EP010: Eric Geiger & Talking to Leadership About Church Online

Well hello there, welcome to the Church Digital podcast. My name is Jeff and I'm glad you're joining us again today. This is episode ten. This is a unique episode, a little different than maybe some of the ways we've done in the past. You see, back in episode nine, Raid the Armas, online pastor at Christ Fellowship, and myself were having a long conversation with lead pastor Eric Geiger from Mariner's Church out in California. And we were wrapping up the episode—it was a great episode—in context of talking about the church and maybe even omni-channel, omni-communications, omni-church, uniting church online and physical campuses online, in context of communication. Eric Geiger actually brought up a new term, at least a new term to me, honestly: a unified church, unified commerce, where it actually more tightly intertwines things, not just from a communications perspective, but actually into a much deeper, much more richer ministry mindset where the church, where the company physically interacts in physical space or virtual space the same way. Great concept, loved it. And so if you're interested more in that, check out episode nine. But at the end of the episode, I asked Eric Geiger a question. I thought I was landing the plane and I asked a simple question: when you're making a decision about something in context of church online, what insight do you take? As leaders underneath you, how can we communicate effectively to you, to show you, to convince you, to give you information towards what would lead you as a lead pastor to make a decision at this level? And honestly, I was surprised that thirty minutes later we were still talking about that one answer. And so rather than pile it into one episode, we broke it up into two. So what you're listening to here is Eric Geiger, lead pastor for Mariner's Church in California, Raid the Armas, online pastor of Christ Fellowship in Miami, as well as myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, in a simple conversation: how to talk to your leadership about church online. Here you go.

How do you, as a lead pastor—Mariner's is huge, like in just the context of size, California, you've got a wide varying range of people that attend, different demographics. How do you make a decision for something like this? Like theologically I'm agreeing with this, I'm not agreeing with this. Once again, I don't want to put you on the spot for a decision in that direction, but more of what decisions? Because I realize the people that are listening to this are technical people that need to convince someone like you of what the way that they think. So coach me through here. How can we connect with you as a high-level leader to show you some of these things, to get you to understand?

That's a great question, man. All right, so you're saying that most people listening right now are guys and girls like you and Ray, and how do they have a combo with a senior pastor, executive pastor, to push the ball a little further down the battlefield?

Yes, sir. Okay, I mean, it all just depends on how compelled the leader is by data. But if the leader is compelled by data, the data that you have at your disposal is staggeringly compelling right now on a couple of things. The number of people who are watching services online—it is really going, it is really increasing, really high. I mean, we might be up like forty-five percent on any given weekend right now online compared to the previous year. That's—I mean, how do you not pay attention to that? And then it's like, okay, do you not want to—what are we gonna do with all these people? You know, they are there. They are watching. And these aren't people just hidden on the side, you know? I mean, oh, and these aren't people who are watching like on Tuesday night. These are people watching the livestream, which to me that's a different thing. Because if you're watching on Tuesday night, it might be my mom, no, she's already plugged in, which she does watch every week. She's plugged into another church. I don't feel any responsibility for her. I mean, I do as my mom, but not as some—she's already plugged into a church, right? But who watch live on Sunday morning or Saturday night? That's a different thing. I mean, are they present? Are they not plugged into a church? Are they plugged into our church? Who are these people? Eric, look at how many people watched last week during church, and then, you know, here's where they're from. Eric, check it out. They are from, you know, X percent are from like within a ten-mile radius. And I think that would get that would get attention big time. Where so one of the things that you've talked about needing—and you said the word, I don't remember if it's discipleship process or discipleship pathway—like, okay, who are these people? Morning attenders to live ones? Okay, there's some legitimacy in here. So they're not attending church somewhere else. Since majority churches are Sunday, so we need to try to do—do you feel accountability for those? I don't even always say that word right. Do you feel accountability for those just within the ten-mile, or do you define it as opportunities even outside of that ten-mile?

Yeah, that's a question, and I think a team's gotta wrestle with that. I don't feel—I feel a very specific burden for Orange County. For me, so there. But there are some churches that they're gonna have a broader perspective, you know, like Life Church, for example. They're gonna feel like—I mean, they have campuses all over, congregations all over. I'm gonna view the stats within Orange County differently than I'm gonna view the stats from somewhere outside of Orange County. We don't have any intention to expand outside of—we want to be for this county, you know, three point four million people or three point two million people that live here, half who don't have any connection to a church. That's really where we're talking and praying. So because of that, I would view those stats through that lens.

Yeah, Orange County is a very diverse area, right? Much like, you know, the context that we work together in here in Miami. Are you finding that a lot of folks are sharing and spreading what you guys are doing beyond the borders of Orange County? Because I imagine it's a very diverse community. From what, from a few times that I've been, you know, in the LA area or even close to it, or maybe I'm off, just looking at some of the demographics, but I see just tremendous potential for some of that content just getting out there simply because of the unique environment that you guys aren't.

So you're talking about like in Miami, you have someone who's from Colombia who listens to a sermon and they're sharing with like family back in Colombia, right?

Yeah, and so you're right. There's diversity here that way. So our vines like forty-four percent Asian, so you know, multiple different generations of that. But there's definitely relationships outside of this area, you know? So I don't know if we've tracked that sharing yet of, you know, who's sending a message or who's sharing a link. Are you? How are you tracking that now?

Right, we are, and we've been since Jeff's been here, because there have been a whole lot of different analytics that we've been able to pull, and even people just kind of interacting with us on a global scale. This last week we had a connection card in from Rwanda of somebody who wants to start a small group there. And so there's missional implications, there's all sorts of things that kind of happen there when that does happen as a result of people interacting with us in different environments. And then, you know, obviously people sharing content—they're sharing content. How are you tracking him? You've got sharing content like Facebook shares? Are we looking at—we take a look at Facebook shares. We can take a look and see how links kind of bounce around, and then of course we see when some of the different views come from. And then when they reach out to us, that's where we get a definite sense of, hey, how'd you hear about us? And how did this happen? And it spurs on a lot more of a detailed conversation. Sometimes it's family, and sometimes it's a friend, and sometimes it's, man, I Googled church, yeah, and your name popped up, and this is how I started interacting with your content. I don't live in a place where there's great theology or where there's great content popping up church-wise, and so I started interacting with you guys, and this is how I came about it. Rob, a small group leader—I'm sorry, Rob, a small group leader that Jeff helped bring up and disciple, and now he's underneath my care. He's leading an online group from the UK, but he actually found us because his company headquarters was here in Miami, down the street from our West Kendall campus, and took that back with him. So there's so many different ways that that comes in.

Yeah, that's cool. I mean, I would love to know you wrestling with the missiology. Like, I want the message shared, and then the ecclesiology—do I want to? Do I want to assume spiritual responsibility for people there or help those people get connected to a church right there?

Right, because we don't have a church there. I would not want to assume shepherd and responsibility there. But I wonder—but I want to, you know, I want the message out. I don't want to try to help them get connected to a church there, you know?

Yes, but I realized that everyone views that differently, so I'm not cracking on that way. I just am glad you have a strategy.

Yeah, and for us it's been a connection-first kind of a strategy to help them get connected locally. That's where Jake Randi, who's been on a past episode of the podcast, has been helpful. He's the online pastor over at Saddleback, where he looks at things through an online-to-offline kind of mode of trying to help people get into offline community relationships, whether that's connecting them to a local church or a local Christian community in their area, trying to help them find a place to get shepherded, not just purely keep them here online. But sometimes, to your point, and this is where the relationship begins, where that transition is on to, and how we can help them get connected in that community. That's kind of how we viewed the road for them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why you do a great job—when I've watched you, Ray, on CF Miami on the online thing, you know, getting the connection card—how many people a week fill that out? It averages maybe around six or seven right now, and so I don't want to—you know, it's funny because different churches' experiences out of like the quote-unquote thousands of years. If you get sometimes you'll get X amount of interactions, and for us those interactions become gold. They become valuable. In terms of helping them, take someone's filling that out online, they really are one kind of communication, yeah. They want to reach out to us in some kind of way, and for us we take that and we run with it as much as they'll allow us, which is why even things—even being specific in terms of we try to make a lot of those fields required, whereas somebody may fill out a connection card at a location right and they may just put their name and drop it in the plate. We're looking for contact information in the sense of driving towards, you know, in the workforce or in the sales force, they might look at it as a lead. We see it as gold in the same kind of way, where we're trying to get their contact information so that we can help them get connected as quickly as possible. So we make a strong drive beginning of the broadcast, may broadcast, and end broadcast to make sure you ask for that. And there even times where I've thought—

Throughout the message, kind of doing pop-ups and just saying, "Hey, if you're just tapping in and joining us in the live stream or whatever, make sure and stop by yammommy.org/connect and get connected with us so that we can help you take that next step on there."

I'm sorry to hijack the broadcast, Jeff. Go for it. I'm asking questions that I think you know. Yeah, you set me off earlier by saying, "Hey, what is senior pastors want to know?" So this is kind of—listen, this is gold. Keep going, man. This is kind of stuff I want to know.

What are you guys finding in terms of—and this would be the stat I'm curious about—as I'm looking for active versus passive, you know, because I guess a fear of online is, man, they're doing four things while they're watching you, you know, and I don't even know how you would gauge that. So this is the only one I don't think of is, how are like in an hour and ten minute service—an hour and ten—what percentage are tapped in, you know, for an hour or more of that? And what, what are their—just for like three or four minutes of the, you know, what percentage of the total stat is there? You can tell me, "They showed up, they were there on time, and they stayed. The thing like it looked like this was their service." Yeah, in my experience, it's not a lot that will tap in for the entire thing. It's not a lot. No. And here's the thing, because you're looking at long-form content, and so some folks will check in and check out as they go along. And we'll see that in a given live stream where folks will show up for whatever reason, check out for a moment, check back in, check back out. And so there's been different implications for that as far as how that works out in terms of the live stream. And then for on-demand content, which there's, yeah, two different strategies as far as how that works.

I think of the way that I personally listen to podcasts, and then I talk to people as far as how they engage with the online service. Sometimes they'll take it in almost like points in the message. Like on drive time, I'm catching point A. I'm getting home, I'm turning on the TV, turn on my Apple TV, YouTube, get to point B, you know, fast forward. I get there. Hey, watch, making dinner, come back in at point C or something along those lines. They are—it's happening continually. Good content, but not—and that's the thing. They're coming back in at different points. And so they might not sit there and watch it all in one particular showing, but they're checking in and checking out in different portions, which even has me considering chopping up different versions of the content and making it available in that kind of way so that people can digest them in that kind of way. Yeah.

I've got a pastor right now that I'm talking to about doing church online, and his goal is to record a five to ten minute sermon in his house in a studio he's got set up on Thursday night. And so for him it's like, "I'm gonna record this for online," and rather than broadcasting the live thing, this is the message that he's gonna send out because it's the same kind of like shorter conversion of the content or a whole different message. He, you know, it's the same message. You know, it's the point one, two, three, cut out point two. And I'm like, "Well, if you do that, you're murdering it." And he's like, "Well, I can take out some of the stories and adjust it." And so it's the same message, call it a condensed version, yeah, that's more tailored for the online audience.

But and realizing, you know, and Eric, you know this just like you're gonna have people that aren't gonna connect in the audience are on—ma, fine. Your audience is disconnected as well. That guy in the back row that's half asleep is really half asleep. I didn't—and I want to be consistent on the expectations, you know? Like, I don't want to put a harder burden on online that I put on, but I just I want someone to give me the data. So you're asking, I mean, how does somebody lead up to the senior pastor helping me see that's what would get my attention, you know? Yeah, go ahead and go ahead.

Right. I was gonna say Jake Rand. I remember reference him again just because he recently put out like a little blog post on addressing the three audiences as well and taking a look at who's joining you in the room, who's joining you in the live stream, and who's joining you on demand later on in terms of how you're addressing them in your sermon context as well, knowing that your people are engaging you in so many different ways. And kind of even finding small tidbits, not just the beginning of the message in terms of greeting them, but finding different ways to acknowledge them. I've heard Andy Stanley do this on and off in his messages where sometimes he'll even say, "Hey, some of you are listening to me right now and you need to go talk to your real pastor, you know, the guy that's actually there at your church online." And so he'll make your ears perk up in that kind of way. "Oh, he's talking to me," or "Hey, he's talking to me while I'm in my car or something like that." Yeah, that's good.

I have not done a good job here, Jeff, you know? We did in Miami. I did get good at addressing the campuses. I got good at that. I got good at looking at the camera and, "Hey, you know, Ray, you're at Coral Gables," or talking to West Kendall. I haven't gotten—I have not developed the discipline yet of talking to the online group. I've not done good at that yet.

I will say that it does help absolutely if you're so if you're looking at the data they're just talking about, and we've seen this, um, like a couple weeks ago, I acknowledge, "Hey, we got a lot of folks watching us in South Carolina. We want to give you guys a shout out." Little things like that, all of a sudden their attention perks up, man. I'm here like Rick's old high school buddies sitting around me, you know? It's Rock Hill. There is—there's a girl. I don't know if she's still doing it, but there was a woman who lived in Rock Hill, South Carolina that was leading an online small group. Now it wasn't from Rick's church. She was from Miami who moved to Rock Hill, yeah, and then ended up—and she was leading an online small group with her friends and in her family. Miami and Rock Hill was kind of a blended group. Miami, Rock Hill. That's like two biggest differences. Who would've thought? Just transparently, what I did, hey, Rick, you're never gonna believe this. And I told him that story. I'm forwarding emails because I'm trying to get him as I'm online pastor. He's faster. Rick, understand there's a story here. There's a soul there. There's a person here that's connected to our church in your hometown. And as much as data plays a part of it, there's also a face to that data now. Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. So that's a good—that's a better answer. So bring data but bring some stories too.

That's just the story. Once and once you start engaging the audience, the stories start piling up. They start coming in as far as, "Hey, I'm watching you from here. Thank you so much." And even to the point, and as you start to sprawl out in your community, we've seen this, Eric. You know, how much we wanted to like focus in on Dade County? Yeah, but we had—we have a lot of people on that Broward line who will drive down to Christ Fellowship. But then this also became looking for them to connect on a regular basis. And there are times where, hey, to shepherd them, I've driven up there, provide some counseling or some different stuff, just because there's no—I'm still good. I guess I'm still the same guy because I just said that. I remember I guess I was—I was that way in Miami too. I was like, "No, no, we're only gonna be Miami Dade." You know, we're only gonna be Miami Dade. I guess that's that too. I told her pastor through this week, and it was funny. He's like, "I totally agree with that." And then I said it to him again. He's like, "I'm not sure if this is what I said." I said, "You got to realize that it may be better for that woman who's sitting in your pew in you at your church right now to stay at home and invite ten of her friends over to watch this church service on our TV." And the pastor is like, "That's awesome. That's great." And I'm like, "Wait, you say that, and I hear that a lot, but when push comes to shove, there's something that stops us from releasing people out of our buildings to go do this in the neighborhoods and they're in homes where they are because we're still this innate thing that drives us to gather them in." Yeah. And to me, that's the thing that church online does is it gives the church permission to release people into communities, yeah, to release people to where they are instead. It's the go and do instead of come and see.

Yeah. I think it goes back to that theological conversation. If you are—if you can't get over the theological hurdle, I respect you. But if you're over the theological hurdle, then you really are asking a philosophical like, which do you prefer? Seeing them or the or knowing this other things happening, you know? So I think that's a wise way to put it. Yes, that's good. That's awesome.

Um, ma'am, what's next? We just totally went through everything, and I know it's been a long podcast. It's been really good stuff, man. Eric, I just—I miss you, man. I'm—dude, I mean, I miss her. I miss these kind of combos with you, man. We always did have—we always went deep real fast.

I tell you what, I remember the first night I met you. And if you do—and at the air place, it denied that you drove me around at two o'clock in the morning by a solid suit. Yeah, whatever. I got to tell this story, but this is just classic for us. I was at Christ Fellowship. I think it was first up to Prime Crime at the time. Yeah, Prime, yeah, yeah. And so like the church was Eric was coming in to preach and view of a call. And I was like student intern or something. And they were like, "Hey, Jeff's young, Eric's young. Jeff, go pick up Eric and his wife at the airport." And there was Saturday night, yeah. And man, it was like—what? Your flight was delayed, yeah? I think I think it finally landed it like one a.m. or something like, yeah. And my luggage wasn't there, and the luggage was gone. And so like he's supposed to be preaching in eight hours and doesn't have a suit, doesn't have anything. And he's like, "Flew in from vacation wearing a Hawaiian shirt," and he's like, "What do I do?" I'm like—it was funny. I was living at my parents at the time. My wife was on a mission trip. My house was being built. That's why I met my parents. My parents were gone. And I'm like, "Dude, come stay at my parents' house. You can sleep in their bed. And you know, my dad, who's a lot larger than Eric, you know, hopefully maybe you can find a suit or something." I worked there because the way that I'm going to like, what, Walmart at one a.m. or two a.m. to buy socks and underwear? That's how you're gonna get the suit from Walmart. I was like, "Whoa, that had to be a bad suit, man." I literally preached in Walmart clothes in view of a call after sleeping in just dad's bed. But I must've been a ballin' servant. Whoo!

I want to tell this part of the story, Eric. I don't know that I've ever told you this. In my heart, there was something that was stirring, right? And I remember this like clear before that—before I would pick you up at the airport, and I can remember sitting at home in my father's den, which was part of the area that we were living in, and I was praying for you. And I was praying for the relationship that you and I would have. I was praying for the relationship and the impact that you would have at that church. And I can tell you Christ Fellowship still has your touch on it. It's still impacted by my life directly. The person that I am today and how I lead and manage and the stuff that I'm saying is directly in relation to our experiences together for that short, long time. So you know the good and the—

Bad the plus and the minus in the day, man. I love you for many, many reasons. I love you, Matt. Means a ton. I love to work with both you guys, and I've told people this about Jeff. And gosh, we broke a lot of rules launching and launching campuses with volunteers. I mean, shoestring budgets and all of us had multiple hats, man. Jeff Reed was responsible on a part-time basis to launch all of the campuses. I mean, I can't even imagine that I would ask somebody to do that now. If I showed up at our staff today and said we're gonna hire a part-time guy who's gonna run all of this stuff, they would be like, what? And yeah, I mean, you built volunteer teams and you were a make-it-happen guy, and it was an incredible run, man. I look back and I have just such great memories.

All right, hey, so hey, Ray, as we're closing up, any thoughts?

Absolutely. You hit it right on the head. You know, as far as some of the theological implications and questions that we're going to have moving forward, and encouraging pastors to take practical steps and reconsider as far as taking the content that they're creating and putting it out there. They appreciate you encouraging with that. And for any of you out there who are tinkering with Church Online or putting your services online or whatever else, bring your pastor the data, talk to them, let them know that there's great possibilities out there. Love what Eric had to share. Those are great.

Hey, I'm curious on the guys that you're talking to who are in the roles that you guys are in and have been in. How much percent of their role is technical and how much percent of their role is pastoral? You know, I know that there's tools like you mentioned, Jeff, that are like Google Analytics. You know, they obviously don't have to Google or run the analytics for you, but they still have to understand what you said a moment ago of like, I mean, you said it like it's no big deal. You know, all the guys do is grab some code, put it on their website, and you know, for a lot of senior pastors, I don't, but that's like another language.

So yeah, so the church.digital. Go to your web browser, a church period digital. No, um, here's the thing. On we were talking about this with Crane, maybe a month ago, a couple months ago. Um, everybody in an online environment, there's only like twenty people who were dedicated in the country to online. Even Ray himself has shared context where he's doing online, but he's doing a bunch of other roles with digital strategy and things like that. Is you're saying there's only twenty pastors in America that are fully dedicated online?

Yes, yeah, and I've actually, that number's come from two different sources. So that's just me pulling it up. And so, but as a result of that, it's a shared role between like a student guy and online or a worship guy and online or what's your second hat?

So my second, I oversee all things web and digital here now. Everything from app development to we're gonna be launching off a new version of our website soon to teach us some different stuff. And even then, I've been brought in a whole bunch on the creative side, everything from writing a lot of the background to shaping our environments because of its implications for what it would mean for online. And so my seat at that table has become very valuable because we're not just thinking to the people in the room. We're thinking about the canvas and then we're thinking about how it ports out to everybody else who's watching us.

So when it comes to that, sitting in those meetings, having an ability to help shape those things is crucial. So this way, when I'm looking at the service on Sunday morning, I'm not surprised by a whole bunch, or I'm not saying, hey, guys, this is very disengaging for thousands of people who are watching this. We have to do a better job of engaging them, of making sure that we are not guiding the service towards them, but at least including them or thinking of them in some kind of way.

Yeah, so that's where that's becoming valuable. And then the last thing is mobile has become so crucial in terms of how people are engaging our service. For sure, the majority of people who are engaged, and not just our website, but our content in general, aren't doing it, you know, on a desktop or a laptop like what we're all doing now. Is we record this podcast, they're doing it through a mobile device. And so I'm even reorienting a lot of our strategy as far as being more and more oriented towards the mobile device and just being part of those conversations moving forward. It's big.

That's good. So in your role, do you know how to like pull the Google Analytics, or do you have somebody else do that?

It's both. If something kind of jumps up over my head, I'll reach out to a coder or something or somebody who's versed in this. And the code community has grown huge in Miami. So we're even, you know, when I'm visiting, when I go back to my campus at Coral Gables or when I'm visiting campuses, I'll have people come up to me who come out of that school saying, hey, if you guys ever need any help, just give me a call. And that's become such a great young resource. And it helps them feel like they've got a place where they could serve, use their gifts. So our volunteers being engaged in that at Christ Fellowship, absolutely, it's been very helpful for us and very helpful for me because, you know, there's been a lot of new in terms of jumping into this role wholeheartedly. There's been a lot of new, and having people help who help speak the language and help decode if I, because remember when I was interning at Christ Fellowship, I worked at the Apple Store. So there was a lot better, remember that?

I did, yeah. So I already had like a lot of background that God was guiding things that I had no idea. You and Jeff for Apple, absolutely.

Hey, hey, represent that. Know that that's fine. Hey, what, Jeff? This ties in, and one more thing. You asked earlier, you asked like, how does a guy in your role get to this in your pastor, right? This is big right here. Mmm, talk about the number of people in the church who would love to volunteer in this kind of role who have technical abilities in this role. They're wondering if their craft can be used for the kingdom.

Absolutely. You would pull my heart at that point because I would feel like, man, I'm preaching to these folks that their work it can be sacred, and they have these great gifts. Are we giving them a chance to use it?

That's absolutely correct. And what I found is it's created a new way to build inroads towards some of those other conversations. And this is something else that would probably catch a lot of senior pastors' attention, particularly with men. This has become a great way to build inroad conversations with them because there are a lot of men going into this field, into the tech field like that.

Yeah, correct. Giger, any closing thoughts? Twenty seconds. What do you got?

We're in a great day where more and more tools are available to us, and they've been commoditized. I mean, they're not as expensive as they used to be, so we can leverage these tools for the gospel.

Hey, well, it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure to have you on, Eric Geiger. If people want to follow you online or in a blog, like, where you at? Kind of list that out for us.

Blog is Eric Geiger dot com. That's where I put new content.

All right, so everybody can find you at Eric Geiger dot com. Man, for Eric, for Ray, my name is Jeff. It has been a pleasure to be here with you today. Thanks, and we'll see you next time here at the Church Digital podcast. You all have a good day.