BETA28: Four Reasons Your Church Can Thrive, Phygitally

All right, hey, welcome to the Beta Show. I'm Jeff at the Church Digital Podcast once again powered by Stadia Church Planning. Want to give a shout out—we're doing this live out through the interwebs to everybody watching on Facebook, YouTube, the Facebook groups. A couple people are going to be watching on Twitch and Periscope. We've made fun a little bit of Periscope in the past, but for those of you out there watching and engaging with this live, awesome. Hey, thanks for that.

Here with the Beta Show, we answer your digital ministry questions. I'm literally giving you my cell phone number right now on the air: 484-324-8724. That's 484-324-8724. Literally my cell phone number is number four the church. So text those ministry questions to 484-324-8724, and we will address them on future episodes here of the Beta Show.

Here with episode 28, we're digging in on this topic: four reasons small churches can thrive digitally. There's a misnomer out there that a small church has no business doing digital ministry. Oftentimes, I think this is propagated by the small church pastors themselves who may be locked into one model or not understanding that really their strengths of a small church play very well into digital ministry.

Now, you may be saying, "What's a small church?" I don't know that I'm necessarily going to put numbers on that, because for me, a small church actually might be a medium or a large size church to another. But at the end of the day, I think that all churches, including small churches, including church plants—we at Stadia, we work a lot with church plants and helping them understand a lot of the same strategy, a lot of the same mindsets coming into it. As a matter of fact, in this season, in COVID season—maybe we're coming out of COVID season, let's admit that. In the early part of this COVID season, I had a digital pastor, good friend of mine, at let's call it a giga church. Let's say that pre-COVID was a 20,000 person church in physical attendance. So this is a very large church. A digital pastor. This is what he said to me. He says, "Jeff, I really wish I was at a small church right now where I was actually able to do tangible ministry, relational ministry."

The giga church, the large churches, oftentimes they don't have the ability to connect in with that relational component. They work very hard because of the size, because of the building size, because of all this. Really, the intimacy of that relationship is lost in physical, and believe it or not, in digital space. And this is where I think that really small churches thrive. Small churches are set up to succeed digitally in many ways better than the larger churches. But here's the deal: it takes a different mindset. You need to be thinking differently than maybe the large churches are, and then maybe even how you're thinking today.

So really, let's focus here as we're going through this conversation. Let's focus on how do we have that different mindset? What do we need to do to overcome maybe some of the challenges that we have to be able to have that different mindset?

Here you go. Four reasons that small churches can thrive digitally.

Here's number one: Excuse number one—we are so small, our online church service production looks horrible. I've heard that excuse time and time again from a small church. Believe me, I'm at a church plant. I attend Reality Church down here in Miami. Carlos Lolette's a Stadia church planner. I think we've done three, maybe just two pop-up services. Like, it's very new. And so yeah, we can really look at the production that we're doing in our services and realize, "Man, our church is so small, we're so new. Like, to actually do the production, it looks horrible compared to Life Church or any many other churches that are out there." It's very easy to stop at that excuse.

The new mindset, the new reality, is that honestly, relationships are so much stronger than your weekend service content. And once again, this is the strength of a small church. The strength of a small church isn't the quality of production. It's not the quality of the worship leader. Honestly, sir, I apologize, lead pastor. It's not even the quality of your sermon. The strength of a small church is the relationships that you can have, the friendships, the intimacy that happens when you're in small. And so when we look at doing digital church, let's focus more on that component, on that piece.

When we look at digital and understanding how a small church can do things, do digital ministry, man, those relationships are so much stronger than the content is. And so pour into those relationships. We're going to build on that here in a little bit. But let's look at number two.

Here, excuse number two: You've probably heard a church say this before—we don't have any budget. It's funny. I've heard small churches say that. I've heard large churches say that. I've heard giga churches say it. Everybody says nobody ever has any budget. But I guess budget is kind of contextual depending on what size church you are. Budget can be defined differently. But in a small church, I guarantee they don't have, you know, "Let's go get a bunch of 4K cameras. Hey, let's get a new two-M switcher. Hey, let's really start to, you know, let's get a quality broadcast encoder and do that." Oftentimes, small churches don't have those resources to really make that weekend production pop.

Well, I guess the new mindset would be: How much budget do you need to buy Zoom? Like, not stock and Zoom, although that probably would have been a good idea a couple years ago. But when it comes down to it, Zoom's like 15 bucks a month for an account. And now I can build relationships. I can dialogue with people. I can meet with people. I can disciple people in digital space. And because I'm doing it digitally, the reach is much farther than I would normally get. The engagement—people wanting to stick around longer—because digital is easier to have that conversation with the intimacy where you're able to process through deeper things quicker.

Man, there's a bunch of strengths in digital that small churches, if we could utilize this—if we could utilize Zoom, not just as a—man, we. I had this conversation recently with a pastor, and they said, "Yeah, we do digital small groups just for, you know, the people that can't do physical. Like, we'd rather them go physical, but digital is just kind of like the catch-all for the people who aren't done wearing masks yet and stuff like that."

That may be true. But if that's your mindset, small church, there's a whole crowd of people. There's a whole ministry potential. There's a mission field you're missing by just having it be the second thought. Instead, man, how do we? How can we really tap into people digitally? How can we really be creative digitally with how we're doing small groups?

I've told stories, and I've talked about my mom a lot here with the Beta Show and the podcast. And my mom's leading a small group right now. I love my mom. My mom's 70 years old. Yeah, I did stutter through that. That wasn't like bad audio. So she's not the typical person that you would think would be leading an online small group. And my mom came up with this actually. She leads, I think, two or three at this point. But my mom, she has one of her small groups. I think they meet on Monday night. It's women her age, so it's women in the 60s and 70s meeting with daughters that are displaced around the country. So it's women meeting with their daughters weekly, talking about the Bible.

So basically, the only time—the majority of the time—these women, my mom's age, get together with people, with their daughters, with their family who live on the other side of the country is when they get together to talk about the Bible. Like, this is a phenomenal concept that brings families together, that strengthens family discipleship, um, even strengthening the bonds of family because now you're definitely talking to your daughter on that upcoming Monday small group. It's incredible idea. My mom came up with it entirely on her own. And when she told me the idea, I'm like, "That's the greatest thing I've ever heard, Mom. That's awesome." And she's had immense success with that.

And so rather than looking at small groups and Zoom as a limitation, look at it as a strength. What can you do creatively with Zoom that you can't do in the physical space? My mom's idea of getting mothers and daughters together would never work in physical space if only because these people live in opposite time zones. So great idea there. Love you, Mom. Hi, Mom. My mom could actually be watching or listening to this at some point, so I just want to publicly say that.

Number three: Excuse number three—I don't understand digital. Okay, no, I'm not saying that I, Jeff, I think I have a grasp on it. Not always learning, though. Let's do this. Pastor saying this: "I don't understand digital. I'm really a brick and mortar guy. I don't know how to lead this."

Frankly, well, first off, if you are thinking that, um, say it, own it, because there's nothing wrong with that, pastor. A lot of times at a small church, you're trained into one model, and that's great. Now, coming out of this COVID season, you're definitely seeing multimodal, different models pop up. And so now maybe it's time for your church to expand into a second model. And just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that your church shouldn't do it, which would get you to this new mindset.

Number three: Ask for volunteers. Ask for help. Disciple those people. Create them as leaders. And then let them lead, pastor. It is completely okay that you don't understand the digital implications of what's happening, and I want to release that from you. What I would suggest, though, is that you find someone in your church or people within your church, and you let them lead out a little bit here. Um, and let them listen. Care for them spiritually. Disciple them to the place where you trust them spiritually. And then you need to trust them to the place technologically that they can take the church. Trust but verify. Test. Experiment. Do some stuff. Build it slowly. But that is a great process to go through to take your church beyond where even you can lead it yourself.

Listen, and this is going to be funny and maybe a little bit out of context. God actually gives us a digital strategy in Proverbs. I don't know if you're ready for this. Proverbs 3:5 and 6: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path."

Listen, uh, like, okay, completely out of context. Don't send the hate mail for this. I probably deserve hate mail for other things, not for this. Ultimately, pastor, if we're trusting God and we're leaning not on our own understanding here, like, let others lead in, maybe even follow God in how He's leading those people experiencing God. Look and see where God is moving around you and follow suit. Join Him in that journey. And so even as you're not falling on your own and depending more on others and on God, and you're acknowledging Him, if you're doing those three things, then He's going to direct your path, which really gets down to the beauty of this.

Now, that's completely out of context, and some pastors out there is opening up his email, so I'm not going to die on this hill. But it really, there's an opportunity to expand the capacity of your church by letting others lead in to that.

All right, look at this. Remember this, pastor. If there's one thing you're taking away from this number three: You can control or you can multiply, but you really can't do both. As you're wanting to do the multiplication, what we're talking about here is doing digital ministry that's separate from the physical ministry.

And you're looking at doing different things. There comes to this place where maybe I really shouldn't necessarily be controlling this thing tightly as much as releasing it and letting, giving others an opportunity to lead. Trust but verify. Disciple to the place where you trust spiritually. These are necessary things, but releasing is going to give you a multiplication opportunity.

All right, hey, let's look at this. Number four. Excuse number four: I don't want to do digital until I can staff it. I have heard this quite a bit, and the answer to this, honestly, is very simple. You've already got all the resources you need. New mindset number four: you've got all the resources you need.

It was funny just recently I was on a stream with my good friends over at Resi. I was doing a webinar with them, and one of the questions they asked was, what's the strengths, weaknesses? What's the greatest strength, what's the greatest weakness in the church today? And to me it was simple. Strength? Yeah, church, we have a phenomenal number of resources. We have a phenomenal number of people that attend that are involved. You know, call them consumers, call them butts and seats, call them religious hangers on. The number of people, yes, maybe it's shrunk in this COVID season, but it is still a phenomenal large number of people. And if we can move them from a consumer, get them to the place where they're on mission, where they're activated, um, guess what? We really don't need the staff. I mean, honestly, when you're looking at like global movements and historical movements, paying a staff person actually like limits the growth of what's possible. Paying for that accountability, often wise, kills the accountability of what could be without that, because it goes from a heart thing to, "Man, I just want that paycheck." And so this idea of "I don't want to do it till I can staff it," honestly, there's no reason not to do it right now. And you may not even need that staff. That may be a separate conversation.

Look, ultimately, here, church, small church, don't copy the big church model of online. Don't look at the Life Churches and say, "I want to do it exactly like they do it." There's lessons to learn. I love my friends at Life Church, Saddleback, Crossroads. You can drop whatever church you want to in there, and there's lessons to learn from them. But I guarantee a small church is going to be successful by doing it different than what some of the big boys are doing with it.

Remember this: relationships win over content. Use the relationships to make more relationships. Content can get you to relationships. It's a hard path. Relationships on relationships will get you more relationships quicker. A relationship to relationship is going to be far more effective than content getting you to that relationship.

I had somebody tell me this just recently. I was doing a thing. Kevin Marcico, US Director of the Timothy Initiative, said this: "Content does not change values. Values don't actually change until people actually do something." And so as we're looking at our church services, as you're creating this content on the weekend, big churches especially, small churches, you're not actually seeing it happen until we're driving people to do something, to have those conversations. So really focus in on that. In small church, utilizing your relationships, your connections that you have with people, you're going to be able to get people to do something at a much quicker, honestly easier route, I would predict, than what some of the giga churches are doing.

Small church, ultimately, get your people on mission digitally, physically and digitally. Let that be the game. Let that be the goal of what we're trying to do there with the small church.

Hey, great. So that was what, like, I don't know, sixteen minutes? Four reasons why your church, why your small church needs to be digital, and pushing this idea of a different mindset along the way. Once again, we would love to hear from you. In future, 484-324-8724. And if this struck a nerve, if you're like, "Hey, I want to learn more about this," Stadia has digital learning communities that are specifically set up to help churches like yours, your big church or your small church, understand how to do this, how to take people and move them and create them into a movement physically and digitally. You can see it here on the back of the TV if you're watching the video: stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital. Stadia churchplanting.org digital. Check that out. Get connected into a learning community and let us help you take some of these next steps digitally.

Hey, for everybody, you know, it's funny as I love this. Hey, thanks for the chat that's coming in at the last minute, literally as I'm landing the plane. Sorry, my bad. I gotta go. But this is Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning. Hey, we'll be back with a live beta show again next Thursday, but until then, check out the podcast, check out at the church dot digital, find me on social media, and find out what Stadia is doing to help churches like yours figure out how to master this idea of digital to the point of creating, making disciple-making movements. Powerful stuff. The stadiachurchplanting.org digital. That's it, everybody. I'm done. Y'all have a good day.