EP099: Korey Deck - Shepherding, Pastoral Care, & Mourning Digitally

Episode 99 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planting. Jeff here. We are one week away from the 100th episode here of the Church Digital Podcast and it's going to be crazy. I am super excited to bring the 100th episode to you all. We're going to go back, we're going to get in our DeLoreans, we're going to go back in time here a little bit and relive a very influential moment in my life, in my Jeffrey life. And so we're gonna experience that. If you've listened to the podcast, you may know what I'm talking about. We've talked about this moment, this evening at Starbucks. I don't wanna go give away too much, but we've talked about it a lot here on the show and we're gonna bring back together that magic and see, even though we've got people who are going to be guests scattered all across the country, see if we can relive that evening at downtown Disneyland at Starbucks. The way, oh I'm, oh look at me, I'm just giving away so much. I'm just gonna stop talking about it right now.

But truthfully, Cory wasn't on my radar a couple weeks ago. I've been working on this other episode where I'm really curious like how the Holy Spirit is moving through our churches, through our digital churches, through our fidget churches in this online season. I'm really curious. I'm looking for some tangible acts, tangible presence of God through these digital methods. So if you've got that, reach out, let you know, let me know. But aside from me even that, like I was in a Facebook group and I posted this question: how are we seeing the Holy Spirit move in our churches this COVID season? And Cory here replied back. Now the way that Cory replied, I'll be honest, left me speechless. Like literally took my words away. I had to like have a moment and pull it together because his response was not what I was expecting. I was expecting to hear God did this, God did that, you know, and just starting to hear more of how we're seeing the Holy Spirit move. Cory's response was simply put: well, 25 people in my church have died as a result of COVID in this season. So yes, we've seen God move through the death and losses of our loved ones.

And I quickly became speechless. Like of all the answers, of all the directions, of all of the thoughts that I was expecting to get, that well, that was not one of them. And so starting to now piece together questions are like: how did you, how do you help someone digitally mourn? How do you do a digital funeral? What does the grieving process look like? What is 25 funerals in a six month period? I mean, essentially that's like one a week, almost. Now they had a much more tighter together, but how do you culturally as a staff, how do you like care for your staff? What is what does that do to the culture of the church? Like my brain started exploding just at the mere idea of having to go through something like this. A church, Grace Community Church in the New York area, having to deal with something like 25 losses, 25 deaths in this COVID season.

No, I want to say upmost and upfront here, like I want to be completely respectful with this conversation. I'm not looking for gotcha journalism. The political nature of what may or may not be happening, this is not the heart of this. And even to the context, this is usually like a digital podcast, but I don't, I don't even really want to talk about the digital nature or the technology aspect of this. I really want to get down to the heart of: how do you pastorally care for somebody that you're not able to touch? How do you help someone grieve when you're not able to be in the same room with them? And Cory, who by his own definition is relatively new in this digital pastor thing, almost had to become an expert in it overnight just over the sheer fact that he had to help so many people in such a unique way than what he was probably equipped and trained for in the seminaries and in churches previous to this.

So it's a fascinating conversation that it has very little to do with technology and much more into the heart of what we as a church are called to be in physical space as well as called to be in digital space. And so for the conversation we're bringing in Cory Deck, one of the campus pastors over at Grace Community Church in New York State, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm calling Shepherding, Pastoral Care and Mourning Digitally.

Okay, everybody, here you go. You know, maybe even just to start the conversation here, tell us your ministry story. How you ended up at your church, what does ministry life look like for you?

For me, it started at birth. You know, my dad's a pastor in Florida and we grew up as missionary kids. We grew up in Africa. So I spent most of my childhood in Johannesburg, South Africa in the mid to late 90s. So grew up around post-apartheid ministry life in Africa, which was an incredibly rich and just cool time to be in ministry as a family. So that kind of informed a lot of how ministry has become for me today. So you know, I grew up as a pastor's kid, missionary kid, all the baggage that comes with that, and was convinced I wasn't gonna be in ministry. But God had other plans. You know, I met my beautiful wife and the burden was just so real. You know, the workers are few, that that was so apparent to us. And so it just became clear. So I was a youth pastor, loved youth ministry, felt God's calling us to do more, and that's how we landed in Hudson in the Hudson Valley. My wife's actually from here, so it's really cool aligning some of our roots here and with what God is doing also through Grace Community Church. So it's kind of a long winding road to get to where we are.

But I was actually hired at Grace Community Church to be the online campus pastor. And that's actually how I first got connected to Jeff. There was like, I got hired and they're like, you gotta go to this conference. And that's, I went to the conference in 2018, the Church IT Conference. It was awesome. It was like I was drinking from that well so deep. And so I haven't been as engaged because ended up the resources weren't there in the online church world for us to launch. So I got placed at a physical campus. Some cool opportunities for our church opened up. Instead of launching online, we're preparing to launch a West Point campus at the West Point Military Academy, stuff like that. But online never happened. And then three weeks before the government told us to shut down, they were like, oh, we see this coming, we should launch online. So that's how we launched online, just a little bit before, like we snuck out, um, just like a week or two. So we had an interesting rocky road being also in New York where we shut down fast and hard.

Yeah, I hope that answers your question. That was kind of a long and winding road. But totally. And you know, the CIT network, Church IT, yeah, I mean Washington DC in 2018 was awesome. 2019 I think was Kansas City. He was really excited about 2020 in Texas. COVID happened and then it's basically run by a bunch of IT guys, the network is church staff IT guys, and in 2020 they got really overloaded with COVID work stuff. And so I think they're doing like some regional roundtables and stuff. We'll put a link in the show notes. I'm not actually sure what they're doing, but a lot of the online ministry stuff wasn't as thick in 2020 this year as much as it's been in the past.

But you know, I love, um, you know, it's there's the whole West Point, like that's like a really interesting thing. Maybe yeah, dig into that on another day. But it was interesting like we bumped into each other, you know, just recently where I was in a Facebook group. I don't remember what Facebook group I posted it, and several of them, but I basically asked the question: hey, where are you seeing the Holy Spirit move through your church in this COVID season? Like I'm not even like church online, you know, sometimes where we get so systematic in the approach of it. I really wanted to like start to pull on this thread of spiritually what God's actually doing. Don't tell me the system or the strategy, but what are we seeing pastorally and shepherdly? I don't know if that's a word, but what are we seeing as we're shepherding our people digitally?

There's the adverb digitally. And you know, I've kind of have said it off air a couple times, but like your comment, you know, left me speechless about how your church has been pastoring and shepherding people in the New York area in this COVID season. So maybe just even to set it up, Cory, do you want to tell us a little bit of your story and what your church has been going through?

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's so funny. I was, I think I even told you, I was in between doing church online, doing physical campus stuff because we just reopened. It was our second Sunday. And I have a practice in my day where I'm like, I have to stop and celebrate. And if I think of something, I'm gonna go check in or message somebody, I have to share it. And that's sort of formed out of this story and kind of what the last few months have been for us.

But my wife was like, why did you write it so fast? Because I wrote, I was like, yeah, we had 25 plus people pass away in that season, in that in that sixth month. Really was more like a three month season for us. And so we've been in the church building again now two weeks in a row. And everything feels, you know, I expected I had a little bit of a sour attitude about it, you know, because of all the restrictions and all the distance. And I just had a feeling it wasn't going to be what I expected it to be, all my years of church production work, you know, are rubbing at this idea of reopening with masks and distance and low production, yadda yadda. And I got into the building and you know, first worship set, some of the families who have lost loved ones are sitting in their rows far apart. And it does look weird and it does feel unproduced and it's not the best, you know, the band is not doing the greatest job. And still you could just see like a very tangible healing, almost as it was like we've carried this grief because we as a campus, you know, as a campus, we're the second biggest campus at our locations. There's about a thousand people in my campus, but we were kind of carrying this loss, this burden virtually, you know, distanced for a while. So to be back in the room, it just caught me so off guard. And I was like, I watched it happen. I was like, I have to tell somebody about this. And I popped on Facebook and there was your post. And I was like, okay cool, I'll share it here because we did do a lot of digital shepherding, weight carrying, grieving, all that. But then it was just a cool moment to be able to celebrate, just the beginning, because it's been bleak. I mean, yeah, it's just, I don't know, there's not a lot of hurrah jumping around. There's not a lot of celebration stuff from us. And so it was really cool to have a very tangible real moment where it was just like, oh yeah, the Holy Spirit's been doing it, you know, doing its thing the whole time. And we were just kind of walking and doing our best in obedient footsteps, you know.

And so even just to kind of set the temperature and the tone here, completely like respectful, not joking around about the scenario, but the reality is like within New York, and I know there's been lots of losses, don't want to get political, 200,000 deaths close to it or at this point beyond it as this business podcast publishes. And we're as a country where we're dealing with what this loss means.

How to manage it and it's uh it just really kind of blindsided me. Wow, this one church community and specifically you guys are a multi-site church it sounds like, and so this is this one campus has experienced 25 losses and I believe you said that it was kind of up front, kind of March, April, May, early on in the in the pandemic as that went through and then your curve kind of leveled off a little bit. What was the, so so healing? Um, like it was first off let me kind of back up. What has been the the temperature of the staff? Not 104, but just like the the can we do that abilities a lot, but like what what's the, I I know what one death, the weight that that carries on me. Two or three, like I did a funeral once where uh it was a murder-suicide thing, an entire family had died and so it was like five people and that that weighed a ton on me. It was it was a family related that had gone. This is 25 people that had gone through this. What what was the toll that took on the staff? What was that environment?

It was um, you know, as you would expect it was intense. Um, and we were just coming out of a really intense season. I think most churches were um coming out of Christmas, January, February, especially in the Northeast. It's cold. Um, you know, the long dark winter is real up here. Um, along with it already being a spiritually cold place. So as far as uh just the energy level of our staff, you know, uh we joke about our scrappy insurgency because um I I lead a team of four um part-time ladies who are just absolute powerhouses. Um, and they are uh just incredible in their in their giftings and in their work, but we were exhausted. Uh, in November my my mother's uh my wife's mother passed and then in December and January two of our elders lost their parents. Um, and so so this grief season had, we were like okay, we were resting, we were you know practicing some lament. Uh, we were just I I digging deep and I, you know, I'm 29 year old, 29 year old years old. I had never done a funeral before and then those three months and I have a young campus. It's not like we're a bit older. It's not like we've been around for a long time. We're four years old or five years old. And um, so we had just been kind of doing this. I had just done my first two funerals as a pastor ever because you don't do a lot of funerals in student ministry. And um, so we were just exhausted. And um, and then with Easter, you know, on its way, so we were we were learning, we were practicing, we're kind of figuring out. So that's kind of where we were as a staff. We were just, and we were new. I started as the lead pastor last July, so I had barely been there six months um as the physical campus pastor. I had been working online before then. Um, so there was just a lot. I mean, it was a heavy, heavy season.

Yeah, and um, so yeah, from from there it it kind of just felt, you know, just from the beginning of the whole COVID crisis, uh we had someone pass away early and it was a member of our church. Um, and it was, you know, someone who was deeply, deeply involved. We you know, there's a variety of spectrum for us on members who were deeply involved versus members we saw, you know, Christmas and Easter things like that. Um, because Catholic culture's very real up here. Uh, and so we have a lot of that. But the first person we lost, um, you know, her husband dropped her off at the hospital for a skin issue and she didn't come out. You know, 72 hours later she was she was gone. So it was like right off the bat and that was early. That was at the end of March, beginning of April. And um, so it was just kind of right off the bat we felt like we were on our laurels, like not knowing what to do. And then another week, yeah, and and so it became overwhelming really fast.

Are stories like this common out of New York churches? Like do art, like where that much loss concentrated within communities? I mean, lots of people have died there. Is that is that a a continuation? Like can other people tell the story?

Yeah, um, I I have connected with, I mean, just some of the local pastors here was actually one of the one of the few things that we really um felt like was a worthy celebration for us was um in this season because our church is a little larger, you know, larger churches in the Northeast are not very common. And um, so a lot of the local parishes, a couple of the um the synagogues in our area who were experiencing a very similar trend, it probably it was in a less of uh um not quite to scale as ours. Um, just as far as percentage-wise, but you know three, four, five people in a in a congregation in a smaller parish or something like that, it was really intense. And you know, in our faith tradition we talk to cameras all the time. It's a little bit more normal, whereas for you know, the Catholic priests down the road and um, you know, for for different faith traditions, they didn't have that. So it was a really unique thing that we got to do. Um, we put on a little like digital conference for some of our local churches to just learn and resource them with our technology stuff to help them set up for you know, virtual end-of-life uh, you know, ceremonies and all the different things that come along with that.

Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's crazy the things in this COVID season that that we're learning and or that we're having to do. And and like I I've a friend of mine wrote wrote a blog for the Church Digital about a funeral that he led. He was in Texas and I don't want to say it was his um somebody who's related to him, maybe his mother-in-law, stepmom, somebody, grandma that had died personally. We'll link to it in the show notes where he he just kind of pastorally talked about like how he uh experienced and and how he pastored in shepherd, but you know, in this situation you're 20, 25 of of these funerals in addition to that's an interesting wrinkle resourcing and helping other churches learn how to take their people through through the grieving process of what that looked like physical and or digital. So maybe even just explain some of that to me. Like where were the funerals? Were they were they physical? Were they digital? Was it like a mix of it? What what did the grieving process kind of look like? Once again, completely want to be respectful, but she's trying to imagine what um how you're being pastoral in this season where we don't have access necessarily to the buildings like we're typically used to having.

Yeah, that was I mean, that was the challenge, right? Shepherding, uh being able to pastor someone on a screen in one of the worst moments of their life. Um, I think we've gotten pretty good at it, at least I feel like um we're getting there where we're really engaging each other and being able to pastor you know each other through some of just life's, you know, crisis moments. And but death, I feel like I hadn't ever thought about tackling digitally. So um, we were not good at it at first. Um, you know, and we I don't I don't know if we're great at it now, but um we did a lot of uh just reflecting. At first, after the first few, um after about the fifth uh like loss, we we kind of looked at each other as a staff and we were like, oh, you know, this is this is going to become so much more than just a funeral uh for so many people because of what we were watching. We were watching people having to drop off their loved ones and then not see them alive again. Um, you know, and that was really difficult to just comprehend for myself. And I didn't have anybody, loved one, you know, I loved one in that seat. So uh after the about the third or fourth funeral and then we had like the fifth or sixth loss, we knew we were going to be doing more. Um, we kind of just took a step back as a team and I was like, okay, I've only done a few of these. I don't feel like we're doing them very well. I feel like we're not doing uh there's like something, there's a ministry opportunity we're missing here. Like there's something not clicking. And um, so we stepped back and we just talked and we you know, turned out my whole staff and I like none of us had ever led a funeral or other than the ones that we had done in our building because so often those are, you know, weddings and funerals, the senior pastor or the lead pastor handles that. It's not like a renowned mentorship moment um in the in there. But yet um, I was like, okay, well let's start doing that. Let's turn this into a discipleship moment for um our teams. And so let's you know, put together a couple different volunteer teams to handle funerals and meals and um wakes are very common up here. Um, so how are we gonna set up, you know, drive-by wakes? Okay, let's set up a hospitality team for drive-through wakes and you know, let's make sure we're there with bottles and masks and you know, grabbers and six feet trays and all those things. Let's just figure it out. And so it wasn't anything incredibly systematic, um which to a systems person like me that really drove me nuts. I was like, what are we doing? Like how, how? And I was like, and um our campus director uh Megan's just like, you can't systematically plan end-of-life stuff, Corey. You have to just, you'd have to just lean in. And that was what we did. We just spent some time leaning into, and they were all different. Some of them were celebratory because uh you know, they lived a long and healthy life. And some of them were really painful, you know, uh a lot of them were really painful in that the loss was just five, ten years, fifteen years too soon. Um, and all you know, underlying health conditions, all those different things. But it was just back to back to back to back to back. It felt like it wasn't stopping. So we knew we couldn't do it alone. So we built, we built kind of a little, a little funeral army is what I call them. It's a little dark, I know, but we um we just, it was what we kind of became was just how are we going to um do this, not so that we don't get stuck here, right? So that we don't get stuck in all the grief and all the loss and all the energy that it costs to be in that place and to do it well. So um, it was a true, you know, kind of carrying one another's burdens season for us. Um, so that was kind of, you know, to circle back, that was what was so beautiful about being in the building. Um, because I know it's been happening, I know it's been happening in people's living rooms. They tell us um, you know, they love worshiping online. They love worshiping with their family in their homes, but it was just it was nice for me as pastor to be able to see it. Um, you know, we've we exercised a lot of our faith muscle in the last few months. So it was it filled my tank to be able to see it. You know, I'll bet. What was this idea of of the um, oh gosh, I just blinked on the term, the the kind of the drive through, the wakes and and doing that? It never occurred to me, you know, to do something like that, just as even as I'm talking with churches about doing things like like that, that aspect of the of the morning process with that is that's beautiful. And in the fact that you're utilizing volunteers and other people within the church to serve the community, to serve their own body by by doing these things is just beautiful.

When casting vision to the volunteers, what was what was that like? Were they excited to be part of it? Did they need to like, what what concerns did they have? Like in this COVID season to engage with people in that space? Like just maybe tell me some of those stories.

Yeah, there was, I mean, there's there still are um for us uh psychologically, COVID's impact, I think, is you know, for our specifically, we're seeing it in our volunteer teams. There is a lot of that. Um, so there's a lot of hesitation. Um, so there's a lot of people who want to serve. And I think that's one of the biggest voids that we have felt. We're a very volunteer-driven church, low staff ratios, and that's you know, a lot of multi-site churches I know are in that.

So our volunteers were itching for something to do. They like, how do we help? We're feeling this, and they did an incredible job feeling it and letting it be fuel. So for those who weren't comfortable, we had them writing cards. You know, we had them reaching out and putting on—we have some people who were not comfortable, but a couple of our older people, you know, they love their Facebook. So they put together Facebook memorial pages, and you know, they just—something else we did, something kind of—we learned through our church online experience was, you know, just engaging with people. So you put out a memorial page, okay? Engage with them in the comments because then I can show you, you know, the loved ones who are grieving, look at what everybody's saying, right? Look at how we're not together, right? You don't get to look at each other's eyes for this funeral, but as we go through this memorial, like throughout it, just read. Because that what you're reading on that screen, someone on the other side of that screen is feeling that, is thinking that, right? So helping to kind of guide people through digital experiences like that—it was bumpy, you know? There was a lot of "I can't get my tablet, I can't get my internet," you know? It was a lot of very basic stuff that I think—it was really cool for us, even as we stayed launching and kind of forming our online experience on the other side of church. It was like, oh, come back to the basics. Make sure we're doing all this stuff right. Let's really make sure, you know, we're handling the basic navigational stuff correctly. And I love all of that, you know? And just having—making sure the ministry component is in place or the opportunity you have to minister to the body, to the people that God's given access to—were the funerals where the people, you know, obviously there are people that are attached to the church, you know, either intimately or loosely. Maybe it's, you know, more of an outsider, but they consider your church your church. Were there opportunities to for life change, for some deeper conversations, evangelism, talk with people who are cold to Christ? Like, how did God maybe move in that area in context of what you were doing there with your church?

Yeah, it's—we're, you know, I feel like we're just beginning to see some of that fruit as far as like tangible steps. You know, if we're—if my next steps faster was in my ear, you know, he'd be like, "Talk about the steps," because that's so important, and we love those steps. But what we see is kind of like the more—the just the more like tangible things as, you know, families of those who have lost who are, you know, in different faith traditions, they had a lot of questions about, well, why did you—why did you do this? You know, in Catholic culture, it's the requiem mass. I didn't do a requiem mass. I didn't do some of the other traditional—so that's—we face a lot of that here. So I got a lot of questions. That was probably one of the best things to come out of it was, well, why is it this way? Okay, well, now I get to talk about XYZ characteristics about what we believe, and that was one of the coolest things. And then the fruit out of that was, as we built out teams and kind of empowered our volunteers to do that, then our volunteers were the ones handling those kinds of conversations, and they were doing it excellently. So now there's relationships. We have a lot of people who are—there's virtual small groups. We have a lot of those happening right now, so they're all connecting. And so that's been one of the tangible ways is, you know, our volunteers have connected really well by just caring, by sending—we're still sending notes, still sending encouragement, still praying with people. You know, so that's probably the most tangible thing coming out of that.

Well, I, you know, I can think of dozens of challenges like issues, problems, things that churches in your position doing what you were doing would struggle with, like just because it's not—it's not natural pre-COVID to engage with people. People weren't comfortable with these conversations. There was a preconceived notion against kind of like video conferencing. Zoom was a thing, but let's just be honest, it was not the—adopt. I mean, I think they went from like 10 million to 200 million users as a result of it, so culture has engaged and has adopted. It's much more comfortable in that space in, you know, October compared to when we were back in March. But I'm just curious to get back to the question because I randomly just go off on tangents. Ooh, squirrel. Yeah, what were some of the biggest challenges? Like, when you go back, I'm trying to figure out—maybe it's technological, maybe it's cultural, maybe it's just issues, challenges, pastoring it in a different way. What were some of the challenges that you faced heading into doing something like this, pastoring people going through crisis situations via technology?

Yeah, it was—I think we learned really quickly how much, especially in the Christian faith, you know, in the evangelical lane, we count on physical expression or physical connection to convey like deep spiritual meaning. Like, you know, and even I think about, you know, all the sermon illustrations were very visual, very hands-on people. And so, you know, I'll never forget the first time we found out one of our—her people was—she, her husband had dropped her off in the hospital, and he hadn't heard. It had been two and a half days, and he hadn't heard what was going on. And so at that—so we were like, okay, well, it's me, you know? And this was in the height of stay-at-home orders, and I was like, okay, I don't know what to do. Let's just—let's meet in the parking lot. Everybody will stay in their cars. Let's just look at each other. We'll FaceTime or we'll get on a, you know, a Teams call or Zoom call, whatever, and you'll—we'll pray together. And her husband came, and he stood in the middle, and in that whole—and that whole experience is when he got a phone call that his wife had passed. And so we were literally parked around him when he got that phone call. And, you know, and we had to process that together. And none of us could give him a hug because he had just been in contact with his loved one who had passed away of COVID. And so there was not a single physical thing you could do to like ease his suffering, right? There was—there was not a single—any. And there was, you know, 15 or 20 of us volunteers, and there was just—you're just sitting there holding nothing. Like, I had my phone, and I just—I wanted to chuck it, you know? I was like, what am I watching? You know, what planet am I in? All the—all the things that we all felt as we hear all these things and all these stories, right? And, you know, the funeral passage in First Thessalonians—we don't grieve like those who have no hope—was like, we had to get really—as a team, so here's another challenge. I mean, that moment, not having the physical connection that you just default to—I mean, I think I watched everybody start to go give him a hug, and then they couldn't, yeah. And to have that sort of like very blatant realization, you have to like really reckon your faith in God and your concepts of death really quickly. And so we grieve like those—we don't grieve like those who don't have hope, or have no hope. That just became sort of a rallying cry for us. It was, okay, well, we have hope. And where we don't have hope, we trust in the Lord, and we know that He's up to something, and we don't just—genuinely don't know what it is. And, you know, it's—and so I joked about our faith muscle, but that's so much of what it was was, I can't physically touch you, so I have to have faith that through this screen—no matter how tired or Zoom fatigued you are—there's a phrase I never want to hear again, Zoom fatigue—but, you know, no matter how Zoom fatigued you are, this is where we're at. So, Lord, work through this digital—this digital tool. You don't like it? Okay, it's not ideal, but it is where we are. And I—and it was sort of for us, we didn't have a lot of choice in it. It was just kind of, this is where we're at, so let's absolutely be wholeheartedly in it because if we're not—you know, if we're not wholeheartedly into the digital connecting, right, the idea that this is not a barrier, it's a real tool—if we're not wholeheartedly there, then it's not just my attitude and my heart that sours at it. It's the people I'm trying to counsel. It's the people I'm trying to care for. It's the, you know, it's the husband in the worst moments of his life. So it became easy then to kind of counsel our people through, well, we can have church digitally because this is where we're at, you know? So it helped. Now our, you know, our online community is pretty robust, and our people are really—even though it's new, it's fresh for us still—they're really accustomed to it. So it's really cool to see how those kinds of things, those patterns, those behaviors we formed over the last few months are starting to bear some fruit.

Okay, so I'm putting myself literally in your spot. I'm in a parking lot, 15 people standing around this guy that we're praying for, just found out that his wife died. How did you—how did you show comfort to that person? You can't do it physically. They're—I mean, his wife just died. They were connected. I'm guessing whatever the timelines, whatever early on—it was radical numbers that may have tapered off with more research. Finish the story for me. How did you show comfort to somebody in that situation? What did that—what that looked like?

Um, I had some of my deacons there, and, you know, they're incredible. One of them, he does hospice care, so he's like—he's, you know, he's just—he's the old—he's the old man with wisdom who you just need at every church to be a complete family, you know? He's that guy. And, um, he just started—he just started reading out of the Psalms. And, um, I couldn't tell you what Sammy read. I don't remember, you know? It's all such a blur. But there was, you know, so he read, and then—and then we just started praying, you know? There wasn't a whole lot to like say. I didn't have any words, you know? I was—I was, I mean, I had words, but I couldn't say them out loud. I was, you know, I was so—I was so frustrated. I was so like, I can't believe we gathered here to pray for healing and to pray for peace, and now we're in this moment. And I think that was about then I started to realize, hey, this is like becoming a pretty serious thing that we're gonna have to tackle as a campus. And it just so happened that, you know, I have a background in digital church and discipleship, so we had some of these tools. And we were well versed in them as a, you know, my campus team was. So it was—it was certainly something that we were equipped to handle. Just was—it was a lot, you know?

What changes did you do digitally? How did you adjust digital ministry? And then did it work? Were people receptive for it? Like, or how did they adapt to this to the ministry that you were doing digitally?

Um, so we—we don't have—we didn't have a robust groups ministry pre-COVID. Um, we didn't even really do a lot digitally. Um, we—we have launched a lot of campuses really fast, and they have grown. Like, we have seen a lot of really impactful fruit from our physical campuses. So we didn't—um, we—our small groups are in our volunteer team. So we didn't really have a lot of small groups. It was like volunteer teams. Um, so they started meeting. They've met digitally kind of on and off. So that part wasn't the—like, the big adjustment for our people. Um, they pivoted to Zoom calls instead of in-person calls. Um, they, you know, volunteered in droves to man church online platform. That was like—to

Me was one of the easier things if that's, I think it's unique, maybe because our church is just so volunteer heavy and we've always been so, our people are really flexible that way. It's like a real blessing of where we are. Um, so we made that pivot was pretty quick and we just kind of said like, yeah, meet with your teams, but also there's, you know, a solid half of our church who's not, so invite them in. And we've, um, you know, it's, uh, it's not like anything fancy. We didn't do anything fancy to get through this season. Uh, we had once a month, um, one of the elders at our campus, uh, he loves to teach. He's a, um, a neuroscientist, neurologist. He's a rocket surgeon. That's how I think of him. He's brilliant and he loves, loves, loves the word. So he just puts on like three hour seminars about topic X. And, um, you know, it didn't do a lot to reach the unchurched, but our church people, um, it, it was just so, you know, so supplemental for them to have some of that. They, they would be like, I'd hop on some Saturdays and he'd have like 80, 90 people, 80 people on his calls, which was just cool. This is one of those things. So we didn't do a lot of, um, you know, super intentional digital switch style stuff other than the things that we had in place. We just helped to transform. You know, we got the text to connect things, a lot of things that I had been banging drums for for a long time. It kind of forced that, so which was great. And, um, we've seen a lot of fruit out of some of those big steps I think that we just hadn't really made as a church because, you know, um, I joke, um, up here, you know, in the Northeast, I think that the church development, church growth cycle where like we lag about ten to fifteen years behind. So some of the things that are really worked in sort of the Southeast and the West are like just starting to work in the Northeast. So physical campuses, like the multi-site models really do it well, and actually a lot of churches in Hudson Valley, so it's kind of cool.

Okay, very interesting. Um, you mean you mentioned digital fatigue earlier. All right, I said yeah, I think you said Zoom was what's the throwaway line, you know? And so your people weren't, we're not able to meet. They're going through this crisis. They're falling back on Zoom. You mentioned Microsoft Teams, these different, you know, uh, video conferencing platforms to talk. Are you guys experiencing kind of Zoom fatigue off of that? Like right now at your church, how are they holding up?

I would say there's definitely, uh, there's a portion, and and I honestly I recommend it. I'm like, hey, if you're really fatigued by the digital thing, please come to the campus. We don't have a lot of room at our campus right now. You know, we went from being able to see 225 per service, having like five services to seating like 90 people now. So I, yeah, and that's yes, with all the New York State requirements. It's very interesting. So I just encourage, I'm like, hey, if you are that, if you are fatigued, if you are drained by seeing my face on the screen, come see my face in person. Like, and so that was kind of the vision cast for reopening for us was for those who have just had it like really tough, please come and and let us, let us just see your face. Let us cry with you. Let us, um, we can't hug you, we won't, but let us just pray and encourage you this way. And, um, so there is, there is a good portion, honestly a lot of people who carried the burdens heavily with us in the first few months of this are the ones who are fatigued by the digital thing. They and they and they, you know, there's a lot of positives and they are very, um, affirming that it's an effective tool and it's important ministry that we have, but they're, uh, they're ready to just kind of be back. So there is a segment, there is a segment, but now and not nearly as large as I thought we would have coming out of this. I thought they were gonna, um, that thought there would be a larger resistance for it and there wasn't.

Oh, I mean, it's the digital fatigue is not digital's fault. It's the lack of physical.

Uh, no, and I do, I do talk digital planting and somebody's gonna be like, but Jeff, you said yes, there, there is there is an extreme group today that's doing digital only church planting and those are meeting a particular type of person. But the average person in America today has two passports. Like, there's the physical passport, that's right, and there's a digital passport. Yeah, I want to be on social media and I want to connect with new people, but I want to also sit at a sushi restaurant and and and drink my green tea surrounded by friends. Like, and so you need, you need to be able to utilize both of those. And in digital fatigue is not digital's fault. It's the lack of physical. And so moving forward, you know, I think there's, there's places for for both. But yeah, so you're going back to the building. How many services have you actually done or like how many weeks have you run? Where are you at right now?

This coming Sunday will be our third Sunday back in the building. Um, so we've been open for two weeks prior and we're we're just holding three services on a Sunday. We used to do a two-day Saturday Sunday split, but just resourcing and right now and all the things that we have to do to keep the building open and safe, then it just didn't make sense to. I mean, that makes total sense. But what, what are you, what, what has that, what has the, the, I keep wanting to say temperature and I find that incredibly inappropriate in this conversation. What, what's, what's been the tone? What's been the feeling? What, what's, what's the feel of of those services?

Oh, it's, it's so very different and I think we've all kind of acknowledged it. Um, because we watching, um, yeah, watching this, I don't want it to sound negative. I'm so, I'm, I want to be really careful because it's, it's not to me a negative watching on screen on experience and a lot of us and we joked about it as a team. You know, we're all watching different churches and filling our own cups and our own hearts with you know what God's doing ever in other places around the country. But we watch so many experiences, you know, even just our own for the past seven months. So I think subconsciously many people like envision themselves in the room with a crowd when they were watching that thing. So when they get to the building, it just, it feels really unsatisfactory. It feels they were like, we've been watching this for six months. Why does it feel weird to be here right now? And yet it does, uh, it just kind of feels funny. Um, so we're working on like how do we make it feel less, uh, just distant because it is, it's distant. It's, you know, it's anonymous whereas you know the anonymity is what we have all had for seven months. We almost don't want to be anonymous. We want our faces seen, you know, um, and so it's funny to think that I know more people. I, I can identify more people through our church online than I can in the building just because of the face mask and the distance. Like I can, I can actually physically me know more people right now digitally, you know, than I can in my in-person building. It's just such a funny thing to like reckon with. Um, but yet that's like one of the challenges for us now as a church, you know, managing, I'm sure a lot of people are in that boat, managing our division of resource for, uh, maintaining all the online stuff while we're back in person, which actually leads into exactly kind of the next question I want to ask is, well, and, and it's funny when I ask churches and have these conversations like there's no solid answer. People do not know how to answer the balance between physical and digital. The average answer is this is what we're trying right now and we're going to figure out kind of where we go from here. So yeah, experiment, try some different things. But as you're looking at your at your church, what is, what is that balance? What role is digital, is online going to continue to play for you and moving forward in the months to come?

I, I think and I, the way that I've seen it, I kind of see it playing out for us at Grace is I see it as a true discipleship tool. Um, I don't know if we'll ever be the really big online only campus or I don't know if we'll have, I, I we have had a lot of really good fruit, but um, I think for us the, the, the biggest win is taking all of our core, you know, pathway processes which are all really good from in person and finally making that transition to digitizing them and then using them well. That is the thing that we have in person. We have nailed, uh, and so translating that digitally now, that's been one of the biggest wins for us is, um, is really, you know, kind of honing in. That's what digital, that's, I think that's how we're going to manage right because we don't have the resourcing. We don't have the video editing. We don't have and hardly any of the equipment, you know, like we are very just kind of a lagging behind is again a term I use for the Northeast, um, in a lot of the things infrastructure-wise to make digital ministry really thrive. We don't have those things as much as we do have kind of the digital discipleship stuff. We can do that. So I think that's where we're gonna, um, because it's already naturally what we're good at, so we're just gonna kind of lean into those things, um, with our kind of the future of the online ministry.

Yeah, well, and honestly, it may be a little off topic, but if you're, if you're doing your physical services and you know and people are wanting to gather physically and it sounds like in this season with everything that New York's been going through like I think there's, there's an importance in gathering physically. One of the fidget mindsets something that would digital can do that could complement it would be that discipleship process. Like that's would be a very powerful online digital tool that would complement the physical services and not not conflict with it. So often so many churches, um, that are maybe you're, you would you say you were like how big are you? We have set eight nine campuses. We're about to have a tenth campus actually, um, in the fall if we ever get to launch, um, our West Point campus because that's a whole different thing. But, um, it's a whole different thing. It's a whole lot crazy. Yeah, we have a couple of those going. So, uh, attendance pre-covered, uh, between four like three thirty-five and four thousand. Your particular campus?

Oh, and my campus is about a thousand. Yeah, a little less. So you got about a thousand. You got a thousand at your campus. Lots of churches who are really at that thousand mark. They spend so much time and energy and resources on creating a physical service and a digital service because they want the digital to be at the same standard at the same level of what the physical. But what's unfortunate is right at that thousand mark you don't necessarily have the budget, the resources, the time, the staffing to really make that quality second service probably align digitally with as good of the quality as what you're doing physically. That's right. And so you're spending all those resources to make that work. Honest to God, I had this exact same conversation with a thousand person church earlier today. They're investing so much into the to get the services to be at the same quality and they're forgetting there's this whole other thing down here of discipleship and disciple making that if we can be more effective in that digital discipleship in the other 167 hours a week, that's right, and if we can do that, that's going to connect with physical people as well as digital people and that's going to raise the overall standard of your church and in time as discipleship gets better, evangelism, disciple making, and all of a sudden that thousand person kind of lit limit roof that you get, all of a sudden you grow past it because you did infrastructure instead of trying to do the the sexy thing with by doing that. That's right. That online service. So yeah, I love that.

The way that you're thinking and honestly like I have so much respect for you right now that of how you've pastorally met the needs of the people within your community uh in in ways that um you know probably not too many people in this country have really dealt with a situation like that I will have nightmares tonight of how I would have handled the guy whose wife just died um and I'm literally standing in front of him and I cannot hug him like I I don't know how I can I would be the pastor and that's and I'm a digital pastor there should be things that it's like oh I need I need to have a better word to say or a phrase or something like that but um I feel like I would have like given him a hug and then go home and like just cover every inch of my body with whatever the cleansing solution I I just I can't even I can't even fathom that and so how you have been able to pastor and shepherd uh in that environment is is phenomenal so thank you for being transparent here honest a little bit uh opening up and walking through this not that you would have been dishonest any other place but just kind of kind of sharing here with the audience um how some of the situations that you've gone through this is this is this been a great episode just tell me even a little bit here is any any closing thoughts as we're landing the plane here in any things we're wrapping up uh mainly a I appreciate you saying those things um Jeff you know this has been a very yeah unsexy is a good way you know it's just not been that and um you know and I didn't get into ministry for that but it it was just it was nice to uh be encouraged by you it was even it was even cool I would say and I appreciate you and your ministry I mean just your voice um through that you know just it was you through your Facebook page um but uh just thank you for asking you know thank you for asking what's what's the Holy Spirit doing uh we need voices of encouragement I think um you know I'm young and in ministry and I've been in it my whole I've been in church my whole life been working behind the scenes and if there's one thing we need more of is is more uh sharing more learning more encouraging um so I really appreciate what you've done um appreciate you asking me on here and just letting you know even for me this has been healthy uh you know to process so I appreciate uh you and I appreciate you getting to share I think the final thought is uh nothing we did was perfect and you know you said what would I do in those moments I still I have nightmares about it still right because I don't think I did it perfectly um but we did we did something you know and I think that's so um we were we were there you know and I think that's so much of what being the family of God is supposed to be is just be there and doesn't got to be pretty perfect uh you know or produced to just be there so uh I mean that's that's a powerful lesson you know even for today so often you know gosh I remember the first time in a church environment I heard the word excellence and honestly I twinged a little bit because I know what excellence means and sometimes excellence is unattainable and often we find ourselves following down a rabbit hole of trying to achieve this excellence instead of what God has for us and so um I if if maybe that's even the the takeaway maybe there's times for excellence but maybe there's times oh yeah just do the ministry that that God has has allotted us and how you've managed to to recognize and pastor and shepherd people in the situation Corey honestly um is is very encouraging for me um and and it was impactful just straight up in my own life as I'm trying to find people who can tell me how the Holy Spirit has moved and and the the twenty five plus you know whatever the the final number is of people who have passed away in context of your church and pastoring and shepherding physically digitally physically however possible in that season it's been such a weird hot mess of a thing you know the the methods don't matter it's it's that is that discipleship is that disciple making we're we're making noise when we're fighting for one side versus the other but and we've lost sight of of the person the people that we're literally trying to to do ministry with so I love that you you know have been able to tell some of these stories about you're putting people first in this um regardless of the methods and however you've managed to to do it so man thanks for the time thanks for for jumping on this uh for Corey uh this is Jeff with the Church Digital thanks for uh joining us here on the pod and we'll see you next time you all have a good day.