EP279 - Evan Connelly, Intercom.com, and Chat 2.0 for Churches

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech for tech's sake, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciplemaking possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? And where does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all of this?

Whether you're a big or small church, an established church or a startup church plant, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. Our heart is that churches like yours would discover a newfound focus on disciplemaking that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, we've got episode 279 of the Church Digital Podcast. Jeff here. We're going to get into the conversation here with the guest Evan Connelly in a second, but I want to tease you all because, well, it's my podcast I can do what I want. Well, technically it's Bernie M's podcast as he's now CEO of the Church Digital, but that's another conversation, guys.

I am really excited about some things that are coming up. There's a couple really cool things that we've been working on. Last week actually, I spent three days out in Dallas, Texas, and boy was it cold. That aside from the frigid temperature of DFW, I got to spend some time with Resi and the team at Resi and some friends over at PushPay, and really excited about some things coming up here in 2024. I can't tell you yet, but I can tease you a little bit, and I do enjoy a good tease. So here, look for it coming soon—some interesting information, some big information, some big news coming out at Resi. Stay tuned.

Oh, and don't forget about Glue. The Church Digital and Glue—we're still baking on some stuff, working out some minor details, but some really big stuff coming on Glue in February. So really, really exciting season here for the Church Digital overall.

Now let's get back to the show. So listen, I'm really excited to have this conversation with my friend Evan Connelly. Evan is online campus director over at Lighthouse Church in Washington, DC, Maryland kind of area. And listen, I'll tell you, the first time I met Evan, he was an IT director. He wasn't a digital pastor. He wasn't an online campus director. He wasn't a pastor. He didn't really have any of that kind of oversight at his church. This was pre-COVID, maybe 2018 or so. And I can actually remember over the years, you know, watching him cast vision to his lead pastor to become a more pastoral voice and to lead the online campus, casting vision for what that online campus could look like even before COVID. His church bought into it, and now five years later, man, that guy is still being very successful running and casting vision for what digital can do to help the physical church.

It's interesting—his approach is very hybrid. How can digital help our physical campus, our physical operations? Which actually brings us straight into today's conversation as we're talking about this new software. Well, it's not new software. It's been around for a while, but Intercom.io. I said Intercom.io on the websites, but it's basically at Intercom.com now. It's a website direct messaging tool. Now, a lot of businesses use this software in order to get customer service, customer success people directly in touch with customers, with clients. Now what's interesting is Evan has started using this to help people get in touch with pastors. This is a very inexpensive, very easy way to get people easy access to pastors from pastoral care, from events—some really interesting approaches.

And you know, Evan borrowed some of this. We've done a lot of podcasts with Church Home. Jonathan Song recently talking about their Pastor Chat program. Jonathan is the director of Pastor Chat. Well, Evan kind of stole their program from that podcast and actually created their own approach and their own spin using cheaper software at Lighthouse Church. And so listen, when I'm hearing Evan talk about this, I'm like, "My gosh, Evan, jump on the podcast. Let's talk about this. Let's cast vision for what this software, Intercom.com, could do for other churches."

So here you go. I'm bringing in Evan Connelly, online campus director with Lighthouse Church there in Maryland, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, in a conversation that I'm calling Intercom.com and Chat 2.0 for Churches.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

All right, hey, so we're bringing into the conversation Evan Connelly, online campus director at Lighthouse Church. Oh man, I forgot to ask what state you're in. It's up near DC, right, as I recall?

Very good. Yeah, we're in Maryland, right outside of Baltimore. So you're pretty much spot on.

Yeah, so that's Tom Pounder stomping ground somewhere up in there as well. Have you ever actually met Tom Pounder in person, Evan? I like, we got to just get that out of the way.

You know what, I actually don't think I have. I have not.

Yeah, for many years of my life, Tom Pounder was a Russian spam bot. Like, he was the person that I think is real, but I would never actually see him in person. He wouldn't show up at the conferences. And so, um, I now I now think that about other people. But I've seen Tom in person, so I can just—

Now you got to wonder, like, wait, are you like a ChatGPT AI bot or something?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. John Pile, John Pile is very suspicious. He would put him on the—I don't know that ChatGPT is that good at the character personifications yet, but maybe it's close. So I don't know. We just literally did a podcast last week on AI, and so you can go back and listen to Kenny Mage talking about all the characterizations and all the future of AI and ChatGPT and AGI, which is the next wave, and all sorts. Oh man, so much, so much good, so much bad, and so much potential for our robotic overlords to rule over us all. Seriously, we're going to have to go back and listen after this.

Yeah, and so this is not the purpose of this conversation. We're not—I would be surprised if we get much into AI beyond this, maybe. Maybe Evan's going to surprise me. But really in this conversation, we're going to get into the idea of maybe what the next level of chat could be for your church. And so now ironically, Evan, man, you were on this podcast four years ago.

Yeah.

Early on, doing a chat conversation. Evan, you are the only person to come on this podcast and talk about ChatHost. I have not, out of 279 episodes now, not had any other person other than you talk about ChatHost. So let's talk about a different form of chat. I'm just the chat guy, which is ironic because I'm also a huge introvert. But apparently I like to chat.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why we earmarked you as that guy, but man, thanks for stepping in. So you—oh, let's back up because you said it. How does it feel to be an introvert but also in digital ministry? Like, kind of walk through that.

Yeah, you know, I think it's mixed feelings honestly. In some ways I think it's possibly easier as an introvert to operate in digital ministry. You know, I think some of the ways we communicate, whether that's through live chat or even video, I think maybe at least for me as an introvert, I feel like I don't—it doesn't, you know, hit me the same way maybe. Um, and so personally I think I can operate better in digital ministry maybe than perhaps I could, you know, in some ways entirely physical. But it seems to work pretty well for me.

I'll be honest with you, Evan. I'm probably—well, no, I'm definitely an introvert. If people who know me like personally and up close are like, "You know, Jeff, you're always talking. You're always all over the place," but it's like my outward is actually a defense mechanism honestly towards being a very introverted self. And um, I fully agree with you that I do think that digital ministry effectively really plays well with introverted tendencies. That you know, I can be in front of a camera, I can talk into a microphone, I can do things like that, and it's a lot easier to do that in digital space than it would be to stand up in front of an equal number of people physically. And so totally. I mean, even to that point, um, you know, like Sundays are actually hours-wise my shortest work day, and yet you know, obviously there is a lot more of the conversations whatnot. I find myself coming home more drained on Sunday even maybe if my work day is like two hours shorter than it would be on Monday or on Thursday, that kind of thing.

All right, so we've teased this thing two, three, four, five times now, talking about the idea of what's next in chat. And so I was hanging out at Church IT Network in West Palm Beach, November 2020—December 2023, somewhere in there—and I just drove up for like one day and just happened to run into my friend Evan here who told me, "Hey, I was speaking at it," and he told me the topic, and I was really disappointed because I was not able to make his session. But I was really excited to hear about what he was working on. And so Evan, you know, I mean, I don't—other than a drum roll, I don't think I can do anything better for you here to set this up. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you guys have been working on over at Lighthouse Church?

Yeah, so really this is something that came out, you know, during COVID. We're at that point like everyone where all of a sudden we pivoted. Everything is entirely online right now. And so it was a really cool season of innovation just where, you know, across the board, we're just, you know, throwing things at the wall, seeing what sticks, and trying to figure out, you know, how can we be more available, more accessible online? What can we do differently? And so this is something though, um, you know, lots of things we tried—you know, some stuck, some didn't. This is one that's stuck really well even coming out of COVID, returning to the new normal, and that is what we call LH Chat. Um, it's very closely based on something we saw Church Home doing. Um, shout out to Sharica Johnson who was really instrumental over at Church Home as we were getting started, you know, doing a few Zoom calls and hearing what they do. They call it Pastor Chat. And so it's this idea of, you know, taking a tool—for us it's Intercom, which is, you know, many people are familiar with. That's a live chat tool. You can integrate that into a website, into an app. And in a business context where you see it most often, usually it's going to be more of a customer service tool. But we wanted to look at it a little differently, a lot like that example that we were seeing back then even with Church Home—as not just, you know, support questions of "Hey, how do I log into my church account?" or "How do I manage this or that or sign up for an event?" But even to make it more pastoral where we could take prayer requests, we could, you know, help people find next steps. Um, and so really, you know, to be able to access or even connect with our staff and our pastors. That it's not, you know, just when you think of like customer support, like someone just reading a script or something, but personal conversation, um, you know, in the same way almost that you'd have in the lobby after a service in person or something like that.

And so we wanted to do that. We started off, um, just kind of in a beta of just on Sundays, and then very quickly, just based on the response we saw, the engagement we saw there, we expanded that out to now where we offer that Sunday through Fridays. So only off day would be Saturday, just when we don't have any staff available to support this. But Sunday through Friday, we have, you know, several members of staff on a rotation that are available.

available and we'll take conversations um as they roll in where on our website on our app you can start you know a private conversation jump in and um we're here whether it's again you know a simple question or you know even maybe prayer request anything that we can do to support the church to have those conversations we have a whole team now that's available I love it so let's there so much there we're gonna we're going to break down a lot of what you just said and start to get give some detail on that so right up front uh it's intercom it's inter i n t r c m. IO I believe I believe that's right yep yeah yeah so we'll put the link in the show notes um I'm not sure if there's one M or two M but thank God for Google and so but you know intercom you know it's it's a uh uh it's an applet that runs on your website you know it's the little talk bubble that's in the lower right hand corner on the church digital we use HubSpot something very similar towards that and there there's other Solutions but but ultimately by clicking on that you're now my understanding is that like audience people consumers people that are on the website have direct access to a pastor via um direct messaging exactly and so you know we wanted to make ourselves accessible almost like in a radical way that you wouldn't expect and know more and more people are doing this we're certainly not the only ones we weren't you we found this example in something that someone else was doing but I think you know you even see in the business space like um you know one thing that really made me want to do this um right before COVID actually I was flying and my wife and I we went into this airport and we went to the baggage drop off area and like everything was closed there was no one there we didn't know like what are we going to do where do how do we handle this and so I don't know why but I fought to send a Twitter message to Southwest Airlines and within two minutes someone had responded to me and they were like you know we're talking to the ground office at this airport someone said they're going to come out and I think within like five minutes I was like talking to someone just based on that message that I sent oh wow and so I did some research on that afterwards I came back and it turns out they have this whole listening center they have this whole staff that was um just dedicated to solving problems really quickly um making you know through all their different channels making their team really accessible and so even like pre-COVID this was something I've been like kicking around in the back of my mind like how can we be accessible like almost in a way that's like unexpected surprise like I didn't expect you know to get in touch with someone that quick or I didn't expect a pastor to jump in and like be able to pray with me and so um that was kind of the the goal there was to be able to make ourselves accessible to an extent to a degree that is almost like um unexpected like wow I I didn't think they'd be able to get back to me that fast or in that way so what types of problems like are people coming to you with on on direct message like is this this what time is your church service how do I get baptized I'm thinking of killing myself like what what's the range of issues that people are are even willing to talk about and that's the thing it is a huge range so one thing um and you know to that point of the range we are very intentionally and there's different ways of setting this up we allow anonymous chats we we it's the way it's set up and part of that's just how intercom works it definitely encourages you to share a name and an email but you don't have to do that and so I mean we have had people open up you know in prayer requests just looking for advice and guidance um you know based on all kinds of things um abuse that they've gone through we have had someone mentioned I'm thinking of ending my life and we've had to you know talk to someone about how to you know have the team prepared in case something like that comes up but um really we've seen everything obviously you know you do get a whole lot of the same repetitive questions some things are as simple as what time are your services you know I'm looking for this event I can't find it how do I do such and such on your website so we get you know a lot of more the administrative type questions what I'd categorize those as and then we get a whole lot of prayer requests I'd say roughly last time I looked roughly half of our chats are categorized as a prayer request and so all over the place there sometimes it's more of like next steps oriented like hey I want to get involved you know I'm looking for a small group obviously we have a you know a variety of small groups and sometimes maybe it's I can't find it or I'm just looking for a recommendation like what do you think would be a good fit but the cool thing with that is the way we've trained our team we kind of look for opportunities for both of those categories of more of you know pointing in a certain direction or of prayer and so whether it's you know as simple as like what time or your service is if that's what how the chat starts we always ask the same question at the end of service or maybe it starts with a prayer request question at the end of every chat we ask the same question and that is is there anything else that I can help you with or pray for and so whether they started asking about service times or whether they started you know opening up about you know prayer request maybe something really heavy that they're going through in life we want to offer in every chat the ability or the option of you know we want can we point you to a next step can we guide you somewhere and can we pray for you and so we've had people that started off you know just asking what time of your service is or this kind of thing and then actually because we asked them can I pray for you opening up about you know in some cases you know something really deep something heavy that you wouldn't expect like I'm just on the website looking for service times that they would have actually shared that but because they were personally asked you know can I pray for you um and so we've seen a huge variety and in a lot of cases you know it starts one way and it actually goes the other way just because we try to find the ability to do both to kind of point to a next step and to provide prayer in any chat where we can this is so good this is so good um now like have you noticed any demographic patterns like who's using this thing who's not using this men women age like what what types of people are you interacting with honestly all over um we've had people um I think it was just this past weekend I had a chat from someone who had mentioned they were watching from a nursing home I believe ninety some years old and um you know they had previously been attending somewhere closer in person but they that wasn't an option currently and so I mean you know all over um certainly younger um and so really I think just about anyone because we make it very prominent on our website on our app um I think the demographics are pretty representative of who's on our website on our app and that is a pretty widespread because um you know in a lot of cases it really is maybe they weren't even necessarily intending to start a chat but just because we kind of really try to spotlight that you know whether it's they couldn't find something or they just see that this is an opportunity they didn't know was there um we've seen people from all different demographics chatting with us yeah yeah now I to honest disclaimer here I tried this at Christ Fellowship Miami in 20 let's call it 2015 2016 we we installed intercom wasn't even around around back then uh the best software that I had available at the time was was live person okay and um and so I I'm not even sure live person is still around intercom is by far the leader in this space now uh but it was interesting to me is that in 2015 2016 eighty to ninety percent of the people that clicked on that um were either immediate hang-ups because they were shocked that somebody actually like answered back hey uh how can I help you or how can I pray for you whatever you know whatever the response was at the moment or literally people like I remember like some people talking oh s you know s word you're real then hanging out like because it was just it was so shocking uh that that somebody would be like really interacting uh via the website you know call it five six seven eight years later are you still getting like that level of of surprise when when a pastor's engaging these people like what are their responses um it's a mix obviously I think you know it's I wouldn't say it's eighty percent I would say the majority at this point you know hey they're more familiar with it obviously like intercom for example I mean you see that all over as you use the internet but um I would say you know maybe not weekly but certainly on a monthly basis do see very specifically that wait are you a real person um are you now you get even like wait are you an AI um and so there still is that surprise factor of like I can't believe that especially when it's someone you know like I've had where I actually I do know this person you know they're really surprised wait like I just like two minutes ago I just put this in and you're here you're talking to me already like how's that possible and so we definitely still get that surprise factor um I think um you even knowing that live chat is a thing you know it's maybe even just a surprise factor of how quickly we try to jump in and I can get to that more later but we actually we try to answer our first response to a chat if it's within our active hours we try to have that first response be within two minutes because again we want it to be like that radical like I I can't believe that you know you're a real person I can't believe that you're talking to me and I can't believe how quickly you made yourself available to me so I mean you being digital online campus director having that level of urgency good for you like but you know I don't want to be like that's your job but yeah that's that I mean that that's within scope of what your job is very aggressively do you have other pastors that that follow that that two-minute guideline yes how did you get other people to buy into this idea yeah so one thing um I think we definitely had working in our advantage and I don't not to say I don't think this is doable now I think it totally is but we rolled this out during COVID early on during COVID so that was at a point where we had no physical services to some extent all of a sudden everyone on our staff had just become part of the online campus to some extent and so it was really easy at that time I think to get buy in and I think we've done a good job of maintaining that buy in even now I think it's totally doable even to launch something like this right now would just take a little more intentionality probably a little more work but um you know we've done a lot of even then and you know certainly continuing we've done a lot of things to kind of create a team of teams and so we have you know multiple pastors we have an elder actually who's on this team we have but then it's not just you know pastors and elders we have you know um our kids director we have our office administrator so it's a it's a wide variety um that we've kind of incorporated here and we've tried to kind of make it a team of teams and so periodically especially early on we'd actually do a monthly team meeting for a little while you know like I mentioned that two-minute goal it is hard um you know it's easier for me to pull

That off we have but we have people you know they're juggling this between other tasks other responsibilities and so that is a big ask and so we've tried to you know really spotlight people reward people when they are doing well with that for a while we had these little um golden laptop trophies.

And so every month I'd look at our response times and when someone you know did amazing we had this golden laptop that we'd just kind of present them and so things like that where just monthly we'd get together um even just having a meal as a team once a month just again like a team with of teams right like all these different ministries all these different teams are represented here and so how do you create some buy in here how do you create a sense of community within this team so that we can um you know just really get that sense of same urgency for everyone talk about our goals how are we doing talk about who's doing well kind of inspire everyone to want to jump in to want to take those chats to want to get us down to that timeline that we're going for and so now we don't meet quite as often it's more like once a quarter but still that same thing of bringing everyone together talking about where we're at sharing wins you know of some of the feedback that we've gotten from some of our chats um and then um you know celebrating people when they're doing well this this is so cool um you know it's a little reminiscent a little bit towards some of the stuff with glue with He Gets Us and the other explorer programs you know but that's that's outside of uh the church scope where this really feels like it's it's more inside the the church space What like the average person are you like what's what's the CTA the call to action what are you handing them off to like is it you're helping them get connected to the event helping them fix the website praying for them uh getting them connected to a small group um somebody for uh deeper physical counseling like how what what's the what's the next step for the person that that's kind of asking uh for help here via intercom yeah um I there's not one we try to base it off of where people are at I'd say some of our most common um certainly small groups that's a big part of who we are um probably a lot of people would be the same there and so even if we can suggest a small group that's one where we try to even you know look for opportunities maybe they're not specifically asking for a small group but even you know with prayer requests um if someone says I'm feeling lonely I'm isolated I don't have anyone a lot of times you know that's a real like opportunity not just to to pray for them but then also you know in addition to praying you know can I suggest are you part of a small group have you considered small group that's a huge call to action it's one of the more frequent ones um outside of that um I mean we get questions about you know care and counseling and so as far as connecting them for pastoral counseling obviously beyond we'll try to to some extent do that over chat but depending on what they're going through you know sometimes you want to set up something if not face to face even just like with a video call or something like that and so um for pastoral counseling we have um bit of a process we can get them and see if that's the best fit for where they're at um so really all over uh I mean even we've had people reach out just we're engaged we want to get married how do we do that um benevolence people who are going through you know financial hardship we have a ministry where we help with that we get a good number of chats along those lines and so yeah if there was one I'd say it's I would say the most common would be our small groups but it's certainly all over the place now what's it's interesting to me like we've talked a lot about pastors and directors and children's directors and others um in there um you haven't mentioned volunteers are volunteers engaging like do you have a volunteer core that's that's using this platform as well not currently um in part for us uh I'd say that's twofold one is intercom is more expensive um I'm not here you're you know I'm not getting I don't have a referral code you don't have to mention EVC5 to get 15% off but um you know it is one of the more expensive ones it's fantastic platform but you know there's that per seat license and so for us that's kind of been a limiting factor in thinking about what it would look like to roll out for volunteers but we've also we've kind of wanted to make this more like in our talking points we kind of speak to this as we have pastors and leaders and you know we could extend that down to volunteers certainly but um as long as capacity allows we've wanted to make our staff and our pastors more accessible through this and so there's been some intentionality there some of that's been limitation but for us right now this has looked like strictly staff and then we have actually you know what I talked about all those years ago with that broadcast chat team where that is volunteer-driven and so we do have a somewhat similar opportunity for volunteers but um this is something that for us is staff based but that is not the only way to do it actually you know talking to Church Home who really did inspire us and teach us so much as we were building this out I know for them they I I believe they do have volunteers yeah and I know Church Home they do utilize a lot of volunteers with the pastor chat and a lot of their pastors uh we've done podcasts and we'll put links in the show notes uh Jonathan Song maybe maybe six months ago late last year mid last year I know just did a a check back in on that so such so good and when I heard you talking Evan about this I was like oh man they must have they must have connected up because there there's not many churches that are that are thinking this way you know even 2023 2024 post-COVID which which will lead me to this you know right now 2024 um you know churches are trying to get back to the way that it was uh and we're seeing a lot of churches devalue digital um did you did you did your church did your leadership put any tension on this like do they see this as a digital tool do they see this as a a digital thing that helps physical engagement driving towards physical small groups and physical church services like how do they view this tool um for you to still be doing it so I try real hard to show how this serves the church as a whole um you know we have different opportunities once a month we have what we call staff chapel we all come together it's almost like a church service for our staff and part of that we share wins and so anytime I get an opportunity I try to share wins specifically for chat and I try to share wins that really do help showcase that this is serving you know not just people who intend entirely online not just you know in some cases people who aren't even in this state but you know we've had people while they're in the building reach out with a chat about how do I do this or how do I I'm looking for someone and so it's made us way more accessible even for people who are presently in the building but you know maybe it's they don't know where to go or they don't know who to talk to or they're more introverted and they rather communicate in that way and so in so many different ways um I've tried to really frame it in a way that this because it does that's what we've seen is that it serves the church as a whole we I would say very much equally you know we have people who intend entirely online who are a little more of a hybrid that's probably most of our audience and um so even to the point that someone in the building might be engaging with us and you know to that point um yeah I think there's continued to be great buy in with this and um even though it exists online I don't think it's viewed as this thing that's just like an online campus specific tool or resource yeah um now I know Church Home they've got that um the pastor chat I mean it's it's a it's a custom platform you know a lot of the the majority of the stuff they're doing is custom and in Intercom IO is more over the over the counter so to speak you know it's a cloud service you can buy is there is there any desire to build a standalone platform to expand beyond this like what's what's kind of next what's in the scope of of where this is going for us um we've just focused on integrations there's a lot that intercom integrates with out of the box um and then we've also paid it's called it's so kind of an interesting game it's called Octopods it's actually built by some guys that used to work at intercom and so it allows integrations with extra platforms at intercom doesn't natively support like a Google Business Manager for example so when you search for us on Google Maps we have a chat button that pops up and it's all funneled through intercom but you can chat with us through our Google Maps we get um I'd say probably weekly we have people chatting with us and we can see a tag it came in through Google Business and so at this point we now um Facebook Instagram Google Business um even our church online platform we um you know where you can take a prayer request over like that email contact form that funnels in through intercom now for us and so we haven't looked at too much at building something different because we have been able to through all those integrations make this really a hub that's been our focus is how can we not just you know through the chat box itself on our website or on our app but then as we took it even more like next level what does it look like for any sort of digital communication like as much as possible to have this one platform because we already have this team you know we realized you know why is it that we have I think at the time we had ten people on this chat team but we only have one person who's looking at our Instagram messages and so we made that connection there and now we were able when you reach out to us you know whether it's Facebook Instagram on Google Maps even to that same degree to be able to take more types of questions to be able to um go deeper to be able to more quickly respond no matter how you're reaching out to us and so that's kind of been our biggest focuses like in any digital communication just how can we kind of merge it all together and so all of that's unified in in in one inbox so like your Instagram DMs are are are hitting intercom's inbox yep yeah and so with that you know we've been able to respond really quickly as is our goal even has um you know kind of pre-built auto replies like it'll say immediately like hey thanks for reaching out our team typically replies within a few minutes and so that's actually helped us I don't know if Facebook still shows us but at one point like you go there and it would have this really prominent badge that like typically replies you know like very quickly or within a few minutes and so it just again like it goes to create a sense of like hey we're really accessible which is you know what the whole heart of this is we want to make ourselves super accessible and so it's allowed us to do that not just on our own website and app but even on these other platforms which especially you know for someone who's maybe new to the church not even part of the church just you know kicking the tires we've been able you know even just from Google Maps you're just trying to you know so you're searching churches near me and you know you click there all of a sudden that chat box is there and so we've just tried to make ourselves super radically accessible in all the different platforms that we have this is so cool and and and about how many how many people are you talking to over

The course of a week we are seeing right now about I think we're seeing about 60 chats per week. I'm sorry, 16 or 60? Six, 60. So you are, through Intercom IO, you are having thumb conversations, you know, texting conversations with 60 people any given week? Yep. And so now there's a wide variety there. I mean, um, a good number of those actually are prayer requests. And so obviously those are some of the longest ones because, um, you know, the way we train our whole team, we want that to be an actual prayer. We don't just say I'm praying for you.

And so as we take a moment and we pray for them, we actually want to, you know, in written form share exactly what we're praying for them. And so obviously that can be a little more wordy. But then, um, we also have saved responses for things, you know, like we've talked about service times a few times. That is a frequent question we get. And in Intercom it's called a macro, you know, it's a saved response. Like, you know, some of these chats, you know, it is as simple as like, okay, I just use a keyboard shortcut. Here's our service times. And maybe they don't get back to us. We do always try to end with, is there anything else I can help with or that I can pray for? But some of them they just end there. But, um, you know, a good number of them, yeah, they are more of a, you know, a personal response that takes a little more time and effort to write something out for.

Do I, I'll put you on the spot. Do you have any idea what percentage is of, maybe like, one-hit-wonder questions versus, um, personal responses, long engagement kind of conversations? I'd say it's at least 50/50, if not more like, maybe a third, um, with two-thirds being more of a requiring more of a custom response. So the half to the major majority, in your guessing, yeah, uh, non-scientific here, but a half to two-thirds are looking for deeper engagement, not a quick. That's interesting. That so for me, that's pivoted over the past eight years. Like when I did this, it kept people more comfortable with the technology. Uh, totally and completely. COVID engaging in that space did a lot to push the needle forward. You know, and, uh, because me, what I was trying was pre-COVID on this. And, uh, but I, I was like 80 to 90% was like, you know, I'm trying to find this page, you know, basic stuff that's like, here's the URL, you know, look under the hamburger next time. Totally. And I think, you know, some of that maybe even comes down to how we frame it and, you know, in different ways that we make it available too. A lot of our prayer requests actually, um, at least the ones that come in on Sunday, and just a, you know, quick note. So we actually see roughly half of our chats come in on Sunday, and then the half come in throughout the week, kind of spread out. Because we see kind of a big correlation of our chats just with overall website and app activity. Obviously, you know, we can have the most activity on those platforms on Sundays. And so, I'll say a lot of our prayer requests come in actually through Church Online Platform with that prayer button that's really prominent on there. And so I think some of that is just even just in those different ways that we've made it available, even the way we speak to it. Uh, we have host spots before service and after service and online. And I try to every week to speak to chat and to speak to it in a way that, you know, if there's anything that we can help you, if there's any questions that we can answer, and also if there's anything that we can pray for, we really try to emphasize that. And so I think, um, to some extent that's probably also where that comes from is that, um, in a lot of the ways that we speak to it, we try to emphasize that we have pastors and leaders who are here to pray for you.

How do you, how do you equip the pastors that are on this? Like you mentioned regular meetings or monthly meetings, and now it's quarterly. Like, was there, did you recruit people that were digitally friendly? Did you recruit people because of their position and then teach them digital? Uh, like, how did the building of that team come together? It was a little bit of both. Um, you know, we wanted to pick people in some cases maybe just because, you know, they're already, we see them as someone who just more digitally friendly in general. Like, you know, um, at times we had a couple, a few different admin people who, um, especially during COVID, they, we already saw them in other ways replying to people, replying to people really quickly. They were comfortable with new technology. Um, and then, um, from the pastoral side, maybe just looking at them more like, hey, maybe, you know, Intercom might take some training, but there's someone who, if someone asks more of a theological question, you know, there's someone who I'd want to be able to jump into that and try to answer that. Because as much as possible, we want to answer everything on chat. There are certainly times, you know, whether it's what someone's going through, this or that, sometimes we have to suggest that we continue this conversation elsewhere. Like, you know, we don't want to go back and forth over, you know, two weeks or a month on Intercom. The platform is just not conducive to that. But, um, you know, yeah, to answer your question, to some I would say it's either, it's, you know, their skill set maybe in, um, being able to pray for people and being able to take more theological questions, something to that extent, or maybe it's more, um, of just this person can, is really good at responding to people and technology. And then, um, having those two different skill sets for the people who maybe, you know, they're just like, man, they can pick anything up. They're good at quickly getting back to people.

We have an online prayer guide. And this is actually pulled from Life Church. It's in the slide deck, which I think you're going to link to. But, um, sure, we have, I think it's like 20-some topics where, you know, if someone says that they're going through a loss, or if someone says they're going through like, um, job trouble, there's scripture that you can share that might encourage them. There's prayer points. And so that's been a great resource to people that might not be as comfortable praying for someone, or, you know, praying for someone out loud, or in this case, like, um, over message. And then we also, we try to do a little bit of an Intercom-specific platform training for those that maybe they're really comfortable praying for people, but what is this app? What are all these buttons? What does this mean? We try to quickly orient them. But one of the advantages with Intercom, and I, I would, I'm sure there's several other platforms where this would be true too, is, you know, it's designed to be user-friendly. So obviously we need to spend a few minutes or, you know, maybe a half hour going through how to use this platform, but it doesn't require a whole lot of specialized training. So I mean, basically then, it's if somebody's knowledgeable enough to handle a text message, I mean, given parameters of what you're typing in, but the technology here is essentially text messaging 101, right? 100%. Yep. And so, yeah, a little bit of training up front. Like I said, you know, we try to teach them how the platform works. Just some of our standard, um, I've mentioned several times, like we try to always end with, is there anything else that I can help you with or pray for? So we try to instill some of that stuff. And we certainly try to, because we do have that wide variety of people on the team, you know, we want to equip everybody to be able to do the same things. And so we have those macros for, you know, whether it's service times or, you know, um, and then, you know, for someone that maybe that's more their lane, but they would have a hard time praying for someone, we also have a lot of training for them to help equip them. Because we want as much as possible anyone who on this team to be able to jump in and help with any type of question or any type of chat.

Yeah. And so you run that Sunday through Friday, uh, taking Saturdays off? That's right. Yeah, we have, um, a little bit more of an on-call schedule for Friday. Um, because our office schedule or staff schedule primarily is Sunday through Thursday, but we do have one person who's working Friday. And then we have kind of like a pastor on call, which is kind of a rotation, just in case that's needed. But, um, it does kind of scale, you know, just like everything else. Um, like I said, big spike of activity on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, kind of continues, and it kind of tapers off going into the weekend. So we've found that works pretty well for us.

Now you presented this at a church IT Network, um, back in November of 23. And so how, man, how'd that go? Were people open to the idea? Excited? Terrified? Not working for me? Like, what was some of the feedback? I was, um, I was really impressed with the, you know, kind of the Q&A at the end. Um, yeah, it seemed like there was a lot of interest. Um, and honestly, um, you've covered some of the questions. I think the biggest questions were, you know, how do I get buy-in? Like, this sounds great, but, you know, this also sounds like it probably requires more than just the online team. I think it's probably safe to say in most cases the online team, you know, is not the majority of the staff. And so, you know, to be able to take that number of chats throughout the week, you know, what does it look like to get buying from enough people on our team? Kind of like I said, just the, um, any sort of intentionality, whether that's some initial training, getting together, um, for us having meals at those meetings has been huge. Just, um, trying to build relationships, um, to a greater extent, and just to see us each as part of this other, this team we're on. Our separate teams as far as our normal responsibilities, but to see this kind of as a team of teams. Um, and so that was probably the biggest question that came up. And then, um, I think just overall, you know, like questions about the platform or, you know, what does it look like to roll this out? How does this integrate with XYZ? What I love about what you've done here is you made this tool bigger than online ministry. Yep. Like, you took the time to get ownership, to buy-in from people in other areas. You got the kids director, you've got the business administrator. You've got different aspects of the church to own the ministry that's happening within digital space. Um, to be honest, that's something I mean, if I looked back at my 10 years as a digital pastor, I wasn't really good at that. And, and oftentimes a lot of what I was trying to do was a struggle. Our implementation of live person eight years ago was too soon. Like, the technology wasn't there. I know that. But, uh, it struggled because we really could not get pastors to own the responsibility and to see a vision for it beyond it. And so, like, it makes me excited. First off, you know, well, first off, I mean, I know I love Church Home. Church Home's awesome. Church Home is one of my favorite churches. And so, hey, hey, Pastor Chat's great. Good for you guys. You guys, I mean, freaking Justin Bieber talks about them on TikTok. They're, they're, it's they're going to figure it out. But a more normal church, sorry, Church Home, you're not normal. Uh, but a more normal church that's engaging towards more of a DM type of approach and engaging up to 60 different conversations any given week, uh, direct one-on-one with someone dealing from a range of topics. Like, this is exciting. This is challenging. This is, um, I mean, some levels revolutionary because now you're able to directly connect with people in a way that you've not been able to before. And I would argue cheaper than you probably were able to in other methods. And so it's just really, really exciting. So, like, are you, is the goal to ramp up more pastors? Is the goal to, um, like, what's...

What's vision for this thing? Where's this thing going? Yeah, so we've, um, we've gone back and forth, you know, um, on availability. Right now we're kind of holding. You've talked about, you know, do you go to more hours or, you know, Saturdays, our one day off? Do you find a way to cover that? Right now I think we're pretty good there. Um, I think one thing for us this year is just continuing to work on that response time. Our goal is two minutes. Last year we saw ourselves drifting a little bit beyond that, so we're trying to get, and the last few weeks have been great. We've been getting back there, but um, just trying to continue to work on that response time and then just seeing where else we can integrate it into things. Um, whether that's, you know, like I said, it's integrated into these different platforms, even beyond our website and our app, but in, you know, like even within different events, within different things that we're doing, are there ways where we can leverage this as a way to reach out to us? As a way to, you know, and even maybe as far as like where maybe we would normally have you like text in a question or something like that, can we use this in the place of that? Just to kind of build awareness, to build familiarity with it. Um, but I think, yeah, biggest thing we'll probably be focusing on this is just continuing to work with the team, create those um, connections between everyone on our staff that's part of this team. And then um, I would say just even as far as how we make it available, um, you know, any sort of ways so we can continue to build awareness of it, to promote it. Um, we tried something a little different this past weekend, pre-service, where we had a TV behind us and we were kind of like showing a screenshot of it and talking about how it works. And so just stuff like that because we promoted it really heavily during COVID, but then I have looked back and, you know, just, you know, how anything goes, you know, last couple years we've just kind of assumed that people know about it. So yeah, not so much like offering a whole lot of new things, but just even building greater awareness of that it's there, this is what you can use it for, maybe finding new ways to speak to it or highlighting things that we might be forgetting to speak to about it.

Awesome. I mean, I'm so excited for this. I wish every church would adopt the sort of strategy just to make pastors more accessible to people, to engage in and kind of tear down some of those boundaries and borders. I'd love to see the price point shrink too to get more volunteers in that space as well, but I totally, totally I can totally feel that that, uh, that pinch there.

Well, awesome, man. This has been, this has been great. You are now the official chat expert for the Church Digital, not only one, but twenty chat. Bringing you in for this. And so, hey, as we're landing the plane here, wrapping up, any closing thoughts?

Yeah, I just say, um, you know, I love to talk about this stuff. One thing I tried to do is we're talking about the, you know, Church IT Network, and I want same thing here for anyone listening. Um, I love talking to other church leaders. And so if anyone is thinking about doing something, maybe you're even doing this and you're like, man, why didn't you say this or why aren't you doing this? Um, you know, goes both ways there, but I'd love to talk. And um, in that link to that slide deck, I do have contact information in there. Um, but I would love to talk, you know, whether it's questions about how we do something or maybe you're doing something similar and you just want to share that. I would love to connect about all those things.

Yeah, sounds good. So check out the show notes or YouTube descriptions and we'll have previous podcasts and Church Home and his CITN presentation, his slide deck will be in there as well. And so it sounds like all sorts of good information in there on this idea and this strategy. And so, well, Evan, man, thanks for jumping on here and being part of the conversation for, uh, yeah, thanks for having me. And um, I'm going to have to start thinking about a third type of chat topic so I can come back on the podcast.

Yeah, I mean, what's what are we going to do with, uh, with metaverse? Like, is there something? What what is, uh, what is um, augmented reality? There we go. Yeah, that'll be a good excuse to buy my new Apple headset.

There you go. You put it in the budget. Apple Vision, thirty-five hundred. It's for Jeff's podcast. I have to do it. Jeff said you needed to do it. Uh, you're the, we, you're the, oh my gosh, that would be chat three point zero, uh, exact for for web three point zero.

Yeah, it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's a done. Just has to happen, right?

All right, so we'll go and schedule the podcast. We'll record again in eight. And well, let's do it for another four years. Let's try to find something.

Sounds great. Awesome. Hey, for, uh, Evan, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for jumping on the podcast here. We'll see you next time on the show. You have a good day.