BETA17: What the Church can Learn from WandaVision (Clubhouse Edition)

Hey, we're going to get you to that podcast in one second, but before we get there, I, Jeff Reed, the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planning, I wanted to have a conversation with you, churches that are out there. One of the greatest things I arguably think that I've done in my life, other than married and kids, okay, that aside, one of the greatest ministry things I've ever done is this idea of the fidgetal learning communities that we are offering through Stadia Church Planning. We want to help you, we want to help your church learn to thrive, grow, and multiply fidgetally, physically, as well as digitally. We've seen about 200 churches go through this already, and it's been a phenomenal result of it.

Culture is changing within these churches. They're understanding what it is to thrive. They're understanding how to grow people, how to grow their church, even in the midst of this COVID, not COVID, wherever we are in the season. And they're even starting to understand what it means to multiply in fidgetal space. There's no secret sauce to doing a digital strategy. There's no secret sauce to doing a fidgetal strategy. There's no secret sauce to making your church thrive, grow, and multiply. It takes work. I'm not going to lie. But through the framework, through the questions, through the learning communities, we connect you with churches. We give you some content. We coach you along the way to help you make the decisions that you need to make so that your church's strategy can thrive, grow, and multiply your church along the way.

This is a great opportunity for your church. We would love to have you be a part of it. For more information, check out stadiacchurchplanning.org slash fidgetal. Stadiachurchplanning.org slash fidgetal. P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L. All right. Hey, that's it. We're going to get you back to that episode right now. I'm excited about this conversation. We're digging into what the church can learn from WandaVision, and we'll probably end up spoiling some WandaVision along the way. So, spoiler alert, we're not responsible for anything that's said afterwards. If you get upset because something's said, you're spoiling episode nine. Like I said, I think I've watched episode nine six times since it's come out. I just basically watch it every day at lunch, just turn it on and have it be noise in the background while I'm having breakfast in the morning.

Anytime I'm alone, basically, that's become my office, honestly, WandaVision has, at least for the season. So, kind of have loved, at least at a personal level, binging it over and over again. Yeah, maybe I am a bigger nerd than you, Ray, now that I hear myself say that. So, hey, we've got a fun panel, and so we'll get to them in a little bit. But we are going to take questions and conversations towards the end because, you know, that's the joy of Clubhouse is letting other people dialogue into this conversation and not just let you all watch from the outside. So, be thinking about some things, and at some point later in this conversation, we'll open it up. This is recording, and so Clubhouse, make sure that I have to say, hey, please acknowledge that this is recording.

So, hey, guys, this is recording. Be aware of that, and yeah, it's going to be great. We'll turn it into a podcast or something later on down the road. So, hey, for the conversation, it was funny. Ben Stapley is a weekend experience director at Christ Fellowship Miami. I actually live in Miami as well. And so, Ben was – I used to be on staff at Christ Fellowship. Ben's a good friend and honestly love anytime I get to share some space with him in online talking about stuff. And so excited to dialogue with him on this. He just beat me to the punch a little bit and published a blog. I'm not saying he stole the topic from me, but positive. I said to him first, why don't we do something on what the church can learn from WandaVision?

As a matter of fact, I remember him making fun of the idea. And then all of a sudden I see Tuesday night that he's published a blog, eight or nine things that the church can learn from WandaVision. So I'm not saying he stole the idea from me, but next time I'll definitely put a copyright on that idea before I share anything with Ben, evidently. Lies. Lies? You're going to call lies? Okay, we'll let you call lies. Ray DeArmis is on as well, digital pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami, Ben's employee. And so Ray, of course, will side with Ben Stapley because he's, well, employed to do so. So excited to see that conversation. We're bringing in a newcomer as well, Garrett Silji, who's also at Christ Fellowship Miami, a production director over there, who is going to be very quiet in this.

Garrett is nervous about having conversations publicly, a phenomenal production director, and he needs to have more confidence in himself to talk through. And so, Garrett, I want to give the floor to you, even to just open up. Anything you have to say? Anything you want to share about yourself in this moment? I knew that was coming. I knew somehow you were going to throw to me first. And I just want to say, Ray may be the one to side with Ben, but I think you brought me in because you know that even though Ben is my boss, I have no problem shaking the table. A little bit. Nervous is an understatement, probably. However, if there was a, I don't think you could have chosen a nerdier topic to bring me in for the first talk on.

And so I'm excited. Definitely have to say some of the ideas are my wife's. She may be a bigger nerd than I am. Surprisingly, I didn't read any comic books growing up. I got into like the whole nerd fandom from the first Iron Man movie. And then I started doing all the research into the comic books and stuff like that afterwards. But my wife read the comic books. And so she brought her nerd wisdom from the comic books into this. Wow, you married up then, man. What way to like, you know, get the wife to kind of own the nerd piece and bring you along. I got a lot of respect for Ileana up front in that. That just increased. By the way, Garrett is sometimes or is always the mastermind behind the Church Digital Podcast doing editing and things like that.

So you guys have definitely heard and seen the effects of his wisdom in that in the past. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. We'll do some questions and audience thoughts maybe towards the end. And I think we've got a hard stop at six. So let's let's pack it in and kind of roll through it here. Hey, so let's open this up. I don't know that I have a format as much as, hey, let's just open floor here. WandaVision, no spoilers. This is Disney's, Marvel's, MCU's first fray into an episodic format. And even just sitting here, I wrote down five or six things that was like, man, I was really surprised how this went. I was really excited to see how this was received. Conceptually, there were some things that I thought was a challenge.

Kevin Feige and the writing and directing team, of course, they did a phenomenal job with it. We're all pro people here, it sounds like. But let's open it up. What when you're looking at the church, what were some implications? What were some thoughts? What were some ideas that maybe the church that we can learn in this season from WandaVision? Man, to be honest, I know the others are going to be the ones to talk more. So I'm definitely going to steal this before they can steal one of my biggest takeaways from this. And I'm just going to say, Ben, this may be in your blog. I read the title of your blog. I haven't read your blog yet. So this is an actual claim. You cannot claim copyright. Haven't read it.

But one of the things that both Ileana and I, talking about it afterwards, were saying was that as WandaVision progressed, and slight spoilers, is that as it progressed, you saw a change in time. You saw that Wanda told her story in different time periods. However, the underlying story of what caused her to tell the story, the underlying scene of everything stayed the same. And it was the root and the foundation across the five or six different decades that we saw featured every episode. And I think, I mean, I don't know if there's a more important day as than, like, right now or even last year during COVID, where that's true to the church. I mean, the message, the underlying story of what the church is supposed to be in our societies is going to stay the same as it was 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago.

But what's changing, and especially today, what needs to change, is how we tell that story or how we reach people with that story. And so we're used to this model of we have to talk to someone in person. And now we're going to start having the conversations more and more of, well, can you reach someone with that same story through different platforms? And, Jeff, this is something I know you talk about all the time on the podcast, but having that digital reach to people is technically a new version of a story for a lot of churches. They haven't told the story through a screen before. They're used to only being able to do it person to person. And even some people that I talk to that aren't even in ministry, the concept of digital church is lost.

And they're like, but what about the social aspect? And so I think that, to me, was one of the biggest things that the church is going to have to really, looking at WandaVision, be able to see, hey, her story of hurt was the same from episode one to episode nine. But how she told that and how she portrayed the scene throughout is what changed. Wow. Garrett goes deep right off the bat. I'm surprised by that. Well said, sir. Ben Ray, what do you think of that? I love it. Anything Garrett says has been approved. But yeah, the mission doesn't change, but the methods do. Completely affirm that and hear that. And actually, even zooming out, I love this conversation, Jeff, just because it helps us. It helps the church learn from other great innovators.

Sometimes it can be a cliche, right? What my organization can learn from this new fad. Like, you know, we're going to see this again next month, the month after that. And I will probably be writing an article on it next month as well. But that being said, it's because there are there are innovations that we can learn and hopefully we will continue to learn. So the fact that we are pushing into this and saying, how do we look outside our walls? And from my vantage point, I was thinking through it in terms of the content and the delivery. But what can I learn from them? Because they're master storytellers. And the fact that they're dropping it at 3 a.m. in Eastern time, what in the world? I have no idea what's going on there.

But I'm sure there's something I should push into and think about because apparently they think there's a value of that, which I hadn't seen anyone else ever do prior to them. Yeah, you know, and picking up off that, Ben, and we discussed this a little bit after I read your blog, my thought process was the reason for dropping it so early was because they didn't want to crash their servers initially, like right off the get go. I mean, when you know that you've got this kind of a base, and they did during one of the episodes, even at 3 a.m., they generated so much excitement for the next episode, so much FOMO for the fact that people didn't want to have the episode spoiled for them, that they ran to it, you know, Thursday night, Friday morning, 3 a.m., running to the servers, crashing Disney Plus at 3 a.m.

Like I wake up in the morning, I look at Twitter, and I see people, well, we did it, folks. We crashed Disney Plus. I couldn't block the episode. And so they accomplished it. But this is everything that Disney tried to do to make sure that they were providing an enjoyable experience for their people so that they had a great, stable platform. And there is something for us to learn from that in that the user experience does matter because, as they just said in their shareholder meeting yesterday, they just crossed 100 million subscribers. In a year and a half, they accomplished what it took Netflix years to do. So that user experience coming first and foremost for them was huge. And it should be something that we learn from as well in terms of, hey, our platform is like, how are we keeping our users in mind?

We might not crash our servers, but we do need to recognize that when we release and how the expected release and are we releasing in a timely fashion when our people are ready for it, that does matter. And making sure that we're consistent with that. Picking up on Garrett's piece, though. I'm sorry, Ben. What were you going to say to that? No, keep going. You're on the roll. Oh, I was going to pick up on Garrett's piece on grief because that honestly was one of the biggest underlying things for me was they took something that is just very culturally, I think it's tough for us to deal with in grief. And they put it in a candy wrapper like Marvel and they made us eat it and they made us eat it willingly.

I thought that was some of the magic of the series in that they were able to give us something that's very difficult to discuss from a cultural standpoint, yet we all endure it. And to even deal with the mental health aspects of it, but in a way that was so palpable that even my kids wanted to watch it. It was pretty powerful from that perspective. Yeah, just piggybacking off what you're saying in terms of Disney doing, considering the guest or their end user, their client, whatever you want to call them, the person they're interacting with and making the product for, they do a phenomenal job at it, right? And you talk about crashing servers. So that happened, you know, if anybody's familiar with CHOP, the church online platform, when a lot of churches back a year ago jumped on them.

I know there were a couple of weekends where the whole thing crashed because everyone, every church was trying to use it at 9 a.m. in the morning. And there was even talk of, hey, can some churches do this in the afternoon instead so that we don't crash this platform? And obviously they're considering their guests well. If you've ever been to a Disney theme park and a Universal theme park, I have the privilege of being able to get to both because I'm close to Orlando. So that customer service, that guest experience is complete, it's night and day because Disney has mastered that ability to think to the guests and meet their needs where they're at. And I think the church can continue to learn from that as well.

I think tagging off of what Ray was saying, just one thing that Disney did well in this was they made the content something people wanted to watch and people could relate with. So it's one thing when we as church and ministry make content that we would enjoy. But it doesn't do anybody any good if our target audience isn't also interested in watching. And so even to the point of making people empathetic and being able to feel the same emotions. I mean, at the beginning, once you first learn what Westview really was, you start to see Wanda as the bad guy. But then even as my wife and I were talking through it, it's if we were in the same situation, what would you choose? If you were in her position, would you have done what she did if you had the same powers?

And I think that's something as the church that we can create content. But if you don't create content that your viewership can see themselves a part of, you may not get that same engagement. And so the lesson going forward is make sure that as we're creating content, as we're reaching people, that we're making the content along the lines of what people actually want to be involved with and what they can see themselves involved with. Yeah, I think there's an opportunity. I was shocked really at how divisive. Some people loved the I Love Lucy, the Bewitched, the Black and White, the Brady Bunch, some of those kind of thematic episodes at the beginning. Where it's like, there was, I kind of, I was surprised they included no MCU value, what, until like the end of episode three or episode four.

Like it was a stretch kind of to get to that point. You know, somebody like me who, that was, I'm recognizing the homage, I'm recognizing the retro feel towards that. Like I love the fact that we're going back into those worlds and we're reliving some of those jokes and we're feeling the tension of the guy choking and kind of the cheesiness of the breakfast for dinner and hearing the lady from the 70s show like laughing awkwardly because she can't do anything else. And while feeling the tension of vision, is he going to save it or save the day or not? Like from a MCU world, I love that. From a, man, I remember watching I Love Lucy or Bewitched and feeling that kind of feelings, not of the guy dying, obviously, but of the kind of the joke of the black and white of the sitcom and that feel.

I loved it. Like, and I was surprised that a lot of people did love it. Now, the majority of people that I've seen in real life have had positive vibes off that and had a good feeling off it all the way through. You know, I don't know Twitter being, you know, Twitter that it is, but in social media, I've really felt some people kind of like, man, I stopped watching the show. I gave up because it was pointless. All they wanted to do was some of this other stuff. I think the majority of people, though, and I would open it even up to you guys, did you vibe well with that? Did you recognize homage for homage and kind of what they were trying to do? Or was the lack of storyline, was that really impactful for you in the beginning?

This is an interesting question, Jeff, because, you know, if they would have released the first three, like, in week one, I think they would have kept a lot more people engaged in the conversation. Because week one was pretty hard for people who really came in unprepped as to what this was going to be in terms of different type of storytelling. So they came in, like, for instance, there are people that are outside of MCU circles that I talked to who gave the show a shot, who are familiar with the movies. But those first two episodes kind of knocked them for a loop because they did not understand what the show was going to be about. And so they're walking into the first two thinking, oh, this is supposed to be a comedy or this is supposed to be a sitcom.

And so they went in with bad expectations. And so this is where expectations can kind of play into everything, right? Because what they thought that they were going to get, they gave up after episode one and two. And it wasn't until some people after episode four said, oh, no, you're missing out. If you haven't watched chapter three and four yet, you don't understand. Because they walked in there expecting a typical sitcom. A typical sitcom of expecting, oh, here are characters that I'm familiar with putting in, you know, given weird situations that we're kind of familiar with. And then, oh, but they're superheroes and this is how they deal with it. No, that's not what this is at all. They didn't understand that they were getting a puzzle and that every piece was supposed to connect.

And that, I think, isolated some viewers from the onset that made it hard for them to kind of jump in. Ray, I haven't looked at the numbers. And so I'd love to know if you were able to track the numbers in terms of their viewership and how it manifested over the weeks. And did they lose people or did it grow as the word of mouth spread that, no, this is a really good show. And the reason I'm asking is I loved it. I loved that I was intrigued. I loved that I wasn't spoon-fed things. I loved that I had to think. I loved that this wasn't some middle America sitcom where it was paint by the numbers. But it was actually refreshing that it was in the dark and I needed to, like, activate my mind. And for me, that's a takeaway for the church where I've sat through a fair share of messages where I feel talked down to.

And as a follower of Christ, maybe that's some of my pride or my hubris I need to wrestle through. But I'm always thinking about the guests that I've invited with me. And if I have to hear a communicator say a point and reiterate their point and then say, do you know what I'm saying? Are you with me? Can I get an amen? And throw in a lot of, frankly speaking, verbal fluff and filler. Because they don't have the content to fill the 30, 35, 45 minutes of actual content. I don't, I feel, again, I feel slightly talked down to. And again, it's not me, but I'm thinking through that guest. Is that the best experience for them? Or do we respect them and think that you're going to hang with me and I'm going to give you some content.

And assuming that you're going to be able to process it and even intrigue and mystery, you're going to be able to hang with that. Because there's going to be a payoff on the back end of this that's worth it for you to be a part of this journey. I thought that was a learning for the church. Communicating expectations right off the bat, right? Because as I interacted with people who weren't familiar with the content, it's almost as if for a lot of people, it unlocks something in them. Because a lot of people who weren't familiar with this kind of storytelling came up to me and they said, well, you know, I watched it, but it's just not funny. And as soon as I told them that it's not supposed to be, it's about grief.

All of a sudden, it's like I unlocked the door for them. And oh, so wait a minute. So she's in pain? Yes. Don't forget. You watch these movies, this movie, this movie, this movie? Yes. Okay. So her guy died. Yeah, that's what's confusing me. Exactly. He's not there. So something's going on. Oh, oh, man. That's crazy. And so all of a sudden, and it was more than one person that I engaged with that, that I had this conversation with. People who are familiar with this kind of medium or people who are familiar with the MCU and kind of diehards, locked in, they weren't going to go anywhere no matter what. They were digging it the same way that you were, Ben and Jeff, but for some others, for some that I would consider maybe outsiders, it was very difficult at first for them to engage with until after episode four, that halfway point where some of that starts to get unlocked for them.

Then they started to really engage. Aha, now we see the grander scheme. Actually, so actually, Ray, so Ileana and I are diehard Marvel fans. We've watched every single movie probably at least five times, minimum. And yet we still had the conversation after episode one of do we want to keep watching this? We both were excited about WandaVision. We were holding our breath for WandaVision, but when the first one came out, we had the expectations of Marvel, of everything Marvel we've experienced, of everything great Marvel's created. And so we still went in to the TV show with the expectation of what the movies have been. And so it wasn't, I think episode three is, we still, we watched it and we watched it faithfully.

However, episode two kind of still had us on the fence. Episode three is what got us to say, okay, now I can't wait for the next episode to come out. But there was just something, like the, there's the, the way that it was, it was phrased was to, to Ben's point was intriguing. But it, at the first one to me, it, at least to me, it didn't paint a picture for us. And it had just so many questions or left with, with so many questions that we were debating whether we wanted to keep going in the journey. And, and I guess that, you know, part of what Ben was saying was that, that can be a downside of, of a church, right? Like you don't want to ask so many questions or leave so much ambiguity in, in a, in content, just trying to create a story.

And now they, they, they wrapped it up well, they followed it up and they brought the engagement back in. But even as a Marvel fan, I almost got last, lost after that first episode. Is there anything of value here versus, you know, I mean, they're used to like a two hour format, packing in as much as possible, beginning to end story. What, what's the, what's the challenge, the difficulties in turning that more into an episodic format? I've got to have what, eight or nine beginning and ends. We're going to have to tell the story over time, keep people engaged over the long run versus, versus packing that in. What, what are we seeing, seeing or feeling there? Are you advocating that we have, please stand by, come up towards the end of a message?

Cause that would be, that would be amazing. Yeah. Like I'm not even going to get started in the eight minute credit roll that happens every week. Like I don't, I don't, I don't want to discuss that. Cause I don't, I don't think there's a lesson towards the eight minute credit roll, but, but more of kind of breaking this up, right? Like you, you have to, um, intentional, like, I don't know, is, is it better to have the cliffhangers? Is it better to get it? I'm honestly, I'm asking a question. Like what's, is there a takeaway there? Well, Ben, I'd love your opinion on that because, uh, you know, I thought through like, you know, old things that the church had produced in his past, like NUMA, where it was like a one-off, right?

Like a Rob Bell and I forgot what Francis Chan's version of it was when he worked with the same production company and they did these really like well done, well orchestrated, you know, like small group lessons, but it didn't connect to anything else. It was just a one-off. But with this, if you could do a series of something that's well-connected, that really creates that kind of FOMO where you want to go down a journey with people and kind of guide them in that direction. I mean, that would be pretty amazing if, uh, the church could pull off that kind of gospel presentation or storytelling that keeps people engaged in that kind of way. And churches wrestled with this when COVID first hit, right?

So that 45 minute message content, is that the best way to deliver it all at once in one sitting? Or would it maybe take those three points and break them up in 15 minute segments and give it to people over the course of the week so that they could chew on it and they could wrestle with that content and think about it for time. So for me, the thing I loved about this, where it wasn't like you're saying, Jeff, it wasn't a three-hour movie. It was, it was told over weeks, I wrestled with that grief factor that Garrett was alluding to earlier on. I wrestled with the emotions here. What would I do in this place? Would I fabricate a complete world to bring back a loved one? I probably would. I probably would.

Now, if I were watching that in a three-hour movie block, I probably wouldn't, I would not have time to wrestle through the implications, the moral implications of power. And to be frank, you don't have to be superhero to have power. We all have power. How do we wield it? I was wrestling with that on Saturday, on Sunday, looking for the next show. Again, if I were sitting in a dark movie theater for three hours and you just, you know, shotgun face me with all this content, I would not have the downtime to process in-depth emotions over a duration. I think sometimes our messages are framed in that same way. It's 50 minutes of content at your go and my ability to wrestle with it, it might be helpful to break that up at times based upon the content.

I'm not saying the model of the 45-minute message is dead. I'm just saying, I think we can also leverage smaller bite-sized informations. That's one of my takeaways. There's something said to leaving the audience wanting more, right? Like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they ended it there. I want to hear more of what's next and the wanting of that. Not to mention giving ideas room to breathe, room to feel. I was much more connected in pain to Wanda's story than I would have been in context of a movie. I truly do believe that. And I think the emotional value of what you're seeing, kind of feeling her pain, honestly, I think that resonates at a human level. Maybe more than, and no disrespect, than what we're going to see with the Falcon and Winter Soldier.

Like, I think that that pain carries with people and speaks volumes where, you know, I'm looking forward to seeing the buddy-buddy of the two of them. But I don't think I'm going to be, like, obsessed at, like, office level watching it over and over again like I am right now with the Wanda vision piece. Even shifting to some more, like, practical ideas. Hey, Paul Bettany, try not to overpromise what's going to happen in the finale by saying that you're going to act with the best actor ever, a guy that you've dreamed with. Getting the entire world obsessed with dreaming of who this person could be, only to find out it's yourself. You were cracking a joke about acting with yourself. And instead, all those dreams of who is Mephisto, who's this guy coming in at the last minute, it all was just a big joke.

And he was punking us. So, maybe there's some lessons there for the church. What do you think? Well, isn't that funny? Because on the other side, the show's creator was saying early on that he felt like a lot of people might be disappointed with the finale. And so, once again, in terms of setting the right expectation and kind of balancing those expectations out, I think is a huge lesson for all of us. Not, right? So, we have to watch our language. Everything is not awesome, as the Lego movie taught us, right? So, we have to be careful by setting the expectation of every weekend is amazing. Everything's epic. Everything's awesome. It's not that we want to downplay things, but we can't – people will stop believing us after a while if we continue to set expectations and not live up to them.

You know, and to tag off of what Ray was saying, it's not quite on what you're asking, Jeff, about expectations. But I think there's this hesitation for churches in creating content to be afraid to touch some of the tougher subjects, to be able to give those feelings of what Ben was talking about, about grief. I mean, Ben was highlighting how the whole series hinges around grief, and they made a whole TV series. They made nine weeks of content about it that made people watch. But yet, if we were to think about creating even one service on a weekend around grief, it would be something that just naturally as ministry leaders that we would think, okay, this is bad. We're going to leave a negative taste in people's mouth.

And so I think the lesson there for churches is if done properly, you can create content around those real tough feelings that people are experiencing and not being afraid of those topics, not being afraid of grief, not being afraid of anxiety, not being afraid of depression, not being afraid of these hard subjects that you can still engage people with. Because if our society's feeling them, they're going to engage with what you're talking about. And so I think that WandaVision proved that, you know, in contrast to Winter Soldier and Falcon, which is going to be a more lighthearted series, you can have a series around superheroes, but that's not painted in the everything is perfect light, what Ray was alluding to.

And you can still create content and you can still create content and a good story around it. Well said, Garrett. Love that. The idea of creating stories in this context. One of the things that stood out for me in addition to the stories, honestly, and once again, this is something that I wasn't expecting walking into it. All the quotes, the stuff coming from vision, what is grief but love persevering, the whole, what was the theosis? What was the guy's name? The ship of theses. The ship of theses. My gosh, like it was, it was rich at this very heady level, but at the same time was, was, was catchable, was repeatable, was shareable, and moving to really express some of the deepness of what the episode, of what the show was really trying to communicate.

And isn't that great that, that they trusted us to kind of get it? And, and I think that's so wonderful as we talk about difficult subjects and, and, you know, hard storytelling and everything else done in, in, in such a pop forum like Marvel, that they trusted the audience to understand it. You know, like what Ben talked about, that they didn't dumb it down for us, that instead that they went the other way and said, no, we know that vision's been a philosopher in the past, you know, and he's got, man, he's got some bangers of lines. If you go back to Age of Ultron, a thing's not beautiful because it lasts. And then he comes back in with some even harder hitting lines in, in these episodes, kind of like what you went, what you went through, Jeff.

It's very, very powerful just to see how they would do that and how they would do that in such a way in a storyline. What was tough for me along that in terms of trusting us as viewers is they took us down the journey of Wanda's trauma and they took us down like her psychological path. As we talk about the grief that she went through and man, what a hard journey, even as a viewer was that to go through. And I'm glad that they trusted us with it, but man, did they trust us big time with going down that hard, dark journey with her. Yeah, I think there's a lot of power in that darkness. And once again, I just I think that resonates at an emotional level deeper with people like we want in 2021. We want to admit we're broken, like like having people who are broken, having people like the authenticity of that message, I think speaks volumes.

I think having people work through their brokenness as opposed to telling stories where people have their act together and everything's perfect. I think people live in the brokenness in those in those stories. I think that resonates at a much deeper level. Ben, what do you think about that? Yeah, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but oftentimes we can focus our content and our messages on the warm and fuzzy and the positive stuff. And I think there's there's a need for that. I think if all your messages are doom and gloom, then it's it's going to repel a lot of people. But you can look you can look at the canon of scripture and see the emotions that were penned down there, that the prophets had freedom to express to their creator, the God of the universe.

And they were not hit with lightning. I think we can bring it up. So so if they can bring up those emotions to God and saying, why was I ever born? Why did you ever make me? I regret the day I was brought into this. If I could, if a prophet can say that to God, then a preacher can say that to the congregation and wrestle through those emotions and not be hit by lightning. And more importantly, not getting permission, but addressing the people in the room who are wrestling with through that. So we had that need pre-COVID this past year of the pandemic has only accelerated our need to open up the hood and address some of the negative emotions. That we all feel in our human experience. So that's from that.

The other thing I think is a helpful takeaway for me for the church. It's just reminding me that everybody, everybody craves spiritual disciplines. So this, again, show, not on demand, right? This was scheduled. Viewing is back, everybody. It's just like the QR code. It's back. And to me, people hung in it and they watched it. So a lot of people woke up at three o'clock in the morning to watch this or, you know, 12 if they were on the West Coast. But beyond like when they're watching, the fact that they will tune in each week and come back to something that's dropping at a particular time, it reinforces the fact that people want to be engaged with disciplines. And they don't want everything in their life just served at them when they want it and on their time and on their schedule.

So as a church leader, how can we continue to engage or re-engage our people with some of those disciplines? And saying that you want guardrails. You were built for that. You were designed for that. You thrive off of that. And we as a church are going to go through a 21-day Daniel fast. Or we as a church are going to go through a year-long Bible reading plan. Can it be a slog getting through Leviticus? Heck yes. But at the end of the day, we think you're going to be better for it by pushing yourself to this discipline. Awesome. Well said, Daniel fast. I'll probably do one of those. COVID's been wrong. Hey, I've got some stats here. I'm looking. I've been Googling WandaVision ratings. By the way, before we get there, in a minute, I want to open it up for questions and thoughts and comments from the audience.

I like hearing other people talk. So if you guys want to come up to the speaker level, go ahead and hit the hand-raise icon, and I'll get you up here in a little bit. So here I'm reading from Observer.com. All right. So on their respective launches, WandaVision, by the way, this is comparing WandaVision to The Mandalorian. Two Disney Plus properties, both Marvel versus Star Wars, both high-trafficated, one would assume. On their respective launches, WandaVision versus Mandalorian, WandaVision was actually 25% more in demand in the U.S. on the opening day than The Mandalorian was. So the Mandalorian grew significantly more day over day after the release of Episode I. So right off the bat, I don't know the tie-ins to this, open to thought, but WandaVision was 25% more popular than The Mandalorian was at launch.

But The Mandalorian had more legs in context of after day one of Episode I. WandaVision flatline, so far, I think this article is dated mid, yeah, WandaVision flatline. Basically, this is all just Episode I. They don't have stats after January 15th. WandaVision Episode I flattened out. It didn't have the legs necessarily because of maybe some of the I Love Lucy or Bewitched, whatever that episode was, hype that wasn't necessarily there compared to Mandalorian's kind of accelerated growth. So any thoughts on that or maybe any closing thoughts before we segue and bring some other audience in? Yeah, The Mandalorian, the first episode, ended with a big cliffhanger in, you know, our Mandalorian friend meeting young Grogu.

And so that kind of a cliffhanger automatically gave you FOMO for Episode II. Kind of like I told you guys, and this isn't proof positive of it because obviously there's a lot more stats, but for a lot of folks, those first two episodes, and even Garrett alluded to this, some folks were kind of left on, you know, man, I don't know if I want to keep going because they weren't – those first two pieces of the puzzle that they got together didn't exactly leave them with that cliffhanger of, oh, there's something greater going on beyond the scenes. And so I think that's where some of it's a bit incomplete. But this is the issue when you choose this style of release of going week to week as opposed to releasing the whole bunch at once.

So I think that's kind of where some of our takeaway kind of comes from. Garrett, Ray, or Garrett, Ben, anything from you guys before we transition? The last thing I've said, and I'll say it again, is not everything needs to explode. Like, I like watching Ant-Man get 40 feet tall. Yay! And I like the obligatory sky beam that it seems like all the Marvel movies seem to incorporate at some point. Some beam shoots into the sky. Usually it's blue. This time it was red. But we didn't see any of those explosions or head lasers or any of that, those action tropes until the season finale, right? We saw a residential life in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. We saw boring domesticated chores. But I was still intrigued because it was pulling me into a deeper narrative of rich emotions that tapped into an arc that had me compelled because I wanted to see where we go.

So to the same way, from a church leader standpoint, everything doesn't need to end on a bang. So, you know, salvation altar calls, they're great. They aren't needed every message. Don't shoehorn them in if that's not where the message is naturally going. Not every worship set needs to end in a crash out. And, you know, energy. Sometimes they can end reflectively. That is good as well. So I think there's a lesson learned there. From a storytelling vantage point, from an experiential vantage point, that the church can pick up on as well. Please make sure that your church members are not looking for Mephisto in all of your church services. That will definitely be an issue. Literally, which one on stage is the devil pretending to be someone else?

Who is the devil in sheep's clothing? Let's literally have that conversation. That's funny. Garrett, anything from you? Yeah. I mean, it's a small thing. And Ray and Ben both kind of alluded to it. But I guess one of the things that I'd tag on just as we wrap up is, you know, WandaVision was the first of its kind for Marvel. And it would be easy to look at the numbers and compare it to the Mandalorian and say that it may have had bigger onset numbers, but didn't last as long. And so, you know, there's going to be the comparison of, all right, so which one is the more impactful? Was it the Mandalorian or was it WandaVision? And then transferring that to churches, is it more impactful to get the numbers on day one?

Or is it more impactful to get the consistent numbers regularly? And so I'd say just don't get so wrapped up in the numbers, but more in the impact that comes off of the experience as a whole. As you're crafting experiences, as you're thinking through how you engage the newcomers in your church, don't just get so wrapped up in just the one occurrence or just the one interaction. But look at the church's interaction with the congregation as a whole. Yeah, well said. You know, there's a lot said to be simple. You know, Mephisto was not in the show. The storylines, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, was not that complicated. It had the four main actors, Wanda, Vision, the two kids, throwing the nosy next door neighbor, ended up being the husband.

I mean, maybe two or three bit actors kind of cast in from the outside. In the grand scheme of storylines, the MCU fans were looking for far more twists and turns and controversy and wanted to over-create it. At the end of the day, it was a very simple story of a woman's grief. Maybe wrapped in a whole bunch of other things like, oh my gosh, that's really Quicksilver from the other universe. This is crazy. I don't know. That's all just a joke. It's just a play. Once again, Marvel's tricking. It really was just a simple story towards it. So, love that. Hey, let's open it up. We'll get to Addison in a second. But if there's other people that have thoughts they want to share or speak to this in the audience, would love to have you use the hand-raised feature.

We'll bring you up. But Addison, what do you think? And what are some thoughts on this? Thanks for getting me right up. I'm trying to squeeze in before youth group. So, we're right up against it here. Anyway, I just feel like there was so much about this show that I think we could learn from, especially in post-COVID church. And that's because of the relational capital Marvel has built with its audience. They were able to tell this story however they wanted to tell this story. So, when we talk about episodes one and two and the way they told it and choosing to just be kind of weirdly boring and not lead with stuff. They were under none of the pressures of a typical TV schedule where you have to do numbers quick or you risk not getting renewed or anything like that.

And it's interesting, somebody just talked about, do you focus on the numbers or whatever? And it's interesting because the structure was basically they allowed professionals to be professionals. The writers of the show wrote the show they wanted to write. The Kevin Feige's of the world laid out the show they wanted to lay out. And they just did it as really just an art form. And I think it's interesting because when we talk about COVID, a lot of us lost touch with people. But if we really audited that, we would say, I was losing touch with them before but COVID accelerated it. And I think when we talk about relational capital and the value of it, Marvel was able to tell the story they wanted to tell and do the things they wanted to do.

And trust that the audience would go through them with it because they've spent 13 movies investing in our creative relationship, if you will. And I think there's definitely something to learn there in the church of the time to, I don't know, the time to lean on your relationships isn't when you're going to stretch them. It's when in the good seasons, if you will. And we all want the opportunity to maybe tell a story a different way or go a different direction or something. But I think it requires us to put the work in. And the one thing I just loved about the show is how much it was artists being artists. But they were able to do it because they were Marvel and because they've churned out 13, you know, 415.

I'm not sure the exact number. But they, you know, they built it up over time. And we were there with them, even though we got to the end of episode two and went like, hey, did anything happen? Like, you know. Yeah, I think it's more like 26 or 28 movies at this point. It's in the high 20s. But you're right. And it was funny. I said to Ray, I love the fact that the origin story for Wanda rolled out this way. It means, because we really didn't know that much about her previous of this. And if we told this story when we weren't emotionally connected to Wanda like we were in this format, I don't think it would have had the leverage. I don't think the pain would have meant this much. And so part of trusting, of creating that story is having a creative idea and expressing it in a way, trusting your teams, trusting your writers.

You know, and even in the early days of MCU, there was not that trust. There was some organizational interference that really was kind of separating Feige from the vision that he had. And so there was an organizational restructure that allowed Feige to run with it. And it's at that point where, I mean, just like you have individual trust where you lead by title and then position and you work your way up in building that trust organizationally. I think we're seeing an organization in Marvel that has built that trust within their lead creatives, within their writers, within their actors, within their people. And so they have that culture of trust that goes a long way in expressing it. As a church, I know that's a hard thing to do.

It's hard to create that level of trust. It's hard to have a down week when there's, you know, every service is 167 hours away or less from the last service. And so there's always that tension of what's coming in that next Sunday. And sometimes it's more of, I've got to just get this done instead of thinking what the long game could be. And so there's, obviously, there's got to be tensions in working that through a church, I would imagine. How do you guys at CF, how do you deal with that tension of, man, there's always another one coming up in that 167 hours. It's right around the corner versus trying to think long term and some of the long play with the weekend. I think it's hard to. And I'll let Ben kind of tackle that a little bit more.

But one of the things that I wanted to address, because I thought Addison brought this up, you know, great in terms of the buildup is it what WandaVision also did was add value to old content. You know how many people I know that went back and watched Age of Ultron again, just because of this show, because they were like, man, I need to go back and refresh. And so, you know, our message archives, you know, that all that content that we spent, that we spend so many hours in creating in terms of how we can point back to that and refer back to that and kind of encourage people to somewhat binge watch, but also kind of connect the dots between where we're going as a church is huge. You know, and I think if we could find ways to leverage weekend content to even leverage past content too, that would be something that's pretty powerful and also point to the fact that, look, we've got established relational and even storytelling or even preaching capital here that we want you to go back and refer to as well.

And that's why we keep that there for you. Another way to avoid that, just the redundancy and the death by repetition is I like to, you know, coming back to the comparison. I know my audio is wonky, so if it is wonky, just cut me off, guys, and I'll stop. But if it's good, I'll keep going. But looking again at Disney and how they tentpole things, right? And so they'll have major movies in their story arc with phase one, two, three, and four. But then they'll have other ones that are like this, that it doesn't need to be the epic endgame finale that we've been waiting for for 10 years. And so for the same way in terms of service planning or event planning, I look at it the same way there with, okay, you got your Easter, Christmas, Mother's Day, and fall kickoff.

Those are your tentpoles, and let's put a lot of effort into those experiences. And let's not try to compete against ourselves in the one-upmanship of every weekend. If so, that's a recipe for burnout and fatigue. But let's keep those big tent poles ahead of us. Another big one for us is our At The Movies series, which is happening in August, and we already started planning for that because we want that to be a spectacular experience on-site and online. So we will plan for it accordingly. Awesome. Hey, we've just got a couple more minutes. I do have a hard stop at 6 Eastern. I apologize for that. Chesley, you wanted to say something. What are you thinking? Yeah, I know you guys hit on this a little while ago.

But there's some real power in storytelling, and I don't think a lot of churches harness that well. I think we're so concerned about biblical accuracy that we sometimes lose the richness of the humanity of the people that we're teaching about in Scripture and the people we're teaching to out in the audience. And so story kind of bridges the gap for everyone beyond generations and even beyond eras. And I think there's something to be said about what Disney has done with the MCU and with WandaVision, of being able to harness story to be able to tell some real intricate and sometimes difficult truths. Amen. I'm going to affirm that. And not only the stories, they did a phenomenal job of, I'll say this, we love telling coming to salvation stories, right?

Jesus saved me. So like oftentimes we'll share that at our baptisms. But it's harder for us to share the sanctification stories that he's continuing to save me because that's a little messy. It's easy to say, oh yeah, in the past that was bad, but Jesus did something, now I'm good. It's harder to say, I still have anger issues that I'm working on right now. And he worked on me this past week and I did not yell at my wife. And that was a good thing. That's a little more embarrassing. But it gives God the glory because he didn't just save us, he is continuing to save us. And then bringing this back full circle in relationship to WandaVision, right? We didn't just see this story of her becoming a superhero, but we saw the story of her wrestling with her powers while she is a superhero.

And so what does it mean for her to continue to push towards the good even after she has established herself as a superhero? I love that aspect of the story and you pointing that out. And just to follow up and affirm that really quickly, I know we're running out of time, but I mean, even from past experience, personally, at our Church Christ Fellowship, we didn't have someone to do exactly what you were saying, Chesley, to harness those stories. And so our stories were good, but we weren't really emphasizing the heart of people's stories. We weren't getting their true heart out of when we would tell them to share something or ask them to share something. And so we hired someone just for that, for helping find a story, then talking to that person and helping that person tell their own story.

And we saw the impact that it had on the stories that were coming out of our own people, not our staff, not of our engaged volunteers, but just even out of the congregation. That person that was sat there, heard, hey, this was a cool thing that happened, talked to that person and got more in-depth, was able to help that person tell their story, tell their testimony, and talk about the impact that came out of it. That's awesome. Yeah, excited to see how Christ Fellowship is leveraging some of these things. And as a team, how you're creating this content on the weekend, pre-production, what goes into it, focusing more on the story. I know there's always the tension of, you know, always the high energy rolling in from the worship set into the message, the message always having the invitation at the end.

You know, that tension exists in every church, physical and digital. And there's so many voices speaking into it. And there's always going to be that tension, right, of how to keep everybody happy, how to succeed, but at the same time, not just live week to week, but look long-term at the endgame, at the long playout. Honestly, for me, that's the win in a Marvel context. We've had all sorts of little conversations here and big conversations here. But this idea of having it roll out long-term, where there's intentional plans and developments of stories and focusing on this, focusing on that, seeing how they work together. And a lot of that does come with, and this gets even back to some of the stuff that Addison was talking about.

There's trust. There's trust among the team. You know, even wrestling with things like COVID and this, they've figured out ways to create the things they needed to create with excellence. Barring, once again, Paul Bettany making some joke about this excellent actor that ended up trolling us and just being him, that'll never die down, Paul Bettany. You will be cursed with that for life, as far as I can tell. Not to mention, let's be honest, aside from MCU, he really hasn't done that much stuff. Except maybe Knight's Tale, but that's a whole other conversation. So, hey. Do not besmirch his good name, Jeff. Do not. Really? I mean, we're all Paul Bettany fans in here. We can't say, dude, you've really not done that much with your career?

Just a little bit. I mean, Paul Bettany's a really good actor. But just, yeah. He's a good actor. He's an incredible actor. Tell me something he's done. Like, just give me some acknowledgement. His resume is lacking. Let's just say it that way. Let's quote from Knight's Tale to Wrap. His resume, well, it's just lacking. Well, I mean, come on. Let's not start the Paul Bettany hate show. Come on. But let's keep it positive here. Because I enjoyed Knight's Tale, and I enjoyed Wimbledon, which is probably the only other movie that I know him from. And then every bit of Jarvis to Vision, to White Vision, to whatever it is that he's become. Well, he's in the Da Vinci Code, too, guys. Come on. Oh, but come on.

Tom Hanks' hair killed the Da Vinci Code. Let's be honest. Alright, so for the man who has been a voice with no body, a body but not human, a memory and walking, and who knows what version for, and the White Knight or whatever that is. The antithesis of Batman, Paul Bettany, I apologize for mocking you on the show. Hey, Ray, I'll give you 10 seconds. I've got to wrap. What are you thinking? As far as WandaVision is concerned, listen, I can't wait to see what kind of other storytelling methods that they're going to pursue. I know we're thinking that the next one is going to be more action-packed than Falcon and Winter Soldier, but Loki's right around the corner coming up in June. And so I can't wait to see how they're going to explore different types of storytelling utilizing Loki because of the credibility that they built up in WandaVision.

Churches, I don't know how we're going to integrate this into this Sunday or this Easter, but long-term, let's consider to how we can change it up and trust our audience and continue to build up credibility, as Addison had told us earlier. Awesome. Hey, we're going to be doing a conversation tomorrow. What happens if we blow up small groups and start from scratch? What could our small groups look like? And so for more information on that, check out thechurch.digital.clubhouse. There's links and information at that point. And we do this regularly on Thursdays at 5 Eastern. So, hey, thanks for joining this. This was fun. For Ben, for Ray, for Garrett, Chesley, and Addison, thanks for jumping on here as well.

This is Jeff with the Church Digital. And Stadia Church Planning. We're going to wrap. I got to go. And we're going to see you next time here on Clubhouse. Y'all have a good day.