BETA15: Above the Funnel (Clubhouse Edition)

Hey, we're going to get you to that podcast in one second, but before we get there, I, Jeff Reed, the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planning, I wanted to have a conversation with you, churches that are out there. One of the greatest things I arguably think that I've done in my life, other than married and kids, okay, that aside, one of the greatest ministry things I've ever done is this idea of the fidgetal learning communities that we are offering through Stadia Church Planning. We want to help you. We want to help your church learn to thrive, grow, and multiply digitally, physically, as well as digitally. We've seen about 200 churches go through this already, and it's been a phenomenal result of it.

Culture is changing within these churches. They're understanding what it is to thrive. They're understanding how to grow people, how to grow their church, even in the midst of this COVID, not COVID, wherever we are in the season, and they're even starting to understand what it means to multiply in fidgetal space. There's no secret sauce to doing a digital strategy. There's no secret sauce to doing a fidgetal strategy. There's no secret sauce to making your church thrive, grow, and multiply. It takes work. I'm not going to lie, but through the framework, through the questions, through the learning communities, we connect you with churches. We give you some content. We coach you along the way to help you make the decisions that you need to make so that your church's strategy can thrive, grow, and multiply your church along the way.

This is a great opportunity for your church. We would love to have you be a part of it. For more information, check out StadiaChurchPlanning.org slash fidgetal, P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L. All right. Hey, that's it. We're going to get you back to that episode right now. Hey, we got Beta Show, episode 15 here. I'm Jeff with the Church.Digital, Stadia Church Planning. It's awesome to be with you. Now, hey, we're experimenting with the Beta Show. I think we've got license. The show is literally called Beta. So, of course, we're going to experiment. Of course, we're going to try something different. We're going to iterate. We tell you guys, we tell churches, we tell digital pastors, lead pastors, you need to iterate.

So, of course, we're going to iterate and learn through it. I got to be honest with you. 15 episodes in here with Beta Show, and I'm learning something. I love the Clubhouse platform. Now, the ability to engage, to dialogue with people, to learn, to let others speak into situations and environments, to get Q&A, to interact. I mean, literally, verbally hear people's voices talking. It's an incredible platform. I loved it very much. And so, we're going to experiment in the next couple of weeks, months with moving the Beta Show onto the Clubhouse platform. Here's what we're going to do. We will record weekly, Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Every Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern, we will do a show on Clubhouse.

Check us out on social media, thechurch.digital, me at Deerfedge, Jeffrey backwards, and you will get information on the show, the link, whatever. But you can guarantee it. We will be Clubhouse, 5 p.m. Eastern, always doing a show. And so, we will not only do that, we invite people to come into Clubhouse. The reason we're doing a Clubhouse is because we want to hear you. We want to answer your questions. We want to make this as practical and as real for you as possible, not just spout philosophy. We do the philosophy through the Church Digital Podcast. We really want with the Beta Show to interact. So, we want that live audience feel that Clubhouse offers so well. Now, I hear you. Android audiences out there are people that are like, Jeff, I don't want to download Clubhouse.

But you have FOMO. You've got fear of missing out. You don't want to miss the stuff that's happening. And so, similar to what we're doing with this episode with Beta Episode 15, we're going to record Clubhouse, and we're going to make it available on the podcast and maybe stream it later down the road. But definitely as an audio download on podcast. So, if you're not able to join us in real time in that conversation in Clubhouse, you still got access to the resources. So, those of the Android users who are out there right now who are sending me hate mail that I've chosen a platform that they're not able to get on right now, relax. It's okay. We got you covered. Majority of the conversations will make it to the podcast.

Life is good. We'll update you. And by the way, as soon as you get on Clubhouse, the better. Okay. Awesome. Hey, so let's dig in specifically into Beta 15. I reached out to a friend, Jason Morris, and said, Hey, Jason, I love the stuff that Westside Family is doing with this above the funnel. Thank you. And let's talk about it. Now, above the funnel. Typically, pre-COVID 2019, churches, the front door, the first step, the first place that they would really engage with, measure, track, keep track of a person was that connection card. And it was somehow affiliated with a weekend service. Maybe even like getting a kid checked in into the children's ministry, but it was centered around the one hour on Sunday, right?

And so now, 2021, and with the kind of the difficulties of engaging with people in the church online service, really, we've seen some churches measure and start to work with and start to intentionally develop relationships, call it above the funnel, above that weekend service. In other words, like Westside Family is doing a lot in the space to develop relationships, discover people, engage with people, build those relationships well before the one hour on Sunday. And that it's that intentionality that's working very well for Westside beyond that one hour on Sunday, getting people connected into groups, because really, those people are not watching church in isolation, even before they make it to the church service.

They're already connecting with people before they step foot physically or virtually into that church service. And so it's this above the funnel thinking, really, that we wanted to start to bring exposure to. Now there's typical Jason Morris, global innovations pastor over at Westside, typical fashion for him. He's got so many resources. He's got so many vendors. He's got so many relationships. And there's so many tools here, from a practical standpoint, that's going to help you. And there's, we did Q&A at the end, like this was a phenomenal conversation. And I feel like it's a great first step into this whole clubhouse beta show experiment that we're doing. So here for beta 15, once again, I'm presenting Jason Morris, global innovations pastor, one of the OGs of church online from Westside family into the conversation, Jeff, myself with the church digital and stated church planning, as well as others from, from the audience in a conversation that I'm simply calling being the church above the funnel.

Okay, everybody, here you go. But hey, let's, let's dig in here. We've got, got Jason Morris here, and looking forward to having a conversation. Yeah, thanks, man. Hey, so let me lay the groundwork here. And then I'm going to just keep pinging people that are following me and trying to bring some in. What we are trying to do. So we're going to, I'm recording this clubhouse says that I have to put that disclaimer out there. And it's nice right on top of the screen. I'm recording this, we're going to turn this into a podcast, maybe a live stream later on, because I'm really hoping to have a solid conversation here. The heart of what we are trying to do as a church, we want to connect with people that are, that are, that are called to Christ.

We, there's, there's a number, there's a large amount of outreach that we, the church, we're looking to do. And, and as a result of this COVID season, not only are we struggling maybe to reach a new person, but we're even losing the people that we are because they may or may not be disenfranchised with this whole, this whole digital model. And so for me, I want to open up the conversation and, and, and I would love to hear from Jason. And we, we sent an email trying to get some others to come in. Want to even hear from the room, open up some insights that the challenge for me, when I look at this is, is that our, our weekend services, essentially, we're the front door for our physical church services for decades.

And I'm not saying it wasn't working at the time. It probably was working effectively. Maybe it was diminishing over the past decade. Like I said, attendance has been down, community influence has, has been down. And so we're seeing the church really get devalued pre COVID leading into December, or excuse me, February, 2020, when everything hit the fan as a result of COVID. So as, as a church, we're used to that queen, that weekend service really shining. But what we're, we're finding is, is that, that weekend service now coming out of COVID, it's struggling for a while. How do we, in physical space, maybe even in digital space, how are we effectively reaching and connecting with those people?

And I'll even throw a stat here to back me up. It's sometimes I'm just talking crazy. Sometimes like there's legitimacy behind it. So like Barna, December, 2020 did a digital church evangelism report and worked with, with alpha on it. Jason, I'm sure you've, you've seen that or reference it, but what, what they found was that 80% of people called to Christ who did not have a relationship with Christ, and we're not connected to the church, 80% of those people don't give a garbage about a church service. Like if they have spiritual questions, they're not going into a building or even an online service on a Sunday morning to find out the spiritual answers for those questions. And so as we're trying to reach and connect with people, maybe this Sunday morning service isn't, isn't the right thing to do.

Maybe there are other ways in digital environments and physical environments above that funnel where that funnel would normally start. Maybe we can find a better way to connect. I want to throw it over to Jason Morris. Hey man, as you're talking, as you're thinking, I know what I love about you is you've already been kind of working above that funnel through Westside family as global innovations pastor there. Like, what are you learning in this space? What are you seeing? Well, what, what I'm seeing is kind of the, what the data bears out is, uh, the people that are coming back to church are church people, those who are coming back. Um, now I do see new families coming in, but they are still churched people.

They might be coming in from other churches. This has done a big reset on a lot of things, but who's not coming back are the people that hopefully we're burdened to reach in the first place. Those who don't know Jesus yet. And so what, what I see in this scramble of, you know, getting services online and, um, getting people back in the building and all of these things while helpful doesn't address the bigger need. And the, the big thing that Jesus actually called us to do was to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations and not necessarily make faithful attenders of live religious community theater. So when, when I'm looking at this, I'm thinking, okay, there are for us, like, for example, we've seen like a five X increase in, um, our counseling department because of COVID.

And, you know, those are folks just out in the community that are just needing help in general. When we're talking about people that, um, are requesting help to talk with somebody from ads like that CV outreach does, we're seeing, you know, we used to get like one or two a week of those types of requests that are always fun conversations to have. Now we're getting like five a day. So it's like going crazy. Now, none of these people, their, their first experience with West side is not the church service. It is a human being that cares about them. And I feel like that actually is probably maybe a more biblical way of approaching it. Just like Jesus said by this, you know, you know, you know, they'll know you by your love.

And so it's like, not that they'll know you because of the nice building and church service, although those are wonderful tools to use. I think that they have a different place in the discipleship continuum than they used to. But we're acting as if they hold the same place as they used to when they don't anymore. Hmm. Does that make sense? What I'm saying? I mean, as it came out, I wasn't sure that it came out and made any sense or not. I like, well, a lot of times we, we feel like a church service is supposed to do evangelistic work, like invest and invite style. Um, and it doesn't work for that anymore. It works for other things wonderfully. Sometimes people look at, you know, a church service as a discipleship tool and it can work for that.

Although there are many other discipleship tools that might work just as good or perhaps even better than a church service for that, uh, part of the discipleship pathway. But what I'm talking about is that people's first interaction with faith is not the church service anymore. And it probably never was. I think that we were kind of fooling ourselves into thinking that people's first interaction with Jesus was through a church service when it probably was through a believer first. Yeah. And what we're going to is we're, we're, we're rediscovering that reality and saying, okay, if it's through a believer first, well then perhaps if we were to empower believers to be salt and light where they are and, um, to help people that are in need, just like Jesus did when he walked this earth and help them to just become like Jesus where they are, that is probably way better anyway.

It might leapfrog the whole church, invest, invite experience altogether because the end result is for us to make disciples who make disciples. And we're seeing this in, in real time. Like what you just described, Jason, like we're seeing that come out factually that same Barna report. They, they interviewed people who were cold to Christ, people who do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ, people who are not actively involved in their church. And they asked when you have spiritual questions, where do you go? 40% of people who are cold to Christ say that they will talk to friends that they see spirituality is important to. So in fact, when people who are cold to Christ, when they are wanting to dialogue, when they are at the life's hard point and they really want to have those conversations, they need help.

They're going to their friends. They're not going to a building. And what's fascinating to me, I want to also turn the corner on this. Another 40% of people who are cold to Christ, who do not have a relationship with Jesus, when they have those spiritual questions, they're going to Google. Exactly. Yeah. You know what it's like? So, so that's what I love about some of these solutions that are out there like glue connect and CV outreach is because when they're going to Google that then they will be introduced to what could be a new friend. Yeah. So you're hitting both when you do that. There needs to be intentionality. We talk a lot, you know, it's funny in this COVID season over the past, can you believe it's almost been a year?

Like the world was coming into an end early March, 2020, and we're just a couple of weeks away. You know, it's listen, the reality is a lot of our digital strategy over the past year was spent on how do I get the stream? How do I chat? How do I, what's the most effective connection card? And, and, and some of that may be valid. I don't, I don't want to demean the service. I think the service, like you said earlier, we'll get there. I think it has a part, but I think there's a whole other process that we need to start thinking about because if we really want to be effective in reaching people in the future, it's not through our buildings. It's not setting up a system where one person standing on a stage, exuding his spiritual gift in front of thousands.

What we really need to start working on is empowering our thousands to develop their spiritual gifts so that they can reach the tens of thousands of people within their circle of influence. It's much better for us in this season. And I would argue, even reverting back to a biblical standard of what was, and definitely it's going to be effective where we're going, we need to start equipping people for these conversations, to be preparing them, to be having them pray for opportunities to share with their people who don't know Christ. And to your point, Jeff, I think that if you look at the prevailing model of church over the past two or three decades, we were preparing people for a particular type of evangelistic style.

It felt a lot like partner with us. We're creating this church service, this moment for people. Partner with us by inviting your friends. So over the past two or three decades, it's almost as if our people, the believers, believers don't know how to lead people to Jesus anymore. They only know how to invite them to church. And sometimes like when I'm talking with guys in the gym or whatever, they'll look at me and the last thing they say, oh, you're just talking religious. You want me to go to your church? And I'm like, I don't want you to go to my church. I don't want you to come to my church. I want you to come to Jesus. You know, whether or not you go to church, that's on you, man. But Jesus is way more important.

But the problem is, is that we, we've done a lot of work training our people over the past two or three decades to see inviting someone to church as their evangelism. And if that was our whole strategy that worked for a long time, especially if we were any good at a church service, that can work. But increasingly, especially now in COVID season, they don't want to come to church. Even our own church people don't want to come to church because of all the weirdness. I mean, only 30 to 40% are coming back. And those are church people, let alone the unchurched folks, the people who they wouldn't even consider going to church to begin with. If someone invited them, now there's so many more barriers that they have to go through in order to even show up.

And even then, in most cases, it's kind of a roll of the dice, whether or not it's going to actually meet their needs or not. And that's one of the things that I feel is like missed opportunities where we use our webpage or social media and all that to bring people to an event so that they could have an experience so that maybe they can come to Jesus. And what I'm saying is just cut out the middleman. Just do your social media and your webpage to bring people to Jesus, period. If they end up coming to church or whatever, okay, fine. But that is part of the continuum afterwards, not the first thing that they should do. You know, that's one of the organizations that has that mindset, and Jason, I'm going to throw it right back to you, is this idea of CD outreach, where they work with churches and funnel, create landing pages that funnels people, not necessarily into ministry, but answers some of those questions that then later get some connected into ministry.

Like I've, I've known them from the outside for a while. I know, Jason, you're been much more active with CV outreach just for the room. I mean, it's, it's a more practical approach, but let's dig in here. Talk a little bit about what CV outreach is and how they can help in this type of situation. Well, what CV outreach does is they, they do a lot of research on figuring out what types of keywords people are asking Google for, for felt needs, and then serving up Google ads against those keywords and giving and pointing them to Jesus. Giving people hope, especially in times like these, that's what people are searching for. And so when they watch a video about how you can have hope. And if you'd like to talk to somebody, you know, click this button.

Well, what that does is that fires off an email to geofenced people that are partners of CV outreach. And then, for example, we get a lot of people in the Kansas city metro, actually it's bigger than that because we're getting people from Topeka, from, you know, Great Bend, Lawrence, a lot of other places that are even two hours away. I'm getting emails saying, Hey, you know, I'm considering, you know, suicidal ideation or my marriage is, is really having a rough time with us in this COVID thing. And I need some help and some counseling, or I can't stand my kids anymore, whatever it happens to be, right? Whatever that felt need happens to be that they were Googling on, or that popped up on their Facebook feed.

And so what I do at that point is I answer them back with an email and say, Hey, so sorry to hear what's going on. You know, here's some of the ways that we can help. Here's my phone number. I would love to have a conversation. You know, I would love to help in any way we can. Here's the struggle that we have at this point. Our counseling team right now is completely overwhelmed with the number of people that are needing, you know, mental health assistance in this time. What from, and it's a whole spectrum of stuff. COVID has unearthed a lot of actual needs needs that were under the surface being kind of maintained that now are just out in the open. And so they, they've told me, they said, Hey, Jason, you know, before we could field all these requests, but we're so overwhelmed, we can't anymore.

And in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, how do I manage the volume? And here's part of the dilemma that I have is I'm getting people from all over the state of Kansas and in an online fashion. Yes, I can minister to them, but I would much rather refer them to pastors in their area. But the problem is, is that there are churches that don't know the CV outreach exists and they don't know how it can help their ministry, not to get them necessarily into church, but to, to be Jesus for people that are in their city and just sit down and have, I mean, I don't know of a pastor who would not love to have coffee with someone from the community who is indeed, who would like to have some counsel. And, you know, like I said, you know, that would, could be a lead that gets somebody into church, but I don't know that that is necessarily the, the goal.

The goal is to just help people. The goal is to be Jesus. Like you didn't see Jesus walking around saying to the lame person, Hey, why don't you come to my healing service at the temple at nine o'clock on Sunday? He didn't say that. You just healed him right then. And, you know, whatever the need happened to be, he met it, he had compassion. And so I feel that that is the big opportunity for us today is to show compassion to people, be human, you know, and double down on the relational side and the human side of online ministry or on just church ministry in general. And you'll be way ahead of where most people are at. Hmm. What, one of the things that just another quick question on CV Outreach before we turn the corner here.

My, my understanding is, is that it utilizes the Google grants. Like there, there's an option. Google gives you, you know, I, hopefully this isn't a surprise. Google gives churches, Google gives nonprofits $10,000 a month towards free AdWords. Now, if you are a church that understands how to utilize Google and AdWords and create those accounts and market, awesome. Do that. I can tell you just in my own experience, 98% of churches have no idea what I'm just talking about. Yeah. I spent years doing it and it's, it's a full-time job like managing that stuff. Well, I started doing it when the Google grant first came out and then I handed it off to, uh, someone that I was contracting who did an amazing job of managing the Google grant at the time.

And we were, most people don't know this, but there's a, there's a $40,000 per month grant available as well that has super high criteria, but, um, and I was really hoping that Westside would be the first church to actually get to the place to need that grant and get it, but we never got it. We got really, really close. You had to create like, uh, you had to, you had to like overuse the grant every single month. Uh, and that's a hard thing to do. It's, it's a whole, because there's so much complexity to it and that's where CV outreach, they can manage the grant for you. But really at this stage, CV outreach has enough churches that are participating and enough grant money to do whatever they want.

That's not their issue. Their issue is not to get people clicking, but to get people to talk to human beings on the receiving end to get the help that they need. Because if you like click on an ad and it takes you to a webpage where you're reading, you know, suggestions on how to help, well, that's okay, but it's so much better to talk with someone like a pastor who's in your area to get the help that you need. That's so much better. Get into contact with people. So CV outreach, ideally what they would love to do is to be the matchmaker or the middleman of people who are in need with people in the church who can meet those needs. Kind of like how Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, all of these companies, they're, they're matchmaking is what they're doing.

They're, they're meeting people who need the service with people who give the service, but are somehow disconnected from each other. And that's what CV outreach is trying to do. It's trying to connect those things because how many people in church want to be like Jesus, how many people in church want to share and show compassion to people in need? How many people in church would love to lead someone to Christ? You know, I mean, yeah, I mean, you talk to anybody in church, they would love to do that. And there's people in their communities that need that. And how do you get those two together to meet each other's needs? That's the challenge. Yeah. So let's, let's pull that thread, right? Let's, let's start to explore that.

We, we said earlier, Barna, thank you very much. 40% of people called to Christ. Um, they're, they're going to, I call it pastor Google. They're going to the search engines. They're going, CV outreach is an incredible resource. If you're not following Dave Adamson, uh, former, uh, North point social media pastor, I want to think it's the title there. He's now back in Australia, working with orange. That man is the King of, uh, YouTube and utilizing YouTube for its search engines. Um, like there's, there's so many different ways to kind of do that. But Jason just brought up a really interesting point talking about, okay, there's, there's another 40% of the equation here, um, that even before people get to the funnel, quote unquote, before people even get to the church, there's an opportunity for one-on-one conversations for personal mission for evangelism, uh, which is, I mean, let's, let's call it.

I ironically, I just did a webinar talking about this exact topic, Jason with glue for glue connect. And so like, I'll, I'll spin it around, but if I only get that happened today. And so we're going to, well, it's out there glue connect.church slash stadia. I'm pretty sure it's, it's at that URL or if not, it will be sometime, but I would love to hear from you, Jason. That was a unsolicited commercial. Oh yeah. I love glue connect. We use them. Um, and we're experimenting. One of, here's one of the things, uh, glue connect is great. Uh, CV outreach is great. It sounds like they're doing the same thing, but here's the subtle nuance of, of the differences between the two. And we use both, um, CV outreach wants to get you into personal connection with people who are in need.

Glue connect is a, uh, church directory, um, recommendation engine using on the front end, the same types of, uh, strategies of, you know, Google keywords, Google ads, Google grants, all of those things in the front end, they're practically identical in the way that they're approaching it. But once one gets into the system and clicks on that ad or video or reads the content, the call to action is slightly different. In glue connect, the call to action is here's the church that's near you that you can, um, that you can contact in CV outreach. It's more like a person is going to call you or email you. That's the difference. One is connecting you to a church. Another is connecting you to a person.

And if I had my, you know, my, and I've talked with, I know a lot of the guys at glue. They're good friends of ours. Um, and we have like glue staff on staff here at Westside. So I talk to these guys all the time and, uh, I've told him straight up. It's like, okay, giving someone, like if you're a person in need and you see a church directory, most people, I think if they're an unchurched person that might be a leap too far, but if you're talking about, uh, okay, someone's going to call me or there's a hotline that I can call and talk with a real person about this thing that I'm feeling right now. Um, that to me feels a little bit of an easier step for your average unchurched person in need. Now here's the catch though.

A lot of our churches are not designed to receive that kind of volume of needs. And so I can understand the glue connect strategy in that, okay, here's the church call them. And then, you know, I can, you know, my hands are clean. Right. But when, uh, you do like the CV outreach methodology, it's like, okay, I've got a queue of people now that I need to contact and my phone dings with a notification and I got to get to them right away. It's a different type of ministry where a lot of times when you're dealing with like church organized, uh, types of like institutional sorts of ministry, it's like, Oh, when, you know, during office hours or once a week on Sunday. And if that's this kind of, uh, ministry man, if that's the kind of ministry volume that you can handle as a church, well then fine, do that.

It's better than nothing. It feels totally different though. When your phone dings at two o'clock in the morning and someone is wanting to commit suicide and you're texting them that feels different. So I think there's, there's a place for both approaches and there's, you know, much work that needs to be done on both sides of the equation. Um, what I love about both approaches is that, um, they're both pre church service. And that I think is territory that we need to explore in even more ways thinking of how do we help people who need Jesus find Jesus, whether or not a church service is in the equation that is territory that we need to explore. Let me, let me back up. Cause I just, you said, you talked about the 2am ding with the suicidal person.

I'm, I'm curious. And cause you, you're implementing these systems. Is that, is that a pastor that's getting that ding? Is there a role that's a volunteer starting to explore that to me? Yeah. That's the thing is like, uh, it started off with me just doing it because I wanted to wrap my brain around it and figure out, okay, what is this like, is this sustainable? Is it something that I could create a volunteer team around to service these sorts of things? Um, like for example, if you knew that someone in your neighborhood was considering divorcing, would you want to talk to that person? My gut tells me, yes, yes. You know? And so it's like at that point, that's where CV outreach is kind of like that matchmaker that way.

Now I wish their geofencing worked a little bit better because again, me talking to someone in Topeka, that's an hour and a half away. The types of resources that I can give to that person is very different than the person that's right down the street. And so the problem that we have is a density problem that there aren't enough churches or aren't enough people that are willing to field these types of requests. And what I ended up doing was because at the, at the time, cause we did this, like we started two years ago. Um, at the time I was getting like, you know, a couple of requests a week, completely manageable. And I had to take a trip to India to do a church planting training. And I handed it off to the, um, receptionist of our counseling ministry and said, you kind of handle a lot of these sorts of requests anyway.

Can you do this for me while I'm gone in India? She's like, no problem. So I gave her all the credentials. You can set up teams inside the tool and all that. So I added her to the tool. And so she started fielding these requests. And when I came back from India two weeks later, she said, you know what, Jason, this is probably stuff that I should be doing anyway, because this is right in our lane. So, you know, I can just take it. And I'm like, awesome. One less thing for me to do, you know? And so basically it's like our counseling ministry has been doing it all the way up until about two weeks ago. So two weeks ago, um, Jodi, the receptionist, she came to me and she said, you know, we are just swamped.

We are overwhelmed. And because of the fact that, uh, a lot of these requests I have to do research on to find out where they can get help in these places that are outside of the Kansas city metro area, it doesn't, they're not warm leads for counseling here because they're two hours away. And so she's like, I don't know now because of COVID, everything just blew up and we're getting so many more requests than normal. And a lot of them are outside of the Kansas city metro. You know, well, a few of them are in the metro, but the vast majority are not. And I, I spend time doing this while I have people that are two or three deep in line in front of my desk right now. And so I can't, I can't do both anymore.

And so I'm like, I'm at the point right now where I'm like, okay, do I hand this off to a volunteer? Now I have people that say, yes, I want to help people who are in need. But when the rubber meets the road and you're having family dinner and your phone dings, because someone's marriage is in crisis, what are you going to do? Yeah. You know, that's the trick right there. And I believe that there are people out there who have a heart for this, um, that would be willing to drop everything and meet that person in their deepest need and make an instant friend, uh, for life and help somebody out. I'm sure that there are people like that. Not everybody's built for that though. And especially like you need an intern, like you need a, need a digital ministry, digital pastor, intern, somebody with a counseling background, you know, maybe somebody in the audience is, is that person, but, uh, that, that, that's beautiful, man.

Um, there, there's a, so we, we, you know, we talked about the, the technical aspects and, and, and glue connect. I'm not kidding. Love the organization. Love what they're doing. Glue connect dot church slash stadia, go swing over there and, and, and learn more about that and what they're offering. Uh, as well as, you know, CV outreach, uh, I think it has incredible, both of these have incredible potential given the level of involvement that you want to have in what's happening there. So, so explore that, but I would be missed here. And Jason, I do want to come around and take some questions here in a minute, let the audience kind of speak into it, but let's, let's talk a little bit because the other half of the equation, it wasn't just the, you know, pastor Google, 40% are hitting up pastor Google, 40% are going to their, their friends.

And so there's, you know, personal evangelism, personal mission that that's in place. Now, you know, little known fact of Jason E.T. is that he's a, he's a former missionary. Like this guy spent international time and has done a lot of work internationally, um, you know, maybe coaching and doing some of these things. So I'm, I'm just curious, talk to me a little bit, intentional disciple making, intentional evangelism. What, what are some practices? What are some things that, that you've done? What do you see work in, in a, in a physical environment, in a digital environment? What, what does this look like 2021 mid post COVID? Well, the, what we've done up until COVID and even in COVID with a few tweaks is a super easy thing we call bless.

Um, and you've probably heard it before. It just works. It, it's an acrostic that is begin with prayer, eat, uh, listen to their story, serve them, and then share your story. That's it. It's super simple. And if you follow that basic continuum, don't try to share your story first. You start first in prayer. That's what you do. And then you just end up eating with people. And it's odd that when, even when you find Jesus, uh, in the gospels, especially in the gospel of Mark, um, he was either eating somewhere, going to somewhere to eat or coming from somewhere that he had just come from eating. And he was called, you know, a glutton and a drunkard because he spent so much time with people around the table for whatever reason, when you get around the table with someone, your guard drops.

People have experienced this everywhere. You eat a meal with someone and instantly you're having conversations that you would never have otherwise, you know, dating relationships start this way. You know, even Psalm 23 talks about you prepared a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You know, it's like you're reconciling people to each other. You, um, there's just barriers that come down. I can't explain it any other way. Sometimes it's over coffee. Sometimes it's over a meal. Sometimes it's, you know, inviting other people to your house. Are you going to other people's houses? It doesn't matter, but you're getting in contact with people, um, after having prayed. And then you just listen, you don't talk, you just listen.

That's it. Um, and especially even on social media, that's what we're on. It's unfortunate that, um, the technology isn't primed to listen. It's primed to first talk. And that's what I love about these tools like clubhouse is that for whatever reason it's, it reverses the equation and it puts me in a posture of listening first. And that's what I love about it. Um, so it's like begin a prayer, listen, eat, uh, then serve somebody like find out where their point of need is and serve them and be willing to be served. Um, and then inevitably when those things are in place, um, they ask you, well, what's up with you and you just share your story and that's it. And we've seen so many people come into the kingdom through that very simple, basic framework that can be executed online too, by the way, even the eat part, it can be done.

Um, that it's just kind of crazy. It, you just got to make it super simple, you know? And at the end of the day, when people start sharing their story of how God has helped them, then it's so funny how natural it is without like this formal gospel presentation, people come into the kingdom, they get baptized and it's just coming out of this basic sort of blessed rhythm. We call it a blessed rhythm. Each of the aspects of the blessed rhythm have, uh, input and an output. Like we begin in prayer, uh, we pray for our city and we let people pray for us, you know, it goes both ways. Um, and when we listen, we listen to other people and we listen to God, you know? So there's, there is, uh, like an, we call it inhale and exhale.

It's a rhythm that happens on all of those things. And it gets funny when you get to the place of like eating and serving, allowing yourself to be served is something that I find difficult. Um, but when I allow myself to be served by someone else, it opens up relationship and I I'm always serving other people, but I don't let people serve me and I'm missing out on what could be the start of a really great relationship that opens up to gospel conversations. So that's, you know, just to answer your question, that's just one of the first things that pops out of my mind because that's one of the things we do. Yeah. Honestly, the thing that I love about that is, is the simplicity because the simplicity I think is, it is what leads towards reproduction of it.

If, if it was so complicated, if it was so, you may be able to get one generation, maybe you can influence somebody else to tell somebody else, but you know, this, this blessed part, it's, it's so simple of approach. You could, you know, you could see somebody three, four or five generations away sharing that story and being able to, to express that. Now, one of the questions that I would ask is oftentimes, I don't know, I feel like we, we, the church and, and I don't mean this negatively. And so I don't, don't hear criticism. I think that sometimes we, we overtrain. We, we keep people on the bench too long without releasing them, you know, and it's, you know, I do a lot of talking centered around knowledge-based discipleship versus obedience-based discipleship, knowledge-based come do this six month course, come do this nine month course, give three years of your life.

And one day you'll be able to have this conversation as opposed to obedience-based where it's more like, dude, go have the conversation. Let the Lord lead you. When you get stuck, tell the guy, hey, let me, I'll get back to you. Let me see what I can figure out. I'm just curious, just in time training. Give me some feedback on that. What, what does that look like? How do we, because we want people to have conversations. We don't want them to look like an idiot, but at the same point, we don't want them sitting on the, on the bench, afraid to go have some of those conversations or, or stuck in discipleship systems that it's more about the knowledge as opposed to activating and releasing out. Give me a little bit here.

Uh, well, here's, here's another, uh, obedience-based, you know, kind of training thing that we do all the time that you can find in like the DBS method, um, where it's like, what is Jesus telling you and what are you doing about it? That's it. Super simple. You can ask that to anybody. Um, and we have like these fireside groups where you get guys around a fire and you just ask those two questions. What is Jesus telling you? You go around the fire. What are you doing about it? You know? And when you hit that second question, things get real quiet because we're not used to doing that. And so like when we're talking about like the bless method, um, we'll spend a whole week just saying, okay, we're just going to talk about beginning in prayer and, you know, just walk around your neighborhood, pray for everybody, you know, figure out what their names are, pray for them by name, you know, just do that.

That's all you do the first week, you know, ask God to reveal to you what he wants to do, where he is already working. And then you start listening to your community in ways that you never had before. And it's like second week. It's like, okay, we're going to just listen. What did you hear from your kid? You know, and they'll tell you all kinds of stuff. Okay. What are you going to do about it? That's, it's really not hard, but what it does though, is it again is obedience based and it comes alive because I think probably the academic setting is probably the only setting that I know of that, um, expects you to learn things without actually putting them in a practice. Like any other kind of training has the assumption you're going to actually do something.

And sometimes I think, you know, you get pastors coming out of seminary or, um, kind of, um, designing things with an academic bent on them. And that's the unfortunate Achilles heel of that. A lot of the educational system is that it teaches you stuff that you don't need to know today. It teaches you stuff that you might need to know tomorrow. And most adults don't learn that way. They only care about stuff that's going to help them today. And then once they start doing stuff, the learning is in the doing, not in the, in the memorizing. So once you start doing stuff, it just comes alive. Just like, you know, the basic principle of Jesus says, love your neighbor as yourself. Super simple. Everybody understands that.

Okay. Now go do that and come back to me next week and see how that went. That's a completely different experience than just saying, oh yeah, I understand the principle, but doing the knowing is in the doing. So whenever I do my church planner trainings or whatever, they don't, you know, like the next module, they don't come back to the next module until they've done what they were supposed to do from the first. And so if you didn't pray, then well, okay, next week, try to do it next week. You know, there's no point in listening to your community if you're not listening to God first. So that's it, you know, and that's the gate actually where you don't progress. And that's another problem too, is that people progress in their knowledge without progressing in their obedience.

And that's dangerous. And unfortunately, even some of the ways that we structure our discipleship or even the way that we structure our church service, where we tell people, we fill people up with more knowledge than they have the capacity to obey. And what we inadvertently do is we're priming them to disobey Jesus. And that's dangerous because James says, if you know to do good and you don't do it, then it's sin. And I'm personally scared as a pastor or as a teacher, to be teaching things that I know my people aren't ready for yet. Just like the Apostle Paul says, you know, I would love, you know, you guys are only at milk level. I would love to give you meat, but you can't handle it yet. I've got to give you milk because, you know, that's all you have the capacity to obey at this point.

Because it doesn't do anybody any favors if I give you more information than you can actually obey. Because for two reasons. One is, I'm priming disobedience in you, and I'm responsible. So I got to give an account before Jesus about that. And that's kind of scary for me. Until you come back and obey, it's like, you know, I'm not going to talk about more stuff. It's kind of like how Jesus, when he sent out the 70, very simple instructions, but there was a feedback loop built into the system. They came back and told Jesus everything that they did. And Jesus helped them with some of the problems that they had. And that's how people learn. The learning's in the doing. I don't think I ever picked that up.

Thank you for that. That's the thing I just learned from this conversation. The feedback loop. The biblical kind of wiring that into that situation. That is awesome. Thank you. Seriously. I will borrow that. I will use that. I'll give you credit half the time. No, that's fine. Just, you know, I think a lot of times we look at Jesus' message, but we don't use his methods. So when you look at the way that Jesus sent out the 70, Why don't we do that? You know, look at it, like seriously, look at it as like a church plan or training or as discipleship pathway. It will, it will blow your mind the way that Jesus did it because he was amazing. Cool. Hey, I want to, so I'm going to want to do two things.

I'm going to, we're going to open up for questions in just a couple minutes. So if you've got questions, comments, thoughts, would love to hear it. Go ahead and raise your hand. I do want to ask one question in this transition. Raise your hands and we'll, I'll bring you up after this. One of the, one of the favorite things. So do we have people from Gluconnect here? I'm not sure if they made it in or not. I'm not recognizing names on there. Raise your hand if you're Gluconnect. We'll bring you up, but otherwise, you know, definitely other comments or questions, feel free to raise up. I did want to ask one kind of follow-up question. You have one of the things that I love about what you're doing is how you're utilizing HubSpot to track awareness.

Like you've almost got a separate database for above the funnel thinking. Right. It's a free. I would love for you maybe to unpack that. Yeah. Yeah. This is like top of the funnel stuff too. So one of the things about HubSpot, like the glue pixel, is that you can place it on all of your assets. So we put the HubSpot pixel on a chop as well as our webpage and all of the other things that we do. So when someone interacts with or fills out a form, HubSpot can scrape the information from that, even though like we're a church that uses CCB, you know, a church community builder as our CHMS or church, you know, management system. Um, but I also put the HubSpot pixel on our webpage and in chop, even though they're filling out a CCB form, HubSpot will scrape that information and create a profile for me.

And that profile then can be, uh, across all of the assets that we have online and where that comes in super handy is when, for example, someone's in CHOP and they request prayer, right? We can have a conversation with them using the HubSpot conversation utility that it has. It's got, you know, like a little chat chat sort of thing that you can interact with people. And I can see on the history of that person. Um, I can see their email address that they have not put into CHOP, but they put in to our webpage, or I can see that they clicked on something concerning family on the webpage. And now they're in CHOP asking for help with their, with their family problems. So it connects dots for me that I otherwise wouldn't know.

And on top of that, it creates a history of interaction. So if someone like when we're not having like a live service or whatever, and they submit a prayer request through HubSpot. Now, when I respond to them through HubSpot, I can see a history of all of the times that they've requested prayer in the past and all the different things they've clicked on in the past. And that way, I can be more precise with the way that I do follow up with these people, because here's what happens in CHOP. Inadvertently, all I have with CHOP is an email address. I don't have an address. I don't have a phone number. I don't have all the information that I would need to create a CCB profile. And so what this acts then as is almost like a pre-CHMS for CCB.

So it allows me over time to start collecting different data points, different parts of their profile before I create a CCB profile for for them as, you know, officially part of our church. So it's like, before someone even is a part of our church, I might have just an email address or just a phone number, or maybe a first name. But over time, I might get a name one week and I might get a, you know, a phone number the next week, and I might get email address the next week. And it starts building over time this profile that becomes robust enough for for me to even do, you know, email drip campaigns on stuff in HubSpot before they even come on site or become a member of our church. Yeah, it's it's that that intentionality to track without feeling in every database manager is always like, hey, there's like 27 fields.

I want to know the birthdays of the children. Exactly. Nobody's getting in the database until I know Jimmy's birthday. And that's, you know, from from our vantage point, trying to work above the funnel. Nobody's going to give you Jimmy's birthday on on a web form. That's crazy. And so being able to do what they're doing by utilizing HubSpot, which is a it's just any given database. It's a marketing database. I use it through the church digital. And so but utilizing a tool like that to to track sounds creepy, but to to connect with to engage with to to have metrics to have information available, even for follow up before you before you truly engage with them at a level and get them connected into the church piece.

I when he told me that idea, I don't know, maybe six months ago, and I my jaw hit the table. I was blown away. Like, that's, that's an incredible idea. Yeah, one of the things it does, too, is if you know that that you don't have to have all the information in the beginning, then you can meter it and your forms and your and the interactions and engagement can be much more immediate, because I'm telling you, if you give me a form that has 50 things on it, I'm not filling it out. But if all I have to put in is my name and my email address. I'm good. I can do that super easy. And if the next time it's asking me, because it already knows who I am at this point, it's like, hey, Jason. You know, it already knows it doesn't ask me for my email address again.

So now it can ask me for, you know, my phone number. And then over time, now I've got a complete profile, you know, and it's not so taxing on the person because the person in the moment, I don't know of anybody who shows up to a webpage or to CHOP and their first thought is, oh, I can't wait to fill out a form. Nobody wants to do that, right? What they're thinking is, oh, I want to find a friend. I want to have somebody pray for me. You know, I want, you know, there's a gazillion other things. And what we're doing is, okay, in order for you to get what you want, you've got to fill out this form. Well, if that's true, then okay, let's make that form just as frictionless as possible. So that's why a lot of this technology is so helpful because it, it doesn't get in the way for real ministry.

Love, love that. Does not get in the way of real ministry. It empowers that. It sets that up. So we've talked a lot about above the funnel here. Um, we, we, we've talked about how we're utilizing, um, the, the Google, the search engines, the, the CV outreach glue connect, putting those, those pieces together. We've talked about the discipleship side, bless empowering individuals to have conversations above the funnel, letting that be the, the, I tell the story, by the way, if you've got questions, I'm going to tell the story. If you've got questions, raise your hand. I promise we'll get the questions in 60 seconds, but I would love to hear it. Let's see. I know. I haven't raised their hands. Somebody raised their hand and then they put it down a couple of times.

And I'm like, wait, is that for real or not? Does it, do I count that for, for the baptism reports? Like what do I need to do? So if you've got questions or thoughts, dialogue, but like, um, I mean, Seth Godin, we all know Seth Godin, top marketing guy in the country, if not the planet, um, thought innovator in the space, not a Christian Jewish guy. Um, Seth Godin on, on his podcast, maybe a year ago, actually, Jason Morris was a guy who connected me to Seth Godin podcast, not necessarily this episode, but, um, Seth Godin was asked the question, how do I get my message heard around the world? And a Jewish guy, not a Christian basically says this, a billion people don't care about anything you have to say.

Um, there's no way to get a billion people to agree. A hundred million, 10 million, 1 million still don't, you're not going to get all of them on the same page. A hundred thousand, 10,000. If you want to get people, you want to get your message heard around the world, tell the smallest number of people possible and ideal, get them to own it and then get them to replicate it. That's to me. Hello, not Jewish or a Jewish, not Christian, basically describes the method that Jesus used to build his church. And, and, and as we're looking at how to be effective for the future, to me, I think this is like one of the greatest course corrections in the history of the church, because now we have an opportunity to think like that.

Let's create resources online to connect people, but let's also empower people. It's, it's not about that one man on stage exuding a spiritual gift in front of thousands. It's about, and I think I said this, it's about releasing thousands to exude their spiritual gifts among more. And so this is the opportunity. This is the waking point, hopefully for the church in this season. Let's not forget where we were at Tom Pounder. We were talking about that at the beginning. Let's not forget where we were. Let's acknowledge and let's keep moving forward on this new path. So, Hey, look, I can ramble all day, but at this point, I want somebody else to walk into the screen. So if somebody wants to raise their hand and dialogue, I, my finger is hovering right above the button.

And so let's, let's come up, let's dialogue into it. Um, any takers? I mean, Jason, we can, we can ramble, but I think it's more effective if we get some other voices in here. Absolutely. Yes. Tyler Ash is coming up. Cool. So the software is working and Tyler is coming in. Hey man. Hey, how are you guys doing? Doing great. Hey, Tyler was one of those false, um, hand raises. I was a false. You got, you got going and I was like, I'll just get out of the way. Yeah, no, that's awesome. Thanks. Thanks for the follow through though. We are going to count you for that baptism report now coming up soon. There you go. Yeah. Hey man. And it's awesome. Technically I think, uh, clubhouse is telling me I have to tell you that we're recording this.

There you go. Um, yeah, you're welcome. So, uh, Hey, what, what are you thinking? Well, um, it's, it's less on the technical side. One, Jason tell Derek Davis. I said, hello. I used to work with him. Yes. He's in the office right next to me. Okay. Yeah. He's a good buddy of mine. And, uh, he's a fellow big family guy. So he's got a lot of, he's got all boys. I've got mostly girls, but, um, we, uh, something that you said earlier, Jason got me thinking where you're talking about kind of more along the lines of like teaching methods. Right. And one of the, one of the best things that I've experienced or thought through in, in my ministry has been rather than like taking time and informing people, cause it isn't about the information.

It's about understanding where they are and helping them from there. It's like putting, putting their faith and practice where it is teaches us where we need to focus our teaching for them. Right. So we see their gaps and we don't waste time heaping information on mountains that they have instead of taking information and putting into the valleys that they have. That's right. That's what a good coach. I love what you were saying about that. I just, it was super, it was a different way of saying some of the same thoughts, but I loved it. I'll shut up now. You don't have a question. No, I just, I was, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate what you said. And I'm learning about the technical side of things that you're talking about.

Cause you're talking about this, uh, app scraping things. And I'm just like, wow, that's a, I didn't even know they did that anymore. Yeah. It happens, man. Yeah. That's precisely how, well, here's, here's what I love about it is that we're all being targeted for all kinds of stuff by businesses all the time. Um, and personally, I think that's good because I would much rather see ads of things that I care about than stuff that I don't. All right. So I'm cool with it. Yeah. But, uh, how I, when I see stuff like that, I think, wow, what kind of opportunity for the kingdom could this be? And, you know, we've done retargeting and all that kind of stuff. And if you put yourself in the shoes of someone who's really struggling and they're going online for solutions, man, how can Jesus not be at the top of that list?

That's how I see it is like, we've got to figure this out because Jesus is the answer for all that. Yeah. What was it? And I've, I've told this story several times. It's, it's actually a Dave Adamson story. We mentioned them earlier. Uh, what I think David create went on YouTube and like searched something to the extent of, I don't know how to pray, like teach me how to pray. How do I pray? How do I talk to God? Search that on YouTube. Now he found thousands of videos that are out there. And what's interesting is that as he scrolled through the pages of results, it took them like several hundred videos, five, six pages deep before he actually got to the one that was created by a church. Now I don't want to discredit the hundreds of videos that were created by individuals up and above where people are doing this and talking about prayer on YouTube, but the church, we didn't figure out how to do it.

And it's funny. Like there was actually, there was one organized pastor, uh, like, uh, Joyce Myers, uh, was, was one and she's on the first page. And it was actually, it was like based off of one of her books. I don't remember what it was at the time, but it wasn't even a Joyce Meyer created video. It was somebody illegally ripped a DVD from the nineties and uploaded it to the YouTube. Uh, so like there was no, there was no church presence speaking into that. And so we've, we've got this opportunity to, to look at some of this technology to engage with people. And what I love is maybe four or five years ago, like I was championing this idea of, of utilizing YouTube in this way, but a lot of the stuff that Jason's talking about with HubSpot and utilizing some of these vendors, I like, I'm not, I'm not dependent on, on a YouTube chat room to, to connect with people.

There's some of this technology and there's landing pages in there and others. There's forms that tie in the database and there's tools for us to work above the funnel. It's not, Hey, I'm just, I'm praying that somebody will, will watch this YouTube video and will email us directly, or we'll call us on the 800 number. Like it's set up in such a way now that we can effectively work and discover who these people are. There's still opportunities to grow, but it's a whole lot better now than it was even merely a couple of years ago. Yeah. It's funny when you, when you talk about that story of, you know, typing prayer and not seeing a church and I've got to wonder because I know this is true. How many pastors have preached a message on prayer?

Probably all of them, but that somehow there's a disconnect between their content that they're creating, you know, and they're working hard every single week to make that content happen. And it gets lost as soon as it leaves his mouth and everybody drives home. And that's a shame because he worked hard. I know because I've worked on my messages and I'm putting so many hours on that sucker, man. It's like, dude, I'm going to squeeze every little bit of impact that, that I put into this. And so that's where, you know, keyword research and just titling your videos correctly, or putting them up on YouTube in the first place, who knows, maybe someone will hit it and get encouraged, you know, or structuring your talks in such a way that it would actually work in for a YouTube audience to begin with.

You know, there's so many things about that story. I think to myself, it's like, holy cow, there's so much missed opportunity, especially with, I mean, we have this mentality when it comes to the gathering, which is important. The gathering as an ephemeral live experience that we're missing the long tail evergreen content that we could be creating in a compounding fashion. Because here's, here's what happens a lot of times. And one of the downfalls, in my opinion, of the whole invest and invite strategy is you invite somebody, and they have a particular need, like they have marriage issues or whatever, and you invite them to church. What if they're not talking about marriage when they show up at church?

How many times does that happen? Right? But if you have, if you are digitally targeting people who have problems with their marriage, and you're saying, here's content that directly addresses the issue that you're facing, that can live on for years, and still be relevant. Like it, it's like, and I wish that we were even better at it. We're constantly tweaking. One of the things we started doing was just lopping off all the dates on all of our titles, because it's irrelevant. You know, it's like, why am I putting the date on here? It's easier for our, our video managers to administrate. Yeah. But what we're also doing is we're inadvertently telegraphing that this is old content, therefore not relevant for you today.

And that's, that's a shame. It shouldn't be that way. Well, and it's completely invalidating every search engine algorithm, which by the way, YouTube is tied to Google so well, like it's, it's ridiculous. So huge, huge power there. Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm excited for this. Katie raised her hand. I have been wanting to meet Katie. I've been seeing Katie around in some other clubhouses and mentally I'm like, Hey, I'm really interested in learning what she has to say. And so I'm excited. I get to like, get her to unmute and talk here a little bit. Katie, nice to meet you. Thanks for joining us. What, what are you thinking? Hey, Jeff, and thanks. And nice to meet you. I know I've been lurking a lot of these rooms.

So it's funny what Jason was just saying, actually, he started to check off all the boxes that I was going to talk about. But no, it's true. So to give you context, so I'm the communications director for the diocese of Maine, the Episcopal diocese of Maine. So we manage 58 churches, 18 summer chapels, a summer camp, and some non-food essential pantries. And we just had this discussion and training last week, talking about themes like forgiveness and prayer and how honest to God, all of our videos for our churches. So we've got a diocesan channel, but then all of our churches have their own channels. And they're, they have great content. They have beautiful content. They're talking about really important themes.

And what are they titling their videos? Sermon from January 17th with absolutely no description, no keywords, no nothing. Now think about, you know, we're a small population state, but we're a large geography state. Lots of people do have computers, so they're searching for stuff. And for 58 churches and like max that out to, you know, 12,000, 15,000 folks who are, you know, attached to those churches to not find that content is heartbreaking. And so as we've done this training on the flip side with some of the stuff at our diocesan level, where we're trying to be the, you know, the lead learners and lead teachers, you know, we've had reach out from like Tampa to us about some of the content that we've put together.

And it's like, that's an interesting connection. And where did they find us? YouTube through that. So I just wanted to throw that in that, you know, that's, it's such a simple thing. Right. But for things like that to change for the message to be found is so important. So thanks for allowing me on stage. Awesome. Yep. One of the principles that I've even heard in context of YouTube is, you know, so often we try to come up and Jason was alluding earlier to like the creative sermon title. Like I've known guys to go back in, even just change it once it's recorded and label it something completely different and something that's, you know, more search friendly, more applicable, less creative. I've worked with pastors that, that, you know, lead communicators that are very creative and have their particular phrases and like the catch words and the key and the cute stuff.

But that doesn't necessarily equate to what people are searching for. Like, I don't know, your message on divorce. I don't want to get divorced. How do I not get divorced? Like be very creative in context of that. And I'll even, you know, tell a story based off it. When, as I was a digital pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami, we actually had a, in a church in Miami, Florida. We had, we had a woman in Atlanta, Georgia, who would honestly, if you were to get her on zoom here, whatever we're on now, clubhouse, she would tell you that Christ Fellowship Miami and the lead pastor Rick Blackwood saved their marriage. Because she was looking for a divorce. She and her husband were going through a hard times in the Atlanta area.

And she's literally Googling, I don't want to get a divorce. And in context of that, she runs across a YouTube video of a sermon series that was initially called Fight. Now, Fight's not necessarily a bad label, but I had relabeled it because Fight didn't carry over the whole divorce marriage approach. I relabeled it on YouTube, something completely different, much more related to the topic. I don't remember what the words were, it was like five years ago. True story here. Like, she found the video, she watched one of the sermons. She watched the entire sermon series. She started watching other videos. She shared the sermon series with her husband. They started watching it together. They started going to marriage counseling together.

They worked it out together. Now they did not start attending Christ Fellowship Miami online. They felt like they wanted to find a local church to worship together, which is awesome. And so like we, as a church, we're able to get, we were able to literally save a marriage of a woman in Atlanta. I can honestly tell you, I've never met her, but hearing her, hearing her husband's story and physically, I've seen her on zoom and then helping them get connected, restore their marriage. And now, you know, serving faithfully in a church in Atlanta, that is a huge win. And that happened as a result, because that content that exists for that one hour on Sunday, there was intentionality to make sure that it existed in a search engine format and it was available out in the interwebs and YouTube and wherever else.

So much effort goes into that one hour on Sunday. And it's a shame that it dies on the one hour on Sunday. It can live far beyond that. We just need to be intentional with that space. Hey, any other, listen, opening it up. Any other questions, comments, thoughts, feel free to raise your hand. Tyler, anything else from y'all's perspective? No, I mean, I'm just, I'm learning. This is all good. Awesome. Love it. Hey, Jason, what do you think? There's, there's an opportunity where like, think about this for a second. What if, and we're, we're doing this with our AT communities and stuff like that. And we've talked about this at length, but what if, instead of looking at our weekend gatherings as ephemeral experiences, what if we were more strategic with them beyond just thinking through, oh, I want to teach on this, this series, or even planning out for the year.

What if we were to think of ours as a discipleship continuum that would step people one step at a time from seeker to believer, to follower, to leader. What if we were to take these types of, this type of content on a continuum, and then have it be evergreen for other places in the world to use and follow that same journey. So like in a lot of cases, when one does a church plant, that's how it works. They get a small group together, and they start setting DNA from the beginning, and there's a lot of intentionality in the first year, even before they start their first church service, as to how they are going to be discipling, what they're going to be doing. And in my mind, I'm thinking, dude, why don't we just use that and help other Acts 2 communities, help other church plants start all around the world, if you digitize that continuum, and then you just rinse and repeat that whole thing all over.

And oddly enough, when when church planners get started, they do a lot of the right things. And then once the church service, and the building, and the staffing, and the offerings, and all of those things start coming into play, it almost feels like that initial momentum gets lost. And I, it's, it's odd to me. Okay, here's, this is just me thinking, and if I'm wrong, please, please tell me. Please tell me I'm wrong. It feels like, with a prevailing model of church, and the way that we're used to doing things, that the church planters are the only ones that are truly getting discipled. And I mean that not to make anybody mad. It's not that there's not Bible teaching going on, or that there's not discipleship going on.

But when you train a church planter, you're going through the entire continuum of what the real discipleship journey is, which means you're going to be making disciples. Most, most people that are into discipleship don't get to that place. And, but church planters do. So it feels like in some ways, there's are the only ones that are getting completely discipled. That's one. And then there, when they start their first year, maybe two years, is when they see the most growth in their ministries. And then it tapers off. And so what happens is, I believe, is that a lot of that discipleship continuum, that discipleship journey, that that completely discipled church planter embarks on a group of people and takes them on a journey for two years and then doesn't know what to do with all of the people that are showing up to church, then it just kind of plateaus.

And when people look at the data, they say, the way that you evangelize a nation is by planting churches, because new churches reach new people. That's true. But maybe if you look at a couple of correlative things to that equation, maybe it's just that discipled people preach people. Or maybe when completely discipled people reach other people with an intentional strategy, maybe that evangelizes better than anything. And that feels to me a lot like what Jesus did in the Gospels. I'll tell you this. Right now, out of this, maybe, I don't know, 16, 20 people in Clubhouse. And so I'm going to tell you something that, honestly, I've never really... I don't talk about this publicly. I don't say this a lot.

And so you 20 people, you're getting the... And by the way, whoever's listening on the podcast... This is going to be good. I can tell. This is going to go everywhere, right? But the reality is, is I sat down maybe three years ago, four years ago. I had one of my volunteers, he was a 20-something millennial. I was a digital pastor at a church. And he wanted to have a conversation about the discipleship at the church that I was at. And so I sat down with him and listened to him to share and talk. And so we're at a pizza parlor. And this guy, this millennial, is yelling at me. It is me and him in this restaurant. No one else is there except the cooks and the people behind the counter. And he's yelling at me at the lack of discipleship.

And I'm like, dude, it's in a mega-giga-church environment. It's called small groups. It's not. You're making a big deal about it or nothing. And he keeps yelling at me. And so finally, after about 15 minutes of them yelling at me, this is honest to God truth. This is my midlife crisis. I listened to him and I realized, oh crap, he's right. And all of a sudden, talking about the stuff that you learned when you're planning a church, when I was doing college ministry 20 plus years ago, all that training on discipleship, all that stuff that honestly, after 20 years of ministry, I had forgotten it transparently. It wasn't a part of my life anymore. And so because I was doing this other system, all of that started flooding, coming back to me, listening to this millennial yell at me about how the church did not have a good discipleship strategy.

And all of a sudden, I realized I have to do this. And so in conversations like this, working with churches ad nauseum, helping them convert, recognize, shift over towards a more intentional discipleship process, having conversations with Jason Morris, talking about bless and reproducing that model, reproducing that structure in and among others. So others can tell others who can tell others. It's crazy. Pre-COVID, nobody was buying this stuff. Because why would I listen to this? The big, the big building's fine. Yeah, I mean, we've got millions invested. Yeah, tenants is down, but we'll be okay. Like we just, we just need to work harder, just need to make more calls. But now, as a result of COVID, that model, the large gathering, like it's not effective.

And so much energy even still goes into that. If we would pour the energy of the large gathering, and Jason, I think you're right. There has to be a point where the large gathering can connect to, where we can start to reproduce people. We just have to figure out that sauce. Right, right. It's like you, the gathering in my mind is something that happens as a result of a group of disciples that happens as a result of a disciple maker. So the, I think a lot of times we flipped what we're supposed to do and what Jesus is supposed to do. Because Jesus told us to make disciples, and he said that he would build his church. And I think we make the mistake of trying to do Jesus' job of building a church, hoping that Jesus will make disciples for us.

And we're, we're doing the wrong job. It's our job to make disciples. If you truly do make disciples who make disciples, that will become a church. But if you plant a church, you, or rather, if you plant a church service, you may or may not always get disciples. Yeah, so true. Jason, you and I did a podcast a month ago, two months ago. We said, I want to say it was 2021, early 2021. We did a podcast. We were talking about the A2 communities, the house church, the micro church. Oh yeah. And so it's a great podcast. At the end of the podcast, I made this statement. If you are out there, church staff, and you've never been discipled, here's my cell phone number, 484-324-8724. Oh yeah, I remember that.

Did anybody call you? You remember that? I had three texts. I had three texts. And I'm honest to God, I got them connected. I have a friend of mine that teaches the Timothy initiative. And so I've got a friend of mine, literally teaching people, discipling people, teaching them a disciple making system and kind of doing that walkway. And so listen, and I would say the same thing here, you know, the people listening, if we've been talking a lot about discipleship, honestly, I didn't anticipate it going this deep. I thought we'd touch on it, but hey, that's cool. If you're like, hey, you know what? I've been doing this church thing, but you're talking about a whole other level that I've never understood before.

My text number, my cell phone number is literally 484-324-8724. I would love to have a conversation with you. I want to challenge you to something. Instead of pawning off a person who's trying to connect with you for discipleship, you do it. I know. You make disciples. Yeah. Dude, I see people here like Ben and George. I want to hear from them. Man, there's people that I recognize here and yeah. So anybody else, come on up. I've got, I got five minutes and I got to go, but I would love a closing thought from somebody. Somebody jump in. And my phone just beeped. George Holloway coming up. Okay. Hey, I've loved this conversation. I just wanted to just kind of, since you can't, there's no reactions in Clubhouse when you're in the audience.

I just wanted to clap to what Jason said. Oh yeah, that would be cool. You do it is a message that I think pastors need to hear when I do discipleship. That's something I'm real passionate about. And picking up the phone and calling the people in your church. Like, how are you doing? What's going on in your life? How can I speak the gospel into what you're going through? And like, it's, I feel like too often we're looking for a program that like systematizes discipleship, but I just loved what you said. You just, you do it, pastor. You do it. Yeah. And here's, here's the trick with that is that, and dude, I can, I can have the same kind of hypocrisy where, you know, there's 2,543 churches that have been planted.

Um, 10,000 people, over 10,000 people last year that were baptized, not even ones that, you know, twice the amount, that amount gave their lives to Christ that I've had the privilege to empower. But if I am not personally doing the exact same thing that I am asking everyone else to do and all of their followers to do, then I'm a hypocrite. Really? And not only that, but I am also teaching it, it affects negatively my training because I cannot give current examples from current experience that would make my training come alive because there's nothing like doing. There's nothing like obeying Jesus because once you start doing that and you start obeying, then your spiritual life just comes alive.

So true. So true right there. Love that. Hey, I'm trying to get, uh, I see pastor. He's like the first guy. Yeah. It's his first time here. It's awesome. And, uh, the software is not letting me get you up. There you go. Oh, he was there and he's gone. Hey Jeff, I'm here. Awesome. I'd rather be, I'd rather be Wayne air late than the late Wayne air. Uh, I just need that phone number. I've got a number of, uh, interns that I want to pass that along to, uh, and not for the sake of Jeff, not for the sake of, uh, even if they end up, uh, you know, getting connected with you or not getting connected with you. It is just going to be such an encouragement for them to know that there's somebody out there that will do this, that I can, that I can be a part of it too, as well.

Like I, I would love to just be able to zoom with you once a month and just keep us on track here at First Baptist because, you know, I grew up in the Maritimes and, uh, of Canada. And I can't remember one time in my entire existence as a pastor, anybody ever saying, Hey, we're starting a discipleship program here at our church. So I know that's unfortunate, but that's just, that's just the culture. You know, it was such high church. It was such all about the Sunday morning, Wednesday night, Sunday night, being in your place. If you're not in your place, you know, if you're not on your bus route, you know, you better get right with God. So, um, I really appreciate, I really appreciate what you're sharing.

And so if you could pass that number along again, that's really all I want. Awesome. I'm happy to do that. 484-324-8724. It just happens to be number four, the church. Um, thank you, Google voice, uh, number four, and then spell out the church in telephone alphabet. Uh, but yeah, we would love to connect with you, uh, pastor Wayne. And so learn, learn more about you. Uh, definitely want to be a resource and if I can encourage them and turn along the way, uh, God, God bless them. So yeah, let's, let's get together on that. Well, I hate to do this. I have to go, I have to have to go be dad. I got to go, uh, take my son to Taekwondo. He's going to do like kick kids in the head. And so I get to watch that for a while and it's going to be awesome.

But Hey, I want to thank, uh, Jason for jumping on here. This has been great. Uh, Katie, George, thank you for sharing. Uh, pastor Wayne is a pleasure to meet you. And I'm serious. Anybody, I would love to dialogue more about this information to contact me is in my bio through clubhouse. You can click on that. And, uh, I know there's at least, uh, the church.digital slash clubhouse. You can book time with me through there if you want to jump on a zoom call or something, but we'd love to dialogue more about this. Hey, I'm going to be doing these every Thursday at five o'clock for, for definitely for a while, but locked in gear five o'clock Eastern, five o'clock Eastern. Thank you for that. So, um, I will get, uh, I'm trying to actually remember what my next topic is, uh, how digital is different.

Uh, and so I had a church planner down here in South Florida or a, um, a, uh, there was a Liz, Liz Rios is down here. She's not a planner, but she's a denominational lead for church planners in South Florida. And so she and I were talking on Facebook and I was like, Liz, come up with the topic. I'll do it on clubhouse, invite whoever you want. And she says, Jeff, I want you to talk about how digital is different. So we're going to do it. We're going to talk about how digital is different than physical and how you need to treat digital in different to be successful. That is coming up next Thursday, 5 PM Eastern here at clubhouse for, for Jason, for, for pastor Wayne, for, for George, Katie, didn't mean to leave you last, but definitely loved having you on as well.

Jeff with the church digital and stadia church planning. Hey, thanks y'all for, for being here and we'll see you next week. Evidently y'all have a good day.