BETA05: Small Steps Towards Effective Digital Strategy

Hey, and we are live here with the Beta Show, episode five. Here, Church Digital Podcast, Stadium Church Planning. Jeff Reed, of course, joining again. I've got a co-host, forever friend that feels like Raid the Armist once again. Ray, you want to say hi to everybody? And we cannot hear Raid the Armist. Can we try again? You disappeared on me, bro. Maybe it's me.

Oh man, this is incredibly awkward on live TV trying to figure out whose fault is it. Is it Jeff's or is it Ray's? We're digging into the audio. I can hear. Let's try this out. Can you hear me now? I can. Awesome. It took 45 seconds to get there, but we're still good for the two of you watching online. This is tech at its best. The awesome thing is we were, God bless him, we were totally talking for like 20 minutes before. No problem. All I did was click the little broadcast button, and all of a sudden the entire world comes to an end.

We feel you. You're paying church. I blame Tim Cook and all his new Macs. He's trying to get me to kick the computer.

Hey, the good people at Rezzy would not have had this problem, by the way. Sneak peek. Some really interesting things happening at Rezzy today. Living as one. You may want to go swing over, check out their website a little bit. Don't tell anybody, but something cool coming.

All right, hey, let's get going. I don't want to waste too much more time now that we're able to, like, technologically talk with each other. This is great. Hey, here with the Beta Show. We answer your questions. Digital church. If you've got questions in context of doing digital ministry or church ministry, feel free to text us those questions at 484-324-8724. If you literally speak a telephone alphabet, that is for the church. Text us those questions. Here with episode five, here we're going to talk about small steps towards effective digital strategy. Small steps towards effective digital strategy.

Here's the question texted in from one of you, one of the digital pastors, volunteers, whoever it's out there. Are there practical small improvements that will help move our digital church strategy forward? Heartfelt texts. There was more that was involved there, you know, talking about like operating at a minimal level, a heart of innovation coming from kind of a minimalistic approach. So love this. Are the practical small improvements that will help move our church forward in the digital strategy?

So when I have these conversations, and I have them all the time, by the way, if you're struggling with this, you're asking yourself this question, you are by far not alone. There's tens of thousands of churches right now that are asking the same question. But for me, it really comes down to kind of these three things. These are popular questions that Ray and I get. We'll talk about here a little bit. Popular church questions that we get often asked about this idea of digital ministry. Is it authentic? Can we afford it? And really, are we called to it? Is it authentic? Can we afford it? And are we called to it?

Ray, just coming as we're walking into this, what are you thinking here about these three questions?

You know, the big thing that everybody starts with for some reason is number two. Can we afford it? And that's always an interesting thing because tech tends to go cheaper. It doesn't typically get more expensive. Like it becomes more and more adapted to the user, and it goes lower and lower and lower. So for instance, you know, once upon a time Jeff and I were like the first people to get an iPhone, and then a couple years later our parents were knocking on our doors like, "Hey, tell me about this iPhone thing." Like they didn't want to be the early adopters, but then it got cheaper. They had those two-year contracts, you know, 200 dollar iPhone, and they were like, "Man, let's get this phone." You know, and so tech tends to trend cheaper. So the "Can we afford it?" question, it really just depends on the first question and the last question, which is, "Is it authentic to who you are? And are we as a church called to do it?" Like you're not called to reinvent the internet. You're not even called to reinvent church online platform. You're not called to reinvent a new app service. There's so many different things out there. Why not leverage the materials that are there? But only if it's truly who you are. Be authentic to what it is that God's calling you to be.

Love it. Love every second of that. So remember, we're trying to figure out small practical steps to help in digital strategy, and really I think it comes down to starting with just answering this question of, "Is it authentic?" Remember here, like we're not celebrating these big massive numbers of reach, the numbers that you get. It's very easy to get lost in that. But beyond even just that reach with these massive numbers, start to discover the names. Who are the people that are watching? And then move beyond just the names of the people that you're meeting. Tell me their story. Who are they? What are they looking for? What are they spiritually struggling with?

You see, the power of digital strategy is not really in this idea of reaching thousands and thousands of people. It really comes down to the power and the influence that we have over individuals. By the way, that's biblical. Like I don't want to get into it, open up your Bible, read John 6. Try to figure out how Jesus was not about reaching the masses but instead engaged and got down to that individual level. Go on the Church Digital. There's a blog or two about that. But definitely the heart here is being authentic with people, and through that, through those relationships, doing that ministry. And that's something honestly a lot of churches are missing today digitally.

So true. And be authentic to who you are. You know, we don't expect anybody to turn into a different church. One of the things that I appreciate about the church that I've been involved with is that we're not trying to be some other church online, even though there's lots of other churches that we're learning from. We have to ask ourselves, "Well, is this authentic to who we are? Our pastors shouldn't dress the part to look like another pastor. Or you know, we shouldn't change our music or even our presentation just because." It's really a question of, "Does this reflect Christ Fellowship online? Does this reflect our community? But also in a digital space, that's very important."

Yeah, and that really comes to the heart. We're going to get into that with number three. Are we called to this? Does it really mirror who we are as a church in our strategy? Which would be a big part of that. And how do you even change churches? How do you change that strategy? How do you talk to leadership about that?

For me, the churches that I've worked with and that I've done digital strategy with, honestly, the next question they ask, even before they get to "Are we called to it?" That's weird. Maybe the second question really should be, "Can we afford this?" Like, okay, hey, you know, Jeff, you want to write a check here?

Actually, I had a leader, somebody on leadership, tell me once, "Jeff, you're really good at spending other people's money." And there is a part of that with digital, right? Because you have this vision and you want to do things to reach people online. But really, kind of the first question to ask here with "Can we afford it?" is, if it's technology, chances are, if the heart of this, and I want to unpack this, if the heart of what we're doing is about technology, then we're probably not going to be able, ultimately, the church is probably not going to be able to afford this today. But if we make it about the relationship component, well, shoot, Facebook's free. It's easy when you don't make it about the bells and whistles. But when you make it about the relationships that we're making, right, Ray, what's resonating with you off of that?

Well, absolutely. You know, Facebook is free. YouTube is free. There's so many different platforms that are out there that are free that your services can exist on. But really, bigger than that, actually, your services can exist on. But the goal is to connect with people, right? Like what Jeff was alluding to earlier, your goal is to connect with people. It's not just the broadcast to the masses. And yes, it is difficult. Yes, it is hard. Yes, many people online prefer anonymity, and it's very difficult to get them to take that next step. However, that is the goal. Just like as a guy who led a physical campus, yes, we wanted people to move from the back row and just being, you know, a back row Baptist and not being known by the church. We wanted to move them into a small group so that they were known. Was that hard? Yes. Did it take time? Yes. And so you have to make sure and understand that you are on these platforms for the purpose of reaching people. They are free platforms, and so leverage them, not for the sake of just growing a broadcast, but for the sake of reaching people.

This is also why Jeff and I were talking about this earlier. Christians shouldn't be so concerned with living in echo chambers right now in terms of digital platforms, right? And Jeff, that's kind of popular right now, right? In terms of, "Man, I'm only going to surround myself with other people who are like me, who think like me online," right?

Yeah, I mean, there's this. We're in this weird season of life, 2020, where we're isolated and we're surrounded at the same time. Where social media just tends to wear on you, and there's so much conflict and pain in there. And it's very easy. I've had friends that are very strong in social media that's like, "Hey, I'm hanging it up. I'm taking a month off. I'm ignoring this." And sometimes getting that margin is healthy. I'll be honest, like I on Twitter, I have filters in place that block out a lot of topics that honestly I just don't want to get sucked into. And probably there's nothing wrong with that. But more to the place of, hey, let's utilize. Remember that these tools are tools, not just to communicate, to drive people to a location as a church. These are tools to engage with people in digital community, to meet people, to dialogue with people, whether they're circles of influence of people that you already know or people that you've never met before that you're going to meet through talking about these topics. There's an opportunity for us to really look at this as a digital missionary. We're not just promoting physical events, a kind of culture, this event-based evangelism. I believe we're kind of moving away from that model. But really, it's more driven towards using social media as a tool to engage with people, to dialogue with people, to meet people, build relationships in digital community. And this is a philosophical shift that if we can figure this out within the church, like this is a very cost-effective way, by far, to extend the circle of influence that any church or even any individual would have for the purpose of disciple making.

So Ray, what are you thinking off of that?

And every opportunity is an opportunity to engage an individual. So even if somebody leaves a negative comment on your video, or if somebody's there, you know, attempting to troll or whatever else, believe it or not, we've actually flipped a lot of those conversations. We've taken like people leaving negative reviews on us on Google or Yelp and leveraged them into gospel conversations and actually invited the person back to church and leveraged that as a way to restore a relationship. So every digital avenue is an opportunity to connect with somebody and to bring them the gospel. We can't be afraid of those things. And so don't be afraid of, like, quote unquote, "Hey, we're going to shut..."

Out the haters. No, instead, why not engage the community at large? Those are the people that God is calling you to reach. And hey, I've been taking my small group through Acts. The same Paul that got tossed in jail for preaching the gospel would witness to the jailer that was keeping him there. So if he can do that with a jailer, surely you and I can do that with a troll on the internet.

So yeah, honestly, they're—they're once again, if you go on the church.digital and search for this within the blogs, there are two conversations. There are two people right now that I think are doing this phenomenally. And so Patrick Holden up at Nouveau Church—I'll tag you in the video, Patrick—is so good at this because what he's doing is even he's planning a church in Ohio. He was in Michigan, he was in another state, and he and he would go into Facebook groups, into groups that were planted in Ohio or and where he wanted to plant his church, and he just start meeting with people within the Facebook group, dialoguing with them through the Facebook group. And the people that he liked, you know, start having a conversation with him on Facebook Messenger. I'll put the links in in the chat for this, but we did a podcast with a phenomenal conversation and all centered around this dude's just relationally meeting and connecting with people digitally. And and through those, he's building his core team to the point that he's got fifty plus people that are now part of the core team of his church before he even physically moved into the city that he was willing to plant his church in.

Yeah, and ultimately, Patrick's a great example of how number two, it's really a question of how you're willing to invest there because Patrick's church hasn't launched a physical location yet. If you were to ask them what their budget looks like, it's probably not what you would expect in terms of a massive amount because they're a church plant. They can't do those kinds of things. But he's leveraging every resource that he has, even though it may be little, but he's doing it with excellence and he's doing it for the sake of engaging people in the digital community.

That is so true. Yeah, and talk, talk about budgets. Tyler Sansom over at First Capital Christian—oh man, that that's not a shot, but Tyler Sansom with what he's doing through his church, anywhere budgets don't exist. It's a very blue-collar church, and as a result of it, Tyler's probably one of the best in the country at this point of realizing, hey, it's it's not about the technology. It's it's about the individuals. It's about the relationships. And he's got this disciple-making vehicle where he's creating these disciple makers and unleashing them in physical and digital space. Like Tyler's literally, as as him as an individual, he's engaging with people by playing Hamilton show tunes on YouTube, and through that process building relationships with people around the world, funneling them into a digital church. And he's encouraging others to utilize social media in in the same way.

Once again, this doesn't have to be free or it just doesn't have to cost money. You can do this stuff free. It's time. And if you're not full-time, if you're part-time, if you're you know a volunteer, however it scales out, there are ways to do this stuff at a very minimal cost. It just comes down to you investing in the lives of others.

Well, you nailed it right there. Exactly. Before we get to the third question, is one of my favorite TED Talks that many of you familiar with is good, fast, and cheap. You can have two out of three. You can't have all three. So if you're gonna have good and cheap, guess what? It can't be fast. You have to make sure and plan it out. And something that I'm not very good at—in fact, uh, my one of my leaders, uh, Ben Stapley, kind of took us through this, you know, creative kind of exercise to find out what kind of innovator we are. And I can be a bit reckless sometimes. I like things rushed, and I want to rush towards innovation. Guess what? If you want it to be less expensive and if you want to be quality, but you don't get the money, then that makes that means that you have to make sure it can take time, and you have to emphasize on making sure that you're doing things well.

Yep. Love, love me some Ben Stapley. He's right. Yeah, maybe you're a little reckless. If you're a little reckless, I'm a train wreck waiting, waiting to happen. I just want to call that out. That's that's so good.

Number three here: Are we called to do this? This really is is the question that I hear from a lot of churches. The third largest question: Are we called to do this thing? And so and it's experiences that I had. We actually had Eric Geiger on the podcast maybe a year ago, and I asked him this question like, hey, you're a lead pastor. You have an opinion. How do I change your opinion? And and Eric's response back was, as lead pastor of Mariners Church out in California, one of the questions he asked back is, are there other people that feel the way that you do? Are there people that want to serve that have a passionate about serving in this area? And my decision is preventing them from fulfilling what God's called them to do?

So the question that I would ask for a lot of staff that are wanting to explore more of this digital space is, are there volunteers that want to get into that area or they want to that want to grow? They want to explore it? That maybe leadership needs to understand, hey, there's an opportunity to do something different, and maybe we should shift here. So are there lay people passionate about serving and helping? By the way, get some of them to cast vision as well. Have some of those conversations. Start to build this thing up organically. That's the beauty of this relational thing. You don't need a bunch of system resources. It can all be done organically with just a little bit of time and influence that you probably already have.

That's right. The other thing is, and and I want to uh reference um, you guys should check out Craig Rochelle's leadership podcast. The episode that just came out this week is about leading up. Um, let me encourage you because Craig talked about this from perspective of when he was understaffed at a church. You have to number one honor your leaders. You have to honor your leaders. If they're not ready to go in a particular direction, don't shove them into it. Number two, you have to make sure that whatever it is that you're looking to do digitally plays into the mission and the vision of the church. This goes back to the number one question: don't be inauthentic. It all has to come together. Your leadership and you need to be so aligned in terms of how online and how your physical are relating, which is why we talk about physical so much. It should be the same mission, the same vision. And just like you know we've referenced this a whole bunch, Jeff Kerry, new Hoffman said, nobody should out-local the local church. Before you're thinking about, man, but we're going to reach the masses around the world with online, that's wonderful. What about your community? So in my case, the question, hey man, we got connection cards coming in from Africa and from this place, and that's cool, but what about Miami-Dade County? Because if we didn't reach Miami-Dade this week, we missed. And so that's something that we have to be concerned about. And you, that's something that leadership needs to hear because all they're thinking of is dollar signs many times. And sometimes if you're an innovator like myself, sometimes all you're talking about is, man, apps and this and this, and you're just thinking of building the future. But you've got to talk about how it all fits into the mission and vision of reaching your community because that's what your pastors and leaders are thinking of too.

By the way, a digital disciple-making process, one that operates physically and digitally towards creating a disciple maker, is an incredible way to reach and influence a hyper-local area like your town or like your city. Um, nobody has time for disciple making. Nobody has time for these things. Do it online. Make it more convenient for them to go through those processes, to have that understanding, and allow them to grow spiritually. So phenomenal opportunity. Experience, regardless of where you are, to be relational. Doesn't cost money. Uh, it takes time and work with who you have. Don't don't brag about the hundreds of people that are watching a service. Celebrate the individuals that you're building relationships through the front door of the service. And really, really start to change the way your church is operating by celebrating all the wins that you're getting through these relational approach that you're taking through online.

So hey, very quickly as we're wrapping up here, any closing thoughts?

Uh, no, just go uh reach your community, but do it together with your team. You know, don't don't just go rogue like that's not the win either, right? Uh, talk to you, talk to your pastors, talk to your leadership, become aligned uh first. Go listen to that Craig Rochelle episode that I told you about and learn how to lead up as you go through this. And then you can start to think through, okay, so maybe it's not about the big budgets. Maybe we don't need to start a completely online campus next year. But how can we be authentic to who we are and at the same time reach people online? Go for it.

Yeah, we really don't script these things. I i just want to say for the record, so we hit two or three resources today that that we'll put—I'll go back and I'll put them into the the comment sections and everywhere—just you guys have them. The two podcasts and we'll hit this Rochelle thing, so you'll find it in there soon.

Awesome resources. Hey, Ray, as always, it's it's great to hang out with you. Hey, church, beta in this stuff. Experiment with it, you know? Even here, talking about being relational, it's maybe take a couple people and give them the opportunity to explore, to experiment, to build relationships. I give them some some leeway just to to do it. See what happens. Staff person, if you're like Jeff, I don't have time—two hours a week, three hours a week. Figure something else out. Start to give some of your other responsibilities to volunteer so you can go in a different direction. There's opportunities to explore at a much higher level here to do something different.

So I have been called three times in this broadcast. Somebody is desperately trying to get in touch with me. So we're gonna wrap right here, and I'm gonna figure out who's been blowing up my phone.

For Ray, this is Jeff at the Church Digital. Stadium Church, planning it's awesome hanging out with here with you on beta, and we'll see you next time here at the show. Y'all have a good day. Better audio, hopefully with a better overall experience. Thanks everybody.