EP298 - Tom Pounder & Utilizing YouTube at Your Church

Just get started. The reality is your first video is you're going to look back five years

from now and say, oh my gosh, I can't believe we did that video. But you're only going to get

better as you keep on doing it. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast,

we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church. But more than tech for tech

itself, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciple making possible digitally? How should

we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital

space? Oh, and where does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all of this?

Whether you're a big or small church, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours

learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, we got episode 298. 298 Church Digital Podcast. Jeff here doing this podcast recording.

A live interview with Tom Pounder coming up more on that a little bit. By the way, I'm going to talk a

little softer, but maybe a little more passionate here with the podcast because my children are literally

asleep in the next room. It's summer here in Miami and they are all over the house. And evidently,

they stayed up late last night. So they're going to sleep in during the day. And it's about 940 a.m.

And I just want to jump in and wake them up and like, hey, get out of bed. But not quite. We'll do

that in a way. Anyway, hey, all of the Church Digital Podcast is brought to you by Riverside. Excited

about our partnership with Riverside. If you haven't checked it out, thechurch.digital.com slash

Riverside. By the way, they have a new feature inside Riverside. They come out with new stuff all the

time. Like every week when I talk about it, there's something new. And this is incredibly awesome and

scary both at the same time, Riverside. I hope you're listening to this. But the feature is, well,

so, you know, I've got, I don't know, hundreds of hours worth of my voice inside Riverside. And,

and so there's now an AI bot that I can type anything inside Riverside and artificial intelligence

will recreate my voice to say it. So, like I said, this is an incredibly cool feature and incredibly

scary both at the same time. You want to get your pastor to say something you need, you need to,

to edit a message or do a voiceover. Artificial intelligence can do that. The flip side is,

wow, what could that be done for not good means? So it's interesting. It's a challenge. You know,

we've talked about the ethics of artificial intelligence surrounding Sora. And, and I'm

excited for the feature. I'll use it for good. But it'll be interesting to see what the future will

hold and how this is used for good and for, let's just say, not good purposes moving forward. So,

hey, check it out. Thechurch.digital/Riverside. Assume the best until you don't have the ability to. So,

thechurch.digital/Riverside. If your church isn't using it, check it out. All sorts of features,

remote access, remote interviews, shorts, artificial intelligence, summarizations, chapter listings,

listings, like your church needs to be utilizing this for your weekend services and even beyond it.

And so, cool. Hey, we've got episode 300, the church digital podcast, 300. I've had 300 of these

conversations already. We've got 299. Actually, technically I've had 299 of these conversations

already. Episode 300, I'm recording very soon. And, uh, so I'm not going to publicly announce here on the

podcast who it's going to be, uh, because I've publicly leaked it on our discord. And so if you

are not on the church digitals discord, well, what the garbage is wrong with you go swing over,

open a web browser to discord.thechurch.digital. If you don't have a discord account, if you don't even

know what discord is, uh, it's a check it out discord.thechurch.digital, that'll help you set

up an account and we'll get you subscribed to our online community, jump in there, be part of it.

Oh, we've got close to 250 people in there right now. And, uh, lots of engagement, lots of fun,

lots of joking around. Megan Carter just went on a vacation and she just told us that

guardians of the galaxy is the best ride at Disney world. And she's not necessarily wrong. Although

I, I would value rise of the resistance more on my side and guardians. I think the guardian story

is better, but ride is rise. It's like three rides in one and we can get into that. Megan and I will

get into that fight at some point, uh, probably on a stream or something. We'll make it public. It'll be

fun. But, um, anyway, all sorts of conversations that are happening, uh, and, uh, early sneak peeks

and, uh, uh, community, uh, centered around digital discipleship, digital church, uh, digital ministry,

uh, lots of crazy people hanging out in discord.thechurch.digital, jump in there,

create an account and, uh, be part of the conversation. So here at 298, we're hanging out

with Tom Pounder. Tom is a TCD sidekick. Tom has been a friend for years going all the way

back to 2018, um, was, uh, probably honestly, one of the first

pastors. I would say maybe top 10, first 10 first digital pastors I met, um, when I, when I quit

Christ fellowship, my, my job that I had in 2018. And so, um, when I resigned and started the church

digital, Tom was, was doing why I'm sidekick, uh, podcast and digital bootcamp and a number of other

things. And just was kind of really excited, uh, to, to connect with me. And, and we just built a,

a friendship that, that equated to, um, Hey Tom, why don't you come on board with the church digital

and be TCD sidekick? And so Tom has, uh, come on with us and is doing a lot of work centered on it.

We'll talk about it in the podcast, but, but more than that, between his blogs and his podcasts,

he's currently a digital pastor at, um, new life church in the DC area and, uh, is doing some

incredible work in YouTube. And so, you know, it's been a while since Tom and I have hung out here on the

podcast. And so I wanted to have more of a casual conversation with my friend, kind of hanging out

and talking a little bit about YouTube. And so here we go. We got Tom Pounder, uh, content director

for the church, digital digital pastor for, uh, new life Christian and myself, Jeff with the church

digital in a conversation, kind of calling your church hacking YouTube. And, uh, if Google hears that

we're hacking YouTube, please don't send Google bots to, you know, spam me because I'm not

literally saying we're going to hack YouTube. It's more of like a life hack. We're going to get

stuff out of it, not, you know, take down the system. I love YouTube. I don't want to destroy it.

I love Google. I don't want to destroy you. Although I'm not sure Google's, you know, do no harm,

uh, mantra is still valid today. Like it maybe it was valid a couple of years ago, but I, I just,

I don't know, man, AI is going to take over the world. That's another conversation. Got serious.

Tom, Tom's going to teach us how to hack YouTube here on the church digital podcast. Here you all go.

So we're, we're streaming this live on, on discord, of course, and having the conversation. We've got

white beard and a flat cap in here. And, uh, so white beard DC is my hometown. And, uh, yeah,

you mentioned that on the call today and I was like, oh yeah, Tom, Tom and Tom from, from the same

language. Tom, you were Tom Pounder. You were originally from DC, Maryland.

Yeah. Uh, just outside of DC in the Northern Virginia area, which if you look at Virginia,

there's the Northern Virginia section, which is about four, maybe five counties. And then there's

the rest of Virginia. And so Northern Virginia is so different from the rest of Virginia. It could

probably be its own state there. It's that different. So what it's more urban versus rural.

Well, it's more suburban. The rest of Virginia is more like rural area outside of like Richmond or

Newport news Norfolk area. It's, there's a lot of ruralness in, well, Hey, uh, so we're doing a

live stream here, a live recording of the TCD podcast. And, um, it's, uh, so I've got,

I mean, honestly, Tom Pounder went, when I started the church digital in 2018, stepped out of the

church job. I was, I was working Tom Pounder was probably the number two guy to reach out to me.

Uh, you know, I probably Jay Cranda was number one. Um, but Tom was, was shortly and she,

Jay and I were friends at the time, but I didn't know Tom from Adam and Tom's like, Hey, why don't we

do a podcast and talk about it? And so jump, jumped on with him and, and he's like, you know,

ask me questions about the church digital. And honestly, in 2018, I had no idea what I was doing

with any of this stuff. And so like, it was a really, uh, start from scratch kind of approach.

And, and, um, like we've just, we've kept that relationship over the years, which has been a lot of

fun. And, uh, and Tom, you know, at the time was doing YM sidekick, which used to be youth ministry

sidekick. And then when he went digital, it was your ministry sidekick. Um, and, uh, I, you know,

I think a couple of years ago, I convinced them, Hey, why don't you come on board with the church

digital and let's, uh, let's make it the TCD sidekick. And so that's, that's where we are today.

TCD sidekick, Tom Pounder, you know, that would, there's the running joke that that would make me

Batman and, and he would be Robin. I would be the Lone Ranger and he would be Toto. I would be

Tonto. Um, Tonto, uh, you know, I'm currently singing. Yeah. Tonto white beard. Does the other

Tom beat you to it? Uh, white beard corrected me of course. Uh, but I'm currently singing the Jeff

Moore, the Ranger and Toto Laurel and Hardy, the Batman and Robin Snoopy and Charlie Snoopy

and Charlie is, uh, you know, although the sidekick is really more of the, what's the bird's

name of Woodstock? Woodstock. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know that you, Tom, you, you can appreciate

a good Jeff Moore song from the, from the early 1990s, can't you? I think so. Maybe possibly,

uh, you know, I, I, I love nineties. I'm all into the nineties, but do you not know Jeff

Moore singing a friend like you? Yeah, I'm going to have to say no, I, I don't.

Or I know the, the, the toy story song, you know, you've got a friend in me, but I don't

know. Tom, get off the stage. We're done. This, this interview is officially over before

it even got started. Google search Jeff Moore. Jeff Moore, G E O F F M O O R E. Jeff Moore

singing a friend like you. Oh, I do know Jeff Moore. I do know Jeff. Yeah. Like a student

ministry guy. You have, do not know this. I am just, we need to pray for the lost souls

that have been under Tom's career in ministry and in the Washington area. Like this is a,

I, I was one of those, I was one of those guys that didn't really go to a lot of the Christian

concerts. Like there were a few that I would go to, but you know, we didn't really, I didn't

really take my students to the Christian concerts. I will say this. One of the first concerts I

ever remember going to, um, this is dating me is that my mom and her friends like took my

brothers and I to go see Sandy Patty, uh, at one of the arenas. And we listened to Sandy Patty.

I got, I got, I got no words. He's quoting Sandy Patty, but he's not referencing Jeff Moore.

I don't even, I, I, um, I'm, I'm at a loss here today. So, um, well, Hey, we are my, my first

concert was Skid Row. My first concert was Petra. Uh, so white beard saying, uh, Skid Row. Uh, my first

concert was Petra, um, uh, was the, uh, beyond belief tour. They did a concert. Oh yeah. I love that.

I'm actually, it was, yeah, yeah. They actually did a, uh, a VCR, a VCR release of that tour,

uh, the VHS tape. And, uh, I'm on the, the concert. I'm, I'm on the VHS. You can, you can see me.

They did like a shot of the audience and I was over like right near the bass player who was like

jamming out. And so it's like, you know, I was like much thinner kid that I am now, much skinnier kid

than I am now. Justin Smith and associations. I worked that tour. Okay. Very cool. Um, wait,

you worked, uh, the, the beyond belief tour down in, in, so down in Miami. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

So I was, I was in seventh grade maybe when that, when that concert was there, another conversation,

white beard evidently was, was there white beard. And I have met like physically 40 times in life,

just never actually talked to each other. The other, our paths have crossed so much. It's amazing.

Um, and, uh, so my, my, my, my, Hey Calvary just walks in. Uh, so we'll have to get serious. Cause now

we've got like real people coming into order to hear about, uh, YouTube hacking. But, um, I will say

that my, my most recent, this is, this is how uncool I am these days. Um, my most recent concert

is the spice girls. I have not been to a concert in 20 years. Easy. I went to the last spice girls

us concert in, uh, in the year 2000. I w I was a radio DJ at the time. I got free tickets and ended

up going with some friends. I was the oldest male that was not a father at the spice girls concert.

There were dads who were taking their little daughters to go see scary spice and, and posh spice.

And, uh, and then there was me. Uh, and yeah, I'll tell you what I really, really want. Believe me.

I, I sing that song all the time to the kids and they, they're like, daddy, shut up. Uh, so I'm going

to go see, I just got tickets to Chris Tomlin in the fall. So I won't be able to share my, my, my, uh,

my spice girl story anymore. Ironically, uh, the person who came in that I was like, Hey, we've got

to behave. We've got someone like watching, uh, as soon as I said, spice girls, they left. So I think

that's scary. We do have a podcast. Yeah, I'm out there. They're talking about, about scary and sporty

and posh and whatever the other one was. Who was the other one? Uh, uh, baby spice. I think there was

baby spice baby. Yes. Scary, sporty, posh and baby. There you go. Tom Pounder knows his spice girls,

but does not know Jeff more in the distance. Um, all right. So here's what I need us to do. Um,

you know, TCD, we launched the discord channel and it's at discord. Uh, the church, digital.com.

If you are not part of the discord channel, like I, I encourage you guys, anybody listening to this

podcast, subscribe to the TCD discord channel, discord of web browser,

go to web browser, discord.thechurch.digital. That'll walk you through creating the account.

That'll get you in to subscribe to the TCD server. There's a channel in there called TCD podcast,

where we're going to talk all about the podcast. So I want you to find the TCD podcast channel on

discord. And I want you to publicly rip and humiliate Tom Pounder for not knowing who Jeff more in the

distances. Like I just am, I'm, I'm, I'm at a loss here, right, right up front. Okay. That was a very

long plea to get people to sign up for the discord. So we've got, we got, I mean, at the time of this

recording, 240 in here, it's been really fun. The German, the German, um, church network just,

just joined in here today. And so I started getting notification. I'm an admin. So anytime somebody

says something, I get notified and, uh, I, I started getting all these pings and it's Simon Dirks,

who's a German doing like posting in German, some of the stuff he's doing on, on the channels. It's

like, ah, I don't recognize that language. And that's okay. It's like, we're just going to,

we're going to move on with that, but it's man, it's going to be awesome in here, uh, with that.

And so Tom, we're going to talk YouTube, right? Yeah. That's the plan.

Listen, I'm, I'm all for it. All right. So we are, um, Tom is the, the, the community,

the content director for the church digital, and obviously has been spending a lot of time

growing and developing the church digitals, uh, subscriber base. I mean, Tom, I may be making

up numbers, but you, you took it from like 300 to 800 man. Right. Like, uh, over, um, over the span

of time when you were running that, like it was a significant jump. I know, I don't think it was

quite 300. I think it was more than that, but we did have a big jump, you know, uh, during the summer

months last year and into the fall. So yeah, we, we did jump a bunch. No, he's, he grew the TCD

subscriber base by 5,000 users, maybe 8.7 million users, uh, overnight. Like it was incredible.

Uh, the most popular video. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I'm not going to lie. The most popular video on TCD's

YouTube channel before Tom was involved was I posted a video of, uh, the CEO of Amazon talking about what

Amazon was going to be back in like, I don't know, like the late nineties. And, uh, I wrote about it

in a blog and for some reason that was, that just, it was like a 60 second video. It's not even a short.

It was like that, just a video. You know, that still gets views, man. Every day. I mean, every week

when we check the YouTube stats, that's still getting views. Well, it's amazing to me that it, um,

first off that, that it's got that much legs. Um, secondly, that people were subscribing to the

church digital. I mean, if you look at the subscriber rate based off of that video, you can see it's

like, people are subscribing to the church digital based off of one 60 second. Like, do they have any

idea what else we talk about on here? Like, just because you, you think that I'm a, whatever Jeff

Bezos fan, uh, does not mean that you're going to like the other content. And so it's, it's,

it's always interesting when that happens, but, but Tom, uh, you know, in addition, digital pastor

at a new life community in Washington, DC. And so, you know, give us, give us a, an update a little

bit specifically how you're using YouTube with, with the church. What, what, what are some lessons

that you're learning? Yeah. So let me just give you a quick little history of, uh, with us with

YouTube is that, you know, we were doing YouTube for a long time, well before COVID. And we were

basically just putting up our sermons online. And, um, and that was fine. You know, it was a way to get

some content on there. And then we'd make some funny videos and we posted on there, but we were

never really intentional about our YouTube stuff until we hit COVID. And, and in Virginia, you know,

our churches were shut down in Virginia probably for like maybe a month to two months. It was on the

shorter end of the shutdowns. They weren't long gated shutdowns during COVID, but it was at that time

where, since we weren't able to have regular connections with people at our church, our lead

pastor said, we need to be getting God's word out to people every single day. And so he had the idea

of that, um, him and the other ministers, myself included, we could do daily devotionals and that

we would be able to post up on YouTube and then also send out on via email. And so that's what we did.

And at that point, we probably had 500, 600 subscribers on YouTube. Um, but at that point,

we started then growing significantly. People started watching our videos from our congregation,

but then if you look at the stats, then you could see that more people that were not subscribers

were discovering our videos and they were being encouraged in their faith during this time.

And so we started doing that, continue to do that. And I would, I would mix it up a little bit and,

and, um, share some worship videos. Or if we had other, other fun videos, we were kind of a,

we like to have fun at our church. And so if there's ever anything fun that happens,

I like to cut it and put it up on YouTube just as a way for people to, to get a taste of who we are

as a church. But then about two years ago, maybe a little bit longer, we started, one of our initiatives

at the church was that we wanted people reading the Bible every day. Um, and so we want to encourage

them in their faith and say, Hey, listen, we're going to text you. And we use the text and church

platform. We're going to text you a daily Bible verse or a passage, and we're going to encourage

you, you in your faith. And so we started doing that. And then as we were going along with that,

we realized, Hey, what if we just did a quick little YouTube short out of this? You know,

a lot of people are watching YouTube shorts or they're watching TikToks or watching Instagram reels

and they're laughing and they're having fun at just the different things, the silly stuff that goes on

with these short videos. And we said, why don't we just, um, you know, give the hope of Christ

into people and hopefully people will be encouraged in their faith. And again, at that point, YouTube

was just getting into the YouTube shorts. And so we thought, let's do that. And, um, let's start

doing daily YouTube shorts. They're only 60 seconds long. I mean, they're not going to be very

difficult. You just take a passage, you share a thought about it and encourage them in Christ.

And the remarkable thing about it was this one where we got, it wasn't just for the main ministers

that were able to share these thoughts. We got volunteers to share these thoughts. We've got

other staffers who were like not ministers share their thoughts. And we got a tremendous response out

of this where, again, at first we were starting to get 50, 60 views. Then we started getting 100 to 200

views. And now we're up to four or 500 views of, uh, um, a devotional that is shared. And what ended up

happening was, again, we grew when we started doing these longer form devotionals. But then when we

started doing YouTube shorts, we grew significantly, like we were like, so when we first started before COVID,

we were at around 500 or so. We're at now up to 1800, almost 1900 subscribers. And we're adding to that

number all the time. And it's in large part because of the devotionals that we're doing. And again, we're not

doing anything spectacular here. We're just sharing the word of God with people. And people are being

encouraged and they're subscribing to our channels. And then we feel like, gosh, we're reaching so many

people. And again, our, our, our weekly reach, like we have at our church, we probably have like 700

people that come to our church service every single Sunday. We're reaching three to four to 5,000 people

a week on YouTube with the hope of Christ. And we're like, we're, we're tripling that what we normally get

on Sundays and we get to encourage people every single day. So that we're using YouTube shorts as

a way to really just share the love of Christ in a devotional format to not just encourage the people

that go to our church, but also the people around our church and around the world.

Yeah, that's, that's so good. While you were talking, Tom, I just, I just pulled up our,

um, the, the church digitals analytics, trying to, to compliment what you're talking about. Um, you

know, over the past 28 days, 75% of new viewers, new viewers to the church digital have been on

shorts, uh, compared to, to 25% of, uh, of, of, of normal videos. Um, returning videos,

most interestingly is probably 66% videos, uh, with shorts coming back around. And, and so like

from a, uh, from an acquisition, um, yeah, so I'm just doing a quick math in my head. 70%

of all subscribers within the last 28 days have been from shorts for the, for the church digital. And so

as you're looking at, uh, acquiring new eyes and getting some ideas out, um, in, in front of new

people, uh, like shorts is, um, is, uh, is not a, it's not a new concept, but, but to be honest,

it's one that, you know, a lot of churches are not taken in physical churches as well as digital

churches is one that we're not taking advantage of. And so it's, it's beautiful.

Yeah, Jeff, I, I think, I think we overcomplicate it sometimes, you know, um, where I think all

churches think they have to be a big church to be able to do something like this, or they have to

be a well-produced video that have to do something like this. And the reality is what, what COVID taught

us with TikTok and Instagram reels is that people were just sitting on their couch doing videos and

people were like watching them and being encouraged by them. And so we don't have to overcomplicate it.

We just have to share the word of God with them. You don't have to do anything trendy or funny. If

you want to, great, you know, but by you sharing the word of God, people, people need to hear that

hope. And so we just said, we're going to be about discipleship. We're going to be about taking people

so that they can take a next step in their faith, no matter where they're at. And God has really

blessed it. Yeah, that's, that's, that's so true. I know, um, you know, churches overcomplicate things

like that's, that's a surprise, man. I don't know any church. That's, that's crazy. Um, but, uh,

you know, quality is, you know, it's, it's always quality versus quantity. Right. And, um, you know,

some, some communications directors pushing for more quantity, some, you know, some creative directors

pushing for better quality. Um, it's, there's, there's always that tension between the two. Um,

this is what, I mean, what I, as we were actually just having this conversation, I want to say

yesterday on, on the church digital discord channel with, uh, with the increase of artificial

intelligence and, and that's starting to get into, was it Sora and now AI being able to even create

and edit video and, and piece together quality video that's artificially intelligent, uh, infused.

Um, this is what I think is going to happen. I think you're going to see a massive shift back

towards very simple and very authentic, um, video communication. Like, you know, when AI artificial

intelligence can make anybody look like they're producing well-produced, well-thought-out, uh,

pieces of, of content, to be honest, and, and hopefully this isn't like spoiling it for people,

like content's going to end up being devalued when AI can do so much of it and anybody can,

can sound, uh, um, intelligent. Um, it's not, it's not that method that's going to stand out.

It's authenticity. It's, it's relationships, it's connections. It's, um, it like, that's,

what's going to resonate well. And, and, and to Tom's point, you know, having a, um, a simple,

you know, camera rig where you're able to turn around and produce stuff to connect with people

versus prove your, how quality you are off of the editing and producing. Um, which once again,

in digital ministry, like that opens up so many opportunities for, even for small and

medium-sized churches to, to now start to engage better because the, you know, the benefit I

remember, I'm not going to tell you the name of this church. I had a conversation with a digital

pastor about this at a, um, let's call it a giga church. Let's call it one of the top five, uh,

churches size wise in America. That's why I'm not going to out this church. Um, but the digital

pastor was beside himself. He was stuck. He was frustrated because of the quality controls that

were in place for him to even do a simple, uh, uh, selfie video to communicate with his people.

He's like, Jeff, I've got literally Tom, you'll appreciate this. He's like, Jeff, I got to work

three weeks in advance because by the time it gets through the brand group and, uh, the content group

and the script, he's like, he's like, literally I got to write the script three weeks out and we're

shooting stuff two weeks out. And by the time it gets through everything, it may be published, you

know, 21 days from when, when I wrote the script. And I was like, you know, I was like, well, that's

not very like authentic. And he's like, yeah, it's, it's really hard to be authentic when you're trying

to figure out how you're going to be authentic, like four weeks later, um, how it's going to sit

then. And that that's, that's some of the traps that were all kind of built up here within our

church systems. Go ahead, Tom. Yeah. You're, you're hitting the nail right on the head, Jeff.

And that's what we discovered here with our, our church as well. Our creative director, and I love

him, you know, he's a great guy to work with. He was so concerned about the, the production of it.

It didn't seem real. And what I finally had to tell him was like, we just have to get started.

We have to go do this and let's just try it out. And because we saw the results of people just being

authentic, people want authenticity. They don't want a production. And I think that's where we've

kind of muddied the waters here is, and again, what COVID showed us was people just wanted real people

doing real things, talking about real life issues. They don't need this high quality thing. I, I can,

I can go and do a video and my hair be a little bit messy and that's okay because they're being

encouraged in their faith. They're not looking to see, you know, my whole, if my whole face is

zit proof, you know, whatever. Like I watch videos now, it's kind of back to what you say about AI.

I watch videos now and I'm like, that person is too perfect looking. This has to be AI. And, and so I'm

like doubting everything I'm watching because of what AI is doing. And I think people are going to get

really sick and tired of it really quick. And they're going to come back to say, Hey,

I need someone who's going to be real with me. I do like, I go on walks a lot at my, around my

neighborhood. And I feel like God speaks to me during those walks. And I'll come back during,

after one of those walks and I'll jot down some notes and I'll be, I'll get right in front of my

camera right there and say, I'm going to do a quick little devotional. It's only five or six minutes.

I'll do this devotional, but I'll cry sometimes. I'll stutter sometimes, but the reality is that

people, it will connect with people because they can relate to that and they can understand that.

And I feel like that's what they want. They want to be able to connect with you.

They don't need your production, man.

Yeah. That's, that's some great insight there. Um, you know, I, I feel the tension of,

of quality versus quantity. I do. Um, you know, I, I'm, I'm wearing my yellow hat to represent the

church digital. I could very easily, my resi hats literally right there. And so I can swap that out

and, and quality is hugely important when you're broadcasting your online church services and like

things like that, you know, it's, it's an important for me to, to wrap, but you know, I think you,

but just like, you know, you swap hats, you just, I think there's, there's different times for,

for different seasons. And if everything has to go through the rigmarole of, of, um, quality,

then you're not, you're going to lose that authenticity piece. And so I, I think that's,

that's, that's a wise takeaway from that. And so, you know, Tom, we're going to get into,

um, you know, shorts. Uh, well, I mean, I'm going to, let's, you know, even just ask that up front.

So if we're talking shorts, cause you're, you're on the front lines here and you've, you've grown

your, your, your subscriber base significantly. Are you looking at, um, like shorts wise, is this

original content that's shot by you shot by others? Are you taking like edits of the sermon? Like

where are you getting your content from to make these shorts? Yeah. So it's a variety of different

things. So most of its original content where if, if we're doing a devotional based, we give the

people the scripture and we give them the freedom to say, Hey, pick a point out of this scripture that

you want to talk about so that we can then send it. And then they send it to me. If it's over a

minute, you know, with shorts, like it can't be over a minute. If it's one Oh one, it doesn't count

as a short on YouTube. It has to be exactly one minute or under. And so, um, they send it to me.

I'll sometimes edit it a little bit, maybe take out something if it's a little bit longer,

but then I'll just post it on YouTube and share it. Um, uh, I like to share our devotionals at

midnight of that day. So at 12 o'clock in the morning, so that by the time I wake up,

people are already being encouraged in their faith and you can kind of see the view count.

Um, but then other shorts that I like to do are, we will do some funny shorts every now and then.

And if there's a, if there is a trend, I did say that we don't always do trends, but if there's a

trend out there that people are like enjoying, sometimes I'll get some people together and we'll

do it together. And I'll either have the videographer put it together in a short or I'll do it.

But then the other one that we like to do is take our sermons and I take our sermons and

I come up in the longer form kind of times, like two to three minutes, but then I'll also

look for ones that I can do like one minute shorts and share those. And I tend to share those

in the afternoon times as a way to kind of offset the morning devotional short that I send out.

I'll send it these, um, these sermonettes and, uh, post it on there and encourage people to go

watch the full video. Yeah. This is, this isn't interesting. Now what's the balance between

a sermon? Um, like how many of the sermon cuts do you do versus how many of the, of the devotional

thoughts? So we do a devotional thought every single day. I mean, we've been doing them

every single day and we'll continue to push those out. The sermon ones we do probably about like two,

maybe sometimes three a week. Um, and what I do is I'll listen to the sermon, take notes on it.

And then after Sunday, Sunday afternoon, I'll start cutting it up and then kind of scheduling

out times where I can share those, those sermon clips out and, you know, the shorts out as well.

Yeah. I mean, I love this because you, you've already balanced through the, the, the tension

of, uh, content outside of the weekend service, you know, so often, you know, there's so much

energy that goes into the weekend service and let's figure out how to maximize that. And so you're

wanting to, to use more and more of that. Um, but you've already looked at doing original content,

um, for your online utilizing, um, the, uh, devotional thought. Like, was that a, was that

a hard conversation? Um, do, do you run kind of administration on that? Trying to schedule people

like what's, what's maybe the responsibility of that looks like? So you're working with volunteers

now at this point, right? Like there's, there's going to be struggles I would imagine, uh, in

addition to joys, like talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah. So what I ended up doing was

I created a Google sheet and then I kind of mapped out the, the, um, the, the scriptures that I wanted

people to use. And so some, some of these ones that we did, like right now we're in the midst of a Bible

on a year plan. So I've mapped out all the scriptures for the whole entire year. Um, but then there have

been other times when I do like a one month or two month series and I'll still map it out, put it in a

Google sheet and then I'll talk about the scripture and I'll have people sign up. And the, at first I

was a little bit more strict on who I wanted to sign up for it. And so I only asked a few people,

but then as we got in a rhythm of doing it, I started asking those people, okay, who would

we ask now? Who else could we ask? And what has been really kind of cool, Jeff, is that

our lead pastor, we have a teaching team, but we're always looking to expand our teaching team on Sunday

mornings. And so what our lead pastor has done is he's used these shorts and even these longer form

devotionals that they can come up with and use it as a, almost like a primer for, okay, can these people

do sermons on Sunday morning? Well, could they be a part of the teaching team? And so we've used it as

almost like a testing ground for them as well to, for them to get to, you know, practice, uh, giving a

message and collecting some thoughts together. And, and we'll use that as kind of a reference point of

like, Hey, listen, is this person getting better with sharing the content?

Very, very cool. So who's, um, so are people like, are you just saying out to the audience at church?

Hey, like if you're interested, sign up, are you handpicking people? Uh, it sounds like handpicking

people's part of it, but like as a general rule, how are you finding people?

Yeah. Again, we do want to be like, again, where I think people appreciate authenticity and whatnot.

We were, we're handpicking people more so than asking in general. So we're not making this a Sunday

morning announcement or anything like that. But again, if, if it's someone that we feel like, Hey,

this person's been growing in Christ, we'd like for them to share them. Then I'll ask them. And then I

have a list, like a list of criteria. Hey, when you're recording a short, we want you to record

it vertically. We need you to keep it 30 seconds long. We want to make sure that you have appropriate

lighting. It could be daytime lighting, or it could be the, uh, um, a ring camera, ring camera light

kind of deal. And so I give them a list of about five or six bullet points for them to consider.

And then I'll have them submit it to me at least two days prior to when it's supposed to go live

so that I can look over it and take it, take a look at it. And if I, if I'm like, ah, this one's not

quite, you know, good, you know, we'd love for you to try it again. We'll ask them to resubmit it.

Okay. Now, what, what I'm not hearing is what I'm hearing is YouTube. What I'm not hearing is

YouTube. And then we post it on Instagram and we post it on Facebook and we post it on TikTok.

Are you, uh, are you only isolating these shorts on YouTube? Are you omni-channel approach and

putting it on other channels? Like what's your, what's your distribution strategy?

Yeah, we're omni-channel where our, our, what we can, what we care most about is YouTube,

but we also post it on Instagram reels and we do put it on TikTok. Occasionally we'll put it on

Twitter just as a, Hey, here's a little quick encouragement for you. Occasionally we'll put

it on Facebook, but again, it's primarily YouTube. Um, then we, we also share on TikTok and reels.

What's engagement like on, I mean, Instagram is, uh, there's a ton of people on IG, uh, TikTok. I mean,

obviously there's, there's a ton of people there. It may not be your typical audience, but they're

there. Um, what's been receptivity on an engagement looks like on some of those other platforms compared

to YouTube? Cause it sounds like you're favoring YouTube. I'm kind of curious why compared to some

of the others. We we've seen the most significant growth and the most comments on YouTube on TikTok

and Instagram, we get likes, but we don't get a lot of engagement. You know, we don't get people

chatting or anything like that. Whereas on YouTube we'll get the trolls, you know, and we'll get,

you know, that, but here's the other thing with YouTube that makes us what makes my focus most is

that YouTube really is evergreen content. Whereas you can scroll through stuff on TikTok and reels,

but you're not going to see something that was posted a year ago or two years ago.

We have a video, uh, and this was one of our shorts on a random passage in Genesis that want,

that our crew, our communications director did. She did it. We still get comments today. Like in fact,

yesterday we got a comment on the video that she did two years ago. And that's the thing why I,

I really value YouTube more is because the content is evergreen. We'll see stuff. I even see digital

shorts that we've done on the church digital dating back from a few weeks ago. YouTube's going to give

you what you're looking for. And they have so many videos that they can choose from that they can

serve you. Whereas I feel like TikTok and reels, they don't do that. It's more TikTok and reels is more

in the here and now. Yeah. I mean, that's true. I'm actually, I'm looking at that on TCD analytics,

just even to quantify that, um, 60% of people come off the shorts feed. So that's giving you what's new.

Um, 17, 18% is browser feature, um, which is, uh, people are looking for something. And so 17%,

um, or, of views are off of that. Um, 7% are external. That would be like the embed codes on

blogs and, and, uh, our podcast pages and stuff like that, which is significant. Uh, 5% on channel

pages, um, and then 11% zero. So between, uh, channel pages and browser, you're looking at 23%

of views are coming from methods that is the viewer looking for information as opposed to the system

pushing it. Um, you know, and really, I mean, that's why systematically, I think YouTube is such a

powerful channel, uh, powerful platform. It's, it's, I don't think it's old news, but you know,

YouTube obviously is owned by Google, but if you Google right now is the largest search engine on

the planet. But if you were to separate Google and YouTube, um, YouTube would be the second largest

search engine on the planet. Like the number of searches that people do on YouTube to find something,

to do something, um, is, uh, is, um, astronomical much more than whatever number three is like,

and I don't even know if YouTube, YouTube, that's funny. If Yahoo is number three, I'm not sure who

number three is in that equation, but because the, the one, two punch of YouTube and Google is just so

high. Um, do you, as you look at, um, you know, just even talking about that, have you done any work

and I'm genuinely asking this with like SEO or ads, um, the Google ad grant, like, have you tried to

balance any of that towards YouTube or, or what, what has a new life been thinking or doing in that

space? We, truthfully, we have not, uh, we've talked about YouTube ads for a while now. We just

have not pulled the trigger on it, but again, we're, we're, we love it so much. I don't know why we

haven't pulled the trigger. And partly it's my blame. I mean, we should be pulling the trigger on,

on YouTube ads. Uh, it just, it just hasn't happened.

No, I, I can feel that pain. Uh, and you know, a lot of times churches get, you know, neck deep in

day to day and week to week, uh, towards that. I ask cause I've, I've recently started, um, a friend,

a new friendship with, uh, some organizations that are in that space. And so to be honest, I'm looking

for some Guinea pigs, uh, to work with. And so if you're interested, uh, if anybody's interested in

that evidently Tom is, as he's pointing at himself on YouTube, um, feel free to, uh, to hit me up and

we, we can have that conversation. My phone, my phone number, you can text me four, eight, four,

three, two, four, eight, seven, two, four. Well, um, Tom, do you like, I know Tom, you're relatively new

to, um, uh, what am I saying here to a Riverside to the platform? We, we, you know, we got you over

here. You were, you were one of the holdouts within the podcast network and, and we're glad

to get you officially on board, uh, with, with Riverside. But, um, have you toyed much with the

AI on there in, in creating shorts with, uh, with the videos or, um, like what, what's been some

experience falling back on AI to even create some of this, uh, short content for you?

Yeah. So, I mean, the reality is that we have a podcast at our church and because of

Riverside and because of Jeff, you pushing me to explore this more, we've gone all in on

Riverside and we're recording the podcast on Riverside. And the beautiful thing about it

is again, the, the, the, the clincher for me was the fact that it was able to create shorts

just like that for me. And, you know, we, I get done with an interview with someone from

our church, give it a few minutes. I hit the magic clip button and automatically they come

up with like four or five clips for me to use that I can post on social media as a way to

encourage people to check out this podcast episode that we're talking about. So, I mean, yes,

it, it, the, having a platform that can help you create the shorts with using AI is invaluable.

It really, truly is amazing. And the quality is great. So yeah, I highly recommend something like

that. Yeah. It's Riverside has been a phenomenal and just even within the past

six months, I mean, we, we've had a sponsorship with Riverside, uh, the church digital has going this

year. And it's, it's incredible to me how much they've improved the software, how much, not that it

was bad before, but, but like when we're talking, uh, feature upgrades and, and, and development roadmaps

and like what they're, what they're doing to the platform is incredible. Um, and they just signed a

deal with a Spotify podcast that, you know, now, yeah. So now Spotify is in anchor. Like you can't

anchor used to have in Spotify used to have a podcast editing software built into their platform.

And, um, I think effective June, um, they're shutting that down entirely. And instead they're

driving everybody to Riverside. And so if you want to like edit your podcast now and you put in, you edit

through, um, and you, you distribute through Spotify or anchor, like it's now, it's now all Riverside.

And so like, I, you know, I don't know what venture capitalists has been funding or what money looks

like for those guys, but they are, they're, they're going for it. And, uh, some of the AI additions,

some of the, um, this is, this is, this is fun, Tom, but it's been really cool. Even on the shorts,

it's been cool. But I don't know if you saw this feature yet, Tom. Um, you may not get it yet

because I don't know what you've got the library built up, but I've got, you know, I've got 150,

200 episodes worth of podcast material in Riverside. And so like, it, it knows me very well. Um, so much

so that I have, uh, the ability now to have my voice in artificial intelligence. So I can now type

whatever I want into Riverside and, um, artificial intelligence will make my voice say it back in,

in a, in a audio file that can be placed on a podcast. Um, and I don't, I don't, I don't,

I don't know that that's good or bad. I mean, as I saw that, I was like, I'm not sure how I feel

about this, but, um, in the moment it's pretty cool. Uh, and so if, you know, if I wanted to get

my Bart Simpson, Simpson voice on, or I don't know why Bart Simpson came to mind, I was going to say

Superman, but, um, you know, which is DC. I don't know why that came to mind either. Forgive me.

But, um, you know, the fact is, is that, you know, Riverside has been investing a lot. So if you're

interested in more about, uh, Riverside, uh, check out the church.digital slash Riverside and that'll

get you connected over to, uh, the nice people at Riverside. And so, well, Tom, um, as we're

hacking up YouTube and trying to figure out how to get, uh, churches, uh, to utilize it better and

improve, man, any other tips or tidbits or suggestions here? Yeah. I'm going to just say,

just get started. The reality is your first video is you're going to look back five years

from now and say, Oh my gosh, I can't believe we did that video. But it, you're only going to get

better as you keep on doing it. The first videos I did, the first shorts I did, I look back and I'm

cringe. I'm like, Oh, my hair was terrible. Like what was I doing with these baggy eyes? But the reality

is that people are going to listen to those shorts or those devotionals or whatever you're producing

and they're going to be encouraged in their faith. And again, as we're going out to seeking to make

disciples of all nations, we can use YouTube that all people all over the world can hear the message

and hope of Christ. The thing is we have to get out of our own way and just get started and just start

experimenting with it, testing it out and seeing how God uses it.

Yeah, it's, that's so true. It's, it's the version one is better than version none. You'll sit around

and talk about how, um, you know, you want to be better. You need better assets and, um, but just,

just get started. It's funny. I agree. Like, you know, we're on episode 298 of the podcast. Episode 300

is a couple of weeks away. I'm actually filming it a week from yesterday. And, um, and, and so like

super exciting, you know, landmark road mark ahead. Um, but the first, the first five podcast episodes

we did were horrendous. Like, I mean, you can go back and listen to them. I don't even, I think they

were so bad. I opted not to put the video on, on YouTube. Um, like it, it just was, was gross. And,

uh, like, you know, and it just, it was, I mean, like one of the things was like the, the bookmark,

the bookshelves behind me were empty. Like it just had crap. Like it just, it was just, you know,

I, but it was, you know, uh, I tell the story all the time. Ray Diarmus was, was the voice in my

head saying version one is better than version nine. Just, just do it, Jeff. Just do it, Jeff. Just do it.

Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. And I finally was like, okay, that's fine. And so,

yeah, we got better. Um, and version two is better than what version one was and version three is

better. And we, you know, we've made, you know, slowly incremental changes over time instead of

trying to get it perfection right out the door, you know, perfection out the door. It doesn't really

exist digitally. Um, that's a, that's a physical limitation that a lot of us try to do. Hey,

Cam, uh, Cam Huxford just walked in. You know, a lot of us try to do, uh, physical perfection. Um,

but digitally it's much more about that connection rather than the perfection aspects of it. And so

awesome. Well, Hey, Tom, as we're, uh, landing the plane here, maybe you want to talk about what

you're doing with TCD sidekick and digital bootcamp and some of the other things that you're doing

digitally. You know, with TCD sidekick, the podcast, I do episodes every other week. And what I like

to do is just bring on people who have something that they're doing digitally, that they're really

excited about and that God's doing, and really just talk about that. And so we usually send it around

a topic of the, of the day, but, um, yeah, so we have that and those are short 30, 35 minute

conversations where people can be encouraged in their digital ministry. Again, I feel like I'm the

sidekick to this person who's sharing their, their story, how God's using that. Also with the church,

digital blog. I mean, we've got some great blogs coming up and ways to encourage you in your digital

ministry. I'm excited about different voices that are coming on, you know, Annie May shares,

Jeff's got some stuff. Um, we've got other voices that are, are coming up where they're just sharing

just practical things that you can do for your digital and online ministry, whether it's metaverse

or online, you know, I'm excited about that kind of stuff. I'm excited about the learning communities

that, that some of you guys are leading and those are like fantastic opportunities to grow.

Again, the digital ministry community is so important because oftentimes we can feel so alone

when you're part of a learning community, you, you realize, Hey, you're not alone. And there's other

people experimenting and learning this stuff as well. So, you know, those are some of the things we,

I get really passionate and excited about. Yeah. I love that. I, you know, I don't think I mentioned

the learning community in this recording. So thank you for doing that. For more information

on the learning community, check out, uh, the church.digital slash LC. We've got five different

learning communities coming up. Um, I'm doing one on hybrid micro sites. Um, I know, uh, Andy Mage is

doing one on asynchronous community. Barbara, uh, Carnero is doing one on digital communications.

Megan Carter is doing one on, um, uh, mental health ministry and Stu, Stu Nami, Stuart McPherson's

doing one on virtual reality, uh, ministry. And so all sorts of, um, opportunities to learn

something different this summer and, uh, experiment, uh, with some people around you to help you

guide you in those ways. So the church.digital slash LC, get more information on there. And Tom,

the blog, the church.digital, the websites that, um, well, we're, we're, I think in the process of

relaunching the blog this week, you know, we've, we've been, we launched a new website today.

Okay. Today as a recording. So, um, you know, I know we're, we're moving to a, so many changes at

the church digital, like in, in, in a normal organization, a normal bivocational organization,

let's take it slow, but no, no, we're just, let's rip the bandaid off. We, we, we launched a,

so we launched a new website, which made us launch into a new community. Um, we launched a new, um,

which means we had to change our blogging system, uh, which means we had to, well, we didn't have to,

but we also changed our CRM at the same time. And, uh, at the same time, our communications

director decided to move to, uh, Portuguese, Portugal in Spain. And so she's on a different

continent and, uh, yeah, it's just been, it's a little chaotic here, but, um, definitely some

exciting things happening this summer. So check out Tom's blogs, uh, through the church digital

at the church.digital. You can see all of them in their new website design glory there under the

digital vault on the website. And so, well, dang, Tom, is there anything else I forgot to say?

You're the best, Jeff. You're the best. That's all I have to say.

Listen, I didn't, and I said this at the beginning and I'll say it at the end when, um,

when I was trying to figure out who the crap I was after walking away from a church in 2018,

you know, Tom was, um, one of several voices that reached out to me and said, Hey, you need to talk.

And, uh, it was, uh, it was really meaningful. Um, you know, even, even back then, you know,

before I met JMO, before I met Andy, before I met Barbara Layton, any of these guys, Tom was,

um, um, like I said, one of the, the original voices. And, and to be honestly honest, he's probably

been doing digital, at least church-based digital ministry a lot longer than I have. And so Tom,

excited to have you part of the team and, uh, looking forward to what's next, but, uh, man,

we're going to land the plane. So for Tom, this is Jeff with the church digital. Thanks for jumping

up and on here. We'll see you next time on the show. Have a good one.