EP046: Matt Welty & Creating Community via Mobile App

Episode 46 of the Church Digital Podcast. Jeff here once again and I got to tell you I'm excited about this podcast. I do say that a lot. I think I say that about every episode. I'm excited, I'm happy on something, but this is a really cool episode where we dig into mobile apps and whether or not it's effective and worthwhile in churches.

And for in the conversation of Brennan Matt Welty, who's Technology Pastor. Is that not like the coolest title ever? Technology Pastor for Crossroads Church, a large multi-site church in Cincinnati, Ohio, now Kentucky area. And they're doing some great things, not only within the church, not only with their church online, but with their mobile. What happened in arguably some of the best things that I've heard in a church mobile app towards creating community that I've ever heard of is gonna come up in this conversation.

So right off the bat we're gonna put the link to the show notes to the mobile app. You guys should take some time, download the mobile app. We'll include the iOS, the Google, all that. So grab that, download the app, look through it while you're listening to this podcast because this is an incredible app. They have some incredible functionality in here that's really moving beyond just the reach component but developing engagement towards creating community, which is far more effective in the mobile scope.

And we're gonna have tons of conversations through this. Love where we're going here. We've got Raid the Armas once again co-host on land ties with Christ Fellowship Miami in the conversation. Matt Welty, Tech Pastor, Pastor of Technology for Crossroads Church up in Cincinnati, and myself Jeff with the Church Digital in a conversation that I'm calling Community via Mobile App.

Hey everybody, here you go. Did this is new? I've not seen these in you, right? What's the story? Would you? Okay, so um, like I had lost my headphones a while back. I had the Bose ear, you know, earphones and stuff, and they were great. Like I still got my cups, but these were like my regular drivers on the regular. And so I was like, well, maybe it's time for a change. Let's take a look at my brother-in-law got the EarPods Pro. So I was like, well, let me ask if I can borrow him because everybody I knew who had them was talking about the noise-canceling, was talking about how much, you know, they enjoyed it in transparency mode and a whole bunch of stuff. So I was like, well, let me ask Thomas if I could borrow them for a weekend, try online stuff and see if they work out well for me because 250 bucks is still something. I mean, to me it's a ton of money to invest in a set of headphones. Was a lot to splurge, but I had a bunch of like Christmas money and stuff that I was like, alright, well if I wanted to I could.

So um, I tried him out and one day, within one day I was convinced because I'm there at Starbucks and I'm doing Church online. People are coming up to me from my campus to talk to me. I turn on transparency mode in a full packed Starbucks. I'm a but I have a full-fledged conversation with them with the things in the ear and it was just next-level technology. I was like, this is probably the most innovative and Jeff and I always talk about this all the time because we have a love-hate relationship with Apple in terms of their lack of innovation lately. This right here is probably the most innovative thing they've come out with since the phone.

So I'm gonna go ahead and say that. You really? Thanks. Oh, thanks for ruining my air pods for me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean, I'm tall and Jeff would be proud of me. I'm totally turned out. I got a little silicone case for it and everything.

Oh yeah. So Matt, are those version one or version two? What are you floating? I've got yes. So I've got version one. I splurged for my wife and got her the wireless charging. Nope. And then the Pros came out and I similarly know Ray. Everyone who has them has said they're worth it and I'd this is the most I've ever spent on headphones in my life. So I'm not a music guy or an audiophile where I have all the stuff before, but even hearing more stuff like what you just said goes, man, this is how we work now though.

Okay, Matt, you've got version one. Awesome. I had version one too. Yeah, I lost birds as well. I lost version one. I literally lost the air pods for like six weeks and the day version two arrived I found the version one ear pods. Fun story, it's on Facebook you can find it, but at the end of the day I've got version two just like this. Much different than version one. There's like no difference. Maybe a better battery life and Siri, which I never really use on my ear much. Shut up, Siri. Siri is now like on my iPad. So I have a one, two hours. You know why? Why did they come out with the whole thing? The Pros for version two would have made so much more sense, but not more money. And that's the difference. Apple is screwing you around because they just want people to buy their crap. So they're gonna buy version one, they're gonna buy version two, and then they're gonna upgrade to the Pros. And at the end of the day, man, there's only so many checks I can write to help. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, I'm at the point now where I just firmly believe that they slap early adopters, you know what I'm saying? Like they come out with new products and if you're an early adopter, you know, you may as well just kind of hang around because you know the best version of it is literally like a year away, right? To say it like that. I mean, that's how I thought about the watch, you know? I bought Apple watch. I bought version two. I bought Gen two. And it was just so bad, you know? Like I was like, this has none of the LTE capability. It wasn't even offered then. I was like, this is, it's so dependent on the phone itself that it didn't, it didn't feel I could improve my life. It just made it worse. It's just all I did was bring more notifications in my life, which I also had a Pebble. Which if you know, if you're a fan of wearables, then you already knew about the Pebble, which it was just a color version of that. So it wasn't merely like a big deal. So now I'm just not even an Apple watch right now. I'm just like, no, that's a terrible idea. It's a terrible device in my view. It's been the same thing with Apple TV and Matt, I'm actually a former like Apple store employee. So like I was like in the religion. I worked for the temple. It was great. It was awesome. But there's so much of that that you know, even for those of us who work there, we were like, yeah, man, they slap early adopters so hard. It's really good to an outsider. It feels like it's changed. So I'm curious what you would say right as someone who was in it at the beginning. I had ten years. I mean, I was a Mac fanboy. So I lined up for the first iPhone, the second one, two, three, the 3G, the like I, and I still have them. There's a box in my basement. Yeah, that's like at some point in the last ten years I think you're right. The first versions, the headliner pieces that they released, the early adopters went and got him, but they were your pain and early adapter tax. But that wasn't the case originally. You were no, you were on the edge using really useful products back in, you know, probably a decade ago. A hundred percent. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. That's that's kind of the something that Jeff and I have lamented on the pot, even just kind of discussing it as far as where Apple is and where they've gone. And it's tough because it's so easy to want to blame just the shift from Steve to Tim. Like it's just, you know, like that's the most visible change that you can kind of latch on to. But a perfect example of this is for instance the new Apple TV streaming service. Go by. So it's the most expensive streaming service out there. Yeah, you're only paying five dollars a month, but for eight shows total. Like that's it. And yes, you know, eventually it's gonna get better. And whether or not, you know, there's all sorts of rumors like, hey, they might make a play for Sony. They might make a play for this company. Yeah, you know, one of those eventually down the line is gonna fall and they're gonna go through on that and it's going to be a great streaming service. But in the meantime, for everybody who's early adopting it, it stinks. It is terrible and it's a bad experience.

Yeah, and so Tim, I know you're listening right now and I know that there are different algorithms on this and so please don't crash my old MacBook Air. But um, but it's just one of those things where it's a bad experience early on. Did you ever watch see that that that show? See? See? Arguably the worst television I've ever seen in my life. You know, I'm a I'm a radio TV film major that actually produced television like in college, you know, roasted like the college projects. Like it would like I'm watching this. I'm like, this is the worst writing, directing, acting, top to bottom, starring um, your Aquaman, whatever that guy's name is. Noah? Homo? And and Alfre Woodard? Like there's a boos of this really rich cast and I'm like, they have no idea what they're doing.

Yeah, somebody got fired on that though. Oh my gosh, horrible. Somebody. How much at stake for Apple to you know, you own it in like think they are here at this beginning? Love. Yes, as a product guy, I want to empathize with people behind the scenes because you, you know, I would Apple is still if you want to go make a product right to be in that environment? How incredible? You have to imagine like you were saying Ray to blame it on, you know, the Steve did Tim transition is the most visible one. There's gotta be crazy complex supply chain issues and regulatory. It like the work the last decade of change has probably made it harder to make hardware and software and in streaming. So you know, and yet you have Amazon and Alexa or Amazon and Google who I think are acting way more competitively in that arena. But they're they're avoiding it on devices so they can put it and change weight quicker. I think so with with all those things said, the day that Apple releases the AR, augmented reality glasses, innovative crack I've ever said, I will be the bleeding edge tax guy buying that and I will be completely happy.

Yeah, and it's gonna cost you a thousand dollars. I'll probably write the check. I'll find a way. Like I am I am a hundred percent in on that. My family does not me. Like you don't wear glasses? No, you don't understand. They're not those happening here. Yes, I will wear glasses for that. Yeah, yeah, I'm good. That's right. Google, Apple, come on, man. Brett, bring it home. Forget the cause. Forget all this side crap. Like bring me the AR goggles. Google Glass was ahead of its time, you know? Right. That way they do it right this time. Awesome. That was an incredible side track before he get started really into that, man. Just tell us a little bit about yourself. Who you are? Crossroads? The the ministry of what you guys are doing? Give us the hard kind of of who you are?

Yeah, a little background. So we I'm honored to be on here and just in among probably the hundreds and thousands of people are just co-learners along the way because we're I think we're all standing on the edge or feel like we're standing on the edge of something and figuring it out together. So excited that any of the small experiments or successes or failures and Crossroads can be used and abused by other people is a really exciting thought to us. I've been at Crossroads for eight years. Crossroads has been around since 1986 though. We we're based in Cincinnati, Ohio, so right in the heart of the Midwest. And Brian Tomar, senior pastor, he's a guy from Pittsburgh. He has been founding pastor, still senior pastor, really for us. The the heartbeat of leading us as a long time kind of pioneering adventurous church. So you know, back at the very beginning, the descriptions of you know, we want to do church for people who have given up on church but not

On God, we want to go after seekers, you know, are open to the idea of God but don't know the language of church, don't know the rules of church, and really remove every barrier in the way of someone caring about Jesus in a language they understand. So, you know, early on in the 90s, that was great music, for a coffee casual and fire, you could bring the coffee into the auditorium. You know, those things are really common now. Yeah, in Cincinnati in the 90s, that was revolutionary. That was on the edge. And, you know, the same way with, you know, Brian's sermons, you know, you would come in and you wouldn't feel you were learning about the Bible. You were hearing the gospel, but you weren't doing a Bible study. You were learning about how God applies to your 9:00 to 5:00. You know, and so that at the time just seemed edgy and different from what people were experiencing, and they could create a room for people to invite their friends.

So we've grown. We're a multi-site church. We're an online church. We've taken on a lot of different forms of church. We have 14 different campuses now, physical locations in Ohio and Kentucky. We just recently, a few weeks ago, launched in Columbus, Ohio, so sort of a last-ditch city push. We have three campuses down in Lexington, Kentucky. We merged with a church that was also called Crossroads down there a few years ago. I made the name. I made the merge. That aspect of the merge was very easy as a result. Other parts of it were really challenging, but at least branding was good. Brady, yeah, the church was still called Crossroads. That's good. And we in the last, you know, for five years have really tried to step into what does it look like to be culturally current in a digital way. So that for sure includes the native app that we've developed and has taken many forms. Online church, community building, starting to merge out on the edges. What does movement look like? What does church plant, house church planning, meet home church, meet watch party, you know? So we're trying to learn from as many people as possible. But it's good. Yeah, that's that's a bit across roads.

Yeah, so let me ask. A lot of what I want to dig into, the podcast is kind of the mobile strategy of what you do. We do a lot of church online here in the podcast, and so it'll kind of sure bleed into this. But why did you opt to go in-house development with the mobile app? There's lots of other developers that are out there. I'm just kind of curious your heart when digging in mobile. Why'd you decide to go in-house?

We'd love. In at different points in our history, partnered with almost all of those players. They're doing incredible things. We, when we decided to develop our own mobile app, we wanted to have a unique purpose driven by the mission of Crossroads. So, you know, it's what is the compelling reason to be natively on someone's thumb and not just give us permission to win in that space, but most apps on people's phone, they'll get opened. So what is inside of our app that uniquely is worthwhile for someone to open a couple days a week? You know, which is a lot in the mobile app space. And so for us, it had to have a very particular utility. And a lot of the more templated app services do a great job of making your weekend content, your group content. There's it's a content management system wrapped up in the native app, and it does that exceptionally well. That same content for us is available in mobile web, and we do a great job of making it awesome on mobile. So we needed a reason beyond that, a real utility. And to create that, I can explain what that is for us, but to create that, we had to go all in. Hurry up. Yes, so dig into it here. What are some of these features? Because we hear this. We have this conversation all the time, you know, and I've heard it. Church mobile app adoption is less than 10 percent. Usage of the church actually uses the mobile app that they're releasing. You know, stats that I've seen in my role as digital pastor and communication directors mirror that in real life where we get a lot of that traction on Sunday because people want to take sermon notes in it, or they'll want to access the sermon audio or video on Monday, which you can also get on a podcast, you can also get through church online or the website. Like, there's a lot of repetitive. So it's not as strong of a strategy point. What have you done with the mobile app there at Crossroads to kind of start to work through that monotonous stuff that they get out of the places and really get to the core of making the mobile app unique?

Yeah, well, our starting point was for the mobile app to be an engagement platform. So it wasn't meant for reach. Hey, why? You could share it with someone, and that could be a way to introduce someone to Crossroads or Jesus. For us, it was an engagement platform. So for people who are already at Crossroads, we zeroed in on this phrase of how do we help someone create a habit of connecting to God and other people? So we, well, many of us, you've grown up in churches or had people disciple us. We have maybe a rhythm of a quiet time or morning scripture and prayer. We learned that, and sometimes so long ago that we forget how that was a habit that was established in us. And most people in our churches today are not reading their Bible. They don't know some of what some of us professional staff Christians we sort of can take for granted. And so we went, let's create an app that is as habit-forming as some of the things that happen in social media and as helpful as some of the things happening in the fitness world and is as user-centered as some of those same industries. And let's do that around Bible reading, prayer, reflection. And so the core action inside of our app is just that. So you can read a new chapter of the Bible with the entire church together each day. You can journal on it publicly or privately. One of the key draws of that is Brian Tome reads that same chapters. You get invited into his living room, and at 6:00 a.m., in the morning, if you will, as he spends time with God, he's gonna journal, and his journal is public. And so you get to scan this chapter of scripture. Imagine if you've never done this in the Bible before, you scan this chapter of scripture. You read the senior pastor's reflection and prayer based on that, and suddenly the bar gets lowered for what spending time with God looks like. You see, you realize, like, oh, that's what he noticed. You go back up to the chapter of scripture, and you're getting reps doing this kind of thing. And we have, oh gosh, 30, 40, 50, or so many experiences we call them. Some of them are gratitude or prayer or thankfulness or worship. We're giving people these small reps in these spiritual disciplines and then allowing them to pray for each other, either anonymously or very directly. And so together, those three things, we alternate them, we build variety and streaks, all kinds of things to very intentionally help that become habit-forming. This guy's week. That's that's what we do. We do have the weekend in there. There's group materials in another section. There's content in the app that's helpful to users, but the core action is really about connecting them with God and other people.

That's really good, and it's something unique. I'm looking at the app right now on my device, and first of all, the user interface is very simple, so I applaud you guys for that, because one of the hardest things I think to do is to keep the menus and some of the different things happening simple, especially for somebody who's coming in fresh. But it seems very outsider-friendly. What I think is awesome from a search perspective, because somebody come in and new to your church or even, hey, like my mom or my friends sent me this app and told me to download it on my phone. If the first thing I'm seeing is a bunch of information or a bunch of stuff about why I should go to your church, I'm probably automatically rejecting it. So talk to me some of the strategy in that.

Well, so we, is it encouraging to hear that it seems easy to use? If I showed you, I mean, we've come a long way. We've been after this for four or five years, and so we've been learning along the way. Just functionally in our church, for you know, we feel this way about the weekend. You know, it's not our phrase, but they, you know, you can belong before you believe. Like, you're fully welcome here and can engage before you fully grasp on to what it means to follow Jesus and figure all this stuff out and apply it to your life. Thankfully, or I would have been excluded. So they, we want the app to function the same way. We do realize that just most people don't have the reps and the track record of following God this way. And so it's got to be a layup. It can't be too simple, but it has to be meaningful. It has to believably help me. Mm-hmm. So if I open up my Nike Club fitness app or my Fitbit app, it has to be simple enough that I can grasp it and not so hard that I immediately believe that I'm probably not disciplined enough to do this. And so we want to help people build momentum. And we think there's a funnel. I mean, when you even old-school church had one, you know, you get invited by your friend. That you probably get invited by your friend again and again and again. Eventually, come think you might get in a group and growth and giving and all those kinds of things. Well, they're all the things we're doing on digital now and just expanded that and changed it from being a straight line, if it ever was one, to really squiggly line. But in the app, I don't need you to sign up for the 10 things right away. I need you to have one great moment with God that leads to the next one that becomes more transformed. And we early on would use the phrase, you know, if you don't count it, you can't grow it. So in old-school church metrics, obviously, and they're still critically important because they're such a big part of the movement, you know, butts in seats and, you know, giving and groups, those are key metrics and they are still, I think, really good indicators of the health of the church. But they're gonna be incomplete. They're becoming more incomplete. The other ones to have in there. And so when we started down the digital route, it's really uncomfortable, but you start talking about minutes of engagement or session links, and they're usually shorter than an hour church service, or daily active users or monthly active users. And so retention rates, all these things are for it. But as we get to know them, we would just always say, if you don't count it, you can't grow it. So if I don't count your very minimal first experience as being valuable to you, then I can't grow it into more deeper engagement. So even if you just open the app and you just read scripture and then you close the app and your quiet time, so to speak, was a minute and a half long today, I want to count it so that I can partner with you to grow it. And that's what we try to do inside the app and make it. You know, there's a lot of questions right now because there was like the app craze, right? Like, um, Apple releases in the App Store, Google Play could becomes a thing, and then every church has the capability of getting an app and getting on your phone now. I kind of hear the pendulum swing in the other direction. One of my biggest concerns always is creating separate databases. How have you guys made sure that both the app and your church database have played in the same ballpark? Oh man, we do. We get to get a little technical. Well, it's challenging. So we, that becomes...

A challenge because most churches, us included, want to build and move fast. And so when you do that to deliver value to people, like it's just, it's not immaturity, it's just we want to have the most impact as quickly as possible. So your database is usually diverged instead of coming together.

We have done a little bit of that over the years. We are actually just starting as a church where there's something called master data management. So we've just found ourselves like many churches. We've got what happens in the app, what happens in our church database. We use HubSpot for marketing communications. We've got, you know, there's maybe three to five other places where data can both be created and stored. And so there's a complex process to figure out where the source of truth is and then how to keep that data really clean. We're learning how to do that.

We have mostly kept the data from the app and the church management system up to this point as separate. And part of the why behind that is it's been two different types of data. So because we've limited what happens inside of the native app, that's mostly going to be clickstream or behavior data, the activity that someone is doing. But it's not collecting a whole lot of like form responses or demographic data, things that would typically be stored in a church management system, signing up to serve, joining a group. And so we've been able to live with the separation. But we've, along the way, whenever we want, we can sync that data because users have unique identifiers and we've set ourselves up so we're not too far behind when the time comes. But we're actually about to switch over to shared authentication so that both systems are sharing the same authentication. That'll help us connect the data in the background. We're going to get so really, and the point is not so much to make that easy on us, though that's great because we can use church resources really efficiently. It's so we can know you as a person, no matter where you show up in the church. It's good. And yes, so I want to follow a rabbit trail. I don't want to go too deep here. What are you specifically using HubSpot for? I love HubSpot and I'm trying to search is using it, and so I'm just curious, practicalities. What's what's HubSpot look like?

HubSpot is predominantly it's our email tool. So all of our church email communication goes through HubSpot. Okay, so that includes, you know, think marketing emails, but I'll suggest here's your quarterly statement, all of that flows through HubSpot. It is used a little bit for lead generation as well. So subscribe to the weekly digest, the content digest, fill out this form for download a resource or something. And so then we can put you on a drip campaign. And so we've used it for that. We just recently did the ninety-day tithe challenge test. Lots of drip. This is lots of churches have done this. It's really, we just did this as a church. And so we used HubSpot as a key part. After someone signs up in the ninety-day tithe test, they were in an email campaign that helps engage them with resources and encouragement. And so it's a tool. It helps us stay engaged with people for sure. It talks great with other systems too. So we use a system called Intercom for our community care. So if you go to our website and you want to chat, you want to pray, you want to know something about Crossroads or how to get connected, the people using that system, using Intercom, that flows with HubSpot. Like the whole goal being, how can we know and care for you better? These are systems that they take time to set up, but they help you do that, especially at scale in church, and to do this when I can't see everybody.

Yeah, and so that Intercom, I, oh, it's the thing that gets a little help thing down at the bottom of the website, bottom right. I love that. Like I'm curious towards this. What is this? So not mobile app, but this is just such a good conversation. Wait, like do you run or spa? Who responds on Intercom? Is it here? Your staff is a front desk? Like what's the interaction point?

Yeah, so some folks that used to be on what would have been called the front desk team are now on the community care team. And so staff respond and some volunteers. So we have some custom trained, vetted volunteers. And it's really, when you think about online church or distributed church, when you can train and trust volunteers, no matter where they are, what time of day it is, it's an incredible serving opportunity where they're meaningfully there, needed and known, and they're doing some incredible work. So it is staff and volunteers. But then sometimes the great thing about those systems is we can help someone best through a bot. So we can predict. I mean, so we set this up. Every week, the arrow, wait, who runs this team, is brilliant. It's so the announcements that happen on the weekend are built into that chat module on web. And so when someone starts a chat, we can assume that a lot of those people are coming with questions about baptisms because we just talked about it on Sunday. Hmm. So instead of having to make someone engage with someone, where some people love to do, but a lot of people don't, we meet them right there with the Jimmy question about baptism. Oh yeah, I do. And so we're very quickly getting people to the information they need through those. I mean, you say it's different than mobile, and it is, but it's all one user experience. All right, you can't silo them for the people who were trying to serve because we were one Crossroads to them. So there's an expectation for all of this to kind of work seamlessly together. So the person in my seat, that's good.

So let's dig into that because at all it is all one experience, but you wanted, what you want to, I assume, what you want to try to do is separate in so some platforms have some responsibilities, some platforms have others. And yes, you want them to try to align towards the common goal. In campaigns there's overlap towards that, but in context of website and context of mobile app and even in social media as you're looking at some of the digital communication pieces, there's different components and different parts towards that. How do you separate? Like what's what's a mobile app functionality versus, you know, mobile web or website in general? Like how does that kind of intermix and play together?

Yeah, I don't think there's more than one right answer to this question, but for us, I think about it is every platform or tool has to have a primary purpose, and then it can have secondary benefits. So the primary purpose of the app is to help someone create a habit of connecting with God. The secondary benefits, and they can also catch the weekend, and they can read an article, and they can follow some people. Like there are many secondary benefits. On the web, the mobile web, which is how most people are accessing the web, so I guess that's why I qualify it to mobile web, it's great for setting things up. So I personally think about signing up to serve, especially for the first time, registering for camp, volunteering, there's all kinds of giving, event. And if I'm setting those things up, web is great at guiding people through those experiences and managing myself in a sense happens really nicely in the web. But many of the secondary benefits overlap between platforms. For me, you then start to look at what can uniquely happen in one platform better or worse than another. And so for sure, in a native app you can create way more tightly controlled immersive experiences. On the web, it's a coded box where you control everything that happens in it. On the web you're dealing with lots of moving standards, any on the browser, someone's in the phone, they're on the packages that have whatever it might be. So you have to be really flexible and resilient on the web. In the app I can build an exceptionally tight morning quiet time with God experience that includes a song and then form completion around thing, thankfulness, and walk someone through the Lord's Prayer and teach them how to pray and in an immersive way. But on the web you compromise. You can do it there, hundred percent, but you have to make some compromises in the experience of it. It's not different from why many of us now build our auditoriums in large black boxes. They're not standard church sanctuaries anymore that are static and hard to change. We want control over the whole experience. When we switch to the next weekend series, people walk in and the entire thing might look different. Where there's that moment in service that you want the music and the lights and the teaching and the whole thing to come together. That I serve equate that. So there's something similar that you can do in a native app, but you can't do it just for fun. You have to have a very express purpose for it, just like in a weekend service you got to be doing something on purpose to move someone forward. And if you do, then yes, so having that level of control, probably in that immersive experience, that takes resourcing, that takes content, that takes buy-in from leadership. I mean, just some of the things you mentioned, having articles that would be included in that, you was I understanding that your pastor literally journals in the app daily? It makes it public so people like, so you have a lot of buy-in towards this. What is that? What is that? How'd you get there?

I can give you names of people who have been down this road and not have that success. So dude, what's the secret, Brian? Tom, I mean, so our senior pastor Brian, like we're just an aggressive church. Like it's in his DNA and he's rude nice. And so whatever it looks like to introduce people to Jesus in the language they understand, what it looked like twenty years ago is one thing, what it looks like today is you're in their pocket and you're with them in the moments where they want to engage with you. And he's incredibly permissioning. So even before he got it and understood it, I think this is explain it to you, he was very trusting to a group of us to go, okay, there's something here. There's a way that we can get in front of people and not just talk at them but actually engage them. And so it, for sure, took time. But over time, as even the app reviews, the app reviews read more like testimonials. This is just how like, you mean, you can ready the horse for battle and the victory belongs to the Lord. You can build that mobile app, but you can't make it change anybody's life. And so there's a God factor here, thank goodness, where he comes in and he uses it in the exact moments that people need it. But we started seeing life change and we started seeing deeper engagement. And so that gets by them. And it takes time. And it often feels like two steps forward, one step back for all of us because you're up on the edge, like we talked about, and you're not always sure if what you're doing is the right thing to do. Is it, especially because so many of us have just been so steeped in a particular way of engaging in church and growing spiritually that trying some of these new things can feel like, what is this? Healthy for people? Is this nutritious for people? Is this good for them? I grew up so totally differently. How would we do this? And so it takes trial and error. But he does. She's he's in there every morning. And it's also though, what an incredible opportunity if you could, if you could help disciple thousands of people at once. If you, I had a guy who brought me into his morning routine, showed me how he read the Bible. I got to do it with him for a while. Brian can't do that with ten thousand people. But now he can. And so there's the modeling that can happen then that we want to lead to real relationship to your level. People are into that experience to go like, I feel like I belong at this church. I'm.

Given a level of access and transparency to the senior pastor, when he does in the weekend, I'm getting his morning routine. These people I haven't even met yet are praying for me. I get to pray for them. I've already contributed to the community, maybe before I've ever joined a group or done a Bible study or given a dollar. So people can belong, and increasingly, because we count it, we can grow it, and we can walk with them and guide them towards deeper levels of engaging in the church. Then that looks like, now I'm attending on the weekend and a group. I've started to tithe, although all those kinds of things. But it begins—we just recognize now it's not church specific, it's everywhere in our culture. It begins in these very small micro moments where people are testing you. There can I trust you? Is this gonna work for me? I've tried things like this before. Is this one different enough that I believe it might actually help me?

Tell me about the content creation side on that. Is your senior pastor legitimately, is Brian, like every day writing into the CMS and it's direct out to the people? Is there like I see a week ahead and then it's like, hey, we're going back? And I'm not trying to duck behind and reveal the wizard behind the curtain or anything like that. It's just, um, it's really powerful. It's really powerful to see that somebody would share this much of their own personal relationship with the Lord with their congregation. And you know, honestly, even if we were like, because there's the—I'm not even perfectionist, but there's the part of me that's like, man, I'd rather be a week ahead so I could review it, you know, take a look at like the grammar structure, blah blah blah blah blah. There's that part of me. But then there's the other part of me of, oh man, but this is vulnerable and transparent and authentic and powerful. So yeah, I love that question.

He brought so Brian—so it's if we play this out, Brian is a user in the app like everyone else. And so I had that same ability to make my journal public. And every community pastor and every community member has that. And so Brian's not going into a CMS. Brian's going into the app the same way someone—what you guys just downloaded it? You could go do a public journal reflection now. We have set it up so that Brian in particular, and then our community pastors, if they journal publicly, they'll always sort to the top because these are the shepherds and leaders of our community. It's we want people to catch them first. It's entirely unscripted, and it's in the morning. So Brian was just on a bike trip. He was out west, and he couldn't do it himself. Service? No problem. He's gone for a week ago, which is also awesome because it's him authentically doing it. It's not a content stream. It's the guy doing, spending his time with God. And I think that's what makes it real. And not—it's not like a quote that comes across Twitter. It's actually him participating, what I think is powerfully, in the same exact way that you would. Actually, you can model it, which is great. It means though that the grammar is bad and words are spelled wrong. And which is great about that is it's him. Like, it's right for the—it's right for the platform. Like, you know, so he's an editor for his books, but this isn't a book. This is, you know, him spending time with God.

Some communications director somewhere is freaking out, I'm sure. But his name's Ben Stapley, and he's pulling the ripcord on the airplane right now. Okay, get some of this buy-in. Go download Crossroads. Anywhere Redux. Screenshot a few of Brian's journals because I think it is—it's a powerful example of a leader not being in a black box, not being inaccessible. And we desperately need that. When you think, if you could just rewind in your mind's what it was like when you first met Jesus and we're trying to figure this stuff out, you need someone who is able to just pull the curtain back. And so often in our—just the way the system is kind of stacked against us in terms of communities and people who are trying to lead lots of people—there's so much expectation for polish, and there's so little room for mistake. And I think we get into the spot where we start performing more than we start giving access and really helping people grow. It's good. The app, again, is not private by any means, but it allows that kind of intimacy, which is great.

One of the coolest things that I've ever heard in context of a church mobile app you guys are doing, and it was this in context of close the loop thing where you were talking about how you guys handle prayer requests. Can you detail for the podcast like how prayer requests work in context of the app there at Crossroads? Again, probably the best experience I'm going to jump in and try it. But what we did, and it's happened in stages—we created a way for people to share anonymous prayer requests. And then anyone—well, actually, stage one was we created digital prayer slips. That's what we call it, Brian. This interview taught us about pace lists a long time ago. It's good. Post-it note of people you're praying for that you put by your toothpaste mirror so when you brush your teeth you're praying for people, which is great. It's a day. It's an easy way to daily pray for the things you want to see God move. So we just took that same concept and we said, let's give people the ability to create a prayer list, a base list inside the app.

The next base was let's let people send those prayer requests out to the community. They could do that anonymously. And we started to have people pray for each other. And when your prayer was prayed for, you would get a push notification. Did that? It said someone just prayed for your prayer request, which is this incredibly simple on the surface but incredibly meaningful moment to suddenly realize that you have access to thousands of people who could pray for your thing. And even if you don't know them, it's a connected experience that can lead to belonging and real relationship.

So then we start—we just up the game from there. And there—so then you were able to share it publicly with your name and face and either your profile picture. We added the ability to friend and follow people. So I have prayer requests that are sent directly to people in my guys group. They're private, the things I'm asking for God, but I send them directly to those people. I have prayer requests that I shared with the whole community. People as possible to correct these things. And sometimes I have prayer requests that are anonymous. They're not connected to my name or face, but I want to take the risk and pray for those things, perhaps. And those same push notifications were happening, and we were seeing more and more people pray. But the moment that we started hockey stick growth—is an exaggeration, but we saw a jump in the number of people engaging in prayer—was when Jeff—we closed the loop. That was just the name we gave to it. We created another push notification. So now I have the ability to mark a prayer request as being answered. When I do that, every person who has ever prayed for that prayer request, whether it was a day ago or a year ago, gets a push notification in that moment saying a prayer you prayed for has been marked as answered.

Closing that loop skyrocketed prayer requests. And so there's a hundred and fifteen or so thousand prayers prayed each month now inside the app. Wow. Wait, wait, wait, wait. A hundred and fifteen thousand? How big is Crossroads? Um, we right now we're probably at twenty-four thousand people physically inside of our buildings, another seven thousand online. Yeah. So let's assume all of them, an average three prayer requests per—that's still it is substantial. And I know it's not everybody, but that's—it's not everybody. But that even knowing that it's not everybody because it's true, not everyone's active in the app, it means that for the people who are active in the app, prayer is one of the most used, most connected, and one of the most—the biggest reasons people come back in and continue to engage. And it is—you then start to your stories of people getting that notification. You feel like God used you, and you know that's true when you pray. And it's crazy to think that we would ever need validation from a push notification on your phone, but it is incredibly powerful to do that. And we get—I mean, incredible stories, God's stories about, you know, I send my prayer request. I'm sitting in the office of the doctor's waiting for the diagnosis, and I start getting push notifications saying my prayer is being prayed for, my prayer is being prayed for. My great people are with you, even though you might be an entirely different state or place. It is—we found one of the main reasons when people download the app, if they start doing prayer, they stay in the app. And we're using really God as it works. And you can see how we're mirroring all the same reasons other apps bring people back in. It's not for—it's not just for content because I can go back in the app whenever I want to see the content. The content will always be there. I go back in the app because my friend Jeff just sent a prayer request or because Ray's—like Ray's prayer request was marked. It's cancer. Do I want to go back in and pray for more prayer requests? You bet I do.

Let's hold on. I'm gonna jump back in. So it's users, people creating value for each other, not just the church pushing content out to people. And people come back for people. That's what I mean. That's why the church is the community. That's right. And to have that happening inside of a digital platform, even in this very infant stage that it's in, there's really promising for how the church can continue to live into this technology future in a way that doesn't sacrifice but might actually enhance and make more accessible so many of the great parts of being in the church.

Yeah, there's definitely—I mean, we use the term high-tech, high-touch. The more technology that we use, the more that we need to respond with a tangible, personal, non-automated response. This idea of the notifications can within prayer requests driving, continue to driving, hey, our prayers matter and they're being effective, whether it's you know one to two weeks or a year or whatever down the road. That's that's phenomenal.

One of the things that I love, and seriously, I think that's the coolest thing I've ever heard in context of a church mobile app because it does continue that engagement in an area where we don't—you know, we can pray for a prayer request, go, and not forget about it. It's almost like out of sight, out of mind. And to know that there's a conclusion to that story, to close the loop on it—yeah, it's just phenomenal.

I just think as a community pastor of one of our sites where there's thousands of people—like, wait, to your point—with the best of intentions, someone comes up to me with a prayer request. I would—I'm not a community pastor, but if I put myself in that spot, I'm gonna pray for him right now in the moment because if I don't, I'm gonna forget. And you've been having done that, which is exceptionally caring and meaningful. I'm likely to forget about that a week later or a month later. What the app allows us to do is do that high-tech, high-touch. I can now grab that prayer request, drill on my pace list. I can even ask that guy, can I put this in here? And then send it out anonymously. Can we get some other people praying for you now? As I get those push notifications, the next time I see that person in the atrium, I get to walk up to them and I—my memories jog. Haven't—don't know. I haven't spent all the calories trying to keep it top of mind. The app has brought it back and allowed me to very meaningfully and thoughtfully care for somebody in the moment. And that's what that's what I—

Want, but technology should reduce the friction to the people on people. The real connective part of part of the church. But what's really interesting in this is you actually told the story in context of going all the way back to your toothpaste lists and how there is a process of growth.

So somewhere out there someone in the audience right now is thanking because this would totally be me if I was in church staff. I want this, this feature in my app as soon as possible. So I'm gonna go now walk into my leadership and say, "Hey, we want to scratch XYZ template adapt instead. We're gonna do this thing completely in-house. We're gonna hire developers and, you know, let's get this in place by Easter," because, you know, you have to have it in place by Easter. Yeah, I mean, make sure that you might as well wait till next Easter. And there's like 52 weeks in between then. There's because that event, honestly, like that, that's who I am. And there's a reason why I don't work on church staffs anymore. It's related to that.

So but here's, here's, here's my thing. How long was it from the toothpaste list to today? To win that roll it, like what, what's the span of time? Because an idea grows. It's, it's not like hurled. Oh, well, it, it has to. If we tried to build what we have today the first time, we would have built it wrong. We wouldn't. If we would have solved the wrong problem. So we taking it in steps also greatly minimizes the risk of solving the wrong problem or not doing anything a user wants anyway.

So starting with the pace list validated that people wanted to pray and there was friction in the process of remembering to pray for people. Giving people the ability of sin odd and anonymous prayer requests validated the fact that people would do that. And so we we built on that. So my team's gonna listen to this and probably correct me. I, it was probably at least two years. And in part because that wasn't the only thing we were working on, but also intentionally because if you get ahead of your skis and spend money before you really learned what the user needs, you're you're likely to spend a lot of money unnecessarily. It would be unwise to go try to build this before Easter. It's good. That's real good.

And it's it's important too because, you know, you guys have done such a good job in taking, you know, when most of us think of an app, we're thinking just about content distribution. That's this legitimately. We're thinking, okay, how could we get our sermons in people's pockets? You guys have taken it a step further. I mean, I want to say one step further. I mean, you guys have charged down the field in terms of creating community with this app. So much so that I mean, I'm looking at these prayers. I mean, it's just so compelling to see how people are being so vulnerable and sharing their stuff. And the fact that you can instantly get feedback that people are praying for you, that that's just powerful. You know, in a whole of the way that I've not seen from any other church in terms of what we're doing with church online.

That Matt, I'm challenged. I'm challenged. But just looking at this in a way, if not that I need the system tomorrow, but just, all right, what am I doing to push the envelope in terms of community building with my church and making sure that people are taking you step beyond just engaging with the platform and engaging with each other? I mean, it's, it's this humanistic approaching engagements that that two-way communication. The app is the thing that facilitates the communication. And something as simple as praying for the prayer requests and allowing the person with the prayer request to be ministered to, but then turn around and minister to others once the prayer request is completed or answered. I mean, that that is such a beautiful idea of closing the loop of, of making both sides be ministered of engaging in this prayer request. It's, it's awesome.

We think about spiritual growth. Especially for adults, I'm no expert either spiritual growth or adult learning. So all I'm doing is connecting dots and parroting with people way smarter than me told me. Adults only grow or learn something new when they need to use it. So we don't do well as adults just learning facts or facts sake. And we typically, and in terms of betterment, when we want to make ourselves better, we we grow best and fastest when we're actually contributing to someone else's growth.

So it's that old adage of like, you know, the best way to learn something is to try to teach it. The print prayer in the opposite. It's simplified example. But I'm, I'm contributing to someone else, praying for them, doing something that is maybe a simple act that maybe it's the first one I've ever done it. It's happening for me there. You're learning something along the way. And the same thing is true in the Bible portion. Very intentionally, you're able to contribute something and get something at the same time. And so you're, you're doing ideally, we're tapping into learning and growth at the moment the user wants it, not the moment that is scheduled by the church. That's good. Or determined by the church what that learning should be, right? The user has some choice. And these platforms are good for that. And all so we need some of the other church platforms like a weekend service where the church is actually following through and it's biblical duties to teach the whole canon of the Bible. And we want it. You might not know you need this, but we want to teach this to you. And we, that's critically important to my development as well. But having both together are two pieces of the same puzzle. And when they fit together, you get the bigger picture.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's so important. It the one hour on Sunday is necessary. I don't want to paint because everyone paid the picture that it's not. It's a great opportunity to gather together in a physical community and drive forward. But when, when that one hour is the only thing, that's where it becomes problematic.

Listen, yeah, there I mean, there's there's a hundred sixty eight hours a weekend. Great, we took care of one. Bad news is that attendances is going down and we're missing some of these other ten poll opportunities to help disciple someone and get them to another level in that rich level of discipleship. Snot happening in a in a larger, you know, experience light like that. Something that is one-way driven communication as opposed to a conversation or interaction, even via a mobile app where you've got multiple people communicating, you know, back and forth with each other.

So Matt, man, this is, this has been beautiful. By the way, I just totally want to acknowledge that the whole Apple podcast are the earbuds totally tied back in. I didn't mean that way at all. But this idea of it took versions of it to get to it and the problem that we needed to get to, like, it's all so, you know, Tim, if you're out there, I, I apologize for yelling at you towards the airport. I don't, I don't, I don't. I love my AirPod Pros. Good job, Tim. And I'm gonna keep yelling if it keeps making good things. I apologize for nothing.

So hey, let's, let's, let's land the plane and wrap up. Ray, just any thoughts? Is real and in here. This is so powerful. And Matt, I want to applaud you and what Crossroads and what your leadership have done. This is phenomenal. And really, this is just, even coming from somebody as simple as not just the pastor, but as a member of a small group. So often in groups, so to use a prayer request, man, and, and I've been convicted of this of them a better job of this later. There's no follow-up, you know, I'm saying? There's no like, "Hey, so how did that go? Or was it answered?"

What Matt and Crossroads Church what they've done is they've created this wonderful act where not only are people giving prayer requests, I don't, people are in community, but they're getting followed up with in a practical way so that people can rejoice or mourning together or and carry out all the commands of scriptures in a digital environment. And this goes beyond just creating content. And it drives towards what church online is supposed to be about, which is about building the community, not just building compelling content, but building a community that's, you know, that's enveloped in the gospel, that's going out there, that's Kingham, it's practically changing people's lives.

And so so grateful to have seen this. Matt, thanks for introducing this into our lives. And I hope much more, more and more churches and even church app developers continue to think towards this direction as we move forward.

Awesome, Matt. Any thoughts in urine? I'm so thankful for you guys, the way that you're helping all of us connect with each other, learn at the same time. There's, there's, there's, there's no way to do this on your own. You can, you can't be a lone wolf person out on the pioneer trying to create the future. And so we, we need each other to do this. And it's just exciting to be a part of it.

Awesome. Hey, Matt, Matt, we're thank you for that. By the way, but you know, it's been a really good podcast. There are vendors out there that need to build this, this prayer functionality into their prayer into their mobile apps. There are churches that need to start to request features and drive some stuff towards the vendors just to get more feature sets and more engaging features in place. Let's, let's get beyond that one hour on Sunday and realize that the mobile app has far more features. One hundred sixty eight hours a week. Your, the thing that that nailed this entire podcast for me was your phrase, Matt, of engagement versus reach. And that with the mobile app, we, we are we are pushing for engagement as opposed to reaching. It's not, it's a website. Let the website reach. And that's easy. But within game with the mobile app, getting people to interact, getting them to talk to, getting them to engagement. Such a bad word where after a conversation, not just a one-way conversation with our people, but a two-way conversation with them. And, and that's what you guys have. So you've done such a great job in creating is you have a way to not just talk at your people, but to receive stuff back from them and to interact with them in such a great way.

So your job well done, man.

Awesome, guys. So we're gonna wrap. Thank you for kind of setting the tone with that. And I hope and pray you guys continue to do so. We're gonna have to bring you back down the road and hear what else you guys are working on. Crossroads is a great church. So we're excited to see everything that you guys are doing in the Cincinnati, Ohio and now Kentucky. You slipped that one into your now multi-state, multi-site yogurt, which is a whole other thing too. But after or format for array, this is Jeff. Thanks for jumping here on the Church Digital Podcast, and we'll see you next time. Y'all have a good day.