EP039: Greg Ligon & Behind the Screens - The State of Church Online

Episode 39 of the Church Digital Podcast

I got to tell you, I am really excited about where this podcast is gonna end. Check it out. Recently, two organizations got together and created a survey to check the state of church online. So we talked about whether churches are engaging or not and what's happening.

And so they did a survey to see where you churches out there and how you are engaging in and utilizing this church online method. So we got Living as One. Now they are no stranger to the podcast or to the Church Digital. We do a ton of work with Colin Jones and Paul and those guys over at Living as One. And also we're bringing new to the podcast Leadership Network. Now, hopefully you guys are no strangers to Leadership Network. By the way, they create some phenomenal resources out there and do a number of intensive trainings and things to help the church, the church operate better. They came together to create a survey, and now we've got the results in of how you church out there and your contemporaries how you're utilizing church online. So this is cool. The survey is out, it's public, it's been released, the report has, and so you can download that report. We're gonna put the link in the show notes. You can just swing over there and grab it from there. But more than that, with this podcast we're able to sit down with these guys and have a conversation about where we are, okay? So we're seeing this. This is that. Why we're seeing this trend? Why? Where are we going? What's next? More than just looking at where we are today, let's be proactively figuring out where we're heading for tomorrow and start to move down that road as we continue this growth towards church online, towards discipleship online.

I got to tell you, the thing that I was most excited about with this report is this idea that discipleship is not just a word that's said and closed doors, but it's something that's happening virtually. And we're starting to see more and more churches trend that way and understand that. The report shows it, which makes me so excited because it's the stuff that we've been talking about. It's awesome.

So here's where we are with the podcast. We literally got Colin Jones, president of Living as One. We got Greg Lagaan, the chief innovation officer with Leadership Network. Raid the Armas, co-host once again, on pastor with Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, in a conversation detailing behind the screens.

Hey, everybody, here we go. I was just curious, like, what were the overall trends that you found in your research? Was there anything that, like, what's the theme that was maybe discovered through this research?

Well, I think one of the big ideas and one of the things that was demonstrated to me is that there's a significant growth in this space. Is that those that were surveyed for this project, 47 percent reported that they had an online campus, which is up 28 percent from when we asked the same question five years ago. And in fact, when we asked that question five years ago, 62 percent indicated they plan not to have an online campus. So we're seeing really rapid growth.

What do you think is the relationship? What's causing that shift to go from not wanting to do a campus to now? What's been the cultural thing that these things allowed more churches to get excited about online?

Well, I think, you know, in some ways it just represents the growth of social environments. Mine, anyway. So I think that that's it. Kind of follows that trend a bit. I think the other thing is in five years, horse technology changes feels like a bit every ten minutes. In fact, that's one of the things I'll talk about a little bit later. But because the technology has improved so much over the last five years, I think more and more people were able to get into the game more quickly because it's affordable and easier to use. The perspective shifted from, "Oh, church online," and heard my attendance. People won't come, you know, all those different perspectives. And they're now surveying that on the data that was really surprising to me. You know, 46 percent disagree that online attendance, you know, doesn't get hurt by it. You know, online streaming in-person attendance. And then 20 percent agreed that it hurt attendance. So there was, you know, more than double that disagreed with that. And then the rest, I guess, we're neutral.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a big surprise to me as well. And you know, I consistently get calls from senior pastors who have that question. They're like, "Oh, my gosh, yeah, we started an online campus and we've dropped our attendance, you know, X percentage. We're thinking about shutting down our online campus." And so I was surprised at the growth and the people who growth in the number of people who really felt like that that was hurting their physical presence. Excuse me, the growth in people that didn't feel like he was hurting their personal physical presence.

I think you mentioned that 46 percent disagreed that adding an online campus hurt their physical presence. Something that was very interesting to me as well. I think one of the things that often times senior pastors, it's a issue in terms of the impact on physical attendance as well. Ruin somebody's has nothing to do with online. There's a there's a significant decrease in physical attendance simply because of the fact that people will see themselves as being a regular attender at church, but they may only come one time a month or two times a month. And so when you actually begin to look at the actual people, the bodies that are showing up on your on your physical campus, your growth is actually in many cases you're growing. You're not declining in terms of the number of people that you're serving. And there's a we work with a group in Scott Summa at Hartford Research Institute, and I believe the latest number that they quote is if you take your average weekend worship attendance, you can multiply it by 3.2, and that really gets you to be at what the reach is that you have as a church just to understand our country is also taking into consideration how this is affecting their decision making. Considering how many people are engaging with them online, do you guys see any shifts in terms of how churches are considering both how they're addressing people like how they're preaching to them, but also how they're making decisions in regards to everything from budgets to how they're communicating with them in terms of engagement?

Well, probably the thing that is that jumps out to me when you ask that question is Crossroads Church, which is up in Cincinnati, which I think is one of the churches that's really leading the way, not just online but with digital, all kinds of digital things. But on their online campuses, you know, they are really working toward having an experience that is, when I would, that is shaped by the physical campus. So you're going to be most likely to attend to attend. So for example, if I'm if I log on online and my locator indicates that I'm closest to the campus that's in the south side of Cincinnati, then I may. They're moving toward the place where they'll actually have a physical. The stream will actually include the campus pastor from that physical campus. And they're really committed that. In fact, they've even changed the name of their online, excuse me, for their campus pastors to community pastors because they're charging that with them with the responsibility not just for the people that are showing up at their building but those who are showing up online in that from that specific geographic area. So that's one of the ways I see that happening.

Yeah, I think Matt know a really cool quote from that on the report where he said, you know, is asking the question basically of, you know, from the data in the report, it's the question of, you know, what's the purpose of, you know, live streaming online? And then I think, like, you know, the majority right now is just getting people, you know, like still just keeping people connected. Like, but then if you look at, like, the higher echelon of churches, like if you go like ten thousand plus, their highest reason is for outreach and evangelism and just like not not engagement at all for actually reaching people. And so I think we'll start to see more and more of the smaller churches realize that, okay, this is, you know, the the offline attender, as long as he's still engaging, should count as a church member. And people are kind of battling with that question now.

I think churches like Crossroads, you know, say stuff like, you know, we don't want to convert someone from online to onsite. You know, our goal is to make sure they're connected to the church community. Connecting is more important than converting them from online to offline for us. And so they were saying, you know, they have other ways of them to connect digitally, digital community groups, and that's more important than actually becoming into a button seat, which is like a huge shift that we see. And I think, you know, Jeff's talked about that a ton on his podcast is trying to get pastors and people that think through, hey, don't just think button seat. It's an old paradigm. And we're really seeing that shift with the churches that are doing digital well. If it's digital attender, if he's growing in community with others attending a church body in whatever way, and that that should count just as much as a regular person that's in the seat, maybe even more so than someone who just comes and watches it every weekend and then leaves and it's not involved at all after that.

Yeah, we're gonna be talking with Crossroads here in a couple episodes, so we're excited to roll that out for everybody. They're doing a lot of really interesting things in that digital and in that church online scope. One of the things that that surprised me with with the with the status guys rolled out is that you you capped the the lowest sized church at about eight hundred people. The average church in America is probably closer to seventy to seventy three. I think eighty percent of churches in America are under two hundred in size. Not sure on the stats, but these are things that I've heard and they sound reasonable. Why did you cap it at eight hundred, like what was what was the logic at that size versus maybe even digging into some of the smaller size churches?

Well, it's really primarily based off of a Leadership Network bias. We've always worked with larger churches, and so our base of churches that participated are primarily larger churches. And so that's really what drove that. And more so than more so than any intention not to reach into the small group market. That's just really been who we feel like we've been called to serve. So that's that be the foundation for that.

I think part of that, I think you're part of the reason that smaller churches may or may not be involved. I think it's really primarily in some ways it's similar to this. I'm not gonna make a blanket statement here that I don't mean to be a blanket statement because there's some actually very incredibly healthy small churches. But in many cases, small, there's some small churches that they're small because there's a lack of vision and leadership. And so I think, you know, that translates them into not being willing to take risk, not being willing to even in many cases not even being exposed to some of the new things that are happening in the church. We talked to like quite a few churches, and you know, hey, we got people fifty people attending and we want to stream because there's a lot of transient communities and people, especially in Florida. We hear that all the time for people in the winter or I mean we, you know, grow it stops it away around. Oh yeah, in the winter. And then I'm in a lot of communities like that, and the smaller churches primarily are driven.

By reasons like that, like they're not thinking about it. Like I want to reach a bunch of people online, but then occasionally now, like especially in a digital world, you'll get really small churches that have just some visionary digitally and they'll be doing crazy numbers digitally and have like 200 people coming on, you know, in their service every Sunday's or even just online churches only. And like the barrier to entry for a digital church and the amount of people that you can reach without it being weird, there's so many more people than the old paradigm of finding people having to attend and do that. So that model's starting to be challenged and I think that's really interesting. Especially, you know, you guys have talked better the way of church planting and the, and what's cool is like we really love when we talk to those smaller churches because they just have questions about it all, you know, like how do we do camera, how do we do, et cetera, and that's really fun for us. Scrappy ones that are sometimes, now you'll come up and you'll get like a really, you know, active, understand digital church planner that you know have some really interesting visions and views on digital.

Yeah, yeah. I think the barriers you take on, the barrier to entry is going down and so I think you will see smaller churches. When I say a smaller church, I'm thinking more of a traditional smaller church that's been small for a long time. That last little piece that you talked about was really running church planters and I think there is, we are going to see, already are seeing this, and we're going to see a growing number of planters that are launching up with an online, and in some cases maybe launching online first before they actually put the physical campus, and building an online community that then becomes the core for launching their physical campus.

Yeah, we have. Yeah, for that it was crazy because there was one of them that had, you know, five hundred people at launch. Do they've been streaming for six months or whatever? Interesting. Yeah, I would love to see more church planters take advantage of that and I've always wondered why there's this rush to get to the physical building, to pay the lease, to pay the AV cost, you know, to go with all this when starting in a virtual and then building from there, building that core team, getting your DNA out there in the community. That's a lot safer to do on a plant side and I just, I think looking forward, I hope my hope is that more churches are gonna start to plant that digital first, grow physical, sure, but start in a digital realm where people can connect to you and can engage with you before getting to that place where we have to start paying all the larger fees.

Well, one of the things that I loved about the report is you delved in a lot to the discipleship piece of this. A lot of times when we talk with churches and pastors, at least me, the extent of their online stops with the broadcast. Like the win of church online is just broadcasting the services out and obviously, calling with living as one, you guys do an excellent job with that, but I really respected how you guys ask some more questions to get into more of the discipleship angle of how churches are doing more than just broadcasting the services but actually getting into small groups and into next steps and into this discipleship piece. You know, I saw one of the stats was it looked like about on average three to six percent of churches are doing that we're interviewed or doing some sort of discipleship virtually online, small groups, et cetera. I mean, obviously when we looked at that, it I think ten thousand plus people, those churches were more like twenty percent. So there's this broad range where some of them are very few, but then when you get to like the giga level, a lot more pick up. What do you think is causing, what are the giga churches seeing that the others aren't? What are those hurdles that are stopping some of the other churches from doing more discipleship?

Well, I think there's a couple of things. I think one of the reasons the giga churches are doing it more is because they have more dedicated resources to be able to try to figure it out, you know, so they have, you know, they can put some staff who are given primary focus to really, you know, developing some of those kinds of things. And that's part of the reason. I think the other reason that it is it's not accelerated as rapidly as we might think is has less to do with online and more to do with a paradigm shift that is not yet fully engaged in terms of what it means to do discipleship. I think we're sitting, many churches, even many large churches, are still thinking about discipleship in a very linear, curricular, educational kind of model. Discipleship really at its heart is really about transformation, right? And so I think as people can begin to get more and more comfortable with the transformational side of discipleship, they're gonna get more and more comfortable with opportunities that online provides in terms of being able to actually have community online. Sir, you an educational model is actually pretty easy to deliver online. There's a lot. I mean, if you're doing, if you got a curriculum-based discipleship program, you can deliver that online pretty easily. But I think the ability to really see the online space as a place to really truly engage, not just to consume, I think we're still in the midst of that shift.

Why do you guys think that it is that so many churches are shy to take their services to social platforms? Because I saw a significant decrease between the number of churches that broadcast on their site compared to how many of them actually take it to the masses on social media.

Yeah, we're actually seeing like a huge increase in people streaming to social. It used to be where they didn't at all. It's pretty difficult the stream to social because you have all these music rights things and especially if you're a small church, like you get docked and taken down. So they get frustrated. But now like the social platforms are handling that a lot better, which is great news. And there's a lot more people that we're seeing, like we have like last weekend just for the amount of new churches that came on, for example, of all of our platform, we had like a fifteen percent week over week increase in Facebook streaming, which is huge when you have that many churches on the platform. So it's like that's not new trick just coming on, that's like, you know, like people that are already coming on and started streaming to Facebook that weren't before, which is really interesting. And that, however, like at the same time, they're realizing, you know, if you look at Facebook watch times, it's like, you know, you'll have for example Saddleback's numbers, you know, they I forget the exact amount but it's something like twenty thousand views and my average watch time of less than two minutes. And that's every church. Let me talk to you know, and then you get like watch times and the, you know, like on an on the bed code on Church Online platform number on your website, it's like forty five minutes, right? And so I think, I think a lot of that is like people realizing that, you know, Facebook and YouTube and all that are really great for marketing value, but that it's really difficult to develop community just because of all the distractions there. And so, you know, there's like the ways that people are doing it that are working is like Facebook groups, but then inherently you lose the marketing value of that, you know, so you get getting the community but then lose the growth. So I think people are trying to answer all those questions and that's why I think the building, I think we'll start to see way more people start to build, you know, social features that on platforms that they control, like Crossroads Day with Crossroads Anywhere and Church Online bid with their app, and lots of churches using actually like social platforms but that they completely control this for that reason so they can manage, attract, grow community, discipleship. Like there's tons of the cycle shape tools and those ways of connecting people that that you wouldn't, they would, you know, happen kind of naturally on Facebook that are hard to cultivate.

Yeah, you are seeing a natural trend away from Facebook in some areas. I just, even, I was just previous to doing this podcast recording with you guys, I was doing another podcast with a number of online pastors and one of the pastors in the room was going into great detail on why he does not broadcast to Facebook. And the reason, the reason why, honestly, and what we talked about in the podcast was I felt like his view of it was yes, he can get far greater engagement on Church Online platform using that embed code because the platform itself is meant to generate that next step. It's meant to keep people engaged from a longer, there's not as many of those distractions. But it's easy to lose that marketing piece of what you're talking about, Colin. You know, so often we feel like, you know, you got to count that butts in seats, you got to count that, and how do we, that two minutes scroll through, that person who sneezed when they're looking at the newsfeed and maybe that counts as a view, like does that count on the reporting, does it not, what do we do with that? And instead of actually like figuring out what's best, let's just throw it in there and then online goes higher, or let's not count it at all, and then it's not. Instead of looking at more of the discipleship model of what's happening and how the broadcast is helping you get people connected either into the physical or a virtual model, like decide.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, one of the things that I think it was about twenty percent of those that we surveyed indicate they didn't even have a capability to measure their online attendance, to really be able to know who's impacting their physical attendance or the level of engagement. Or I think that's also gonna, that's a big question in terms of what does engagement look like. I mean, you compared Facebook and online in terms of the amount of time they're there, but you know, I can also be online and it appears that I'm online but I'm in the next room, you know, fixing lunch or whatever. And so it was fascinating to me when I talked with the guys at Virtual Reality Church last week and we were just talking about metrics and some of those kinds of things and that was one of the things that he said was he thinks, I think there's gonna be a real difference in the way that churches think about, particularly if they're comparing virtual reality experiences to an online experience. He said because a virtual reality experience actually requires greater engagement, right? So I mean, if you're in virtual reality, you're actually interfacing, engaging with engaging with the content, man, you got your goggles on for goodness sake, you know, so it's and so I think that's gonna be a fascinating thing for us to try to figure out to you is what does engagement really look like? How do we measure that? Is it simply about the number of minutes that somebody's, you know, logged on, or are there ways that we can begin to get at actually transformational kind of metrics, particularly when you go back to start talking about the discipleship side of things?

Yeah, I think the engagement and discipleship are the two things that we hear the most from the churches that have been streaming for a while. How do we unlock that? And the thing that probably the podcast talks about the most, you know, we it was in the next level, engaged and disciple the people that are coming and not just have to be packs and followers, but the, and there's there's so many cool things going on today now. There's Church Online platform trying to make a bunch of updates.

And their platform to make that easier. And there's streaming providers like us, they're trying to do cards and stuff that comes up. And then I think that too is like the churches that are killing it on the, you know, marketing side of the church aren't at all killing it and probably the discipleship online. You know, it's like very different. Like you have, like, everybody wants to do it. Elevation does, because they have so many millions of views, right? And they're starting, and it's so cool. And what they do is they cut up a little chunks and post it all, and they do.

I give you a look at their marketing. It's amazing. Everybody wants to be that. But when you're a small church, it's really hard to mimic that, you know? They do things really excellently and have the numbers to where the algorithms work to their favor and do all that really well. So it might be good for a smaller church to say, "Hey, let Elevation be Elevation, and God bless them in that way." Like my fifteen-year-old, you know, cousin, you know, whatever, nephews, just watched Steven Furtick all the time and never go to church, you know? But then, does it? If you're a small church, if you care more about discipleship online, you know, because that's your niche, it's interesting. The whole influence, the marketing, several is that influence at some level. Typically you talk about verdict and a church and those kinds of huge followings. But in some other realms that are impacted by online, for example, I do a lot of work in publishing as well. And one of the things they're discovering in publishing is you have a great, you have a much greater conversion rate if you want to use that term when you're actually working with not necessarily the biggest number but the right number. And so they've begun to talk to, use this terminology of micro-influencers. In some many cases, you know, there are some of the major brands in terms of books and authors are having greater impact by taking a subset of their big fan base. But these are really people who are totally engaged and are really going to be able to really be champions of the product. And so there's probably something for the church to learn there as well as we think about the engagement and the traction process as well.

One of the other things that's happening in that space is we have a partnership with an organization called Glue. It's a big data subscription platform. And one of the things that they're being able to do in addition to being able to more accurately understand who it is in your community so that your communication, however the marketing looks like, is really hitting, hitting, hitting with connecting with the people that are going to most likely say, "Yeah, that's what I need. I'm gonna go to your church." The other thing that is really in the beginning stages and that we're actually working with them on a couple of places is developing some assessments. And I think that's going to be something that's going to get built into a lot of these platforms as well that will help with measuring some of the transformations. So you've got some kind of pre and post-tests. So you have the ability when somebody launches or begins to engage in a small group online, there's some kind of assessment that they take. And then when they've completed that season or six weeks, here's whatever, there's kind of a post-assessment. So I think that part of what's happening digitally is really growing as well. That's good.

Yeah, I've been running some betas with Glue on that assessment and kind of the vehicle engine they're building around that. Arguably for me, and I've totally missed this, is some of the most exciting things I see, honestly, in the church online today. Because it's starting to now develop a system that I can build a discipleship process around online. And it's not, "Oh, I got to utilize this platform and get it to integrate with this and this and this, and the data is all over the place and something breaks and on all these different people are pointing at each other." Glue's really starting to figure out how to do that and are putting something in place that any church relatively easily can have a discipleship process in place to get people connected online.

How many churches are actually thinking through that next step process? In terms of, "Hey, so they're watching now. What's their next step?" Depending on what platform they're watching on, is there a unified next step? Is there a bunch of different databases kind of roaming around in different churches, and they're struggling? How are they kind of managing a lot of the concepts? That's a good question. It's not. It's early on. I think in terms of, I would say, most aren't managing it well. We, again, kind of our leadership network primary client or really large churches. And even the really large churches as we've worked with in the data space, you know, they're there. They can even actually begin to effectively engage in some of this big data, this third-party data. They're just trying to get their first and second party data right, you know? Get their database to a place they even know who it is in their, you know, in their own church. And so, but I think that there are, you know, there's a, we work with a group of churches, probably about forty-five churches, but I would say are kind of on the front end, cutting edge. They're the ones who are building out the resources and the tools, are figuring out how to use data, understand, you know, how to close your back door. You know, what are the indicators that somebody's about to leave in terms of ministry? They're building out some propensity kind of profiles that help them to understand who are the people in your congregation that whose marriages are likely in trouble and what percentage of your people are that way or in that scenario? And as a result, what kind of discipleship and tools when you put in place? And so a lot of those conversations are beginning to happen. But I would say it's still pretty early in this stage.

All the assessment process that we talked about and I talked about previously with Glue, those are all built in such a way that when you complete the survey, based on your responses, there are customized next steps that are developed. So based on kind of where you are in the process. And so I think some of that next step process is going to be cooked into the assessment tools.

We touched on it earlier where church online is great for like a front door. These are our visitors, people that don't even know who you are and are just trying to really start to learn more about your church. They're interested in the side-door approach of, "Okay, I'm traveling. I'm away on a snowbird in Miami Beach, who actually is from Canada, back and forth, and they're able to connect with the church that I'm attending from a distance." When we start to talk about maybe this digital door, maybe these people who are not physically in the space, but this is still part of their church, they are engaging in spiritual instruction and discipleship but not in the physical realm. Like, what needs to happen for the church to see this? When we have this conversation, often at least I do, when I talk with pastors, they're like, "Hey, that person on the other side of town or in another country in another time zone, that's not my responsibility. All the discipleship that I do is in the physical realm." What are some hurdles that we need to do to kind of get past that? What advice could you give for some of us in the church online realm that maybe see things differently? How can we help change this culture?

Well, I think anytime you're making any kind of cultural, anytime you're wanting to make a significant shift like that, it's really a culture shift. And anytime you have a shift a culture, the primary way that you do that is through storytelling and giving examples over and over and over again of how, you know, how it actually is working. It's the same thing we talked about multi-site all the time. You know, if you really want to become a multi-site church, you know, you need to be talking about not the factory and opening another building. We were talking about the why you're doing it. Kind of goes back to the high as well. Chase Oaks Church, where Const has the pastor, I think, when they were a master at it. And when they started by launching their multi-site strategy, their kind of framework was this value of, "You have to love where you live." And so they said, "You know, we're gonna really live into that value. We can't have people that are driving in forty-five minutes to get to our campus on legacy. We need to be able to allow people to worship, engage, you know, in their community." And so I think some of that translates into online as well.

So anyway, that's, I think, that's a big piece. I've been going back to your question, how do you help people get to that? It's telling the stories of transformation, telling the stories of where it works. An online campus, paths for a senior pastor, whoever the gatekeepers are and the influencers are in the context of a church, telling those stories of success is really, really important and key. And I think thinking about it as a funnel is really, really helpful.

So the reality is if you, you know, the purpose of streaming is there's a lot of benefits, but if you do stream, there's, you know, forty percent of them is what in the report are irregular attendees, people that you don't know that you know what? See goes back to the number they said. Every time they run anything, you know, thirty to fifty percent are people that they don't have any track, don't know, aren't of any member database, never filled out a contact card, et cetera. And like, the interesting thing about that is like, that's, you know, forty, like for most churches are really concerned about growth. So in that funnel, you have some of those people that have never been to your church or just watching online, right? Yes. Well, then if you ask them in a grocery store, they would say, "I'm a Jae-seok or I'm a whatever," but they haven't been in three years, right? But they watch online every, however long. And so I think the question is of like, "Hey, what's your strategy for getting those out of the funnel?" You know, it's probably okay to say some of those we want to attend in person, right? But for a lot of those, that's probably not okay to say, for whatever reason, whether they're out of the city and can't attend in person or whether they just personality-wise would never come to a church until they receive more transformation or maybe never, you know? And then you have all those buckets of people. So I think as a church, just thinking through, "Hey, let's be honest about, you know, forty percent, whatever, here's the funnel. Do we have a plan for those different people in different walks of life, right?" It's like, are we thinking about and trying to shepherd the spiritual development of people that we won't ever see, you know? Because that's our steward. And so I think thinking about it, okay, that's the reality of what's happening no matter what you believe, you know? So how can we steer them the best?

Yeah, yeah. Any other cool thing? Oh, quick, cause the same, because you know, we used to think in terms of that in terms of Christmas and Easter only. And now there's this whole other category of online, right? And so it's interesting. You guys chat with any churches that actually have a strategy for that or they're at least are thinking through that process?

Good question. None that come to mind immediately. Yeah, and then they come to mind immediately that you're engaged with? Yeah, Jeff, with no other names, I sat in a session, but there we did a session basically, the what ended up happening, I don't know if this is the session title, but we talked about the funnel of church online and how from that and how people see.

That and there's it's cool because what I think is happening is like the churches that are between 500 and 4,000 people that are really doing the most of that because they're driven with growth, right? They're not the 10,000 people churches that really care about growth but they're comfortable, you know? It's like the churches that are like, "We need this to grow. Our senior pastor sees this as a strategic difference of our church. Now we're gonna see this differently." So Jeff, you probably—I would like if you talked to that.

Yeah, so we did. We did at the Church I conference and we did a podcast. It's redefining the why of church online, and it's on the podcast. I'm not sure what number, but what we really—the challenge is, and it's really the biggest hurdle with church online, is trying to figure out who that person is that's watching, you know? And so like, you can create code, but there's privacy issues. And so like, we want privacy, but at the same time we want to be able to access information and figure out how to do ministry with them. By the way, like that issue exists at the physical church too. I mean, how many of our people sit in the back of the room completely disconnected during the message and try to haul out of that lobby as fast as possible without somebody even saying hi to them? I mean, there's a large percentage of people. Unless their kids are actually checked in to the children's ministry and they give, we have no idea who they are. They're not active members or they're not serving. And so the challenge of church online, when people are like, "Yeah, but I don't know who they are"—well, you don't know who they are in the physical realm yet. You work hard to figure out how to engage them. You come up with ways, gimmick solutions, to get them to join in a group, to meet the pastor, to put a face to a name, and do that. A lot of that—there are some churches that are figuring it out. There are a lot more that are trying and experimenting different things. But at the end of the day, it's that same intentionality towards, "I need to figure out who this IP address is because that person, that IP address has a soul, and as a result of that, I need to spiritually care for that person."

Yeah, at the end of the day, people have to raise their hand, right? In the digital world, to be able to say, "Yeah, I want to be contacted." And so I think, you know, I think some of the churches that are doing a good job of trying to figure out how to get people to raise their hand are approaching it from a little bit different perspective. So again, I'm going back to Crossroads. I've been dipping in that well a little bit, you know? But they have a series of podcasts that they do now that are specifically targeted at different demographics. So one is targeted at women who are in executive leadership. That's primarily a podcast that's around, you know, things certain things that would serve someone who's a woman and leading in a company in some form or fashion. So they're serving that person, and then weaving in through that the opportunity for people for them to be able to talk about what they do across reason why that makes a difference. And then people have had that felt need met, and they're going to be more likely to raise your hand to figure out how to be connected with. So I think that some of those kinds of things are really key.

I think the other thing though is we do—there are a lot of people that show up online that we do have information on. And so it's figuring out how we create the system for a digital solution, much like the analog solution that I used back when I was in my very first church a long time ago. And we had—one of my responsibilities as associate was to follow up on the people, the irregular attenders. And so I had this process that I developed where I would, you know, regularly call these people. And it was, in some ways, it was a little bit like a drip campaign if you put it in today's vernacular, because just every once in a while they'd get a note from me or they'd get a call from me or they'd get some kind of drop by their house. Back in the day when people actually visit—pastors visit your home—and I'd leave my business card, whatever. But over time, probably some of the most significant ministry experiences I had as an associate at that church came from some of those people because I had this ongoing kind of contact with them. And whenever there was a crisis in their life or something, somebody was gonna want to get married or whatever, there was a big—they knew they had somebody to call.

And so I think that's the thing we have to think about in another place. We have to think about in terms of next steps and continuing to nurture people is, how do we help people be exposed to the opportunities for next steps for those that we do know as well? This is where hiring a digital marketer for that role is really good because they think through, you know, buckets of people online, right? And they think it's all about getting people to interact. It's all about personalization and workflows. People could do that really well. I mean, right now, if you are a good digital marketer, they'll know like right now there's something that you can get that it probably won't last very long, but you can get the personal email address of like 80% of people that come to your site and you can match that and you can email them even if they don't give you their info, which is like probably total privacy rule violation. But then like, that's what businesses are doing, right? And so you've got to decide like, "Hey, what's okay for me to do versus whatever?" and then break down that wall. But at least have someone that knows how to connect with someone digitally and workflows and have paths and thought through paths digitally for each person that's coming because taking that person—they're just visiting your site, you know? You don't want to do it on the fourth or fifth visit. You want to do it on the first visit. You won't have them engaged because you know that's the only time they might come, right? Huge drop-off rates after that. And so you need something to think through, "Okay, this person—this person's coming. Are they this? What's the best way to engage them? You know, are they in this? Though, are they someone that's elderly in a nursing home? Are they someone that's watching that's not a believer, that's never attended church before, let's check it out?" You know? And then if so, you know, you interact with those people in different ways. And there's a lot of great smart ways that churches are doing this to get those to engage.

Any? Yeah, so let's jump in our DeLoreans. Let's get in our time machines and go ten years in the future. Twenty twenty-nine. What trends? What is church online gonna look like then? What is, you know, we're seeing micro churches now. We're seeing—so I'm gonna start with kids ministry and starting to explore in that space. What's church gonna look like in 2029? Anybody? Everyone's quiet because everybody will be wrong if we have a very limited sample size. Two conversations and then one application. So I talked with the Pursuit Church, Angela Craig—excuse me, Pursuit Church Live—and it's a totally online campus. Fascinating things that they're doing. They have an amazing international reach. 45 countries, 43 languages. Forty-nine percent of the people they're logging in are coming in from developing countries. And so I think we're gonna see some online campuses that are never moved from being online. They have reach. They have an opportunity to connect in some unique ways. They're beginning to talk about development of their teams. They're putting together an academy to help train people how to lead in this kind of context. I think we're going to see more and more of those.

I also, you know, I was a little bit skeptical when I went and spoke—I had a conversation with Virtual Reality Church. Like, now on his name—help me. Judge? DJ Soda? Yeah, DJ. But I think it was fascinating for me to hear him talk about the missions, not so much the virtual reality side of things and the technology, but just the way they're thinking through that. So it's even easier been talking about the different platforms. So they're on one of their primary virtual reality platforms. He kind of equated that to a megachurch kind of model because it was kind of most well developed and you have the ability to do all these special kinds of things—event registration and all these different kinds of things—as kind of a megachurch kind of model. And then he said they also have a lot of people on this other platform whose name I don't remember right now, but he said that's kind of more like a house church kind of model because it's a little bit scaled back, it's a little bit kind of more organic. And he's talking about the new platform that's kind of the new Facebook virtual reality platform that was coming. He said, "We think that will be kind of a new model as well." And he even began to talk about it in terms of launching either new campuses or planting new communities by using these different kinds of technologies. So I think the virtual reality thing has the potential to begin to gain some traction over the next ten years.

There's probably ten years back now, maybe a little bit longer than that. One Life Church, Bobby Grunwald and those guys, you know, how to develop—was it called Second Life? First, Second Life, you know? It was maybe Life, and you know, it was pretty advanced for its time, but it was still pretty clunky. And I think the advances that have been made in the last ten years will only accelerate over the next ten.

I want to ask a question, and forgive me if I'm getting personal, because I really want to try to figure this out because I'm all about the digital church. And maybe culture isn't ready for us to accept the idea of a digital-only church, but I think that from a theological standpoint it's there. It's just gonna take time for acceptance. Greg, you ask the question, and when you said that you went in a little hesitant. Where did that hesitation come from? And it will point that kind of a piece for you. Help me. You're a little older. You have a good perspective. I'm not dating you. I'm sorry. But they're very kind. A little older. I'll take a little loader. Gracious here. But tell me about that. Help me unpack here. So like, what was the concerns? And how did it dissipate? Or did it? Like, where do you stand today?

Yeah, yeah. I think that it was interesting because one of the things that I, when I interviewed him, I asked what was surprising to him or what was surprising to others whenever they had conversations with him. And he said, "Well, most people think that when they hear about Virtual Reality Church, but it's just dunce. It's a bunch of, you know, punks that are gamers, you know? That's all they're—they're living in this virtual reality." And he said, "Actually, our—the demographics and those that are participating in our online church, the average age is like 42, and there are leaders that are actually leading, and they're trying to lead, are in that kind of 40s age range as well." And so I think I just probably in general had this perception about virtual reality as being this gamer kind of thing, not really real. I think that, you know, for me it's probably still gonna be—there's still gonna be a process of transformation as I'll ever get to the place where I'm going to feel comfortable just going to—

A virtual reality church or only going to an online church for that matter, because I do think there are some women when the opportunity affords itself, there are some things that can happen in, you know, face-to-face kind of conversation that don't happen online. So that's probably, you know, I may be showing my age, I may be sure, but I think there's some of those kind of realities.

The other thing that was kind of fascinating to me when I talked with Angela at Pursuit Church that live, which makes total sense to me because they don't do any kind of visual kind of thing. I think it's, you're just you're logging on, which are totally anonymous, you know. I think you may have an avatar or whatever you develop, you're totally anonymous. And so she had actually, she's up in the Pacific Northwest and she had a gay during where she invited people to actually come physically into, they come together for a physical gathering. And she saw what was so fascinating was the diversity of the people that showed up and people had no idea—age diversity, theological diversity, ethnicity diversity, socioeconomic diversity, a lot of people with handicaps, you know, that they physically couldn't participate in a church on a regular basis.

And so this had kind of opened up the world of church and a relationship with Christ and an opportunity being community in some really significant ways. And so I don't think I don't anticipate that it will ever become the only mode for doing church, either of those, but I do think it has the potential to increase as being in an amazingly effective way to reach people and allow people to be in a process of transformation and discipleship.

Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate the time. Hollan, Greg, any closing thoughts as we land the plane?

Yeah, I think, you know, church is historically very long behind culture change. And you know, when you look at the twenty and thirty and forty year olds, there's the way that behavior changing is that they go home and watch Netflix, right? And many less people are getting out. So if we think about how church drives change for that, it gets interesting, you know. Like, who knows what I'm gonna look like in ten years, but it doesn't get interesting, you know, when you look at the behavior it's happening now. And if we want to meet people, if we want to reach people, we got to meet them where they're at, you know. They're not gonna come to a building if that's the only place they go to every week, you know. That has social reaction. I mean, that's just unrealistic to think, you know. That's so scary. So I'm really excited that churches are rethinking, kind of, hey, what does culture look like and what does it look like to be Jesus to the culture? And it's really cool to see that happen all over the world. And it's small examples like virtual reality church and in bigger examples. And it just, it's evident that God's a move in the digital world, and it's really fun to get to watch it. So if you're if you're doing it, please continue.

Yeah, I think it's an opportunity for us. It's a tool that's provided for us to be able to engage different groups of people in ways that we haven't been able to do, just as the other, you know, major technology transformations all the way back to the printing press, you know, have done. So I think it gives us the opportunity to do that. I think it's interesting to think about the fact that I think it would be, I think there could be a natural tendency for us, for many churches to say, okay, I've got to have an online campus or online, you know, service or online experience. I'm going to do that. In some ways they had not thinking through it deeply enough to understand what uniquely has to happen in that online experience. And maybe even how that online experience shows up online, it may not be as an online church. It may be in some other digital kind of expression where people are living. You know, think how people go home and watch Netflix. They're probably not a whole lot of those that are on church. They go home and look for online for an online church. So every summer, so I think that that hard work of really understanding how you make an online experience one actually intersect with where people are living, I think is a really important thing for churches to think about as well.

Yeah, you gotta have a strategy behind it. And so with that strategy comes intentionality to figure out who you are as a church and what that representation looks like online. My challenge is that if you're broadcasting services, you should be considering a discipleship process because your mission is engaging people anywhere around the world. And if somebody gets saved there, has to be some sort of an intentional discipleship process—small groups, next step, something for them to get further in. But know, those are very good words, Greg. Thank you for that.

Hey, Ray, as we're wrapping, anything on your end?

Yeah, just to piggyback on what you're saying, Jeff. You know, so many churches don't really think through the discipleship process on the onset anyways. It's an important factor, you know. They think about having small groups, they think about having messages, and not even just in an online environment, but even their in-person environments. And so that next step, especially as we enter a new decade where engagement is really the driving force, and you know, we've talked about that often, how churches need to understand better and we all need to work harder at helping people through those next steps, whether it's in person or even through digital platforms. And thinking about how there are the same next step no matter which environment they're engaging. And so, you know, my hope and my challenge, and listen guys, great studying, very encouraging stuff, good things to hear. Our hope is that more leaders, more church leaders, take a look at their next steps and think through how that can happen on all platforms, in-person included.

Yeah, and we don't want to downplay the streaming and what's involved in that. It's definitely a part of it. By the way, if you're, no, I'm gonna do cheap commercial for calling, cuz I'm not gonna give them time to. If you're not involving living as one in your streaming process, you certainly should. I can't tell you how many hours of sleep I've lost on bad streaming solutions. Living as one solved many problems for many, many churches that I work with and others, and you should too. Collins that work commercialize you good. Don't, don't.

Yeah, awesome. So chill, living as one dot com. And of course, leadership network, leadnet dot org. I think we've got org phenomenal organization that's helping push forward the cause of big C church. And very, very impressed. I've loved the stuff that I've done with them in the past, and even seeing the stuff that's coming out now is phenomenal. So Greg, Colin, thank you very much for being here and being a part of this. Ray, once again, thanks for jumping on. This is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time at the Church Digital podcast. You all have a good day.