EP117: The New Digital Pastor

If there's one thing that we can agree on here in 2021 is there's more digital pastors running around doing ministry today in February 2021 than there was a year ago in February 2020.

Hey, this is Jeff with the Church Digital powered by Stated Church Planning. It's great to be here, love y'all, jumping into this conversation here. Look, it's a reality in this season moving towards more of a digital ministry. Churches are understanding, "Hey, we need someone to lead us in this area, in this digital area. We need someone to champion this idea of digital ministry among the rest of our staffs. We need someone to pastor, to care for, to shepherd people in digital space." And why not hire, why not position, why not transition someone into this—call it a digital pastor, digital champion role? And so we're seeing that happen in massive ways now.

What does this mean? How are they doing? What were they before? How is that transition going? What are the challenges? What are the issues as we're moving more and more, maybe past COVID, or seeing maybe the light at the end of the tunnel? I don't want to jinx this thing. The reality is, even where we are in today's culture here in February 2021, maybe 30 to 50 percent of pre-COVID attendance has made it back into the building for most churches. It seems the majority of the audience, pre-COVID audience, is still watching and engaging digitally. And so even as we're trying to transition all our energy and all our attentions back to the building in an effort to get people back into the physical space that today's church seems to be comfortable with, unfortunately the reality is we still need to care for, we still need to pay attention, because the majority of our audience, the majority of the people that need to be connected to our church, are in digital space. And having that digital pastor, digital champion, is as important today, February 2021, and into the future—it's more important, maybe even, than it was in the past.

So here's what I wanted to do. I really want to dig into this idea. We're bringing in three digital pastors, three people who 12 months ago they were not doing anything in this digital pastor role. They were campus pastors, they were guest services, they were next generation people, they were different roles. But in this COVID season, they've had to transition into a digital pastor. What are the challenges? What are the issues? What are the struggles that you're facing? How's leadership working? How's volunteer recruiting? How's casting vision? Hey, if you're new in online ministry or you're thinking about getting into online ministry, this is an incredible conversation because you're hearing it from three successful digital pastors learning as they're going, trying to figure it out, and you're learning insights from them.

So here's who we're bringing into the conversation: Rob Schmidgall, who's the digital pastor at National Community Church in Washington DC. Tyler Volkers, who's the digital pastor over at Ridge Community Church up in Wisconsin. And Christian Vanderhovel—Christian, I'm pretty sure that's how you say your last name. I can't even read my own handwriting. Sorry, Christian. Who's with Cornerstone Church up in the San Francisco, California area.

But here's where we are. We're literally asking these guys, "What are your struggles? What have you overcome? Who's been your best friend in this situation? Who within ministry is running with you? What departments get it? What departments don't? How do you work through that?" A lot of the tensions that's involved in this physical-digital COVID season that we're in.

So we got Rob, we got Tyler, we got Christian, you got myself, Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning, in a conversation that I'm calling "Becoming That Digital Pastor."

Okay, everybody, here you go.

Yeah, I'm Tyler Volkers at the Ridge Community Church in the Milwaukee area, and I was serving as our family ministry director, next gen pastor, as well as dabbling as an executive pastor at our youngest location before I became our digital pastor in the middle of 2020.

Well, my name is Christian Vanderhovel, and I serve as the church online pastor right now at my church in the California San Francisco East Bay area. Before that, I was a guest services director. However, I've been at my church for 20 years on staff full-time, and I've played just about every other role from children's ministry director to multi-site director to campus pastor to all sorts of everything in between. But I pivoted to church online only a couple days before Christmas of last year, so I'm really new at this. You guys, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm taking notes. That's what I'm doing.

I'm Rob Schmidgall. I'm at National Community Church in Washington DC area, and I was a campus pastor at one of our campuses. And when we shifted, I just volunteered to help out with the online transition and then ended up being invited into the online pastor role. And so I've been dual role really until the end of the year and just January, really full-time transition to online pastor.

That's awesome. There's so many stories like each of yours that I've heard in this COVID season where we're maybe pre-COVID January, February 2020, operating in one level. Christian, I think, was guest services as an example. And hey, you're doing this guest services thing, and then all of a sudden COVID happens and churches are trying to pivot, they're trying to adjust to a digital framework, and starting to put guys, moving pastors, moving staff people, moving volunteers, even from a physical role into a digital or maybe, you know, some of those areas weren't really defined for the church.

I honestly, I've heard this story hundreds of times in the season, and I really want to do a podcast to feature some guys that are on this walk that are really struggling with some of these things, that are overcoming challenges, that are seeing successes, and start to tell some of their stories. Because there's so many people out there that are operating, let's call it maybe outside of their comfort zone or maybe outside of what they themselves are used to in context of ministry. And so I wanted to bring Tyler, Christian, and Rob together. Interestingly, I think it's three different time zones across the country, different sizes, different types of churches, but all of them are developing a digital strategy, and all of them have equipped these three to be a pastor in this digital space.

So it's gonna be a dialogue, it's gonna be open-ended, and kind of looking forward to the question. I want to learn some things, maybe even organizationally, how the churches are shifting, what are the challenges of today for many of you out there. This is an opportunity to relate, to connect with people that are going through some of the same challenges you are.

So, hey, you know, there's the pivot, right? Like, we don't need to shy away from that. We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There was an issue that happened March 2020, and churches went radical, churches adjusted, and you guys are in new positions as a result. So I'm just curious, maybe from an overarching view to start the conversation, what was that pivot like? What was it like going from your different roles? It happened, now the church is adjusting digital, and you guys are now moving into a completely different context. So what were you feeling? What was that pivot, that transition, like for you all?

I'll start off just because I feel like it was so providential from our perspective. We launched church online by using the Church Online Platform that Life Church provides, YouTube. We've been broadcasting sort of for the last, what, 10 years, but now going, "How do we engage the people that are on the other side of the camera?" We started that in September of 2019, and I was given 10, 20, 10 percent really of my role as guest services director, say, "Hey, can you also oversee the team there and help people feel comfortable, whoever's on the other side, and maybe find out more about them?" So I started that engagement in September of 2019, started an online-only community group in January of 2020. And so when March rolled around, all of a sudden we went from five, six campuses, we went to one campus only—the digital campus. And that was, it felt very providential. We felt ready, we felt prepared. We were able to hang on and be able to keep going, doing the things that we've been doing without missing any weeks, without missing any opportunity.

So it was insane, and I, you know, probably like all of you, there were weeks when there was just no day off because it was just constant, constant work and going all the way through Easter. But it was a crazy pivot, and now pivoting to, "Hold up, are we gonna keep doing this like forever? Are we always gonna do that?" That's our next challenge.

Hey, Jeff, for me, we describe February 2020 as a church as really the sweet spot for ministry. I mean, things were, God was moving at the Ridge. We saw a lot of people come, a lot of people engaging. We were very happy with the steps that others were taking. I called myself in the sweet spot, the most optimal role for me. I was serving as our next gen pastor. I've been doing that for several years. I've been on staff for the Ridge for about 11 years at this point, started in student ministry, and just continued to watch the Ridge just continue to grow and evolve over the years. And then I was helping out one of our youngest campuses as executive pastor, thinking, "Hey, you know, God's got me on this growth trajectory. You know, what is God doing in me and in the Ridge?" Felt really, really good about it.

We were doing digital ministries led by a phenomenal volunteer team, and so we had something off the ground where we were starting to engage with people digitally. We even signed on to be a Futurist Group with Stadia to know and say, "We know one of our next hills to take is digital ministry in terms of leadership, resources, strategy." But I remember March 15th was the day, and we were actually, I was getting ready to teach later that Thursday night or the 14th or whatever that day was, and they said, "Tyler, we can't have any large group like gatherings at all right now." Like, and I scheduled to teach that weekend, and so they threw me in the empty auditorium and said, "Here's a camera, go," and we broadcasted. I'm like, "I have no idea what's going on," and did not realize that that was going to be the case for several months.

And then during a little bit in the pandemic, I sit on our elite team. My lead pastor just texted me—Jeff, actually some podcast episodes of yours—and he just said, "Hey, I want you to just listen to these and let me know what you think about them." And I said, "Okay, I'll do that." So I was listening to a few of them, thought, "Wow, this is really interesting. This is really kind of cool." And then he, Jeff, with his relationship with you, got me in touch with you and just began to talk about what does it mean to move into the role of a digital pastor. So we were committed to saying, "Let's increase our leadership, let's increase our resources, let's increase our strategy." I just never thought I was going to be the guy to be asked to do it, but I fell in love with what I saw could be the opportunity to be a part of that and said, "Okay, let's begin to figure this out," and been trying to figure it out. But thankfully I've had great resources to help us kind of navigate these new waters.

Yeah, for us, pre-COVID we, you know, we were throwing all our sermons up on YouTube. That was pretty much our online presence. Obviously we had our website, but then we had been dreaming and talking about, you know...

Starting an online campus or community, but we had probably a two-year trajectory that we were on and this obviously sped that up. So I think our first couple weeks we threw it up on Facebook and I think by Easter we had jumped, you know, we got chopped and started going that route. And so I think from the beginning for us we knew, hey, this is just pushing us into our future. It's just kind of pushing us there faster than we thought. And for us I think right out of the gate we were like, this is where we've been supposed to be. We should have been here. Now we're here and we're not leaving. And so it's been exciting. But we're just grabbing stuff, we're throwing stuff at the wall, we're just hanging on. I mean, this train is running and yeah, we're just barely hanging on, but it's been amazing. It's been amazing. And I'm pretty excited about what opportunities are out there. It's limitless for sure.

That's great, Rob. I've told you this story. My mother, who's been on the podcast, leads two or three online small groups. She loves National Community Church, loves every time Mark releases a book, Mark Batterson, she's reading it. She's given the copy to me already highlighted and marked up. Like, it's kind of a pun there, Mark marked up. Sorry, moving on. And it's honest to God, this is a true story. Mom's in my house some like Wednesday night or Thursday night in the COVID season and she looks at me and she says, "Hey, does National Community Church do anything online? I like, I never hear about them." And I'm like, "I don't, I don't think so. I like, I honestly, they've never kind of popped up on my radar. Maybe I should look into it," and something like that was Thursday night. And as God is my witness, Friday, you messaged me on Facebook or whatever it was just out of the blue starting to ask some questions. And I'm like, "Hey, Mom, they're figuring it out. The good news, they're coming. They're going to get there soon." But it's been exciting, honestly. You know, for me kind of sitting in the seat that I'm in, seeing so many churches pivot and adjusting the season, a Christian, you know, I mean, you said something in your when you were talking about how yeah, you're working through how to get on. Maybe some of the question for you now is some of the what's coming up in the horizon is, are we going to do this forever? And I'm just curious, like, have you guys, has your church, has leadership, have they answered that question yet? Are you convinced and set that this is, I mean, I don't think there's a wrong answer to this, but are you doing it in the future? Is that in the long-term plans? Is it no, we're not interested? It's just the stop gap? Is it we're kind of experimenting and still figuring it out? Where are each of you kind of in that long-term digital process at Cornerstone?

We are definitely at the throw the spaghetti against the wall, see what sticks kind of thing. Rob, what you said, it's exactly right. We're just trying to figure it out because, you know, we are also running online church a little bit like a physical location with attendance numbers. Is that what we're measuring? Are we measuring eyeballs? Are we measuring seats and butts? Are we, what are we doing? Are we, how do you measure engagement? How do you measure a next step? How do you measure growth? How do you measure connection? And I think there's, we're going to have to be doing that in a different way than we do in physical locations. So pretty excited about that. But like you said at the beginning, Jeff, like there's all these new ways to engage with people. We've started, we opened up a Discord server for people to chat throughout the week. I'm opening up rooms on Clubhouse every once in a while, virtual cafes, everything and anything, not necessarily to get our message out as much as it is to get people to come and find and connect with us on whatever device or whatever space and whatever time zone or whatever time of day that they can. I think that's where discipleship happens. So I'm here for a, yeah, I'm here for answers as well.

We would say as long as we're able to connect with people and connect with our ones, we're going to be in this. And we keep looking back at the research that I think Barna put out before COVID and said sixty percent of unchurched people were unwilling to go to a physical, in-person church service. And that was before COVID. So I mean, you can just assume that that number is just way, way up. But also according to Barna research, I mean, they're willing to check out church online, you know, if a friend sends them a link or invites them to not just a service but maybe there's other, you know, we've been talking about platform content. Can we put out that's shareable that R99 and share with their one? And so our conviction is digital is just like the building. And if it works to gather people and to help them find and follow Jesus, we're in. And for whatever reason it doesn't, okay, then we'll look to the next thing. But right now our gut tells us this is what's going to connect with people and it's going to help them find and follow Jesus. Now our big question is, well, how do you leverage both the physical and the digital and create a seamless integration to allow others to experience both and still take steps in their faith journey, which is what we've been working on.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I said we're here to stay for sure. It is, it's not the wild, wild west. I wouldn't call it that. It's just like this massive open field and you're trying to figure out like, where are we supposed to go? There's so many opportunities and it's been so overwhelming in that regard. So we've really had to just decide like, what can we just do? What can we do now? Don't let the vastness of this opportunity keep us from doing something today. And so that's really been the challenge for us is just to keep trying something, trying different things, and learning from each other has been a huge thing. I mean, getting in with you guys, Jeff, and with Stadia and with some of those huddles and then just talking to other pastors, man, I just encourage any online pastors or volunteers that are out there, reach out to other guys that are doing this or women that are leading in this field. And man, people are making themselves available. We're all sharing ideas and that's the beauty of this. I feel like in a lot of ways we know this, right? The world has shrunk. Well, it has from a relational standpoint for ministers too and volunteers. Like, we have the way that we have opportunity to connect and learn from each other, inspire each other, encourage each other, share little ideas. It's awesome. So yeah, it's overwhelming, but it's also the little victories that we're pulling off, you know, here and there, are just they're huge wins.

Yeah, I didn't intentionally and I'm completely transparent, I didn't intentionally group this, but as I'm looking at the screen, Tyler is involved in Stadia's Futurist Group and so we've been working with the Ridge as well as some others in deep ways. Rob, with National Community, you were part of the Digital Learning Communities, you know, a shorter stand. It's probably, I think it's a ten-week and Stadia's onboarding even churches in twenty twenty-one and taking them through digital learning communities. Christian's part of the Stadia Facebook group where we're connecting people together and doing this. Back when I was doing online ministry in twenty fifteen, you know, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, I felt alone, honest to God, because there wasn't these shared community spaces. There wasn't an opportunity to dialogue. And when you talk to the guys like who were pioneering this, Stephen back in the twenty tens, the Crandas, the Neil Smith, you know, those guys, Greg Atkinson, they'll tell you that, man, it was alone. There was a tight group. I think there were five guys across the country that were really championing digital at that time. And seeing how everything has shifted and now there's so much opportunity for training, for education, for resources, for guidance, and I'm not even Stadia, but outside of that, is beautiful. See, commercial, if you do want to connect with Stadia, let us know, happy to do that. Not that aside, it's really fun to help guys like you wrestle through some of this stuff, to overcome it, to see kind of even from a long-term strategy point to even some of the stuff day-to-day routines that some of those kind of struggles. Which kind of gets me to, what are you working on right now? Like, what's the project? What's the issue? I mean, we mentioned, I think Tyler, you mentioned like the physical and digital, figuring out that relationship. Is it the day-to-day stuff that you're really spending your time working on? Is it more of the long-term stuff? Like, what are you physically, what's taking up your time today, Jeff?

What we've been working on is trying to really implement that digital strategy that we've been talking about and how do we take our digital or our discipleship process, would you rather, and connect with our ones to help move them to ultimately a place where they're multiplying and helping other people find and follow Jesus? And so with us, we've been doing some really hard work and big vision work over the last several months where we went, we redefined our institutional one, which we spent a lot of time with Intentional Churches and Doug Parks and those guys. So that's where a lot of that language comes from. But what was so freeing for us was when we landed on, no, we really want to connect with the thirty-three-year-old unchurched male and his family, whatever relationship that he may have and kids. And that allowed us to really then say, okay, let's design our strategy to speak to that person. Would they connect with our service? So we spent a lot of time looking at our weekly service and saying, really, what we've been doing in the auditorium is really designed for the auditorium. And that's great and it's an awesome experience for what's going on in there. But to just stream that or even just stream parts of it, that's not necessarily the best digital experience for that man in his living room or watching on a screen. And so we then pivoted to customizing. We did some experiments and now we're doing a longer experiment. We're not going to take our weekly service and just create a uniquely designed in-person and a uniquely designed digital service. So what does that mean? A couple examples. Our teaching pastor for that week is giving the same message online as well as in person, but online he's speaking or she's speaking in a room similar to this, right, to the camera, speaking everything to, you know, just thinking through how they're consuming that, whereas then in person it's going to be different. But the same calls to action are going to be the exact same music we're playing with and trying to figure out how to best engage with that because our analytics tell us starting off with twenty minutes on a weekly service of music that they don't know, they're going to drop off on that. And it's hard and it's a hard truth, but it's just what we see. And so that's some of the steps we've taken. But with that, that's just a piece of the bigger picture of what we've really been working on as our digital pathway and our in-person pathway to say, okay, can every call to action that we would have, if you're going to take a significant step in your faith journey, how can we make that available both digitally and in person?

Make that, uh, in a way that can happen both in person as well as online. And so, for example, if they make a decision to follow Jesus and they let us know about it, they get the same follow-up steps. Again, move them into our discipleship pathway, which for us is they get the first steps kind of sent back to them to their phone, and then we invite them into either a rooted experience—it's in person or online—which then funnels them into our discipleship model, which can happen in person or online as well. And have it be seamless where they can bounce back and forth, whether it's attend in person for services and go to a group online and serve. However, that's a hard thing to tackle.

How about some of the other ones? Uh, Christian, Rob, what are you experiencing here? What are you working on right now?

Which one of the things am I working on? I think probably the biggest thing is that vision piece. You know, because some churches are wrestling with, okay, so do we believe that you can land in our digital community and that that's a final landing spot, right? Versus are we just reaching people and then plugging them into local churches? And so wrestling with that, and then, well, what do you do in the meantime? Somebody may not immediately do that. And so really trying to say, what is our vision? You know, you think about like our vision as churches, it's all built around gathering. Everything drives towards gathering. We're not gathering, right? We're not together. And so while that has been a challenge, it has been incredibly good for us because it stripped away something that was good but was also—how do you, how do I say this? I think it was also weakening some of the other areas of what our vision was for people, because our vision a lot of times brought you know, was about you're going to fulfill your vision in our gathering. And there's an importance to that, but there's also a side of a vision for a person that is very individual and that is specific to them and is specific to how are you living right in your COVID circle or your own personal life.

I think one of our sayings that we kind of discovered in this season was this saying that the only ceiling on your intimacy with God and impact on the world is your daily spiritual disciplines. And so we started leaning in on that and saying, how are we equipping people in their daily spiritual disciplines? And then really, a lot of our digital effort was around that. Then it began to move to, okay, beyond that, like if we're reaching people that maybe don't know the Lord, what? And they get into their spiritual disciplines, now what's next, right? And so leaning into more of a missional mindset for that person, how are they living on mission? And then the beauty of that is, I think this is going to better inform us as we start to gather again for what we're doing to invest in people, because we're still not gathering. I don't know how you guys are, but since we went offline last March, we still have not gathered. And DC has rules and restrictions that have prevented us from being able to gather again. And so it's been a challenge, but it's really helped us to focus in.

So I think that's kind of a broad, nebulous answer to this, but I mean, I think it's just what we're working on is what is our vision for every single person long term, not just to get from A to B, but to get from A to Z? And how are we setting people up to be able to do that when you're setting them up in the digital space? That's so much more intentional. It has to be. If you're not, you know, here, go here, here, here, then here, then here—we were a very organic church, and so that's how we did church, that's how we do life. We're organic. But there's just not a ton of organicness in the digital space. So yeah, it's been good for us in that regard, and that's kind of where we're really leaning in right now.

I give you props even on focusing on the strategy piece up front. If you get the strategy—excuse me—if you get the vision piece up front, you get the vision settled, everything else falls into play. You have clarity putting together the rest of the puzzle. It's where you don't have that vision, you don't have that finish line set, you find yourself moving in one direction, then all of a sudden you talk about how, you know, the finish line shifts. You know, somebody moved the cheese, so to speak, and now you're working over here and now you're working over here, kind of moving through, but you don't have that clarity of vision to make sure that everything's aligning from the get-go. So what an important piece, really, to nail that vision right from the beginning.

How about you, Christian? What are you working on?

Same as Rob, really looking at the strategy and the vision for our church. Um, I'm hoping that we as a church—and I'm saying that for Cornerstone, but I'm also saying that for big C church—that we take this pandemic and this big pause button as an opportunity and not something negative, but as just an opportunity to say, what are we working on? Our strategy, to be really honest, in this East Bay of California was not working. We were hitting, you know, ten thousand people in seats, whatever, but that was so far we were able to measure about three percent of the people around us. And I'm thinking Rob is probably similar to you—three percent of people that live in our East Bay area attend church of any kind, of any kind. And so ninety-seven percent of people were able to ignore us or found us completely irrelevant.

So we're trying to figure out, what do we, what are we doing going forward? We have not been in the building since March. Um, some outdoor services, tiny little ones, in all five of our physical locations. And we're going, what are we doing with those buildings? What are we going to use them for? How is it going to fit? I like what you said, Tyler. I think we're looking at something similar—say, are we producing, for lack of a better word, content just for online going forward as well as live iterations, expressions of church? Are we going to go less of a consumeristic, individualistic type of expression or a, you know, a lot of smoke machine type stuff, and going to more of a synagogue type thing where there's some teaching but there's a lot of discussion? The room is full of tables instead of chairs and bleachers. And so that's the level of rethinking we're doing and strategizing we're doing, and it's upending. It's depending a lot because our whole economic model was built around people coming. We still passed bags at Cornerstone at every location. So how are we going to? What are people expecting? But we're focusing also a lot on the ninety-seven who just don't know and don't care.

Ninety-seven? Is that like the lost percentage in the San Francisco area where you are?

Yeah, three percent of the population goes to church, and we're called Church Church, uh, Catholic Church. Uh, we'll take the synagogues, we'll take any kind of religion. It's about three to four percent. And so that's—well, we're not the big mission field, absolutely. It's amazing. Yeah, it's that's a great part, great thing, but it's also overwhelming and also kind of sobering, realizing that we weren't really doing that great.

What has—I'm curious, what has like staff support? You know, there are churches where they have reorged where there's now a large percentage of staff that are helping in the digital space because there was nowhere there and there's no physical services. So we've got all these people sitting around not doing something. Let's do digital. There are churches where that's not happened and it's been more volunteer support. There are churches where volunteer support is not available because of COVID and there's fear of serving in physical space or lackadaisicalness even serving online. And it's the lone guy taking the hill by himself, you know? Kind of set an ego aside here, but tell me, like, what does support look like for you? You're evolving into these digital pastors. Who's running alongside you, or are you at the end of the dock by yourself getting ready to jump in the water?

I'll jump into that because we have started regathering here in person since the summer. And uh, we, our staff has been awesome, uh, full, uh, very flexible individuals. I mean, we've reordered several times, and I don't think we're completely done, obviously, going to hey, you're digital only to now you're in person, um, and as well as having digital. And I think what we found, just like many churches and all the research I think we've all heard—I mean, the Ridge was not immune to the percentages of those coming back in person—where we realized, oh, we are very overstaffed for those who are attending in person and very understaffed for those who are just committed to a digital setting.

And so what we just said is two things. One, let's begin to reallocate some staff again to what does it mean to serve a digital? And so, um, I mean, I have a couple other staff individuals that are committing, just being specifically working to create content, build relationships, and develop others. But the second, and I think this is more significant—I think this is where many churches are gonna go—is it's on us to continue to lead all of our staff people to think about both and to serve both. I love what Crossroads in Ohio has said—they're not campus pastors, they're community pastors. And so you're going to focus on both. And so what we're beginning to kind of think about and begin to dream up and start rolling out is another reorg, so to speak, but I think this one's going to stick more for the next three to five years where you're going to see a few specialists thinking about in person only and then maybe a few specialists thinking about digital only, but the majority of staff is going to have to shift, just like all of us and all of our lead pastors and everyone's teaching. Like, well, how do you serve both? And I think it was Gracewell that said it great: hey, we're gonna go all in on physical and we're gonna go all in on digital, and everyone's going to think about both a little bit more moving out. I think that's what we're going to land on over the next few months.

I mean, I'm technically the only—I mean, you know, we have our IT guy and stuff like that—but as far as ministry in the digital space, I'm the only one that's a hundred percent focused on that. And then everybody else is, I mean, since we're still fully digital, everybody has to, right? Like, small groups, you gotta reinvent that in the digital space. Um, some of our campus pastors are leading other efforts of community gathering in the digital space. And so I think those things are all going to stick. Um, but yeah, it's everybody's got their hand in the pot in a good way. Um, and then so part of my role then is also that digital champion, right? Of just how am I encouraging? How am I helping them to dream? And then supporting them as much as them supporting me. Um, but yeah, we're, I mean, you know, it's a digital first world, and that's not going to change. So I think we all have to think that way, and our team's been doing a good job at that.

We haven't gathered again, so I don't know if things are going to change when we do. But according to Tyler, we'll still be okay because only maybe—I'm curious, how many? What's your attendance percentage, Tyler?

Yeah, that's a great question. When we were able to start regathering back in July, at that point it was probably about thirty percent started coming back. Now, uh, now end of January, we're—

Seeing an uptick of, um, closer to about it's the percentages are about the same. We're seeing more starting to come back, but the good news is, and this is where I think we're doing everything right, our online isn't dipping, which to me shows by the grace of God we're connecting with new people.

And so, uh, so how we measure online and all of that, like that, that's still growing, but our in-person is growing. I'd say we're probably closer to 40, maybe 45 of where we were at, uh, before, um, a year ago. And so when you go all in, we're actually up a year ago, but in-person is, um, still around that 45 is what we're seeing.

Yeah, it seems like 30 seems to be the average of what we're today. I talked with a pastor the other day who was in Phoenix, I want to say Arizona area, who is more 20 to 25. So there's some below that, there are some above in that, and it's awesome. But when I, when when I talk to churches and, and like I asked two questions, I'm like, hey, what's the percentage of people that are that are that are watching online versus in the room? And it's usually like a 70-30, 80-20 ratio. And then the follow-up question is like, how much, what's the percentage of ratio that's going towards your in-service, your in-building services versus like your online ministry? And without a doubt, it's, it's always yeah, 90, 95, 100, 98 percent of our effort goes towards the building and like the service. The online ministry, not even just the services, the discipleship piece of it is often kind of been lost in the shuffle. And that's what's encouraging to me, hearing you know some of you guys, you're wrestling with the long-term vision. It's not just the stopgap. You're wrestling with how to do these things, uh, digitally. That's an encouragement to me because that's, you're developing a full functioning digital church that's complementing, that's working alongside what's happening in physical space, whether it's kind of omni-channel where it's, you know, carbon copy, you can dance back and forth between the two, like Tyler is alluding to, or something that's self-sufficient, self-sustaining, that it's reaching just a different type of person than the physical building can. Like these are all things that churches like yours are wrestling through, uh, with this.

So well, let me ask you, you know, just even as we're talking here about, um, you know, some of some of the struggles that we're overcoming and that churches are overcoming, what's, uh, either give me one or two, both I don't care. Um, what's your biggest, what's the thing that you bringing you the most joy? What's bringing you the most joy in doing ministry online? Uh, maybe what's the biggest challenge that that you're facing, like what are the ups and downs of where you guys are on a regular basis?

I think, uh, some of some of the biggest joys are seeing, uh, people who previously were not connected or not being discipled, uh, being very connected. I hear the line something along the line of, "I feel more connected to my church now than I have in the past," all the time. Uh, it's probably because of the small group that they're in or whatever, but this thing, this screen here allows for so much transparency. It allows for people to open up in a way because maybe because they can close this laptop or turn off their screen or whatever, um, that it allows people to be really open and really transparent. I love seeing people with significant disabilities, whether physical or otherwise, getting involved in church where they could not, would not feel comfortable, um, or able to go to a physical building. Now say, "I can and I am." And, um, you know, there's there's one gentleman, uh, who has some sort of disability, and when he started attending a small group, he was in the corner, the lights were off, you could see barely one eye when he had his camera on. To now seeing his face and he is engaged, and it's the first time in a long time that he's had contact with other people. So that type of stuff fires me up. And I love seeing other pastors in our church take a full, um, make use of the 167 hours outside of holding a microphone. I love that. And there is a lot of work to be done there because there's a lot of people who just want, they feel like that's ministry. I'm holding a microphone and eyes on are on me. And, uh, so those are some of my wins, man.

I, one of the things I'm most excited about is our, we started a 7:14 a.m. prayer meeting, um, on Zoom, and we ended up having 101 prayer meetings last year. We gather every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. 101 prayer meetings. We took the number of people that attended, multiplied it by the time spent, and we prayed for what would equal out to 1,854 days of prayer. Oh my gosh. Prayer over two years of ongoing prayer that happened because of this. We've done prayer meetings in the past. We do 40 days of prayer, you know, every year to kick off the year or 30 days, or we do Lent prayer. We've never come close to the amount of people that can show up at 7:14 for prayer. And you know what, if they gotta, we usually go till 7:45, 8 o'clock. If you got to cut out at 7:40, that's fine, you know, um, but those kind of things, you know, we've started, we started, uh, a daily five-minute podcast we call it NCC Daily, and we've created text groups around these things where, hey, everybody listen to it on your own, drop a text when you do in your little group, um, little things like that. You know, being two weeks ago being on the, on the, you know, on Zoom with someone in Berlin, Germany, talking about, um, you know, about their life and just kind of coaching them through that, and then the week before that talking to someone down in Argentina. Um, crazy.

On the flip side, and I'll say this, and this is kind of what you were alluding to, Christian, that the rich are getting richer spiritually. The people who are putting in the effort in this season are growing exponentially. It's amazing. But what has been so hard for me is connecting with people who I know love the Lord with all their heart, but they'll say, "I haven't watched church in three months. I just can't get into it." And I mean, I get it, right? Um, and thank God we're connecting because they're like, "I need, you know, I need some, I need some encouragement. I need to be held accountable. I need you," you know, but man, that can, and there are so many people who all reach out and just connect and they're like, "Oh yeah, I haven't watched in a month. You know, I haven't watched in six months." I mean, uh, that's hard. That's the stuff that just, it kills you, man. But and it's not that they haven't walked away from faith. They're not, you know, they're just, it just, they don't connect that way. And so trying to lean into how are we, how are we building that, you know, keeping that connected community together, even if you're not going to watch online, that's fine, but how are we engaging and how are we connecting? And anyways, that's just being kind of real vulnerable.

No, I mean, it's what really has been hard. Yeah, I, I can, I can relate. I can understand. Thank you for some of the transparency there. Um, it's funny. We, um, we talk about how in digital churches you reach a different type of person through digital methods, and and you're seeing that in the season. You're right. You're able to connect the people that are hungry that can work this model. Like there's no limit to what they can do by engaging through it. But the sad reality is without the physical model working, there's a percentage that's not that's not going to be able to connect as well. And I don't know if it necessarily, you know, some people are like, it draws a generational line, uh, you know, an older generation's not gonna, I don't, I don't believe that. I don't think it's generational. You know, I would actually, this second time my mom's mentioned on the podcast, you're welcome, Mom. Uh, I mean, she's 73. Like I said, she's leading, she's leading two small groups right now, and she's like trying to figure out how to ramp up and do a third. Um, and it's not, and it's not old ladies she's doing it. She's like doing it with younger women doing like mentoring type relationships and just really, really rich into it. So but there are people, there are ways to engage into it. You just got to figure out, I guess, how to get there, how to connect with it. Uh, well, our prayer meeting is definitely a higher age demographic. We're, I'm seeing a lot more people like, you know, my mom, the same. It's she loves it, right? Because it's hard to get out, to walk from the car all the way into the church, and then, you know, getting back out. So she loves, loves this. Um, but yeah, you know, you know who's also been, um, significantly, which demographic has significantly grown is our singles. They feel way more, um, engaged. They don't feel quite as, uh, marginalized, you know, in a physical church setting where it's about families and kids and all that.

So well, cool. Um, Rob, I want to unpack, not today, but that prayer thing. I'm, we're going to have another conversation. We'll dig into that. Like I'm really intrigued. Like my first question is, do people show up in their pajamas? Like I want the, uh, honest, we'll ask that off there. So we'll tease that for a later time. It's called video off. Okay, I got you. Now like I'm sipping that coffee, I'm eating my bagel. Probably 20 at max have their video on. The video off button, what's been the biggest surprise? Um, you know, it's some of you, Tyler was leaning this way, I think pre-COVID. Uh, Christian, you've been all over the map. Uh, doing in your ministry career, Rob, you were a campus pastor as I recall, kind of pivoted as a result of this. So some of you, you know, definitely lots of rich ministry career, not not much on the digital side. What what surprised you in this? You're like, oh, I didn't see that coming. I didn't expect that.

Uh, I'll jump in and kind of tail end off the previous question with the joy of the anytime, anywhere, any place, which has led to that surprise because you guys are talking about the different generations, different stages of life experiencing that, you know, from a personal standpoint, like, um, Jeff, I'll mention my mom as well. My family lives outside out of state, and there's, they're in a spot that there's not many churches like the Ridge there. And my wife and I were like, hey, at some point we go plant there, you know, because, but this has allowed us to connect with them, and we're seeing family members take steps. My, my wife's had family members that kids are never had an experience like we're able to provide, and now they're doing that in their homes too, uh, to see that. So I think the surprise is just in a really pleasant way of this really is anytime, anywhere, any place. People are taking steps. Apologies, I get a message on Tuesday morning from, hey, I saw you guys talk about depression. I want to talk about that, and they're jumping in, and uh, it's been really cool.

But Jeff, the other, the other big surprise, and I just want to share, uh, just a kind of a note of gratitude for me, I was very pleasantly surprised when you said, uh, at first time he's like, hey, this is a tight-knit community, and just the opportunity that you and the names that you mentioned, Ray, Ben, um, all of those guys, guys you've had on this podcast before, and how open-handed you have been and saying, hey, we're going to do whatever we can to lead our churches, but not just our churches, we're going to help all these other churches across the nation and the world figure this out and help them get going. And I think many people are following Jesus as a result of that. And so that was just really cool where anytime, text message or whatnot, I mean, you guys are saying, hey, we'll help you, we'll get this figured out, and no question was too small, no question was too big. And, uh, in other areas of ministry, it's not as open-handed like

That and so that was a very, very cool thing to hear. And so thank you, Jeff, and thank you to the original guys who allowed this, I think, to probably be an easier transition for us than maybe what it would have been otherwise. I tell you, a lot of that's grounded over years and decades of ministry life being told you're crazy. And so when somebody comes along who thinks the exact same way you are and is asking the questions that you were asking, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago, yeah, you want to help that guy because you're not crazy.

Like, I've not told this story before. I remember walking into a digital conference that was out in California, down in Disneyland, Downtown Disney, and walked into this. It was a church technology conference, and literally I was shocked. There were a thousand people who were asking the same questions that I was. This is back in my staff life, and this is when I really realized, wow, there's like people out there like me who are needing help, who are asking these questions and just don't have the database of names, the history, the connections to get some of these answers. So yeah, definitely love what's happening there.

So how about the other two? Christian, Rob, what are you guys thinking in context of maybe some surprises in this ministry shift? I love the friendships that have formed between volunteers from all over the West Coast, from different countries, that are now serving with us. And it's the CR. I mean, you know, you know that solid friendships can form online, but to see that happen and see the people come alongside each other during difficult times and hop on the phone or on a Zoom after just a chat turns a certain way, it was really fun. And the other surprise was how many people start their journey with Jesus based on watching something on their computer or mobile device and getting a chance to baptize them and start it. It's been one of those aspirational things that you start when you talk about church online. Like, oh, we could, you know, we can and people will, you know, accept Christ. And to see that actually happen because they were sent a link, teenagers, all ages, it has been really surprising and very, very cool.

Yeah, I think on the positive surprises, I'm echoing what these guys are saying about just the openness of the community to be available. On the maybe more difficult surprise that I didn't see coming was how difficult it is to minister to kids. At least it has been for us. I mean, we're doing all the videos and, you know, but like kids being able to engage with the teacher, we're trying on Zoom. We're doing small groups with kids, but it's just been harder than I anticipated. You know, I figured, hey, we just make a cool video and kids and parents will love it. But I think parents are really feeling the loss of those other voices into their kids' lives. And so that's been a real surprise to me, that it's so difficult to figure out. So we're still, again, throwing spaghetti against the wall trying to get it, but that's been a tough surprise.

Rob, yeah, we've had that similar surprise as well. And I wonder, just kind of thinking as a former next-gen guy, all that staff is trying to pivot real hard to get, you know, the videos up and the videos up. And I was talking with our kids team the other day, and I'm like, you know, just using Orange, for example, and I think you guys are an Orange church as well. Hey, their goal is never to put a video out in front of a kid. The goal, the strategy really is, well, how do you get a small group leader and a parent partnering together to influence a kid? And so maybe it's not the goal. Maybe it's not the goal to get the video out. Maybe the goal is how do we leverage these digital tools to partner with a parent and partner with a small group, would just introduce each other? Maybe it's not YouTube. I don't know. I mean, we're starting to just try to hit the ground. We're going to because that was the area I noticed that was obviously the easiest when you start re-gathering in person to push digital to the side again because now you're like, now we gotta do small groups and CDC protocols and all of this stuff. And it was the easiest to kind of start walking away. And like, hold on, hold on, guys. Let's, you know, let's start kind of gathering around and let's start rethinking this because you're right, and it can feel lonely by not offering that.

Yeah, for me, kids was the surprise of COVID. I'm church ass. I remember I was doing a webinar, and when it like kids is not even on my radar. And I've done kids ministry online back in like 2017, so like it wasn't, but it wasn't urgent, you know, in the grand scheme of my life and pre, kind of as COVID was starting up. And I remember that question came across in a webinar I was leading, and I saw it and it kind of like blew it off. And then like three more people asked the same question, kind of upvoted it in the thing, and it's like, oh, I guess I'm gonna have to address this one. And gave some fluff answer they didn't like. And just four months, what do we do with the kids? What do we do with the kids? What do we do with the kids? It's just been that repeating pattern.

I love churches that are experimenting with it. I think the, I don't know that there's a really good lesson here. I don't think there's a solid answer. There's no secret sauce. But it's don't, it's you have to think different than what you're doing in the current space. Like, you know, I'll throw like the, and this may be crazy and I'm kind of crazy, but like the Robloxian Christians. Daniel Aaron's been on the podcast, actually the most listened podcast by the Church Digital. Daniel Aaron talking about the Robloxian Christian church that he started when he was eleven years old and just recently handed it off to somebody else because it was weird for a twenty-year-old to be in Roblox. And now like some sixteen-year-old girl is running this church that has impacted, the last count I heard was like somewhere around sixty thousand people over the span of nine years. Ridiculous. But it's not, hey, let's do like this physical church service to do it digitally. It's a completely separate thing. And so like the people that I've seen be successful are like that. There are churches that are now doing like established churches, Bayside in California is one of them trying to get connected with, but they've got a Robloxian campus and their kids ministries run by kids and students and that's happening in that environment. Or, you know, the guys who, who's the YouTube crew that does all the like the basketball, like fifty miles away, you know, it's the goofy stuff on YouTube. Tyler Sansom does this stuff where he's, they utilize YouTube to connect with the kids or with adults or different things, not preaching the gospel in the content but using it to develop relationship through the social media network of YouTube and then connecting them to the church through that relationship.

Well, you said, Jeff, where you said like it's about relationships. I think that we've, it's all about relationship. When Tyler just said thank you so much for sharing everything that you had, when we were locked in, we were some people around me were nervous that everybody was just going to watch Mark Batterson or Andy Stanley or Jeff or whoever, you know, um Grochelle, and that's not the case. That people are still wanting to connect with us because we have a relationship. And so we have to be in all these states. We have to be in World Blocks and to be on Facebook. It's driving us crazy to think that we have to be on TikTok as a church. My gosh, do we have to? And all of it to have that relationship. And how do we multiply that? How do we not kill ourselves by spreading ourselves too thin? But I think it's been so surprising too to me, by Tyler, what you said, that everybody's so open to go, come see what we do, do what we do, use what we have. And it doesn't mean that we're all going to that one spot, to that one preacher, to that one experience. We actually see even more iterations get created. And I think the interesting challenge for churches like yours, I would say this. I think the next step for you, and it's interesting, I'm gonna build Christian on that example right there. I gotta get my church on TikTok. I don't know anything about TikTok. What's this Clubhouse thing? My gosh, they come out with new, Parlor was a thing and then it went away. Okay, it's good now, it's bad. I got you're coming out with so much new stuff. How am I supposed to keep up? At some level, and I haven't seen a lot of churches do this, but I think this is the challenge. At some point you've got to let go of being the ones to go and do your voice on those platforms. What I mean by that is find three strong Christians that understand what it is to make a disciple in your church and invite them to go tackle TikTok. Invite someone else to develop your strategy for Clubhouse, okay? Maybe stay away from Parlor. I don't even know if it's up yet. But find ways to empower others to go be that voice. You're a there's so many opportunities digitally, and this is the thing I don't think the church has really grasped yet. We are a lid in the digital space because it's so easy to do instead of us. Our institutional voice building off of Tyler in his content with intentional churches, instead of our institutional voice being the one that everybody hears, which by the way they don't care about our institutional voices. Individuals have the power. Let's get individuals out there. Let's, I'm more interested in, oh yeah, I'm more interested in four digital disciples getting into TikTok than National Community Church getting into TikTok. Mark Batterson, okay? Maybe Mark Batterson doing a sixty-second TikTok dance. I would be interested in that. Make that happen. We're not happening, okay? But get some digital missionaries out there. Get somebody who understands that culture to do it and empower these individuals to do something. They'll be more, and then funnel it into your digital church, whatever that looks like. That to me would be the goal. What do you guys think about that?

Yeah, we're that's our thought right now. We're also looking at equipping kind of like the micro movement as well. Like, hey, you know, how do we equip people to gather their neighborhoods and do this well? We can take that same training. This is our thought process. Do that same thing for individuals, wherever they're at online, and then invest in their ones online is them as an individual. We have a lady who attends our church who has done very, very well with some social network marketing company. If I said the company you would be very familiar with it, I think. And she just told me she's like, if people want that brand they can just go on that website and buy the brand. I have to get them to trust me as an individual before that brand. And she's just done an incredible job with that. And so I think the next challenge of what we're working on, Jeff, you're dead honest. How do we equip our ninety-nine, those who call the Ridge their home or call themselves followers of Jesus, to connect with their ones relationally and invest in them? Not just in at the gym or at the schools or in their neighborhoods, which they need to do, but in their own online community that they are. So they're going into their local community Facebook groups and building relationships there or school or, you know, running or whatever, you know, like to develop relationships there. And we give them the tools to then begin to interact and help them follow Jesus and do their own.

Things there, yeah, I agree. Um, 50, 50 year old lead pastors should not be dancing on TikTok. I don't think that would be a great idea at all. Um, but if we take those opportunities to say, you know, here's how you as students or twenty-somethings do this, um, in a way that builds genuine relationships, I think I think can help just continue to grow that guy's kingdom.

I know how much of a conversation this is for you and your church or with leaders, but I think we have to stop moving away from making all these online iterations of church just the way to funnel them to come into one of our rooms and have some sort of worship experience. It's great, that's a great goal, but I think if we change it to say no, we are just using all these tools to help you create meaningful discipleship relationships in person or not, we're going to help disciple you, and that ultimately is going to lead to in-person change for you and your community. But I'm not sure if that's going to be in big auditoriums all the time or as an ultimate goal. I I would think the pendulum is shifting. Um, I I think that you're you're going to see more comfortability in that digital space. Right now there's still we want to drive people to the building. Um, the building itself is under under turmoil. Um, honestly, your your ones, your people who are called to Christ, Christian, the ninety-sevens that are in San Francisco, I think they're gonna treat the church like they would a movie theater. If if they are comfortable enough to go into a movie theater, a strange building, sit in a chair for two hours and watch, okay, not an Avengers movie, just watch some random movie. If they can do that, I think there's still a chance for the church. If we can't even get them to shell out fifteen bucks to go sit and watch a popcorn flick, I I don't think we're going to see evangelism happen. Now there may be other things that can't happen in the building, but I don't think that the evangelistic part of our church strategy is going to exist in that building on the one hour on Sunday.

Hey, just as we're wrapping up here, this has been an awesome conversation. Let's, is is online ministry like for for you personally, church, you know, they're figuring out some of the long-term vision, what this looks like. I'm just curious for you, like is is this your your whole hog, you're in this, is this you know, you're not sure long term if this is online or if it's physical, kind of what's your temperature at this point? You know, February 2021, what does it look like for you long term? Is this is this the the long term or you're still working that through?

Let me let me see what my GameStop stock is at right now.

Well played. Well, yeah, man, I'm in it, dude. This this is phenomenal. I love just the opportunity that's out here. Um, I love, you know, the people that are in this space, and it it, there's no, there is no age limit. There are limits with someone's age on what they'll do, but there's no limit to any age being involved at some level in this space. And so it's just, it really is exciting, and I'm I'm just, man, I just have to keep myself focused because I, there's so many potential, right? Like we were talking about so many things we could do, so I'm trying to be like focus. Um, yes, yes, one hundred percent. This is this is the future. This is now. I want to echo everything Rob just said, and and I want to say that field that you talked about at the beginning, Rob, like it's just a vast open field uh that's just ripe for harvesting. I'm so in that, and if I could do this for the rest of my ministry career, I think it'd be a huge win because there's so much to be discovered, there's so much to be developed, so much to be found out that um if you sign me up, sign me up. Love it.

You know, Jeff, I am laughing because a year ago I had no idea what like an online campus pastor or digital pastor was, and and here we are, you know, kind of going through the transition. I think uh for for me, the the joke around me, as long as I've been on staff for the Ridge for you know last eleven years, I've just been wired in a way to just kind of come into something that's been started, build it up, build systems, implement a strategy, and then find the next person, hand it off, and go and do that. I don't know if that's the case for online. I think online uh there's a lot of ground to cover, there's a lot of work yet to be done, and it's probably gonna do this. I can say the Ridge is definitely in on this long long term, and I'm planning on, like I mentioned earlier, all of us have to continue to think about this more and more. So I think so. Um, I just uh my job description changes about every two to three years. Who knows uh what that what that could mean, but uh we're committed as a church where we always say hey, um, as long as it's uh helping people, we're gonna do it, and we we think digital is doing that right now.

Hey, you're every two to three years? I mean, there were parts of my ministry career where it was every two to three months I had a different role. I think Christian can probably agree with that, it sounds like with his history, but uh that's that's awesome. I and I've loved, I loved seeing each of your churches work through this, and and uh each of you individually kind of kind of grow and develop in in ministry. And so looking forward to more conversations uh in in the days, weeks, and and months ahead because what's, COVID's a marathon. I feel like we said that ten months ago. COVID's a marathon, and and we're, I think we're on mile ten of what is still a long road ahead of us here. So looking forward to um honestly being that water guy next to the barrel at mile marker eleven point four saying oh, you just got another fifteen miles, you're fine, keep going, you're good, you're good, you got it, keep going. It's pretty much where I am at this point. Keep going, you're good.

Hey, this has been a great time as we're landing the plane. Any any closing thoughts, Christian? Anything from you wrapping up?

No, I just I I hope we can continue this uh close-knit community even if it when it grows, that we keep ourselves available to help one another out. There's so many questions that you you, Jeff, and Jay, like just problems you've already solved, and it's super helpful for those of us who are just getting started. So I hope we can keep that going, and um and that we can yeah keep our keep our um our phones right next to our us ourselves to uh to answer the call.

Awesome, that's exactly. Keep keep the thumbs on the on the on the keyboard. Just just keep. Could you imagine doing this without the Apple iPhone? I just I wanna sometimes I rip Apple on the show a little too much, maybe, but like without internet, without the iPhone, I could not imagine the church dealing with the pandemic like in this in this season. Like I I think God brings opportunities in and amongst everything, and I think I would say helping for art for our churches was Slack. If we made the move to Slack about two years ago, I don't know if we would have survived without Slack. So if you're not using Slack as an organization when everybody's in different uh physical locations, it is, it's not a lifesaver.

Yeah, I I would I would echo that. Slack's a big win. Rob Tyler, any closest thoughts here as we're wrapping up?

I just uh keep going. Everyone's doing great. I mean, we're trying new things and just stay agile and lead with vision. I think as we continue to try new things to see new things, you're going to face opposition, you're going to face push back. Um, but remembering the why and and the wise wife we try, you know, so just continue to lead with vision, and uh you'll keep doing great.

Awesome, well, well said, Rob. I think I would leave everybody with if they have any questions, reach out to Tyler or Christian, and they'll help you out.

Um, no thanks, Jeff, just for creating this space, man, and for for being the crazy weirdo who thought about doing this five years ago or ten years ago whenever you were doing it, and um yeah, just so thankful for for just the the circle of people that you've pulled together to to make available for people. So um hey, man, keep trying, everybody. We're gonna we're we're making a difference. We're gonna make a difference, and just want to encourage everyone to keep plugging away, man, and and and stick with it. So thanks, Jeff.

That's awesome. Hey, so we're going to wrap on this. Once again, thank you to Tyler, Christian, and Rob for jumping on on on the podcast here. A great time dealing talking with this panel um towards you know what's next and seeing them grow and develop their their churches and them themselves as as digital and online pastors. So we're gonna wrap, and uh we will be talking about this, I'm sure again, and continuing here on the podcast. But for Tyler, Christian, for Rob, this is Jeff with the Church Digital, Stadium Church Planting. Thanks again for joining us here on on the pod. We'll see you next time here at the show. Y'all have a good day.