BETA33: Five Foundations of a Phygital Church

Episode 33. Time's flying. Here I'm Jeff with the Church Digital Podcast once again. As always, powered by Stadia Church Planting. And welcome to the Beta Show. Here on the Beta Show we answer your digital ministry questions live on the air. So we do the show every Thursday, but if you've got questions, go ahead and text them in to 484-324-8724. I quite literally am giving my cell phone number live on the air. 484-324-8724. Text your questions in and we will obviously answer them in a future show here.

With the Beta Show, like I said here, if you're listening to this on demand or if you're listening to this on podcast, we at the Beta Show here, we do this live every Thursday, noon Eastern. You can watch live at facebook.com/thechurchdigital or youtube.com/thechurchdigital. It's the best place. I'm actually running a test today to see if this is working as we're broadcasting it to Instagram. I'm not sure it's working, but hey, that's the wonders of technology. We'll try to figure it out. Instagram coming soon. If you're watching live, go and throw your questions and comments in, whatever social media platform you're in. We'll try to bring them up here in the show. Engage. Once we get off air, I'm happy to go through that. And of course, if you're listening via podcast or anything, you can text us at 484-324-8724. That's quite literally number four, the church, if you speak telephone alphabet. So that's beautiful.

Next week, we are dreaming of a social media church. That is the conversation at hand. What does a church that entirely runs on social media? No physical, nothing else. How can you do church in a Facebook, in Instagram, in TikTok? Oh, that would be fun. Let's do a TikTok church. See what that looks like.

But for today, we're going to be talking a lot about fidget. Now, in recent weeks, yes, I've been poked and prodded a little bit, made fun a little bit about this word digital. And look, you know, I've said it time and time again. I didn't make up the word. I'm just the guy who says, "Hey, church needs to think like fidget." And so yes, Jay Kranda has made fun of me recently, saying that fidget sounds like something from a horror movie. I can't tell you how many people have asked me to sing the Olivia Newton-John 80s pop, "Let's Get Fidget." But we're not going to do that. Let's get fidget off. Okay, well, that's all you're going to get today of that.

Because at the heart of this, really, we need to remember that fidget is, I think, it's different than hybrid. Hybrid is, "Hey, let's use both of it. Digital, maybe I'm nuancing here, but it's this opportunity to utilize the strengths of the physical, the strengths of digital, and find ways to get it to work together. Not just shove an idea together and do it in physical and digital because you have to, but more of a nuance towards an intentional strategy to help the physical and the digital work together.

And by the way, Stadia has a dead set. You can see the logo behind me. We are excited to help churches learn to thrive, grow, and multiply physically and digitally. We, I mean, we literally own the trademark on Fidget Church. So hey, we want to help you with that. Go to stadiachurchplanting.org/digital. We've got cohorts starting here in the fall and plenty of opportunities for churches that are serious about digital, even in this new post-COVID society that we're walking into. Plenty of opportunities to connect with that, which really, really brings us here to the topic that we're going to talk about today with Beta 33: Five Foundations of a Physical Church.

That's right. Five Foundations of a Physical Church. If you're thinking about digital, what, how do you need to be thinking? What is the foundation that you're being built on? And so this is really the heart of what we're going to pull on in this episode today. Five foundations to be fidget in your church.

Number one, here, let's just dive in: More about strategy, less about panic. This is funny. Someone else told me this and I was like, "Oh, that's good. I totally want to explore that." If our move towards fidget is more about, "Oh my gosh, we got to get everybody to the building, so we need to do digital as much as possible to drive people from digital back into physical," I mean, you're being led by fear. And so there's obviously some things maybe to work through and address, but at the end of that, you're going to put all this energy and effort into fidget, and then you're going to abandon it at the end, or you're not going to put the energy into digital that needs to happen. And as a result, it's not going to be effective in getting people back to the building.

Our posture should not be, "We'll do anything possible to get people back to the building." We need to remember that buildings, just like digital, these are tools. The end game is not, and we said this time and time again, it's not building. It's disciple making. It's not digital. It's disciple making. It's "Go and make disciples," Matthew 28. And so let that be the challenge. Tools, venues, these things don't matter. And so having that mindset up front, well, maybe you're doing more ministry right now in digital space than you even realize because you're stuck in the mindset that you've got to get them back in the building.

Pastor, don't be afraid people are not currently in your building. Be afraid they have no spiritual purpose when they're not in your building. That's the thing to fear. That's the thing to be frustrated about. And let's keep that in mind even moving forward. Fidget Church develops a strategy towards discipleship, towards disciple making, towards multiplication. It's not about filling seats, but it's more about starting a movement. So be thinking more that way. It's much more about strategy than it is about panic and fear.

Well, let's swing into number two: More about conversation, less about content. No, I lied here. Actually, this is like 2B is coming up also. So more about conversation, less about content. And in that same time, it's more about individuals and it's less about masses.

It's very easy when you're looking at doing things in digital space to press play on that virtual VCR player, virtual DVD player, send the video off to Restream.io, which sends it all over the place, and just, "Hey, it's done. I've reached thousands of people. Oh my gosh, this is so easy. I can like be on vacation now because I played the sermon and I can just sit back and relax poolside here for the summer." I wish. And sadly, I think that's some of the situation where maybe we were digital because some churches were thinking that it was more about content. It was more about getting content and stuff out in front of masses instead of realizing, "Hey, I still need to be building relationships digitally. I need to know the names of people digitally. I need to be involved in these people's lives, utilizing digital communication tools to know who they are."

A fidget church is going to be a lot more about those conversations, and it's going to be a lot more about those individuals. It's going to be more engaged in the two-way conversations with these people. That's the challenge of digital. Can we use these digital tools not to reach millions but to reach individuals and get those individuals to multiply? Here, yes, discovering who these people are who are watching these services is hard. I had that conversation yesterday with an executive or a part of a church that I'm doing work with, and yes, it's hard to discover who these people are. But to be effective, we need to have relationships. We need to have names, not numbers. And the analytics don't tell you the story if you don't know who these people are because in order to get them to those next levels, in order to get them connected into groups, in order to move them along that disciple-making process, you got to have a name and you got to have a relationship to guide them along those ways.

Number two: It's more about conversations, less about content. And to be, I cheated a little bit, more about individuals, less about masses.

Let's move to, hey, you know, we got a comment. Let's swing in here. Oh yeah, somebody's sending some love. That would be a fun song. "Let's Get Digital." Okay, look, it made me. If I get 50 shares on this video, I will sing in the next episode, "Let's Get Fidget." By the way, got somebody else just doing here, watching live all the way from India, South Asia. Love that. And it's fascinating to me in this season how much fidget, how much digital church, how much the global church is asking for help, is looking for help, and is challenging ideas at the same time. Shane finally just shared this video. That's awesome. 49 more people and I will sing the "Let's Get Fidget" song.

All right, number three: More about consistency, less about quality. This one hurts because so much in the world today, post-COVID, we're trying to get the best stream possible. We're upgrading the cameras. We're working on our lighting. We're doing all this, and quality is important. But if we're doing everything possible to try to get the best product out there and we're sacrificing things like discipleship, community, we're ignoring who these people are because we're convinced that it's more about producing for the masses, that's not going to help at a fidget church. That's not going to help you in this process of trying to make disciple making.

It's almost like I feel maybe I'm speaking out of turn like this desire for the best product. And believe me, I'm the guy like I run a tech company on the side. I help churches improve their products. So maybe I am being a hypocrite here. But if all we care about is the quality and we're not looking at the other stuff, then we're missing the mark of what a fidget church can be.

Consistency is far more important when it comes towards this idea of being fiddled in, in this idea of reaching people in digital space as well as physical. And you know, I'm almost tempted to say some things like Gary Vee. If version one is always better than version none, you know, Gary has said that many times in his lifetime. He's a secular marketing guy also. You know, I would quote Mark Venti. If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, then you waited too long to release it. Because whatever you're going to do, you're going to release it. You're going to learn something. You're going to experiment from it. So these are some of the challenges where consistency is more important than quality. Take those steps and get out there sooner than later. Experiment. We're going to talk about this. Start simple. Yes, it takes time. There's no formulaic answer. This is not an easy thing to do, but get out there and start with what you have and work consistently towards it.

Very few people, even where we are in this post-COVID society, they're not going to complain about the product, especially if you're doing more than the product, especially if you're using the product to get you connected into relationships. People have a relationship with you. They're not going to complain about the product. Let's say it that way.

Number four: It's more about creating something new. It's less about maintaining something old. Speaking of experimenting, there's no better time to try something different than right now, coming out of COVID. All the playbooks are scrambled. Everybody's trying to figure out something new in the world of church today. Nobody has the right answer. Everybody's trying to experiment and do something new. And if what you're trying to do is just maintain, you know what should never be said in the church today? "That's not the way that we used to do it." Like, where we are in 2021, July 7th, whatever the date is, that's not the way that we used to do it. Do you know how much stuff has changed in culture over the past 18 months?

15 months and this is the thing that that fears me, that makes me afraid. I may be afraid. It's the wrong word. C point one. But if what we're trying to do is just go back to the way that it used to be, what we're seeing in culture is new things, is different things. They're having far more engagement. And so a church that didn't have a really aggressive digital strategy now embracing fidget and going into multiple models of church, physical and digital, well shoot, you are now having an opportunity to do something different, something new. And what we're seeing culturally is when new things happen, new people are interested in engaging with it. So this is the opportunity here. Don't be afraid of a new idea. Experiment. Find ways to try it out. New things historically are more likely to grow.

Well, let's continue on here at number five. It's not just about wide. It's about deep. Uh, 5B. Let's let's throw this at the same time. It's not just about deep. It's also about wide. Now, if anybody's singing deep and why, deep, why do I sing so much? Like I need to stop singing. Really, just throw them both together. It's not just about wide. It's also about deep. And it's not just about deep. It's also about wide. Like this is the thing that a fiddle does. And so often in churches, maybe pre-covered, we saw this where a church had a strong leaning towards uh evangelism uh and so it was more driven by that pastor on that stage preaching that message physically or digitally trying to expose to reach as many people as possible uh but then like now we're seeing and you'd also see at the same time discipleship heavy churches, churches that didn't have a lot of evangelism but were very strong towards knowledge based discipleship where you would get people in classes, get people in in groups and where there was depth to it but there wasn't necessarily the evangelical reach, the the connection point. And and I think where we are here in 2021, I think the answer is you need both. And this is really where I think that a fidget church can shine because a digital church can complement here.

Now notice here up up front, um, all the other language points that that I've said through one through four, we're like more and less. We need more of this. We need less of this. And in here, like I'm saying with this, this is not we don't just need more wide. We also need more deep. Um, it's both and. We need to have that mindset. Digital, yeah sure, we can broadcast to thousands of people. Go for it. But don't stop with that reach. Those reach you're creating consumers. And so yes, we can broadcast the message out for a lot of people to engage with, but what does it look like to take them to a deeper point to engage to dialogue to disciple them to the point where they can reach their oi cost, their circle of influence in 2021's uh and I I do believe this, our church in 2021, it needs to be both an evangelist and a disciple maker. And it's yes, you know, the the disciple making crew out there saying yes, but the disciple makers become the evangelist. I know that that's kind of the point. We need to be focused on on getting the message brought at the same time we need to be training people on how to multiply, on how to share their faith to reach the people that are around them. And through the strength of digital reaching people very easily using digital tools, at the same time equipping people, which is one of the strengths of digital, training them via digital tools and methods, the fidget attachment to any given church is going to help that church, assuming the church takes digital serious. It's going to help that church train up both the evangelists and the disciple makers and it's going to help them have a completely different strategy in their church moving forward.

Our churches need to challenge our members, our attenders to be that, to be the evangelists and the disciple makers, to share their story in Christ and to help others see how what Christ can do for them. That's the heart of fidget. And then to take those people through a multiplication process and help them understand that they need to tell others that same vision.

So there you go. Five foundations of a fidget church. Number one, it's more about strategy, less about panic. Number two, it's more about conversations, less about content, and it's more about individuals, less about masses. Love that. Number three, more about consistency, it's less about quality. Number four, it's more about creating something new, it's less about maintaining something old. Number five, it's not just about wide, it's also about deep, and it's not just about deep, it's also about wide.

There's your five foundations of a fidget church. Um, I love this. So by the way, I had a comment just quick thrown in here. I do love the idea of a TikTok church. We have to wrestle with that. We'll we'll dig into that some next week as we're talking uh a bit with beta 34 about dreaming of a social media church.

So hey, this has been a great time, a great conversation with that. We're going to wrap here. Beta 33, found five foundations of a fidget church. Don't forget Stadia wants to help you find your digital purpose in ministry uh whether it's digital only church planting, physical multimodal, there's so many different approaches. Check out my website, thechurch.digital for next steps. There. Oh, by the way, let's get you started on your digital journey here. Uh, you got questions? I'm literally putting my cell phone on here. 484-324-8724. Feel free to give me a call. Like I said, next week, beta 34, dreaming of a social media church. Looking forward to it. Uh, so it's been great. Thanks for this. Beta 33 is in the can for Jeff me for Stadia church planning for the church digital. It's great to have you here and we'll see you next week here on the beta show. Y'all have a good one.