EP080: Angela Craig & Planting a Digital-Only Church on Facebook

Episode 80 of the Church at Digital podcast, powered once again by Stadia. Church planting. Jeff here. We've got a great episode, but before we get there, we are still celebrating our ten thousand podcast plays here at the Church Digital podcast. And to that end, I want to give away some coffee to our listeners and thank our listeners for listening to this.

Here's what I'm looking for: go to thechurch.digital/10k. It's a simple process. We just want to hear how we, the Church Digital, how we're making a difference in the life of your church. So often we're creating this content and we're getting feedback, but we'd love to get some more from you guys. So how are we, the Church Digital, helping? How can we help some more? Follow the process there at thechurch.digital/10k—the number ten and a K. Link is in the show notes. Dive into it. All right, here we are with this episode, and this one hits close to home. I loved seeing this. This happened. We're bringing in Angela Craig to the conversation. Now, pre-COVID, Angela Craig wasn't even on my radar, and I said that on the show, and I'm a little embarrassed. Once I kind of heard who she was, that I didn't know about her, because Angela, for the past three years, has been running a digital-only church on Facebook. Yes, Pursuit Church Live. And as a matter of fact, it was like the first social media church of the Assemblies of God denomination. I don't know if there's a lot of other social media churches or if the Assemblies of God denomination does it more, but that's her deal. It's the first Assemblies of God church on social media. And so she'd been doing it for three years. Found some fascinating stories. She's hit in forty-three countries, forty-five languages. And so it's really, really interesting how she's been able to not only get this huge reach but by utilizing the Facebook platform, she's getting some really solid engagement. And where it's getting into this relational approach that we talked about so much with church online, and even now with this digital-only expression of church.

Now, some of you out there are saying right now, "Wait, digital-only? As in, no physical space?" Yeah. That was really controversial pre-COVID. We're all doing it. Maybe as we go back to the buildings, there's gonna be this mix, this hybrid, this digital approach of physical and digital. But I love pioneers like what we see out of Angela here, who even three years ago were pushing all in on this idea of digital-only. And through Stadia, we are looking to launch more of these digital-only churches. So as some of you guys are listening to this and you're saying, "Hey, this is a really interesting idea. Hey, I might be interested in doing something like that," I want to hear from you. So do me a favor. Let's reach out. Let's connect. Jeff at thechurch.digital. Check out the show notes in the podcast. There's a ton of different ways to get in touch with me. But at the end of the day, we at Stadia want to help people like Angela figure this out. God bless Angela. Three years ago, she didn't have the help. She didn't have the guidance. We want to be the guidance at Stadia. So if you're interested, let's have that conversation. Hats off to the lady here for following her calling, for doing the thing when the rest of the world thought she was crazy, and for being able to sit back and watch how her faithfulness has reaped rewards as a result of it. God, thank you for doing something through this ministry of Pursuit Church Live that Angela's created here on Facebook.

So here we are in the conversation with Angela. Her story—that's not the name of the podcast. I don't think that's the name of a movie, right? It's a movie. No. All right, so here's what we're bringing into the conversation: Angela Craig, lead pastor, Pursuit Church Live; myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital; and director of Church Digital church planting for Stadia church planting. In a conversation that I'm calling "Planting a Digital Church on Social Media."

Okay, everybody, here you go. Officially, my title was ordained minister with the Assemblies of God, and I became an ordained minister probably eleven years ago. I was working for Northwest Ministry Network, which is basically, if you are familiar with Assemblies of God, they are a training office for it. I'm in the state of Washington, and so we have three hundred twenty churches, Assemblies of God churches. And so we were responsible for training, equipping, strengthening, and encouraging pastors and leaders of those churches. So I did that for ten years. And I actually started Facebook groups with credentialed women about six years ago, and that is how I—that was kind of the start of digital ministry for me.

So you started the Facebook groups. And was that leading so you're doing Facebook groups, but now with Pursuit Church Live, you're doing like a more tangible church? Like, maybe we describe how you started with the church?

Yeah, so as a director at the Northwest Ministry Network, I was think of me like as a leadership coach and encourager. And so these Facebook groups I started for women who knew they were called to ministry but didn't know how to get started. But what I found out in that experiment was that about forty percent of women who were coming into the groups through Facebook didn't have a church that they would call their home church. And I love people, and I'm always wanting to include everybody. And I saw this whole category of people who wouldn't go to church or couldn't go to church or didn't have a church, but really wanted to know Jesus, were interested in exploring faith, and interested in exploring purpose, and wanted to be a part of this group. And so strangers became friends with authentic relationship. And we were able to disciple every day, not just on Sundays for half an hour. At the same time, I was also working and volunteering in my own local church and felt the frustration of seeing people leave, seeing people not be able to attend, and wondering like, "How?" That was the biggest question we were asking in our church. I think most churches ask: "How do we get people to come to church?" And so we had to figure out how to bring church to them. And I really see that modeled in the life of Jesus. He went to people, and he went where the people were. And this was kind of my lightbulb, my aha moment: the people are on Facebook. So that's how we started in 2017. I asked our superintendent of our network, who was in charge of church planting at the time. I said, "I want to try this digital-only church." And he said, "Go for it." Now, it took June of 2017 to May to actually be approved as the first social media church of Assemblies of God by the National Office, because, you know, how do you—there's no walls. How do you count people? All these things that happen when you do digital church. So that's how we got started in 2017.

That's awesome. So the first Assemblies of God social media church. So I mean, there's a couple questions even with that statement. Yeah, and I want the audience to understand like, what is a digital church in this context? So you mentioned tens of thousands of people, Facebook-only, running that platform, seeing the algorithms, reaching forty-five countries, international reach very quickly. In the grand scheme of things, what are the offerings—not money standpoint as much as like, what does a physical church do? What does it look like? Services, groups? Like, what's the life of a digital church there with Pursuit Church Live?

Well, that is actually morphed over time. And one of the big things I tell people about digital ministry is that you have to get outside the church box. So working in a church, I had ideas about what church looks like, but people online that don't know Jesus or have left church don't necessarily need online church to look like church. What they need is someone to really get to know them. So what we do—you might look online and be like, "Well, what are they doing exactly?" We're making Jesus the center of social media. That's the hook. Like, we're tailoring it to things that are relevant to people today. So we have to adapt. And we might adapt before COVID. We were adapting, meaning we would change what we were doing about every four to six weeks. And that we've tried sermon series like a regular church in the past, and that was effective, but not as effective as what we're doing now. So during COVID, we changed in twenty-four hours based on what people were needing. Like, you have to be really in touch with your demographic of what they're needing in a moment and then address those things. And that's the great thing about being on social media is that you can follow, "Okay, God, what do your people need to know?" You know, "What can we do to introduce them to faith and then to build them in their faith?" And so being online, we can build community, we can disciple, and we can care for people much more than what it looks like if you were just to go to Pursuit Church Live on Facebook and look at the outside. There's a whole lot more going on behind the scenes of how we do that.

Yeah, and you guys, like, all the community, all that for you is centered on that Facebook platform? That's what you're using pretty much exclusively?

Let's really do the ministry well. And financially, it's free. Can't beat that. No, you can't meet that. It's great. It's a good financial model.

What was the AOG kind of response? How difficult was it at the denominational level to maybe rattle some cages? Because like, the idea of a social media church itself is controversial. Individually working with a denomination like AOG probably provided some challenges as well. So like, what was that conversation like as you're trying to figure out how to do a social media church to get some of that approval and help from organizations that's a good question?

I think from me, I just moved forward without the approval of the National Office. If they were going to approve it, great. But when God calls you, you have to be obedient, right? And so I figured, "I'm doing this, and if they don't approve me, I'm still doing this. If they do approve me, I'm still doing this." And so eventually they, with the advocacy of my network and my superintendent who was a big fan of this idea—because he is all about reaching everyone for Jesus without boundaries. He doesn't have mental boundaries about it. So at the time, he was like, "Let's plant churches in, you know, if you work at Boeing or at Microsoft, let's plant churches in the lunchroom." So that's how small groups and so he was all about reaching people where you can reach them or where your influence was. So he was a huge advocate for me in our church structure. And also, AG is a huge mission organization. And so I think in the end, they saw this as church. Our church, Pursuit Church Live, as a mission organization because we were able to reach into every corner of the world through social media. And so that's how we got approved.

You know, and the other part is like, what is a social media church? So social media, Facebook—you know, obviously if you've got the networks—what, what does it look like? And even what makes you a church quote-unquote on these social media networks? That's a great question.

When we started, we tried everything. So we tried streaming. We tried YouTube. We tried Instagram. WhatsApp. I did. I learned how to develop an app. Like, I created an app. If you've seen Church Home, their app, that's my dream app. But also, don't have a good amount of money to do that. If you haven't, check it out because it's a great tool to put Jesus in people's hands every day. And so what I found was then we couldn't really do anything well because we were so diverse. And we also, when we were streaming to our website, which many churches still do, all the traffic was coming from Facebook. So when you look at Facebook, it has two point six billion people a month. And right now, they're spending—

About a little under an hour, I think 58 minutes or something a day, and I couldn't pass up that opportunity. And so we had enough traffic. We were in 45 countries and 43 languages after the first year. That was plenty of people to disciple. So we could have gone wider, but we wanted to go deeper. We wanted our roots to go deeper. And so we decided that that was gonna be our platform: Facebook. And we do dabble in other things, but that is where we train leaders. Like on Instagram, I have a leader who we're training, and she's an up-and-coming twenty-something who is doing live video and learning how to disciple online through that opportunity on Instagram. But Facebook is our main platform now.

I'm gonna back up a little bit because you just surprised me. One year, 45 countries, 43 languages. Unpack that, because we talked about how, you know, physical has their strengths, digital has their strengths, their strengths and weaknesses with both. Within a year, you're essentially hitting 45 nations and 43 languages. Ain't no way you're doing that in the physical space. So tell me what that looks like digitally.

Surprising. I didn't know anything about Facebook algorithms. I didn't know anything. All I knew is that God was calling me to reach people that were spiritually homeless, people that didn't have a place they could call their home, people that needed to be seen. And people are on Facebook, on social media, to be seen. And we all know that. And so I love to make people know their lives matter. And so I didn't know that it would be like that: 10,000 people in 45 countries and 43 languages. And that's really small, actually, in the big picture. But that was all due to Facebook algorithms for free. I didn't do any promoting. And so there is power in it for the local church, for the digital minister who wants to plant just a digital-only church, which I hope more people will do. There's so much potential, untapped potential in what we can do reaching every corner for Jesus. And it just makes the Bible come alive when you read those words on the page of Scripture saying that we should go to every corner of the world. So when you do digital ministry, I think your eyes are open to the bigger picture of how you can reach so many people.

So you've been doing this three years. You started 2017, so like three years. Bad math, probably eighteen, nineteen, twenty, right? Someone close to three years now. Three years. Awesome. So I mean, three years in, there's got to be some great stories. Like, tell us some examples. Tell us some stories of life change or what's coming out of Pursue Church.

So I do. I have more stories than we have time for, which is just amazing. And I remember the first time I realized how important Pursue Church could be was the September after we had started. So we're just a couple months in, and I had no idea what we're doing. We're just dabbling in everything, my husband and I and our youngest son, went on a camping trip for my birthday. And we did a kayaking trip. And on this trip, we met a woman named Debbie. And she'd been living in this kind of rural area, no churches, no community. She was taking care of a friend who was disabled, and she had been there 18 months without any community outside this friend. And so we got talking, you know, in this four-hour journey, just about her life, where she was from. And she asked what I did, and I told her that I had just started this online church. And at the end, I asked if I could pray with her, if I could give her my contact info, you know, my phone number, and I would love to get her connected to our community at Pursue Church. I was like, because you could do it on Facebook. And it was in that moment I realized if I was pastoring a local church in the Seattle area where I'm from, she never could have attended that church. And there wasn't a church in the little town that she was in. And so my eyes are really opened to the power of this.

Well, fast forward. Debbie, not long after that, I followed up with a text, and she started coming to Pursue Church, attending online. And then we did a lot of talking, and she joined one of our groups, and she gave her life to Christ. And then she knew when she moved, how now she's serving in her local church. So that's the other piece of this: so often people are disenfranchised from the church for some reason, and then they come into this very safe and authentic online community, and then are planted back in in-person community. And so I just heard from Debbie, I don't know, maybe six weeks ago, just about the stuff that she's doing in her local church and how her life has drastically changed. I was like, wow, okay, this is the power of it.

That's just one story. Globally, I never would have thought when I started this that we would have a worship leader who I would never meet going live on Facebook to lead worship from Uganda. I mean, that was not in my mind. That was in God's mind, but that was not in my mind. And so to be able to build bridges with other countries and people of different social and economical backgrounds and race and gender and age and disability, I mean, it's just bringing this global community of people together to follow Christ. It's like it's so powerful and so rewarding. And those are the things that make you stay with it because you know it's God's plan to do this.

And then the last story I'm going to tell you is about one of our team leaders, D, and she's an amazing human being. She lives in Colorado, and I met her online. I did kind of the usual thing. When you church plant, you recruit a team first. But since I didn't—digital ministry churches were not around when I did this—I did it backwards. So I basically started and then did my recruiting by identifying people online who were engaged, who had said they were all in at Pursue Church Live. And D was one of those people. And she has MS, can't leave her home, can't attend her local church. And she, within a few months, was leading our team, and she's just an absolute fabulous encourager of encouragers. And now we're starting a school—well, a ministry school in partnership with Northwest University where I teach here in the Seattle area. And so she's gonna go and get another degree. She's already got three degrees, but she's gonna get a ministry degree and become a credentialed minister. And she's starting an online micro community through Pursue Church Life, which is something we're doing now. And so that, in you know, three years, that's incredible to me. Like the potential of what we could do, especially when we're partnered together. Like, especially with, you know, I knew Jeff. I mean, that's just makes it so much easier when we do it together.

So you're getting into a school. You're a teacher. And you're connecting. So you're providing online education. You've got somebody who's launching a micro location out of your digital-only church. Like, you're seeing a lot of opportunities for greater understanding, development, leadership pipeline. You know, even to person, we talked a lot in another show about online to offline. The gospel we learn in the online world has to affect our offline relationships. And what you're describing with D, where now she's going and now she's creating a watch party, a micro location—I like a house church type of thing. That's awesome. Was that in the roadmap? Was that her idea? Was that something you've organizationally wanted to do? What's kind of the genesis of the micro location?

Well, I don't know how God talks to you, but I remember before we started, the spring before we planted Pursue Church, and I was standing in the kitchen in front of the microwave, probably making another cup of coffee—anybody like coffee?—and I just heard God say, you know, Pursue Paris, Pursuit Seattle, Pursuit, and he was just naming off places in the world. I was like, okay, God, whatever you say. I just want to do this one thing right here and see what happens. And so this is the year that now we're actually, we have our feet underneath us, and so we're moving forward. And the groups that I thought he was showing me were in person. And the three groups we have starting are all online digital churches. Small, I don't know that they'll be small, but they're there. They'll be micro groups through Pursue Church Life. Two of them are topical. Like, they're addressing a specific demographic. D, her demographic, her group is Moving Mountains, and she wants to talk to people that have any kind of disability or people with chronic illness and help them to know faith and to walk, you know, to grow their faith. Gary, he already has an in-person group of people that are part of a retirement community. But then when everything went online, he started doing online for his church and realized how many people were left out because they were online but they're very isolated and alone. And so now he's starting a micro community for people of a mature age. We like to call it that. And then Nadine and her husband Roger, they are they feel called to their local town in Pueblo, Colorado. And so they're starting kind of an I Love Pueblo Facebook group to resource people in areas of drug addiction and gang-related activity and homelessness. And so that word is going where the need is really. And I think that's important to be really adaptable and flexible as far as ministry is concerned. We need everybody in it.

And what I love here is you're empowering other people to do ministry. You're doing, you're empowering these people in Pueblo, Colorado, and others to do ministry. It's not watch this and process this content. It's let me give you the tools, let me give you the opportunity to reach your circle of influence, whether in Pueblo, Colorado, or anywhere, or even I would imagine even utilizing that Facebook platform as well. From a technical standpoint, I don't want to die here, but it's a really smart platform to use because you're able to get people's profile information out of Facebook so easily as opposed to broadcasting services on Chop or Church Online Platform or things like this where you'll get tens of thousands of people viewing but only a couple of people are actually filling out the connection cards. Facebook gives you that information more readily available.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I was just gonna say things that are behind the scenes with that is how I can message anybody who likes a post. And I spend a lot of time doing that. And so if you're doing digital ministry, if that's not your strength, like friends, streaming really professional—I don't say excellent, but professional content—was not my thing. Like, I'm not a camera person. I'm not a tech person, although I've become definitely more techie. But I am more of a relational person. And so for me, just being able to know people, that God sees them, that and that starts with us as Christians seeing people. That's where it started. So the whole, yeah, Facebook and being able to reach out to people is really, really important.

I love the fact that you just said you replied via Facebook Messenger when people like a post. To me, it's like if we're gonna say something on social media and if people like it, that's like the invitation to start the conversation. It's not the end game. That's not, hey, I got 187 likes on this post. What do you do with that? Like, how is that helping? Getting, building that relationship, engage and have some conversations. We've talked with several people lately. Patrick's a church planter in Columbus, Ohio, and Patrick doesn't even live in Columbus, and he's using Facebook Messenger and Facebook.

Groups to connect with people that he doesn't even know and basically start to talk to him about being us. I'm part of his core team and basically through like Facebook Messenger he's recruited 40 to 50 leaders in Columbus when he doesn't even live in the state. Mm-hmm. Doing it all interstate. I think he's in Michigan. And so incredible opportunities to reach and build relationships digitally. That's really encouraging. And honestly, I have never met—well, until we had our first in-person Pursue Slab gathering this past October—I had not met any of my team except for two, and I had at the time I don't know, 44 people. So how in that, it does change the way you look at building teams.

I also would encourage people not—I mean, to think outside the box. As far as during the summer, I had to my first summer had two interns that had not gone to church growing up, had never read the Bible, and they interned in my office. And both of them gave their life to Christ and now are doing Young Life or, you know, one's going to college this year and the other one is gonna be a senior in college. I just remember sitting like right here where my desk is, one of them sitting across from me, and I'm having her make graphics and find Bible verses on the topics we were doing. And she pulled up some really great scriptures. I'm like, "Who taught you the Bible?" And she said, "What you did. You taught me the Bible." And I was like, "This was two weeks in." I taught her. All I did was teach her how to find answers in the Bible. It was like, "Okay, when I worked in at a church building, I never did this much discipleship. I spent 90% of my time working on the program and then an hour on Sundays talking to people in the lobby, an hour on Wednesdays leading women's Bible study. There is no comparison. There's absolutely no comparison."

And I'm not saying that you can't do 90% of stuff that is not discipleship online. You absolutely can. And I'm trying to help pastors now realize that we need to invest our time wisely if the world is going to know Jesus. And that's not always gonna be in, you know, just these incredible flashy videos and excellent content. I mean, I love excellent content. I love professional-looking content. I love all of that. But people honestly just want to know that you care about them.

So true. And that the challenge though with Facebook, and likely I'll just, I'll put on my detractor hat because I've had this conversation enough in my life. Yeah, Jeff, you don't know these people. Like, the fact that you have 44 leaders and you had only met two of them, but you considered them a leader and was engaging and was involved in their lives. You mentioned the words "authentic community" I don't know, maybe ten minutes ago. Like, in some people's minds, you cannot do authentic community in digital space. In digital community, all the authentic stuff that happens in the physical building, digital community is shallow. Have you ever hung out on Twitter, Facebook? Like, people are abandoning because of all the cultural tensions in life. And then somehow in the midst of this social media distaste, you may manage to carve out relational ministry, authentic relationships, empowering others to reach out via these same networks. Like, what were the challenges? How did you overcome that? Wow. Some of these people that are questioning this, how would you respond to that?

Well, I have a calling I have to follow. And if people don't understand, I want to invite them in. If they were to join our team and be able to see like how we talk to each other throughout the day, we Marco Polo each other. We—if anybody doesn't know what that is, it's—I love it because you can record a video anytime and then you can watch it. So it's not like signing up for a Zoom. So we created all these ways to keep in touch with each other. But really, the nice thing about social media is that it's much more vulnerable than in-person because you have kind of this anonymity and you can always run away if you get embarrassed. And so when you have that vulnerability with other people, that's what the kickstart to authentic relationships is. So you're vulnerable and you share, and then you see that people can be trusted with your life and with your thoughts and honoring and respectful. And you have their confidence. And you can see people's heart for God in their words and in their videos. It builds relationship much faster than in person.

I have built relationships in the three years much faster than I ever did working at my network position for ten years because we worked, you know, and we were close, you know, I thought. But not like this. Not in the same way. Because you don't spend as much time together even when you're working in the same office. You know, you're behind a closed door. You only meet for a meeting. But this is sharing life together online. And I think that's what social media does. This is to build community that way. That's the goal of it, to build meaningful community. And so we have the same goal.

Yeah, you know, I used the phrase in online and social media: it's better to ask questions than make statements. And the vulnerability piece, I mean, that's even a one-up on that. It's be vulnerable and allow others to dialogue to you and maybe even through you. And as a result of that, you know, understanding comes into play in a greater way. And that's where I think true conversations come in online, instead of us, you know, shouting at each other, listening to each other. And through the vulnerability, through the patience, getting into true conversation. That's awesome.

Well, and that's one way you've overcome some obstacles of trying to figure out what have been some of the challenges you've had to work through in doing probably one of the first digital churches in America?

Well, and I'm always asking people, "Hey, if you had a digital church, please tell me, because I want to know." You go in first isn't always the easiest, but I'm super glad that I did. The obstacle, the biggest—the biggest gift is Facebook. The biggest obstacle is Facebook. And the reason why is because their algorithms, they're constantly doing improvements. You have to really have a fluid personality of being able to go with the flow as far as working in Facebook. So the biggest gift—like I said, that's over 2.6 billion people coming every month. But then, you know, if you've been doing online, maybe with your church or as a volunteer or as an online pastor, you know, like Easter, for our churches, all the churches across the board were like, "Wow, we just had, you know, 5,000 people. We had, you know, 120 comments." And then, you know, two weeks later, "I just had 12 people and one comment. I'm quitting." And I've been through it enough that I know that it will change as fast as your ups and downs. It's very much like that. But I have to keep my mind focused on the mission of who we are reaching. And just because it goes down, I still have a lot of people that I can invest time in. And so do you, even if someone's listening, you just have a personal platform. You have a lot of people you can invest time in. And sometimes that's the hardest part, you know, is to keep your mental toughness and your adaptability skills as a leader to understand that we can just wait a little while and keep making Jesus the center of social media. And then it will change.

So for instance, since Easter, our numbers have been way down. And we had to really make a difference. So let's say two weeks ago I was doing videos that had 12 views. And then this week, all of a sudden, we have 72,000 people watching a three-minute permit. And you're like, "What just happened here?" But, you know, not everybody in—but that's just what happens. And so the 12 people are important and the 72,000 people are important. And so I don't use that as a gauge of success because there's always somebody that we can be discipling, someone we could be caring for, and someone we can be building community with. So through, you know, all the means that Facebook gives us.

Yeah, it's interesting. Even in, and I think you'll appreciate this, do you read Carey Nieuwhof or listen to his stuff?

Yeah, maybe a month ago, May, he was doing an analog versus digital comparison. And so it was one of his articles. He had like seven or ten kind of falling under one column was analog, and it was like the old way of thinking, the old paradigm. And then the digital was the new way of thinking, the new paradigm. And so he had buzzwords kind of underneath her. And all of them were good. But did like one of the last ones, and in his gathering under analog was the word "global," and under digital was the word "local." And pastors kind of reached out and put them in Facebook groups, the article, and Facebook groups. And they were questioning. And even some of the cohorts and training set out that I'm doing, they're like, "Jeff, that's wrong. That's a typo. You got it backwards. We're much more global now before because the internet reach is so global." And it was like, "No, you're missing the point of what Carey's saying. It's local. It's an individual ministry now with online and the ability for us to empower people, to mobilize people to reach their local areas, their local circle of influence, the people that are immediately connected to them. It's not, 'Hey,' and I love the fact that you're reaching in 45 countries. That's awesome. I'm more excited about the individuals that you are now unleashing in different areas and other places because there's an opportunity to multiply off of that in a great way. And so whether it's the 12 or the 72,000, you get to this place of, 'Man, if we can keep building those individual relationships, we can multiply.' I mean, that's really, I think, where you see the gospel start to create a movement physically or even digitally in this season. So that's awesome."

Do you have any idea why the video was 72,000? I'm just putting on my technical hat. Sorry, that's a really strong difference between 12 and 72k.

Well, it wasn't quite 12. It's probably more like 12,000 probably. 12 people that watched live, okay? And then 12,000 people over time. But this was literally 72,000 that watched live. So that's what I'm saying. I have over three years tried to find the answers to that, trying to change around like, "Was it a donate button? Or was it the time of day? Or was it the length of video? Or was it that we had captions? Or was it what I was wearing or the way my hair was? Or, you know, what caught their attention behind me?" Or, for the other, I'm not the only person that speaks. That's one thing I'm big about is just having a lot of different people. But really, I think a lot of it does just have to do with what Facebook is doing at the time. I know that they were heavily promoting churches on Easter and on Christmas, Christmas Eve, any kind of religious holiday. They will promote churches. I know that. And that's probably why we saw such a large uptake.

So talk to me about what's next for Pursue Church. Where were you guys going? Where does this look like? Where is the digital-only church here? Where is it growing to?

I think I mentioned quite a few of these things before, but we are starting—I work at Northwest University, and Northwest University is an online school. And so we're doing partnership to bring education to the world. And so we're offering two associate's degrees and six bachelor degrees online through Pursue. The biggest thing that we get requests for is education because of the demographics we serve. And this is a very small drop in that bucket of helping people to make education affordable and also to train up ministers. So basically the structure will be that they'll go to school online and then have an academic coach and do an apprenticeship through our church or through their church.

local church or through depend on what their degree is that's the great thing about digital is you can plug a lot more people in because we have more categories and then than just children use women or men and so that's that's a big thing we're working on our what we call the digital plus planting church planting where we're creating these micro communities and so we're testing that and then of course online Jesus because I was a coach for for pastors before I'm still incredibly passionate about that and so helping churches to build community and disciple and care online and you know and I want them to be able to sustain doing online church and I know that's really challenging for people right now to figure out a way to simplify to make it fluid and to build a team to do that so that's that's on my heart as well.

Yeah, so I mean talk a little bit about that because I don't think you've talked about online Jesus yet in my understanding right in the midst of this go bid season you decided to write and publish a book is that how this played out?

Yeah, yeah, well yes it is readable in se how thin it is here in a day or an evening. I think several people said I read that last night which is exactly what I wanted it to be. When covered hit and pre-COVID after COVID, and Jeff you understand this, churches were really questioning is digital ministry is that or is online church that real community? That was the big question. Is that real community? Then we didn't have a choice to find out whether it was or wasn't and I'm just so thankful it's what I've been praying for is for churches to have an online presence and because I really think there's a lot of power for the local church especially to stay connected with the people that come to their church and then to invite others in that would be using Facebook as like the Yellow Pages and it's easy to invite a friend to look at you know hey check out my church Facebook page anyways.

So yes, in 38 days I wrote this because I was getting asked so much and I needed to duplicate myself. So this is really just online Jesus is our story and you can get that on Amazon if it's helpful to you but I think you'll be surprised. I go through the three you know disciplines of building community and discipling and caring for people online and how to build care teams and there's a lot of tricks and tips and ideas in there for you and then I have a website you can go to for free resources too which is online Jesus info.

So honestly like within this COVID season you you really you hit the radar for me and it was on the I don't know remember exactly what the topic was but there were several within the the online digital online practitioners relaying to it is it's it's you know that that group that church online group online ministry crew you know I saw your name pop up on helping some churches because they in those first couple weeks in March were crazy so many people asking and just it was like you know I think collectively all of us we work in 20 plus hours at some point just trying to help as many as at least and my camp I could and and I remembered looking now seeing like Angela Craig and I'm like I don't know who that is and just watching some of the feedback you were giving I'm like that's really good like she's I don't know who that is but she's intelligent she's smart she's responding well with that. I love how she handled that and was funny couple times sometimes I like jump on afterwards and just kind of help firm up some things and you know this is probably gonna sound like ego I really don't mean it that way but when you responded I'm like yeah I don't need to worry about that she's got it covered chill she'll keep tapped in and so you know a lot of the with the book a lot of these resources and guidance your e-bill how physical church is even rests within the season about a better understand facebooking online it's truly been awesome I've loved seeing the church grow through this and even getting some awareness of what you're doing with with pursuit church has been awesome really really good.

Well let me ask this because I'm you know I mean literally my job with Stadia as director of digital church planting my job is to literally carbon copy you so you you wrote this into a book form which I love I'm gonna get the book buy it and read it but the the challenge is also in addition to you know carbon copy yourself into a book I want to figure out like what's the formula how do I get people to start to understand Facebook YouTube virtual reality video games understand some of these digital platforms differently and start to look at some of the relationships that could be built in the same way that you have obviously with Facebook somebody wants to get started in doing a digital church walk me through a couple of their first steps how would you if you were doing it today knowing what you know how would you start a digital church 2020 mid-post COVID?

Well try every idea you have about what church looks like and then talk to Jeff because when I did this though I was making it up as I went along and it was really important to be flexible to have an adaptive leadership style and also just practicing an intellectual humility like saying I don't have the answers because you're not gonna have them if you want to have all the answers before you start you're not gonna start.

So I would start with number one connecting with people that are already doing this and maybe it's maybe it's not just digital only but I would say the best thing you could do is to audit an online a church that's doing online that you like their style because every cell is different. You can volunteer or apprentice at 4°C Church Live and part of the team and just the looking like that's what we're doing now is anybody who has church staff that they can't they can't train up I'm inviting them to just come and be on our team so the person can learn and then take that back to their church or do it themselves because that's important that we work together recognizing like what group of people what demographic is God calling you to because you could hone in to that just by what platform you pick so Facebook might not be the platform for the people that you're supposed to serve but there's there are lots of platforms you can explore.

So you know find people that are doing like-minded people and you're in such a great spot right now if you're starting because when Jeff and I started we didn't know each other and we were saying how great it would be to know one another at that point to know we weren't crazy for having these ideas and so know your demographic find the right platform creating a care team and I write this in the book too but we did ours backwards and I actually think for a digital ministry this is an OK way to do it because you don't know who your people are until you start and so for me I was looking for people that were already engaged and and obviously called to our specific church no for you it post COVID or during COVID right now you have more people in your sight in your sight line because churches have been doing online platforms now for about three months so there's gonna be more interest for you to bring like-minded people onto your team.

So I would say start having coffee conversations with people and that doesn't have to be you don't have to know them in person they could just people with people that you have met online so I think that's just the basic stuff. I really just remember to always put people before your program. I think that's what's made pursuit church life successful is that we focused you know 90% of our attention on building relationships not on producing you know flashy content and there's a place for flashy content I'm not saying there isn't maybe that's what you're called to it just wasn't my gift set so know how God has created you and then surround yourself with people that are different than you so if you're an entrepreneur or you're a shepherd or you're administrator or you're a creator then you're gonna need other people on your team that complement that strengths and you can find them out there God will provide them I'm sure he always does when he calls us he provides what we need.

I mean it contents important and we talked a lot about it on the show but it doesn't stop at the content the content needs to lead to community otherwise you know we had talked James 1:22 all the time words not don't just be hearers of the word you know in this case online do what it says in the real world and so we need that that physical execution we need that that community for us to to exude if all we are is if the only place that we show our spiritual gifts are the fruits of the spirit in in virtual space it doesn't show up in our real life what are we like?

Yeah if if I'm a Christian in a Facebook group but I am a jerk to my wife and I yell at my kids all the time I mean I don't know that I'm really showing that the level of Christ-like that I should be even in the physical realm and so the challenge for a digital church is don't just be content be content in a virtual environment a digital environment that causes action physically and so you're seeing that with with the online groups with the relationships with the coffees with having these face-to-face conversations even digitally but you're also seeing that in the micro locations and the number the other things that you guys are working on.

I'm so encouraged by it and I even just want to speak to that because there's a season of our churches are we're doing digital they're moving back honestly today as I'm doing this recording I've had three conversations with with digital potential digital church planters who are considering digital church planting because the to go church where they work isn't interested in doing online ministry and so they're looking at potentially planting a digital church as a solution as a stopgap to get in to do things digitally because their current employer the current church isn't interested which is which is fine some churches aren't called to the digital ministry hopefully some some will be if that's you like be encouraged there are others out there like you who are who are struggling who are trying to figure this out he's trying to figure out that balance and honestly I was I was offline earlier here with Angela where man 2017 was a rough year for me because I felt like I was alone we talked about it here on the podcast before and and knowing me I didn't know it at the time but there's people like Angela who was already working through some of this stuff and trying to figure it out but being a front runner here in this digital-only so don't be discouraged there are others out there jumping some Facebook groups meet some people have conversations through you know the Stadia church-planting Facebook group the church digital will include the links to it that online digital church practitioners whatever it's called they keep changing the name on me that group you know there's there's plenty of opportunities to meet people in the dialog nobody's got there nobody's got the complete answers yet we don't we don't have the final solution we're all figuring this out together and so jump in those conversations and let's let's work through this.

In one piece I I have been so encouraged by this am Angela I had had no idea like you were out there and and moving down this road so thank you for what you're doing through pursued church and some of the lessons that you're learning man just as we're landing the plane in any closing thoughts anything just to kind of wrap up?

I would just say that digital ministry is like canoeing a mountain I don't know if you've heard of that book but I highly recommend it and and so listen to the call God on your life surround yourself with people that will support you you have to right here in this.

podcast that would be happy to help you and move you forward. And know that God is something something really incredible for you, and it's gonna look different than what I'm doing, and that's the beauty of God's kingdom. So I say bring it on. Like, don't hold back. And if you're working with another church, that it's not, you know, that's not part of their ethics or their mission, that is okay. And you can start a group online on your own. Totally do it. Just do it and test it and don't be afraid to stick both feet in because Jesus will catch you.

That's awesome. Well, hey, so we're gonna kind of wrap on that. I've loved this. Hey, Angela, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, maybe they've got questions on Pursue Church or even Pursue Church, how do they find the information about you or the church? You can go to PursueChurch.live on Facebook and message me. I'm there quite a bit. You can email me through our website, Pursuit, PursuitChurch.live or online Jesus info. I have all sorts of ways, so definitely get in touch. I'm happy to help. Typical online minister all over the place on every platform.

That's awesome. Well, hey, so we're gonna wrap. Very much thank you for this, Angela. Appreciate you jumping on. For Angela, this is Jeff at the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning. Thanks for jumping on this podcast with us, and we'll see you next time here at the show. Y'all be good day.