EP119: Phygital Groups that Multiply

Can small groups actually multiply? Can digital small groups actually multiply? This is the question that we're digging into here with this episode of the Church Digital Podcast. Jeff Reed here, Church Digital, powered once again by Stadia Church Planting. I love the stuff that Stadia is doing and the way that they're exploring things like even small groups and how churches can thrive, grow, and multiply, develop strategies that can help churches like yours learn to thrive, grow, and multiply.

Just recently I had the opportunity to be on a webinar with our friends over at Glue. If you're not familiar with Glue, check the website out: glue.us. There's some really interesting things that they're doing, even towards the point of helping churches market and connect with people within their communities. Go to glueconnect.church/stadia for more information. I don't want to park out on that. Within the webinar you'll hear something at the end that gives more information towards this Glue Connect thing that they're doing for churches. But specifically here we're going to talk about how to get groups that multiply. So I had a really great conversation with Jamie Larson of Glue, where she was interviewing me. So we're going to flip the script a little bit here on the Church Digital Podcast. Instead of me interviewing somebody else, somebody's interviewing me, talking about how to get groups to multiply and maybe even a little bit teasing to what a discipleship relationship with discipleship groups can look like in digital space.

So for the conversation here: Jamie Larson with Glue, Glue Connect, myself Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting, simply put, having a conversation about digital groups that multiply. Okay, everybody, here you go.

Well, hey everyone. I'm Jamie Larson. I want to welcome you. Today's workshop is digital groups that multiply, and by digital we mean combining physical and digital. Please continue to introduce yourself in the chat. We do want this to be interactive throughout the entire time, so you won't feel rude if you're asking questions or you're putting something in the chat. We absolutely want you to do that.

If you're here with us for the first time today, welcome. We've actually been having multiple workshops, and so we have a whole series of them. We've got ones from writing emails to your congregation that they will actually read, and then we've got stuff around social media and how to build relationships. We've got videos, we've got downloads, so much more. And so we want to direct you to where you can watch any of those that may be helpful to you. And in the chat we'll have a link that you can go to so that you can access all of those.

So over the next 45 minutes we're going to walk you through the best practices for helping online groups multiply. I'm really excited that you're here today. Don't know if you can tell, but I am super excited. My name is Jamie Larson. I've been a pastor's wife for 20 years, which is weird because I don't even think I'm old enough to be a pastor's wife for 20 years, but I have been. I started an online education site a couple or several years ago, actually, and I had to learn the ins and outs of digital marketing, how to attract people digitally, and how to grow them without ever meeting them. Does that sound familiar? Because that's what a lot of you are having to do right now.

Now I actually work at Glue and I run the Engaged Church Community for pastors and communication directors. We also have Randy, Julia, and Jeremy from Glue in the chat who are available to answer any of your questions throughout the workshop. We will have a Q&A time at the very end for you to also ask Jeff your questions. So if they can't answer those questions, they're going to feed them to us at the end to make sure that we go over afterwards.

So throughout our workshop we're going to post in the chat and ask some questions, and we would love for you to interact with those answers or those questions and give us your answers. And so again, I just want to remind you: make sure that as you're replying, that it's replying to everybody and not just panelists, okay?

Hey Jeff, how's it going?

Well, hey, that was a mouthful. You went through that pretty well. Yes, it is a mouthful. I'm glad I got through it. And I'm so excited that you are here with us today, Jeff. I want to introduce everybody to you. I think a lot of people probably already know who you are, but just in case they don't, I'm going to share a little bit about you. You are the director of digital church planting for Stadia, correct?

Yep, that's pretty awesome.

Yeah, it's a fun job, I bet.

I bet. You've been in the church for nearly 20 years and you started the Church.Digital in 2018. And now as the director of digital church planting for Stadia, Jeff spends his time helping plant digital-only churches in online communities. That's so awesome. As well as helping churches develop and implement strategies for digital church. I just know I'm gonna get that term wrong, but I said it right this time. Digital. You're also married with your wife Amy. You've got two children and a puppy who has a taste for technology. Tell me about that.

Yeah, so my dog loves to eat products, and it seems to be the more expensive the better taste that it has. So recently she totally demolished a pair of AirPods—excuse me—AirPods version two, not the Pros. It was actually my excuse to upgrade to the Pros. But yeah, the case. Oh yeah. So yeah, she's. I used to joke that like she's Thanos just coming along and sitting out the herd, allowing for more growth to come afterwards. You see, I did a Marvel tie-in there.

I totally, totally, totally got that. Good, good, good, good. That's great. Yes, we have a puppy as well who does love AirPods. So I can definitely relate.

Well, hey, we want to make sure that you stick around until the end because, like I said, we're going to have a Q&A which I think is going to be super valuable. But we're also going to be giving two bonuses created by Stadia with next steps that can take you beyond what we even talk about today. These are really informative and really beautifully designed bonuses.

If this is the first time that you have been hanging out with Glue, I just want to tell you a little bit about us. At Glue, we are really passionate about growth, and we refer to leaders of churches and non-profits as champions because that's exactly what you are at the end of the day. Our goal is to serve you, so we spend a lot of our time listening to our champions and figuring out what is standing in the way of your success, and then we work to build tech solutions that make your job a little easier.

I also want to preface that any tools or tech solutions that we talk about today, they will be at zero cost to you. So we are not trying to sell you anything. I hope that is really refreshing to hear. Today is all about being a gift to you, and we hope that this conversation serves you and your church really well.

So without further ado, let's move on to our guest Jeff and learn about digital groups that multiply. Okay, Jeff, so what are the strengths and the weaknesses, as well as the similarities and differences, of online small groups versus physical small groups? How do we do this well?

Wow, like that's the big question, right? How to, what's the difference? We know this physical realm. We're trying to do it online. And by the way, it's great to be here. Really looking forward to the conversation, Glue crowd. Hey, thanks for this. And I'm a big chat guy, like we had talked about here. So even I want to ask the room in advance right now: you tell me, what are the strengths that you see as you've been testing, as you've been experimenting, as you've been trying online small groups as a result of COVID? What are you seeing kind of as the strengths coming out of that?

For me, I see scalability. It's the ability to virtually at any time do a small group. You want to do a small group at nine o'clock at night to reach a bunch of soccer moms, single soccer moms that have a bunch of kids? Yeah, you can do that. After the kids go to bed, do a small group and create that community. Then you want to do it at eleven o'clock at night? Well, I mean, I guess if you're single and you're not gonna wake up the house, sure, why not? Go do that five o'clock in the morning? There's no excuse because you're in an online environment. You're able to do things virtually, digitally, that you wouldn't be able to do physically. It's much more convenient as well, so it's a lot less excuses for engaging in there. It's easy to join a group. Honestly, we all have webcams in our pockets. They're called iPhones or Androids. And so the little cameras that we've got built in, coupled with Zoom or some sort of technology, it's easy to engage right there.

But from a more kind of philosophical standpoint, video digital small groups is really the great equalizer. Oftentimes, if you really analyze some of the psychology of what happens in physical small groups, there's a lot of judging or there's a lot of uncomfortability based on where we are meeting in the physical space. Maybe it's a lower economical person who's joining a physical small group, walking into a luxurious two-story mansion with this gorgeous gateway doorway, and immediately they're feeling less valued, more shy, more uncomfortable because it's not in their space. When in fact, what we discover in online small groups, there's a lens—like you can't see it, but it's right there—and that lens gives me the ability, it's safety, comfort. You know, Jamie, you're on the other side of the country and I can have a conversation and I'm not worried about being judged because I'm in Miami, Florida and you're in Colorado. And so the ability for us to get real with each other quickly in digital environments—digital pastors tell you that happens very quickly in digital space but not necessarily physical space.

Yeah, that's actually a really great point. I never would have thought of that. And also, I don't have to clean. I mean, you're only seeing the neat part of my office right now. I didn't have to clean everything up, which is a huge plus.

Yeah, it's ironic. I'm actually in my guest bedroom, so there's like a bed four feet that way. You don't know that. You don't need to know that. My dog is probably trashing the living room as we speak, and so I don't have to explore and expose a lot of that. I can just worry about the conversation that we're having and engage in the space without having to worry about what's happening in the other areas.

And from once again from another practical standpoint, we've got the ability—and you can Google this term—it's called "flip the classroom." This is actually like an educational thing. My wife has a master's in education and they've studied this where they found that the lecture portion of what happens in a classroom setting, the best way to do that is not within the actual classroom setting with multiple people, but it's watching it on demand during the week. And then when you gather together, it's not listen to one person lecture. It's actually dialoguing, right? And so now we've got the opportunity to not just listen to a video, watch a video, kind of online, do that stuff in advance, but come into the room ready to dialogue. It's better in digital environments. It's better to ask questions than make statements. It's better to use question marks than periods. And that questioning, that facilitating, allows for people to engage in conversation, which is really the strength of what we want utilizing these digital tools—get people engaging in conversations.

Yeah, that's really good. And I've actually heard of flipped the classroom before. That's a great approach. So then, do we have weaknesses when it comes to online small groups?

Doing this digitally? Oh yeah, I mean I would be crazy to say that there's not weaknesses. Now there's opportunities as well to maybe overcome. And once again I'll ask in the chat, would love you guys to tell me what are some of the weaknesses that you're seeing in context of the digital small groups?

For me, right off the bat, and this is not a new concept, this is decades old, it's the perception that utilizing technology is, hold it, it's distant. Um, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just means it's we have to work as a church. We've got to work hard to overcome that. It's the impression that it's very impersonal. Um, when in fact it's very, very personal. I mean, just this week, and unfortunately I don't get into the details, within an hour yesterday I made a grown woman cry on a Zoom call. It wasn't, it was not, no, it wasn't confession. There. And Jeff, I can be a jerk, but it wasn't in that situation. Honestly, we just got so real with each other. Her husband was in the room on the call as well, but we just unearthed some things in 45 minutes worth of conversation that she was very real and personal to her, and she got emotional as a result of it. And once again, it's recognizing the tools for the strengths. And yes, there are weaknesses, but we can overcome it.

It's global. This means that we've got to deal with issues like time zones. I personally I've led one small group at one time with I was in Miami, Florida. There was a guy in England and there was a guy in Hawaii. And so the best time to do that was 3 p.m. Sunday Eastern Standard Time because that was like eight o'clock in England and that was like 6 a.m. in Hawaii. And so these are challenges you've got to look at if you're doing something global. If you're reaching a global person, um, it's new. We're talking fiddle, which is a new word, physical and digital. The fact that you're addressing digital is probably new for your church, but at the same time here we're talking, we're going to talk more about this idea of multiplication, an intentional multiplication, intentional focus on this is probably two new concepts for your church. You're maybe saying it, but you're not putting some of it into practice. And even one of these concepts is hard. Intentionally focusing on both is once again even more hard.

Any change in church structure can be slow, and tackling two at the same time is definitely a slow process. For sure, for sure. People are having to get used to change these days a little bit quicker, it seems like though. So, okay, so second question. Changes in the church can take time. So that's what we're talking about right now. What strategies might a church need to make to ensure that their digital groups can thrive and multiply? And I'm even thinking in my head, Jeff, right now, some of the older generation and you know, not having the tech, and so maybe you'll cover some of that. But um, would love to know the answer to this.

Awesome. Love that. And we'll dig into the older generation. I'll tell you a story about my mom coming up. I'm not calling my mom, well, yeah, I am calling my mom old. Sorry, Mom. Um, so right, we've got a strategy that we need to shift here. The biggest hurdle that hopefully we're overcoming in this season is that we need to move past the Sunday large gathering being the singular focus. Um, now in pre-COVID it was, we've done the analogy before, we've talked about it, where that Sunday large gathering was really the queen. If you wanted something done, if you wanted something communicated, if you wanted to get people for your ministry, for your small group, or whatever, get it in that Sunday service. And by the way, if you get the pastor to work it into a sermon, extra credit points, you're guaranteed success, right? I mean, it's crazy, but there's an opportunity to do more than just that. And as and as upset as we were when we could no longer gather in our buildings, honestly, pastor, don't be upset about not gathering in the building. Be upset that your people don't have purpose when they're not in your building, which really gets us to this. Three, we call them three piston approach. Um, Ali Ruhi, who's a church planter at Stadia, has talked about this a lot. And it's this idea of yes, the Sunday morning, the large gathering, the sermon is important, but it's not the only thing. Let's throw groups in there. Let's throw a biblical community, getting people at a broken level, smaller groups for intentional discipleship. That's important. There's a third as well that works together in this getting people, and I would call it on personal mission. And really this personal mission in groups, these two pieces work very well together. And it really needs to be an integral part of your church's mission and vision working for moving forward. And it works great because no matter where you're located, honestly, you can be the guy in England, you can be the guy in Hawaii, you have the opportunity to reach out to your community in your own circle of influence and reach them for Christ.

So we're talking intentional evangelism, intentional multiplication at it, literally in my example, a global, a worldwide movement. The benefit of COVID, and I really do believe this is that I believe that God realigned his church with his true mission. Um, we moved beyond maybe some unhealthy dependencies on a large gathering where one person stands on a podium and exudes a spiritual gift in front of thousands, and instead now we've moved into a place where all of us have the opportunity to strengthen our individual spiritual gifts and use them to reach our circle of influences with that.

Yeah, Ali, Ali Ruhi is a great example. I mentioned him earlier. Um, he's a pastor out in California, and he was quoted as saying this to me, and and I'll be honest, like my jaw hit the table when I heard this. He says, "Jeff, my church is healthier because of COVID." And immediately I leaned in because I never heard a pastor say my church is healthier because of COVID. But he started telling me stories of um his attendance of his large gathering his week in service was cut 80 percent, like dwindled down next to nothing in an online environment, but he saw his online small groups triple. He saw people start to get on mission and understand the personal mission aspects of what was there. And honestly, talking about another metric to look at in the COVID season in California, he saw his giving increase 25 percent, increase of giving as a result of it. And so he's not looking of just shuffling people from services to small groups. He's measuring giving. He's measuring personal mission and evangelism, saying, "Jeff, because of our intentionality towards personal mission, tying it into groups, this multiplication angle, our church is healthier as a result of it."

And you know, and I would even segue there into um some Seth Godin. This is weird because Seth is probably one of the top marketing guys in the country, maybe the planet, right? I mean, we've all read his books. Um, he was on a podcast, Google Seth Godin, but he was on, he did his podcast and somebody from I think Turkey um phoned in a question for his podcast. And the guy asked from Turkey, "Hey, how do I get my message heard around the world?" And Seth, Seth basically answered this: "You'll never get a billion people to agree with what you have to say. A billion people do not care about your individual message. If if you really want to reach people, it's not a hundred million, it's not a ten million, it's not a million, it's not a hundred thousand. Ten thousand. To really impact people, you want to tell the smallest number of people possible an idea. You want to get them to own it, and you want to get them to replicate it."

Yeah, Seth is Jewish, not a Christian, and he's describing in simple principles the foundation with which Christ built his church. I mean, he's explaining discipleship and disciple-making. And so we have this opportunity to see multiplication in these small groups led by volunteers, by individuals who are on personal mission, to see this multiplication happen. And we've got opportunities in this COVID season to do it in physical space, maybe, but we definitely have opportunities to do it in digital space where people can be more real and more transparent with each other.

Yes, I love that. Wow, that is really great. So what about changes in the culture? Multiplying groups can be hard. It's a definite culture change. I mean, and let's even ask this in the chat. Would love some feedback. What cultural shifts has your church had to do in this COVID season? Groups, um, giving, moving online, what has that tension looked like and felt like for you guys? It's so much. It's so much right now. It really is amazing that we are in this time of history and we're gonna look back and say, "Wow, this was a transformation of the church and how the church had to present itself." Um, so yeah, I'm curious to know.

Totally and completely up front, hey, let's experiment. Let's try something different. Let's be okay with it because COVID made us change everything anyway. So let's be intentional and maybe claim some hills, gain some victories towards it. Let's celebrate those victories when they come. And and let's celebrate the failures and recognize failures for what they are. You know, maybe some questions even walking into it is staff bought in? Have you had the conversation with staff? Do they understand what you're trying to achieve? What about key volunteers, high level leaders? Have you had that level of conversation? Do they all understand the why? Not what you're wanting to do, but why you're wanting to do it? Do they understand some of the motivations? Because them owning the motivations once again is going to help them replicate it out into others.

Before you roll out that new culture to your entire church, create test environments where you can learn lessons from it, reevaluate, and then try again. Reiterate. And so with an experiment, it should never be an experiment, "Oh, that didn't work, let's throw it away." Sure, it should be, "Let's experiment with it. Let's learn something from it. Let's broaden, bring more people in, and let's experiment again." And so learn lessons, iterate, especially looking at all the churches that we're doing physical ministry in 2019 February that are now having to address with everything digital. It's okay to not have the answers. Like, give yourself a pass for that. But it's not okay not to do anything. Try something and kind of experiment and build through that. Stay true to who you are, but don't be afraid to reassess with that. And definitely, definitely involve others in the conversation. Let others speak into that rather than just, "It's got to be my way or the hard way." Let others come in, and the more that they come in, the more that they will own that as they're going back out.

I love that you use the word experiment and test because it really gives permission um for failure. And that's really what we have to do is we have to fail fast so that we can turn around and do it again and figure out what actually works. And this is the time to be doing that. In marketing, that's like a known thing, and there's permission to do it. But I feel like sometimes in the church there's not that permission. And right now we're giving the permission to fail fast so that we can figure this thing out, right?

Yeah. Um, and really the heart of failing fast is learning those lessons, learning what you need to pick yourself up and do it again. The sooner you can fail is the sooner you get to the next step. The sooner you get to that next version that could be the success. And and if that ends up failing, cool, pick yourself up and and try again, iterate from it, learn from it, and try again. Um, and and I will say this, we've probably got, we got different sized.

Churches in the room, don't wait for the big churches to figure it out, right? Big churches doing digital ministry, doing online ministry, looks different than small churches. Coming from a guy who's working in both environments, helping churches in both environments, I had an executive pastor tell me, "I'm just waiting for the megachurch to figure it out and then we'll just copy whatever they're doing." It doesn't work.

No, I will say this. I actually had a megachurch digital pastor. Pre-COVID, attendance over 20,000 people, not including the online audience. The digital pastor of this church said to me, pre-COVID, "But Jeff, I really wish I was at a small church right now, able to do tangible relational ministry as opposed to what I'm doing here in the megachurch mentality." So there's opportunities for the small church even to be more successful in this digital environment by looking at it through a relational scope.

That's good. Okay, moving right along here. We're gonna go to question number three. How can we empower leaders to start and lead digital small groups that multiply, especially when more groups means more leaders?

Yeah, great, great question. Ultimately, the big question is: who's accountable? What is the relationship between your physical small groups and your digital small groups? Is it all under the same umbrella? Are two different people leading it? What does that look like? Is there a pastor? Is there a staff member? Is there a high-level volunteer who's responsible for the small groups, physical and/or digital? Like, figure out who is the accountable person towards it. Oftentimes churches don't have that clarity. And then at that point, now that person is investing into others, and maybe in the staff, but more likely it's volunteers. And by the way, volunteers are going to scale much quicker than staff will.

Investing directly into calls and texts or encouragement, you know, if you're a small group, challenge a volunteer to own the ministry and manage it and grow it. Oftentimes I've seen volunteers be a better recruiter for other volunteers because there's this, well, you're paid to be a pastor. Isn't this your job? Shouldn't you be doing this? Which, honestly, that mindset kills growth. It kills multiplication within any church, within any organization. I mean, even going back to the Seth Godin idea, it's not "let me as a pastor tell a bunch of people," but "let me cast an idea of vision to volunteers who then cast it and drive it down to even more volunteers."

Large churches set up a network of leaders where a volunteer is responsible for X number of groups. Honestly, I've heard you know, Life Church told me there's in the middle of the U.S. military, there's only one person over seven different people. Nowhere within the military structure is there more than one person who oversees seven. And so for them, that's their structure. Life Church: one person, one volunteer oversees seven, who oversee another seven, oversee another seven, kind of, you know, pyramids away.

What's fascinating by doing this is that churches like Life Church, Crossroads, Saddleback, they've got thousands of small groups spanning multiple continents, and with it, it's really only one or two staff people that are overseeing the small group part because they have such a high standard for leadership of the volunteers. And really, this is the challenge. We should expect more. We should challenge more. We should lead them to a higher level. By the way, we should be spiritually challenging them as well, not just in a leadership standpoint, but in a discipleship standpoint. Help them raise up so that they even see the importance of personal mission in their lives and can even cast it on to someone else. And it'll make it stickier for them because they're highly involved.

Exactly. Just, you know, keep in mind with this that paid staff people are a lid to a multiplication movement. And the answer is not—and I know that's hard, pastor. I've been the guy on your staff. I have been the guy who oversees 30 employees. But when it comes towards growth and movement, especially in this mid-coast post-COVID season, I think there's opportunities for us to raise the standard of volunteers and encourage them. And this is where we see revival happen.

There's gonna be an urgency within you because it was within me where I have to control the situation. And I wanna encourage you a little bit here: release the control. And you know what, and I would even ask this, let's throw this in the chat. Is your church too involved in how small group leaders lead? Is it not involved enough? Or is it involved perfectly? Like, self-evaluate yourself on an honest hour here. You know, I mean, this is a Glue webinar. I don't know where the answers are going, but ask yourself that. Throw it in the chat. Let's figure it out.

The small things can happen in a digital space. Like, you know, something as simple as you get a small group leader that comes up and says, "Hey, I got a bunch of soccer moms. We want to do, we want to use Google Hangouts or whatever they call it now as our platform for our small group." Hopefully the answer is, "Sure." You know, normally we encourage this idea of platform agnostic, where I, honestly, as a digital pastor, I don't care what platform you use. I will support one. I'll support Zoom, and if you don't have a platform, I'll recommend Zoom because it's something that we as a church recommend. But if they want to get on Discord, if they want to get on Slack, if they want to use WhatsApp, if they want to do a Bible reading plan on the YouVersion app, if they want to do Clubhouse, which is the new thing, I mean, to me it doesn't matter. What matters is, I think there are standards that we put in place for our small groups, but then we say, "Hey, there's even some flexibility within that."

So if a small group wants to meet and they only want to use WhatsApp, they don't want to get on camera where they can dialogue with each other, but they want to utilize these tools like a text group and so they just want to mass text each other, kind of, you know, and I'm in a bunch of just different groups like that where sometimes it's guys joking around, but some of these groups are quite serious where I've got guys in four or five states and we're praying for each other. And one of the wives just had cancer, and we're pouring into a text group support versus prayer. Literally crying while texting on a phone.

Now, if that's the only thing you're doing, great. Now, if that's a short-term solution, there's an opportunity to grow that into more, which is one of the things that we've worked on over time. And so raise that standard, but if somebody wants to start somewhere, be okay. Release that control and let them kind of grow through that.

Yeah, that is good. It's good. Okay, so do you have anything else you want to say on this? I think we've got to get moving on to the next question, but I just want to make sure that you feel good about it.

Love it. Yeah, let's move to what's next.

Okay, great. Okay, so this is a big question because I think, you know, we kind of got to a point where we knew how to grow some groups in person, but how do you multiply groups online?

Yeah, so the challenges on tangible, you know, it's overwhelming, right? I mean, we're really talking about two different things. We're talking about creating a multiplying, disciple-making structure, and then at the same time, we're talking about doing it digitally, and both of these may be a little uncomfortable or go against the norm of where we are.

Couple thoughts, maybe heading in. First off, challenge people to reach their circle of influence. Like, give people, cast vision towards this. There's a number of materials and resources that are out there. I personally, in my life, I've used the material called Timothy Initiative that kind of casts vision and does training towards that. Four Fields is another one. And so with love, we talk about a lot of these, you know, later on with some other stadium resources. But don't start with discipleship standards so high that you're excluding people and not letting people get started from the get-go.

Let people come in and literally the old song from like the '80s, "Put me in, coach, I'm ready to play." Like, get them in and work through them out there. Teach, explore, raise the standard, educate, disciple, give them better understanding. It's better for them to be out in the field playing, out in the field doing what they feel God's leading them to do, instead of having them on the bench for an extended period of time, not doing it, instead watching somebody else get qualified.

People leading as quickly as possible, but that doesn't mean they're done learning. Keep discipling them. You wanna really, you wanna find leaders that can lead five to ten people. And sometimes I feel like in small groups we try to get those big hitters, the people that can, you know, reach 50, lead 100, lead 200. Those people are nice, but you really just need five to ten. So work on that five to ten and grow them and develop them through it.

Provide training, provide personal investment to help these leaders. Remember, digital allows for a lot more flexibility. You know, even, hey, we can use the Bible version, the YouVersion Bible app, to go through reading plans together. Do it. Like, don't say, "No, we have to define small groups as staring into a webcam." That's not necessary. With that, because there's an opportunity to do more and there's an opportunity to reach people by doing these different ways online.

People are looking for a personal connection, pastors. We've talked about this. You're a lid to growth. A real person is going to be more effective. And I would even throw this as an example, pastor. When's the last time—well, maybe not in COVID, this is a bad example—but you're on the airplane and the guy over next to you says, "Hey, what do you do for a living?" and you have that awkward dance where you try not to say that you're a pastor, and if you do say you're a pastor, he probably shuts you down and doesn't have any conversation with you for the rest of the flight. At least that's been me on several occasions.

But situations like a person reaching out to another person: "Hey, Susie, my name's Jamie. I'm a single mom. You know, I got connected to you through the church. Pastor Jerry over here told me you might be interested in a small group. We've got four small groups over here. We've got four moms that are involved in a small group, and I would love to invite you into the small group. We meet online at 8:30 at night after all the kids are out of bed. Sometimes there's a glass of wine, sometimes we're in our pajamas. Ultimately, it's a great time for us to unpack, but we read through God's scripture, we pray together, and it's been incredibly helpful, honestly, in my life. And so I was wondering if you'd like to join us in that."

That right there means more than the pastor checking in. Pastor check-in, but now you've got somebody that's relatable that can connect to her.

Yeah, so love that focus on personal evangelism, you know, let's say that personal mission in resources that are available to leaders, things like this Timothy Initiative, other things, get that in front of people. This experience of multiplying guided by strong curriculum will help people invite more people, which will invite more people. And what's fascinating, especially if we focus on the personal mission aspects of multiplying, it's less about the church and it's more about individuals. You're not inviting people to a large gathering.

You're encouraging people to have a personal mission in their life and evangelize and utilize that to bring others to Christ. And through that process, get, obviously yes, get them connected to the church for more disciple making. But that's a much more, you know, to use the buzzword, that's a much more authentic approach through this individual way than others. Um, from a practical standpoint, my small group, I met last night with him. We was literally my wife and I were in this room and so there's about 50 people, it's about 30 devices. Wow, that is huge. Yeah, and so we start big and what happens in our group, there's the time where we come together, we pray, we do a devotional. There's a vision casting kind of in a large group. We're going through emotionally healthy relationships because they're a book. And so there's a portion that's together that's big, but we break up. And so we utilize the Zoom feature called breakout rooms. Right. And so we break down and so now I'm not in a group of like 50 people, I'm more like in a group of six to eight. And so then there's a leader in the room and we're going through and talking about it. Now what's, and then at some point we'll either come back together for closing prayer, we'll break up from the groups. Okay, what's fascinating by using this kind of large gathering, small gathering approach is that we're actually mentoring and growing other leaders in this small group setting. We're seeing who's stepping up to be the leader. And so initially, eventually maybe empowering that person or this group to not be a group of 50 and then break out, but maybe the six to eight people goes and starts their own small group. We, this leader that's being nurtured, it doesn't even know that he's being nurtured, is eventually going to be cast this vision of, hey, why don't you go lead this small group over here? And I'll tell you, like Saddleback utilized this method. We stole it from them. Um, everything's borrowed. You guys can take this, right? But Saddleback does, uh, they did a super group kind of thing where it says 50 people, large gathering for small groups. Uh, they did seven days a week. And they ran an experiment with it where they had one of these super groups meeting. So it was seven large groups. And at the end of the six weeks that their curriculum was run, they had birth something like 57 small groups out of seven. And so we're literally seeing multiplication here because you're utilizing this factory of the super group, this large gathering. You've got an opportunity to intimately grow individuals in these small gatherings. And then you've got an opportunity to release them to kind of do their own thing. Accountability is still a part, but you're doing that through a multiplication purpose. Oh my gosh, that that is a great nugget right there. Um, wow, Jeff, you have shared so many great things for us to think about today. Um, and I'm just wondering, I'm sure that you have a lot more to share as well, but I'm wondering what do you want to leave folks with now? Um, yeah, so absolutely. Here, uh, we've got two bonuses. Now I'm really excited about these. These resources and I love helping churches. And right off the bat, we've got two bonuses that that I want to leave in your hands. First off, there's a selection of questions that I hope you'll bring back to your church and talk with your team about because it's not enough for you to understand this. You're not going to change culture just you. Bring your team in. These discussion questions are all about digital groups and how it can operate at your church. And the second bonus is an excerpt from our book that Stadia called defining the fidget church. You'll get both of these bonuses sent right to your inbox along with a link to the recordings from today's workshop. Oh, and and by the way, uh, if one more thing here, out Steve Jobs, one more thing. Um, hopefully it's that cool. Uh, if this has been helpful for to you, uh, we're thrilled here to announce that in partnership with Glue Connect, we're making uh our 10 on-demand digital training sessions available to you for free. Really, really excited about this. Through the 10 part course, we'll walk you through the essentials of engaging your people more deeply than ever before, even when you can't meet in person by doing this in physical and digital space. You walk away with best practices for online worship that engages people for the long run, how to run small groups even when you can't meet in person, how to be a change agent at your church, how to change that culture, how to prepare for the future. Uh, and there's a ton of more information in here. So do this. Go to glueconnect.church.stadia to sign up for the fidget quick start course uh through Glue Connect. And you normally sell that? Yeah, so like we we do this with Stadia. Uh, and there's there's groups that are there. Uh, but honestly, and this is, I love Glue. I've loved you guys for years. And so the opportunity to make these resources available for you to impact more churches, including some of the churches that are in here on this webinar, yeah, this is this is my heart. And so we would love to make this available to you. Yeah, thank you so much. That is incredibly generous. It's very relevant. I'm really excited to be able to offer this to everybody for free. Um, and I want to share a little bit more about Glue Connect just because I think that there's probably quite a few people on here who haven't heard of it. We believe that the church is stronger when it's working together. And that's not just churches. That's networks. That's people like you together to change lives and to transform cities all together. Um, so here's how Glue Connect works. It uses a collective of ad buying power to support church outreach campaigns in your city. Um, so it's not just you doing it. It's a collective of churches doing it together. We do all the planning. So Glue does all the planning and strategy uh for you, running the ads on social media with very targeted, um, you know, unique to the needs of the people within your city. And why do we do this? We are working together to help you get more people through your digital front door. We want you to focus on doing what you do best, which is building relationships and nurturing disciples through the power of the gospel. And then we do what we do best, which is serving you through tech solutions. The ads uh sent to people, or the ads you can see them right here. I think it's it's on the um the the slide right here. This is what they look like. And it sends people to a directory of churches. And your church should definitely be in that directory. People can view your church's profile and then if they want to learn more or connect, they're encouraged to reach out by social media or by visiting your website. And look at how great this all looks. I mean, this is very professionally done. The value of all this is seventeen hundred dollars, which we know through talking to our champions is a lot of money. And it's hard right now to um to be able to finance something like this. But we also know how powerful it can be for you. So Glue Connect is rolling out city by city right now. The there are donors in Dallas, Fort Worth, Florida, Kansas City, and Columbus who are kingdom minded and who have stepped up to pay the cost. You guys, this is amazing. We have donors who have stepped up to pay the cost of Glue Connect for churches like you. So for your church, it's it's it's free of charge. It's not free though. I hate when people say oh Glue Connect is free because it's not free. Um, nothing is really free, right? The reality is that someone out there has already paid it for you so that church is like you can have access. But I do want to say that there are limited amounts of scholarship per city. So because you are on this workshop, you are one of the first hearing about it and you can go snag a scholarship um so that you can be one of the first churches um you know and and able to get the scholarship and and your church will be inside this church directory. Together churches can win so that you can go focus your attention on your ministry and what really matters. Love that. Hey, remember that by signing up you're going to get access to the resources from Stadia like our fidget quick start and a lot of the other uh partners who want, like us, they want to serve churches like you. And and again, to get access to these 10 modules from Stadia, all centered around utilizing the strengths and the weaknesses of physical and digital fidel church, go to glueconnect.church.stadia and sign up for your Glue Connect account. And you'll be able to access our course at that point completely free. So everything's free. You get Glue Connect and you get uh this amazing course and it's done for you. So Glue Connect is not one of those piece of technology where you actually like have to go hire somebody to figure it out. Um, it is done for you. The only thing you have to do is fill out your profile that that shows up in the directory. And at Glue, we actually have um champion success managers who uh walk alongside you to help you do that. We have a community as well that will help you fill out that profile. So hey, I just really want to thank you so much, Jeff, for joining us. You just gave us so much information so generously. Um, and so thank you for being here, Jeff. And I want to thank everybody else uh who joined us today. Remember that you're gonna get the the bonus. You get free 12 months of Glue Connect plus Stadia's digital quick start course. Um, and so if you have any questions, make sure that you reach out to us via email. We'll put that in the chat. Um, and we are gonna go now into um Q&A. And so if you do have questions that you want to ask Jeff, we invite you to stay a little bit longer and we'll get those questions answered for you. How do you facilitate the nature of five to ten minute casual space for catching up and having time for fellowship in digital groups? How can you help build a sense of community? Yeah, love that. The the awkward thing in that 50 person group kind of gathering is that there's only in Zoom, there's only one thread conversation. So when I'm in a room with 50 people, I can lean over to my wife who's physically sitting next to me. I can turn off the mic and I can whisper something. But that moment where I'm trying to talk to square number 27 on my screen, and I can do that in chat, but that's not nearly as cool. What I will tell you, this is there are other platforms uh that are working that are coming out that give more attention to this. Um uh, Unplug here, Alter Live, actually does a lot of that where I can break out. I can have like a just a talk with just square number 27 and kind of isolated conversation. So check out that platform. Okay, ultimately you want to get people talking. And so if you're creating environments for that, even doing some of the breakouts, giving people the ability to kind of go, utilizing some of the breakout feature, get them talking in that five minutes. Don't make it about one on one-way conversation, but multiple. Yes, yeah, that's that's really good. Um, we actually kind of talked about this a little bit, but didn't go too deep into it. So how can a church get specific age groups like seniors? And we're not talking high schools and high school seniors. We're talking about senior seniors. Uh, involved in groups uh when they're not super comfortable with technology. I never told my mom's story. Sorry, I didn't. That's so true. Oh my gosh, I I'm so embarrassed. Um, so my mom's 73 years old and true, honest-to-God story. Um, maybe four years ago, I was a digital pastor and I looked at mom and I said, hey, mom, I've got a group of, um, my mom's uh a a female professional uh lady professional here in Miami, just like a business professional, very kind of VP of major Fortune 500 companies kind of.

That wiring and I said to Mom, I said, "Hey Mom, I've got some twenty-somethings, young professionals, females. Um, would you want to do a small group with them? Like, like teach them—not let me teach them all about God, yes, but also like past wisdom, mentorship, like kind of mentor these young professionals." There's a lawyer, there's a doctor, and my mom's like, "Sure." Honestly, she was in her late sixties at the time. She thought her ministry career was over. This is her story. She thought her ministry career was over. She's like, "Hey, all the church that she's at, it's all a bunch of young people. I'm just gonna retire. I'm done." And so she'd tell you like this rejuvenated her career. My mom is not technological. She's like, "I'm having to go over there and teach her how to print at least once a month." Like, so it's not like she's super sharp in the technical aspects, but she's recognized the ability to love on people, care for them to the point where she's leading two groups. I think she's starting, considering doing a third one. Her groups—one of her groups is she's reached out to moms that she knows that, you know, maybe fifties, you know, more in that age, that have young daughters, twenty-somes, that are scattered across the country, okay? And so my mom's second group is working with older ladies and their daughters, and the only time that they really gather together regularly during the week is talking about the Bible and praying together. Like, this is the opportunity that my mom has. And even like some of the groups that she's led—there was a girl that she was an introducer to, she was a law school student up in DC. She since moved to Houston, and that this girl that my mom mentored—who my mom said, "Jeff, it's like the daughter I never had"—no, she's now leading physical small groups in Houston and still engages regularly digitally. So even my mom is seeing multiplication where she's worked with this girl in Houston or in DC who moved to Houston and is now leading small group in the physical space in Houston.

So digital technology, old people—I don't think that that's an excuse to back off. I think that you cast a vision. This isn't an opportunity for you to do things digitally. This is an opportunity for you to mentor and disciple a generation that's looking for help, that that can gain something from your influence. And so approach that with it. Now, you know, is it get with small groups? Is it do a massive party line, like on a call, because they're really technologically phobic? Yeah, work through that stuff, right? But if we're really looking to multiply, I have seen old people engage in digital church as much as I have the millennial and the twenty-something. It all depends on that perspective and that challenge of personal mission. That's where an older generation's going to win—on personal mission.

That's good. And you know, here's a question. I don't know that you need to go too deep into it because I feel like you did talk about it quite a bit, but in a digital group, how do you encourage outreach? And maybe what they're talking about is more, you know, instead of multiplication, outreach—it's, you know, I'm actually community-based.

Yeah, yeah. So you got to teach people to fish. Um, I'm in—I'm on multiple continents, spread across eleven time zones. Um, I can't—we can't all get together and do the service project together, but I can encourage people. And the guy in England and the guy in Hawaii and the guy in New York, "Hey, why don't you find five friends and go work at a homeless center? Why don't you go do something?" And I'm not giving people the service project to do. I'm teaching them the importance of serving in their communities, and I'm challenging them to reach their circle of influence where they are. It's a huge opportunity for them to connect with their neighbors, their coworkers, their friends, and start to carry. It's more important in this environment—I could preach a whole sermon on that. I'm not going to, but essentially the gospel that we hear in our online world, it has to influence our offline relationships. And so it's very important for these people, wherever they are, to be engaging in that physical space. That's that's part of even this multiplication because I want them to be talking to their friends about this.

That's good. Yeah, okay. So um, this question is near and dear to my heart actually. Um, would you recommend making a digital group or hybrid digital in-person group public, like, um, you know, Facebook, like a Facebook group?

Okay, so I would utilize Facebook. Um, if I'm creating a Facebook group for the ten people or the thirty people or the fifty people in my super group or individuals, I don't know that I would make that public. I would make that just for those people that are within that community. That being said, asterisk, your church, I would suggest, has a public Facebook group for the entire church or for the online community. Utilize that as a place to gather people together. I've personally seen more success out of a Facebook group for your church as opposed to your Facebook page for your church. And there's lots of strategies I could talk about about broadcasting church services into Facebook groups, driving people into Facebook groups, because as people go into Facebook groups, there's a record that they were there, and I have a handle—which means that like a Facebook handle—so I can contact them. Facebook groups is a very powerful tool. The real question is, what's the context? What are you trying to achieve towards it? So I hope that's helpful. I'd love to drill in specifics at a later point if that's possible.

Yeah, that's good. That's good. Okay, so gosh, we—this is a lot of questions for today. Um, how do you know if my digital physical groups are really multiplying? What should I be looking for?

So how do you know if your groups are multiplying? Um, you're gonna start to see some generations happen. You're going to start to see people inviting others in. You're going to start to hear salvation stories. You're going to start to see videos of baptism, yeah? Like, even let's figure out how you're going to baptize somebody that gets saved in another time zone, an old friend from Facebook. There are ways to do that. These are the things that you're going to start to kind of struggle with—questions that are going to pop up. And when these stories come in, celebrate them. Get up on the rooftop, put a play the video in front of the church, all text everybody within the church staff. You know, especially in this experimental phase, celebrate your victories absolutely, and tell people the lessons that you're learning. If it's not going well, what's the lesson and how are you going to change it and do it different next time? Like, be very public with the experiment because people are going to start praying with you. They're going to celebrate with you. They're going to be like, "Hey, I'm not okay with this. I'm not okay that some guy's getting baptized in a in a apartment in a condo in New York City in a small little bathtub. He almost banged his head on the faucet. Too bad it already happened." Like, and this is this is awesome. We're we're seeing a person movement here where people are evangelizing to others within their circle of influence in digital space. It's okay. God's doing something great here, and that needs to be celebrated.

That's right. That is right. Oh, Jeff, thanks so much for all the information. Thank you for staying long to answer questions. Um, this was a wealth of knowledge. I want to encourage you to go go to glueconnect.church, Stadia, get your free course, get on Glue Connect. You want to make sure that your church shows up in that profile so when explorers are looking for a church, you can be that church for them, all right? And if you have any more questions, please email growth at glue dot us, and have a fabulous rest of your day.