EP298 - Tom Pounder & Utilizing YouTube at Your Church

Just get started. The reality is your first video is you're going to look back five years from now and say, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe we did that video," but you're only going to get better as you keep on doing it.

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, 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, we got episode 298. 298 Church Digital Podcast. Jeff here doing this podcast recording. We did a lot live interview with Tom Pounder coming up. More on that. Little bit by the way, I'm going to talk a little softer but maybe a little more passionate here with the podcast because my children are literally asleep in the next room. It's summer here in Miami and they are all over the house, and evidently they stayed up late last night, so they're going to sleep in during the day. And it's about 9:40 a.m., and I just want to like jump in and like wake them up and like, "Hey, get out of bed," but not quite. We'll do that anyway.

Anyway, hey, all of the Church Digital Podcast is brought to you by Riverside. Excited about our partnership with Riverside. If you haven't checked it out, the church.digital/riverside. By the way, they have a new feature inside Riverside. Like, they come out with new stuff all the time. Like, every week when I talk about it, it's something new, and this is incredibly awesome and scary both at the same time. Riverside, I hope you're listening to this, but the feature is, well, so you know, I've got I don't know, hundreds of hours worth of my voice inside Riverside, and so there's now an AI bot that I can type anything inside Riverside and artificial intelligence will recreate my voice to say it. So like I said, this is an incredibly cool feature and incredibly scary both at the same time. You want to get your pastor to say something you need, you need to edit a message or do a voiceover? Artificial intelligence can do that. The flip side is, uh, wow, what could that be done for not good means? So it's interesting. It's a challenge. You know, we've talked about the ethics of artificial intelligence surrounding Sora, and I'm excited for the feature. I'll use it for good, but it'll be interesting to see what the future will hold and how this is used for good and for let's just say not good purposes moving forward.

So hey, check it out. The church.digital/riverside. Assume the best until you don't have the ability to. So the church.digital/riverside. If your church isn't using it, check it out. All sorts of features: remote access, remote interviews, shorts, artificial intelligence summarizations, chapter listings. Like, your church needs to be utilizing this for your weekend services and even beyond it. And so cool.

Hey, we've got episode 300. The Church Digital Podcast 300. I've had 300 of these conversations already. We've got 299 actually. Technically, I've had 299 of these conversations already. Episode 300, I'm recording very soon, and so I'm not going to publicly announce here on the podcast who it's going to be because I've publicly leaked it on our Discord. And so if you're not on the Church Digital's Discord, well, what the garbage is wrong with you? Go swing over, open a web browser to discord.thechurch.digital. If you don't have a Discord account, if you don't even know what Discord is, check it out. discord.thechurch.digital. That'll help you set up an account and we'll get you subscribed to our online community. Jump in there, be part of it. We got close to 250 people in there right now, and lots of engagement, lots of fun, lots of joking around. Megan Carter just went on a vacation and she just told us that Guardians of the Galaxy is the best ride at Disney World, and she's not necessarily wrong. Although I would value Rise of the Resistance more on my side than Guardians. I think the Guardian story is better, but Rise is like three rides in one. We can get into Megan and I will get into that fight at some point, probably on a stream or something. We'll make it public. It'll be fun. But anyway, all sorts of conversations that are happening, and early sneak peeks and community centered around digital discipleship, digital church, digital ministry. Lots of crazy people hanging out in discord.thechurch.digital. Jump in there, create an account, and be part of the conversation.

So here at 298, we're hanging out with Tom Pounder. Tom is TCD sidekick. Tom has been a friend for years, going all the way back to 2018. Was probably honestly one of the first pastors I would say, maybe top ten, first ten digital pastors I met. When I quit Christ Fellowship, my job that I had in 2018, and so when I resigned and started the Church Digital, Tom was doing YM Sidekick, podcast and digital bootcamp and a number of other things, and just was kind of really excited to connect with me. And we just built a friendship that equated to, "Hey, Tom, why don't you come on board the Church Digital and be TCD Sidekick?" And so Tom has come on with us and is doing a lot of work. We'll talk about it in the podcast. But more than that, between his blogs and his podcasts, he's currently a digital pastor at New Life Church in the DC area and is doing some incredible work in YouTube. And so, you know, it's been a while since Tom and I have hung out here on the podcast, and so I wanted to have more of a casual conversation with my friend, kind of hanging out and talking a little bit about YouTube. And so here we go. We got Tom Pounder, content director for the Church Digital, digital pastor for New Life Christian, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, and a conversation kind of calling your church hacking YouTube. And if Google hears that we're hacking YouTube, please don't send Google bots to, you know, spam me, because I'm not literally saying we're gonna hack YouTube. It's more of like a life hack. We're going to get stuff out of it, not, you know, take down the system. I love YouTube. I don't want to destroy it. I love Google. I don't want to destroy you, although I'm not sure Google's "Do No Harm" mantra is still valid today. Like, it maybe was valid a couple years ago, but I just, I don't know, man. AI is going to take over the world. That's another conversation. Got serious. Tom's going to teach us how to hack YouTube here on the Church Digital Podcast. Here you all go.

So we're streaming this live on Discord, of course, and having the conversation. We've got Whitebeard and Flatt in here, and so Whitebeard, DC is my hometown, and yeah, you mentioned that on the call today, and I was like, "Oh yeah, Tom." Tom from the same Northeast woods. Tom, you were Tom Pounder. You were originally from DC, Maryland?

Yeah, I'm just outside of DC in the Northern Virginia area, which if you look at Virginia, there's the Northern Virginia section, which is about four, maybe five counties, and then there's the rest of Virginia. And so Northern Virginia is so different from the rest of Virginia it could probably be its own state. There it's that different.

So what, it's more urban versus rural?

Well, it's more suburban. The rest of Virginia is more like rural area, outside of like Richmond or Newport News, Norfolk area. There's a lot of ruralness in, well, hey, so we're doing a lot live stream here, a live recording of the TCD podcast. And so I've got, I mean, honestly, Tom Pounder, when I started the Church Digital in 2018, stepped out of the church job I was working. Tom Pounder was probably the number two guy to reach out to me. You know, probably Jay Kanda was number one, but Tom was shortly. And Jay and I were friends at the time, but I didn't know Tom from Adam. And Tom's like, "Hey, why don't we do a podcast and talk about it?" And so jumped on with him, and he's like, "You know, ask me questions about the Church Digital." And honestly, in 2018, I had no idea what I was doing with any of this stuff. And so like, it was a really start from scratch kind of approach. And like, we've just kept that relationship over the years. Been a lot of fun. And Tom, you know, at the time was doing YM Sidekick, which used to be Youth Ministry Sidekick, and then when he went digital, it was Your Ministry Sidekick. And you know, I think a couple years ago I convinced him, "Hey, why don't you come on board the Church Digital and let's make it the TCD Sidekick?" And so that's where we are today. TCD Sidekick, Tom Pounder. You know, that would, there's the running joke that that would make me Batman and he would be Robin. I would be the Lone Ranger and he would be Toto. I would be Tanto.

Tanto. You know, I'm currently singing.

Yeah, Tanto. Whitebeard does the other Tom beat you to it. Whitebeard corrected me, of course. But I'm currently singing the Jeff Moore Ranger and Tonto. Laurel and Hardy. The Batman and Robin. Snoopy and Charlie. Snoopy and Charlie is, you know, although the sidekick is really more of the, what's the bird's name? Woodstock.

Woodstock, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know that, Tom, you could appreciate a good Jeff Moore song from the early 1990s, can't you?

I think so, maybe possibly. You know, I love the nineties. I'm all into the nineties, but do you not know Jeff Moore singing "A Friend Like You"?

Yeah, I'm gonna have to say no. I don't. Or I know the Toy Story song, "You've Got a Friend in Me," but I don't know.

Tom, get off the stage. We're done. This interview is officially over before it even got started. Google search Jeff Moore. J-E-F-F M-O-O-R-E. Jeff Moore in the distance singing "A Friend Like You."

Oh, I do know Jeff Moore. I do know Jeff.

Yeah, like a student ministry guy. You have not know this. I am just, yes, pray for the lost souls that have been under Tom's career in ministry in the Washington area. Like, this is a, I was one of those. I was one of those guys that didn't really go to a lot of the Christian concerts. Like, there were a few that I would go to, but you know, we didn't really, I didn't really take my students to the Christian concerts. I will say this, one of the first concerts I ever remember going to, um, this is dating me, is that my mom and her friends like took my brothers and I to go see Sandy Patty at one of the arenas. And we listen to Sandy Patty. I got, I got, I got no words.

He's quoting Sandy Patty, but he's not referencing Jeff Moore. I don't even, I'm at a loss here today.

So, um, well, hey, we are. My first concert with Skid Row. My first concert was Petra. So Whitebeard saying Skid Row. My first concert was Petra. Um, was the Beyond Belief tour. They did a concert aquarium. I love. I'm actually was, yeah, yeah, they actually did a VCR release of that tour, a VHS tape, and I'm on the concert. I'm on the VHS. You can see me. They did like a shot of the audience, and I was over like right near the bass player who was like jamming out. And so it's like, you know, I was a much thinner kid than I am now, much skinnier kid that I am now. Justin Smith and associations. I worked that tour. Okay, very cool. Um, wait, you worked the Beyond Belief tour down in, so down in Miami? That's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah, so I was, I was in seventh grade maybe when that, when that concert was there. Another conversation, Whitebeard evidently was there. Whitebeard and I have met like physically 40 times in life, just never actually talked to each other. Our paths have crossed so much, it's amazing. Um, and uh, so my, my, my, hey Calvary just walks in. Uh, so we'll have to get serious because now we've got like real people coming in to want to hear about YouTube hacking. But um, I will say that my most recent, this is, this is how uncool I am these days. Um, my most recent concert is the Spice Girls. I have not been to a concert in 20 years easy. I went to the last Spice Girls US concert in uh, in the year 2000. I was a radio DJ at the time. I got free tickets and ended up going with some friends. I was the oldest male that was not a father at the Spice Girls concert. There were dads who were taking their little daughters to go see Scary Spice and Posh Spice, and uh, and then there was me. Uh, I'll tell you what I really, really want. Believe me, I, I sing that song all the time to the kids and they, they're like, "Daddy, shut up." Uh, so I'm going to go see, I just got tickets to Chris Tomlin in the fall, so I won't be able to share my Spice Girl story anymore. Ironically, um, the person who came in that I was like, "Hey, we've got to behave, we've got someone like watching," as soon as I said Spice Girls, they left. So I think that scared, like, we do have a podcast. Yeah, I'm out. They're talking about Scary and Sporty and Posh and whatever the other one was. Who was the other one? Uh, uh, Baby Spice? I think there was Baby Spice. Baby, yeah. Scary, Sporty, Posh, and Baby. There you go. Tom Pounder knows his Spice Girls, but does not know Jeff Moore in the distance. Um, all right, so here's what I need us to do. Um, you know, TCD, we launched a Discord channel and it's that discord.thechurchdigital.com. If you are not part of the Discord channel, like I encourage you guys, anybody listen to this podcast, subscribe to the TCD Discord channel. Discord web browser, go to web browser Discord, thechurchdigital.com. That'll walk you through creating the account. That'll get you in to subscribe to the TCD server. There's a channel in there called TCD Podcast where we're going to talk all about the podcast. So I want you to find the TCD Podcast channel on Discord and I want you to publicly rip and humiliate Tom Pounder for not knowing who Jeff Moore in the distance is. Like, I, I just am, I'm, I'm at a loss here, right? Right up front. Okay, that was a very long plea to get people to sign up for the Discord. So we've got, we got, I mean, at the time of this recording, 240 in here. It's been really fun. The German, the German um, church network just just joined in here today, and so I started getting notified. I'm an admin, so anytime somebody says something, I get notified, and uh, I started getting all these pings, and it's Simon DKS who's a German doing like posting in German some of the stuff he's doing on the channels. It's like, "Ah, I don't recognize that language," and that's okay. It's like, we're just gonna, we're gonna move on with that. But it's, man, it's going to be awesome in here uh, with that. And so Tom, we're going to talk YouTube, right?

Yeah, that's the plan. Listen, I'm all for it. All right, so we are, um, Tom is the community content director for the Church Digital and obviously has been spending a lot of time growing and developing the Church Digital's uh, subscriber base. I mean, Tom, I may be making up numbers, but you, you took it from like 300 to 800, man, right? Like, over the span of time when you were running that, like, it was a significant jump.

I, I don't think it was quite 300. I think it was more than that, but we did have a big jump, you know, uh, during the summer months last year and into the fall. So yeah, we did jump a bunch.

No, he's, he grew the TCD subscriber base by 5,000 users, maybe 8.7 million users uh, overnight, like, it was incredible. Um, the most popular video, yeah, yeah, listen, I'm not going to lie. The most popular video on TCD's YouTube channel before Tom was involved was I posted a video of uh, the CEO of Amazon talking about what Amazon was going to be back in like, I don't know, like the late 90s, and um, I wrote about it in a blog, and for some reason that, that just, it was like a 60-second video. It's not even a short. It was like just a video, you know, that still gets views, man, every day. I mean, every week when we check the YouTube stats, that's still getting views. It's amazing to me that it, um, first off, that that it's got that much legs. Um, secondly, that people were subscribing to the Church Digital. I mean, if you look at the subscriber rate based off of that video, you can see it's like people are subscribing to the Church Digital based off of TCD, like, do they have any idea what else we talk about on here? Like, just because you think that I'm, I'm a, whatever, Jeff Bezos fan, uh, does not mean that you're going to like the other content. And so it's, it's always interesting when that happens. But but Tom, uh, you know, in addition, digital pastor at New Life Community in Washington DC, and and so, you know, give us, give us an update, a little bit, specifically how you're using YouTube with the church. What, what are some lessons that you're learning?

Yeah, so let me just give you a quick little history of about with us with YouTube is that, you know, we were doing YouTube for a long time, well before COVID, and we were basically just putting up our sermons online. And um, and that was fine, you know, it was a way to get some content on there. Then we'd make some funny videos and we'd posted on there, but we were never really intentional about our YouTube stuff until we hit COVID. And in Virginia, you know, our churches were shut down in Virginia probably for like maybe a month to two months. It was on the shorter end of the shutdowns. They weren't long-gated shutdowns during COVID, but it was at that time where since we weren't able to have regular connections with people at our church, our lead pastor said we need to be getting God's word out to people every single day. And so he had the idea that um, him and the other ministers, myself included, we could do daily devotionals and that we would be able to post up on YouTube and then also send out via email. And so that's what we did. And at that point we probably had 500, 600 subscribers on YouTube. Um, but at that point we started then growing significantly. People started watching our videos from our congregation, but then if you look at the stats, then you could see that more people that were not subscribers were discovering our videos, and they were being encouraged in their faith during this time. And so we started doing that, continue to do that, and I would, I would mix it up a little bit and and um, share some worship videos or if we had other, other fun videos. We, we're kind of a, we like to have fun at our church, and so if there's ever anything fun that happens, I like to cut it and put it up on YouTube just as a way for people to get a taste of who we are as a church. But then about about two years ago, maybe a little bit longer, we started one of our initiatives at the church was that we wanted people reading the Bible every day. Um, and so we want to encourage them in their faith and say, "Hey, listen, we're going to text you," and we use the Text and Church platform. We're going to text you a daily Bible verse or a passage, and we're going to encourage you in your faith. And so we started doing that. And then as we were going along with that, we realized, "Hey, what if we just did a quick little YouTube short out of this?" You know, a lot of people are watching YouTube shorts or they're watching TikToks. They're watching Instagram reels, and they're laughing and they're having fun at just the different things, the silly stuff that goes on with these short videos. And we said, "Why don't we just um, you know, give the hope of Christ in to people," and hopefully people will be encouraged in their faith. And again, at that point, YouTube was just getting into the YouTube shorts. And so we thought, "Let's do that," and um, let's start doing daily YouTube shorts. They're only 60 seconds long. I mean, they're not going to be very difficult. You just take a passage, you share a thought about it, and encourage them in Christ. And the remarkable thing about it was this one where we got, it wasn't just for the main ministers that were able to share these thoughts. We got volunteers to share these thoughts. We've got other staffers who were like, not ministers, share their thoughts. And we got a tremendous response out of this where again, at first we were starting to getting 50, 60 views, then we started getting 100 to 200 views, and now we're up to four or 500 views of uh um, a devotional that is shared. And what ended up happening was again, we grew when we started doing these long-form devotionals, but then when we started doing YouTube shorts, we grew significantly. Like, we were getting, like, so when we first started before COVID, we were at around 500 or so. We're at now up to 1,800, almost 1,900 subscribers, and we're adding to that number all the time. And it's in large part because of the devotionals that we're doing. And again, we're not doing anything spectacular here. We're just sharing the word of God with people, and people are being encouraged, and they're subscribing to our channels. And we feel like, "Gosh, we're reaching so many people." And again, our weekly reach, like, we have at our church, we probably have like 700 people that come to our church service every single Sunday. We're reaching three to four to 5,000 people a week on YouTube with the hope of Christ. And we're like, we're tripling that what we normally get on Sundays. And we get to encourage people every single day. So that we're using YouTube shorts as a way to really just share the love of Christ in a devotional format to not just encourage the people that go to our church, but also the people around our church and around the world.

Yeah, that's that's so good. While while you were talking, Tom, I just I just pulled up our um, the Church Digital's analytics trying to to complement what you're talking about. Um, you know, over the past 28 days, 75% of new viewers, new viewers to the Church Digital, have been on shorts uh, compared to to 25% of uh, of of normal videos. Um, returning videos interestingly is probably 66% videos uh, with shorts coming back around. And so like, from a uh, from an acquisition, um, yeah, so I'm just doing quick math in my head. 70% of all subscribers within the last 28 days have been from shorts for for the Church Digital. And so as you're looking at acquiring new eyes and getting some ideas out um, in in front of new people, um, like shorts is um, is not, it's not a new concept, but but to be honest, it's one that, you know, a lot of churches are not taking. Physical church as well as digital churches is one that we're not taking advantage of. And so it's beautiful.

Yeah, Jeff, I I think I think we overcomplicate it sometimes, you know, um, where I think all churches think they have to be a big church to be able to do something like this or they have to be a well-produced video that have to do something like this. And the reality is what what COVID taught us with TikTok and Instagram reels is that people were just sitting on their couch doing videos, and people were like watching them and being encouraged by them. And so we don't have to overcomplicate it. We just have to share the word of God with them. You don't have to do anything trendy or funny if you want to. Great, you know, but by you sharing the word of God, people people need to hear that hope. And so we just said we're going to be about discipleship. We're going to be about taking people so that they can take a next step in their faith, no matter where they're at, and God has really blessed.

Yeah, that's that's so true. I know, um, you know, churches over complicate things. Like that's that's a surprise, man. I I don't know any church that complicates things like that's that's crazy. Um, but uh, you know, quality is, you know, it's it's always quality versus quantity, right? And um, you know, some communications directors pushing for more quantity, some, you know, some creative directors pushing for better quality. Um, it's there's there's always that tension between the two.

Um, this is what I mean. What I is we were actually just having this conversation. I want to say yesterday on on the church digital Discord channel with the with the increase of artificial intelligence and and that's starting to get into, was it Sora, and now AI being able to even create and edit video and and piece together quality video that's artificially intelligent infused. Um, this is what I think is going to happen. I think you're going to see a massive shift back towards very simple and very authentic um video communication. Like, you know, when AI artificial intelligence can make anybody look like they're producing well-produced, well-thought-out uh pieces of of content, to be honest, and and hopefully this isn't like spoiling it for people, like content's going to end up being devalued when AI can do so much of it and anybody can can sound uh um intelligent. Um, it's not it's not that method that's going to stand out. It's authenticity. It's its relationships. It's connection. It's um, it, like that's what's going to resonate well.

And to Tom's point, you know, having a um a simple, you know, camera rig where you're able to turn around and produce stuff to connect with people versus prove your how quality you are off of the editing and producing. Um, which once again in digital ministry, like that opens up so many opportunities for even for small and medium-sized churches to to now start to engage better because the, you know, the benefit. I remember, I'm I'm not going to tell you the name of this church. I had a conversation with a digital pastor about this at a um, let's call it a giga church. Let's call it one of the top five uh churches size-wise in America. That's why I'm I'm not going to out this church. Um, but the digital pastor was beside himself. He was stuck. He was frustrated because of the quality controls that were in place for him to even do a simple uh uh selfie video to communicate with his people. He's like, Jeff, I've got literally, Tom, you'll appreciate this. He's like, Jeff, I got to work three weeks in advance because by the time it gets through the brand group and the the content group and the script, and he's like, he's like, literally I got to write the script three weeks out and we're shooting stuff two weeks out and by the time it gets through everything, it may be published, you know, twenty-one days from when I wrote the script. And and I was like, you know, I was like, well, that's not very like authentic. And he's like, yeah, it's it's really hard to be authentic when you're trying to figure out how you're going to be authentic like four weeks later. Um, how it's going to sit then. And that that's that's some of the traps that we're all kind of built up here within our church systems.

Go ahead, Tom.

Yeah, you're you're hitting the nail right on the head, Jeff. And that's what we've discovered here with our our church as well. Our creative director and I, I love him, you know, he's a great guy to work with. He was so concerned about the the production of it. It didn't seem real. And what I finally had to tell him was like, we just have to get started. We have to go do this and let's just try it out. And because we saw the results of people just being authentic, people want authenticity. They don't want a production. And I think that's where we've kind of muddied the waters here is, and again, what COVID showed us was people just wanted real people doing real things talking about real life issues. They don't need this high quality thing. I I can I can go and do a video and my hair be a little bit messy and that's okay because they're being encouraged in their faith. They're not looking to see, you know, my whole, if my whole face is zit-proof, you know, whatever. Like, I watch videos now. It's kind of back to what you say about AI. I watch videos now and I'm like, that person is too perfect looking. This has to be AI. And and so I'm like doubting everything I'm watching because of what AI is doing. And I think people are going to get really sick and tired of it really quick and they're going to come back to say, hey, I I need someone who's going to be real with me.

I do like, I go on walks a lot at my around my neighborhood and I feel like God speaks to me during those walks. And I'll come back during after one of those walks and I'll jot down some notes and I'll be, I'll get right in front of my camera right there and say, I'm going to do a quick little devotional on it. It's only five or six minutes. I'll do this devotional, but I'll cry sometimes. I'll stutter sometimes. But the reality is that people, it will connect with people because they can relate to that and they can understand that. And I feel like that's what they want. They want to be able to connect with you. They don't need your production, man.

Yeah, that's that's some great insight there. Um, you know, I I feel the tension of of quality versus quantity. I do. Um, you know, I'm I'm wearing my yellow hat to represent the church digital. I could very easily, my resident hats literally right there, and so I can swap that out. And and quality is hugely important when you're broadcasting your online church services and like things like that, you know, it's it's important for me to to rep. But you know, I think you just like, you know, you swap hats. You you just, I think there's there's different times for for different seasons. And if everything has to go through the rigmarole of of um quality, then you're not, you're going to lose that authenticity piece. And so I I think that's that's that's a wise takeaway from that.

And so, you know, Tom, we're going to get into um, you know, shorts. Uh, well, I mean, let's you know, even just ask that up front. So if we're talking shorts, because you're you're on the front lines here and and you've you've grown your your your subscriber base significantly, are you looking at um, like shorts-wise, is this original content that's shot by you, shot by others? Are you taking like edits of the sermon? Like, where are you getting your content from to make these shorts?

Yeah, so it's a variety of different things. So most of it's original content where if if we're doing it devotional-based, we give the people the scripture and we give them the freedom to say, hey, pick a point out of this scripture that you want to talk about so that we can then send it, and then they send it to me. If it's over a minute, you know, with shorts, like it can't be over a minute. If it's one-oh-one, it doesn't count as a short on YouTube. It has to be exactly one minute or under. And so um, they send it to me. I I'll sometimes edit it a little bit, maybe take out something if it's a little bit longer, but then I'll just post it on YouTube and share it. Um, uh, I like to share our devotionals at midnight of that day, so at twelve o'clock in the morning, so that by the time I wake up, people are already being encouraged in their faith and you can kind of see the view count. Um, but then other shorts that I like to do are we will do some funny shorts every now and then if there's a if there is a trend. I I did say that we don't always do trends, but if there's a trend out there that people are like enjoying, sometimes I'll get some people together and we'll do it uh together. And I'll either have the videographer put it together in a short or I'll do it. But then the other one that we like to do is take our sermons and I take our sermons and I cut them up into longer form kind of times like two to three minutes. But then I'll also look for ones that can do like one-minute shorts and share those. And I tend to share those in the afternoon times as a way to kind of offset the morning devotional short that I send out. I'll send it these um these sermon nets and uh post it on there and encourage people to go watch the full video.

Yeah, this is this is interesting now. What's the balance between a a sermon, um, like how many of the sermon cuts do you do versus how many of the of the devotional thoughts?

So we do a devotional thought every single day. I mean, we've been doing them every single day and and we'll continue to push those out. The sermon ones we do probably about like two, maybe sometimes three a week. Um, and what I do is I'll listen to the sermon, take notes on it, and then after Sunday, Sunday afternoon, I'll start cutting it up and then kind of scheduling out times where I can share those those sermon clips out and you know the shorts out as well.

Yeah, I I love this because you you've already balanced through the the tension of uh content outside of the weekend service. You know, so often you know there's so much energy that goes into the weekend service and let's figure out how to maximize that. And so you're wanting to to use more and more of that. Um, but you've already looked at doing original content um for your online utilizing um the uh devotional thought. Like, was that a was that a hard conversation? Um, do do you run kind of administration on that trying to schedule people? Like, what's what's maybe the responsibility of that look like? You're working with volunteers now at this point, right? Like, there's there's going to be struggles I would imagine uh in addition to joy. Like, talk to me a little bit about that.

Yeah, so what I ended up doing was I created a Google sheet and then I kind of mapped out the the um the the scriptures that I wanted people to use. And so some some of these ones that we did, like right now we're in the midst of a Bible in a year plan, so I've mapped out all the scriptures for the whole entire year. Um, but then there have been other times when I do like a one-month or two-month series and I'll still map it out, put it in a Google sheet, and then I'll talk about the scripture and then I'll have people sign up. And the at first I was a little bit more strict on who I wanted to sign up for it. And so I only asked a few people. But then as we got in a rhythm of doing it, I started asking those people, okay, who would we ask now? Who else could we ask? And what has been really kind of cool, Jeff, is that our lead pastor, we have a teaching team, but we're always looking to expand our teaching team on Sunday mornings. And so what our lead pastor has done is he's used these shorts and even these longer-form devotionals that they can come up with and use it as almost like a primer for, okay, can these people do sermons on Sunday morning? Would could they be a part of the teaching team? And so we've used it as almost like a testing ground for them as well to for them to get to you know practice uh giving a message and collecting some thoughts together. And and we'll use that as kind of a reference point of like, hey, listen, is this person getting better with sharing the content?

Very, very cool. So who's um, so are people like, are you just saying out to the audience at church, hey, like, if you're interested, sign up? Are you handpicking people? Uh, it sounds like handpicking people's part of it, but like, as a general rule, how are you finding people?

Yeah, again, we do want to be like, again, where I think people appreciate authenticity and and whatnot, we we're we're handpicking people more so than asking in general. So we're not making this a Sunday morning announcement or anything like that. But again, if if it's someone that we feel like, hey, this person's been growing in Christ, we'd like for them to share, then then I'll ask them. And then I have a list, like a a list of criteria, hey, when you're recording it short, we...

Want you to record it vertically. We need you to keep it 30 seconds long. We want to make sure that you have appropriate lighting. It could be daytime lighting or it could be via a ring camera, ring camera light kind of deal. And so I give them a list of about five or six bullet points for them to consider. And then I'll have them submit it to me at least two days prior to when it's supposed to go live so that I can look over it and take a look at it. And if I'm like, "Ah, this one's not quite, you know, good," you know, we'd love for you to try it again last and then resubmit it.

Now, what I'm not hearing is—what I'm hearing is YouTube. What I'm not hearing is YouTube and then we post it on Instagram and we post it on Facebook and we post it on TikTok. Are you only isolating these shorts on YouTube, or are you—Omni-channel approach and putting it on other channels? Like, what's your distribution strategy?

Yeah, we're Omni-channel. Where our—what we consider, what we care most about is YouTube, but we also post it on Instagram Reels and we do put it on TikTok occasionally. We'll put it on Twitter just as a, "Hey, here's a little quick encouragement for you." Occasionally we'll put it on Facebook, but again, it's primarily YouTube. Then we also share on TikTok and Reels.

What's engagement like on—I mean, Instagram, there's a ton of people on IG. TikTok, I mean, obviously there's a ton of people there. It may not be your typical audience, but they're there. What's been receptivity and engagement looked like on some of those other platforms compared to YouTube? Because it sounds like you're favoring YouTube. I'm kind of curious why compared to some of the others.

We've seen the most significant growth and the most comments on YouTube. On TikTok and Instagram, we get likes, but we don't get a lot of engagement. You know, we don't get people chatting or anything like that. Whereas on YouTube, we'll get the trolls, you know, and we'll get, you know, that. But here's the other thing with YouTube that makes us—well, makes my focus most—is that YouTube really is evergreen content. Whereas you can scroll through stuff on TikTok and Reels, but you're not going to see something that was posted a year ago or two years ago.

We have a video, and this was one of our shorts on a random passage in Genesis that one that our communications director did. She did it. We still get comments today. Like, in fact, yesterday we got a comment on the video that she did two years ago. And that's the thing why I really value YouTube more is because the content is evergreen. We'll see stuff. I'll even see digital shorts that we've done on the Church Digital dating from a few weeks ago. YouTube's going to give you what you're looking for, and they have so many videos that they can choose from that they can serve you. Whereas I feel like TikTok and Reels, they don't do that. It's more TikTok and Reels is more in the here and now.

Yeah, I mean, that's true. I'm actually looking at that on TCD Analytics just even to quantify that. Sixty percent of people come off to shorts feed, so that's giving you what's new. Seventeen, eighteen percent is browser feature, which is people are looking for something. And so 17 percent, or views are off of that. Seven percent are external, that would be like the embed codes on blogs and podcast pages and stuff like that, which is significant. Five percent on channel pages. And then 11 percent—zero. So between channel pages and browser, you're looking at 23 percent of views are coming from methods that is the viewer looking for information as opposed to the system pushing it.

You know, and really, I mean, that's why systematically I think YouTube is such a powerful channel, powerful platform. It's—I don't think it's old news, but you know, YouTube obviously is owned by Google. But if you were to separate Google and YouTube, YouTube would be the second largest search engine on the planet. Like, the number of searches that people do on YouTube to find something, to do something, is astronomical, much more than whatever number three is. Like, I don't even know if YouTube—that's funny. If Yahoo is number three, I'm not sure who number three is in that equation. But because the one-two punch of YouTube and Google is just so high, do you, as you look at, you know, just even talking about that, have you done any work—and I'm genuinely asking this with like SEO or ads, the Google Ad Grant—like, have you tried to balance any of that towards YouTube, or what is New Life been thinking or doing in that space?

We truthfully have not. We've talked about YouTube ads for a while now. We just have not pulled the trigger on it. But again, we love it so much. I don't know why we haven't pulled the trigger. And partly it's to my blame. I mean, we should be pulling the trigger on YouTube ads. It just hasn't happened.

No, I can feel that pain. And you know, a lot of times churches get neck-deep in day-to-day and week-to-week towards that. I ask is I've recently started a new friendship with some organizations that are in that space. And so to be honest, I'm looking for some guinea pigs to work with. And so if you're interested—if anybody interested in that, evidently Tom is as he's pointing at himself on YouTube—feel free to hit me up. And we can have that conversation. My phone number, you can text me: 484-324-8724.

Well, Tom, do you like—I know Tom, you're relatively new to—what am I saying here—to Riverside, to the platform. We, you know, we got you over here. You were one of the holdouts within the podcast network, and we're glad to get you officially on board with Riverside. But have you toyed much with the AI on there in creating shorts with the videos, or like, what's been some experience falling back on AI to even create some of this short content for you?

Yeah, so I mean, the reality is that we have a podcast at our church. And because of Riverside and because of Jeff pushing me to explore this more, we've gone all in on Riverside. And we're recording the podcast on Riverside. And the beautiful thing about it is, again, the clincher for me was the fact that it was able to create shorts just like that for me. And you know, we—I get done with an interview with someone from our church, give it a few minutes, I hit the magic clip button, and automatically they come up with like four or five clips for me to use news that I can post on social media as a way to encourage people to check out this podcast episode that we're talking about. So I mean, yes, having a platform that can help you create the shorts with using AI is invaluable. It really truly is amazing, and the quality is great. So yeah, I highly recommend something like that.

Yeah, Riverside has been phenomenal. And just even within the past six months, I mean, we've had a sponsorship with Riverside. The Church Digital has going this year, and it's incredible to me how much they've improved the software. How much—not that it was bad before, but like, when we're talking feature upgrades and development roadmaps and like what they're doing to the platform is incredible. And they just signed a deal with a Spotify podcast that, you know, now—yeah, so now Spotify is in anchor. Like, you can't anchor. Anchor used to have, and Spotify used to have a podcast editing software built into their platform. And I think effective June, they're shutting that down entirely, and instead they're driving everybody to Riverside. And so if you want to like edit your podcast now and you distribute through Spotify or Anchor, like it's now all Riverside. And so like, I know I don't know what venture capitalist has been funding or what money looks like for those guys, but they're going for it. And some of the AI editions, some of the—this is this is fun, Tom, but it's been really cool even on the shorts. It's been cool. But I don't know if you saw this feature yet, Tom. You may not get it yet because I don't know that you've got the library built up. But I've got, you know, I've got 150, 200 episodes worth of podcast material in Riverside. And so like, it knows me very well. So much so that I have the ability now to have my voice in artificial intelligence. So I can now type whatever I want into Riverside, and artificial intelligence will make my voice say it back in an audio file that can be placed on a podcast.

I—that's scary. I don't know that that's good or bad. I mean, as I saw that, I was like, "Ah, not sure how I feel about this." But in the moment, it's pretty cool. So you know, if I wanted to get my Bart Simpson voice on—or I don't know why Bart Simpson came to mind. I was gonna say Superman, but I don't know why that came to mind either. Forgive me. But you know, the fact is that you know, Riverside's been investing a lot. So if you're interested in more about Riverside, check out thechurchdigital.com/riverside. That'll get you connected over to the nice people at Riverside.

So, well, Tom, as we're hacking up YouTube and trying to figure out how to get churches to utilize it better and improve, man, any other tips or tidbits or suggestions here?

Yeah, I'm gonna just say just get started. The reality is your first video is—you're gonna look back five years from now and say, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe we did that video." But you're only going to get better as you keep on doing it. The first videos I did, the first shorts I did, I look back and I'm cringe. I'm like, "Oh, my hair was terrible. Like, what was I doing with these baggy eyes?" But the reality is that people are going to listen to those shorts or those devotionals or whatever you're producing, and they're going to be encouraging their faith. And again, as we're going out to seeking to make disciples of all nations, we can use YouTube that all people all over the world can hear the message and hope of Christ. The thing is, we have to get out of our own way and just get started and just start experimenting with it, testing it out, and seeing how God uses it.

Yeah, that's so true. It's the version one is better than version none. You'll sit around and talk about how, you know, you want to be better, you need better assets, and but just get started. It's funny. I agree. Like, you know, we're on episode 298 of the podcast. Episode 300 is couple weeks away. I'm actually filming it a week from yesterday, and so like, super exciting, you know, landmark, roadmark ahead. But the first five podcast episodes we did were horrendous. Like, you, I mean, you can go back and listen to them. I don't even—I think they were so bad I opted not to put the video on YouTube. Like, it just was gross. And like, you know, and it just was. I mean, like, one of the things was like the bookshelf, the bookshelves behind me were empty. Like, it just had crap. Like, it just was just, you know, I. But it was, you know, I tell the story all the time. Ra the Armis was the voice in my head saying, "Version one's better than version none. Just do it, Jeff. Just do it. Do it, Jeff. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it." And I finally was like, "Okay, that's fine." And so yeah, we got better. And version two is better than what version one was, and version three is better. And we know we've made, you know, slowly and incremental changes over time instead of trying to get it perfection right out the door. You know, perfection out the door doesn't really exist digitally. That's a physical limitation that a lot—

Of us try to do, hey Cam, Cam Huford just walked in. You know, a lot of us try to do physical perfection, but digitally it's much more about that connection rather than the perfection aspects of it. So awesome. Well, hey Tom, as we're landing the plane here, maybe you want to talk about what you're doing with TCD Sidekick and Digital Boot Camp and some of the other things that you're doing digitally?

You know, with TCD Sidekick, the podcast I do episodes every other week, and what I like to do is just bring on people who have something that they're doing digitally that they're really excited about and that God's doing, and really just talk about that. So we usually send it around a topic of the day, but yeah, so we have that and those are short 30 to 35 minute conversations where people can be encouraged in their digital ministry. Again, I feel like I'm the sidekick to this person who's sharing their story, how God's using that. Also with the Church Digital blog, I mean we've got some great blogs coming up and ways to encourage you in your digital ministry. I'm excited about different voices that are coming on. You know, Andy Mage shares, Jeff's got some stuff. We've got other voices that are coming up where they're just sharing practical things that you can do for your digital and online ministry, whether it's metaverse or online. You know, I'm excited about that kind of stuff. I'm excited about the learning communities that some of you guys are leading, and those are like fantastic opportunities to grow. Again, the digital ministry community is so important because oftentimes we can feel so alone. When you're part of a learning community, you realize, hey, you're not alone, and there's other people experimenting and learning this stuff as well. So you know, those are some of the things we I get really passionate and excited about.

Yeah, I love that. I don't think I mentioned the learning community in this recording, so thank you for doing that. For more information on the learning community, check out thechurch.digital. We've got five different learning communities coming up. I'm doing one on hybrid microsites. I know Andy Mage is doing one on asynchronous community. Barbara Carrero is doing one on digital communications. Megan Carter is doing one on mental health ministry. And Stu Tsunami, Stuart Merson's doing one on virtual reality ministry. And so all sorts of opportunities to learn something different this summer and experiment with some people around you to help guide you in those ways. So thechurch.digital, get more information on there.

And Tom, the blog, thechurch.digital, the websites that, well, we're in the process of relaunching the blog this week. You know, we've been, we launched a new website today. Okay, good, today as of recording. So you know, I know we're moving to so many changes at the Church Digital. Like in a normal organization, a normal bivocational organization, we like, let's take it slow. But no, no, we're just, let's rip the band-aid off. We launched a new website, which made us launch into a new community platform. We launched a new, which means we had to change our blogging system. Which means we had to, well, we didn't have to, but we also changed our CRM at the same time. And at the same time, our communications director decided to move to Portuguese Portugal in Spain, and so she's on a different continent. And yeah, it's just been a little chaotic here, but definitely some exciting things happening this summer. So check out Tom's blogs through the Church Digital, thechurch.digital. You can see all of them in their new website design glory there under the Digital Vault on the website.

And so, well dang, Tom, is there anything else I forgot to say? You're the best, Jeff. You're the best. That's all I have to say. Listen, I didn't, and I said this at the beginning and I'll say it at the end. When I was trying to figure out who the crap I was after walking away from a church in 2018, you know, Tom was one of several voices that reached out to me and said, hey, you need to talk. And it was really meaningful. You know, even back then, before I met J Mo, before I met Andy, before I met Barbara, Leon, any of these guys, Tom was like I said, one of the original voices. And to be honest, he's probably been doing digital, at least church-based digital ministry, a lot longer than I have. And so Tom, excited to have you part of the team and looking forward to what's next. But man, we're going to land the plane. So for Tom, this is Jeff at the Church Digital. Thanks for jumping on here. We'll see you next time on the show. Have a good one.