WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.720 All right. Episode 53 of the Church Digital Podcast. I got to tell you, I wish this one 00:00:04.720 --> 00:00:12.520 was being sent out in better circumstances. So yeah, we're on lockdown. Like the church where 00:00:12.520 --> 00:00:19.700 I'm at, that I work at here in Miami, we are not having services on Sunday. We are broadcasting 00:00:19.700 --> 00:00:25.440 entirely online. We had to cancel evangelism training and discipleship training. I'm actually, 00:00:25.440 --> 00:00:31.180 when I do this recording right now, it's Saturday and all this is done. We're not doing 00:00:31.180 --> 00:00:38.020 any of this stuff in the physical space anymore. What's great for us is that we have a structure 00:00:38.020 --> 00:00:43.960 in place to move in the swing to do this online. And so really this is the challenge that I 00:00:43.960 --> 00:00:49.840 want to throw to a lot of you out there. In this season, when we are no longer able to 00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:56.080 do ministry in physical spaces, let's look at doing it online. This is not a pump the 00:00:56.080 --> 00:01:02.340 brake and we're just waving the white flag, giving up. This is our opportunity to embrace 00:01:02.340 --> 00:01:09.300 online and do services, do church services, but don't stop there. Do discipleship, do ministry 00:01:09.300 --> 00:01:15.360 online. And so this is what we're bringing here in the podcast this episode. We're bringing 00:01:15.360 --> 00:01:21.920 in a webinar. I actually, I filmed this back on Thursday before the lockdown happened, 00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:26.360 before the world went crazy. Well, okay, maybe the world's kind of going crazy, but before 00:01:26.360 --> 00:01:33.820 it really got crazy, we did a podcast, a webinar with some people from Stadia. So we brought 00:01:33.820 --> 00:01:39.120 in, well, Greg Nettle, let's just open with that. The president of Stadia is jumping on this 00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:44.820 webinar. We brought in Nathan Hawkins, who's one of the regional guys who works with churches 00:01:44.820 --> 00:01:50.520 up in the, up in the Pacific Northwest. Ironically, his church was actually shut down a week ago, 00:01:50.520 --> 00:01:56.100 but it just, as it spread from, you know, the, across the Pacific into America, his was one 00:01:56.100 --> 00:02:00.940 of the first churches, one of the first areas up in Seattle impacted, as well as we're bringing 00:02:00.940 --> 00:02:06.800 in, again, excuse me, Ben Kacharis, who is one of the churches who partners with Stadia, 00:02:06.880 --> 00:02:11.880 but he's also on the board of directors with Stadia Church Planting. The heart of who we are 00:02:11.880 --> 00:02:19.260 with Stadia, as well as the Church Digital, is to help you, church out there, figure out how to do 00:02:19.260 --> 00:02:24.380 effective ministry online. And what's interesting is for years, we were just defining effective by that 00:02:24.380 --> 00:02:30.320 one hour on Sunday, but we are literally locked down, and there are no opportunities to do discipleship 00:02:30.320 --> 00:02:34.340 unless we're embracing this digital front. So the challenge that I want to throw at you, 00:02:34.440 --> 00:02:40.580 listening audience out there, is to embrace these digital methods. Now, chances are, if you've been 00:02:40.580 --> 00:02:44.000 listening to this podcast a long time, you've got all this figured out, or you think you got all this 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:48.860 figured out, but here's the reality. There's a ton of new people that are embracing this content. 00:02:49.320 --> 00:02:56.700 The website, the Church Digital, we've seen a 700% increase, growing increase in traffic week to week 00:02:56.700 --> 00:03:02.980 during this. And it's not leveling off, it's spiking up here in the most recent days since 00:03:02.980 --> 00:03:10.460 virtually the entire country has gone on lockdown. So churches, fans, friendly, yeah, we'll go ahead and 00:03:10.460 --> 00:03:15.500 leave that in the podcast. Friendly, the friends and family of the Church Digital, because you guys 00:03:15.500 --> 00:03:22.580 are my family. Help us get the word out. And this is not for self-gratification, but this is more for 00:03:22.580 --> 00:03:27.860 helping churches get aware of this. Here's what I want you to do. If you know churches who are 00:03:27.860 --> 00:03:33.440 struggling, who are interested, or even if you just want to throw this on social media, thechurch.digital 00:03:33.440 --> 00:03:40.320 slash COVID-19. All the resources that we're creating, all the links, everything is going to be on that 00:03:40.320 --> 00:03:46.660 webpage, thechurch.digital slash COVID-19. So we're going to go ahead and go to the episode here. This 00:03:46.660 --> 00:03:54.580 is episode 53, The Church in Coronavirus Culture. Okay, everybody, here you go. Hey, friends, I'm Greg 00:03:54.580 --> 00:04:00.220 Nettle, and I serve as president of Stadia Church Planting. Thank you so much for joining us for this 00:04:00.220 --> 00:04:08.900 webinar. Sorry it's under these circumstances, but we feel like God in advance kind of uniquely prepared 00:04:08.900 --> 00:04:16.240 Stadia for such a time as this. About six months ago, Stadia convened a gathering out in Colorado 00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:22.720 of tech leaders from all across the country, both in the business world and in the church world, 00:04:22.720 --> 00:04:29.440 to kind of explore the idea of what technology is available to us for new church planting specifically, 00:04:29.740 --> 00:04:36.040 and further just in general expressions of the church, how to make disciples. And as we left that 00:04:36.040 --> 00:04:43.420 gathering, we were absolutely convinced that it would be imperative for us to pursue digital technology 00:04:43.420 --> 00:04:50.620 to advance the kingdom of God, to advance the gospel. What we learned was the potential to reach people 00:04:50.620 --> 00:04:57.180 all over the globe throughout the United States is unprecedented in our time and even further with 00:04:57.180 --> 00:05:04.820 what's coming with 5G technology. As a result of that, we formed a team at Stadia, we brought some new staff 00:05:04.820 --> 00:05:12.680 on board with our team to launch our digital church planting kind of operation. Jeff Reed, who we're going 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:18.520 to be hearing from, if you had the LeBron James of basketball on your team, that's Jeff Reed in the 00:05:18.520 --> 00:05:24.320 digital world. So being a Cleveland guy, you know, I appreciate that analogy anyhow. Hopefully you West Coast 00:05:24.320 --> 00:05:29.540 people will also. But you're going to hear from Jeff. He's absolutely amazing. Jeff's doing a lot of 00:05:29.540 --> 00:05:35.720 things for us now. We've got cohorts forming on how to start digital expressions of the church. He'll be an 00:05:35.720 --> 00:05:41.100 incredible resource for you as well. I'm going to pray for us in just a couple minutes. And after that, 00:05:41.100 --> 00:05:46.660 we'll turn it over to Jeff and then Nathan Hawkins, who you've heard from already. Nathan does an 00:05:46.660 --> 00:05:52.520 incredible job for Stadia out on the West Coast. But here's what I wanted to say to you, first and 00:05:52.520 --> 00:05:59.240 foremost, about what we're all facing with what's happening with the coronavirus. It's really easy 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:06.420 for us to look at this as, oh my gosh, we might not be able to have weekend gatherings. Or, oh my gosh, 00:06:06.420 --> 00:06:11.140 what are we going to do about finances? Or, oh goodness, how are we going to disciple people? Or 00:06:11.140 --> 00:06:15.800 how do we do children's gatherings? And those are all legitimate, valid questions. And just so you know, 00:06:15.860 --> 00:06:21.300 we're asking them here locally and in our home church as well. But here's what I want to say to 00:06:21.300 --> 00:06:29.260 start this off. I believe we need to reframe this. I believe this is an incredible opportunity for the 00:06:29.260 --> 00:06:36.280 church to advance the good news of Jesus Christ. Because when things are at their worst, the church is 00:06:36.280 --> 00:06:43.520 at its best. It's when people need us the most, when they need the church. But let me say it even 00:06:43.520 --> 00:06:49.020 further. There are millions and millions of people across the United States that never would have 00:06:49.020 --> 00:06:55.400 stepped foot in the doors of our church building this weekend, even if the coronavirus had not 00:06:55.400 --> 00:07:01.340 happened. They would not have stepped in. Far fewer are going to now. So how about if we take this 00:07:01.340 --> 00:07:08.380 opportunity? What if we develop our teaching series or we use our online platforms to answer the questions 00:07:08.380 --> 00:07:14.840 everyone in the country is asking right now from a biblical perspective? What do we, where's hope in 00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:19.620 all of this? Why do bad things happen like this? Where's God in all this? What do I tell my children 00:07:19.620 --> 00:07:27.040 about the coronavirus? There are a zillion questions we have the answers to. And if we could teach from 00:07:27.040 --> 00:07:34.620 that perspective, we could reach people in the unchurched world in a way that no one else, including 00:07:34.620 --> 00:07:40.500 ourselves, ever could have because those people won't come in our doors. So let's look at this as an 00:07:40.500 --> 00:07:46.480 opportunity to reach others. Perhaps look at it as an opportunity to experiment with digital online 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:51.900 expressions of the church. It's coming anyhow. This is a great opportunity to begin experimenting 00:07:51.900 --> 00:07:58.800 for that, with that, and building for that. Online disciple making, we have to be doing it as a church 00:07:58.800 --> 00:08:05.040 anyhow. This gives us the opportunity to jumpstart that. Children's ministry, we're going to be talking 00:08:05.040 --> 00:08:10.580 a little bit about that. Incredible opportunities with that. So let's go into it with that mindset 00:08:10.580 --> 00:08:16.860 rather than looking at this as a negative. How about if we look at this as a positive opportunity for the 00:08:16.860 --> 00:08:23.080 gospel? Let's pray together. Amen. God, I am so grateful for every person on this call. You've 00:08:23.080 --> 00:08:29.300 entrusted them with leadership, with caring for the beautiful bride of Christ. God, would you help us to 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:42.900 take steps of faith? Father, I pray for Jeff Reed, for Nathan Hawkins, for Ben Kacharis as they pour 00:08:42.900 --> 00:08:49.740 into us today. And I just pray that you'll bless our time together. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 00:08:49.740 --> 00:08:57.240 Amen. Amen. Thank you for that, Greg. Just a reminder, if you're just joining us, please go ahead and mute your 00:08:57.240 --> 00:09:03.600 microphone and we would encourage you to select the speaker view on the top right corner so you can see 00:09:03.600 --> 00:09:09.640 who it is that's communicating to you. And then encourage you to make use of the chat function for 00:09:09.640 --> 00:09:16.120 your questions. We will reserve some time as we wrap to address some of your questions and we want to be 00:09:16.120 --> 00:09:22.600 able to respond as much in real time. As Greg said, my name is Nathan Hawkins. I get the privilege of serving 00:09:22.600 --> 00:09:28.260 Stadia Partners here in the West Coast. I'm based in Seattle, Washington, the epicenter of this 00:09:28.260 --> 00:09:34.180 outbreak, at least in the United States at this point. Our church was not able to meet last week 00:09:34.180 --> 00:09:41.080 and our schools have been canceled. And as many of you are now experiencing, we're just a little bit 00:09:41.080 --> 00:09:46.080 ahead. So we'll offer some insights and perspective from that, but we want to hear from the experts. So 00:09:46.080 --> 00:09:53.460 Jeff Reed leads in the digital online church space. Jeff, what are some of the very first steps that we 00:09:53.460 --> 00:09:58.700 need to be taking, things that we can be thinking about as this opportunity Greg identified? 00:09:59.700 --> 00:10:03.660 Awesome. Hey, thanks, Chivo. Nathan, appreciate that. I'm going to call him Chivo on the broadcast 00:10:03.660 --> 00:10:09.820 because that's just how it's programmed in my head. I apologize. I'm excited to be here under weird 00:10:09.820 --> 00:10:16.780 circumstances, but I want to try to help us figure out some simple and practical steps of how to improve 00:10:16.780 --> 00:10:24.480 our online ministry, our church online, as we're feeling pressure and as we're even being limited 00:10:24.480 --> 00:10:30.760 on how we're doing ministry physically. And so the first step that Nathan alluded to is let's talk 00:10:30.760 --> 00:10:36.580 about how to broadcast our church services online. And so there's a couple, there's going to be some 00:10:36.580 --> 00:10:40.980 slides that's going to come up and it's going to reinforce this. Also, let me go ahead and tell 00:10:40.980 --> 00:10:47.320 you that a lot of the, um, the notes that we will have available is online. And a lot of the links 00:10:47.320 --> 00:10:55.300 and the vendors and other resources are currently available at the church.digital slash notes. So if 00:10:55.300 --> 00:10:59.920 you want to pull that up in your web browser, you can follow along, uh, with a lot of the vendors and 00:10:59.920 --> 00:11:04.740 examples that I'm talking about. Cause at the end, um, we here at Stadia and the church digital, 00:11:04.740 --> 00:11:09.620 we want to provide resources to help you figure out how to take these next steps. But let's talk 00:11:09.620 --> 00:11:15.220 specifically, uh, about broadcasting our church service and what that looks like in, in an online 00:11:15.220 --> 00:11:20.900 context. Really there's two different types of platforms that we're going to land on. Um, so the 00:11:20.900 --> 00:11:27.380 first platform that we can land on is social media. Uh, and then the second is going to be more website 00:11:27.380 --> 00:11:32.340 based. And let's, let's talk a little bit about the difference between the two. Uh, when we broadcast on 00:11:32.340 --> 00:11:38.420 social media, it is probably the easiest way right now to broadcast the service online. So whatever 00:11:38.420 --> 00:11:43.940 the time is your service, you can broadcast the super easy way is something as simple as, as a phone 00:11:43.940 --> 00:11:49.220 device that that's showing it. Um, there's some quality issues and some things that may come up, but 00:11:49.220 --> 00:11:54.980 if you were really trying to do it super easy, super simple, you're broadcasting that to social media, 00:11:54.980 --> 00:12:02.260 things like Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Periscope, which is connected to Twitter and people, your audience 00:12:02.260 --> 00:12:09.380 is engaging with that service, watching it online. Now, if you just did the phone device, you may have 00:12:09.380 --> 00:12:16.740 problems with audio. It may not sound good. Um, video may be pixelated and hard to receive. Um, in addition to 00:12:16.740 --> 00:12:24.500 that, uh, social media itself, the platforms actually try to drive away from long-term viewing. So think 00:12:24.500 --> 00:12:30.500 about it. Like if you're watching a Facebook video, you're getting other push notifications that are 00:12:30.500 --> 00:12:36.500 popping up on your phone of other things that somebody else is saying, or other videos that are happening. 00:12:36.500 --> 00:12:41.140 Uh, same thing with the other platforms. Cause in the end, Facebook isn't concerned with 00:12:41.140 --> 00:12:48.900 someone watching a full 70 minute service. They want people to ingest as much communication as possible. 00:12:48.900 --> 00:12:54.260 So they're literally throwing distractions in amongst the broadcast to pull people away from it. 00:12:54.260 --> 00:12:59.780 The average Facebook, uh, watch is probably two to five minutes. YouTube is a little longer, 00:12:59.780 --> 00:13:07.620 maybe five, seven, 10. Uh, and so because all of these distractions happen, that's why platforms like 00:13:07.620 --> 00:13:13.620 church online platform, which is released by life church and, and as a free option to you guys 00:13:14.180 --> 00:13:20.980 are basically operate as a standalone website or even broadcasting it to your own website where there 00:13:20.980 --> 00:13:26.180 are no distractions. Uh, people who broadcast to a more controlled environment like church online 00:13:26.180 --> 00:13:33.300 platform report 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 50 minutes, 60 minutes, a much longer engagement because there's 00:13:33.300 --> 00:13:37.540 not all the distractions of social media. Social media plays a part because you're 00:13:37.540 --> 00:13:43.220 you're getting a lot of audience, but utilize the social media to route to a controlled environment 00:13:43.220 --> 00:13:49.060 like church online platform. All of the links are available in on that notes page, um, with that. 00:13:49.060 --> 00:13:53.620 And so you can definitely check out those, but the next thing I want to talk about. 00:13:53.620 --> 00:13:59.940 So Jeff, let me just interject there. So I can clarify. So what you're saying is social media is, uh, 00:14:00.500 --> 00:14:07.940 potentially a great first step if, if we're not already, uh, sharing our content online and there's 00:14:07.940 --> 00:14:15.540 some, uh, ready-made applications that we're familiar with Facebook, Periscope, YouTube. However, 00:14:15.540 --> 00:14:24.420 you're encouraging churches to create their own, uh, system on their website in order that people can 00:14:24.420 --> 00:14:29.780 remain focused and engaged longer. So you're going to talk more about how we do that. Correct? 00:14:29.780 --> 00:14:37.460 Correct. So a church online platform, there are at this point, there's probably 15,000 churches out 00:14:37.460 --> 00:14:44.900 there that broadcast their video to this standalone website and the church line platform. It could be, 00:14:44.900 --> 00:14:51.460 um, your church domain that, that has it. So it's branded. It's your color palette. It's your logo. 00:14:51.460 --> 00:14:56.740 It has your look. It has your feel, but the difference is, is that, and it actually looks 00:14:56.740 --> 00:15:02.500 very similar to how life churches, uh, weekend services look like when they broadcast it's the 00:15:02.500 --> 00:15:08.500 same base technology. But as a result of that, it's a controlled environment. That's not distracting 00:15:08.500 --> 00:15:17.620 away from other things. Hmm. So whether we're using social media or an, uh, a tool that will allow 00:15:17.620 --> 00:15:23.940 us to share to our own website, what are some easy tips that we can start with in terms of where do 00:15:23.940 --> 00:15:30.260 we focus? What do we do for the sound? Uh, how do we want to frame that? What, what's important 00:15:30.260 --> 00:15:36.900 for people to see and hear? Some of the things that we need to look at in context of, of what the video 00:15:36.900 --> 00:15:43.540 and what the audio looks like. The best way to get quality on the audio is to pull it from the board. 00:15:43.540 --> 00:15:48.260 And you may have some technical aspects of that, but you can take a feed from the soundboard 00:15:48.260 --> 00:15:54.500 and run it into the camera. There's a number of devices and cameras that we, we can look like. And if 00:15:54.500 --> 00:15:59.780 we can go, uh, to the equipment slide, we'll kind of reference some of that here. Uh, thank you very 00:15:59.780 --> 00:16:07.460 much, Josie for running the slides on that. There's some equipment options and, um, we're looking at 00:16:07.460 --> 00:16:14.340 solutions like living as one. We're looking at solutions like Mevo, uh, and switcher studio. 00:16:14.340 --> 00:16:21.460 There's different levels of, of buy-in on these encoders. Your process is basically that you're 00:16:21.460 --> 00:16:26.740 going to take audio from a soundboard, video from a camera, and you're going to run it into 00:16:26.740 --> 00:16:34.180 these encoder devices that are going to broadcast it online. And depending upon how, what your budget 00:16:34.180 --> 00:16:38.580 is, how much money is available, uh, is really going to dictate and the quality that you're looking 00:16:38.580 --> 00:16:45.060 for is really going to dictate the next steps, uh, that you, you want to do. So the living as one 00:16:45.060 --> 00:16:51.540 option is, is 1200 to $4,000. And it really depends 1200. If you're just broadcasting online, 00:16:51.540 --> 00:16:57.300 4,000. If, if you are a multi-site church and are interested in doing campus to campus broadcast. 00:16:57.300 --> 00:17:01.700 So that's really the difference on that, but that's going to give you probably the best quality 00:17:01.700 --> 00:17:07.780 and the most stability of, of any of the vendors out there. Uh, there is, uh, a Mevo there, 00:17:07.780 --> 00:17:14.820 which is an independent camera, uh, that is, uh, more of a prosumer level. It's 00:17:14.820 --> 00:17:18.660 not quite professional. It's not quite consumer. It's kind of that mid range, 00:17:18.660 --> 00:17:25.140 which is an excellent video quality. Um, but it's also a, uh, and then audio, uh, 00:17:25.140 --> 00:17:30.500 camp works as well with that, uh, a consumer level product is switcher studio that has, 00:17:30.500 --> 00:17:35.620 there's a small monthly, a fee to it, but essentially switcher studio uses your camp, your phones. 00:17:35.620 --> 00:17:41.620 And so you position six or eight cameras or phones literally around your worship center. 00:17:41.620 --> 00:17:46.420 And then somebody is on an iPad, basically switching between the phone cameras, uh, 00:17:46.420 --> 00:17:51.220 and then broadcasting that live. I've got several clients who use that. And then there is a solution 00:17:51.220 --> 00:17:57.700 that's called OBS, uh, which is open sourced, which means it's free, uh, which means it's also very 00:17:57.700 --> 00:18:03.380 technical and it's difficult. If you have technical savvy people on your staff, maybe they can get OBS to 00:18:03.380 --> 00:18:11.620 work. If you are, um, kind of a novice in the technical field, pay some money and go with something easier 00:18:11.620 --> 00:18:17.140 and more stable. It is important to notice here on this before we shift, uh, that the living as one 00:18:17.140 --> 00:18:27.380 option is only, uh, is the only one that can broadcast to a separate website like a church online platform, 00:18:27.380 --> 00:18:35.300 or even your separate website live. Uh, all the others are social media only. So there is some 00:18:35.300 --> 00:18:42.660 easability to that, but you also lose the stability of having it on your branded website, as opposed to 00:18:42.660 --> 00:18:47.300 just random Facebook that's throwing distractions at you. Go ahead, Nathan. 00:18:47.300 --> 00:18:54.020 Thank you, Jeff. So the key is that we will need some sort of a encoder device. The basic level is 00:18:54.020 --> 00:19:00.260 what's available on our phones that allows us to access social media. However, you're recommending 00:19:00.260 --> 00:19:07.300 churches consider something that allows them to stream and or broadcast directly to their own domain 00:19:07.300 --> 00:19:16.820 website primarily so that people can be focused and stay engaged longer, can, can be a part of more of 00:19:16.820 --> 00:19:22.980 that service as opposed to the distractions that we encounter in the social media space. So that's step 00:19:22.980 --> 00:19:30.740 one. It's making available what we're familiar with, what we are accustomed to providing, uh, at a baseline 00:19:30.740 --> 00:19:38.500 level on a weekly basis. The next step is really to engage our community online. And that's different 00:19:38.500 --> 00:19:44.180 than simply broadcasting. Jeff, talk to us a little bit about what does it mean to start to engage our 00:19:44.180 --> 00:19:51.380 community online? Yeah. So one of the things that we're looking at when we do, um, engaging the word 00:19:51.380 --> 00:19:58.500 engagement, uh, literally means that we want to have two way communication. The biggest purpose of what we 00:19:58.500 --> 00:20:05.620 want to do is with step number two here is to keep our people on mission, even if they can't physically 00:20:05.620 --> 00:20:12.500 gather in the space. Uh, so, so let's, let's talk about this. There's an opportunity for us, 00:20:12.500 --> 00:20:18.580 and this is outside of the weekend service. We have captive the potentially as this thing gets worse and 00:20:18.580 --> 00:20:23.780 worse. And if we do as a church, if we do experience the inability to gather physically, 00:20:24.420 --> 00:20:30.100 that doesn't affect just us, the church that affects culture around us. And that's, that's already 00:20:30.100 --> 00:20:37.540 happening. Looking at the NBA, uh, no longer doing games, looking at March Madness with the move that 00:20:37.540 --> 00:20:43.860 they have. Here in Miami, where I am two major events, ultra music festival, which impacts 100,000 00:20:43.860 --> 00:20:50.340 people was shut down. Caiocho, which is a Hispanic thing, which impacts a million people was shut down. And so, 00:20:50.340 --> 00:20:57.220 as a result of this, we're getting the situation where our audience isn't distracted by the stuff 00:20:57.220 --> 00:21:04.420 around them in these lockdown situations there, they have an opportunity. We have an opportunity 00:21:04.420 --> 00:21:11.220 to be a strong voice at them, towards them and engage and have conversations. So one of the things that I 00:21:11.220 --> 00:21:17.380 want to challenge us on the church is how do we keep them on mission through this? So there's definite 00:21:17.380 --> 00:21:23.220 challenges with how to do this on the adult side. And we won't get to that here in a little bit, 00:21:23.220 --> 00:21:31.060 but I even, cause I know Greg and his passion, uh, for doing ministry with kids and every child has a 00:21:31.060 --> 00:21:37.300 church. I love this passion that, that Stadia has all overall has a great man. Would you love to just 00:21:37.300 --> 00:21:39.380 share some ideas with us of what that would look like? 00:21:40.100 --> 00:21:45.860 Yeah, I think, uh, you know, a couple of things that, that come to mind when we think about children 00:21:46.500 --> 00:21:52.260 is we, you don't have to be ultra slick. Um, take advantage of some opportunities. I'm thinking about 00:21:52.260 --> 00:21:58.980 my 11 year old son, um, Elijah, who it looks like Ohio schools are going to be shut down this afternoon. 00:21:58.980 --> 00:22:05.300 The governor's addressing us as a state and Elijah is going to be home from school eight hours a day 00:22:05.860 --> 00:22:12.580 with a strong desire to play fortnight for eight straight hours. Um, I would love a church 00:22:13.140 --> 00:22:22.020 to have a set time every day. Let's say 9:00 AM where they're going to gather for 30 minutes children to pray together online. 00:22:22.660 --> 00:22:28.260 Um, what an easy thing to do. Um, and the powerful prayers of children will affect much. 00:22:28.820 --> 00:22:34.740 Um, what if, what if an hour every other day or every day, parents will love us for this as the church 00:22:34.740 --> 00:22:40.180 if we had some kind of kids club online, because see children are going to be missing community. 00:22:40.180 --> 00:22:43.940 If their schools are shut down, if they're not able to go to, you know, the 00:22:44.580 --> 00:22:50.580 trampoline place sky zone, what are they going to do? Well, what if we created community for them online? 00:22:50.580 --> 00:22:57.780 So again, let's take this as an opportunity to create discipleship spaces and fun spaces for community 00:22:58.340 --> 00:23:03.620 for children and begin thinking the same way. How does that transition into adult world? 00:23:03.620 --> 00:23:09.060 Create times where, um, parents and children are coming together to read a Bible story. 00:23:09.060 --> 00:23:14.580 Again, nothing slick. Have some from your, someone from your church volunteer to be the story reader. 00:23:14.580 --> 00:23:19.700 Have children read the Bible stories, do different things like that, but keep caring for children, 00:23:19.700 --> 00:23:26.100 even when you can't necessarily gather on weekends. But even if you can, we have to start thinking this way 00:23:26.100 --> 00:23:30.660 Because our children and grandchildren are all online already. 00:23:30.660 --> 00:23:39.060 Indeed. Indeed. So the key takeaway there is that step one is to share some of what we're already doing. 00:23:39.060 --> 00:23:46.260 Yeah. And we talked about doing that live, but we're also able to record content and then make it available 00:23:46.740 --> 00:23:52.020 on demand. And that's a capacity, Jeff, I'll invite you to speak to, but we've already also pivoted to 00:23:52.980 --> 00:24:00.260 engaging with people, which you noted is about the two-way communication, not just broadcasting, but also 00:24:00.260 --> 00:24:06.580 receiving, uh, and facilitating communication. So there's some different platforms, uh, that we recommend. 00:24:06.580 --> 00:24:13.060 They have pros and cons, each of them that allow for something like that. For example, uh, we're all 00:24:13.060 --> 00:24:20.500 using zoom right now in what we call an online meeting room. However, zoom also has webinar capabilities. 00:24:20.500 --> 00:24:23.860 Jeff, what are some of the systems and tools that you recommend for. 00:24:26.260 --> 00:24:29.380 Yeah. So let's, let's talk about some of this two-way communication. 00:24:29.860 --> 00:24:36.100 Um, zoom is obviously it's the platform that we're on right now. And so we've got the opportunity. 00:24:36.100 --> 00:24:42.740 Uh, it looks like there's 90 people in this space and love that typically in this type of environment, 00:24:42.740 --> 00:24:50.100 we are not, um, utilizing this platform, zoom, this type of room for 90 people. 00:24:50.100 --> 00:24:58.340 The average engagement is more of like 70, uh, excuse me, seven to 10. It's a much more smaller, 00:24:58.340 --> 00:25:04.020 intimate gathering with that. Um, there's a webinar platform that zoom has and that others 00:25:04.020 --> 00:25:08.100 that we'll talk to in a little bit, but when you're having some of this two-way communication, 00:25:08.660 --> 00:25:14.580 it's, um, an opportunity for us not to all be muted, but to talk together. And the reality is the way that 00:25:14.580 --> 00:25:18.420 we're doing it today, we were spinning this up quickly in order to get the conversation, this 00:25:18.420 --> 00:25:23.540 information to you. But realize, and some of you may have experienced something like this, where you're 00:25:23.540 --> 00:25:29.860 literally just sitting in a room having a conversation with your, your kids or your grandkids on, on a device 00:25:29.860 --> 00:25:36.660 like this. Um, you'll find, and with the Bible studies and the community that I lead, there's a very strong 00:25:36.660 --> 00:25:43.700 face-to-face, um, there, it's easy to engage that way. I do find this with the online Bible studies that I read, 00:25:43.700 --> 00:25:50.660 people are far more comfortable in having conversations virtually. There's something about the webcam. There's 00:25:50.660 --> 00:25:57.460 something about the, the monitor, the separation, the distance, um, the idea of, of judgment, the idea 00:25:57.460 --> 00:26:02.900 of I'm safe in this environment so I can be open and transparent. I'll be honest. And in the Bible 00:26:02.900 --> 00:26:07.620 studies that I've led, I've actually been able to get deeper in the virtual ones than I have in the physical 00:26:07.620 --> 00:26:12.820 one because people tend to hold back when they're physical. They don't trust because there's that, that 00:26:12.820 --> 00:26:18.020 physical, uh, judgment that's capable. I don't know what this person sitting next to me is thinking. 00:26:18.820 --> 00:26:23.620 But when we look at engaging online before, and before we get into even the other platforms, I do 00:26:23.620 --> 00:26:29.940 want to follow the slide here. We have an opportunity to connect with people within the neighborhoods, uh, 00:26:29.940 --> 00:26:35.620 with that. In addition to, uh, how we're engaging in the community, there's a lot of neighborhood touch to 00:26:35.620 --> 00:26:41.380 that. I wrote a book and this is on your notes page. It's called What Happens When Church Online Grows Up. 00:26:41.380 --> 00:26:46.740 And it's this idea of following a discipleship process of, of how we're moving people from our 00:26:46.740 --> 00:26:53.140 services into small groups and into being on mission. And so there's an opportunity here 00:26:53.140 --> 00:27:00.260 to connect in physical community physically. Um, so things like we see churches like Elevation who do 00:27:00.260 --> 00:27:05.300 watch parties, uh, where people gather together to watch the service. Uh, Saddleback uses the term, 00:27:05.620 --> 00:27:10.740 home gatherings and where they gather people together to, to watch the services. While people 00:27:10.740 --> 00:27:17.700 may not be able to gather in 250s or plus in some areas like where Nathan's at, people can gather in 00:27:17.700 --> 00:27:24.260 much smaller areas, uh, in homes to watch this stuff. Within that, what happens when Church Online 00:27:24.260 --> 00:27:30.500 grows up? I actually tell the story of, uh, a church that I was at where we had house churches that were 00:27:30.500 --> 00:27:36.820 operating three, four, five hours away, as well as three to four or five states away. Uh, and how we 00:27:36.820 --> 00:27:42.020 were seeing ministry happen within the community. There's a great opportunity to ask some of your 00:27:42.020 --> 00:27:46.660 people to do some of this ministry, maybe within their neighborhoods. Obviously do what we need to do to 00:27:46.660 --> 00:27:52.500 clean up the house and make it healthy and take care of the health precautions with that, but turn homes 00:27:52.500 --> 00:27:59.380 into small locations to do ministry. In addition to that, I think there's an opportunity for us to 00:27:59.380 --> 00:28:06.420 connect to the physical community virtually. I look at next door mobile app. I look at, uh, which is, 00:28:06.420 --> 00:28:11.620 I don't know if you guys have it, but it's literally an app that's designed to get our neighborhoods 00:28:11.620 --> 00:28:19.220 connected together. And so using next door as a way to connect with neighbors, to hear what's going on, 00:28:19.220 --> 00:28:25.140 ring mobile app that is the ring doorbell I've got at my house. And it's amazing within the community, 00:28:25.140 --> 00:28:31.620 how much the people within the two miles around my house are constantly talking to each other and 00:28:31.620 --> 00:28:39.620 engaging in that invest through the technology into those already existing cultures. Even Facebook 00:28:39.620 --> 00:28:49.460 community groups is a great way to talk face to face with people, uh, to talk texts wise with people and 00:28:49.460 --> 00:28:56.900 build relationships. There's a, there's a theory that we're, we're coming up to and it's, and it's called, uh, 00:28:56.900 --> 00:29:04.660 online to offline. And, and this is it. The, the gospel that we hear in our online world should affect our 00:29:04.660 --> 00:29:12.980 offline relationships. Uh, and it comes from, from this, this idea of James 1 22 where it's, um, uh, 00:29:12.980 --> 00:29:17.780 let's go to the James 1 22 slide. Cause of course I'm blanked on it as soon as I said to do it. Uh, 00:29:17.780 --> 00:29:23.620 but essentially it's do not merely listen to the word, uh, and so deceive yourselves, do what it says. 00:29:24.340 --> 00:29:30.100 And often what we do kind of just with this online to offline idea, do not merely listen to the word 00:29:30.100 --> 00:29:37.700 online. And so deceive yourselves, do what it says in the real world. So as you're hearing this stuff, 00:29:37.700 --> 00:29:42.660 go ahead, Nathan. Yeah. Just an example of that. I jumping back to something you said earlier. I think 00:29:42.660 --> 00:29:49.300 an opportunity to do just that are these watch parties, which I think, as you noted, we can do 00:29:49.300 --> 00:29:56.180 in person by gathering in small groups in people's homes where that's still allowed. Um, and, or you 00:29:56.180 --> 00:30:04.020 can actually have a, an online watch party where you might use a platform like this or otherwise, or 00:30:04.020 --> 00:30:11.460 perhaps even just, um, all access something at the same time and then, you know, engage via text chat 00:30:11.460 --> 00:30:20.100 or something that affect. We talked about, um, making, uh, services available on demand in addition to 00:30:20.100 --> 00:30:25.380 streaming so that people can access them really taking advantage of the opportunity that the digital 00:30:25.380 --> 00:30:32.020 provides us for the both. And, uh, these are some really creative opportunities to facilitate 00:30:32.020 --> 00:30:38.420 these types of connections, as you know, in the real world offline, um, taking the church online 00:30:38.980 --> 00:30:46.340 into real life. Say a little bit more about some of those different, uh, platforms or tools 00:30:46.340 --> 00:30:52.340 specifically that facilitate that. You mentioned Zoom, which we're using here. There are a couple of 00:30:52.340 --> 00:30:58.180 others, uh, and they each have some pros and cons. Uh, what are they and how do we use them? 00:30:59.300 --> 00:31:04.980 Yeah. So Zoom, uh, by far right now, industry standard is probably the most stable. 00:31:04.980 --> 00:31:10.820 Um, Skype is available as well, but obviously here with Zoom, uh, we've got 90 people in this room at 00:31:10.820 --> 00:31:17.540 the same time straight and, and has a Zoom has a much larger, uh, roof of the people that can fit in. 00:31:17.540 --> 00:31:22.980 Skype, uh, is limited to the number of people that can have simultaneous conversations. Uh, 00:31:22.980 --> 00:31:30.500 but Skype should be on the list as well. There's an option called talkie.io and talkie.io is actually 00:31:30.500 --> 00:31:37.220 very similar to Zoom. It's web-based and not app-based, uh, but it's free. And so if you go to that website, 00:31:37.220 --> 00:31:44.660 talkie.io, that might be a good, uh, inexpensive option. In context of Zoom, uh, I think the start, 00:31:44.660 --> 00:31:52.580 starting account is $15 a month, but that's for the leader. And so if you were doing small groups, 00:31:52.580 --> 00:31:59.540 there's an option for each leader of the small group would need the account. Um, Google Hangouts has, 00:31:59.540 --> 00:32:06.340 um, uh, is also a very popular option. A lot of people have Gmail accounts and if they have a Gmail 00:32:06.340 --> 00:32:12.900 account, then they have access to Google Hangouts and can log into that. It's easy. And, uh, I believe 00:32:12.900 --> 00:32:18.100 at some level it's free on the Google Hangout, but I think you may have to pay for some of the larger features. 00:32:18.740 --> 00:32:25.380 One of the things that I recommend for churches overall is that they be platform agnostic. And agnostic 00:32:25.380 --> 00:32:31.780 is a scary word, but what I mean here is I don't know that I care what platform somebody's using to have the conversation. 00:32:32.340 --> 00:32:39.300 Uh, if you have a bunch of soccer moms that all have Google accounts, let them use, uh, you know, 00:32:39.300 --> 00:32:43.940 the Google Hangout. If you've got a bunch of video gamers and millennials that want to use another 00:32:43.940 --> 00:32:49.620 platform, let them, they're already there. Uh, what I normally recommend to churches is that they have 00:32:49.620 --> 00:32:55.140 one platform that they utilize, but if somebody wants to go a different route, that's fine. I'm, 00:32:55.140 --> 00:33:00.340 I'm more concerned about what we're talking about from a pastoral context than I am the platform 00:33:00.980 --> 00:33:05.540 that they're on. So those are some great options for you guys to investigate. 00:33:05.540 --> 00:33:12.980 Some of those platforms are virtual and can function in both capacities. So a situation like this where 00:33:12.980 --> 00:33:19.300 we have a large group of people in a room, we might normally use a webinar system, but we could use 00:33:19.300 --> 00:33:24.820 even zoom. In fact, uh, this is something that Stadia is quite familiar with as a virtual organization. 00:33:24.820 --> 00:33:30.180 Greg, maybe you would share with us a little bit about, uh, how this is similar to a Stadia team meeting. 00:33:30.180 --> 00:33:37.460 And one of the ways that we would leverage zoom at this scale to, uh, have breakout rooms and, and go 00:33:37.460 --> 00:33:42.980 from a large audience like the one we're in right now to smaller discussion based opportunities. 00:33:43.940 --> 00:33:51.460 Yeah. I don't know if I would have been so convinced, um, everyone about, um, online, uh, community, 00:33:52.020 --> 00:33:58.820 had I not been immersed in a leadership role with an organization that is 100% virtual. 00:33:59.220 --> 00:34:05.620 In other words, we literally have no offices anywhere. So this is what our staff meeting 00:34:05.620 --> 00:34:11.460 looks like when we have a Stadia all staff meeting, this, it looks like this, it's multiple screens. 00:34:11.460 --> 00:34:17.540 And so I'll spend part of the time casting vision and talking. And then immediately what I love about 00:34:17.540 --> 00:34:24.740 zoom is Janie Mahaffey clicks a button and we split automatically into groups of six. And we have 00:34:24.740 --> 00:34:29.860 discussion questions that are printed at the top of the screen. Someone facilitates the discussion. 00:34:29.860 --> 00:34:36.500 They can be very intimate questions. Um, you know, feisty discussions. And then 10 minutes later, 00:34:36.500 --> 00:34:42.660 we're clicked automatically back into the large group and we can report out if we so choose my, 00:34:42.660 --> 00:34:50.260 my point is, is that I'm absolutely amazed at what we can do with discipling and with inspiration 00:34:50.900 --> 00:34:54.660 in this kind of gathering. And for us, this is just normative. 00:34:57.060 --> 00:35:04.660 So as you said, there's a real opportunity to go from the large scale broadcast to the engagement, 00:35:04.660 --> 00:35:10.100 the two way communication back and forth. And Jeff shared with us a number of different, uh, 00:35:10.100 --> 00:35:14.660 tools and resources that are available to us to do that. I want to take a moment, however, 00:35:14.660 --> 00:35:20.260 and step back from some of this technical and talk a little bit about the pastoral. Um, 00:35:20.260 --> 00:35:26.740 this is obviously a unique time and we as a church are uniquely positioned to speak into 00:35:27.380 --> 00:35:32.980 some of the anxiety and, uh, concerns that people hold. And so to hear from that perspective, 00:35:32.980 --> 00:35:37.780 we're grateful to welcome Ben Kacheris, the lead pastor of Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, 00:35:37.780 --> 00:35:43.860 Maryland. Uh, Ben is a Stadia board member and they have been a fantastic partner with Stadia. 00:35:43.860 --> 00:35:49.940 And so Ben, offer us some insights on how we can be ministering to people pastorally in this, 00:35:49.940 --> 00:35:56.100 in these days. Yeah. Uh, our team is doing the same thing that probably everyone on this call is 00:35:56.100 --> 00:36:01.700 doing. Uh, we met, uh, this morning, yesterday, watching the news, trying to get a read on what's 00:36:01.700 --> 00:36:08.500 happening, uh, locally, uh, for us, what that looks like is, um, you know, the local community 00:36:08.500 --> 00:36:13.940 college just shut down. The local schools are going down. Every, everything is shutting. So for us, 00:36:13.940 --> 00:36:20.580 it's, it's definitely sort of, uh, culturally tone deaf for us to hold the line that we thought we were 00:36:20.580 --> 00:36:25.620 were going to hold and say, we're going to be a meeting this weekend. That was what we came into 00:36:25.620 --> 00:36:30.580 this morning saying. And just in a matter of hours, it's like, yeah, no, we would, that's, 00:36:30.580 --> 00:36:36.260 that's, that's not cool. Uh, we're being really advised against that. So we're shifting quickly. 00:36:36.500 --> 00:36:41.700 And, uh, we were going to be trying to figure out digital for next week. Turns out we're figuring 00:36:41.700 --> 00:36:46.500 out this week. So I'm over here scribbling notes, uh, with, uh, from everything Jeff is saying, 00:36:46.500 --> 00:36:51.700 you know, as we've thought about this the same way, I'm sure other churches are, um, 00:36:52.420 --> 00:36:57.860 kind of things. I thought about things in maybe three categories. One, one kind of the general 00:36:57.860 --> 00:37:02.660 posture, which I think has been well articulated already, but then some, some super pastoral 00:37:02.660 --> 00:37:06.660 things that might just kind of get your juices flowing on how you can respond. And then some 00:37:06.660 --> 00:37:11.620 practical stuff as well, but just the posture, I don't think it can be overstated. I think there's a 00:37:11.620 --> 00:37:19.460 huge need for, um, us as leaders to cast some vision around how we respond to this. The posture 00:37:19.460 --> 00:37:25.060 being as Greg articulated so well, and Jeff has said so well, we're really going to step into this 00:37:25.060 --> 00:37:29.380 moment. It's not like, Hey, we're probably going to cancel something and we're withdrawing, but we're 00:37:29.380 --> 00:37:35.140 going to step in and seize this moment as a leverage point for strong, positive leadership. We're not going 00:37:35.140 --> 00:37:40.980 to go dark. We're going to communicate probably more rather than less and see this as huge opportunity. 00:37:40.980 --> 00:37:47.380 Um, I think back to some of the real critically defining moments of our church. Um, they have 00:37:47.380 --> 00:37:54.020 been these crises moments, whether it was a hurricane or a shooting of a local police officer or whatever, 00:37:54.020 --> 00:38:07.700 where we had opportunity to kind of 00:38:07.700 --> 00:38:10.340 and, and, and, and, and passable. 00:38:12.500 --> 00:38:16.180 But for, so I would really just, you know, and we've got me right now. It's like, you know what, 00:38:16.180 --> 00:38:20.100 the coronavirus isn't going to stop our church, you know, I mean, not to be melodramatic, but you 00:38:20.100 --> 00:38:23.700 really need to kind of bring that kind of perspective to seize the moment. The gates of hell aren't going to 00:38:23.700 --> 00:38:29.380 prevail and that sort of thing. So strong, positive leadership. It makes me remember that, you know, 00:38:29.380 --> 00:38:35.540 Rodney Stark, that sociologist talks about how the church flourished like never before in the first 00:38:35.540 --> 00:38:40.420 few centuries for, you know, what 40 decades in a row at 10% growth or whatever. They didn't have 00:38:40.420 --> 00:38:45.700 buildings. They didn't have not just smoke machines. They didn't have anything. They didn't even have a 00:38:45.700 --> 00:38:51.700 Bible and they flourished. And so in those kinds of settings, I mean, this really provides an opportunity 00:38:51.700 --> 00:38:57.300 and we have digital at our disposal. So just some, this, that posture, I think I wouldn't overlook the 00:38:57.300 --> 00:39:02.820 importance of, of conveying, hey, what a great opportunity that is, and that strong, positive 00:39:02.820 --> 00:39:08.500 leadership. And the second thing, just kind of talking about pastoral, I think there's plenty of 00:39:08.500 --> 00:39:12.660 people now that are telling everybody what to do about washing their hands and, you know, keeping their 00:39:12.660 --> 00:39:18.340 hands out of their mouths and all that. I think what we need to provide is, is, is not so much, you know, 00:39:18.340 --> 00:39:27.780 what, what to do as much as how to think and be. And so we, we traffic in hope. So I wouldn't shy away 00:39:27.780 --> 00:39:34.660 from just unapologetically stepping up and, and providing the things that we do best. I, I do think 00:39:34.660 --> 00:39:41.460 of 9/11. I remember that event happened on a Tuesday. We all scrambled and had a service on Thursday and 00:39:41.460 --> 00:39:47.700 our church filled with people that we didn't recognize who were saying, you know what, I am 00:39:47.700 --> 00:39:54.740 interested in kind of coming together around something of faith and hope and hear what it has to be said 00:39:54.740 --> 00:40:00.820 right now. And it kind of positioned our church as we gave this calming effect and this sort of, 00:40:00.820 --> 00:40:08.180 let's hold together here. I gave a message of hope, a biblical message of faith. It positioned us. And for 00:40:08.180 --> 00:40:14.180 years we had people come back to our church and their first exposure was then at that 9/11 deal. Well, 00:40:14.180 --> 00:40:19.060 we can't gather now, but we can go to them. And so I would just say, as you prepare your, 00:40:19.780 --> 00:40:25.220 I love the distinction between doing what you normally do online, which isn't going to reach a ton of 00:40:25.220 --> 00:40:34.180 people other than who you normally touch, but really be thinking about how can we package this and present 00:40:34.180 --> 00:40:40.180 this in a way that truly engages new ears because there will be people that will look to your church now 00:40:40.740 --> 00:40:45.780 that don't normally and wouldn't otherwise. So it's a real opportunity that way. Just, you know, 00:40:45.940 --> 00:40:52.420 some of the things pastorally we need to bring are peace. Jesus talks so much about peace in all circumstances. 00:40:52.420 --> 00:40:59.380 That's a radical concept. Our culture doesn't apparently understand very well based on the levels of anxiety. So, 00:41:00.660 --> 00:41:09.140 you're going to talk about and bring a sense of peace to people that helps them see they don't need to be 00:41:09.140 --> 00:41:14.660 freaked out. The presence of Christ is another basic Christian teaching. This is a time to talk about 00:41:14.660 --> 00:41:19.220 the presence of Jesus. And perspective is another big deal. You know, historically the church has been 00:41:19.220 --> 00:41:24.260 through a lot of stuff over the years. And it's, I find myself, I just wrote a blog post about the 14th 00:41:24.260 --> 00:41:29.460 century when the Black Death killed, you know, millions and millions and millions of people. And it was the 00:41:29.460 --> 00:41:37.780 Christians who rose up and just had their finest hour loving people, you know, better than anyone. And, you know, 00:41:38.260 --> 00:41:42.100 kind of posted that on my blog and people were like, you know, that perspective was really helpful. 00:41:42.740 --> 00:41:49.060 You know, Max Lucado's got a great book called Anxious for Nothing. And I just did a short video 00:41:49.060 --> 00:41:55.220 yesterday where I stole an illustration he uses called, where, you know, it's the scene in Jaws, 00:41:55.220 --> 00:42:00.900 where they're out there, everyone's scared to death about the circling shark. And this very bad 00:42:01.860 --> 00:42:08.660 special effects shark comes up and scares them all. And the great line that the sheriff gives 00:42:08.660 --> 00:42:13.220 there while they're out there is, when he sees the size of the shark, he says, "You're going to need 00:42:13.220 --> 00:42:19.940 a bigger boat." And, you know, the implication is clear. If they're on a battleship looking down 00:42:19.940 --> 00:42:23.860 at that little tiny, it's going to look like a minnow, you know. And so we've got all these 00:42:24.420 --> 00:42:31.540 circling sharks of fear and panic right now with the stock market and whatever else, but aren't you 00:42:31.540 --> 00:42:37.540 glad that we're on a bigger boat? You know, just these basic analogies that remind people of the 00:42:37.540 --> 00:42:42.340 size of our God and the size of our faith are important. Gene Apple was just saying this morning, 00:42:42.340 --> 00:42:49.220 this is a good time to pull out John 14. You know, trust in God, trust also in me. That's the recipe for 00:42:49.940 --> 00:42:56.260 my peace I give you. And we need to give that kind of word to our people. I think I'm looking for 00:42:56.260 --> 00:43:01.620 passages in the Psalms which talk about the firm rock that we stand on in times that feel shaky to 00:43:01.620 --> 00:43:06.980 people. You know, there's lots of language about quarantine going on right now. And it's like, 00:43:06.980 --> 00:43:12.420 yes, if that's what has to happen, be great, but think to do that, but be safe. But think of all those 00:43:12.420 --> 00:43:19.220 passages that say, God is my refuge and God is my fortress. He hems me in and I'm safe there. 00:43:19.780 --> 00:43:24.980 So, you know, I think those are the kinds of things that I think of pastorally. And then, 00:43:24.980 --> 00:43:29.700 you know, Psalm 112 is just a great one that we're using on the close of a lot of our e-notes 00:43:29.700 --> 00:43:36.340 right now. Psalm 112 7 says, don't fear bad news. The people of God confidently trust in the Lord to 00:43:36.340 --> 00:43:42.020 care for them. They're confident and fearless that they can face any foe triumphantly. So you all are 00:43:42.020 --> 00:43:47.620 experts at this, but sometimes it's helpful to hear, you know, what others are grabbing onto. So those are 00:43:47.620 --> 00:43:52.820 some, some pastoral things, just, just quickly, then maybe some practical things. 00:43:52.820 --> 00:43:58.020 We, do you want to jump in there? 00:43:58.020 --> 00:44:04.980 Okay. So, so practical for us, we have made the decision this morning that we won't be 00:44:06.020 --> 00:44:10.580 having services this weekend. So we're busy right now. Another room full of people getting our 00:44:10.580 --> 00:44:17.380 communication plan all together, a sequence of 10 or 12 communications, but one of them will be a video. 00:44:17.380 --> 00:44:22.740 And I, rather than, than a written e-note or something, I think it's important that we try to 00:44:22.740 --> 00:44:28.020 be physically present as much as possible and demonstrate the power of media and digital 00:44:28.020 --> 00:44:32.980 rather than sending out an email. And so that way they can hear your tone of voice and you can 00:44:32.980 --> 00:44:37.860 pastorally lead in a way you can't through an e-mail or something. But we're, we're not going to say 00:44:37.860 --> 00:44:43.540 we're canceling services. We're going to say our worship gatherings are all online this weekend. 00:44:43.540 --> 00:44:59.780 We're, we're, we're, we're pre-recording that. And it will be a abbreviated service just because we don't 00:44:59.780 --> 00:45:17.620 want to just sort of say, hey, mountain people, let's go online. We want to say, you have a friend 00:45:17.620 --> 00:45:23.780 that probably needs to hear what we're going to say. And I'd rather have them invited to a 35 minute 00:45:23.780 --> 00:45:30.660 sort of loop than a 70 minute one as a first touch. So we don't want to just do this for our people. 00:45:30.660 --> 00:45:37.460 We want this to be a moment by God's providence. We jumped on the bandwagon months ago and said, 00:45:37.460 --> 00:45:42.500 let's do the anxious for nothing series. That series has been done by a number of people. 00:45:42.500 --> 00:45:47.700 There's a host of great resources. There's a book by Lucado. There's free resources from Grishel. 00:45:48.340 --> 00:45:54.580 Ashley Woolridge did it. I just completed it. Gene Apple's done it. Tim Harlow's done it. So you know 00:45:54.580 --> 00:45:59.300 how this works. We all steal everybody's stuff and it's all good. Give credit where it's due, 00:45:59.300 --> 00:46:04.660 but the timing could not be more beautiful. So we just ended that series. We were going to launch a 00:46:04.660 --> 00:46:09.540 new series. We're pivoting and we're going to continue with anxious for nothing. There's plenty 00:46:09.540 --> 00:46:15.940 more that the Bible has to say about this and be able to just talk about that from a real practical 00:46:15.940 --> 00:46:21.620 standpoint, uh, in light of the current reality. So that's our plan. There's a separate video recording. 00:46:21.620 --> 00:46:28.820 We're going to do for, for kids and a separate one for students. Um, and the, and the kids is going 00:46:28.820 --> 00:46:36.020 to continue immediately after we're finished with the recording for the sort of main service, which is 00:46:36.020 --> 00:46:43.220 going to include a time of, you know, talking about how to be faithful to God and giving and ways to talk 00:46:43.220 --> 00:46:48.900 about that. And also a home communion, you know, just we'll, we'll have that kind of, um, 00:46:48.900 --> 00:46:54.020 um, pre-packaged get together with friends if you want to, but in your home participate with this 00:46:54.020 --> 00:46:57.860 worship. We're going to have a message. We're going to have some songs and, and worship together that 00:46:57.860 --> 00:47:03.380 way follows immediately with a kid's presentation, um, that our student minute kids ministry is doing, 00:47:03.380 --> 00:47:07.780 and then a link to what the kids are doing. And that, that will happen, uh, separately. 00:47:07.780 --> 00:47:14.260 Then in addition to that, we'll be saying in an email today, um, Hey, this is our decision and what 00:47:14.260 --> 00:47:19.540 we're doing. Go to the website. That's where you'll link to the experience. But in addition, 00:47:20.260 --> 00:47:24.660 Hey, uh, here's some new things we're doing. And if you don't know anything about mountain, 00:47:24.660 --> 00:47:30.020 we'd love to have you join us. And we're just going to do some pop-up zoom groups. Uh, we'll do 00:47:30.020 --> 00:47:34.980 one. That's just like Greg gave us a great idea this morning, Greg Nettle. We're going to do one just 00:47:34.980 --> 00:47:39.220 on how you talk to your kids about, you know, stress and anxiety, what's going on. How do you 00:47:39.220 --> 00:47:43.780 talk to your kids about Corona virus? You're going to have some time at home with them, uh, with schools 00:47:43.780 --> 00:47:49.620 down. Uh, and so, uh, that's just going to be a pop-up kind of zoom. And we'll just put the, um, 00:47:49.620 --> 00:47:55.620 the, the, uh, the invitation out for people to join us and spread that social media wise. Uh, 00:47:55.620 --> 00:48:00.180 we'll have like pizza with the pastor, except buy your own pizza and eat it in your house. And we're 00:48:00.180 --> 00:48:05.220 just going to talk out, uh, talk through a passage of scripture and, and do those kinds of things. 00:48:05.220 --> 00:48:10.260 Now, all of our other groups are encouraged to either to avoid canceling, but to postpone 00:48:11.140 --> 00:48:19.940 or go live, uh, on, uh, digital and our large groups. Um, we're going to do those on zoom and the 00:48:19.940 --> 00:48:25.780 rest are group specific. And so the group, if they're more comfortable with Google, they can do it that 00:48:25.780 --> 00:48:30.820 way, but the groups will decentralize and decide how they're going to do that online. 00:48:30.820 --> 00:48:35.460 So those are some practical things we're thinking about. We just got something come across the wire 00:48:35.460 --> 00:48:40.900 there locally. They're wanting to train a bunch of people to deliver groceries to the elderly. Um, 00:48:40.900 --> 00:48:45.460 so we're going to let our people know that and say, Hey, here's a way to do that. As things unfold, 00:48:45.460 --> 00:48:50.100 I think it's going to be really obvious that we're going to have some new opportunities to love 00:48:50.100 --> 00:48:56.980 our communities, wherever you are, uh, through these kinds of ways. And, um, but we've just kind of today 00:48:56.980 --> 00:49:02.500 made that shift to saying we were holding on, holding on saying, Hey, if you want to come, come, 00:49:02.500 --> 00:49:08.420 we were advised by some medical professionals that because of the delay in the symptoms, you've got 00:49:08.420 --> 00:49:13.860 people that are going to be asymptomatic. They're gathering and they're healthy, but they sneeze and 00:49:13.860 --> 00:49:17.860 they give it to someone else who goes and gets sick. They're going to track that. They're going to say, 00:49:17.860 --> 00:49:21.940 where were you? They're going to say, we were at mountain church. They're going to come back and they 00:49:21.940 --> 00:49:26.580 very well, well, we're on a quarantine, everyone who shows up, which is not the kind of press we want. 00:49:26.580 --> 00:49:32.260 I don't want to get into all that jazz, but in our area, it's clearly the right thing. Uh, and so 00:49:32.260 --> 00:49:37.860 rather than regretting it, we're just, uh, we're going for it and saying, Hey, this is a great opportunity. 00:49:37.860 --> 00:49:43.300 So, you know, just, uh, hopefully some of those categories will get your juices going in the things that 00:49:43.300 --> 00:49:47.780 are important to you and your setting. Your posture is important. Some of the pastor 00:49:47.780 --> 00:49:52.980 touches and the language of scripture. This is our finest stuff. You know, this is what we have is 00:49:52.980 --> 00:49:58.900 what we have to offer. And then the practical stuff about, um, engaging deeply and the last P 00:49:58.900 --> 00:50:03.300 obviously would be prayer. You know, I think people are people who don't pray regularly are willing to 00:50:03.300 --> 00:50:08.100 pray now. So, uh, we're going to do some online prayer meetings and see if we can get better attendance 00:50:08.100 --> 00:50:11.620 at those than we can when we do them in person. So hopefully some of that's helpful. 00:50:11.620 --> 00:50:19.620 Amen. Thank you so much, Ben, for both the pastoral and practical insights. Uh, just that posture of 00:50:19.620 --> 00:50:25.300 maintaining a calming presence, pointing people to the rock, the peace that we find, the hope that we 00:50:25.300 --> 00:50:30.820 have in Jesus, all of those are really critical. And those are ways that we as the church can embody 00:50:30.820 --> 00:50:37.460 the church, even if it's not physically, if it's done virtually. So we just have a few minutes left in 00:50:37.460 --> 00:50:43.620 our time. I want to encourage people to continue to make use of the chat to a direct specific questions 00:50:43.620 --> 00:50:52.020 at Jeff, Greg, Ben, or others also to be sharing some of your insights. Uh, many of you may also have 00:50:52.020 --> 00:50:59.380 some unique ideas. Uh, I know, uh, our team has designed some just potential crazy ideas, things 00:50:59.380 --> 00:51:06.660 that we could be doing that would be a servant to you. But as we look at ways to go from simply 00:51:06.660 --> 00:51:14.980 broadcasting to facilitating engagement, to facilitating connection, to, uh, creating these types of 00:51:14.980 --> 00:51:21.700 environments with some of the different tools that we've talked about, um, this is going to prove really 00:51:21.700 --> 00:51:27.700 helpful. And I believe this is going to be an opportunity for the church to truly shine. Um, Jeff, what are 00:51:27.700 --> 00:51:34.420 some of those, uh, ideas that we've talked about, examples of things that you've seen in other churches, ways that 00:51:34.420 --> 00:51:41.940 churches are leveraging technology, particularly for the engagement? Uh, those are some things that I think 00:51:41.940 --> 00:51:48.580 we could all use insights from. Yeah, I love that. I love what, what Ben said. And I'm actually, uh, 00:51:48.580 --> 00:51:54.100 somebody texted me when they said it, that was a great idea. The whole student ministry pizza thing. That was 00:51:54.100 --> 00:52:01.220 awesome. Uh, some, some crazy ideas, some, some things that just might work with y'all. Um, I, I can tell you, 00:52:01.220 --> 00:52:08.340 it seems like in, in discipleship, as the 101, 201, 301, 401, kind of like the, the, the baseball 00:52:08.340 --> 00:52:14.260 path, nobody ever gets to the home plate that, that being on mission, that discipleship or that evangelism piece. 00:52:14.660 --> 00:52:21.300 Offer some of those classes online, uh, utilizing a webinar or a zoom thing. You got to realize that our 00:52:21.300 --> 00:52:27.940 audience to, to Ben's point, it's a captive audience as this thing rolls out. Um, they're not going to get 00:52:27.940 --> 00:52:34.260 distracted by a lot of the things in the physical realm. And so we've got an opportunity to speak in and some of that stuff that 00:52:34.260 --> 00:52:38.580 never really gets traction in your church because everybody's just too busy doing other stuff. 00:52:38.580 --> 00:52:45.060 Do it here or, or do a book club, uh, with moms or friends reading through, uh, a Christian book or 00:52:45.060 --> 00:52:50.980 maybe even a book of the Bible. Uh, you know, just an opportunity to do something different. Yeah. 00:52:50.980 --> 00:52:57.780 Try to like a book, book way, but like grant gather them together virtually and give them an opportunity. 00:52:57.780 --> 00:53:03.620 Maybe it's trying something different than what you're more of a felt need, uh, as opposed to 00:53:03.620 --> 00:53:08.660 more of what you maybe typically do. Try a different technique, train parents and how to disciple their 00:53:08.660 --> 00:53:13.860 kids. Uh, yeah. So, so I got two kids, nine and 11. Um, I mean, I'm not saying I'm going to get stuck 00:53:13.860 --> 00:53:18.500 in the house with them, but if I do get locked in, I'm going to run out of stuff to do at some point. 00:53:18.500 --> 00:53:26.260 There's only so much like, uh, Nintendo I can play. And so maybe start to help me understand how to 00:53:26.260 --> 00:53:32.020 minister to my kids so that I can be that spiritual leader. That would be awesome. There are services 00:53:32.020 --> 00:53:40.980 online like, uh, Vomo.org and on flourish. And these are actually crowdsourced volunteer things like 00:53:40.980 --> 00:53:46.900 databases where people post opportunities to serve and the churches and organizations can partner with 00:53:46.900 --> 00:53:53.460 them and then do those service, uh, opportunities. And sometimes it's like large numbers of people. 00:53:53.460 --> 00:53:59.460 Sometimes it's individual people needing a help in a situation. Maybe it's just making aware of, 00:53:59.460 --> 00:54:06.100 of utilizing services like this. Um, and, and, and doing that within the communities where you are. 00:54:07.220 --> 00:54:13.540 Here's what I do know is, is that, you know, oftentimes our staff are so busy creating that experience that, 00:54:13.540 --> 00:54:20.100 that 40 hour a week, uh, driven towards that weekend service. We've got an opportunity to be highly 00:54:20.100 --> 00:54:26.100 relational with this. And sometimes when we do technology, there's a level of, okay, the technology 00:54:26.100 --> 00:54:32.660 is cold. And so it's, it's, it's non-responsive. It's distance. Um, what I, what I would argue is there's 00:54:32.660 --> 00:54:40.740 an opportunity for us to be highly relational, highly personal when it comes to the technology. And so 00:54:40.740 --> 00:54:46.660 the more high tech we use, the more high touch we need to be in those environments, uh, to build those 00:54:46.660 --> 00:54:53.300 relationships to utilize the technology for individual conversations and crazy ideas like this, uh, 00:54:53.300 --> 00:54:56.340 man, that, that, that'll help get you started on that. 00:54:56.340 --> 00:55:01.940 Even just recognizing, as you said, there are platforms been mentioned hearing from their city 00:55:01.940 --> 00:55:07.700 that there was a need for people to do groceries. If we're paying attention online to some of those 00:55:07.700 --> 00:55:14.820 websites, you pointed us to Jeff or other community forums. We talked earlier about next door or Facebook 00:55:14.820 --> 00:55:20.420 groups or different community groups where people are going to begin posting needs. And the church has 00:55:20.420 --> 00:55:27.380 an opportunity to respond to those needs and to be the church again, embodying the church and the 00:55:27.380 --> 00:55:35.380 gospel message, the hope that we bring, um, even when it starts online to take it back into the real life 00:55:35.380 --> 00:55:41.140 experience. Um, we just have a few minutes left. I want to open it up for some questions. Uh, maybe it 00:55:41.140 --> 00:55:47.300 could be on some of the technical aspects of the different tools or services that we've talked about 00:55:47.300 --> 00:55:55.060 to up until this point, or, uh, to share different ideas that we're hearing from one another, uh, in terms 00:55:55.060 --> 00:55:58.340 of how we can be engaging. 00:56:03.940 --> 00:56:09.140 I know it's difficult to take advantage of that opportunity, particularly when we're in this space, 00:56:09.140 --> 00:56:16.340 uh, virtually to come off mute, but, uh, recognizing that, uh, yeah, zoom gives us that opportunity. 00:56:16.340 --> 00:56:16.980 Go ahead, Jeff. 00:56:17.540 --> 00:56:21.460 Yeah. I tell you one of the things, uh, who's, who's a friend of mine. Hey, right. 00:56:21.860 --> 00:56:28.740 Um, I, and we hadn't said this, but do a prayer service, um, gather together virtually on zoom 00:56:28.740 --> 00:56:33.860 and, and pray. I'll tell you this. And, and, and well, yeah, I'll go ahead and say it. One thing that, 00:56:33.860 --> 00:56:39.140 that I've always wanted to do, and, uh, maybe this is the catalyst that actually launches it, 00:56:39.700 --> 00:56:45.300 but there's an opportunity. What if we spent a couple of days and just read the Bible together, 00:56:45.860 --> 00:56:51.780 like reading it, not like studying it, doing a one-off conversation, but like starting at Genesis 00:56:51.780 --> 00:56:58.500 and just take turns rolling in and out of an open zoom thing, uh, studying the word of God, 00:56:58.500 --> 00:57:04.820 you got to realize like there's opportunities to be incredibly creative. The best ideas are ones that, 00:57:04.820 --> 00:57:11.140 that you guys with your teams will talk through and find out, but there's opportunities to engage 00:57:11.140 --> 00:57:16.980 and do things because they're not getting distracted with everything else. It's, it's our turn to come 00:57:16.980 --> 00:57:23.860 in here and utilize online to push our mission forward in, uh, in the future. Go ahead, Nathan. 00:57:23.860 --> 00:57:30.580 No, absolutely. It's just recognizing the opportunity that exists before us. And just, uh, as a reminder 00:57:30.580 --> 00:57:36.500 of where we've been and where we're going, um, we've talked about the importance of making content 00:57:36.500 --> 00:57:43.220 available, whether it be streaming and, or, uh, platforming content that people can download or 00:57:43.220 --> 00:57:49.780 access on demand. We've talked about the importance of creating opportunities for engagement for that 00:57:49.780 --> 00:57:56.180 two-way communication, particularly as people may become more isolated. Uh, especially I think about 00:57:56.180 --> 00:58:02.740 someone like, uh, my mother who is less technically savvy and is less comfortable and recognizing, 00:58:02.740 --> 00:58:09.460 introducing a tool like zoom or some of these other platforms we've discussed may be, uh, unfamiliar, 00:58:09.460 --> 00:58:16.180 but really helpful. And so taking advantage of the opportunity that we have now to help get people 00:58:16.180 --> 00:58:21.940 set up with those types of systems, uh, will be really helpful to facilitate that engagement 00:58:21.940 --> 00:58:29.060 as it becomes difficult. Uh, the key being keeping on mission, even if we're not able to gather in large 00:58:29.060 --> 00:58:34.580 groups, as has already been mandated, uh, here in Washington state and likely will be in other states 00:58:34.580 --> 00:58:41.140 as well. Again, I love the way Ben reframed that we are not canceling. We are not discontinuing. 00:58:41.140 --> 00:58:47.060 We are going online. The church is going to continue to be the church. We're just going to do it in 00:58:47.060 --> 00:58:53.220 different ways, given the situation and the context that we find ourselves in. Once again, all these 00:58:53.220 --> 00:58:59.780 resources, the links, the tools, uh, that Jeff has pointed us to Greg and others have mentioned, 00:58:59.780 --> 00:59:05.620 they're going to be available in the notes that are on our landing page. And I'll invite one of my 00:59:05.620 --> 00:59:10.580 teammates to just share that link directly in the chat. If you're dialing in and you're not able to 00:59:10.580 --> 00:59:18.340 see that you can go to stadia church planting.org forward slash Corona resources. Also the church.digital 00:59:18.340 --> 00:59:24.420 forward slash notes to speak to some of these opportunities. Um, as we begin to wind down our 00:59:24.420 --> 00:59:28.660 time, I'm going to invite our president Greg to pray for us. And then I want to just let you know 00:59:28.660 --> 00:59:33.860 that Jeff and I, and a few others will stick around. Uh, we welcome some dialogue. If you have some 00:59:33.860 --> 00:59:39.140 specific questions based on your context, or you want to know what's going on in another part of 00:59:39.140 --> 00:59:43.940 the world, as we said, we're leading out here on the West coast, those of you in the East and in 00:59:43.940 --> 00:59:50.100 the heartland are going to be following, I suspect. So we'll make that available. So closing thoughts, 00:59:50.100 --> 00:59:57.380 Jeff or Greg, as we begin to wind down. Jeff, um, what's the licensing they need to do this stuff 00:59:57.380 --> 01:00:03.780 online. Anything? Yeah. So, um, that was a great question. Uh, whoever said that in the thread, 01:00:03.780 --> 01:00:10.580 one of the challenges with, with Facebook is, um, is that they have their own DRM digital rights 01:00:10.580 --> 01:00:21.060 management. And, um, oftentimes worship music gets flagged as, as being, um, uh, illegal, not illegal, 01:00:21.060 --> 01:00:27.460 but you don't have permission to play that, um, not to get technical, but, um, it's specifically 01:00:27.460 --> 01:00:35.140 when the band is using what's called a loop or a track underneath their music that they've 01:00:35.140 --> 01:00:41.620 specifically taken from another band. So if you're singing a Hillsong, it's not a song, 01:00:41.620 --> 01:00:48.020 it's not a problem, but if you're singing a Hillsong song and you're using Hillsong's kind of drummer and 01:00:48.020 --> 01:00:53.300 beat, believe it or not, Facebook's figured out how to recognize, Hey, that's, that's your, 01:00:53.300 --> 01:00:58.580 you're singing a Hillsong song. And even though you have all the legal rights to perform it in the 01:00:58.580 --> 01:01:03.780 building, uh, and you may even secure the rights with other places to broadcast it online. 01:01:04.340 --> 01:01:10.900 Facebook is doing their thing to lock it down. Now you can tell Facebook after the fact, no, 01:01:10.900 --> 01:01:16.500 I do have rights and they'll, they'll open it up for on demand. But at the moment with the live 01:01:16.500 --> 01:01:21.620 broadcast, it'll, they'll literally black you out. Um, and, and if you're a repeated offender, 01:01:21.620 --> 01:01:28.740 they'll black you out like over extended broadcast. So yet another reason to go ahead and, and create 01:01:28.740 --> 01:01:36.740 those systems to share that content on your own church's website platform. Yeah. We can start with 01:01:36.740 --> 01:01:41.540 the social media tools that are available at our disposal. And if that's all we have the capability 01:01:41.540 --> 01:01:46.660 capability to access, go ahead and do that. But for this reason and a myriad of others, 01:01:46.660 --> 01:01:53.300 others, we want to encourage church to go online themselves and make use of their website so that 01:01:53.300 --> 01:01:57.300 they can serve their community. I do want to respect our time, Greg, please. 01:01:57.300 --> 01:02:03.140 Yeah. What, um, how can they, you're going to stay on. They can ask more questions about licensing 01:02:03.140 --> 01:02:09.220 after you have one day seminars coming up, you have cohorts starting. How do they get involved in those? 01:02:09.220 --> 01:02:15.060 Yeah. So great. Thank you for Greg and Nathan have loved this. So through the church digital, 01:02:15.060 --> 01:02:20.580 as well as stadia, we are offering, uh, several, uh, resources available for you guys. First off, 01:02:20.580 --> 01:02:26.900 I understand that as a church, we're, we're under the quite literal gun as, as we're trying to figure 01:02:26.900 --> 01:02:33.940 out how to proceed quickly. If you need help, specific one-on-one help, uh, through stadia, 01:02:33.940 --> 01:02:39.620 we are offering, uh, individual consulting, uh, towards that. If you go to the church digital 01:02:39.620 --> 01:02:46.180 slash notes at the bottom, you'll see a form, uh, as we have availability with, uh, consultants 01:02:46.180 --> 01:02:52.420 and people who know online ministry very well, we can connect you with them. And through stadia, 01:02:52.420 --> 01:02:59.060 we can help get the needs met. In addition to that, we are offering long-term, uh, cohorts 01:02:59.060 --> 01:03:05.060 and strategy sessions. The next one's going to be, I think June 23rd, where we are going to be meeting 01:03:05.060 --> 01:03:13.860 in Cincinnati, Ohio for a, uh, a 24 hour, uh, bootcamp essentially to help you develop your strategy for 01:03:13.860 --> 01:03:19.300 church online, how it, so that it matches, so that it compliments, so that it can effectively help you 01:03:19.300 --> 01:03:24.580 as you're doing your, your church ministry. This isn't just a, a band-aid job to get you through, 01:03:24.580 --> 01:03:30.020 uh, you know, coronavirus season, but it's more of strategically, how can we help you develop 01:03:30.020 --> 01:03:35.700 church online so that it's effective part of your ministry? Uh, there's information as well. We can put 01:03:35.700 --> 01:03:42.100 the, uh, the stadia, um, link in there, or you can fill out through the church digital either way, 01:03:42.100 --> 01:03:47.460 and, uh, we can get you connected more information on that. I provide a number of resources online, 01:03:47.460 --> 01:03:52.820 blogs and podcasts through the church digital, and I would love to invite you into that as through the 01:03:52.820 --> 01:03:59.220 church digital and through stadia, um, we're coming together literally in real time here, helping people 01:03:59.220 --> 01:04:05.220 like you develop effective ministry so that we can create disciples in virtual space. So thank you for 01:04:05.220 --> 01:04:12.260 this, uh, back to y'all. Okay, so here's the deal. Real quick as we're wrapping up, we have less than a 01:04:12.260 --> 01:04:17.140 minute. Um, here's a couple things we've learned about these big zoom meetings. There's a reason we're 01:04:17.140 --> 01:04:23.620 popping back and forth from person to person talking. You need to do that as well. In, in digital space, 01:04:23.620 --> 01:04:29.860 it's, it's really difficult to listen to one person for an hour. Okay. Even if it's Ben Kacharis and as 01:04:29.860 --> 01:04:37.060 good as he is, um, the optimal sermon and listening time is actually going to come down, typically be 01:04:37.060 --> 01:04:43.860 shorter than what you can do in your weekend gatherings. And so, you know, be aware of that. Use a host, 01:04:43.860 --> 01:04:49.780 use multiple speakers, things like that. And people aren't going to engage in a large group like this. 01:04:49.780 --> 01:04:54.820 They don't in the all stadia staff meetings, but they wouldn't in our weekend gathering at Rivertree 01:04:54.820 --> 01:04:59.540 either with a thousand people sitting in the auditorium. If I said, does anybody have a question? 01:04:59.540 --> 01:05:04.980 Very few people are going to ask a question. Same online. The questions have to come in smaller groups. 01:05:04.980 --> 01:05:10.900 And when you break people out. Okay. Thanks for your time. Let me pray and bless you as we go. 01:05:11.700 --> 01:05:17.060 Father, so grateful for these leaders and the church, your church that you've entrusted to us. 01:05:18.980 --> 01:05:24.580 God, I pray that you give them supernatural wisdom in making the decision to, to gather this weekend 01:05:24.580 --> 01:05:32.740 or whenever they gather of what, you know, digital platform to use of all those difficult questions. 01:05:33.460 --> 01:05:38.180 God, I pray that you protect your church, that you pray, protect the health of these leaders and their 01:05:38.180 --> 01:05:44.660 families. Please bless them in Jesus name. Amen. Have a great weekend, folks. 01:05:49.540 --> 01:05:53.060 Nathan, can we address maybe some of these other questions if people want to stick around? 01:05:53.060 --> 01:05:58.340 Absolutely. Absolutely. Jeff, start us off. You've got some great insights on this. 01:05:58.340 --> 01:06:03.780 Yeah. If, if y'all have questions and you're interested, I probably got 10, 15 more minutes, 01:06:03.780 --> 01:06:10.500 so we'd love to address some of that as you're interested. Somebody's asking about what worship 01:06:10.500 --> 01:06:17.220 looks like in context of broadcasting it live. The biggest concern that you're going to have, 01:06:17.220 --> 01:06:21.540 the biggest problem with broadcasting worship is the mix, especially if you're mixing, 01:06:22.340 --> 01:06:30.500 like for the audience and not for the online people. For example, if your drum is live on stage, 01:06:31.220 --> 01:06:37.860 not in a box, a drum cage, but in the room, chances are your mix for the house is very low because the 01:06:37.860 --> 01:06:45.620 drums are acoustically loud. Now, if you listen to that online, it might sound weird. Just, it's going to be 01:06:45.620 --> 01:06:50.900 a unique mix. Figure out ways to overcome that. Hopefully your sound engineer can, can help overcome 01:06:50.900 --> 01:06:57.860 that. So just recognizing even that there's a difference between that mix for live versus 01:06:57.860 --> 01:07:04.100 something that would be either streamed and or recorded and made available offline. That's a great 01:07:04.100 --> 01:07:10.260 first step. Yeah. One thing that's also, and we didn't really hit on this much, we just kind of flew 01:07:10.260 --> 01:07:20.500 past it is this idea of pre-recording and on demand. So there are, when I was online pastor at a church, 01:07:20.500 --> 01:07:27.540 we recorded our services Saturday night and then we were able to adjust it on Sunday. Now you guys may 01:07:27.540 --> 01:07:34.100 not have the opportunity, but there's also an opportunity to record things live in an empty room 01:07:34.100 --> 01:07:42.100 and to make adjustments to it, utilizing technology and then scheduling it to play back at a later time 01:07:42.100 --> 01:07:50.180 or just making it on demand overall. Here's Jeff. Yeah. I see, I see the advantage to making something 01:07:50.180 --> 01:07:57.220 available on demand as opposed to live. I'm almost questioning what's the value of a live stream. 01:07:57.220 --> 01:08:04.100 Is it primarily so that people can engage with one another in real time, perhaps as they're watching? 01:08:04.100 --> 01:08:11.940 And if, if that's the case, how do they do that? Yeah. So the, it's, it's, it depends on 01:08:11.940 --> 01:08:17.060 the environment and the people that you have. So I can't give you a solid answer, but I can tell you this. 01:08:18.420 --> 01:08:25.220 You'll receive more views on demand, which means people watching it Monday through Saturday than 01:08:25.220 --> 01:08:33.540 typically what would happen on a day. However, um, they, the ability for you to engage with people, 01:08:33.540 --> 01:08:40.100 talk with people, chat hosts, do ministry in that space. It's much more effective on that Sunday 01:08:40.100 --> 01:08:46.020 live broadcast. In other words, like I may be at the workplace. I'm like, Hey man, let me put on the 01:08:46.020 --> 01:08:50.500 service. It was a great service from this week. I'm just doing some work. Let me put this on aimlessly 01:08:50.500 --> 01:08:57.060 in the background. That's what oftentimes your on demand viewer is on a Tuesday afternoon. Whereas 01:08:57.060 --> 01:09:02.180 maybe like actually engaging with that person and driving them towards the discipleship process. 01:09:02.900 --> 01:09:12.340 A lot of that happens more on the Sunday service. Um, and so, plus your, your Christian audience and 01:09:12.340 --> 01:09:17.940 the people who are more used to physical ministry are more used to attending on a Sunday. And so they're 01:09:17.940 --> 01:09:24.100 more likely to engage with your content, just realizing, Hey, it's Sunday, nine o'clock. I need 01:09:24.100 --> 01:09:29.140 to go to church, but it's not at the physical space because I'm on lockdown. So let me, let me go watch it 01:09:29.140 --> 01:09:36.420 online. Uh, there's opportunities and there's benefits for both. It's just knowing the context of, of what you're 01:09:36.420 --> 01:09:42.660 trying to achieve. And the nice thing about digital is that we don't necessarily have to choose. We can 01:09:42.660 --> 01:09:50.340 do both. We can make available content in real time in order to engage with people in order to facilitate 01:09:50.340 --> 01:09:57.540 those types of chats, whether they be via our own systems or something like a messenger, a group chat, 01:09:57.540 --> 01:10:04.180 or, uh, we talked a little bit about WhatsApp, some of these different tools, but then also utilizing 01:10:04.180 --> 01:10:09.860 digital to make either that same content or something similar available on demand, whether it be a 01:10:09.860 --> 01:10:18.980 podcast or a video cast, or even our church here in Seattle is pre-recording services, uploading the file 01:10:18.980 --> 01:10:25.460 to a link, uh, that churches or that members can download in their homes. And they're encouraging 01:10:25.460 --> 01:10:30.900 us to watch that not only as a family, but with our neighbors. And, you know, Ben said earlier, 01:10:30.900 --> 01:10:35.620 they're even customizing what they're doing at mountain in order to make it more accessible and, 01:10:35.620 --> 01:10:39.940 and to say, Hey, why don't you come over? We're going to hear some encouragement in these troubling 01:10:39.940 --> 01:10:47.220 times from our pastor, uh, and, and making that available to engage your community, to continue to be on 01:10:47.220 --> 01:10:54.420 mission. I love that. Somebody's, somebody's asked here, sorry, I'll just cut, cut you off. I apologize. 01:10:54.420 --> 01:10:59.540 Um, uh, Michael's asked, how do you handle worship when you have to do offsite because you don't have 01:10:59.540 --> 01:11:08.740 access to the building? Um, I have seen people, small churches, um, literally set up a good acoustic 01:11:08.740 --> 01:11:14.980 guitar and a gym bay in a living room, have three people on a couch and lead worship that way. Uh, 01:11:14.980 --> 01:11:19.140 that, that specifically was a good Friday service. It was done by a friend of mine last year, 01:11:19.140 --> 01:11:24.260 but super unplugged, super low budget. I'm not, the phone, the camera may have even been a phone, 01:11:24.980 --> 01:11:29.940 but it was a worship environment that that was created. If you're in lockdown and you can't even 01:11:29.940 --> 01:11:33.460 enter the building, your audience is going to appreciate you're on lockdown and you can't even 01:11:33.460 --> 01:11:38.820 enter the building. Just find ways to be creative in that. Or maybe even here's the, here's a step two 01:11:38.820 --> 01:11:43.860 challenge. Do you have to do musical worship in that environment? Or can you be more creative with 01:11:43.860 --> 01:11:50.020 doing some things, um, with that? Maybe, maybe worship in that context looks different. Maybe it's 01:11:50.020 --> 01:11:56.660 more of a prayer service than it is a whole, uh, musical expression that we're typically used to 01:11:56.660 --> 01:12:00.340 seeing. Be, be creative with that space as you're, you're fleshing it out. 01:12:00.980 --> 01:12:07.140 I know a lot of churches will put together a virtual set list, their worship set. Um, 01:12:07.140 --> 01:12:13.220 but then they'll just go ahead and, you know, tag the actual artists on Spotify and, or, you know, 01:12:13.220 --> 01:12:18.820 Amazon music or iTunes or whatever, uh, system you use that you say, Hey, these are the songs that we 01:12:18.820 --> 01:12:23.620 sang, or we were going to sing, or we're singing together, but you can listen to them directly, 01:12:23.620 --> 01:12:30.660 you know, via the artist. There's something neat, however, about the personalization. Uh, yeah, 01:12:30.660 --> 01:12:37.060 maybe Hillsong music sounds better than, uh, the team at my church, but being able to see and hear 01:12:37.060 --> 01:12:44.660 from them, particularly in these times, I appreciate, I know a church that is a multi-site and they're 01:12:44.660 --> 01:12:52.340 actually recording services uniquely for each one of their locations, utilizing people from each of those 01:12:52.340 --> 01:12:58.820 distinct locations in order to reflect their community, their respective communities. So it's not as if 01:12:59.460 --> 01:13:04.420 they're only going to take advantage of, Hey, the one that has a centralized location, they're sharing 01:13:04.420 --> 01:13:10.660 that. And that might be a way that churches that do have physical space could, uh, share with those 01:13:10.660 --> 01:13:15.620 of us that don't. There are a lot of church plants, obviously that's our wheelhouse, who don't have 01:13:15.620 --> 01:13:21.060 the 24/7 space and an existing church or an established church with the location 01:13:21.060 --> 01:13:27.140 being willing to open up their space, even maybe share some of their technical equipment so that 01:13:27.140 --> 01:13:32.420 a church plant can do that and make those services available to their congregation. What an opportunity 01:13:32.420 --> 01:13:37.060 for us to band together as the church, as the body and share those resources. 01:13:38.900 --> 01:13:44.900 Some of the other technical questions we saw, Jeff, speak to, uh, more on, on platforms and systems, 01:13:44.900 --> 01:13:53.220 processes. We can get into weeds now. Yeah. Um, uh, man, I don't even know where to start. Somebody throw 01:13:53.220 --> 01:13:57.860 a systems question in here if, if you've got it, but let me address, because this, this one's close to 01:13:57.860 --> 01:14:04.980 my heart. Scott, who's up, it's seriously to send questions. I, I, I, I'm open. Um, Scott, uh, he's, 01:14:04.980 --> 01:14:10.740 he's out of, he's out of school. Uh, it may be shutting down, trying to figure out options. Uh, 01:14:10.740 --> 01:14:17.060 so the church that I attend in the same situation, Scott, we have one of our campuses is at a high 01:14:17.060 --> 01:14:22.660 school. Uh, we actually received an email, maybe not as strong as what you have, but that the contracts 01:14:22.660 --> 01:14:28.180 are being invalidated, uh, as we speak because of this situation, we are not officially getting kicked 01:14:28.180 --> 01:14:34.180 out, but there's grounds to the county has basically ripped up all the contracts as a result of it. Um, 01:14:35.220 --> 01:14:42.180 once again, as stuff like that happens, I think there's opportunities to be creative in the space. Uh, 01:14:42.180 --> 01:14:48.260 I think your audience is going to recognize that there's this problem and that they're going to 01:14:48.260 --> 01:14:53.460 appreciate what you are trying to do as a result of it. I don't, I don't know that I would challenge 01:14:53.460 --> 01:14:57.140 anybody to go against, you know, leadership, leadership's in place by God. They're Romans. 01:14:57.140 --> 01:15:02.580 We can have that conversation. Uh, but essentially I think there's an opportunity for you to look at it, 01:15:02.580 --> 01:15:07.700 at it differently. Yeah. In many cases, that decision is being removed, but for those of you that are 01:15:07.700 --> 01:15:13.300 wrestling with, uh, it's still our decision to make. We haven't been told we can't gather yet 01:15:13.300 --> 01:15:21.220 via the state because we're a larger group of people or via whatever, uh, facility that you may be renting 01:15:21.220 --> 01:15:26.340 space from. That's where you're going to have to really pray and discern, uh, because there are 01:15:26.340 --> 01:15:31.460 advantages to coming together corporately. There's a reason that we want to do that. Uh, and what we've 01:15:31.460 --> 01:15:38.340 tried to talk about here today are what are ways that we can continue to connect, continue to convene, 01:15:38.340 --> 01:15:44.980 to gather people, uh, even in this sort of disembodied virtual way. Uh, 01:15:46.580 --> 01:15:49.620 that's where the contextualization is going to be really critical. 01:15:52.820 --> 01:15:56.980 One of the things I'm excited about our, our neighborhood, since our schools and churches 01:15:56.980 --> 01:16:02.580 have all already been closed, uh, we're seeing a lot of activity on social networking sites where 01:16:02.580 --> 01:16:08.740 parents are banding together and saying, Hey, let's, let's pool our resources to, to care for, 01:16:08.740 --> 01:16:16.500 continue to educate our children and, uh, you know, making our homes and places of worship available 01:16:16.500 --> 01:16:22.260 for those types of gatherings. Um, particularly to the community that may be in search of spaces 01:16:22.260 --> 01:16:28.180 that they could gather in again, in deference to whatever the guidelines are locally with regard to, 01:16:28.900 --> 01:16:35.940 uh, what, what's being asked by the authorities. Uh, but if we can continue to gather in small groups 01:16:35.940 --> 01:16:42.340 to make the spaces that we have available to others presents an opportunity to be a real witness and a 01:16:42.340 --> 01:16:48.980 source of hope and encouragement. All right, everyone, let's close in prayer. Father, thank you for this 01:16:48.980 --> 01:16:56.980 opportunity to reach the world for Jesus. Thank you for this opportunity to be the church, 01:16:56.980 --> 01:17:07.700 your church in our community, to care for people by bringing them food. Ah, God, to enter into even their 01:17:07.700 --> 01:17:17.300 illness and care for them. Father, I pray that you'll protect our, your church, that you'll protect us as 01:17:17.300 --> 01:17:26.900 your church caretakers. But Father, I pray also that we will boldly go where you ask us to go and that 01:17:26.900 --> 01:17:35.700 we'll lead so that people look and all they can say is Jesus showed up. We pray your blessing on every 01:17:35.700 --> 01:17:41.060 single person on this call, Father, as they lead and make hard decisions in the days and weeks to come. 01:17:42.580 --> 01:17:47.140 May you empower them and lift them up in Jesus name. Amen. 01:17:48.740 --> 01:17:53.700 Amen. Thanks, everyone. Thank you all for joining us. We appreciate, uh, 01:17:54.820 --> 01:17:59.780 the, the, the desire and the intention that all of you have to continue to be the church in these 01:17:59.780 --> 01:18:06.980 tumultuous times. Uh, we will, uh, make the notes available on the web links that have been shared here in 01:18:06.980 --> 01:18:14.020 the notes section, as well as the landing page as we leave this, uh, zoom room, uh, and encourage you to check 01:18:14.020 --> 01:18:21.460 back in, uh, and follow along, share your insights. What are you learning? And, uh, what, what are the resources that you 01:18:21.460 --> 01:18:34.980 would make available? Uh, thanks to those who've already done that in the chat space. Um, yeah, the church is the hope of the world, and we will continue to be that, uh, and provide that hope, even in these times. So thank you all for being with you. 01:18:34.980 --> 01:18:39.460 Thank you all for being with us today. God bless you. Um, let's be the church.