BETA00: How Do We Do Creative Digital Church Services & Physical Church Services at the Same Time?

Hey, all right. Hey, welcome to Beta. We're trying something new over here at the church in digital, and we're experimenting. Yeah, you can run some fun parallels. We're baiting with a show that's called Beta. It'll make sense down the road, just stick with us.

Of course, Ray the Arm is here, digital pastor over at Christ Fellowship Miami. Anytime I'm gonna experiment and play around with some like new technology or try to do something different, you know, I gotta bring Ray along, just to kind of make fun of me as we're doing whatever it is that we're doing over here. It's just too easy. There's always some new technology that Jeff is really just trying to tap into.

But the great thing about this is that we want to hear from people, right, Jeff? I mean, that's kind of the big thing. Is we want to build the same community that many people are trying to build with church online. We want to hear from our church digital community as far as some of the questions that they may have. And we felt that podcast wasn't going to do it. We felt like we had to beta. We had to try something new.

Yeah, that's exactly right. You see, with the church digital podcast, which is coming up on our 100th episode, it's phenomenal. It's been an awesome time. But we get so heady, so theoretical, so kind of future-oriented, that there's like we can't even like see practical in the conversation. And so we wanted to kind of do something that was a little more grounded as well.

So here's what we're doing: text your digital fidget church questions to this number here on the screen. For the church, don't you love this? I literally have a phone number for the church: 484-324-8724. Text those questions, and we want to answer them. We're going to list them, catalog them, and then do beta episodes here on the channels that you're watching. We're going to put this on YouTube, on Facebook, on Periscope, Twitter. You know, wherever we can land this stuff. And of course, we're gonna tie it in to the church digital podcast as well.

So write that number down: 484-324-8724. Right now, go ahead and spam me. Okay, don't spam me. Well, maybe yeah, spam me. That's okay. Send me some messages. Send me some questions that you guys are struggling with in context of doing online ministry. And we're gonna do short. I promise you, we'll do some sort of short-term conversation here to answer those questions.

So, and here we go. Number one, and I'm doing this. Okay, look, we're just starting this. We're calling this episode zero, Beta double-O. We're just starting this thing, right? We don't know. But here's what I do know: nobody's texting me this question, but I've had this question come to me. I don't know, at least a dozen times here within the past week.

How do we do creative digital church services for online at the same time as doing physical services? Like, okay, hey, great. We can do physical pre-COVID. Oh wait, no, physical shut down entirely. Let's do all digital. Okay, I can pour all those resources. And now hundreds of thousands of churches across America are now trying to wrestle with this idea of how do we do both at the same time? How does this even even work?

And so, man, Ray, just what do you think of this question? Have you had people ask you this?

Yeah, I mean, and this is something that we're even trying to wrestle with, right? Because as many of us have learned, if you're trying to recreate the physical experience online, like you're losing, right? You're like you're not necessarily catering to an audience, or you're kind of going after an audience or trying to do things that you're noticing aren't working like they did in person. Pastors, your jokes aren't landing the same way. You're getting word that some of your people aren't singing along with the worship music, and so that's a bit of a struggle. And why is it so different? And why is it so hard?

And listen, it's almost like live comedy, you know? I'm pretty sure if Jerry Seinfeld were to tell you, yeah, doing things in this coping environment is different than me packing a club in New York and just kind of catering to the audience that's in the room. And so the reality is, is you legit probably can't do both at the same time, right? Like you kind of have to think through who your primary target audience is, right, Jeff, and think through how you're going to kind of craft some of your content in towards them, right?

Yeah, it's really targeting this idea of who you're trying to reach and how are you trying to communicate to them. So, and this is really one of the weaknesses of live streaming a physical service because when you're doing that physical service, you're really communicating. You're preaching. You're really talking in this season to your 99s. Now, we do this analogy of the ones in the 99s, you know, the parable of the shepherd that goes after the one lost sheep, leaving the other 99 behind. It's kind of that parallel.

So within your church service, within your buildings, you're not getting people called to Christ coming to a physical building. And if you are, congratulations, those are like the few stories out of the many. Because what we're really seeing is this 99, the people that are engaged into your church that are really going into the building for that. And they need to be ministered to. They need to be discipled. They need some of that communication.

But if we're really looking at online as our opportunity to reach ones, I don't know that we're going to get that out of live streaming in our building. Now, throw that aside. This whole idea of, hey, you know what, I'm going to preach 40 minutes in the building? Well, we already learned in this COVID season that 40-minute sermon doesn't land online. If we're looking at it towards evangelism, that the ones aren't giving it to them. Hey, those like five songs that you want to sing online—that's not going to land, or excuse me, sing in the building—that's not going to land online like you would want it to.

And so we've seen a lot of churches in the season really pare down the experience of what they're broadcasting online instead of being that 70, 80, 90-minute service, making it more like a 40, 50, maybe 60 minutes, but a much smaller experience of it.

Yeah, and I'm more curious for a lot of churches as to how they're asking as opposed to how to take their physical service online. How to take their digital service back into the building, you know, that same experience that you're creating for your digital experience that was kind of the way that it should have been, you know?

You know, everybody talks about our ADD culture. The reality of it is that human attention span has always been about 20 minutes. I remember watching a message from Erwin McManus about 20 years ago—now it was about 15 years ago. I watched him at a Saddleback Worship Conference, and he made mention of this as it was legit happening to me, and this was before I had an iPhone in my pocket. He said, "Some of you aren't even checked into my message right now." He's like, "I work the same way. I check in. I'm here for five minutes. I check out for a few minutes. I check back in." And he's talking about this to pastors as he's preaching through this. But he was 100 percent correct.

Many people aren't watching a 40-minute experience, especially with a smartphone device in their hand and listening all the way through every detail of the pastor's message and legit like on pace with him the entire way. Now, is it happening to one or two people? Absolutely. But for the rest of us, we're checking in, we're checking out.

And so in order to help avoid that, we kind of have to ask, okay, so we got used to recreating some of our experiences in shorter formats for an online audience who, yeah, they can watch us here, but they're probably also going to go pour some cereal in a bowl, or they're going to go check on the kids to make sure that they're not killing each other or something else along those lines.

And so in the same way, we have to figure out how we're going to take those experiences back into a physical environment because, especially for non-believers, I don't think they're going to be under an hour and a half and two-hour services anymore.

Yeah, it's really interesting. Like, even Craig Groeschel with the video teaching and some of the Dawn, you know, video teaching has worked at multi-site campuses for a decade. Like, it was early 2010s when I started video teaching and creating that through churches that I was on staff at. But Groeschel, whenever he would go visit, like he would preach Saturday night, record the message in the can for Life Church, and then go out. When he would visit other campuses on Sunday, that was getting the video teaching message. He would never actually stand on stage and preach in the physical space. He would sit on the front row, and then they would play the video teaching message of him preaching.

Yeah, okay, maybe it's awkward to see yourself preach, but it's this really fascinating thing that comes out of it where he didn't want to preach live because he didn't want to devalue the video teaching that was happening. And so he thought if he preached live, that meant that live preaching was better than video, and he didn't want to do that because video was the thing that was solidifying all of the Life Church campuses together.

And so in this season, I wonder if there's not a lesson here to take away that maybe doing that pre-recorded message, maybe it's even that 20-minute message, using it not just in the digital space but also in physical space as well.

Man, that really simplifies a lot of the scariness, a lot of the monster that is creating the second service because you're double-using the content in physical space as well as digital. Because where we're going here is this idea of creating the second thing can often be a beast unto itself because we're putting all this work, all this effort, all this energy into creating this, and this is where churches were before we went back into the building in the middle of COVID, mid-COVID, because they were creating this monster of a thing, and it was done with excellence, it was done with perfection, it was a thing to be proud of. But it utilized all the resources that were in the physical building to get there.

And now, oh my gosh, you want me to do both? How am I supposed to? I need to communicate something different to the online building than the physical, but I do it, but I can't do both with excellence. And by doing both, like, I don't know what to do. I need to double my teams. I need to double my staff. Write me a bigger check. And you know, in this COVID season, bigger checks just don't seem to be coming.

Yeah, you know, this kind of goes back to—and I've, if you listen to the pod, you've heard me talk about that TED Talk before, and you've probably even seen it yourself—you know, the three things that you can only have two out of three: good, fast, or cheap, right? Good, you can have two out of three. You can't have three out of three.

And so part of the question that I think a lot of us are asking, and maybe a lot more your teams are probably like knocking on your lead pastor's door like, "Hey, during COVID you were farther out with your message. Like, you were ready to record on Thursday. Can we get back to that?" And he's thinking to himself, "No, man, now I've got those extra three days to kind of work with and play with and toy around and tinker with stuff." And that's where some of the challenge can be in terms of the difference between pre-recorded and wanting to go back to live in the room is just the thought process of when are we gonna push that content out, right, Jeff? Because that kind of puts you at a timetable, and then that timetable also determines your budget because if you're going to do last-minute edits, if you're going to do last-minute shots or reshoots or whatever else, that's when things get complicated.

And get very expensive as opposed to when you're thinking further in advance and thinking a little bit further out and working with your teams a lot more within their allotted hours, you avoid burnout. You avoid so many different things, and it allows the rest of your ministry team to make sure that they're ministering to the congregation, which is huge.

You mentioned Craig Groschel earlier. Craig got to the point where pre-COVID that he was recording on Thursdays the message he wouldn't even be preaching on Saturday nights. And so then he would show up at all locations just there to shake hands, kiss babies, and pray for people, which is where he determined his greatest value was on a Sunday morning. And for some of us, we think, "Man, our greatest value is just the content we put out." But even Craig will tell you, "Hey, it's gotta be content married with community," and that's where church comes into play.

Yeah, and really, it's funny. The Thursday night with Groschel, it kind of leads me into where I want to go next with this thing. I almost think that the Thursday night service being for the online recording, that capture service for online, I think that's the GITMO solution. I didn't realize this was going to become the Craig Groschel hour, but wasn't it Groschel who used the GITMO? Was that out of the Global Leadership Summit this year, 2020?

And yeah, 2020 was this year. And so like, this idea of GITMO is phenomenal. And listen, I like—we've talked about this on the podcast where we've got Crossroads in Cincinnati, Uber creative services. This church has got tons of resources. I'm literally watching the lead pastor Brian Tome preach a sermon while wakeboarding. I just—if there was a proverbial shark tank in the lake, he would have jumped it. Like, this is unbelievable that he's literally preaching while wakeboarding.

Now, let's face it, and this unfortunately, there's a standard. Like, remember, comparison is the thief of joy. We talked about that in this COVID season, and it's like, "Oh, I'm a church of a thousand. I gotta compete with this. I gotta figure out, 'Hey, can you preach a sermon while actually jumping a shark tank on the wakeboard?'" And don't do that.

And so here's kind of the tension of it where we bring this GITMO back into it. And so early on, what you're talking about with Life Church, where they would capture the service Thursday night, now they would change the language. The host would be able to say what the host needed to say for online. The teacher was able to drill into those cameras and look at it and communicate the type of message needed online. Worship was maybe a simpler set, a smaller set that was more appropriate for the online environment. But we're doing this digitally, exclusively for the digital audience. And I personally think this is a great way to utilize the resources that your venue, that your church has, right? And find ways to make it effective for your church.

Yeah, and then the last thing that they utilized as part of that was recycled worship. And some aren't gonna like that tag on of "recycled," but they would pre-record the worship and then they would cut, like, some of the songs and mix and match them throughout in terms of their online services.

Now, I understand, "Oh man, we want everything to be fresh week to week." Okay, but listen, your online audience isn't really going to engage as much in song. That's not the experience that they're receiving at home. They're not having the lights hit their face. They're not there with the fog and the stuff happening on stage. That's not something that they're experiencing in real time as much. And so if you actually went a little bit lighter on worship and like one or two songs that were pre-recorded, like, let's say that you just did one day recording with your worship team, you recorded ten songs, and then you just had them out. I mean, think about this: you can either have your best musicians all in one day, they're shooting, getting the best of the best of everything. And this way, your digital audience gets something amazing. And then for the rest of your teams that have to put these online stuff together, they're not looking to get everything week to week. It helps them facilitate, and it helps them build a system so that they can get great content out there so that they can spend the rest of their time ministering to people, which is what it's supposed to be.

And so, you know, if we get caught up and like, Jeff, you nailed it on the head—comparisons steal joy. Yeah, so that means that we can't pivot week to week to be like North Point this week and be like Life Church next week. No, let's be who we are. Let's set a plan, and then we can tweak along the way.

Yeah, so good. And even just to close up this vein here: do not burn out on the one hour on Sunday. Do not pour every ounce of resources you and your organization have in order to create this duality of the church service. There's more to church than the one hour on Sunday. There's a larger purpose of what your church's resources need to do—to not just create a follower of Christ, but a disciple maker. And as much as we, the church, are used to creating these awesome physical and digital experiences, that's really just the beginning of the life of the church. And so don't spend all the resources creating those experiences that you're not doing intentional steps and having some of those resources to create the disciple makers that the Bible calls us to do.

Yeah, you know, hitting the brakes and having everybody take a break from Sunday morning is scary, right? Because we don't know what we're kind of coming back into as we're looking to reopen church services. And even as those who have reopened are kind of already reporting, "Hey, listen, it's not like we're seeing an extreme rush for people to kind of come back on Sunday." Some are fearful because of the virus, and others have just been out of routine for so long that, you know, they're like, "Man, we found a new routine. We found a new thing, and so we're just kind of going to stick with it."

But it does remind us that this entire time, this isn't new. This isn't because of COVID. The 167 hours during the week that you hear a lot of people in this kind of world reference—that matters a ton more than just what happens on Sunday morning. I mean, if you're in youth ministry and if you're in kids ministry, you know this, because parents often will just drop off their kids saying, "Hey, change them. Change it. Make them better." And you're sitting there thinking to yourself, "Hey, listen, within three months this kid's life will probably turn around, but you can make a bigger impact around that dinner table at home than I ever can through a message a week and a few worship songs and a game." And that's 100 percent correct.

And in the same way with online church or just with church in general, right? We're supposed to be raising up believers. We're supposed to be making devoted followers of Jesus, and that doesn't just happen on an hour on Sunday. Now, worshiping Jesus—super important. Coming together as the body of believers—here for it. It's not physical. It's not digital. It's not weekend. It's create that disciple maker. And if that is first and foremost, then everything else is just a tool to get us to that point.

So very, very well said, Ray. Hey, listen, so we're gonna wrap here. This was golden. We want to do this weekly. And what's the next episode going to be?

I have no idea because I haven't gotten your questions yet. So here's what we're asking: text these questions right now. Your questions—what are you struggling with? What's the next step? Where are you lost? What do you have no idea on? What are you thinking about? Whatever it is, text it to me over here at 484-324-8724. The number is literally for the church. And send me your questions. Well, maybe we'll talk about it next week, and you'll be able—maybe we mention your name, maybe I don't know. We'll figure it out. But send us your questions and give us something to do.

By the way, you can access this beta and a bunch of other free resources over at thechurch.digital. So if you're not at thechurch.digital, if you've not checked out our other podcasts and what we're doing, all that—what up, bro? Come on, like, like, go some love. We're freaking 100 episodes coming up here in a couple weeks. What do you mean you haven't, you haven't like watched it? Come on, jump on this thing, and you can do that over at thechurch.digital/podcast.

So hey, Ray, man, thanks for jumping on this. Looking forward to doing the next one. For Ray, I'm Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time here on Beta. Have a good day.