EP281 - Barbara Carneiro, Generational Communication, and Target Audience

The more narrow you can go, the easier it will be for people to say yes to following you as a curator for something. 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 discipleship making 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, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, everybody. Episode 281. 281 of the Church Digital Podcast. Wait for it. Brought to you by Riverside. That's right. The Church Digital has a new partner. Riverside software. We love these guys. We're going to talk more about this later. It doesn't actually start until February, but you know I just love talking about stuff before it's supposed to happen. Consider this the Church Digital leak. Check out Riverside. Go to thechurchdigital.com/riverside for more information on this. Believe me, we'll be talking about this soon enough. But hey, episode 281 of the Church Digital Podcast. Jeff here. I think I said that. Founder of the Church Digital, and I am excited about this podcast. I think of I'm excited about podcast 280 other times in my life, but here with episode 281, man, I was really looking forward to this conversation, and I loved it. It's so much fun. Barbara Carrero. Well, I got to tell you, in the grand scheme of things, Barbara has been more to this organization, to the Church Digital, over the past 18 months like I cannot put into words how much support, how helpful, how instrumental Barbara has been to the Church Digital. The new Church Digital. This is probably, I don't know, I was trying to think about this, version five or version six of the Church Digital over its five or six year career, constantly evolving and changing. And Barbara has been a key part in this new version for this new season.

So who's Barbara? You keep asking me because I keep saying her name. Barbara is CEO of Word Revolution. It's an agency that runs and helps churches and other organizations. We're going to get into this. But as I was thinking about the podcast, you know, to bring in Barbara came to mind, and I shot a quick message, a DM, over to Barbara. Hey, let's get together and talk. What are we going to talk about? And this idea of communications because she is so strong in communications. Of course, she's also incredible on branding. She's helped the Church Digital with this new branding that's coming out. But really her heart is strategy. And so what you're going to hear, and of course I love strategy, she's a maverick just like me, and what you're going to hear in this are two mavericks, two visionaries, two strategy people thinking. Not, I want to make sure here, this isn't stuff that you should be doing. Like, this isn't radical thought. This is stuff that you should already be doing. This is not what's coming up. This is like stuff you should be doing today. But unfortunately, the majority of churches really don't understand this well. So we're going to have a conversation here. You know, Barbara from a strategy standpoint, man, we end up talking generational communications, the different generations that exist, and how, you know, you communicate to a millennial different than you do a Gen Z, then a Gen X, then a boomer, and everything in between. And so generational communication is very important for churches, especially in digital space. But even more than that, starting to get into personas and target audiences, and oh my gosh, I kept saying in this podcast, we got to bring it back, Barbara. We got to bring it back, Barbara, because just the more that we peeled back the layers, the more that it's all this is the beginning of many, many more conversations that we need to get into, especially as we look at our churches not only operating from an ecclesiological standpoint but from a communication standpoint. How are you utilizing these tools effectively for the kingdom while still respecting what the kingdom is calling us to be, using these tools? And so it's going to be a fun conversation here with Barbara Carrero, CEO of Word Revolution, and myself, Jeff, founder of the Church Digital, in a conversation that I'm simply calling today generational communication and target audience.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

Well, hey, Barbara, to kick this off, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? That's always a complex question because, you know, it's hard to figure out like what is home for me. We've traveled a lot as a family, so as of right now I'm recording from Rock Hill, South Carolina, but as a family we're migrating to Barcelona in the summer, so we'll be relocating soon. So that's where home will be for a little while. I'm, you know, the things that I like to do where I spend most of my time is in communications. That is really my happy place for a lot of the stuff that I do. I have an agency that is called Word Revolution that keeps me busy and entertained and excited at the same time. We have a team of 12 now, so we just came out from a team meeting, and I'm always full of energy after that. So you're getting me at this place of being super excited. So yeah, very cool.

Well, I tell you, I'm jealous about the Barcelona piece. It's been, I've been living vicariously through your Facebook posts as you've been talking about your time over there and the move over there like that's. I did a mission trip over to Barcelona when I right when I came out of college. I maybe spent two or three weeks over there, and I just love the culture, the space, the place was Barcelona. And a little bit into France as well because Barcelona's, I recall, is like right on the border. I think. And oh my gosh, it was so cool. I almost died over there, but that's a completely different story. My class ring is somewhere in some river in Barcelona as part of the I almost died and lost my class ring in the process. Unfortunately, I survived the ordeal, but I'm not actually kidding there. But that's a story for another day. So let's move on.

So Barbara, your agency, I'm just curious because I didn't realize. I knew you had an agency. I knew it was like 12. That's pretty extensive. What types of things with your agency do you do? You help because I know you do a lot of work with churches. So tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, so we definitely have this specific passion for churches, and so the processes that we have designed can really apply to any organization, but our pursuit of people to work with us, we generally pursue churches. Funny enough, we have like limo companies and pool builders and other, you know, other types of organizations that will ask us for help. And that was actually my background because I started before I was a believer. So my agency is older than my faith is. Agency started almost 20 years ago, and I came to faith about 13 years ago. So it was interesting to see how, from coming from the place of having the agency and working in communications, I then had to understand what an ark was. So, you know, kind of getting into the world of what church is was a lot of novelty for me. So for me, the Christian side was the novelty, and I feel like sometimes for the people we serve is the opposite. They have the Christian side, and they're trying to understand communications and how to make this thing work for the church.

So yeah, as an agency, we have people all over the world. Portugal, Venezuela, Brazil, and then us here in the US, and now we're relocating to Spain. So that team is responsible for a lot of things, but I tried to focus us greatly on strategy. That is my passion. So my goal is to be like, okay, let's not design anything yet. Let's figure out who this church is, why they exist, what drives them to even, you know, do what they do. And, you know, who are they serving? Who can they serve well? And these questions generally dictate then how we design, create copy, video, social media, and things like that.

Yeah, so yes. And so Barbara, or Word Revolution, has been vital over the past year or so for the Church Digital. Some of you have seen the new logo. The website has not officially launched yet. I've been told Bernie, the guy who's in charge now, is like it's going to launch within the next couple days. So maybe swing over to the Church Digital and you can maybe actually see the refreshed website. But Barbara and her team, as an organization, were trying to figure out what the new voice was, what the brand was, what it needed to look like, who were we reaching? You know, helping us better figure out our personas. Like Barbara was so instrumental really in helping me get out what was in my head, get it on paper, start to get some of the rest of the team to own that, to understand that, to speak into that, and evolve it.

You know, and I'll just say kind of upfront like I wasn't a big fan, and I said this in a previous podcast, I was not a big fan of, hey, Jeff, your logo is old and dated and it needs to change. Like, I'm actually very passionate about that logo. But understanding, you know, and Barbara was one of the clear voices for this, that hey, it's reaching a type of person, and you're saying you need to change to reach a different type of person. So you're going to have to sacrifice the logo in order to be more effective for us to move this, to be to reach a younger audience. And she was right. And so, you know, having the people within your organization that are challenging you and leading to that, or maybe you're one of these voices that are speaking to leadership, challenging them, and helping them try to understand that, like having those people in your life is so important and so vital to that.

And so upfront, before we actually get into the conversation, Barbara, thank you for the work towards that.

Yeah, cool. And by the way, if anybody wants to email Bernie and harass Bernie for the website that was supposed to launch a long time ago and has yet to launch, you can go ahead and do that at romans@thechurchdigital.com. And so hey, Bernie, I know you're listening to the podcast. You're welcome. But no, seriously, it's like literally it's a couple days away. I was just adjusting some text right before the podcast myself, and excited to see it coming.

Okay, so hey, Barbara, let's, and I just, I could talk about Barcelona. I could talk about how you found Christ and you changed your business. Like, I didn't know that aspect of you, and so like I almost want to come back to that maybe on a different podcast and start to explore that because I love that idea that you found Jesus and it was so impactful that it actually adjusted your career and your focus. Like that's a very powerful statement. But let's get into this because I'm totally not thinking that right now, and then I want to spend some time focusing on that.

Really, and Barb and I, we were together on Facebook Messenger because that's the platform that I use to communicate with Barbara on a regular basis for whatever reason. That's the default application I go to. And within Facebook Messenger, we were talking about what to do on this podcast, and Barbara brought up this idea.

Of generations and about how if we really want to use our content, we want to want to reach different people, then we have to realize that we have to communicate differently to the different generations that are out there. And as I was wrestling with that, you know, we as a church, I don't I don't know that we really understand that well in digital space. And so I was like, oh, let's have that conversation. Let's see where it goes. So Barbara, I probably butchered the concept right up here at the front. Why don't you share a little bit like the idea of generations and how we're communicating and connecting with people in digital space?

Like to talk a little bit about that, uh, and you know, I'm very passionate about it and I think it comes from, um, in a way trying to understand my kids, trying to understand those in my life and trying to understand how the next generation after me is behaving or doing things differently. So it came out of curiosity, but at the same time, I couldn't ignore the fact that it was connecting to my job, right? So when you think of communications, you have to—let's, I mean, communications in itself requires a message, requires a sender and a recipient. And so I'm like, why are we ignoring the recipients? Like, we need to figure out who they are. And the generational studies that I've been doing for a solid ten years, I think at this point, have shown me a few things. And so there are data to back up stereotypical groups that you can find in each generation. And I think that sometimes we're like, well, I don't fit that stereotype or I don't like stereotypes, but one thing is true is that the way your sense of the world is formed, your worldview is formed, depends heavily on how the world was when you were a child. And so the world was different when I was a child compared to how my kids are now and how the world is right now and their children. Our worldview forms—it's completely formed, um, to an extent I'm believing that by the time our childhood is done. So think about it. My twelve-year-old, his way of perceiving the world is formed. He already has that, and that is going to educate his decision-making process when he's twenty-five, when he's thirty, when he's fifty-five, right? So a lot of the things that we carry with us are simply a sense of what we bring back, like it's nostalgia. You call it whatever you want, but we all go back to that place in childhood that has created for us what seems normal, what seems acceptable. And so you don't have to go too far. Like us Gen Xers find something funny that Millennials don't think it's funny. So you don't have to go too far. But anyway, when it comes to this idea of understanding generations, what I like to look at is, even though we're still operating in the stereotypical box, okay? So what determines the sense of worth for a person? So I believe that the four generations that we have alive—well, we don't know much about Alpha just yet—and the generation before the Baby Boomers, they're dying or they, you know, it's a generation that is ceasing to exist. So let's compare Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Z. Just these four. And I would say that the way that they perceive their sense of worth, it gives us so much information of how we can engage with them. Now, I'm assuming that most of you probably don't want to be sitting with a sixty-page report on generations. Like, that's the kind of stuff you read and then you're like, okay, great, now what do I do with this? Now it's like, it's just a lot of data. Some of us may be okay with that, but most of us are probably not really interested in reading these, you know, very heavy text information about generations, okay? So I'm going to sum it up for you. This is what I found to be valuable: when we think of the Baby Boomer generation, this is a generation that their sense of worth comes from the things they contribute towards. And so we call them the contributors. Yeah, and so if I can contribute towards something, I assign a sense of worth back to myself because of that. Remember, we're talking stereotypes here, so give that a little bit of a grain of salt for what I'm saying. And then you're going to go to Gen Xers. Gen Xers are what we call the consumer generation. This doesn't have to be a negative, but in some cases it has played out as a negative. Look at how the church has created the consumer experience of a church, right? So you go and you observe and you receive and you're served. And like, that is because this is the first generation that is now able to consume more than the previous generation. They're the business owners, the entrepreneurs, and so they don't have the nine-to-five and kind of a prediction of what their salary will be for the rest of their lives, right? So this is the generation that now can actually consume more because they can make more. And you know what I'm saying? So this generation alone, their sense of worth comes from the things they can consume because that seems, for them, that I've achieved something. I was able to, you know, become somebody. The whole, like, look at what the Joneses are doing, came from that generation, right? Then you have the Millennials. Millennials assign worth based on collaboration. So we call them collaborators. That is a generation that really enjoys this idea of people collaborating with people, a global view of how things can be done. And so that's what, for them, becomes an important aspect of how they see the world. And then you get the Gen Z, and they're what we call the curators, okay? So for them to be the person at school that says, hey, here's the game that I found, here's the playlist that I'm listening to, they become the curators for others. And there's a lot more that I can talk about curation, but this is kind of like the summary of these four generations. If you don't remember anything else: contributors, consumers, collaborators, and curators. And that should be a good guideline for what you're trying to do.

Very good. Look at that. Four C's. They all line up so well. Contributors, consumers, collaborators, and curators. Yeah, so it's interesting. The Boomers being the contributors, I hadn't—um, the Boomers are the contributors, and then so who was the consumers? It's us, Jeff. It's the Gen Xers.

Oh, Gen Xers. I'm sorry. Yeah, we are the consumers. We're the ones. I don't know that I should, I don't know that I want to take credit for that. I was about to put that together. That's interesting. By the way, do you have, because I mean, there's a lot there. Do you have like a book, an ebook, something where this is written? Maybe not a sixty-page report or something, a blog that this is processed on, or any way?

So I do have the sixty-page one that I actually use as a reference often. It's something that I compile and, you know, over the years. But I think what would be the most helpful tool is to actually simplify. And so this is one way to simplify what I had just told you: figure out, like, what is the category? What makes me have this sense of worth in my life? But then there are communication details that I can obviously add to each one of them. So how, what is the best way to communicate with them? How do they deal with money? How do they give and why they give? Yeah, so there are a lot of little details that would apply to each generation that is very different. Now, you can go away from the generations and think more globally. It's like, well, we want to be multi-generational. We want to be this. And I think that applies to a certain extent. But as soon as you start getting into, like, the visuals, the copy, that's when you're going to see that, you know, the way I speak to a Gen X that is focused on results is different than a Gen Z that is focused on curation. And so, yeah, so that's a different—I mean, here in the house we have two Gen Z, and let me tell you, we're all very results-driven. So well, I mean, just for giggles, let's pull the thread here. So, um, I mean, you said giving. I mean, why not? Let's. You know, everybody in 2024 is concerned about giving. And so the idea of, okay, we're really giving, but we're really speaking to four different personas that are driven by four different motives. For sure, the Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Just as giving as an example, how would we massage that idea for the four different personas that we're wanting to connect with? And again, the disclaimer applies here that this is the stereotypical behavior, and not everybody will fit in it one hundred percent. But when you think of the Baby Boomers, they want the brick with their name on it. So it's like, I've donated, and there's some sort of recognition for that donation. It doesn't have to be visible in a sense that it has to be public, but there's a certain level of recognition of that donation—either a meeting with the pastor or there's a, you know what I mean, a letter that came in the mail. Like, there's a level of recognition that happens that says we recognize you as a contributor. You go to Gen Xers, and I want to know that my one hundred dollars will get me five bricks on that house in Guatemala, right? So it's the result-driven approach. Like, we are the generation that likes to top it off. Like, how many, how much do you need to close this thing? Are you five thousand short? I'll get the five thousand, right? So we're very results-driven in that sense. And so if you make it too abstract, we're not going to respond to it. If you just say, hey, we're trying to fundraise fifty thousand, that's just very abstract. There's no connection to a gift. And so I need to tie it to a specific result. Say, hey, listen, for every one thousand dollars we get, we're going to be able to fund this one thing. And so I know that I'm funding a goat, you know what I mean? Like, for whatever reason, us Gen Xers really want to know which goat we're funding in Africa instead of, you know. And it's, I mean, I'm obviously exaggerating on the comical side of the conversation here, but in many ways we operate from that place of my X dollars will be the equivalent to this result. With Millennials, they're the ones that will get all of their friends, like, hey, let's do this together, you know? I've donated to this because this cause has a greater sense of purpose that comes associated with the donation. So for them, it's about what kind of impact this will have in the world. And because I can see that impact, I will actually talk about it with my friends and say, hey, there's this organization that really could use our help to end blank. And so it's a different approach. That's why, if you go back a few years, the Compassion International approach of having, hey, here's the actual face of the kid you're sponsoring, fit the Gen X understanding of result. That's why it worked so well. When you come to the Gen Z generation, obviously you have to remember they're kind of young still. But I, and this is more of an assumption than an actual proven type of data, but I believe these are the guys that will utilize technology to spread the word so wide that many little dollars will account for much. Yeah, I think this is a generation that will basically expose a need. Again, they will be curating that need for somebody. Others will see the need, and they will kind of, like, all gather into donating towards something. They're very young still, so they're just hitting the marketplace in their twenties, like early twenties, at this stage. And so, you know, we have to wait a little bit more until we see how this plays out.

They mature in the marketplace to have a better idea, but I believe that's what would happen. Like, I would rather create a TikTok that will get a bunch of people to donate, and that's my contribution. So yeah, no offense to the idea that Gen Z needs to mature. I tell you, you can send all hate mail on that. Go ahead and send that to Romans, RNS thee church dot digital. That'll be great as well.

Okay, so hey, let's use compassion because I want to maybe show some of the strain that's here. Compassion built an idea on how to connect with people, and at the time, your point really, putting the kid's face on the paper, I'm giving fifty bucks a month to this kid so that he does what he's doing. I can't, you know, break little Diego's heart and no longer pay for this. So like, that's my motivation to pay, whatever it is. That idea works in for Gen X, but you're suggesting that doesn't really work at the other extreme, down at Gen Z. No, I know, right? It may not work as well. It may not be as effective. And so like, Compassion, they've got whole innovation departments, and I know some of the people over there, and so Compassion is doing great. This is not about them, but as an example, ideologically, like, do we change our processes to better reach? Like, do we do more communications? Do we create a different thing? Like, how do we, as the church, maybe how do we adapt some of the stuff that we're doing to better connect with some of these different extreme groups?

So, you know, when you come to Gen Z, the biggest communication channel for them is short video. So they're saying a couple of things to us. They're not going to sit for a presentation where you tell them about what's happening somewhere that needs your help. And so it has more to do with how can I create these seeds of information that they're exposed to consistently that will basically say to them, "Hey, I'm willing to support this in certain ways." I'm going to bring a different concept here that I think is what society is going where we are going as a society in general, because they will help us. It will help educate what I think Gen Z are doing.

So when you think of the information age that we experienced a few years ago, all we had was information, right? So now the currency that we as a society were kind of spending, the currency is time. You basically say, "I'm going to spend this much time reading, finding information, right?" So you go to the internet and now you have access to all of this thing. So the currency at that point is your time. You're just spending your time, then you move on to what we call the engagement age, right? Some people are talking about this already or still. Go down social media. This is the engagement age. And now the difference is you post, I post, you like, I like, you share, I share. There's a lot of this back and forth. It's not just me consuming information. Now we're engaging. And the currency now is attention. So you've heard marketers say this, like, "You got to catch their attention. You got to capture their attention." Attention is the currency.

I think the phenomenon that it's already happening, whether we want it or not, is that we're already moving from attention, from engagement to the next stage, which is curation. Why do we need curation? Because our brains are exhausted. Yeah, so all of our brains are exhausted. We can't deal with everything that is coming our way. And Gen Z has no option. They do not know the world without this because that's how their world was formed. So for them, the reality is, "I grew up and I was born and I existed where there's already a lot coming my way." This explains a few things. Our brains are tired, and our brains are constantly being asked to assess what comes our way. So our brains are always doing this, like, "What is it? Who is it for? What do I get?" So every time I'm exposed to anything on the internet, any video, any social media post, my brain is always like, "What is it? Who's it for? What do I get?" Now imagine scrolling through your feed and your brain's like, you know, going through this sequence of questions all the time. I mean, at some point in time, you're just going to explode. That's what it is.

So what do we do? We say, "I need a place to rest and my brain needs to rest." So I'm going to go. It's so basically what we're all doing, all of us, is we're pursuing curators. We're pursuing somebody that curates the information for me because I can no longer consume everything. That's why you see so much of the diversion in politics. So I'm following a curator that is going to take me this way, and you're going to follow a curator that is going to take you that way. Our paths will never cross as far as the information we consume, the people we see, the things we learn, the books we read, the Netflix shows we watch. Like, our paths will never cross because we're both following someone's path of curation.

Now I'm getting super nerdy now, so you tell me if I need to stop. No, I actually want to build on this if I can, because you just connected the dots for me on something. Literally, I'm sitting here like, "Oh my gosh, she just said what I believe that I didn't put it together with Gen Z and the curation aspect." But like, I have always been a proponent of me doing ministry. It's much more effective for somebody else to be saying what I want to say than for me to say it. Like, as a pastor, I actually have the least amount of value today in 2024 than I've ever had in my life. Like, and it's more about empowering others and helping others do that. But that, I mean, that's for me, that's more about discipleship and multiplication. But curation, in many ways, is part of that because now you get other people that have that attention, that have that focus, that are curating for that. That's beautiful.

So let me tell you something really interesting. Because when we moved from information to engagement, we moved from time to attention. And now we're moving from attention to trust. And so the currency now is trust. I'm following the path of those I trust. And so my kid is following the people that he trusts online for gaming information, for whatever products they want to wear or use or buy or consume. And so he's following the particular path of curation that is being set in front of him. And he doesn't know anything else exists because he doesn't have the ability, the capacity, or the time to really engage with everything else out there. And so he's basically saying, "I can't ever research everything out there."

How many times do you ask your people what Netflix shows are you watching these days? Because how many hours have you spent just scrolling trying to figure out what to watch next? So we're asking people to curate stuff for us all the time. We just don't realize that you open your phone. If you have an iPhone, you just pull down, you're going to see the four apps that your phone thinks you're supposed to use at this moment. And let me tell you, if I pull it at nine o'clock in the morning, it will show me my bank account because there's generally what I do first, you know, at the beginning of the day, get my work going. I check the bank account, pay any bills, do that kind of stuff. So as soon as I pull down at nine o'clock a.m., it knows she's going to go to her bank account. But if it's three o'clock p.m., I can guarantee it's going to show me Starbucks because that's what my kids ask when I pick them up from school. And so my phone is curating my experience.

This is not just personalization. I want to make the difference there because this is not just personalizing to your needs. It's basically curating the path for you. Like, if I pull down, immediately my mouth starts watering thinking about Starbucks. Yeah, so there's a process of curation that basically feels like it's we're being guided somewhere. And you add to that another thing, which is when you go through a path of curation, what you're doing is you're entering a circle of trust. So when I say I'm going to follow Jeff Reed, I'm going to follow a path that you're creating for me, but I'm going to enter your circle of trust. So if now I have, let's say, you know, Andy in your circle, I'm going to naturally trust Andy simply because he's in the same circle of curation that I am and that you are.

Interesting fact, how cool it is that we're going back to something so deep as trust as being the currency that we expend, that we spend with each other. How amazing it is that I think God is doing this shift, bringing us back to a place where we trust one another. And how impressive that the generation that we now have is the most spiritual one. We've all heard that people are kind of like talking about. They're very spiritual. Do you think there's a reason why? And here's why. The internet has everything available. It can access everything. You know, my kid came the other day saying, "You know, Mommy, this is how they do the magic trick with whatever." I was like, "Dude, you're about to ruin my childhood. Just don't show me. Like, I do not want you to show me how they cut the woman in half because that for me is like a magic moment. It's an experience that I don't want to. I don't want to know how it works because you're going to ruin it for me."

The previous generations, we had awe and wonder simply because we didn't know everything. Now everything is out there. Everything is available. So guess what's left? Nothing. So they have to pursue all wonder in the spiritual world because the natural world literally gives you everything that you possibly could possibly need at any time.

Now, we don't, and I just disclaimer, we're I don't know, twenty, thirty minutes into this thing. We don't normally get like this level of communications like here on the podcast. Like, she just dropped a tidbit about how personalization and curation are different things, and I almost want to just do a podcast episode just on that. Like, I'm nerding out over here on the communications aspect.

My well, and so we're probably going to bring you back on very soon to get into that because the idea of personalization is in communication, once again in digital context. Like, this is where this is where we should be, not where we're going. And so in many ways, the church is catching up on a lot of this contextually in the idea. But trust and trusting that circle, Andy Mage, by the way, operations director at the church digital, is phenomenal. If you're not listening to his podcast, FTTT, from text to testimony, and some of the stuff that he's doing through Glue and some of those resources, it's like it's incredible stuff. So we'll put a link in the show notes for that.

But as we're getting into this communication stuff, really, I think what we're doing is laying this foundation for us as organizations to start to understand that if we want to be effective in reaching particular people or particular groups of people, that messaging may need to adjust. Now, Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Like, nobody's questioning that. But to think that I'm going to have the ability to present a message in a certain way in the same format and have it be effective to reach that eighty-year-old person and that eighteen-year-old person and that eight-year-old person, like, it just doesn't work that way. And it hasn't, to be honest, it hasn't worked that way in decades. But as a church, we need to start to consider the idea.

Of targeted communications and targeted audience and start to really start to wrestle with that, which you know, some churches are like "of course" and some churches are like "what do you, what are you talking about?" I'm sorry, I cut you off Barbara, go ahead.

No, yeah, I was going to say like you asked about like how do we communicate with different generations and the reality is you're going to have to find different channels. Um, and so now when you think of your traditional church where people come on a Sunday to a building, uh, that obviously generates in my opinion a greater limitation when it comes to the communication side. Can a church be multigenerational? 100%. Should it be multigenerational? Yes, it should. But when it comes to communications, what you're going to see is that channels have to be segmented. They have to be utilized in ways that are different for everybody.

And so what we do is we stuff every channel with everything. We're just gonna be okay. Uh, on my social media I'm going to put everything, and then on my email newsletter I'm going to put everything. And all you have to do is figure out, okay, can we start doing—and this is traditional segmenting, like marketers have been talking about this for a long time—but can we pull the youth through a text message, maybe, you know, and not have to send them the newsletter? Because the reality is they will not open that email. Like my kids don't open email. They don't know, you know what they think email is for? Confirmation from a doctor's appointment, confirmation that the soccer is—like that's what email is for. For them it's not for communications. It's more like a record of receipts kind of thing. It's just that their little like confirm that this thing exists and it's going to be done that way. But that's the extent of it. So communication happens over direct message, and churches are not prepared for that. Or the majority are not prepared for that. But let's address it from this angle: by segmenting how you communicate, even visually. So you can have a website that looks and speaks to it, looks a certain way and speaks to a certain group of people. And maybe you can still print that newsletter and send to a few people in your church. They'll be okay. You can still print those, send them over. I feel like the older generation in your church will really appreciate that.

So I'm not a big advocate of like just cut it off because it's old. No, just be smart with your resources. You don't have to print 2,000. I think it would mean a lot for some people to have a channel that matches the way they are engaging now. What happens when you have 20 channels? You have to have the resources to manage those 20 channels. And so most churches don't have it. I'm talking money, time, resources, people, right, tools. These are all resources that you need. So if you're having, like, if you're spreading yourself and your volunteers too thin to handle 20, maybe we should cut it down to 10. And by doing so, I think you're going to have to be okay by saying, you know what, right now these are the people we can serve well. And maybe we can, I don't know, get together with another church that can serve the other group well.

Well, I tell you, you may have just said the most controversial thing on the Church Digital podcast this year: the idea that you would advocate for printing uh the Sunday morning bulletin and continue printing that. Like, um, I literally had a conversation this week with somebody spouting venom about the, um, about their bulletin. They're still doing it. So like, I know there's a lot of hate about the paper. Listen, if you want—if you—whatever works. I feel like we cannot discard a tactic just because others say it's outdated. Um, there are churches—like we had a church we worked with. They were literally in a retired community. Yeah. Looking from the outside, if you were to just look from the outside, you say, "Oh, this church is aging. They're not thinking about the new generation." And I was like, "You have no context to understand what's happening there. They should keep this and this and this and this because they literally live and serve a community that is of retired people that will operate in a certain way and respond positively to a certain thing."

So we need to understand that channels cannot be more important than people. We have to start with people and then decide what channels make sense. You want to send, you want to send a bird with a message? You send the bird. Like, I'm okay with that as long as you have the resources and it matches the people that you speak to, that you're speaking to. I mean, what are we doing in other countries when we go on missions? What do we do? We learn their culture. We understand their language. We understand their. I mean, I've had uh times in the past where I was supposed to buy a specific piece of clothes in order to go to this missions trip because of the way that the culture there works. It's the same way. Learn about your people and serve them the way that makes sense for them to be served.

This is so, this is so good. And and to be honest, Barbara, like I'm just gonna lay it out right here. Um, like what you're doing is you're challenging the concept of omnichannel, where you communicate everything everywhere. Now, I'm not actually sure this blog still exists on the Church Digital. I may have taken it down because pre-COVID 2018, 2019, I was actually an advocate for omnichannel. Uh, the idea of trying to help churches lean into digital. Oh, it's so easy, just do everything everywhere. Like, don't think about it. But honestly, like the nail in the omnichannel coffin was COVID because it just accelerated everything so quickly. And all of a sudden now you saw more targeted audience versus some of these channels. You saw TikTok. You saw the, uh, the Gen Z's and even the Millennials bail from Facebook. You started to see, you know, more of a TikTok crowd, um, accelerate exodus away from Facebook. Kind of whatever, whatever. Um, and just as a result of that, now you're starting to see these characteristics, these communities be more defined by demographics. And which it really has become this curation aspect. As that generation, maybe it's become more defined, there's others start to lean into the concept as the technology matures.

And so let me let me give you another example that will clarify some of this because you can have those different channels and you can utilize them in a way that is kind of like, you know, more massive. And remember, some churches are larger than others, so they have more resources. So it's easy to operate more channels when you have more resources. But for the, you know, normal church out there—100 people, 150, 200—that's not the case. And so instead of the pastor staying up posting to social media and doing all these things and printing and designing and copying and like, which is very common nowadays, like we just want to make sure we are inviting people for that first step that makes sense to them.

Remember, when you think of curation, it's a path. It's a path. All you have to do is invite them for the first thing that you want them to do to enter your circle of trust. That's it. And that circle of trust can be entered from different places. So if I'm a baby boomer, it could be because you have an event that applies to me and what I'm doing. Maybe it's like a, you know, fundraiser dinner. And now I know about your church. And from there I enter your curation path. Yeah. And then you have another one that is different for a different audience and a different. But then, uh, once they enter the circle of trust, then you do whatever you're currently doing—like whatever events, whatever, um, activities—and you start introducing them to the other people in your circle of trust.

So people, marketers at least used to talk about this as a funnel, like "Oh, a bunch of people at the top and then it goes down to funnel." And I don't think it's a funnel. I think it's a path. I do believe that. And we're not inviting people to the end of the road. We're inviting people for that first step.

So I'll give you very practical examples. When we think of websites, it's one of the things we do the most. And so when I think of a website, uh, generally you have people designing websites for churches like, "This is all the events we do. These are the sermons that we have. These are the times that we gather. These are the, you know, all we have kids and students and seniors and singles and, you know, all of the offerings." It's like a menu. It's like a Mexican menu of all the things that you can do at that church. Uh, and believe it or not, that's still stuck in the information age. They're just giving information. That's it. They're not even in the engagement age yet. And so much less do they jump to curation.

Uh, what we do is we say, okay, what would be the first thing that a person in this demographic in this area for this church would be willing to do? And most of the time, the first step is not to come to church on Sunday. So often you will see a website that we design in the call to action on the homepage. The whole homepage is to meet with a pastor for coffee on a Wednesday, on a Tuesday. Coffee. Relational equity. You're just bringing them through the first step that makes sense to them. Sometimes it's to ask a question. "Hey, do you have a question? Ask a question." And that's the first step. That's the only thing you want them to do. So will I find the time and locations? Yes. Will I find if you have kids or not? Yes. But my focus is to simply invite you into my circle of trust. And there, that is an answer that is a lot easier to give than "I'm showing up on Sunday with my wife and my kids and I don't know where to park and I don't know what to address." You don't have to worry about those things anymore. And this is on the physical church.

Let's talk about the digital church. What is the first step you would want people to take before they show up for an actual meeting, gathering, event that you're organizing? Maybe it's just to join Discord. That's an easier yes. And now they're in the circle of trust that you're building.

Wow. She's, for, uh, for you, for Gen Y, for Gen X, you said Millennial. Like, that's, that's, I'm sorry, you said uh you said Discord. That's borderline impressive. I, I want to draw attention to that. I butchered the line totally, but I still think it's impressive. Um, yeah. How does somebody become a curator? Like, I mean, I woke up one morning and said, "Hey, I want to start the Church Digital and I want to help like churches figure this stuff out." And so like, that was me in 2018, 2017, late. And so like, I set out to do that. But does it, is it always that intentional? Is it unintentional? Like, what does that look like?

I think most of the time it's very unintentional, but it's done intuitively. So, oh, this is where we definitely need to schedule another another podcast because, okay, what you are curating for people is the satisfaction of a key human desire. Yeah. All churches are doing the same thing. All individuals, all organizations. Like, you go to Starbucks for one reason, and it's not the coffee because there's coffee in many other places. And so there's a key human desire that is being satisfied by the organizations that we engage with. And so when I think of a church, I need to figure out: Am I curating a path of hope for people in my area? Am I creating a path of belonging for people in my area? Am I creating a path of truth for people in my area? And I do believe that, um, when, and you and I have gone through this process together already, I do believe that there are 12 archetypes that a church can fall into. And uh, we, let's be honest, we all want our churches to instill hope and to bring truth and to create belonging. But they're going to, there's going to be one of these that will.

That will rise to the surface so you can see that, for example, Tim Keller's church is a church that would be focused on the truth. That's the key human desire. And I can give you very clear examples of this. The people in New York, the intellectuals in New York that would go to his church, and this is again I'm talking generically, okay? It's stereotypical. They don't have to worry about belonging, protection, and like money can buy those things, right? They have enough in their lives to buy those things, but they might be pursuing truth and they don't know where to find it. And so that demographic might actually resonate with a church like Tim Keller's where it's focused on the truth.

You go to Louie Giglio in Atlanta and now we're talking about hope. Yeah, yeah. And then you go to Andy Stanley and you're talking about leadership. And these churches, independent of their theology—we're not talking about their theology as much as it is the expression of how they do church. It can happen online as well. So I believe each church is responding to a key human desire. If you know what is the key human desire you're responding to, that is your path of curation. That is the path of curation you're creating for people.

So in your case, uh, you know, in my case, um, we're, we're, uh, we're focusing on, believe it or not, it's actually, it's, it has to do with like acceptance and belonging because we're creating a space for those that are on the outside. Yeah. So who are the people that would not identify or feel comfortable? When you think of a digital church in the metaverse, what they're doing is they're creating acceptance for the person that feels like in everything that exists out there, I don't belong. And that's what they're doing. It's a path of a church in the metaverse. I can tell you a church in the metaverse is specifically creating and satisfying the desire of acceptance. That's what they're doing. And they can exist there successfully.

Yeah, Stewart McPherson would tell you the same thing. Had that conversation with him a lot, lot on the metaverse. Um, very, very interesting. Oh my gosh, there's so much here. Like we're going to have to do another conversation. I want to get into personas and all this. Like you're just, you're just pulling all these threads and I'm like we could literally be here for like two, three hours having this conversation. We're, we're gonna have to break this up because both of us have other things to do. And, and, uh, make it easier for the audience to process through, let me ask, uh, because you know some of this is we've talked about the idea of targeted audience in context of, uh, ages, yes. You know, I'm guessing there's probably some, uh, characteristics and personas breaks it beyond just age as being the characteristic of that, um, you know, and obviously different, uh, different people, men and women have different interests and different communication challenges even, um, different like you mentioned with your Tim Keller versus Stanley and in that crowd, you know, it's different. And that's some of the danger of omni-channel or even hey, let me watch and see what somebody else is doing and I'm going to do the exact same thing. You know, it's like, um, it's conference envy. So and so said they do it this way, so I'm going to do the same thing. And so there's there's some challenges to that.

Yeah, but I, I'm actually not sure if how you're going to answer this, um, because but sometimes you know you shoot the shotgun and uh and that one pellet does actually land. Biblically it talks about scattering seed and yes some of it's rocky path and thorny bush but some of it lands on on soil. Um, do you put your sermon on LinkedIn? Like the majority of audience is probably not going to connect on. I get this question all the time. Why don't we put the sermon on LinkedIn? Why does nobody do that? Because it's free, it's easy. Somebody, it might that one pellet might actually connect. I know this is a graphic example, but yeah, bear with me. Like is it worth doing or what's the damage if you do? Like kind of wrestle with some of that for me.

So I think it comes down to being wise with your resources, really. And so when I think of a curator, somebody that is very niched down, it's someone that is very specific. Like you know, you know exactly what path they're creating for you. There's no doubt. It's not generic. It's not vanilla, right? And so when I follow somebody that is helping me with metaverse stuff, they're helping me with metaverse stuff. I don't expect them to help me with you know how to decorate my house. Like, uh, so there's a, and we're going to have several curators for several things in what we're doing. So the more narrow, the more narrow you can go, the easier it will be for people to say yes to following you as a curator for something. Uh, and so you have to be clear on what you're doing so that others can also join that movement that you're joining.

So if you import ideas from other people, I mean imagine if you're a church like uh Andy Stanley and you're importing things from Tim Keller's church, it's just not going to fit. And that's sometimes why you have some leadership issues is because you have some people focusing on one key human desire and then you have other people focusing on another key human desire. Uh, if you are a teacher church and you have people coming to your church, you'll probably hear this often. They just didn't feed me enough over there because their pursuit was of truth. They didn't need the other things. Their pursuit was of truth. And so there will be, church is designed specifically to fulfill that independent of how they operate.

So this is what is interesting about these ideas is that it's universal. You go to Asia, you're going to have teacher churches. You go to Africa, you're gonna have leader churches. Yeah, it goes beyond how you express it. It goes beyond how you design it. But uh, let's go back to the question you had. And I know that we can wrap up with that one. If I'm trying to figure out who my audience is, I do think that um I need to focus on what is the key human desire we're satisfying. I would start there and then I would apply the layer of the generation on top of it. I would say okay, right now the way that we're going to express this will be visually for the millennial, in content for the millennial, in communications for the millennial. Others around you need to see it as a target. So the millennial is your bullseye. It's not just going to be exclusive to them. The next layer over, maybe the Gen Xers will feel like hey, I'm not too far off. I can kind of identify with eighty, ninety percent of what these guys are doing, you know? And then you're going to have another layer beyond that.

So in a target, you're going to have maybe three, four layers of people that will still resonate with what's at the core, but you need to know where the target is. Like you have to have that core. You need to know what is the bullseye. And so I would start with the key human desire. Capture what is the key human desire that our church is satisfying. And then I will add the layer of generations to determine how I communicate that because visually, in content, and even in channel, it will be different.

Yeah, now some of you may be listening to some of this wisdom talking about target audience and realizing hey, you know what, like the church we're called to reach our neighborhoods. We're called to reach that. And in physical environments you may be, um, digitally though, this idea of scattering the seed, like it just, it just doesn't, it doesn't work like that. That's actually a beautiful biblical parallel where you scatter the seed and it won't digitally. It's not, it's not going to land, um, nearly to the percentage wise that that you think it can. Um, you know, some of you may actually be thinking because I've had conversations with people and they talk well, LifeChurch is doing it. LifeChurch is taking that same message and they're launching all these campuses and doing all this stuff. And yeah, it's true. LifeChurch is probably one of the largest, if not the largest, uh, multi-site physical location church in America. Um, but there's an interesting tidbit. And I actually have a bunch of friends over at LifeChurch and had the luxury of hanging out with their operations team a lot. Um, I don't know if you know this, Barbara. LifeChurch and this, this may not be true, this is several years ago when I had this conversation and things move quickly over there, but for them their target audience, um, is Panera. The restaurant. They get opportunities to connect with, um, to connect with, uh, churches. Like people approach them all the time. Come take over our church, come take over our property, come take over our debt, you know, just whatever. People trying to merge in with LifeChurch. And one of the first things that LifeChurch does is see if there's a Panera anywhere near that location because the type of person, what they figured out, the type of audience that LifeChurch is designed to reach is the type of person that would go to Panera the restaurant.

Wow. And so like if there's no Panera in your town, there's a very good chance LifeChurch is not coming to you. Now, like I said, things may have changed. That was maybe three years ago, early COVID when I had that conversation. But the fact is is that everybody, at least the churches that are effective physically, digitally, fully, whatever, hybrid, um, thinking more and more targeted is going to help you be more effective, um, with what we're trying to do. It's, you know, I say this and people like, like look at me like I'm crazy, but effectively trying to reach less people will help you reach more people. It's when you try to reach more people that your stuff is ineffective and you actually reach less than if you had since had tried to reach less. That's when you multiply and get more.

Go back to the Bible. He focused. Yeah, man, that that crazy Jesus guy actually knew what he was talking about. Like it's two thousand years later, this stuff's still working. And uh, and by the way, like some of the some of the top marketing guys uh right now, I talk about Seth Godin. You can go back to previous podcasts and blogs, but some of the stuff Seth Godin talks about and the way that he handles marketing, uh, is I mean I hate to be like straight biblical, but dude, it freaking comes from the Bible. And I think Seth Godin's Jewish, so I'm not sure where he pulls it. Well, Old Testament sure, but it's some of the New Testament stuff like he pulls as well. So it's um really, really interesting.

Barbara, this has been a phenomenal conversation. We're going to have to do it again. I like, over here on the side, I am taking notes for what I want to dig into for the next conversation. So we're going to do this real soon and have you come back. And uh, I, you know, I love, I love church communications. And this has been a lot of fun. As we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts?

Listen, just know that it is simpler than you think it is. I feel like we overcomplicate things and I think we're ready for simplification now. I think the church is ready for that beautiful simplification. Twenty twenty-four, curation and simplification. That, that does that does a lot. You know, I got, we made things really complicated, uh, maybe over the past decade or so. And so a simplification, uh, would would be a great help.

But we're, hey, we're going to land the plane. Uh, and so hey, I hope this podcast has been helpful for you. If it has not, once again, go ahead and email uh Bernie at Romans, R-O-M-A-N-S at the church digital, the church dot digital, and tell them Jeff said hello. That'll be great. But for Barbara, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for jumping on the podcast here, and uh, we'll see you next time on the show. You have a good day.