BETA22: Greg Atkinson & Tips from an Online Secret Shopper

All right, you got Beta Show Episode 22. I'm Jeff with the Church Digital Podcast once again. It's powered by Stadia Church Planting, and I'm excited about this episode. I love this episode. We are going old school here with this episode. We've got Greg Atkinson coming in to the show. Now Greg is a good friend and it's been very influential in my ministry career as I was doing church online as a digital pastor, and then I was heading into the Church Digital and eventually into the Stadium. So Greg's a friend. Greg is also one of the top names right now when it comes towards first impressions. He's very active in consulting and helping churches literally around the country. He has been resourcing and equipping churches in first impressions and guest services for years. By the way, you can check out First Impressions Conference as just one of the many things that this guy's doing to help resource churches. And part of that resourcing gets him evaluating physical services and also digital services. And so literally Greg's a secret shopper in the physical space as well as through like church online services. So I just I wanted to ask Greg, "Hey Greg, as a secret shopper, man, what are you looking for? What works? What doesn't work? What advice do you have?" And so we really—I don't want to call it a controversial episode, but a lot of the things that we touch on are very basic questions that there's not a solid answer for. Is it better to pre-record or is it better to go live? How long do you really think that sermon needs to be? Should we do campus-specific announcements for online, or should the broadcast campus just, you know, do their announcements and have that be online? Look, we can argue this stuff all day long, but I really wanted to go to the guy who's out there resourcing churches, the guy who's out there connecting with churches, and ask them some of these basic simple questions when it comes to how we're doing our church online services. So if you're looking for practical insight, if you're looking for essential directions on how to take some next steps, I would love for you to check out this episode with Greg Atkinson. First Impressions Conference as well as many other things around the country, and myself Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting in a conversation that I am simply calling "Secret Shopper Tips for Church Online."

Okay, everybody, here you go. You have posted on your blog before screenshots from my blog where I was taking screenshots of church online experience and just sharing about it, just trying to encourage people. I didn't know it would take twelve years later a pandemic to get us all online, but I was talking about it back in 2008. So it's been a journey, man. That's been a minute though. 2008. Look at how much ministry has changed. Look at how much—I mean, even COVID aside, 2008 to 2020 February, a lot has changed in ministry life. And then that's fast-forwarded even more in this COVID season. Just today I was talking at lunch with some pastors, and we were debating how much time has really accelerated in this COVID season. I've heard some technology experts talking about maybe two to five years of technology kind of sped up, kind of fast-forwarded in this season. And so it's a fascinating world that we're living in where maybe even, you know, when Greg started online ministry in 2008 and working into that, it was really this like hyper-edgy concept. Not a lot of churches were doing it. As a matter of fact, Greg, when you started in 2008, what, five or six churches probably were serious about doing this online?

Yeah, the ones that come to mind that I remember watching in 2008 would be, you know, Brandon Donaldson at Life Church, and Bradford Singleton and those guys at Seacoast in Charleston, Cross Point in Nashville, and Central Christian in Las Vegas with Jud Wilhite. But there was just a handful of those watched each week. And I wrote about them. Yeah, and there was like Potential Church was one of those. Actually, I think it was Flamingo Road. Yeah, Flamingo Road at the time. They do a lot of screenshots of theirs, and I loved watching Flamingo Road online. And I actually went and spoke there in either 2008 or 2009. I was on my Church 2.0 tour, and I spoke there. I believe it was 2009. I spoke at Flamingo Road and did a Church 2.0 gathering. But yeah, I followed them for a long time. They were doing some great stuff down in your area. That's beautiful. We definitely need more solid churches down here in South Florida.

So hey, for this conversation, I'd love to set you up here at the beginning. And Greg, I'd love to ask this question. We did not prompt this. I normally would have thrown Greg some prompts or, "Hey, these are some questions that I would ask," but hey, so this is going to be raw, right? Hey, that's the way it works here at Clubhouse. What I'm curious about is, and let this kind of be the first question, the first salvo—we're dialoguing here. What are things that we, when we do church online, and the average church—generalize here, of course—what are we missing? The goal is with our church online services to engage with people and either build relationships that funnel them into the physical service or to a digital small group or something like that. Either way, the majority of churches out there are looking at our services as really the front door to something. But oftentimes we don't know who's watching. People are watching in isolation, in anonymity, and we're trying to engage there. And so I'm just curious, if you're looking at this church service programming, if you're looking at maybe some of the interfaces of Facebook or YouTube or even Church Online Platform, what are a couple of things quickly that it's like, "If churches would do this, if churches would take care of this," as you're doing the secret shopper, as you're advising churches, what are the common themes that seem to pop up? That, hey, these are just some things that we need to fine-tune on.

Sure, yeah, I'll throw out some ideas. I also was going to say, kind of echo what you said at the beginning, that I didn't want this to be a one-way conversation. I would love to hear what others are doing. I see Tyler and Antoine and others on here that I know are doing some great stuff. I would love to hear what's happening around the world. And as you know, this is a global ministry, so I'm excited to learn as well. I'm still a student as well as a leader and practitioner. But I was working with a church this past weekend. I was at Gingersburgh Church in Ohio doing an in-person secret shopper. And I always do dinner with whoever brought me in Saturday night. And so I had dinner with the teaching pastor and the guest services director and the communications director. And we were talking over dinner, and I asked them if they knew some of the analytics and some of the metrics of where they're reaching people. They are doing a good job with church online on Saturday night. They're streaming their Saturday night service, and then they do in person on Sunday. And that was Saturday night. And then I visited the church Sunday morning. But Saturday night over dinner, I said, "Do you know where people are watching from?" And so Gingersburgh Church is in Tipp City, Ohio, which is very close to Dayton, Ohio, where I flew into. And also close to that is a city named Troy, Ohio. And so he said, "Our top three cities of people that watch our online broadcast are Tipp City, Dayton, and Troy." I said, "Well, that's awesome." I said, "What I think is I think people are watching. They're enjoying it. They're close to you. And when this coronavirus goes away and more and more people get immunized and vaccinated and things get safer and things calm down and we get a little bit back to where we feel safe and healthy and things are in a better situation," I said, "I think you'll see some people come out." And I asked him about how they were growing online, and he said, "We're pretty steady. We've been for several months now just the exact same tenants and metrics." And I said, "Well, that tells me that they like what they're seeing because you're not losing people. It's not decreasing. You have the same audience watching every week from your main three cities around the church campus, and they like what they're seeing. And they're—" I said, "And I think when it's safe and when the time is right, they'll come in person. They'll show up in person because we talk a lot about, you know, this whole hybrid concept, and you've caught it, you've coined the term 'physical and digital.' But there's—I said, you know, it's one thing if you have somebody watching from Tokyo or the Philippines or Florida. You know, they're not going to show up at your church next week. But if your top three demographic are the three cities that surround your church and it's staying holding steady, there's a good chance those people are going to show up one day in person. And that's where first impressions and guest services kicks in and things that I work with churches on to help them feel ready for that.

But I came home Sunday. I flew home Sunday afternoon. Sunday night I started watching church online. I caught up. I watched the Elevation Church and saw what I had missed from that morning since I wasn't watching in the morning like I typically do. And then I watched actually a church in Charlotte. I see Antoine on here. I watched Antoine's church. And I started looking at even a small church just doing some great things creatively. And they had, you know, a welcome video with host, and, you know, this one thing. And as Jeff, you and I have talked about it, it's one thing to just turn on your camera in the back of the room when the service starts and hit record and cut it off when the service ends. It's another thing, as I talked about at Steve Fox Church Online Summit, to have a bookending approach where you have something at the beginning and you have something in, or as I call it, a pre and a post. But to have a pre-show where you're hearing from hosts and they're telling you what's going on and welcoming you from around the world and giving you some tidbits about the church and some announcements and things like that. And then this church also in Charlotte that I was watching, Antoine's church, had a post-show, like an after party on Zoom. And so that to me is things that make it feel a little bit more like a real church online as opposed to a fly on the wall watching a recording of a service happening in person. If that makes sense.

Yeah, to make it more engaging, to provide information and content that's exclusive to that online broadcast where it's not we're shoehorning in, but you're actually providing a voice of somebody who's speaking direct, staring down that camera, talking only to those people online. Especially in this COVID season where we are just literally today where there's like sixty percent of our people have not yet returned to the physical building, to still engage in dialogue with them, to the camera, to encourage them even in their home environments or wherever they're watching. I love that example of like the three surrounding cities. They want to come back. They're just not ready to yet. And if we're ignoring them, if we're not dialoguing with them, if we're not engaging with them digitally, we run the risk of losing them. So that's some awesome tips right there.

What else do you have? Let me say this, audience. If you've got questions or thoughts, let's go ahead and have you do this. Raise your hand, use the little icon there within Clubhouse. I'll bring you up to the speaker level. But while you're thinking about that and doing that, Greg, man, one more.

Tip, what do you got? What's something an easy win? Yeah, because I like you, Jeff, and you took me to eat Cuban food in Miami. Oh totally, I'm gonna hook you up. Here's a tip that happened recently when I was consulting with a church, and I shared this today. I'm doing this week-long first impressions challenge in my Facebook group. It's just a free online course I'm teaching Monday through Friday. If you want, you can catch it tomorrow at 2 PM Eastern. It's just a free teaching I'm doing, but I talked about this today.

A lot of churches, when you're in person and especially online—so like for me, Jeff, when I watch church online at home and I watch all the time and I'm watching in several churches—I'm watching Mike Todd at Transformation Church, I'm watching Steven Furtick at Elevation Church, I'm watching Jud Wilhite at Central Christian. There's all kinds of churches I keep my eye on, including smaller churches. But when I watch a church, a great way for me to connect with you is a digital connection card or a texting solution. And I have partnered with Text in Church and use them personally, but I love Tyler Smith and the guys at Text in Church and what they're doing and a way to partner together.

But what I realized recently when I was visiting this church to consult with was they said, "If you're new here, we want to connect with you. Text the word new to," and then they gave a number. So I open up my texting app—my messages, is it messages? Yeah, messages. Open up my text and I typed in the word new, and then I clicked the place at the top where you put your number in, and I looked up at the screen to see what the number was, and it had already gone off the screen.

And these same people were complaining to me, "Nobody fills out, nobody does the texting. We're paying for texting service, but nobody's using it." And I said, "Well, I can tell you why right now, because it went off the screen in a flash."

So if I'm broadcasting church online and I want to connect with people and I want to do a digital connection card like you can do with Text in Church or other solutions, whatever that may be—and the reason texting is good for me, Jeff, is when I watch at home, I'm not on my laptop where I can type in an actual connection card. I'm watching on my TV. I have a giant TV in my den. I'm using Roku and I'm using the YouTube app. So I'm watching church online on YouTube, and the only thing I have near me—because I keep this, this is another talk I've talked about before about being present and setting boundaries—but I keep my laptop in my office so I'm not in my home office. So I'm sitting on my couch and all I have with me is my phone.

So if you want to connect with me and many others while we're watching online on our television, you've got to have a texting solution where you say, "Hey, if you're new today, we want to connect with you. We'd love to even send you a digital gift," which I'm a big fan of, whether it be a DoorDash gift card or a Starbucks gift card or make a donation to a local charity in somebody's name. There's all kinds of digital gifts that you can do.

But like I said today, it all starts with gathering at the first impressions challenge. I was teaching on this. It all starts with gathering their data, their information, and that comes to a connection card. And so if you don't have a texting solution, you're gonna miss me while I'm sitting there just staring at my television with no computer nearby, so I'm just watching online.

And so when I watch each week and, you know, Chad from Elevation Church or whoever it may be says, "Hey, you know, if you're new today, text welcome or text new to 555678," and then leave that number up on the screen—is my tip of the day. Leave that number up on the screen. Allow me to get my phone out, type in the word new or welcome or I knew or whatever it may be, and then see the number, type it in, and hit send. And then that should send me back a digital connection card where you collect my name, number, and email.

Once you get all that, then you can interact with me and have a whole follow-up sequence, which I have partnered with Text in Church to do this. We call it the easy button. But where you have a texting workflow just like an email workflow, where there's a texting thing that's gonna shoot it out. And what's cool is when I visited churches as a secret shopper, I'll fill out their connection card digitally, and then I leave and I go back home and I'm going about my normal life, and on Saturday, every now and then I'll get a text from a church that I've consulted with before. It says, "Hey, don't miss tomorrow as we start our new series such and such. See you at such and such church." And I'm thinking, "Oh man, I miss those guys. That was a good trip."

But all that to say, what was happening, Jeff, was they didn't leave the number on the screen long enough. But at the same time, they were complaining to me or mourning to me that nobody was using the texting solution, nobody was filling it out. And I whipped my phone out, typed in the word new, and then looked up for the number, and I couldn't find it anywhere. It was gone in an instant.

And so just leave it up there as a lower third on the screen and allow people time to type it in. That's my tip of the day, for what it's worth.

Several solid things there. First off, utilizing a texting service where it's not tied into like Facebook or one specific platform, having it even outside of church online platform so if people are watching it on social media, like having a text service that crosses over all platforms and is not, you know, social media dependent, is a huge win. Arguably, that phone number is probably the most important slide or lower third of the entire service. Like, I don't want to take anything away from the gospel presentation that the lead pastor is probably going to have at some point, but aside from maybe those couple of minutes, getting people connected through that service to something else, gathering that information, allowing them to share with you, to engage in that space within the digital service, within a physical service—this is crucial. This is such a big step.

So taking that time, even repeatedly—I know specifically with the church that I serve at here in Miami, they utter that phone number and that information three, four, five times over the course of the service, whether it's the new here or whether it's the give now or whether it's the serve, join a group. You know, it's just part of the culture and in the DNA. So crucial—drip campaigns afterwards. Like, Greg, you said it very well there. Once you have gathered that information, have the ability to follow up with more constant information. Were you served well? Are there other things that we can do? How have you liked after two or three weeks? How have you liked the church? How can we improve? Start to allow that—the other people, the visitor—to dialogue with you and to converse about it. And you can do that very well via texting as well as even some of the other messaging platforms. So that's solid.

Well, I tell you what, I haven't gotten any questions yet. There's two things that come to mind. One church I forgot to mention that I'm watching a lot lately because I love what they're doing and their lead pastor is speaking at the fall first impressions conference—Alex Seeley and that's the Belonging Co in Nashville. I love what the Belonging Co is doing, and I was watching them online, and Alex was on the stage doing a welcome, greeting people, and as she was talking, like you said, behind her on the screen for the whole time was the number to text in. Text to give, text if you're new, text if you made a decision. Like, the whole time it was up on the screen over her head, behind her, as she was talking. And so I love what the Belonging Co is doing.

And then as you talked about, as that drip campaign goes on and gets more and more through, you know, I was looking at a free resource that Life Church put out with the Church Online Platform, and they had nine ways to follow up online. So if anybody wants to hear these in case you haven't seen this resource, you can find it through Shop. But here's nine ways to follow up online, and I want to talk about the ninth wave because it's what Jeff was alluding to, leading to with a drip campaign.

But it says: one, create an email workflow. Two, invite to a Facebook group. Three, invite to a new believer class or small group. Four, record a welcome video for new guests. Five, send a text message. Six, send a card in the mail. Seven, set up a phone call. I talked about that today at my first impressions challenge—the power of a phone call. Eight, schedule video meeting. And nine, this is cool—have coffee with the pastor. You know, this online can lead to in person.

And so if I'm like this church I was with this past weekend in Ohio that had the largest bit of their audience from the three cities surrounding the church, you could eventually in a texting relationship where you're doing a drip campaign and getting to know somebody more and more and more, that could lead to coffee with a pastor or coffee with a staff member. And so that's just food for thought.

Love that. And so I tell you what, like, I'm not familiar with that nine, but if you're listening on podcast, we'll put the link in the show notes. If you're here, you can't Google it, can't find it. We'll have that link at some point later on to distribute out.

Okay, and so let's do this. I seriously, we do want to dialogue here. If I mean, listen, I can ask great questions all day long and we'll continue to just fill up time, but I would much rather hear from somebody in the room. What are you guys thinking? What's the struggle point that you guys are feeling? Or even how do we do? What's working? Or what's working?

Yeah, let's dialogue through here. Perennial students here, learning up top. Would love to learn from somebody else in the room. Greg, let's get controversial here. Would love your take on this: pre-recorded exclusive content online versus streaming. What do you think works better and why?

That's a tricky question. That's a tricky question. I think what works better is live streaming. However, if you can't pull that off with excellence, pre-record.

So I was just watching a church Sunday night when I got back from Ohio, and they had pre-recorded the pre and post, and it looked excellent and it felt like it. And then I asked the pastor Monday, "Was that live or pre-recorded?" He said it was pre-recorded. I said, "It's what I thought, but it felt like it."

But you know, when I watch Elevation Church, they're showing what the temperature is in a country in the Philippines or in Brazil, you know, a country that's watching online, and they're showing the temperature there and a greeting in their language. So it's obviously very live and they're talking about stuff in real time. So that's very complicated and not everybody has that ability.

So if you can't pull it off in real time, then I would be all about doing as many takes as—and I told a pastor this week, I said, "Do take after take after take until you get a winning video of a pre-recorded welcome by the host where they are personable and relatable and genuine and authentic and smiling and welcoming."

And once you get that take, then package it and turn it into your pre-roll. But um, the other thing that I would mention is investing in the right equipment. I was watching a church online recently where it kept sputtering and kept skipping, and I thought they've got some internet bandwidth issues. They're struggling with their internet where they're streaming. They're streaming from their church building, but the internet is struggling to keep up. And so my wife and I were watching it together, and it was sputtering so much and it was skipping and going in and out so much that my wife said, "Please cut that off. It's driving me crazy," because just wasn't an enough investment in infrastructure and in support. It's kind of like a slow website. If you don't have the right hosting for your website, then your website struggles and it's slow, and people won't put up with that. Your website has got to be fast. So investing in the right equipment is good. Yeah, that's just the thought for what it's worth, because it just happened recently.

Yeah, I know with encoding and internet bandwidth, upload, download, there's lots of factors that can go into providing a good solution or even providing a stable solution that is able to withhold some of the internet outages and hiccups that may happen over any given service. So, you know, we can talk offline and I can point you in the direction towards that. But more than anything, I would—who do you, Greg? Who do you recommend? Kind of, I'll just open it up. Why not? Who do you recommend working with on some of those streaming solutions?

Well, I think we both know the same company that I'm gonna say, but our First Impressions Conference, and this is just a free endorsement that I'm just a big believer in, but we partner with Resi. Used to be Living as One. And the reason I went with them—one, they had reached out to me and we got connected. And but when I looked into them, I looked at who uses Resi, that was formerly known as Living as One. And we have friends that work there, and I know we know a lot of the same people. But Life Church, when they stream, they're using Resi. Elevation. Shirts. 12 Stone. New Spring. The Global Leadership Conference out of Willow Creek, when they're broadcasting to all of their satellite campuses for the Global Leadership Conference, it's coming from Resi. And so when I'm looking for reliability and a product that I can trust to broadcast around the world to multiple countries, our First Impressions Conference, it gives me great peace of mind to know that Elevation and Life Church and churches like that with such a huge following use Resi, including the Global Leadership Summit that has a lot on the line. And so we have been very happy with them. They have no downtime. They do a minute delay, and so there's no downtime, there's no skips, there's no pauses. Everything stays solid. So I actually told that pastor that I met with this week, I said, "I'm going to connect you with my friends at Resi because there's no downtime, there's no delay, there's no skipping, no sputtering, no buffering. It just works."

Yeah, I would wholly agree there. And the Resi, formerly Living as One guys, they're good friends. I want to tell one story for, and I did not want to make this a Resi commercial, but my favorite Resi, Living as One story—um, we were, I was working at a church contract helping their tech stuff, kind of doing some upgrades for them. It's a multi-site megachurch down here in South Florida. And we had just brought in Resi. Recently was relatively new at that particular church. It was Living as One at the time. And we were on a Sunday where we were serving out in the community, so we were not doing church services on the Sunday. Control room, as a matter of fact, was shut down. We were doing some upgrades. And so all the gear was offline intentionally this Sunday because there were no church services. We could afford to move some things around and clean up. And what happened was seven o'clock in the morning Eastern Standard Time, which I guess is like six a.m. where Resi, Living as One, is located in Dallas with their tech support. They notice that our encoders are offline when it shouldn't be. They're expecting them to be online. And so they shoot an email out to multiple people Sunday morning, seven a.m.: "Hey, we see your gear's offline when it shouldn't be. Can you get it online? We know your service is coming up, so do what you can because right now it's not working right." They sent another email like at seven forty-five. They sent another email at like eight fifteen, realizing, "Hey, the services typically come on at nine o'clock, and you're forty-five minutes out. Your encoder is not working well." Nobody's answering these emails because we're all not paying attention to anything service-related or email-related. We're going to go out and serve within the community. And this even gets to the point where they pick up the phone and they start calling people at eight fifteen in the morning, freaking out that no one's answering the phone and they're thirty minutes away from this service and none of the encoders are working like they're supposed to. And so they finally get to me. I'm like the third or fourth person they called. And I just start laughing. I'm like, "Thank you very much for caring so much about this church service that you've sent three emails and made four phone calls trying to make sure that the service would go off without a hitch. We're not worried about it today because we're out serving in the community." And it was this great laugh. But it's like, when you need support is Sunday morning. And whether it's Resi or whether it's others, make sure that you've got somebody that's going to answer the phone Sunday morning at nine o'clock Eastern because a lot of these solutions that are out there, they're not going to give you that support, or they're not even going to be forward-acting like we saw with Resi in the situation.

Go ahead, Greg. I'm sorry. I was to say I've experienced that personally as a campus pastor at a multi-site church at a video venue where we relied on streaming and video teaching. And when the internet provider for our city was not in the office on Sunday morning and we had issues, I had to get up there and preach live as the campus pastor because we had no video. So I'm very familiar with that. Get a company that's in the office on Sunday.

Amen to that. And it's never a good time when the campus pastor stands up to preach at a multi-site. I'm just telling you, as the production guy of multi-site, when that happens, the following Monday is not a good experience. It's just not a good thing.

Hey, um, so I hate to like call people out, but would love some insight here. What are some lessons that you guys are learning as you're looking at church online? What's the secret for what you guys are doing? How have you seen engagement work online? Feel free to raise that hand, come up, and let's dialogue through it. I'm running out of my questions that I was going to ask Greg here, so we'd love somebody to kind of fill in the gap, and we can keep talking.

Hey, Greg, let me ask this. I'm just trying to think things that I wrestle with as a digital pastor. Are announcements exclusive for online, or am I in my video taking the campus pastor announcements from broadcast campus and showing that online? What's a better approach? What do you think?

Can you say that one more time? What was the question?

Yeah, sorry. I think my internet was breaking up. Sorry. Um, campus announcements. The announcements in the church service broadcast—is it better to do something exclusive for the online environment, or can we get away with doing the broadcast campus pastor and showing those announcements?

Yeah, tricky question. You can get away with it, but it's better to have exclusive. So some of the large churches that I watch online, they cut away to the online post or their online campus pastor to do specifically geared to the online church. And they cut back into the service for music and preaching and things like that. You just have to be able to see a countdown clock, you know, live on the spot on the stage and stay in sync with each other. That you know, churches like Elevation and Life Church and others do so well because they've been doing it for a long time in the multi-site world. They were always on the clock as campus pastors. And so if you can, if you can have somebody on stage that's a host doing an announcement or a welcome and they're watching a clock, and then you have a campus pastor or host in front of the cameras off to the side or outside doing a welcome or announcements, and they're watching the clock, and everybody stays synced up, and then you go back live to the worship team for the next song, that's great. But yeah, you could get away with somebody in the room that's obviously a lot easier. And I know you're a video director like myself, but um, but if you can do something exclusive, anytime you can have people talking to, looking, you know, I talk about being known and seen. And I always mention the movie Avatar where they said, "I see you." To be able to talk straight to people watching online and engage with them is always going to be a win.

He's a friend of mine. I'll be seeing this week. Scarlett, represent. I, um, I love this. The idea, and I've had several churches talk to me about this: "Hey, Jeff, is it possible where I can see, as the like the pastor on stage, can I see the names of the people that are watching online? Can I see the chat room on a stage TV forward-facing where only I, the speaker or the host, can see it so that I can literally mention people by name? Where I can ask questions and then dialogue with them like in real time as if they're in the room?" You know, it's almost like if you've ever watched anything on Twitch, how a streamer is engaging with the people in the chat room and literally having like that level of conversation. I think that's this next level, this next opportunity that we have in the physical space to really engage with people that are watching digitally, to mention them by name, to talk with them, to have them ask questions in the chat room. Yes, chat hosts can engage and they do a great job, but oh my gosh, to have a teacher, to have a communicator say something and to mention them and bring them into the message or into a prayer time or announcement time, like I think that's a whole other level of engagement where physical environments are recognizing and speaking to a digital space.

I've even had pastors ask me, "Hey, Jeff, can I actually like see the people?" Like they want to do Zoom church, if only to be able to have a TV running Zoom somewhere up on the screen so they can see all the people with the webcams on. They want like that level of interactivity.

Absolutely beautiful. Hey, do you know anybody that is running those two clocks, like where the message is live and so campus pastor and then a digital pastor doing the announcements and it's all timed? I know like the Elevations and some of the larger churches do that. Have you seen smaller churches like get to that level of programming where the announcements are even timed and synced like almost to the second? Is that popular at like a small to medium-sized church? I'm just curious.

Well, two-fold answer. One, I haven't seen it. Two, but I don't doubt it's out there. I think that's why I look to Clubhouse and social media to find out what's going on out there. That's why I want to...

To hear from other people in here I see Tim and Tyler and people I recognize from social media. And I know Antoine's gotta end up, but I want to, uh, Tim's got something to say. I want, I want to hear from people because I'm sure it's out there. I'm not aware of it on a smaller scale, but I'm sure it's out there. And by the way, um, Jeff, you probably know this, but I posted it for the first time today on Facebook. But, um, me and my buddy Niels Smith created the Social Media Church Conference that's coming this summer. And, um, if you haven't checked it out yet, you're going to love this lineup of speakers. And we have people specifically speaking on Clubhouse and TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. But, um, there are speakers that are speaking about people that I follow on Clubhouse that I love. And it's Sean Cannell with YouTube and, um, Brady Shearer, and all these guys, and Nona Jones for Facebook. But check out socialmedia.church slash conference. But, you know, Niels and these guys, remember, DJ, the Social Media Church podcast has been around for a decade, and I've been on it a few times. But we just announced this week the new conference, the brand new virtual conference where you can learn from social media influencers and learn how to leverage tools like Clubhouse because this is such a cool meeting. But I don't want to speak anymore. I'll go quiet. I see we got Antoine and Tim. However you want to manage that, Jeff, we have, we have some questions. Do you know what? I can't see any hand raised on my screen. Oh, you can't see it? No, I guess it's because you started the room. Let's go ahead and raise them up and bring them up. Whoever gets their hand raised, uh, Greg, since I can't see it, just bring them up and I'll kind of navigate through some of that. Uh, so Antoine, thank you, sir, for jumping in, sir. I don't think I've met you yet, but it's awesome to have you on. Um, what questions do you have? What thoughts do you have here on this topic? You've asked several of them, but I think my question was, are building from where you are to where you're trying to go, and how do you master the middle? Uh, the equipment can be expensive. The infrastructure can be expensive. So what advice would you give a church who's getting into the digital space? Um, how do you gradually grow as opposed to being overwhelmed by, uh, so much that you could do but you have a limited budget? So that was what my question was being framed as.

Yeah, that's a great question, Greg. You wanna take a shot? Yeah, what's cool is Jeff, nobody knows this, but I'm actually Antoine is a church planter in Charlotte. And, um, you know, I live in Charlotte, but Antoine and I are about to team up. I'm going to be joining his church, Think Kingdom, as executive pastor. And, um, we're gonna get there. Uh, Antoine and I have already had some discussions, and I've been watching what they're doing online, and for a small church plant, you wouldn't believe how ambitious they are and how much they are doing that just blows my mind. So are there small and medium-sized churches out there that are doing, uh, tough things? Absolutely. Uh, but I would say, uh, the foundational piece of advice is you gotta start from somewhere. Start from where you are, and then be patient and have a long-term view. My goal that I've always told everybody in ministry is we are in this for the long haul. You got to think in terms of years. Just have a long-term view. This year we'll invest in this camera, and next year we'll get this camera, and then the next year we'll upgrade to this switcher. And then just think in terms of years and seasons. You always, it's something I'm writing about right now in my fifth book, thinking in terms of seasons. But we will get there eventually. We want to think in terms of seasons and years. But, uh, Antoine, you guys are crushing it. You're doing some great stuff. To be a church plant with a limited budget in a multi-ethnic context, so you guys are doing some amazing things. But, uh, just keep pressing forward is how I sign a lot of emails. Keep pressing on. But, um, you'll get there. We'll get there. That's that's beautiful, Greg Atkinson getting back in the game, joining on as executive pastor, executive director. That's that's awesome. Uh, excited to see Antoine, man. I'm excited about your church. There's a lot of, um, uh, it's I'm excited meeting any planter that's like gung-ho and not living life like a planter, but instead, you know, pedal to the metal doing everything they can. So even your heart asking this question about how to start, how to grow, um, you know, I would echo what Greg says, but I would also add this: experiment. Um, especially as a planter, you, it's funny. I just had lunch. I was running in last second. Uh, we're working with a church plant. I'm attending my family. We're attending a church plant, a Stadia church plant down here in Miami. And the guys, the church literally, they did their first pop-up service Easter Sunday. So everything's fresh, everything's new. And for planters like that, and it sounds like planters like you, this is a beautiful opportunity. You don't have the baggage of a legacy church, right? Yeah. And so you get to create the DNA. You get to create the voice. Like, you've got so much opportunity ahead. But because you don't have the experience of knowing how things are operating or how things are going to respond, it's really crucial to experiment. Try something for a short while. Did it work? Did it not work? Iterate and try again. Um, you know, maybe you're using a lesser quality camera or even a free solution as an experiment. Maybe you're contracting labor instead of hiring a person. You're doing things in short, simple ways that can you can see: is this getting us the result that we want, or are we needing something different? Are we even going to be the type of church that's going to blow up YouTube, or do we need to be a type of church that's doing something else? You're that's going to be writing and doing more blogging and doing more like Medium.com stuff. So experiment with the different ways as cheap as possible so that you can find out the rhythms and find out the ways that God's really going to use you and your church's giftedness. So love this question, sir. That that is excellent. What's the name of the church? Tell me because I want to watch it from afar.

Yeah, the name of the church is Stink Kingdom, based on, uh, Matthew 6:33, "Seek ye first the kingdom." Uh, so this season that we're in, um, I appreciate, uh, you have an exclusive. So Greg, let the cat out of the bag. So you should feel honored to know what we're what we have cooking up. But I think what we're what we're seeing because of the season that we're in is to be flexible, to be mobile, and to use it as an opportunity because it's what you said, Jeff. It's the DNA, and we're creating the DNA, and we're also building the plane as we fly it. So that's exciting and also nerve-wracking at the same time. But, um, just encouraging this season. That's awesome. I heard that Jeff said iterate, iterate, just little by little. We'll just keep building the plane as you fly it. But think in seasons. Think in terms of years. Yeah, yeah, iterations. This season we're going to improve this. This season, and then we'll focus on this. And, uh, you know, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. That's what I always tell churches when I come in. This title of this broadcast today was a secret shopper. When I do a secret shopper, I leave a church with a lot of items to work on, and I always say to prioritize and to just take it one at a time. Don't get overwhelmed with all my recommendations. Just do one at a time. So, uh, I'm gonna bring up Tim. Uh, Tim, go ahead and hit us with your question, man.

I was just gonna comment on you, Jeff. You asked about, um, any smaller churches doing the timing thing and then a live broadcast. Um, we, uh, we're we're kind of like a medium church, I guess. We're about, we prior to COVID, we were around three hundred people. Okay. And, uh, online we were running we were running quite a few there for a while. But that's because we were doing some good stuff with Google ads, and then they changed everything and it tanked on us. But so, but what we were doing was, um, if the campus pastor had like a two-minute section on Planning Center, you know, planning out the service and everything, then I would come in on like Saturday night and record a video or whenever I could get to it, basically, that would be that two-minute time frame. And then, um, we used a live stream switcher, which, um, the software, and it could have changed now because, um, we don't really use it now because we're not doing live anymore. We're doing, uh, pre-recorded since COVID started. But with Live Stream Studio, we were able to just cut away and put up the video that's pre-recorded during that time. And then, um, when the campus pastor would get done speaking, we could set our end point and switch back over to the service live. It may be like a little minute delay or something like that. That's awesome. But yeah, hey, Greg, let me let me ask this question. Did the content vary? Like, why would you do it at something exclusive for online? Was the announcement content different? Was it that you wanted to be more relational? Um, like, what what was the win for your church? By the way, three hundred is not a medium-sized church. That's a pretty big church, bro. Uh, but talk to me. Give me why. What was the win for you in doing something separate?

Yeah, so we didn't want it to be just a stream. Um, and you know, we would say I would get up and record this video, and I would say, "Hey, you're here today. Join the chat. Say hello. Tell us where you're watching from. Don't just sit there and watch this thing, but engage. You know, you're participating with us. Um, I mean, we want to get to know you. This is about a community. It's not about just a video that you're going to sit and watch." Um, I, I mean, I did this every week for, I could almost do the whole spiel, you know, because I did it for so long. But so it was that, you know, the worst thing that was in our mind of a campus pastor coming out on stage and someone watching online, and they say, "Hey, Abby, and campus, good morning." And if it was a seven o'clock service, then they're tuned out also. Abington is not relevant to people online. Um, and then if he said anything like, "Grab the card in front of you and let us know you're here," like, none of that made any sense to online people. So we just wanted to specifically engage the people online. And, uh, now that we're doing pre-recorded with COVID, and we also had an opportunity to be picked up by our local TV, so we've been doing, uh, eleven o'clock on Sunday. Um, when football was canceled, we were on like the main NBC affiliate. Wow. Now we're on CW, so it's it's not quite as big of an audience. Um, so so we pre-record, and now me and another guy kind of just do a little banter back and forth, and we we say, you know, go to our hub. That's where you can connect. Um, we've tried the text messaging thing, but we're kind of like an older, uh, retirement center type people, and we definitely have an older crowd, and not everybody texts. So we haven't seen a lot of good luck with texting yet. Um, but it's definitely something we're going to keep pushing on and do a little better. And I really like what you said, Greg, about keeping the number up long enough that that could probably play into what we're doing. So that's one takeaway I'm leaving with today.

Yep. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, guys, and I have to run. I wish I could stay longer, but it's basketball night, so I got to go play in the rec league. Get awesome. Don't don't break anything, Tim. Uh, be safe. Um, thanks, guys. Put me in a basketball league. I I would kill somebody, and before I would even kill myself. So that that's not a good thing at this point. Nice to talk to you, guys. Thank you. Good morning. Talk to you, Tim. Uh, Jeff, Dan, Dan was...

Next had a hand up. Uh, Dan, let's hear from you, man.

Hey, y'all, thanks for doing this. First time listener, first time caller, glad to be here. So we are a legacy church with a ton of baggage, 200 people, South Alabama, United Methodist. Um, half of our congregation is over 70.

But that's that's a good thing too. So we are going to set aside about 50 grand for audio visual streaming upgrades. Um, we're already streaming and we're doing pretty well for our size and compared to our peers. Um, but we're not where we need to be. Uh, my question is, how do so we've raised money to replace a roof, we've raised money to repair a parking lot, but when it comes to raising money for the future, for more digital stuff, we're not sure what do we call the campaign? How do we sell it? How do we pitch it to people who can't quite see the benefit until it's fully there?

Yeah, that's that's a great question. Greg, let me let me tackle this one first and and I'll throw it to you. Uh, this one hits close to home for me. Um, Dan, my, uh, it's it's funny. I've I've had this conversation with Alabama pastors before, so like it's uh, this seems to be a common theme with Alabama small Alabama legacy churches. Um, and so here's my answer. My mom is 73 years old. She lives down here in in Miami with us. Um, not with us with us, but like nearby where we live. And she right now probably teaches two online small groups. Um, is very active in in church line within her church, and she's actually considering starting a third online small group as a matter of fact. She's probably listening to this broadcast right now in the Facebook world or something like that, wherever she's connecting into it. Um, she at 73 has caught the vision of digital. Now I'm a digital guy, so yeah, my mom probably is wanting to connect with me at some level in in, and so that may have been the thing to get her in. But when I had that first conversation with my mom at 70, when she was probably in her mid-60s, was retired at this point in life, and I wanted mom to teach a small group, I I didn't talk to my mom from a technological standpoint. Um, I mean, I'm adopted, true story, and so like genetics, it's not like this technological thing. The calling that I have came from my family, although they're they're pretty technologically savvy. What I pitched to my mom was, hey, I, mom, you're a former business professional. You're a vice president, uh, of uh, at one point of a Fortune 500 company. Um, your business professional down here in South Florida. I've got three girls in their 20s. Um, one studying to be a lawyer, one studying to be a doctor, and one is working on her MBA. Would you want to teach a Bible study with them? Would you maybe want to pass on? Would you maybe want to disciple them, pass on some of the legacy that you have to these girls? And my mom, not looking at it from a technological standpoint, but from a mentoring, from a discipleship, from a spiritual standpoint, jumped all over it.

Side note, these three girls lived in three different states, two different time zones, spread across the country. So the only way my mom could do this was in context of doing it online through platforms like Zoom. And so she she would tell me later on, Jeff, these small groups that she leads online, Jeff, it's like having the daughter that I never actually had because I'm an only child and I'm not a girl. So she was able to connect. She was able to share. She was able to extend her ministry life in in the church that she attends. If the church is a little more younger, a lot more younger, and so at her at 66, 67, 68, she thought she was done with ministry. She was hanging it up. And she got to this place though by through digital, through doing online small groups in ministry, where she was able to extend that ministry on. As a matter of fact, she started bringing in other women who were at that same 60, 70, retired post life, you know, work life, and brought them in and start started training them to do small groups and Bible studies. And she's multiplied out where now there's multiple groups meeting, and some are being trained by the the girls, some are being trained by the women she's trained at all. And so we're seeing multiplication happen here digitally because somebody in their 60s stepped up.

And I think that is the opportunity. As I've talked with that generation about some of the things we Stadia we're doing digitally, like they're very strong supporters. They're all in. But I'm not winning them over talking about tech. It's not tech for tech's sake. It's tech is means to the end of of discipleship, of disciple making, of spiritual development. And so I wouldn't make the the pitch about my about technology. I would make the pitch about growing and developing people spiritually, not only today but in the future. Kind of shift it that way. Go ahead, Greg.

Yeah, if I was to say I have a personal story as well about my mom, um, which which gets right to the heart of why this ministry matters and communicates to elders, deacons, uh, boards, anybody you have to talk to to get approval for stuff. But my mom has breast cancer. She's been battling breast cancer for two years. And and through chemotherapy, her immune system got shot up where she had no immune system. So she couldn't be around anybody. So a year before COVID, in 2019, she couldn't go to church and had to watch online and couldn't be around anybody because her immune system was compromised. And she was going through chemo and surgery and radiation. And then the year 2020 during COVID, she still had a weakened immune system, even though chemo was mostly behind her. Every now and then she has to take a chemo pill, but the chemotherapy was behind her. But she couldn't be around anybody. And so uh, her, she had a small group from her church. Um, and she's a part of a church plant. My mom's young at heart. This is the second church plant she's been a part of uh in in my since I left uh for college uh over 20 something years ago. But um, she's a part of a young church plant, and they're the old people in the church. And they actually had their small group come out on Christmas and Christmas do Christmas caroling outside. My mom heard singing and went outside, and there was a small group of young adults all with masks on standing outside caroling, turning the online, the virtual to in person. Um, and my mom stood outside on the porch with her mask on crying listening to Christmas caroling. Um, but this church plant, which I'm so proud of, took shepherding and caring for those in their congregation seriously, even the so-called old ones. And so my mom still uh to this day is not able to go back in person yet just because of a compromised immune system. Uh, but she's faithful and watches every week online. And so you know, whether it be a TV broadcast like my mom has watched Charles Stanley for years at First Baptist Atlanta or church online, you just never know who you're reaching and why they're watching through that means. Uh, you know, church online doesn't have to be just for cool young 20-somethings. My mom is in her late 60s watching church online from home just because she can't get out. And so I would like, uh, you want to always start with the wine, but I would I would I would piggyback on what Jeff was saying about getting to the heart of ministry and why we do what we do.

So good, really good right there. Hey, and we we we got to talk mom stories, Greg. This is awesome. I love this. I've never heard that story from you. That's that's beautiful. You're reaching different. Here's the challenge, and I don't think we, the church, I don't think we've realized this yet. Uh, we reach a different type of person in digital space than we do physically. You know, Greg's talking about his mom. For for whatever reasons, isn't coming into the space. Yes, there is overlap. Um, there are people that may be quote unquote lazy, uh, may not want to come into the building, um, and would rather process it online. Uh, but the the reality is is that maybe what we're doing digitally is okay, even at the level of discipleship as physically. My parents, you know, like I said earlier, they're they're on the older side of the equation. The church that they attend is very young, kind of even in by COVID standards, it's packed out. It's a very kind of crowded space. So even pre-COVID, they weren't going to the physical building regularly, but they were involved in multiple small groups. They serve in multiple capacities within the community, uh, doing things for homeless ministry, um, care closets, providing for it for the needy, even leading out in some of these areas. And so there's opportunities to look at, hey, doing ministry digitally is okay. Engaging digitally is not better or worse than physically. It's just different. And if we, the church, could look at it that way and not judge physical environments or digital environments, one being better than the other, all of a sudden we're going to open up this opportunity because now digitally, if we really did digital ministry the way that we can, if we looked at it not as a front door to physical but as an opportunity to reach a different type of person, the churches that are doing that right now are seeing phenomenal results by reaching a digital person digitally and then leading them into discipleship. We can have all sorts of conversations on that later, but I'm excited to see Jeffrey up here. Jeffrey's got a question or a thought. So what what are you thinking? What what are you, what's your thoughts on this uh idea here, engaging and talking with people online?

I think it's uh necessary. I mean, I think you're at a spot now where where people are more, I think they're more apt to jump on to a church's Facebook Live more before they are to actually walk into a building. And so not to put any pressure on anybody with that kind of statement, I think a lot of us, a lot of times we we kind of fall trap and we look at places like Elevation or we look at places um, you know, like a Transformation Church and we look at other other different places that are that are you know, somewhat killing it online, and all we're seeing is nothing but the highlight reel. And we keep forgetting that there's behind the scenes footage. We forget that they had to start somewhere. And so I would say, you know, don't don't don't count out the small beginnings. You know, I go to a very large church. Um, I'm not the pastor. I'm not on staff, just a volunteer. Uh, I volunteer on the production side of things, so uh, run broadcast uh for most Sundays. And uh, through that, you know, pre-COVID, we had a decent online um audience, and it wasn't very big, and we really weren't devoting a lot of time to it. But now in the, you know, when COVID hit in the middle of COVID, hopefully we're getting out of COVID, we have really focused a lot of attention to that online campus and almost made it just as as a priority as an actual campus that we have. Um, and we've seen like I believe Easter, there was we saw, I think it was like, oh man, I can't remember, I think it was like 10 million plus that watched our Easter, our Easter service. Um, and so just you know, kind of coming from from from the opposite side of it of a large church, didn't have a huge online presence till COVID hit, now we have a very large online presence. So so don't count it out if you're you know, if you're in that of just like really trying to focus in on you know, building up your community right there, then going to online, do it, build up something, you know, get get something going, but don't don't don't feel like that you have to do both things at once and don't feel like you have to be an expert at both things at once. Build up one, then start building the other up. I think somebody was talking a while ago about you know, this year we're going to buy this and then we'll budget into next year for this and the budget into next year for that. You know, that's that I I think that's a great idea. So I would just say, you know, don't look at these other places and think I've got to be them right now. You got to remember, you know, them right now is years in the making from where from where.

They are from where, from where they came from to where they are right now. So I would just say, you know, don't despise small beginnings and kill it when whatever you're doing, so that whenever you get ready to jump online, you've got it. And you know, places like this can help you learn how to hone those crafts and those skills and what you need to do.

Thank you. Yeah, that's exactly what I was telling Antoine. I actually used that phrase. We were eating the other night and I said, "Don't despise the small beginnings." And that's what I was saying about buying equipment year by year. You got to start somewhere.

Absolutely. Jeff, I've got to run here. It's after six and I've got a dinner with a pastor and then we're gonna go meet with a guy that's struggling and minister to him. This is the first thing I've done in person in a long time because with COVID being in a purely virtual world for the last year. But now I'm fully vaccinated, so I've got to go meet with this pastor and then go pray with a guy that's struggling. First in-person ministry in a while. But thanks for setting this up, man, and thanks for making it happen.

Beautiful. Yeah, hey, thanks for joining us, Greg. Appreciate the time that we got. Audience, we do this every Thursday at five o'clock Eastern. We've got guests come in. Check out the church.digital slash clubhouse for future conversations. We'll get them posted up there. But Greg, man, I know First Impressions Conference is a big deal. You talked about Social Media Conference as well for Social Media Church. So check out Google, Greg Atkinson. First Impressions Conference. Greg, what's the website in passing before you take off?

Yeah, the first, uh, firstimpressionsconference.com is our website. And we are less than a month away from our spring conference, May 13th and 14th. Gonna be hearing from some amazing communicators and speakers and guest services directors and pastors like Kyle Idleman at Southeast Christian and Matt Frye and Ritz Villadas in New York and Chad Vitz at Zoe LA. Chad uses social media very, very well and is big on TikTok and Instagram. So we're going to be hearing from some amazing leaders at our spring conference, May 13th and 14th. Firstimpressionsconference.com. And then you can just Google Social Media Church Conference. That'll be coming in the summer in July. You got plenty of time for that.

Awesome. So we're going to wrap right here. Greg, thanks for the time. Check out those resources and conferences. Check out Greg in general. Phenomenal resource there, just even him as a person. But we're going to close here for Greg, for Antoine, looking forward to great things coming out of that church there. This is Jeff within everybody else who came up. Thank you, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting. Thanks for joining us here at the pod, and we'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good day. Thanks, everybody.