EP028: Seth Muse & Redefining Engagement

Hey Jeff here with the Church Digital. I'm excited about episode 28. We're talking about a topic we don't normally hit on in context with Church online with the podcast here, but it's something that's near and dear to my heart. It's really an underlying theme of all of these podcasts that we've done along the way.

And no, we're not gonna talk about Spider-Man in his return back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He was hardly gone and now he's back. I just wanted to take a moment here publicly on the podcast: thank Marvel, think Disney, think Sony for getting together, for figuring out how to make this thing work, for signing the deal. Everybody's happy, everybody's making money, and we get Spider-Man one or two more movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and we'll have to see what other crossovers come down the road. But this is not a Marvel podcast. What kind of is on the side, but it's not normally a Marvel podcast.

So let's talk about Church online. What I want to hit on today really centers around this idea of the word engagement. And so honestly, I believe that engagement has really lost its meaning, or it has so many meanings right now that people don't really understand what the core of engagement is. And to that end, I want to bring in Seth Muse. Seth is communications director, and long story short, he had on his Instagram account maybe a couple weeks ago arguably the greatest single Instagram post I've ever seen in my life. Okay, maybe that's a little overstating, but it was really good. And it encapsulated a lot of what I've been wrestling with in the past couple years of how it highlighted the two types of different—in his context social media posts, but in my context I'd say in context of Church online—what we're communicating, even not even church-aligned but church overall, there's two different types of communications.

And to his point, post type number one are posts where it's communication that's centered around us as a church. And the second type of communication that he highlighted is the types of communication that highlight the listener, the reader, the audience. It's designed to engage the people where they are. You see, sometimes in church we think by talking about a sermon series or talking about inviting through a social media post to some events, we think that that's engagement. When that's really not engagement. Engagement is when we listen to the people, not when we try to cram information towards them and drive them onto our property, physical or virtual. For Church online, and so this is what I want to do. I want to have a conversation where we dig in and try to figure out what engagement really is and how we as a church, we as Church online, can do better at engaging online.

So welcome Seth Muse from Hope Fellowship to the conversation. Myself, Jeff Reed from the Church Digital, in a conversation on redefining engagement. Everybody, here you go.

For me, I think the church is—so when social media really started, it was a promotional deal. I mean, it was "I put yourself out there" kind of thing, and there really wasn't any rhyme or reason to what was going on. It was just chaos, and we saw it as like, "Hey, I put things out there, people see it." But it's so not the case anymore. And you have to be more strategic now, and it's just so much harder to be seen and noticed. And what people tend to stop scrolling on is important, and they scroll on things—sadly, we're sinners—stuff that's kind of about them, you know, that makes them feel good. So that's kind of where I was. I was literally writing some things down for audio I was doing for a couple of our channels, and I just wanted to see what kind of content we were posting. And I had these columns that were like, "Yeah, I shouldn't have thrown that away, probably use that today," but it had like scripture posts or like encouragement, inspiration, advertisements, what else was it? Like a promotional deal, like, "Um, sign up for this thing." Because some of our—and it would be like, I could check some of those more than once for one post, right? Because if we covered a couple boxes, and when I was looking at it, I was like, "I'm naturally just divided it into these columns without realizing it," and went, "Oh my gosh, these are about us and these are about them." I was like, "That's clear. I'm gonna write that down on the board before I forget it." So I started to brainstorm, and that's what I came up with. And I was like, "Somebody might want to see that," and here we are.

Well, and even the word engagement—like, it's been lost over the years or it's been watered down and means so many different things that it's like, "Oh yeah, I'm engaging people by"—and I'm overstating here to prove a point—"but I'm engaging people by shoving my agenda towards them and getting them to process, you know, my new sermon series or this event." And just to step back and to realize that's not really engagement. When we're forcing our agenda or our motives towards them, engagement isn't—yes, and while that may work in a church building with people that already bought in, like we know that doesn't work with outsiders, with people who are cold to the idea of church or even to God.

It was funny—like, we're—this is just an off story. What one of the things that I'm doing right now, I'm consulting with a church that's getting ready to launch a multi-site in an area that there's not a lot of churches. There hasn't been a lot of success of churches here in Miami. And so on project managing, I'm helping, you know, with some logistics and some things like that. And so we had an opportunity to sit down—it's happening in a school, so the multi-site's gonna be set up and tear down in a school, so a week or so ago I sat down with the teachers, love the classrooms that we want to go into. And it was funny like one of the teachers in the room was more anti us being there than the others. Like, she had maybe a little more concerns about it and was very much pressing the "what are you doing for us" kind of approach.

And it was funny like, you know, immediately some of the pastors were talking about, "Oh well, you know, we've already been out here to help paint and we built a butterfly garden and so we were doing, you know, just a lot of this stuff around here." And the church had really been doing a good job of serving the community, but it was funny like her immediate response was, "Oh, facility stuff? Yeah, okay. What do we get out of this exactly?" Like, it was this moment of clarity. I'm like, "Okay, they're saying the right answers, oh, but that's not what she wanted to hear."

Okay, and so like, you know, fifteen minutes later down the road, I'm like, "Hey, you know what I want to hear? I want to hear how we can serve you. We told you how we're serving, but it didn't connect with you. So what do you need?" And it was funny from that second on, the relationship, the conversation went completely different because she's now understanding I'm on her side as opposed to I'm shoving an agenda. Yeah, and it was amazing the clarity and the conversations. And you know, in back of my mind I'm like, "I gotta figure out how to do some of this stuff. I have no idea how to, but dang it, what we're gonna—we're gonna give it a shot and figure out how to help this teacher be more effective in her school."

You're right, that we just have to keep what's in it for people in the front of our mind. And we always answer that question well: "Jesus is in it for people." And they're like, "Well, they've already decided they don't want that. What if they've decided they don't want that at all?" Yeah, then what? You still gotta have a church and a building. You still need them on your side, you know? And like, any still-catch Christians that would say that, like, "Yeah, I'm a regular attender and show up once every six weeks on average," you know? So it's like, yeah, even our people are not like, "Man, we just can't wait to get back to church." So you know, we have to keep that in mind so that they're constantly reminded of like, "Here's the benefit of this place. Here's what it does for you. Here's how it enhances your life." And that sounds sleazy and sales-pitchy, but I mean, that's what we've always really done. It's just now the answer to that question is different, you know? Because they're not prioritizing the church, and we're not prioritizing it as a community anymore, you know? It's not the center and the hub of activity in the communities. The school is. Educators would say scholars would say that we're in a post-Christian society. Yeah, and so how the church responds to us—to your point, one week out of four when we've got a six percent attendance, you know, maybe a decade, two decades ago, like we were pushing more than once a week and trying to get people to come back for like a midweek service and things like that. But we've—the church has changed and attendance has changed, and we're seeing we're seeing drop in physical attendance. We're seeing online attendance spike and increase, and some churches handle that better than others.

I've had conversations with churches where it's like, "Hey, we're considering shutting down our online campus in hopes that by shutting down the online option, people will go back to the physical building." And I'm not even—like, in that, I think personally that's a bad idea. Hey, stop the thing that's working in hopes that it'll help the thing that's not working anymore. So like, culturally, that gives me a headache. I'll find is if they shut that thing down, it actually hurts their attendance in physical places. So true. They're where online kind of can feed into that as a front door, as that first level of like your lobby or guest services, even engaging on that. But it's amazing what happens when you don't try to push the agenda or the strategy or the model, but instead step back and listen to what people are looking for, what they need. How, you know, you may be trying to meet them at this level when in fact people are, you know, they're not—to your point, the person who may already be turned off or against church might be looking for another engagement point, another relational point that's not going to be solved by your most recent sermon series. That's not going to be—maybe there's a marriage saying they're struggling with or something. And instead of pushing an agenda, it's listening to where the people are and doing that. And that's the thing that I think online does so well is that you're able to turn the corner and meet people where they are. And they're not—they're not gonna type in your sermon series title to Google. They're not looking for that. They're not looking for like, you know, I don't know, whatever series you've got, I forget, like at the movies. They're not really looking for that on Google. They're looking for, you know, fixing marriage or, you know, dealing with difficult kids. And you know, they're typing keywords that are not gonna bring your sermon series up online. And that's where they're going for help. They're not thinking, "Let's call someone at the church on this on the telephone and talk to a real person who is a pastor," because that's not what they see as the go-to for help. So they're gonna go online and they're gonna start to YouTube and they're gonna search Google. And which are the number—you know, in not the right order, but one and two search engines in the world. And "how-to" in Google is like the number-one hit phrase. It's "how to do stuff." It's the University of YouTube, you know? So they're gonna find it there, and they're not looking for us at the church. So it's like we're trying—we have to figure out as a church how do, instead of because they're not coming to us, how do we get to them and how do we think about...

Them and I think this is what Jesus always did. He always went to them. He never sat around and just waited for people to show up. He was moving and they followed him. You know, the intentionality of "follow me" is that the thing you're following is moving. You know, and it's like you've got to move with him to stay with him. And so things are always going to be changing. Things are out. Methods are always going to be moving. The crowd is always going to be, you know, morphing into something, and you have to constantly be moving with it or you stand still and you're left behind. And that's what I think happens to a lot of churches. We find a model that makes us comfortable and has some success, but then the model moves in the culture moves and we don't move with it. And so we miss so many people. And I think that's the big deal with online, that a lot of pastors, you know, or maybe missing if they're against it, is that it's not a replacement of your in-person stuff. It's an extension of it. It's an "and" thing. And it brings people in. It connects with them where they are. It makes a bridge, you know, and it goes to where they are. So I feel like I have a lot of strong feelings about this, but you know, because I really want to like, I really believe that, you know, the mandate for Christians is to go. Yes, it's not to, you know, plant and stay and put up like the bat signal with a cross in it and think that somebody's gonna show up. And it just doesn't work like that, especially now. I got to tell you, don't say that bat signal with a cross thing too loud. Somebody's actually gonna like run with that. If like, that's, oh my God, that's the greatest thing I've ever heard. A bat signal with a cross. He shrine it up in the well. I'm not saying I haven't done it, but they're, you know, they're there's so much good. They're here. Like today, what I heard you say, what I hear a lot of people struggle with is it's one more thing. For decades we've been okay with just the service. Like we have this model. This model works. I was actually on a podcast with Tom Pounder a couple weeks ago, and we were talking about this, and he equated it to like, it was this beautiful analogy. It was like traditionalist with baseball of, well, no, you can't add that because Babe Ruth didn't have to deal with that in 1920 when he won, you know, in an era. All of a sudden you go to all the historical context and all of this, and it's like, well, no, they, the game's like the world has changed around the game of baseball, and all of a sudden you need to do things to keep the game to be relevant.

Yeah, it's not the game doesn't change. I don't know that the rules necessarily change, but how the game's presented should be. And in church, similarly, the goal, the goal was your Sunday service. Then he had the wrong goal for years. Like the goal wasn't the service. The service was the method for the endgame, which was the gospel, which is that discipleship piece. And so realizing that we're called to make disciples, go and make disciples, your reference set, you know, we've got this great challenge to evolve because the world is evolving faster than ever before. The church struggles to realize that.

Yeah, oh yeah, and into my favorites, the, oh, let's change our services. People are only coming once a month, you know, maybe if we're lucky we can get them to two. And it's I'm just, I'm always like, turn the game on on its side. Like, dude, look at it from a completely different viewpoint. Figure out how to make disciples a hundred and sixty-eight hours a week, engaging people when they, where they are, instead of trying to drag people into a building that they don't want to go to anymore.

Yeah, and that's how, that's how like I struggle with this because I think I see social in a way that many leaders who are in pastoral positions don't. And this is, I think, the disconnect. Communications is looking at this post, you know, it's like that we can we can see it as "us and them" type post, but for a pastor I think they see it as all-inclusive. Like all of them are us and they are part of us. And there's there's any, there's a misunderstanding that social is a thing that's meant to advertise and to get people to move to some. I see social as a tool for our ministry. Like it almost like it's a small little slice of church that we can put out and have a conversation about every day or a couple times a day, you know? It's like if I put out a scripture, we can talk about it or they can at least hear it. I mean, what's different than that then a pastor standing on a stage and saying the scripture? They don't respond. I mean, they're sitting there in their seat, they're listening. There's no engagement, you know, in a worship service while the pastor's speaking. They're just considering what he's saying or listening, unless they're opening a peppermint, then everybody's watching that because that's the loudest thing in the world. But you know, they're like, what are you really getting there that you don't get online, you know, when when someone passes some information along? If it's just information, and so there's this thing that's like, there's so many similarities between how social can be a culture-creating tool, a ministry of discipleship tool, maybe not another evangelism tool. That's kind of tough. But you know, like it can be something that encourages people to live life like Jesus wants something to live. And isn't that good? Like, why is that not good enough to do that? There we can only do that in person, you know? That makes no sense to me because I see it happening. And it's like the culture has already accepted this as a mode for learning, for growing, for inspiration. And we know this because there are so many people whose theology is based on not Scripture but Instagram posts about scripture that are made out of context, that are made by people that aren't explaining it in really crazy ways. And the church is not in that space, you know? If you're concerned about theology, then put some there, you know? It's like do that there and make some post about growing them. And all it happens is they read it and are inspired and learn and grow, and they don't have to click anything or come to anything.

Yeah, and I read to win. I remember David Adamson, you know, out of North Point. He did this experiment and he put on social media. It was the, I think he was trying to search for "help me, how to pray" or "tell me how to pray" or "I don't know how to pray." And so like he did a search for that on YouTube, and just he started reporting on what was coming up. And it was, I think, out of the first twenty, thirty, forty, there were no churches at all. It was, you know, in your own girls, Jimbo, a Susie B, just just random people. And first off, like congratulations to those people. Thank you for, you know, creating content that they, I don't want to, I don't want to take, you know, their online or their ministry impact away. But there's a huge opportunity. As a matter of fact, the first church person that popped up was actually Joyce Meyer. And so she came up, but it wasn't official Joyce Meyer Ministries. Somebody just ripped a Joyce Meyer video and put it on there. So even in the first, whatever it was, it was multiple pages worth of results before you finally got down to the church taking an opportunity to speak into that. And when I, when I've told that story, when I tell that story to churches, and it's like, here's the opportunity you have to speak into it, their engagement towards the people of YouTube, to the community of YouTube, to those online. It's, yeah, you know, we're just, those aren't those aren't the people we're trying to reach. We're trying to reach the people within our within our block, within twenty miles of our church, within our city, you know, within the little town that we live in. It's it's geographically limited to that scope. Like churches don't look at online as a mission field yet. I'm I'm generalizing. There are churches that do. That by the bill, yeah, it's not part of the strategy. It's something extra. Like if the social media person and a website person all were fired, the church would be like, we're okay. We can outsource that. It's not like, oh my gosh, we lost our youth pastor, you know? And that's kind of what it really is is that you've lost someone that connects you to a wide world that have a lot of people that will find you there in your city that may not have known your existence because most searching Google and on YouTube is localized. It's if you're searching for how do I fix my marriage, it's probably going to serve up something that you're either connected to already or if there's nothing there, it'll try to connect you to. I know definitely on Google it does this. Maybe on YouTube, but it'll definitely connect you to stuff that is near you because they want those meaningful relationships and connections to happen. And so if we just leverage that platform and use keywords that people are actually searching for instead of our clever and creative titles as the keyword, then we will actually be found and people will connect with it. And it's like that's the new mission for you. That's the new evangelism is SEO and Google, you know, and being found on YouTube.

Dave Adamson's a friend, and I love that guy. He actually said he doesn't believe that church attendance is decreasing. He believes it's decentralizing. The community that you have, the culture of people that you have in your church, they're counting attendance as watching online. They're counting attendance as going and physically being there. They're counting church attendance as being in their small group. That we can do nothing else. It's like I'm going and investing in my spiritual life with Christ somewhere. They're probably doing it once a week at the most, unless they have a regular like personal time or whatever. When they're going and connecting something, they're counting online as one of those attendance points. And marriages are not. We're not counting that. We're saying that's a doorway to actual attendance. That's kind of how we phrase it and put and really phrased it that way. But that's how we think about it. It's like we have online. That's great. But really what we care about is butts and seats. When that's not what they care about. They will come to church once every four to six weeks in our counting. But in their counting, they watched online twice and showed up once. They came three times. You see what I'm saying? They're the culture's understanding of attendance is different. And even our people's understanding of attendance is different than the pastoral leadership and the churches who are theologically debating whether or not that counts. It's like they've already decided it counts. And so we're not responding to that. And so they show up and what we hear sometimes from pastors is they actually downplay online attendance and they say, we want that's great, but we want you to have, you know, if you hear, and yeah, you're gonna miss community. Yeah, you're gonna miss think. But they have community. They have their small groups, you know, they have their friend groups. They have their baseball team parent group or whatever. And they don't understand how it's different. So we're missing that connection. But for them it's always gonna be like, hey, I showed, I watched church online. I set aside time to sit and watch something for forty-five minutes to an hour and a half. That's me attended because I gave you my attention. And that's what we don't understand. Attendance is not what people is what not valuable anymore. Attention is valuable. And that's what they're basing. Cutting of the price of a tenet of doing something is not how much of my attendance is gonna be needed. It's like now I'm not even gonna think about that. How much of my attention you're gonna get? And churches are not.

Thinking in terms of attention, they're thinking in terms of attendance still and physically being somewhere. And I mean, I don't even have to be physically in a store to shop anymore. Why would I have to physically be in your church? It's like, I know the theological difference. I know why that's not the same, but they don't, you know? And in our attempts to educate them, it just makes them feel guilty for doing it, and then they don't want to come at all.

Yeah, yeah. It's and we're in the we're in this position right where culture is shifting and the church often struggles to adjust to it, to adapt to it, right? How do we turn the corner? Like, what in your mind, with your advice, like Seth, how does somebody, you know, maybe right now there's an online pastor, there's an online volunteer, there's somebody that wants to turn the corner either in social media, church online, digital communication, something where it's, "Hey, I need to. We need to engage more. We need to start focusing more on that side of the coin, start to worry more about them and less about us."

Man, I think it starts from the top. Your senior leadership has to understand that. And so if they're not there yet, it's part of our job, you know, this guy Clay Scroggins stuff like leading up, right? You have to educate. You have to investigate and bring things to them, help them understand, "This is what's happening on here." That's kind of our job, right? In communications or creativity and creative department or whatever we're working in the web world or online world. It's this is our job is to help those that really aren't in it. They don't care. I mean, your pastor might be great at it, but he's not in it like we are, right? Like, even some of the ones that are most involved. So it's our job to bring that to them and help them see the value of the ministry that could take place.

Because I find that pastors don't really care about stats. They care about stories. They care about people, life changed. It's like that's what they got into this for. And so for us, as you know, creative leaders or, you know, maybe we're pastors, I'm not sure, but you know, we have to bring that into the end of the story for them to help them see like, "This is not an either/or ministry. This is an and ministry."

And the biggest hurdle to that is finances. And so I always, always say that you can look at your budget at a church and see what you really care about. And you can really tell like what is your priority as a ministry. And often the budget has tons of money going into the weekend service and no money going into the week, you know? Like, and I'm not even talking about line items. I'm talking about Bible studies and classes and, you know, home groups. There's no money resourcing, staffing for that or volunteer training for that. There's no money going into the creative space or social media or ads or your website. It's like, "Let's just do what we have because that stuff's kind of expensive." Let's be honest, our world is kind of expensive. So we get, we're like, we're putting a ton of money, like hundreds of thousands of dollars into our sound system that will only affect those that show up. But you know, a thousand dollars a year into social media ads that will affect so many people every week for fifty-two weeks out of the year, you know, not just fifty-two days out of the year, you know, if you're just meeting on Sunday. So that's a huge difference.

And I think that if you can't shift your budget around, then it's always going to be an uphill battle to start including the online world as part of your ministry strategy. Because I think that's the real goal is getting everyone on board to see that when people are here or when people are connecting with us elsewhere online, it's a person. They matter. And when we should care about them the same as if they were standing right in front of us in real life. And how would we do ministry if that were the case? We thought about them that way. It's changing the picture that we have in our mind of what constitutes ministry. And use air quotes why say that, what constitutes ministry? It's not just what we've known as we do a service. It's excellent. It's so good people can't help but show up. And then they, we send them on and we try to connect them to the small groups and Bible studies they'd actually meet in person. It's like there is a whole world of stuff of connection that matters to our communities that we can invest in. And it's going to take investment. You need people and you need money and they have to have time. And it's because all of that, just like a real relationship, it just takes time to cultivate, you know?

And so I think there's a couple of steps to it. It's not easy. It's not simple. It's not even often clear on most of our churches. But if we keep those goals in front of us, then we're and we all understand the goal is the same. I think that's where the big hang-up for most churches are is that a communication department sees some needs and ends up goals that aren't shared by pastoral staff. And pastoral staff see needs and goals that aren't shared by the communication staff who are doing all these online things. And so getting those people in the room to say, "What is our church doing in ministry?" and seeing communications as a ministry and not as a service department is a huge mind shift that has to happen. And it has to happen on the, it's not just pastors, it's communicators seeing ourselves that way, you know, in owning some of that space.

I mean, when people respond to me on Facebook to our church, that's me responding. I'm the one social media guy for our main channels. Then we have some others that help with some of our students and kids and whatever in volunteers. We give out, we've launched a massive Facebook group strategy and we published that, or actually running some contests right now. And at the campus pastors doing it, but without their buy-in, all of that fails, you know? And they've just seen how good it can be because we launched a campus with nobody, that you know, it didn't have a building, still doesn't have a building. Yeah, we started a Facebook group, two hundred people. And actually somebody else started it. I just took it over and then we branded it up, made it good, gave it to our pastor. I ran him through how to work it, you know, how to do content and like just use your phone, just get in there and be real with people. And it has over a thousand people in it now. That was six months ago, you know? And the reason it did that is because they're excited about what's going on in their community. We're coming there, but we were talking about them the whole time. And that's what they're pumped about.

Yeah, and that's, I've struggled with this over the years within not about one church, multiple churches, you know? Two things that you just kind of hit on there is, is creative communication is that a ministry or is it a service department? You know, are we ministering or are we executing the directives of the pastors and ministers? With that, and like, I honestly, in my life span, like I've landed on both sides of the coin where I'm like, "Guys, for a ministry, like, you know, let's run that way." And sometimes honestly I've been like, "Hey, like, we're just following the leader of the pastors with that. And let's set aside, you know, some of our own agenda and ideas for now and let's just focus on serving." And so there's different sides of that.

But the biggest tension that I feel, and I've run into this honestly within the past week, where I was talking with an online pastor who had created a group for the church online. So basically, with the church online was his Facebook group. It was so they were doing the broadcast rather than doing connection cards. Like they funneled everybody into that group. But in the group, then they were engaging relationally. They were connecting. They were trying to funnel into the next steps class or the, or the, you know, small groups, whatever it was. But they were using that private Facebook group for the church online to really do ministry, to engage, to talk with people where they are and then do ministry with them.

Yeah, and that was the group where that was going well. And then it, like, this is a story from the church, but essentially the creative communications department got wind that they were doing this like separate thing. It was like, "No, that can't be. You know, that can't be a ministry thing that's gonna run through us because they're wanting to take the opportunity to, you know, market a new sermon series or, you know, start to do more of the us type of communications than the them type of communications that the online campus was trying to do." And so then there became a, you know, at the battle might be an overstatement, but tensions around how that group operates and what's at. And they're still trying to figure that out like, "How do you?" Yeah, and so like you see both sides of that, right? How do you handle it?

Like, well, for us, first of all, you know, serving is ministry. So what we do as a department, as we, if we're serving other departments and other members in the church, it is a ministry to serve them, even serving staff. And so I think we have to, as communicators and communication departments, we have to see what we do as a service in some ways to. If you're a minister and you're coming to someone and they've got a problem, your goal is to help them, right? It's not to, you know, it's not just to say, "Here's the right things. Here's what you have to do." It's it's to help them get over whatever barriers they're in the way before they can do those things, right?

And so in that particular situation, you know, we've had groups that started. And so my response then was I go to, no, "Hey, I see that you started a group. It's really cool. I like what you're doing. Or I love that you're doing this. But we do have a policy, you know, that we're a part of it. Here's what I want to do. Can we, can I, I mean, I need to be an admin so we can officially represent the church because we want to actually make this thing blow up for you. It's like we're for you like we're for you doing ministry. You found something we didn't see. Awesome. Let us help you make it great." Not let us take it over, but let us assist you. Let us give you our expertise. And our expertise, if sometimes isn't wanted because it's not ministry minded, it's service minded. And we come in with that mindset of, "We're gonna make this excellent. We're gonna change all the colors. We're gonna make, we're gonna control the content. We're gonna be able to post."

I don't post anything in our Facebook groups. And as I talk with our campus pastors, I let them have the group. It's their ministry. I'm helping them do it. I'm giving them content ideas. I gave them scheduling ideas of how to keep up with that. I gave them examples. I'll even go film it for them. But I'm not gonna be on camera. I'm not gonna post graphics in there. I'm not gonna do that kind of stuff because that's for them. I want them to see that as part of their ministry. And as a communication department, we have to kind of think about our ministry is through people. And so sometimes that's not gonna come out on the other side like we kind of envisioned it. So we have to be okay with that.

But in those situations, it's we have to remember that we're here to serve. Like we're not a service department only, but we are here to serve. That's the mindset of a minister, of a pastor, is that we have to understand that we're here to help people move from one step to the next. And if our pastors are the face that can do that, then we need to help that face get in front of their face. And if we can't do that, then it's really because it's more selfish. It's about us.

Ted Vaughn at that church conference recently shared this great spectrum for communicators to understand. He said when we go through this and this is a tension.

To manage for us, this is not gonna be—we figured this out. We'd set some policies and we're not a problem with any more. Communicators are always having to manage this tension because there's always stuff that's moving. And he gave us a spectrum like, which side are you on? Are you skewing towards anger and you want to control things and it makes you angry, being, you know, something like that? Oh man, I can't believe they started a group. How dare they do that without our permission? And then you become like the branding cop, you know, the excellence cop or whatever. Nobody likes you. And then you're not helping anybody. You're just the guy they have to get around to get done with what they feel like God is calling them to do. And that's not a good position.

And then you skew all the way to the other side of apathy or, and where it's like, I can't get anything done. I give up. You know, whatever you want to do. And it's just chaos. Yeah, start a group. I don't care. And it doesn't look like the rest of the groups and you're not in it. Something crazy happens and you're like, I don't know. You know, and it's like, whatever you want to do. That you got branding issues all over the place. We can't go that far either.

So we're constantly managing this tension in the middle of like, hey, we want to help you do this. We, there's some things that are non-negotiable, but those are not too many things, you know? Nothing that really affects you doing ministry because we really want to empower you to do ministry. And when I started putting it that way to our campuses, they suddenly got really excited about social media where previously they were really adverse to it. They hated it. And then they started to see it as like, oh, I get to do this. This is my ministry. This is like a kind of flavor and how I want to. And it was like the campus pastors were saying like, we feel like we don't, you know, they don't teach our main. Our lead pastor teaches a lot and he's on video so we pipe it into other campuses so they could speak three or four times a year. And you know, some of them are good at it and that's not as good at it, but they all want to be in front of the people that they pastor so that people can know who they are and they can make these connections because they're doing the day-to-day work, right?

And so I'm like, hey, here's an answer to that question. You can be in front of your people every day if you want to. Just pull out phone, getting your group. Hey guys, it's your pastor. Love you. Here's a devotional thought. Here's something going, you know, and make it about what they're dealing with. Minister them where they are. And you can be in front of them.

So communication departments have to like look at some of these issues and go, how can we help solve some of the problems that our ministers are having? And that's when you become the hero. That's when you become a major help and people like to see come into their office. They're, you know, because you know that you're gonna go, I got an idea that I think can help you out. What do you think about this? And they're gonna be like, I'm glad to see you coming instead of, oh man, I did something wrong. What's he coming for? What's he coming in here for? You know, you don't want that. Or you don't want a guy that's sitting over in the office going, you know, I have to make him do. I needed a Facebook group and I haven't seen it yet. You know, whatever.

So I think to turn that corner, you know, you really, the communication departments just have to understand that we are servants that have ministry in mind. There are things that we have to be assertive about, but if we have that relationship, that they know we're for them, for the rest of the church, those were for them, then those things we have to be assertive about are not really a problem.

Well, I tell you what, that is that not like the exact same posture that the church should have? We are servants serving the world, but we have a posture of love and respect, knowing that we, the church, are for them. And it's amazing when we, when we engage, if we engage like you were saying in your example, if the creative, if the communications department engages the church at that level with that service attitude, their response among the church—and I've seen it in my own communications departments that I've led and worked with—like it's phenomenal. That responds when they serve with that level of respect.

And coming back to the us versus them mentality as we communicate publicly, you know, church, if we have that posture of understanding them, understanding the people, engaging with that level, letting people know that we are for them, and the understanding that what Christ can do with that, a lot of the people that are not interested in you will become interested because you care for them as an individual as opposed to an analytical bottom line. To quote Seth, and I've used that phrase of lighter so no worries. That's awesome. Every time I hear on a podcast I'm like, button seed. Hey, that's great because it's, it's we're there more than that. And the people, people in the world today are looking for something. Stats tell us, LifeWay 2016, that what they're looking for, they don't want to find in a building. They're not interested in your church the same level that you're probably not interested in going to a mosque. You've already made spiritual decisions or comfortable worry where you are. But people are interested in talking to others about their faith. They are interested in talking to their friends about faith.

So the more that we can disciple and lead people, the more that we can engage our Christ-followers to get them to become digital disciples that are out there utilizing social media to get public to go out there and to utilize the mission field, that's a win. But that often doesn't happen in a brick-and-mortar building. Now on a sunny day, in fact, we did a communication survey a year ago. We just wanted to find out like how our channels are hitting the people, like where are we actually, where they care, you know, where are they looking? And so you do you. Where do you normally find out about events, you know, that kind of thing? And one of the questions we ask is, how are you most likely to invite someone? Is it phone call? Is it text message? Is it with a card that we give you to hand out? Is it social media posts that you can share? And that when or word of mouth? Word of mouth was number one by far, but number two was a social media invite that they shared. And the rest were like nothing. It was crazy because our church is up, is like it's a younger, you know, families and a lot of mobile friendly people. And you know, our giving is 90, I think almost 90% online, you know, so we're like in that phase of things. So I know that we're kind of skewed to one side, but even still, that's that's a staggering, that's a staggering stat for us to go, wow, social media invite. And here's what to take away from that: they count sharing your post as a church as an invite to everyone on their list. That's huge. But we don't, we want him to call, we want him to text, we wanted to give them, we want to give them a card and they have to hand it out. They're not gonna really do that. It may not even make it to the car, you know? They want it, but you give them a social media post that they care about. And here's what they're kind of posted were talking about. Let's just, you know, we didn't really do this yet, but the them kind of posts that they'll actually share: questions. Like, what kind of stuff do you like on your burger? That's stupid, but that's what friends talk about, right? And so if your church is asking that, we're trying to be friends with you. And so there is this funny in my church that's, you know, whatever, they share that polls, boats, you know, like, what's your, you know, it could be like, who's your favorite Bible character? To like, who's your favorite Office character? You know, and it could be any of that, and they'll share that kind of stuff.

Tasks, like give them something like, hey, just tell five people they matter today. Or I did a post recently which was a countdown post. I got this idea from Brady Shearer. And it was a one-minute countdown. You can see it just taken away. And all it was was a drone shot of our city. We're actually waiting in our city. I got a story tape and it's a city, a drone shot. It was like, take 60 seconds to pray for a neighbor. And it just counts down with some nice music.

Behind the scenes shots of what's going on your church—people love to find out who you really are. That's super important. Inspirational posts and devotionals are huge. They'll say, oh, that's great. They want to be represented. They feel like, oh, that's what I think though. That's what I believe. Yeah, let's share that. They'll share it with it. And they count that as an invite or a touch point with their friends. Scripture quotes, things that you know they find interestingly, while share that, counts as an invite for them. And things that are like for us are announcements, ministry promos, ads, invites to the service, even our about us, getting our people to invite people, which they may share that series promos. That's about us. It's what we're doing. And most people, unless it's a really clever or a controversial sounding series, they're probably not going to share that. They don't really care because that changes so much. So it's not like, I mean, you're you're at the movie series is cool, but you know, and you know probably infringing on a lot of copyright laws, but it's still that's cool series that people will want to show in like a churches show in movies. It's still though not as popular as a video of somebody doing on his phone going, hey, I love you guys. We're starting. I'd love to see you guys at my church. That works better. It just works better. And I can't explain why. It just feels more authentic. And those are the posts that are really more about let's just be real, let's just be friends because that feels like you care about them. But a big produced video or a nicely designed graphic is like a business, yeah, you know, it's professional. And so kind of more about us, like how cool we are, you know? That's not a question they have. They're like, we know you can do cool stuff. Cool, I don't care. Okay, about your events. Okay, about your series. What do you need for me?

Yeah, and it's ironic that that actually plays well to the smaller and medium size churches that don't have the huge budgets, that don't have them. Absolutely, the creative resources. You know, several times and just talking with churches, I'll have a pastor tell me, oh, I'm one to get the quality up before I do some do a video, before I get into social media. And in like my head explodes because honestly, the lesser quality makes you more engaging and endearing, and it's going to get people to buy into you over something that's over produced and over edited and over sensationalized.

And well, let me just quote a foul-mouthed genius, Gary Vaynerchuk. It's a version one is better than version none. So that's yeah, do it. Oh man, I'm amazed at how much, how many connections or relationships and ministry opportunities we're willing to let just go by and do nothing because we didn't want, we couldn't do it a hundred percent perfect or because we couldn't do it excellently. They don't care about that. Just do something. Oh, that blows my mind too. That's a soapbox for me right now. I gotta be crazy. I'm like, you're not here to make great stuff. You're here to reach people with the gospel. Like that, if you make great stuff and good, awesome, but if you can't, that does not disqualify you from disqualify you from ministry. You're called to do that still. And doing nothing because you can't do it great, its disobedient, man. I'm sorry. It's disobedient to our mandate as a Christian really. I feel very strong. Yeah, so it's Seth Muse at Instagram. S-E-T-H-E-M-U-S. Not not to me. I don't want it. It's fine. Something. But no, it's it's what you know, once again, it's trusting God to do something.

With it offering whatever the resources you have, whatever that offering is, giving it to him and allowing him to use it for his kingdom of glory. And I don't want to over spiritualize something like producing a video, but no work goes unrewarded or unfulfilled. And so by doing that, get it out there and let God, let the Holy Spirit do something with it. It's the Widow's mite. It's the Widow's mite story. It's social media. You're the widow dropping little, little two copper coins in the box and giving everything you got. You know, it's like, what do you got? If you don't have a 4K camera, so what? You have an iPhone, you know, a Samsung, whatever you've got, a decent phone and a video device that can be a studio in a box. Do something. You know, because that's where your people are. It's like Jesus didn't sit around and go, "Well, I'm gonna wait until they build like microphone systems to show up on the earth." You know, he didn't wait for like social media to be a thing. Because he could have reached so many more people had he come in this time with social media. He could have, but he chose to come at the time he did because, and then, and dealt with that. And like, he did the best for what he had. He just met, he went for it. Like, and people wrote about it. You know, it's like, best do what you can do right now. Anything is missing, I know, but still, any thoughts as we're landing the plane?

No, I mean, just realize if you're in the communication space, you're working with social media, a lot of us are part time, you know, we're volunteer. There's a lot of people in churches that, you know, the structure isn't necessarily clear or healthy or what. Every new, you may see here or let's go. Yeah, I'm with you. I get it. I can't do jack about it. Take the little steps, you know. Take the lead where you can, and you know, always try to explain. And it's kind of like the scripture you like, never tire of doing what's good. It's like, never tire of trying to bring people along with you. Never tire of like trying to show how this can be an enhancement to what the church does in your area. And it is a tireless, thankless task a lot of times, but you just celebrate those little wins that you get and find a community of people that get it that will say, "Good job, that was awesome," because without that, I'd be dead. I mean, my whole, I mean, I have a good setup here, I really do, but it's not devoid of things like this where I disagree with leadership on how we should view these types of things or whatever. And we have those conversations, and not a whim, you know, and there's someone to win. That's fine, you know, because I'm here to serve. So I do what I can with this. And there's things that I hold that I'm like, "Huh, I think I'm wrong about that. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I need to expand my thought on social media or maybe I," because there was a time where I was like, "I'm not promoting anything." It was like, I had a conversation with my boss at the time, and he was like, "I think you're missing some stuff." I was like, "Yeah, because you do need those US posts. I hope we understand that. Like, you can't not post that stuff, you know, but you can find a way to post it and talk about it that's not just a big ask all the time, you know. You can find a way to talk about it. Like, instead of saying, 'Come to our student party thing that we're having Wednesday,' get some students to talk about how much they love that thing, and then just put the details in the caption or a link in the caption. So you're still focused on what they would care about, but you're actually getting them to talk about it. You're actually advertising too, you know. That's what I was doing. My audit, some of them were like, it was a them and us post at the same time, you know. And if you're creative enough or you think about it hard enough, you can figure out ways to do the us post into them way."

Hmm, I think that is, and I think that's the magic, right? That's the magic. If you can find that way to do it, it takes more time, takes more effort, it's a little harder if you think I'll further ahead, but I mean, come on though, that's our job. So you know, we can do that. So that's what I was, that's my party shot is that you need to, we can't think in that dichotomy. I think it's a false dichotomy, but it is one that we live in. But we have to see, how can we bridge that gap? Because let me tell you, that's what pastors get excited about. You're helping me put butts in seats and we're reaching people online. That's the goal. Is to do these together and find a way to really help them do ministry even more and more while infusing the online world to it and showing that there's value there.

Awesome, well said. It's a mixture, right? If you get the us content but presented in a them way so they can process it. That was excellent. Well, hey Seth, where can people find you online?

You can connect with me at sethnews.com, and from there you can find my Facebook group and following on Instagram. And you know, I'd love you to subscribe to my podcast, The Seminary of Hard Knocks. We talked about church communications, its content marketing. I like to say it's a common ground marketing kind of a podcast. So love for you to subscribe and give that a listen.

Awesome. Well, hey Seth, thanks for jumping into our world here and appreciate you coming on. Listening audience, it's been a great podcast again, and we'll hear you next time here at the Church Digital Podcast. Y'all have a good day.