EP091: Tyler Sansom - Building & Using Influence as a Digital Missionary

Episode 91 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by State Church Planning. Jeff here. Okay, this guy, this guest, I bring him in all the time. He holds the record. We'll do a test right now. He holds the record for the number of guest appearances on the Church Digital Podcast. Okay, ready? Go.

All right, it's Tyler Sansom. You probably knew that because you clicked on the link to open up the podcast. So I've just really literally wasted 30 seconds of your life. That's great. Hey, so we're bringing Tyler Sansom in and we're gonna have a conversation. A lot of changes happening. You know, Tyler's at Sansom Church Anywhere. First Capital Christian. First Capital Christian used to have an online ministry called Church Anywhere that was broadcasting services and doing things, but in this COVID season they learned kind of some things about maybe how the online broadcast and the services weren't as effective as doing some other ways, and they've broken off. First Capital has the Church Anywhere. Instead of being their online broadcast, it's actually now a sister church under the same umbrella. And Tyler talks about it, but essentially it's now a separate church entity, different strategy, different vision, different mission. And Tyler is now the lead pastor of this Church Anywhere movement. Some really, really exciting, incredible things are coming from it. And because they've broken off now, they've got freedom to do digital missions, to do digital ministry, to do things digitally instead of being locked into the way that you do things at the physical building.

And what's happening as a result of that now, they're asking questions and having conversations centered around like how to influence people, how to build that influence, and maybe from that influence get people connected to Christ. And so they're doing—listen, this conversation, this podcast—here's what I need you to do. I need you to think outside the box. Like, don't be thinking, "Well, no, that's not what we do in the physical church building." Physical and digital, they operate differently. Most times they're actually backwards. They do it completely opposite. And so for a little bit here, I want you to start thinking outside the box and start wrestling with this idea of if I didn't have the building, how could I be effective in doing ministry? Because this is really the question that Tyler's wrestling with and that we're talking with in the podcast. We're talking kids, students, TikTok. Man, I was Twitch. All sorts of crazy stuff that pre-COVID, like, nobody was having these conversations. And Tyler and Church Anywhere is really leading the way and digging into some of this.

So here's where we are. Bringing into the conversation, of course, Tyler Anywhere—Tyler Anywhere, that says his new name—Tyler Sansom, lead pastor Church Anywhere. We're bringing in Ray the Armist, digital pastor Christ Fellowship Miami. Myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm calling "Building and Using Influence as a Digital Missionary." Okay, everybody, you go. Like, tell us a little bit what's going on in Church Anywhere. Give us an update.

Yeah, man, we have launched a whole digital church, which is crazy, and it doesn't necessarily look like what you think of when you think of church, but we've got four staff members now on our digital church plant team, our Church Anywhere team. I'm actually sitting in one of our office spaces. So we have a studio, like a community office space, and then like a recording area for audio. And yeah, it's been amazing to watch how God has worked through that so far. So I think today we're going to get into some of the like the strategies that we're doing. So I won't talk too much about that yet, but we've got a family ministries online pastor, an engagement pastor for online, an office admin who kind of handles all of our database and things like that, and then I get to be the lead of that. So very exciting stuff.

That's awesome. So you've actually got a team. Like, 99 percent of churches in America today, there's somebody who's like, "My gosh, can somebody else love, care about, think about online ministry?" But you've got a team that's helping you with that. That's awesome. So tell me a little bit. Let's just back up. Like, you used to be First Capital Christian online ministry, and now are you guys still connected with First Capital? Like, are you a completely digital-only separate church with a separate team? Like, talk to me a little bit just about that transition because people know First Capital. They knew you guys as part of that, but now you're something different.

Yeah, um, yes and no. So we think of it this way. If there's like a big umbrella on top, that would be First Capital Ministries. So instead of First Capital Christian Church, it would be like First Capital Ministries, and you got two branches of that. So you've got the 305 branch, which is our street address here in our physical location. So yeah, First Capital Christian Church at 305. And then you have Church Anywhere. So we have different target audiences, but we're still existing under the same vision of helping people find and follow Jesus. So basically like sister churches with the same vision, just totally different target audiences and different approaches to ministry.

I love that language—different target audiences. Maybe unpack that a little bit. What's the target audience of the physical location there in Corydon, Indiana? What's the target audience of what you're trying to do online?

Yeah, the target audience for our physical location for a long time has been a 35-year-old male in Harrison County, Indiana. We believe that if we can get the young family's father to come to church, then the family will come. Not that we're not trying to reach children and moms and teens and all of that, but most of the time when the dad comes, the whole family comes. So that was our target audience. Online, though, our target audience is the world. I mean, we don't have to pinpoint Harrison County, Indiana. We want to reach people in Harrison County, but we also want to reach people in Pakistan and we want to reach people in Australia. And so the target audiences are a little different. And online, we can be very specific with content and community strategies for really specific target audiences. So we can literally target like 18 to 20-year-old females who go to Yale. We probably wouldn't do that one, but that's just the example that I randomly thought of, and I'm not sure how I got there.

That's really interesting. The whole 18 to 20-year-olds at Yale—that's maybe a little creepy, but we'll move beyond that one and go to something else. But just even with the target audience, I'm curious, like, you know, because I have conversations with some digital planters, digital-only church planters, where they have a specific niche. Like, I was talking with a guy in the Philippines. His name is Philip. Philip from the Philippines. And he wanted to plant a digital-only church in the Philippines but was aimed at creatives. It's like the video, the motion graphics guys, the graphic artists, the video editors—like that particular group—because that was his one, that was the group that he was passionate about. With Church Anywhere, do you have one? And we talk about the one kind of like you're the institutional one that, like, your model that you're going after the 35-year-old males from that. Do you have a one for the digital that you're going after, or is it more broad at this point?

It's more broad, but we've broken it down demographically and generationally. So we use a funnel system, and I can send you the PDF if you want to link that to this podcast. But there's a whole funnel system to where we have like preschool-age kids and then elementary-age kids, then middle school, high school, then college age and beyond, and then like Gen X plus. Online, there's not a whole lot of strategy for reaching Boomers that wouldn't be the same as like Gen X. And so we kind of stopped there. But each of these funnels has like a broad base at the top, so there's lots of different things that we put online that could reach different interest groups within that age bracket, and they all funnel down to community.

So the target audiences are not necessarily like one audience, but we've got specific niches within these generations. So for example, like we use video games to reach high school and middle school age kids, but we wouldn't do that for like Gen X people because they're not nearly as much on video games. So we use YouTube to reach Gen X and Facebook things like that. And so not like necessarily one specific target audience like a 35-year-old male, but broken down into demographics with more specific targets within those demographics.

What's the difference between how you would do ministry when you were under First Capital Christian versus now that you're at the digital-only church? You've got some different strategies. What's the big difference? Give me an overarching view between how it used to be when you were under First Capital and now.

Yeah, it's probably the biggest difference is probably the tethered part. So everything we did online before was tethered to what we were doing in person for the most part. And now we don't have to. Obviously, we still like to use things that we do in person. We still like to have the same communicators on the screen. We still like to, if we do an initiative in person that's a challenge for our people, we want to try to replicate that online. But we don't have to anymore. So not only do we get to supplement what we do in person, but we get to create new avenues now, which before didn't make a whole lot of sense if it was just First Capital. But now we have First Capital plus Church Anywhere.

Now that you're separate, so you're able to have some freedom, you're able to do some things different than what's in the building. Give me some examples. Now that you've got that freedom, how are you utilizing the freedom? What does it look like to operate and do ministry more digitally without having the tethered physical building in place?

Yeah, right now we're doing weekly Bible studies. And the cool part about this—like, in person, if you did a Bible study, you'd have people sign up for maybe like a six-week class and you'd all meet together on like a Wednesday night at seven. Online, you can utilize things like YouVersion or like creating your own curriculum to where it's asynchronous communication. So people can do it whenever they want, which means that people from all over the world can join in on these Bible studies. And because there's so much resources out there, we can change up the subject every single week. And so even though it might be the same 50 people that are doing the Bible study, we're also adding three or four more that maybe didn't want to sign up at the first of the month but can do it the second week of the month, and they haven't missed anything. So it's not necessarily long, drawn-out studies, but right now we're doing like a seven-day study and then a seven-day study and a seven-day study, and it's seen steady growth throughout. And it's both people that are in our area and then people as far away as like London, England.

So that's really cool. You mentioned this idea of kids and students in the different funnels, and we'll put that in the show notes. What does it look like to reach through? Because you know, sometimes when I talk digital-only church or even micro locations or house churches and kids, you know, the parent of somebody that I'm talking with will say like, "You know, creep factor. Stay away from my kids. Yeah, I'm not even sure I want people doing that online." Like, what's that?

Tension, how do you guys kind of regulate, moderate that? How have you addressed that in this idea of reaching kids through a digital expression of church?

So whenever I was a kid, which wasn't that long ago—I haven't had my ten year high school reunion yet, so I still consider myself not that far off from high school. Growing up going to church, I think back at the things that we did, like within Sunday school and Wednesday nights and things like that. And I don't want to downplay this stuff—like it was fine—but I don't think I would have watched or participated in any of that had I not been at church. Like the only reason I would have watched things like that they showed us or read things that we were supposed to read was because I was at the building and that's what we did when we went to church.

And like we still kind of have that model, I think, like the stuff that people put out for children within a worship context for kids is great stuff. I'm not sure they're super interested in watching that outside of being at the church building though. So when COVID hit, a lot of people just tried to use that same model and just like put it online and assume kids would just be interested in watching it. And we found out that they're just not. Like they're not super interested in watching that kind of stuff.

So our philosophy is more of like an influencer kind of thing, to where we're trying to find the apps and platforms that these kids are actually on and produce content that they would be interested in watching in hopes that we can make connections with them to be able to disciple them relationally rather than through content.

For example, like our online family pastor Patrick, he's doing some Twitch streaming. And right now he's working with our in-person student pastor as like a partnership. And they're literally just saying, "You can challenge us to anything and we will take you on in anything." So we've had kids that are challenging them to like video games. So they'll like capture this challenge and post it on YouTube as like challenge number one. Yesterday they did one with a local kid who challenged them to soccer. And like neither one of our people are good at soccer, so they got like killed by this twelve-year-old girl in soccer. But they've been capturing that and putting it on YouTube to engage with other students that way.

So that's just some of the stuff that he's trying to do. He's being an influencer on YouTube with content that kids are interested in in hopes to share the gospel with them relationally. That's pretty cool. And YouTube has been the main platform that you guys have seen success with? That Twitch, like guys have been amazing. How much? And Instagram have been the ones that he's really focusing on?

That's cool. And this approach with platform, have you seen it lead to like relational exchange? Have you seen it kind of move forward in that? Because when I think of that, I think of all right, internet celebrity, but I don't necessarily think of connection.

Yeah, um, it has been a slow build. We're confident in this strategy and we've made some connections. I'm speaking specifically for youth. Yeah, weirdly the adult side of this strategy has been like super successful so far and like kind of exploded. We can get into that in a little bit. I think kids are a little bit more tech savvy and can find broader things than adults can on the internet. And so there's just so much to pick from that it's been a slow build. But we have seen some success from it.

So we're seeing kids who are viewing the devos he's posting every single week because they found him through Twitch or through the video game stuff. And we're seeing, well, these challenges are working. Like kids are actually challenging them to things, which is good.

Is the traffic on that, is it local to Crete, Indiana where you are? Is it outside of that? With the kids, the devos, the challenges, like what's the footprint?

Yeah, it's a mix of both. We realized that the easiest way to start, specifically with teams, because nobody's like trailed this before, would be to start locally because we have name recognition within our community in the surrounding areas. So he's targeting local. But the byproduct of that now is beyond local. Which on the adult side, we kind of went the opposite way. So we targeted worldwide. And the byproduct has been some local people have been involved. We just had the advantage on the adult side that we've been doing online ministry for a while, whereas we haven't had online kids and teen ministry up until recently.

So yeah, I mean let's talk about on the adult side. So you've got challenge me and you're getting schooled by a twelve-year-old kid, the girl playing soccer. Awesome. Um, you know what, what are you doing on the adult side? Are you trying to like play in darts? Like what's the challenge? What's the hook? Um, on the adult side, is it typical Bible stuff, church stuff, or what is building that influence?

So me and the engagement pastor, we both take what we call it digital missionary strategy. And that's what we've labeled this part of our strategy. And so I'm a digital missionary to YouTube. That's been my platform. She's a digital missionary to TikTok. That's her platform.

So for my YouTube channel, my background is in music. And so I've been singing for a long time. I play lots of instruments. And so I'm using those talents to like build an audience. So I've been posting like Broadway music covers. I'll post like one of those a week. And then I'll also post like either a devotional, which is like five minutes or so, or a vlog with like a devo content in it, or a spoken word devotional like a poem. Um, so I've done all three of those in the last six months like on some form of a weekly basis.

And um, like the covers are a really good way of introducing people to my channel. And then the devos are a really good way of introducing people to Jesus.

Sorry Tyler, how big did that Hamilton cover go for you man?

The Hamilton cover is at like eight or nine thousand right now. But I did a Wicked cover, um, for the Defying Gravity, like the main song. And it's at like one hundred thirty thousand views right now, which is crazy.

That is crazy. So like it's nuts. If like YouTube, if you just are consistent and have like good content, spend time making it, like it's easy to build an audience. Um, so I had like three hundred followers when we started this kind of, or subscribers when we started this digital missionary strategy. And I have like almost twenty-five hundred subscribers now. And that's been three and a half months.

Um, so the cool part about once you get past like a thousand subscribers, YouTube unlocks a community tab. So you can post um updates like you would on Facebook or Twitter or whatever. And so I'm posting like the link to my weekly Bible study. So I'm having people from my YouTube community who are doing Bible studies with me now. I became friends with them on Facebook. So I like have like private messages with these people who have only met me through YouTube, which is crazy.

Um, and so that's the kind of stuff that we're doing. The girl that's doing TikTok is very similar, except she has made her niche mental health. She struggles with anxiety. And so she started a blog about mental health issues and how to get over those. And she makes these silly TikTok videos that direct people to her blog.

Um, and this is crazy guys. She's been praying with about six to eight families weekly just through TikTok. Um, so she had, like, she did this one blog where she held her glasses up to her phone and focused through her glasses. And then took the glasses away and basically was like, "Now you can see what I see," and it's real blurry. And then she wrote a blog post about how we don't often look through other people's viewpoint whenever we talk to them. It's genius idea. But it had like two hundred thousand hits on TikTok because it was a clever idea. And then that led people to her blog post. So now she's like one-on-one discipling these people and like praying with them through private messages.

Um, over an eleven-second video and a blog post. Crazy stuff.

That's amazing. Like, like, even just mentally processing through that to an eleven-second video, incredible idea with the glasses. But through that getting it connected into um, you know, a blog post where they're, where they're digesting more content on your website, anywhere website, it leads them to a relationship, getting to the point where they're where they're praying together and dialoguing through that. That's incredible.

It was like the Super Bowl the first time she texted the rest of the team and said, "I just prayed with someone through TikTok." All of us were like, "This is the best day of our lives." I mean, this is where we're seeing fruits of this. You're seeing other, do you have any other stories, any other examples?

When we started talking about potentially starting a fully digital church, um, my main like meat behind my argument for my eldership was this screenshot that I had taken from a guy I went to high school with. And on the screenshot, he had put a Facebook post that said, "If heaven is filled with Christians," in quotation marks, "then I don't want to be there." And it like broke my heart because I grew up with this guy. And I was like, "Man, there is no reason that Christians should be the reason this guy doesn't want to go to heaven and have a relationship with Jesus. Like we should not be the reason for that."

So I brought that to our eldership and said, "Like this is the type of person we can reach on the internet that we're never ever going to reach by him coming to a physical building. Like period. Like he's very clear what he just said. He's not going to come to a building."

And uh, so we, yeah, we were like, "Yeah, that's great." So we started this online campus. Um, my devo, spoken word poem from two weeks ago, like I posted it on YouTube. And that same guy commented on it and said, "You have no idea how much the videos that your church has been impacting my life. I've been really struggling with my faith for years. I was locked up in prison for seven years after high school. And I've just felt so lost. And you have no idea how much of an impact you guys have made on me."

Literally the same guy that had posted this Facebook post that was the reason we started this campus. And that was like the absolute affirmation that our team needed um for us to be like, "Okay God, you're a lot bigger than we think you are. And I think we're doing the right thing. So just you take it and run with it."

And since then, it's like the floodgates have opened, specifically with people on YouTube and TikTok.

You know, we talk a lot about this idea of creating, connecting relationships and building relationships. And we actually had you on a podcast, I don't know, maybe somewhere in this COVID season, you know, talking about this. And that relationship piece. And you dropped the line—I've never heard an online pastor say it—my literal job description says I need to know a hundred people digitally.

And so like you're interacting with your former high school buddy here. That's great. You've got the girl praying, um, you know, some people would say maybe that's not a real relationship, praying through TikTok. It's not in physical space. Maybe prayer only works, Holy Spirit only works if you're breathing air molecules. Like we can get sarcastic on that. Maybe. But um, like talk to me about the relationship level because people connect to community before they connect to Christ. Often in online and digital spheres we see that here in 2020 in this COVID season. So that relationship component is key for us to be really effective in reaching. How is digital church being effective?

In creating these relationships, I think the accessibility is probably the easiest or the best part of online ministry. Yesterday I connected with one of our Church Anywhere—I would, I'm not gonna say members because we don't have membership—but one of our regular Church Anywhere people who lives in Missouri.

And it was easy for us to connect about an issue that had happened to her at work that day, even though she's like a different time zone, it was late in the evening. But because we have built a relationship through Facebook Messenger after we had connected through a worship service, I was able to pray with her over this issue she was having, tried to counsel her the best that I possibly could in like a pastoral way. But because of the relationship we built through just Facebook Messenger—I've never seen her in person—I felt like I was talking to an old friend, even though we've never actually met. So the accessibility and ease of connection is unlimited on the internet.

Yeah, it's funny because it sounds like your church, Tyler, has not just a lot of different lines in the water, but like a specific line to each platform and then almost drawing them in to the same hub in terms of getting connected with Church Anywhere on almost all platforms. Like, how are you guys utilizing some of that? Because it seems like it's very methodical. You know, as you talk about it, I'm like, man, it's pretty cool. They got somebody for TikTok, they got some, they got you for YouTube, they got, but then you're drawing them into this community that's much larger than just a platform.

Yeah, we, and when you see the PDF I'll send Jeff, you've got these big funnels which are the broad, like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, whatever, but they're all funneling down to this community. And we've got a Discord community for like teenagers, we've got a Facebook group for adults, and then beyond that we've got our individual YouTube community, which once you get past a certain amount of subscribers you have this community tab. And like, people are on YouTube all the time, and so if you post a "How can I pray for you today?" status update, you're getting like twenty, thirty comments of people from all over the country who are wanting you to pray with them. And that's when you have an opportunity to say, "Well, let me send you a friend request on Facebook so we can continue to pray for each other," and that's when you say, "Let's exchange emails so we can stay connected beyond just this YouTube thing." And so while the funnel might be really broad at the top, once it narrows down to leading them to either a Facebook group or our website where the blog is being held for Instagram or for TikTok or this Discord, we have them. Like, we've captured their information to continue their relationship.

I was having a conversation with Jason Morris, Westside Family Global Innovations pastor or whatever—he's been on the podcast a lot. We all know Jason. He used the term with me, the phrase, "Facebook is just another neighborhood." And it was really, and it's talking about how for Westside, like his goal is to unleash volunteers on each individual platform. And instead of trying to move people from Facebook to watch this YouTube video to go over here for that, it's like, no, utilize the Facebook tools and just create community in there. It was just transparently, I've gone back and forth on that. And but I hear from you this, "Hey, yeah, I'm the YouTube guy. I've got somebody who's a TikTok girl who's in that." What's your mentality? Talk, walk me through a little bit here. The process of keeping kind of everybody within that platform, doing church in that space, being church in that space. Like, what was your mindset kind of with that breakup?

Yeah, well, the TikTok girl, it was by accident. She just posted the glasses video and it blew up and she had a bunch of followers. So I was like, "Hey, maybe you should just focus on TikTok." And so it's pretty destined. Yeah, that worked really well. YouTube, we knew, was the second biggest search engine in the world, and so we knew we had to get on there somehow and figure out a way to reach people. And it wasn't going to be just sermon clips every single week. I love our senior pastor and I get to preach too, but neither one of us are Andy Stanley and neither one of us are Steven Furtick, and we don't have any kind of name recognition beyond that. So people probably aren't searching for First Capitol Christian Church or Church Anywhere on YouTube, but they might be searching for this cover video, and then I might have a chance of relationally building with them. So I don't necessarily tell people to stay in their lane and be only on this platform. It just happened to be that's the platform that each of us know how to use the best, and so we wanted to focus on what we do well within this season of launching this church.

Are our boomers connecting with this? I'm curious, like, is there a line where an influencer approach is—it too soon to tell? Like, what are you finding there?

Yeah, I think it's a little too soon to tell. And I don't like, I'm twenty-seven, I don't really tailor my anything towards boomers, just because, like, on YouTube you have to be yourself. People appreciate authenticity. And so like, I don't know how to be anything but a twenty-seven-year-old. But maybe in the future we might have like a YouTube channel dedicated specifically for things that boomers would like. I don't know.

No, but I think that's important, and I think that's the right mindset. You know, too often folks try to act outside of their age range or try to be who they're not. And we keep talking about the internet in an age of authenticity, and yet we keep finding more and more folks are inauthentic online. How are you encouraging your leadership to stay true to who they are as opposed to trying to be that big communicator? Because so often I'm finding that leadership wants to push forward, man. We want to grow to that status. Well, you're not Mike Todd, and I don't want you to be.

Yeah, it's man, that's tough. And like, I always tell my wife, I would hate to be a teenager growing up today because of the comparison game that they play on social media. But that's not just teenagers. Adults do it all the time. Specifically now, we have leaders who have been leading, pastors that have been twenty, thirty years at the same church, and now they're seeing their church attendance in person like non-existent, and they don't know how to cope with it because church has been this way for so long that they're comparing themselves to not only the past, but they're now comparing themselves to other churches that are struggling but still might be a little bit bigger than we are. So like, the church down the street might have four hundred people, we might have three hundred people, and we might have both used to have fifteen hundred people, but there's still the comparison game being played. So that mindset is not just online.

We have been really, really diligent in trying to carve our own path on the online stuff. And that's why I'm doing Broadway covers. Like, I'm not very good at anything else. So like, I can't sing lots of other types of music, and so I try to do what I can do. But I realize not everybody can do that, but everybody can do something well. And so if we could get past the comparison, get past what we think it's supposed to look like, and focus on people and telling people about Jesus the only way that we can, I think that we could start all using the internet more efficiently.

I think we're learning through quarantine that church doesn't necessarily have to look like three songs and a message. A church can look like finding connection through a YouTube video that leads to a weekly Bible study that leads to baptism.

I'm curious, a year from now, if for whatever God-forsaken reason we're still stuck in this situation, how do you see some of church online evolving? Particularly for you guys, I know you can't necessarily speak for everybody, but particularly for you guys in terms of continuing to build on the community that you guys have already started to create.

Yeah, we're starting, we're starting this soon. Our big theme for the fall, for at least for Church Anywhere and for First Capitol, hopefully we're figuring out how to mesh these together, is to empower our people. Like, historically, Church Anywhere, we've been really good at empowering people to lead like through microsites and things like that, but that's been more difficult in quarantine. So now we're trying to figure out initiatives to mobilize people more.

One that's coming out soon is something called "I Am Church Anywhere," and we've reached out to several of our Church Anywhere regulars across the country. Like, all four of us have reached out to ten people, and they've sent videos back with them telling their testimony video. So we're gonna blast social media with testimony videos for people all over the world, and then challenge other people on each of these posts to also share their story. So we'll give them a way to upload their video like through email or through our Church Anywhere website, and we'll continue to share their story. So it could be like a two or three week initiative, but we're at least going to be sharing forty to fifty stories of these people and how God has moved in their lives. But that mobilizes people to act and do something. So our whole fall is based on these actions. We're trying to work on teaching them how to be generous beyond just like weekend services, teaching them how to share their stories, things like that.

Is the end game of something like this—is it depth? As in, the four of you want to get as many followers, subscribers as possible for the influence? Is it width, where you want to multiply yourself into other potential? And we all have the potential to be spiritual influencers. Like, what's the end game with your approach here?

Yeah, one of the things this fall we're working on is a content creation team. But we wouldn't be having them probably create content from Church Anywhere. We would be encouraging people that we are personally mentoring on how to do some of the stuff that we're doing. So that could be like a lay person, a volunteer who may be like really good at pottery. So why not make pottery YouTube videos and hit that niche of people in order to hopefully share Jesus with people that share the interest that they share? So that content team, this fall, we're really going to work on teaching them how to do video stuff, teaching them how to be good on social media, and then like unleashing them to kind of do what we're already doing, alongside of other stuff too. That's not our like the biggest focus we have, but that's one of the things we're trying to do for this mobilization piece.

So ready to answer your question, a year from now I hope that Church Anywhere has been mobilized to share the gospel on the internet and not just consume content that we put out.

What does that act? So if we're not just consumers, what is that action? What is that do in the real world piece? Have you seen some of that? You're seeing engagement with subscribers, we're getting opportunity to pray. Have we seen it get to this place yet where it's now driving action in the physical realm?

Yeah, I got a text yesterday. This is super exciting. I'm really excited to share this. I got a text yesterday that said, "Hey, what does Church Anywhere have to offer for me for mobile baptisms?" And I

Was like, "Well, tell me more about it," and they said, "Well, I just shared Jesus with a co-worker and I need to be able to baptize her." And I was like, "Dude, I will, I will buy you a pool if that's what it takes." And so, yeah, we're going to be able to provide her with like a horse trough to baptize this person in their parking lot on like Sunday afternoon at their work space. And so that would be one of the things that's driving action. Like, I hope to be the outfitter basically. If they text me and they need like, "I just shared Jesus with somebody, but I have a question about this," I hope to be able to be the person that gives them the answer to send to the other person rather than just saying, "Okay, well, tell them to come to church and I'll tell them myself." If that makes sense.

Yeah, we've talked a lot about in podcasts this idea of the church's platform where, what if the church didn't actually do the service, the church service, but instead empowered other people with the gospel and let them do the evangelism, the disciple making, doing actions through it? Like companies like Uber and Airbnb are revolutionizing their industries, but they don't actually provide the services, right? As much as empower others to do that. And by doing it, it's become more and more scalable and reproducible, and they're getting a much larger reach than they would. What you're describing here's a great example of that where somebody's like, "Hey, I just brought somebody to Christ. I have no idea how to baptize them. Can you help me with that?" And being a horse trough in a parking lot—was that in Cordon? Is that somewhere else? Like an hour away? So you're helping somebody figure out a horse trough an hour away?

Well, and they're connected with our microsite that's an hour away as well. So like, they'll already have a community of believers to go and like physically be with after this, which is awesome.

That's interesting. We haven't talked about the microsite piece. So you had 18, 1947. How, where are you up to now?

Yeah, it changes everything. Twenty-one. I really think last time we talked to twenty. So every time we talk, there's just another one popping up. Hey, so like, is that part of it where it's digital that grows physical? What role does physical play in a digital-only church anywhere?

I don't know. That's the beauty of it. It's awesome. It's ever evolving. So like, this person that's getting baptized in the horse trough is going to be able to physically connect with this group because we already have them there. But hopefully, like, ideally, somebody would find a video I put out on YouTube and then like a year later they're leaving their own microsite. That would be awesome. But I just don't know yet. It's still a little too early to tell how exactly they fit together. We're all for people being in physical communities if it works for their demographic and where they like geographically live. How's they're working out right now? And I forgive me if you guys went over this earlier, but how's that working out right now as far as the microsites meeting and all that? Is all of that like completely digital right now? And if so, are you looking for a plan for them to come back? That's like ten or less or some of that? Like, how does that work?

Some of them are working well. Like, some of them in homes—like, that's up to the people that own the home. They can do whatever they feel comfortable with. And so those have been fine. Like, the home side has been the cause-based ones where they're more institutional have really been based on what the places will let us. I would say this: our one of the jails that we're in brought me in to design a sound system behind a plexiglass wall that they were going to put in in order for us to continue doing church anywhere and for other people to come in. So they finished installing yesterday. It's like a giant plexiglas wall where the volunteers will stand on one side and the inmates on the other side, and there's a two-way microphone system so we can still communicate. There's like two giant screens where we can still watch the same things. So it's been really cool to see these institutions buy into the idea of doing ministry in their places and then figuring out creative ways to actually make it happen. So that's a very safe way. There's like no germs being passed at all, but we can still come in and do those. So those start back next week. It's really just case by case for these microsites and what can meet and what can't meet.

If somebody wanted to do this like an influencer or model, you started with three hundred on YouTube. Like, how did, how would they do that? Like, what advice would you give to somebody who's wanting to go down this road?

I think we tend to overthink everything and we plan things out until we're blue in the face and then we end up never doing anything a lot of the times. Like, that's been probably one of my pet peeves since starting in full-time ministry eight years ago has just been this like we put all this effort into the pre-part of it and then we get so exhausted that it never comes to fruition. The best time to start YouTube was probably last year, but the second best time is right now. So just do it. Figure out what you like or what you're good at and just start making videos. Like, people make them with cell phones. And if your end goal is trying to build relationship with people, then I think whatever you do, like, focus it in on that goal and just start doing it. That's probably the worst advice ever, but just do something. I think is the way I would go with that.

You started with YouTube. You had the followers on there. Megan stumbles into the TikTok and then discovers it. Talk to me a little bit about kind of finding that strategy. YouTube is the second largest search engine if you separate it from Google. Like, is that the place to go if I was wanting to do this influencer? How do, what, tell me the strategy for how to get started?

Yeah, I think YouTube is probably the—YouTube has a really large audience. It's also not the easiest one to get started on. It's, there's just such a broad base of videos. It's hard to get noticed right off the bat, whereas TikTok is eleven to thirteen second videos. You can be really goofy and find what's trending and build a following probably quicker. But I think TikTok's harder to do ministry on than YouTube is. So there's benefits to both and there's cons to both. For my own, like, I don't have a TikTok. I don't really have much interest in that. And so that's why I picked YouTube. There wasn't like a big strategy behind it, whereas she already has a TikTok but she has interest in that. Like, there's a—I think you and Dave Adamson did the ten commandments to YouTube. That's a great video. Like, go watch that and then just start a YouTube channel and do what he says. I feel like that's a microcosm for Christianity. I heard Francis Chan one time at Passion, and he literally just opened the Bible and said, "Okay, here's how to be a Christian. Just like, open this up and do what it says." And we like to make it a lot harder sometimes. Well, for YouTube, like, go find a video that explains how YouTube works and then just go do it. There's a bunch of those YouTubes out there.

I'm just curious, like, is Twitch something that's becoming more and more prevalent? You know, I think they just shut down Mixer, which was little known, and so a bunch of the Mixer people kind of jumped on Twitch, and it seems to be picking up. You know, broadcast audience kind of mindset as well. Is Twitch on either of your guys' road maps? Awareness? Like, are you tracking with Twitch at all?

Yeah, that's our online family pastor is doing a lot with Twitch, especially like these video game challenges and stuff to be able to stream those on Twitch. Lots of teenagers are on that platform. I've been trying to get our students guys to really focus in on Twitch. They've done a good job of kind of going after the gaming community, similar to how Tyler's talked about how each of their folks have gone after like a different platform. Some of them tried—they specifically assigned certain folks to be keen on NBA 2K, someone Call of Duty, and some on like Animal Crossing, and then kind of put up a schedule on our Instagram, you know, to try and engage students on some of those platforms. And they found some success there. Twitch is one of those things, and we've seen a lot of folks really spread the gospel and some of the on Twitch and do this kind of a thing. It's just like YouTube where if you're consistent with it and stick with it and know it and understand it, you really can grow something positive. It just takes somebody who's minded towards it. Unfortunately, we haven't found anybody to really stick with it on our end.

Well, I tell you, all right, I'm totally gonna put you on the spot here, and I wasn't even thinking I was gonna ask this question. But you know, he's talking about an influencer approach, which is atypical physical ministry. You are actually a physical church digital pastor. Like, what headaches? What challenges? Some of this influencer approach of how he's doing it? What would it take to do that at a physical church or at least in a church that's used to doing physical ministry?

I think the first thing is that you have to really help some of your pastors and some of your people understand the importance of the fact that this is a real audience that you can have real influence over. And really, even understanding what an influencer is—I mean, Tyler, feel free to button in and disagree at any point because some of them, they have such a negative view of what it means to be an influencer at this point. Like, they look at it and they see a lot of people involved in multi-level marketing schemes who are just trying to like sell stuff or whatever else. So when they first think influencer, they think of it as kind of a selfish thing, like, "Oh, I'm going to grow my platform or I'm trying to get popular," and not necessarily trying to elevate Jesus in a particular area or something along those lines.

We did have a campus pastor who I'm not going to name right off the bat, and he actually did in a positive light. He actually found a bit of his voice early on in COVID and really started keying in on the subject of anxiety, kind of like how Tyler had somebody in his group do that, and really was doing a good job. And it's funny—he messaged me about two weeks ago like, "Hey, I want to start building this up again." I said, "Man, you did such a great job at the beginning. Don't lose your voice in this." And he said, "Yeah, I just started," and this is the key, I think, for a lot of pastors and where they struggle. He started to get discouraged on the view count because we measure what matters. And the minute that the metrics start to dip, all of a sudden we think, "I've lost influence. I've lost hope. Nobody's interested." And so he stopped doing it. And I tried to encourage him and I tried to send him a podcast and other folks. I'm like, "Listen, you got to do this because you love this and because you really believe God has called you to voice you to give you a voice in this specific area."

Tyler, what are your thoughts there on that?

Yeah, I agree. And that kind of goes back to that comparison game trap that we can fall into of, "Well, my views have gone down, but this person's views have gone up." But I'm—we're all trying. If it's the same category, we're hopefully all on the same team trying to reach the same goal. So stop comparing yourself to other people's views. And the way the internet works is like you're going to fluctuate on like view counts and things like that. One video could be viral and

Have a ton of views and the other one could have like four or five hundred, but that doesn't mean you're any less effective if you can get past the view account and focus on the audience that you're building in the community aspect of what you're trying to do relationally, then things kind of change in your mind like that.

I also think it's a leap for a lot of pastors in physical churches to move from "I need the church's platform to elevate my voice" as opposed to building my own platform, because so many of them want to get on the church handles thinking that, oh man, this is how I am able to be heard. I've heard this from other churches as well where it's like, oh well, all of a sudden our campus pastors want to be in the church online broadcast or they want to do announcements in this specific area because they're so used to the church's platform elevating their voice instead of establishing their own. And that's where I would encourage them. It's this isn't meant to be discouraging in any kind of way. It's meant to be encouraging. God gave you a voice. Use your voice as opposed to thinking that the only way that your voice can get elevated is through your church handle.

Yeah, I've had that conversation with some of my staff, some of the staff members on the physical side of what we do early on who struggled with the idea of us being, we call it digital missionaries, but as a social media influencer because of the pride issue of it. Oh, you're trying to just build your name up, you're trying to do this, trying to do this. What we got, we have to remember that like when we're wrapped up in our church bubble, like our Christian bubble, like we know all these churches, like we know what North Point is, you know what Elevation is. But like a majority of people that we're going to see on the internet, they don't have a clue who Elevation Church is. They don't have a clue who North Point is. They may know who Andy Stanley or Steven Furtick is, but like those are name recognition things for Christians. If we're trying to reach non-Christians, they're not like super trusting of institutions in the first place and definitely not searching for churches specifically.

So we came up with this. We got down to the fact that we think we can reach more people as a person rather than a church handle, and that was really hard for people to grasp at the beginning. So you have to have some form of like, why. You have to have the why behind it to be able to back up why you're trying to do what you're trying to do. And the great irony of all that to me, Tyler, is when I listen to Craig Rochelle in his leadership podcast, when I listen to Andy Stanley, it's very apparent that they're not going after the church community. They're going after business leaders. They're going after people outside of their circle that they're trying to pull in for the sake of the gospel. And that's the interesting thing to me is that even though those folks get accused of trying to build their voice in the Christian community, what they're really after is they're looking at it through an evangelistic approach. And that's why they started a lot of those platforms was to go reach out to people instead of reaching around to the same people that they're normally reaching.

Yeah, love, love everything about this. If you're a physical missionary, you're going to move to another country and you're going to build relationships. You're going to connect with those people, and through that relational influence, that's how you start to spread Christ inside. You want to go as many people as possible. You want to share Christ as much as possible to build up the church. What I love about this model of influence is it's not influence for influence's sake. It's influence for the sake of the kingdom that leads somewhere. And so understanding it's not about the number of YouTube subscribers, just like it's not the number of butts and seats that we're watching in our physical service as well as our online services, it really comes down to whatever that next step is, getting people connected into your discipleship pathway, funnel process, whatever, towards getting people connected to the gospel, to a greater understanding of Christ. And so whether that's done, you know, we use this language a lot at Stadia, it doesn't matter if it's physical, it doesn't matter if it's digital, but those are not the end. It's means to the end that developing a person to become a disciple maker, a Great Commission, that that should be the end. And so whatever the process is is to do that, let's do it.

I love this influencer idea and I'm going to be excited to kind of see how this grows and develops. And of course I think Tyler has holds the record for number of times to appear on the Church Digital podcast, so we will of course bring you back at some point. Several of them are at the top as well, just kind of calling them out here a little bit there. But actually, it's been a really interesting couple months here for the podcast. That's a later conversation. But we're going to land right here at this time.

Hey, listen, Tyler, thanks for jumping on this. Love the fact that you're innovating, digging into things and taking a different approach. Love seeing what's happening at Church Anywhere and what's coming up for Tyler for Ray. This is Jeff with the Church Digital and State of Church Planning. Thanks for being here and we'll see you next time here at the podcast. You all have a good day.