EP136: Brandon Arndt & First Days of a Digital Pastor, Post-COVID Edition

So it's no secret that one of my previous employments, one of my jobs here, working as church staff, was digital pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami. And I operated within the years I caught roughly 2015 to 2018. Enjoyed my time there. I was actually grew up in Christ Fellowship Miami, often been on staff there. Honestly, going all the way back to like Hurricane Andrew in 1992 when I was a student intern when I was in high school. So I have a great relationship with the church, and in my own life, I parted ways in 2018 as I felt God was leading me towards starting the Church Digital, which led me to George Stadia, and now looking at where God has me, I love the church Christ Fellowship Miami and love the ministry that's happening there. But I can see how God was moving through me by having me leave and move on.

While I was there, though, as I was getting ready to walk out the door, I handed the keys to digital over to my friend Ray D'Armis, who at the time was involved, actually who was overseeing one of Christ Fellowship Miami's physical campuses. And so Ray, of course, has been digital pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami for three some years, 2018 up to pretty much like right now, where Ray just recently resigned at Christ Fellowship Miami and is no longer going to be on a church staff at all. And instead, what we talked about in a previous podcast here with Ray, he's going almost into like a personal mission as he's going back to school to get a degree as a medical technician of sorts, a medical assistant, and is going to be, for him, he's looking at his next mission field as a hospital. He wants to go and be a missionary of sorts working among the people in the community that centers in and around the hospital, both the patients and the nurses and the doctors and the people with that. And so this is a fascinating concept, but none of it has anything to do with digital ministry, at least in Ray's context.

And so we talked and celebrated Ray, and if you want to go back to that podcast, you listen to it, feel free to. But with this one, we really wanted to focus on what's next. Because just like I in 2018 worked and handed over the keys to Ray D'Armis, which was a decent transition, probably could have been better, but in all things Ray was set up to succeed and went on to do that. And what's fascinating is now, coming in, Ray is setting up the next person to succeed as well.

And so I wanted to bring on Brandon Arndt, who is now the new digital pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami, to have that conversation. Hey, what are the things you're most excited about? What are you? What's your biggest fear right now? What's the biggest challenge? What's the hurdles? What's the obstacles? How do you feel you were prepared for this job? Was this something? He's with the student ministry background. Were there things in student ministry that prepared you for this, or are you? Who are your sources? Who are you falling back on to get information? Who's challenging you right now in this digital pastor job?

Oh, so much. We dove into here. Look, here's what we know. Lots of people are doing digital ministry today that we're not doing digital ministry in January 2020. Lots of churches are learning and growing, even in this post-COVID era, even as we're flying back to the building as quick as we can. There are still churches that are doing and are seeing thriving ministry happening digitally. And we're starting to empower staff to come on board and be the leaders of this in digital space.

And so for this podcast conversation, I want to bring on a new guy, a new guy that's coming in that's trying to figure out how to do digital ministry, maybe seeing some examples of how this has been happening previously as he's had Ray to fall back on and even texting me on occasion asking me questions with some nuanced issues. So he's got a source, but how is he handling this? How is he getting in there and trying to figure out how to lead a digital movement out of a multi-site megachurch, globally reaching here in South Florida?

So some interesting challenges that I think are going to parallel to where you guys are as a church, big and or small. And so here we are, bringing in Brandon Arndt, current digital pastor with Christ Fellowship Miami. You're bringing Ray D'Armis, co-host once again with the Church Digital, former digital pastor Christ Fellowship Miami. You're bringing in myself, Jeff, the Church Digital, of course, powered by Stadia Church Planning, of course, once again, and former digital pastor of Christ Fellowship Miami. And all of us is centered around a conversation that I'm simply calling here the road of a new digital pastor.

Okay, everybody, here you go. Hey, maybe just kick us off here a little bit, Brandon. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up being the digital pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami.

Oh, wow. That's a well, I don't know if we got enough time for all that. But I grew up originally in North Alabama. I grew up there, moved to Miami in 2013 to help plant a church in North Miami, and then ended up at CF as a student guy from that church plant partnership with Christ Fellowship. Ended up there working under Ray as a student guy at Christ Fellowship, and then from there moved up doing some weekend experience stuff for students while doing the student director stuff. And then COVID hit, and since I was the weekend experience person, it now became my job to oversee online students. So that's how I started, that's the first little dabble into online stuff. And then a little bit into COVID, Ray hit me up of, "Hey, I need some help because this is a large monster, and I've been doing this all by myself for a while, and we're finally able to add somebody. Hey, how do you feel about doing it?" And so it's a fun time for me. So I was like, "Sure, I love learning new things and doing things." So okay, let's go. So that's how I ended up there. That's the short version. I know I told you it was gonna be long, but that was pretty short.

That was impressive. So so let's just get to the heart of this. Ray, I did the job no problem by myself. Why are you being a lazy butt and not able to do it? Why do you need help, bro?

I mean, we both know I'm not. I was doing like two or three jobs with that role when I was there. You can't even, we both know I'm not half as gifted as you, Jeff. So I mean, we could start there. But the big thing was, um, so I mean, last year with COVID, CF had decided, as a church, out of nowhere, to expand to all ministries are going to go online, English and Spanish. Like, we decided in one fell swoop that we were going to go bilingual. And mind you, prior to that, and Jeff will remember this, Jeff and I were part of the era of like pulling teeth to try and just get Spanish online. Like, you know, we had English going and kicking strong. That was fine. But just even the thought process in a bilingual city like Miami to get Spanish online was like pulling teeth. And so COVID hit, everything hits the fan, right? And the next thing you know, our leadership is coming to us and asking for English, Spanish, kids, students online. And so in one fell swoop, one of my goals for 2020 was to do a Spanish website. That was a goal for 2020. I got that done in a month. That went from being an annual goal to like a month goal. And it wasn't by myself. I had Romina and Amy Carlero, who's worked with Jeff and a few, and Karina Alonso, who oversees our Spanish online, actually speak into it and translate, and then I integrated a bunch of stuff. But outside of that, we were having to record, and then we made the same mistake that a lot of churches made where we put a lot of staff really in volunteer positions because we were just looking for things for people to do.

But from there, we saw, kind of as we were getting ready to reopen, and Christ Fellowship is still forward thinking in this way, that digital was going to matter and digital was going to matter for the long haul. Now, don't get me wrong. Digital's audience pre-COVID was already outpacing physical attendance. That was something that was already starting to happen. But then COVID hit, and there is no physical attendance. It's all digital. And so the thought process of just having one person oversee essentially what is it, what wasn't just the largest campus at that point, but what was the entire church because everybody had to go online, was too much. And so from there, they gave me the pick of the litter, and I knew that Brandon was gonna be the bang of choice. And so it was just obvious from the get-go. Brandon mentioned that he and I went way back and we worked together for years, and Brandon is gifted in many ways that I am not that that's gonna work out perfect for digital. And so I was happy to bring him on in that role just because I knew what was there.

Brandon, honestly, he's one of those guys, and he's being really humble about himself. It's one of the great things I love about him. But Brandon's the kind of guy that I could put anywhere in the organization and it's going to get better. I firmly believe that about him, and I've seen it. I saw him do it in students, and then I saw him do it with students online, start something from scratch and just boom, watch it flourish. And then sure enough, I knew he was going to continue to go down that thread for adults. So yeah, that's how we ended up there.

Love it. Love the connection, the mentoring here, growing into that. And it's been fun, Brandon. It has been fun. Even from the outside, I don't know that we worked together really closely, but even from afar, when I was at CF, watching you kind of go through the thing, you know, at there at that North Miami campus, you know, as a student guy kind of sort of with production but not really, and watching kind of the steps grow, you've always been, and it's interesting with digital pastors, more often than not, you're they're, I guess the word would be multifaceted. They've got skills and abilities beyond, you know, what the digital thing is, because digital is such an umbrella that encompasses so much of ministry when it's done right. You know, you don't, you know, you've got somebody who's technical that's also gifted in communicating, that's also a relational person, or maybe they're not a relational person, but over time they understand that and develop those relationships. And so, man, love seeing you in this new role.

Now, one of the things that Ray said, and this is an area that I think, honestly, that I think Christ Fellowship's different than a lot of other churches is, you know, normally when I say things like digital pastor, what I'm talking about is like pastoring and shepherding and building relationships and disciple making, and figuring out how the service broadcasts and chat hosts and all those things are important. And to my knowledge, Christ Fellowship does, you know, a lot of those things in context, though. Like, Ray, you built a Spanish website. Like, what beyond building a website? That's the role of digital pastor. Like, what does the role encompass with you guys? Because I think it's more than what the typical church would look at.

Yeah, so at Christ Fellowship, it really is more of a digital strategist slash pastor kind of a role. So for instance, you know, when Jeff was with our organization, Jeff, you oversaw a lot of stuff. Jeff, you oversaw production, you oversaw arts and comm at one point, you oversaw online. And so the thought process as I was coming into the role was that Jeff was going to be focused on digital strategy for our church, which was going to encompass the web, the app, and some other things, and I was going to oversee the online community.

Well, when Jeff left our organization, we did the thing that, uh, not just churches do, but we did the thing that a lot of organizations do, which is we combined two roles into one, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. And because ultimately you're going to be better at one aspect than you are going to be at the other, and something's going to give, something's going to hurt. Now, that's that's a side conversation that we talked about with Jay Cranda. You know, you've heard, uh, you can go back in the in the church digital archives and kind of look at, you know, different types of online pastors and and see. I think Jeff, we did an episode with Jay, right, where we talked about like the difference between what I did and what Jeff did, or what Jay did, in the sense of all the things that I oversaw and Jay was just purely focused on community, which is great if you have a church that can do that. Um, for CF, we're kind of a, we're a megachurch on a shoestring budget, uh, to say the least. And so there were a lot of things that we had to kind of bring underneath this umbrella that Brandon, why don't you just let people know what, what you know, a week in the life of Brandon at CF Church online pastor, digital pastor, is like?

Oh, wow. Uh, yeah, so a week for me is, um, he's only had like three of them. He's not sure yet. I've had like a month and less work. Unless, unless you checked out on me a lot before we, before you exited the, before you exited the organization, and I ran it without knowing I was running it. Put my legs up as soon as I announced I was out. For me, I mean, and that's, I, I don't know if we'll get into it, but that's been an adjustment that I've had to deal with is moving up to where what Ray was doing. Uh, because Ray, kind of with him being his role, he kind of shadowed out some of the things that would come. So, but a lot of my weeks is following up with people. Um, we have our connection cards that we push for our online, um, our online congregation, just like our on-site people. So it's a lot of follow-up with them. It's, uh, prayer requests that we get throughout the week and different hours, different times we get prayer requests. So it's, it's me following up with those people as well, letting them know that we're here for them as a church and, and, uh, that we're praying for them. Uh, but then outside of that, it's, uh, it's a lot of, I didn't know like my, I didn't get a web design degree, uh, but we, I'm making web pages. Um, I mean, we've got, we've got Summer CF coming up, so that's been a big thing for us is making, uh, web pages for that and making sure all that stuff looks good. And, uh, so it's making web pages for things, it's updating apps, the app, and, uh, it's putting in sermon notes for the weekend. It's on our apps and uploading videos and doing all these extra things. It's marketing, looking at how do we market our church through a digital thing. Um, you know, it's extra stuff that I've learned from talking to other people around the US that, that I, that that we have to do that they may not. So that's a, that's a little bit of, of in the nutshell of, of what, of what I do.

Yeah, I'm curious because I really want to dig into the relationship because you've got you've got a creative department. They've got a social media director. There's tons of people within that group that understand marketing at some level. Um, like, and so you're, you're building the web page. That's that's a communications tool, but it's also a ministry tool. So what, what, what is that relationship? Who, who leads that dance? How, how does that work if you have responsibility but you're outside of the preview of the department that we ideally should be handling communications?

Yeah, with communications, I mean, that's I'm kind of, uh, spearheaded in my view, uh, Ray. It may have been different with you, but, but, uh, Ben Stapley helps me navigate between communication of the church and and what we need on the website. So we're all a part. We're still under that. I'm under his umbrella. So web communications, uh, creative is all under his umbrella. So he does a, he does a really good job of, of making sure we know what we're doing and then also me and the department heads have good relationships as well of where we're using, um, different stuff like Basecamp, different things like that. So when we have assignments or big events, things that are coming up, we have those in there to where we can keep track of what's happening.

This is the rare role that that I don't think you see in a whole lot of multi-site churches in that it's both dotted line and campus pastor wrapped up into one. Because Brandon's got to both oversee a community of people that are meeting online and you know that are functioning spiritually and gathering in groups and doing a lot of different stuff. So there's that aspect. But on the other aspect, he's equipping Christ Fellowship at large through digital means, whether it's through the app, whether it's through the site, whether it's through digital tools and et cetera. And so it's, it's the rare bit of both that you don't see a lot in many other roles.

What do you enjoy doing the most? Okay, like, let's, let's pretend your bosses, uh, Ben Stapley, is probably going to listen to this because he likes to keep track of his people. I do know Jen Toberland, Jim, uh, listens on a regular basis. So at some point, two of your supervisors are probably listening to this. Your boss and your boss's boss. This would be great. Um, what do you like doing? Like, uh, Brandon, what are you, what are you passionate about? What's, what's the thing that you're like, this is awesome? What's the thing that you're like, oh, this again? Kind of, what are you vibing on?

Uh, well, no, the most like the fun thing to me is when I get to interact with people. Um, is I mean, whenever I get those prayer requests, like I'm, I don't, I don't think they get tired of it, but I always like, that's usually a celebration that I have of like, people are actually, because it, it always catches me in awe, whether it was on site or online, of people love God enough and trust our church enough to come alongside to share their, to share their what they're going through with us. Especially on on-site, like a lot of them haven't met me personally through, uh, through a Zoom or anything like that, or, or even on site if they live in Miami but are part of our online, they haven't met me, but they're sending things in with a trust that our church is going to do what they say they're going to do and pray for them. And so that's an encouragement for me just to be able to pray for people, getting to walk with people through what they're going through, helping them take next steps like the connection reports that we have of what they're interested in. Uh, like that's a, that's a fun thing for me. Uh, I mean, I don't know if it's because I was on site for so long and, and you know, it gives me a little glimpse of, okay, this is interaction, a relationship that's tangible that I can see and hold on to. Um, least thing I don't like, marketing at all. Like I don't have a marketing degree. I don't want a marketing degree. Um, SEOs and all that stuff just hurts, hurt my head. Like I still can't pinpoint what keyword catapults a video. Ray somehow put in a secret one in a couple videos that just catapulted, and I can't figure it out. It's like on the back, you've heard it, explosive. Just, it's the Frederick and all your metadata. It's like a back end of a back end that he found in YouTube somewhere, uh, that's, that's just driving these things, and I can't find it. Um, but no, like that's the, that's the part that gets, because to me, it's, it's that intangible. I know viewership is is important because it's getting it out there, but it's also can be manufactured, and it also can be like, it can just be there, like just not, it can be not important at all. Like it, it could be just made up people that have accidentally clicked your stuff but didn't even really get into what you were wanting to say or your contact, and they're not integrating into what you're doing. So that's the frustrating side of online for me is the marketing, SEO, and then this whole, if we don't, but if you, if you get caught up in the, I've got to see that number continue to skyrocket, and that means we're, that means we're doing great things just because we've got, you know, this video's got twenty thousand views, you know, it's that, that's the one that holds me. And mind you, Brandon, seem like CF has seen like great engagement numbers on a regular week to just, you know, you typically don't see a whole lot of churches. Brandon, you want to give some insight as far as like how many people are connecting on a regular basis?

Yeah, I mean, usually for our connection reports, I've got twenty different connections off of that. Um, and then new people taking next steps, um, we usually, I think we're averaging five or six first-time guests that that fill out a card for us right now for the year of people that are doing that. And then also taking next steps and generosity with first-time, first-time givers and things like that have really been the the past little bit has has picked up a lot. Ten to twelve, and then relapse givers as well. Um, people want to get baptized. Like all these things are the measurables that that make me happy to be a part of online, to be a part of online. It's really what we celebrate, or I've tried to celebrate, and what Ray has instilled in me to celebrate is these things are people's lives being changed. So you celebrate those things. A view is a view, but you celebrate that view once it, as it takes its next step. Um, and it's really in whoever it is relationship with Jesus. That's, that's awesome. It's not, it's not just about the reach. It's not just about that view, but discipling that view, uh, along the journey and celebrating each and every step around the way.

That was eloquently said, Brandon. That was impressive. You see how, how could you not think Brandon was gonna be the guy? That's what I'm saying. Like, it's just so obvious. He got it. That's it. He's had a good trainer along the way. Let's just say it, say it that way.

I had a few of them. Yeah, awesome. Uh, hey, so, so Ray, I mean, just in, and even to drill in, let me ask you this. Why? Okay, and I mean, we were joking, maybe not, Brandon literally does have a good grasp on this. Uh, but what were some intangibles? What were you looking for? So I mean, you're literally, you're, you're leaving. We talked about it in in the previous episode, uh, and you're trying to, to replace yourself and trying to set up the church to succeed moving forward. Everything ended on great terms. No, no ill will, no harm being done. How did you transition? What were the skill sets? What were some of the characteristics you were looking for that led you to Brandon?

Um, uh, first thing I would say is, um, and I kind of alluded to this earlier, um, Brandon was proven within our organization already. Like there wasn't a doubt in my mind that he's a good leader because I've seen him lead before. Um, Brandon, for me, and, and this isn't an insult to Brandon, it was just to me, he was one of those guys that didn't get the shot that he deserved, uh, in the sense that he had proven himself over and over and over again in my book. Like I had seen him just win and succeed and do things well. Uh, and so Brandon, if I'm speaking out of turn, you know, go ahead and stop, but that just from my perspective was the way that it was. And so I'd seen him win over and over again, uh, and, and do things well and not need to be in the lead seat in order to win, which is so big for online. And let me tell you why. Many times, uh, physical campus pastors want to be able to communicate at their physical campus, but that doesn't get to happen for online. The lead communicator or the person communicating on stage is typically the person who has to carry thirty to forty minutes.

of the broadcast and so it takes a lot of humility but it also takes a lot of leadership skill to say that I don't have to be that person in order to grow community here. And Brandon had that right from the get-go. Brandon didn't have to be the person who was speaking on a Friday night in student ministry. He would empower other people to do that, so long as he could build relationships with others. And so as soon as I saw that in tangible and intangible quality about him, I said, "Man, this guy is going to be a great leader no matter where we put him in the organization."

The only other thing that I needed to know after that is if you wanted it, because you have to want to do ministry online like that. And I can't be clear—like, this isn't a good role to just drop somebody in. And for those of you church pastors out there, you're just looking for a body, this is not a good role to just put a body in. Like, this has to be somebody who's a go-getter and somebody who's driven, and so somebody who actually believes in the vision and mission of your church and carrying that out in a digital landscape. And Brandon very much was that guy. He's a go-getter. He's on top of things. He's organized. He's administratively gifted. But on top of that, I always knew that he was going to get the job done. He wasn't going to make excuses. He was going to go after and get out and get at it. And if he couldn't figure it out, he was going to ask, or he was going to learn. And all those things are what you need wrapped up in a digital pastor role, because there is no figuring this out because it changes so fast and it changes often. Today we're talking streams in digital groups. Tomorrow we could be talking VR. We don't know. And so especially in this landscape, you need somebody who's teachable, somebody who's willing to learn, but also somebody who's very driven. And Brandon was all those things.

Brandon, care to refute anything he just said?

I mean, I don't know. I'm gonna have to carry both of you guys around with me. Like, I'm gonna get the sound bites of this and so set it on my desk so when I'm having a bad day I can just pull up Jeff and Ray and have that sunshine and rainbows in me around me.

Pastors, I'm gonna repeat this statement: do not just put anybody to do this role. Like, do not just allow somebody to fill in the gap here. Pick somebody that's a proven leader that you're going to empower to lead this because it matters. And because so much of your church—over a hundred percent of your physical attendance is going to interact with this aspect of your church because even your physical attendance, they're going to interact with your digital component and they're going to be sharing the messages. So why not have somebody who is really good interact with this piece? Because you need somebody that's there.

Well said. And there—it's funny. There's within Stadia we're doing so much analysis, character analysis, character development, surveys, digging into what makes for a strong digital pastor, a digital church planter. Entrepreneurial is a high value. Networking, disciple maker, high value. Relational, high value. Ability being able to see gray and not black and white is a high value, because so much of doing this digital, it's breaking and it's bending the rules of what's happening digital. So if you've got a rule follower, that's actually one of the worst things you can do in digital space because what you're going to get is physical ministry done digitally, which is going to crash and burn, as opposed to really taking advantage of digital, which is bending and melding the physical and the digital pieces together. So yeah, love so much of this conversation.

Brandon, hey, if you're looking—so your student ministry kind of background here, a little bit. What are some things that, hey, you know what, student ministry prepared me for this job? What are some characteristics, some traits that it's like, yeah, thank you very much, student ministry, because I've got that tool in the toolchest?

Yeah, I think probably the biggest thing is where I served, that in student ministry within CF and then even before that. Um, I've got the freedom to try things. Like, we were left alone to try things. Like, we could do stuff. Um, so I could throw stuff up against the wall and see what stuck. And then if it stuck, you know, we go with that. If it doesn't, oh whoops, we don't do that anymore. If we just go on about, we go do something else. We throw something else up there. Um, so I think that's one big thing of like just not being afraid to try new things, um, to try stuff, um, to see what works, what doesn't work. Um, I think that's probably one of the biggest tool things. And then also my days before CF as a student director like in Alabama, one of the things was that I didn't have the robust stuff that some of the larger churches had. And so it was, for a while I had to build up volunteers and then I was having to learn. I didn't have my own production guy. Like, that was me learning how to do ProPresenter when it was—everybody was still trying to use EasyWorship and ProPresenter had come out and it's like, "Let's switch really quickly because this is great." And so learning how to do that on my own, learning how to get set—like, I'm not an audio guy, but learning how to make that to where it doesn't hurt your ears. And then recruiting people that actually know how to do this stuff. Um, I think that's some of that stuff too is just being able to, or just learning how you grow stuff that's not you, but you're learning. You have to learn it first and then you help cultivate somebody else. Y'all bring somebody else along with you to help you with that. And so I think that was a big thing with student ministry. Those two things: um, being able to have freedom to mess up and be able to throw things up against the wall and see what works, and then also being able to build up and having to learn how to do things.

Yeah, having the freedom to mess up changes a lot of things. It gets you aggressive instead of fearful. Um, and it's interesting. Church leaders often struggle with that. There's a level of expectation. There's a level of excellence. You know, excellence is a great word, but excellence often becomes a shield of, "Let's not change because what we have works." It gets to this place of holding on to what's good when there may be something great. You just gotta have the freedom to experiment, to let go of what's excellent, try—yeah, okay, maybe it's not broke, but we still wanna do something different because there may be something better in return.

And so love that for CF and hope that you continue to—when that was a thing to do with me serving in students and taking over online, like, we didn't have anything. I mean, I could look to what Ray was doing, but what Ray and they were doing for the adult, like, that sometimes doesn't translate over to what a student would want. So we were able to, and I had great people on my team that had great ideas. There's a production guy at Christ Fellowship, eighteen-year-old guy, Christian Dalberry, that if it wasn't for him, like, a lot of our stuff we did, like, I wouldn't have ever come up with. Like, I wasn't coming up with it, but I helped. I let him express his ideas and we were able to run with it. Of cinematic shooting in our pre-recorded worship to make a more engaging shot while we're shooting the message instead of just having one stagnant camera and maybe another one that's a side camera. Okay, well, let's put somebody else up on the stage too with a separate camera that that speaker can turn to and speak, can talk to whenever it's a really critical part of their message where they really want to get up close and grab engagement. It was using a drone. We don't have a jib camera at Christ Fellowship, so what did we do? We brought in a drone and we flew the drone around to get different shots for worship and stuff just to give you a different view and different look. And changing stuff up like that, hosting moments—we didn't do them from the stage. We would go to the balconies. We would go to the—like, I even asked them, I was like, "Hey, can we get up in the catwalk?" They're like, "Well, I don't think that'll be a great shot, but we can maybe try one day." And so, you know, got to try all these different things. I was able to do that in student ministry, and I think it—I mean, Ray can tell me if I'm wrong—but I think it helped push the church along a little bit because we could be the guinea pig experiments and then he could grab on to whatever worked and could tweak it to how he needed it.

And this is something that a lot of people miss that happens in physical church too. Whatever your student ministry looks like is typically what your Sunday morning is going to look like in ten to twelve years. That's just the way that churches have evolved like ever since student ministry became a thing in the eighties, right? So student ministry, like, typically, like, whatever it is that you're seeing, the style of music, the, you know, the type of artist that you use, or even, you know, just kind of what's going on up there, eventually those folks grow up. They go into their twenties and thirties, and what do they do? They plant a church and they change the way that church looks like. And so in the same way with digital, we were able to do a lot of cool stuff thanks to Brandon's leadership and thanks to the folks that are there like Christian and others that they experimented with everything. I mean, they threw everything on the board. They said, "All right, well, what if we did worship different? All right, so what if we did this different? What if we did hosting different? What if we did the message different?" Because they started to see—they started to take a look at, "We've got to go with what works because the students weren't engaging with something that was just student ministry done like church online for adults." So that wasn't working for them. So they opened up the entire can and said, "Let's change it all," and they did. I mean, Brandon, you know, you should—you guys should share what you guys did for Thanksgiving last year because I thought that was pretty unique.

Oh yeah, for Thanksgiving, um, we also kind of did it for Christmas, but Thanksgiving we changed it up and, uh, we actually went to a volunteer's house. So we did the whole service there. So we did the living room. We turned it into a studio there and recorded worship there, a broken down version of it. But, um, but we recorded worship there. We lined up—we had four or five of us of the student directors that were there to just, and we all had like a thing that we would share, and then led that into, uh, what we're thankful for, and just kind of helping lead students of, "Hey, when you're with your family this Thanksgiving, like, here's something you can do around the table to help." It's been a tough year. It was COVID. It was COVID. Everything was happening. Like, it was a tough year. People had lost people. People lost jobs. Like, their parents had lost jobs. Different things were happening. But it was just a way for us to be able to say, "Hey, here's—we all need to be thankful. So here's a good intimate way that we can come together, do that, and then also at your home you can do this. Like, you can sing. You can get together around your dinner table instead of watching the football game or whatever while you're eating. Hey, go around the table before you start or while you're eating of, 'Hey, what's one thing that I'm thankful for that God's done this year?'"

And so we kind of incorporated some things like that even within our messages that whenever the student directors would teach, we started using things where we would use animations. We would turn one of our student directors into a cartoon and a part in a couple of the things.

And where we would use like a not a green screen—we were in a studio—but we would project onto the wall and they would be able to use instead of a TV that most, you see most people on those Sunday use. You would use a TV to talk about your points. This was all up on the wall and we would do like little stick figures to represent what they were talking about. So you just, we just used a bunch of different things to try to engage and try to keep things fresh so that, you know, they didn't get bored.

And a lot of that comes with having that—you have the freedom to explore, to experiment. And what's funny is, you know, just for the audience listening, Christ Fellowship is a very high pressure, high stress environment. And even with that, there's still an opportunity. There's, you know, there's always—you're 167 hours away from that Sunday morning, away from that Friday evening broadcast. And but there still is an opportunity to kind of explore there. And what's fascinating, you know, Brandon, you're talking about, you know, an eighteen-year-old Christian Dahlberry. Dude, okay, so I'm forty-three years old. And I told that eighteen-year-old Christian Dalbury, "I don't even go to Christ Fellowship Miami anymore. Hey, Christian, anytime you need help on a Friday night for me to work underneath you, I'm happy to, bro. Call me up. Let me run that switcher." And I just, I love the fact that the church has given freedom and empowered some of these young kids with these crazy ideas. You know, Garrett Silgie's another example of this. Garrett Silgia is now production director for the church. He's twenty-something. Garrett's actually editing the video right now. Hi, Garrett. Garrett is one of these twenty-something kids that came up through the church and is now leading in big ways because the church gave freedom for him to explore and to do some things different. You know, he was working with Robert Chrisler back in the day, another kid who came up through the church and had freedom towards that. And so there's all this opportunity to do radical things. And I'm not even just talking digitally. There's different mindsets that are existing within your church. If we look at the people of the church and we give them freedom to explore these things as opposed to holding them tight to a system of what we think is excellent, there may be better or learnings to even come out of that. Give it a try, iterate, try again, learn something from that and make improvements from it.

And so that's honestly, I didn't think that was the thing we were going to cover in this podcast, but I love that we took an opportunity to call it out because I think it's really, it's one of the strengths of the church—how it's able to develop these people when they're young, utilize them, and give them the authority to take a step at things and run with it.

Absolutely. Give them, you know, empower them to do it. But then the next big thing is also give them the freedom to make a mistake here and there. Because, you know, in order to reach those bounds of creativity that you're talking about, you kind of got to pull back a little bit in terms of thinking through, "Oh man, but what if it doesn't come out as good as I want it to be?" That's the only way that you really get to try new things and you really get to explore some of those boundaries. Because listen, the Thanksgiving episode that we're talking about, or even some of the other things that we did, did they come out exactly the way that Brandon and the team had envisioned? No. But you got to be a bit of a romantic and go for it anyways. And so the fact that they were willing to take the risk and go for it, and you know, as somebody who's mentored me before says, "Hey, so you know, they're going to shoot for the stars, but if they hit the moon, that's totally fine. What's the worst that could happen?" And so we've seen it proven over and over again.

So who said who said the moon thing? Because I say that all the time.

Oh, for that, uh, I think I've heard you say it before, but I've heard uh, Professor Massimini, who I've got—it was like an eighty-year-old Cuban guy that I've got like breathing down my neck with all sorts of anatomy and physiology now. He says, "Garmas, if you want an A, you need to go for a two hundred. That is the only way that you get an A." And so it's working out so far. But yeah, that's Massimini for you.

So there you go. Isn't that a clothing line in the nineties? Masa?

It wouldn't surprise me if Massimini has his own clothing line, but he's still choosing to dress like it's nineteen ninety-nine. That wouldn't shock me at all.

All right, Brandon, what's the one thing? What's the first thing you changed after Ray left? Ray packs up his box, it's loaded in his trunk. What's the first thing you said, "Nah, we're getting rid of that?"

Uh, everything. No, I'm just kidding. No, actually, we've held on to a lot of things. Like, I haven't been able to—I was trying to get my, you know, keep my head on above water, you know, because it, we talked about earlier, like, all that I have to oversee. So it takes a little bit to change some things. Maybe the first thing that we did change, though, um, and it wasn't anything that Ray didn't do or didn't want to do, but we've upped our Spanish hosting to where we co-host now. Instead, before it was a single person. And so for the past month, we've had co-hosts throughout for both English and Spanish to help beef that up. So we've recruited some people there. In the works, if you are subscribed to Christ Fellowship's YouTube page, we are going to give you some relief of seeing a twenty-seventeen Ray. We're working on getting a new YouTube channel—um, I guess you'd call it trailer or promo, whichever one you want to call it—so we're updating a few of those things. It's just some small things that needed to be updated. Like right now, I'm just trying to—I'm trying to keep the train on the train tracks, and then we'll work on some, we'll work on adding some detour tracks here in the next few months.

Awesome. Don't be afraid to kick right at the curb whenever possible and blame me as often as possible too. That is one thing Ray told me: if anything happens, just blame Ray. And I was like, "Okay, but as long as you know it." So there were multiple things I found out actually. We were just talking about this the other day with somebody from Christ Fellowship. They were like, "I can't believe you did that." I'm like, "Did what?" They told me, and I was like, "Oh, did I get blamed for that? Was that me?" Okay, cool. It could be me. That's fine. But that wasn't how it went down. But that's cool. We could live with it.

Yeah, maybe Ray took that advice whenever you left. He was like, "Oh, we'll just blame Jeff." When in doubt, when in doubt, play Jeff. That's how it works, right? And it'll be blame Brandon one side whenever that job's—that's exactly right.

No, I mean, that's kind of the fun of passing something on between you and I too, because I did the same thing with Tucker when I gave, you know, the physical campus, you know, to him over at Coral Gables. And it's one of those things where I encourage them. I said, "Hey, listen, if nothing else, you can allow me to be the bad guy. So if a new rule comes in, just be like, 'Well, then this is Ray's rule. You know, I'm just enacting it.'" Because being the new guy sometimes in that situation, and especially when with a role like online pastor or campus pastor where you're caught in the middle between top-level leadership and people have high expectations underneath you too in terms of congregation, that can be a bit of a challenge. And so if I can be a punching bag on the way out unwittingly, absolutely.

I'll tell you that the thing that I mean, honestly, even just going back looking historically at my run as a digital pastor, I don't think I really appreciated the amount of influence that was there. Um, I can remember I was out of the position for maybe a year or so—this is pre-COVID—I'm sitting at a Starbucks. Um, it's actually the one here, one thirty-sixth street and US-1. If you're here in, or one forty-seventh street, US-1. And so I'm sitting inside the Starbucks and it's packed out. And so I'm on my laptop working. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing something, not really paying attention. There's one table open to me in the entire Starbucks. And in walks—I've told Ray the story, I think, in walks Omar Greatly and Carlos Cardenas. Okay, so at the time, it was the broadcast campus pastor and the executive pastor. Both were on the teaching team. These are now the lead pastor of Christ Fellowship Miami and the essentially director of campuses, executive something like that. And so like, these are two very important people within the church. These are two people that are high-profile positions within the church. And I'm a digital pastor who hasn't worked at the church for a year, just quietly sitting, you know, at my desk. They're having a conversation. We said hi. We were social for a minute. I went back to work. And then they went and had whatever conversation they were having. In walks this dude. I don't know who this guy is. I've never seen him before. And then he walks past me and he turns around, looks at me for an awkward minute. And I look up from the laptop. I don't know, Bray, you may have gotten this maybe more than me, but I love this. "Hey, you're the guy from the TV." And it's like, "You mean the computer? The laptop?" "Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hey, I'm Jeff. I'm the digital pastor. I was the digital pastor." And this guy, like, comes in and he starts, you know, sees me, recognizes me, has this conversation, starts bearing his soul, all the stuff going on, talking about the church. You know, fortunately in a very positive example. Now I want you to understand the situation. He recognizes me as the digital pastor. He does not recognize two of the three people on the teaching team literally one table over from me. And the tables were so close they could have jumped into the conversation and dialogued into it. So like, he has clear purview, and he just recognizes me as being that guy that shows up on the screen every once in a while when I watch a service online. And so the ability from a digital perspective to speak into and to champion these ideas for Christ, it's a beautiful thing. Ray, do you ever have an experience like that?

A ton. And especially during COVID, um, even masked up, I would go to places and people would stop me like, "Hey, you know, you're pastor, right? You're the church online guy, you know, for Christ Fellowship." And that was something that I hadn't, I never kind of anticipated as part of the role, which was kind of weird, you know what I'm saying? Um, it was an odd kind of celebrity. It never got me any free food, which is always the worst kind of celebrity. But um, but it was, but it was something that was very humbling in that kind of regard because so much of this feels like it's behind the scenes because you're not standing in front of an audience of people. And yet with digital, the largest audience is not in the room on Sunday morning. And that, I think, you know, prior even prior to COVID, as that continued to happen over and over and over and over again, you know, if I was in the Coral Gables area, I would get stopped by like, I don't know, one or two people a month as the church online guy would get stopped.

By like two or three people a week, you know, in terms of like how that would happen. And so it just gives you an idea of a lot of people are watching, whether or not—whether or not you consider them to be part of Christ Fellowship, they consider themselves to be part of Christ Fellowship because they're engaged online. And because of that, as the church online pastor, you become their campus pastor.

Yeah, we've even seen it within our ministries. So like within our CF Kids, like they do an incredible job with their online. It's a lot, but they do an incredible job with it. And just the kids at a local campus, if they go—the people that are on that online, if they go visit a local campus or they're part of a local campus, the kids come in and they're like, "Oh wow!" Like, "Oh, it's so—" and so from the—from the—from the TV, from like, they like you said, from YouTube, you're, you know, and they get you, they get excited. And it's like they meet—they've met somebody. And stuff. But we, you get that here and there. I haven't got it as much yet because, you know, really remixing it, it'll happen for you. It'll happen for you. It'll be okay if it doesn't. If you get free coffee, you will have surpassed Jeff and I in every area of life. All it takes is one free coffee. That's it.

Well, there it is. So, so, uh, podcast community, just let's make it happen. If you're in Miami, uh, just let me know if you see me walking around. Let's one-up Jeff and Ray. Let's put that out there. Do it. Give my man a shot real quick. Do it. Awesome. And maybe set the standard a little higher than than free coffee. But hey, it doesn't hurt to start. It's a start, you know? That's true. I'll give it to you. What's your biggest challenge right now, Brandon? You know, you're three weeks in, you're figuring this out. What's the hill you're trying to climb?

The hill I'm trying to climb, um, I think right now would be um building back up our chat hosts and um and then also figuring out our small group philosophy of how we're actually—how we're going to do that. But with online, with as a hybrid church, how we're going to do that. Um, with chat host, I think Ray may have spoke about it before, but one of the—we think that one of the biggest mistakes we made was during COVID was having our staff as chat hosts because we lost people that were volunteering to be chat hosts because it's like, "Oh, well, my campus pastor's on here saying stuff. What am I gonna say that they can't?" Like, that they're gonna, you know, where you put the pedestal on somebody. And it's, and so it's like you just start losing. So now it's everybody's back physical, and now it's like, "Oh, well, okay, now we see what's left." And it's like it wasn't as gleaming and great as what we thought. And so it's just building that up. And then also with our Spanish, um, with our Spanish community as well, like helping, like figuring out the bandwidth between uh the people that run that, are help run our Spanish and global and within our online. Us finding the bandwidth because they're wearing a lot of different hats and doing a lot of different things too. And then with online, with me, and I'm not bilingual. Like English is my language. I took Spanish for two years in high school but forgot a lot of it. So it's so finding the bandwidth between both of our stuff to help build that chat hosting, um, that chat hosting community as well to help build that. And then our small group philosophy. What do we want to do? Is it if anybody fills out something online that it comes to on the online team and we find small groups from there? Or is it more of if they—if we get them and they live in the Miami area, we find the closest uh campus that they live to? And since we're a hybrid church and even our physical campuses have on—have Zoom, have uh still have Zoom small groups, do we get them plugged in there or help push them towards a physical, uh, small group? Or and then if not, then okay, well, you can join in on on our online Zoom. So I think those are the two big challenges right now that are probably going to be my big focuses for the focus for the for the next six months, the end of the year, to just try to put some put some benchmarks out there to try to grow that. Because and it's all engagement focused. Like like I said, like the view stuff, like it's gonna come and go. It's a roller coaster. That's probably that's another thing a hard thing that I've had to deal with is is jumping in. I tried to tell myself not to. Ray told me not to. But it's you get caught on that view, that viewership, and it's uh it's like a roller coaster. One week for some reason a key word hits and it skyrockets like to the moon, and the next week something doesn't hit and it just drops. And so it's you know Facebook decides it wants to do its thing, or Instagram wants to do its thing, or Chop for for some reason the server overloads or something, you know, you have your stuff. And so that's that's been a struggle. Just a personal struggle. It's not a—of not getting locked in on on numbers and letting that dictate how I feel about what we're doing as a church and what I'm doing as a as a director.

Well, I mean, I can give you horror stories of of people, myself included, who gain their identity based off of that butts and seats, digital or physical number, and and how that messes with the psyche and and loses, you know, God's given you X number of people to disciple. Disciple them. Um, you know, celebrate those steps of taking that person in isolation and moving them closer towards the disciple. Don't don't freak out because that number is bigger or smaller than what God's brought you. Run the process. Keep working through uh what you have, and and God will give more in his time.

So love that, and love the fact that you're three weeks in and have that wisdom. Um, I I may have been several years in before I had that wisdom, and I probably had more hair and and darker goatee.

Um, well, it's probably because I saw a big downswing after Ray left. We had a pretty big downswing, so I had to come to grips really quickly with that. This is the—Godzilla's curious, right? Like, coming out of uh COVID, now that we're like almost completely fully reopened at CF, and I kept telling Brandon, you know, as as the church continues to open up more and more, to continue to watch that number. But then to look at more the connection card number. That was going to be the big one to look—how many connections were coming in—and to champion that. Because either way, even when we were like hitting our highest of highs last year, the thing that I kept bringing in leadership was, "Hey, I know that you're celebrating this, but the reality is is that what you really should be celebrating is this. You should be celebrating the number of connections. Like, the number of views is cool, but look at the number of connections." It's almost like—and this is a terrible biblical allusion, but work with me here, folks, right? So the disciples come back to Jesus, and they're all like excited because they casted out demons, they've healed the sick, and they've done this stuff. And Jesus says, "Yeah, yeah, that's great, but greater than that, man, once you thank God the fact that your name is written in the book of life." You know, so like he's trying to give them perspective. You know, and in the same way, I think we all need a dose of perspective that if people are taking next steps, that always matters more. That supersedes even who's putting a butt in a chair or who's you know putting a view on the screen. Is who's taking a next step in terms of moving forward in the relationship with Jesus? That's a bigger one.

That's beautiful. You know, John 6, one of the feeding of the thousands—Jesus had a mass followers. He fed him. He was doing signs and wonders. He literally fed him dinner. Uh, the next morning, they—people go to him because they're hungry for breakfast. He doesn't give him breakfast. He actually chases them away. He starts saying, "Eat my flesh, drink my blood." I believe it says in Jesus, in in John 6:66, it says something to the extent of, "And they were offended, and some left." Like, even some disciples at that point walked walked away from Christ. And so I mean, even Christ himself wasn't about the reach. He used to reach number to engage people towards creating disciples, even if it meant chasing away some of those people that were the hangers-on.

Yeah, I lovingly call that the zombie message. The zombie sermon. Eat my flesh, drink my blood. Thin the crowd real quick.

Yeah, the zombie message. Oh, we need to do a podcast on that. Like, there may be some something there. Let's maybe that's too crazy for for this. That's that's awesome. Hey, Brandon, uh, just as we're wrapping up here, um, any, any uh, what advice would you give to somebody who, you know, okay, look, you're you're a month into the role, we're heading back to the building. Um, and so there's a lot of energy churches across America to head back to that to the building. Some churches are forgetting some of those lessons that we've learned in this COVID season. The the the golden age of church was February 2020, and that's exactly what we're going back to to to live through that that aura again. So you're a digital church, you're, I mean, you're a digital church pastor. You're literally walking that line right now. Um, what advice would you give to somebody out there who's new in the role and maybe experiencing this like you are?

Yeah, wow, that was a tough one. I don't know advice that I would give. Um, I mean, hopefully you can be honest with the people above you, like to to share your struggles with, like, if if in in a respectful way. Um, you know, so if we're trying to go back to things that that we're working and and pre-COVID, and but we know that this is like it's gonna zap the the mission, like if it's gonna kill the mission of what we're doing online, like hopefully you you have enough—hopefully your leadership is open enough to where you can go and and talk about those things and not just hold on to them and just get bitter about it and be like, "Well, these people don't know what they're talking about. They keep trying to go back," when you never let them know, like, "Hey, let's not go that route."

Um, I mean, other than that, I mean, guess from the three weeks, I mean, I guess it has to be like don't chase those numbers. Like, don't chase them. Like, they're gonna come. Like, put out content, put your content out there. Um, get it, get it out there in front of people. But try to disciple people, whether you're a large church, small church, whatever it, whatever it is, like, whoever's—what—try to disciple them. Try to try to bring them along. Try to bring them along with you. Um, and and help them grow closer to Jesus. Um, it's the ultimate goal. Don't go chasing those numbers because like I said, they're going to come, they're going to go. It's just different things. Um, and then uh don't be afraid to to fail, which is a tough thing for for me sometimes because I am a—I do have like a kind of a perfectionist thought process in my mind of where I get a—and I also, and this is probably this is not good in the role that I'm in, but I'm working through it—of I feel way more comfortable about something that I've done before and I've seen done before to implement it. Where if it's something I have to create new, I get a lot more uncomfortable. And so it's okay to be uncomfortable, and it's okay to try to do those things. You don't always have to go back to, "I know this is tried and true." It may be tried and true, but then when you try it again, it ain't tried and true no more. And so don't be afraid to to try new things, uh, to do that as well. And um and yeah, don't be afraid to ask people. Like, get, like, talk to people. Like, luckily, I have YouTube guys that are that are phone calls away, uh, texts away if I have questions. Um, I've also network with other people. Um, so jump in those Facebook groups that you see. Um, jump in.

You know, if you see a social media, a church that's doing things that you like, and you see them doing, reach out to them. Try to reach out to who their online director is or something and just have a conversation. Most people that I've talked to, no matter how big, no matter how small, like they can make, they'll make time to speak to you and help you out. So don't be afraid to ask questions and think you've got to go across it by yourself. Like there's other people to help you get through it.

The one thing that I love about the digital community, digital ministry, online pastors, digital pastors, digital insurance planners, like it is, it's a very tight and supportive community. And I was telling somebody at this lunch today, we were all crazy pre-COVID. COVID just validated everything that we've said. And so pre-COVID we were thinking this way when the rest of the world thought we were nuts. And so the support that we have for one another and the ability to help others who have questions, like there's just high level, because we all remember the days when it was like, you're an idiot, why do you think this way? And now, thank you very much, COVID. Okay, maybe you are an idiot, but at least we can see the purpose behind why you were thinking the way that you did. There's some perks with you being crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Twenty years worth of perks. That's got a decent payoff. Let's just say that.

Awesome. Hey, this has been a great time. Brandon, excited about you in the new role and where you're heading off to, Ray. You know, as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts?

Yeah, I guess you guys can see what a tremendous person that God provided in Brandon. Transition well whenever you leave a role. Transition well. Um, leave something behind for somebody to pick up and keep running with. I used to think that ministry was a sprint, and then the older I got, I thought it was a marathon, and now I realize it's a relay race. So my job is not necessarily to do well for me. My job is to do well with something and then to give it to somebody who can do better. And I believe that God provided that person. I believe he's going to go far with this, and then one day he's going to do the same and hand it off to somebody else, because we're all temporary. But you know, if you're building digital around yourself, then really you're not serving the kingdom. You're serving you. And nothing could be a life less spent than building something around yourself as opposed to thinking kingdom-minded. So you know, Brandon, man, thank you for grabbing the baton and running with it, because you're gonna run far.

There we go. We're gonna add that in. I'm telling you guys, Garrett, just send that, just send the whole audio file over here. I'll chop it up myself, and we'll just have Jeff and Ray. I'm gonna put it in my back pocket and play it on my phone as I walk down the street. It's gonna be great. I'm gonna be the happiest guy.

Well, and to be fair, and this is the other thing, you know, like I grabbed the baton from Jeff, and Jeff set up something that was great and stable ahead of my time and was way ahead of the time of others. You know, and so you know, a lot of people, by God's grace, came to Christ Fellowship for help, and we were able to provide a lot of answers because of the stability that we had over a sustained amount of time. You know, God willing, I will never, I hope in our lifetime we don't go through a pandemic ever again, but I don't know that there is not going to be another thing that's going to cause physical church to have to stop meeting for a Sunday, for two Sundays, for three Sundays, for a year. I don't know. And so in light of that, just make sure that you have people that you can trust at the top who have things prepared in such a way that just in case they had to hand it off, it's good to go.

Well, and part of it is, let's be honest, we've all seen people drop the baton in church staff environments, drop the baton at that last fifty feet, where they lived a great life and then things got personal, things got, you know, out of context, or just unfortunate, and it was that rough, that rough transition, that rough handoff. You know, I've said the quote here before, not Bible in this situation, Ronald Reagan: there's no limit to the amount of good one can do as long as he doesn't care who gets credit. And you know, so in this situation, handing it off to the next guy and letting it run good, you know, it's funny, even I was joking earlier on the show, taking the hit for the thing that was said about the thing that had absolutely nothing to do with, um, so that the other person could keep the credibility to do the thing that he eventually needed to do.

Cool, all about it. I don't have anything to gain or lose in that situation, but hopefully the kingdom has something to gain in that situation, and hopefully the person who said the thing, throwing me under the bus, knows, hey, you played that card once. You really can't play that card twice. That's you, Keith.

Um, awesome. Love it. Hey, so we're gonna land the plane. This has been awesome. Great. And so Brandon, looking forward to seeing things continue to grow and expand at Christ Fellowship as you guys are taking online, taking digital global through the campuses and different things there. Love the approach, and looking forward to it. Ray, of course, always great to hang out with you. But for Brandon, for Ray, this is Jeff at the Church Digital and Stadium Church Planning. Thanks for joining us here at this show. We'll see you next time at the pod. Y'all have a good day.