21.260 --> 00:20:26.020 gosh, this guy came through church online and now he's a part of the physical life of the church. Like 00:20:26.020 --> 00:20:32.440 this church online thing really works. Like this is a thing and it helps grow that vision in everyone's 00:20:32.440 --> 00:20:36.900 eyes. It's so great that you talk about the handoff because the handoff for us here at Christ 00:20:36.900 --> 00:20:41.840 fellowship in terms of if they, if we can get them into a physical campus that's nearby, how much that 00:20:41.840 --> 00:20:47.680 just expands and celebrates the winds overall for what church online is. And it doesn't make it seem like 00:20:47.680 --> 00:20:51.520 it's an online ministry, which is kind of a term that I fight around here. I'm trying to help people 00:20:51.520 --> 00:20:56.900 understand, no, this is a way that people gather and interact. You know, this is a way for people to 00:20:56.900 --> 00:21:02.000 experience the body of Christ. It's not just a ministry of the church. This is the church overall. 00:21:02.380 --> 00:21:02.820 Yeah. 00:21:04.360 --> 00:21:09.540 Yeah. And it goes back to that whole, and we've talked about this previously, but it's, it's the online to 00:21:09.540 --> 00:21:14.760 offline relationships, right? So the, the, the lessons that we learned, the gospel that we hear 00:21:14.760 --> 00:21:20.920 online, that we experienced through church online, maybe that we experienced listening to a, to a sermon 00:21:20.920 --> 00:21:28.660 archive or, or something on social media that, that impacts us in the real world. James 1 22. Don't just 00:21:28.660 --> 00:21:34.180 hear, be hearers of the word online, do what it says in the real world. And so as a result, 00:21:34.660 --> 00:21:40.220 you know, being able to connect the, the virtual with the physical and blur those lines, 00:21:40.220 --> 00:21:44.300 you know, and, and we mentioned earlier, Ray, I think you did like, I just, I want to do a whole 00:21:44.300 --> 00:21:49.000 episode on this idea of Omnichannel and, and, and how there is this, this grade, and we'll put it in 00:21:49.000 --> 00:21:54.440 the show notes, the link to Dave Amundson. And I talked about it on my blog, but this idea that 00:21:54.440 --> 00:22:01.500 it's not just a single message that's done in a single space, whether it's virtual or whether it's 00:22:01.500 --> 00:22:08.180 sermon archive or, and it's not this idea that you don't just go and hear it in that one and people 00:22:08.180 --> 00:22:14.000 like live in that one environment. It's that it's all holistically involved in that. Well, that also 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:20.480 impacts not just processing of a sermon, but that also impacts the ministry lives that our church has. 00:22:20.580 --> 00:22:26.260 And our church now needs to wrestle with, and we're talking about what does pastoral care look like 00:22:26.260 --> 00:22:31.340 virtually? And sometimes that's, you know, driving 60 miles up the road, or it's calling friends and 00:22:31.340 --> 00:22:36.000 friends of friends and networking to find somebody. Well, I mean, that same conversation can be had, 00:22:36.160 --> 00:22:40.540 you know, what is, what does it look like to disciple somebody? What does it look like to, 00:22:41.060 --> 00:22:46.420 you know, to, to care for somebody in a different way? And suddenly, like, it's, 00:22:46.920 --> 00:22:52.940 it's a much more holistic view of church when church is actually doing the biblical community 00:22:52.940 --> 00:22:59.200 that a discipleship angle. And the pastor kind of being the person to, to lead into that, to speak 00:22:59.200 --> 00:23:05.140 into that is so important, so important. But there's a lot of vision, like that doesn't, that doesn't 00:23:05.140 --> 00:23:10.840 happen overnight, right? Like, I can remember, I'll just tell a horror story. Actually, yeah, I will tell 00:23:10.840 --> 00:23:16.180 horror story. Like we were, we were trying to figure out Christ Fellowship, Miami, I'll call them out. It's, 00:23:16.260 --> 00:23:21.840 it's fine. But we were trying to figure out, because they have this, this annual, it's quarterly, 00:23:21.980 --> 00:23:26.320 it's a movement called Love Miami. And that's where we get out there, serving the neighborhood, 00:23:26.520 --> 00:23:31.100 serving the communities, and, and, you know, make a difference for Christ. Do, do things like on 00:23:31.100 --> 00:23:37.000 schools, in, in parks, just loving on, loving on the community in the name of Christ. And so, 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:42.380 like, I wanted to get the, the, some of our, our, our church online people involved. I had, 00:23:42.380 --> 00:23:47.140 like, groups in, in Key West, groups in New York, kind of scattered around the country. And I was 00:23:47.140 --> 00:23:51.280 trying to figure out how to, like, get them to do something. But Love Miami itself was, was dated. 00:23:51.780 --> 00:24:00.360 Like, it's, it's limited to that Miami 305-786 zip code. And, and I remember, it was in a meeting 00:24:00.360 --> 00:24:05.980 with the entire staff. And it was, the idea was thrown out, maybe a little premature. What if, 00:24:06.080 --> 00:24:12.000 what if we changed Love Miami to Love Your City? And, and it was, it was, it was a, it was a bad job 00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:17.560 of casting vision. And like, the response in that environment wasn't, wasn't really good. It was 00:24:17.560 --> 00:24:22.800 kind of bad and awkward. And, and, and flaming bullets started flying all over the place. You 00:24:22.800 --> 00:24:27.100 can't change Love Miami, Love Miami. We've been doing this for 20, 30 years, like blah, blah, blah, blah, 00:24:27.100 --> 00:24:32.540 blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. And I, as the online pastor, I'm like, I agree with you. Like, I, 00:24:32.540 --> 00:24:38.620 I don't, I don't want to, don't want to do this. So like, there's, how do we have that conversation 00:24:38.620 --> 00:24:45.760 where we, we cast vision, where we, we, we empower ministry people. We make them aware of what 00:24:45.760 --> 00:24:52.120 online does. This is an example of how online is not done well, how it's not cast vision and it 00:24:52.120 --> 00:24:57.900 wasn't received well, but how can it be? Yeah. Yeah. What do you guys think? Dave, what have you 00:24:57.900 --> 00:25:02.860 experienced? David, David, you go first. Cause I got some thoughts on this. Go ahead. So I have a 00:25:02.860 --> 00:25:08.380 similar horror story I'll tell really quick, Jeff. So, uh, where I was, it's, it's a broadcast video 00:25:08.380 --> 00:25:13.880 feed to every campus every Sunday. And then about four times a year, the campus pastor it's campus 00:25:13.880 --> 00:25:19.740 pastor Sunday where they speak. And so I came to leadership one day. I said, well, if it's campus 00:25:19.740 --> 00:25:27.580 pastor Sunday and I'm the online pastor, should I preach for the online stream? And it was like, 00:25:27.660 --> 00:25:33.360 well, of course you wouldn't know. Cause the online pastor and like they kind of put everybody in a 00:25:33.360 --> 00:25:37.840 pickle where it was like, well, I'm the online pastor. And, and it was because that, 00:25:38.140 --> 00:25:42.640 that audit, that audience, that online congregation was so large. It was like, 00:25:42.640 --> 00:25:49.180 do we all of a sudden want to trust this newbie with this many people? Um, so similar horror stories, 00:25:49.180 --> 00:25:57.800 flaming, firing darts were flying at me. And so that didn't quite go over as well. And so I think 00:25:57.800 --> 00:26:03.660 one thing for me of casting vision for church online is something John Maxwell says, or there's been a few 00:26:03.660 --> 00:26:09.740 people that said it is great leaders ask great questions and to cast vision for church online. 00:26:10.400 --> 00:26:18.640 You have to ask the staff and ask the members of the church questions about where they stand with 00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:24.920 church online. Um, and you're not looking for a doctrinal stance on it, but Hey, if they asked me, 00:26:24.920 --> 00:26:30.640 Hey, well, how do you pastor someone on? How do you disciple someone online? Well, how do you think we 00:26:30.640 --> 00:26:36.180 should, if you were watching online, how would you want to be discipled? And it's beginning, 00:26:36.760 --> 00:26:43.000 begin that thought process in people's minds of saying, getting them in the people's shoes that 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:47.160 are watching online and saying, okay, what would I want if I was there? And it's same thing when I'm 00:26:47.160 --> 00:26:51.600 trying to get a new volunteer to serve at church online, when they're like, well, what do I write 00:26:51.600 --> 00:26:56.020 in the chat? Well, if you were sitting at home and your computer, what would you want someone to say to 00:26:56.020 --> 00:27:01.520 you? Well, I would want them to welcome. And, and so, and it's just getting them to, cause they've, 00:27:01.520 --> 00:27:06.640 they've never thought of themselves as being in those shoes of just helping them walk a mile in 00:27:06.640 --> 00:27:11.460 that person's shoes that's watching online. And so for me, the casting vision, same way with the staff 00:27:11.460 --> 00:27:17.560 of, Hey, if you were a shut in and couldn't, couldn't get to church physically, uh, what would 00:27:17.560 --> 00:27:22.460 you want someone to do? You would want more than just a stream. You would want a live person 00:27:22.460 --> 00:27:27.760 coming on camera, welcoming you. You would want an opportunity to give financially. You would want 00:27:27.760 --> 00:27:34.100 an opportunity to sit in a Bible study class other than, uh, just the Sunday morning worship 00:27:34.100 --> 00:27:39.900 experience. Yeah, that's good, David. It's so true. And I'm glad that you mentioned all those avenues. 00:27:39.900 --> 00:27:44.080 It's funny because you know, that exact instance that you mentioned, you know, we've, we've still 00:27:44.080 --> 00:27:48.020 tussling with that kind of thing. And I've even had experience communicating here at CF, but it still 00:27:48.020 --> 00:27:51.880 becomes a bit of an issue. And that's just, since we're all given full disclosure here, you know, 00:27:51.880 --> 00:27:57.200 and I love my doing a lot of great innovative things, but on top of that, you know, what I found, 00:27:57.260 --> 00:28:02.180 which helps out a whole lot is telling stories of all the wins and keeping the stories in front 00:28:02.180 --> 00:28:07.380 of leadership. Nowadays, if folks are leading comments on, you know, just things to pray for, 00:28:07.380 --> 00:28:12.880 or things that, that they're so grateful for, for church online, I'm constantly taking screenshots 00:28:12.880 --> 00:28:18.280 of it and immediately firing it off to leadership just to keep it in their view of this is why we do 00:28:18.280 --> 00:28:23.380 what we do. And this is on good days and on bad days, right? Matter if it's on Sundays where church 00:28:23.380 --> 00:28:28.440 online is awesome, or if man, we got issues with X, Y, and Z doesn't matter. Just constantly keeping 00:28:28.440 --> 00:28:33.800 the vision in front of leadership. And I'm even at the point now where by God's grace, we've got other 00:28:33.800 --> 00:28:38.500 leaders in our church, other campus pastors, or other kids directors or different folks that are 00:28:38.500 --> 00:28:42.480 starting to tell, they're getting stories and feedback. And so now I'm even like, Hey, listen, 00:28:42.660 --> 00:28:45.660 you know, for everyone, I'll buy you a cup of Starbucks for everyone that you pass on the 00:28:45.660 --> 00:28:51.240 leadership because it's worth it because it continues to keep the vision forward in everybody's 00:28:51.240 --> 00:28:57.540 eyes of one, how important this is. And then two, the fact that this isn't a segmented audience of 00:28:57.540 --> 00:29:02.080 the church. This is the church overall. This is that omni channel. This is everybody together 00:29:02.080 --> 00:29:06.160 who takes part in this, whether for whatever reason they're sick or they're passing it on to their 00:29:06.160 --> 00:29:10.580 loved ones or something else. And then finally, just the practicality of it. It's important to 00:29:10.580 --> 00:29:15.340 tell the stories of how people are being affected by this. And so if you're out there, please keep 00:29:15.340 --> 00:29:19.780 your stories in front of your leadership. Let them know about these folks because they need to know 00:29:19.780 --> 00:29:21.820 that people are being ministered to in this way. 00:29:23.240 --> 00:29:29.680 Yeah, straight up. Those two things, just copy and paste that. Asking the right questions, 00:29:30.900 --> 00:29:37.480 guiding people, that's almost like it's a coaching one-on-one strategy. People have the answers that 00:29:37.480 --> 00:29:42.940 they need. They're already ingrained in that. And so it's coaching to kind of walk them through it. 00:29:43.340 --> 00:29:49.640 And it's telling stories and celebrating those things. And the big wins and the small wins, 00:29:49.880 --> 00:29:56.200 like there's nothing too big or too small to celebrate. And I think, I'm not sure if we've 00:29:56.200 --> 00:30:02.220 talked about it on the podcast, but I can remember we had a microlocation. We had several microlocations 00:30:02.220 --> 00:30:08.320 up in New York, but we had a house church. And they sent me a video. They texted it to me of a guy 00:30:08.320 --> 00:30:14.780 getting baptized. And Ray knows this video. But it was awesome. And it was literally the guys 00:30:14.780 --> 00:30:22.480 getting baptized in a bathtub and in a New York apartment. So the bathroom's already like, I don't 00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:27.240 know, three by three. The tub's like half the space. There's like five people crammed in this. 00:30:28.080 --> 00:30:34.380 And the guy who was doing the dunking, I'm not saying he wasn't smart, but he was baptizing 00:30:34.380 --> 00:30:39.880 towards putting the head towards where the, where the faucet knob is instead of doing it the other 00:30:39.880 --> 00:30:44.380 way. And so we're watching this video and it's like this close to this guy's head getting 00:30:44.380 --> 00:30:51.440 conked. And in response from the staff on this video, like half the people were like, this is the 00:30:51.440 --> 00:30:56.100 coolest thing I've ever seen. We need to do this more. And the other people were like, you can't do 00:30:56.100 --> 00:31:00.540 that. You can't baptize somebody in a bathtub. He almost, you know, almost banged his head. 00:31:00.780 --> 00:31:05.480 And it's like, well, it already happened. You know, let's, let's, let's celebrate it. Let's not 00:31:05.480 --> 00:31:10.520 worry about the naysayers. Let's, let's make it what it is. So throw those stories, throw those 00:31:10.520 --> 00:31:16.680 celebrations out there. But what's interesting, and actually I had this conversation with an online 00:31:16.680 --> 00:31:21.980 pastor. And what's interesting, this is an online pastor who's an IT guy, you know, dual hat. So I 00:31:21.980 --> 00:31:25.240 had this conversation like a month ago. And because I asked him, I was like, how's your ministry going? 00:31:25.820 --> 00:31:32.380 And he said, Jeff, I'm at this really interesting state right now where we've gone through the season 00:31:32.380 --> 00:31:39.260 of casting vision. And so now the vision is bought in. They've seen the success of it. 00:31:39.960 --> 00:31:47.340 Now leadership is expecting stuff from us. It's, it's no longer a philosophical thing. Will it work 00:31:47.340 --> 00:31:52.460 for this particular church? It's, it's grounded in the reality of now there's goals. Now there's 00:31:52.460 --> 00:31:59.620 expectations and we have to like deliver on these things. As online pastors, you know, Ray, I know 00:31:59.620 --> 00:32:04.580 you deal a lot with that. I'm sure David as, as well. Like how do we, how do we wrestle with, 00:32:04.760 --> 00:32:07.600 with the goals and the expectations of this? What does that look like? 00:32:09.760 --> 00:32:11.300 Go ahead, Ray. You want to go first? 00:32:11.720 --> 00:32:16.580 Sure. Expectations. I think we're still kind of wrestling through some of the expectations as 00:32:16.580 --> 00:32:20.640 people struggle through what to measure. And, you know, ultimately, and I know this is kind 00:32:20.640 --> 00:32:25.040 of pithy, but we measure what matters, um, in all organizations. And so it's very easy 00:32:25.040 --> 00:32:30.660 to fall in love with online attendance in terms of what it is and how fast it can grow 00:32:30.660 --> 00:32:34.500 and some of that stuff. And so I can understand why everybody right off the bat would look at 00:32:34.500 --> 00:32:37.400 this and say, well, look how many people, you know, are watching us. I mean, man, this is 00:32:37.400 --> 00:32:42.320 incredible. And not really kind of digging in, in terms of the actual community and what 00:32:42.320 --> 00:32:46.340 that can mean as far as expectations. But the reality of this is, and Jeff, you and I have 00:32:46.340 --> 00:32:53.100 talked about this is that, you know, um, your online strategy really should be, it should 00:32:53.100 --> 00:32:56.820 resemble what's going on in your physical locations at your church. If you're really 00:32:56.820 --> 00:33:01.460 trying to see real discipleship and real growth happen in the life of believers, then things 00:33:01.460 --> 00:33:05.440 like online groups, if you're a small groups deal, or if even if you're a Sunday school, 00:33:05.620 --> 00:33:09.720 host Sunday school, you know, here in a chat room, like we are, you know, like don't be 00:33:09.720 --> 00:33:13.100 limited by those things. But really your same discipleship strategy that would be for 00:33:13.100 --> 00:33:17.160 somebody who showed up for a physical location should exist for those who show up to your 00:33:17.160 --> 00:33:22.180 online campus. And if you're really measuring engagement and what matters, then you have 00:33:22.180 --> 00:33:27.220 to keep the community piece up front and your expectations should be really just unlimited 00:33:27.220 --> 00:33:29.320 by the potential of that and what that could look like. 00:33:30.560 --> 00:33:36.560 Yeah. For me coming into this new role, uh, I walked in and it was like thousands of people 00:33:36.560 --> 00:33:42.480 watching every single week and so many people and all this. And I sat down, I looked at all 00:33:42.480 --> 00:33:49.000 the numbers and I was like, it's just not there. Like I'm not seeing the data that the previous 00:33:49.000 --> 00:33:55.480 guy was seeing. And yeah, there's thousands, but the watch time was minuscule. And I was like, 00:33:55.500 --> 00:34:00.760 that's not a viewer at three seconds. They didn't watch service even at a minute and a half. They, 00:34:00.980 --> 00:34:05.500 they were not there long enough. And this goes back to what do we count as a viewer and what's 00:34:05.500 --> 00:34:12.780 where do we draw the line? And so for me, it has been scaling it all the way back, like reporting the 00:34:12.780 --> 00:34:19.100 lowest number possible, um, to, to manage those expectations of, I had to be honest with leadership 00:34:19.100 --> 00:34:24.640 where I was like, Hey, the numbers that you're getting are not accurate numbers. Um, I know they 00:34:24.640 --> 00:34:31.080 sound really sexy, but they're just, they're just not it. Like there's no hard data to back up other 00:34:31.080 --> 00:34:38.160 than one line of text that says this many people clicked on your stream while it was live. That's 00:34:38.160 --> 00:34:42.580 literally the only number. I don't have connect cards to back it up. I don't have people in life 00:34:42.580 --> 00:34:47.000 groups to back it up. I don't even have people that have given their life to Christ to back it up. It 00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:53.740 is literally, that is the only piece of data that I have. And so making sure you have an entire 00:34:53.740 --> 00:35:01.460 picture of the ministry, uh, giving that to it because so quickly with a lot of lead pastors and 00:35:01.460 --> 00:35:06.140 this isn't a slam on anyone. It's just your natural reaction is, okay, if we have church online, 00:35:06.240 --> 00:35:12.100 how many people are watching? Well, that's a great question, but you would never say that in youth 00:35:12.100 --> 00:35:17.280 ministry of, Oh, how many teens are showing up? That is important, but Hey, how many teens got 00:35:17.280 --> 00:35:22.040 saved this year? How many teens got baptized? How many teens went to camp? How many teens are in 00:35:22.040 --> 00:35:27.120 life group? You ask all of those questions. It's the same thing in church online. You've got to say 00:35:27.120 --> 00:35:31.540 how many people are doing this? How many people have jumped in the chat? How many people have filled 00:35:31.540 --> 00:35:37.580 out a connect card? How many people have contacted us saying, Hey, pray for me. I consider you my church 00:35:37.580 --> 00:35:41.660 home. Uh, all of those things, those are all metrics that you've got to put together a whole 00:35:41.660 --> 00:35:47.520 package because that's what, that's what you need leadership to weigh an expectation on, not just, 00:35:47.520 --> 00:35:52.520 Hey, how many people clicked on the feed? Cause we know with technology that can, you hit the right 00:35:52.520 --> 00:35:58.280 Google ad word and all of a sudden you're 10,000 people in the next week you're at two. Well, 00:35:58.440 --> 00:36:04.580 that looks terrible on your resume. And so giving an entire holistic picture to leadership, that's, 00:36:04.840 --> 00:36:09.300 that's my way of how you would manage an expectation better. That's good. Yeah. We're actually 00:36:09.300 --> 00:36:13.780 going to be, that's so good, David, man. We're going to be talking more about this, um, in the 00:36:13.780 --> 00:36:19.160 next podcast, we've got, uh, Jason Morris on, uh, and we're going to be talking about the discipleship 00:36:19.800 --> 00:36:24.720 pathway of, of, of church online. And now when it, when it really comes down to it, and we've already 00:36:24.720 --> 00:36:28.180 recorded the podcast and I don't want to give away his stuff, but I was going to say now that I know 00:36:28.180 --> 00:36:34.200 that he's going to be on there completely disregard everything I've said. Jason Morris is the king 00:36:34.200 --> 00:36:42.520 of truly looking at people as more than just a viewer. Uh, so if you want to know what it looks 00:36:42.520 --> 00:36:49.860 like to have someone as a part of your church that just happens to be digital, just, just ignore what 00:36:49.860 --> 00:36:55.840 I said, listen to Jason. Yeah, he is. That's why literally why we had him on. It was, it was so 00:36:55.840 --> 00:36:59.500 good. And I want you guys to hear that when we roll it out in a couple of weeks and it's in the 00:36:59.500 --> 00:37:05.200 next, it's literally the next episode, but it's the, it's this idea of we measure the wrong thing. 00:37:05.200 --> 00:37:11.880 And you're right. Those view stats, Facebook live lies. You still need to, I still believe you need 00:37:11.880 --> 00:37:18.540 to do it. Uh, because exposure and getting people connected is, is awesome. They, they see it, 00:37:18.540 --> 00:37:24.880 but are those people viable? Um, are those people connected into ministry is Facebook's a great front 00:37:24.880 --> 00:37:28.040 door to something else, but we shouldn't be measuring, we shouldn't be basing our success 00:37:28.040 --> 00:37:32.640 on Facebook. If you'd be basing our success on whatever that next step in the discipleship pathway 00:37:32.640 --> 00:37:38.220 is. And if you're like, what's a discipleship pathway, just like finish this episode, go to 00:37:38.220 --> 00:37:43.460 the next one. It's going to roll out in two weeks and it's going to be awesome. Uh, but so, but that, 00:37:43.580 --> 00:37:48.240 that's the challenge, right? Is, is that, you know, I can remember like every time I would turn in my 00:37:48.240 --> 00:37:52.560 report, uh, and I, and that the leadership would be like, this is awesome. You got so many people. 00:37:52.560 --> 00:37:56.960 I was like, Hey, don't be excited because of this number. Don't be excited because of views. 00:37:57.440 --> 00:38:02.140 Be excited that we got hundreds of people in, in online small groups, be excited that we're, 00:38:02.140 --> 00:38:07.840 we're launching physical, like micro locations and those things. And like, that's where, um, 00:38:08.160 --> 00:38:11.960 that's where true ministry, true discipleship like comes into play. Right. 00:38:12.460 --> 00:38:17.620 Yeah. I, a few weeks ago, go ahead. A few weeks ago in staff meeting. So when I first got here, 00:38:17.620 --> 00:38:26.000 it was all viewers, no connection of just click on to watch. I couldn't get it. I couldn't get 00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:31.540 anybody in live prayer. I couldn't get anybody to email me back. It was literally like, I want to 00:38:31.540 --> 00:38:37.940 watch and no one talked to me. And on, I mean, it was weeks and months of just stoking the fire, 00:38:38.040 --> 00:38:43.980 trying to get something going on one Sunday, two people clicked live prayer. And so I walked into 00:38:43.980 --> 00:38:49.640 staff meeting Tuesday morning and I was like, two people clicked live prayer. And I was like, 00:38:49.760 --> 00:38:57.200 what? And I was like, you don't understand. It has been a nightmare trying to get people to connect 00:38:57.200 --> 00:39:03.020 online. And it's not a nightmare. It was, I was, it's a joy to try and get people to connect, but 00:39:03.020 --> 00:39:08.700 it was just like pulling. And I was like, two people clicked it. Like that's, they took a next 00:39:08.700 --> 00:39:14.140 step. Whether, whether, whether you think it's the next step or not, it is. They literally took a next 00:39:14.140 --> 00:39:19.120 step with the church saying, I trust you to know who I am and know what I'm going through. Pray with 00:39:19.120 --> 00:39:25.420 me. And that was, that was my win. I wrote on that. I'm still riding on it. You know, I, and David, 00:39:25.480 --> 00:39:29.520 it's, it's so good. I was super appreciative of, and we took down a video of this, Jeff, 00:39:29.520 --> 00:39:33.820 you saw, um, when we went through this where, um, and you talked about one baptism where I took 00:39:33.820 --> 00:39:38.860 somebody through our one-on-one that, and we discovered that she wasn't baptized, but she was 00:39:38.860 --> 00:39:42.300 a police officer, but she lived close to a campus, but because of her schedule, she couldn't do it. 00:39:42.500 --> 00:39:47.040 Man, when I baptized her and when we recorded that, and when we were able to celebrate that, 00:39:47.880 --> 00:39:52.080 just to celebrate, once again, to celebrate what matters and to push that out there, 00:39:52.640 --> 00:39:57.500 um, what that does for the rest of your church. And then our leadership actually took that and used it 00:39:57.500 --> 00:40:01.340 for an offering moment. And all of a sudden it illuminated even a lot of people in our 00:40:01.340 --> 00:40:05.980 congregation. Celebrate it, celebrate it, celebrate it. Man, look at what can happen. Look at what's 00:40:05.980 --> 00:40:11.900 possible. Two people clicking on for live prayer, people engaging in online experiences, taking those 00:40:11.900 --> 00:40:16.380 next steps in faith. That is powerful stuff. That's great. I love it. 00:40:18.240 --> 00:40:24.880 So like, what's, what's the next step? So like you've, and let's, let's unpack. So I want to go 00:40:24.880 --> 00:40:29.660 back, David, to your, like, you're in, you're in a season of drought. That may be overstating, but 00:40:29.660 --> 00:40:35.520 like, you don't have engagement. By the way, side note, like even, even the live prayer and the chat 00:40:35.520 --> 00:40:43.060 stuff, you do this in circles. It's, it's huge, but it's a small percentage of people that engage. 00:40:43.240 --> 00:40:50.080 Like, traditionally speaking, as near as I can tell, 10 to 15% of people, when I ask this question, 00:40:50.420 --> 00:40:57.020 more often than not, it's 10 to 15% of people will engage in those chats. And so it's, it's very 00:40:57.020 --> 00:41:03.660 discouraging, even if we're trying to base our success on that, because people don't, don't readily, 00:41:03.660 --> 00:41:09.460 don't openly connect to that. And sometimes it's weeks or months. I had a guy tell me once, he's like, 00:41:09.460 --> 00:41:15.660 yeah, I did it for 18 months. He did a year and a half of chat before he really saw any, any engagement 00:41:15.660 --> 00:41:22.760 click on. And so like, what are some things pastorally that, that we can do? Uh, what type 00:41:22.760 --> 00:41:27.600 of environments can we create to, to drive people? Cause the, the biggest challenge in church online 00:41:27.600 --> 00:41:32.940 isn't getting your service. Um, and it's not even creating the, the ministry, like the, the small 00:41:32.940 --> 00:41:38.460 groups and the pastoral piece. It's discovering who the people are that are watching in isolation 00:41:38.460 --> 00:41:43.800 and getting them connected to it. It's that, it's that virtual gap in between service and 00:41:43.800 --> 00:41:48.360 viable ministry. So like, you know, David, I'm just curious, like you were in a season 00:41:48.360 --> 00:41:52.500 of, of drought. You've maybe made up, maybe a little turn. You've had some experience in 00:41:52.500 --> 00:41:56.740 the past. Like what have you done to kind of connect those, connect the bridge there? 00:41:57.800 --> 00:42:04.700 So one of them has been being just very intentional with the chat of every time I post on Facebook 00:42:04.700 --> 00:42:10.000 of, Hey, we're about to go live. I tell people, Hey, jump in the chat, say, hi, tell me where 00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.340 you're watching from. Just continually telling them every time, Hey, tell me who it is. So 00:42:14.340 --> 00:42:20.320 now I'm starting to see every Sunday, I'm seeing those same names in the chat. I'm seeing those 00:42:20.320 --> 00:42:25.400 people that have created a profile and they're coming back, logging in as the same person, not 00:42:25.400 --> 00:42:30.100 just typing in a nickname, but they're coming in. And of course, a lot of this references church 00:42:30.100 --> 00:42:34.880 online platform. Uh, for those of you that use it, you'll probably know what we're talking about. For 00:42:34.880 --> 00:42:38.640 those of you that don't, you probably have something similar. Um, but they're actually, 00:42:38.640 --> 00:42:45.000 they're, they're logging in. And so the last few weeks is I've been starting direct messages with 00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:51.560 them or private messages where I'm saying, Hey, Amanda, I'm so glad that you're here. Uh, would love 00:42:51.560 --> 00:42:56.380 to, would love to talk some more. Here's my email, shoot me an email where I'm, I'm beginning those 00:42:56.380 --> 00:43:01.460 steps of, okay. Cause my goal, honestly, uh, between you, all of us, my goal is that they're 00:43:01.460 --> 00:43:05.900 going to serve on at church online. They they're watching every week. Hey, you be a host. Like 00:43:05.900 --> 00:43:11.980 this is your next step. And so, but I know I can't come out the gate with that because six 00:43:11.980 --> 00:43:16.260 weeks ago, they weren't even willing to get on the chat. And now they're willing to get 00:43:16.260 --> 00:43:21.180 on and say, hi, it's Amanda again. And, and I'm able to say, Hey, so glad to see you again. 00:43:21.180 --> 00:43:26.760 And you got anybody watching with you. Um, and so it's those, it's those small incremental 00:43:26.760 --> 00:43:31.760 steps where, Hey, just because somebody chat as chatting for the first time, Hey, that might 00:43:31.760 --> 00:43:35.400 not be the time to throw out a connect card. Like I know you want it. I do. I want their 00:43:35.400 --> 00:43:39.520 information. I want to know who they are, but it's like knowing that, Hey, they've been here 00:43:39.520 --> 00:43:45.400 three weeks in a row. I can see, I can see they're there. They're now sending six messages 00:43:45.400 --> 00:43:50.660 per service instead of just one when they first get on or, Hey, we had a whole conversation 00:43:50.660 --> 00:43:57.260 then. And it, it's, it's taking those wins and remembering them, but not necessarily trying 00:43:57.260 --> 00:44:02.860 to hit a home run right off the bat. Um, and so that's, what's been a key for me is just 00:44:02.860 --> 00:44:07.720 taking slow methodical steps of like, Hey, I know we're going to be back next Wednesday. 00:44:07.940 --> 00:44:12.680 I mean, should the Lord Terry, I know, I know she's probably going to be back and, and yeah, 00:44:12.680 --> 00:44:16.500 there's some risk. Maybe she finds a new church and I never see her again. Of course 00:44:16.500 --> 00:44:20.760 that can happen, but it's saying, you know what? This person has been faithful. We would 00:44:20.760 --> 00:44:25.580 do it the same way in a physical campus. Like when someone shows up for the first time, Hey, 00:44:25.620 --> 00:44:29.360 welcome. My name is David. You want to be a life group leader? Like we wouldn't do that 00:44:29.360 --> 00:44:34.280 to a guest. It's Hey, we're so glad you're here. How long have you been coming here? Hey, 00:44:34.280 --> 00:44:37.520 have you come over to our blue room? Let's, let's get you some, let's get you a Bible. Do 00:44:37.520 --> 00:44:40.660 you have a Bible at home? We want, we want you to have one of those. Um, or Hey, 00:44:40.660 --> 00:44:44.980 we're reading through the Bible together. Uh, if you've never read the Bible, here's 00:44:44.980 --> 00:44:51.080 a great place to start. And the same slow process that we would take with a physical 00:44:51.080 --> 00:44:54.760 person, Hey, we're taking out with physical with digital. Hey, we're so glad you're in 00:44:54.760 --> 00:44:59.900 the chat today. Would, would you fill out a connect card and taking those slow steps? 00:45:00.560 --> 00:45:04.780 It's good. Yeah. It's important to walk before you run in a lot of those senses. I mean, 00:45:04.780 --> 00:45:12.380 absolutely. And especially since David, I imagine, you know, you guys are, are utilizing that same 00:45:12.380 --> 00:45:16.280 way that you would for the person who attended for the first time, you're bringing that same 00:45:16.280 --> 00:45:21.320 strategy. They're online, right? I mean, Hey, we have the Bible reading plan right on the app, 00:45:21.580 --> 00:45:26.200 go in and click on it. That's, that's the biggest thing we do together as a church. Other than life 00:45:26.200 --> 00:45:31.420 groups is we read through the Bible together. And then our Sunday morning services, the message 00:45:31.420 --> 00:45:36.720 comes out of the reading that you would have read the previous week. Um, and so I get to tell people 00:45:36.720 --> 00:45:41.640 that of, Hey, Hey, read the Bible with us this week. Cause next Sunday, we're going to preach 00:45:41.640 --> 00:45:45.820 about something that you're going to read this week. And then they realize, Oh wait, it's like 00:45:45.820 --> 00:45:52.580 this every week, which is awesome. I love that we get, we do it that way. Um, and so it's, it's fun. 00:45:52.640 --> 00:45:57.620 Yeah. We get to do the same thing digitally as physically. We went longer than I wanted, but this 00:45:57.620 --> 00:46:00.620 has been a really good conversation. It seems to be a common phrase right now. 00:46:01.120 --> 00:46:05.520 Podcast has gone longer than it was supposed to, but, uh, it's, it's good material. So man, 00:46:05.720 --> 00:46:11.380 David, thanks for sharing with us. Um, any, any closing thoughts, 20 seconds. Mike is yours. 00:46:11.480 --> 00:46:16.140 David, what do you got? I say this to every online pastor. I'll say it to all of you guys. 00:46:16.200 --> 00:46:21.620 Don't be afraid to start small. If you feel like you have, if you feel like everything is 00:46:21.620 --> 00:46:27.640 overwhelming, go back to what has God called us to do. Who can change the world? Everybody, 00:46:27.640 --> 00:46:33.000 everybody in Church Online can change the world, but who can change your community? You can. Don't be 00:46:33.000 --> 00:46:40.500 afraid to draw back and say, okay, God, what can we do in this community through online medium to change 00:46:40.500 --> 00:46:45.440 our city, to then change our County, to then change our state, to then change the world. Don't feel like 00:46:45.440 --> 00:46:50.420 you have to change the world. Change your community through Church Online. Amen. That's good stuff, man. 00:46:51.460 --> 00:46:57.000 Jesus changed the world with, uh, and I'm going to overstate here, but three disciples, 00:46:57.240 --> 00:47:05.220 three people that he was close to and 12 followers. And so like I too, I've always said, I'd rather have 00:47:05.220 --> 00:47:11.420 15 people that were sold out in love with a cause than something larger than that. So man, thank you 00:47:11.420 --> 00:47:16.160 very much, David. That was, that was phenomenal. Ray, 20 seconds in closing, anything on your end? 00:47:17.040 --> 00:47:21.240 Love learning from you, David. It's a phenomenal thing to all of you guys wearing two hats. Keep 00:47:21.240 --> 00:47:25.460 hope alive. This is a season in time. Keep, keep checking on. It's good stuff. 00:47:26.980 --> 00:47:31.640 Hey, yeah. So it's been the Church Digital Podcast. Like I mentioned, next up is going to be Jason 00:47:31.640 --> 00:47:36.500 Morris and it's literally, it's just going to run right off where we left off and go into the next 00:47:36.500 --> 00:47:42.560 one. So definitely catch that podcast. But for David, for, for Ray, for myself, Jeff, check out the 00:47:42.560 --> 00:47:46.020 show notes. We'll have more information on there. We'll see you next time here on the Church 00:47:46.020 --> 00:47:47.380 Digital Podcast. Thanks everybody.