EP043: Kyle Schultz & Deconstructing Kids Church Online

Episode 43 with the Church Digital Podcast and this is gonna be an interesting podcast because I'm not even gonna be the host here. It looks like I'm gonna be the guest that's gonna be interviewed on my own podcast. It's gonna be fun. See, a couple maybe a month or so ago at this point, Kyle Schultz, who is the associate online pastor over at North Woods Community Church up in Illinois, they were interested in and maybe possibly doing some church online for kids stuff. And so Kyle got on Facebook and posted that he was looking for somebody to give him some insight towards church online for kids. And so Christ Fellowship Miami, the church that I was at when I was online pastor, did church online for kids for a season. I tagged on on the threads like, "Yeah, I'd love to talk with an expert too on church online for kids or somebody else who's done it and done it successfully." And slowly we discovered that nobody else really was interested or had done church online for kids. And so it actually started a series of conversations like, "Who else has done church online for kids? Surely somebody has done a targeted motion towards movement towards creating an online environment aimed at children." And low and behold, I don't think that there are many people that have. And so instead of interviewing myself, which would be weird on a podcast, I've asked Kyle Schultz to come on and be the interviewer to walk through some questions. And together, let's just dialogue through what it means to do church online for kids, what are the strengths and what are the weaknesses, and what are the issues. And just with a full disclaimer, we didn't do church online for kids that long. There were some issues that we as an organization couldn't get past. And so it did run for a period of time and then we stopped it. They're not doing it now. To say that it can't be done, I would disagree with. To say that it should not be done, I think we should as churches be utilizing online environments to reach kids. I do think it looks differently, and that's a lot of what this podcast is about, because I think the rules of church online for kids has to be different than church online. So we're gonna unpack a lot of this right here in this podcast. You've got Kyle Schultz, associate online pastor with North Woods Community Church. You've got Raid the Armas, who's currently online pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami and once again co-host here with the Church Digital Podcast. And myself, Jeff Reed, with the Church Digital Podcast. In an episode that I'm calling "Deconstructing Kids Church Online."

Okay, everybody, here you go. I just want to hear about your guys's experience with doing kids ministry online. Like, that, let's start there. What's your experience been and why did you start?

So we looked at what we were doing across all of our campuses, kids, students, adult services. We were a what, were we six, seven campus multi-site church? Probably 2015?

Yeah, we were hovering around eight. We were getting a head mommy beach-like, and we were. And we also had like a lot of micro siting going on, like within campuses. Like we had campuses doing specialized services. Like we had Brickell going on at the time. That's true. We have got about Brickell. Yeah, there was. And there were like experimental things that we were doing at the time to reach more people. We were hovering around like ten thousand in terms of attendance.

Yeah, and so for us, and that's not even including online, this is just counting some of the physical numbers at the time. And so there was a season of, "Hey, since we're already scaling this stuff to go multi-site, what would it look like if we just scaled it a little more to take it online?"

Yeah, and since, so kind of the challenge that I brought in, actually on to the kids ministry team, is, "All right, so we're doing skits, we're doing games, we're doing honestly video worship at that point. We never did live band worship. There's so much of this stuff is already video based. What would it take to just do a little more work to make it not just video-based for a multi-site venue but video based entirely for online?"

So the big thing, like for us, there was already the stories like that would be told. Kind of like, to forgive me, I don't know kids ministry terms, came in terms, but like the parable, the story that would connect to the kids, that was already video based. We were already recording that because it was too difficult to reproduce actors across six, eight campuses. So, "Hey, let's just video that." Worship was already video at that point, and we were taking stuff off an open network. But way back then, I think NewSpring wasn't attached to New Open Network. NewSpring was doing their own thing. They were. I remember like we took a lot of stuff back then from NewSpring as well. But I also gotta say this, Jeff. We wrote a lot of content. Like we had staffed writers for CF Kids at the time, which made sharing the content a lot easier. You know, and for those of you who are working with 252 or some of the other stuff, you know that they've got all the rights, they've got all that stuff. And so right now, that's not something. Whether it's Gospel Project, you know, if you're on the Southern Baptist end, or whether you're working with 252 and Orange, we weren't doing that at the time, which enabled us to then create a lot of content that we could share. Now, there was a lot of upfront cost to that, as you can imagine. But at the time, we were also doing online teaching on the weekend with kids as we were with adults. We were just packaging it for kids, which, you know, created a great vibe. It's something that we had going on for a long time even before this era. But it enabled us to do this kind of thing and to do it well.

So the biggest challenge I think that we really pulled from doing the Orange, and we'll get to this at a later point, they ended up going to Orange, which is really what kind of dive-bombed the online piece. You know, you maybe you don't necessarily feel this, but being in Miami, as multicultural as we are, it was a bunch of white people on videos. Like, it was not kind of, and I'm not speaking negative of NewSpring or any church, because kind of like if that's who your church is made up of, I totally recognize, "Hey, you know, just go with that." But in a church like Christ Fellowship, where it was like, I mean, I'm just gonna make up numbers here, over forty, fifty percent Hispanic, twenty-five or thirty percent white, twenty, eighty percent black. Yeah, I mean, we had at this point because races don't even mean anything anymore down here. Like seeing a bunch of white people act out something on earth, like it's awkward enough that you have to question it. Like people in there would be like, "Why are there a bunch of white people up there? What are they politically trying to say?" And so like, it's at that tension of you want to create your own stuff, right? But that costs money. But then if you don't, then you're kind of stuck with what you know, not offending Life Church, but Life Church in the middle of, you know, Oklahoma, they have a different demographic of people who are showing up, and they may not represent as well. Anyway, and not at the time, there weren't a lot of people creating video content either in this kind of area that we could take and we could say we could actually fit and work into this.

I remember this because I was part of a group that went to go review different types of curriculums that like we had to offer that Orange had to offer. And this is before we made the job. And a lot of it was text-based. It was like, "Hey, here are PDFs that your folks can download." But once again, that took a lot of it and it put a lot of emphasis on having a quality volunteer, which is great if you can reproduce that over and over and over again across multiple locations, across multiple services. We could not, especially go in week to week with the material and trying to get it at the time to match up and to sync in with alignment in terms of what was going on in the weekend. It just wasn't something that that would have worked out for us.

But you know, that being said, the content that we were able to create was actually very compelling for kids. It was very good, and it was something that, you know, even my own kids enjoyed. You know, I'd preface it like, "Hey, is our stuff?" I would just throw it out there, and it was a lot of fun.

I lost the biggest part when we really looked at what we were doing at the multi-site level. So content that we were already creating for the multi-site, what were we missing to put it online? And the biggest part that we were missing was the hosted segments. So normally, like the campus, you know, the campus children's director or a volunteer, you know, would stand up in front of the kids, be the hype man, get him excited, you know, set up to introduce the video, set up maybe tell him something to set the stage, and then show the video. And so we were missing kind of that hype person for online, which is where Roxie fit in so well because, yeah, Roxie just exudes hype. And so like, you know, she just really has that high level energy and connects so well with kids. And you put her in front of the camera, and it doesn't matter that there's no kids in front of her. She is still hyping that crowd up in real ways.

And the good thing with her was we actually tried two or three different people in the role. There were staff, one was someone who was a volunteer in kids ministry and had a background in television. So she was more comfortable on the television side, but she wasn't like as tightly intertwined. She was a volunteer, so she kind of knew what was going on. She really struggled in the role. And honestly, she went on after she left. She went on to do incredible things. Like, so I'm, this isn't a negative towards her at all because honestly, she's working for a far better organization at this point than any of us was. But where she struggled with it was kids ministry. And this may be just indicative of Christ Fellowship, but there's so many day-to-day changes and so much like fluidity in kind of what's happening that her as a volunteer on the outside really struggled to keep up with it. And so things would change, you know, oftentimes between Monday and Wednesday. And like by the time she came in to film something on Wednesday, it had changed two or three times. She didn't know about it, and we had to go back and reshoot. And the communication really wasn't that good because she was kind of an outsider trying to come in. And that was one of the big reasons why we went with the Roxie model, where, "Hey, let's get somebody that already speaks the language, already understands what's going on. Let's just get a little more out of her."

I think Roxie was part-time. I don't think she was full-time at that point. It wasn't like, you know, move her twenty-five to thirty hours or something like that, just give her a little more where she can help create this content and kind of help us get to that next level, at least at the intro.

Absolutely. So what would you guys say? Was there a felt need in your mind for a kids ministry online as you guys were assessing your online presence and your community? Was there a need there that you guys were like, "We have to do this," or is it just something that you guys just jumped into because you're like, "Well, we're at the multi-site. We're already doing it. Let's just try it?"

Yeah, that's a great question. Here's what I would say. I don't think we realized that felt need, and then the felt need became the biggest challenge. Now, the reason we got into it was, and I'll own this, like I live and I've lived my life, even with the Church Digital, I don't think there's a limitation to what church online can be. And so the biggest challenge when I talk about church online, when I talk about micro-siting, one of the questions I'll get out of top five.

Questions people ask one of them is always what do you do with the kids? And so rather than kind of running with that or hiding from that, I'm just kind of a jerk that way. I'm like, we are freaking gonna do kids ministry. Let's figure out how to do it, okay? If I just said freaking on a pod, but we're good. We're gonna figure out how to do this. Anyways, so we're gonna figure out how to how to do this. And so it was, you know, let's throw stuff in a blender. Let's see if it sticks. Let's be experimental with it, you know, and see how how it goes.

Now, the challenge with me when I look at church online, I wasn't necessarily targeting the people. I definitely was not targeting the people in my front door or side door. I'm not targeting people who attended Christ Fellowship Miami campuses. I was trying to target people outside the city, outside the state, outside the country, around the world. And really, and I can't speak to the stats now, but when I left, fifty percent of the traffic of Christ Fellowship Miami online, of their online church, was outside of the state of Florida. So there was a much larger reach. Part of that is actually there were many reasons why that was happening. But here's the problem that I experienced: I can market an adult service. I could never figure out how to market a kid service. Like, I can't. You can't market to kids. Like, you can't create ads for kids. They're not on the social media. The only thing we could do was to market to the parents and kind of draw it down to the kid level. Yeah. And so that really became the problem. The biggest hurdle of church online was the adult services were very outside, external-oriented, evangelism, reach out, get them connected to God type of thing. The church online really evolved into my kids are sick, my kids are in a church this week, I want to keep them connected so they can watch the service. You know, it happens like it was funny. My kids were, I'm gonna do bad math here, my kids were probably four and six when we were doing this. Both of them had iPads. Yeah, I'm the dad that gives her kids iPads at four and six. We, you can email me eight later. But I bookmarked the CF online four on that, and they would, instead of watching freaking Handy Manny fifty times over and over and over and over again, they were watching CF online. And I, and I personally, I love that. But it wasn't the vision of the church. The vision was more external and reaching out as opposed to giving people an alternative to Handy Manny. And so that was a lot of where that tension was going.

No, I was gonna say, you know, Jeff, the irony of that is I think, you know, to your question, Kyle, the answer is yes and yes. Like, there's the felt need and there's also the understanding that, hey, there is an audience here. Like, that's the way that I'm looking at it now, or I'm hoping that one day we can bring it back, either in partnership with one of our content creators or something else. We're even working on, we're knocking on our his door like, hey, look, can we get rights to this? Can we do something? And here's why, because I agree with Jeff. There's the sense of, hey, we work so hard on creating compelling content that it can't just exist for the weekend. Like, that's that, that's just bad stewardship, right? You're gonna tell me we're gonna invest all this time and all this effort and it's just gonna exist on Saturday and Sunday? And the same thing has to apply to kids as it does in terms of our adult service. So we're gonna invest all this time and effort into this kind of ministry and the content's just going to get relayed once to them? You know, that, that my view just doesn't make sense. And especially in an era where kids are used to the whole fictional kind of mindset, digital in physical places, just kind of providing them the same content but they have access to. And so I'm convinced that my kids, if they'll go to church on Sunday, still, and they'll want to replay that service if it was great and compelling during the week, they'll still want to go back and watch that great content if it's presenting a package that they're gonna love. Absolutely, they're gonna come back to watch it, or they're gonna show it to their friends. Hey, look at what, look at what I'm watching. And and this is the key, Jeff. I think this was our missed opportunity at the time, and I think we're discovering this more now. YouTube is like the great place for this to live. YouTube is like the grand spot for this to live on YouTube. Kids specifically, and YouTube right now is being very very careful with kids stuff. That you've got like a special checkmark. Some of you are YouTube content creators. You know this. You've seen this already. That if you were creating stuff for kids, you have to market specifically for kids, and they won't allow it on the YouTube Kids app and they shouldn't, unless it goes, unless this is checked off so that they can review it and so that they can put it out there. So now more than ever, there is a hunger, there's a desire, there's an audience, and the kids have the capability of getting to it. And you can create great content that's made for them. I mean, you know, let's kind of go back and let's think through about how Mr. Rogers, you know, would pour into so much effort to make his available for families at churches. We should do the same thing. We should pour the same kind of efforts. And so Reggie Joyner, if you're listening to me out there, alright, make Orange available so that churches can take the stuff online because, man, there's an audience here. People need to see that. That's a great point on the YouTube Kids. I just want to put a disclaimer on that. We shut down. We switched to Orange in the next week. YouTube announced YouTube Kids. That's fact. And it was honest because I remember going back in and try, actually, hey, we got a shot here. Let's let's pin it. It was too late. Like, it was already, it was we've already moved over. And yeah, Reggie, Orange, man, there's a lot of humility win that right? It's like, let me create content and have it not just for my brother, my brand, but let me create content, Orange. Let me create content for others. Yeah, we can show them at the church property, but but show it online as well. Like, I would imagine there would be a lot more exposure. And I'm just hypothesizing here, but if there was a video that was shown on two fifty-two and then that would get some traction, but if you show that video on maybe a couple hundred church online, there's gonna be a lot more exposure towards that. A baby, you're more, maybe you're more selective about who you're bringing in, but I I think, you know, once again, it's a lot better what other people say about you than what you say about yourself. And churches, you know, being able to provide some of that content, being able to own it, to that point, like, I think that's a huge opportunity.

Yeah, I'm there. Been two or three conversations I've had. Any time I see an underworked video person, honest to God, underworked Christian video person, I cast this vision to them. What if you created video content for churches in the kids area? And that's nothing against any of the players that are out there, but I just think there's this huge need and there's not a lot of options out there. Yeah, you got that, got the LifeWay stuff. Yeah, Orange. You know, there's, it's funny, everywhere I am, I'm in the church world, everywhere I look, it's Orange stuff. And it's, it's good stuff. I don't want to criticize it, but love to have some other options out there that would maybe challenge and get some innovation in the area.

What would you guys say is the biggest challenge that you face when you first started doing kids ministry online? Finding the audience, because we really were limited. The adults that would watch online, it wasn't a clean fit. I'm going to answer this in two. Finding the audience is one. The adults wouldn't stream, wouldn't connect, and immediately down to the kids. And so like that was a hard kind of push to get it there. And when we did really kind of figure that out, we were a regulated word, we were kind of restricted. Our audience really was the kids who were just sticker, who were traveling and stuff like that. And so that was a challenge. Probably the other challenge was when we tried to do it at the microsite level, we tried to do house church. There's a lot of legal issues around kids ministry churches. And even really challenges, even seeing how, when we were doing micro locations in two thousand fourteen to two thousand fifteen, house churches watching church online, you know, watch parties, is it gives a common term now, right? When we were doing that back then, it wasn't a common term back then. Even how we were handling the kids, you know, you're putting it on the website and all these people are coming to some house they don't know. Like, even that philosophies kind of shifted a little bit. Like, I can remember we had a house church up and a network that was kind of starting up in the New York City area, and the guy would literally let his thirteen-year-old daughter lead like the Bible study or with the kids. They'd watched a video, they go through the curriculum. Like, and it was, it ended up being when every time they did it on Friday nights, it was like one kid would take a turn teaching all the other kids. So he would like rotate through and have different kids do different things, which was kind of a cool spin on it that I wasn't expecting. But it was instead of like the adults teaching, it was like was the kids. But even that, it's like, you know, there's a lawyer somewhere who's just banging his head against the wall because there's there's so much tension around the idea of children in homes that may or may not be fully supervised, you know? And so that there there's some difficulty there that is mixed.

Yeah, the community aspect has to be the most challenging, you know, when you talk about a church online, the whole thing shouldn't be just the content creation but the community that you're trying to create around it. And in terms of speaking as a parent, yeah, I'd be really uncomfortable with my six-year-old like, hey, so I want to go into a fat room with a volunteer, you know, to leave my small group. Yeah, even that for me, even as a church person, even as a pastor, yeah, that for me just sets off all sorts of red flags. Like, and so creating the community around the content is got to be the most difficult part because, yes, you know, that people are watching, but how you get them to interact with one another or how you get them to take next steps, that's that's the most challenging aspect of it.

Well, and then, you know, part of you raised your points great. What about next steps? Try to figure out taking steps. What's the endgame? Yeah, like, what what is the finish line? What are you trying to do with your children online? And so even, and that's not, that's not something any of us on this podcast can answer. That's like a philosophical question that church needs to wrestle with because in one thing, you know, if you listen to the podcast, these were more than just the one hour on Sunday and just like, you know, to use Christ Fellowship's example, Christ Fellowship, my an example from a couple years ago, we needed to be more than just broadcasting that one service. What what is it? Okay, so the goal is, you know, to empower parents with more resources, I'll disciple their kids. Cool. So that's more than just video, by the way. That's a larger need than just for a church online. That's the entire church. So there's there's ways I think with kids ministry to maybe align things where physical, I mean, you use the word digital, ray, I love that. It's the combining of the physical campuses and the digital and the online campus. It's it's not two different experiences, not two different goals. It's one goal. It's just interwove in' to work together. Yeah, and to point back real quick to two fifty-two, so this is where Parent Cue has come in so big. Like, they provide, they provide a lot of great resources for parents to do that in the sense that whether or not parents use them, that's on

Their own dime or that's are on their own, you know, whatever they're gonna do. But providing an app, providing all sorts of tools, you know, that kind of coincide with those lessons, that's a big deal because then that further is, you know, the home game in terms of me as a parent empowering me to disciple my kids, which should be the goal of every church ministry. Church kids ministry to partner with the parents so that it's not like when I did youth group back in the day, it's like, "Oh, we're dropping off our kid for you to fix him." No, no, no, no, no, that's not how it works. We're supposed to partner together on this, you know, so that your child has a cohesive team. I'm gonna back you up as a parent and you're gonna back me up as a student person, and we're gonna plan together how to help raise this human into a fully functional adult that loves Jesus and that's gonna serve him with the rest of his life. And that's how this is gonna work together.

In kids ministry, there's got to be that kind of relationship where that happens. And so maybe the community aspect is parents, kids ministers together, kind of working together and to help provide resources and provide tools that they can build community around. You know, if I am a parent who is only online and I've got my kids and you don't have your own content that you're creating yourself as a church, so what resources are there available, you know, or curriculums that can be used to help successfully implement, you know, a kids online ministry and help foster that with them? I guess is where I am. That seems like the next logical question to ask here because that's one of the things we're wrestling with at North Woods is we don't, we don't do our own content like video-based content. So, you know, I don't right now, I think it's all, they're not a part of 252. I know that they're creating their own, but it's none of it as digitally based right now.

Okay, well, if you are writing your own content, that at least saves you the trouble of having to jump through those loopholes, which is great. However, if you're not creating any kind of digital resources with that, I can understand how that can be a little bit all right. So how do we take that next step? Like I mentioned earlier, if you're looking for, you know, Gospel Project or any of those deals, right now they're not licensing that for churches to take it to the digital area. We're all hoping and praying that somehow, someway, if it's a larger license, we got to pay for, if it's something along those lines that gets opened up to churches, but we're not there just yet.

Do you know what the, and I'm out of my league here, what's the logistical hold up on them licensing it? Like, you know, what the reason is?

No, not just yet. We've talked to the folks at Orange on a number of fronts, and the only reason I keep referencing them is because that's who our church is using currently. We're not using Gospel Project right now, you know, we're still trying to work it out with them. I think it's, I think there's a lot of different areas both in terms of music. You know, music licensing can be such a challenging for all of you who are doing search online, you know what I'm talking about? Especially if you're trying to take it on social media, you've been flagged by Facebook or even flagged by YouTube's content copyright, whatever. I mean, that's for sure a thing you know to worry about, to think through. The next thing is cultural references. If they're looking at, "Hey, we want to leverage a clip or something," you know, if they're doing some form of that, and they're not doing at the movies, but if they're doing some form of that, then you know, that's another issue that kind of comes into play as far as the content and the licensing is concerned. And then I think the third thing is, I think they're trying to figure that out as well, you know, how to sell our content but also how to enable churches to distribute it digitally. I think they're trying to figure that out as well, you know. Not every church can create content leveraging their scripts. Some can, some can't, right? Like our church, we do have the capability of doing that. We would have to staff more in order to help, you know, provide video editors and videographers and things like that to make it happen. But you know, we see the vision, we see the understanding of it. I think we would go for it, but it would be a challenge for churches in general to do that because of some of the upfront costs that are involved, at least to do it well.

It'd be really interesting if a church kind of caught vision of this.

Yeah, and it's like, "Hey, we're gonna do this and let's partner with bleeding edge." It's always expensive. It is. That's just kind of like the thought, and part of the reason why I love working with vendors so much is because I believe that innovation right now isn't going to come out of the church overall. It's going to come out of vendors. They're gonna provide the resources that then now vendors have paid that bleeding-edge tax, and now the churches can kind of come on easier without paying all that upfront cost. And the vendor can spread it out over a bunch. But it would, and you know, maybe there's a reason why this is working or not working, and like I said, I don't understand how the sausage is made on this necessarily to really appreciate the licensing and the legal issues there. But if it could be interesting if like five churches, ten churches got together and said, "Hey, we're gonna align and we're gonna create kids content and this is gonna be the endgame. We're gonna be culturally relevant, we're gonna be demographically appropriate, we're gonna be theologically sound, and we're gonna have distribution of all of this so that it works within our," I don't know if that's a network thing, I don't know if that's a denomination thing, but there's an opportunity I think for churches to work together towards it and spread out all this costs among multiple churches.

Like, I even think, how I mean, just it's completely off topic from kids ministry, but look at how Rock RMS started, you know? It was a couple of churches coming together and then everybody open sources and it adds on to it. There's a model there that if some churches would get together and just, you know, I don't be like, learn to work together, but figure out how to work together, I think there's an opportunity for a big win to connect with kids in a new way.

Absolutely. Especially since, you know, considering, I mean, this is my kids, man. This is Gen Z. This is just kids, you know? This is what happens. This is our opportunity to reach them, and this is the medium that they're going to most often, you know, they're going to digital resources. You can cry about it, you can hate on it, you can shake a stick at them and say, "Get off my lawn and get on the street and ride a bike," or whatever else, but you gotta deal with the fact that they love the digital resources that are provided to them.

Schools are figuring this out. For love of God, my kids are doing, my kids are doing homework on their computers. They're encountering the same material, you know, through digital mediums, and then they're having to go do their physical homework like in a pad and paper and notebook. They're having to do both. So somewhere in the church world there is a place for this, and essentially, yes, we do need to throw out the challenge. We should be the way in this, but instead we're lagging way behind in terms of trying to break some barriers and make this kind of thing happen.

Yeah, one, I mean, my first grader, everything he does at school is online. He rarely has paper-based homework. So it makes sense.

So what type of strategies and systems did you guys put into place when you first started?

It's not the answer you wanted at all. We wanted, we wanted to make sure, I mean, from the, from we wanted to get it off the ground to see if it would work. That was kind of the limit. Let me, let me answer the question, and I'm gonna answer your question. I'm gonna turn the corner. It was throw and go. We, I don't even, I can't even remember how long we did it. I want to say maybe six months. I don't think it was a full year, man. It didn't feel that long. It felt a lot shorter than that.

Yeah, like it was, it was, it was give it a shot and then kind of budgets and some other things kind of fell into play where they didn't want to invest all that bleeding-edge tax money, bleeding-edge tax money, into this. And so they went with Orange solution. But they're ultimately, we were, we were stuck on creating content.

Yeah, and it was, "Okay, let's figure out the easiest and the cheapest way to create this model of the weekend service online."

Mm-hmm. And that's where I made my mistake. Like, I'll just, I'll own this right now. I shouldn't have been so focused on recreating that one hour on Sunday. Yeah, and instead I should have been focused on how can I create resources that can help people like me disciple my kids? And that's where, that's where the focus got, got on this. This was one of my biggest mistakes in my stretch. They're doing church online was I was so focused on the content piece and exclusivity of online because I got to create this content for an online audience. Instead, I should have been, "How can I create content that will help parents, help parents disciple kids, whether they're in the same city where they attend a physical campus or whether they're in another country?" Like, the idea was, it's where this vigil comes into play. Yeah, I should have been creating content that would help disciple on resource and help parents be better to reach kids instead of trying to figure out, "Oh, how do I get that skit background MC thing to look good in a video frame?"

Yeah, I was misguided. This kind of centers around Kyler on the entire thing that we told you at the beginning of the podcast where we were doing a lot of things at the time, and the truth is we were doing a lot of things in recent, a lot of people, but there wasn't an overarching strategy in terms of what we were doing. And so that was some of the frustration that we were leading with at the time.

If there's an underlying DNA behind what it is that you're doing and if there's an underlying strategy and infrastructure, then reaching out beyond some of these things and pushing some bleeding edge doesn't feel so stressful in the organization because it feels like you're taking what you're doing and you're taking it into a digital area. It's the same thing, you know? Jeff and I have discussed a lot over and over again with people with discipleship stuff. Like, you can have like, "Oh, church online does discipleship this way," and then the rest of the church does it this way. It's like, no, it should be unified in all areas. And so, you know, figuring out strategically what it was we were gonna do, if the goal, like what Jeff is saying, if the goal was to help parents disciple their kids, man, I think that's something that we could have succeeded at, and it would have been better in the sense of, "Hey, we could have done it at a pace that worked out great." We went about, we would have been about concerned about creating an hour's worth of content maybe as much as, "Hey, here's fifteen minutes here and there," but heading in a specific direction, you know what I'm saying? Of great content that's compelling for kids, it's super professional, it's very well done. And you know, but you live and you learn, and that doesn't mean that that's not something we could revisit or somebody else can pick up this blueprint we're talking about now and run with it. Go for it.

Yeah, and really, I mean, that's where that's where experimenting comes in.

Into play and we so often we talk with churches and they're like, "Oh, it failed. We're gonna..." and it's honestly, it's one of my regrets. I'm not saying the thing was a failure. It was so bleeding-edge. It was information. But what I regret is that we never got to turn the corner and try it again. It was that, you know, budget was too tight. We're not interested in going in this direction. We're just gonna cut ties on this. The entire church is going the Orange, which is great, but Orange doesn't have distributions. So you're, you know, so like that's the unfortunate of this. I would have loved to, okay, now I understand this better. Let's figure out how to create resources in a different, in a different topic, in a different range, under a different guidance. And unfortunately, we just didn't get the chance.

That being out and said, man, churches out there, experiment with stuff like this. And when you learn those lessons, don't be afraid to try it again. Experiment in a different way. Revamp. Give it another shot.

Yeah, you know what I would love to see? What I think would be great, and then maybe someone's gonna pick this, run with it, and then become a millionaire. And for your art, men, go ahead. Somebody go out there. Your pencils ready? Hold on. Yeah, go get ready. This is the ideal for this. Create one of those unboxing channel videos for kids and have a spiritual lesson that's Bible-based right at the end. Like, man, my kids will probably watch that for hours. Give you like 10,000 views, you know what I'm saying? Ten million views. Other kids will watch it, you know what I'm saying? Because it's taking something that kids are already watching. Like, I'm sure other parents, you don't get it. I don't get it. Kids watching up other, you know, watching other kids unbox toys and play with them. But they do it, you know what I'm saying? Because it's the newest Frozen doll. And let me tell you what I learned from Frozen. This is how God, you know, how God works. And both create like a devotional around that. And there it is. There it is. Because kids will watch it. They will engage with it and leverage it for the glory of God. I mean, if we're able to create Christian radio stations for the glory of God based on the same pop music that we listen to, you can do this. So go for it.

I'm definitely with you on that. I mean, well, because my boys, they're on YouTube Kids. They watch Bryan's World and other things like that. And I'm like, how can we create content that's more based around what they should be learning instead of a lot of toy, you know? And so yeah, definitely it resonates a lot with me. A lot. And let's, let's, this is interesting. And this is not what when talk about online, but let's really dig into the content here, right? The problem is, is that at least I would throw out as option number one, the problem is, is that we're so focused on throwing an agenda or a series or a topic or pushing this stuff on there. We're not really engaging and listening. And the problem, if we could, if we could figure out how to, and I don't know how, do you engage and listen to little kids? Which is another thing, which is why I'm so focused on parenting instead of the kids. And that might be a crutch in itself. Maybe there is a way to listen to the kids, to get down to that level. But it seems to me like if all we're doing is, and this is what I was guilty of, let's figure out, I'd create this new dynamic sermon series for kids or this new, you know, whatever it was, message series or topic series or story series, whatever the language was in it. And it's like that just became the overarching vehicle of everything that we did with kids ministry online.

And there is, I'll just speak in my language, there's hollowness to that. Like, that's not something that you can build an effective church, ineffective ministry, it kids ministry on there. Has to be more to that. There has to be. And I want to use the word physical connection, but there has to be something richer than just the story. If I'm watching, and I'm using a dated reference of Handy Manny because my kids were addicted to Handy Manny, if all I'm doing is watching Handy Manny, I'm not discipling my kids by watching Handy Manny with him. Watching Handy Manny, there's another level that we gotta get to with the kids in it. And it's figuring out how to create that content coupled with another piece of, okay, what's the physical interaction or the person-to-person interaction to help them take maybe this head knowledge down to a heart? That's where the parent has to come into play. And that's that I appreciate, you know, once again, going back to Arms, that they provide questions for during the week for the parents and the kids to interact, you know? And I'm saying, so if you can do something based off of that model where you're providing content that's for the kid, but at the same time, the parent has a spot, hey, parents, click here. We've got, you know, a spot for you to act. Here's discussion questions between you and your kid. Here's, you know, an activity that you guys can do together. Here is this. That to me, the parents a lot more compelling, you know what I'm saying? In that it's giving me an activity or it's giving me a way to relate to my kid through spiritual content. That I become the small group leader then in my household. I become the small group leader leading Zoey and Lexi, my two little girls, through that content. And that's where I think that relationship can be, as opposed to, hey, someone known guys, some volunteer to church or somebody who's not really gonna stick and walk with them for the long haul. Now, obviously, that's, you know, in a digital world, that's putting a lot on the parent. Supposedly, you know, it's what we're called to do as parents anyways. It's just giving us more handles on how to do so.

So most people would agree that, I mean, parents, they're kind of the most spiritual influence over their kids than anybody in their life. So I mean, if you really think about that, so I need, I need help. I need help.

Yeah, disciple in my kids. I me too. God Almighty. Yeah. Like, church out there listening, realize, you know, the hero in my children's spiritual life does not need to be the children's pastor, you know? We've talked about a lot of things, you know, with this. But when it comes to creating by him, you know, not only at the leadership, executive leadership level with a kids ministry, but even with the own kids ministry, they had their staff. What's some advice that you would give around that, you know? We haven't explained. We haven't experienced that because the question hasn't been asked yet. But yeah, I'm sure at least at North Woods, I mean, that's gonna be something that we may have an issue with. But we may not. I mean, I don't know. So yeah, any advice there that you would give?

Let me throw two things. I remember the first conversation that we had about kids ministry online and half with the staff, with the people who would be involved in executing this on a regular basis, half were excited at the opportunity. Half of them looked at it like this is just more work. And I'm already giving you as much as I can. I cannot give you that extra. And so, but I, we started cell tasks. We didn't necessarily sell it on envision, on discipleship, because at the time, Church wise, were a very task-oriented and not necessarily, you know, person-oriented. So I think part of the challenge is to speak to the level of the vision first. That's where getting it to align with the church overall, which actually gets me in the number to figure out how it's a win for physical as well as online. Because, and especially, I mean, you can look at your CMS check-in. I'm willing to bet if you're like any other church in America, one week out of three, the kids are there. So two weeks out of three, the kids are gone. You're adults. That's maybe worse than that. But you at least know through kids check-in, you know what that is. And so realize that's another opportunity for you to engage with kids. So that's another opportunity for you to engage with parents with added value for them to maybe understand something at a spiritual level during the week, you know?

I think there's a lot of effort in church overall, not just kids ministry, towards that one hour on Sunday. And if we just put a fraction of that towards the other 167 hours a week so that people can be Christian, so that they can understand their spiritual calling outside of the physical church building on Sunday, I think the church would be in a better place. And so it's leading with a lot of that vision and understanding. Assuming your church is on board with that, that'll really help you get to that. Sometimes you're gonna have to sell this vision up, man. Because if you're excited, listen, I'll just tell you, for me, if it was, it was hard going up there, was eventually bought into and then scrutinized, learn from it, and make adjustments, you know, as you're doing it. There's not a lot that are doing it, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. This is to me, like I said earlier, kids ministry, deaf. These are two things that I think the church is grossly missing an opportunity by not capitalizing and building on this in the digital skill. That's good.

There are steps to this. I don't think has to be an all-in to think, you know, to tell your leadership, hey, we want to just dedicate a bunch of resource to starting an online kids ministry. I think there are steps that you can take that can help lead to that, which when you provide enough wins over time, enough momentum in a specific direction that's compelling enough for leadership to create buy-in with them, which I think they would see the value in it. I think the first person, you know, on board is actually your kids director because they're gonna be not just creating the content, but you gotta be completely aligned. You don't want two different churches existing like your kids online ministry and then your kids in-person ministry. And you don't want them to think that you're trying to compete with them either, which is where a lot of people start with online spaces, right? Like, oh, online competes with the weekend. No, it doesn't. Enhance this the weekend, but it doesn't compete with the weekend. Allows the same content that you're creating to live on for a long time and to be leveraged for a lot of people. Why not go ahead and connect? We were talking about create a few resources that your parents can use and flip them on digital platforms and promote them and talk about them, leverage them off, and refer back to them and point to them over and over again. You won't create a Bible story for kids, a Bible study for kids, put that on in digital platforms, leverage them often, talk about them often, you know, refer back to them. And then use those steps. This way, you can come back to your leadership and you could say, look, this thing got like 300 views in the first couple of weeks that it was up. People are out there watching it and they're sharing it. This is what's happening with this. Imagine if we did just a little bit more. And don't cast like the whole thing in front of them, but just start walking them slowly through this process. Because the guess point, this is very bleeding-edge on a lot of fronts. And so you don't have to jump all the way in the river. There are steps that we can take to get there.

So before we go off, you know, start starting a bunch of different, you know, side projects competing with all the different content Raiders that are out there for kids materials, let's see if we can take some steps in the right direction to help provide resources for both kids and parents to grow in their relationship with Jesus. It's really good. And let your, and I love the idea.

Array of your like start, you know, bring the children's director, bring the kids director in early. I would even say let them define it, let them create the why of it. You know, you've heard you've heard Ray and I ramble on about kids ministry and we're we're not the experts in this. You have a staff expert and so letting them define it is going to give them the ownership down the road when there's tension, when things are being called into play, when there's questions, when there's evaluating for how to make it better. If they own it at the beginning, they're gonna own it in that season.

Absolutely. Just switch gears just a little bit. You know, I would say there's a lot of talk about micro churches and in the online space. What does a successful kids ministry look like? And you guys elated just some challenges that come with them earlier, but well, yes. Let me ask this girl before you do that, just to give give me context. What is a micro location? Because if micro location looks like 50 different things, sure, you guys, what is micro locations look like where you're at?

Yeah, we've got a couple right now that are meeting outside of the Peoria area that would not be able to travel to get here. We've got one in the Quad Cities, which is about an hour and a half to two hours away from us. We've got a group of 15 people that meet at a house and they kind of rotate between each of the couple's houses each week. And you know, one of the questions that they're asking is, you know, how do we minister to our kids in that setting? You know, and what does that look like as it continues to grow? And one of the approaches that we're as a church moving to is we're really going to use our micro churches as a way to plant churches because we're moving from a multi-site approach to a church planting approach. And so that's just one of the things that we're kind of wrestling with because and that's been asked of all micro locations of like, we're having a hard time figuring out what to do with our kids when we're meeting.

So so what's what's the average size of micro location right now? Our biggest one, they have 15 people that are there and there's a couple of them that have kids. It's not a huge demographic of children, but there are some kids that are represented there.

So this is the challenge in terms of liability because I remember Jeff, we talked about this with Danny Hicks, I believe, to it at Elevation, in terms of their watch parties and and how it's kind of become, you know, a bit of an issue. And and you know, it's a problem that will eventually get solved, but there's a lot of issues in terms of liability if we if if you say, hey, we've got kids ministry at these locations, that that's problematic in the sense of, well, that comes with a lot of expectations. Should a kid get hurt, even if the kids are just, hey, playing outside in the backyard, jumping on a trampoline, and all sudden one kid falls, breaks darn, okay, what happens now? Is the person hosting, you know, the watch party or the micro location liable? And the answer unfortunately is yes, to a degree. And then the church also becomes liable if it falls underneath that umbrella of, hey, we're an expression of the church wherever we're at. And so that's where you want to be very, very careful of how you express, hey, kids are welcome here, et cetera, or, hey, we want to do kids ministries at these micro locations. For right now, that that may be an unwise thing because there's not a great solution on that front for kids.

Yeah, I don't know, Ray. A lot of the same is this. I've literally had this conversation. The same liability you have with with kids at a micro location, it's the same liability you have with kids at a small group at somebody's house. Like you're already your church is already taking some of this risk on by doing things at houses. And so there is an inherent risk with that.

Maybe is interesting. Yeah, I mean, but it is right. It's it's yes. And this goes where this is where and I remember having these discussions with our higher-ups on this according to the insurance riders and stuff. And this is where you got to be careful about what a micro location is and how it's defined in terms of, you know, hey, this is a mini location because, you know, they're having up. We don't describe small groups as like a pop-up store, you know what I'm saying, or a pop-up location. But these micro locations are described in that kind of light. So in the same way, yeah, if there's a difference between like a pop-up store Best Buy in a mall or something along those lines, that's carrying the brand a lot heavier than something else. And so that's where small groups get a little bit different treatment versus a micro location, you know what I'm saying? That's that's where in terms of the branding and you know, this is where legal jargon comes into play. Look, I've got family that are that study the law and they're lawyers and stuff, but this is where they tend to win or where they tend to go after folks. Hey, wait, you guys have defined this as church property. Now that right there is kind of what places you in the realm of liability. That's what that's where I would say you got to be careful with it, you know? And yeah, even if they don't win the case, Jeff, it's the fact that they're gonna go after you and the fact that it's gonna cost you a lot in legal fees and they're gonna cost you a lot in legal fees with it.

Yeah, Kyle, this isn't necessarily conversation that you wanted to have, but this actually gets back great. Ooh, Jake Krandle, when did with his his movement of micro? Mmm, his movement of micro is is less of, hey, I'm gonna gather 50 people in Phoenix, Arizona together because I've got 50 viewers and I'm trying to gather these people together. His expression of micro of what he's working at now is, I've got one person in Phoenix that knows 10 people that don't know Jesus, and I'm gonna disciple her to the point that she can go out and start to gather these 10 people in to their church. And so that approach is far more engaging. The better word healthy's a better word. I'm trying to think of a good word. I'm sorry, is is a lot safer. I mean, your your if you're bringing in 10 of your friends into your house and four of them have kids, that's that's a lot safer opportunity, which is actually why it's probably small groups is a little safer of an environment because you don't have random strangers walking in. Which on having done the microsite model, that was, hey, let's try to cluster these people together. It is kind of weird when you're like, hey, I want to post your website, your name, honor your address. Oh, my address on our website and people are just gonna randomly show up. Like that's that's that's weird. And so there's chances are your organization and as Northwoods already has some sort of solution for that at the micro level. But a lot of that is if if it's if it's a safer environment, you don't necessarily have some of those worries or you're less worried about that.

The other part of this isn't, I hate to even like play this card, but it's worth doing. Nowhere in the Bible doesn't say you have to do kids ministry like that. Even kids ministry itself, I think was, I think ain't come, Kyle, you may have been there, but Jason Morris is actually talking about this at the Church ID Network. I think he said was like late 1800s when the church is trying to kind of figure it out. All we got a separate the kids into something. So they farmed them out into like the school classrooms or something. I don't know. But I see at the end of the day, you know, I would even challenge a little bit of at the micro level, let's not figure out how to shuffle the kids off into daycare because if the best that you can generate on your own is daycare, then yeah, let's let's figure out how to make it inclusive and make them make them a part of it. And so it's it's a hard question. It causes people to question some of the values the merit II have it within their church or organization. But like a micro location put to the end of planting churches should not die. That movement should not stop to exist because we don't know what to do with our eight-year-old, right? And you know, exist. And and your hundred percent right. This is kind of a struggle in terms of the model if you're looking for a micro location to be an exact microcosm of what you create on Sunday morning, that that are right there is already gonna be flawed. So if you want to check in kids and kind of shuffle them off to a bedroom or a playroom or something along those lines, that's going to be flawed in the same way that I wouldn't want greeters at my micro location, you know, knock, have people out in front of my house like, hey, welcome, welcome to Christ Fellowship and come on in and raise sofas right there and the fridge is Aaron. Yeah, with the street signs and the whole nine and branded t-shirts and and all that stuff. So you know, I mean, if that's the model you're going for, then then that's that's a model to go for. But that's gonna be something that's difficult to replicate over and over and over again, which is kind of where it comes into play where is something to Jeff's point that looks a lot more like small groups. I mean, I tell every couple that comes in with kids, my smarter take the kids, run in because they got to go to the bathroom. It's okay. I don't want you to freak out. You know, if we got to stop the Bible study because somebody got a boo-boo, it's okay. They're free to run in there and play and play with the toys and have fun with the kids and all that stuff. And then for those of you without kids that are here in the small group, I just want you to understand that that's what this is. I want you guys to get used to it. I want you to treat them like your nieces and nephews and just totally be okay with them running around and being alright with that. Are you guys good with that? Yeah, if you're not, that's okay. We'll help get you max to another group. There's other churches, there's other places for people to connect. If they're not connecting because kids are running in another house and having a good time, well, mint, that just may not be for them. And I know I sound mean by saying it, the man, there's way too many free expressions of church out there for you to try go lead one if it's not good. Well, Jim, that's all I've gone as far as questions so far for today. So awesome. Hey, was this was this helpful?

It was, it was super helpful. Yeah, especially around the micro church side, even thought about the legal side of it. So that's that's super helpful just to know. But yeah, I truly appreciate your guys's your time and your wisdom. You know, not Kyle, we appreciate you bringing up the conversation and it's something that we talked about quite often still to this day because, you know, in our heart and and Jeff said a new church and and I'm still here at CF, in our heart, they're still very much as a place for this. Nobody's figured it out yet, but there's a place for this. And so yeah, you know, we're hoping that somebody picks it up and maybe you, we hope we hope you pick up the Rubik's Cube and run with it, man.

Hmm, yeah, yeah, I'm really excited. Just I mean, as we've been talking about two different sides of it, like how can we, you know, in in in quip parents, you know, like I definitely think I mean I lean more to that side of it regard to this whole kids online thing. So yeah, that's exciting. So I'm excited.