EP064: Patrick Holden, Meeting & Mobilizing People on Facebook

Episode 64 of the Church of Digital podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning. We're gonna park out here on this Stadia Church Planning side for this podcast. This is the first podcast where we've talked with a church planter who's going in this process. By the way, there's huge implications for church online all over this conversation because what we're talking about here is how to utilize Facebook to mobilize people across the country. We're bringing in a conversation with Patrick Holden. Patrick is a planter. He has yet to officially launch—I hate to use the word launch, but to start his physical church plant in Columbus, Ohio. As a matter of fact, Patrick doesn't even live currently in Columbus, Ohio. He's living somewhere in Michigan. But as a result of utilizing Facebook technology, he's already building his core team. He's building his group, his followers. He's finding his own here in Columbus, Ohio, utilizing Facebook. He's not even in the state, but he's utilizing it to connect, to meet with people, and to recruit them into his church. And it's not just Patrick that's doing it. His system is so scalable. His core team, who also does not live currently in Columbus, Ohio, all over the country—which were there at—they're using it as well. And so even though these people do not live in Columbus, Ohio, they are actively recruiting and developing relationships with people in Columbus toward starting this church plant. I mean, talk about mobilizing people on mission. Even though we're in the midst of this coronavirus, this COVID season, this is crazy stuff.

So here's where we are. We're bringing in Patrick Holden into the conversation. We're also bringing in another Stadia staffer. His name is Nathan Hawkins. I call him Chief O a couple times in the podcast. That's his nickname. He's the West Regional Director with Stadia Church Planning and just an all-around great guy, and quickly becoming a fanboy of church online, which is one of the reasons I like him. So we've got Nathan, Chief O, Hawkins coming in. We've got Patrick Holden for Nouveau Church in Columbus, Ohio. Myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, in a conversation that I'm calling "Meeting and Mobilizing People on Facebook."

All right, everybody, here you go.

Yeah, so the spark note version, I think for us, is you know, way back in college, my freshman year of college, me, my roommates, and my wife Emily, we all worked in a suit of minister together. And we would just always dream, you know, but what would it look like if we ever found the church one day and say, fast forward, you know, fifteen years later, really we're all doing ministry at different places. One of my friends is an executive pastor at a large multisite church in Dalton. The other, the creative director—Emily's a creative director—and then I'm a lead pastor for one of the multisite churches here in Michigan. And about two years ago, God really started kind of opening our hearts back up to planning a church again. And it's always been there, but it was like he was saying, "Hey, this is the time to do it." And so we started exploring that, and then all of us decided we were gonna go to Columbus, Ohio, to plant a church. And so we went there. We knew that we had kind of a long on-ramp, which is probably unique for us. We were gonna be in the places that we were at for about another year. And yeah, and we said, "Hey, how are we gonna launch this thing? We got a year's running room before we move to the city. And how do we navigate that?"

Yeah, I'm just curious, kind of like coming off of that, why Columbus? Like, was it there in tonight air regionally connected with the others? Like, just throw a dart, you know?

It's so funny. I love to tell the story. See, we had five cities. Columbus was number five. I promised my wife—I'm what my wife is from Ohio. I said I'll never live in Ohio. I'm from the South. It snows there. I feel about that. But I think we went to the other cities and we landed in Columbus. And in the most Hannibal way possible, we felt like this is where God was calling us. And then we felt that we said we're going to spend three days in the city. And so we spent three days in the city. We took a camera downtown, sort of emulated "Humans of New York," if you're familiar with that. Took a picture of people's stories. And something we get a shift in me going, people really will have a random conversation with you like that. And we interviewed 107 people over three days. One hundred and six of them were agnostic. And we said, "Okay, like, this is this is where we feel like that."

So yeah, 107. And a horse recognized it. And I'm an introvert too, so that was a lot of coffee those days. Looks fun.

Yeah, so at this point you're launching when? When's this going public officially?

Yeah, so I mean, we're hoping to have our first like official set of services September of 2021. So we're still a ways off. And really, I mean, we've been in the current, you know, job that we're in for about a year having our church know that we're leaving to do this. And so in the next two months is when we were moving out of Columbus. We've got about a two-month lender to be good to get down there. And then the other families that are coming with us, they'll be there early, really fall.

Yeah, so Jeff, one of the things I love about what Patrick and innovators like him are causing us to do is to rethink the whole notion of when is this launching, when is it getting started, what is it? Because as he said, you know, yeah, we're anticipating our first perhaps public corporate gathering in the fall of '21. They've been at work already, and God's clearly been at work well in advance. And so it's joining in to that and then continuing to build on that, which will eventually result in some sort of corporate gathering. But sure, they're already well in. And I love that, Patrick. You're doing awesome work already.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

So the thing that intrigues me about Patrick is because I was in a meeting through Stadia, and he was talking to some of the other pre—it's I'm learning the Patricia planning terms is pretty much right. It's not quite public, yeah, yeah. The thing, and so he's telling this story of how he's doing ministry like via Facebook and how he's connecting with people via Facebook in the area, not even in Columbus, Ohio, already already doing some of this. And so I was really intrigued because, you know, anytime somebody's doing ministry virtually, oh, and they're in another state, I mean, that's just a phenomenal story. And so like, I wanted to bring Patrick on and really dive into this.

Okay, so what does this look like? How do you do this? What are the responses? Evidently, that's 99.4% agnosticism in Columbus, okay? It's a non-scientific poll, but you've got this huge opportunity to connect with people. And you're doing it. For starters, until you get there, you're doing it during Facebook. So what are you learning? What are you experiencing in this season?

You know, for us, it really began, you know, for me thinking about two different things. As soon as we felt called to plant a church, the first question we started to ask was, "How do we find the first twenty-five or thirty people?" And the more church planters that I talk to, you know, most all of them had a version of an answer: "Once we arrived in the city, I would go to Starbucks or coffee shop, just introduce ourselves to people that maybe we didn't know before, and tell them about the church plant," which is really great. But I think for me, I kept thinking, "There's got to be a way to do that from a distance because we've got a year before we're ever gonna be there." And so for us, it really was kind of like, I know, you know, if you're thinking about building a fire, I know how to maintain a fire. I know how to keep it hopefully going and hopefully grow it, but I had no idea how to find sticks and stones and just get it to get it started.

And so we can add his idea. What would it be like the first day that we moved to Columbus? We pulled in with a moving truck, and we said, "We're gonna have an event that night." Like, the vision was like, we were able to get a hundred people there that first night, get some of the work that we had done before. And so as I said, we began to dream about that. We just said, "Hey, there's all these people on Facebook. We know from our time over the course of three days that people would kind of randomly, you know, respond to you, you know, going up to them and talking to them, especially when you're talking about the city." And so what we decided to do is we were gonna add people on Facebook as friends. And then we would message them. And the message was geared specifically to say, "Hey, will you talk to us about Columbus? Inform us. Lead us on how to do that well." And we found anywhere from twenty to thirty percent of those people would respond back, take a phone call with us on, usually on FaceTime. And then you would kind of go from there. So that's how we did it.

Patrick, let me just say a couple things. I love the innovation on so many levels. And I don't know who the church planter is you were talking to that said you meet folks at Starbucks because maybe in 2010, but now in 2020, like, talk to me when I'm at Starbucks. The whole third space thing—there's a drive-through now. But your true innovation is recognizing that, yeah, I love your fire analogy. It's like, I don't want to try to gather sticks. Oftentimes we'll say, particularly from an investment standpoint, do you want to invest in this opportunity where someone's rubbing sticks together or this opportunity where there's a fire going? And what you're demonstrating is we can generate some spark, even start a small fire from a distance. And so you also now have this long runway before you invest all the time and energy and resources, money, relocate your family, and everybody else that's gonna go to Columbus with you, to really have a proof of concept. And so if I'm an investor, I'm listening to you going, "Oh wow, you're already in contact with how many people there? You're already engaging at what?" And you've got a hundred people who are gonna show up to welcome you. Like, "Oh gosh, sign me up. Oh, Patrick, how do I get on your team and invest with you?" What's fantastic?

Yeah, no, absolutely. You know what's so interesting to you is I found even when we said with personal donors, a large surge that's really, but even personal donors, there was a level of confidence that we had because you're like, donors, they're more likely to give to something that's moving than simply an idea. And so we just kept saying, "Hey, we can tell you stories, people that we've met, individual stories of people, and you're joining a team that's already moving." So yeah, we've felt a lot more confidence going into these conversations.

Tell us one of those stories. Give us an example of connected with.

Sure. What my favorites is, I said, we got to, you know, I don't know too much about football, Ohio State University, the big deal, or the Ohio State University. I'm sorry, O-H. Yeah, anyway, so everybody was listening in from Ohio news with you next. And so yes, I didn't know a ton about it. And so I'm on Facebook. I think it was probably like a ten or twelve person that I did this with, happened to be a former Ohio State football player, who phenomenal player and super gracious guy. And he jumped on the call with me, and we talked for almost two hours. I told him a little bit about what we were doing, and he just, he just happened to be over the entrepreneurial, you know, component of the business department at Ohio State. And so, you know, we got to pick his brain and talk a lot about startup world and the church stuff. And you know, he's actually gonna be jumping on a call with us tonight for digital small groups. Comes everything except.

Like those are fun stories. You know, one of the things that we try to do as well is really trying to target people who are already networkers in the city, right? There's a lot of people who are business networkers already who have, you know, their job is to make connections. And so we were trying to go after people who had three or four thousand friends and talk to them. And we found that they wanted to be so helpful in helping us get connected to other people.

So, you know, I think if some friends we have, I'm sure that I asked for permission, but we randomly met them, didn't know that ahead of time. And as soon as we did, I mean, they've introduced us to really hundreds of people since then. And yeah, you know them as well. So it's interesting how it works.

The prayer that we pray, you know, before we actually sit down, which sounds on a computer to send these messages out, there's a God would direct us to the key influencers, the people who can, you know, grow it exponentially through their networks already.

So how do, so from a practical standpoint, like are you filtering on Facebook? How are you finding three to four thousand plus friends in Columbus? Like, what, how do you get there?

So yeah, we originally started by looking at Facebook groups and just finding Christian organizations that had groups. And then it was funny, it doesn't show you all the information, but you can find the people that are liking most recently. So we would go through, they would post, click the people who are liking it, and then we would kind of run through this process with those people. You only get so many of those groups, so we did that for a little while. Then we started, like I said, going after networkers, so trying to find, you know, networking companies and the people that were connecting to them. And so we started doing that. Those are really great for us.

And then, you know, the other thing is when somebody said yes, we would go through their friend list and start adding everybody. And that way, as weird as it sounds on this side, you would obviously show that we had mutual friends, which would be a usual, usually a great conversation starter. And you know, it's weird in the beginning. You definitely have people go, "Why me?" I'm like, "It's random." But we made for fun conversations, and most everybody's so gracious.

Patrick, let me clarify something. So the Buckeye, for example, the player that you've connected with and is now opening doors for you, have you shaken his hand yet?

Oh, that's a great question. Um, you know, coronavirus kind of shut down a little bit of our travel. But what we did, and I could team all day about this, is you know, there's several of us, eleven adults are going to be a part of it from other places. We started doing this, and we would fly down for these like two-day trips. And we would just stack these meetings back to back to back to back to back over a two-day period. You know, you'd spend eight to twelve hours a day just meeting with people that you met.

One of our team members, name is Ryan, he lives in Georgia. Ryan flew into Columbus and just stacked two days of meetings with people. And yeah, so we did it. So I actually did. I'm not the guy I was telling you about. I went to OSU, he gave me a tour, went to his office, spent some time together. So yeah, we've tried to do that. Coronavirus has made it harder.

But as a University of Miami Hurricane fan living in Miami the majority of my life, I cannot acknowledge or condone the use of Ohio State in this podcast. You know, I'm struggling even as I'm listening to this. I may have to edit it out. I have to see how the rest of the podcast goes. We might just keep this one on the shelf.

But no, Facebook's really, it really is a good idea here. I got to tell you, the thing that I love about what you described so far is that this isn't an ad campaign where you're spending hundreds of dollars a day to do something. Like, what you're actually doing is utilizing the platform and being relational to meet people. And as a result of meeting people, building relationships, and funneling that into ministry, you're meeting people, you're connecting with them in community, and then you're getting to the Christ point or whatever the evangelism is. But you're not beating people over the head on a platform. You're engaging in conversation, which in this coronavirus season we're in, where we're conversation starved, it's not content strategy, it's conversation. And that's what makes this thing beautiful.

Is this, I'm just curious, like did you see this somewhere? Was this something that came, like how did you grow to this point of, "Hey, let's utilize the Facebook platform to actually physically have conversations and meet people?"

I had, I'm sure other people have done it, I'm sure, but no, we hadn't. In fact, none of us thought it would work. So I'll be honest, we committed to do it for two weeks. That's all we said. Then we would do fifteen of these a piece for like two weeks. Nobody thought it was gonna work, especially me, I think. And then it did. And then all of a sudden, you know, our first two contacts were for college students at OSU. And so yeah, that's how we did it.

And for us, and I think the other side of this is interesting, is it feels in a moment like mundane work, you know? I mean, like you're literally copying, pasting, sending a message, and then we're adding into our database system. And then they respond. Though, and I think for me, it's like we've got to embrace it. There is like this, like responsible for the obedience in the small part of it. I think God has, like you're talking about, run about this beautiful kind of ray of relationships on the other side of it.

Yeah, amen. You're responsible for obedience, but also there's some strategic thinking you mentioned just there. You're using templates, you're adding people to a database, so you're being systematic, it's intentional, it's not haphazard. Tell us a little bit more about that. What does that look like? How do you make sure that not everybody is doing the same thing with the same person, or if someone blocks you, you don't like it? How do you do that?

Well, I again want to brag on the guys. I'm not even naming Ryan, style, Brian, everybody has their smart friend. Ryan is one of my smart friends. And so I said, "Hey, let's try it," and he created this ability to use HubSpot, clear with HubSpot. And we kind of approach it as if we're doing sales. And so what we did is he set it up for us. And once we send the message, it is a template. We took this simple message we send every item as a friend. And then we go over to HubSpot and we add every single person that we reach out to in HubSpot, put their name in there, and then he broke it out into a category called "potential involvement with our church," "conversation status," so we know exactly where people are, and then whether they're open to a face-to-face meeting. And then we go in there and we add that information.

And then we try to keep up with it. I would say our team is significantly better at it than me. I wish I was better at it. They're phenomenal. You know, I'm scattered, but yeah, so you know, somebody's killing it, and so they put all of that information in there. And so it's always there.

HubSpot's great, so you can add tags like in HubSpot, so it'll pop up to remind them. It's creepy as it sounds, and there's some time you can actually, if you're sending an email, you can actually tell when they open it. You know, we tried to develop strategy around, "Hey, when they open it, what does that mean?" And so HubSpot had a great tool.

And the other thing for us too is, you know, with church database systems, you're paying, and a lot of times for how many people you have in the system. And we didn't want, you know, a thousand people that might not be involved in that system and pay for that. So once somebody takes the next step for us, then we move them over into Planning Center, which is what we use, and we track them a little bit differently over there. But yeah, that's the system behind it.

Patrick, I want to ask you about something. You keep mentioning your team, and I think this is something that we don't want to be lost on folks. Your team is spread out all over the country, and you guys are collaborating virtually. So it's not just you, but it's people, many of whom I suspect are probably volunteering their time. You mentioned your smart friend who certainly is more capable than us in systems. But having a process, having a system, allows other people to be involved. It's not like this just lives in your head and you're trying to do it all on your own. The fact that you guys have taken the effort to map it out and say, "Here's what we're gonna do," it invites other people to be involved. Talk to us about how that works on your team.

Yeah, you know, and so I would say like, I'm so lucky to be able to work with people that seriously are more talented and smarter, and that there's some of my best friends in the whole world. And so you're right, nobody's paid on our team actually, nobody including me. It's better. Our team at this point, everybody's volunteering their time. Mostly people are kind of working two jobs, you know, with this as a part of it.

So what we try to do though is we try to lean into our separate strengths. Obviously, that's one of Brian's. And he's the extroverted person on our team. But we also said, "How do we make it so scalable that any volunteer here can replicate the system?" And so we literally made videos. Like, he again, we made how-to five-minute videos on how to walk through it, there step by step. Thing obviously, I mean, we can give whoever wants that. We gave all this stuff right. But you know, he spent a lot of time doing that.

And so what we've done, we do have volunteers that are part of it now. Part of our goal now is how do we, a lot of people want to talk to the lead pastor, which is, you know, that's part of it. But and so there are people that will get access to my Facebook account soon, and they will be sending out messages in some way on behalf of me and scheduling it, which is great. So I'll still do it, but they'll be doing part of that.

But you know, there's this component of it that we wanted to be so scalable that our hope is no matter, you know, if God blesses it and we go to other parts of the city or even other cities, that we could take the same approach, even if it's in a different, you know, social media place, and just keep replicating it over.

Yeah, that's our hope.

I love that. And we've got an eight-page PDF open here on my desktop that's your plan. And so we'll put that in the show notes to link to. And if you could send over the videos, honestly, I use HubSpot for my business, and so part of me wants to like understand the HubSpot and your perspective of how you're merging it together for my own benefit.

I know that a lot of times I've been talking with churches towards like the average church. And I'm moving beyond church plant just here for a second. But the average church is broadcasting. This is not an exaggeration. I was talking with a church today who said they had sixty-five thousand people watching their Easter services, and the connection cards that they actually had with tangible names to follow up on, they had eleven.

And so like, I'm just doing bad math in my head as my dog barks in the background, welcome to coronavirus season. Sixty-five thousand and it drops down to eleven for actual tangible follow-up. And so I've even been encouraging, utilize Facebook groups, utilize Facebook where it's not as invasive as a connection card. It's easier to peel people's information out of it. The fact that you're getting twenty to thirty percent response rate on a Facebook message is crazy. Like right now, Facebook message is actually the most successful platform currently in the industry today. Email's like twenty percent open rate. Text message is like...

50 to 60 open with it Facebook messengers 80 to 90 percent at this point and so getting people to engage it in the feeling think like they can respond and and if they don't like you they can block you through Facebook right super easy so it's low risk for them to engage in that conversation is is a great idea and I love the fact that that you're capitalizing on this to to like get engaged to meet people and then move them along to to what's next thank you yeah that's also I didn't know those stats about messenger though but I'm definitely telling everybody I know that's good hey let me just interject and remind us we're talking metrics were talking systems and processes a point to all this is making disciples and and you guys have this amazing strategy you're doing phenomenal work it may sound a little corporate or salesy to some folks but at the end of the day you're reaching out to people with good news and you're inviting them into community and I wish more church planters would focus and start here where you have on relationships on meeting people on making those types of connections as opposed to focused on hey where are we gonna meet and what kind of sound system are we gonna have and what's my first year sermons dude you'll get to that you guys are making relationships and introducing people to Jesus and starting with just that real life connection that's why you're doing this and you can do it from afar alright Patrick this is genius you know it's I love it you said I'll tell you one more quick story I we had somebody that we met on some of the messenger thing and they've been distantly connected to what we're doing and but there was somebody in Columbus who reached out to husband just had a heart attack he has a coronavirus so he had heart attack and coronavirus and they have a special needs son and and so through somebody that we reached out to on Facebook right they got connected through what we were doing I got her connected and she resolved us on messenger and so we were able to talk to her and do some like like you're saying real ministry from 700 miles away I have no idea how many miles of those I just picked the number and and yeah and it's and it's been an amazing thing we were able to come alongside of her so I just lost wanting everything you're saying God doesn't work through all of that I'm just curious in your process like so you're you're having the conversation you're in another state you're launching like in 18 months would you say fall 2021 and yeah coronavirus launching anything physical is crazy at this point what are you what's the what's the handoff what are you trying to connect these people to like in your discipleship pathway process strategy whatever the word is like what's the next step for somebody who you're literally having this a cold conversation with on facebook messenger so good so you know we coronavirus actually caused us to pivot slightly and and it's been super helpful and super beneficial so far so once we have that initial call with them now what we're doing is we're inviting them to a to a soon group they were having once a month and we've started doing digital services online and so we invite them to be a part of this group where they actually help me craft the message help us craft the service give us input on the kind of thing that people in Columbus want to talk about right that's part of it is being away it's been good to go I don't know what everybody's seeing I don't know what they're feeling you coach us and so we invite them to this group and then we ask them to come and invite other people to it and because they spoke into it there they're much more likely to do that so we're doing these monthly services online at any another scale back the gh4 one camera and a couple lights but you know it's that but we do that and then we're seeing people like come over and that's great and then our end goal is that they would end up in a digital weekly small group abouts you know we were gonna do dinner parties but we can't and so we're doing these zoom groups online we have one a night actually I was texting some of the guys they're talking about earlier they're coming tonight and we'll hop on you know zoom call and and that way we can build relationships with each other build our launch team but also speak in disciple one another for those groups that's kind of our end goal right they're already doing it they've already started they're already joining with God and they're not waiting until they are able to gather whether it be virtually or in person next year whenever and once again digital allows us to transcend geography so you can do that from afar whether it's 700 or 900 or just I think the key point you're doing it now it's not as if this is all precursor or you know this is the the preamble and then the real you know whatever starts like no this is ministry now that will lead to more and something different in the future but it's it's authentic and I just love that so yeah you're hosting virtual zoom groups so someone goes through that they have a conversation with you you're inviting them to be the expert to participate by giving you feedback and input you're not showing up with all the answers they're contributing what does that look like one of those one of those groups talked about yeah so you know it's something I love I'm sure most everyone's familiar with Josh Kelsey dachshund or DLC out c3 their needs inner parties I'm sure we've adapted a version of but you know they were doing but it really is I will come in and spend about you know 60 to 75 minutes together we'll play some sort of game at the beginning of those zoom calls tell stories we're going around one person will tell a story like their life and we go around do that I do it very short I mean I jokingly call it a devotional you know from my Baptist background I don't know if that would even be considered one you know but I'm doing a little little little devotional short thing and then at the end we actually find some really helpful we actually asked for prayer requests from people who file reviews or not and we believe if you were gonna be leaning into that especially in this time period at least engage in the spiritual transcendence part of it and so we do that and then we we hang out as long afterwards they want to the other night we had one and about half the call left and about half the call state an additional hour hour and a half yeah so that's that's that's kind of our and our hope is once we get to a certain number we'll just replicate them or we can always break out into multiple rooms on the zoom call so that's you know it's all about yeah I mean you're not slowing down cuz a zoom or not because the coronavirus you're ramping up and even utilizing this season to go with it chiva what are you thinking well question you're not gonna stop this when you get there and when you get on the ground and when you start being able to gather physically I mean you guys are learning lessons now that you'll carry with you I pray correct because I'm thinking about this from the existing church standpoint there you know they they're not building towards something they're already there so they could do this too and you will continue to some what will that look like once you get on the ground and once you start gathering physically weekly how will this carry over into that season you know it's funny it's a we I think we had felt this as a family I'm in my early 30s we have two young kids yeah and I love small groups I believe in it the idea of going to a small group it's very difficult for young families right now and so for us before we even decided we were gonna buy your we said we have to figure out a way to do this digitally once they go to bed so yes our hope is continue doing this in terms of the reaching out I'm sure at some point Facebook will become something else that we utilize you know but but the idea of how can we digitally make connections with people we want to be on the front lines of doing that and then you know also figure out a way to do it physically so I'm I'm sure we'll have services but it's funny like I was I was talking to a guy the other day who is a high level media person we were talking about the secular you know sort of approach to production right now and I've always been part of attraction churches I'm Alina and and I love moving lights another thing about what he said that was so interesting to me he says especially in this season even coming out of it on the other side of it the most tractional thing is gonna be the real and raw even if it's online digital real raw relational component they ask the thing it's gonna attract people because Jimmy Fallon's at his house right now those kids you know what I mean John Krasinski's doing the you know I mean that's just a piece of it feel so I think for us I will probably shift in the production a little bit but always doing this this this is the thing that I have I've worked with stadia I just checked the calendar I think it'll be I'm coming up on my third month so I'm kind of new this has been the biggest lesson that I've learned in the three months that I've been here and it's something that I probably should have known and when when Craig my boss when Craig said it to me I was like it was like somebody hit me over the head with a ton of bricks I'm like why haven't ever seen this before in my life so we all know Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life right you know connect to God serving you know we all have different languages we all different strategies but there's a first base there's a second base there's a third base and then hopefully a home played mission sometimes it's a baseball diamond sometimes it's three one two three kind of approach but everything starts with the big service right and so for four years I struggled with working in in mega giga church environments where the one is the first step and so and you're trying to gather hundreds thousands tens of thousands you know churches are telling me they saw hundreds of thousands of people in in easter environments this year coronavirus things are skyrocketing where there's more attendance online than ever before 50% of churches are growing according to Kerry new off so we're seeing this spike who are these people who are they actually where are they coming from what's their story how can we as a church minister to them more than just creating a video content for them to process how do we engage in a two-way conversation it was interesting I challenged one of my churches the church that I work with here in Miami called Christ journey and I challenged them to that and they they actually we did some things on Facebook through groups to get names and so we grabbed the names engage them on Facebook Messenger had several hundred conversations off of people that we didn't have names of before one of the ladies this is her story she lives in St. Augustine Florida which is probably five to six hours away from Miami she's never been to Christ's journey she doesn't know anything really about the church she googled us found the service god attached to it by the way she's not sure that her sir church is a small church they're not streaming anything so she doesn't have the church Christ journey is her church for this season and she doesn't know if her church is gonna open because the longer this stretch goes the harder economically it's gonna be for these smaller churches to survive so utilizing a one-on-one conversation via facebook messenger Christ journey was able to learn something in greater detail of how to minister to the group overall because this is just one story of multiple all of a sudden instead of going you know let's go group first what if we went backwards what if we went individual first and built on it and so you see for years

I've been wrestling with we're doing this backwards. We shouldn't be going big. We should be going individual. But the mega mentality that just environments that I've worked in, no, you gotta gotta go big first. You gotta go big first. It wasn't until I was in this like church planning environment where it's like, well of course you go small first. Jeff, what were you thinking?

Chivo, you've you've lived this. What are you thinking off in this? It's it here's the both and, right? It God has clearly worked through large established churches and there's something to be said for the, you know, those of us that have been Christ's followers for a long time. I love corporate worship. I love, you know, great preaching. I love being a part of a church that gathers. But I'm one segment of the population and I I think it was Alan Hirsch who said this a long time ago. You have all these churches fighting over that segment. It meanwhile there's this whole other segment of people who probably aren't interested in that and won't do that. But they might have a conversation with you, Patrick, or they might stream something. They might be open to engaging virtually because it gives them a different sort of connection and engagement and so forth. Why why would we neglect them? Why would we compel you? Well, in order to be a part of the church you have to physically show up on Sunday. Well, we've just alienated a whole bunch of people who need the hope of the gospel. So yeah, if if they're not willing to come to us, let's go to them. Let's be this areas and do that in this space. I just I love what you're doing and what you're recognizing here in terms of yeah this will carry over and yeah there may be okay thousands of people watched a stream online. How many of them are gonna show up? That's good. But how many of them would continue to engage at some level if we would reach out to them and invite them into a conversation? Patrick, you're doing it. I love it. I love your saying it.

See, because I would say there were a long time you've heard this even about like megachurch models, which you know we've been a part of for a long time. This the model is gonna have to change where I almost go like I feel like what we're talking about now and what we're seeing even with some of the larger churches, it's it's more of an addition. See, there are a large people that will come to that gathering. But there are you're saying there are ton of people that never would. And so you know it is it's easier than we think it is and the model doesn't necessarily up end everything. It's all right. So I'm a church planter. I am intrigued by what you're talking about. I'm thinking about doing something similar. Where do I start? What do I do?

Yeah, so you know what we did is we just, I think it's a it took a lot of courage to do the first ten. So I think you just commit to doing it ten times and then if that doesn't work do it another tenth. I give yourself a couple of weeks of a window and then once you have your first conversation easier. We literally started in the group. So I would say go start in a Facebook group. Easy way to do it. It's the town that you're going to. Most of them have a Facebook group or a page. Go to that page. Find the last five things that they posted and then go see the people that are liking it. Add them and send a message. And then I would say find the smartest people you can. If you're anything like me, who can actually track the data because the data informed all the other next steps. And that's what I would say. Just real quick, tell me some examples. Some groups that you would harvest them for me. I feel bad even saying that. That you missed information that may not be the right word. But that that you were you were working like what are some examples? Community groups where you were, you know, it's so we really would. I would go to the years and in New Albany in Columbus, there's kind of, you know, segmented part Columbus. We went to there and went to their pages. And you know, Dublin's actually just added a bridge and they're building out all this stuff. We'd go there finding people there liked it. So we go to the city pages. When it comes to like Christian colleges, law, if you find a Christian college, you're the city that you're in, a lot of those colleges will have Christian groups that you can go find and you can kind of add people. Again, you're kind of wanting to get both sides of it. I think one of the things we're talking about right now we haven't dope to defend. So maybe somebody let's do this will and then they'll coach us on it. But you know, we're trying to say hey, there are people who are already social influencers, specifically you know parents or mom blogs or this kind of thing. And and what we're saying is we want to be helpful in these spaces just like they are. How do we make those connections with those people that can kind of leverage networks together and partner to do those kinds of things? We're trying to do that right now. But those are a few places that we've looked on ously the business networkers. If you find the business networking in your community, you know, they want to be helpful and they're gonna make some connections too. So going with the goers is a phrase that we've embraced here with Stadia for a long time and you're doing that. I just want to acknowledge something here, Patrick. Um, you are out at the leading edge of something that we are excited to be supportive of. I'm so glad that we get to support you via Stadia. I know you come from amazing church planting church at Kensington and also we're fortunate. I mean it's for such a time as this. Three months, Jeff. Is that all? I mean clearly you won't profit in this space in this sector for a long time and I'm so grateful for the platform you have and the way people are now tuning in to pay attention and recognize hey, that guy's got some really important things to say. So I'm just I'm grateful to be connected with both of you and associated. I'm grateful for Stadia's leadership recognizing this opportunity and encouraging both of you in this innovative online digital ministry. I just want to say well done to both of you.

Yeah, so I've already told Patrick when I retire he's gonna take over my job with Stadia and it's gonna be awesome. I've already duplicated rule number one is surround yourself with smart people and do whatever they tell you, right? So it's been it's been a lot of fun and looking forward to more. It's but you know, it's I always feel weird when I'm like it's been fun in the midst of coronavirus. People are dying and there's massive pandemic and economies are crashing. But I think I think it's it's interesting to see the church pivot in the season relatively successfully understanding some things. You know, it's funny. Let's make it the Alan Hirsch podcast take. Well, you know, if you want to learn how to play chess you got to take the Queen off the board, the most powerful piece. Then you really learn how to use the other pieces. And for centuries the the weekend service, okay maybe decades, the weekend service was really the the Queen of it. And taking it off, learning other processes and how to use some of these other tools effectively, even tools that churches don't know they have, like how to crowdsource information off of Facebook to use it to meet and capitalize with more. It's just so so good. Jeff, you and I were on another call earlier today where one of our teammates made an analogy this season that we're in. You know, we're recording this the week of Easter and it's almost as if this is a season where we're in the tomb. You know, it's sort of the sad Saturday. There's a lot of us going oh my goodness. I just crucified our Lord. Like we we thought he was going to redeem. And but Sunday's coming and the resurrection and the hope and the way the church is going to resurrect coming out of this season. Buckle up friends. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait to see what God does. And yeah, it's it's gonna be through new life like this church you're planting, Patrick, like this ministry that you're leading us in, Jeff. It's sad Saturday with the Corona, but Sunday's coming.

Amen. And we're gonna we're gonna land the plane on that. That was eloquent. Well said, Chivo. Pulling it in. That was great. Hey, closing closing thoughts from from either of you. Patrick, in anything is real and in the plane here. You know, I think if I would just say one thing to you know, talking to church planters, we made so many friends on this. You know, there are moments where you feel discouraged. You're like hey, we're quarantined. How am I going to launch this church? And I think my wife and I were talking tonight and we were just feeling I don't think God cast the planet church. They call this to do it during this time period, which means we're gonna have to figure out new ways. But that's part of the calling and he's called us to. And if he's call this to it, he'll be faithful through it. And so I feel like for us that's where we're trying to land. And and yeah, yeah, coronavirus is an opportunity. It's not an excuse.

I love that. Chivo's and in the plane thoughts. I just yes and amen to both of you for such a time as this. Clearly it's the case, Patrick. I look forward to following along. I hope you'll update us. Maybe Jeff will even bring you back and you can share okay, how is this continue to develop in the season that comes. So thank you for your time and for sharing your insights, your creativity. I know a lot of leaders are gonna learn from you and I pray that they'll follow and reach out to their community as proactively and intentionally as you have even from a distance. Mad respect, brother. Thank you.

I hate so we're gonna wrap on that. It's been a been a great podcast. I man, Patrick, thank you for jumping on here. Chivo, thanks for jumping on as well and co-hosting with me. I I've loved the experience with Stadia. I've loved understanding it completely different side of ministry for me on this church planting side. I'm still green in a lot of different areas and so love heaven as he's wearing a green shirt. That's occurred. Yeah, the never mind. I may I cut that out because I was just weird. But this has been awesome time. I'm gonna laugh. Why not? So we're gonna land and I'm gonna shut up for Patrick for four. Chivo, this is Jeff the Church Digital. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time here the podcast. You have a good day.