BETA07: Experiment - Learn to Fire BBs before Bullets before Bombs

And now we're good. You never know when it's actually going to click on because I've noticed sometimes it doesn't.

Hey, welcome to the Beta Show, episode seven here with the Church Digital Podcast. Data Church Planning Jeff here once again, joined by Ray the Armist Digital Pastor over at Christ Fellowship Miami.

You want to say hey, anybody? Ray, what's going on?

Everybody, can't wait for you 2021. You're right around the corner. Can't wait to give you a big old hug.

So here with the Beta Show, at least towards the end of 2020, you know Ray gave a tease to it. I don't know about you, but we're tired. It's been a long stretch. And so occasionally we're going to do a little something different. We did the Craze Show last week. We talked about the greatness of Thanksgiving. You can go back and check that out on YouTube if you're really interested in giving, guys. It was amazing. Ribs giving. Mine was hashtag salmon. I ate at a restaurant at Disney World, which was awesome, but that's another conversation entirely.

But here for the Beta Show today, we want to answer your questions. And that's what we do here at the Beta Show. We answer questions on online ministries submitted by people like you. So go ahead and text your questions in: 484-324-87. We'll answer them in a future episode. By the way, we are live, and chances are we can see and interact with you with Facebook, at least in the comments. So if you're on Facebook, comment in there. It'll pop up. I already see a comment here right now. Dan Tebow, what up guys? Okay, well done, sir.

Moving on, by the way. Dan Tebow, was that this week or was that last week? The Liberty University interview?

It's this week. Dan Tebow's on our podcast here at the Church Digital Podcast. He and Professor Lowe, who's a Liberty University professor, awesome, talking about academian church online. Great stuff there. Hey, Dan, um, good to know you're out there.

Here's what we're going to talk about this week, episode seven here: Experiment. Learn to fire BBs before bullets before bombs. I always like this: BBs before bullets before bombs. Let's get to the heart of the question here.

I talked to my church. I talked my church leadership into trying a viewer interactive service this Christmas. I'm a volunteer tasked with creating the format. Staff will execute logistics. How can I start small, shoot BBs before bullets before bombs, and set us up for hopeful success to build on?

Okay, interesting question. You know, it's funny. Even Ray and I were talking off air here a little bit. Not exactly sure what a viewer interactive service would look like. There's some interesting words, and I'm hoping there's some culture within the church of, hey, like we're used to doing this sort of thing, and it's not just somebody trying something ridiculous out of left field in a very terrifying time. Maybe like it is with Christmas. But I love the heart of this. I love the fact that it's a volunteer that's challenging the church. Maybe, hey, we can do this. What if we did it this way? Like so often, some key volunteers that are in my life are still friends that are still pushing me in certain ways. And so I love that relationship where volunteers can maybe push the church into challenging, into trying something different.

So Ray, what are you thinking when you look at this question?

I love that folks dream big. Um, and we want to continue to dream big. Jeff and I love dreaming big, and we love, like, experimenting. However, and this is something to kind of key into as we key into what a BB or what a bullet and then what a BB looks like, is you got to make sure that the fundamentals are done no matter what. Dunking a basketball is fantastic. If you're not able to dribble though, you're not touching the league. And so you got to make sure that the fundamentals are still very, very important and crucial in terms of testing because this is big. Because especially with COVID, everybody keeps thinking high tech, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. But if some of the fundamentals and basics of creating community and all that aren't there, then really you're going to do one great experience. Everybody's going to be like, wow, that was awesome. But then it, you're going to see a little return on the back, and you're going to ask yourself, was it really worth it? And we don't want, we don't want you to experience that. Love that. That's actually that sets up one of the things that I was going to say, and I didn't even tell Ray I was going to talk about this. It was last minute drop. Somebody out in the Twitter sphere tweeted this this morning, and I forget who it was, so if it was you, I'm sorry: Be consistent before you innovate.

Don't be the guy that's just coming out of left field. Oh, I want to do this, and then go and do it. Be consistent with the regular. Create that culture. Create that standard. Get more people involved with you before there. Be consistent. Don't be afraid of innovation, of experimenting, of doing it. But to the point of, if you can't, you know, run, if you can't even walk, why are you going to try to run? If you can't run, why are you going to try to run that marathon? Like, do some simple steps. Make sure you're good at that, that your team, your group is good with that, and move on.

The ultimate thing you want to do is, you know, analysis paralysis. Stuck in a rut. Working Sunday to Sunday. You're just trying to, the church is just trying to be comfortable. They're in that groove, and they're afraid to experiment, try something, or, you know, the average church. I hear time and time again: We just, Jeff, we just don't have time. There's not enough hours in the day. We're so busy doing the stuff that we're doing that we don't actually really want to try to do anything different. And that's the challenge.

You know, from a guy that's been on church staff for years, um, and talking and helping churches in the season, uh, did so often that I tell people: Church staff people think they're the busiest people on the planet, and I don't know if it's actually true. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren't. But that Sunday morning, 9 a.m., it's 167 hours away. There's so much work. There's so much preparation that goes into that one hour. Talking here in the U.S. church model, that sometimes we're afraid to set goals for higher standards, to try to change, do something different, because we've got that routine that's in place. And I love the fact with this question that we've got a volunteer that's challenging that and challenging the church to kind of step through that.

Ray, any thoughts?

Yeah, so you know, you talk about analysis paralysis and being stuck in a rut there. Um, the hardest thing I think is to stay focused on whatever your goal is with this online broadcast or with what it is that you're trying to do. And so you want to make sure, um, Mr. Volunteer Person, that you don't get a whole lot of chefs in the kitchen. You take input from folks, but ultimately there has to be an overarching decision maker who's saying we got to stay focused on our goal. Because if not, and this is my experience with online stuff, this has been Jeff's experience, I mean, listen, uh, you got a great dream, but a lot of other people got a great dream for your dream. And so they're going to want to start pulling it in different directions. And the next thing you know, the whole thing ends up lost and nothing's been done. And guess what? The service is tomorrow.

So you want to make sure and have whatever is the focus of that and then continue to drive towards that. And then if at all possible, pick one platform. Whatever your church's best platform is, whether it's Facebook, YouTube, but pick one. Don't go all of them. Pick one platform and aim for that. This way, communication-wise, you can be very, very clear to your church. Especially like if you don't have clear, good communication in your church, a lot of this is going to get lost in the mix. Like if you're sending them six or seven emails a day, they're going to ignore this. So I'm telling you right now, you have to be very, very clear: This is what we're doing. This is where you can go. And this is how you can find it. Because I guarantee you, your staff is going to evaluate this by how many people engage with it. So that's going to be very important.

Yeah, and it's very, very true there for the volunteer or the staff person. You know, like Ray was saying, understand the situation that you're walking into. More not only like the opportunity that's available to try and do something different, but even the situation of, hey, the production director, the tech guy who's on staff for the church just had a second kid in his really busy office hours time-wise, and it may be a headache. Or the lead pastor is struggling with the idea of, hey, you know what, we're seeing thirty attendance in our building. I'm really not sure on this whole digital thing, and maybe I'm questioning. Or maybe even the financial stress the church may be under because they're seeing a twenty to thirty dip in giving because of the economical situation. All of this feeds into the experiment because what you are doing is you are wanting to change the situation. You're wanting to change the rut. Meanwhile, everyone else in the church is trying to get back to the rut. They want to get one hundred percent of people back in the building. They want to get the giving up. They want to get back to their normal work environments. And sometimes, you know, they're hesitant to try different things when in fact in this season you need to try different things.

So really understand that situation. And even to the point that, well, Ray was saying, if you're a volunteer trying a different thing, have a single staff content contact who you are working through. Because so often in these staff environments, oh, I got to talk to this guy about this, this guy to this, this guy about this, and all of a sudden you're three, four, five, six, nine people along. And I've just seen it time and time again where the volunteer gets fried and gets lost because different people have different responsibilities to check out. So find that one person who's on staff who's bought into it and run with it. Or if you're at a small church, talk to those volunteers that are key holders that are stakeholders in what you're trying to do and get them to own some of this responsibility as well. Do not be the guy who's trying to do a church experiment in a vacuum. It takes more than that.

Let me segue here to number two: Play in the Sandbox.

Um, know the technology. Know what you're experimenting with long before you get to the broadcast, to whatever you're trying to do the day when it's going live. Don't get any surprises. Don't be like, oh, what does this button do? I've been that guy in the middle of the actual thing. I've never actually seen this button before. Let me click. Oh, dang it, it's all gone. What do I do now? Don't be that guy. Play in the sandbox long before you get to that point. Work out all the kinks so when you're actually going into the day of, there's no surprises in what's happening right.

What do you got? And then along with that, like so, play in the sandbox for sure. Test out all your AV stuff in advance because that's usually the stuff that kind of poops out. And then keep it simple. Keep your programming super simple, um, especially in regards to shooting a BB or bullet. Like, have one place where you're shooting. Don't say, hey, we're going to go here, and then we're going to go here, and then we're going to shoot over to this person's phone, and they're going to take over on live. Don't do any of that. And same thing with your chat situation. Like if you're going to talk about, like, interacting with people.

Do it all through chat like encourage people like to interact with the chat, have chat volunteers on-site like to type in and to take part in it below the Zoom experience and all this stuff. I've seen a lot of churches do that and I know that a lot of churches are taking a look at that. The tough thing is that when you talk about interaction and talk about like table interaction, we don't do our services that way where it's like, "All right, we're going to pause the message right now and we're going to hear from our audience," you know, kind of like Donahue used to do or like your daytime talk shows, right? Like that's not what we're there to do. We're there to give content, but then to engage with them through the content. And so as you're playing through the sandbox, think through what that experience is going to be like and then use the KISS strategy: keep it simple, stupid, right? Like as simple as possible. And then roadmap it out. If you're gonna have discussion questions, roadmap it out. Have your chat volunteers aware ahead of time and help them guide the conversation along the way.

Yeah, plan everything out in advance. Let me just roll through some bullets here. Test the technology often. Learn all aspects of the technology that you're testing and experimenting, even the ones you don't need today. Know what it can do so that you can grow, so it can scale with you. And if a platform is way over-engineered and there's a simpler solution, don't be afraid of the simpler solution for today. Don't necessarily buy the platform you need for tomorrow. Buy the platform you need for today. Write the small checks before you write the big checks. Make sure that your organization has bought into the culture, into the DNA that wants to own the responsibility of what you're stepping into. And if you can do that on a free platform or a cheap platform as opposed to an enterprise-level platform, well, it's better to learn those lessons at nineteen ninety-nine a month as opposed to, I don't know, five hundred a month or whatever the higher price point is. You know, all those things can grow up. And so number three here: establish culture. Invite others to play with you. And especially if there's dollar figures that are involved, invite other people into the sandbox. Let them play. Get their feedback. It's one thing to have—and this is a mistake, honestly, I've made this mistake in church life—it's one thing to be the owner of an idea. It's another to be a catalyst of an idea that now other people own. And so the more that you get other people to own the technology, to own the experiment, to own this, whether it's staff or whether it's volunteers, this is where you get buy-in. This ownership of that idea is going to allow it to become part of the culture of what your church is. And the idea will solidify much quicker. It'll be far more effective. And you're going to be able to utilize other people, other than just yourself, to execute it on a regular basis. So don't be afraid to invite others in the sandbox, even if you don't know all the details, you don't have the finished solution for it yet. Bring them in. Let them be part of this.

So I love where this conversation is going. Let's move on to the next one here: go public before you go public.

Yeah, here's what I mean by this. If you are wanting to do something on a Sunday morning, you're wanting to experiment with something on a Sunday morning, a Sunday morning is a horrible time to go public with an experiment for the first time. So find ways to go public with the technology, with the experiment, with this adjustment, with this new idea before you get to the Sunday morning service.

Now, Ray, you were talking about like a Tuesday or a Thursday. Like, what are some examples of some ways maybe that we can roll out and do something here about going public before public?

It's really easy to have a test run ahead of time on an off night that will allow for you to get all the kinks out of the system, but at the same time to cast some vision. So you can even tell people, "Hey, listen," and you can invite them into this process. We've done this. We have legit done this when we've done like Instagram Live sessions. "Hey, church family, we are testing this out and so we want to thank you for joining us here on Instagram Live. And so if you got any comments right now, go ahead and drop them in because we are testing this out." We've legit done that because number one, we don't want to set a false precedent on our account like we're not going live with the express purpose of that. But then I'll even use that to promote, "Hey, but ultimately we're testing this out for Friday night. Friday night we're doing our live service, you know, right here on Instagram Live. We want you to join us here. So make sure and test this out with us and let us know if it's working on your end." And you'd be surprised how many people give the thumbs up, loud and clear, "Everything's great." No, "You're a little distorted. Right? Your Wi-Fi is a little bit off. Your signal is not good." You know, that's a great way to go public before you go public. And guess what? People will be very forgiving about this because they're looking forward to something that you're going to do next. And then afterwards, the great thing with live streams is you can delete them. That's the great, awesome thing. You can go back and delete it so it doesn't have to live forever on the internet. You know, you can go back and delete it once you're done going public before you go public. But it's another great way to point forward, doing that test run. It's a great way to point forward at what's coming next.

Yeah, I mean, things like a Monday or Tuesday devotional thought by the lead pastor utilizing the technology that's pointing towards a Sunday morning service, or you're doing an Advent countdown for five weeks where you're using this technology in a way to lead up and into the Christmas holidays. There's lots of—there's so many easy ways right now. And really, just look at how your church operates and utilize the technology to communicate. But what you're gaining from this is, "Hey, when all the eyes are on Sunday," or whatever, you know, the twentieth, the twenty-second, whatever the Sundays before, or that Christmas Eve service—obviously the twenty-fourth—on that date, before all the eyes are on the high-pressure situation, everyone is comfortable with the technology. They're rolling because they've done it at least once earlier in the week, if not multiple times, right? And so you're walking into that Christmas Eve service with a much higher level of confidence. The lead pastor is knowing, "Hey, that camera's going to work. Hey, this is how I need to address the audience. This is how I handle that situation." Everybody's got a couple repetitions. They're more comfortable as opposed to if it was the first time. It would be, "Oh, dear God, if you're out there, please—no offense—out there. He's out there. Dear God, please let this work," because that's the worst thing that you want to have to happen. Work with it. Be comfortable with it. Take it public before you're really wanting to take it public. That's good. And that's going to lead us into this. I love this: any time that you experiment here, evaluate, celebrate, and edit or iterate.

Evaluate: did it work? Did it not work? Is this the right platform? Is it the wrong platform? Did the technology work and fail? Did the people buy into it? Does it really fit into our culture? With any experiment, we need to be comfortable with the idea of asking questions. And by the way, we need to become comfortable with celebrating the wins as well as the losses. And that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing because that failure is going to take us a step closer to the next thing that is the win. It's going to help us get past this area where we potentially could be stuck. Don't get stuck there. Keep moving to the next thing.

So like this person here, this volunteer who's doing this idea with this interactive new thing, I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if the people are going to buy into it. I don't know if, hey, you know what, it's the first shot. Maybe that first shot's going to be horrible. Maybe that second shot will get better. Maybe the third will get better. But roll through time to really evaluate what's happening, celebrate the win, celebrate the losses of it, and then take the time to iterate, experiment, do another version of it, a revision of it, change something that you've learned from the first section into the second section and see if it gets better. That's how we grow an experiment to the point of where we eventually get to the success. And the church, man, in the season there's so much we can learn from this type of thing.

Ray, what do you think?

Absolutely. And document, document everything. All your evaluations, all your celebrations, all that stuff. Document it so that you can know better for, "Hey, so we're going to do this again," or, "Hey, we're never going to do this again. Here's why." But you at least need to have a good understanding of what worked and what didn't work. And then, of course, and we've talked about on our podcast, the feedback sandwich. Don't give the feedback sandwich of, "Hey, great thing, bad thing, great thing," like, go through all the good, document that, then go through all the bad and document that, and be as specific as possible. "Oh, this didn't work. Why didn't it work? How could it have been better? What will you do next time if you do this?" Et cetera. It has to be specific. You have to ask a lot better questions. And then make sure that you're not the only person who's evaluating it. And please, please, please—because we do this too often in church world—don't accept, "Bro, it was awesome," or, "Bro, it sucks," as an evaluation. No, that's not it. It has to be more than that. What about it was great? What about it was bad? How can we improve? We got to get better. That's awesome.

Dan Tebow's still out there. Amen. We need to learn more from our failures. And so what—want to count that out? That's man, that's a serious-looking Facebook profile photo over there, Chris.

Yeah, it's just right there. By the way, I just want to give a shout-out. Jamie Robbins Robinson over on Facebook, another podcast guest in recent weeks. "Hey, friends, hey, Jamie." Um, all right, that was good for the plug there. That was great.

So the challenge really for us is to learn how to evaluate, celebrate, iterate, and document. You've been hanging around Ben Stapley a lot with a lot of it. It helps, no? It's that right there. Because at least for us, and it's not just in the services—because we do document celebrations and things that we need to change week to week—but everything from last week. We did some grateful news for Thanksgiving. We need to know where we're doing well and where we're not. And the only way we can do that is by having some kind of a visible scorecard. With sports, you can know where you are just by looking at the scoreboard. With church, man, we're so fast Sunday to Sunday that sometimes it's easy to forget where we goofed and how we can make sure that it doesn't happen again. And I've been in on church staffs where it's like, "Oh, man, why are we repeating the same mistake?" Well, we never stopped, evaluated, and then decided, "Okay, this is how we're going to improve to ensure that we don't go back to that." So it's important to document, recognize. Culture of your church is going to fight against the change, right? As a general rule, maybe your church is the exception to the rule. You're the needle in the haystack. But as a general rule, church is going to fight against that change.

That doesn't mean you're wrong. It just means that you need to be aware that there's going to be that tension pushing against, and so take the time to evaluate, take the time to celebrate, iterate, document, and grow through this. Um, take the time to experiment. That is so key for the church today and for our friends here.

Um, wrapping up, I'm really intrigued what a live viewer interactive service experience is, and so if you are watching this, let us know. Um, and I really go kind of, I'm curious to see how this actually goes. The person didn't give their name on the text, but it's here's what. And once again, I want to salute you, whoever this is, because you're the volunteer who's pushing the church. You're the guy who's not paid to be there, and you are owning the ministry to the level that you're challenging them to do things different.

Um, by the way, staff people watching this, celebrate these people in your church. Listen to them, support them, challenge them, and let them lead your church, your department, your organizations, your ministries, whatever, because these are the people that can take your organization to a place that you can't.

Um, this is another weakness of me and ministry life. I was the gatekeeper, and I realized at some point that me being the gatekeeper became a lid, and I needed to start to empower people like this guy sending the text and let them be the leaders of it. And as they grew and as they expanded, you know, all the other boats rose. That I, uh, my leadership rose to a higher level, and as a result, so much more was done for the kingdom, not because I held the gatekeepers, but because I released them out and empowered other staff as well as other volunteers to really run with that.

So whoever this is, uh, mysterious texting person, thank you for what you're doing for the kingdom.

Hey, Reyes, we're wrapping up. Any last thoughts?

No, uh, keep pushing the envelope, mysterious volunteer person. As Jeff said, and then, um, you know, it's one of those things where don't forget you're not gonna change your church in terms of like how you come across to the internet, no matter what kind of tech you use. And so be who you are. Uh, and it's better to be who you are because that's who your people want you to be anyways. So have a great time. I hope you drop us a link, man, so we can check it out alongside you. It would be a lot of fun.

Definitely, definitely excited about that. Future questions, text us here 484-324-8. I hope this was helpful for you. Every week I'm like, hey, we're going to keep this one under fifteen minutes, and right now we're at twenty-five, so failure. I'm closer to success, maybe one day, but right now I can't do a fifteen minutes of these lives. So hey, for Ray, uh, this is Jeff at the Church Digital and Stadium Church Planning. Thanks for hanging out with us once again on the Beta Show, and we'll see you next time. Y'all have a good day. Bye.