BETA08: Five Options Better than the Connection Card

Hey, welcome to the beta show episode eight here. I'm Jeff with the church digital podcast in Stadia Church Planting. I'm normally introducing Ray DeArmis, digital pastor of Christ Fellowship Miami. For whatever reason, he's not going to join us today. Let's just pretend that he is ba-la-la-ing at la-la-la. So it's going to be me, it's going to be solo, and it's going to be awesome. Hey, so we normally do these on Wednesday. We actually had, I wanted to take a break from doing the beta show. I just got so excited on this topic. It's like, let's do a broadcast anyway, just me. But tomorrow, Wednesday, we're doing the Cray Show. We're going to have some fun, kind of like trying to offer some levity in this holiday season.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, we're doing the top five, unofficial top five ranking of geek Christmas movies. So yeah, it's the holidays. I'm having fun. We can do it tomorrow, Wednesday. But I was so motivated by this topic. I had so many questions in such a short amount of time dealing on this one topic. It's like, hey, we got to do a special episode just for this. Let me clear my calendar. It's crazy. Yeah, it's the holidays. Yeah, there's so many other things to do. Yeah. But we got to talk about this beta episode eight here. Here's the challenge. Top five options better than the connection card. Top five options better than the connection card. All right, let's drill in some detail here. Let me make sure we're talking about the same thing.

The what and the why of the connection card. When I'm literally talking about the connection card, in physical space, it's usually it's that form that's in the worship folder or it's in the chair backs where your visitors are filling out things like their name, their email address. They're signing up for a service option or signing up for a small group. They're giving a prayer request. It's that point of engagement in physical space where you are trying to get people information physically to get them engaged into your engagement pathway, discipleship process, anything other than the one hour on Sunday. So that's what a connection card is. And it's brutally important. It is so important because church is more than the one hour on Sunday, right?

We know that. I don't need to beat that up, but we want to do more ministry than just that one hour on Sunday. The goal, the great commission is to go and make disciples. And that disciple making process is more than just the one hour on Sunday. So we know what the connection card is. We're looking at it right here. Let's talk about why it doesn't work. And maybe if you're interested, what do we do to fix it? Okay, so here we go. Let's look at number one here, the first point of why it doesn't work. And simply put, it's you're asking way too much personal information. Okay, look, I'm cold to the church. I'm cold to your organization. I'm cold to Christ. I see some random video pop up on my Facebook feed and I'm engaging and I'm watching this video.

I do not want to give you my cell phone number. I do not want to give you my email address. I don't want to get spam emails from you. I don't want you to blow up my inbox. And I don't want calls. I don't like talking to people. I don't like getting texts from people that I don't know. And so all of these personal information that you're trying to engage you, the church, you're trying to engage with people that are cold to Christ. Well, frankly put, they're not interested in connecting with you in those platforms because they don't know what you're going to do with the information. How much are you going to spam them, to blow them up? How much of a harassment is going to be? Personal information like the cell phone and like the email address, while it's very popular for you, easy for you, the church to engage with, it's not going to work well for people who are cold to Christ.

And that's different, I would suggest, than physical. Because at physical, people trust you enough to go to your property, pre-COVID, even mid-COVID. I think there's a trust level with physical people. You're reaching a broader reach of people digitally. And so some of that personal information, yeah, you want to give it for the database, but it's not going to connect well with it. People don't want to give it to you. In addition to that, oftentimes the connection card's requesting too much information. I swear I clicked on that and it didn't go. Too much information too soon. I don't want to give you, I, person cold to Christ, cold to church, cold to your organization, I don't want to give you all my kids' birthdays.

I don't want to give you my anniversary. I'm not interested in all of this information. So often churches use that connection card, tie it into like the database for the church. And here are the 47 fields that have to be filled out in order to effectively create a database record in the church management system. Okay, look, online's different. You're going to reach a lot of people. And those lots of people aren't interested in giving you 47 records of data to put into the system. You may need to consider doing another strategy here. And the third part, the connection card is not easily accessible on all platforms. How do you connect to the connection card on Facebook, on Instagram Live, on YouTube?

Where is that information available? It's oftentimes it's not. Connection card strongly featured in church online platform. But a lot of these other areas, it's difficult to get to. You've got to read through the comments on Facebook to find the appropriate time to go to it. And so just for whatever reason, you're not seeing a lot of engagement when it comes to the connection card. If you're honest, look at yourself and evaluate for your church, you're probably not feeling it. Now let's keep pulling that honesty thread. And this honestly may not be the answer that we want to hear. Online services are struggling in context of reaching people cold to Christ. Now there is reach towards it, but is it effective in engaging in getting those connection cards and some of that?

Honestly, there's a movement here where we're discovering, looking at data that's coming back in, that the online services overall may not be as effective in reaching people digitally as we had hoped. Just even this week, Barna has released a digital evangelism report partnering with Alpha. And so digital evangelism, what does it look like interviewing 1,300, 1,500 Americans today, Christians, non-Christians, some of the stuff that's come out of it. 70% of non-Christians are not interested in online church services. Like that's a fact. American non-Christians are not, 70%, okay, 30% is, 70%, the majority is not. They're not interested in online church services. This is a fascinating stat to me.

This is also in that same Barna digital evangelism report here. 90% of non-Christians after having a conversation about faith with a Christian within the past year. So I talked about faith, a lost person, cold to Christ, had a conversation with a Christian, physically or digitally. 90% of the non-Christians reported that the conversation went well. I think sometimes we as Christians were afraid of the wrath of the Twitter sphere and saying something and offending. 90% have reported that the conversation went well. So the fear that we have in not sharing our faith online, honestly, from the non-Christian perspective, we're learning from Barna, they're not feeling it. So, hey, maybe there is a better opportunity for us to not do the services for evangelism, but to do something different and start to take personal relationships and through those relationships, connect people to Christ.

So that's a whole other conversation. By the way, if you want to read that Barna report, it's on Barna.com. There's a short link at Barna.com slash Stadia, S-T-A-D-I-A. And so you can get Barna's report there towards hybrid church that they did with Stadia, the Alpha. It's Barna, the Alpha evangelism. Both reports are phenomenal. Super exciting to see real life stats coming in real time. Well, hey, I've stalled a lot here. Let's get to the meat of it. Five things that we can do better than the connection card. Five things that work better than the connection card. All right, look, here we go. Number one, text connect to whatever. The reason this is better is if I'm on Facebook, if I'm on YouTube, if I'm on all these platforms, the connection card's not easily accessible.

And now if I'm on Facebook on a mobile phone, it's full screen and I've got to scroll around to try to find the connection card. I made like disconnect from the video entirely because iOS, the video goes full screen and you can't connect with it always and firmware and blah, blah, blah. Look, sometimes it's just easier to have a completely separate option. So the text connect to whatever, or here's the church address.org slash connect, make it easily accessible for people to get to the connection card, regardless of whatever platform you're on. Now it's an interesting challenge, even here with the text to connect. Look, I just said, I don't want to give you my cell phone number. And now you want me to use my cell phone number to text you what I want.

And so people are going to be hesitant. Cold people to Christ are going to be hesitant to go this route. Maybe it's worth doing, but there's going to be some hesitancy towards it. So, so know that, that going in Facebook groups to me, this is a huge win organizationally because while I person called to Christ, I don't want to give you my cell phone because I don't want you constantly harassing me. And there's really no way easy way for me to block you. And I don't want to give you my email address because you're going to constantly harass me with things that I'm not interested in. And you, you may or may not unsubscribe correctly when I, when I click unsubscribe to the email, Facebook gives me person called to Christ user.

It gives me complete power to say, I never want to hear from you again. A couple of simple mouse clicks can block. So for a situation of dialoguing with somebody doing this via a Facebook group, doing it via the Facebook platform is incredibly easy. So even things like, Hey, you know what? Jump in this Facebook group. Uh, and when they jump in the Facebook group, you get the handle automatically on Facebook. Similarly dialoguing on the Facebook platform right now, some churches have reported 40%, um, uh, engagement response using Facebook messenger. So in other words, a person called to Christ, I reach out to them directly via Facebook messenger. Churches are reporting back as high as 40% of those response of those requests of those dialogues come back 40% of the time.

The person you're Facebook messaging is going to reply back to you. That is an incredibly high response. If you look at email, you're lucky. If you get 40% of opens, much less 40% of responses, try, try calling people and see if you get 40% of, of responses back. Facebook messenger is very high. I've actually had industry standard. Tell me outside of the church as high as 80% of people are responding to Facebook messenger. And so getting that Facebook address and then dialoguing with them, getting their Facebook profile and dialoguing them through the groups, through the messenger is a big way to build relationships. If you get people fed into a group, now you have access to that group to continually build relationships, create content that gets engagement, that gets them warm to the idea of Christ or warm to the idea of who you are.

And through those relationships, continually funnel them up. Here's another one talking about Facebook and social media, follow up individually, like one-on-one on anyone who likes comments or shares your social media posts or online service. Once again, utilizing that Facebook messenger method or Instagram direct service, do whatever you've got to do to engage with those people, um, directly. So if they like it, that gives you permission to reach out, ask questions like, Hey, how can I serve you? How can I pray for you? What, what can I do for you in ministry? How can I, how can I care for you? How can I help you spiritually? Start to really dialogue through these things and give them an option, give them an opportunity to engage in, and follow up.

Don't be afraid just because they like something that gives you permission to reach out. They don't like you. They won't reply. They don't like you. They'll block you. But the fact that they liked what you said means that they're already a little bit warmer because they, they, they digested a smaller piece of content, which is giving you an opportunity to move forward. I've had a couple of churches tell this one to me. I'm, I'm intrigued by it. And so I would suggest maybe some of you guys experiment with this rather than, you know, filling out a connection card. That means now I have to pick up the phone, email, follow up with that person directly. And which means like, there's nothing accountable towards it.

They can just ignore. I've had a couple churches tell me they've had report, uh, success with this instead of just filling out a form that goes to some email list that, you know, the mayor may not have replied to. Have them fill out the form, which plugs them in immediately into a next steps class and to learn about the church into a one-on-one where there's like immediate application towards it. So they're not just filling out the card to do nothing. They're filling out the card to sign up for something. And the flip side of this, which I could see this working as a one-two punch. If you're going to sign up for something, you need to do it frequently and regularly enough that there's a payoff towards it.

Instead of doing that membership once a month, maybe you do it, not membership, that next steps class. Instead of doing that once a month, maybe you're doing it every week for the, for the month of January and just regularly offering those, those steps. So as people in this Christmas season are, are getting, maybe watching services, getting connected, there's an immediate step to get them to sign up for these, these new next steps, new member type classes on line where they're engaging with it in immediate time. I've had, I've had churches tell me they've, they've had a huge, now listen, there's an opportunity here for the people, just like they're going to blow off that email. They're going to blow off that next steps class.

You will have a percentage. I had a church tell me, Hey, 80% blew us off. And another church that's 60% of people signed up blew us off. The, the, the fact though, there is okay, but you got 20% that showed up. You got 40% that, that actually followed through correctly with it. Would you have gotten that 40% if you tried to reach them via email, build the relationships? It's, it's kind of the microwave approach. You kind of skipping a couple steps to get it in. It's not going to work for everybody. Uh, but it's, I think it's better than just getting, asking a whole bunch of information and then not being able to follow up. Let me give you a number five here, man. We're flying through this, right?

I missed the follow-up comments from you, man. Uh, I could really use a drink of water, but let me get to number five here. Number five, shareable content with the asterisk of, oh, by the way, train people to personally follow up on the digital invite. So as a church, and we, we see this also with, with the Barna report. I don't have the exact number in my head, but P I think was 50, 50% of people are looking to be, uh, to be trained to share their faith. And they're looking for 50% of Christians are looking for the church to equip them with tools to, to share their faith and digital tools to, to share about, about the church. They want resources given to them. Barna, look at it. Uh, the barna.com stadium has got the link.

They're looking for resources, give them resources, give them graphics, give them video clips, let them share this stuff on social media. 52% of people said in that same Barna report, 52% of people said it is important for them in their faith to share information about their faith on their social media channels. They see value in that. And for us, it's funny. I say that I don't want to give out my cell phone number. I just got a spam call on my cell phone number while I'm doing this. 52% of people want to share their faith digitally church, give them assets that, that look good, that are effective in connecting the people that are seeing them to, to your church, to your services online. But what's interesting at the same time, let's train people.

Let's train the people who have these digital assets to follow up. Hey, you had 10 people who liked that social media graphic about your Christmas church service coming up. Personally invite them to watch one of the online services with you. People are cold to the idea of church services largely because they don't like the church. They don't like what the institution has become, some of the stances, and I don't want to get into the political things, but at the end of this, I don't know that people are really cold to Christ as much as maybe they're turned off by what they perceive the church is. You know, Gandhi actually said this, I love Jesus. It's the Christians that I don't like. They're so unlike Christ.

And so sometimes, unfortunately in this season, I think we're seeing that people are perceiving some negativity towards the church when in fact, um, the church maybe has an opportunity to recover from that and how we recover from that is through individuals. So Susie sharing a graphic about a Christmas service is one thing. That's awesome. People will see it. Susie then following up with everybody who engaged on that social media post or Susie using that, not to put it just on social media, but to text it directly to 10 of her friends within her circle of influence. And then personally invite via text, Hey, come be part of a church service with me. Well, those people who are cold to Christ and cold to your organization are suddenly warming up because they like Susie.

They're not telling your, your organization who they don't know. No, they're telling their friends Susie. No, by the way, we talked earlier through this, that 90% of unsaved people of lost people, people who are cold to Christ aren't offended in these conversations with people like Susie. If we want to win in this season, the future of the church is one where we're equipping people, where we're equipping Susie and we're releasing Susie digitally to engage with her people and point them to Christ. And so as effective as it is for the connection cards to possibly engage people to our organization, things like this honestly are another step towards how we should be empowering the Susies of our church, the 99, the people who are already engaged into our church and getting them connected to, um, the church to Christ.

So, Hey, this has been great. So we're going to post all this on, on YouTube. We're going to post it over at the church digital. Obviously look in this Christmas season, we want to see, we stated church planning, we, the church digital, me, we want to see churches thrive. We want to see disciples made. We want to see people take a step closer than a greater understanding of Christ. And, and all of those steps work through relationships. So whether the connection card works, whether it doesn't, whether some of these other things that we talk about work or don't, these next steps for your church, for it to be effective 2021 and beyond all center around building these relationships. So we'll listen, we are, we're going to wrap here.

This has been a great time. Thank you for this. Hey, we're going to be back tomorrow with the Cray show goofing off with Ray, special guest host, Tyler Sansom from church anywhere talking about, listen, how bad is this segue literally going from like relational evangelism to the top five unofficial geeky, uh, Christmas movies, but Hey, you know what? It's 2020. We're just living a crazy life. So if we're going to wrap, thanks everybody. Uh, y'all have a good day. Thank you.