EP062: Jay Kranda & Tomorrow's Phygital Strategy

Episode 62 of the Church at Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning guys, congratulations, we did it. We survived Easter. A month ago people were freaking out about this whole church online thing and that we went and did the impossible. We did the Super Bowl. We did the biggest Sunday of the year and did it in a church online environment. You out there, the creative geniuses, the online pastors, the executive pastor, the lead pastors, the volunteer, each of you did a phenomenal job to help these services happen online. You all should be applauded for what happened as a result of it.

It's funny. Wow, while I was doing this recording, actually had a text come in from a friend of mine who's connected with Life Church, works on the Church Online platform, that project. And so I've got some stats. I don't think these are final stats, but this is just even where we are in the midst of Sunday when I'm doing this recording. Eleven point four million people watched a church service on the Church Online platform. Of those, fifty-seven thousand services, fifty-seven thousand services have been executed on the Church Online platform. Over seventy thousand salvations as a result of it. One hundred thirty-four countries. By the way, this is like one thirty p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday the twelfth. We're still in the midst of Easter Sunday and we're already seeing stats like this coming in. And I'm sure it's gonna skyrocket. By the way, I'm not sure if we had done all physical services. I don't think we would have reached one hundred thirty-four countries. And there's this interesting merger between physical and digital.

Now, look, we really know how to do the physical church service. We've been doing the physical church service as a church. We've been doing them for centuries. The physical church service, I think gun to our head, we've been trying to figure out how to do the church online service, the digital church service. Well, the conversation that I want to have today is what does it look like to do both well? What does it look like to take the church online, the digital aspect, and then the physical aspect and do it well together so that it's a merger of physical and digital?

What if, what if I'm just, hey, let's just make up a word because that's what we do, right? What if we're looking at a phygital one that marries physical and digital together? With that, what are the differences? What are the strengths and weaknesses? What are the opportunities that we have to combine? And what would that do for us to church long-term?

Listen, we made it past getting all our church services online. We made it past Easter, which was one giant hurdle that we as a church had. We've got an opportunity now to do the next thing, and that's develop a strategy for the church that is merging physical and digital together. A phygital strategy for the church. That's the challenge before you.

And to this end, we're bringing in a podcast, a conversation. We've got Jake Randa from Saddleback Church, one of the OGs right now at church online. Original gangster, in case like you're not up with the lingo, you know, I try to stay cool at forty-two. Jay's coming back in. No strangers to the podcast. He was actually one of the first guests we had on the podcast a year ago. We're coming up on our one-year anniversary. And then we're also bringing in a co-host of the podcast here, digital pastor of Christ Fellowship Miami, Arrey D'Armas. In a conversation that I'm calling Tomorrow's Digital Strategy.

All right, everybody, here we go.

Who would have won the NBA Finals this year?

I actually think it would've been the Lakers.

Yeah, would this have been the year?

Yeah, well, when you say the year, I mean we've had many years, so you don't need to like tell us. We're not test me. There's no drought. So here we were, we're good. But yeah, I think I think the Lakers had a, I mean I know I'm biased, I think they had a legitimate chance to do it considering everything. But you never know. They're the playoffs were deep this year. The teams were deep. There were everybody. I think there were like four teams that legitimately could have if they would have gotten on fire, which is all you need. You just need four. You need four games and that's all you need.

So it's true. I think I think it would have been, you guys are the Clippers? I think either way the trophy would have stayed in Los Angeles. Whoever came out of the West was gonna win just because to me an Takuna is gonna leave like the Bucs just don't have enough that's gonna be that. But yeah, yeah, you know, I think LeBron came in third championship with a third team solidifying yet another piece on his resume for history.

Yeah, now you're depressing me, Jeff.

Yeah, now I'm like, now we got a, now I gotta wait. You know, because most likely they're not gonna play. I know that they're trying to make stuff happen in July, but are they really?

I hadn't heard. Let's see. I'd see. I know. Well, like they're trying. It's like the what's-his-name from the UFC. Like they're trying to buy the island. He's trying to like buy an island so you can go. Dana White? Yeah, yeah, he's trying to have fights on an island somewhere. But people are not. I mean, the thing is, I was listening to something yesterday and they were talking about like I guess they did WrestleMania with nobody. Yes, inactive watch it. But they said it was kind of weird. Everybody was just like, it's definitely super strange.

So I, I don't know. I, I don't know how how a team. I was watching I was I watched a couple nights ago the old, the Utah Bulls games and I totally forgot the Utah. I remember the thing with the old with the Utah games was how loud the arena was because it was all up on it like it was just kind of a weird. It was like a tight arena and they would they kept going to shots of the noise level in the arena which I totally, I know that was the thing Utah did forever. But it was funny because it wasn't a digital digital meter. It was like an actual shot of like a real meter like somewhere like a note because they couldn't do it digitally. So it just kept shot into this camera shot. I was like, it's so old. But but I'm like, I don't know how game in a quiet arena where you could hear everything it would be really strange in playoffs are such a momentum. There is something about basketball when it's loud and it's just, I don't know how that would be. I don't know how it affect the teams and I don't know how yet you would have to essentially lock everybody down. You would have to say guys, we're playing in this, this area, this every, you can't leave like like and you're just stuck here for the next, you know, you're for the next weeks, weeks.

Yeah, and it like, what people really want to do that? I don't know. We'll see.

Well, the other thing to J's is not just the players themselves, right? Like it's their staff. It's the coaches. Its folks. Yeah, it's a lot of folks that you have to have under wraps for a quarantine for all this stuff. But I agree with you. Look, when we talk about wrestling, like when I was in college I went to go see the filming of Monday Night Raw here in my hand. Oh yeah, yeah, and miss me. This was during the Stone Cold Rock era when they were like huge and man, what an amazing experience. But I saw some of the clips of WrestleMania and stuff. Do yet the crowd out of its like seventy percent of wrestling is gone. It's it's, yeah, yeah, you can't, you, yeah, that's the thing. It's it's, we have, you know, we move next door like our closest friends and so we've been like in quarantine with each other kind of. But another friend lives on the same street and they have kids that are older and one of the kids is kind of like he's not a bane to nav rules and so quite we had a conversation today about like okay this our friend's son Jacob who we, I was like his long group leader in high school like I love Jacob but like he, he's going in and out. He's not obeying anything and so now he's gonna be home and we had this conference. We're having gonna have this this weird conversation like you know we're gonna to tell him like he can't just come over to our house because I said sure if he wants to break the rules he can but we're in self quarantine right now like between our families and so we and in your wrists keen because they my our friend's mom is gonna come stay with him and she's high-risk essentially and so like like so this is what's gonna how are you gonna control all these teams all their kids all their families like so you really have to go you have to have those type of conversations.

Oh, so you have your daughter who's in college wants to go to the local coffee shop and just grab some come back like did she wear a mask? Are you doing the temperature stuff? Are you gonna do what China is doing with the green a yellow card stuff? We're like that's how they're like, I know it's possible but like, I know they have to go into a player's agreement deal. They'd be to go to the the Players Association and go like, like it is infringing in people's rights like it's a big thing and so it's like it's gonna be interesting. But regardless, we have to figure it out here in the next month or so as they start lifting stuff. If Americans are square masks, we probably can go back to some activity. But it will people obeys the relation to so our autonomy has always kind of been the issue at this and I find it very spiritual like on one side because right like the Bible that we study is actually Eastern and thought and so there's a lot more thought in terms of how individuals actions affect the community. When this whole thing happened, the instant thing that was insulted was everybody's autonomy was everybody's individual rights like nobody, no government's gonna tell me that I can't worship at church in person. Yeah, are you thinking Christologically about how your actions affect the community?

Yeah, yeah, I know it's a good question. When we get past coronavirus, when life gets back to whatever normal is, what, what is what is church look like? What is what is culture look like around us? Like we started we're talking about you know WWE, WWF and you know the the rock doing his hand thing to the to the E or are you smelling what the rock's cooking in the kitchen? Whatever the line is. I'd spent so long since I watched that stuff. I was more of a Hulk Hogan Ultimate Warrior kind of kind of like that was my heyday way back when. And so like you're right that take that out of the equation, out of that physical environment where you're just watching it online, there is a there is a piece of it where yeah you need that physical component. But without having the the online part, without it being broadcast, you're definitely losing a lot of reach. And so there's this, there's this tension and I can't believe I'm drawn analogy of church to WWE. I did not plan this when I started this podcast. But you've got this tension, right? Between all right, so let's go all the way back to the way that it was before coronavirus where all these churches aren't having anything to do with with online. Okay, you can maybe do that. I don't even know that you can do that because culture is swinging so far the other way towards having more digital, more technology, more community centered around these these technology pieces. So like I think there's a balance between the two. Like when you look, when you think at what does culture gonna look like post coronavirus? When you think how is the church, how can the church respond to this?

Jake Randa, Raid the Armas, two of the smartest people I know, which is why I wanted you on this podcast. What are you thinking about? What, what is the future look like?

Well, I was actually just thinking how you kind of look like Jake the Snake. I was just like, you got, that's awesome. Yeah, you got to look a little bit. So but anyways, so but yeah, it's a, it's a good question. I, I, I, I go to two places. I definitely think that a lot of people are going to immediately leverage you know Zoom for a lot more things. I think there's a lot of it. There was a quote today that I was reading in an an article and...

He was talking about kind of this idea of what the coronavirus is doing and I'll just read it. It was from Ben Thompson. He says the coronavirus will not so much ferment drastic changes as it will accelerate trends that were already happening. Changes that might have taken ten to fifteen years, simply because of the stickiness of the status quo, may now happen in far less time. And so he was talking about like cutting cords. So if people have cable because of live streaming of sports and there's no live sports, a lot of people might immediately be forced into a corner to go, "Oh wow, like I don't really need this. I can get everything on Netflix or whatever." And I think churches are realizing like, "Oh wow, like we can do meetings online. We can do support groups online. We can do youth group online." You know, I was kind of joking that right now if you get let go at your church and you need to get hired at a church right now, you could really get hired anywhere like any church is doing remote stuff now. They might not want to do that or they might not have the funds right now to do that, so it's not really a good time for that to happen. But I do think there's a lot of people just realizing, "Oh wow, like a lot of this stuff is working now."

The flipside, I do also feel that there's a lot of people that this might give them justification to not do things online after this because they might go, "This didn't work for us or I didn't see this." And I actually think a lot of that is coming from the confusion around metrics. I don't feel like a lot of people are looking at all this stuff and they're like, "Wow, a lot of people are watching this," or "This isn't working." And I think if you didn't have the platform set up for this pre-COVID, right, and all of a sudden everybody has to watch on Facebook and YouTube and on your website, whatever, if you didn't have that platform set up, you're having to re-message a bunch of people where to go. And the people that already had that, it was seamless. Like for us, we already had a platform. We had subscribers. We had things. And so people automatically knew where to go. And I think a lot of people the first couple weeks have been painful, and I am scared that might give them reason to not reinvest. And I feel like both camps kind of exist. I do feel like more people will leverage it. I do feel like that camp's larger. But I am a little nervous for what people will do after this. They might stop doing something just because they said, "Oh look, we did that and it didn't really work that great."

You know, I'm actually a little more optimistic, even though I agree with you. I think that things will change. That I'm glad that you cited that article because I couldn't agree more. This really advanced us a lot quicker than what we had thought in terms of arriving at this point. I was telling Jeff earlier that we were so happy that ninety percent of our physical groups actually transitioned to an online environment during this time, which was bigger than what I thought would happen. And so that right there, but they were already, exactly what you're saying, Jake. We had a lot of the things in place. We had, we know how to do this. We've done this already in other environments. We've taken our services online. I was taking small groups online. We've got membership online. We've got like so many different things that are possible that people can encounter these environments in an online process. Most of our church was already on board with online giving, so some of those things were already in place. And for the churches that were not, this was very difficult.

Now, the reason I say I'm more optimistic is because I think that church, both church plants and moving forward, and even those that are gonna be replants, are now gonna have in mind that they need to have at least some kind of presence in the digital environment. Even if they're not going to stream their services, their pastors are gonna be more conscientious and effective. I've got to stay connected with my people during the one hundred sixty-seven hours of the week. I think that's going to be a primary engagement driving factor kind of moving forward, whether it's gonna be through social media platforms or something else. And it's not even gonna be before they would like install people saying, "Oh well, that's just celebrity stuff. That's just people trying to accentuate themselves." I think now they recognize, "Oh no, there's a need for my people to be connected on a regular basis throughout the week to pastoral community, to have somebody shepherding them in that kind of way." And so that's something that I could see that hangs around for a long time moving forward in church leadership.

Yeah, that's good. I was just as you were saying that, I was thinking of a lot of church plants and people coming out of seminary right now. And I got an email from somebody just yesterday that they're graduating from seminary and they're wanting to plant a church online. And I'm thinking there's a lot of these people that are finishing up school or maybe, you know, there's a friend here locally that planted a church. And I'm just thinking, "Oh man, what a terrible time to be like cut off from a lot of the financial support," because it is, you know, churches that have been going for a couple years, you're gonna generally have some base. But if you're just launching or just launched, it's gonna be really rough. But I am excited for the people thinking about planting churches instead of getting so wrapped up and just picking a location and a building. You know, more people are gonna go, "Oh wow, maybe we should just start streaming and start doing this," and the barrier of entry is a lot lower now. And I like that because I think getting some thinking digital really early.

Yeah, let me pitch in something on that because, like, and I'm gonna put on my Stadia hat here for a second. There are some phenomenal stories that are coming out of Stadia. Next week we're gonna have Patrick. He's a church planter. The man's not even living in the city where his church is planting yet, and he's utilizing Facebook groups and Zoom to ramp up his actual ministry. And how he's got such a, like, even today he started rolling out his strategy for how he's using local Facebook groups to connect with people, trying to get exposure to meet and funnel them in. It's phenomenal, the stuff that he's doing, and he's not even located within the city that he's trying to reach. There are people that we're gonna be doing blogs with, and I'm gonna write content. There's guys who were scheduled to launch their church in the fall, and they're looking at the ramp up of what's happening in this season, and they're like, "Yeah, we want to roll sooner. Like, let's launch now. We're not prepared for physical, but let's do ministry now because this is where people need us." And so it's amazing to me. To some people, there's a mix. I've seen both. There are some people who are like, "I don't even know what's going on right now. I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna delay." And then at the same time, I've seen people who are like, "Dude, the fire's over there. That's where I'm needed. I'm running towards the fire to try to do what I can." It's this phenomenal experience where you start to see planters. I had a mega church, literally twenty thousand member church with physical locations. Their online pastor said to me the other day, "Man, I wish I was at a church plant right now where I could be doing tangible ministry." Because he's even recognizing, which is scary, you know, I kinda had to work with him a little bit, but he's seeing this point of, "Okay, what's happening at the physical level with the broadcast and all this, that's so far away from the relationships. You have to work really hard to get into those tangible relationships." And that's really where a lot of the, for the church online, the relationships, that's where the life change and the discipleship comes in. Small churches, church plants, having huge opportunity in the time ahead to utilize technology in a real way. I don't know that they really realized it beforehand, but I know a lot of churches are learning it kind of in this season.

Yeah, and just to throw this in on the flip side, like I heard from some folks about how disappointed they were that their churches weren't offering anything here locally in Miami. They almost felt disenfranchised. They felt so isolated as a result of it. And these are older, elderly folks, you know. Their churches weren't even offering, you know, the people that you thought, although those folks might not necessarily be into church online or whatever, all of it, they felt alone in the fact that their church wasn't offering any opportunity for them to engage online. And they were coming to us saying, "Hey, we're gonna be watching your services in this time because we have nothing else." And I almost wanted to give that pickup, that pass, respond back like, "Hey man, can you please just record yourself for this poor old lady here? She wants to be part of your church. She still wants to be tied in there, but you're not providing that opportunity for her." Like, that's a shame. I've heard that from a couple people.

Just looking at pausing, and I do, do you think it's overwhelming when you think about doing church online? And especially if you think of it as an all-or-nothing type of initiative. We've been talking a lot about the ideas that there's like kind of four pillars of how you kind of do it. It's you have large gatherings online. You have small gatherings online. You have one-on-one connections, and you have self-guided kind of opportunities. And your church needs to do all those. And you as the pastor don't need to do it all, but you need to encourage your key people and your small groups and the people mentoring to use these venues because ultimately you as the pastor are not doing all the ministry. And so you've got to understand some of it. You got to enable your key people to do it. But I do, you think a lot of, I do think it calls out like if it's if you're just streaming, I still believe that it's because your ministry paradigm was so dependent on people being present. And the more you do stuff online, and I know you guys have experienced this before, you do something digital, you have to really think through it because it's you have to pre-program it. You got to write out your emails. You've got to coach your people. And I think a lot of people, the way they do ministries, people show up and they preach and then they have these conversations. And sometimes digital kind of calls out all this planning that you have to do, and it is hard. So I'm praying that a lot of people as the weeks go on, that they get challenged not to just pause, and that even the people that are doing small things, that you got into more uncomfortable like, "We gotta up your game slowly," because this, as the weeks and the months draw on, however long we're in this season, you can't pause. Pause cannot be an answer for everything. It can be an answer for some things, but not for everything.

Yeah, you know, Jay, a conversation that I think this advance drastically, and we were highlighting this with our staff the last couple weeks, was the engagement being the new attendance conversation. To me, this whole thing is advanced this light years ahead because, you know, everybody's fallen in love with the views right now, right? Like, "Oh man, great, we got awesome views. Hey, everybody's reaching thousands and thousands of people. Wonderful." But the thing that I keep telling them is, "All right, but how many connections did we receive that week? How many people are getting plugged in? This matters." Because if and when, if and when it comes time to...

transition back to physical locations like we need to make sure that people are connected. We need to make sure that they're connected, and even then in the here and now, if they're going to be cared for, they have to be connected, whether it's in small group, whether they're serving, they have to have some kind of tangible connection to the church. And so we have to hone in on those metrics now and put a greater emphasis on those than we do on the actual viewcount week to week.

Yeah, so I mean engagement, at least how I define engagement, it's a two-way conversation. So it's user, computer, user online, a tender engaging in a conversation with the church or someone from the church to the point that they're no longer just consuming a product, but they're responding and engaging with it in the physical space.

There's three different models of church. One would be a physical only model of church, one that is, hey, we're just going back to the way that it was in the physical space. There is the other end of the spectrum, and this is one that I've done a lot of talking about, where it's a digital only model, a digital exclusive ecclesiology, only in virtual space. It's not dependent on physical at all. And then there's probably something in between, call it morphed, fidget. Oh, that's the term that Stadia is using right now towards it's a mixture of digital and physical where we're utilizing the physical church, but we're utilizing the digital tools to create a mixed model of it.

Ray, we've been on podcast with Eric Geiger. I think Geiger is actually the first person that I ever heard say the word digital, back when we did this podcast almost a year ago. No man, it's been crazy.

Here's my question with all that. Is a physical only in this culture, and I'm not looking for mic drops here, but legitimately, like, is that even gonna work? We've technology has shifted and adjusted so far. Yeah, there's probably some churches that still could be physical only and ignore it, but I'm wondering at some point, is it already gone where a physical only approach, like they're not gonna last? Is there room for it?

It might be into doomsday. I'm open to feedback. What do you guys think? Physical only? I think you're always gonna have outliers in terms of the physical only, you know, that you'll be able to point to and don't be able to point to themselves and say, you see, we did it without digital, as if there's a gold medal for that, you know? I think those are always going to exist. I don't think it's going to be the norm though. You know, I think within this, within the bell curve of a strictly digital and strictly physical, I think the greater is going to be in the middle where the fictional meets. But within that though, I think you are still gonna have someone on the outlier side that say, no, we are not gonna podcast. Even we're not going to put our stuff streaming. We're not going to do any of that. Instead, we're going to make sure that all of our meetings are in physical spaces and environments. I think that it would still happen.

Yeah, and it's really, it comes down to like, you know, each of us are called to reach the people God calls us to reach. So is the question, can people who leverage just physical and not digital? Well, of course. There's always going to be counter movements to reach different people. You know, it's kind of like the difference between, you know, Orange County to Los Angeles County to, you know, outside of Seattle. Like every little subculture exists. And you know, I don't have to like Minecraft for Minecraft to be used in popular, you know, I mean, like it is, you know, there's so much of the internet that I just don't get. But it's still relevant, you know? I pull up any YouTuber and I get annoyed in a moment. I'm like, how is this person popular? And it's, but the point is that, you know, it's the whole thing that it happened with Zoom in the last couple weeks. Like Zoom has been around. Many of us have been using Zoom for five plus years. And the problem was Zoom. What happened last couple weeks is when two hundred million people use it and one percent of those two million people get scared because a third of their people are in China, then everybody has there's a backlash on Zoom. And it's like nothing really changed. It just happened to be there. Audience went berserk. And it's just when you have a large enough people, people get scared. But I think the reverse is true with the church. For sure, people, there's always, always gonna be things that are gonna be relevant. And I think they're gonna be people that are unreached. And I just, I think it doesn't, it doesn't make sense if you wanted to reach a lot of people to not use digital. But can you reach people? Yeah. And I still think that that will be, it could be a powerful expression, especially as you know, before this, there were all that stuff going around about how social media and being on your phone and screen time and all this stuff was kind of draining your brain. And the thought was if you really need too much in the digital, you were kind of feeding this bad habit and it wasn't mentally healthy. And so I think that we'll go back. I think whatever we're in, you know, we're gonna swing back. Pretty, you know, humans are pretty resilient. And I think, you know, everybody thought the world was gonna be one way after 9/11, and guess what? It went back to that way. I think we're gonna go back to our ways after this. There will be some changes, but I think we are, I mean, you look through the span of history, we've been through a lot, and eventually we kind of go back to norm. Sorry, I don't think that this will drastically change too much. I just think it will just lead to people. I think there's a portion of people that probably were gonna adopt some digital stuff. I'm curious. The thing I feel like that I think it will impact churches, I think the more we're, we're more learning remote learning stuff is going to be really interesting. I think there's gonna be a lot of people more okay with like people working from home and just like that. I think a lot of churches just totally, you know, figured that one out. But I don't think it's gonna, I feel like for sure digital is the smartest way to do it, but still people will still not do digital for sure. You know, we're gonna get to the remote learning. Carey Newhoffer published a thing, and I don't want us to unpack it here in a second, but I want to come back to your four pillars, J. And I'm glad you just said it because it was in the back of my mind. I couldn't figure out what the four were. But I've loved this of you've got the, you know, the large group, you've got small group, you've got one-on-one, and then you've got kind of self-led, self-taught systems that are in place.

I would suggest pre-coronavirus that church was using was very good. I say that we were really good at broadcasting services and we were really good at making sermon archives and some resources available for us, quote-unquote, self-taught. I don't know that we were really developing rich funnels and curriculum there, but I think we were. We thought we were good. And maybe the large group and in the self, I don't think that we had really given much attention to the one-on-one and in the small group. I think that we're seeing the small group grow quickly. If nothing else, in like situations like Ray, where, hey, we had to get our groups have to meet. This is a long period of time. And now, you know, Ray's telling stories of ninety percent of their small groups are now funneled into an online environment. And some of those, when the dust settles, some of them may stick online, some of them may be a hybrid. And you know, would love to see some exposure there. I think in this season, I'm hoping that the church is learning there's opportunities for four pillars, not just two. And one thing that I don't even think that we've even realized yet is how to utilize the one-on-one for multiplication, for discipleship, to teach a disciple others to the point where they can disciple someone else. So I think there's even opportunities first to grow in the season where even our today towards what tomorrow can be. Kinda any thought? Any thoughts on that? How have you seen the small groups or the one-on-one? Kind of what does that look like in your environments?

So for us, you know, the small group has really been transformed in a lot of ways. I mean, we were already doing digital small groups before through Zoom or through Google Hangouts or whatever methods that the group leader wanted to choose. But Jeff, what you're talking about here, you know, I don't even know if we're succeeding in that. I look forward to hearing Jay's answer a little bit more. This is what I was gonna highlight. It's remember we spoke to Ed Stetzer a few episodes ago where he talked about the need for the third environment that churches need, like a third environment. And we talked about how digital can become that. We're finding that we're creating more content, but even I've been coming back and talking to our leadership about creating more community around that third environment because as such, we kind of become like many Netflix with the amount of content that we've been turning out. Just the needs, it's need people, social, social, social, thinking that that's connection. But the reality of it is that the opposite is to where people need more community, kind of engagement.

So Jay, what are some things that you guys have done in terms of the one-on-one stuff to get good at that?

Yeah, so for sure, we've had a huge confusion as well. I don't know the percentage of what's happening, but a lot of stuff we were promoting early on was how to convert your existing group to an online group and then how to join an online group. So I think we spun up a lot of like more robust tutorial videos on how do you Zoom? We spun up a support line so people who were kind of stuck could call in and we could answer questions on whatever. I did one where this lady who was like clearly in her eighties, she did not know how to Zoom. She's trying to do it from her iPad. And you know, I'm just, I realized she was scheduling, she was editing her resume meeting on like her iPad calendar. I was like, oh yeah, that doesn't talk to the same app. You gotta go. So like, so it's like those type of things where you're just trying to, you're trying to help people navigate the gap of transition. And then because like we're in that, we're, it's the classic like, you know, what's gonna happen when people like with the Industrial, we're gonna leave people around, you know, the people from a horse to the car, and people that's left behind. And we're in one of those digital where you could have survived without digital in some level because you could have still done stuff, but now those people who hadn't adopted, you know, are being left behind. So we wanted to guide those people. And then it was a lot of, we spun up a lot of online central groups where large groups could be together and we would use Zoom breakouts so that people could taste and experience what the online group was before being jumped into starting one or joining one. Small but one-oh-one, I think a lot of it is around, hey, experience an online group, join an online group. And then the idea is that you could do this same thing one-on-one with people. And I think we've been communicating to things. It's you could do a Zoom, a Skype, or just call people. And this is something that, you know, I've been doing like I did a Zoom with my grandma a couple like two weeks ago. We can have a grandma that's so sweet. I love it. So like, but it was fun, grandson. I knew. Yeah, I'm just saying. But like, but it was funny because like I said, let's do a Zoom, and I text all my family and stuff, and we did this Zoom, and I grabbed one of my brothers and his wife lived with my grandma right now. And so he was able to be tech support, and we were all able to get on the call. And the cool thing I have another...

Brother that's in will actually just moved. He's in Missouri outside of St. Louis, and we were able to all be up on this call. We hadn't all been together for like years, and like my nephew and stuff, and it was sure the power of this. Like, why weren't we doing this before? Like, we could have done this, but this forced everybody to do it.

And I, I think with my grandma though, I still, we did that Zoom, but I still call her once a week. I call my other grandma too. And so the last couple weeks, because two things I know that they're isolated and they have to stay inside, that they're in the demographic they have to, but I just call them. And so I think we're encouraging you, don't have to use complex technology. You could just jump on the phone. And I think a lot of that is just teaching and modeling from the pastor side. It's just going, hey, here's the way you can experience it. Hey, and then we tell them, hey, you need to do it 100%. And then lastly, you could use whatever you want. Just old school, call them.

Yeah, I was trying earlier today. I was meeting with somebody this morning, and we were trying to do a Zoom call, and their Wi-Fi went down. And it's funny, I just recalled when we did a phone call, and it's like it doesn't need to be this like complicated thing. And I think sometimes we put the bar so high that it's just like we just like, and this is the whole thing, you guys know this, our online groups were very agnostic with our technology. So it's just like, meet with your friends, meet with your people. We don't care how you meet. Zoom's a great tool. If it's confusing to you, I don't care. Call, you know, you know, FaceTime, you text each other, whatever. Just you need to meet. And so I think the more we tell those stories, the more we provide environments for them to taste it and experience it, but more people will do it. And I think that's why I would encourage pastors, if you're like, I just don't get online groups, I don't, it scares me, I don't, if you don't do it, your community won't do it. And your job is you still want your church to still be a church, and you need to facilitate that. And I think a lot of churches are the catalyst to people figuring out they're either experiencing at work or they're experiencing in their church. And if they start doing it, then guess what? Then nobody, oh, you know what? I could do this with my family, or I could do this with my with my with my neighbors. I could use Zoom. And I think a lot of people are meeting in online groups for their work and for their church, and that's bleeding over to all areas of life, which ultimately leaves people not feeling as isolated, and it leads to a healthy experience. So I think we do have a job to show that this stuff is possible online, and we gotta push them, and we got to do it.

Yeah, you said something earlier that really intrigued me. You said that you think that things you're gonna kind of go back to normal like really, really quick. Um, you know, in terms of the fact that we're gonna get back to the way that things were. Why do you think that's the case? And what do you think some of that's gonna look like? Like, let's say August, they say, hey guys, we're ready to go back in to gatherings of 50 or more on a nationwide scale in the United States. What does that look like to you?

I think if you, if you do not know, oh, so this is the number one thing. There's a lot of people that went streaming the first week or two, and they were measuring another week three, four, five into it. They're seeing a drop. And so I think the narrative is gonna be like, wow, that only works for the first week or two, and now we have a third of where we're at. And I think if you don't, if you don't properly understand the metrics, if you don't properly understand what's going on, then I feel like the data can be spun in any way possible.

Another example is that if you don't have a good strategy online right now, and you're not telling people to get into online groups, if you're not launching them, then nobody's gonna do it. And you might come out of this, go, you know what? We stream, but online groups really didn't work, and our people really don't want it, because nobody did it. And the question comes down, what's that? Because nobody did it because I really didn't want it, or was it because you're poor leadership? You weren't able to execute it right? And so I think I'm nervous that right now churches are not leveraging digital correctly, and they're gonna say our people don't want a digital strategy because they didn't do it. And it really, it's not gonna be because they didn't do it because you didn't do it right. And I think it could be a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So I think it's, I think people will, I think a lot of people will continue streaming in their services. I'm just worried people won't stream more things. They won't lean into online groups. They'll pull back. So if like support groups, online support groups, I think make a lot of sense. And I think a lot of people will go, you know what? That was scary. Let's not do that. I don't think you need to make it for everybody, but I still think they like online counseling, online crisis stuff, online groups. I think that it has a place digitally, and maybe it's 20% of your strategy, but I think a lot of people might go, you know what, and pull back there. At least that's my, but if I put on my my speculative hat, which, which if you knew anything about my stock investing, you would know that it's probably not worth a lot, but ultimately I guess that's what I'm feeling. I am a little nervous about that.

Yeah, you know, it's funny, because I lean a little bit more the optimistic side. And the reason is is because, you know, I liken it kind of to what happened when your lead pastor, when Rick Warren came out with Purpose Driven Church. A lot of churches tried it, and then they tried it. They quote-unquote tried it. They didn't necessarily give in to it. They didn't build systems around it. They didn't really try to move people through each of the five purposes. They didn't really do that. And so after, you know, six weeks, so hey, we took our shirts, do Purpose Driven Life, we did XY and Z, and you know what? Our church didn't grow. Well, you still stayed in small groups. You didn't funnel people. You didn't have connections. You didn't have systems in place to move people into the small groups, those who wanted to join, those who wanted to get on board with some of this stuff. You took a lot of people through who wanted to get on board, but you never really had the systems in place to get them there. So it's not that it didn't work. It's that you weren't really fully dedicated to the system. And so that's kind of where I agree with you in a sense of, yeah, are some people gonna be critical of it on the back end? Absolutely. Do I see a lot of other people kind of like the elderly that we talked about on the front end transitioning to churches that had a lot of those systems in place though? Absolutely, I do. Because now they're put into care systems where people are actually carrying on them and loving on them in that 167th space, and not just in that hour and 15 or two hours on Sunday. Now they've actually got church for real. Like, they've got a community of believers that are in their lives that care about them as opposed to just, well, I sit in the pew and I sing from the hymnal. It's the same hymnal every week, and that's all we got. Now they're actually gonna have real people, tangible people in their lives that they can go and visit, that can visit, and then this is the not so optimistic side. There's still the fear factor of getting sick. There's still that cloud that's going to loom over our nation and over a culture for quite a while, where I think even just going to church and seeing people in masks is gonna be enough to freak people out that they're gonna say, you know what? I'd prefer to stay home. I prefer to engage in digital spaces for now until I have some kind of normalcy back. And so even though I agree, like, hey, 9/11, if eventually things went back to normal, I still see because of cultural advancements and because of fear and even because of connection on the positive side, I see a lot of the digital stuff hanging around and sticking.

Well said. Well said. Hey, yeah, so and I mentioned that briefly. Kerry Newhoff, and I hate to like quote well, Kerry Newhoff, said, but it's it's interesting because actually had several people email me. Kerry Newhoff's most recent blog, we'll link to in the show notes. It's like five predictions for the future, and honestly, a lot of it has validated a lot of the things that I've been saying. And he's talking about how digital churches is here to stay. We, in church online, in his context, because when I say digital, I'm far more aggressive towards digital only, but to his context, church online, digital church is here to stay.

Daily content was another thing that Kerry said in his, of how this is the opportunity for church to be seven days a week. Rheya, to your end, I think there's an opportunity not just to be content but to have community around that. And that's the thing that I think the church, a lesson that I'm learning even mid-coronavirus here, it's not enough to be content seven days a week, but to be community. Acts two. I recently wrote a blog on this last week about how we're content overload, but we're really conversation starved because we're watching content, but we're not interacting with people. Create community online, not not seven days a week, not not just the content.

Work environment, I got to tell you, like, I'm looking forward to to having this mixed work environment where some at home and some in the office because I've had plenty of people tell me that they are more productive in home environments as well. This was interesting, and it will pause here for a second. He saw that multi-site maybe it was gonna have an issue here because people are more likely to stay at home and engage instead of going to some of the the multi-site campuses where they're smaller. They can't necessarily afford the 20% drop like a normal church would. Like, what's what's your spin? And in the fifth was sermon, and we can talk about sermon later, but sermon definitely is evolving in this season. But I'm just curious on the multi-site and I'm not necessarily good for my crops either here, but what do you also take towards multi-site and may be struggling in this season?

Yeah, I guess I, I feel like a lot of our multi-site in our model, and I've seen this in other churches as well, is that, you know, ultimately, like, the larger you are, the more like neutral your language has to come from. It has to feel like it's from this behemoth because you're ultimately thinking about everybody. And I really have loved a lot of churches that have multi-site expressions thriving because literally their pastor now has more time than ever to communicate to their to their community. And so like our church was doing stuff daily, and I just loved watching a lot of our art campus pastors like just go live and upload videos and record stuff from their home and just figure out all that stuff. So I actually, and I think ultimately that's the, you know, within your church, the value of the multi-site depending on if you have live teaching or you know a pre-recorded type of thing, you know, a lot of it comes down to that tight-knit community and ultimately social media and online tactics are really good in that. And so the idea is that I just have my message for our people. And I think if you empower people, I actually think that this is a thriving opportunity now. The question is, is the person who got hired at that multi-site location and ready to, you know, to actually be somebody who to leverage these moments? Because I know I noticed that it's like, oh, site, and like, you know, we had some people that weren't really on social media, and now in this time you have to be on social media. This is the only way you.

Could talk to your people and that could be uncomfortable. So I do think it's the same way if you're multi-site. Tomorrow went to a live teaching and you were a video else, but maybe you're not necessarily the person that can handle the live teaching. That's not a skill that you've built up.

But I definitely think it's something that is valuable, more valuable at a multi-site level because you could be more personable. You can express the ethos of whatever your campus is at that level.

Yeah, I agree with you. I think there's a lot of need, you know, for campus pastors. Especially we had the same issue with campus pastors. A lot of all of our campus pastors had social media accounts. Did they ever leverage them for the sake of connecting with their communities or whatever prior to this? No. And so this was kind of a sharp learning lesson, like a real quick huff that it hit left and take a turn where, and even then we've had to encourage them, but not just content. Once again, comic we flagged earlier, but also community side. Make sure you're engaging in the community. So you're talking with people that you're inviting them to take next steps. You're doing those things as well. I think that's crucial.

But also there's something that I wonder about because I launched the physical multi-site before I took on this job of being our online pastor. And you know, looking back and looking at the expenses that are there, and even then looking forward in the way that these dynamics are changing the economy of church, I do wonder how ready churches are gonna be to jump into rental spaces for a lot of this, but especially where real estate can be so high when they know the potential for reach through digital avenues and they know the potential for community building early on, on set before launching that physical location.

I'm kind of hoping that a lot more churches who are kind of on the edge to transition would merge through some of this with some of the multi-site churches to help alleviate some of that stress, some of the financial burden that's there. Not just because churches like Christ Fellowship Coral Gables that I helped launch, you know, would have an opportunity, but because you know, specifically in cities in areas like New York, LA, where Jake, where James at, you know, in Orange County in that area, Miami where I'm at, where real estate is so huge and so expensive and it's difficult for churches to stay physically in a space where they can gain from that. To me, that's a big deal.

And then the last thing, Jeff, we flag this before, is the size of the spaces that we think that we need. You know, I think in terms of advancement we're not gonna be building these massive theaters anymore. I think this is going to help advance the fact that we're gonna build smaller, smaller rooms, but maybe more of them, you know, to help accommodate for the needs of a specific community, recognizing that the digital environments can carry the bulk of the load of larger spaces.

There's certainly opportunities for the physical church to pivot through this and even to understand, you know, at the campus level it's far more relational and getting down into that. Even with multi-site churches that I work with, it's, you know, the content, let central run the content. At the campus level, get relational, get down and dirty at that level and understand that, yeah, you know, we're in the people business at that point. At the campus level, if we're conversation starved, even in this coronavirus season, that's our opportunity to engage at the campuses to really get into that. So definitely love that.

Well, I tell you what, we're gonna wrap this. It's been a great, once again, it's always a great podcast when Jake, Jake ranted us in the building. Love seeing Jay's face. You have to go to YouTube. The way we're on YouTube, when we never talked about YouTube, but nobody ever follows me on YouTube. But if you want to see Jay's face through this and see his awesome seminary-like backdrop that's not in an actual library, go over to YouTube and you can see that in dissected. So dope. It is awesome. It's been great. Just like, you know, raving out over here or looking at Jay's theological backdrop. Cool.

Hey, so as we're landing the plane here after that awkward moment, hey Ray, any thoughts as we're landing the plane here?

Yeah, leading into this, honestly, I went into this season with a spirit of fear, you know, with the disease and everything kind of looming over us as a heavy cloud like many of you did. And even kind of walking as to how churches were going to transition into these spaces, I'm super encouraged by the ones that have at least tried. And I think that's something, you know, to be celebrated. Now coming out of it, are we gonna embrace the physical and digital? That's a question that we've all got to answer together and how we're going to embrace that.

I've always been encouraged by how Jay and Jeff have led the way and pioneered in so many ways and providing resources for churches to navigate those questions. And so if you've not yet checked out some of these tools in terms of how to launch small doors online, how to do that, I want encourage you to. It's just, you know, take about a half hour and plug in with some of those videos and dive into it and start to ask yourself, man, am I concerned with the community aspects of my church right now or am I just worried about getting a message out to them every week? Because that community question, that's gonna change everything for you in terms of your digital experience.

James, right? And that this could be something that, hey, it's just a fleeting moment for your church unless you leverage it for all of its potential.

Awesome, well said. By the way, Jake Randall dot com, I think that's the website. Jake Randall is your social media. Like, how can people follow up with you, Jay?

Yeah, yeah, just Jake Randa. Just create all the accounts. They're all the same. Jake Randa all over the place. You know, there's not a lot of us, so.

Hey, and you should hit him up on TikTok. Jake Rando on TikTok. I don't even know if that's a good question. I have follow that sequestered. I told you before you had an account, so you lied in a previous podcast.

Well, on you, you have the question is that I don't know what my username is. So I think I have it. So that's a good question.

I would say, Jeff, for my closing thought would be to encourage churches and leaders, you know, within those churches with your leadership, is this is the time to experiment with all your ideas. So if you've got an idea that you want to experiment with digitally, this is the time to test it because your leadership is got some interest. So do not, if you're like, I want to try out this thing digitally and you're doing it six months from now, you've missed it. You've totally missed it.

So whatever you want to do, try it out and put it under the umbrella, or the, you know, the everything about we're testing this out. So online membership, we want to test out all the membership. Hey, can we test this out right now? A week? We're not gonna, let's just do small faith. Let's just try it out in a beta form. But this is the time. Make your asks now. Do not wait till later. So I think that would be my encouragement.

Yeah, by the way, if you're not in a faith talking about experimenting and even just getting feedback, there's that are on this road. If you're not in a Facebook group talking and talking through some of the stuff, you really should be. A lot of the best wisdom and experience from guys that are doing this, guys and gals who were doing this, you know, I'm hearing coming out of Facebook groups. So I know I started one at uni. The short link is that the church digital slash FB for Facebook. And so that will redirect to one that I'm doing with Stadia. I know there's an online digital tools, and if you hit me up on Facebook, I can point you that way. And the dot com, man, I don't know how you generate so much like video content on YouTube. I'm always shocked at how much stuff you're turning around just the one-man shop making that happen. But he's definitely a good follow there with the YouTube stuff.

And not to mention, I mean, crap, five years ago, seven years ago when I started on this road, I didn't know what I was doing and Jay was one of the voices for me, honestly, that just started speaking into me and saying, hey, there's this thing called online to offline. Have you heard of it? And honestly, that one philosophy, and whether he takes credit or not for saying it, revolutionized my view of church and others as well.

And so you go back to earlier podcast. If you go back to episode three, I think it was the first to Jake Randa, the OG. And so you can catch up with that and listen to it. But as you tell me, the least listened to episode, by the way, you've told me last time we were on, so so I need more views for it. We need more listens. People, help, listen, audience.

I'm gonna be completely honest right now, and this I cut this out in an earlier podcast because it was inappropriate, but he's brought it up again, so let's actually really have to tell the story. Jake Randa is the least listened episode I have at the Church Digital today. I don't think it's related to Jake Randa because Jake Randa, another episode that we did later on was actually very high. But I launched four episodes at the exact same day when we launched this thing. By the way, our one year anniversary is like coming up in a couple days, and so our one year anniversary we're bringing in somebody. We're gonna launch on Thursday. It's gonna be awesome. When's your anniversary coming up?

But with Jay, we launched four episodes in a row. Episode one, episode two were heavily listened to. Episode four, which was the top one in the podcast when people downloaded it, is heavily listened to. My man Jay gets no love whatsoever. Nobody listens to his podcast. I'm like, it's Jay freakin Crandall. Why does nobody listen to this podcast? So I totally thought, like, I text you daily. I had an idea of why that happened. But yeah, I stood you like, I know you've released a bunch at once, but it still cracks me up.

Yeah, it so it's totally, it's I show you to launch three. Maybe I should have just launched two. But I was really excited to do the podcast thing, and I can't believe we made like sixty plus here. This is awesome. When's your anniversary coming up?

So here's what I want you to do, listening audience. Stop this podcast. Go back to your app. Scroll down. I ain't episode three. Jake Randa. By the way, I'm not saying that episode's better than this episode, but it's, no, it's, it's a really good one. Check it out. Listen to it and just show some love to my friend Jay so he's no longer the least listened to episode of the Church Digital. I mean, he's too smart to be at the bottom. He just, he really is. Give Jay a chance.

James, great having you in the podcast. I hope we have many more before you kill Jeff Reed.

Yeah, awesome. Hey, so for Ray, for Jay, this is Jeff for the Church Digital. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time here on the podcast. Y'all have a good day.