BETA36: My Church is Reverting Back to Physical-Only. HELP!?!

All right, welcome to the Beta Show. It's episode 36. I'm Jeff with the Church Digital Podcast once again. All of this is powered by Stadia Church Planting, and I'm excited to be here at the Beta Show. We answer your digital ministry questions live on air. Go ahead and text us your digital ministry questions: 484-324-8724. We will address them at a later point, and actually we'll talk about this. I have no idea what we're talking about in Beta 37.

So I need you out there to tell me the topic we need to hit here with Beta 36. We're going to be talking: hey, my church is reverting back to physical only. What do I do? Help. I'm getting a lot of these questions, and there's a lot that I want to speak into with this. We're going to get into that here in a little bit.

By the way, if you're watching live, go ahead and shoot us some comments. Go ahead and engage with us there within the social media, whatever your platform you're watching in—YouTube, Facebook, Twitter—there's different groups and things that we're showing this on Facebook as well. Engage with that. We'll be getting the chat, some of the comments here through the system. And also we're using Stream Yard as the platform, so go ahead and like, do whatever the approval thing is that you have to do to get this to work for Stream Yard so that we can see who it is that's talking with. If you're in Stream Yard and Facebook, if you're in Facebook, this will make sense. If you're listening to this on demand, realize that we do this show live every Thursday at noon Eastern, and you go to facebook.com/thechurchdigital or youtube.com/thechurchdigital for the best place to connect into that.

By the way, quick commercial: Stadia is doing an Innovation Meetup. I love these innovation meetups where we gather church leaders, people leaders from around the country as well as marketplace leaders coming in and speaking specifically on topics. And so the couple themes that we're working with for this innovation meetup is going to be the multi-modal church—why your church needs to be doing different models, different strategies to be effective towards that. We've got churches, church leaders we're bringing in that have been doing multi-modal approaches, and so we're going to be speaking to that. Also, in-sourcing leadership development—what does it look like to grow leaders from within instead of always having to bring in from the outside? So a couple key topics there. It's going to be Thursday—excuse me—August 17th. I think that's a Tuesday, August 17th, noon to 4 Eastern. Go and check out stadiachurchplanting.org/innovation for information on that.

Hey, like I said, next week's topic I don't have a clue. I've been speaking and working on some other things, and so I came back in through today—like my first day in the office this week—which is awesome and horrible both at the same time. And I just collectively have no clue what I'm talking about next week. So I really need you to give me a topic for next week. But for today, Beta 36: hey, my church is reverting back to physical only. What do I do? Help. Help me figure this thing out.

Well, first off, let me tell you that I can relate to this. I understand the challenge of how to be digital, how to be thinking digital when the rest of the people you're working with are physical. And so there's some things that I want to address here that, even at a psychological level, that's a hard thing to be in when you are thinking different than everyone else that you're with and you're fighting for the thing, but it constantly makes you feel like you're fighting against everybody else.

And so like, let me even just say up front with this: number one, digital. This is not your identity. You know, a lot of times—and listen, I'm even guilty of this—there is irony that I'm saying this. That fidget, when you see like a little TM on the lower third, trademark, Stadia literally owns the trademark for "fidget" in context of religious, in context of church services. So in some way, fidget is our identity, or at least we're helping to define that word. But fidget is not your identity.

And whether the strategy includes digital or digital, the end game for your church isn't the physical space, it isn't digital, it's not these games. The end game is that disciple-making peace. And so don't forget that. Take a step back and look at what your church is doing. Is it working? Is it helpful? Is it productive? Does it need digital in that? Where we are in 2021, it's possible now. I may get people on following me just because it's possible to not need digital. I think that's decreasing, less and less, and I think the pendulum is definitely shifting the other way. But the reality is that it's possible to make a disciple without utilizing these devices, without utilizing webcams and smartphones and everything else that's in between.

So realize that by even doing this, the fact that we are—if you're championing this idea, just because somebody says no to that idea does not mean that it's directed at you. Don't take this stuff personally. When you get people fighting against the direction that you're trying to push, when you get people that don't understand the direction that you're trying to push, you can't make your identity digital, of who you are. It's not healthy for you as an individual. Once again, I can literally attest to this because the majority of my church staff career I was fighting for things that the churches ultimately weren't interested in doing. And to say that the ideas were bad isn't true—they were great ideas. It just wasn't for that respective church.

Once again, remember here that digital, these are tools. This is not the goal. Just like a building is a tool, it's not the goal. The disciple-making is the goal. And so whatever method your church is using to get to that place of making those disciples, embrace that and use that. But recognize that maybe doing digital for this season, it's not this in-game perfect thing that you're expecting. Instead, it may look a little different. It may need to be a baby step, not the finish line.

What's interesting is a lot of churches in this COVID season—everybody had a hard right right around March 16, 2020 to figure out how to do this digital ministry thing. And it's a hard left it feels like now, post-COVID, trying to get back to normal. And so maybe there needs to be some baby steps that are in place to better understand that. But the battlefield for whether or not to be fidget is not, "Oh, well we have to be because it's 2021," or "We need to be more modern, and so that's why we have to use these tools, these smartphones. We have to engage in social media. We've got to be able to do these new things." I mean, yes, technology's advancing, culture is shifting, but it's more important what's more effective in making those disciples, what's more important in making disciple-makers. Where we can, what's more effective to create those disciple-makers that are coming through? God can move outside of digital or physical. These are just tools that allow God to connect with us through Scripture, that allow us to create a community where we can connect with and support one another.

Get this. Check it out: championing digital and physical from the second chair. So many of you, you are not the decision-maker in your church. Let's be realistic. You're not. You know, in my ministry career when I was a church staff guy, I was probably three or four rungs down the ladder. And so I never had the direct influence of a decision-maker to make a decision, but I had the ability to influence someone to influence someone to influence someone. And that's a long, slow process to try to convince somebody to try to convince somebody else to try to convince somebody else.

You probably have done something like this in either your ministry career or in the job workplace. The challenge, I think, is what's helpful for me was when I started not looking at convincing the guy directly above me, but when I stepped back and said, "Hey, what's the overall goal of the church? And how do I get what I want to align with what they are, rather than me trying to force my agenda and shove it up that ladder, wrong to the next letter, wrong to the next letter, wrong?" It was, "Hey, what's the goal of the church? What are we trying to do? And then how can I use digital to complement what's happening in that space?"

So I stepped back and it was like, "Hey, I want us to be a digital-only—okay, digital's not, you know, they're not looking at digital communities, a community that's worthy of a church. So what role does digital need to play? And how can I support it and get it in that place?"

You know, sometimes it's better to take that approach of what piece of the puzzle does digital need to play? If digital is a tool and it's shapeable and it's malleable, it's fluid, how do we need to adjust it to work?

It was funny just recently we're having a conversation with a church that was interested in going multi-site. And the lead pastor was very aggressive, wanting to go multi-site towards that, which is a, you know, it's a win. There's some challenges with multi-site even post-COVID, but there's still a win to be able to engage and be more relational within the community. But what was interesting was the digital person was very passionate about how the church needed to stop the multi-site plans that were already enacted and they were already rolling because they wanted to do digital first. Their understanding was that if the church went from a single location to digital and then from digital broke it down to go multi-site, that would have been a win. And I mean, it's a good strategy. It wasn't the strategy that would have worked for the church because the church was already moving towards multi-site. They already had locations. They already had campus pastors. They were already developing these leaders. It's almost like, yeah, that's a great strategy if y'all thought of it maybe six, twelve months earlier, but unfortunately you didn't. You've already got some of these things rolling. How can digital complement what's already happening in that space?

And so that's really the challenge: finding that role for what digital needs to be. Number four: find the role for what digital, for what fidget needs to be. Does it need to be stronger services? Does it need to be a stronger reach of your online services? Do you need digital to keep that 50 percent of people that are not yet in the building to keep them engaged? Do you need digital to be stronger equipping towards evangelism? Do you look at digital as a digital mission field and you want to empower people to go be digital missionaries, to go out? What role does digital need to play in 2021 for a church to say, "Hey, I want nothing to do with digital"? It's crazy. Even if, hey, I'm looking at social media as the front door, as the lobby, as the first impression that somebody's going to get from our church, and I want to engage in social media to at least pull people in towards the building, digital has some role. Your church at some level has to be fidget. They just may not be thinking to the full level of what you, as a church leader, a digital leader, a digital native, are thinking.

And so it really comes down to what is the role that can play? Now, it may not be where you want to be right now, and I understand that. I appreciate that. And I suggest you keep fighting. You keep finding ways. Maybe fighting's even too part of a word, but you keep progressing, trying different things. You don't give up. But you realize that Rome wasn't built in a day and that you're not going to conquer the hill that quickly. And as quickly as people pivoted towards digital...

And COVID season they are regressing back the other direction and that's okay. You've got lessons, you've got observations, you've got stories from the season. Keep telling them, keep building on them. And really, number five here: keep defining the digital. The digital, keep defining the experiment. Don't give up. Keep trying different things. Even if it's, hey, you know what, I'm going to take you six people over here and I'm gonna do something on the side on my own. Hey, you know what, yeah, I'm working 40 hours a week trying to do this. I, hey, you know what, but I'm gonna do this on the site. Hey, you know what, I've got I got three key volunteers. I'm gonna pull them in and I'm gonna ask them to champion this idea for me.

It was funny. I had a conversation actually. I'll give credit to this: Eric Geiger. I don't know Eric. He's a lead pastor at Mariners Church out in California. I used to be under him when he was executive pastor. Chris Fellows, remind me pre-COVID, he and I had a conversation and he said this. I asked him the question: hey, Eric, you're—and Eric's not a digitally comfortable guy. Like, he's more in that physical realm. And as a decision maker, you know, response again, I respect how he views digital and the decisions that he is to make for his church. But I asked him, hey, what would change your mind? Like, you know, facts, stories, data—like, what are the things that change your mind when it comes towards making a decision? And one of the things that he said was, Jeff, if there's a whole bunch of volunteers that are passionate about serving in this area—high-level volunteers, givers, donors—if people are excited about doing something that may, you know, give me an opportunity to relook and to reevaluate because there's something that's already happening. I'm not having to build something from scratch. I can see the movement. I can see the activity and I can learn from it.

So for many of you, thank you, Eric, for that insight. For many of you, I would even challenge you and say start something. Don't give up. Keep it on the downlow. Keep it like almost underground a little bit. Keep working through some of those ideas now because that's going to pay off down the road. That's going to give opportunities for you to learn more, to fine-tune. But as you're doing those experiments, don't do them by yourself. Bring in other high-level volunteers. Let them testify to what's happening and what they're seeing. Bring in other staff people, leaders. Like, make it bigger than you. Slowly boil the frog. Slowly towards this, but grow something more progressive to the place where, man, look, look at what we're doing. Look what we're seeing. Who else can we involve into this? Can we do something more with it?

You can't. It's so easy to try to boil the frog, you know, the old adage. If you boil the frog quickly, it's going to jump out. You're not going to get there. But if you boil the frog slowly, put it in cold water—this is a gross illustration for a live stream, sorry—but the part of it is, is it takes a while to change this. And I think so often, if I really were to look back and say, hey, what was the lesson of COVID for the church? That hard right in that hard left. Hard right pre-COVID, changing culture. Hard left coming out of, now into a post-COVID, people are wanting to go back. I don't think you changed culture. I think you had people doing what they did to keep doing the ministry they needed to. And changing culture is something that takes time. That's the lesson I feel like for today.

So if you're discouraged in this season, don't be discouraged. Keep fighting. Keep trying to change that culture. Keep championing ideas. Keep thinking outside of the box. Keep innovating. Keep working through this and know that there are people, uh, like myself, especially in the digital church community, there are people out there that want to help you on this road.

Hey, Stadia, we're doing digital learning communities where we're literally helping churches like yours work through it to thrive, grow, and multiply digitally. Here's an idea. This fall, we're starting more physical learning communities where we're gathering churches together to beat it up—iron sharpening iron—figuring out how to do this. We're connecting churches of similar status and type together so that they can work through this within learning communities. Not just digesting content. Content is free. You can listen to my streams all day long. But this is an opportunity to connect with people in a new way into dialogue. And so if you're wanting to connect with some churches that are, maybe asking some of these same questions and figuring out how to do it together, go to stadiachurchplanning.org slash digital—D-I-G-I-T-A-L—and get more information on learning communities that are starting up this fall.

Well, hey, guys, we're going to wrap here. Beta 36: my church is thinking about reverting. My church is reverting back to physical only. What do I do? Ultimately, you let them. But you don't give up. You keep championing. You keep finding ways. Keep leading from that second chair. You figure out what the role is that digital needs to play, and you experiment along the way.

So this is Jeff Hope. It's been a good one, and we'll see you next time here at the Beta Show. Y'all, good day.