EP029: Mark Venti & Churchome's Digital Culture

Let's not get hung up on a facility. That's a direct quote from Mark Venti here on episode 29 of the Church Digital Podcast. We had a great episode, great interview, great conversation, and I got to tell you it went a little long, but it is so rich with concepts for church online, for digital church, for mobile app church that I don't want to add a bunch of stuff here in the beginning. I just want you to listen to the interview because right from the get-go it is solid, solid stuff. So here's who I'm bringing to the table today: Mark Venti, executive pastor of Church Home there on the west coast. I'm bringing in Radio Armas, online pastor from Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself of course, Jeff Reed from the Church Digital, in a conversation that I'm calling "Creating Church Culture Digitally." Everybody, here you go.

Our church started in 1992 and I came over. I started attending Church Home. It was then called the City Church that was launched called the City Church in Seattle, Washington. I joined the church in 2000. I kind of dabbled in it a little bit before that, but I came to do or Bible College and the church saw a lot of growth early on and I came on staff in 2001 cleaning toilets and washing windows. And then during that time, myself, I did a lot of youth ministry. And during that time, our church also transitioned to doing multi-site. We lost our first location in 2004, and so I was a part of that on the youth ministry side, how to start and grow our youth ministry in multiple locations. And a really fun time. Our pastor right now is Judah Smith. So his parents started the church and he was the youth pastor though, and I worked with him back in youth ministry and you know, had a really fun time building the youth ministry in the multi-site environment. And what that meant was we did four youth services a week in person. So that was a lot. I did the high school in the music, and then I slowly morphed into becoming the college and young adults pastor and campus pastor to our locations, one that's on the University of Washington, so it's pretty much all college students, a lot of fun. It would triple the third week of September when all the students came back, and then like the second week in December it was like the rapture happened. And then I can't, it was faster at our main location.

And the church has just been through, you know, a bunch. What happened in 2006? Sorry, 2005. Right after we started this new location, we were looking at again in a new building, and at that point we needed to get insurance on our lead pastor to get leverage at the bank and discovered that he had multiple myeloma. And so the mission of our church became the healing of our pastor. And so our church was growing at an exponential rate, you know, in those first ten years, and then all of a sudden our mission became that he would get better. So throughout all of that, we stayed about the same size of a community. Did you take over the church in 2009? And a year later his dad passed away. So it was, you know, then then we went through quite a bit of a season of transition because Judah was transitioning the church and mourning his dad's a lot. His dad's life the same time. This is when I was out to UD, so I was kind of in a little bit of a bubble because I'm with a bunch of young college students that have no connection to our past. And so, you know, I wasn't in the middle of all that pain as much as a lot of our community was here. And then I came over and helped lead our main location for four years in the transition into leadership team role, which is where I sit now and helping resource all of our locations. And I'm primarily involved with expansion and growth for our church.

There is so much really good there, especially, you know, I heard succession plans, health, longevity of being on staff, and really like, and that's that's like the first question I would ask, and that's not even what I wanted to dig into. So you started it slimy. I'm not saying you were in the mail room, but you were. He's basically like cleaning toilets. Is that a literal thing?

My second year as a college student, I started. I became a janitor at the church. I was a waiter at in a restaurant, and so I started, yeah, cleaning literally cleaning toilets. I was also leading worship as a volunteer, so I was doing all the music for a youth ministry, and I there was a few Sundays where I was literally on the clock emptying garbages. But this is back in the day where you wore suits to church every Sunday, and so I bought my suit at. We also had a little like thrift shop in our lobby, so I bought my suit for twenty dollars that I wore almost every week. And well, there were a few Sundays where I was cleaning toilets with the suit on in between services and I'd get on the station and lead worship and auditorium seats about twenty-five hundred. So I'd be leading worship in front of two thousand people and then during service break I'd be emptying garbages. So yeah, that would, that was real. That that's that's an interesting stage, stage of life, definitely.

Yeah, so we've talked about this on the podcast and I'm just gonna be completely transparent right here. I haven't had a ministry position longer than four years. When you're looking at something where I'm doing bad math in my head, but fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years, I think right? Nineteen years or nineteen? Like I said, bad math. Ninety-nine meters. How, how did you manage to stay in a position for nineteen years? Like, what what does that look like for you?

Probably because our church changes so much, so it doesn't feel like I'm in one position. I mean, my role, I had probably only been in one similar role for more than three years at a time. We're we're a pretty younger staff. It hasn't always been like that. Being our pastor now is forty years old. He took over the church at thirty-one, and so that's probably a lot of it. I'm also, I love the vision of the church. I love. I have a long-term relationship with Jude and Chelsea. I mean, I I was seventeen and I went on a ministry trip with him when they were engaged to be married, and when they were on this trip, it's me, a seventeen-year-old with an engaged couple on a ten-hour drive into Canada, and there were times where Judah would go up to study and I'd sit in a coffee shop. This fiancée, it was bizarre. I'm just saying we go way back. And so I just think there's there's something there, and we also complement each other. Judah is an artist. He is a gifted communicator. My know, I'm the first person in my family to be ministry. My my dad is a mechanical engineer, so even the way my brain is wired, like I connect with you to. I've preached a lot. I did all all of that, but I'm also a little bit more of a you know, tactical, mathematical-minded individual. So we just have a long history, so we connect really well, but I'm also very different than him.

Wow, that's that's exciting how you found somebody that's like complementary and you connect with each other and and and completing that that package. So you're with that, you were with this city and so now there's you're in the midst of a rebrand or something heading in the church home. And I know like you first came on my radar honestly. I found you on Fox News. I think ran read an article about this guy named Judah Smith who's trying to like pastor people digitally on his phone, like, and it's just like, what's what's going on? So I started digging and doing some research, and I aren't you honestly? I don't just right now the number one blog on my website is what I've wrote about you guys. So I don't know if like people are still hitting on Google or what. I honestly didn't really dig into the analytics lately, but there still is a hot topic where people are trying to figure out what church home is. So kind of help us here and really help us define what what is church home? What are you guys trying to do?

So here's part of the story that's funny. Is so we changed the name of our church three years ago, and it did our church. We didn't have a digital app at that point. We weren't. We didn't change the name of our church so that we could become a you know, a massive digital expression. I mean, the name of our church is not very innovative. In fact, we pushed back which food quite a bit. Like, hey, we can get like some professionals in here like rebranding experts, and he's like, no, I feel like God's calling our church to be church like a home and this is three years ago and possibly to have church in your home. And and but church should feel like a home setting. It should feel like a refuge. It should feel like a space where you breathe. And I I didn't feel like it's supposed to change. So it was a bit of an identity emphasize err when we made that transition a little bit. We know how important technology would be to complete that mission. I mean, we're still learning how that all is, but we there's people that have come up to me and been like, okay, so I nope City Church, which is our old name, but there's a million City churches now. When we started in 1992, who was like this super innovative name, but we were City Church. And when we change, people thought like, okay, so a city church like you're building church and church home is like your digital church. It's just it just happens to be that within a year of us changing our name that this opportunity came for us around using digital technology to help us create communities hopefully all over the world. The the goal of church home is to create churches in homes. In part one is to create a church environment maybe in a physical building that feels like home. But then there's a second part that's creating churches in homes. On unpack I mean both if you want, but really that second piece of what does it look like to create a church at home?

Yeah, I mean the first thing I'll say is I think I think it's important we don't get hung up on a facility because it's not about a building. It's not about a home. It's it's way more about church. We all know this. It's no question for any church leader that a building is not a church. And that's the same thing, you know, I think that's probably why and your blog in the past and maybe when we launched our app, the people there were some people that had a little bit of a hard time because they're like, an app is not church. And we're like, we're not saying it is, but we do believe just like a building facilitates church, we believe that an app facilitates church. And and I will also say this, that the first three hundred years of the church, there were buildings like the buildings were did get created till Constantine built them. And so like when we when we look at churches, I mean throughout the New Testament, Paul is saying, hey, greet those people, and if you if you look at it, says the ones who meet at the church in your home like people just found whatever means possible they could to build the community of church. And I I think culturally that we we put limitations around the church that don't need to be there. And I think that's kind of the heart. I mean, if you take the digital mentality, that's way broader, not talking church, but you know, we have Amazon in our backyard, Silicon Valley's just down the road, and Seattle is becoming a new Silicon Valley. I mean, literally our real estate has doubled in the last three years because a lot of companies from San Francisco are moving up here. Apple's moving their headquarters to Seattle. Microsoft is literally a stone's throw from where I'm sitting right now. The list goes on. So we're not very, we're in a very tech area. The way the way the tech world thinks is they they literally are are constantly adapting, constantly changing, and they're constantly thinking one thing: let's use whatever means humanly possible to sell what we have, to give what we have. And so my opinion, like, why shouldn't the church think that much that that way, even more so? Like, let's use any means we possibly can. I mean, Amazon started in Seattle last year. They built a whole department, invested millions of dollars into downtown, this thing called Amazon Go.

It's a grocery store that you walk in with your phone in your pocket, grab your stuff and walk out without checking out. Your phone just doesn't worry. Everybody's like, "This is gonna be the next idea." Well, they closed it two months ago. They're like, "Didn't work." And by the way, all of your staff that did this, you don't have a job anymore. But at the same time, they just started a new store in Seattle because they're testing it called the Four Star. And with what that is, is the top one four-star rated products on Amazon. They're selling in person. And they're, I mean, they're totally random, but they're all the top sellers. And Amazon's just going, "It's not about an app. It's not about online. It's about a building. It's let's find any way possible to sell. And so if a building helps us, let's do it. Let's find it out." It's so much more. I think, why doesn't the church think the same way?

Yeah, there's that bit of experimenting that, you know, the church has. And we talked about this recently. We had Seth Muse on, who's a communications director at a church. And we've just talked so much about this idea of the church doesn't experiment. It's afraid to. It gets locked in this model of the brick and mortar building. Of, "Oh, well, we've been doing church services for years. We shouldn't have to do another thing because the church service worked twenty years ago, thirty years ago, fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, way back in Constantine." I mean, that's a great illustration right there of we've been stuck in a model or maybe trying to break free of that model. Churches like yours with Church Home, you know, wrestling with what it looks like to do something different. And honestly, like as I was doing some digging, I'll never forget this tweet. And I, we may have discussed it, I think previously, but literally somebody said in a tweet, and Twitter's Twitter, I get it. "I don't know what the F-bomb you think this is, but don't call it Church." That was the church. That was someone involved in the church's response to Church Home experimenting with doing something different. Like, and there's a whole bunch of issues with that. But how much of that have you guys felt?

Seattle sheltered. I'll say that. Like, word, we're probably disconnected from a lot of different areas with, like, sometimes the competition and the critics in the church world. And I mean, honestly, what we're passionate about, we're based in Seattle. We have a location in Los Angeles. And we're believing to really reach people and engage with them at a high level, much broader than that, clearly. But I think we've been sheltered from a lot of it. I mean, I would say this: like, we, a lot of our staff, for example, I mean, they probably are not. Like, we regulate their social media, but we don't talk about our press this way or that way that much. You know, there were some at the beginning that were kind of fun to hear. Just like, I was like, "Wow, people really have an opinion about this. I'm kind of shocked." But they're gonna, there might still be a lot going on. I literally would say I don't even know. I think we just have our head down. We're trying to learn. We're trying to experiment. We're trying to listen to users, not to critics. Or another way, that's a those are kind of digital terms, but you know, we're trying to listen to people that are engaging with our community and what their experiences are and how we can make that better. That's what I have my focused attention on. That's what our team has focused attention on.

Yeah, well, what is it? So what is it? What does church look like in Church Home? Obviously, physical buildings, I think people can put it together. But you know, maybe since let's not listen to the critics, but let's focus on what is this? What's the end game? What's the actual church? What I think people get hung up on, I mean, to answer your question, we have five locations that are buildings. We have staff pastors. We have gatherings on Sundays and Wednesday night. But we also have this digital tool that is what we're passionate about. Is that we call it a digital tool, by the way. That it's a tool that helps engagement. I'm gonna use a term that's nothing rocket science, but I think this is what gets people hung up with, maybe this critic who said this is not church. And is this: well, people need to meet in person. And I mean, that's a good question. I don't know if anybody can conclude on that. But I will tell you, our goal is that people would meet in person. So what we are hoping to do with mobile technology is help people, whether they meet in our buildings or they meet in another way, that we can create a space where people can build relationships and meet face to face. So, and whatever means possible for that to facilitate, there is massive benefits to digital engagement and technology. I believe the majority of that, and get the majority of that, is really benefit on the front end. I asked the guys at Life Church when we were first exploring this, you know, because from what a little bit that I know, they're some of the people that really started this. And I talked to their online pastor. And he's like, "Man, people are actually engaged more online than they do in person. You know, I walk past somebody in our lobby and they won't say hi to me. And they'll get on their phone and they'll text me." Or vice versa. People will be extremely vulnerable. And let's just be honest, it's because there's an ability. You know, you can talk about, "I had a terrible day today. This, this, and this, and this." And just open up very quickly with complete strangers. That's actually something that we can really use for our benefit. Like, we can use that vulnerability to create connections that hopefully lead to people meeting together in person.

So what Church Home looks like is, I say all that to say, Church Home is very passionate about being church like a home. And what I mean by that, again, is that you have a safe place, a small church that happens to have a lot of people. So we want to have a small church environment. And it's just our prayer that we reach as many people as possible. So it happens that a lot of people, but it might mean small environments. Or if you're in an environment that's large, we want to feel very small. We want to feel very authentic. We want to feel very genuine. We want everybody to know somebody and somebody to know you. At the end of the day, is that about a groups program? Isn't about this? I think programs are overrated. Programs help us facilitate a cultural value. Our cultural value would be that when you're going through a hard time, get you back. We know somebody that you can call or text or connect with. And that person doesn't need to have the answers. They seem to be able to be there and be like, "And I'm sorry. I'll pray with you. I'm for you." And we all know that the people we want to go to in those moments, it's not somebody that's got a solution, but somebody's gonna empathize with us. It's gonna be somebody that's gonna be there for us. And so we're trying to find any way possible to help facilitate easy connection, even like I said, for people to come in our buildings. We, I think one of the negative aspects of the megachurch world in which we live in, of which we are one by the way, is it's so easy to slip in and slip out. It's so easy to come to a gathering and think a gathering is church. And as we know, church is so much more than that. And so we're kind of trying to think of a community that engages daily rather than Sunday. And let's use Sunday or a gathering as a tool to help people engage daily. So that's what we're passionate about. Church Home.

So often we hear with Church Online or technology that it conflicts, that it competes with the physical building. Like, I've literally had conversations where pastors are debating about shutting down Church Online because they're saying Church Online numbers skyrocket and they're saying physical numbers shrink. So rather than working with the thing that's being successful, they want to shut down the successful thing in hopes that since they're not able to access the content, the services, the messages online, they'll go back to the physical buildings, the brick and mortar, and see it there. What you've done with Church Home is you've managed to develop a strategy, or maybe unpack what this looks like, where your Church Home app, your digital strategy, complements what's happening in the physical as well as coexisting outside it for an online audience. You kind of unpack a little bit about how the mobile works alongside and doesn't compete with the physical.

Well, let me use a few words that you just used to kind of give context. First off, let me actually say it does compete. And I think it's important for any leader to go, "If I leave it to itself, they do contrast and they do compete. But if we lead it, they cannot and actually don't." Even want to use the word complement. That they can do their part in their own space to help make the whole experience better. Let me give you an example. When Nordstrom first started their digital and Nordstrom's also a local community here company here, and when they first started their digital online presence for selling stuff, what ended up happening without them trying to was their stores and their digital ended up competing against each other. And so that leadership got together and said, "This isn't going to work." The option that I think what churches and what church leaders have thought is you can have three options: keep them competing, and that's a pain, or shut one of them down. We should shut buildings down? No, we should shut that online down. But when you think of business terms, how terrible would that be for Nordstrom to make that conclusion? Of course, the answer is one of the two: either let them keep competing, which I don't think is a good solution, or let's find out a way that these can work together. Not, and I agree there's a complementary aspect to it, but there's also an idea of going, "Let's make digital make physical better and let's make physical make digital better."

So what I mean by this is this, and this is what we're endeavoring to do. And I will say that we are trying and we are growing and we are learning. And I think we've got some great ideas and I think what we're doing right now is also awesome. But I think some of the new things we're gonna be trying in the future are going to even make this even better. That you have the exact same experience whether your first interaction with Church Home is digital and online or if it's in person. And I'm actually beginning to see that the most ideal scenario is your first impression to be digitally, which leads to in-person. So I'm gonna use in-person on purpose rather than then buildings because again, I don't want us to be limited to buildings being physical. Physical, that I think we see in the Bible, is people meeting with people. And obviously there's the whole government structure church, of course we believe in all that. But I'm just saying it's face-to-face engagement.

So what we have had, and this actually did happen for us, is that when we launched our app, we realized quickly that we had to start creating workflows. How is this all going to work? And so we started creating all these workflows. And all of a sudden, we kind of had two churches. We had workflows for all of our buildings in our megachurch, and then we had workflows for all of our digital. And I mean, we had staff literally just to tell you the conflict, to be vulnerable with you, we had staff being like, "I kind of feel like we're going back to the book Exodus and you're asking us to build more brick with less straw." But like, I feel like you just gave.

Me a second job I can't keep up with both because, but you were like, "We're gonna, we're gonna seamlessly bring us together, all of us are gonna be involved. You're everybody's gonna have a job on the app, everybody's gonna have a job in person," and that's still, you know, part of being team is you just jump in and do it. But we're working on right now is trying to go, let's think of one workflow that seamlessly has digital, physical, physical, digital, physical, rather than digital, digital, digital, digital, digital, or physical, physical, physical, physical, physical. Let's have one workflow that doesn't cause these things to compete because they naturally do, but they actually seamlessly work together. And there's a term that is funny in industry right now. It's that's called digital. Like I said, you can tell so many jokes around it, but this term is exactly that. It's the seamless cohesion of physical and digital workflows working together in cohesion to build the best product we possibly can. So church is not a business, it's not a product, you hear about heart, but that's what we're endeavoring to do. And it's a constant journey. It's a constant adaptation, and it's a constant learning from users on how we can do that better.

Mark, you made a comment earlier about how programs and processes need to work together. Um, I thought that was great because so often, you know, I find that we get so caught up in terms of what the true purpose of the program is, and so can you give me some, some like more specific examples as to how that works out with Church Home in terms of, hey, here's the concept that we want to see happen, how are we going to do this in a digital space, and we're open to whatever ideas come with it as far as how that's gonna work?

Sure. I'll tell you something we are doing right now. I also tell you some of the problems we have with those, which is why we're trying to explore other ways, but they're good problems. It's there's probably always going to be some problems with everything we do, which is what keeps us having a job. But what we're doing right now, which has been a big aspect of what we're trying to leverage, content to be a hook for people to engage with, and our goal is that those people would consider starting groups, leading groups. So obviously groups is a very big aspect. We want to make it super easy for people to lead groups. One thing has been very specific is we have tried to really streamline our technology rather than having like fifteen different on-ramps. As narrowing as it is, we've said this is our on-ramp, so we don't, we're not like communicating to our church and say, "Hey, go use this technology, go use that, go do this," and I think there's benefits to that. But I think what I would recommend to anybody is curate those different technologies that other people created, like Facebook groups or any of those, try to curate them to work as one seamless thing customized for your community. So for us, we went all-in with mobile app. Are we going to have use some of that in an online web-based experience? Sure, we'd like to build that out, but we went first with a mobile app because that's way more where people are at. I mean, who even remembers amazon.com? Like, I'm not saying people don't use it, but that's where Amazon started, but what made Amazon Amazon is that app because we all know we spend way too much money because we think of something and then we buy it right then on our phone. So mobile technology is very different than online technology, and mobile technology's primarily about the immediate and also primarily about engagement because you can engage right then, right there. I mean, think about how different social media would be if we didn't have mobile phones. It'd be extremely different. And so I think streamlining what you're going to choose, that's what we chose, that's why we went that direction. I also believe that businesses, they're using mobile technology appropriately, are the ones that are really exciting. And I don't think, in my opinion, I don't think churches have really used mobile technology for what it is. It's become like an app version of a website. It's not really interactive, it's not very engaging, it's not something that is addicting. And let's be honest, these things are addicting, so why not use that addiction to do it for something awesome like Jesus and church? So that's what we're on for sure.

Some of the other things we're working on right now is we do still presently have separate workflows, and what we are working on, a new what you thing that will allow us to do this, that your first step, for example, I think probably somewhere in the nineties or maybe even there's always the eighties, we can think Bill Hybels and lots of other great, you know, entrepreneurial, creative thinking pastors that were like, "Hey, let's make Sunday's the front door of church. Like, we're gonna make it open for non-Christians and make it a space where people feel safe," and Sunday's became that. What we're wanting is we're wanting this phone, this digital app or maybe the online experience, to become the front door of church. That it's way less intimidating. Let's just be flat-out honest to say, "Hey, would you consider checking out this cool content? This is an app that our community, the community I'm a part of, is leading," and rather than going like, "Hey, do you want to darken the doors of a church building this Sunday?" For people who don't go to church, there's so many preconceived ideas about that, but there's so little preconceived ideas about church on the back. So most people, I'll tell you, our experience, most people are like a hundred percent, "Y'all check it out, that's cool, wow, this is awesome," like, and you can show it to him real quick. The hairdresser, "Hey, check this out. Oh, that's kind of cool." So we're thinking digital really is a great first step.

So I'll give you an example right now. On Sundays, if you come to one of our buildings, if you raise your hand or respond in some way to say, "I want to follow Jesus," you know, we have our assimilation steps, workflows, and it's usually as simple as ours are very low compared to most churches, but it's usually as simple as, "Hey, we've got people on our next steps bar in the lobby. We have prayer on tap in the lobby. Go check it out, and you know, we'd love to connect with you. We got a couple different things people can do." What we would like to do is build our technology out appropriately so that whether you're in your barber shop or you are at church, the first steps are exactly the same. Download the app and tell us a little about yourself. So we're gonna build out kind of a space where the onboarding process is us getting to know the user, and then that space will really allow us the ability to engage with them customized and kind of help them find their next step in engagement. So regardless of whether you're gonna be in the building or you're engaging from a barber shop three states away, the goal is that once you download this app and you go through kind of an opening process, it'll immediately connect you into a space, a smaller space, where you can engage with other users around your location so you can start to get to know people, and then hopefully eventually you naturally get to know them online. You'll be like, "Hey, you want to meet up at a coffee shop? I'd love to get to know you more." So but we hope that's actually gonna revolutionize our, the people who come to our buildings also. The same thing will happen. They'll be put in a small space with a group of people that live, you know, in the Redmond area around them, maybe they all work at Microsoft, and be like, "Hey, let's grab lunch during our lunch break today. I, you know, I've met you on this digitally, let's meet in person now." So the app drives it, connects people who are geographically similar and connects them together in hopes of creating some sort of a biblical community.

Yeah, what I mean in using church language here, but what else, like with the app at all? I know a lot of times in physical brick and mortars, like there's next step classes, one-oh-one, two-hundred, and three-hundred, four-oh-one, you know, connect to God, other serving, mission, you know, just different strategies that are out there. Do you guys implement any of those strategies on your app? Are those strategies in the physical church? Like, what are those processes kind of look like for you?

Well, let me preface this with that. With its first to the guy who launched it, one of the top investors for Airbnb and the guy launched PayPal, said, "If you're not embarrassed by the first expression of your technology, you launched too late." So there are aspects of our app that I so wish were already better, and we're better from the beginning, but we took that as a premise to go, "Let's go, let's get out there, and we'll make it better as we go." It is getting more systematized and strategic upfront. We just put all that content on there, and we've allowed on-demand version of chat in all of those spaces. So I mean, just if we really just boil it down and simple, so we have our grow classes on there. We have content about how to get baptized and the basics of what we believe about biblical baptism, and we encourage people to do it. And here's what we see biblically is that is the base that you need. Go do it and let us know. Like, we're also here, come to our church, come to our building if you want, but we also believe that the Bible gives preference for this over here if you do in this way. So we have that content on there. Yes, with kind of some of this new stuff that I was just describing that we're trying to get better at because we're trying to use the technology to help kind of lead somebody through those steps. So you know, if you're engaging and you want to step into a leadership, it's very clear what to do, and all of that is at your fingertips. And we want it to be in an engaging space where you're simultaneously engaging with humans, not just digital content, and going through checking off boxes because, as we all know, the devil can do that, and he could be leading in our church. So but at the same time, there's just a massive level of trust also. So you know, we also really believe in and you know, doing everything we can with all those different processes, but also leading a space for people to step in and give it a go.

So other things like volunteering, a lot of it is around chat and communication. Like, we haven't integrated at this point like functional stuff that typical church things do, but I will say this: if you don't think about church via how to make Sunday happen, but you make church more around like engagement and community, volunteering looks totally different. It's not about getting volunteers at a door on Sunday. It's about people serving their neighbors, and it's about people doing difference. So we only are high on that. We have these things called uplift projects, and we do global uplift projects. And so like when the wildfires hit California, we did a response event last fall where we literally did a live event Q&A for thirty minutes, and we just tried to raise money for, we picked an organization, it was the firefighters, and you know, a lot of this was around finances, but we literally brought three people on live that their houses burned down. We interviewed them. We talked to them about what the experience is like, and it's on our app right now, so you have all that on demand. So there's lots of opportunities like that, but then we also encourage people to start, just like a group, we encourage them to start what we call uplift groups, which are basically like service-oriented, volunteer-oriented things, so getting out and impacting your city, impacting your world. So it's really more around resourcing and empowering people to go do than it is around like trying to.

Collect people and having organization systems that help make Sunday happen. Mark, that's fantastic. Kind of begs the question a little bit, and I know you guys got a physical location in Los Angeles as well. Do you have online digital communities that that end up resulting in physical locations or not, not locations in the sense of a physical campus, but outside of Seattle and outside of LA, like in terms of these connections, is that happening with Church Home?

Yeah, we're, it organically has happened. Yeah, and we're in beta mode of that, meaning we're exploring that ourselves. So yeah, we have a handful. We probably have more than that that we know of too, but some that we're engaging with. We have one in Seattle. There's an area in Seattle called Bainbridge Island. So it's literally an island that you have to take a boat to get to Seattle. And it's an island life like people don't want to leave the island. And it's a couple that's just hardcore that commuted to our church an hour and a half. But when this happened, they're like, awesome, we can just invite people into our home. So they just did it. We didn't tell them to. And we're like, awesome. You know, it's kind of crazy about this. Same thing about digital being a first impression. I went, so I've been to there. They're on our app. We're calling it a group at this point. But they do join our live gathering. They meet in their home. They worship together. They always cook food. He's a professional musician, so he has a studio in his house. And they live out of their house literally, really artistic couple. And all of the people I can almost promise you this, all the people that have come to their group wouldn't in no way ever get on the ferry and ever come to one of our buildings. They are not church people. They're kind of spiritual. So when their friend said, hey, we're doing this thing at our house. It's about Jesus. Come over. They're like, yeah, we'll come support you. There. I mean, people are open, but coming to a church building, especially it's an hour to have drive, like that's for the committed. And this is a small community where, just to be honest, like no church planters are going like, let's go. They're like, it's so, so we have a community like that there. We have one in Dallas that started, which I know we're all like, there's tons of churches in Dallas, but it were gonna happen. So we got around it. It was this couple that literally they listened to our podcast, liked our pastor, liked our culture. And they literally prayed. They showed us this in their journal. They're a younger couple. And they said, hey, we're praying for you that we're gonna find the church within a year. And we're praying that we'll find insurance just like Church Home. That was living their journal. The next week we announced our app. And they were like, oh my word, let's start a group. Within two weeks, because of the app, they had over forty people come to their group that they'd never met. They started in a cafe because they didn't want a bunch of strangers showing up at their house. And they literally meet every week now. They've had baptisms. They've had people. They have people give their lives to Jesus weekly, like raise their hand. The same time if people are under physical buildings, we are presently constantly talking to them because we want to learn from them more than we're asking them to learn from us. Primarily, more about what's the experience like? What are the pain points you're having? We're also clearly at the same time just completely giving them culture and DNA every chance we have. But yeah, we're in an exploration process in that. So when people are starting them, we're wanting to hear from them and see what's happening. And we're kind of seeing where that goes.

I know we had Danny from Elevation Church on, and she's the watch party pastor. And she talked a lot about kind of what you're describing, at least Elevation's spin on that. And they're constantly evolving and experimenting with that model over there. Like Dallas, what does that service look like? How are you training these people? Quality control? Like that's two time zones away from you on the west coast. What the practicality of that worship experience look like?

So what I say right now could be completely different in six months. So we're literally in a place where we're just starting to lean in to go, okay, let's collect a handful of these and let's learn from them. Let's go to them. Let's experience it with them. It's just so different. And it's funny. I'm talking about using a digital tool, and right now we're communicating over a computer, but it takes for a pastor, it's so different when you meet a person. That's why we want our digital tool to lead to in person. So we want to go to them. We want to learn from them. But what's happening right now is this. We have weekly communication with them because they want it. They are communicating with us via text. We have a Google Hangout with all of our what we call our global group leaders. So we have groups that are meeting in I think eighty different cities worldwide. And we actually do a Google Hangout with all of those leaders. And it's like a leaders meeting. We talk culture. We ask. We have a Q&A time with them. They ask us questions. Obviously, some of them are engaging with us more than others. And so that's what kind of the support structure looks like. But we really hope to build that out quite a bit moving forward.

Second, how the services look like. They get together. There's usually some food when they're hanging out. And then we have service that's scheduled at six p.m. Pacific time. So for them, that's eight p.m. So when it comes on, they just AirPlay it to their TV. We're working on, we're working on, we would like to, it just comes down to priorities, build a Roku and Apple TV app so they can just, it's embedded in there. But in the meantime, Chromecast is on there. And so we're working on casting abilities. But there's cast it on their TV. And they literally watch the same experience at this point. We might do a different customized version for in-home, but right now it's the exact same experience if you're just taking it on the phone. And on the phone, we have a highly moderated chat area. And it's fascinating. The very beginning, we have what are called our digital lobby. It literally looks like our services. So our services are unique, not like most churches. We worship at the end. We sing at the end. We preach at the beginning. So wow, yes, I know it's very different. But when we start, it happened unplanned. When we start our LA community, which we never planned doing, it started in a home, which is funny. Literally, Judah was down there with a friend of his in the industry. And he said, hey, you're in town for a preaching engagement. Will you do Bible study at my house? And they invited people that would not normally go to church. And Judah has a gift, definitely for communication, especially with unchurched people. And that night there was like probably twelve or fifteen people. And like two-thirds of the room responded to give their lives to Jesus. And it was one of those moments like, wow, that was God. Of course, there was no music. There was nothing. It was in a house. And he got up and talked. So quickly, these are very unsure people. So if we started with like a song at the beginning, it would have been like, where are we? So that whole community in LA, for a year, and it grew to like three hundred. It was literally Judah to hop on a plane, everybody Wednesday, preaching and leaving. And we would meet in a hotel ballroom with a microphone. That was it. It grew to several hundred people. And then we started introducing music at the end because it just felt right. To be honest, with all the people in the room, none of them had any experience in a church setting, like zero. And so we've used that to kind of reflect. You know, we think we can give some biblical precedence. We don't think it's like that level, but you know, we believe that worship is a response to the gospel. And so that's why we do it. But it's also disarming. So literally, if you come to whatever services online or in person, let's say it starts at nine. Nine-oh-three. That preacher's up there. Let's open our Bibles. And you're going. And then it leads to singing. And then like some closing comments and giving and stuff like that. So we have a digital lobby. It's like ten minutes of chat. And everybody's like, hey, I'm here from Brazil. I'm here. It's pretty fun because you got people from all over the world that are checking in. And so there's a chat where we are super social. Or we're like a family. We're Church Home. So we're very social. Half the time when the communicator gets up, he's like, okay, we're starting. Like literally, so people look around like, oh, I guess I should sit down now. And some people sit down. And then we start. Then the communicator starts speaking. And it leads into music. And it leads into a response time. And all that time has got some chat in there. You can turn the chat off if you turn your phone to landscape mode. Or you can keep it on if you keep it up. So whichever one you prefer. But it's all, it seems great.

So this is amazing. And I know that in a lot of respects, it's innovative. Are there any other churches or church movements that you guys are learning from right now?

Yeah, we learn different things from different people. Of course, you're not gonna be surprised by the people I bring up. But in the church world, obviously, Elevation, what they're doing is unbelievable. And I'm friends with a few of the people there. Life Church, Craig, is kind of like an uncle to Pastor Judah, to our pastor. So he's constantly encouraging him and his innovation. When we launch the app, you know, Craig was, aren't they're cheering them on. So you know, I would say those two are some of the top. I'm friends with a few other online pastors. So like the pastoral engagement part, you know, Saddleback, I know they've been doing online groups for a long time. We've learned some from them. But when it comes to the technology platform, to be honest, we're learning from people that are not church people. Right? The way this started was an entrepreneur that went to church twice a year. Was home sick in November and he turned TV on and watched church on TV. And he's a very successful, smart entrepreneur. And he goes, the church hasn't updated their technology since nineteen seventy. He's like, they're still using broadcast TV. They haven't even started using mobile technology. And so he got this idea as an entrepreneur. I want to build mobile technology like the church has never seen. And so for him, it's a business. But incredible guy. And he actually reached out to us. And he started talking with us. And they're the ones that had developed this with us and for us. It's an incredible partnership. But none of them, and I mean none of them, are church people. They've all become Jesus followers. But it's funny. Well, they'll challenge our strategies all the time. Like last week, I was talking to him about in groups, kind of a, with a lot of us, do New Year like a groups initiative. And I'm like, why do you do that? And there, and then immediately when they asked the question, I start getting in their frame of reference. And I'm like, there's so many better ways we could be doing this. And so I want to be honest. I would say we actually are learning a lot more from Silicon Valley. And we are learning from churches in many ways. Shouldn't that be the case? And I think that's wonderful that you guys have the humility to admit that because, you know, you kind of challenge this thought earlier.

We get stuck in our own perspective, in our own way. Well, this is the way it's always been done, therefore it's always the way it always should be done. And it seems like you guys are challenging that. How are you guys creating content to engage folks in the midweek that's connected to the weekend? Because I know that's a big part of what it is that you're doing, and that's just got to be there. That's got to create a tremendous amount of tension for you. So tell me, so right now we have what's called a Daily Spark. So maybe we haven't—we haven't—we have a daily one minute and a half, and it is curated. It is intentional. I wouldn't say it's always like echoing what's being said on Sunday exactly, but I will say this: once again, this is just our community, but we preach Jesus every Sunday. So almost doesn't matter what you're talking about, it always ties in together. And so yeah, we do have a daily thing called Daily Spark that's also something that we are, you know, continuing to try to make better and more engaging, more interactive. And when I say engaging, I'm not talking about engaging with other people. I'm talking about engaging with Jesus, man. There's a lot of content out there, so we want something that really makes that, really helps you facilitate a moment with Jesus. So we're—there's actually some sneak peek stuff on there right now called guided prayers. It's like about four to five minutes, literally that, like, helping people. And I'll tell you what, I've been praying and reading my Bible for twenty-five years daily—obviously not every day, but you get him saying yeah—and I found these personally like so engaging in a world that is full of distractions. And I thought my prayer life is so easy. Like, I have to focus so much more. And maybe people are more spiritual than me, but I've had to fight for focus in my time in the Bible, in my time talking to God, more just because the culture we live in now. Life is so fast-paced and because of the digital tools that we have. And I'll say these five to eight minute guided prayers have been really helpful for me because it's just something like, think about this right now. Say this out loud. Think about how Jesus is embracing you right now, you know? Like, it's pretty awesome. So we hope that those are going to be a real tool to help people. Once again, our church exists to point people to Jesus, not to our message. So the daily content is points that are—is that from a practical standpoint, is that Judah? Is that the pastor who's in your daily minute? Like, who are the people doing the content?

So the Daily Sparks—the Daily Sparks all started out as Judah and Chelsea. We shot them all in two days, like a month, like literally they just did two days straight content, nailed it. And then we started doing like response sparks, like where he'd be like a selfie spark where he just pulls his phone up and does it. If something happened like a tragedy, we still do these. Like the day of, he'll stop, he'll say something about it, pray it, and we'll post it. So it did start out primarily as Jude and Chelsea. Then we've started bringing in a handful of our community, and we've been intentional about different voices, different ages, you know, the diversity, inclusivity, different perspectives. Though guided prayers are—are once again, it's just another piece of content. We'll see what happens, but they're doing those right now too.

And let me ask this: probably the biggest problem with churches that are doing something similar or trying to do something similar to what you're doing—groups creating physical community, creating community online, utilizing a church online or a digital transmission—is this idea of church in isolation. And you mentioned it earlier, you know, the goal of church home isn't to have a bunch of people staring at their iPhones experiencing a church. The goal is to create community. How are you creating new communities in different areas, an island that you're not able to plant a church—Dallas, you know, wherever they may be? How are you able to get people away from isolation, staring at the phones? Like, is this geographical thing you were talking about earlier the only way you're doing it? Are there other methods that you're using to pull people out of isolation into a new community?

Yeah, it's a good question. I'll take a stab at it. It starts with the heart and the focus. That's the goal of this. So when we're shaping and making content and we're shaping and making strategy, we're focusing on that. I don't know if number one, there's—we can't control people. We can't force them. But we are definitely trying to, from the very inception, from the launch of this app, we said this is all about—the tag that the word we use—just funny, tactile relationships. Now we're kind of saying face-to-face engagement. Engagement is not a new thing on an app, but face-to-face engagement, you know, leading to that, is not the tool of a lot of—well, there's some dating apps around that. But so yeah, I will say this: the digital device—we didn't know in the beginning, but it has led to a lot of isolation. It just has. But I think God's redeemed a lot of things to use them for other purposes. So worth saying, rather than hiding from it, let's redeem it and use it to remove isolation. So yeah, I would say how we're doing that is probably in our messaging. We're building. We're trying to constantly think of new strategies to help facilitate that. What we're learning from people—they're meeting in person. Once we learn more from them, we'll probably adjust the technology to support that better, to help facilitate that better. But I know for myself in the past, I've got the cart before the horse way too many times. I've got an idea, I think it's great, and then we put all this work into it, and then people really actually don't care about it or want it. But the way great organizations and companies do it is they try things and they listen. They take feedback and then they adjust and they adapt. And as they do that, so our goal is not changing. It's the goal that's been since the beginning of the church: point people to Jesus, let community swell as a result, and then help people step up to lead that community. And so we didn't create a vision. It's already established in the Bible. We're just trying to find tools to help facilitate it.

I saw Clay Scroggins once at a conference, and he said that the digital disruption—the business world looks at the digital disruption as an opportunity. The church looks at it as an obstacle to run away from. And so you, you know, maybe learning some from the business side out on the west coast, but also trying to take advantage of these tools to create community, to create disciples, to connect people to God.

Ray, did you have anything? Questions as we're wrapping? How to land in the plane? I love this, Mark. I hope we can have you on again just because I feel like I learned a lot, and I hope everybody listening learned a lot as well. And just hearing your heart and your passion for innovation, you've heard a sentence before. Once again, folks, um, try. Just try. Get out there and try something. And if you get mocked for it, if folks don't like it, if they don't appreciate it, that's okay. Just keep trying and keep tweaking at it because it really is about reaching folks for Christ. Just all Mark is doing well. And I'll land the plane on a few scriptures because that's very spiritual and probably appropriate. But that's what the early church did. They seemed good to us and the Holy Spirit to set you apart. I think we got to do more things. It's like, I think it's gonna be good. It seems like it's gonna be good. I think God's saying this to me, so let's give it a try. And I love—I think it's the original Living Translation—that it's an Ecclesiastes scripture—but it says if you wait for perfect conditions, you'll never get anything done. And it's just never gonna be cookie cutter. This is never going to be a formula. We're working with people. We're building a community, not an organization. And I can't wait for perfect conditions. We've got to give it a try. And I promise you this: if we talk again someday, I will contradict myself then. We will have learned new things. We will change things we're doing right now, and I'll say, oh yeah, I remember when I said that. I completely disagree with myself. And I think that's part of learning and growing. And I want to be that type of Jesus follower that I'm humble enough to go, I had that completely wrong. And I think we need to apply that to our strategies as a church too.

Awesome. I mean, I don't know anything better that I can say to land the plane. So Mark, thank you for joining us today. Ray, thanks for jumping on as well. This is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for being here, and I was here you or see you or whatever next time. You'll have a good day.