BETA02: Pushing Church Online While Managing Reopening Transitions

Welcome to the Beta Show. Here we are at episode two, here kicking off a new live broadcast with the Beta Show. Jeff Reed with Stadia Church Planning in the Church that Digital, here joined once again by Ray D'Armas, Digital Pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami. And so looking forward to having this conversation where we are answering your questions here with the Beta Show. We're dedicating this point in time really to answer questions in context of online ministry. So digital church, digital church, micro church, trying to get back into the building, online discipleship, small groups—there's so much social media, there's so much that's all intertwined into this. So as you have questions, we want you to text us at For the Church, 484-324-8724. If you speak alphabet telephone alphabet, it's number four of the church. Text those questions in. We'll be answering those questions in coming weeks here with the Beta Show. And we've really, Ray, we've got a great question lined up for this one. I saw this one come in and I was like, "Oh yeah, we're gonna hit that one right now," because it's certainly relevant to where a lot of churches are today. So here we are with the question, the topic for today: How do we advance online ministry while reopening our physical buildings? And here's the exact question—you're gonna love this. What are some ways to structure to advance online ministry while managing the tensions of reopening? If you're an online pastor out there, you are feeling these tensions. Ray, you just launched—what, you're week two here relaunching, reopening? Tell me, what tensions are you feeling?

There's a lot of different tensions, right? In terms of what matters more, I think, is kind of the biggest tension that everybody's kind of feeling. And part of what I've tried to guide some of our leadership to is just understanding the impact of what could be made through those cameras. Because at least still here in South Florida, we're still kind of capped as far as like what's the largest amount of people that we're able to reach in the room. And the largest that we're allowed to reach in the room is 25 percent of what fits in the room already pre-COVID. Our larger audience was being reached online, but now even more so as we enter a quote-unquote post-COVID reopening phase—because COVID still hasn't gone anywhere, by the way, right? Like, it's still existing, and not everybody's ready to come back to physical audiences. Part of what we've tried to make sure and help folks understand is, "Hey, listen, what happens in those cameras still matters." And this is where having alignment and strategy in terms of what happens in person and what happens online is so important, because those next steps are crucial. So you don't want to abandon your online next steps. But the entire time, as Jeff and I have constantly preached throughout this entire thing—if you want to go back to some of the podcast episodes—alignment of next steps and making sure what happens in physical and what happens in digital is always crucial.

Yes, love that. And in this season where we're trying to go back to the buildings, to re-initiate, to get our queen—the queen's been off the table for six months. We're trying to reactivate that queen. We talked about that a lot here. We got to get our buildings working, but not at sacrificing what we have online. Because the reality here up front—let's recognize the majority of our people are not back in the building yet. Not sure what's actually happening there. I can just tell you from stories that I've heard from churches across the country. They seem to start at about 30 percent of pre-COVID numbers attending. And traditionally it drops before it comes back up. So it's not this massive throng of people trying to get back into the building. We're not seeing that for a number of reasons. And even my own church, we've not reopened yet. So some churches haven't even gotten back to that place yet. So recognize the majority of the people are not in the building, which has a follow-up question: Do the majority of your resources need to go back into the building? It's so easy for us to fall back into that February 2020 mindset of, "Oh, well, that's the way we used to do it in February 2020. That's the way that we have to do it here mid-October 2020." But the fact is, there's more people not in your building than are. And so keep utilizing the digital to stay tapped in with those people. That's crucial to help your church moving forward. What are you thinking?

Yeah, and you know, Jeff, just kind of cap off there on one D, right? On resources. So recognizing that, hey, as we reopen, we're kind of dealing with less resources. Like, a lot of things that churches are telling us is that less resources are coming in because, hey, folks have lost jobs, businesses have closed due to the pandemic. Recognizing that digital resources go further, faster, for less money. I was talking to a friend from another church. He leads kind of their communications department. He was telling me how he was convincing his leadership to move away from billboards. They wanted to spend, and for some of you smaller churches, forgive me for these numbers because I know this is going to sound kind of astronomical when you hear about how big churches work, but they wanted to spend 100K on billboards. And he was saying, "No, no, no. Give me 30K in digital marketing, and I'll show you I'll reach more people in that 100K in digital build and billboards." And so this is where churches, you need to understand: don't go back to what was. If you're rushing back to what was, you're kind of missing the point. Amazon, Walmart—they're all moving on. They're moving on to, "Okay, now we're living in a digital space. We can reach more people for less. How can we leverage less resources wisely to reach more people?"

Yeah, definitely. And learning that lesson here mid-COVID, post-COVID, coming out of the season into whatever the next normal is. Number two: realize online compliments. It does not have to compete with physical. I know this is crazy. Just take a moment. It does not have to compete with the physical building. Highlight the complimentary opportunities here. You know, so much we talk about it—it's that old mindset, right? Getting back to like February 2020, where we're driven by this idea of butts in seats, and that's the goal of what we're trying to do. It doesn't have to be that way. We don't have to put online service to physical service and let those compete for those butts. And if online butts gets more than physical butts—well, I've said butts more times in this broadcast than I'm really comfortable with, so I need to kind of back off that. But Ray, we were just on a podcast with Jim Tomberlin. We're going to roll it out here in a couple weeks. And in the conversation there with Jim, we were really talking about this idea of how digital becomes almost the glue that connects all of these individual silos. Like we talked about, we can service—this is a silo. Small groups is a silo. Social media itself sometimes can be a silo. Kids is a silo. Student isn't really—well, we've got an opportunity with digital to now create a unified experience that connects all of those silos together and drive them in a specific place. And so digital or online is not in conflict with your physical service. It can, utilizing social media, utilizing small groups, be more effective in making that physical experience better, right?

And Jeff, the hard thing is that digital was never meant to compete with physical. I think that's where a lot of churches have that kind of misconstrued. "Oh, well, people aren't showing up to our services because they're watching online." Well, they're still engaging with your content. The question is, are they engaging with the rest of your church? Are you helping them through your discipleship pathway? Are you helping them take next steps? And don't just talk about giving. I mean, talk about like tangible things like community and serving—some of those other aspects. You know, those are the things that really get people kind of cued into it and glued into the life of the church. So physical and digital, we're never meant to compete with each other. They do complement each other, and especially in an ever-changing world. And mind you, you've heard us talk about this over and over again on this podcast: digital, in many ways, is the front door. It is the way that people are going to engage first. If I'm even moving to a new city, you better believe that I'm checking you out online before I bring my family, before I bring that commitment of, "Okay, I'm ready to bring my wife and my kids to your front door." Especially in the COVID season. Already at Christ Fellowship, two weeks reopened, we've seen a lot of visitors and guests who connected with us digitally first, and now that they're finally able to engage with us physically, they're starting to. It's huge.

Yeah, I love that. And so utilizing that digital, the strengths of digital—we'll talk more about this—but it's really this digital approach. Stadia Church Planning, we've been really championing this idea of digital and physical, utilizing the strengths working together. Don't look at it competing. Let me get to number three here. And if you thought number one was in howie, here's number three: What we don't like about online, if we're honest, we can probably say the same thing about our physical. Because more often than not, if digital online ministry is a mirror of what happens in physical space, it's a force magnifier. And oftentimes, if we say, "Hey, you know what, online ministry, man, it's we're really just creating consumers of a product"—we as a church, we need to be more than just creating the consumer. So like, I would rather dive into the physical. And maybe, maybe you're different, I don't know your church. But if you really looked at your church, maybe there's an opportunity to observe maybe some of those same consumerism practices. Maybe not getting people on mission or the mobilization at your church. Maybe there's an issue at the overarching issue. It's not just a digital thing.

Yeah, you know, and this is a discipleship conversation. So you know, if you have somebody come up to you and says, "Well, why do I have to come in person if I can just watch it online?"—that right there is a discipleship conversation. Because all they're concerned with is consuming content. "Hey, if I can watch it at home, what's the difference between me watching it at the theater?" You know, it's the same thing. I could tell folks about, "Hey, why should I go to an NFL game if I could just watch it at home? Why would I spend all that money if I can just watch it at home?" Well, the difference is in an NFL game, I'm not invited to take part in it. With church, I'm supposed to be an active participant in church. And I don't just mean clapping my hands and raising my hands during worship. I mean, I'm supposed to be one of the players. I'm supposed to be one of the coaches. I'm supposed to be involved in the game. This is the big difference between attending an event and partaking in a team, which is what I'm supposed to be as part of a church. Now, if you view church as just, "Hey, the people show up and then they go home," okay, that's fine. Yeah, I agree. Online is completely competing with your physical stuff. But if you're trying to move people along a discipleship pathway, then it kind of doesn't matter how they consume the content, whether they're in person or whether they're at home, so long as they are moving along your discipleship pathway, right? If they're engaging through all the different things, if somebody's in a small group, if somebody is serving, if somebody is giving, if somebody is participating in those things, if they're serving their community through your church, then yeah, you know what, they might show up once a month physically in person, but they're more active than a

Person who shows up four times on Sunday and doesn't do the rest of that stuff. Yeah, what's awesome is, Ray, I'm just learning more and more functionality here. We're actually getting comments from the outside. Let me throw some of them up here that are just vibing with us. Like we're doing this in real time. Christian, by the way, on Facebook, isn't reopening that way and allowing people online to look into the room essentially going back to in-the-building ministry is more important and more effective. This consumer mentality, isn't this what we're trying to avoid? Like Christian's making a great statement right here. Andy Hill also on Facebook. Andy says, "So much my face is literally covered at this moment. You can't even see me on the broadcast. I've never looked better." Andy, you are a beautiful man wearing that hat. At the end of it here, so it's still personal. The online congregation is not just a camera in the room observation where it's not going back to the old, but it's creating this digital discipleship pathway, a physical discipleship pathway, a unified discipleship pathway engagement pathway. Because the end game isn't butts and seats or viewers on our Facebook feed. The end game truly is, let's get to that disciple maker, and now let's figure out how to do that utilizing the physical and the digital approach, right?

What's beautiful about this is this is exactly what we're doing through the Church Digital in Stadia Church Planting. It's what made this question so relevant. It's like, "Hey, we got to talk about it because churches are struggling with this. They're struggling with that digital strategy that works with the physical strategy and how it all comes together." And so if you're interested in more information and learning how to do this, check out stadiachurchplanting.org. That's S-T-A-D-I-A, P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L. We are helping organizations like yours, churches like yours, learn how to take advantage of the strengths of physical, the strengths of digital, and help you learn how to develop that digital strategy, that discipleship pathway, so that your church can thrive, grow, and multiply. Looking for more opportunities, 2021 is going to be an incredible year. So much exciting stuff happening in context of how we, Stadia, we, the Church Digital, are going to be able to help out. By the way, there's plenty of other beta resources at thechurch.digital. Other blogs, podcasts that we've done recently. We're coming up on our 100th episode that'll be launching here of the Church Digital podcast starting next. That's publishing Monday right around the corner. So all sorts of great stuff coming up.

I wanted to give homage here. So this question was asked. I didn't know who it was. It was a phone number who texted. I didn't have the phone number saved. Had no idea who the person was. And so I just thought, "Man, that's a great question. Want to come back to it." Let's drill into it. I scheduled it. I was like, "Hey, we're going to do it." And even just last night I texted the person like at nine, ten at night saying, "Hey, just let you know we're going to answer this question. By the way, did you want to get mentioned on the podcast? No pressure, but just wanted to ask if it was okay." The person said yes. It's Corey Deck out of Grace Community Church up in New York. He's actually the guy that was our guest on the most recent podcast episode 99 where we were talking about shepherding and pastoring people digitally. So Corey, great question. It is Corey week here at the Church Digital. We are nothing but Corey all day long. So it's going to be awesome.

Hey Ray, just as we're wrapping up here, any closing thoughts on all this stuff?

Yeah, you don't have to agree with Jeff and I on any of this stuff. If you disagree, make sure and let us know in the comments or share with us some of your thoughts. You know, these are just some things that we're observing and that we've kind of been piping into. And the other thing is, keep the questions coming. You know, we in no way consider ourselves experts. We are talking about this stuff because, much like you, we are testing these things out in real time. We're all learning together, and that is important. The important thing is that we share what we are learning as well. So if you're learning something new, let us know with the Church Digital as well.

Awesome. Love that. Christian just asked another question. Can you talk about ways that your attendees can engage that's outside beyond a physical building?

Yes, Christian, yes we can. In a future episode of beta, we will tackle this one. That's a great question. I'm going to make sure to save that. If you want to text me, once again, text all questions to For the Church, 484-324-8724. You see what I did there? I kind of channeled my inner DJ from way back in the 90s, modern rock. Good times, Detroit. I was feeling like a 1960s Batman. Join us next time, same bat time, same black panel. That's where. What is that? That's beautiful.

All right, we're going to wrap. For Ray, this is Jeff with the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planting. Texting those questions. Um, let's continue moving forward. Thanks for joining us here at Beta Show. We'll see you next time, y'all. Good day.