EP069: Thinking Digital First Even When We Get Back to the Building

Episode 69 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning. Once again, Jeff here, excited about the podcast that's happening here. Awesome topic: how do we church? How do we get back into our buildings? What's the plan? What should the plan be? What should we be taking into consideration as we're heading back into the buildings?

And the funny thing is, other than this like intro, I really didn't contribute much into this conversation because the people we had on the podcast were so passionate, they were so excited about this, they wouldn't stop talking. And through the process we had a fascinating conversation about how to be digital first in this season in addition to going into the building, which is important. The building's play a role. Have we learned anything in this season towards being digital first? And so that's the conversation that we're having. It's an awesome conversation.

Matt Welton, technology pastor out of Crossroads up in Cincinnati. Jason Morris, Westside Family Kansas City, their global innovations pastor. Of course, Raid the Armas, co-host, regular here, digital pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami. Myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital as well as Stadia Church Planning. And a conversation that I'm calling "Digital First Even When We Get Back to the Building."

Okay, everybody, here you go.

Have you two met each other or had college? You made the connection?

We called each other and had a lot of really great conversations. I was really kind of curious to see what Crossroads is thinking now on this particular topic for the podcast because you guys are probably a couple steps ahead anyway for most churches. So I'm kind of curious to see how you guys are approaching it.

We're like doing a complete flip. It seems. So it's always, here's more about that, right?

Yeah, I'm thinking like, oh, this is gonna be great. I'm gonna let Jason answer everything first. One. Okay, here's what Crossroads is thinking. Here's what I'm thinking. I don't know. Yeah, it's also everything that will change too. That's the fun part about this topic is like, in a yes, it's it's more like an approach, thinking about it, not only in a month, two months, and then a year from now. Yeah, they're probably gonna be three separate models.

Yeah, agreed. Yep. It's more about the philosophy of how do you think about it versus the when do you do it and what's the specific tactic? It's like, well, you're gonna do it three times. So yeah, I agree. Or just try to do it twice. Number one, yep, depending upon how you look at it. And that's one of the things where we use a church or life saying. I mean, there would be so much pain in creating a transitional plan for the next month, maybe two. It's not worth it for insurance of our sight. It's not worth it. Yeah, like, you know, opening your buildings back up doesn't take the same amount of effort as having a service did three months ago. It's right. You're gonna pull additional effort away from things that could be really fruitful right now.

Exactly. Potentially less return.

Yeah, no joke. I realize, is this the kind of stuff we're allowed to say? I'm not even sure if we officially started this state.

Yeah, you guys just kind of go straight into it. That's awesome, right? Ray emailed me earlier today or texted or something. He's like, "Hey, how should I prepare for this thing?" And I'm like, "Are you kidding? We're gonna like let these two guys go in the room, we're gonna like press record, and they're just gonna go." Smartness that's in here. I just want to get out of the way of the conversation and really let this happen.

I've had twenty-seven-year-old pastors, Jeff. I'm gonna do everything I can to get back in that building as fast as possible. And like, who are just miserable in this in this digital experiment. I've had sixty-five, sixty-six-year-old pastors. Jeff, we are not gonna go back into a building until we can hug somebody. So we are fully engaging and doing this digital movement as long as possible until the place that we can do church the way that we have been designed to do church. So like, let's fall in love with this digital strategy. And it's not an age thing. It's when I still grab the custard, it might be an experience thing. We go for guys that have been doing it. It's interesting, you know, sixty-five years or whatever. They know the amount of effort and energy it takes to pull this off week after week. And so they're thinking of it from a different mindset because they're talking about managing not only their own energy but managing the energy of their congregation because they've seen things come and go really quickly. And that's something that the twenty-seven-year-old hasn't learned yet because he's just like, let's just get done, let's get it done, you know? And he's not really thinking about the marathon like the sixty-five-year-old is.

Yeah, and that this is a marathon, especially with the stage rollout that we have here in Kansas City. Dude, it's gonna be at least six months. Here's the part that for me is a little pernicious. Is that technically in the state of Kansas, because of all the curfuffle that's been happening, and in Johnson County, which is the county that our church is in, that is the highest number of COVID cases of the whole state, the governor is saying one thing, the county is saying another. But both are afraid of touching the church. They're calling the church an essential business, which is great. I mean, especially after all the kerfuffle in Kansas, you know, with the governor over it, right? So they're calling it an essential business. So basically it's like, okay, it's up to you pastors then. Go for it. You take the responsibility of the health of your county, of your neighborhood, and of your state. It's on you now because the sports guys, they're not doing anything. I mean, every other large gathering has been clamped down except for the church. And this is one of those weird legal things about separation of church and state kind of stuff where it lays out in wacky ways for pastors right now.

And now we've got pressure from both sides. We've got pressure from the culture to not open, and then you got pressure from people in our churches to open. Mm-hmm. And that's weird. We've never had that before. To this for me personally is a like, when I can doesn't mean you should situation. Because I think we're allowed it's an incredible thing. It's how affirming even that a lot of state governments are saying, hey, churches are essential businesses. Yeah, that's that's great. Yeah. And when you, we have to pay attention to the currency of culture right now. And for the people we're trying to reach, yes, it will crush our witness to not be socially conscious and care about the health of people that we're trying to reach. And so it's one thing for church people. Absolutely, we want because it will give us a sense of normalcy as a churchgoer, as someone who's been in that habit. This will give me an anchor that feels great, and it will be amazing, you know? I'll get to see my people and that'll be awesome. But we're gonna reopen and risk our witness to unbelieving people who we hope to reach and welcome into the family of God. So that the church people who are already engaged in our church currently can come back into a building. And the right trade-off, right? Because you would think that we would have learned from the example of Jesus that it's not about us, but about that lost person who doesn't know Jesus yet. And if we do something stupid culturally that puts yet another mark against the name of Jesus, I think we're kind of gonna be held accountable for that too.

Way to throw the way to throw the dagger in there. It's about love your neighbor as yourself kind of a deal.

I know. Now it's just the Jesus hook that I needed though. That was no good. No, you know, both of you bring up a very, very good point. And I guess kind of what a lot of this comes down to in terms of how a lot of this is functioning is, do we satisfy our current crowd, which is always a questioning trick, right? Do we satisfy our current crowd or do we do it a tank to make sure that we're consistently tapped in with reaching people for Christ? Would you now? That's been like the battle of like the last like fifty years of church, right? Okay, like in terms of, hey, do we do we consider going more seeker-sensitive versus just tapping into like what we've currently going on? Do we consider going digital versus just keeping things the norm? You know, this is yet another hard-fought battle on that front. Am I correct? And kind of not summing it up but just looking at it from that person?

I mean, even when you look at First Corinthians 14 and the Apostle Paul says, do your church services differently so that the new person who's coming in doesn't think you're crazy. Though so I think this is just another application of that idea. Where for whatever reason, any organization, whether it be religious or not, tends toward introspection, tends toward complexity, tends towards serving the needs of their members and gets real introspective and real inward-focused instead of outward-focused. That's just human nature. The gap between the people who are already a part of the church, believe what we believe, following Jesus alongside of us in community with us, is growing wider between the people that we're trying to reach. So I think we have to pay attention back to there was in that last fifty years, in those five decades, that that was closer together. There were we shared values. There was an association with church. There was no big barrier to walking into a good today. Like to go back to how it was before is a false narrative. It's a fantasy to think like we'll go back to the way it was. There will be a big barrier for people who don't yet believe what we believe to come into our big dark building. Know what's gonna happen there and drop off your kids? Yeah, right. Like seeing real breathy all directions no matter what. The step forward is, how does the combination of both of these things? It's not an abandoned what we're doing, right? It's as we step forward, what are we learning now? Because we have to in this digital mode that is affected at reaching your people and is at engaging disciples and making disciple makers, right? And and and then what do we add back in as we can and when do we do it? And they'll be hopefully lots of different variations of that depending on the job.

One of the really great quotes that I don't know, maybe Jeff you posted this or something, I don't remember who posted it, but it was an Alan Hirsch quote where he said that church in COVID season right now is having to do things completely differently. It's like playing chess without your queen. Yeah. So what it does is really good chess masters will practice without their queen. And what we're learning right now is I personally believe that Jesus is forcing us to be really good at our game so that we can find other ways of doing the disciple-making mission that Jesus called us to do without a Sunday weekly service. So that we can explore all these other things and discover there we have more power at our disposal than we realize. And this the queen is always nice to have, but it's an add-on. And what what has happened, I think, in kind of this punctuated church history of the past three or four months, is it used to be that churches had an on-site. They were an on-site church with an online add-on. Now in COVID season, everybody's an online church. Mm-hmm. And post-COVID, we'll see what happens. But I I'll tell you that there are churches that are forward-thinking from the things we're learning right now and how to play chess well and realizing how much power and how many more pieces we actually have on the board that they're considering like our church is considering flipping to becoming an online church with an on-site add-on.

That's a different model that I think is more scalable and has more potential for leadership development and probably is even a little bit closer to what we find in Scripture. And I definitely think that it's probably going to be more effective with the that we will find ourselves in post-COVID season.

I mean, at the end of the day, I think all of this is playing. Yeah, and it—I've—it's funny. I think two or three times the whole Alan Hirsch thing has come up through blogs or podcasts. It's been a common theme. We have used the queen way too much, and as a result of that, we became just that's the only tool that we would use on the chessboard. This has removed it, and I do think it has a place. And I—the guy who's like director of digital church planting, it's my job to plant digital-only churches. I am saying there isn't—there is a place for physical location on that. And even in that though, we need to realize it's a tool, not the method towards it. And so that's where I think hopefully churches—and I love this idea of digital first. Where—and this is really the thing that I wanted to kind of park on because it's a different mentality, Jason, to your point. It was physical first and then maybe an option of digital. I mean, that's—and you were far more aggressive in that. Maybe ten percent of churches who are broadcasting pre-COVID, but for the majority of the church, it was physical first and digital is like, you know, get the people in the physical building. That's it. There was not looking at online as discipleship opportunities within that virtual space.

We've got a season now here to pivot. Matt, Matt Lord—me, when we were talking about this podcast, when I invited him in, and I was like, "Hey, Matt, yeah, come on. I want to talk about when we get back to the building." And Matt, via email, text, whatever it was, he's like, he called me out, which I love. And he's like, "Jeff, here you're looking at it backwards. We're not going back to the building. We're implementing physical locations into our new founded digital strategy." And in that one statement, I'm like, "Oh my God, she just—" I have told that story to fifteen people because it's like, when we're doing this, when we're even considering this, let's not forget everything we've learned, but let's add to it.

So I want to hear this. So Matt, I mean, I've got some things that we've been doing that I could share, but I really want to hear what Matt I said say because they've been doing micro-siting, and they're a little few steps ahead of the game on that front. And so I'm kind of curious as to what has changed in this season, what your plans are going forward, if you have any, or if they're just conjecture at this point. That's fine. I still want to hear it.

Yeah, they are conjecture. I mean, they need—anybody who has a hard and fast plan is gonna get that plan disrupted really soon, right? So we don't—we don't have a hard and fast plan. We—it's a—it's a missionary mindset for me. It's the approach to the problem to go, we're not preserving and protecting our method of the church. We are—as the people we're trying to reach—just like if we were to get picked up from America—we're in Ohio, so we're like in the middle of the middle, or I don't know, Kansas, and maybe the middle of the middle—but we and go to a different country with a different language, we wouldn't go, "Well, everyone come do it the way that we do it." We would—we all know this, like any—you know? And so we would get in and do the native language. Cultures has changed pre-COVID, but for sure all of us are having to, you know, get gripped by this fact that then the native language of the people we're trying to reach is digital.

So we've—this is our opportunity, if we'll let it, for God to show us the new capability we need in our organization. So we—we had experimented like, if we're ahead, we're only ahead and experimenting and gathering up mistakes and figuring out as we go. But we—we mean, we've we have done the microsite, or the, you know, sort of more smaller gatherings, watch parties, like Elevation is, and and so many other churches are doing inside of the initial weeks of stay-at-home orders. Our staff, like so many church staffs, shifted to, "Great, we're picking up the phone. We called every person in the church. How can we pray for you?" In most cases, leading voice knows no one picks up the number they don't know. Yeah.

And going—it's I think to even the phone call thing, that's a great example of how when we say digital first, we don't—digital—it—digital first is still people doing ministry with people. Yes, it's a different tool at forum, changing it. It's like if you were to go back to whatever buildings came online and 380 or something like, "Oh, you guys are guys are going building first." That's interesting. No, we're just you're adapting to the culture, you know? I would have loved to have been a part of those conversations as a digital guy. Like that have been good for me because now, you know, all the building guys are like digital now, you know? So yeah, it it isn't moving forward, and buildings play a critical role in it. Like, but for us to go, let's not lose any of our innovation that we're experiencing now, let's not lose any of our momentum. We've validated for people that they can be engaged in the church, growing spiritually, reaching your friend without a building. So instead of going back, it's just a mindset to go, as we add a building back in, what is—what is it? What can only a building do? What—how do we use it in a way that it's so unique and so value-added? Because it won't. If we're honest with ourselves, all of the church people already engaged in our churches will come back to our buildings when we reopen them. And then in a few weeks, if we're offering only what we're offering online inside of our buildings, they will opt for the more convenient way to be engaged in our churches.

We validated the good news is that we've said in this COVID period, this is an authentic expression of church. What we're doing digitally—we can't bring buildings back in in a way that takes all of that away, especially because it's gonna be the minority of our churches coming together together. So we get a small group gathered together and say, "OK, just kidding, guys. All that stuff we were doing online, it's not—not fully church anymore. You gotta come here for the full church experience." So we've got it. That's the mindset. If we can't go back, we've got to figure out how to probabilities back in to the full toolbox.

I've got a question though, because one of the things we're wrestling with is which one takes primary. And in our mind, it's like, you know what, we should probably go to the place where online takes primary—is the primary expression of worship—and your on-site expression of worship now takes a back burner to what we are programming for. All our energy and resourcing, staffing, all that kind of stuff, because pre-COVID it was the opposite. We were broadcasting what was happening on site. Now what we could do is we could throw in the room on the screen what we have pre-prepared for everyone online. Yeah, so that's a flip. That's one of the things that we're talking through because what one thing that's really great about creating all of your workflows, all of your worship, all of your teaching, all that stuff that is prepared and optimized for the screen is that the screen is scalable. You can put it in a small room. You can put it in your pocket. You can put it in a big room. It doesn't matter, right? We've got new pieces all over the place that just do video, and obviously the screen works there, right?

Yeah, so if we were to optimize all of our processes, all of the energy for Sunday's come and kind of stuff—mm-hmm—on the video first, then we can scale it and let people go wherever they want. That's kind of what we're thinking at this point.

I love it. So personal opinion is in full agreement with that. We—we internally at Crossroads, a year and a half ago, I think is about the timing of it, we went screen first. So we—that was an internal call to action. We will be screen will create screen-first content for every—for every venue. And it was just what you're describing, Jason, that was the mindset behind it, and made mistakes along the way.

So for us, one of the mistakes we made was—we—well, the metaphor we used was Jerry Seinfeld. So Seinfeld, an incredible comedian, prolific live entertainer, but only so many people could see him live. When you put Jerry's—no loss of DNA—his comedy inside of a sitcom, it scales. Yes. But here's here's the thing though. There's a way you're not gonna criticize Seinfeld here because you sacred cows. I think we're not. One of the mistakes here's a critical distinction though. There is a difference between watching the Seinfeld show and watching TV show that's one of his comedy routines on stage. There is a difference. The way that you program it, the way that you edit it, the way that you, you know, leave room for commercial—almost all those things that a normal sitcom is a completely different metaphor of storytelling than the way that one would do it standing on a stage, right? Yes.

And what we're trying to pull off right now is not to recreate a stage experience on Sunday in our videos, but create a completely new method of storytelling altogether. And that impacts the way that we program it, impacts liturgy, it impacts, you know, the way that we try to make it interactive, all of those things. And we're still experimenting. We've got one coming out this Sunday that I think is getting close. We're starting to figure it out what we can do, but it's radically different and it's very disruptive for people that are used to like the worship guys are like, "What do we do? How do we do this?" You know, they want to do a stage thing, you know, and everybody film it. But that doesn't fit in what we're trying to do with video-first kind of stuff.

So go ahead. I want to dig in there for both of you. I want to hear from both of you because in case my—the time this podcast comes out, like this will have already happened. So Matt, you're gonna go next. But you know, we had to basically take a stick of dynamite to the whole thing. Once we hit COVID, in terms of the service, and we had to say, "Okay, this made sense from exactly what you said—bringing a stage experience to online. Now when it's online first, the whole thing, the whole shebang had to change from beginning to end. Our experience of worship, the way that their worship leaders interacted with the camera, even the way that our communicators talk, length of sermon, et cetera."

So Matt, for sure, you go. Jason, I want to hear what you guys got on the docket coming up this this weekend.

So yeah, we've we've experimented with some of this. We've done on-location teaching. So we've gone far away to different parts of the world to go, "Okay, we're connecting in the geography, and where you can you can feel to the teaching background." That wasn't—that was an early experiment, and it was better than onstage teaching, way more immersive, can play them in more places. We tried a reality TV show format. So we used our camps structure, and we followed people through today can't experience spiritual mountaintop, exceptional vulnerability, the whole thing. In a hundred ways it was great. In a hundred ways we learned like, "Okay, that was cool, but it was also a reality TV show, and all the people coming for church would say that was a great reality TV show, but I wanted you to give me church."

So on-location and so—and you know, and so there are more recent versions of on-location teaching are way more interactive. It's not just a backdrop where Brian was just an Israel, a story where Jesus puts mud and the guy's eyes to take away his blindness, but can't see until he walks the half-mile from where this happens down to the river to wash the mud out of his eyes, which is a piece of the story I'd never thought about before. And so Brian, blindfolded with mud in his eyes, walks the half mile as he continues to teach about—

The doubt and the fear and the you have to take action and faith in all these things so that kind of knew that's the at least for us the moment that new mode of storytelling to get the sermon across which was great. What we've found is that skills everywhere and the great news is you can take that same video product if you just play it in an auditorium good but not great because why come in for just what I could watch on my couch but now in an auditorium in a building you can augment that with worship experiences from your worship leaders that can't happen anywhere else from commentary from Brian or some of the other like so we'll do a in and out a video thing where Brian will we'll play a clip of what you can watch the whole thing online if you're but if you're in our buildings you're gonna see a 15 minute clip and then Brian's gonna riff on it and so it creates this venue in room church experience but you to your point Jason your you've created a new type of content that's now usable in so many different places which is really healthy for our churches too because most of our churches are were made to only produce one thing right we've optimized for the past hundred years even our building to specialize for one kind of experience they do one thing so if you if you flip that in covet season and take this opportunity to get optimized to create screen first that may work for another five years but what it what it will do is also create a capability in your staff and your organization to pivot again if you need to so now we're what we're doing is our online experiences will be different than our in-room experiences they'll share some of the same assets yeah we're having that conversation Jen you and which is a little scary for me because I know all the work that it's gonna take totally but one thing that I think to your point that I've been talking about as well as if we create core content with which each environment can contextualize and add to as needed and we know that this 15 minutes is not going to be old service but this will be the core part of the service that keeps us all unified together as a church network yeah this is what we're all gonna be doing on Sunday or Saturday night or whatever right this is what we're gonna be doing this week right and each environment can scale it up or down as needed including the online environment so if the online environment you know we've got 15 minutes of really high production high quality storytelling via video now I can do cut-ins and riff on that to just my online audience right knowing that it's my online audience is the primary people that are going to be receiving it this is something that's probably gonna happen you know six months down the road when everybody kind of settles into whatever their rhythm happens to be and I will be able to minister to you in a specific and contextualized way to that audience in particular knowing that in the big room of a thousand people or in the other room that we have across town with our multi-site you know with 300 people they're going to be contextualizing it differently but we're all going to have that same core content at least and that way instead of having that core content come from one place on a stage it is now storytelling from video perspective first yes and I think we can have way more interactivity around that one of the things that we're putting into the video thing for four hours right now I'm just what we're experimenting with this this Sunday particular block of time set aside in the video with like a little countdown and stuff in there and prayer prompts to have prayer moments in the middle of the video so that people can wherever they are gather their whole family together and say okay we're gonna pray for this right now and there's like these prayer prompts and these little visuals and things like that to keep things going you know and then pulling them out of that prayer time into a worship time you know but it feels it's not it's not passive so and that's one of the big things about video I think we need to figure out is keeping it not passive because people are used to watching TV you're used to watching movies all those things where you just sit back in the lazy chair in your pajamas and just like coast and that's not what we want to do in church church is supposed to be participative read 1st Corinthians 14 everybody's supposed to be bring in something we have to figure out how all of us together can participate and I think that's one of the things that people are feeling that vacuum right now that whole because they're watching videos and honestly they're watching videos from everybody but if the participation though you can't you can't fake that you know you can't just watch participation you have to create participation so that's that's a great time and I definitely want to have that conversation eventually about how Christians are content overloaded and discipleship starved like we'll have that conversation down the road I'm pretty sure Jeff will have us back on for that really what I want to know is should we be creating more second screened experiences than if that's the case I'm sure that people have that kind of conversation and that kind of participation because for instance one of the things that I love about the NBA right now is NBA Twitter because for me yeah it's a second screen experience I'm watching the game but there are jokes there's inside things there's all sorts of stuff happening alongside of it you know Netflix party is kind of erupted and it's become a thing you know and so now I can watch videos and participate with others and that as well yes so here for church how can we make sure and create conversational experiences with this within the service both physical and digital to ensure that that kind of thing continues so it's interesting that you had mentioned that particular scenario with NBA that you watch the game so there's like three different layers of things going on there's an actual game that's going on on-site in an arena somewhere where people are interacting with one another with this with different people then the people that are watching it on TV but the interaction platform is the same common denominator with both audiences I think there's there are things to be learned there and to be mined there where you can have people on site interacting with people online and create that cross network effect that's happening and the only the only downside to that is is that you all have to be on the same time that's where we come back to live versus pre-recorded see one of the benefits we have right now is and this is what we're kind of experimenting with right now is how can we make pre-recorded content which if you get the quality up you kind of have to you how do you get pre-recorded content have the interactivity of live more than just chat and I've seen certain churches take like a zoom call like this where they'll have people interacting but they'll do it like Mystery Science Theater 3000 style where they're watching a video but everybody else is kind of interacting at the same time so that would be one approach that is not chat related where you have this participative thing polls and surveys and things like that if you're doing it in a live environment then you can respond to the responses that are happening in real time and people feel like oh I'm a part of this they're paying attention to me Q&A sessions those types of things that can happen cross campus cross location just the timing thing is what you have to snap into when you create those interactive experiences and that's that's where for me it's like okay how do we how do we pull this off in a good way so that's it we're experimenting with this Sunday with these prayer moments and I'm telling people if you're in the room you got people in the room then pray with some people in your room if you got you're by yourself or you're watching this later pray in the comments and yeah so or pray in the chat you know so all of you are not alone that is the thing that people want to feel and that's why there's so much push toward going back to the building it's because they want to feel part of something again they want to participate again and that that core desire we should really think about hard because if any any pastor wants to have is somebody who wants to participate so let's figure that out in the digital space and then when we put the on-site add-on that'll just be easy at that point your prayer moment Jason I I think it's brilliant I can't wait to I'm gonna watch it and I can't wait to hear what you yeah as you debrief it what happens what it reminds me of is if you guys have ever done a google sprint there they have this phrase they use in their that's called working alone together I've never thought about in this context but what you're setting people up to do even if they watch it on demand later on you're pausing their moment you're causing them to interacting even if they're only interacting with their family or they're by themselves they are with their church they're doing something alone together this is something our movement did even if it's a little bit separated by time and I think to the the chat during service we we've got to be careful about labeling that as community or as participation it is for some but also when we go back into buildings I don't think any of us are gonna be like and we love for everyone to just continue to chat during the sermon and it's everyone be quiet so online thinking like what are those core actions what does participation mean if I watch on my my Roku the sermon this week and I'm struck by this revelation that's teaching this thing that should lead me to inaction we we know and do within all of our teaching structures where we go we don't want people to know more stuff want me to practice more stuff so everything has to end in a do so I think to that second screen experience could be a second moment experience so it could it can be not timed at the same time it could be take an initial action like this will be about it like text something to this number because on Monday morning we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna send you a stimulus to do X there's an idea yeah you say dissipation yeah but it's separate and everybody can even if I watch that on demand a year later potentially with this you know you and and so I think to like when you're creating screen first content you're thinking about evergreen interactions that people can have the other benefit that comes from the screen first content is you're setting yourself up not just for the scalability that weekend in different environments you're automatically creating all of your long-form on-demand content for years to come that people search up what's usable in social media which I think we all have to figure out how to get the most out of every single resource right now and forever but interaction is I've had a lot of passion around that to figure out what does that mean in the digital space when it's mixed in with my life happens in this you know if I'm in this room watching church I don't interact what does that mean but there are some tangible steps I can take in obedience and in response to God and they can be in the moment worship prayer but you could extend the service well into the week or maybe even start to get into some engagement discipleship stuff because we're not we're getting people out of content consumption mode into like oh yeah I did I did say I wanted on Sunday to do that thing on Wednesday how helpful my church just helped me probably through on that one of the things that I think it's been helpful in this covet season because the queen in the same

Way where it can go laterally and diagonally, the Queen, as it relates to the Sunday services, both a building and a time. So it's a weekly thing. So we just went away from weekly and we went away from building. Those two constraints, I think you've just tapped into, as it relates to possible interactions where you could have like a staggered interaction where on one day you're saying, "Hey, respond in this way," and we will talk about it three days later when we have our prayer time together, you know, live at five, whatever that is. You've just disintegrated two things. One is you disintegrated the building. The other you disintegrated weekly Sunday, which is super helpful because I've been finding in this time that we're getting more done daily than we could weekly. We're getting there done when it comes to parents empowering them to pastor their own kids and they're awakening to their own priesthood in their homes like never before. And we're getting feedback now where they're like, "I don't want to send to Sunday school," and that's because I don't like you guys, but I feel like I can do a better job. All of us should hear kids ministry is one of the reasons we always hold up as a unique thing that people come to the building for. You're just for sure true. If you're early in your spiritual walk, you haven't had some of those epiphanies you're talking about, but I do think a lot of churches are figuring out how to distribute the development, discipleship of kids. And so we're, yeah, and that is one that's one of the barriers. It's interesting, yes. That's one of the barriers to for a lot of the micro-siting stuff because whenever you talk about like mortgage, microsites, community groups, missional communities, the question always is, "What are you gonna do with the kids?" Right? And we're figuring that out now in this time period. So down that is no longer an obstacle because we've already got that figured out. We did in COVID season. We can do it here. And that will unlock all kinds of scalability for us as the big C church like we've never seen before. But there's other things too where people, you know, we're calling them up on the phone. They're having like these personal interactions and they're saying things like, "You guys never call me before," which is true. That's an indictment on us because you were depending on me too much, right? And so yeah, now we're like having these personal conversations. We're praying with people and the people are telling us, "This is more meaningful to me than Sunday." Thank you. And so if that's true, and what is also true, we did like this Barna thing that a lot of churches are doing right now, and we got results back that were surprising to us but not that unlike what a lot of other large churches are experiencing too. Where there were three basic questions when it's time to go back to the building, you know, "What are your expectations?" And question number one, what are the answer? Number one response was, "Oh, I'll come back. You guys, I'm in. You guys do whatever you want. I'm in," right? Right. That was that was only nineteen percent. Thirteen percent, just these stats are your church, right? These so nineteen percent at Westside. Okay, what's going? I'm sorry. And if I get the percentages a little off, it's because they were moving around a little bit as the survey went through. Was true, okay? So here's here's the other thing. Thirteen percent said, "I'm not coming back until there's a vaccine." All the rest of them, sixty-nine percent, is "I will only come back with proper health and safety measures in place." So we just got this big old indication right there. Whenever that time comes, whether it is when gatherings can be tens, fifties, or thousands, the church is going to look in large gatherings will be different. It has to be, or we're only gonna have twenty percent of the people show up. We might be actually okay with that, knowing that the rest of the eighty percent are online getting the job done in their homes and in missional communities and stuff like that anyway, which kind of brings the question then: if we're getting twice as much work done, twice as much discipleship for half the cost, why would we want to go back to the building? So use it for something different. Yes. I like that. That's the like, that's what we have. This incredible opportunity to go into the building with a new objective for what. Yes, yes. If you happen to be a church where you've discovered that you're delivering some of the same value but way more efficiently through all these digital tools, you have this incredible asset. So what is it? And worship is one of those. Like, for the body of visitors to be in corporate worship where the Holy Spirit comes into a room, like, you I can be moved through worship online. I am authentically different thing. It's different when you're there. So okay, great. How do we lean in to that unique thing that can happen in a building? What community things can happen in the building? How can you raise the value? Like, I think about for Leah and I got three little kids, you know, what if we could do date night and church in one? That sounds pretty amazing for us in a week. Like, if we could come and kids club doubled as a babysitter and we could drop off our kids and so cross. There's a big difference. So this next thing I'm gonna say, but like, I can grab a beer, she can grab a glass of wine, and then we can go into church and we can have an immersive church experience and they come out and chat about it a little bit and probably run into some of our friends who are in a similar life stage before we go grab our kids from kids club. That's an offering that a building can do that that I can't. I can't get on one, and it may or may not have anything to do with a sermon or worship music or the normal liturgies we're thinking of, right? So as we as we go forward or go, we think about bringing buildings back in. It's great. What are these? Add? Because we're not digital focus. We're not building focus. We're people focused. So what do people need to help them know Jesus, accelerate their growth to Jesus, accelerate their path to community, whatever they, whatever you're trying to do? But pick potentially pick a new objective or a sharper one for what happens in your building and only bring it back to do that thing. Yes. So to your point, some of the things that I've got like done, this list of proposal things that I'm like submitting, one of the things is to only use the building for like monthly or quarterly events, like the big ones. When we do the big ones, we blow them out. Like, yeah, just big-time, high production that we can spend a lot of time working up toward, setting up the stage, doing all these things. So like when we launch a series, we're gonna do it big. When we do Christmas, we do Easter, we do back, whatever that happens to be, right? Do it really, really big, bigger than we've ever done it, and we do it once a quarter or or whatever, you know? And we can spend all quarter for that special event and have everybody there on those big things. And knowing that it only happens about once a quarter, COVID thing is still a factor. We can spread out those experiences over the course of a week to disperse the crowd a little bit. It's gonna make it a whole lot easier then to try to pull that off every single Sunday because the dispersal of that will grind our staff into the ground. Because if you're thinking like in my mind, I'm psyched right now. We've have like four services at our largest campus, right? Eight fifteen, nine thirty, eleven o'clock, and five o'clock. Already online on-demand is already bigger than our five o'clock. It's like, um, factors of magnitude bigger, our on-demand audience than the five o'clock p.m., right? It, depending upon which measures you use, which I use like super conservative measures, we can talk about that a different time, but you know, it's bigger than any other service, depending on the ways you measure it, right? So but in COVID season or post-COVID when all these safety measures have to be in place, what is that going to look like? You know, we can't have an eight fifteen into nine thirty and a one-hour service because of the turnaround time, the cleanup, rearrange, and then space people out. Are we gonna do more services? Are we gonna space them out two hours? So now we're talking about Saturday, Sunday, all day, having this huge building that it's optimized for thousands of people, not for fifties or hundreds, and spacing out all the chairs, cleaning up afterwards. That is a nightmare for staff. I mean, you just, you think about that, and even the staff that have been redeployed to our call centers that are loving it, by the way, because they're having, they're praying with folks, they're awakening their pastor or calling like never before. And now you're gonna tell them, "Oh, we're gonna pivot again," and instead of you working like two service, two or three services in the morning, you're gonna work all weekend and you're gonna clean up every single time. Yeah, how is that gonna feel? So in in my mind, if we if we take it and say, "All right, we're gonna do this once a quarter, once a month, whatever," we can spread out and disperse and do it in a sustainable fashion with the staff that we currently have, knowing that the primary expression will be in neighborhood communities, in online, in home. And another thing that I'm proposing to is that we replace our small group ministry with this new missional community thing. So there's no competition. So in other words, no more small groups. All of our small groups are going to be these community group, missional community things, and they'll all be watch parties that do it whenever is most convenient for their neighborhood, once a week. And knowing that daily, they're still, we're still going to be doing online stuff that we're always doing. So every day they're gonna get it just like they do right now, except now they'll be able to go down the street and meet with twenty or thirty other people. I have a barbecue watch service, which is which is designed for that type of environment. And then once a month you have this huge blowout, or once a quarter you have this huge blowout. We baptize a bunch of people. We have a confident gathering. Biasi other love it. The thing is, there's already families that are doing this right now. We've already had families do this in other parts of Olathe and in Lenexa, even before COVID. And I guarantee you they're doing it right now because that is their primary expression of church, and they would come to the big box about once a month. So I'm just taking that basic model that organically already happened and I'm saying that is the model now because it's the only one that's going to function with any kind of, you know, man, just the thought of trying to do kids ministry and you know, big box experience in this phased COVID season gives me hives because it's just way too much work for what you're getting out of it. But if we can, and everybody else knows it too, and there's a bunch of people who think, "Man, I don't want to go back to the big box because I don't know what kind of contagions are going on there. You know, how they're cleaning? I will minimize my surface area of risk by going down the street. I'll do that," you know? And so working that right there is leadership development. It would be so exciting to me to see us start figuring out the hybrid of megachurch and home turf, traditional church, missional community stuff. I think I mean, any thriving church has had to have that axis to continuum of temple in-home. Like, you can't only do one. And so the megachurch has that continuum. There's got it. Even the home churches are hurting right now. I can't great to my my twenty-five person home church gathering right now. And so it's interesting on the elephant's the spectrum you're having to figure out if you weren't prepared digitally, this is a.

Really tough time. So as more things come online, no matter who you are, figuring out how you can win. And so as you were describing some of that missional community stuff, I thought, how that, which is organic and sometimes as faulted as it, like man, does it ever really grow? Does it ever really reproduce? Does it ever? How do you give it an influx of resources so that it can expand?

Yeah, so to take, to take Randy, to take the leader in there to model it on the big screen of the megachurch is really interesting. To even use the buildings to go, we're not doing weekend services maybe in our buildings for the next few months, but what we could do on Tuesday night is the four, five, two, four, four zip code hosted by of the missional community leader. Like we're gonna help them throw out the bill. Like so it's a safe third space where people can come, socially distant, barbecue. Now they take it from there and run. Like now out of the building after that one. But we can, so figuring out how to overlap some of these neighborhood home-based and things that we've always been so attracted to in principle, they just fit and sound right. And how do we accelerate and infuse them with resource of some of the megachurch model that's about execution and drive?

So what if we were to use the big box only for leadership development of those leaders who are hosting these missional communities? So if I want to go to the big ma, to the big box, and I'm, we're only allowed fifty people, well it's going to be those fifty leaders instead of just fifty Rando people, you know, that may or may not be impacting their neighborhoods, because we're very clear about what we're supposed to do as a church. So if you're going to limit us to fifty, well those fifty are going to be rockstar. Kind of like when Jesus only had the twelve, they were rock stars. And so he could go saying, look, I did everything I was supposed to do. You know, I'm good with those eleven, you know, that one, whatever. But those eleven, we're good.

So if the state says, oh, you can only have ten people, well then we're just going back to Jesus, you know, and we're gonna dedicate all of our energies on that group of people, knowing that they will be leading others as well. It's not just micro sites. It's not just like, we, we live precoded, we lived in this world that we thought was all these separate. Just, well then you're just a megachurch, you're just a home church, or just a microsite, you're just a missional community. It's the blending of these that is so interesting to me right now. To go like, it is the micro community while you're reaching tens of thousands of people potentially. Like you, it's a both/and. And it's so hard to do the both/and, but as movements now I think we've got to step into how do we do the big and the small? How do we do the digital and the physical? How do we do the very personal and the macro ministry that we might do? Like it's all on the table. And figuring out where we can win in the both/and based on your ministry in your church feels like this is the moment to capture before all this slips.

So let me ask this, and let's pivot as we're getting close to wrapping up here. And let's just say it this way: there are people listening to this podcast that buy into what you're saying. Their leadership does not. So let's pivot here and let's get a little practical. This entire conversation's been theoretical. So there are people where that are passionate about this. Now their leadership's not. How do you advise them to have the conversation? Cast vision? Direct? You guys are both high-level leaders. How would you recommend things like that are handled? Submission to authority and honoring your leadership?

I think you have to empathize with the fact that oftentimes the way that they have, the way that they have engaged in ministry, that there's a grieving process that if it's happening, they have to go through this. Like I used to watch people get lit up by my message. I used to go down and put my hand and pray on for someone in Denver, you know? Like there's so much change that for many of us are passionate about it, we've crossed these bridges for the last many years, but we've got to give time and space for people to cross them with us.

And then I think practically to help them do that, putting them in positions where they can win, and then ensuring you're looping back all of the life change stories. Like them, that's really what we're in this game for. And so if you're truly reaching new people for Jesus, if you're seeing people get baptized, you're seeing people grow, and those tangible stories, whether they start to come in is now app reviews or Facebook comments or whatever, there's gonna be a new way to get them, but you've got to do the feedback. Because so much of our leadership now is flying by instrument instead of by sight. And you have to take it on your responsibility to be the instrument of feedback to go, this, something's happening. God's at, God's at work here. And patience and timing, like I, you know, all the, everything those have to come together. And you can sometimes see it before other people, but there's often times also a reason why maybe it's not hitting all gears right away. And that sometimes is even protection. So just being open to that and honoring your leader, I think it's a big part.

One of the other things that's a tool at our disposal that we have uniquely in this time, that it's not that this kind of frustration didn't exist before, it's been there with any transition like this, but now you have the unique opportunity to just blame it on the virus, because it's forcing us to do things that we probably wouldn't have chosen to do otherwise. And so when I died, loved it, you know, you're flying by instrument instead of, you know, by sight, which is awesome. And that is what makes your metrics and your analytics so important in this time. You're hitting something with the engagement thing. I mean, I think online gives us such an opportunity to have a breadth of reach. Yeah, great leaders can smell that coming. If you are at all trying to prop up a number, just like if you're taking your Facebook impressions, which is valuable for something, I've been trying to feel like see what that you to move people, like the inciting incident of the virus will move a great leader to a place of introspection and reflection and how we're going to tackle this thing. But then to your point, Jason, like it's you need down the funnel metrics to go like, no, here's here's the real stuff that is happening as a result of this. I think that's what attaches into the great. I mean, in the past, you know, five years ago, a lot of us were talking about a future state where certain models might not work, which is valuable, but it's very different. Like that's still a manufactured threat. You take advantage of the fact that right now there is a very real threat to our model ministry, and not to arch, not to our model ministry, there's a threat to our ability to fulfill the Great Commission and its followers of Jesus. We get hyped up on going like, great, the gospel is resilient. So so what's our way around? How are we gonna do this? And we just got to capitalize on that the best that we can.

Love that. Yeah, and that's that's gonna be a great place to lay it, laying the plane. That's I think God has his church going through that and for a reason. I think there's there's a lesson to be learned in this. And in the process of God breaking the model of church, not his church, but the model of the church, you know, I've never known in scripture where God breaks something and puts it back together exactly the way that it was. Usually in that breaking process there's there's a humbling and adaptation or something to get it more in tune with the the glory and the purpose that God wanted for it. And so I'm I'm anxious to see how the church is going to evolve in the season.

We just did a podcast with Edie right before COVID, and with Ed Stetzer, and and and literally the conversation with that is, Edie, we talk all this needs to change, literally year after year, week after week, month after month we say we need change and nothing ever changes. Edie, what do we have to do to change? And it's like, Jeff, I don't know that you you're gonna see the change. And then like later in the podcast he says something about COVID, and then March eighth happened and the entire world like changed. And and it's it's kind of bittersweet in this moment to look in the sea. Got, God's in control of all of this. And as a result of it, things are gonna work to the to the to his glory ultimately throughout it. And we are just mere pawns and pieces serving him in that. And I'm so anxious and so appreciative of this change and where we're going, you know? I can do even from my experience, the churches that that were that are making picking up those phone calls and having those conversations and building that, the people are saying, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm at a better spiritual level now than I was with the events. Like there's there's lessons in here that we, we church, we need to, we need to learn from that.

So so Matt, Jason, man, I think this is the least I've ever said in a podcast and this is the most fun I've had through it, cuz I just sat back and it's like, I'm just gonna listen to these guys. I'm, hey Ray, we need to just give them a podcast. Like let's just get the two of them doing a podcast, you know? Podcast network, son. Alright, so so we're gonna revisit that. We'll come back around. But seriously, gentlemen, thank you very much. This was a great conversation. For Ray, for Jason, for Matt, this is Jeff for the Dead Church Digital. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time here at the podcast. Y'all have a good day.

Yeah, I knew that, and then I'd play chess this way, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't just Weenie Hut Junior's kid chess back in the day. But when a pawn crosses the board, if you're after queen, it gets promoted. You could, yeah, exactly. In church online has just crossed the board. Interest. Yeah, that's all just good right there. Yes, it's gotta get back in there. We'll figure out a way to inception it. Anyways, guys.