EP098: Patrick Holden & The Potential Simplicity of Online Church Services

Episode 98 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stated Church Planting. Jeff here. We are just a couple episodes away from the greatness that will be episode 100. I'm not even gonna tease what's coming up other than to tease and say it is going to be incredible. You're going to love episode 100.

But hey, let's focus here on where we are with episode 98. Really, episode 97 and 98 are two sides of the same coin because as you remember, we had this conversation episode 97 with Craig Dockery, basically the chief creative in context of Crossroads weekend service. Phenomenal church, huge giga church doing some incredibly creative things online. You know, kind of tongue-in-cheek here, joking a lot. They are the church that Brian Tome, lead pastor, preached the sermon while wakeboarding. Literally, you can see on a boat in the middle of a lake somewhere. Boat's moving. Brian is preaching a sermon, not about wakeboarding, but tying in with the analogy of wakeboarding. And so there's all sorts of creative resources that we, the church, can do in context of our weekend services. But if you're like the majority of churches out there, well man, like Crossroads team, Craig's team is huge. And so he's got all these resources. He's got all these people. But if you're like the typical church in America, you probably don't have that deep of a bench in your creative team. It'd be great to have. Maybe you've got some volunteers that are stepping in and filling in some gaps. But Crossroads is in a different league.

And so to that point, I wanted to have a completely separate conversation on the exact same topic. So we brought in Patrick Holden, who's a church planter with a church called Nouveau Church. Now, I'm not sure if I don't even think Patrick's church has officially launched. Whatever launched means. He's doing online services and he's developing his core team. Patrick's actually been on the podcast here before. He was the guy that was in Michigan, was not even living in the Ohio area where he was wanting to plant his church, but was developing his team in her state utilizing tools like Facebook Messenger, Facebook groups to start to connect to people and build up his core team.

Well, I wanted to bring Patrick into the conversation because for a church planter, I would once again suggest he's probably got one of the most creative church services, most creative online church services around. And how it clearly functions, it clearly communicates. Its minimalistic approach would seem to be very easy for a church to replicate. Kind of this model that he's creating. But what's interesting is the model that he's created actually does not feel very much at all like a typical worship service. Like the flow, the feel, even some of the liturgy is kind of different. And so hey, we did like the giga church approach to creativity and worship services and saw their unique approach and saw how they were wrestling with the liturgy of this. And now with here with episode 98, I wanted to do the exact opposite. Let's not go to a giga. Let's go to a guy that has barely even started down this road and see how he is able to do this online, maybe even starting to wrestle with what physical and online look like together.

So really, really fascinating conversations here. And so I'm bringing into the conversation, of course, Patrick Holden, lead pastor with Nouveau Church. I'm bringing in Raid, the Armistice co-host here with the Church Digital Podcast, digital pastor over at Christ Fellowship in Miami, and of course, myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning in a conversation that I'm simply calling here: The Potential Simplicity of Online Church Services.

Okay, everybody, there you go. The heart of what I really want to talk about here is, and we're hearing a lot of this where churches are trying to figure out how to do physical service and a digital service. There's hey, let's just livestream what's in the building. But they're really not. By livestreaming what's in the building, they're really not speaking to the online audience. Nor are they. Like how you would do a service physically is different than what you would do digitally. And so we've been bringing in some different people. We're starting to really dive into this idea of what a digital service and online service can be and how it's different than, you know, the typical model.

And so we brought in, oh dang it, I just blinked on his name. I'll have to look it up here in a second, but we brought in Crossroads to talk with them about, you know, what the service is and their interpretation. You know, they're a gig of church. They got all sorts of resources. They're blown out of the water. You know, I'm watching Brian Tome preach a sermon while wakeboard.

Yes, Patrick knew it.

Oh yeah, immediately we had a creative team meeting.

Why can we not wakeboard? What are we gonna do to keep up with that with the Tomes? This is the limiting factor.

Yeah, that's right. I was a limiting factor. My athletic ability became the limiting factor for that. So yeah.

So did they look at you and you're like no, we're not even? Or did they at least entertain the thought?

Yeah, I think what they did is they look to me and they're like, I feel like Numa is more your speed, where you're just walking. You know, I'm not like the Numa thing. And I'm like, I don't know how to feel about that. But yeah, anyway, right? We trust you to walk. We just don't trust you to do much else.

Walk and talk. Great. Gum. No, I can't do that. That's too much.

Absolutely. I belong in a West Wing episode. That's where I belong, not like doing fun things.

Anyway, sorry.

I belong in a West Wing episode. We're gonna have that be the title. This guy belongs in a West Wing episode.

Hey, yeah, you guys want to see my dog? This is awesome. My little puppy Ray. So he named Ray Ray, not after Ray Ray, but Ray Skywalker Ray. And so this is Ray.

Oh, that's cool. It's like I told Jeff. They named her Ray because she's always trying to get in the podcast just like me. That's the big issue. So she's always trying to steal the show. She's four months in, very high maintenance right now, and she is very excited.

Yeah, that's very much enough. That's awesome. I love it.

What I really want to talk about with this really roundabout intro here is let's get into this idea of your creative services that you're doing church services online. You know, I've been vocal in saying this, and with humility, I don't mean to like stroke egos or anything, but the creative approach that you're doing for your services, even as a church planter, is truly phenomenal. Kind of some of the approaches and the creativity and the intentionality that I'm seeing, even for somebody that hasn't even started like launching a service or meeting regularly, or you've got 30 people on your core team that haven't even met in the same space because you've been planting and starting in this COVID season. So man, I would just love to really focus on this idea of the church service and maybe even just to kick it off, like as you're doing your online services, like what? How have you structured this? Like what part does it play in your church's strategy? Like what's the role of the online service? What's its function?

Yeah, no, that's great. So you know, first of all, I think obviously, I mean, you know this, where as a church plant, brand new, and by noon being like pre-long way pre-launch. And so you know what we did and the way that it came about is, you know, we were in Michigan. I think, you know, we were in Michigan at the time we decided to do online services. We're moving to Ohio and then on top of that, my wife and I just moved into like the 700 square foot tiny cottage. I have two kids, I've won four, one, two. We'd film these things late at night once they went to bed, once I got a deep sleep, right? Like 10 o'clock in the evening. I had a GH4, so if you're a camera guy, if you like camera, you got a GH4 with a lens that doesn't zoom, so it's like across the whole way. And we just said, it would be possible as COVID happened, which was six months before we plan on doing anything like this. Would it be possible to put up an online service that would be helpful to people and help people see who we want to be? And that was really kind of that. We hoped it was helpful. We hope people enjoyed it. We hope people had a great experience. But there was like a legitimacy component. At least as a church plant, when we go, we feel like we can start a conversation around a topic in 18 to 20 minutes, which is about how long I speak. I'm not going to solve, like we just did a politics match. I'm not going to solve politics in 18, 20 minutes. But can we start a conversation that leads to a digital group and launched out of that? And so that was kind of our strategy back this past Easter. That's what we started doing. We still do that, right? So we do a once a month online service, and then we do digital group. Now, digital group is where our bread and butter is. But our online service, we say it brings legitimacy to it. It helps people connect with who we are. And for people who are inviting, it helps them to be able to point to something and say they have something. They have a real church. I promise it's not a cult. It's a real church. Right? There's a little bit of that. And for us, it's a conversation starter. And so we've tried to figure out, it's morphed a little bit, but we've tried to figure out how do we make that engaging experience that, you know, helps people see a little bit of who we are.

So at what point did, because I, you know, kind of gushing before we kind of got into the plot about like how much I love the content that you guys have created, at what point did you guys decide hey, we're not going to do a traditional search service? We're going to do something that's really tailor-made for a digital experience? Because that's what really kind of set me off is, oh, this is uniquely created for digital. Like this isn't just hey, we're taking a search service and we're putting it online. This is everything. The preaching is YouTube style. Everything is very much like I'm watching a vlogger on screen. And so kind of walk me through some of that creative process.

Oh, that's good. So you know, that's a great question. I think for us, part of it was before COVID hit, right? We knew we wanted to have separate content online that was just not streaming our services. And it was partly because, like you were talking about YouTube, I was finding that when I had a question, I would go to YouTube and then there was some guy in his, you know, I have a car question. There's some guy in his garage just trying to fix something to walk me through it. And that's where I found helpful things. But they were filmed completely different, right? And then I started thinking about our red. I don't remember who said this quote. You guys could probably quote it better than me. But somebody had said, you know, students right now, like Generation Z one, they want to be YouTube stars rather than they want to be the next Brad Pitt, right? And so like, there's this whole generation of people that are looking at YouTube differently. And their films, like the jump cut thing, and they're shorter, you know, typically shorter content and quick, you know, sort of statements. And so we had said, so for us, we said, even if we do live and even if there's a component of streaming, there's to be a day where we want to create that kind of content. And then the real question was, can I be that kind of communicator? Can I learn that, which is a different flex for me? And so then COVID hit, and it was like that was our only choice. You know, like we didn't have a...

Space to stream, there weren't a thousand people in a room. It was me and sometimes my wife in the room and usually my mom watching on Facebook Live. Like, that was about what we had, you know? And I think for us, that kind of what's kind of spearheaded because we think, you know, we still do that as much as the online live stream experience of a big room is great. Um, for the person who's not a follower of Jesus yet, they're going to stumble into the content we put on YouTube or content offer probably more than they're gonna sit down and listen to me talk for thirty minutes in that vein.

So hey, yeah. And so I love the intentionality of aiming the services online towards the ones, realizing hey, I'm trying to connect with new people and I want to create this standalone piece of content. Maybe it's not what we would do in a physical building that we're sharing digitally, but it's something more specifically aimed at it. And how you're using some of these creative elements in ways that connect with ones to keep them engaged with the content longer. Like, I'll be honest, and I've said this to you several times, it's like I never realized how much I want to hear backing tracks behind sermons until I actually heard you do this. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is the greatest thing ever. I must have told two dozen churches in this COVID season, put a backing track behind it, watch what happens. And I don't actually, I don't know that any of them have the courage to do it. I don't think anybody's kind of pulled the trigger because it's different, it's weird. It's maybe that's not, but you're if you're not trying to reach your ninety-nine but you're trying to reach your one, all of a sudden that backing track's just another element to kind of keep people engaged with that.

So like, looking at your services, what's been some of the feedback? What's been some of the observations? What are some of these creative elements that maybe you're thinking outside the box, maybe doing some different things creatively? And how's that been working?

I love you talking about the backing tracks. Thanks for noticing that. I didn't know if anybody would ever notice that. But yeah, you know, that stuff's so cheap now. We use Soundstripe for most of that or GarageBand where I film something. I don't even have a keyboard. I'm filming it on my like typing keyboard like a backing track or something. Um, you know, I think the backing track's a big deal. I think it caused me to think differently as a communicator because it forces me to go, what emotion am I trying to convey in this moment? Wow. And I'll pitch people to that, and that's different. That's different than I've had to speak before. Like, that backing tracks are a big deal.

I think we use some version of a title package or a bumper video before the message a lot of churches do that. I do think it's different digitally, right? So usually in a room, that's when people are doing offering, a lot of time you know things are shuffling. You have to be really, I think we have to be punchy and short and intentional about how we do those title packages. And then we try to, you know, through backing track, seamlessly lead into the talk, which means we're asking the question, what emotion are we trying to convey in the tension of this title package that musically and thematically can lead us into a talk?

So we did one, I believe it was on like mental health a while back, and the first part of it feels like very like House oriented. Remember the show House? Like, it's very like cerebral, and we're about to talk about that kind of stuff, and medical and quick, and then it leads us into the talk. So we're trying to figure out how do we seamlessly do those things. A lot of people are doing that, but I think it's a completely different thing when you're thinking YouTube style.

We do that. The other thing for us is jump cuts. We've talked about that a little bit already. YouTube kind of thrives off of it's not the normal version of a conversation that you're having with somebody. It's very quick, and it's cuts and it's zooming and zoom out. And you know, we try our best to be very creative in how we move in and out of those shots.

So I, this is kind of a, I mean, again, for the people who are video geeks like I am on this, we shoot with one camera in 4K or 6K depending on which camera, right? And then we just set up four different shots where we zoom in, and then the person editing just gets to essentially edit like they're editing four or five different clips. But creatively, we go, we try to on the front end decide what do we want to zoom in on and what are we not? Like, how are we kind of approaching that?

Then the big thing for us too is how do we showcase our city? So what we did is I don't have a drone. We don't have drone shots for the city. We found people who had taken drone shots of the city on Instagram. I just messaged them, and we got pretty much everything for free. And one person was like, no, I think I need to charge. They charge us twenty bucks. I'm like, I'll give you twenty bucks for that whole 4K drone video. And we use those as transitions a lot of times in our services to go, hey, you know, we are contextual in the city. It's not just, you know, in a studio kind of thing.

I think the other big thing for us is in our hosting segments. This is one of the big things that we've talked about is we want that to feel very personal. Um, and so the types of cuts and zoom in and zoom out and, you know, music that we put behind that, um, is trying to help them understand those things.

The other thing, and sorry, last thing for the communicators too, I would say this: humor is completely different on YouTube. It's just different. Which means the jokes that you're going to make in a live room, and you know this, if you make a joke in a live room and you get, you know, ten percent of the audience laughing and they're in the middle, you know, laughter goes like from one spot and spreads out, right? That's why when you have more people in a room and they're close together, they laugh, you know, more of your jokes. And you cannot be as funny. But if you make ten percent of people laugh, oftentimes people are going to laugh if they're laughing around you. Nobody's sitting in their living room with four other people. You have to legit be funny on YouTube. You have to. And so for us, we're going, the humor feels very different. We're trying to get creative on, I think I made a joke the other week about Ohio State Michigan. We bleeped out when I said Michigan, right? That's funny when you see it, but it takes more production to be funny sometimes on YouTube, and we're trying to explore those things creatively as well.

For what it's worth, I chuckled at that. To Michigan, I did, because in my mind I'm like, why aren't you from Michigan? And you're bleeping yourself when you moved, and at least you had lived in Michigan. And so like, I found irony in that. I don't think I was rolling on the floor laughing. It wasn't like a rifle. It was probably more like it's cute. Yeah. And then move on to it.

So you know, I do feel that, um, you know, and even like I've seen somewhere you've done like interviews with the mental health where you pulled in an expert to kind of like have that conversation, creating once again another piece of content, another asset that maybe you can't do in the physical building or that you can kind of tailor make and create and aim towards a particular end. Have you, I saw the one with the mental health, have you done other types of interviews or other types of involving people outside of the church in those conversations?

Yeah, we have. We did that with Dr. Carter on mental health, psychologists. We actually did one where we talked about joy, and when we talked about joy, um, it was interesting because we had a guy who really works with athletes to help them like have better performance in the way that they think and in their mind. And so I love interviews, especially on digital, because I can take a fifty-minute interview and I can get twelve pieces of content out of it, right? So we might show three or four minutes of that in our service, and then we, what we do, we'll make these content offers that'll say, hey, if you like that and you want more, go to this website, and then it'll either be the full interview or we sliced it up in a bunch of different segments.

So interviews have been huge for us. In fact, we think about discipleship a lot of ways, and how do we, how do we give you small pieces of content consistently to help you come, you know, both become more familiar with us, but for you as a person, going you're not gonna, you're not gonna digest fifty minutes a lot of time on principle-based things like that. You're gonna digest it over time. And so like with Dr. Carter and with my friend Craig Fullen, we did both those interviews, filmed them at you know fifty minutes to an hour, and then showed three to five minutes in the service and then had another ten pieces of content that we'll email you later on.

So I, again, that's not something you can do in a one-hour segment in a physical building. You know, even if you did, I would say to people that are doing it that way, you could still take that interview, slice it up, brand it slightly different, and send it out, and people are going to get a lot further, I think, transformation from seeing it spread out over time. So that's how we've approached interviews so far. And again, with both of those interviews at fifty to sixty minutes, we've gotten at least a dozen pieces of content from it.

So tell me, you guys, especially when we talk about content in this era, in this time, it's so divided, and yet you chose to like lean in to some of the most uncomfortable things. And especially in your, you know, as we talk about like the click funnel, just talking about the conversation that you created around what it means to, you know, kind of live in this election time and how to deal with people on Facebook and some of this stuff. And so kind of walk through that and how that's been for you, because in my mind I'm like, man, churches want to run as far away from that as possible. And you guys can back into the building that's on fire and you're like, nope, we're going that way. This is the core. We're headed to.

Yeah, oh my gosh. Um, so it's funny because 2020 didn't just give you a pandemic, right? It gave you racial attention. It gave you an election. It gives you everything. And you're right, the temptation, I think, for a lot of pastors is to go, I don't want to be divisive. I don't want to say the wrong things. I'm going to kind of walk away from that. What we've found though is when we talk about the one, that's what they really want to hear more than my top three messages, you know, I mean, like, there's like a, they want us to lean into that.

Now the struggle with that is being able to research quick enough to be able to put something out there that actually says something substantial, you know, which again for our monthly services it helps me because you have a couple weeks to plan that. The things that have shifted for us is we had a plan of content for about a year out, and I think we're finding we can't do that because something is going to pop up that's different. So we said we want to lean into those things.

We also, this is a big strategy for us, we invite people from Columbus to help me write my talks. We found that people who are not already a part of our services or other people's ones, right, people that they're inviting, we say, hey, jump on a Zoom call with us. I'm going to be talking about racial attention. Jump on the Zoom call, and then coach me on what you hope that other people will coach me on what you hope.

Your friends would hear from a church and what we find is when they speak into it then they show up to our online services and we have people that are on our launch team now because they did that early on that's been a huge strategy for us and it gives me just a lot of clarity because again I'm a 30-something white guy that lives in Columbus, Ohio. I have a very specific perspective when it comes to politics or like we'll talk about racial attention. So we've tried our best to lean into that. We found a lot of opportunity. I think so much of it is just saying as a pastor this is an opportunity more than it is a challenge or an obstacle and trying to lean into that. But yeah, that's how we've approached it.

As you're inviting people to coming up those talks, like is this like a large net like throwing it out there or are there specific people that you're like you, you, and you? Or hey, is it non-Christians, Christians? Is it mixed? Who are you co-writing with?

So we have like we have people in Columbus we're saying you're on launch team, invite as many people as you can and help coach me. So we have the wide net. But I would also say to every communicator, right, especially in 2020, right, especially you need people who you can put on a text thread who can look at a Google doc who are not Christians, who are agnostics, who are different race than you are. You need women around you that can speak into this. And so I have subgroups that I'll text out to the content.

So I'd say like we did one on racial intentions a couple months back and it was probably good 30 or 40 people that they were speaking into that pretty deeply. Like they had my notes and they were saying I wouldn't say it this way and Arby looked at this resource. So yeah, so there's a strategy component to saying we know that if we invite people from Columbus to be a part, I'm gonna be better and they're gonna be interested. And then as a communicator also go, I also need perspective of people on a consistent basis that are willing to look at me and go that just that ain't it, you know what I mean? And give me some clarity.

So I never like the idea of sharing it out with people having that never had that thought. Never, like you know, and I've heard like it's a stretch to get, you know, some churches that have like teaching teams where you know there's five or six staff people, maybe it's a couple campus pastors, communications person will hear the sermon preached. But the idea of being that transparent and open-handed with what you're teaching, now I'm not hearing you question like the theological, adjusting the theological, but the tone, the attitudinal, allowing people to breathe into that, even own that, speak into it, man, that's going to give them so much more ownership of your ministry and direction.

It's you know, we there's a saying we say it a lot. You know, we're talking about online engagement and social media within church and it's in 2020 it's better to ask questions than make statements. So what you're really doing is you're asking a question. Hey, this is what I'm thinking. Is this right? Is this wrong? You tell me. Your approach here, and either validate or question, but help shape me with how I'm communicating this. That's beautiful and that's been effective moving people, like engaging with people maybe outside the church, getting them within the church, that sort of thing.

Oh, it's probably been one of my favorite things. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So we had one, my favorite story from it was there was a guy who wasn't connected to us. I mean, he's kind of loosely, he'd been to one digital group and then found out we were talking about racial tensions, started his own watch party for our Facebook Live event and then we picked up people from that watch party to be a part of what we're doing. He's going like that's like our reach, you know, grew exponentially through that. And so yeah, but he had also like helped speak into, he's one of the people that helped speak into those talks. And yeah, we're finding that it happens, especially, and I would say this, sorry, not on a soapbox, but you know, I'm kind of awesome. I would say communicators, especially people who are not followers of Jesus, and everybody knows this, we have our own vernacular, our own language. You need people who can tell you that if you say it that way then they're gonna immediately build a wall. And I just, as much as I'm trying to think about people who are not Christians, I don't always think of it.

You know, one of those slight shifts we made is when I talk about God I want to talk about Jesus in the talk and somebody said have you ever thought about just referring to God as the divine or energy? I'm like I would never do that. I would never talk about God like that. And they're like well it would just help this person maybe to think of it differently. And I said it one time, the divine, and I had a guy and then I progressively talked about then God, Jesus, we moved our way through the Trinity by the end of the talk. But just because I changed the language slightly in the very beginning it broke down a barrier and I would have never thought to talk about it that way. And I did it in our digital group. And so we try that a lot. So anyway, yeah, that's powerful.

Though because you know, I know we're kind of building towards kind of broader concepts than what you're talking about, but let me ask how far out in advance then are you kind of testing some of these things out? Because content is very hard in the way that you're doing it right. Like there's an overarching story that you're trying to tell. Every service seems to be very intentional that it's not separated, right?

Right. But which means that you've got to be further out. And so how far out right now? Because you're not trying to be so far out you want to be a year out, but you want to be close enough to where you can create great content and produce great content without killing your team, right?

No, that's good. That's a great question. Um, I want to tell you like it's perfectly systemized because I want you to know that I'm systematized and that there's a perfect, but there's not. I would say I'm shooting to be two to three weeks out of having a draft that I can send. The hardest thing for me as a communicator in those moments, and it takes, it takes like a breaking open, you know what I mean, of saying this is number one, it's not done yet. So look at the art and know that it's not done and then critique something that's not done. So two, three weeks out I'm doing my best to do that. And then we'll send it. But I also would say like there are parts of the talks I'll send statements to. Like does this statement work? Does this statement not? How would I make this connect to a 50-year-old empty nester, you know what I mean? Who you're saying but differently? Like I jokingly say an African-American woman in her mid-50s who's an empty nester. I don't think about that. So I have people that I'll send statements to, her thoughts to. So yeah, usually two to three weeks out. And then I progressively are adding and I'm truly, between just between us, I'm tweaking in the room that we're filming. I never feel like it's done. In fact, most of the talks that I've given I would still say oh I could have, but I'm sure that's most speakers. But yeah, anyway, we're tweaking some filming.

To give you credit, I feel like that's all content creators. I think we get frustrated in church about that stuff, but then I've seen all the documentaries and some of the stuff behind the scenes of like say Saturday Night Live where they're trying to take all of the world's events and content, or even the Daily Show, right? And they're trying to shove it into one event and they're like man we wish we could have perfected it, but next week's coming. So we kind of got to move that. She's coming, right?

Absolutely. And it does, it forces you to be open-handed and knowing it's never quite, you know, and then I get to go hey maybe I'll give that talk again four years from now, you know, a version of it at least.

So for sure, for sure. So tell me about, um, because there's the content that you're creating for the weekend, but then there's this other content that you guys have kind of created. Is it similar? Is it the same content where it's like you're trying to get people and draw them into a deeper conversation with your church?

Yes. So yeah, we so Tony Morgan um really helped us with this early on. We were sitting with him and I remember one of our team members, I believe it was one of our guys, his name is Ryan Steigle, and then another guy on our team named Zach White, again, they're the brains behind a lot of what's happening. But we asked Tony what is it that you wish churches were doing that nobody's really leaning into or a lot of people aren't leaning into? Because I don't understand why people don't do content offers because a lot of people online that are selling things or putting things out there doing content offers, that's how they grow. And you're talking about funnels. And so we started saying hey, we're writing content, I'm writing content anyway. Can we make it to where it's shorter and punchier and something that we could put on Facebook to draw you in with?

So we did that with interviews. Recently we did this for the politics thing. So we did like a two months for politics talks. We took my application steps and we just made a video, two-minute video out of each one of those application steps and just kind of filmed it slightly different and send them out. So our goal with that is to help people be exposed to what we're doing number one because we think that they'll watch a two-minute video probably before they'll watch a 30-minute, you know, kind of thing. Um, and then say hey, it's also a discipleship tool for people who are already a part of this to go, I could, even though they've heard me say it hopefully in the service, they get a quick reminder with a different example in their inbox consistently. And we're seeing the watch-through rates on those just kind of skyrocket. We're seeing people do this on Mailchimp and you know, and then we can give them more content later if we do that again. Those are basic, you know, principles online with that kind of stuff. But I feel like for us it's a newer thing that we're trying.

So a lot of that content is there. The other thing that we're trying, and we've done it a few times, is how do we do behind-the-scenes stuff? I'm a perfectionist more by nature to experience before we started filming today, you know, I'm just I'm just wired that way. But we're also saying there's a lot of people, even people that are outside of the church, that want to see the behind-the-scenes part of it as much. So one, I think one time I filmed on my iPhone how we set up for a service. That's probably one of the most watched videos that we've had. Um, and so we're doing some of that content too. So there's like the content offer and then there's behind-the-scenes and story part that feels more vlogger, you know, kind of thing.

Well, you know, you made mention of it. I don't want to belittle it because I really feel like you guys are pioneering more a lot of this side on the church side because you know I've seen you know other folks try to draw people into deeper conversations with their products. But when you talk about the church doing it, I was looking at some of the stuff you guys are doing. I was like oh no, this is a different approach than what I've seen from other folks where this is tailor-made to take you on a journey further and further and further into the church.

Absolutely, yeah. And the cool thing, you guys know this too, there are people who want to be anonymous for a while and this

gives them a longer on-ramp to be anonymous but also behind the scenes engage enough to where we know what they're engaging with. One of the biggest shifts I feel as a speaker now is I know what content is landing through numerical value by whether they're watching, you know what I mean? I can tell you which one of the application points was most interesting to people because now we have data. And so to your point of saying we can draw them deeper, it helps me be more informed on how to do that and help be able to give them content that's most helpful to them.

I gotta ask, that's kind of coming out of that because you guys are so forward-thinking. Are you thinking of making said data and then leveraging it for, okay, and this is where we need to go next? That's great. We, uh, yes, I would say Zach and Ryan, those guys, they're doing more of that. I'm probably approaching it more from a communicator—what's working, what type of language is—but yeah, I would say like the forward-thinking parts of their minds certainly are looking at that now. We're so new to it, which I'll also say, like candidly, we're very new to it. You got like Tony Morgan been doing it for years, and you know, they can have a lot more data to work with. But we're trying to say we can see demographics and people and location, and we're trying to make decisions even in a city. So we're attracting people from all over the city because we're digital. We know where they are in the city. We know the demographic of the person that's watching, and we know that sort of thing, which helps me to tailor the types of content that we can put in front of them and what we'll do next.

So yes, I would say I'm probably less involved in that because, again, those guys are just so brilliant that you probably have them on a podcast. Like, they're the ones that are so great at that. But as a communicator specifically, I'm trying to figure out what's working with which demographic, and I can now see that data, which is helping me write a little bit differently here.

Well, let's not sleep on the fact that you're being very creative, you're being very intentional, you're thinking outside the box with the way some of the things that you're doing. Even what you're describing and how you're creating this other content, you're allowing people to speak into things. This is a very unique approach. But honestly, you're preaching once a month, and so you're only doing that one service. So you've got more time to be creative, to do things, to let it breathe. Um, is there intentionality? Like, I know I'm sure short term there is. Long term, like, are you going to the place of where you're going to be doing weekly services? How are you going to manage the tension? Like, what does some of that long-term creative aspect look like? Are you, if you're going to get back into a more weekly rhythm?

Yeah, that's great. That's a great question. So I don't know that I have a perfect answer for that, so I'm going to pitch you the questions that we're asking. You guys might even have an answer for before we do, you know? But um, I would say this: where the question that we're asking right now is, right now we've been put in a place where we're prioritizing digital over physical first. So now my question goes, we've always asked the question, how does physical inform what we do in digital? We're switching it. We're going, we have big screens, and most churches have a projector, you know? If you have the money, you have an LED wall one day, right? Like, so we're going, people are sitting in front of screens anyway. So I'm asking the question right now, how does our digital approach inform what we would do live?

I don't think we're saying we wouldn't do music, but I would say what does a message look like? We're also asking the question, how can I leverage the phone that's in your pocket in an interactive way to interact in a live setting? So the one thing that you miss when you're live is the comment section on Facebook or the comments, you know, on a Zoom call, like, which is where a lot of community's happening in real time. Also, I acknowledge the communicator this generation is fact-checking me as I'm speaking, you know what I mean? Like, they're doing three tasks on their phone as they're hearing me present live.

So we're going, if that's the case, let me just tell you where to go. Like, this is one of the things we're talking about live is going, as I'm speaking, how great would it be if there's a pop-up on the screen that you're watching that says, hey, for more information about, check out. I don't want to assume that people aren't already doing that as I go. And I'll also say it gives us so much—I think it gives us so much more credibility if we can point to people who both agree with us. Now, this is kind of out there a little bit and disagree with us. If I can, when I can reference a person who is secular thinking, this may be different than me, and then while somebody's fact-checking that, be also talking about why I think this perspective is right. I don't think we lose influence there. I think we only gain influence because they're going to go look at it anywhere they already are, right?

And so for us, we're trying to say, how do we make that an interactive experience live versus a sit and hear? I listen to a lecture. Can the narrative approach to a message work in a live space? And if that's true, this is what I really believe, and we'll see again how it all works out. And if we may not even be the ones who figured out that, probably other people do. But if that works, how much more scalable is that kind of environment if it's interactive? A lot of it's not just like live stream video based, but like more narrative video based. Like, what does that look like five years from now, ten years from now? And is that more natively how teams, twenties, thirties-somethings are experiencing the world anyway?

So again, we don't have answers for that, but I'll say those are questions that we're asking. I think no matter what, as much as we can and as long as we have the margin and team and dollars, we're going to try to have a separate wing of YouTube-style content. The frequency we don't know yet, but we're trying to figure that out and then figure out how does that make its way into a physical.

I love that you're blurring the line between the thinking digital first and how can that scalable digital-first content support what happens, you know, in the physical space. We were doing video teaching on multi-site campuses across the country, you know, mere months ago. And so even blurring that more with as creative and as engaging as what you're doing with that content online. Like, when I, funny, I'm one of the first services, you know, you sent me or that you did, or one of the first services that I saw, was giving you some feedback, you know, honor and thoughts, and just even floored, you know, even at some of the early work as you were coming out. But I remember one, one of the content, one of the things that I just kept beating on is you've got all this creativity that you're doing online. How are you going to represent this in physical space? You're doing all these great cuts. How does that impact what you're going to do in your physical building? Are you going to do the backing track in the physical building? Because even then I was like, okay, I'm thinking physical first instead of, okay, let me think digital first and then allow that to resource the physical piece.

There are, and I'll just give you the brass tacks on that. There's a handful of churches that are talking serious about that. Um, I don't know of many churches that are actually executing on it, um, because there is the, I've got a multi-million dollar building that's where all the value is. I've got to think, I've got to think physical first, and digital is becoming that, you know? And so it's an interesting exercise where, and actually, I look towards planters like you and this next generation that doesn't have, once again, the years of baggage, the previous assumptions of what churches from attenders and just been able to really work at it with a clean slate to really define what this next level of church is. If we, like you're suggesting, continue to think digital first.

Yeah, I mean, I love this. That's cool. The one person we're looking at in the secular world, uh, I don't know if you're familiar with Hasan Minhaj on Netflix?

Yeah.

So it raises the question, how many people do you have to have in the room to make it interesting? And what is the graphics package and live component looks like? Uh, now I don't, I'm not recommending it for content. He certainly says words that you don't want your four-year-old in the room to hear. But I would say in terms of a communicator and humor and style and what could be replicatable across the way, that's one thing that we're looking at.

Yeah, and that kind of style, you know, and once again, you talk about like allowing people to fact-check and this kind of thing has been something that he's been comfortable with from the get-go. Like, he's understood conversing with his generation both through screens but also through social media and kind of continuing a conversation. And I think even though he just recently got canceled by Netflix because Netflix was trying to shift towards a different direction that had nothing to do with the popularity of his content so much as, oh man, his content was really good. And even his mindset was great in terms of how he was delivering it. And especially like you just talked about the difficulty of doing comedy through screening, right? He was delivering it in such a way that he went from the live audience that got scrapped because of COVID and now he was still able to punch the jokes, provide the content, and do it in such a way where it was, oh man, but if you don't believe me, here are two or three links that you can go back and check me out, right?

Oh yes, absolutely. And it makes you also think about on the hiring side of things for those of us who are creative content writers. You look at a guy like Hasan Minhaj who has however many researchers, however many content writers, and there is a lot of content you have to produce. But going, who is a comedian that you know that could look at your talk and say, here's four jokes to make that better, right? We don't think about that until we have to. But I think we're in an age where we have to think about how do you build a communication team to make that content punch, especially for those of us who, again, I'm in my thirties, I didn't natively grow up with YouTube. I grew up with a Razr phone, you know? So I mean, like, there's a little bit of like, how do we, how do we view that world? Because there is an eighteen-year-old somewhere who has less time than I do and has less money to put towards something, and they're getting millions of views on YouTube. How are they doing that? There's a way to do it, and I think the local church and specifically communicators have to figure out how to do that.

So there is so much truth right there. I'm coming, oh my gosh, coming from a guy with a live production background, and you know, and I'll walk into churches and they're like, I had a church tell me, yeah, we're in the middle of dropping like six multiple six figures on building out a production studio. And I'm like, that's nice. What can you do now? Like, right? Don't wait three or four months to write the big check. You got what you need right now. And starting to, you know, fire those BBs before bullets and the bullets before, uh, cannonballs, you know? That is that is so true. You know, even in this COVID season, experiment, test the waters before you write that big check. Um, sometimes the thing that you think you want to do when you actually do.

If you're like, "Hey, you know what, I don't want to do this," and then you're 200,000 invested into something that you don't want to do, so there's a lot of wisdom towards that. Hey, um, let me pivot a little bit here. Another thing that you're working on or that you've been able to take advantage of is like, you're not even—do you even have a worship guy at this point? Because every time I see the services, like it's you're outsourcing, you're bringing in a friend from somewhere, or like, you know, Austin Stone Worship, you know, home of like Chris Tomlin. You were showing that video. So like, what is, what's like the, um, what's the role of worship, musical worship? What are you thinking short term, long term? What's the plan?

Oh, that's a great question. It's one of my favorite things to talk about too, because we stumbled into this and it's been one of the best things. So, um, I was at actually Radius CPAC, which I loved, and I met a worship leader there and he shows me his phone as well. Yeah, we did this little video and they had like 15,000 views and it's them in their living room and the recording quality is fantastic, but it's built for YouTube. It's worship music that's built for YouTube, not just streamed from a big stage. And it got me thinking, I can't afford, you know, I mean, I guess we don't have a worship leader, you know, we don't have somebody doing music. We're new to Columbus, you know, we're still gathering people, but we wanted to have something that felt artistic and as transcendent as we can make it in this service, specifically around worship. And so I asked him at our first service, I said, "Hey, would you mind? I mean, like, it'll give you some exposure, not a time, but it'll give you some exposure, you know, and then it'll help us to have some quality music. Would you let us use it for free?" And he said yes. And once he said yes, I was like, "Okay, who else could we ask?" And so we just started. We would now, what we do is we find the song that we want, we find someone on YouTube. Typically it's a person who's getting, you know, between five thousand and fifteen thousand views. Generally after that, they're probably pretty big, you know, but around five to fifteen thousand, sometimes a little bit more. A lot of these are churches. And we say, "Hey, like, we're gonna give you all the credit." So like, when you talk about Austin Stone, we put there in the comments, "Go check out, follow their YouTube page. Here's where you can find it. Here's the specific singers I hear, the people that are doing it." Um, and then we say, "Hey, can we take it? Like, we'll skin it out. Like, we'll put like a background behind the video and make it, you know, still Nuevo style, but, um, but use their stuff." And honestly, no one has told me no yet. Uh, no churches told me no, no individual. It feels like in some ways a win-win. We're not a massive church where they're getting so much exposure, but they get a little bit. They'll pick up some followers. And we get great worship designed for the screen, which is a different thing. Like, it is a different feel when you do it that way. And so I'll just kind of tell you, we Austin Stone was phenomenal. They have amazing stuff. Garden MSC around California, they let us use one. I mean, incredible quality. These are both churches. One of my favorites has actually been a church in New York City and it's called Hope Church. Friend Drew's pastor out there. I mean, these are three people I would guess in their early twenties and studio apartments in New York, but they're, I mean, the quality is phenomenal, you know, and again, it's built for the screen. So that's what we do. We just ask people if we can use it. Uh, again, people have said yes. And, uh, and then we give them, you know, as much credit as we could possibly put out there and do it that way. So yeah, that's an, and I just, nobody has ever said no. Like, that is intriguing to me. And so, but I guess it's, you know, because I would try to do that where I would try to get licensed for a movie clip or, you know, a TV show or something, and like, those people, they're never calling you back. But I guess the YouTubers within that community, they're already within the Christian community because it's worship music. That's fascinating. They've been able to like engage more and follow up and are willing to do that.

Oh man, I would say this too, and again, I, the open source concept, the open-handedness of these churches, and hopefully for all of us, it, when we come to the digital space, it really is an opportunity for us to give everything away to each other to make it better. And so again, like you said, there are so many of these churches that'll do that, YouTubers, but hopefully we all do, like our, our open, we can give away the little things that we have and hopefully we are doing that. So yeah, yeah, I'm glad you, but you're right, it's a great opportunity, you know, even post-2020 as we're redefining what churches look like because COVID, you know, maybe there's an opportunity for some of these bigger churches to start to supply some of these resources, maybe not at a network level or maybe at a network level, but start to open up open-handedness in this season to provide resources for churches that are starting out or for churches that are struggling. Maybe having to go back from, you know, as churches are shutting down before they're pulling the plug, maybe they're going back to digital because they've lost that school, they've lost that setup, tear down venue, and so they're needing to fall back on churches helping by providing worship content and things like that. That honestly, like, that's the hard part of an online service, I believe, to kind of assemble. I'm the teaching there's prep time, but at least in the technical aspects to really make it screen-first viable, that's difficult to do. And so like Austin Stone, I had a lot of respect. I used to work in Austin at another church, Austin Ridge, which was confused all the time for Austin Stone. So I already had a lot of respect for those guys. And just even the fact that they just did that, um, when I saw their little watermark pop up on the video, I was like, "Hey, I know those guys. That's awesome." I love that they did that for you.

Um, well, hey, you know, even maybe just as we're kind of wrapping up here and transitioning, um, like, what does it look like for you? So you're doing online. When are you meeting physically? Like, do you have a plan at this point of what exactly that physical engagement is, how you're going to kind of balance the tension between physical and digital?

Yeah, that's great, you know, and we're again, we're so new. Our launch date is September 2021. That's when we'd go weekly in a physical location, you know, we're actually looking right now at mid-October, you know, COVID pending, you know, and trying to find a venue. I think our approach right now, um, and other churches have done this too, is we would do like gathering. We would hang out, we'd spend some time together, and then it would be a teaching. But a lot of it's like working to connect with one another, gather in person as many people that have engaged with us digitally, you know, and start doing that. I think as we progress to like the September launch, again, there's a lot of question marks that we have around coronavirus and how we navigate that and what venues look like. And for a lot of church planters, it can be difficult to get school or government buildings in general right now. So how do you do that? I think the thing that we keep wrestling with, as I said earlier, is how do we make digital migrate into what we're doing in a physical location? We feel like we can do that. We can scale it multiple times, and that's what we're hoping to try to do. Um, but, um, and then yeah, and then trying to figure out like, how do we make those two worlds collide? So we're asking the question anytime that I'm up in front of people, even in a physical location, how do we capture that content in a way where we can build out more digital content with it? We don't want to waste any time that we do speaking that way. And the great thing is, and you guys know this too, the equipment now to be able to do that is so much cheaper than it used to be. We can get a cinema camera, Black Magic thing, for I mean, we're all in it like maybe two thousand dollars for a camera, maybe a little bit more, and have a couple of those going with the right backdrop. Like, we can take that content and morph it. The other thing that we've also kind of dreamed about as we think about physical locations, how do we pre-capture some content in the same room and then try to like morph that into digital content as well? So we're hoping we can merge those two spaces. We definitely do want to be a physical location and on digital. I think what we're discovering is that those two worlds hopefully will merge or in mess in some messy sort of format some way. And then we also are operating off the assumption that the vast majority of people who will connect with us in the beginning will connect with us digitally and likely in small chunks of content that we put out first. And so we're putting a lot of our efforts there. So there's a long answer to a question, but that's what we're attempting.

So loved every second of it. I think it's a great strategy and looking forward to seeing how it gets implemented, executed, and what the results are up there in the Columbus area. So, Ray, as my dog jumps back into the frame—she's been great—um, I don't want to hear from puppy Ray. I want to hear from Ray Ray Reyes. We're landing the plane. Any thoughts on your side?

Yeah, Patrick, I mean, you and your team, and I love the humility that you're giving, so much credit to your team as far as, you know, you name names and some of the folks that are obviously kind of directing what you guys are doing. You guys have not just captured my attention, but I can imagine, you know, the attention of many people that are there. And the fact that you are inclusive and inviting them into the conversation to help create some of the content that's helping shape and mold the community that you guys are trying to build is huge to me. I'll be praying for all the success in the world, and I'm going to be keeping an eye on Columbus, Ohio, a community that has broken my heart since they stole a national title from my Miami Hurricanes like nineteen years ago. It's still burning inside, but let me tell you, it's still fresh now. Now I've got a reason to root for Ohio, and I'm so excited for what God's doing in you, man. I think it's wonderful. Even the Buckeyes need Jesus, man. That's awesome way to like rip that band-aid off, man. That hurts the heart right there. Some wounds have never healed, you know? That's right. That's funny. Awesome. Hey, yeah, so Patrick, as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts on your side?

You know what, uh, I don't think so. I, I think, you know, I'm very passionate about communicators and speakers. Obviously, I'm sure you've heard that. I think I would say to anybody who's listening, whether you're in your twenties or you're in your sixties, where we are right now, yeah, it is a different learning curve and it's easy to feel discouraged and how to navigate through, how do you do it well, what does that look like? But I'll just say you're learning a new skill. It's okay. But just make sure you don't just, I encourage you all the time, communicators, don't just fall back into the way we've always done it. The world has changed. The way we communicate is changing, if not already has. And let's just be the best students of that that we can possibly be. And then lastly, I would say to you, Jeff, thank you for all the things that you're doing, a resource. We have been a recipient of the content that you've put out, and we are.

Better for it, and so I just wanted to say thank you for all that you're doing here—your podcasts and blogs and your text messages and the feedback that you've given us. We're just so grateful for you and all you're doing. If you listen to this, you need to be listening to this podcast and watching this content a lot. It's super helpful for us, so thank you, Jeff, for all you're doing.

Awesome. Yeah, love, love every second of it, even when my dog barks in the middle of a podcast. Apologies for that. Yeah, this, this is the, this is why when your kids are like, "Daddy, I want a puppy," and I'm like, "No, let's get an older dog." This is why. And you work at home while they go to school and while your wife doesn't work, this is why you fight. You don't give in. You fight because this dog has bitten me. This four-month-old dog has bitten me at least 300 times in this podcast.

Oh my gosh. Okay, hey, listen, Patrick. I, I am always, it's always fun to talk with you. It's funny. I remember when we sat down across from each other at that CPAC, uh, with Stadia, whatever city. I don't even, I don't even remember where we were, man. Uh, whatever, what was it? California? California somewhere? Rice City? Yeah, we're over with those guys, and just, you know, we sat across each other at the table and just immediately was like, "Man, this guy's smart. This guy's asking the right questions and heading down the right path." And so I mean, I'm excited to see how the church has developed and in the road that you're on. Um, we'll continue to pray that God's doing great things through Nouveau as you're moving from that digital to physical and and growing in that way. So, and once again, thanks for jumping on here. The services, everything's awesome. We didn't say it, maybe I said it up front, but uh, there's links in the show notes to like examples of the services and things, and so y'all check out some of these services. Don't carve and copy it, but find ways to maybe take some of these lessons and apply it to your churches where they are. And so for Patrick, for Ray, for the other Ray, my dog who's currently biting me for the five hundredth time, uh, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for joining us here in the podcast, and we'll see you next time here on the show. Y'all have a good day.