How Will You Reach Them? Are You Reaching Them? - Chris Thompson

I am Chris Thompson. Reverend Thompson if you like. And I am, as we always introduce ourselves, I'm a full-time pastor and a full-time nerd.

We run a digital church called North Hill Live. And here at North Hill Live, we've come a long way to get to where we are.

And I know that Flat Cap spent a little bit of time walking through basically it is who it is that you're meeting, right?

Well, on the other side, once you've done your effort, once you've done your stream, it's important to realize once you've started your ministry that at a certain point, you have to re-evaluate and you have to figure out, are we actually doing it or not?

I went to share slides. I want to be as cool as Flat Cap, but as soon as I shared slides, everything went away. You got just audio, you got no video. I'm good. You're good now. It's all there. You see the slides as well. All right. You let her brother know because it looks like the slides aren't coming up.

All right. Having said all of that, which was, you know, a whole lot of nothing. They've asked me to come in and talk a little bit about metrics.

And so we're going to do exactly that. We're going to attempt to walk through some of the metrics. Before we get to numbers, like what did I do last week? Did my stream actually hit any viewers or was I just talking to myself and screaming into the void, which is basically how we all start, I'm afraid.

We all start by screaming into the void. So once we get past that, we want to look at numbers. So are we meeting the needs that we have already called out?

So why do those metrics matter? There is this trend in Christendom. Now depends on when you got into ministry and whether you got into professional ministry or whether you got into lay ministry. But there is this trend that says that the numbers don't matter. If you focus on how much money came in, if you focus on how many people were sitting in the seats, that you're doing ministry wrong.

And I want to be the first person if no one has ever said it to you before that that is just not true. It's not true at all. You know, when Christ was walking around and he was feeding, wait, how many people was he feeding? Oh, we all know the number, right? Why? Because the Bible cares about numbers. The people matter. Christ kept track of people. Peter kept track of people.

In fact, the early church kept a list. So they knew that all of their people were being fed, that all their widows were getting visited. You can't do it without numbers. People and numbers are the same thing. And if people matter to God, then the numbers should matter to God.

And so the numbers have to be looked at. Now, having said all of that, a larger number by definition, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing a better ministry. So, as Flat Cap said, who are we reaching? Like, what is your demographic on our end? We need to realize who we are as a minister of the gospel.

You wouldn't be here unless you had some sort of streaming and ministry goal. So, the question we're going to answer is, what kind of streamer are you? What kind of minister are you? And there are a number of categories here. And I want to bring them up real quick and we'll walk through them.

If you have your um your Excel file where you are keeping your speaker notes and walking through trying to decide what kind of streamer you are, this will be the thing that goes in that spreadsheet. There we go. Tyrannosaurus says, "Our church is shrinking, but also we're starting both a good news club and an ESL class in the elementary school we meet in." Exactly.

And so total numbers doesn't matter. As long as your numbers are in the right place. So, here we go. There are a number of different ways you can minister. And once you figure out who you are, then we know which numbers we're supposed to be looking at. The first one we have here should be disciplemaker.

Are you a disciple maker? And a disciplemaker is based on the passage out of Matthew, Matthew 28:19. And that is the passage we've all heard a thousand times. Go therefore and make disciples. Now, if you're looking at what you already do or what your personality already is, a disciplemaker is focused on equipping others, theology, truth.

Are you when you set up your stream schedule? Are you excited about the times when you read the Bible? Are you excited about the times when maybe you're doing a Bible study? Do you have a Strong's on your table? Do you have a GNT on your shelf? Perhaps you're a disciple maker. Is prayer an essential part of your meeting time?

If someone comes into your stream, whether it is here on Twitch or whether it's over there on the YouTubes or the TikToks, when somebody rolls in and they go, "Hey man, I've had a rough day. I got a rough day and I'm getting ready to go home to the wife and what I don't want to do is fight. Do you stop your stream? Stop playing your game and pray for them?" Perhaps you're a disciplemaker.

Are you interested in investing in cross-cultural? Does it matter to you if the people in your stream make the same money you do, speak the same language you do, live on the same continent you do, have the same kind of job as you do. If none of that matters and what you really care about is reaching a group of people for the gospel, then perhaps you're a disciplemaker.

Are you interested in teaching and modeling, get this, your dependence on God? That should be the first point here or the second point we got teaching and modeling. The second one being dependence on God. Is your dependence on God something that you're willing to put out there? Because if your stream is about discipleship, that means when you fail you also put it out there. You're not scared of sharing success and failure. GNT, GNT, the Greek New Testament. So, we have Disciple Maker based on Matthew 28:19.

So, that's number one. Now, if you're like, man, that some of that hits and some of it doesn't. Don't worry, there's three more. We got group leader.

Now, a group leader is sort of fun. You may find yourself to be a group leader if you follow Matthew 23:9-11. You guys know this passage as well. This is the passage that talks about the greatest among you is going to be your servant. That's that group leader.

Do you naturally gather people to you that want to hang out with you and do a thing? Do you build effective teams? Is loyalty a big part? Do you have a group of people that when you hit the go live button, they're there? And it doesn't matter whether you are building a motorcycle like I do on Fridays or whether you got a Bible study like I do on Tuesdays or whether you are failing at a video game like I do every Monday. Those people are always there. Those are your ride and dies.

Do you naturally develop those people? Do you spend time giving people the authority to guide vision and direction? If you came on your stream and said, "Next week, next week we're going to do an egg hunt, an IRL egg hunt in my backyard, but I have no idea how to do that." Do you have people that raise up in your stream and go, "Oh, here's five ways to do it. Here's how to run your tech. Here's how to run your promotion. I'll jump up and do it." If those things happen to you where your community rises up to make it work, then maybe you're a group leader.

Now, this also goes into different things because the group leader begins to widen, right? And I know that we have people coming on later. They're going to talk about expanding your group through things like Discord and world missions and stream teams. But if those things are interesting to you, if your group naturally dives into them, we currently have a Discord.

Now, Discord is not the kind of thing that is normally where my strength lies. When people said you got to do a Discord once you start streaming, I thought people were talking nonsense. What's the point of that? And that Discord has become a place where people who think that way pray for one another and share their life.

We got a whole section where people take selfies of themselves in front of like their job or in the grocery store and post them up. Why? Because they've developed this team and this friendship, right? And that's happened all off of the normal screen.

Now, the third thing you might be, so maybe you're a disciplemaker, maybe you're a group leader, maybe you're none of those things. We have the host. Now, the host is fascinating. The host, the way we've broken host down is that the host is based on Matthew 25:45, which is, the least of these becomes the greatest.

You guys know the passage. Jesus is talking. Who's the greatest among you? Well, it's the least. The least is going to become the best, the greatest, the host.

If your spiritual giftedness leans itself towards hosting, if it leans itself towards equipping, if you're the kind of person that gets their house completely set up when somebody's coming over and they make sixteen cheese plates and is smoking meat out back and when everybody comes over, the linen napkins are folded just right and you're meeting people and you're shaking hands and kissing babies. Maybe you're a host.

The closest thing you can think of for a host is probably a shepherd. Is your ministry style in a place where meeting needs is your drive? Where when someone comes in and they got a real question, they have a real need and you can meet that need. That fills you with joy. That's a host.

Do you care for individuals and community? Individuals and community. You know, this one's tricky because a lot of us when we get into digital space, we said, I'm going to minister in digital space. And but the way to do that is I'm going to play a game. And this is absolutely a positive thing. We need ministers in the gaming sphere.

But I there's definitely this intentional intentionality of it where you're playing the game and you're trying to be amazing at the game so you get more eyeballs on you, right? You want the eyeballs on you because you want Jesus to shine. So you have to be great at the game. To be great at the game, you got to focus on the game, right?

So you're focusing on the game and you're doing your thing and you're running around, you're trying to shoot that guy and hide behind that wall and you're trying to get top eight or whatever it is you're trying to do and somebody rolls in your chat and goes, "Yo, you're listening here says Christian and says prayer and says discipleship and says love and acceptance. Man, I just broke up with my girlfriend. I don't know what I'm going to do."

You have a choice, right? As a host, you now have to choose. Am I going to stop what I'm doing and lose this match and spend a few minutes as a community praying for, lifting up, and encouraging this person? Because that's what a host does. That's what a host does. A host stops what they're doing and goes, "No, no, no, no. The person is more important than the agenda."

If that is hard for you, believe you me, I understand. I completely understand because sometimes we've spent time setting it up, man. We've spent time setting it up and getting it ready. And I put my effort, I put my energy, I spent my dollars on that thing.

But if we're here for people, then there's got to be a break. If that's natural for you, maybe you're a host. Next up here, look, this next one, before we get into this, this next one is called Entertainer.

This one is going to set some of y'all on edge. And I realize this, but when I say entertainer, I don't want you to think of it as a negative thing.

Sometimes we think of entertainers, we think of influencers as being that like, hey, I'm on stage and it's all about me. I don't really see it this way.

The passage that I got the word entertainer from actually comes from Romans chapter 15. And that passage, you've heard it before.

It's basically talking about the fact that there will be signs and wonders performed by people. Signs and wonders performed when God is moving.

The entertainer is not only engaging people with the word as in there is a person, right? He's doing the host thing. There's the person.

But here's the word of God. And here's how these things tie together. The entertainer is also willing to embarrass themselves. I'm going to say that again.

The entertainer is willing to embarrass themselves for the sake of the gospel. I got a couple good examples of this, but ultimately speaking, if you as the streamer make a mistake, are you the kind of person who is going to throw their hands up and rage quit and say goodbye, then you're probably not an entertainer, right? Because you see, the entertainer is going to laugh at their own failure. They're going to laugh at the fact that their normal community is trolling them a little bit.

An entertainer will accidentally pass gas on stream and then laugh for 20 minutes about themselves because you know their community is going to talk about it forever because you've now created community around your pain, around your suffering.

You have become the clown on stage. And I mean that in the most positive way possible. Are you spreading the gospel with passion and energy?

Passion and energy. Are you not only engaging people with the word of God, but your passion and your energy comes through? Are you entertaining when people show up?

What gets you hyped on your channel? What about your stream gets you excited when you get ready to hit go live? What gets you stoked?

Are you sitting there going, "When I hit go live, I gotta be professional. My hair got to be just right. I got to have the right cologne on.

My posture has to be right. My background can't be messy." Or do you get stoked about the fact that when you hit live, the Holy Spirit is going to show up?

The Holy Spirit's going to be there and speak through you. Does that get you excited? If so, perhaps you're an entertainer. Perhaps you should lean into the fact that you need to be praying in the spirit in a vocal way.

An entertainer is comfortable crying and laughing and hollering and whispering all on one stream. Is that who you are? Because if so, the metrics you look at are going to be different than everybody else's.

And the last one, the last one comes out of actually I don't know how many years of church planning and pastoral ministry that I've done.

I'm probably sitting at 30 years. Am I giving my age away if I say how many years I've been in ministry?

It's a little more than 30 if I'm being honest. And I've seen a lot of pastors and I've seen a lot of pastors work in different ways.

Some of them are disciplemakers and group leaders and hosts and entertainers. And this last one is the one that I think is the most polarizing when it comes to local church ministry, which is the big brother.

A big brother comes out of James chapter 1. I picked verses 26 and 27, but you can put a few more verses in there.

You can go a little farther if you want. But this idea out of the book of James is when James is talking about that pure and unbridled religion.

He says pure and unbridled religion and yes he uses the word religion. Religion leads you to care about the orphans and the widows. I'm gonna say that again.

Pure and unbridled religion. Real dedication to the ministry. Real dedication to the gospel leads you to care for the orphans and for the widows.

That's a big brother. Do you dream big? You see, because a big brother has been around a minute, right? He's seen a little bit.

And when I say brother, by the way, I mean brother, sister, right? Spouse. I mean he's seen a little more. She's seen a little more.

And because she's seen a little more, because he's seen a little more, they know that God can do big things. And when someone rolls into your stream and they're struggling with life decisions, are you the kind of person that stops and shares stories about success stories and stories of failure with the goal of lifting someone else. Someone comes in, they got an idea. You start dancing around and you start screaming, "You can do it.

I'm going to help you do it. I'm going to give you a platform to do it." Is that you? Are you willing to shepherd others?

Are you looking for that one sheep that's slowly wandering away? That one that you're going to leave your 99 and go seek after. Are you that big brother that sees the pothole in the road before your community does?

Are you willing to say the hard thing and do it at the right time? Because let's be honest, no matter which one of these paradigms you fall into, when the camera turns on, you go all the way up to level 11, right?

All the way up to level 11. You don't stay at one. You take your personality and it cranks to 11. So, if you don't understand which of these personalities you are in, you're going to be bouncing back and forth between them, and no one's going to know who you are or what to expect when they hit the follow button. Andy says, "This is perfect for streams and Tik Tok and Instagram, really everything. When you look to reach people for Jesus through content, I'm struggling to figure out which my archetype is." Yeah.

I think, brother, you're going to have to what we're asking when we get ready to go to I think we're almost there. When we get ready to split off and fill out our sheets, I encourage you to pick one, possibly two of these and try to narrow it down a little bit. There is some crossover as you can see just by looking at them because a big brother, this cheerleader, you also need a cheerleader when it comes to being a group leader, right?

When you give somebody some authority and you go, "Hey, why don't you set this thing up for me?" You got to check in. You got to cheerlead, right?

So, there is some crossover. I am aware of that. Drew says, "I see so many of these. I think people highlight the big brother a lot for you, but man, group leader, disciplemaker are huge." Yeah.

And I think there are some crossovers. Absolutely. Big brother and disciplemaker and group leader from what I know about you.

Yep. Yep. So, real quick, I want to close with this thing before breakout. But I think it's important that you especially if you're just getting started, if you haven't been doing this for years and years, if you're just getting started, at least it happened a lot to me.

I would have people that would roll into my stream and they would kind of like what I'm doing and they would kind of get engaged and eventually they would go, "Hey, pastor, you got to realize that you don't have to you don't have to pretend here.

You can just be you here." And I kept looking at myself going, I think I'm being me. And so eventually I pulled one of them aside and said, "Hey, I've heard this like three or four times.

I gotta I got to stop putting on airs. What do you what do people mean? Like I've heard it from a number of people.

What do you mean when you say it?" And they said, "No, no, no, no, no. What I'm saying is when you when you when you go live, it's like your energy is higher." And I know that that's not your energy, you know, all day long.

You don't walk around hollering and screaming and praying and dancing and spinning around in your chair. And I got to thinking about that and it made me realize that when you hit the go live button, whatever your character is here, whatever your paradigm is, that goes from your normal like idle speed, right? If you got your amp turned up to five, that's where you're at. But when you hit go live, that all gets amplified because no matter how we want to cut it, when you have a mic and a camera in your face, you turn it up just a little bit.

I want to encourage you, that's not fake, that's not a lie. You're not making it up. When you have a chance to watch a professional athlete, doesn't matter who it is, let's say we're watching LeBron James next week, and we're watching LeBron James play.

I guarantee you, he's playing harder when the cameras are on and the game counts than he did at practice the night before. It's no different than when we go live.

I want to encourage you not to be embarrassed. If you're a disciplemaker, jump in with both feet and make disciples and don't be ashamed.

If you're a group leader, man, go encourage folk. Lift them up. Put them together. Do great things for the kingdom. If you're a host, open the doors.

Make a safe space for others to inhabit and hang out. If you're an entertainer, if you're an entertainer, I want to see you dressed up for Halloween and for Christmas.

I want to see you dancing and screaming into the microphone. And if you're a big brother, with all your heart, put your arms around those that walk in.

Help them dream big. Don't be ashamed of it. Go ahead and turn it up to 11. Roman says, "Disciple maker and big brother seem to be a default for me.

I got to start working there." You literally radiate big brother energy. I feel you. Well, you're still an entertainer. It's not a conversation rather than answering the chat.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It absolutely is. There is still an entertainment factor. If someone is taking out their time to be with you, they have hit the follow button.

They've hit the watch button. What that means is they're choosing not to do other things and to hang out with you. So, you got to put it on front street.

So, no matter which of these you come down on, I encourage you to make sure that you're giving it all you got. Dr. Level Up is saying at some level, we all need to have the basics down for all these, but we definitely have more specialties.

Yep. Yep. I'm with it. Andy, we ready for our five minute? You already have your goals and your dreams otherwise you wouldn't be here.

So who are you? This is the question of the day. This is the question of the day. So we'll go ahead and take our five.

I'm going to hang out here. If you have more discussions, I'm happy to bust them out here in a chat. Otherwise, go ahead and find your breakout room.

Take a minute and fill out your sheet family. When you come back, we getting into the exciting part, number crunching. Let's do this. Alrighty, is everybody rolling back in?

We had plenty of time to fill out our sheet. Man, some of these are tricky, right? I know that I've gone through these a couple times and find myself somewhere between, you know, entertainer and possibly big brother.

I tend to be comfortable hitting people with those hard truths that not everybody wants to talk about. I've definitely done that.

And so I'm sure that there have been times and places where my people have been frustrated. And I encourage you if you find yourself between categories to spend some time mulling it over, you may very well be in the middle of a couple of them.

So now that we've kind of determined a little bit about where your passion is, now we need to start looking at actual paradigm of numbers.

Right? So you have your paradigm of what I'm going to do. Where am I going to spend my time? What kind of stream am I going to do?

Now I'm technically a variety streamer. We are doing a church plant. I have a physical location right here. And my sanctuary is right through this wall here on the other side.

And I do an IRL church. And then during the week in the mornings, preferably before noon, I'm doing digital church. But those digital church things take place over four different types of streams.

So, let me go over my schedule real quick so I can kind of see where I'm coming from when I talk about looking at numbers.

The first of which is on Monday, I do a video game stream. And I typically play very indie, very low dollar games with a lot of glitch and a lot of mess in them, right?

Um, and so I love a good simulator, something with problems, something that doesn't run well. That's kind of what I do on Mondays.

On Tuesday, I just enjoy it. By the way, if you're wondering why I choose bad games, I enjoy them. Um, on Tuesdays, I do Bible study and we work our way through the Bible.

Um, and we've been, we do a book at a time and at the end, we take attendance, by the way, something I encourage you to do if you ever do a Bible study. Take attendance. And at the end, if you make enough Bible studies, I send you a gift. On Thursdays, we have Thursday. That's church just like anybody else would go to church.

We do worship and we do preaching and we pray for one another. Church. And on Fridays, it's DIY Friday and I build a motorcycle.

I got a whole motorcycle table and I tore it down and I'm putting it all back together. I'm almost done with my first one.

Anyway, so that's what I do. So when I look at the numbers, all of these categories are the ones that are the most important for me.

Oh, slides are not coming through anymore. I will reset them, my friend. Oh, they are coming through. Okay. As long as you got them, then I'm good.

All right. So, here we go. The first set of numbers. Now, these are all numbers that I'm taking specifically from Twitch, which is where we do our ministry.

Some of these numbers, some of these I don't know metrics can be converted over to other platforms, but we're going from the Twitch side today.

The first one is peak viewers. So, you start your stream. In my case, I start at 9:00 a.m. I'm getting ready to hit the live button at 9.

I'm getting ready to hit the raid out button at noon. That's roughly my schedule four days a week. So, when I get done with the stream, it's important for me to go look at my peak viewer number.

Now, our peak viewer number is going to be vastly different. Your peak viewer number may be 400. Your peak viewer number may be seven, but the peak is still the peak because what we're looking at is to see what happened on my stream and where were people excited.

So, did you change a title description midstream? I do that all the time. I start off playing a game and we get three-quarters of the way through the stream and I go, "Oh, I'm kind of finished with the game. Let's do some community games to kind of wrap it up." I do this a couple times a week. I go in, I change my title.

If my stream peaked when I change the title, that might very well mean that people don't like my indie game, that people really want that community game, and they're popping in to see it.

You guys catch that? Um, did your programming change? Uh, do you normally play games on Tuesdays, but this particular Tuesday you didn't have a game, so you did a cooking stream and your numbers peaked?

Something to think about or perhaps they dumped. This is really important if you're an entertainer or a big brother that the thing you're doing at that point really matters.

Uh there's a streamer that I follow on the regular and their peak number always hits in the first 20 minutes always, which is crazy.

If you've been a streamer for a while, most streamers their number will grow and grow and grow and grow and grow over the stream and eventually it tapers off at the top and then perhaps drops down a little, right?

You kind of even get that sort of bell curve, right, that we talk about in like elementary school. But his numbers peak at the beginning.

So he and I had a chance to chat about this. Why is that? And it turns out the first 20 minutes of stream, he prays for his community.

That's it. The community comes in and he goes, "Hey man, I love y'all and I know not all of you into Jesus, but we're going to pray for you." There are people that show up just for that and then go on for their day.

That should tell this person a little bit about where and how he spends his time on stream, right? If you're an entertainer or a big brother, your peak viewer number is going to matter.

You should keep track of it. Um, amen. I know we're all called to cast wide nets, but my passion or giftedness is with my 12 or so that I can pour into.

There you go, Romans. I'm with you. Um, number two, this is one, by the way, this next one is the one that has just come across my radar.

This is the one I'm obsessed with. I encourage you if you've never looked at it before, look at this. This is called chat peaking.

Now, if you guys know what chat is, obviously you're all chatting in the side here. You know what chat is. So, as you are streaming, people talk.

Sometimes they talk to one another and sometimes they're talking to you. To be honest, I'm more interested oftentimes in people talking to one another.

So chat peaking in a lot of ways is a simple review of your most impactful sections. Your most impactful sections. Uh what exactly were you doing when the most people were talking about you?

Right. At what point were most people chatting about you? Uh, chatting to you, chatting around you, chatting about what you were doing or how you were doing it.

So, chat peaking is fascinating. When you get done with your stream, I encourage you to pull up your stats and look at chat peaking.

When the most people were talking, uh, were you excited as the streamer? Were you excited? Were you contemplative? Right? Were you sitting there with your hands folded?

Were you worshiping? Right? Did you have like a YouTube band playing and you had your hands up and you were singing and getting into it?

Were you yelling? Did you just lose a game? Did you just win a game? Were you crying? Were you being emotive in some way?

Was it the very beginning of your stream? Or was it right when you were ready to raid out? Um, all right. Let me give me just a second, fam.

Let me see if I can deal with this real quick. Did my slide change? Did it change back? You guys should be seeing a screen that says peak viewers and chat peaking.

Back to one. Back to two. Okay, cool. Uh, if it goes sideways, just let a brother know. I got a look, I got this theory.

I got this theory. Uh, if your entire stream has no scuff in it, did you really stream? I don't think so. Oh, you still got a loading screen, man.

I'm sorry. All right, so my first two are peak viewers and chat peaking. Um, and these are two numbers you can watch. Uh obviously the chat peaking is the most fascinating of all of these for me.

I think it's the kind of thing where you could really gauge is what I'm doing hitting people right? Are people noticing? Um, did I make a change and do people like it?

Uh the third one is first time viewers. Now everybody loves a first time viewer right? People who have maybe never ever been in your stream before, the first time they come in.

This is a number most of us want to watch, especially if you're a host or a big brother. Um, hosts and big brothers, they really kind of live on this, right?

So, the question is, if you're a host or if you're in the big brother category, depending on what your style is, do your first time viewers become longtime visitors, right?

Are you converting them? Do they feel welcome? Have you made a space where viewers can roll in for the first time? Now, first time viewers are tricky, though.

And what I want to say about this when we come to metrics is when you look at your first time viewer stats typically they're going to say how many first time viewers did you have today versus yesterday versus a week ago.

That's typically the way that lays out. So, if you're looking at that, your first time viewers, if you had three first time viewers on a stream on a Wednesday and your Wednesday stream, um, you play Fortnite, you can't really compare that to a Thursday stream from a week before where you were playing Minecraft.

Does that make sense? You kind of have to compare apples to apples. Then, once you've done that for a while, not just a week, but you have to do it for a month, two months, and then look at it.

You might realize that the title that says Fortnite brings in more fresh faces than a title that says I don't know any other game that I can't, how is it look, we're all gaming streamers, I can't think of another game that has broken in my head. Uh, Minecraft. Uh, so if Minecraft is bringing in half as many new faces as Fortnite, if you care about new faces right, if that's an important metric for you, then it's possible that your content has to line up with your goals.

Maple syrup simulator, bro, flat cap, I got a great maple syrup simulator for you if you want to play one. I got a good one.

Mbazoo. Go hook up Mbazoo and you can make all the maple syrup you want. It's a great game. Uh, having said all of that, first time viewers, uh, the question is, are you bringing them into fellowship?

Is your stream dynamic enough where they have gone from, "Oh, I'm just here lurking in the back," right, to maybe getting into metric number four.

Have they become first time chatters? Now, this is the point where everybody in chat has to put their claps in because first time chatters um is huge especially for discipleship makers and group leaders.

So, a first time chatter is exactly what it sounds like. It means maybe I've been lurking in the back for a minute.

I was a first time viewer a month ago. Um maybe I came over because your title says that you were um giving away a GameCube this week.

Maybe your title says um I don't know that you are going to shave your mustache today. And so I want to see some crazy man on stream shave his mustache.

Whatever brought them in. You've gone from I'm lurking in the back to you did a thing, you said a thing, and you spurned me on to where I had to pull out my keyboard and I had to say something.

I had to pick up my phone off its stand and I had to engage. Uh Tyrannosaurus Wheat says, "I do not look good without a mustache."

The mustache is the only thing that bothers me. I think it looks okay, but I hate having to take care of a mustache.

Five minute morning. I'm almost to the end, brother. We getting there. We have a viewer who is now either upset enough with me, right?

He's angry with me, she's angry with me, so she's got to say so. Or she's laughing with me, so she has to say so, right?

She's crying with me, so she's got to put an emote up. He's so happy that I'm playing his favorite game. He's got to say hi.

Disciple makers and group leaders need lots of first time chatters. So, if you're like, you know what, discipleship is what I'm all about. First time chatters is huge.

That means there's a person that showed up to hear you talk about the book of James and at a certain point they went, "Oh, I've never thought about that." Or, "Oh, I disagree with that." You have just got your first time chatter from that person.

You now have a chance to actually engage their heart and their mind. Group leaders and hosts, man, you want that first time chatter too, right, man?

If you're a group leader, this is your lifeblood because those first time chatters are the ones that are going to give life to your small groups.

They're the ones that are going to jump in there first. And hosts. This is just proof that you have developed a place, right? An environment where people are comfortable enough to open up their mouth.

That means your community is nice enough to each other that even if somebody has a question, they think they're probably not going to be beat up for it. Even if they disagree, they think, "Oh, I'm going to be respected in here." First time chatters respond to the way our regulars get along with each other.

If your ride or dies, those that always are there when you hit go live, if they treat each other well, you're going to have a whole lot of first time chatters. If they don't, people will be very slow to speak up for that first time. It's hard to have a relationship if people won't chat.

That's huge. Yeah, Phantom. And um I have a tendency, you probably have already realized just listening to me for the last twenty minutes that uh I will run over people verbally. Um and so I have to consciously slow down. I have to consciously stop and go, "Hey, I've been talking for ten minutes. What y'all think about that?" And you, I'm shocked at how many people were just waiting to get a word in edgewise.

And so first-time viewers and first-time chatters, sometimes we have to consciously make space for them or at least I do just personality-wise. So what is it you have been focusing on when you're done with a stream? When you're done with a week stream, however it is that you go back and evaluate, what number do you focus on? Are you only looking at your average viewership?

Because my personal opinion is that number probably tells you the least. Now, I'm not saying throw that number away. But the average viewership is the one that's on your screen at the bottom unless you hide it. It's the one that's always there. It's the one that that TikTok cares about. It's the one that Twitch cares about. It's the one that YouTube cares about.

My personal opinion, that number means very little to mission. That number means very little. Now, people are people, but if you're trying to hone in what it is that you're doing, that's probably not the metric you should be checking out.

So, what is your most impactful metric? Now, what would you like to change? What would you like to change? If you could change one of your metrics, if you could trade in first-time chatters for first-time viewers, or if you could trade in first-time viewers for peak numbers, what portion of your metric do you feel falls short? Those are my two questions. We'll do a five-minute breakout. Go ahead and think those through. Uh, which metric do you focus on and which one do you feel like you should be and never quite hits the numbers you think it should?

Um, yeah. Andy, you want them? Why don't we do a five-minute breakout and then I just have one action slide and uh I'll send them to you.

All right, family. Well, um, it is time for me to pull out the pastor card. Like I said, I've been a pastor for years and years. Um, and one of the number one things that I've always been able to do or been required to do or been driven to do as a pastor is whenever you finish your time of speaking, you do all this prep work.

Um, if you've ever had to like sit down and write a sermon, you do hours and hours of prep work and you get it all narrowed down to four points in a poem. You know what I'm saying? And you get up and you present it. When you come to the end, if you do not give an exhortation, a call to change, then perhaps you haven't really done your job.

So, you will have to give me the benefit of the doubt when I say this is your call to action. Here's your action plan.

I want to encourage you to do a couple things. Number one is to check your numbers weekly. Y'all walk around with, if you're anything like me anyway, you walk around with this supercomputer in your pocket, what we just refer to as your cell phone. Put on there a once a week alert telling you to check your numbers. Do a weekly update. Once a week, jump onto your platform and check your numbers.

How did we do this week? Is there anything that sticks out? Number two, action point number two, let's run an experiment. Change your schedule, your time, your day, your event order, your format, and then track all those metrics for a change.

So, if you do your weekly and you get to the end and go, man, my viewer ratings are good. They're up, man. People are loving what I'm doing, but man, they're just not talking to each other. Then consider running an experiment. Change a thing, one thing. Now, don't run it. It's not a one-shot. You have to run it for a week or so.

You have to do your experiment for more than one stream. And then check your numbers against your baseline. I'm going to say that again. Change one thing and run it for a period of time, a week, a month, depending on what your schedule looks like, and then check it against your baseline.

So once you have a baseline and you're like, I love my stats except this one stat, you can pretty easily narrow down what it is you need to change.

You know, it's fascinating. I did this actually and I ran my stats. I ran my regulars and I said, "Man, I'm not sure what it is that I'm doing, but I'm not getting engagement right in the middle of my stream." And so I went back and I watched all the streams where I had low engagement in the middle, you know, that middle hour where your numbers are the highest, my engagement was low.

What is going on? So, I went back and I looked through it all and I found a stream where the very middle of my stream my engagement was super super high, right in the middle. And I, what exactly what I was doing, like what what changed on that stream compared to another. And I realized that in the middle of that stream, in a very serious stream, we took a minute and we just talked with one another.

I stopped doing the Bible study. I stopped doing the prayer stuff and we watched a video that somebody had sent. You got to see this video, pastor. And we all had a big laugh, right? And engagement went up and then we were re-energized. And I realized that in the middle of that stream, I let my stream, my community have a recess, right?

We were doing serious work. We had a five minute recess. We came back and the energy was back up again. So, I encourage you if you have a dead spot, if you have a metric that you're not happy with, run an experiment.

Change your schedule, change your time, change your day, change your event order, change your format, whatever you think it needs to be changed, and do it for a set period of time. And then measure one set of numbers against the other. And I want to close with this statement. Your metrics determine your success or your failure.

Why? Why? Before you all start hollering at me. Why? Because your metrics are people, right? If our goal is to share the gospel with the world, every number is a person. Every comment is a person. Every follow is a person. Every sub is a person. Those are people. And so the metrics determine success, not your comfort level.

Not your comfort level. One more time. It's not how comfortable I am on stream. It's those numbers. Blessings, family.