BETA35: How Do We Staff This Phygital Church Thing?

All right, hey, welcome to the Beta Show. This is episode 35. Uh, my name is Jeff with the Church Digital Podcast. Uh, once again, as always, powered by Stadia Church Planting. Uh, love working with Stadia. They got a lot of cool things coming here in third quarter of '21, and we're going to talk about some of that stuff here very soon. But here with the Beta Show, we answer your digital ministry questions. So things that you want to talk about, things that you want the answer to, go ahead and text that into the Beta Show. Here, text them 484-324-8724. I'm literally giving you, as I drop it, uh, my cell phone number: 484-324-8724. By the way, if you can't tell, like, packing tape holding the cracked screen together. Mark Zuckerberg is going to be, uh, wants Facebook to be the company of the metaverse. So DJ Soto out there is enthralled with that idea. I love that. We'll be talking more about that at some point, I'm sure, here with this episode, Beta 35.

Here's what we're talking about: How do we staff this whole digital church thing? We're going to get more into that. If you're listening live right now, go ahead and comment in whatever social media platform you're in. We'll be engaging with that throughout the show, bringing up some of the comments and things here within the Beta Show. If you're watching on demand after we're broadcasting this live, hey, we broadcast every Thursday, noon Eastern. So we'd love to have you be a part of it. We're already seeing viewers and comments coming in already. That's great. You can watch the show Thursday, noon Eastern at facebook.com/thechurchdigital as well as YouTube.com/thechurchdigital. So check out that and the other resources that are there.

Uh, next week, here's what we're talking about: the essential ecclesiology of a digital-only church. You've been talking about what the church is and you can do it digitally, and people are like, "Oh, Jeff, how do we actually do this thing?" And so I'm going to propose an idea for you. Now, these types of things and these types of conversations, especially with digital-only churches, that does seem crazy. And yeah, I do talk crazy a lot. One of the things that I love about Stadia is they talk crazy with me. We're doing a Stadia innovation meetup Tuesday, August 17th, um, on talking digital church, multimodal church, insourcing, and leadership development. Go ahead and go to stadiachurchplanting.org/innovation for more information on this. It's a free virtual meetup. Excited about what's happening there: Stadia Church Planting Innovation.

All right, well, let's do this. Let's go and get into Beta 35: How do we staff this whole digital church thing? Even coming out of this mid-post-COVID season, some churches are still trying to find that right person to be the digital pastor for that church. Now, the typical church, if you're looking for a digital pastor, this would be my recommendation: look for a relational type of person, someone who's more of a networker, someone who's a connector, uh, someone who's comfortable speaking in small venues. Tech-savvy is good. Tech-savant? You don't need an expert. You don't need somebody who can code. The typical average church does not need to go overboard when it comes to some of those things. You really need somebody who can build relationships in digital space and who's comfortable with the technological advances of Facebook, of YouTube, of things like that. At least have that ground level and go from there.

So churches, you know, I speak with several already this week that are still trying to find that type of person and wanting to hire that type of person. And, uh, recently had a church tell me, "Yeah, we're really waiting to really get started in our digital ministry until we can find that person. We don't want to do anything until we can get that person on staff." And one of the challenges that I would say at this point, post-COVID 2021, if you're not doing anything digital until you hire that person, that's not the right answer. Uh, especially seeing as I don't know, mid-post-COVID, in this season, definitely post-COVID in this season. I say that a good friend of mine just, you know, texted me earlier today in a group and said that he had COVID. So I don't know that we're really past this thing. But anyway, we can pretend post-COVID, you know, where we are in 2021. Like, the people are still not coming physically. I think the most that I'm hearing is 50, 60 percent, maybe in a good situation 70 percent of the people pre-COVID are coming back to the building. And so there's still a large number of people that are engaging in digital space. Just because you cannot afford or you cannot find someone does not mean that you should wait on moving forward in digital ministry.

And this is really what we're going to talk about here: How are some options? What can you do with maybe some of the resources that you have? Cost-effective solutions we've got to realize are out there, even if you don't have that full-time salary, that FTE, the full-time employee that you can throw towards digital. So we've got some options that I want to walk through here that should be nice and clean.

Option number one: Hire that full-time digital pastor for all the digital responsibilities. Uh, and so you're gonna hire that guy or that gal, that person, and that person is gonna be responsible for doing your digital church. Uh, they are going to carry all the responsibilities, all the knowledge of that moving forward. And there's pros and there's cons to this idea.

Pro: Okay, it's a very clear responsibility in there. Digital pastor, you're responsible for the digital service. You're responsible for the volunteers. You're responsible for even things like age-graded. Like, it comes out of that digital pastor role because, I mean, literally in his job title there is the word "digital."

The con of that, the downside of that, is that the digital responsibilities often isolated to that person. It's interesting. January 2020, I would have told you that the digital pastor was the right answer. And I think I was actually on record. If you want to go back and listen to old podcasts about how digital pastor shepherding the entire church in digital space, not just caring about the online campus per se. I, January 2020, that was the answer. COVID changed everything. Uh, what are we doing for kids digitally? What are we doing for students? How are we discipling parents in that space to better care for their children so that they can be the disciple makers even within their house? COVID opened up a lot more urgency and a lot more opportunities to not just care for select people that aren't covered by the physical campus, but really engaging with the entirety of the church in digital space.

Which really brings us to number two here: Crown a digital champion to think digital first, uh, help, uh, hold staff accountable for digital ministry. So rather than having the idea of a digital pastor where that is the only thing that that person does, this is really tugging on the thread of, okay, I'm going to have someone who's responsible for thinking digital first, but really the execution of digital is spread across the entire staff, recognizing that the con, the negative of a digital pastor, is it's all kind of siloed and isolated in that person. What if we got the kids director? What if we got the students director? What if we got the small groups director? What if we got, um, you know, the person responsible for giving? What if, what if all of us? What if our church was thinking digital, ideally digital first, but in this world where we're so much emphasis going back to physical, what if we actually remembered, hey, digital's a thing too? And by the way, 30 to 50 percent of our people pre-COVID have not made it back to the building, so they're still engaging in that digital space.

So sometimes you need a champion. And almost I would suggest at this point it's better to have a champion than it is a pastor because you get more than one person focusing on that responsibility. And, and to be honest, the idea of this for me came from Church Home. Mark Mindy, uh, Mark Venti is the director of ministries, executive director of ministry, something of ministries, one of the uh, senior leaders there at Church Home, which is arguably one of the most innovative churches in America. If you've not checked out churchhome.org, uh, if you're looking for more information on that. But like, Pastor Chat, like they've reorged and are completely in a digital structure. They have closed physical campuses in this COVID season to put more emphasis on digital. But there's no, there's no one person who's responsible for digital at Church Home. The one thing that Mark Venti has told me just time and time again is it's everybody's responsibility to do digital. And he is just the champion in his ministry position to really get out there and say, "We need to do this. We need to do this. We need to do this. We should be doing this. We need to be thinking digitally. Are you thinking digitally? How does this physical thing that we're doing, how does that affect digital? Can, are there ways that that can work together?" Like, he is the guy for the org. When they were transitioning, that was championing that idea over and over again of digital, trying to get more people to think digital. And that's awesome. You've got an executive-level person with Mark Venti who's doing this, and I love his heart for doing that. And Church Home has seen success as a result of it.

For some of you, though, and even in my life, there were times where, you know, as that high-level leader that had lots of responsibilities, but also one of my responsibilities was championing digital, I came to realize I couldn't do it. I could not champion physical and digital at the same time. I had too many. Jeff, you got to have these priorities in my life, just at a personal level. And so there were seasons in my ministry life where I was championing digital where I went up to an admin to, uh, to actually was a project manager, uh, that I was working with, and I said, "Your number one priority in ministry and working here is to ask the question: How does this affect digital?" And so any meeting that you're in, uh, any conversation that you're having, any coffee, any lunch, anything, any of the stuff that you're involved in, ask the question, "How is this affecting digital?" And literally it was to a, uh, to an admin, to a project manager, a highly qualified individual but not a decision maker. And so by asking, not at the decision maker, I'm not asking her, this person, to make the decisions. I'm asking her to make sure the conversations being had and whoever needs to make that decision makes that decision. She's basically the coach standing from afar saying, "Yo, you forgot about this. How do you want to handle that situation?" She's the accountability. She's like the good angel on the shoulder saying, "Don't forget about digital. Don't forget about digital." And for a season, she did that job very well.

And it's interesting. In other situations, I've actually seen, hey, let's, let's, you know, increase your paycheck. Let's, let's give you a two-thousand-dollar raise. Let's give you something because we're adding "digital champion" to your title. Thank you for even caring about this and championing this and helping our church, who's very driven to be thinking physical first, helping us think digital first. And so even in this position where I'm supposed to be the digital champion but can't be because I'm not in those meetings and I'm not on those, but this project management, this person was so, maybe there's even situations in your ministry where there's someone that's on your staff, yeah, a high-level person being...

A digital champion is awesome. That's going to help you know, ram those decisions through and get it done. Maybe there's a low-level person that you're inviting into it, somebody that's involved but not the decision maker, who can just be that constant reminder, that somebody that can ask that digital question when everyone else in the room is thinking physical.

Digital slowly becomes a part of everyone's responsibility. It's not siloed with one or two individuals, and this is the heart of it. If you really want to change the culture of the church towards being physical and digital working together, hiring that digital pastor—so now you've got, you know, one out of eight pastors, one out of twelve staff people that are thinking digital. That's not going to give you the magnitude that you want. The goal that's going to be effective and moving forward, the goal is not, "Hey, digital's covered because we got this guy. We wrote him a check. His paycheck, and now he's got to do all the work." The goal is, "How do we get that working across all fronts?"

Hey, Andrew Bolton. Andrew, man, I've been emailing you. We got to get together. Andrew just threw in a question here: "How does something avoid developing a chip on the shoulder, operating like everyone forgot about digital?"

Yeah, so if you've got that, you're just constantly reminding. And you know what, let me just say it this way. I think I'm reading the question right. It's okay if everybody forgets about digital, or at least acknowledge, "Hey, the systems that we have set up are in such a way that everyone forgets about it." And so you, as the champion, the new digital champion, you are the reminder. And it's not, you know, the annoyance. It's more of, "Hey, this can be better. How can we do this?"

Just recently, a couple days ago, I was talking with a church about digital next steps. Okay, we've got the physical, we've got the digital church service. And they're, you know, they're having a disconnect trying to get people watching church in isolation. So they're having a hard time getting people to go. For what their next step was, was join a Zoom meeting with a pastor. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's like huge steps. You got to kind of step that thing through."

And what was interesting as I was talking with this lead pastor about some of those baby steps, those next steps digitally, how to build those relationships, he immediately connected over and said, "Why don't we do that in physical space too? Because physically we're having disconnects. So maybe we need to do some of those baby steps." And that's what the digital champion's doing. It's not, "Everybody forgets about digital. We need to champion digital. Yeah, digital! Although, you know, yay digital, it's also, 'How can we do digital to help physical? How can we do things better digitally in the physical space?'" Which is why you need that buy-in.

And it's awkward in the beginning because you're challenging people's preconceptions, their notions where they are. Everything is fine physically where we were February 2020 is awesome, and nothing needs to change. Everybody just needs to get their COVID shot and come in and worship with us, and we will even put February 2020 on our worship folders, printed worship folders, and we're just going to pretend like nothing happened in the past eighteen months. This is what the church wants to do. This is what your pastors want to do. And it's okay to be able to say, "It's not gonna work. We gotta, we gotta learn something. We gotta change. We gotta grow through that." And that conversation can be had nicely.

With that, Andrew, seriously, I gotta, I'll be emailing you. We gotta catch up on some things.

Option three here. Love this. Don't know what to do. Okay, so option one was like hire a guy full time. Number two was like get a champion, and that can be somebody that's already on pay, just a little more, you know, finances or stretch them a little bit by giving a couple different tasks. Option three: don't know what to do? Just hand it over to a volunteer. Because look, at the end of the day, version one is better than version none. Thank you very much, Gary Vee.

So if you are doing stuff in digital or you're not doing anything in digital and you're waiting for this miraculous guy to show up, but he hasn't showed up yet, or you're waiting to hire this perfect girl and you've just not met her, look, give it to somebody else. Just learn from it. Basically, it comes down to this: if you trust the volunteer spiritually, then trust what they want to do digitally. Create benchmarks and goals. Call an experiment. Run a test for a month. See what happens. Did it work? Evaluate and try again. Rather than just not doing anything, do something, and through that learning process, figure out if you really want to do this or not.

You know, tip here walking in on this: if you—it's as churches I would challenge you with this because I've actually seen this go sour a couple times in this COVID season. If you know what you want to do digitally—excuse me, let me say it this way. Not if, my fault. Know what you want to do digitally before you hire someone full time. There's been a couple situations where churches have—I mean, I've been part of the conversations before they hire. "Jeff, we really don't know what we want to do digitally. We're not sure what the plan is, what the strategy. We're going to hire somebody, and when we hire somebody, we're hoping they're going to help us develop the strategy." That sounds great in principle.

What I've seen a couple times in this COVID season is the churches then hire somebody, and that person is driven more towards micro locations. That person is driven more towards creating digital community, working extensively within those digital communities. And the church discovers, as the newly hired digital pastor starts pushing and championing that direction, the church discovers, "Hey, you know what, we're really not interested in that. We're really, really just looking for more of a broadcast and kind of engagement through the chat, that type of thing."

I've literally, I know of a couple digital pastors right now who were hired in 2021 who are already looking for another job because the church that they went into was that, who was saying things like, "Hey, yeah, come in. We'll figure it out." As the pastor was figuring it out, didn't it work out? So churches, know what you're getting into. Know what you're looking for. And even before you're hiring that person, or even as developing that champion, start to learn what you are, even working with the volunteer. Let that volunteer season be a training opportunity for you.

Speaking of that, in an unrelated conversation, if you are looking to hire somebody, I've got friends that are looking for jobs, so who are qualified, who can do the digital stuff. So hit me up on social media. Dear Fudge on all the social media networks, you guys know that, or obviously you can hit me up through the church digital.

Awesome. Hey, so this has been great. We're going to wrap up here. Beta 35: How do we staff this fidget church thing? And so hopefully this is enough to kind of scratch the surface and get you going on that.

Got a couple comments coming in from Tope here. "If you're in a place where the physical next steps are not clear, what do you do? You clarify them." I think there's an opportunity for physical and digital to work together, at least here in America. I could see that happening, Tope. I'm not sure you're the contextualization of where you guys are in Africa, what that technology readily looks like, but in America I'm seeing more and more where they were assuming people were taking massive steps physically and digitally. And a lot of what they were doing, even pre-COVID, isn't working anymore on those next steps. And so it's creating those next steps digitally to get going through that. I think that would be a great option for you.

So hey, we're going to wrap on Beta 35 right here: How do we staff this digital thing? By the way, Stadia is doing physical learning communities in the fall, helping churches like yours learn to thrive, grow, and multiply physically and digitally in hybrid environments. Let's figure out both. Let's figure out how they work together, and let's figure out how to create that disciple-making pathway, that engagement pathway that's going to pull people from isolation and your physical churches and your digital churches and get them connected into your church and into a disciple-making multiplication movement.

It's an exciting season. There's some great things that's happening out of Stadia, and I love the idea of these digital learning communities where we're walking with you. It's not just content. It's not just curriculum. Curriculum's awesome. The content's great. The speakers we got involved in this is great, but it's also a community where you're connected with other churches similar to yours that are asking the same questions, that are stuck on the same problems, and as iron sharpens iron, you guys are walking through it in real time.

So check out stadia churchplanting.org/digital for more information there. And for the rest of us, the rest of us like it's me and my guest bedroom slash office. So hey, I've been Jeff with the Church Digital and with Stadia Church Planning, of course. This has been awesome. We will see you next week here at the Beta Show. Y'all have a good day.