EP114: Jay Kranda and the Constant Evolution of an Online Church

All right, well it's without a question church has evolved over the past year, right? Like that's, we don't need to discuss that. From where we were pre-COVID February 2020 to where we are today, we the church have a whole other set of problems. We've got a whole other set of challenges and a whole other opportunity to overcome that. And that's really what we talk about here in this episode here with the Church Digital podcast: how the church has evolved, how the church has grown, and what are the opportunities that we should be looking forward to on the road ahead.

So for the conversation, we're bringing in a regular here with the Church Digital podcast. We're bringing in Jay Crandall. Jay is the online pastor with Saddleback Church, just a good friend and support in this season. Check him out at jkranda.com, link in the show notes. But Jay's coming in and we're talking a lot about this idea of how the church has evolved. What does it look like in kids? What does it look like in students? How do we do adult ministry different today, maybe than what we did before? How do you lead in an environment like this? How do you handle things like big data and just so many conversations that are open, so many ideas we're just beginning to scratch the surface on as we're looking at how the church is evolving. Not negative, don't play the ecclesiology card. It's solid how it's evolving, blending physical and digital together.

So we're bringing in Jay Crandall, like I said, Saddleback, Ray D'Armist, digital pastor, Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm calling the constant evolution of an online church.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

Well, hey, you know, every time we get together we never actually talk about the thing we're going to talk about. So Lakers, Heat, didn't go real well for the Miami fans here in Orlando. It was brutal, so in the bubble. So what are we thinking in this upcoming season? Who's who's bragging? Who's who's holding back?

Where are we? Ironically, Ray is literally wearing a Miami Heat shirt right now in the most tumultuous of times as a Heat fan too, because we're like on a terrible losing streak. But I actually, and I'm making the bold prediction right now, I actually think that the Lakers go back-to-back. I don't think that the Nets pull it off. I don't think that they make it happen. I'm waiting for Kyrie to make that whole team implode with some kind of crazy theory about the world being flat or something. But I'm waiting for that to implode. Crandall, what say you?

Yeah, I mean, we're, when you're, I honestly care less about this year. I don't know, we already won, so I'm kind of like whatever. But yeah, I haven't watched a ton of basketball at the start of this season. I've watched probably six or seven games really, I feel like, and I've just because it started so quickly, you know. And so I watched the game last night. It was not the greatest game for the Lakers, but they did come back. But they're so good right now. They're just playing good. They seem to be cruising even the games they lose. It's like they're in it. So when a team is playing like that, you kind of assume they're gonna win it. But who knows? It all comes down to the trade deadline, who gets moved around, who are the buyouts, and injury, you know? It's going to be a weird year with people playing a lot of games, slow rest, and we're going to go in. It's going to be weird. It's going to be interesting.

So the Lakers are the favorites. There's no doubt. Like that's true. It's just, yeah, I think that's the LeBron effect, like, you know, during the regular season doesn't matter really what happens because you know you're going to be there at the end. You know you're going to be in it. That's how I felt the four years that he was here. It was we had a lot of the drama that first year, up and down, it was the Heat, the whole thing with them going down to town. But really at the end, you knew that they were going to be there in contention as one of the final four and then most likely one of the top two.

Yeah, it's gonna be good. I feel like a good feeling. Jeff just brought that up to try to get us to not like each other. I feel like that's what I did.

Well, you know, I'm gonna put the proverbial gun to your head right here because Jay, I'm not feeling the excitement from you on the NBA with the Lakers. Like you've got the crown, you're the champions, and you're not excited. So I want to ask you this, and I'm not a sports guy, Lakers or the field. I want you to claim right now. I want you to throw down. Are the Lakers going to walk away with this or is it going to be the field? Because you're not showing me the emotion that champion Laker fan needs to be showing. What do you got?

You asked that question like you've gambled in the past. The Church Digital podcast is officially sponsored by DraftKings. We want to thank DraftKings very much. That just accelerated quickly.

No, oh my gosh, I would bet the Lakers right now. I would bet. So LeBron, just LeBron's been there, and you got all these teams that are very good. But if you look around, the Clippers are the only other ones that you kind of go, who can pull it out? Is Kawhi? Why is he? He can deliver. But everybody else, you got a lot of like Sixers haven't been there, Milwaukee struggles to get to the conference finals. You got Nets who KD is KD, but you got everybody else who's like kind of a mess. And you just kind of go, Utah is Utah. Like they're great, but they're always overprojectd. That Utah's gonna be better. So you just kind of look, Nuggets struggle. Like it's just like, yeah, you would go the Lakers are the easy. They got to be the favorites just because of LeBron.

So yeah, that's cute. But also, yeah, I was gonna say you have the benefit of having the trophy, you know, like you mentioned that earlier.

Oh yeah, because on the off chance, and it would have been a huge upset had you guys lost to Miami, it would have been pure suffering this season just waiting to get back to the top. Because that's how it felt to us when we lost to the Mavs that first year. It was suffering just waiting to get back to the top. They, you know, it's hard to get back-to-back because there's like the motivation is not really there. It's, you know, because you've kind of already done it. Now when you, you know, I think LeBron is motivated to do it because he wants to kind of edge MJ. So I think he's motivated. But I think, I don't, I don't think most, that's why it's hard. It's so, but yes, I like our star power up there. So if Russ ends up on the Miami Heat, you know, who knows if Russ ends up there, we'll be working. Russ, I think I saw, scored 35 points on 35 shots the other night. It was just horrendous.

Wow, well Bradley Beal would be mad at Russ.

Yeah, Bradley Beal would be the guy for the Heat. He would. Yeah, it's just typical Heat fans. We don't want to give up anything. Like we'll photoshop a guy in our jerseys like all day, and we'll be like, yeah, let's trade the guy at the end of the bench.

You're talking the Laker fans or the photoshop kings?

So that's true. That's not beautiful. There's two franchises that are cursed with that.

So okay, and we're gonna pivot. That was nice for these six people who are still listening to the podcast. We're actually interested in online ministry. Awesome.

Hey, let's pivot and let's dive into a conversation here about digital, about digital ministry, online ministry. So obviously COVID's been crazy. It's been nuts. And we've seen a massive cultural shift within churches within the past year. I don't even think we've had two. We're not, what are we, ten months now heading into March 2021? And it's important, I think, to realize that COVID was an accelerator. We were already on this path. We were on this journey. COVID just got us there quicker. It's the virtual fast forward button on the VCR machine getting us to the destination at a much quicker rate. And with that, we've seen pivots within the church. Some churches are trying to go back to the way that it was February 2020, like that was the greatest time in the history of the church. Some people are trying to figure out how to address a new digital strategy, a digital strategy, and figuring out how to get physical and digital to work together.

What I wanted to do with this podcast, really, you know, Jay, you've been doing online ministry, digital ministry, for a decade plus. You know, at some point it's embarrassing to ask how many years, but you've been in the game a long time. Ray's been in the game a long time as well. And I just wanted to even talk about how we've changed ministry, what the position looked like maybe pre-COVID, what the evolution, what the changes, how we've adjusted ministry even in operating at a staff level, at a volunteer level, how ministry has looked different as we've gone from pre-COVID towards this acceleration process and culture and where we are now.

So even Jay, just to kick us off, by the way, welcome back once again, man. It's always great to have you on. But just tell us a little bit like what pivots, what changes, what evolutions have you seen kind of in digital ministry within this COVID season?

Yeah, for sure. It's been, you know, I don't know what the phrase is. Official people are saying it's the adolescence or the adult phase of the internet. But we just, I mean, even right now as we're recording this, you know, there's all this stuff going on on the stock market with how Reddit and all these people are influencing things. I got right now, I had a couple months ago or a month ago, bought some Dogecoin crypto, and I'm watching it double. And it's just like because of just internet and Twitter and people and engagement and just, you know, here's the deal: when you get a bunch of people and you connect them, all sorts of things can happen, both good and bad. And I think the church, for sure, it's been a slow step into the direction of figuring out how do you use all these tools to do the things we need to do.

You know, early on, when I first stepped into online ministry, I was kind of just, you know, I would say somebody who just made sure the weekend happened and I pointed out issues. It's like, did the stream work? Have a chat person there? It was very like, you know, AOL chat, you know, MSN Hotmail Messenger-ish. You know, it's just very, just make sure nothing breaks, you know? And then over the course of a couple years, we started to see viewership grow. We started to see more people responding. I remember the first response cards I handled were like I got exported to a PDF that I had to like type into a system to like follow up with. Um, now that's like 2009-ish, you know? So like some of the systems were pretty new at least how they all integrated together. But you think about now, like we've moved from you know just having somebody paying attention to it to hey these online groups are a huge potential. That was our first, I think, big learning was having me part-time over it and then I had other responsibilities at my church when I first started. And then our online groups grew a ton. And I think we launched those around 2012-ish. And we, you know, we weren't using Zoom. Zoom didn't exist. I think it was called something else or it had just been created. And we used something called TalkBox at the time, and that integrated on our website. And I think online groups were our first like big jump of like, oh.

Wow, like community can happen, like people can connect now. It was like old school webcam, you know, I don't know, whatever it was. I think we actually used Adobe Flash. Uh, Adobe, um, whoa, whoa, whoa. Adobe Connect. Okay, Connect. Connects. Okay, Flash. You're not allowed to say that anymore. That's like a curse word.

No, we're done. And like it, what that means anymore because like some, it's like doesn't work and then anyways, um, so it's dead. It's officially R.I.P. It's done. Okay. Um, I'm gonna miss my Flash games, addictedgames.com based games. Um, so I just, it, that was our first stage for our church. So I actually got hired initially full time to be to take care of our weekend and then over our online groups and then move forward a couple more years and then it was like, hey, we actually want to make a campus out of this. And so it's like we have the groups, we have the weekend. Let's like get ministry. Let's like start maybe allowing people to strike groups in their homes far away. And then during COVID, you know, when we stepped into COVID, our church particular, you know, we definitely had a huge leap ahead. But I think we kind of really realized that, you know, coming out of COVID, this is going to look very differently. And so we had conversations early on. We had some strategy around, you know, what is like the butterfly moment for the online campus. Um, because, you know, with everybody being online, we don't want to segment out. You know, I've been kind of saying this thing where like the problem with having a digital point person or online pastor or a digital pastor, whatever you want to call them, is that like, what are they supposed to own? Because every team is supposed to have a digital presence. So what are you, are you owning it? Just a digital community? Are you then a consultant internally? You know, that's the, you know, like if you're helping with, if you're the digital pastor helping with online groups, or shouldn't the small groups person at your church be over the digital groups? How is that connection? And so obviously this gets easier, harder depending on your size. But I think even more recently we've been having that kind of moment of like, maybe the online ministry is no longer like a campus and maybe like my role is a little bit more, um, broader where I'm helping the church on all sorts of things and speaking into things. But I think I just, I put this on Twitter. I don't know if you guys saw it, but I think Ray, you saw, but I put this on Twitter a couple days ago where I've talked to some of the largest churches over the last couple months and every single one of them have asked, what are you guys doing next? Because they are restructuring their online ministry. And these are churches that have thriving online ministries. And they've realized that they can't just do the same thing. They got to change. And what's interesting is there's a bunch of churches that are looking towards us to go, we just want to do what you're doing. And what we're at is we're like, we don't want to keep doing this. We want to do something completely different. So that's kind of been our journey. That's like a shotgun of everything. But, um, but yeah, that's what I'm curious, Ray. What, what you guys are doing at your church. You know, for SJ, it's been very much the same thing. I mentioned this to Jeff earlier where it's like, you know, Jeff started a lot of stuff at Christ Fellowship and then I grabbed the baton and I kept going with the groups and some of the different stuff. And we were continuing to build community, build community, build community. COVID hits and my role shifts more into we've got campus pastors and then we've got dotted lines and online kind of functions a bit as both. And then my role shifted way more towards the dotted line side where I found myself resourcing other ministries and working with them to first get their content up, but then to get them from content to community as well. And then since then, you know, by God's grace, one of the things that we did last year, because, you know, on especially down here Miami, you know, we're bilingual, we got a whole lot of stuff we weren't doing Spanish online. Then we decided, all right, now that we're locked down, we got to go fully Spanish online. And so we brought back Spanish online for us and that had to go full. Then we had kids online. Then we had students online. And so I finally got, you know, I was able to open up another job position to get somebody to help me out with some of the stuff that we're doing on the regular. And so Brandon came on. He's my online coordinator now. He helps me out with like the majority of the stuff now with the community because I've got to focus on a lot more of a bigger picture. In terms of, all right, what's kids doing? What's students doing? Oh, kinda like what you're saying, J. Hey, ministry's gotta change. Oh man, students really are engaging with this, you know, the way that adults are with their stuff. So how can we help them brainstorm and work towards solutions for that? Um, and then in the midst of that too, there's also this whole digital revolution that we're in the middle of, even reopening where we wanted to go to more of a touchless experience. And I was already overseeing a lot of the digital aspects of our stuff in terms of our app and some of that stuff. And so we had to come up with creation and, and you know, possibilities for that. And then how to get that to integrate with our database system. So more and more of that has become half IT, half, you know, web-based stuff, and then a lot of community underneath. And so it's, it's been a little bit crazy fun as far as like how this roller coaster ride has gone. But it's definitely not the same job description in terms of engaging it, uh, from the onset. Definitely not. That does, does kids and students and like, is that, is that an active? I know Ray, you guys are still actively running with that. Um, is that still active in general? Are we hearing a lot of that? It seems like we couldn't really figure out the answer and it felt like a lot of churches started to kind of fall away from that kind of. What, what's your vibe looking into the future as we look at like children's ministry and student ministry?

Yeah, you know, you know, a church our size, you know, it's really, you know, I, I'm not, I'm not super engaged with, um, I'm not part of that strategy directly. I'm more like an advocate or just somebody who speaks into, you know, where I can add value. I know like our, they're rethinking some of their strategy. They're trying to engage more. Like they've leaned heavy into YouTube and then they're trying to get a more live interactive event. I actually think that they're gonna maybe host some events on Chop, um, in the next year. So like that's easy. Like I've used Chops, so I know how to like, you know, speak into that. So you know, I think for us, the one thing that each team has realized and I think every church has realized is that, you know, you need to have some, this is what I'll say. I'm trying to encourage a lot of people to think through creating digital spaces where their community can connect with each other. So instead of like a lot of churches were relying off of Sunday as the time you run into your people and you connect and they connect with each other, but you need to have like a Facebook group, a message or thread. You need to have something. I don't care where it is, but you need to allow that. And like, for example, like I know our Saddleback kids, you know, ministry, you know, they had a hard time converting parents to start watching their content every because they never had the mechanism to rely to tell them to go watch something because kids just showed up every weekend. And so that was like a communication strategy. But I know moving out of this, they want that muscle to be big, but, um, to be strong. And so for us, it's I think that's the nugget of how does it all work together, you know, under, you know, on our website, you know, we redesigned or, you know, we added the first couple weeks of COVID, you know, links to our Saddleback kids and our student ministry links right on our online page where it used to be just our adult service. Where there were easy links, we're moving into more customizable stuff around campuses so you can get your own stuff. But, um, you know, I think coming out of COVID, you know, in person is going to be just as valuable. The question is, is I just think there's going to be more eyes on the digital and they're going to understand that that's such an important backup, you know, because yes, maybe you reach this many kids on a Sunday when you open back up, but the question is, you still can reach more if you do digital right. Um, you know, I always come back to something that I think is important this year is just no longer asking for scraps for online, like where you're just trying to justify it financially. I think we need to take bigger swings. We need to, you know, I, that's how I worked early on. It was just like, hey, if we did this, I know it will make sense. And I think like, um, I like to think of the example of, you know, the church that I came to faith at was this was a church about 500, you know, not super small, not super big. But I remember like our youth ministry had a budget of like 2,500 for the year or something like that was our budget. And it was like a pain to try to get a budget increase. But we would spend like ten thousand dollars once our AC broke on our worship building. And it's like we're so quick to open up wallets for our building because we, because it's easy to understand. It's like looking at, you know, I was, I was like one of my good friends was arguing me about cryptocurrency and he was like saying something about it doesn't even make sense and it's just zeros and ones. And I was like, well, your money in your bank is just zeros and ones. It's the same thing. It's not money. He's not really sitting in the bank somewhere. Um, but it's just hard for you to consider. It's hard for him to conceptualize why this is important. The same way I think it's hard for senior pastors and committees and leadership and deacon boards and all this to think about why is your website important? Why is your streaming quality, you know, why? I was just looking at another friend's church and, you know, they were streaming and the service was a little blurry. And I was just like, you know, I think your camera's too far away and you probably need to up it. But it's going to cost some money. Yeah, get all that equipment. And I think it's just we need to take bigger swings. And I think that's just that's overall stuff I'm feeling. But I'm curious how more ministries adapt to the kids and stuff because I think it is an area that is under, I will say most people strategies that I see are super disconnected. Generally, I, um, just even last night I was having a conversation with the lead pastor, probably 800 to a thousand person church. And, um, and he asked me, it's like, how much, how much money should I be spending on digital? And, and my response was, what's your percentage of people pre-COVID that are back into your building? And, and he said 20. And I said, so you've got 80 percent of people that are not in your building that are still engaging with you digitally? He said yes. I said, how much money are you spending on digital right now? And, and he's like, maybe, maybe two percent. You might want to shift that a little bit. Like, I don't know that I want to say 80 percent of your budget needs to go towards digital since 80 percent of your people are digital. But at least something more than two percent. Like, don't tip online if that's where the majority of your people are. Um, engage with them. Yes, pull them back to the building if that's part of what your strategy is. But you're going to lose those people if you continue to ignore them in digital space. So Ray, what are you chewing here thinking about this?

No, it's funny because, you know, Jay mentioned crypto earlier and I think a lot of pastors approach, uh, search...

Online, like they approach like some new people approach cryptocurrency, right? They're like, "All right, cool, I'm gonna invest two dollars and I'm gonna get back a million dollars. Like this is gonna be like a lottery ticket," you know? And they don't realize that there's that this is investment in the sense of, yeah, you know, you get a little bit more bang for your buck, but at the same time that doesn't mean that you go cheap. And especially in the area of kids and students, you know, as churches start to reopen, as they start to reconfigure their scorecards, "Hey, how are we going to determine whether or not we've got wins here as we reopen and try to get some of these people back into the building?" Especially for Gen Z, you know, you're talking about reaching this next generation. Jeff, your kids. Jay, your kids. My kids. They're all watching YouTube channels. They're all watching these influencers. They're pouring in hours and hours. Yeah, for you it's Roblox. For my kids it's Ninja Kids. Like, they're obsessed with, like, you know, these little American Ninja Warrior children, you know, that flip all over the screen. That's what they're into. But you know, for kids and students, we kind of have to be at the forefront of some of that too, and we have to figure out how to do that.

Our kids ministry, they did something fantastic that they're still doing, where they got smart. They started to think like a YouTuber and they started getting into these box challenges where basically they would give kids challenges throughout the series. They would encourage them to watch. Like, "Hey, you know, make sure that get your parents' permission. You know, fill out the card. Like, 'Hey, we're gonna give you guys some things to do. Like, hey, I watched three out of the five services. I memorized the verse for the series. I did this.' Email that to us, and then we will send you a box full of CF Kids goodies." And then, you know, they come through on it. And that right there has been a great way for us to get some data. And, right, like, "Hey, are you watching? We want to connect with you." And then from there, we've also offered parents like free resources on the forum as well. Like, "Hey, we'll email you all of our Orange, you know, resources that we have for parents." And that's been a great way to just kind of tie all that in together and a powerful way to help kids create community. And then the parents, like, we encourage them to tag, like, when their kids get the box, tag it on social media, you know? And we share that. So it's created this really cool ongoing community that's worked out really well for us. It's been good.

Yeah, maybe even, and that's a great idea, right? Like, I'd never the fidget approach of that, mailing something physical, getting kids to engage with something in physical space, rewarding that, you know? I know at, um, I'm just even thinking back to my days at Christ Fellowship, they had the, well, I don't know what it's called, but the Bling Store where you could go get like all the cheesy stickers with the Christ Fellowship branding or the CF Kids frisbee and all that. But trying to engage that physical side by rewarding digital engagement, that's that's really a great idea. And that's easy to do, right? I don't know that I wanted to park out on this, but the ability for a small church to create a small bling box to mail out to reward some of that engagement, that that's a great idea.

Yeah, and just to give you an idea for those churches that are listening out there, like, "Oh man, but what if it costs X, Y, and Z?" So one of the things that we did was we resourced our local campus kids directors to deliver the boxes for their kids, you know, in a safe, spacious, and sanitized way. They would show up, and my girls loved it. Like, their campus kids director showed up masked up, you know, with like little bells and whistles and that kind of thing, like shaking up, like, "Hey, Zoe and Lexi, you guys did it? That's awesome!" And they left the box there. You know, but for my kids, anything that they get in snail mail is gold. Anything that they get in the mail, it makes them feel so special. And so that for them just creates an awesome experience for them.

There's something around, um, you know, one of the things I'm trying to do is because the learning curve here is so quick, it's, you know, I last a couple, the last couple weeks I've been told by like a bunch of different people that I need to be on Clubhouse, and it's like, even to me as a digital pastor, I'm like, "Whatever," you know what I mean? Like, and so like I get on it and I'm using it, but the question is, it's like everybody else is just like sinking, you know? They're trying to keep ahead. And I think there's all these ideas from kids ministries to how to make your service more engaging, how to think about groups, to communication strategies, all this stuff. And I think one of the things I, we're trying to do, and I think some churches I've seen do this, is try to create more of a cohort of learning and honoring those that are taking, you know, cool, doing cool things. Because nobody, no one here is the expert on this stuff. I think there are people that can be voices of reason. You know, I might not know how every platform works, but I at least can think through what's the, you know, I can notice good expressions of things. And I think we're trying to create like a, like honoring, especially because the church, our side is like, "Hey, check out what this team did and let's learn from it," or "Here's the tip." So almost like educating, you know? And I would say for most churches, do that for your staff and for your volunteers, you know, even when you're small. Like, how do you get your core? When I was a youth pastor before I was at my church, you know, I had twenty volunteers that I met with monthly that helped pull off our youth ministry. And we would meet and we would talk about things, and they weren't paid. And I would do the same thing there, like teaching digital. So like that, you know, at that point it would be like, "Hey, your small group leaders or your people in your group, what tools are you using? You know, how do you use it? You know, tell us about Slack or tell us about House Party or whatever." Um, and so I think we're trying to, and so by elevating people at our church that are doing cool things digitally, it's re, it's kind of saying like, "Hey, this is the cool stuff," and then it's also encouraging and equalizing it to everybody else. And so that, I mean, that's what happened to the world with Zoom, right? Nobody really understood Zoom. Now everybody understands it. They understand so much about Zoom that they're fatigued on Zoom. So I think, sure, but that came with like being pushed into the deep end. And so I think one of the things that, especially if you're listening to this as an online pastor, you know, figure out how you can be a coach to your broader church. Or even if you're the digital person at your church, maybe you're not even that officially, you know, like send a monthly email about, "Hey, I noticed what the kids ministry did with this," or "Hey, by the way, I was reading this article about this thing," you know? So I think having that collective, you know, almost like a Reddit thread type of sub-community where you're just kind of learning together. And then what you do is you position yourself as somebody who is, um, who is one of the experts, you know? I did not sign up to be an expert in online church. I just started to like talk about it, share it. And I think, especially if this is somebody and I'm going to get super focused here, like if this is somebody that you're like, "You want to be that person for your church?" Well, just start doing it. Start doing it. Start sending, you know, me, you know how many times I've gotten good will with my leaders by just sending random emails of my thoughts? Like it's just like, "Hey, I was thinking," and like I'll get this reply back, which I'm like, "They're not even gonna reply," and they'll be like, "This was so good," and it's just like a small thing like that. And so it's always, it's always easier to go, "Well, it'd be nice if I had that title," but I'm telling you, like your leadership in your church and your people, they don't know how to think about this. And that's why you're gonna have to build it, which is like the scary part of it and also the fun part.

I like the idea, Jay, of decentralizing, you know, the pathway for information to flow in. Like you talked about, you know, sharing articles or sharing things and encouraging that kind of thing within the organization. Because so often we've talked about this on this podcast where it's like, "I don't have all the good ideas, but I can also be a student of other people in the organization in terms of what they're doing and sharing that amongst each other." That's important because my kids director might have a great idea for adults online that I'm not even thinking about. But if I shut myself off to her, then I've siloed everything that we could do in digital, and we might not grow or we miss out on an opportunity to grow together as an organization.

Yeah, if you keep pulling that thread and following this decentralized line that we're talking about, we're getting back to this place of empowering individuals and listening to the individuals in that. And that really, even going back to the whole Reddit GameStop thing that we're living through in real time, for me this is just another example of where individuals have more power now in 2021 than our organizations do. If the individuals figure out how to capitalize, how to take advantage of the system, how to speak up for themselves and manage it, organizations need to be afraid of an individual or of individuals that are on a mission. If we, the church, could figure out how to do that, if to leverage our individuals to that way, it's phenomenal potential. And as we're talking about like equipping, and how are you guys seeing, you know, in your ministry, maybe we weren't even talking about equipping, maybe Jay was because Jay was future thinking pre-COVID, but now in this season, Carrie Newhoff saying, "Hey, if you want to be effective in the future, you need to be equipping people today." How are you seeing that pivot? Are you seeing that pivot happening in real time within your churches?

Yeah, I guess, you know, I see stuff happening, and I think what's hard is we are at a really weird moment. And this is why it's always easier for, uh, you know, for it, it's harder for a Blockbuster to become Netflix, and that, then a Netflix to go back to Blockbuster, you know what I mean? Like, because it's just, when you're trying to move a huge ship here. And so I think I still think there's this thinking around churches where it's about ministering to people in the room, and it's about, you know, because here's the deal, there's a lot of churches that are in lease agreements, have debts and stuff, and they have to make that thing work, you know, which is okay. I think this is why other, I've had a lot of conversations with churches internationally that don't have the luxury of being able to own property, and it's a whole another dynamic, you know? Um, it's the same reason why a lot of our stuff about not meeting here in the US, it's we can cry about our religious rights because we have a lot of them here. And so, uh, and so I, I'm curious, I'm not a hundred percent sure how churches will pivot. But I, I am excited. I will say one of the things that I really love is there are a lot of churches embracing like YouTube over just a Facebook stream. More and I think that's the opportunity of getting away from time-specific things. That it's really encouraging because if we're just talking about the first couple of weeks, it's just how do we get weekend happening? It's very streaming dependent, which is a great strategy. But you know, the internet, you know, the whole thing is that you can do things twenty-four seven. You don't have to just.

You know, get people around a, you know, a specific time, which I think is corporately gathering on time, real time is really important, um, especially for the church. But I think if you build out a YouTube strategy where people can discover you and find you in a lot of creative inbound type of real internet ways and not just replicating what's happening and building online, I think that's what I'm cool also seeing churches, uh, especially now those are going back in person, thinking through how do you have the tension between meeting in person and then having something online. Maybe the online product is a little different.

And maybe, you know, the phrase that I've been using is like strategically streaming, where you're not streaming everything. You're not just streaming what happens in a room, but maybe you do. Maybe you have Sunday and then you have a special edit and you put some love into it and you just make it a little different. Um, and then that that goes back to inviting them back in person. So those are some of my high level thoughts: strategically streaming. I love that term. I've been trying to figure out how to like describe that idea. I'm, I'll give you credit for the first couple times I'd say it. It's strategically streaming. What, what, well said there. Yeah, I agree with everything what Jay was saying. I think kind of moving forward when it comes to resourcing, my biggest concern at this point for, for at least for the Western church, for, for us here in the United States is that Jeff, you and I have talked about this privately. Um, we're over resourced and we're under discipled, right? Like we've got resources galore in terms of online content, in terms of communication, in terms of a lot of stuff that exists out there. Like, and I'm even surprised at all the different age groups now post-COVID, right, that are are engaging with online channels to learn and and to do different things.

My, I think moving forward, another big concern for me is content creation. A long time with some of this stuff, as and I'm not trying to make this completely political, but you know, the QAnon stuff really did open up, at least for us in the church, as far as a lot of misinformation that can infiltrate the church and really steer it in a direction that we don't want to go. And it, you know, a lot of pastors I know, Stetzer has even talked about this, how a lot of pastors are afraid to address that with their own churches because so many of them have been discipled wrongly and poorly and driven towards a bad direction that they're afraid to lose their congregation over it. Uh, and that's something that just kind of weeded its way through, you know, thanks to the algorithm and kind of found its way into the church and really took a lot of well-meaning believers down the path that they never intended to go.

Um, you know, or as I'd love to joke around with folks, the things that my parents warned me about as I was growing up: hey, those video games are going to rot your brain. Now I've got to warn them about: hey, that internet's going to rot your brain. So you know, I've got to be constantly, you know, concerned about that in terms of you know how that is shaping and shifting our disciples and our followers and where it's shifting their attention. Because if we're going to keep them on mission, then that also means that we have to keep them, you know, thinking and moving in the right direction. And we got to go from, you know, right the head to the heart to the hands to actual, actual action with that. And so they're over resourced, but the resources that they're receiving, the content creation within that is a bit of a concern. And then how it's actually leading them to action is another concern. Because we've talked about this with Jay before, um, you know, they could just, and we saw it even with COVID, some of them found a different digital church during that time because there wasn't that kind of community. They found a pastor that they liked hearing from more or somebody that was more their flavor, and so they disconnected from community as a result. And I think that's something that we just have to be more tapped into in terms of keeping real relationship with our people. Because uh, if, what was that, I heard today, that the technology has to be, it has to make us more human. We have to find greater ways to connect. And so that right there, I think that's that's a big concern for me moving forward.

Really, Ray, what you're talking about is like the really, it's the heart of online to offline. I want to, you know, I'm not promoting Jay and the stuff that he's been doing through Saddleback, but it's this idea of if if we're not seeing action in our hands, then we're creating content that's only consuming. We're creating consumers instead of driving that into offline realms where we're being real with with real people. And that's why I love this idea of online offline. The gospel that we hear in our online world, it has to influence what we're doing offline. And and while that was a a theoretical principle that philosophically we could talk about pre-COVID, now that we're coming into, you know, mid-post-COVID, that's a reality. I think more people are seeing that today and are understanding that standard today than definitely was around uh before this thing got started back in March 2020.

Let's pivot here and let's dig into something. You know, I made a kind of a joke earlier about pastors wanting to go back to February 2020. Uh, seriously though, in in all respect, um, they do. A phenomenon there's so much pressure centered around a lead pastor in this environment in 2021. Like I cannot imagine what it would be like to lead an organization of any size between shutting the doors, the religious freedoms, the COVID safety, and like, they don't prep any of them. Not even talking about like the the race issues and everything that's that's surrounding that. There's no seminary class for this, I'm guessing. Jay, Ray, you guys were seminary graduates. They didn't, they didn't teach you about how to handle pandemics and no, okay, good, okay. I was the only one from a major city in my seminary. I had, I had some, I had normal folk in my in my in my classes, but no, yeah, you're right. Like it's not, you know, I loved my time at seminary. It was it was amazing. But you know, I actually asked my profs multiple times about online ministry and they looked at me at complete confusion because again, it's you know, they weren't using it.

And I think this is why it's really important that before you make judgments on platforms and places, you need to, you need to, you need to just dabble in. I'm not saying you gotta like full-time commit to it. You know, there's a lot of platforms that I don't use daily. Um, I barely use Instagram and Facebook daily. Um, I I'm on them and I check and I interact, but I don't really, you know, you go to my Instagram account, I barely, I'm not on that that much. But I think it's about just having a presence and understanding it. And then by understanding it, or at least being in it, it allows you to start form right opinions on how to leverage it. And so I again, I I think you're right. Like enter the internet is, it's just a tool. Um, technology is just a tool. It's it's you know, it's like fire. It can burn your hand or you can, you know, cook your dinner. And I think uh, I think that's something that we as, I think the, and this is what I've loved about pastors over the last um, you know, ten plus months, you know, just jumping into the trenches is that they've started this. They've opened their eyes on what's potential there. There was such a closed off mind, I think, for a long time. And now they're like, you know what, this is possible. You know, and just like anything, it's going to take work and strategy. But I do think the more you have, you know, different minds thinking and processing and trying things, I think we're going to have really cool things happen. And that's why I've always been a big believer that I think it's going to be the churches, you know, under five hundred that are really going to leverage the internet in a whole new creative way. Because here's the deal: if you're a big church, you got a big building and you got big things to pay off and do things, you know, there's a lot there. And you have some sandbox to think, you know, to think through. You know, that there's a reason why it's it's hard to make that, but a small church, you can start from the ground up. You know, I I, another phrase that I started to use is like, you know, the potential of like locationless churches, you know, like really locationless churches. And I know this is stuff Jeff, you're you're doing with Stadia. And but like, that's a shift. And I've had I've had many conversations with with people over the last ten years about this concept. And I've had people try it and fail. But I think the amount of people coming into seminary really thinking about that, I think is really cool.

The, I still think I get really worried about some of the barriers of entry with like huge technologies like the CRMs and stuff and how segmented they are. And even I I get overwhelmed at all that stuff. And I and I think I I still think there needs to be more innovation um in that realm to kind of make you know personalization really done right and automation and all this stuff like scale. Because I think there's a lot of tools, but you got to kind of Frankenstein it all together. And I think I I hope that more of these large, especially church CRMs that churches are tied to, you know, have a come to Jesus moment and really think through like how to build stuff. I don't know how much is possible. I know there's cool stuff happening. I don't live in that world. But I just feel like every other week I hear about some new random CRM that I've never heard of that they're like, you know, knees deep in. And I'm like, what in the world is this thing? Why are the screenshots look like it's like a, you know, a Windows 98 or something, like, you know, the software. But that's that's true. So I think data is such a huge thing. And I I always bring this up, but I just, it, you know, you get him, you just, you get stuck if you can't really manipulate and do things and personalize, you know, and all that stuff.

I honestly did not think we would talk about CRMs and CHMs today. That was not on my radar. So so that that's intriguing. Are you, are you advocating for, I'm I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm not looking for Mike drops explosion type type things. Like is it, is it less, it that you think is is necessary? Is it like a deeper feature base to get it more developed? Like what what what are you kind of wrestling with here?

I just think all churches need to have a real assessment. You need to have, you need to talk to every team and person how they feel about your current CRM. Does it do what it needs to do? Like just do a, just do an audit, an internal audit, and then make the change if it's not or hire the person to build the thing that needs to happen. Because I think there's a lot of people have built things for like check-in tools and stuff on Sunday. But I think like, like logged in experiences on your website for in your app for your CRM not to be all integrated together, it's such a big, like such a big disconnect. And there are things that do this. All a car, we all use services um that they have lot, this isn't a drastic technology. Like you can, you can go pay for like member for something and you can do this. You can, this is a, this is an easy thing to pull off. But here's the deal is that the CRM companies, you know, have to own the app company and have to own like the website company. And then sometimes all those things don't really, like they don't, they don't work well. So I just think it's a little bit of a mess. There are things people are doing in this space, but um, you know, and and there's cons to it. So.

I just think personalization obviously is the no-brainer word that has been for years, but I think for churches to do that right, the text, the technology deck has to all make sense. And I think some of the tools that exist for churches—at least the church tools—aren't the greatest. They're very siloed.

Um, that's a—I'm probably just, I'm gonna get an email from some CEO of something from this, but I just think that it doesn't really serve the church of 100 very well, you know? Because you have to have an app company over here, you have to do this over here, and they don't talk to each other. And it's like, why do I want an app if it's not per—the whole reason for an app is to be super personal. And it's—and so, but yeah, for us, and the good news for us, Jay, at least at Christ Fellowship, our CRM is a company called One Church, and our app and everything is through that. And so it's created more of that experience for it. So much so that when we talked about like creating that touchless experience, one of the things that we're able to unveil, you know, when we were reopening, was kids checking via the app. They could scan, you know, they could check off their kids because it's logged into their account and they're giving us through the same thing, and everything. And so for us, it's all underneath one temple now. Was that easy to pull off? No. And I still have to go up to every ministry and remind them, nope, you're not going to do a Google Form. It's going to go through our CRM. We're not going to create separate databases. So much so that I'm even trying to like get us away in our comms department. I'm trying to get us away from Mailchimp because I'm trying to say, guys, that's a separate database. Like, you're over here collecting separate data that we can't come back and reevaluate and know who our people are and know how they're engaging with us. And so the toughest thing there is that we're not—you know, if we ever make that move, we're not going to get the same robust tools that Mailchimp provides, like, hey, open rates or some of that other stuff. I know that our guys are like people at One Church are working on some of that stuff in the background, but it's not there yet. And having the patience to get there is tough for an organization, especially if at one point you enjoyed some of those features.

Yeah, that's—it's funny that we had this. My team, same thing. We pay Mayor Trump a couple hundred dollars every month. I think it's like over 300 bucks every month, and it's a segmented experience. And I had the exact same conversation. We need to move to this other system, and it's just pain. And I had a conversation—we use our church uses a big provider. I'm forgetting their name right now, but they have to—I go, they have to be able to do like automation stuff where I can add people to a list and trigger emails and stuff. And but we had to like—it's just not enabled for us, so we have to like go through this process. But I'm like, especially with like, you know, data and stuff, we're moving towards all the data needs to be stored one place. So if a member wants to be not contacted, we can't have all these multiple databases, which is something that is happening very quickly—already happened in Europe, but here it's happening. And I, yeah, so same thing. We're moving away from Mailchimp, even though it does hurt me because I really do like Mailchimp.

Yeah, I mean, it's got a lot of robust tools, but like you're saying, when we have segmented data, that means that you know we can offend people real easily if they're trying to get out of our mail list, or we can lose people within the gap, which is what happened more often than not was, oh man, they're people who fell through the cracks because their stuff was in one spot, not necessarily in the overall.

Yeah, we could have this conversation all day long. We maybe we need to dig into CRMs and CHMs—church management solution software solutions—at a later time, honestly. That was like, whoa, did that just happen? Well, I love that. But it's true. As we're looking to the future, and even vendors that are in that space, just like we're challenging churches, hey, you got to spend more budget here. Vendors realize there are a lot of churches that have a much higher expectation now today than they did technically, digitally, than they did in February 2019, or 2020, excuse me. And so the more that we can pivot and go in that direction, as a vendor providing solutions like that, churches be ready to experiment. Through Stadia, we're actually running a number of experiments right now utilizing software solutions that didn't exist pre-COVID, and starting to kick the tires on things like this. And Altered Live is one of those, and we'll be talking more about that later. But love what we're seeing now with some vendors, and others follow soon, continue to help provide solutions for churches that are looking at doing ministry in this next normal of what's ahead.

So Jay, man, I have loved this time once again, and always love hanging out with you, even though you are a Lakers fan. But hey, go, go LeBron, I guess, to some level. Hey, Jay, as we're wrapping up, landing the plane here, any closing thoughts?

Yeah, I really—the one thing that I would say that is a bare minimum, as a church, no matter your size, you really need to have somebody at the table, you know, that is thinking about your digital presence and thinking, just at least being an advocate for that community. That's something that I would tell. It doesn't have to be staff. It could be a volunteer. But somebody that, as you're thinking through, you know, what does this mean for us digitally? So especially as we go back to meeting in person over the next, you know, a couple months, it's going to be really easy to gravitate back to like prioritizing the people of the room, which is okay. But you really need to have somebody on the team that's kind of just like reminding you, kind of being the—you know, they're the pebble in your shoe—just kind of like saying, hey, don't forget about us. We gotta think through what does this mean for those viewing online and so forth.

I love that. I would echo that. You gotta have somebody who's thinking digital first, even if your church is not somewhere where that's the priority piece. To that, hey, Ray, as we're wrapping up here, any closing thoughts?

Yeah, I completely agree with Jay in that somebody has to be at the table being the advocate for this. And lead pastor, it's a top-down deal. And so make sure that you are continually pushing and thinking through digital as you're crafting your message, as you're thinking through next steps. Think about those digital next steps too. Are you going to have a text code? Are you going to move people to an online form? How are you going to do that? Because more and more, and especially as we reopen, right? So Jeff talked about that One Church. If 80 percent of your folks are out there watching you digitally, think of them first. No offense to the people in the room, but think of those 80. That 80 first, because it could be your mom, could be your aunt, your uncle. But think of that person that's behind the camera and how you are crafting everything and even guiding them and discipling them through every area of your ministry.

Yeah, I would echo that. Even as you're thinking about what those next steps are digitally, try to figure out what discipleship means for you in digital space. Is that small groups? Is there something where it's more equipping, training? Alpha has been doing some phenomenal things in evangelism. Others as well in the season have an intentional approach towards what those next steps are digitally, just the same level that you would physically. And it's amazing. Even though people are not in your building, you could be growing them spiritually to the place where they can be mobilized and released, where you can help equip them to do ministry instead of sitting on a chair in a big building consuming a product. Release them out to do ministry. So phenomenal concepts for 2021. Excited for what's ahead.

Hey, so we're going to land the plane right here. For Jay, for Ray, for the NBA 2021 season, we're looking ahead—go Lakers. That's weird. Miami Heat, maybe. We're going to wrap up here. This is Jeff with the Church Digital in State of Church Planning. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time here at the pod. You all have a good day.