EP054: I Streamed a Church Service, What's Next?

We are at episode 54 of the Church Digital podcast. Man, has it been a week or what? It feels like just a week or so ago I was at the Exponential Conference in Orlando hanging out with a bunch of church planter people trying to figure out multiplication, and then this coronavirus thing came, and it has been absolutely bonkers since then.

By the way, it has been really an enjoyable—I hesitate, I don't even know what word to say—it has been an enjoyable experience working with Stadia church planting in this process as we're helping churches figure out how to do church online. You know, it's funny. We've been talking about digital churches and digital church in the biblical ecclesiology of all this, kind of creating this new model because we've got physical churches and we've got digital churches, and then somewhere along the way—thank you, coronavirus—every church has become a digital-only expression of worship because there is no longer any physical option, unless we're talking about the house churches, which I think are the only physical option that's available to meet at this point today.

You, family, who's listening, you are a church. Is that not awesome or what? Well, I tell you what, this has been a really interesting ride. There's been a lot of traffic and attention that's been brought to this through Stadia. We've done tons of webinars, have been asked to speak on more podcasts—I think within the past week than my entire life combined—and somewhere along the way, it's been awesome to help churches understand: yeah, it's important to broadcast our services, but there's also this important part of what's next? What does discipleship look like? What does small groups look like? What does biblical community look like? What does being on mission look like for the church? And that's really the question of episode 54 here with the podcast.

Because great, we figured out how to do church services. That's awesome. Good for you. It's a necessary step in order to do church today, but don't stop there. If this is a two to three week thing, then maybe, just maybe, it's okay to just do services. But the reach that we are getting right now online is astronomical.

Let me just share some stats. Within the Church Digital, my website talking about how to do church online, I've seen a thousand percent increase in traffic week to week during this coronavirus season. So many of you are asking the questions, and that's good. But it's not just church people. It's not just church leaders. It's not just pastors who are asking this question. Through conversations with random churches—this is a random sampling, I'm not saying this is official—but I'm saying that I've heard anywhere from three to five times the amount of viewers in church online this weekend than any other. This past weekend, what I would call Church Appreciation Sunday—church Online Appreciation Sunday—when everybody started thronging to the online campuses, three to five times viewership.

It may just be that we had a lot more attenders in our churches than we realized, and that they're coming less and less frequently. Or it may be that people out there, due to this coronavirus issue, are looking for something. They're looking for answers. They're looking for hope in ways that maybe they don't know how to find. And guess what? Netflix doesn't have all of the answers for us. Not even Disney Plus. I know it's hard to imagine, Disney Plus does not have all of the answers for us today.

Church, this is our opportunity. Not just to connect them into hope, but to connect them into community. Reimagine, rethink what discipleship, what biblical community is, whatever the mission of your church is—figure out how to do that in virtual space and allow people to be on mission for you in this season.

The challenge of the church is not to broadcast services. It's not one-way communication. It's two-way communication. That's going to continue to challenge the people, your audience, not just to be a consumer of a product, but to be on mission for God through your church digitally. That's a hard challenge, but it's one that you, church, one that you, pastor, need to understand and step up for in a big way today.

So here's where we are. Scheduled a conversation, brought in some online pastors, and was like, "Hey, I want to talk about the context of: hey, we broadcasted a service, that's awesome. What's next?" Because lots of us, thousands of us, for the first time this past weekend, broadcast the service, but we have no idea what's next. And as much as we're obsessed with broadcasting the services, it's the wrong question. The real question is: what's next after the broadcast? What is that next step? What is the goal and purpose of this?

I was really excited about this conversation, so much so I decided not to even show up for it due to scheduling conflicts. Honestly, I just wasn't able to do it. And rather than delaying the conversation, I said, "You know what? You guys have the conversation without me." There's probably some leadership lessons in there: don't become the lid of your organization. Empower others to do so. And I won't have that conversation now, but it is a good conversation.

I brought in Ray, the Armas, co-host, who's now the official host of the Church Digital podcast for this episode. He's going to be leading the conversation. I brought in two friends of mine, two guys that have been doing online ministry for a while now—different-sized churches. I brought in Andy Mage from Bay Hope Church as well as Mark Brandt from Lutheran Church of Hope. What's interesting here: got different denominations, different-sized churches, but all of them have a very clear vision on what is next and how that process works.

All right, great. We're broadcasting services. Good for us. What's the next step?

Great conversation. I'm glad you're here, looking forward to what's next for all of you. Here you go.

So many folks are now having church online due to the advent of COVID-19, otherwise known as the coronavirus. A lot of folks started streaming, maybe even for the first time this week. I know I talked to a lot of friends that—man, their church streamed for the first time this week. It felt a little dangerous, felt a little weird, but man, they went out there, they did it. And now the big question is: how do they move from content to community? So they streamed a lot of content, they put their message out there, but now the quote—now how can they help take all those folks who watched, all those views, all the different streams that happen, and how can they start moving forward and building community around that? That's a big, big, big, and an awesome new frontier for us too.

I mean, it's so neat to know that people can connect this way, especially in this time. I mean, nobody wanted, obviously, for church online to become so prominent, but it's great that now it's just so much easier and accessible for churches, even ones that have never done this before.

I think people wanted it to be—maybe guys like Jeff Reed, everybody else on this pod—but you know, I think it's interesting too. The last—and we're recording this on a Monday after kind of the world blew up, at least the United States world kind of blew up. And watching the sprint that happened towards the end of last week—really, the NBA got cancelled, and then March Madness, and then, you know, my timeline is going to get fuzzy because I've had way more coffee than I've had sleep lately—but watching the amount of churches that went, "Oh snap, we have to close our doors. What are we going to do?" It's funny.

And Ray, getting asked to be on here, I think Mark and I, we've been, you know, we've been doing church online for a while. I mean, Bay Hope's been doing it for almost ten years now. Mark, how long you guys been doing it?

I think it's six or seven. I lose track on the timeline too.

But the thing is, it's not just broadcasting services. You know, it's not just—it's not that. That's the front door to everything right now: the Sunday morning service experience, or the weekend service, or whatever you want to call it. But then there's that follow-up that needs to happen. How do you keep people not only engaged for the hundred sixty-seven hours, but how do you keep them engaged with the body of Christ such that we can kind of further the mission of Jesus? And I think that's where we're in an interesting time right now. These are the times that try men's souls, is what I've been kind of telling people.

That's a good line, and it's true. This does try men's souls. And really, for a lot of churches, I don't want to say everybody's acting like a hypocrite or anything like that, but it's definitely expanding our theology in terms of what it means to gather, isn't it? Especially since we currently don't have the capability of gathering publicly. You know, this last week, the CDC recommending that it might be an eight-week window in which many of us can't gather in gatherings of over fifty or more in person. And so that's a big deal. And so now we've got a lot of churches having to answer the question: alright, so we can't gather, but we're streaming. But how can we encourage people to build community around this? And so what are some ways that you guys have done this?

I mean, it's been over ten years for the TV—I mean, even for us, we've been doing this for a long time. So how do we help take churches, especially smaller churches, from the stream to community in this time period?

I think there's a couple of practical ways. Andy, I wrote a blog post for the Church Digital about this that went up yesterday, as a matter of fact. And I related it to World of Warcraft. And I was a big gamer. And what would happen with massively multiplayer RPG games is that you would start this game by yourself, and then you would ultimately find yourself in a large group of people running around, you know, shooting zombies and killing monsters and stuff. But what would happen is that you and it, you eventually would group up together. And that group would be fulfilling quests and objectives, but that group would actually start moving more into the week. And so you'd be getting out of the game, talking to people in message boards and chat rooms and all these other things. And then you would actually, over a period of time, learn about these people who started as just phases on a screen or characters on a screen. You would learn about these people, about their lives, about their wives and children, about their homes, about their struggles and their joys and all these other things.

And some of those people that I met, I am actually fifteen years later, I'm still friends with. And I still talk to, even though they're literally in one—you know, in Washington, in California, in Maine, in New York. I still talk to them. And the interesting thing is, we can do that even more readily now than we could fifteen years ago. Now we have this advent of video conferencing and all this other stuff where we can actually group people in the Acts 2 church model way easier than I think the physical church realizes.

So physical church involves you having to drive to a place. Even if it's a small group, you have to drive to somebody's house. You get the kids together, you know, you pack them up in the back of the car, and then we're going to do the Acts 2 thing of, "Oh hey, we're meeting in homes and we're helping and all this other stuff." We can do that immediately. I just have to send a link around, and people click on that, and then boom, there I am on their computer screen. Then boom, there's twenty-five other people in a room, and we're all in this computer screen together, learning the same thing, looking at the same thing. And then at the end of the time, I can say, "Okay guys, love you, let's pray," boom, and then I go back to my life and they go back to their life.

I think we're in such a cool period right now that we need to step into this to explore it. Yeah, I would even take it, you know, a step further with that small grouping idea. I think we're shattering some models of how people meet in group and do community. Before, it was, "Hey, we're gonna have a small group. We're gonna meet on every other Friday at Jeff's house, and whoever can make it can make it." And so many of those models were starting to fail because life has gotten so busy. To begin with, people just have travel schedules that get done just untenable to be able to meet in person as regularly as they'd want. And so many small groups are starting to fail. Community was starting to disappear because people are getting so busy. Well, now you add online ministry as an option for people and take away, you know, even the current climate we're in with this anxiety and fear. I feel like small groups and community is a great next step for people who are doing online. It's, how do you get people to begin to meet? And even if they live right down the street, it's letting people know, "Hey, you can get together virtually. You can have a small group in a meeting like this that is very authentic." And it's not—I mean, obviously everybody, all of us that do this, say in person is always going to be better. But this is really becoming a great way to get people together in the same space to share community. So families, you know, you have young kids, you get them to bed, and you've got that time where typically you'd unwind with a Netflix show or something like that. Well, now you say, "Hey, our small group is gonna meet at 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday," and I jump online or let's get our computers up, and you're meeting with people that you know you're gonna see the next day, maybe at the grocery store or the school. But this is the best time you can get together for 30 minutes of just prayer and encouragement. So I think we're trying to just look at all these new models of how to be church together. And so if I'm a new pastor, you know, doing this online stuff, and I've got people who can't leave their homes for a while, you know, and I've got a way to teach them how to do groups, you know, in a Zoom or other option, this is the time to be thinking and learning about those things. And then the interesting thing—oh, go ahead.

Right, sorry. No, no, it's gonna say that this adds to the whole aspect of community. There, so often we've talked about how our churches are often like the actual environments in which the quote-unquote church can't necessarily get engaged, right? Because they're just receiving content, just by sitting there in a pew. However, online now, we've been and we've continued to, and it's almost encouraged for them to participate. Man, this creates a new kind of way for them to be part of church, which is brilliant.

That's funny. So this last weekend, I saw as the transition started happening very rapidly from, "Hey, we're not meeting physically," to, "Okay, now we've got the streaming thing." I saw a number of people, friends of mine on Facebook and follow, you know, people I follow on Instagram and stuff, that were having the same debates that I think our churches, both Mark and I's churches, would have had five or six years ago. Of, "There's no way you can do this. You need to actually see somebody, and you need to, you know, physically, you know, this is how it is. It's the body language and all this other stuff." And I saw people very vehemently disagreeing with the notion that you can do church online and, more than that, you can do community and groups online. And yet I think there's—and maybe that's just an older generation, and so I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater there. But for me, I'm 36. I'm as much of a digital native as you're gonna find in pastoral leadership outside, if you know, some of the younger guys. But I automatically, like, I can see somebody on a screen and I go, "Okay, they're talking to me, so that's a real person." You know, there's almost a suspension of disbelief that happens that we can really lean into as we create community.

Yeah, and the hard thing is there is we are a lot of paradigms had to be broken this past weekend, right? For a lot of folks. And that right there, it's so difficult. And I understand it's really difficult when someone, you know, to use the phrase that someone moves your cheese, like this, right? Especially when you weren't ready for it and you were antagonistic towards it and you were saying, "But no, but this isn't possible." And listen, this isn't about being right or wrong. It's just understanding the difficulty of having to be pushed through this paradigm shift as opposed to, "Let me absorb it. Let me think through it. Let me welcome it into my life." And really, my biggest concern is—and let me ask you—how are folks in your environments engaging with this? How are the elderly engaging with this? Because this is primarily like they're gonna have their primary way of engaging with church for probably the next month, right?

Yeah, and that's gonna be, I think, a struggle. I've already seen it where in my role I've been called by some of our shut-in folks to come in and help them get connected. And even just showing them how to hook an HDMI cable to their computer to their smart TV to help have a better and more stable streaming experience sometimes is going a step too far. Like, "Whoa, what are you talking about?" And so I think we're gonna have to go slow with this. We decided for the first time as a church to record our traditional service. We had not ever done that before. We still have a traditional Lutheran liturgical service with hymns and such. And so we did that yesterday. We put that out online last night for our folks that consider that their church home. I'm still waiting to hear how that's going for them, so I'm excited to get some feedback and see. Because I think that's something we were—it's so funny. This is fast-forwarding everything we had talked about producing a video file at that service for a while because we have a lot of folks that just because of other underlying concerns couldn't make it to begin with. Well, now put us in this scenario, and I mean, we were scrambling yesterday to get a camera in there. And we actually talked about bringing in hymn singers, the singing in the room, you know, just to give it more of an authentic feel. So yeah, but the elderly folks, it's teaching them a new trick, but also keeping it so simple that they don't have to be. Some of these things are so user-friendly anymore, but it's just that getting over this idea that it's new or different and then recognizing how beautiful it can be.

Well, the thing about being a pastor is that you need to lead your flock and not just expect them to keep up with you. And so there have you know, there's the younger sort of digital native part of me that wants to go to some of the people that I've had to talk to in the nine months I've been doing this, "Well, duh, you just click a link. Like, how can you not get that?" Then the pastoral side of you says, "Oh, with grace." Yeah, that's good. I always like to think of it as if I'm talking to my own family members, my own grandparents, when we have to walk folks through that. I mean, I'm sure like many of you, you know, especially when you're involved in what it is that we're doing, your IT for the family, like that's how it works. You know, mom and dad or grandma and grandpa need help plugging in that new DVD player or, "Hey, we just got him an Apple TV. Awesome. So call Ray up, and I'm coming over." And in the same way with church, it's kind of working the same thing. We had to flag our campus pastors early on before the weekend to be willing to do the same thing for folks in our congregation, just flagging that, "Hey, it would be really unfair for us to have church, to enjoy church online, to all of us got to have this great experience, and then for them to feel very, very left simply because they didn't know how to turn it on or how to switch, you know, how to switch with source their television was on, or even, 'Hey, where do I go on the website?' Like, how do I make this easier?" And that's a very difficult thing. But now then, as we talk about community, what are some tools that you guys leverage currently for online community? Like, what are some different ways that you do that?

The biggest ones right now are, for us in particular, our Facebook and Zoom. And those are obviously universal box standards. Facebook just for the chat aspect of it, more than anything, and the quick video, quick announcements, kind of quick connection thing. And then Zoom for our online groups. That's just been the easiest way to kind of get 15 to 20 to however many people you want in a room. And if you need to do video curriculum, you can share the video, share the image, whatever. But most people, as long as you walk them through it for about five minutes, they'll understand Zoom.

If we're doing the same thing, I mean, Zoom is the easiest platform I think for anybody to jump on. You don't have to download the app, but it's helpful if you do. I mean, it's really easy. Just click a link. And no, we joke about that before. It's like a link. But yeah, it truly can be that simple. But we're also trying to do some unique content on YouTube now as well. We started a video podcast with our senior pastor called "Pastor Mike Drop." His name is Pastor Mike. That's very clever. Dad joke. But we're utilizing that as a way to communicate information to folks. So, for example, we're really lucky. One of our associate pastors is also a medical doctor by trade. She was an OBGYN, still is. And so she actually came on. She co-taught yesterday with our senior pastor because she can offer the medical side of this whole issue we're facing. And so she actually did a podcast this past week with him, and that's been one of our most viewed podcasts we've ever had because she's brought that level of expertise. So many people have commented back, "That was so high. They have her on there." And so we're gonna—before we thought about just, we recorded like 10 early, you know, within a week, and we're gonna put those out, you know, one every day. And then we're gonna do one a week of those video podcasts. I think now that we have this time to reevaluate, I think our senior pastor is going to be recording those as quickly as he can. Just because what can't happen is people used to take for granted we can just go to the building, we can go and hang out with our classes and our people, and that's not going to be the case. So all of those different things we're gonna have to reevaluate. Can we create those same experiences digitally? And what can that look like? And I would love to say that we've got that all figured out today, but we don't. But the nice thing is we're closer than we would have ever been before to produce that same level of digital content. And now it's just helping people understand that that experience that they're gonna have digitally, while different, can still be every bit as authentic as it would be if you were sitting in a classroom in our building in West Des Moines or otherwise.

And it's to piggyback on that, and here's a little inside baseball for everyone listening. Marc and I are actually in a small group that we meet once a week-ish, as regularly as possible. And God kind of brought us, but also a bunch of people to the same idea at the same time, not necessarily the video podcast, but grouping people around self-produced content, YouTube content, basically. How do I, as a church leader, help organize people around bits of content, not these huge swaths of things, but, you know, so for example, that medical doctor podcast like Mark Pearson here talking about that, and I'm going, "Oh man, how could we as the church..."

Not just your church and not just my church, but how could we as capital C Church jump on that? And like, I almost wonder if there's a way—one of the screens I have open right now behind you guys is a Google sheet that we're sharing between all our pastoral staff and shooting schedules and stuff for the next weeks, you know, just to get content out there. I would love to have that not just with our church but with all churches so that we can start to open up these groups—inter-church, interdenominational groups—and that's very crunchy, pie-in-the-sky, hippie way of looking at things, but we're in this era like, let's try it. Let's group people together and see what works.

Yeah, not at all. I don't think it's very hippyish or thinking that way too. I mean, what I found is the online community in terms of churches and church online has actually been more interdenominational in terms of helping each other out than anything else that I've been a part of, which is a beautiful thing in terms of sharing information. And it's funny because, art, people need to hear this kind of content. Marc, I want to applaud you and your church in terms of what you've done because even as I was talking, you know, for the first time we offer the kids experience online this week, and one of the things that we discussed with our kids ministry is how we're gonna capitalize on that and what a topic that we came up on is help with, like, helping parents disciple their kids and navigate social distancing and what that's gonna look like. But then not just creating the content but making sure that there's conversation around the content as well.

This is a total aside from the podcast. Can you share that? I would love to take a look at that.

Yeah, we've not created yet, but we'll totally share that with you guys and send it on over. And Mark, you know, we'll include this in the show notes as far as what you guys did this last Sunday because I think it'd be great. I think a lot of churches could learn from that because, you know, this is a great opportunity for us to continue and to engage in the conversation. Like, culture at large is having this conversation, and the church, there's a place for us here. And it's not in terms of fear and fear-mongering, and it's not in the earth of in terms of just pushing faith, but there's a way to bring everybody together and to say, "Hey, listen, so as believers, here's our response and here's how we're going to guide our families through these things," and we can generate these conversations and start them.

Just real quick, because we actually had similar conversations this week in terms of what tools—because we'd already been using Zoom, but because onboarding people can be so difficult, we're even encouraging people to go back to old-school phone conferencing. Like, "Hey, call up a member of your small group and add a call on your iPhone and add a call and add a call and keep adding a call." You know, if it's like the easiest way for you to do this, if you don't want to download an excess app, if you don't want to go about those things, then just go old school, you know? Old school prayer chain and just add a call right there, and let's all gather around the iPhones and let's have small group, you know? Yeah, you can't see each other, but at least we know whether we're here and we're together and we can have conversation. There's so many different ways to do that. And so for even churches that are thinking themselves, "Man, I don't want to go out. I don't think we can afford Zoom right now. Things are all crazy. We're not even sure about giving right now," but we just need some free tools, guys. There's stuff that exists out there for you to come around and to be in creating community, whether it's just a phone call, whether it's Google Hangout—something we've done before here—but leverage whatever tools that there are because there's all sorts of ways.

Go ahead, Andy.

Two other, two other ones actually. You're talking about the phone thing, two other real cheap and free ones. Anybody listening to this needs them: Skype, obviously, right? Is installable on any platform, allows you to put a bunch of people in a room together. That audio quality, it's not the best, but it works. The other one is Slack, and I've been experimenting with Slack for—I'm trying to get people away from Facebook because Facebook is, you know, the big evil—but also a lot of people are just leaving Facebook in droves. Slack actually has video conferencing built into the free client up to fifteen people that you can group together, and then you have a chat transcript of everything that happened later. So there's this enormous opportunity there. Slack, and I believe—I want to say Discord does it as well. Discord's more kind of esoteric for a lot of people, so just if you want to stick to Slack, go for it. That's good.

Are you guys providing questions or like discussion questions to help generate some of that community alongside the content that you're creating on the weekends?

Yeah, so I'll jump in on that. I have been producing a document essentially that was shareable on our website for our small groups. It was a sermon discussion guide where our small group pastor would edit down the sermon, you know, take out some of the stuff that we can shorten it down to about twenty minutes so it's a little bit more digestible. We're talking about now coupling that with a video component as well so the small group that maybe can't meet in person can do this on their own and then get together virtually to discuss. So we can at least keep that continuity of meeting going because, as you know, as people do right now, they're kind of hunkering down. And you know, I would say to, I mean, obviously this is very contextual based on what's facing right now, but a lot of folks are really concerned over the social distancing, and folks that already feel isolated in general. And if we don't find ways to virtually connect, I think especially as the church and encourage that, we're gonna have some folks who are already struggling, you know, with that connection point in general that can feel so isolated that it's just, it's gonna get to a point where we just—we encourage people at the end of our broadcast yesterday. We said, "Hey, reach out virtually or give a phone call to people, you know, really need you know that reach out right now," because especially given this time, this is where you know that virtual connection can really make a difference for folks in terms of connected not only to just one another but to that faith group.

Yeah, to piggyback on that, we're actually—we do, we don't necessarily do off the sermon itself. Even we do that every so often, but our newest role of groups was supposed to be starting after Easter, but given everything, it's actually gonna start this week. We've got a meeting of our leaders happening at the middle of this week, and then we're starting that role on Sunday. We're starting a brand-new curriculum, our brand-new semester, excuse me. And we're basically, we've got a couple of groups. One group is just doing a straight Bible study. Like, our leader, he's a brilliant guy, and he's just going to walk people through the book of James, and he's doing an old-school Bible study and just one-on-one type stuff. It's gonna be great.

We've got another group that is going to be doing kind of some more right-now media, kind of guided content, so just from other places that we can kind of zoom in, you know? But I always use the Crazy Love example—it's not gonna be Crazy Love, but you know, something a little bit more introductory there to see if the group dynamic works. And then give it six weeks. If it doesn't work, spin off into another group.

We actually had a guy that he started our whole online ministry and kind of helped here and then backed away and has been a volunteer ever since. He had a really brilliant idea a couple weeks ago that we're going to enact immediately, actually, and that is the group that is less about a study and a curriculum and that is more about relationship and relational. So literally, it's going to be a group that we're just gonna get together whenever we can—maybe two groups, maybe three groups—have a leader, have kind of a guided prayer session, and then really just open it up for twenty, thirty minutes and just talk and just chat and really just, you know, especially right now. I think if people are looking at the, you know, the—I know the extroverted people right now are dying a thousand deaths every time that they have to hear about being quarantined and how they can't leave their house for eight weeks. And I understand that. I totally get that. And so if we can offer a space that allows people to just come and talk—just, we don't have to learn, we don't have to—it's just let's just talk. I think that's a very plausible idea, and I think one that's going to gain a ton of traction.

Yeah, it's funny because a few weeks ago we talked to Ed Stetzer, and we were kind of discussing the need for a third space in terms of church environments. Like, we had, we talked about, you know, "Hey, so it's great that we've got services and it's great that we have small groups," but we discussed the need for a third environment. And I think this whole thing that's going on can actually fast-forward digital becoming that third environment, that third space because, you know, I lamented kind of the loss of Sunday school. I don't either. You guys grew up with Sunday school, but I did. And you know, in Sunday school there was a lot of good education in terms of spiritual disciplines. There was a little bit of a higher accountability. There was a lot more that went on that when churches in general, when we made the hard swing to, "Hey, move away from Sunday School and move directly towards small groups only," we now have an undereducated Christian-wise, you know, generation coming up behind us in terms of just some of the basic stuff of the Bible. And now we're opening up opportunities digitally for a lot of this to occur where it's like even churches that move towards simple church like ours did—online environments over the next couple weeks are going to be our way of like engaging people midweek where we didn't even have a midweek service before. But now we see the just that need to stay plugged in with people because we don't have the capability of meeting with them face to face.

Well, and I kind of liken it to this, you know? You talk about people getting comfortable with the environment. A short story: when I was a kid growing up, I was a huge Cubs fan. Absolutely lived and died by that Cubs. My grandfather started it. It was a terrible affliction for so many years because of how bad they were. But I'll never forget, you know, watching Wrigley Field on TV was so amazing, you know? Just to see the ivy and just to see the players on the field. I thought, "Man, what would it look like to be there in person?" And so I went finally when I was twenty-two to my first game, and just walking in the field is like, "Man, it totally has shattered all my expectations," you know, on what I thought it would have been.

So take that in reverse a bit, you know? We're so used to in-person, you know, but I think once people realize that this virtual experience can be authentic and it—oh wow, this isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be—it really can enhance the ability to stay connected, especially during this time. I mean, Andy and I and Jeff have been, you know, hanging out together for the better part of six, you know, months or so, and we've never been in the same space together. You know, we've never been in the same room or building together. But I can say to these guys, you know, friends, and you know, we do life together in the way that this is, you know, so much so that you know, if we ever do happen—if you know, finally get a chance to be around each other—that's gonna be a really cool moment just to say, "Oh man, you know, here..."

We go, I think our people in our churches, especially a pastor who is exploring this for the first time, needs to understand, you know, try this out. You know, it really can be authentic. I think the fear before was, how can you be authentic? Be a scream. And I feel like that is the more you experience it, the less that fear is prevalent. Yeah, because you really can't be church together.

Yeah, it's funny because we've discussed how avatar sometimes can encourage people to be more willing to share just because they feel alright because there's distance between us in terms of the screen and everything else. They feel more open, as if like, well, you can't hurt me or you can't do something about it, so I'm open to be honest or to be me, which can create a lot of interesting things in terms of authentic community in church. As we have this over the next couple weeks, you know, in times past we have our church self, we have our social media self, but now with digital online, especially with these smaller environments to encounter the content, right? Encounter the message. But then having to honestly answer, okay, but how is this impacting my faith? One, take it even a step further. Let's take the context out of things altogether. What we're really experiencing right now is a new advent of ways to connect with people. And there will be some folks that may connect with our churches for the very first time ever because they realize, oh, I don't have to show up in person the first time. I can check them out online first. So there's a real opportunity here, especially for some of these smaller church gatherings. There were folks you're going to check them out for the first time virtually. Why? Because it's finally an option. And you know, don't understand opportunity to reach people who have never been to church before. I mean, of course there are your folks who are your regular folks are like, yeah, so glad we could still be church together. But there's also people in that virtual space who are hanging out with you for the first time. And you could say, hey, we would love to meet you in person when we get the chance to do so. And here's where we are. It's a it to never because it's easy for us to assume, you know, and use insider language with folks in that space. To take that aside and say, no, we need to be as welcoming in this environment as we would be for anybody walking into our physical space so that they not only can connect with somebody. So, you know, yesterday we had hosts. We actually had co-hosts for the first time ever. There was myself and one of our pastors that sat at a table. We welcomed people on camera. That we handed it off to our worship team. And each and every person introduced themselves, you know, so that the person who was watching knew, oh, that's Alyssa, she's our worship leader. Oh, that's Mike, he's our senior pastor. Oh, that's Mark. That's a man that we we tried to so really be as open and then by an environment as possible so that that first-time viewer didn't just see us as some face on a screen. They saw us as somebody that really did truly want to connect with them.

That's really beautiful. And it's the kind of things like that that really make search online more about the community and less suggests about, hey, I'm watching the screen. And as we go over these next couple weeks, I know churches it's gonna be tough. Andy, Mark, what would you tell a lead pastor right now just to encourage them? Like, hey, listen, this is this could be a solid game-changer for your church. What would you like? This morning we had an all-staff prayer time just to kind of lead out and lead into the you know the time. And the thing that kept coming up in all, most of the people that were praying was that this is the time that the church will shine the brightest. This is the time that the Gospel message will shine the brightest is in times of adversity. And this is a time of adversity. And it's up to the true, you know, you go through history and you see the church trying different things at different points in history. Some of them succeeding, some of them failing. This one has already been tried. Sort of the online frontier has already been tried. We've already gotten past the bleeding edge. We already know how to group people together. We already know how to stream. There are free utilities out there to stream, to group, and to gather and to do all these other things. We need to get work and we're stepping into very rapidly the 2.0 phase of online church. And for any pastor that's out there that is worried about, how do I, I don't know how, how many people are gonna, how my people are gonna respond and take it and do all that, the worst thing you can do is in a time like this for the next three to five weeks. The worst thing you can do is not give a shot because you're going to, you know, the worst thing that happens at that point is, okay, you go back to what you used to do. You go back to your normal physical gatherings and that's the way you minister to your people. But you know, you never know. You might find something that really sparks a light in your community that really starts to connect more and more people together through that connection to the gospel.

Yeah, I heard a story yesterday of a pastor who did Facebook Live for the first time and his daughter actually held the phone in the front pew and you know pointed it at him. And and that's another thing I'm encouraged to, you know, you don't have to reinvent the wheel on this. You know, don't feel like you have to instantly become an expert on this. Kids, I mean, this is face it, they've been operating devices since they were born, you know, and so find a student. You know, this is a great time to really I think elevates some volunteers in your in your churches, you know, to a place where, you know, may I don't, I don't know how to do this Facebook thing, but you know, I can find a kid or even a young adult that is native to this technology that might even think of an idea you'd never thought of before and is willing to come in and give that time. Why? Because there's value placed in that moment like and I can give to my church because I know this. I just gets me excited being a former student pastor of, you know, exciting kids to volunteer and to use that gift that they have because they've been doing so, you know, Snapchat, hangouts, they've been doing all these things for for a you know a better part of two to three years. So now, you know, it's connecting their digital gift with the church in a new and radical way. And so all that pastor really has to do is content. And they're great at content, you know, this is what they've been called to do is to create content. Now help give somebody else the opportunity to curate that content for you in a way that you know they can upload it to YouTube. You can, they could create a YouTube channel for your church. It doesn't take much. But if you don't know how to do it, you're gonna struggle with it. But that kid's gonna come along and say, man, I've already had a YouTube channel. I've only put two things up there, but let me do this for a church. This would be awesome. You're gonna use YouTube. That's so good. And I'm so glad you guys said that. And for any of you who are out there that this was your first Sunday streaming or maybe your second, third, but you just feel super nervous because you're like, well, it's not at the standard that I thought it would be, you know, Andy and Mark are sharing with you it's gold because we just want to let you know that your folks are gonna care about the fact that you're trying. They want it. They want to know your heart and they want to know that you're with them through this situation. They're just scared and they need to hear their pastor's voice. They need to hear a source of hope. And you're doing that. And so continue to do so.

Guys, great thoughts. Thank you so much for your time. I let's wrap things up. Andy, anything you want to add to land the plane, man? I'm I'm really excited about these next weeks and coming months. I really do think I did and it removed the whole online church. I really think this is a time for the church global to really step up to minister, to bring hope, to bring light, to bring peace. And I am so thrilled that guys like us and people all over the world listening to this are going to get the chance to really lean into what God is doing. It's good. Mark, you got anything you want to add? Yeah, I would say go and do some learning yourself. To a benchmark off of other folks. Yesterday, while I was actually on stage at our table hosting, I had Andy's church online experience up and I was watching that and commenting in their space because that was a lot of fun. And just seeing what they do, we're doing a lot of it this week. You, it'd be easy to think, oh man, you know, we're a big church, we've got this figured out. No, we're still learning from everybody else as well. So go and watch other churches that are doing this, even though, even at a small scale, and bring it back. We have a phrase at our church. We call hope a fying. You know, our church is hope. So we hope if I something and put it into our context. Just because somebody's doing something on a big scale with five cameras and HD and all that, you could look at that and say, man, well, we can't do that. But just learn from, like, how are they engaging that camera? Because I think, like, for example, if you're a pastor and you're doing this for the first time, the worst thing you could do is to be still looking around your space. Oh, let's talk to these folks because that's what we do, you know? Think of that camera like a person and put a name to that person. That is, that's Margie and she's sitting at home with her husband and they are not able to be here. I'm talking to her. And and that's that's where that connection could become authentic when you when you engage with this in a way that says, I know we can't be together in person, but when we can again, because there is another side to this time we're going, when we can again, how beautiful that's gonna be.

That's real good. Guys, thank you so much for your time. I know this has been a great time. And listen, for those of you listening out there, don't just create the content. Encourage community to meet together, whether it's in person or online. Listen, additional spaces are gonna mean a whole lot right now. We don't have to over complicate the process. All we've got to do is keep it simple, stupid. Just KISS. All right, just keep it simple and let's just relax and let's get through this together. These next few weeks are gonna be an incredible time in the church's history. And I promise you, church pastor, a lot of people who had never stepped through your doors are going to listen to your message and come to know Jesus and get discipled as a result of this. So this is going to be a great time for you guys. Thanks so much for your time together. For Jack, who couldn't be here, for me, for Andy, for Mark, this is the Church Digital Hope. You all have a great day.