EP061: Kids, Students, & Church Online

All right, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planting. This is Jeff here. We've got another great episode set up for you. Here we're going off topic a little bit. In off topic, we always go off topic. I don't even know what the topic is of this podcast anymore. From church online, the digital church, to church planting, to on mission—like it's been a very wide variety of topics lately. It's been fun. And in this, I don't know if we're allowed to have fun in this coronavirus season. That just got awkward there for a second. But I've really enjoyed this podcast, working alongside Ray and creating content for a lot of you out there. And I've enjoyed hearing how these contents, these podcasts, the blogs, all the resources that we're sharing, the webinars—how they are making a difference out there in churches like yours and in your church. So thank you for that. Let us know, hit us up on social media. The Church Digital on all platforms—Instagram, Twitter. It's Deer Fed, and that's my personal account. Jeff Read backwards to your veg. In case you didn't put that together, would love to hear from you on that.

So hey, with this episode, I went back close to home: Christ Fellowship Miami, where Radio Armas is the digital pastor. We did a deep dive here in the episode. Ray is really proud, you know, as much as one can be proud in ministry, and not calling him out, but he's really proud of the effort that the kids and students have done, the ministry directors and the leaders and the staff, how good a job they've done in this season of creating content, of doing ministry, of engaging in two-way conversations through the kids and student ministries. And so we wanted to highlight kids and student ministries, talk about maybe some of the challenges, some of the issues, some of the hurdles, some of the successes that we've seen in kids and students. And I thought, hey, I love Christ Fellowship and we love the church. Would love an opportunity to, you know, sit down with some of the staff and kind of hear how they are doing kids and student ministry in this coronavirus season, what the ministry looks like on Church Online. And so into the conversation, of course, Radio Armas, digital pastor, Christ Fellowship Miami, but including Ileana Syl G, who's the weekend experience director for kids ministry. They have a weekend experience director for kids. Like, this is phenomenal stuff. And Tony Cobb, who's the ministry director of student ministry—basically the guy who's in charge of the thousand plus students that Christ Fellowship Miami reaches across all campuses. And so it's a phenomenal conversation dealing with kids and students. But we also talked a lot about small church, big church. We talk a lot about one-way versus two-way communication. Like, there's a lot of popular themes that we've been talking about here in the podcasts and blogs, and then lately in the season, creating good content, but in addition to the content, have the conversation with it as well. Don't just create content and forget the relational aspects. Relational is so important as well. So you're gonna hear a bunch of that in the podcast, and I can't wait for you to hear it.

So hey, we got Radio Armas, digital pastor, Christ Fellowship Miami; Ileana Syl G, weekend experience director; Tony Cobb, ministry director for students; and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, in a conversation that I'm calling "Kids, Students, and Church Online."

Okay, everybody, here you go.

Yeah, so my name is Tony, and I am a ministry director for students. And yeah, I've been here for a couple years. And yeah, I got four kids and a lovely wife, Rachel, and we're in the middle of coronavirus homeschooling like everybody else. Fun.

Yeah, so for kids, probably I noticed you're in the office. You're still going out to the office now. That's across the street for you, so that's not that far, right?

Right, I literally walk across the street. So don't panic. I'm in the city of Miami, Florida, but two houses down from the office. And to make this thing happen without children running around and screaming, we went ahead and walked across the street. So yep.

Yeah, much appreciation for that. And so we've also got Ileana Syl G here on the podcast as well. Maybe just tell a little bit about yourself and what you do with Christ Fellowship Miami.

Alright, so my name is Ileana, and I am the kids weekend experience director. And that involves planning all curriculum, all what we call tag-ins, but they're pretty much just mini events that the kids do for the weekend. And then I help distribute all information of anything kids-related to all of our campuses. So that's part of my role. And then also part of my role is not only the teaching aspect of curriculum, but also the applying aspect—meaning, okay, kids, we taught you this. Now, how can we apply it? And then some of that includes partnering with our missions. And then every month we have a different mission. So awesome.

Yeah, that's—I love that, partnering with missions and working, you know, even locally, and helping kids understand kind of what it means to be on mission even at an early age. That's a really sweet thing.

So the reason for the podcast, you know, is what—like we talked about—is, well, first off, you know, all you guys, both you guys work at Christ Fellowship Miami, where Ray is the digital pastor. And straight up, Ray is very proud of what Christ Fellowship is doing in the context of kids ministry and student ministry in this coronavirus season. And even churches that I work with, often some of them have been looking at Christ Fellowship, looking at how you guys are doing kids and student ministry, and what it looks like to really engage in and do ministry with these age groups when you're not able to physically gather. And so, you know, I wanted to give Ray just an opportunity here to talk through with you guys, to ask some questions, and really dig into what kids ministry, what student ministry looks like at Christ Fellowship Miami, and what lessons are we learning from this. Because there—I mean, there's always room for improvement, there's always something. But a lot of times, the churches that we work with, they may not even know where to start in this. We'll kind of go back and forth between kids and students because, you know, there's so much to dive into, and we're gonna get through as much as we can today.

The reason is both kids and students at CF have done a good job of not just building content, but trying to create community around the content. You know, there's—and that's really been the key with Church Online the entire time that Jeff and I have been doing this podcast: you know, compelling content is one thing, and we want churches to create that, but really creating and centering community around it is a big deal. And from the get-go, as soon as you know this whole thing was announced—that we're not having church this weekend—you know, that was happening a couple weeks ago. Both students and kids dove into plans to execute not just as fast as possible, but as excellently as possible, to make sure that they had both content and community up for that weekend. And so that's one of the reasons why I was super—why I still am so proud of what we're doing—because not only have they created plans, but they've been adaptable and shaping those plans. And so, you know, Ileana, just kind of take us through the process. Like, from day one, like what that looked like for you guys that Friday a few weeks ago when all that happened, and then, you know, kind of walk us through some of that, what that's looked like for kids.

So, you know, Ray was part of some of the communication with this. And originally, we thought we would just post a lesson online. We thought, okay, that's the easiest. Maybe that's—so they're making all the noises and she's freaking out. Okay, anyway. So we thought originally we'll just post a lesson. And even Ray challenged us. He's like, okay, why don't you guys just do CF Kids Online? We used to do it in the past. Why not do it now? And then he even suggested, let's do one that we have in the archives. My hesitation with that was we had built so much momentum for the series that we were in, and our kids were crazy excited to the point of like—they, I felt like there was—they were so engaged with what we're doing. The "All In" series, we're teaching them our CF Kids values and even about generosity. And every week we kept seeing more and more and more kids engaged with it. That we thought, okay, if we just threw in a random lesson, it would lose momentum of the series. So we decided, let's continue our series. Let's record something. And then that way, our kids have some form of normalcy. And that's the other thing with kids, you know, you need that. And it helps them to calm down, especially in this season. They're confused. I don't know what's going on. And so we very, very quickly wrote up a script and recorded that. I think we recorded Friday and then posted Saturday. And then we thought, okay, let's not just have the lessons available. What can we do to allow parents to engage with the kids afterwards?

So right now, I guess what we've been mainly focusing on is obviously providing the content that we would have provided on the weekend, and then engaging parents to be that lead. The next step is trying to figure out, like, you guys are ready to discuss, like, how do we have a sense of community? And some of the things that we've been doing that kind of have been happening that way is our fifth-grade leadership. So we've also had other leaders create videos for that. They send it out, and our original intent was the same thing: send it out, let people let the kids watch the video and engage with it, you know, with the content that they could download. But then we found our leaders, or fifth-grade leaders, wanted to teach their class. They're like, I don't care if this is happening. I want to teach it. And so some of them, with the actual director of the campus, all do what we're doing now. They're doing Google Hangout or Zoom with the parent there as well, and they teach their lesson. And that was actually pretty cool. And then we got screenshots of all these kids on the screen, and they're so engaged. And again, it's just that idea of normalcy, of like, no, I still want to learn this leadership principle. Like, I don't care if I have to be at my house. And then to help that, we also sent them—every time we learn a new value, they get a bracelet. So we mailed them all their new bracelets that way. Again, they just feel like we're continuing. We're not freaking out. This is normal. So that's what we've been doing with kids, man.

You know, that's so special that you guys have really not let some of these things that are going on—social distancing and everything else—become barriers that you can't break through in terms of creating that kind of community. And then, how are you guys working that out with the parents of the fifth-grade leadership, like in terms of getting the permission to do said, you know, Zoom hangouts or Google Hangouts and all that?

It's communication from the director. They—the director and the leader. So we were about three months into our leadership program, and in general, from the very beginning, there has to be communication between the parents and the teacher. And so that relationship has already been built. So that it's easy for them to say, hey, and you know the parent's name, can we do this thing? Obviously, see what the parent permission is. The only way that they can log on. And then with the director monitoring it or the other leader, they—it's a way to manage that. Like, I heard what Tony was saying. It is scary. Like, how do you—

Manage it, especially dealing with kids. I probably wouldn't do something like that for anybody any other age group except for fifth grade. That's good. So there are limitations to this. Just to be clear, for the rest of our audience, there are clear limitations as to which age groups you, that even as an organization, we feel comfortable doing this with. For sure. And I think about how teachers are doing this right now. They're doing the Zoom calls too, and God willing, the parent is there to make sure nothing unsavory is happening. So that's fair enough. How that came about, yeah, my child's first grade teacher had a Zoom call this past week with the class, and it was a good way for them to create community. The teacher was on, but both Lauren and I were behind the iPad in the same way, just making sure that everything was cool. And what it did, honestly, like I didn't expect this, what it did for my six-year-old, I mean her complexion, everything was just through the roof. Like, man, other kids to interact with right now, especially in an area where it's like, man, I can play with the kids on my block, but I can't really play with anybody else. So that's really great that you guys are doing that, Tony. You know, you guys did a great job in creating content, but not just that. Like since then, it's exploded into this multi-platform, seven-day-a-week interaction type deal with students, man. Talk to us as far as like where it started and where now, and how that's gone, because to me it's just been, it's almost like you guys became a TV network overnight. You know, where it's like we got seven-day-a-week programming, we've got lots of opportunities for you to engage and interact. It's just been so monumental to me. So tell us about, we got to give you guys props. I forgot, you know, Jeff and Ray and you guys, I don't know where our church and where the world would be without guys like you guys, because you know, there was a digital world that the church we kind of knew about, but without you we would have been dead in the water. And so just thank you guys for setting up things like this resources, because when all this stuff hit, man, we truly would have been out on our own and just lost. And so maybe because of you guys, you're helping a ton of us out. And so honestly, like all the stuff that we've been doing at students, it was a platform that was established long ago by, you know, the folks at like Church Online. We got to use like a great platform and just plug and play all of our content that we've been doing. You know, our church has fantastic facilities, so we can use, you know, the multi-camera setup and switchers and all that kind of stuff, which we have. We've made this public in Miami. But if you're in Miami and you're hearing this, we have opportunities for you to come and record. And so if you're still looking for a place and you don't have a place to come and do that, and we'd love to help you out. So we are, we're just taking stuff that we're seeing other people doing and repurposing it and repackaging it, because we're lost in a sense that we're trying to figure this out as well. We've done a lot of teaching from the Bible. You know, we've done a lot of relational ministry and student ministry, but this is something brand new to us. We're in a world where students get their content primarily from a different source than us. They get it from YouTube. They get it from social media. And so what's happening is we're having to compete with the likes of somebody who gets millions and millions of followers, and all of a sudden we have to jump in that game. And so we're having to figure out on the fly, you know, essentially rebuilding an airplane that's already flying. It's craziness, but it's, and so I appreciate you giving us props because it's just one of those things where there are days where we feel like we're failing miserably at this, and there are days that we feel like, man, that that kind of work. And so over the past couple of weeks, we've tried a lot of things. And so just a couple of things that we try, so we obviously wanted to keep our consistent format from what we do. Our primary service on Friday night, so we wanted there to be some consistency. I love what Ileana said, our kids are thriving for something normal, some normalcy in their life. And so what our kids see is, you know, it's church. What is it that that feels normal? So a message feels normal, worship feels normal, small groups feel normal. And so that's what we tried to throw out immediately as good as we could. And so we had somebody teach a message. We put that on Instagram Live. Apparently you could do that. We never knew. I mean, Ray helped us out. We jumped on that pretty quick. We did the Church Online platform. We had some worship in the can, is what you call it. We had some pre-recorded worship, but that backfired really quickly. Because in the worship set, there were kids in it. So that Friday night, we had canceled service and said, hey, we're gonna go all online. And there were kids in the worship set. And so in the chat, there are a bunch of kids saying, hey, you guys lied to us. There's a bunch of kids in the set. So that backfired. So the next week, it happened, by the way, like people, I was in the chat with Tony. People were upset, thinking that we had some kind of, I don't know, like underground worship set where it's like all the real, like, yes, Oaks came together and worship God and recorded this, you know, but it's air. You'd search and not invite me. I mean, for real, that's exactly what it felt like. It was. And so it's a, we've had a lot of these conversations where it's, if you're not failing, you're not trying. And so that was one of those. We were like, sure, yeah, that was one of those that makes sense. We told everybody we canceled church, and there was, I mean, literally, I think the opening line from Kevin, our worship leader, was, hey, alright, so you have students stand up to your feet and come to the front. And I was like, but we're not there anyways. So yeah, so we did, you know, try to create that normalcy. And so worship, message, small groups, to make it feel like what we do every Friday night. And so then what we did was we were just getting, we were listening to kids, listening to leaders, and that's what we've been doing this whole time. And so I'm thirty-eight years old. I'm way past the age of kids that we were ministering to. And so one of the things that I'm learning is, you know, I need to hear their feedback and listen to what they're wanting and what they're needing, what their parents are wanting and needing. And so that's what we've been doing. We've been trying to get, you know, what is it that you're needing? And taking that and applying it. And so kids were like, hey, we want something. Is there any way we could do something every day? And so we took that and ran with it. We said, okay, let's do something every day. It doesn't take that much from us. And so we started, what could we do every day? Just a quick Bible study. Or there's a lot of kids in trouble. A lot of kids like, you know, that the word lonely kept coming up. Like, we're just alone, we're by ourselves, isolated. And so we said, okay, let's have an opportunity to pray for kids and things like that. So Tuesdays and Thursdays, we send, hey, what can we pray for you about? And then we just go on Instagram Live and we just pray. And that itself has been fantastic. Wednesdays, we do, you know, we do a TikTok challenge where we just throw it out and kids can interact and engage with us. And the Fridays, we do, you know, we do our normal service where we have message. And then Mondays, we have our student directors where they bring like a little devotion and encouragement and things like that, sort of engaging our kids all throughout the week. But what I tell our team is this: there are things, and Jeff and Ray, I'm sure you guys know this, there are things that are going to be created in the next month that haven't been created yet. And so eighty percent of what we do now will change. Well, eighty percent of what we do now is gonna stay the same is what I say. But twenty percent of what we do is going to change every week because it's going to have to adapt to what people are coming out with and new tools and new tricks. And it's going to have to be us listening and putting our ear to the ground and figuring out how to do ministry in this season. We've got to be consistent and we've got to stay steady, but at the same time, we've got to be able to grow with people that are smarter at this than us. And I think that's the flexibility that's going to allow us to grow in this season and not rigidness is going to hold us back. And it's going to be the control that's going to keep us from driving and being fantastically great in this season. But it will be the ability to say, okay, that twenty percent that has to be different, it's going to make us even better. And so I've challenged my team, like every week, you have to come up with something new. What are we gonna do new this week? And they're like, is that gonna be every week? Every week, until we get through this season, we're gonna do something new. We're gonna engage a kid differently. We're gonna do, you know, something. So I mean, that's kind of our format. We're gonna engage kids on a daily basis, you know, from their feedback. We're gonna keep consistent with our service. But I honestly, we are engaging something every week. We're gonna do something new, try something new, and it may fail, you know, ninety percent of the time, but we're gonna figure out how to connect with our kids. So it's good. So real quick, for both Ileana and Tony, what are some of the feedback loops that you guys have opened up to get some of this? Because I think it's great that both of you are staying, you know, just ready and adaptable, but not a lot of people are used to, especially administratively, hearing from their people what it is that they need and what it is that they want that they'll actually interact with. And so what are some of the feedback loops that you guys have opened yourself up to that you would recommend to other church leaders as well? Well, so we got parents who were actually taking pictures or videos of their kids watching the online service. And this week, we just got a video from a kid. He gave us the feedback, and he's like, it's great, you guys did a good job, but I need more worship. And we're like, oh, okay. So taking that into consideration, we're adding more worship. And so we have been finding that people have been finding us actually to give us that feedback, messaging our directors. Or directors would then tell us, hey, this is feedback I got from this parent, this is feedback I got from this kid. And that has been really helpful because we're tailoring it for that exact audience. So that's worked out pretty well. It's good. Sorry, the same. I mean, it's a novel idea. Holy cow, we just gonna pick up a phone and we call people? No, so first week, we actually had all of our directors call every single one of our students in our database, which was crazy amounts, was thousands of kids. And the feedback that we got just from that was incredible. And just the amount of love and support that families felt was fantastic. And so that was the feedback that started it all. And so then we are, what we'll continue to do is we create a parent group. So just like this, like this Zoom call, will create a specific group for different campuses. We'll select parents and say, hey, we want to invite you on to a conversation, maybe once a week, to say, hey, what are you seeing? How are you? How is this engaging your kids? So from a middle school parent...

To a high school parent and just give us feedback and and and just unbridled, hey, here's the questions. Before we ever jump on this, we want you to see how this is working. And so that's how we're going to both novel ideas, and it's, you know, it's great both of you are getting feedback from different sources. And yet, you know, one is unsolicited and then one is completely solicited.

It's funny, Tony, because last week Jeff and I had a conversation with with artists who is basically the creative director for exert some contaminate phone calls, and like literally told influencers, hey, we want you to repost. He's like, you know, for us there is no means of old-school and new-school right now. There's a means of just communicating out to our people and just doing whatever it takes to kind of get in that kind of engagement with them. So I think it's great that both of you are taking different approaches to get in touch with our folks.

So now what are some of the challenges that we're noticing in terms of that can that community aspect? What are some of the challenges that we're seeing? Ilyana, you want to break down some of that in terms of kids? Like, what some of the challenges that you guys are wrestling through now and what are some ways that you're doing to take on those challenges coming up?

So we're trying to build community right now through our Instagram. However, the challenge is that that has never, our kids Instagram specifically, has never really been poured into as much as it is now. So we don't have the following, you know, the followers. We don't have just consistency, and that's like the key word. And Rae, you always challenge me. Without you, you always say like it when I present a new idea, you're like, that's fine, but it needs to be consistent. That way you build momentum. That way people know. And right now I think that's the challenge is letting our parents know that we're even here and finding that consistency, which we have not found yet.

I would say students, I mean, Tony, you could speak more into this, but students had a pretty good following on their Instagram. And so kids are used to going there and seeing the content and they know exactly what to do. But now we're finding we have to kind of train our parents where to go. Like, hey, guys, this is where you go. And on top of that, then you have to go to this other page for more information or more resources or more. And so that's what we've been working on, and it's been a challenge.

And adjusting, full transparency, sometimes I find myself comparing to. I follow a lot of other kids ministries and just seeing the consistency with their Instagram page and the amount of parents that engage. And I'm like, I want to be there. But I have to realize too, it takes time. And I think this is, it was something we always wanted to do, but I think this season is what's gonna push us to start doing it and then God willing afterwards continue to do it too, because we see the importance. We see parents engaging. We read their comments when we present something.

We started bedtime stories on Wednesdays at 6:30. And even that, we posted it like 6:45 because the video wasn't uploading and there was all this like, we're just trying to be consistent. So that's been the biggest challenge I think out of everything.

Let's go back up. Pause, pause out. What's bedtime stories? Okay, so like Tony has the Instagram plan, or Instagram plan is to at least post to fun crafts for families to do together and then Mondays and Fridays. And then every Wednesday, have we read the Jesus Storybook Bible with like, we want our parents to engage with their kids by reading it. So we have two directors reading the Jesus Storybook Bible. We play a game and then we do questions like, all right, guys, from the story you read, Jesus served others. What are ways that you, how are you, how can you serve others in the season? And then we love you, bye bye guys, good night.

And it's also a way for our kids to see our directors too and see that they're still there. They're still available. That they care for them. And so that's something that we've been trying.

That's an awesome idea that didn't even cross my mind. I'm not that I'm like hanging out in kids content area, but the idea of doing like a bedtime story at night can and using the Jesus Storybook, which was such a phenomenal resource, we're link to it in the show notes. Like, that that's a great idea. Sure, and that's that's super easy. That's like grab an iPhone, put it on selfie mode, do a recording from your phone reading from a book.

Well, we did it with an iPhone. So yeah, we did it that way. We had the directors come in. We literally had an iPhone. All right, read. Tell me this bedtime story. Press start. They read the story, you know, fun. And I made it like they always do. And then we do close-ups on the picture the way the kids can see it. And then yeah, love that. That's a beautiful idea. I love it.

And you know, it's it's that kind of novel thinking that I'm telling you, it's it's gonna connect with parents. And I love, Ileana, that you were honest enough to kind of just talk about, hey, so this is something that we're building. We're working on this, you know. And so Tony, you guys have obviously you've been honing. You've been trying to build community for some time. How have you reached some of the benefits off of that in this? How has that worked out for you guys?

Yeah, I think, you know, that's an area that we're trying to get better at. I think we've, what we're finding is that's something our kids are really craving is that community aspect. Like I was saying before, you know, you have our kids have access to unlimited amounts of content. So we're just throwing our content and in in the mix of all of this now. And so they're responding. They connect with the with our content. But it seems like what they're craving is that relational element.

So what we've been trying to do is is find a great tool that that allows them to connect in the best way. Obviously, I think they still prefer that that face-to-face connection because it's it's the one thing that the church still provides that that social media and technology it hasn't been able to. But what what's happening now is is you're you're meshing the two. It's it's we're forcing the issue of of you have to be able to be relational through technology.

And so through it's things like this, through Zoom. So what we're trying out, and honestly, this is like right now on the fly, we're trying to test out beta test where we would do, you know, like church on lines platform where we would just do, you know, type in questions from our small group lesson and anybody engage. I would say probably 20% of the kids that were watching the message, but it wasn't, it wasn't really engaging. That was the feedback that we were getting. It wasn't like, man, that felt felt great.

But and so what we're trying to do now is see if if it's if we can take another step and say, okay, let let's try a platform like Zoom and see if we can, you know, utilize the breakout rooms or utilize the webinar format so where a kid feels like they're sitting in that in that circle in that small group space and engaging with their leader, someone who cares, someone who's going to connect with them on that consistent basis, especially during in this this time where they're isolated and they're, you know, they feel like they're alone. Someone who's going to be consistent in their life. Let's see if we can do that and and and then provide that leader tools and equip them with with better resources and see if that that can make the difference.

And so that's where we're at right now. And so we're gonna try to launch that really within the next week, trying to prepare and train our leaders to launch that.

So all right, so we have a lot of churches that maybe don't have a lot of the same resources that that listen to our podcast, you know, Christ Fellowship. We're very blessed to have, you know, an extensive kids and student department, partly because we're multi-site and we've got so many people in different locations. But I've worked for the church where the student guy, me at the time, was volunteer and our kids director was either part-time or volunteer.

And so in each of your ministries, I'm gonna start with Eliana. What would you say is like one next step that you would advise for them to try this week to help connect with their people? And it doesn't matter if it's old school or new school. What's one step that they can do to engage their people, especially during this time and know this crisis?

I definitely think you don't need a production crew or whatever to engage your parents. You're right, you could just use your iPhone. I honestly think it's something as simple as doing an Instagram live of the lesson or just even, hey, parents, just checking in. Want to make sure you guys are okay. How can I pray for you? Just creating the atmosphere where they can see the face of the director and that they're still finding a way to teach a lesson. But it doesn't have to be anything crazy.

Thankfully, kids aren't as vicious and things that they see online. So I don't think they'll mind if it's just Instagram live in your house and you're trying to teach the lesson. So I don't know how students, as students, are more unforgiving with that aspect. But that was something that I had shared with with our people too. I was like, it doesn't need to be crazy. Kids just want to see your face. They just want to see consistency. They just want to see that someone is giving their lesson and it's normal.

Yeah, it's funny, Eliana, you mentioned that because I was reflecting on the fact a couple weeks ago before school, you know, made that shift in that change. I was listening to a bunch of my older daughter's classmates talk about Ninja on Twitter. They were talking about him, you know, I mean, he's become like one of the biggest celebrities for the Fortnite superstar, all this stuff. They're literally, he's just used to be broadcasting on Twitch. Now he's now he's kind of shelling out some new platform. But it's just him playing video games, nothing else, nothing over there like that. That's it. The guy's making millions of dollars and kids are bought into it.

Like, and so I think what you're saying is 100% true, that it doesn't have to be this crazy over-the-top production. Tony, same question. Like, how so youth pastor who's volunteer or you know, part-time, pay full-time hours, huh? Like, what would be one thing that you would tell them, hey, man, here's your next step in terms of engaging your students if you've not started already?

Honestly, it's probably more the the relational connection and it's the consistency. So consistently, you know, relational like content. Like you can get content. Like you can connect with them, you know, if you want to do like a, yeah, you can do a FaceTime or WhatsApp or you know, you can even do, there's, you know, a free way of of doing Zoom and things like that. Like you can set up, just be consistent. You can do your own Bible study. You can do your own. But if you're not even equipped to do your own Bible study, grab somebody else's content and and and and throw it up there and just connect.

Like there's so many great features that allow you to connect nowadays. I think that if you just be consistent, what you'll find is, man, kids will, they're gonna, they're gonna jump on and really, you know, thrive off of that. They want to be needed and known. It's that's still true in the digital world as it was in the physical. People want to be needed and known. And so it doesn't, I mean, that's probably the benefit of the of the smaller church versus the giga church or the mega church or whatever is that it's a lot easier to know people on a personal level now and to be honest with you, the smaller church, they're much better at that than then say the bigger churches.

It's so interesting because the smaller church right now feels inadequate. And actually, I was on, I was on another podcast with somebody yesterday, not one.

Not one of mine. We were talking about this. The small church feels inadequate to be able to keep up because they're measuring themselves based on the content that the bigger churches are doing. I mean, Ilyana, at some level you even attested to that in this podcast where you're looking at other churches and the engagement that—that's what's happening. And so you're wishing you had that and working towards that, you know? The goal, I would imagine, in this coronavirus season we've touched on a little bit here—it's not broadcasting the one message. It's not that one-way communication. There's so much one-way communication right now. Disney Plus, Netflix, Hulu—these are all one-way communication. I can sit down, I can binge a show, and I can be as isolated as anybody else on the planet is right now, you know? I think the challenge for the church is that it is that two-way and figuring out how to engage in a two-way conversation, to interact. You know, some of the things that I love from this is even things like getting on a phone and calling. Tony, your words—a thousand people. I mean, I can't think of any lower-tech way to engage with someone than actually picking up the phone and actually trying to do a voice call. But at some level, like the value that it has, that shows that it enables them to have a conversation, to let them know that they're loved. And that binge-watching The Office or Friends on Netflix does not tell me I'm loved. That two-way conversation lets people know in this coronavirus season that I am loved. So I love that. Thanks, thanks for that. And in small church altar that's listening, there's definitely an opportunity to jump all over that because, to the point, bigger churches struggle to have that individual conversation. Because in Tony's situation, he's got a thousand kids. He's got to have an individual conversation with that. That is a logistical nightmare. A smaller church, you've got a huge opportunity to engage with people right where you are and not try to compete with the big, but use the strength of the small to have relationships in deep ways. Tony, I'm sorry I cut you off. You were saying?

Yeah, and I—and even more than that, I think there are things that a smaller church can teach the larger church. And so don't be afraid to do that. I said in this season, like we tell our staff, like our job profiles have all but been deleted. You know, we're all new. And so it's almost like the church world—our size of our churches have been deleted because it's all ambiguous now. How many people watch your messages is pretty ambiguous because it may mean something, it may mean nothing. Well, we'll see in three months. And so what's happening is the small church—you have value to bring to a medium-size, a large-sized church. Because the truth is, the relational things that you have learned really can contribute to someone who has learned a lot of skills and, say, like managing levels of leaders and systems and things like that. I think there's a lot of things that they've learned and a lot of equity they can bring. You know, and vice versa, there's other things. But yeah, I think there's a ton of value that they bring.

So we've talked about sharing content, or we've talked about utilizing other people's content. I know there's some licensing, or at least there may have been licensing. I think some companies may have released licensing, but this is completely out of my league. So where can people get content, maybe to repackage and reutilize? Who at this point is okay with letting their content go online? Like, just give some recommendations for churches that are out there wondering on that aisle, both on the kids and, if appropriate, on the student side.

So we do—Tony does this as well—we do purchase Orange curriculum, and Orange curriculum does allow you to post content as long as it's on a password-protected site or something like Vimeo where someone can't try to rip off what they have. So plus, they sent out an email last week in response to all of this with all of their content that you can send out to parents without you having to do anything. Honestly, you did this. Forward that email. It has all these links. You can watch a Bible story video. It has articles on how to talk to your kids about the coronavirus. It has all of these things that they're providing for whoever has a subscription with them.

Other churches that I have reached out to in the past, and I would have to see if it's still true now, is Crossroads Kids Club has always released their content for free as well without having to do password-protected or anything like that. Saddleback, you do? I reached out to them. Same thing as Orange. They just want to make sure that if you're providing it, it's a private link that way no one can try to rip off their stuff. And those were the three that I've looked into so far.

Oh, and Kidspring. I'm sorry, Kidspring from NewSpring. They have a resource website in general that they provide free resources for kids.

Yeah, and Life Church. Do they have kids? Life Church has that as well.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they share everything, right?

Yeah, that's what I was looking at. Student guys, so yeah, we've got—anyway, that's another story.

So Tony, what are you going to say?

Yeah, so I would say that the primary one that I would go to is open.church, which is going to be Life Church's primary one, because you have a ton of great churches that partner with Life Church as well that are going to funnel their free content on there. And so if you go to open.church and then click on the resources tab, they have students as well as small groups or kids curriculum. And there's a ton of great free resources that. And then I mean, honestly, the good old Google. If you Google "free resources for ministry," you're going to be surprised what pops up, especially now. A lot of people will use that content. So the stuff that Ilyana was mentioning, as well as those things that is—those are gold. And then never be afraid to ask.

Call someone and ask. So just because it's not on there doesn't mean they wouldn't give it to you.

Yeah, and that's the exact attitude that we took with Orange. Correct? Because at first, this—no offense to Orange. We're deeply appreciative of what they've allowed us to do in this. But at first, that question was up in the air, right?

Yep.

So we reached out to Orange and Saddleback because we use a lot of their videos. We literally just asked them, like exactly like Tony saying. We're like, "Hey, guys, you know, in this season, what can we do with your content?" They responded pretty quickly.

Yep.

And, you know, we are a multicultural city, so we have, you know, Orange has fantastic Spanish options, have English things like that. And so there—we're looking for all that kind of content. So we're able through Orange to be able to offer alongside the content that we put out, we can actually offer a Spanish version because a lot of our parents of our students—Ilyana knows this—that we have families that don't speak English at all. And so as they're sitting alongside a middle schooler or high schooler, they can actually go along the message, along with the message with those notes in Spanish. So we found that's been helpful too for our global campuses who—same thing. They were in the same boat as us, and they're like, "What do we do?" And so at least Orange providing the Spanish has helped out a lot.

Yeah, and that's going to make for a great podcast down the road that I think we'll revisit—is bilingual ministry. There's something that's huge in Miami. And you know, not only CF, but you know, we've brought back a lot of that in terms of what we're doing digitally, but we've expanded it. Jeff, last week we launched, so you have kids online in Spanish as well. No kidding?

Yes, yeah.

And you know, as Tony's talking about student resources as well that we're providing, this is a big deal. This is not just as part of our global strategy, but even it's a local strategy. You know, we've got sixty percent in Miami-Dade County where our church lives that still consider Spanish their primary language. And that might not be the case for the kids. I'm myself a third-generation immigrant. Ilyana, you know, the same—second or third—where English is our primary language. But that doesn't mean that the parents don't want to interact or don't feel more comfortable engaging with their kids in English. And so try to make sure and provide them resources so that they can still spiritually lead their kids, even if it's in a different language.

That's right. Yeah, we are seeing the global church, especially South America, Cuba, what they're able to do with our content, Orange's content via us in Spanish. It's tremendous. I mean, what God is doing in those countries is absolutely fantastic. And I mean, especially now in this season, it has been a tremendous blessing to be able to gift them that content.

Holy cow. I mean, it was—because before it was night and day. They didn't have access to that. And I don't know, Jeff. I mean, if Amy, your wife—I know she does school teaching and stuff like that—one of the biggest dilemmas that we've been seeing in the city is when kids have gone home to do education at home. That not bilingual parent, maybe they only speak—they're predominantly Hispanic and they only speak Spanish—is being able to teach that student who's been being taught in English. That's been a huge issue. And so we've been hearing that from the front lines. And so it's anything that we could do to supplement those two things could say, "Look, we're teaching your kid in English, but alongside that, here it is in Spanish." And so it's been a tremendous, tremendous help.

Yeah, I love that philosophy of Spanish. And even for my time at Christ Fellowship, because Miami is such a bilingual, trilingual, quadrilingual city. That's right. Not rich. I mean, this truly is the melting pot of it all. And so to be able to utilize those resources in Spanish, I mean, maybe the kids are reading them in Spanish, maybe not. Yeah, it does open up, you know, some global campuses and some work down in Latin and South America, but to better empower the parents to do ministry to the kids because you're speaking in the parent's heart language as opposed to right, making them try to take something out of context and translate it where they may not be comfortable with that yet. That is an awesome reason to go through all the effort of doing the Spanish and the translation of that.

Rey, we're going to have to park out, you know? I'd love to even revisit maybe like the ASL, American Sign Language, the Deaf stuff, you know, at some point. That's one of the—I think it's like in the top three largest unreached people groups in the world. Is it the hard of hearing? The in American Sign Language, ASL?

Yeah, that's just America as opposed to the other national sign languages. Because I know they're all over the place. At some point it opens up into a wider scope of sign language, but there's definitely that group has always been close to my heart. And looking at online as a way to reach those people—deaf people, hard-of-hearing people—is yeah, that's that's near and dear to me. Maybe it's because I'm forty percent deaf myself in my right ear. But that's that's another thing.

So ironically, I always put my wife on the right side. No, I'm kidding. Because—oh, that joke. That is a quick edit right there.

So hey, but this has been a really good podcast. Ray, you're landing in the plane. Yeah, you know, I want to once again—and it's not just because I work with them—but I want to applaud what we've been able to do in this.

CF kids and see if students any want to check out more, check out at CF students or at CF kids Miami. We'll put links in the show notes to their Instagram just because that's an easy way to get started, and then they follow them on different platforms as necessary just to see some of the stuff that we're doing.

But here's the thing. I was kind of thinking back when I was a kid, there was a show I used to watch called The Wonder Years. Some of you may be aware of that, especially if you're an '80s and '90s kid. But Kevin Arnold one day was, you know, he was heralded by all of his friends because he was able to ask a girl out on a date. And he was sitting amongst them, a table full of nerds, and he, as he breaks the fourth wall and tells us through his thoughts, he said, "You know, for some reason they were all looking to me for guidance. And then I realized in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." And I've never forgotten it. That's right. And this is the church right now. You know, you heard it first from these two. We're trying things. We're not the experts, but we're trying things. And right now we're all kind of flying blind. And so let me tell you, these two are leading the way just by saying, "Hey, look, I don't have all the answers, but I've got a good working eye, and here I am trying to lead the way." Take their advice. Heat it. Take it. Build off on it. Share that back with us. Tell us how you're doing it better. We want this to be interactive as well so that we minister to our people better, because we're all in the same boat. We're all learning.

Yeah, so good. Ilyana, is there anything related to playing any closing thoughts? Anything when you're in?

Yeah, just recently I listened to something. Pastor Omar, he met with three other local Miami pastors, and Rich Wilkerson had mentioned from the Whoo. He was like, "You know, grocery stores aren't gonna be the same after this. This isn't gonna be the same." He listed all of these, and then he said, "The church isn't gonna be the same." And I think if we keep thinking that, "Oh, I just can't wait for this to be over so things can go back to normal," I think we are shooting ourselves in the foot, to be honest. I think this is a time to be innovative, and it's a time to also be open to maybe where God is leading us. Because I think God is working greatly in this season, you know, despite everything that's crazy that's going on. I think if we keep thinking to ourselves, "I'm just waiting this out until it's back to normal," that is gonna be a mistake. I think we should be praying and seeking and asking, "Okay, God, what do you? How can I still expand your kingdom with what's happening now?" And then what's gonna be the aftermath of this?

Yeah, well, well said. Very well said. Tony, as relating to playing any closing thoughts, yeah?

I just double down on what Ileana was saying. I think that's so good. I was telling our team this past week. It was reminding them, and I think the story has been told a couple of times in history, and so I don't actually think it's probably true because it's told a couple times. But it was when Cortez landed and he basically defeated the—what was it? The Mayans? And in certain global history here, band that was not the pirate. Is a Pat Reilly story, man. This lettuce. I preface it by, "It's probably not true." And so if you knock me on my facts, it's—but the story was, and the story was like he landed on the shores of South America with only a few hundred boats, you know? And to go up against a few million people with a few hundred boats and a couple of thousand men was ludicrous. And so his speech to these men as they offloaded the boats was, "Burn the boats." And it was profound. And so like, the idea was, and this is what I was telling my team, was if you have the opportunity to retreat, you always will. If you don't, you'll get creative. So the only way home is through victory. We're gonna use their boats to get back home. Like, that's the idea. And so in this season, it's what Ileana was saying. Yeah, like we can't go back home, you know, the old way. We gotta go back home the new way. And so I think that's the new thing. Don't ride the old boat back home. Let's figure out the new way. Because if you're consumed with, "We can retreat," you're gonna miss out on all of the creative things that we could do to win the battle. And so that's what's inspiring us these days is all the new things that we can do.

Well, I just fact-checked you. Referencing Steven Curtis Chapman, he's "Burned the Ships," which is a song back from the '90s that he literally wrote about this whole Cortez enemy. You come on. Nineteen on the Eastern Shore of Mexico. I can read the lyrics while cleaning the show notes, but you are spotted now. I don't—I don't want to tell you this, but if you listen, now that I've actually been in Miami for a couple of years, you don't want to have Hispanic people fact-check Cortez. That whole account of him defeating—but that's a whole nother podcast depending on where she's panicked culture. Someone, yeah, the same culture. Like, they get offended when you say that Cortez defeated. Like, come on, dude. Some do. I'm telling you now. Some Cubans consider themselves more from Spain than indigenous.

Yeah, anyways, all that said, I'm so happy that we finally did a podcast where Steven Curtis Chapman was mentioned. I am just glad I could contribute my little bit to this conversation here. That if nothing else, I contributed Steven Curtis Chapman.

Yes, good, good times. Good times. Ray, we're landing in any closing thoughts?

You can tell how proud I am of this team. And guys, I want to thank you again for coming on the pod. This is big for a lot of other churches, and thank you so much for affording us the time to do this. And this team's not done rolling, as you can tell. They've got a fire lit underneath them, and they've got a lot of ideas that they're going to be executing. Like, this isn't just theory. A lot of these things are already rolling out as of today. And so, you know, I just want to encourage them, and I want to encourage you out there who are listening to try something new this week. Give it one shot. Even if it fails, even if you feel like, "Oh, man, what if they make fun of me?" or something else. I'm gonna tell you right now, anything you do with the idea of engagement in terms of your students—still concern about the celebrity aspects. Be concerned about engaging and talking to them, and you will see that victory that Tony's talking about. You will.

Awesome. Two-way conversation is so important in today. Love the little one-way conversation pushing content. Figure out how to do two-way respectfully of that, because students, kids, adults—that's how we feel loved in today. Not the one-way, the two-way. Figure out how to do that. That's the strength of the Internet, especially in this coronavirus season.

So hey, Tony, Ileana, Ray, thanks for jumping on this podcast. It's been great. Love it. And looking forward to—we'll have to continue the conversation about Spanish languages, all sorts of fun things. But that is not today. So for Tony, for Ileana, for Ray, this is Jeff at the Church Digital. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time here at the podcast. Y'all have a good day.