BETA03: Church, We Forgot the Why

All right, hey, we are live here with Beta Episode Three, Beta Show. Once again, Jeff Reed here with the Church Digital State of Church Planning. I got Raid the Armist jumping on here, Digital Passover at Christ Fellowship Miami. Ray, you want to say hey to somebody?

It's so good to be with you all. Special shout out to Tua Tagovailoa. I can't even pronounce his last name, starting quarterback for the Miami Dolphins. We know you're watching, so glad you're a boy.

Yeah, too well done, man. His stock rose quickly this weekend. This is not a sports show, but when I see the Dolphins, when it was an away game too, right? It was an away game, 24 to nothing. It was their home game. It was our, it was against our hated rivals, the Jets, which is always. It was a home game whenever we was a home game against. Yeah, but God bless you, Miami Dolphins. You, God willing, you'll finally do something right. We'll see. Guess what? It's the Miami Dolphins. They'll find a point at some point this year. They're gonna end up making me cry.

So we are not gonna talk about the Miami Dolphins. We've got far better things to talk about here on the Beta Show. Up front, remember here with the Beta Show, we are quite literally answering your questions on digital church, online church, online ministry. So if you've got questions, go ahead and text us here: 484-324-8724. It's literally number four the church if you speak telephone alphabet. That's awesome. Text your questions for us. I just even this morning I had somebody contact me with this incredible question. We'll tease it, maybe attend to the show, but we're going to get into that next week as a matter of fact. The show last week we had a question that popped up from Christian here in the conference. By the way, while we're doing this, if you're on Facebook, go ahead and comment your questions, your thoughts with us here with the magic software that we're using here, StreamYard. We're going to be able to put some of those comments here on the air, so go and do that.

But Christian asked this great question: Can you talk about ways that your attendees can engage that's outside, that's beyond a physical location? So we're feeling this tension. Every church across the country is we've got to open up, we've got to open up. All these pastors are pushing towards getting back in the building, but 30 maybe are going back to the building. And oftentimes it'll drop down before it drops before it goes up again. I don't know that I've heard anybody say a number over 50 right now. That's attending. It's usually 30 to 40.

And so how do we get that engagement to come back? As a matter of fact, another question was asked here in light of seeing churches come back with 50 percent attendance. Is this how can we reach new people while not in the building? And Ken here, Ken Cavanaugh, continues on. I think we need more to double than double what we're currently seeing or to feel discouraging to kind of come back to that very small building. So we're trying to figure out how do we engage with people in the digital space when they're not in the building to get them back into the building if we're doing kind of this digital approach here?

And Ray, just kind of hearing those questions, what thoughts kind of come to your head? Just intro level?

Yeah, you know, Jeff, we were talking about this before we went live, and for many of us we're going to have to kind of scrap what we had done before, even over the last few months, and kind of take a pause and kind of rethink because in many ways we're relaunching again. We're kind of going at things from a new perspective. And if the goal is engagement and not necessarily attendance, then we have to ask ourselves, well, how can we get our people involved and not necessarily just attending? And so we have to really go beyond just Sunday and think about, well, what are other times? What are there opportunities for folks to engage? Because many times we're still stuck in the mode of, you know, like what you mentioned, Jeff. Here comes Sunday. We keep thinking about that over and over and over again. If that's our thought process in terms of building followers of Jesus, then obviously we kind of got a pause. And I think many of us, even prior to this broadcast, would have said that, but now we've got to ask ourselves practically, okay, are our people engaged in things like small group Bible study? Or assuming smaller Bible study, are they engaged in those things? Are they engaged in reaching their community? Are you doing anything that allows a volunteer, not staff volunteers? Are you providing opportunities for them to engage their community, whether it's masked up in some kind of socially distant manner? But we've got to provide more than just Sunday opportunities for folks to exercise their spiritual gifts.

I love that, Ray, man. I could listen to you talk like that all day long because it feeds so well into what I wanted to say here. Pastor, don't be upset your people are not in your building. Be upset they have no spiritual purpose when they're not in your building. So much of Ray's talking about serving and being in the community and engaging with people. Like for me, this is the lesson of 2020, because the building stopped working. And when the building stopped working, we discovered, honestly, and I don't mean this rudely, many Christians didn't know what to do. Like they had so defined their Christianity by that one hour on Sunday. When that was taken away from them, Christians were walking around without purpose, without figuring out how to exist, how to do things in that world, which honestly kind of brings up this point that I would say the goal is not the building.

It felt like in this COVID season the goal was, hey, let's get back to the building as quickly as possible. And even still in this COVID season, churches are struggling to get back to the building. It's not the building. It's not physical, and honestly, like even as a digital guy, I'll tell you, it's not digital either. It's the Great Commission. It's Matthew 28. It's disciple making. And figure out how to do that, I would suggest physically and digitally.

So as much as we want to, hey, you know what, we've only got 30 percent attendance. It's embarrassingly low in the building. I mean, even within my own family, we're having conversations as our church is going back to the building. It's just starting to open up November 1st. My wife and I are having conversations. Do we trust that environment? Nothing against the church, but do we want to go back to that? Do we want to hold off a little bit and wait towards later? So many people across the country are wrestling with that. And if we church are putting all our pressure on the building, but our people are not there, we're missing a great opportunity.

Go ahead.

Yeah, and you know, speaking of that, Jeff, like just being completely transparent as a staff member to church, and even though I oversee our digital and church online, we, my family has not physically gone back to church as of yet, even though our church campuses have reopened. And part of the reason is because I have a lot of family with pre-existing conditions. So the thought of us catching COVID and then passing it on to them and being a risk factor for them, it's not fear, it's practicality for us. And so we're not there yet. For right now, that's not to say we'll never be there again. That's, we're not there yet for right now.

And if that's me as a leader, then I can only imagine that other people don't feel that comfortable either. But then it kind of also goes back to, well, you know, beforehand we thought that folks were really taking steps spiritually when they were, you know, in the worship center, arms raised up and singing along. And we thought, man, that person is engaged. Well, that's one form of engagement, but that's not complete engagement. And I think that's what we're finding now because, as you said, Jeff, once we took that part of church away from them, now what are the other aspects of their faith that they're practicing in? And how are they growing together with the family of God? Because that's what church is supposed to be. It's a local recognition of the family of God, wherever you're at. And you know, if I couldn't meet with my parents physically right now, I wouldn't cease being part of the family either way. And so we've got to check in. We've got to see how those folks are integrating it with the family.

Yeah, and so it, as much as we want to make it about the building, let's get back to the building, we want to get more energy into the building, you got two guys here giving coaching, giving some direction. We cannot make it about the building because people are going to be hesitant to go back to the building. And to judge either one of our spiritual walks, forgive me, Ray, I'm gonna speak for you, but I know you pretty well, to judge either of our spiritual walks because we're not sitting in a pew at Sunday night nine o'clock, that's not the right direction to go.

Which would lead us to number two: Don't push us into a building. Don't push people to a building. Take this opportunity and engagement to train them in evangelism, to train them in disciple making. What if we flip the script on this whole COVID season? Instead of making it the struggle to get back to the building, make it the win of where we took this opportunity of engagement to train people on how to share Christ, to hold people accountable on sharing their faith, and to do things much more towards this style of, let us empower you to reach the people that are in your life, your circle of influence. It's a completely different approach, but it's one. Instead of being negative because I'm not in the building, I'm taking advantage of the season where people may or may not be in the building and using engagement outside the church to do something far more healthier, I think, for the church overall.

Right. What are you thinking on that?

Well, I mean, you know, and there's so much truth in that, Jeff. And the big thing is that we have an opportunity to equip people to do ministry where they're at. And I think that's another thing that COVID taught us was it's not so much about the church, you know, taking that away from them because then it's just a one-way broadcast, right? Which is what many of us were afraid of. Oh, it's a one-way broadcast. There's no interaction. There's no engagement. How are people going to be able to serve? How are people going to be able to do that? But we thought that just in context of Sundays. We weren't necessarily thinking about that in terms of how are they serving their community? How are they engaging their community? And so for many of us, it maybe it's time to go back to even the Saddleback style of small groups, right? The one-four-one, four-one, or the four-one-one, depending on how Steve Glades inversed it to you once upon a time. But it was four weeks of Bible study, one week of get together and party, and one week of serving your community.

And if you've got that kind of structure as a small group, then the idea is you can spend one week inviting people who aren't Christians to come and take part in your small group and see that you guys are normal and invite them to come back for Bible study the next week. And then you spend four weeks of Bible study with them, just kind of journeying with them on a spiritual journey. And then the last week you serve your community together. That's an easy, basic structure in which you've got evangelism, you've got discipleship, you're reaching out to your neighborhoods, and at the same time, if they come to Christ, guess where they're connected? At your church.

Love that because we get that. That's where that's where we connect. That's where we win by getting people in the church. But the church is not the pew. Like, let's not kid ourselves.

2020, the church is not that physical seat. Hopefully, over the past eight to ten months—here, however long COVID has been—so hard for me to keep up. Yeah, it's a thing, but listen, it feels like it. Right, here's the deal. Some of you, some of you out there, pastor, you're telling me right now, "But Jeff, we're already doing this disciple-making. We're already focusing on that." I would ask, take a section here, and Ray was kind of hinting at it. Pause and ask yourself some of these questions honestly. Is it working? Are you seeing results? Are you seeing multiplication? Are you seeing not people getting saved in a building, but were you seeing, even pre-COVID or mid-COVID, were you seeing people within your church reach out to others?

You know, here in Stadia, we use the language of the 99 and the one. The not, and it's the parable of the shepherd that leaves the 99 sheep to go after the one lost sheep. And so the idea is, okay, the 99 people—these are people that are warm to Christ. They're warm to your church. They're your faithful following, your core. And so the one is that lost person that doesn't know Christ. Are you seeing situations where your 99 are going after your one? Or your 99 consuming a product? Or are they just being part of the church without necessarily reaching out and being aggressive in the community?

That's true. And you know, the last big thing is that we need to make sure and try and keep the church body together. There's a lot of division. There's a lot of things that are dividing us right now. We're being divided along all sorts of lines and all sorts of opinions, and we have to do with the best that we can to keep the family together. And so it's not that I want you to change who you are, church family, but you also got to recognize that this is a tough time to disciple your church. This really is, because you've got to kind of bring up the fact that, "Hey, listen, I understand that there's all sorts of reasons to divide right now, but the one thing that Jesus prayed for before he went to the cross was unity. Will you stay united with us? Will you be one with us? Whether you're pro coming into the services or whether you're pro staying at home, this is a time now more than ever for the sake of our witness to be united as one."

Yeah, and so it's really, even with that unity, if we were focused in unity towards the cause of sharing Christ, of being serious about disciple-making and empowering people towards this idea of reaching their ones, what would unity in this season look like?

You know, so often I hear—and this is crazy to me, I don't understand 2020—because I'll talk with a pastor, and I've had this conversation at least a dozen times, where a pastor in this COVID season tells me something to the extent of, "Jeff, I think my church is going to split because of masks." There is so much passion within the church centered around this idea of masks, of race, of political. I like 2020 has been a very bifurcated year. Totally recognized that. But even in the context of all of these different ideas, what we really are looking at are people who are passionate about something. And as much as we're separated right now and are not able to engage in physical space together, what if we, the church, what if we figured out how to redirect that passion? Towards masks or not masks, to redirect some of the outspokenness that we have and get that directed towards helping people evangelize, helping people understand disciple-making processes, what Matthew 28 calls us to do, and then unleashing them out, church.

What if the call for COVID in the season isn't get back to the building, but it's create an army of disciple-makers and unleash them to reach their people? Mobilize them to go. And we've got incredible opportunities in the season, looking at like Rooted is a platform that exists online. Disciples Made. No Place Left. Like, these are all evangelism, disciple-making, disciple-training systems that allow people like me, pastors, to train others on how to share their faith. And through that process, releasing them out.

What if instead of being worried about how do I get, you know, max capacity in the building and force people into a situation they may or may not be comfortable with? Or even I'm trying to reach out to ones to get into the building where the ones don't necessarily want to get back to the building? What if we stopped in this season and said, "Hey, let's intentionally train up our 99. Let's focus on the people, whether they're in the building or at home, and let's disciple them. Let's engage with them and hold them to a higher standard so that we can now release them out so they can be released out to reach the people that God's called them to reach."

Yeah, and it creates a different sense of raising the bar, right, in terms of maturity. And it's ironic because, and many of us know this, somebody who comes to faith brand new is usually most excited about sharing their faith. Why is it that we try to squeeze some of that by saying, "Well, we want to get you into our different system or try to mold you into our thing," as opposed to saying, "All right, let's equip you to share your faith wherever you're at, because this is the most excited you're ever going to be about it"?

And the reality is, in this COVID season, you have lots of people who are coming to Christ. Lots of people are coming to Christ online, digitally, or even someone who are showing up in person. It's possible. So if that's the case, why not equip them with the basics of the faith? Turn them around and send them right back into their workplace, send them right back into their Zoom rooms, into their places where they have influence, and saying, "Guys, here's this Jesus that I found. Here is this forgiveness that I found. Come with me. Come and see. Come and taste and see that my Lord is good. Find all those things." That's real. Why do we want to stop all that?

The answer is, is because we don't. But at the same time, we feel like we're ill-equipped. It doesn't matter if you're going back to some of the stuff that Jeff talked about or Evangelism Explosion. Like, go all the way back and dig up whatever evangelism training you were taught when you were a teenager and trained somebody else on how to do that and figure that out. Because right now, it's not about, "Oh man, we do great worship here. Oh hey, we got great production. Hey, we got wonderful guest services." It's not really about that right now, and it might not be about that over the next six months. So what can it be about right now? Reaching somebody for Christ.

Yeah, love that. Hey, what can it be about right now? Well said, Ray. Let's use right now. Right now, not the Right Now Network. You know, whatever. Okay, maybe anyway. Let's let right now, let's use COVID to get people off spiritual milk and to get them on solid food. Now I'm paralleling here, First Corinthians 3:2. "I gave you milk, not solid food, for you're not ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready." Swing over here to Hebrews 5:12.

"In fact, by this time you ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You still haven't gotten it." Paraphrased. "You need milk, not solid food." So there's a call, I think, for us to understand, "Hey, there's an opportunity for people to be on milk, but we need to grow them towards a solid food point." And I would suggest here, sitting in your well, now virtual pews, because your physical buildings are relatively empty, there's an opportunity for us to aggressively engage with our people outside of the building or inside of the building, but to create them to be the disciple-makers, to get them on this biblical solid food to the point where they can now feed themselves and maybe even take care of feeding and leading someone else to Christ.

Ray, what are you thinking on this?

Well, I love that, you know, Jeff, but so often, so many folks that I've talked to about these particular verses have taken this and think, "Well, my folks need more knowledge." And the reality of it is, is that there's enough books. There's enough material. There's enough content out there now. Many of your churches have access to right now media, kind of like how Jeff joked about a little bit earlier. You know, you have access to all the content in the world, and yet we have very knowledgeable Christians, but not a lot of Christians that are putting into practice some of the things that they've done. And that's really where the issue of spiritual health comes into play. And really, me, because it's, listen, if you can give me a full discourse and a background on Corinth or on the book of Hebrews or anything else, hey, all of that's wonderful. But is it really pushing somebody forward in terms of practicing their Christianity? Are they really loving their neighbor as themselves more because of it? That's what we're talking about in terms of moving them through the pipeline in terms of discipleship-making, not just in terms of knowledge. Knowledge is great, but once again, just like we learned in Scripture, knowledge can also puff up. And so we have to be careful that we're not just trying to create knowledgeable Christians, but we're trying to create people who actually practice their faith, actively loving the people that are around them, bringing them to Christ, and then discipling them right after that. That's the important thing.

Love that. You know, it's James 1:22. "Don't just be hearers of the word," you know, I paraphrase online, and so deceive yourselves. "Do what it says." Once again, paraphrasing in the real world, "Don't just hear the word, do what it says."

And so having that executed love. Love that there. Hey, look, we do a show beta, and somebody called me out. They were like, "Well, Jeff, you're not giving us any practical insights on how to do this." So here's your beta moment for the show. Run some test groups through a disciple-making process. Disciples Made. Rooted. No Place Left. Alpha. Even as it is, an opportunity to engage with that platform. Test this out. Test this out. An intentional disciple-making initiative. Run it in small. Did it work? What do you need to improve on? Like, you can grab 30 people right now, break them up into groups, some of the leaders of your church, and start to do this, even in a skunk works, even in a small situation. Experiment with it, and then see where you get, right?

Or start very small. You know, I did a program called Growing Up by Robbie Gallaty with three guys intentionally at my church, and I hand-selected them. And then when it came time, when we were done, I told them that they had to hand-select somebody too. And intentionally let them know that they were in a discipleship relationship. I told them, "There's no ninja discipleship. There's no, 'Hey, I'm going to do this and they're not even going to know it.' This is going to be like, 'Hey, you know, sand the floor,' and then, 'All right, I'm going to teach you how to block.' It's not going to be any of that. You have to make sure that they identify that they're in an accountable relationship and that you're going to keep them accountable to things like reading their Bible, praying, evangelism, etc., because then it's understood that there's expectations. Then it's understood that you guys are going to live in conversation about these things. It's not going to be something that's all, and by the way, no, no, no. We're meeting for an explicit purpose to move you forward in terms of being a follower of Jesus. Disciple people on purpose. Start small like the Master did, and then over time go big."

Well done on the Karate Kid reference. That was great. I got to tell you, I'm a little disappointed we made it to the end of the show without working in a Back to the Future reference since today's Back to the Future.

The future day in the future, I feel like we failed a little bit here in the show. We'll have to work harder on that next time. Hey, listen, we at Stadia, we want to help churches like you figure out how to develop a digital strategy, a digital strategy where you're creating those disciple makers and unleashing them physically in digital and physical space. Um, if you are interested in more of these types of conversations and how we can practically help your church, check out stadiachurchplanning.org.

Next week we are talking about Christmas. I don't know, seriously, sitting here today, October 21st, I don't know that I have an answer for Christmas. We're going to work on it this week. We're going to ask around and see what some churches are doing to figure it out. But how do you do Christmas in a digital environment? What is that going to look like December 23rd, 24th, 25th, 2020?

It's going to be crazy. Text your questions here to For the Church, 484-324-8724. We would love to hear your questions and we went along this episode but loved every second of it. I knew this was going to be a rich conversation. Ray, any closing thoughts as we're landing the plane?

No, much love to you all. Don't forget, hey, it's okay to try things. You know, we haven't mastered these things. We're not in a new normal. Jeff and I talked about this. You know, there's no sense of new normal because what we're facing right now, we've not been doing long enough to be normal. And so I want to just encourage you, church pastor, it's okay to experiment right now. It's okay to try something. Try and make sure that the mission stays the same, but the way that you're accomplishing that mission, keep loose hands with that. Awesome. Love that. Hey, for Ray, I'm Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning. Thanks for jumping on this episode of Beta 3, and we'll see you next time here at the Beta Show. Y'all have a good day. See you later.