EP076: Lee Coate & Digital Engagement Pathway for Your Church

Episode 76 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia. A church planting Jeff here once again. We've got a great episode for you, digging in here, getting into the individual, getting into the one, getting into the smallness of church online. Really, we talk about church online. We often think of it as this big, massive, huge thing, but really the success of church online is not found in its large reach as much as it is in a much smaller engagement. And so we're gonna talk a lot about that here within this context.

We're bringing in Lee Cote, executive pastor of the Crossing Church in Las Vegas, a large church by the way. He's also does some work with Intentional Churches if you're familiar with that. But in gaining context, we did talk a lot in this episode about individuals, not the mass of what's happening, but the smallness of the individuals and how we as a church can reach them. By the way, we're not talking about individuals that are just within the physical church building. We're not just talking about the individuals that are in a digital-only environment that are not attending the physical building. We're actually talking about both and how to develop an intentional discipleship pathway, or as he calls it a digital engagement pathway, that your church can utilize. The technology component to start to engage and track with people in digital space, sure, but also engage and track with people who are going to your church for discipleship in the physical environment.

Once again, digital, it's this combination of physical and digital working together to get this vital placement. And this here, this is what we really wanted to talk about. How do we engage people? How do we meet people? How do we build relationships with people who are just watching church online and get them to a place where they are fully engaged and they're activated in ministry in your church, whether their physical or digital only? Fascinating conversation, really, really deep level stuff.

By the way, his engagement pathway, Lee's engagement pathway, we've got a link to it in the show notes. We're gonna talk about this a ton. So swing over to the show notes, check it out at the Church Digital. There's a blog there. If you can't find it, go find, search for it and find it there. But access that information, have it available because we're gonna be talking a lot about this pathway through this podcast.

So for the conversation, I'm bringing in Lee Cote, executive pastor of the Crossing Church in Vegas, Ray Armas, did you know pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami, and of course myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm calling Digital Engagement Pathways for Your Church.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

So what's interesting about the Crossing, Jeff and Ray, is that we would say that for as long as I can remember, we really had an online presence that was there as either an introduction for people or a placeholder for people, maybe a substitution or supplement for people that were unable to make it to our physical locations. And that was fine. That was actually a strategy for us. So our online presence, I would say outside of social media, really was limited to our Sunday worship experience being broadcast. And so the way I would describe it is we would bring our auditorium into your living room, but you would definitely feel as if you were watching our auditorium in your living room. There was small acknowledgments that you might be watching from somewhere else, but generally the content and the tone of our gatherings would have been directed towards those who were physically in the room.

Obviously, with COVID happening in March, we made a pivot. And the pivot for us was not as dramatic as probably for some who literally had no online presence and had to pivot to figuring it out with iPhones and learned things like black magic and 720 and YouTube and things like that. But our pivot was more towards how do we begin to build content towards an online audience and what does that look like? And some of that was technology and technical things that we don't need to talk about. That's way outside of my lane. But more so, like, what is, to your question, what is that audience? And frankly, I think the question that I hope a lot of churches have asked, that we began to ask early on, which I'm grateful for, is are we just gonna build a platform that holds our people over for as long as they are sheltering in place or not physically? Or are we going to build a platform that continues to reflect our values of, you know, helping people discover Jesus and their own personal journey of faith? And that word "discover" is a big word. We'll talk about it even a little more later. But this idea of we wanted a platform that we could continually see people come to Christ and come into community at the Crossing. And so that really drove our decisions.

Obviously, not within the first 48 hours, but within the first week or two as we started to get our feet under us off the pivot and started to get organized, then we began to ask those questions moving forward. The funny part is we initially told people we're gonna be online for two weeks. And as of this recording, we are 12 weeks and no end in sight as far as no physical gatherings for us here in Vegas.

What kind of changes did you see? And I know that you guys had some discussions and you guys talked about it. But what would you say are some of the greatest changes that you've seen in terms of how you've adapted to this? Because I imagine a lot of churches are experimenting with different types of adaptations. And so, you know, what has been the secret sauce for the Crossing?

Well, I think I would say, Ray, a holistic approach pretty quickly was important for us, and we'll even drive some of our decisions post-COVID. What I mean by that is we pivoted initially, obviously, to bring our worship gatherings, and those took on a little bit of a different form, obviously, to camera, a little bit more compressed service time, things that were directed to that online audience, action steps, those sorts of things, engaging in chats, empowering our staff to be very present and engaging in those rooms. But I would say even beyond that, making sure that our extended ministry also began to have a presence.

I'll give you one example. So we have a recovery ministry that meets every Monday night, as many churches do. I won't name the recovery ministry, but initially they did not want us to take their content online. So we immediately pivoted, and our recovery ministry became Crossing Recovery, which we call CR. And we started recording music and testimonies, devotionals, and we've had that going on since the beginning, especially for those people that really need that 12-step process. Right? If that goes away, that can be life-changing for them and life-altering. So that would be an example of thinking that went beyond Sunday. What do we need to be doing to create not just an online audience, but really an effective online picture of what the church should be?

Yeah, Jeff sent me a photo of the funnel that you guys are using. And why don't you just tell some of our listeners about that funnel in terms of how you see somebody moving from all of that online content that you guys are putting out there to actually being engaged in your church? And I think that that focus, the idea of a pathway or a funnel, is kind of our narrative, our optimum narrative of where we would want to see people move. We realize people do what they want to do in the timing they want to do it, but we believe it's important for us to have an optimum narrative because we want to work that, scrub it all the time, see what's working, what's not, and really measure movement off of that.

So if someone links to the picture, which I'm sure Jeff will, one of the words they see is "movement," right? That we wear these are not programs. I want people to understand we're not taking all of our programs and pressing them into a narrative. We're really saying what are the key things that we want to produce movement towards someone getting connected to Christ and getting connected to the Crossing? And we say that over and over again.

So within a week or two, we started pressing in, and we have a physical location pathway that looks similar to that but would include other elements that are for the physical experience. And so we just basically said what would a digital, virtual experience of movement and connection look like? And the top of it is really our reach. We started asking the questions around how do we reach people who are far from Christ or far from church community and started looking at that and then moved our way down.

What's interesting about it is there are handoffs as well. If you look at that chart, there are certain places where there's a handoff as far as who will be responsible for that person's care, that person's movement, that person's growth along the pathway. And it all starts from our people just spreading and sharing to their ones, the ones in their life, to use that term, and then beginning to see those people take steps. And so that was really the fruition of it. It was taking what we were doing already and pushing it into an online context. And now that will continually live for us indefinitely because it really has shifted our mentality towards that.

And I'm glad you said that because that was gonna be my next question: what's gonna hang around off of this post in terms of reopening? Like, what's gonna stay?

Yeah, and that's the question, Ray, right? That everybody's asking, right? Is what's permanent and what's temporary? And everybody has ideas, and you can spend all day reading blogs and websites and listening to podcasts like this, you know, where people are telling you, you know, one set is saying everything's gonna eventually go back to normal. The other set is saying, you know, sell your building, you know, things are never gonna be the same. We've taken kind of the last 10 percent approach where we've said we're not sure how quickly, but we believe that 85 to 90 percent of things will return to some degree of normal as people will eventually come back and want to gather and hug each other and do that.

So what our team has been really scrubbing is what's the last 10 percent that is forever changed? Number one, or we want to forever chase that we're going to make sure stays changed. So with the pathway, we have discovered one that there's some personal touch that we need to get back to with our guests that's beyond just them, beyond that mentality that they just want anonymity forever. And so we've learned that once they identify themselves, that some personal touch is appropriate.

Secondly, we're using the term "integration," which means like our Discoverer step will be a physical step again that people can come to campus, they can have lunch, they can walk around, they can talk face-to-face, but we'll also always maintain a virtual presence that people, whether online or whether they just choose to take it from the comfort of their home, will be able to always access as an integrated alternative. So those are, we're still asking and answering those questions right, but that's part of what has been the lightbulb moment for us as far as our movement from church just showing up online when you want it to this is an experience that integrates in an omni-channel type way with our church. So you can physically show up sometimes or digitally show up sometimes and you can play in both of those sandboxes and still grow in your relationship with Christ and your relationship with the Crossing.

I love that omni-channel. We've talked a lot about that on the podcast, going back about how through omni you're trying to get a consistent messaging across multiple platforms. Typically it's more like social media, making sure you're consistent across, but I love your approach of physical and digital both being a consistent messaging. One of the things I'd love to know is who's watching. Like when you're looking at UK, so you've got 85 to 90 percent who are physically going back to a building at some point, at least that's against the middle of what I understood what your planning. What do you know of the 10 percent? Are they people that are in Vegas? Are they people used to be in Vegas and moved away? Are they people who just are connecting with your church through? Who are they? Like where are you seeing these people come from?

Our best way to it, first of all, that's there's some data that we have obviously Jeff on that, but it's also pretty tricky. Like everything, the one reason why we have these conversations is the nuance of the digital world is it can be pretty hard to really nail down what's really going on there. There's a lot of challenges there. But what we all tell you what we're learning about that audience is, you know, and we're learning it a lot through our pathway because as people are moving through it, that's a really good identifier. Because I think there's so many eyes on everybody's thing, right? I'm watching other churches. I'm peeking in on my friends or people I'm coaching, and so I know there's a lot of dialogue around numbers and how many do we think are watching and which platforms are best. What I really see is as people start to move from the wider end of that funnel and they begin to actually take movement steps into connection is where we're really looking at, going okay, this is an integrated model. Because even if someone, I was on our discover lounge three weeks ago and there was a gentleman in New York outside of Manhattan who had been watching our service for four weeks, and I don't think this story is just anecdotal, I think it's at least an idea of where this can be, and he showed up in our discover lounge to take the next step. And he's gonna get in an online group from New York and he's gonna be with people in Vegas and people from elsewhere. So I think what we're learning is if you will lean in towards the one in your digital environments, not just as a supplement for your 99 who show up, that you will begin to open up the audience much wider, both locally and even beyond that, because the tone of what you're doing will tell them they are welcome there versus the tone of I'm watching a service that's for a bunch of people that live in Vegas. They can pick up on that. But if the tone is, man, we're glad you're here wherever you're watching, that's key. I will say the caveat is we're not treating it as a broadcast. And I'm not sure I'm using the right word, so correct me Jeff in your world, but we're not looking at creating a crossing broadcast channel or, you know, a Christian network of content that is. That's nothing wrong with that, but that's not our directive. We, that's why this engagement funnel we're talking about is so important. Because I think when you see broadcasts, they're not really looking to move people into that kind of community, and we're looking to see people engage in our church digitally.

You know, it's interesting. I just came out of a meeting, a conversation just before we did this recording, and we were talking about physical first and we were talking about digital first, and kind of the challenges back and forth with that. And somebody made the observation, hey, shouldn't we be face to face first? Like it's not about the building, it's not about the technology, it's about the relationship piece. And I was like, oh, that's good. I'm gonna steal that because it really is. It's about that relationship, that aspect of it. And you hinted at it, and I want you to dig in a little bit because we've not exposed the podcast to this yet. But I'm going to very quickly in subsequent episodes talk to me about the one. You talked about how instead of doing a broadcast reaching, you're really interested in kind of reaching in and finding the one. I would love to hear and maybe explain a little bit what is the one for Crossings, right?

So there's a lot of different terms, and I don't want to make people crazy who might be listening. Because you have to filter this conversation through the Great Commission, right? That our strategy drives our vision through our values towards our mission, and our mission is the Great Commission. And whoever is listening from a church context, we all have the same mission, even if we have a cute statement that says something a little different, it's all based on the Great Commission, right? So then we back up and do values and vision and strategy, which can get very diverse the further you get into strategy. And so for us to have the one in mind, Jeff, is crucial and key to the tone at which we set. And so we have conversations around things as many churches do, like primary target. Who is our primary target? Doesn't mean the other targets don't matter, but who are we primarily thinking is on the other end of either sitting in a chair or has their device open and is watching us communicate? And what is compelling about that experience for them? So you have churches all the time that will talk about, you know, thirty-five-year-old married male with two kids, things like that. We have some variants of that that we talked about, but I think what's interesting, and you bring up a great point, because I think it will be interesting going forward to look at, and one of the things that online does allow you, right, is a little bit even an easier way of looking at demographics that are viewing, especially with Facebook and some of those things. We're able to see who is watching, who are these people that are watching, what kind of content are they interacting with? And I think we will continue to tweak to answer your question. I'm not sure quite yet who are one is online. I know they're there, but I think we'll continue to tweak as we can define that more and start to say, and we're having the conversation now around, do we go back to basically streaming what we're doing in the room, or do we continue to create content that I would say is modeled after what we do in the room, but it's not an absolute mimicking of what we do in the room? And that conversation is ongoing right now because we're talking resources, staffing, and all of that. But that conversation is about the one. Like, how are we going to reach the one that catches us online, whether they live in Vegas or in Long Island? And what's the best way to do that with the content we're giving them? So that's a long answer to I think a pretty important question that is yet to be answered for us in its entirety. But I think we're asking, and you're asking the right question for sure.

Yeah, and that's a hard question for so many churches right now, is do we create content just for online? Especially planning for reopening, we're gonna, I know you talked about how you're back and forth in the process. But what are you guys considering as far as what that would look like in terms of, hey, we're going to continue, but we're going to treat this almost as if it's a separate campus in a unique neighborhood that we're trying to reach?

Yeah, we've taken the bold step of actually reintegrating one of our locations that we had that was in a portable school because we just aren't even sure about their ability to meet. And so we made the preemptive step in the last few weeks to have them integrate back into one of our other locations. That group of people, and we made a staff change and move that lead location person into an online lead role. And it's interesting, Rea, as I talked to him, he started thinking, you know, what does that mean for me as far as content creation, all that? And the conversations we've been having is, you don't need to worry that much about that. You need to pastor the same way you would pastor a physical location. Do that, create steps, make sure people are being cared for, make sure movement's happening, be online, right? So we'll do some live things with him and all that, but I didn't put him in that role so that he could create content. We have people that can do that. I need him to be a pastor. To Jeff's term, face to face as much as possible for those individuals that choose to be part of our online campus experience. So that's a preemptive step that we've already taken. We've also slowed our reentry probably more than some. We're not as anxious for reentry. I just think that I've seen a shift in the last two to three weeks where there was a lot of language around the church is not a building, and it's all good, you know? Church in multiple living rooms and thousands, and it was great, right? And all of a sudden now reentry has become a thing. And I feel like the rush to close has now become the rush to reentry or reopen. And I'm a little concerned that even for us ourselves included, that we're rushing to reentry and we're going to miss the opportunities that God, to make it, which it is a spiritual thing that God has given us in our rush to get back to what we knew as normal. And we're slower partly because we have to be in our context right now. We can't meet. And secondly, one of our guiding principles of reentry is we don't want to reopen until our physical locations experience can match or exceed what we're doing online. Right now we could not even touch what we're doing online even if we had bodies in a room. So we've taken a little bit of a harder stance on, we're gonna go slow to try to continue to maintain a hard online presence that will continue beyond reentry. And I just caution guys out there that have kind of said, online, online, oh yeah, that thing over there, you know? I don't think it's, I don't think it's going away. Here's what's cool. We've exposed people while they were captive, they were sheltered at home. We've exposed people to something that in January they would have said, I don't really want to do that, right? I like to be in church. I'm not saying they won't come back to church. I think most of them will. But when the suggestion is made or when the opportunity is now made for them to either attend or invite to an online presence, they're gonna be way into going, yep, that's a great. We did that for three or four months. It's an awesome way to attend church. I'm not afraid of that right now. I'm feeling a lot of people going, I'm done, I want to go back to a physical thing. But as things start to settle in, I think there's gonna be a lot of openness to that online experience.

I want to leave in there, yeah, for a moment because reopening to me is not evangelistic. It's like a little bit self-serving in the sense of we're rushing back. But really to get our own people in the door because non-believers don't care to rush to church right now. No, this is not an environment where people are gonna be inviting their ones into the building. It's just not. But you can still invite them online. And there's a pipeline there, Ray, for sure, right? And part of the reason I believe, and this may be unfair, and I don't want to caveat this part, this may be unfair of different folks church, but part of the reason I believe that is because they don't have that discipleship pathway for online, which is why they're in such a rush to reopen. Any so can you talk about how that is affecting your decision to slow the process down because you're still carrying people through this process? I think that's, I think it's a valid point you make, Rea, is if...

If you're now let's say 10 to 12 weeks into the online almost exclusively and you don't have some degree of an understanding of how we're gonna move people in an online environment, then I would say you are probably very desperate to get back into the building at this point because you've kind of stopped at the hour on Sunday experience.

And I think your point is well-taken. I think that as we develop an understanding of how we can actually disciple and move people and reach people, which we've talked about through an online experience, again I think it can be cooperative. I don't think it has to be a destination model. I think a destination model is valid and if that's what God's called people and giving them a vision for, go for it. I don't think it has to be that. I think it can be an integrated or even an entryway type model, but it needs to have that reach factor in order for it to be worth the resourcing that people are doing.

I've actually encouraged a lot of people, Ray and Jeff, to not go full online campus. I've talked to guys, they're like, "Oh, we're gonna be an online campus," and I'm like, "I'm not sure that you're quite ready or have the understanding of what that really means." So it's okay for you to just go back to a re-entry model or at an entryway model that just sort of leads a front door for your one. That's that's a totally valid. It's okay to do that, right? To create an environment where people can see before they come. Totally, totally a valid reason to have an online presence.

I just think we have to make those decisions and then create that pathway that will allow people to not just be at a dead end, which I think is what we're experiencing right now is kind of that dead end. At worst, hopefully we're learning in this COVID season that that online can complement what happens in the building and the two can work together. Maybe not as a holistic carbon copy. And I'm even fascinated with one of the things you said earlier where you were like, "Yeah, there's something we do digitally, but we just opted not to do it online." And so there is there is a place for online to function maybe in tandem or complementing and filling in some of the weaknesses of online at minimum. But there's an option for part of what I think that could be is in this role of discipleship. And you listed online groups and community response and some of these things within your digital engagement pathway. And these are very strong words. These are very strong ideas that sometimes the church struggles to get a large majority of their people in groups because it's another thing. And the one our small group is really three hours of dragging my kids all around the city and trying to get things, and I'm exhausted. I can't handle that. Then we're starting to discover, "Man, an online group really isn't that bad." And yeah, I'm digitally exhausted, but it's not digital's fault. It's digital exhaustion because I haven't had any physical interaction. If I had a balanced life between digital and physical, maybe this stuff would actually really work better. And so talk to me a little bit. You know, talking about the Crossing, how the digital and the physical really complement each other or how you're planning to have them complement and work together to get people to where you want them to be.

Yeah, we're leaning in hard to the integration. What I, we're using the term integration, which is that, you know, on the idea of we want as much as possible to have some sort of a relationship between the physical. So I'll give you some examples that are all still obviously in a lot of beta forms. But you know, you mentioned groups. I think one of the things that we've discovered is again that captive audience where we were able to not only pivot groups that were meeting physically to online, but also we were successful. So pleased with our team because I know this is harder than I'm making it sound. We were successfully able to launch quite a few groups just strictly online groups that had not existed before that people were, you know, shelter-in-place. And we said what we did is we pivoted to a four-week message-based group model for the duration of this time. And our idea was you can give it four weeks and if it doesn't work or life changes, you're out. And it's all message-based. Nobody's got to have a study. You don't gotta watch a video. You just attend on Sunday, which helps drive that. Show up on a Tuesday night, have a conversation around questions we've sent out. It's not rocket science. Troops have been doing it. But to be able to do that online and say four weeks, and then in four weeks we're gonna do another launch or you can stay with your group. The thing we've heard a lot is what we're calling a hybrid, which means we're gonna have a lot of groups that are gonna start meeting physically a time or two a month. We're gonna have dinner and meet because we want to. But man, think about childcare. You mentioned it. Like that's the big thing with groups, right? Is what do we do with our kids? Imagine groups that meet once, twice in person, but then on a Tuesday night, mom and dad put the kids to bed, and at eight o'clock on a Tuesday night, their group meets virtually online. And so you can actually meet more consistently because you can meet more conveniently. And we believe that that will be part of what we do going forward.

We're also looking at shifting things like Alpha. We've got groups launching this week with Alpha online. Things like FPU is creating a lot of digital content. So we're partnering with a lot of these organizations that we will continue to have physical options for that down the road, but there will be again, there will be an integrated digital opportunity there for almost everything that we have on our campus. We're still trying to have conversations around things like next-gen ministry. What does that look like? Those conversations right now, they have an experience that's there and available. We'll have some conversations around what that looks like in the new normal.

So if somebody attends a physical small group but they decide they want to attend services online, love forever. I mean, like that's that's no pain point. No, like not being in the building. How did your church get to that place? I mean, this is, I mean, you know, it may change some things, but that that's a hard pill to swallow sometimes. And it's a hard place for you know, a senior pastor standing on stage. He's used to identifying with people in the room, you know, who needs that energy to speak to. Like talk to me a little bit about how your church got to this place where you're okay doing this, really this hybrid, this digital model.

Yeah, I think you mentioned that. I think I would caution guys again that our, listen to this. Like, you know, Lencioni just came out with his book about motives. And sometimes in this re-entry time, I'm just wanting guys to just kind of at least pray through what are you, what's the motivations that are going on right now with your timing? You know, how much of it is motivated by something other than an authentic need for people to gather during this season? Again, I'm not trying to answer that question. I just think I hope guys are asking it authentically and making decisions based on that.

I think for us, I think we're fortunate enough to have a team that sort of lives in that, "What's the, you know, give me some fresh meat. What's the next hill to take?" And so I realized that not every team is comprised that way. But I would say, you know, it might be time for teams, no matter how big or small your church is. I love that three-box solution. I can't even remember the name of the guy who wrote the book, but maybe we can reference it there. Had nothing to do with church, but he basically, I'm gonna mess it up, but to paraphrase, he talks about how really successful organizations always are maintaining their core business or core thing. They're eliminating things that no longer are effective, and they're innovating. But he talks about how those boxes don't necessarily touch or interact all the time. That you can have your primary business. It's like Apple, right? There over here selling you an iPhone. Well, they've got a group somewhere in Northern California that's already created the next thing that we don't even know about yet. And when it's ready, so I think I would encourage structures to make sure that they at least can take some people and put them in that innovation box and go, "What are the things that we aren't doing?" We can go ahead and stand in front of the people and preach and do all that stuff, but do we have somebody over here that's thinking about what's next? And we're giving them at least enough gasoline poured on it that they can start to create and start to integrate that stuff into what our core model is.

And I think we've tried to do that as much as possible to use somewhat of that concept of going, "Yeah, we gotta do what we do. All right, we gotta do what the Great Commission calls us to do, but let's let's keep this going over here and let's see what works and let's integrate it into what is the core." And so I don't care how small or large you are, I think churches can innovate in their context and their demographic if they will allow the guys. If it's not you as the senior leader and you've got people on your team that want to do that, put them in a box over here and let them innovate a little bit and see what it might do as far as your kingdom impact in the context that God's placed you in.

Yeah, that makes for a very agile church, but it also means you're not worried about tomorrow. Matthew 6:34, tomorrow worried about itself. You're just putting trust in and today with that. But you also have to let go of a lot of the tensions and control because you're now trusting the guy that's in the innovation box. By the way, it's Vijay Govindarajan. You cannot do it. Will include the link in the show notes. Like Google it real quick. Yeah, he's got a TED talk if you don't want to read. You can just watch the ten-minute TED talk and you'll get the gist of it. It's really good.

Sounds good. We'll link to that too, because I'm all about the ten-minute TED talk. That's awesome. But and there's a piece of this where you're letting go and you're trusting the guy that's in the box. And so suddenly I have like Brad Pitt flashes, what's in the box, right now going through my head. So apologize for that. Don't we won't link to that in the show notes.

But at the core of this, you guys are starting to utilize this digital pathway to connect with people within your within your physical location in a hybrid model. But you're really also starting to pave the way for a digital-only crowd, people who are not attending the physical church for whatever reason. And you've talked about how you're okay if somebody does a hybrid of a physical approach and in a digital-only too, even to that extent. So when you when you check the extremes of your pipeline, I'm even thinking like, you know, within this funnel, I'm seeing the reference to community responses and things like that. What does this extreme look like in a digital-only environment? How is somebody getting involved in the community if they don't, they don't live in Vegas? What what does that look like for you guys?

I think that'll be really important for us to continue to press in value that's beyond where you are physically. That's it's not about where you are, but it's about the value that supersedes all of that, right? So again, that's a tonal change for us. So obviously the large majority of people who attend the Crossing, even if they're digital but local, which will be still a large majority, will be able to respond to the Las Vegas community. But we are beginning to have some push into going this value of community response, partnership, love you, love thy neighbor as thyself. If you're in Long Island, if you're in San Francisco.

If you're watching in Wisconsin, we want to empower you and to push you through messaging and through influence to engage that way where you are. Because, you know, I think we all would admit there is an institutional vision that we all have that causes us to start churches and to lead churches. But any good institutional vision should lead to an individual vision, right? Where the person now starts to see the church's vision as my own, right? It's the person who goes and feeds somebody with the church and then realizes my neighbor's hungry across the street and walks across the street.

So in the digital world, especially for those that are outside of our direct physical location, we're gonna need to lean in more to helping them understand: this is an institutional vision, this is a Great Commission, then it's a crossing vision, but then it becomes your individual. We can't tell you in Grand Rapids, Michigan what this looks like for you. But man, if you're really living out fully what it is to be in Christ and to be in community, you better figure it out, right?

And I can even see a day where we'll feature a lot of those things in our social media. You'll start to see pictures of people outside of our immediate area living out their faith that we're talking about and telling stories about in these places that we've never met except online. And to me, that is freaking amazing.

You know, at what level would you consider somebody to be not just fully engaged in the church who watches online, but actually involved to such a degree that you're considering them almost key leadership in the church? Because you're pushing some barriers here, which is great. But you know, I don't know if you guys do membership, for instance, at the Crossing. But if you guys don't do something like that, then at what point would you take the outside consideration into major leadership decisions that you guys are making?

So you just reminded me of something that I'm gonna answer your question with this, and push on me if I don't get to the answer. But we use the term "activator." We don't have a membership. I'm not a fan of membership for us. We just use this term "activator," and we define it somewhat by an individual's movement through that narrative of the pathway, right? So it's not just you're an activator because you serve in the nursery once a week. It's a much more holistic understanding of, you know, your gathering with others, you're in community with others in a smaller form, and you're living selflessly. That's kind of how we define it. You're living selflessly in the way you give, you go, you use your gifts.

So we have, you know, we've got t-shirts that say "activator." So if you've got a t-shirt, that means you've got a thing, right? And during this COVID, about three weeks ago, we decided we need a touch base with these people because normally we would have a gathering about three times a year with a meal and rally and, you know, cast vision. So we did a webinar, and we put it together, and it was crazy because we tried to do a webinar that was kind of live slash pre-recorded, right? It was technically crazy for rookies like us, but it was amazing. Had over 400 people RSVP, show up. We don't know how many viewers that met, and just able to check in and cast more vision and share stories around that.

And so I can see now, again, Ray, to your question—someone in Grand Rapids, I don't know why I'm picking on Grand Rapids, but somebody in Grand Rapids who really connects with Christ, they consider themselves part of our community, and they're living out that selfless living, they're in an online small group, they're attending that. We're gonna create an environment where if we're live in the room with our activator night, you better believe that you're gonna be able to join that in a digital way when that's happening in real time. That's my expectation, not "hey, catch it later," but in real time. So that the Grand Rapids activator will have the same experience as the Las Vegas activator.

And I, it's funny because that sounds really amazing, and it really doesn't sound that far-reaching to me now.

Yeah, in January I would have said, "What's the point?" So I sound very confident. I need to tell the listener, like, this is all stuff that's blowing our mind over the last three months. So it's okay that it's okay for me to sound like I'm really confident when really I'm just learning, like the rest of us.

Well, and it gets back to we're driven or motivated by face-to-face, which calls out the individual. Carey Nieuwhof just recently posted, like, his seven trends or seven changes or seven something you don't have to do effective. Oh my gosh, he only has three? He always has five. He's always got more lists in. He's got lists in the next year of five this and six. Got more content than Netflix, man. Like us.

Well, the thing that I want to draw attention to is because he said, he said like the old way is he's like analog is the old way, digital is the new way. It was like one of these types of things. And he's like global's the old way, local's the new way. And it's amazing to me how many people have come back around and they're like, "That doesn't make sense. Local's the old way, global's the new way."

And I, so you know, you don't understand the heart of where we are right now. It's about the individual in the churches, empowering that individual to be on mission, to be an activator where they are in their local community. The global approach was "my church has to be everywhere." The approach that Carey Nieuwhof was hinting to is "I don't have to buy the church, don't have to be everywhere. I need to be connected with people, and I need to be empowering them where they are," which were other of his big buzzwords: empowering and connecting. To get that individual to be that in the story that you're telling in Grand Rapids or any of never feeling somebody in Grand Rapids right now, evidently, man, you're listening in, you're right here.

That makes me actually, I was the guy listening to like preachers and they always told you, "Write to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we'll send you a book." And I was like, probably in my subconscious, Ray, somewhere that that's like the address that you got to mail your check to. Zondervan is based out of Grand Rapids. I'm just saying there's gotta be something up there in publishing.

You know, Jeff, you mentioned Carey, and he's obviously a great asset to churches, and I love what he writes about. One of the things he's been discussing that's been a bit of attention for us is that most people, most churches are now experiencing a flattening of their digital attendance, however they were measuring it. And we could have a whole other podcast around that. But no matter how they were measuring, I think most everyone would say they've seen a flattening.

And so it's interesting because Carey has continued, and others like us have continued to say there is a future for digital. And I think we're also experiencing in my conversations guys that are going to, "Man, I want to buy into that, but the numbers I'm seeing now are starting to make me nervous that maybe I'm not ready for that, right? You're saying it's digital, but people are flocking or flying away like crazy. Why should I lean into this? It sounds like I'm asking you guys the question, but why should I lean into this? Why should I resource this when I'm seeing people start to back away?"

And so any concern people are gonna respond to that inappropriately?

Yeah, what I've been telling a lot of folks who've been dealing with that too is I remind them of 9/11. You know, if you planted a church like the week before 9/11, odds are your church that week too was packed, like right after 9/11, in terms of people. Like culture, especially running to the church, just looking for a place to go, looking for answers, looking for comfort. Call it whatever you will. And then slowly trickling off, like as that event subsides, as we kind of come to a better understanding of normal. That's how I've been explaining to my leadership in terms of, "Man, those first few weeks leading up to Easter were spikes. Man, what was going on there?" And I'm like, "Yeah, everybody wanted a piece of Jesus because they thought the world was gonna end. Now they're kind of living in this, and they're thinking, 'Well, maybe things in the apocalypse aren't as bad as I thought. World didn't end. So what am I doing?'"

Well, and I think the captive audience has now become less captive in most places. Even if churches are not, you know, starting to open up their physical locations again, people are out. In most cases, however you feel about that, it's true, right? And so, you know, I think, you know, eventually soccer practices will happen again, tournaments will happen. And so I think I agree, Ray, and I think we're just seeing also normal attendance patterns start to take hold in the digital world.

Lee, actually, I think you got the answer here in this craft because a lot of the times that we're gonna lose people if all we're doing is providing content. Because if all we are doing is providing content, there's gonna be better content. Jake Rand over at Saddleback tweeted a stat. It actually made me explode. My head exploded. I literally tweeted the emoji like 140 times of the head exploding when I saw this: that ten percent of people have swapped to churches in this COVID season. Ten percent of people have changed the churches that they're going to because the content ultimately wasn't good enough. And if the content that we're watching isn't good enough, they're gonna go somewhere else.

People's evil unless, unless we get them on mission, unless we get them engaged, which is which is the heart of this thing. Church online is the first step of a service, which leads into some sort of content where I'm interacting in a chatroom or the church is communicating with me via text. I'm now engaged in a two-way conversation, which is leading towards a connection where there's different things with Facebook and a discover class and a personal gift from the church where you're starting the stairs that people who are cold to the church or even cold to God into a warmer relationship with the church and into ultimately into a face-to-face as quickly as possible interaction.

We the church cared about the face-to-face. We wouldn't be worried about investing in digital. It's pennies compared to what launching a campus is. And at the end of the day, it's the more that we can engage people in community and create this movement that you've described in this chart. It's how that we the church can thrive and multiply even in this season.

So I'm sorry, Lee. Cut you off. Go ahead.

I was cutting you off. Yeah, I think what's interesting is that I popped on our discover lounge last night, just because I wanted to, you know, it happens every Tuesday night in the Zoom room, and we have people that are facilitating that. But man, it just so inspires me, you know? And we've moved a monthly environment to a weekly environment. We believe that things move faster in the digital world. That I'm not gonna sign up digitally for something that doesn't happen for three more weeks. That all sign up on a Sunday for something that happens tomorrow night or in forty-eight hours. And I think that's true. But we'll see.

But man, I pop on there, and you know, there's a dozen people, and as there's a dozen little squares like we're looking at in a Zoom room with couples both sitting around a table staring into the camera, single people staring at the camera from both Las Vegas and other places watching the values of the Crossing go by in a presentation, facilitating a Q&A, I'm talking to them about getting connected in an online group. And I'm just like, man, like this is amazing, just to see this.

Know, and again we get enamored by rooms of hundreds, right? We want these sort of numbers of men. Our first step we need to have 50 people show up this month, there's 75 people show up. But what's cool about the digital is you become so story-based. Like we've all talked to, so you're literally dealing with people one-on-one and you're seeing people, and in it's just yeah, it's different than physical. It's different than eyeball-to-eyeball, but there are some things that can happen virtually that I'm not sure what happened at the speed that they happen if it was based on a physical setup. That's awesome.

Well, hey, I have. I love this podcast. I've loved this conversation. The idea of creating a pathway, an engagement pathway like this, and once again I've said it a dozen times in this podcast: click the link, look at it, take a look at this, and even start to figure out how your church can't, can't kind of pivot towards us or develop something like this. Well, Lee, let me even ask this question as we're wrapping up here. I don't have this. I don't have a plan like this. I may not even have a plan like this for my physical church. Like, how do I even get started in developing something like this for my church?

Yeah, I think one of the things that's key on that digital chart that I want to mention as I answer that is if you look at it on the left, there's some core foundational words: contact, connect, community. Those are words that we believe in as far as those are the movement steps. The reason there's those lines and the items on the right is because those are the methodology behind the objective, and those are very interchangeable. So even right now, seven, eight, nine weeks in, we're still working on those things on the right, and I've told my team we're not gonna spend months. Like, if something's not working towards connection or towards community, we're gonna scrap it and we're gonna innovate. And so right now, everything you see on the right is still in play, but I can't guarantee you that in a month that some of those things won't shift or change or be eliminated based on effectiveness towards the objectives.

So I wanted people as they look at that chart to understand I wouldn't. I would be able to tell them some practical things we've learned, but I wouldn't want to be the guy telling them follow this model exactly in your world will blow up with engagement. But you know, I've developed these tools alongside our growth momentum group and working with some other teams, and you know, I'm sure you'll link to me along with my day job. I'd love to talk to people if we could be of any help or make some suggestions. Obviously we'd love to do that. And the stuff that you guys are doing in the forums that you guys have as well will continue to help people. I think it's key time, and Jeff, Ray, I think you know, as people re-enter, stating again what I stated earlier, I just think this is the core time for us to make some decisions around what is online going to look like for us because decisions will have a huge impact on your church's ability to really fulfill the Great Commission at its peak that God intends in this next season. Very, very well said.

By the way, I'm assuming in this funnel like you've got six or seven steps—church online, contact, connection, community, online groups, community response, engaged—like I'm assuming that's your metrics, that's what you're measuring, right? Where people are, and so like it's not just the butts in the seats number. You're measuring at each level of the funnel through this, which is giving you the number you're looking for, or just a more balanced approach going?

Yeah, for sure. Like a percentage numbers generally how we're doing it. So I give you the first month, which I haven't got recent numbers, but the first month we had a hundred people, 105 people who RSVP'd for our discover. One of the things we didn't talk about is we killed our digital connection card in the first two weeks because it was a response and an ask towards nothing. And there, and so we thought, let's just immediately move them to this lounge, which totally violates our physical principles that we would do in our physical locations. So basically when they RSVP for the lounge, they're giving us the same information they were giving us on the connect card. They're just RSVP'ing. And so we had a hundred and three people that RSVP'd, we had about sixty percent who actually showed up, and we had thirty percent of that sixty percent that so we had a hundred RSVP, 60 show up, 35 who ended up in an online group. Those were our main April two main numbers, right after Easter. Awesome. Yes, and we feel really, I mean, if we had that, honestly, you guys, if we had that in a physical month, we would call that pretty effective engagement in moving people through the pipeline. So we felt pretty good about that. But to your bigger question, yes, we can see data-wise where things are working or where things stop working potentially and where we need to pivot with our methods.

Yeah, I love that. An accountability is so crucial with having something like this. And people are asking me, well, how do you count? They're trying to compare like the physical only online, and you start to get to the multipliers, which my gosh, that just complicates things so much. When you add those multipliers and all of a sudden you're starting to get false stats coming back in where you don't really know the true story. If you put your metrics on this and you hold each level accountable, not for you know some multiplier which producing these awesome numbers, but the ministry of what's actually happening, and you're able to evaluate and adjust in there, I love what you said about how man, the stuff that's on the right side of this graph like they may change if it's not effective. If chatrooms and welcome text is not effective ways of contacting, then let's change. You know, I can tell you by my own experience like Facebook Messenger, cold calling is hugely effective right now. Now, for you know three months, six months, eighteen months, sure, at some point that's gonna change. And when the numbers drop because you're evaluating that, you'll move to the next thing. But you have a more balanced kind of dipstick approach across the entire thing as opposed to just kind of watching that one number and celebrating when you know the Facebook Ads are to your benefit and you get more traffic that way.

So we, the top of the funnel measurements is where you really, again, to measure. I mean, if we're honest, it's when that contact is made and that engagement starts to happen. That's really the number that matters. Everything else is just eyeballs that are difficult to really ascertain what, who is that and why are they watching and how long are they watching. But man, when they take a step, when they self-identify as hey, I'm here and I'm interested engaging, not just clicking on the thumbs up or the heart, but I'm literally interested engaging, to me that's when the numbers really start mattering because they really start reflecting lives and movement and life change.

That was a great line to end. I love how that was so well said. Thank you. It does. It's when you get to that next level, when you get to the contact, that's where they self-identify themselves. That's where that's where the challenge starts. That's not where the challenge ends. And so Lee, man, thank you for that. Ray, as we're landing the plane, any closing thoughts? What are you thinking on your side, Lee?

I love this. You know, just the fact that you were so open about this pathway, and I think a lot of people who are gonna look at that link in the show notes are actually going to discover how much of this they're gonna want to either copy over or how they can really adapt their own strategy into this, which a lot of folks aren't necessarily thinking into. And if you're leading a church and you're not thinking through pathways, then the reality is is you're still just thinking of Sunday morning, even if that's online. As we're landing the plane, Lee, any closing thoughts on your side?

Just encourage guys and gals that are leading, you know, where you are in this season to look beyond just the replication of your Sunday experience and pushing into people's living room, but to begin to take the Great Commission we've been given and in your context and in your way to begin to see how can I leverage digital moving forward as people have been exposed, as people have been embracing, as we move forward into this new normal? Well, how do I reach people? What I'm doing in order to see life transformation happen, that it wouldn't just be a supplement to what we're doing physically, but that it would become really a catalytic thing for your church to begin to stretch their influence and see the kingdom of God advance, that would be in whatever way, shape, or form or strategy used. That would be my strong encouragement to anyone that's listening.

Yeah, love that very much. And the marriage of the two, of the physical and the digital working together, going with a digital strategy does not mean that you're abandoning the building. Now, I'm a cutting edge guy. If you want to talk about a digital-only church, I would love to have that conversation. But for the majority of churches out there, you're not ready for it. And in a matter of fact, the culture needs the physical aspect of it to, like, just like we're in the middle of digital frustration and burnout, we need that physical engagement, even in this COVID season. So figure out how the two can marry together and create that discipleship strategy. This digital engagement pathway that we're linking to and talking about to help figure out what the next steps are and also to hold accountable for the path of how your church is doing in the digital space.

So Lee, man, I want to thank you for jumping on this and sharing that. So very much appreciate you for that. For Ray, for Lee, this is Jeff at the Church Digital. Thanks for jumping on the podcast again. We'll see you next time here at the show. You have a good day.