EP057: Heredes Ribeiro - Easter Services Church Online Only

All right, you got episode 57 of the Church Digital podcast powered by Stadia Church Planting. Yet this is the third podcast we're rolling out this week on top of probably 10 to 12 blog posts that are rolling out this week. There's just so much content, there's so many things that we want to say in this coronavirus season. So forgive the content overload. I hope you're able to keep up with it all or at least find things that are beneficial for you in this coronavirus season.

We've got a great episode here today and it's something that I think is relevant to where we are as a church, and that is centered around Easter. Well, I got to tell you, like Easter is our Super Bowl. Like this is the thing that we put all our Easter eggs in the basket—pun intended. They're entirely to prepare for this massive Easter experience. As production director and producer for a multi-site church, I can tell you I've spent 96, 98, 800 plus hours over one week just in preparation to make sure that all the campuses and all of the venues were prepared for the Easter service.

And now we're in the midst of this coronavirus, and we're mere a couple weeks away from Easter happening on April 12th. And there's this realization of it doesn't look like we're actually gonna have Easter in a physical building. That may be a little scary to some out there. It's actually probably scary to a lot because like Church Online wasn't even like theologically acceptable two to three weeks ago. And now the Super Bowl, the biggest Sunday of the year, Easter, is looking like it's gonna be online only.

So out there, pastors, people who are preparing content, lead pastors, how do you pivot? How do you change worship? What does it look like for Easter online? Creative, how do we communicate these things? What are creative elements that we can do within the context of it? What does it look like to produce an overly produced and sensationalized service? And then you got Jimmy Fallon who's doing an Easter broadcast in his living room with an iPhone with his kid climbing all over him. What are these tensions that we deal with when we're talking about Easter? How do we pipe Easter in this coronavirus season? That's really the question we dive into.

So we're bringing in Miami favorite and a longtime fan here of the podcast, Aira Dhis. Aira Dhis is a producer over at Grace Family Church now up in Tampa, Florida. And Aaron Astiz, a guy that I've known and respected—we'll get to it in the podcast—for a couple decades now. I knew him even when he was in high school, you know, and I was like a college kid. And it's been awesome seeing him grow in ministry and influence just in churches across the country and helping people wrestle with creative elements like this.

Well, how do you do Easter in coronavirus season exclusively on Church Online? What does that even look like? So did that end up bringing artists into the conversation as well as Ray de Armas, co-hosts once again with the Church Digital as well as the Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself, Jeff, at the Church Digital, in a conversation that I'm calling Easter Service Church Online-Only.

Hey, everybody, here you go. Great style, Church. Actually, we've been made Tampa our home for the past year and a half, gonna be two years, and loving life up here. It's a great and growing city and part of a great, great team, great church, and excited to get to do all things creator. So have a hand in all things from video production, worship communications, to all things digital and how that translates, especially in a season like this. It's been a lot of fun. Have a passion for it, love leveraging all things digital, early adopter of everything to try to get the good news out. So it's been fun to do that and spearhead, you know, that here in Tampa with a great family church. So honored to be here, man. Excited to talk to you guys and go miss y'all. It's been a while.

Yeah, so Grace Family is by Aira de Sweet. Oh, way back. Those we don't want to die on this in the podcast, but we are. We don't live together in Miami. It's been awesome. We were just talking off air about how Aira des owes me a large sum of money due to a mishap that he did when he was in high school. This sounds very mocking. Yeah, you can't see my me. Owes me a lot of money. I just leave a pending in the air. Let's that's gonna get flattened somewhere there. No, no, it'll be fine. I'll be. It'll be greater. It's nothing to do with any illegal substances. We apologize, FBI, for listening, and sorry about that. Yes, you've got things to do today. Make me awesome.

So but what we really wanted to get into this conversation is Easter. And so we're in the midst of this coronavirus season. We see, you know, at the time of this recording, Easter is a mere three weeks away and it's getting sooner and sooner literally by the day here, quite literally by the day. And the great thing about Easter, you know, especially when you're a church with the creative department and you're ahead of the game, you know, the second Christmas is over, you start having conversations about Easter. You flip the switch and you start talking about, okay, what's the theme? What are we going for? What's our voice? Create the graphics, create the video. And you've got usually that three or four month period between, you know, January 6th, you know, in there a situation that you're April 12th. So you got that four months to really create this awesome, spectacular experience, this environment for Easter.

Well, coronavirus kind of threw a wrench in all of that. There is no building, and a lot of the assets may or might have changed, and culture is shifting. We're literally moving the target here because coronavirus is really just running amok in our society and culture today. Majority of churches at this point, if they're doing anything, they're digital-only expressions, which is funny. Even just a mere couple months ago, a lot of churches would have said this is crazy and they're theologically against these things. And now all of a sudden they're in the for a kind of jumping in. But that's the side conversation we'll get to later when it comes to this Easter thing, man. Like there's this opportunity to pivot, to change, to go from a physical to virtual. And Aira des, you know, I know with you with Grace Family and Ray with Christ Fellowship Miami, and like we're all feeling this tension of how do we pivot and when. What is pivoting even look like?

So, you know, Aira, it is one of the things that I ask you. It's like early on in this conversation, at what point did Grace Family did you guys actually start to have a coronavirus Easter conversation? When did this hit your radar?

Yeah, no doubt. Obviously, we were listening to authorities, governor, president, following along daily and just closely. As a matter of fact, even at the time of this recording, it's limbo if it's full lockdown or not lockdown and all of that. And while we feel like people there is that pent up kind of idea of wanting to get out of the house and connect, I don't think it's gonna be as fast or as quick as many may think. We're oh free to go. Let's go. Let's ring gauge quickly. There will be some hesitation, some precautions, and some things we saw it.

So a month out, a month from Easter, we decided to lock in the team. Okay, online or physical? We're locking in the theme. This is what we want to. We're actually sticking with the "It Is Well" theme. It's a throwback. It is well. So playing up, even helping folks, hey, will you here panic? You're here worried? You here? Hey, it is well. And obviously they won't talk about as well in our city. It is well. But it's ultimately right. It is well and our soul. And kind of throwing it back to really one of my favorite hymns.

And so what we're locked in on that theme from a programming perspective, we decided, okay, let's think this stuff through the basics, which I'm sure a lot of folks by now have figured out. What does interaction look like? You can't fill out a physical card. What is gaming look like? It's different. What does all of that stuff? What is the basic fellowship, communion, all of that? Are we doing communion or are we not? If we are, how are we doing that? So some of those foundational level things we started talking about. A possibility we made the call to go three weeks out. A sir, we decided to say, hey, we're going online. Even if you reopen, we felt that because of a change in staff culture already, because of the change in work, you know, flow for all of our teams, you got a staff about 250 to try to coordinate all that to come back together and panic and put a service at six locations. We felt let's build the best online service we can in the next three weeks. And that's what we're doing. That's what I do now. And then now we're discussing what was a feature song and this big presentation with cello strings and a dancer, no typical stuff that churches love to pull out at Easter. How does that look like online? What makes it different? What makes it special? What makes it so? We're having those conversations, you know, now in preparation for Easter. Hope that helps answer a little bit.

I want to applaud you for your boldness and making that call early on, Aira. Where as I'm sure there's a lot of churches that are still out there still hoping and praying that they'll be able to throw something together last minute. I mean, you know, what would you advise for them as they walk through some of those calls?

Yeah, you know, and it every case is different. You know, I don't want to sit here and say that, oh, you should do this and this is the way. I understand different sizes, different spaces, different demographics. We're trying to this is the wisest for us in our situation. And ultimately, we're trying to think, how can we reach the most where the Tampa Bay area? So Tampa, St. Petersburg, our goal is to reach the Tampa Bay area. So how can we rise above the noise? How can we get the good news out to the Tampa Bay area the best, the most effect? So we feel like we can reach more people actually. So again, and this is a glimpse, right? We're obviously the right podcast for this. This is not only a glimpse of the now, it's the future. And you know, just and prophetic about this, we all know, right? Calling it and claiming it. And you guys understand the digital space. This is so we're excited because this has shifted attention and we know Church Online is going to come back stronger even when we start gathering physical spaces. It's become they understand it's introduced a whole set of folks to church online. So we made a call. There's a risk, no doubt. I think we've just the ability to not waiver. We just decided to let's just focus in on this. Let's give it the best. We felt good about attendance and engagement so far that it's given us the confidence to say let's go big or go home.

Yeah, I'm just curious. Let's dive in a little bit in context of Easter. How have your normal, like your what, two or three weeks in? At what point did you shut down the physical services? And how has engagement online for you specifically been in this season?

Yeah, so it's, um, what's interesting is, you know, where we're the big church on the block, okay? So we're the largest physical church in town. So all eyes on us. We were we were the ones setting the trend. Churches were calling, well, if they shut down, we shut down. If we don't, so there's a lot of pressure on that. And we were in touch. We were the one of the first ones calling governor and calling the mayor, say, hey, we want to be side by side with you on this. We don't want to contradict. So that was keep the community engagement there with, you know, with our politicians with our leaders. And we did. We knew a day before the mayor was gonna make an announcement about some of the...

Closing down of the schools, the minute the schools went and it impacted parents, impact the job flow, we understood, okay, this is a community shift. So we made that call. We were that same week, the week that they announced school shutting down, we announced, "Hey, we're going, we're going online."

Online only. So it's been two to four weeks of that. Although we're going into our third week of church online only and committing to Easter and then as long as we need it. It's good air to say I always, I've always felt that you've had a good grasp of social media and how that ties in with the church experience. What are some ways that Grace has taken this situation and stay plugged in with folks via social media channels?

No, it's good. That's good. You know, we use, I assured this before another podcast or places, and it's funny because when we talked about this earlier, it was the idea of HYPE, right? How to build hype. Sometimes hype gets has a bad reputation, it has a bad vibe. Just hype, it's all noise, it's bluff. We levered it for us. It's an acronym, and in anything we do, whether it's an event, whether it's a church service online, whether it's a product or selling, whether it's whatever it may be, we ask these questions. So and it's, I'll give you to hear HYPE, right? It's H. It's "How am I helping others?" It's always asking that question. How is this service, houses product, now the foundation or the foundational? We know, right? We're in the business of helping people of the gospel of getting the eternal, you know, that eternal good news out. We know that. But at the surface level, people don't know that. They're going through struggles right now, financial struggles right now. They're afraid to get out there, afraid of their neighbor. So but how? So how am I helping with our services, with our church? How I help me? That's the H, right?

The Y for us, it's "Did your solution?" Right? So what's your solution? What's your solution? So immediately I say, "How can we help?" And they're here. Here's a solution. We feel here's an answer we can give you. Here's why you should attend. Here's why again. And these are old marketing skills, which again, sometimes churches are afraid to use, and I'm like, "Why not?" Like we have the greatest story in the world to share. We have the good news, the eternal, life-changing. Let's use everything we got. So that's, so that's your solution. Then obviously, to know it's the people, right? So the P, HYPE, HYP, people. It's about people. We know it started with people, it ends up. So who are you engaged, right? That's when you get into the influencers. Who are the folks that you want to engage to get the word out? How did you promote this in that angle? And I will say this, a lot of that happens, a lot of the successful campaigns and things we have, it's this. You wanted to promote on social, but we'll pick up the phone and say, "Hey, Suzy. Hey, Johnny. Hey, we're doing this. Then keeping a favor, can you go ahead and promote? Cheryl, you sent up if you could, if you just tag and send post?" The ROI on that is up and down to things. But when you actually gain and jump in, so we engage people and the ones we want, like literally old school, or will go look staff members in the eye and say, "Hey, Johnny, I need you to post this here. Do this now." Not this loose staff email to a bunch, no, no. It's, I think that's how you get the commitment, and that's how you get the specific. Yeah, so we do that. And if I like the engagement, you know, it's HYPE. The ends with engagement. So comment, like, share, repost, answer questions, crowdsource, ask questions back. So we follow, we try to follow that. We've been doing that throughout coronavirus. We've been asking questions. We've been, "Hey, here's how we can help you." We're actually our church is offering, you know, picking up groceries and delivering them to some of the other, here so we can help you, know, here's our solution. So we offer that. We've engage our staff and our people. We we had our different campuses this weekend split up during services engaging on church online. So this campus took the 4:30 hour there in there, man, boom. So it's like campuses make this our, your, our, let's show up. So then you create an internal competition and how some fun with it, etcetera. So it's been fun. It's been new. We're discovering as we go ideas. I mean, we're watching, I'm watching Jimmy Fallon do a show from his kitchen with his phone. I mean, we're learning as we go to just like they are, and we're adapting. We're doing stuff. We did a fortress, a fortress challenge with our kids at home. We never does at home. What do they do? They build fortresses. So hashtag his own sweet home, which is the name of our kids ministry zone, zone sweet home, build a fortress, dude. It's been great. People are sharing it, creates a fun engagement, and also leave them to the resources to our teaching. So it's in fun. We're learning. We've got different demographics. We've got a young and old. Like it's a, it's a hybrid, man. Oh, you've got a thriving, growing, but an older demographic, 25-year-old church. So it's been fun to adapt to all the, to all the social, you know, available to us.

You mentioned Jimmy Fallon, and it's funny, just you know, a couple hours before this recording I was in a meeting talking about Easter service with a church, and the tension we had talked about is creating the over-the-top production that we normally see in context of Easter and doing that in a broadcast environment. And then we also talked about, do Jimmy Fallon's producing a service, like producing a show on an iPhone with his kid climbing all over him? There's some level we've, we've, we've moved away from hyper production and are almost getting bare-bones, authentic, real with with people as we're all just collectively stuck in in our homes. Like coming from a guy who's lived both sides of the coin here, areas like how do you balance the hyper production behind the realism of like the "I'm stuck in my office doing this thing with my kids in the other room?" Like I know it's, what's that tension look like?

No, a key word, tension, right? I think in the mighty words of Andy Stanley, writes attention. You have to manage. Like here's, here's my, my take on it. We've been talking about the same thing. For example, if Jimmy Fallon thought it was better to just do it from home and never go back to the studio and have the roots and have a staff, he'd probably do it. He knows it's now. He knows that this, for the right now, it's incredible. It's ideal. There's the authenticity. There's a fun. It's different. So but I do think the other is preferred, and he'll go back to the minute he can.

I'm also thinking of this. We've had, you know, 400% increase on our viewers online. A lot of those people have never come to Grace Family Church. They don't know. They've never been here. So you're also exposing them to who you are for the long run. So there's that piece of, okay, they, I think it's a very evangelistic outreach tool that they may come back and say, "You know what? This church was there online. What I needed it. I got a glimpse of who they are. I got a taste of what they do. They're a little more comfortable coming to your physical campuses when the time comes around."

At the same time, authenticity is keep sort of our values here to be real aspect. If it's flashy for the sake and cool for the sake of cool, I think we've missed it. There's enough of that. I think so. I think the octave you can try to figure out the excellence factor with the authenticity piece and have some humor. That's why sometimes humor works. Don't take yourself too seriously, you know? Just have fun. Leave that, you know, that helps break some of that. But it's attention. We don't haven't figured out. We're navigating to. So I'll say this, our students have nailed that. Our kids have known the shooting stuff on their iPhone. They get away with murder doing a bunch. Like it's okay. Like now's the time to do that. Get your student pastors on IG live answering questions, talking to your students. Let your parents see that you're talking to their student pastor. Now's the time to milk all of that for sure.

For sure. That's good. What do you say to senior pastors who are afraid of living in that tension of, "Man, I want to be me, but I don't think people are gonna accept me for the real me because they want staged me. And so how do I now infiltrate this world of digital, but I'm afraid to because once it all goes back to the norm, I can't take anything?"

Yeah, that's a good question. We'll be right back after this break. Get back in there, leadership. Get any Stanley. I love to do to read of stuff. What leadership is influence. We know that, right? So the folks who say to leave influence on the table and to not user tonight, so I get from that question. If the question to me came across to fold that in the authenticity piece but leverage social media, okay? Our church is not on TikTok because, oh, it's cool. It's because it's a voice, and it's not gonna connect with everybody. But there's a demographic that at some point we need to be the light in that dark little TikTok space, okay? And so so it's Debra doing that and being present and being early adopter with a jump in. Don't be afraid. Be present. I mean, I tell people this all the time, and I preaches to our team, you know, the porn industry has no hesitation in putting all their efforts and getting crap out, right? And bring, you know, Europe, I don't know if you saw that, they released, you know, one of the thriving porn sites gave away free accounts to all of Europe during the the quarantine. It's horrible. Really amazing. Sorry, wrong word. It's amazing that they would give that away economically with what a hard, it's crazy. But just to go to show like if the porn is she's giving up financially to get people in to sell them to their, why we should do the same? I mean, there's no reason we should leave influence. And listen, I think most of it about my dad's an example of this. My dad's a six-year-old pastor, man, passes the Church of Miami. Does a great job. Shepherd's heart. He's, he's late in the game with a lot of it. He navigates. He's got his iPhone. He knows how to go live here. He does this. He struggles through it though. Shoot it this way. It's, it's quirky. Quirky is better than nothing, okay? So go with quirky. But to is also ask your grandson, ask your son, ask the name somebody there knows. They're gonna help you. And what do they engage somebody else? Figure it out. Ask them over the phone. You have to. We're locked out. Call them. Figure there's a way. I think don't, don't let that, the authenticity. I think, man, the deeper question with that, I would challenge anybody. There shouldn't be the platform persona and then the, you know, me at dinner with my kids persona. It should be the same. You should be able to put a camera at the dinner table with your family, and you should be okay to broadcast that to the world. And password, I mean, again, that should be the case. We're not perfect. I'm not perfect. I know I, but good. That should be a good, you know, barometer for us to try to figure out, man. There shouldn't be the difference. And I think people want to see your dog, your backyard, that you maybe even cuss a little. I don't know. There's a sensor button for that. Beep. I know Jeff Koz is, but that's another episode. That's true. Especially when it gets shoved in the mud while holding a camera by a high school brat like 20 years ago. There may have been little cussing, a little bit. But yeah, because here's the thing. Like as we've entered this era, some pastors are feeling more and more comfortable with taking their stuff online, which is fantastic. We'd like to see that. We want to hear that. But a lot of them are scared because they're not some of the personalities that we're mentioning. They're not a Craig Groeschel. They're not a Steven Furtick, who at this point are more than comfortable to just flip it on the camera and going, yeah. That's a great irony. It's like they've got this platform, but they're not afraid to risk it for the sense of being authentic versus pastors who have a smaller platform that are like, "Well, I'm a..."

Know it's almost like we're dealing with a parable of the talents situation. I've got this one talent and yeah that guy's got five, but I'm afraid to risk this one so I'm gonna bury it. No, that's good, that's good. One of the things that I've loved, go ahead.

Air as you talk, one that's point and I, it's a good opportunity to like, this is just so not comfortable and you don't want to maybe you said somebody up, maybe it's senior pastor and you're not comfortable at all. Bring your student guy, bring that and bring something next to you. Is it time to pass the baton digitally and let them own and carry the vision of the church right now? I'm not saying give up your senior pastor, don't get crazy now student pastors, but collaborate. Figure out, do a panel, do Q&A, bring your wife on board or bring your kids. I think there's different ways to even Q&A, get questions for my congregation. Don't feel I can't preach a sermon to an empty room. You can figure it out. Like I think that you get, we always kind of have to get over ourselves and kind of figure that out because I think you leave a lot on the table. I think there's a lot of other influencers. They're not preaching the good news, not doing good for humanity that are very aggressive about figuring it out. I think we need to figure it out. Sorry, go ahead.

No, and that's that actually leads in exactly what I was going to say is, is I can tell you several churches in this season that the pastor is preaching an abbreviated message on Sunday. He's trying to get under the twenty, twenty-five minute for the message, but then what's happening as a result of that was some of his spare time is he's in the process of going through another complete sermon series, almost five-minute video sermonettes on during the week, Monday through Friday at night, putting it on Facebook Live or something like that. Even starting to see, hey, let's loop in student guy, let's loop in campus pastor who doesn't preach, let's start to loop in other people to kind of begin to, this is a great opportunity I think for the church at all to grow entirely, not for one man to exude as his spiritual gifts on one platform, but allow others the opportunity to grow and to do ministry in this, you know, and in some situations, chance it's not like there's a lot of other things that are going on. Allow other people to prep in and speak into it. What do you think here? It is, yeah, no, I agree and that's a good point. We in our Easter conversation and to go back to the first question, we've been very intentional. It's still this, you know, people gave us an hour on Sunday. No doubt they're they're bored at home now. They're trying to figure out between Disney Plus, Netflix, Hulu and whatever is available. So they may give us more hours now, but I would still plan for the good hour. What's the hour you're gonna source content? We're planning, are you start to try to include element for kids, representation of our student pastors in that hour so that if it's almost a family service, if you said now with your family to watch this service, you kind of get a taste from those people, the personalities. So we're not beginning that because I still feel like it's wishful thinking to think that they're gonna watch in our service, attend a group online, then watch resources for kids and boom. I mean, it could navigate that way if the content, that's when content does matter and the more gripping it, especially with kids, they're used to, they're used to the colors and the sound of Disney and it's hard to compete with that. And but it's possible and there's a lot of great free resource out there. No, Jeff's got a billion recommended for you. But I think it's figuring out do well with that hour, lessons more, but then figure that out and cool, point them to that hour to try to engage and then figure out the rest, the calls, the FaceTime, the Zoom calls, the Google Hangouts, the whatever you're doing, the Facebook groups to keep them engaged, talking, opening up and praying together. So anyway, that's all that's good. You know, some of the things that we're trying to figure through and we're learning from Disney Channel is how to help create that kind of interesting excitement going into Easter where we're even talking about, hey, so we're gonna give you prompts for watch parties, kind of like what they do. It's like, hey, High School Musical 2 is coming out, post your own deal, and obviously get together. But if we're even like, alright, so how do we get this kid space? You guys are looking to leverage, which I've not heard from any church, that one hour for the whole spectrum. That's what we're trying to do.

Yeah, yeah, and it's we're trying and I'll tell you this, we, uh, there's two things. There's also a parallel conversation going on. A lot of churches tried this, I think this past weekend, but if the whole drive-in, the whole drive-in church scenario, I'm sure you, that's a whole other paradigm, a whole other thing that's happening. We saw four or five churches did it this weekend and I think, is it more buzz worthy? Is it more just so the news station can cover it? Sure, and I'm all about that. I'm all about the press release and the headline and getting, you know, there's strategies for that that I love exploring because I said I want to be on the headline news. Yes, I do, you know, because I think that get the gospel out. But to is we're trying to figure out, we had a series. I'll tell you kind of something that we had to can a trash. The kids had a series leading up to Easter called Tag You're It, okay? We had a little invite card with a little hand, you know, like the little foam hands, the foam hands number one. We had a little invite card that had tag was great because people, they would write the name of the person they're inviting and they would give it to the friend. Tag you're it, right? Campaign. Now we had to can a as far as physically because there's no tagging going around. There's no, you know, but now we're working, this is a week we're do, we do hashtag you're it, right? Is there a place you hashtag your it or find? We're trying to figure that out of how to do. Now the kid demographic is there for it. Do we engage the parents? Then that's why that came. We got engage the parents, engage the kids because the kids are not necessarily searching through Instagram. It depends what age, but the audience we're looking for. So we're trying to figure leading up to Easter, how does the invite look and get? And if you could put all your eggs in one basket, it's like, let's push it to that hour. Let's make that out of the best as all-inclusive as you can. And then aftermath of that, as I get, you want more of this? Yeah, we got zone, which is kids. You want students? We got this. We've got, you want couples in marriage? Then there's the aftermath of we're here for you. Like I said earlier, we're here to help you, know, here's how to help, but here's our solution right here. Here's how we can help you. So we're still navigating all that. We don't have all the answers, but by the time you hear this, pull this up, GFC Florida dot com, you'll see what we did.

One of the things that you talked about with us earlier is how you guys were able to engage folks on the giving front and this time. And yeah, you can from from experience, a lot of churches, this is something that every church has a big ol question mark on their head. They're like, now we can't pass the book at this past weekend, you know, some of our people, they're engaging for the first time with online giving. How else can we engage our people? No, it's a good, relevant and important question for sure. No doubt. I think when people are just look at the lines at the gun stores, right? There's a fear. There's a hoarding. They're like, oh, the zombies are coming. So they're, it's a weird, so there's a natural bunker down, stock up, and God calls us still to spirit of generosity, right? So there's so hot, how do you, so for us it's two things. We've looked at, we don't want to come across like a telethon, coming across, and right now I call this number and you do this and you do that. There's that tension because it could be, remember, people are watching this for the first time. There's still that, and that's important because this is a witnessing and evangelistic tool. The other part of it is how do you leverage the existing core? So we've, our team's been working on on the following. We've looked at the list, poor folks have given for the first time the last three months for the first time, okay? There's an email and a text message drafted strategically to them and saying, hey, you want to say thank you? Your twenty dollar gift, a lot to do A, B, and C, and then now's the time to give again. We're not meeting physically, but blah blah blah, and I can just, and it gives you, here's where you can click, and again, these are obviously personalized emails with their names and all the tools that are available out there. So that's one. Then there's the ones, the folks who are reoccurring givers, okay? And how do you communicate to them saying thank you? Sometimes the best ask is the same thank you, right? So and specific thank you. Hey, which one, let you know that because of you, maybe seeing me, I'll tell you this, this is one thing we're leveraging. I'm just spewing now. We were able to help four churches this past weekend to church online, okay? As a great family church, we helped four churches. We're letting her congregation know that, right? That's kingdom vision. That's us. Hey, it's not even just about us. It's about getting this word out. It's about helping our friends and those, and that helps the folks who's reoccurring give or say, hey, this is what you're doing. It's because of you we can keep the internet going and strong. It's because of you that we got the staff that can, so that's it's very targeted, sit right, is very targeted. On the surface level, we say, hey, if you've never given, can see, this is how you can do it. Spell it out. We did a video explaining exactly how to do it that can come across sometimes a little like, you know, left term. It's necessary. I think those are conversations you have with CFOs and with senior pastors saying, hey, the tact and who are trying to reach and who, because some of it's like, listen, if we're worried about twenty people and they're the donors and they're the ones, guess what, we can still pick up the phone and we can call them. Like seriously, they're still bad that we can still make phone calls, you know? That's still not, so we've been averaging a little bit of a blanket of all and really thinking long term. There's the now, playing this now game of how do we partner with people, but the long-term game of like, we're introducing people to the church. If any Jesus, well, are we scaring them away from our buildings with everything we're doing, or are we saying, hey, these guys are actually pretty normal? They talk like real people. It looks somewhat normal. Let's maybe they'll come after. So that's that's just our initial thoughts come with that solid, that solid, and that's probably a lot more than then what a lot of churches are doing in the sense of engaging their people because there's, I don't want to call it an inherent guilt, but really there's fear of engaging givers in this kind of way because of what you're talking about with the telethon thing. And hey, we want people to be generous, but we're afraid to ask. And that's why we only talk about giving like once a year. But at the same time, we're afraid that if we don't talk about it, search doors are gonna close. By the time that the virus thing is up and left, that's right. No, and there's ton, obviously there's tons of studies to be done on this and that have been done. The age of the giver matters. How you talk to them, there's all of that, right? And and then also if they're watching the news and people are losing their jobs, guess what? We need to talk about benevolence to where the church, how are we doing that, okay? So it's not, it's not just, it's, I think we need to come in and say, hey, we're here for you, you know, we're here for you.

Doing that too, we're serving the elderly. Doing this, hey, if you have a benevolence request, text this and do this. Those offers and benevolence, it's reverse psychology are also helping. You know what, man? I need to give something. These people are helping that I can go myself, but if I give twenty or if I stick to my tithe, so I think there's just it's that it's sincere. I we can't make you do anything, but if you're church and that's the heart of your church and what you're doing, find those things to serve. That hasn't changed. We gotta find ways to serve our community. We got to find ways to serve our people. We have our staff on the phones, man. We broke down the list of room everybody. We're calling our folks checking in. You need anything? I know I'm just here to pray. You can't pray for you, and then we get back and we're praying on Google Hangouts or putting over the phone.

Well, I think we just gotta find different ways to serve as a result, and then obviously trust God, right? God's not surprised by this. He's not freaking out. He's not. You trust God and all of this, and that he's gonna provide and that and then his people, the money has always been there and he's feelings at all, so it's good.

Let me let me ask you a question and let's shift gears back to the actual service because I'm just curious. Is are you guys aiming for like your Easter service? Are you aiming for a typical seventy minutes, sixty, forty, thirty? Like what what do you guys think when you're looking at that age of service? What what is the actual flow and feel of it? What what are you aiming for?

Okay, so based on analytics from the past two years and then the analytic from the past two weeks, okay, we are looking at drop-off rates, engagement, place where are they watching, where they dropped? Do they care where do they fast-forward to? So everywhere we can get those analytics, we're studying them. As of right now, that's goodness to a forty-five-minute service. Okay, that's where we are right now. So it's not your traditional six songs on the front end and one because the environment is different. It's not conducive to this extended one because we're aware that we're trying to be very evangelistic to the new folks as well, okay? Easter is a gospel presentation. It's what happened on the cross and why it matters. So we know that it always is, now it's even more so. Therefore, we think less is more. And even those forty-five minutes, we're trying to make it engaging, different locations, fast-moving. The breaks are intentional, so they're not commercials, but they're also conducive transitions. That's where we are now. It's a it's gonna take some work, you know? We're actually in the middle of that right now, shooting some stuff tomorrow, next week, talking to. Oh, and another thing, how do you engage on the campus? Every campus pastor once should be a part of it. Sure, they sure they not all of the stuff. So we're finding creative ways. Do they make a cameo? Is there a funny video here that we can do that includes them? It check like, and it's important. People want to see their leaders. They want to see their passwords. They want to see their. So we're trying to find creative ways to do that. But we feel like after four, this is for us, and I say, you know, different audiences, different places. For us, forty-five minutes, they look great. It's easier to watch because even that's long, okay? Because we're in a YouTube under ten-minute duration situation, right? I think even that's long. But forty-five for an Easter experience celebration, and then it's easy to share too because I think it's easy for them to like, hey, pass this on, get this too. But that's where we are right now.

Yeah, you just gave some creative director a heart attack. They're there. They're already planning ninety minutes. You know, an extended Easter, and you just cut that crap in half. We listen, the past two weeks, we already, I know we freaked our team out, but again, it's work and its quality too, right? We went from six. We typically do six songs, five to six on a weekend. We went to three already. I mean, off the bat, we knew that three is is is is the new normal for us. But then how do we, how is it mixed? How does it look? How are the lyric interactions like? Are we doing something? We did some. We tried something different when we fill the screen but with video, and we're still messing with that. But um, but I think it's to just reproduce the normal is easier for sure. It is, okay? But really think of the family sitting in the living room or sitting in their bed and really speaking to them and really like me because that's how they're watching it. I mean, I think we lie to ourselves that they gather and they dress up and and it's cool if that's how the model you pushed. I'm awesome. Like, I think in general terms, I think that's how people are watching their pajamas. So they're cooking while they're watching. So it's being real about for now that experience and then how that grows and evolves into something different and something, you know, more improved.

So if somebody's getting started trying to figure out how to do church online, maybe they're, you know, a lot of what we're dealing with with the church digital is a lot of small, medium-sized churches. They're now just really asking questions as a result of coronavirus, and they're all deal with what Easter? No, no, no, no. There's a lot of people who are starting out in this world, man. I mean, God bless them for trying to figure it out. What's a good place to start? I like, don't don't look Jeff. Think I was joking. You've been great, man. You've been resourceful. I've sent some people your way. I still sent, you know, you've been very generous with the information, with the links. There's so much out there that you've done the research, the writing on, and spent the time you've been at it for for decades and decades. And they can't get it. Make you sound like they're older since the time was either Al Gore invented the internet. I'm not sure which one where we constantly fight about that in a regularly supporting the question. He is literally that's a great listen. I think this it goes back a little bit. If I were sincerely like, I helped my dad this week into church online for the first time. It's one spectrum, and I've helped some folks have smaller churches. I think it's it's don't expect to be the expert now and don't like, oh my God, a research, right? No, but this is the leadership principle. Find, go, go lock arms with somebody with somebody younger, typically, because they got a smarter phone that you. That's why the only reason they're smarter because their phones may be a little better. And I find somebody's got a phone. You can do this on a phone, on a phone, and I even you didn't even stand for it. Lean it up against something. I mean, there are really simple ways. But I think even to put the pressure on yourself, I think it's break out of that is know, find someone to find somebody younger, develop that, and it guess what? There's ministry happening there. Oh, but I can't get out of the house or we could figure something out. Listen, I'll give you an example. My dad is shooting a video on his phone by himself from Miami, okay? He is what's acting it to me. I told him that you got a preacher under two minutes because WhatsApp only takes ten-minute videos. He's what's sapping it over to me, okay? I'm gonna overlay some little graphic and a song. That's boom. I used Video Rama and iMovie on my phone. Call phone Video Rama and iMovie on my phone, send it back to him or probably I think we talked about him giving you the credentials to his Facebook login post. Good. I mean, so he's leaning in. I know I'm leaning into other folks. I don't, I don't, I'm gonna TikTok, but I could care less and I don't know. I'm meaning, you know, yeah, hey, do something with this. We need to get, give it, got to give it away. Give ministry away. I think in return from a tech and then culture, when you don't know anything else, the Easter services is a key component. But what happens a lot of times and air that you touched on it briefly with the follow-up and the accountability are working with staffs and so like I just want to talk about maybe as we're walking into the seats or service, what does follow-up look like? What does how do we engage with first-time guest visitors? How do we even figure out who these people are? How do we discover who people are that are watching the broadcast? You know, an array and a Christ Fellowship Miami, you guys have done a lot of interesting things along those lines as well. And so I'd love to maybe just hear from both you guys what that discovery process looks like, what follow-up can look like, how to get them connected into next steps. Like Easter is only as good as what happens the next week and the ability for us to funnel people to you know a discipleship process is key. So you know what could that look like centered here around some of these Easter services?

Well, let you go first, right? Yeah, you know, for us it's been, and we talked about this before, and maybe some of you checked out the article that I wrote about this on just on the site. We have a singular digital connection card that we try to funnel them through. That's available that we put in the broadcast, maybe about three times. Like I preached about this connection card in the broadcast. We do in the intro and make sure on an outro, which a lot of you probably, especially we'd been doing an online service, probably do. You probably do like a small twenty-second spill to kick off the mess, to kick off the service, something in between, and then something to close. And in each of those things, I am pushing our URL, which is CF Mommy org slash online. And I'm telling them to fill out a connection card there at the website for any kind of next step, whether it's a prayer request, whether it's, you know, hey, I want to get connected to a group, I want to take our one-on-one class, whatever. This way, if they're watching it on YouTube, if they're watching it on our website, if they're watching it on a church online platform, if they're checking it on Facebook Live, they're all getting the same message that after the broadcast that they need to go fill out that connection card.

We offer a free gift, which is a download of like one of our worship team songs. This way we can kind of be similar to what we do in our regular in-person services where we offer a gift. So I can't, especially with finances the way they are, we have people that are watching us around the world. Sometimes I can't ship a mug to the opposite side of the planet. Just good that would probably like kill like a lot of my budget. But um, but what I can do is I can give them instantly a free download in that moment. And one of the things, you know, it doesn't have to be a song. So your worship team, you know, you may not have a worship team. This recorder original music, cool. Have your pastor write like, here are three spiritual ways, you know, that you can engage God, turn it into a PDF and offer that as a download. You know, when we were kids and I would listen to, you know, a pastor on the radio and say things like, hey, if we send five dollars here, John MacArthur will send you a book. Great. Create a digital form of that offer it for free and give it away. That honestly to me, it's a great way to connect with people. The same strategy that used for your in-person services, use online. That's worked out for us. That's good stuff.

You know, and so something our team is working on along the same lines, Ray, hoping we can execute by then, is really trying to Reese, and I'm in that demographic now because I've got four young kids under eight, four boys under it. So my wife's my hero, crazy town. So if you can resource myself, my wife and I, it's good stuff to talk about, color, draw, boom. I mean, you name it, a schedule. So we're talking about how do you resource the cabin fever? Like how do you resource the games? But but all again with purpose, right? Because it serves as we're providing the tool, it's Bible lessons, it's color.

So they're navigating some of that to provide as a download. Hey parents, click here to download ABC and D is scheduled for this week. A game idea is blank, you know, Wednesdays, you know, family fun night on Fridays, all the stuff that. So I'm hoping that comes out because I need, so I need another thing is this. Sometimes you forget that in social media that email and text are a huge, still part of social media, like huge hoops. Sometimes we just think it's, yeah, we think it's just, so it's just, you know, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter or, but man, so I think we've been leveraging tons and our older demographic with text and email. They're still, and we're looking at how do we write better emails. It's a great time to figure out how to write better emails. That's right. What matters, you know, Donald Miller talks, you know, if you've never done his marketing course on its subject, it's the first line and it's the PS. Those are the three things. Like so for us, it's like, okay, how do we write these emails so they actually get read, so they actually get clicked on, so they actually get, because you know, you can tell through analytics and all that if they're doing that. So we're really spending some time on engaging there and the text message ratio of how, how to get people, you know, asking questions, boom, we're trying to open a concierge service. So instead of calling the front line, how do they text in any prayer? This I need that is their service. There's so there's a 24/7 receptionist. It's good, helping them answer questions and do what they do. So we're we're trying to figure all that, keep the engagement going and keep people connected.

Yeah, you know, a lot of churches, I should say a lot, some churches are moving towards that concierge service kind of embedded on there, like it's Intercom dot IO is a service. I don't know, is that what you guys are using? Air, it is. Do you know? I don't. I've heard of them. I don't think we are, but that's a great service. I heard, yeah, so Intercom, do two M's on comm is an example of that. We'll include it in the show notes. That's a great line on the Donald Miller, the the subject, the first line and yes, in the PS, the PostScript down at the bottom. Very, very cool. Well, hey man, this this has been a great podcast. I feel like we are landing the plane here, wrapping up on Easter. Either way, happy Easter, you know, I've been seeing like people thrown around like virtual egg hunt, like things and types of thing for the kids. Do you want, it was that what you're gonna talk about, Aaron?

Yeah, I was just as I'm talking about it, I'm like, yeah, there should be a virtual egg hunt. Some room, maybe we should launch it there. There's something I can find out eggs on your site. My kids, that's funny. Like my kids, Taekwondo, my son's Taekwondo things actually doing it. We're in it's not a church, but what they do every year is they put like discounts and coupons in the in the Easter eggs and so everybody wants to do the Easter eggs because they're getting 50% off some clothing or 25% off a private lesson or something like that. And so like the Easter egg hunts like a big deal for them all the time. What date is what they just announced is that you can drive by and pick up the Easter eggs, um, wherever, and then basically at whatever the time is, everybody's gonna jump on Zoom and and you, your kids hunt for the egg. So you hide the eggs and then at the prescribed time, everybody goes on Zoom and everybody can see like everybody hunting for the eggs in the yard. And it was just this really kind of, alright, so like we can't actually do an egg hunt in an area with like 25 or even 100 kids because of, or even three kids, but I matter because of, you know, the whole social distancing thing. But we can create some energy around that, going played that video on social media to allow for for different interaction or do things creatively within that space. So maybe consider doing some some things like that. Even I want to borrow that. I'm gonna borrow that idea. That's a good one. I like awesome. Everybody, martial arts, you can totally give them credits. Awesome. By the way, he heard Miami, it's just the cheap plug. Like they they are incredible and they've done great things with with my kids. Come on down, call this number.

Hey, hey, one thing I just had, this is on the podcast or not, they made, we did one time at the staff at church in Miami. We wanted to drive traffic to her app. We introduced a new app. Nobody was downloading any. We're like, so we lined up with Easter two years ago, actually. We did an Easter egg hunt inside the app, meaning that we literally bury little icons in different pages of the app. We said there are 40 eggs in the app, and then we figured out a way that the minute somebody landed on that page, we knew we took it out, right? So we had a guy who work in the bathroom and literally, so it drove, man, I was hundreds of people downloaded the app to just do that, and then we gave prizes. It was just a way to drive the goal was driving people to the app, right, then Church online. But there's ways to be, you know, creative and figure out. Barry, what you can do is in your Instagram page, go comment on a post from a year ago, drop a little egg on a comment, let people find it. So it's a way to drive traffic to your account, you know, I'm saying. Taekwondo calm slash Jeff, yeah, get a, you have to like, like all seven, and their people are home and they're home looking for stuff to do. Let them do it on your page. That's exactly, yeah, very cool.

All right, hey, Ray, is related in the plane. Any closing thoughts? I, yeah, as many of you are thinking about planning your Easter services online, just continue to think through how you're engaging people socially on the week to week, especially in terms of clear communication. One of the things we discussed at the beginning of this podcast is that Grace Family has already been made the decision that they are going fully online for Easter Sunday, whether or not we can reopen. Having that kind of clear communication right now will prevent people from showing up on a Sunday on Easter Sunday and then getting that disappointment of getting turned away. But number two, it will help them invite somebody else to watch with them. So make sure if you can get in room with your leadership, pray it through, make the decision, and then clearly communicate that decision this week as soon as possible.

Yeah, I mean, there's it's very difficult at this point to juggle multiple scenarios, and you spend so much energy trying to keep that backup scenario that you know isn't gonna work out. Even even if the buildings do pan back up, the the throng of people are not gonna want to go out, and especially being a large room and in situations like that. So you know, I, you know, as much as I can from the outside, call it shut it down. Just be aware, be sensitive to what's going on, and what you'll find is that clarity of vision is gonna help your staff, your teams, your volunteers execute most more clearly on the vision at hand. So of course, I'm not involved in any of your church leadership sand, therefore have nothing to gain from this other than the guy who's just stirring the pot. But go ahead and call it. Let's just uh, land a plane and kind of move off of that. That's cool. Aaron, s, man, as we're wrapping up, in any any last thoughts? And you're in no. A thanks, thanks for the opportunity to hang out, to learn. I've learned as much as I've been able to share. So thanks for sharing. Like I said, these are, you know, things we're navigating. We don't have it all figured out, but we're always asking. We like to early adopt, take risks. I think it's a good, it's a good time to take risks, man. And I think pastors listening, oh, we shall not forsake the gathering. You're not, you're not still gathering. It looks different, it feels different, and everything you've been taught is maybe kind of, but it's not. You're not. I think there's more connection and everything. The entire industry from the dating industry to everything to retail shows you that the connection to counseling happening via text, people are still gathering now, and we can get into the hole. But don't, don't think you're doing that by shutting it down or by Councillor by pushing it all online and digital. And because God, God's gonna use it. He has in the past and he'll continue to do that. So awesome. Well, hey man, this has been a great podcast. Artists, I've once again, I mean, I've always loved hanging out with you, Evan. Yes, here here on the on the podcast. By the way, if you want to keep in touch with artists, Instagram's the best way. Air dispelled here dot 200 head and message on Instagram and tell him that he owes me $650 plus interest from, mm, what are we? We're almost $2,600 interest. There's gotta be something substantial happening right there financially. And then it does now, especially how much bones cost. I mean, that felt like a lot more money. I ruin camp because basically we were, it was the year was 2000, 2001, it was somewhere around there, bro. Crazy. He was deaf was hanging out by the, he was, you know, by the, wasn't the mud puddle, it was a mud pit. Or so a mud pit and a youth camp. He's hanging out, standing around. He's running tech production, producing this whole thing, you know, and you know, we're a little punk teenagers. We see, I'm standing there just kind of, you know, be Jeff. They were like, hey, so we gang up on him and we toss him into the mud pit. All my word, it was horrible. It took a few of us. We got him in there, and then he walks out full of mud with the camera, pulls it out from his pocket, this drain trash. So we were super guilty, and that night, and I think you get him in Memorial right for the camera. It was awesome. Very good sport.

Oh no, I was a great sport until the camp was over, then I was like, who the garbage is gonna be paid for my camera? Because this came out or like my money here. Okay, anybody actually ever paid for that? I need to go before the projects wraps up. Did you all huddle around the campfire crying, tossing the same branch in over repentance over this camera? Is that what happened? I could sing of Your love forever, bro. Like going to do with Easter. But this has been very therapeutic. It is now. Well with my soul. Thank you so much. Let's bring it full circle, and we're gonna land a plane right there for Arid. This for Ray. This is Jeff with the Church Digital Podcast. Thanks for joining us again, and we'll see again next time here on the podcast. You have a good day.