EP279 - Evan Connelly, Intercom.com, and Chat 2.0 for Churches

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,

an established church, or a startup church plant, the church digital's goal is to help churches like

yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. Our heart? That churches like

yours would discover a new founded focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church.

And now here's your host, Jeff Reed. All right, we've got episode 279, 279 of the church digital

podcast. Jeff here. We're going to get into the conversation here with the guest, Evan Connolly,

in a second. But I, I want to tease you all because, because it's my podcast. I can, I can do what I

want. Well, technically it's Bernie Mapealy's podcast as he's now CEO of the church digital,

but that that's another conversation. Guys, I am really excited about some things that are coming

up. There's, there's a couple really cool things that we've been, we've been working on. Um, last week,

actually, I spent three days out in Dallas, Texas, and boy, was it cold. That aside from the frigid

temperature of, of DFW, I got to spend some time with Resi, uh, and the, the team at Resi and some

friends over at push pay and really excited about some things coming up here in 2024. I can't tell

you yet, but I can tease you a little bit and I do enjoy a good tease. So here, look for it coming

soon. Some interesting information, some big information, some big news coming out at Resi.

Stay tuned. Oh, and, and don't forget about glue, the church digital and glue. We've, we're still,

we're still baking on some stuff, working out some, some minor details, but some really big stuff

coming on glue in February. So really, really exciting season here, uh, for the church digital

overall. Now let's get back to the show. So listen, I'm really excited to have this conversation

with, with my friend, Evan Connolly. Evan is online campus director over at, uh, Lighthouse

Church, Washington, DC, Maryland kind of area. And, uh, listen, I, I, the first time I met

Evan, he was an IT director. He wasn't a direct, like he was not an online campus director. He wasn't

a, uh, wasn't a pastor. Didn't really have any of that, that kind of oversight at, at his church.

This was pre COVID maybe 2018 or so. And I can actually remember over the, uh, over the

years, you know, watching him cast vision to his lead pastor to become, uh, a more pastoral

voice and to lead the online campus, casting vision for what that online campus could look

like. Even before COVID his church buying into it. And now five years later, man, that guy

is still, uh, being very successful running and casting vision for what digital can do to

help the physical church. It's interesting. Like he's, he has a very hybrid approach with

his church. How can digital help our physical campus, our physical operations, which actually

brings us straight into today's conversation. As we're talking about this new soft, well, it's

not new software. It's been around for a while, but intercom.io I've said intercom.io and the

websites, but it's basically at intercom.com. Now it's a, it's a, it's a website, direct messaging.

Now a lot of businesses use this software, uh, in order to, to get customer service, customer

success, people direct in touch with the customers, with the clients. Now what's interesting is Evan

has started using this to help people get in touch with pastors. Uh, this is a very inexpensive,

very easy way to get people easy, easy access to pastors from, uh, pastoral care, from events,

some really interesting approaches. And you know, Evan borrowed some of this. We've done a lot of

podcasts with church home, uh, Jonathan song recently talking about, um, their pastor chat program.

Jonathan is the director of pastor chat. Well, Evan kind of stole their program from, from that podcast

and actually created their own approach and their own spin, uh, using a cheaper software at for

lighthouse church, lighthouse church. And so listen, when I'm hearing Evan talk about this, I'm like,

my gosh, Evan, jump on the podcast. Let's talk about this. Let's cast vision for what this software

intercom.com could do for other churches. And so here you go. I'm bringing in Evan Connolly,

online campus director with a lighthouse church, uh, there in Maryland and myself,

Jeff with the church digital and a conversation that I'm calling intercom.com and chat 2.0 for

churches. Okay, everybody, here you go. All right. Hey, so we're bringing into the conversation,

Evan, Evan Connolly online campus director at lighthouse church. Oh man, I forgot to ask what

state Europe. It's up near DC, right? As I recall. Very good. Yeah. We're in Maryland,

right outside of Baltimore. So you're pretty much spot on. Yeah. So that, that's, uh, that's Tom,

uh, Tom Pounder stomping ground somewhere up in there as well. Have you, have you actually ever

met Tom Pounder in person, Evan? I like, we got to just get the, you know what? I actually,

I don't think I have, I have not. Yeah. Um, yeah. For many years of my life, Tom Pounder was,

it was a Russian spam bot. Like he was the person that I think is real, but I would never actually

see him in person. You wouldn't show up at the conferences. And so, um, I now, I now think that

about other people, but I've seen Tom in person, so I can just, yeah. Now you got to wonder like,

wait, are you like a chat GPT AI bot or something? Oh yeah. Uh, John Pyle, John Pyle is very

suspicious. Uh, we, he would put him on the, I don't know that chat GPT is that good at the

character personifications yet, but, uh, maybe it's close. So on around, we just literally did a

podcast last week on AI. And so you can go back and listen to Kenny Mage talking about all the

characterizations and all the future of AI and chat GPT and AGI, which is the next wave and all sorts.

Oh my, so much, so much good, so much bad, and so much potential for our robotic overlords to rule

over us. Uh, seriously, I have to go back and listen after this. Yeah. And so this is not the

purpose of this conversation. We're not, I would be surprised if we get much into AI beyond this,

maybe, maybe Evan's going to surprise me, but really in this conversation, we're going to get

into the idea of maybe what the next level of chat could be, uh, for your church. And so now,

ironically, Evan, uh, man, you were on this podcast four years ago, early on at doing a chat

conversation. Evan, you are the only person to come on this podcast and talk about chat

hosts. I have not out of 279 episodes. Now that had any other person other than you talk

about chat hosts. So let's, and here I am talking about a different form of chat. I'm

just the chat guy, which is ironic because I'm also a huge introvert, but apparently I like

to chat. Yeah. I, I don't know. I don't know why we earmarked you as, as that, as that

guy, but, uh, man, thanks, thanks for stepping in. So you, well, let's back up because you, you said

it, how does it feel to be an introvert, but also in digital ministry, like kind of walk through

that. Yeah. You know, it's mixed feelings, honestly, in some ways, I think it's possibly

easier as an introvert to operate, um, in digital ministry. You know, I think some of the ways we

communicate, whether that's through live chat or even video, I think maybe at least for me as an

introvert, I feel like I don't, it doesn't, you know, hit me the same way maybe. Um, and so

personally, I think I can operate better in digital mini ministry maybe than perhaps I could,

you know, in some ways entirely physical, but it seems to work pretty well for me.

I'll be honest with you, Evan. I'm, I'm probably, uh, well, no, I'm definitely an introvert. Uh,

yeah. People who know me like personally and up closer, like, you know, Jeff, like you're always

talking, you're always all over the place, but it, like my outward is, is actually a defense mechanism,

honestly, uh, towards being a very introverted self. And, um, I fully agree with you that I do think

that digital ministry effectively really plays well with, with introverted tendencies that, you know,

I can be in front of a camera, I can talk in a microphone, I can do things like that. And it's a lot

easier to do that in digital space, um, than it would be to stand up in front of an equal number

of people physically. And so totally, I mean, even to that point, um, you know, like Sundays are

actually hours wise, my shortest work day. And yet, you know, obviously there is a lot more of the,

you know, conversations, whatnot. I find myself coming home more drained on Sunday, even maybe

if my work day is like two hours shorter than it would be on Monday or on Thursday, that kind of thing.

All right. So we've teased this thing two, three, four, five times now, uh, talking about the idea

of what's next in chat. And so I was hanging out at a church it network in West Palm beach,

November, 2020, December, 2023, somewhere in there. And, uh, I just drove up for like one day and just

happened to run into my, my friend Evan here told me, Hey, he was speaking at it. And he told me the

topic and I was really disappointed because I was not able to make his session, but I was really

excited to hear about what he was working on. And so Evan, you know, I, I mean, I don't, other than

a drum roll, I don't think I can do anything better for you here to set this up. Why don't you, why don't

you tell us a little bit about what you guys have been working on over at Lighthouse church?

Yeah. So really this is something that came out, you know, during COVID, we were at that point,

like everyone where all of a sudden we pivoted, everything is entirely online right now.

And so it was a really cool season of innovation just where, you know, across the board, we're just,

you know, throwing things at the wall, seeing what sticks and trying to figure out, you know,

how can we be more available, more accessible online? What can we do differently? And so this

is something though, um, you know, lots of things we tried, you know, some stuck, some didn't. This

is one that's stuck really well, even coming out of COVID returning to the new normal. And that is

what we call LH chat. Um, it's very closely based on something we saw church home doing. Um, huge shout

out to Sharika Johnson, who was, um, really instrumental over at church home as we were

getting started, you know, doing a few zoom calls and hearing what they do, they call it pastor chat.

And so it's this idea of, you know, taking a tool for us, it's intercom, which is, you know,

many people are familiar with that. It's a live chat tool. You can integrate that into a website,

into an app and in a business context where you see it most often, usually that's going

to be more of a customer service tool, but we wanted to look at it a little differently.

A lot like that example that we were seeing back then, even with church home as not just,

you know, support questions of, Hey, how do I log into my, you know, my church account or

how do I, you know, manage this or that, or sign up for an event, but even to make it more

pastoral where we could take prayer requests, we could, you know, help people find next steps.

Um, and so really, you know, to be able to access, um, or even connect with our staff and our pastors,

that it's not, you know, just when you think of like customer support, like someone just reading

a script or something, but personal conversations, um, you know, in the same way, almost that you'd

have in the lobby after a service in person or something like that. And so we wanted to do that.

We started off, um, just kind of in a beta of just on Sundays and then very quickly, just based on the

response we saw, the engagement we saw there, we expanded that out to now where we offer that Sunday

through Fridays. So only off day would be Saturday, just when we don't have any staff available to

support this, but Sunday through Friday, we have, you know, several members of staff on a rotation

that are available and we'll take conversations, um, as they roll in where on our website, on our app,

you can start, you know, private conversation, jump in and, um, we're here over again, you know,

a simple question or, you know, even maybe a prayer request, anything that we can do to support the

church, to have those conversations. We have the whole team now that's available.

I love it. So let's, there's so much there. We're going to, we're going to break down a lot of what

you just said and start to get, give some detail on that. So right up front, uh, it's intercom,

it's inter, I N T R C O M dot IO, I believe. I believe that's right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll put

the link in the show notes. Um, I'm not sure if there's one M or two M's, but thank God for Google.

And so, but you know, intercom, you know, it's, it's a, uh, uh, it's an applet that runs on your

website. You know, it's the little talk bubble that's in the lower right-hand corner on the

church digital. We use HubSpot and something very similar towards that. And there, there's other

solutions, but, but ultimately by clicking on that you're now, my understanding is that like

audience people, consumers, people that are on the website have direct access to a pastor via, um,

direct messaging. Exactly. And so, you know, we wanted to make ourselves accessible,

almost like in a radical way that you wouldn't expect. And then more and more people are doing

this. We're certainly not the only ones we weren't even, you know, we found this example

in something that someone else was doing, but I think, you know, you even see in the business space,

like, um, you know, one thing that really made me want to do this, um, right before COVID actually,

I was flying and my wife and I, we went into this airport and we went to the baggage drop-off area

and like everything was closed and there was no one there. We didn't know like,

what are we going to do? Where do, how do we handle this? And so I don't know why,

but I fought to send a Twitter message to Southwest airlines. And within two minutes,

someone had responded to me and they were like, you know, we're talking to the ground office at this

airport. Someone said they're going to come out. And I think within like five minutes,

I was like talking to someone just based on that message that I sent.

Oh wow.

And so I did some research on that afterwards. I came back and it turns out they have this

whole listening center. They have this whole staff that was, um, just dedicated to solving problems

really quickly. Um, making, you know, through all their different channels, making their team

really accessible. And so even like pre COVID, this was something I'd been like kicking around in the

back of my mind. Like, how can we be accessible? Like almost in a way that's like unexpected,

surprising. Like I didn't expect, you know, to get in touch with someone that quick,

or I didn't expect a pastor to jump in and like be able to pray with me. And so, um, that was kind of

the, the goal there was to be able to make ourselves accessible to an extent, to a degree

that is almost like, um, unexpected. Like, wow, I didn't think they'd be able to get back to me that

faster in that way. So what types of problems like are people coming to you with on, on direct

message? Like, is this, what time is your church service? How do I get baptized? I'm thinking of

killing myself. Like what's the range of issues that people are even willing to talk about?

And that's the thing. It is a huge range. So one thing, um, and you know, to that point of the range,

we are very intentionally, and there's different ways of setting this up. We allow anonymous chats.

We, we, it's the way it's set up. And part of that's just how intercom works.

It definitely encourages you to share a name and an email, but you don't have to do that.

And so, I mean, we have had people open up, you know, in prayer requests, just looking for advice

and guidance, um, you know, based on all kinds of things, um, abuse that they've gone through.

We have had someone mentioned, Hey, I'm thinking of ending my life. And we've had to, you know,

talk to someone about how to, you know, have the team prepared in case something like that comes up.

But, um, really we've seen everything, obviously, you know, we, you do get a whole lot of the same

repetitive questions. Some things are as simple as what time are your services? You know, I'm looking

for this event. I can't find it. How do I do such and such on your website? So we get, you know,

a lot of more of the administrative type questions, what I'd categorize those as. And then we get a

whole lot of prayer requests. I'd say roughly last time I looked, roughly half of our chats are

categorized as a prayer request. And so all over the place there, sometimes it's more of like next

steps oriented, like, Hey, I want to get involved. You know, I'm looking for a small group. Obviously,

we have a variety of small groups. And sometimes maybe it's, I can't find it, or I'm just looking

for a recommendation. Like, what do you think would be a good fit? But the cool thing with that is the

way we've trained our team, we kind of look for opportunities for both of those categories of more

of, you know, pointing in a certain direction or of prayer. And so whether it's, you know,

as simple as like, what time are your services, if that's how the chat starts, we always ask the

same question at the end of service, or maybe it starts with a prayer request at the end of every

chat, we ask the same question. And that is, is there anything else that I can help you with

or pray for? And so wherever they started asking about service times or wherever they started,

you know, opening up about, you know, a prayer request, maybe something really heavy that they're

going through in life. We want to offer in every chat, the ability or the option of, you know,

we want, can we point you to a next step? Can we guide you somewhere? And can we pray for you?

And so we've had people that started off, you know, just asking what time of your services or this kind

of thing. And then actually, because we asked them, can I pray for you opening up about, you know,

in some cases, you know, something really deep, something heavy that you wouldn't expect, like,

I'm just on the website looking for service times that they would have actually shared that,

but because they were personally asked, you know, can I pray for you? And so we've seen

a huge variety. And in a lot of cases, you know, it starts one way and it actually goes the other way,

just because we try to find the ability to do both to kind of point to a next step and to

provide prayer in any chat where we can.

This is so good. This is so good. Now, like, have you noticed any demographic patterns? Like,

who's using this thing? Who's not using this? Men, women, age? Like, what types of people are you

interacting with?

Honestly, all over. We've had people, I think it was just this past weekend, I had a chat from

someone who had mentioned they were watching from a nursing home, I believe 90 some years old. And

they had previously been attending somewhere closer in person, but they, that wasn't an option

currently. And so, I mean, you know, all over, certainly younger. And so really, I think just

about anyone, because we make it very prominent on our website, on our app, I think the demographics

are pretty representative of who's on our website, on our app, and that is a pretty widespread.

Because, you know, in a lot of cases, it really is, maybe they weren't even necessarily intending

to start a chat, but just because we kind of really try to spotlight that, you know, whether it's,

they couldn't find something or they just see that this is an opportunity they didn't know was there.

We've seen people from all different demographics chatting with us.

Yeah. Now, honest disclaimer here, I tried this at Christ Fellowship Miami in 20, let's call it 2015,

2016. We installed, Intercom wasn't even around back then. The best software that I had available

at the time was LivePerson. And so I'm not even sure LivePerson is still around. Intercom is by far

the leader in this space now. But it was interesting to me is that in 2015, 2016,

80 to 90% of the people that clicked on that were either immediate hangups, because they were shocked

that somebody actually like answered back, "Hey, how can I help you?" or "How can I pray for you?" or whatever,

you know, whatever the response was at the moment. Or literally people, like I remember some people

talking like, "Oh, S, you know, S word, you're real." Yeah.

And then hanging out, like, because it was just, it was so shocking

that somebody would be like really interacting via the website. You know, call it five, six,

seven, eight years later. Are you still getting like that level of

surprise when, when a pastor's engaging these people? Like, what are their responses?

Um, it's a mix. Obviously, I think, you know, it's probably, I wouldn't say it's 80%. I would

say the majority at this point, you know, hey, it's, they're more familiar with it. Obviously,

like Intercomium, for example, I mean, you see that all over as you use the internet.

But, um, I would say, you know, maybe not weekly, but certainly on a monthly basis, I do see

very specifically that, wait, are you a real person? Um, are you, and now you get even like,

wait, are you an AI? Um, and so there still is that surprise factor of like, I can't believe that,

especially when it's someone, you know, like I've had where I actually, I do know this person,

you know, they're really surprised. Wait, like I just, two minutes ago, I just put this in and

you're here, you're talking to me already. Like, how's that possible? And so we definitely still get

that surprise factor. Um, I think, um, you know, even knowing that live chat is a thing, you know,

it's maybe even just a surprise factor of how quickly we try to jump in and I can get to that

more later, but we actually, we try to answer our first response to a chat. If it's within our active

hours, we try to have that first response be within two minutes. Cause again, we want it to be like

that radical, like, I can't believe that, you know, you're a real person. I can't believe that

you're talking to me and I can't believe how quickly you made yourself available to me.

So, I mean, you being digital online campus director, having that level of urgency, good for

you. Like, but you know, I don't want to be like, that's your job, but yeah, sure. That's that. I

mean, that that's within scope of what your job is very aggressively. Do you have other pastors that,

that follow that, that two minute guide rules? Yes.

How did you get other people to buy into this idea? Yeah. So one thing, um, I think we definitely

had working in our advantage and I don't, not to say, I don't think this is doable now. I think it

totally is, but we rolled this out during COVID early on during COVID. So that was at a point where

we had no physical services to some extent, all of a sudden, everyone on our staff had just become

part of the online campus to some extent. And so it was really easy at that time, I think, to get buy-in.

And I think we've done a good job of maintaining that buy-in even now. I think it's totally doable

even to launch something like this right now would just take a little more intentionality,

probably a little more work. But, um, you know, we've done a lot of, even then, and, you know,

certainly continuing, we've done a lot of things to kind of create a team of teams. And so we have,

you know, multiple pastors, we have an elder actually, who's on this team we have, but then it's not

just, you know, pastors and elders. We have, you know, um, our kids director, we have our

office administrator. So it's a, it's a wide variety, um, that we've kind of incorporated

here and we've tried to kind of make it a team of teams. And so periodically, especially early on,

we'd actually do a monthly team meeting for a little while, you know, like I mentioned that

two minute goal is hard. Um, you know, it's easier for me to pull that off. We have, but we have people,

you know, they're juggling this between our tasks, our responsibilities. And so

that is a big ask. And so we've tried to really spotlight people, reward people when they are

doing well with that for a while, we had these little, um, golden laptop trophies. And so every

month I'd look at our response times. And when someone, you know, did amazing, we had this golden

laptop that we just kind of present them. And so things like that were just monthly, we'd get

together. Um, even just having a meal as a team once a month, just again, like a team of teams,

right? Like all these different ministries, all these different teams are represented here. And so

how do you create some buy-in here? How do you create a sense of community within this team so

that we can, um, you know, just really get that sense of same urgency for everyone. Talk about our

goals. How are we doing? Talk about who's doing well, kind of inspire everyone to want to jump in,

to want to take those chats, to want to get us down to that timeline that we're going for. And so

now we don't meet quite as often. It's more like once a quarter, but still that same thing of

bringing everyone together, talking about where we're at, sharing wins, you know, of, of some of

the feedback that we've gotten from some of our chats. Um, and then, um, you know, celebrating

people when they're doing well. This is so cool. Um, you know, it's a little reminiscent, a little

bit towards some of the stuff with glue with the, he gets us and the other Explorer programs, you know,

but that's, that's outside of, uh, the church scope where this really feels like it's, it's more

inside the, the, the church space. What, like the average person, are you like, what's, what's the

CTA, the call to action? What are you handing them off to? Like, is it, you're helping them get

connected to the event, helping them fix the website, praying for them, uh, getting them connected to a

small group, uh, uh, somebody for, uh, deeper physical counseling. Like how, what, what's the,

what's the next step for the person that that's kind of asking, uh, for help here via intercom?

Yeah. Um, there's not one, we try to base it off of where people are at. I'd say some of our most

common, um, certainly small groups, that's a big part of who we are. Um, probably a lot of people

would be the same there. And so even if we can suggest a small group, that's one where we try to

even, you know, look for opportunities. Maybe they're not specifically asking for a small group,

but even, you know, within prayer requests. Um, if someone says I'm feeling lonely, I'm isolated,

I don't have anyone. A lot of times, you know, that's a real like opportunity, not just to,

to pray for them, but then also, you know, in addition to praying, you know, can I suggest,

are you part of a small group? Have you considered a small group? That's a huge call to action.

That's one of the more frequent ones. Um, outside of that, um, I mean, we get questions about,

you know, care and counseling. And so as far as connecting them for pastoral counseling,

obviously beyond, we'll try to, to some extent, do that over chat, but depending on what they're

going through, you know, sometimes you want to set up something, if not face to face, even just like

with a video call or something like that. And so, um, for pastoral counseling, we have, um,

a bit of a process we can get them and see if that's the best fit for where they're at. Um,

so really all over, uh, I mean, even we have people reach out, just we're, we're engaged.

We want to get married. How do we do that? Um, benevolence, people who are going through,

you know, financial hardship. We have a ministry where we help with that. We get a good number of

chats along those lines. And so, yeah, if there was one, I'd say it's, I would say the most common

would be our small groups, but it's certainly all over the place. Now it's, it's interesting to me,

like we've talked a lot about pastors and directors and children's directors and, and others, uh, in

there. Um, you haven't mentioned volunteers are volunteers engaging. Like, do you have a volunteer

core that's, that's using this platform as well? Not currently. Um, in part for us, uh, I'd say

that's twofold. One is intercom is more expensive. Um, I'm not here, you know, I'm not gonna, I don't

have a referral code. You don't have to mention Evan C 15 to get 15% off, but, um, you know,

it is one of the more expensive ones. It's a fantastic platform, but you know, there's that

per seat license. And so for us, that's kind of been a limiting factor in thinking about what it

would look like to roll out for volunteers. But we've also, we've kind of wanted to make this more,

you know, like in our talking points, we kind of speak to this as we have pastors and leaders and,

you know, we could extend that down to volunteers certainly, but, um, as long as capacity allows,

we've wanted to make our staff and our pastors more accessible through this. And so there's been some

some intentionality there. Some of that's been a limitation, but for us right now,

this has looked like strictly staff. And then we have actually, you know, what I talked about

all those years ago with that broadcast chat team, where that is volunteer driven. And so we do have

a somewhat similar opportunity for volunteers, but, um, this is something that for us is staff-based,

but that is not the only way to do it. Actually, you know, in talking to church home, who really did

inspire us and teach us so much as we were building this out, I know for them, they, I believe they do

have volunteers.

Yeah. And I know the church home, they do utilize a lot of volunteers with the pastor chat and a lot of

their pastors. Uh, we've done podcasts and we'll put links in the show notes. Uh, Jonathan song,

maybe, uh, maybe, maybe six months ago, late last year, mid last year. I know just did a check back

in on that. So such, so good. And when I heard you talking, Evan, about this, I was like, oh man,

they must've, they must've connected up because there's, there's not many churches that are,

that are thinking this way. You know, even 2023, 2024 post COVID, which, which will lead me to this,

you know, right now, 2024, um, you know, churches are trying to get back to the way that it was.

Uh, and we're seeing a lot of churches devalue digital. Um, did you, did you, did your church,

did your leadership put any attention on this? Like, do they see this as a digital tool? Do they see this

as a, uh, a digital thing that helps physical engagement driving towards physical small groups

and physical church services? Like how do they view this tool, um, for you to still be doing it?

So I try real hard to show how this serves the church as a whole. Um, I mean, we have different

opportunities. Once a month, we have what we call staff chapel. We all come together. It's almost like

a church service for our staff. And part of that we share wins. And so anytime I get an opportunity,

I try to share wins specifically for chat. And I try to share wins that really do help showcase

that this is serving, you know, not just people who intend entirely online, not just, you know,

in some cases, people aren't even in this state, but you know, we've had people while they're in the

building, reach out with a chat about how do I do this or how do I, um, looking for someone. And so

it's made us way more accessible, even for people who are presently in the building, but you know,

maybe it's, they don't know where to go or they don't know who to talk to, or they're more introverted

than they'd rather communicate in that way. And so in so many different ways, um, I've tried to really frame it

in a way that this, because it does, that's what we've seen is that it serves the church as a whole.

We, I would say very much equally, you know, we have people who, and we serve people who intend

entirely online, who are a little more of a hybrid. That's probably most of our audience. And, um,

so even to the point that someone in the building might be engaging with us and, you know, to that

point, um, yeah, I think there's continued to be great buy-in with this. And, um, even though it

exists online, I don't think it's viewed as this thing. It's just like an online campus specific

tool or resource.

Yeah. Um, no, I know church home, they've got that, um, uh, the pastor chat. I mean, it's, it's a,

it's a custom platform. You know, a lot of the, the majority of the stuff they're doing is custom

and intercom IO is more over the, over the counter, so to speak, you know, it's a cloud service you

can buy. Is there, is there any desire to build a standalone platform to expand beyond this? Like

what's, what's kind of next, what's in the scope of, of where this is going?

For us. Um, we've just focused on integrations. There's a lot that intercom integrates with out

of the box. Um, and then we've also paid, it's called, it's a kind of an interesting game. It's

called octopods. It's actually built by some guys that used to work at intercom. And so it allows

integrations with extra platforms that intercom doesn't natively support like a Google business

manager, for example. So when you search for us on Google maps, we have a chat button that pops up and

it's all funneled through intercom, but you can chat with us through our Google maps. We get,

um, I'd say probably weekly, we have people chatting with us and we can see a tag. It came

in through Google business. And so at this point we now, um, Facebook, Instagram, Google business,

um, even our church online platform, we, um, you know, where you can take a prayer request over

like that email contact form that funnels in through intercom now for us. And so we haven't

looked at too much at building something different because we have been able to through all those

integrations, make this really a hub. That's been our focus is how can we not just, you know,

through the chat box itself on our website or on our app, but then as we took it even more like next

level, what does it look like for any sort of digital communication, like as much as possible to

have this one platform? Cause we already have this team, you know, we realized, you know, why is it that

we have, I think at the time we had 10 people on this chat team, but we only have one person who's looking at

our Instagram messages. And so we made that connection there. And now we were able, when you reach out to

us, you know, wherever it's Facebook, Instagram, on Google maps, even to that same degree, to be able

to take more types of questions, to be able to, um, go deeper, to be able to more quickly respond, no matter

how you're reaching out to us. And so that's kind of been our biggest focus is like in any digital

communication. Just how can we kind of merge it all together?

And so all of that's unified in, in, in one inbox. So like Instagram DMS are hitting intercoms inbox.

Yep. Yeah. And so with that, you know, we've been able to respond really quickly as is our goal even

has, um, you know, kind of prebuilt auto replies. Like it'll say immediately like, Hey, thanks for

reaching out. Our team typically replies within a few minutes. And so that's actually helped us. I don't

know if Facebook still shows us, but at one point, like you'd go there and it would have this really

prominent badge that like typically replies, you know, like very quickly or within a few minutes.

And so it just, again, like, it goes to create a sense of like, Hey, we're really accessible,

which is, you know, what the whole heart of this is we want to make ourselves super accessible.

And so it's allowed us to do that, not just on our own website and app, but even on these other

platforms, which especially, you know, for someone who's maybe new to the church, not even part of the

church, just, you know, kicking the tires, we've been able, you know, even just from Google maps,

you're just trying to, you know, so you're searching churches near me and, you know, you click there,

all of a sudden that chat box is there. And so we've just tried to make ourselves

super radically accessible in all the different platforms that we have.

This is so cool. And, and, and about how many, how many people are you talking to

over the course of a week we are seeing right now about, I think we're seeing about 60 chats per week.

I'm sorry, 16 or six, zero, six, six, zero, six. So you are, you through intercom IO,

you are having some conversations, you know, texting conversations

with 60, six, zero people, any given week.

Yep. And so now there's a wide variety there. I mean, um, a good number of those actually are

prayer requests. And so obviously those are some of the longest ones because, um, you know,

the way we train our whole team, we want that to be, uh, an actual prayer. We don't just say I'm

praying for you. And so as we take a moment and we pray for them, we actually want to, you know,

in written form share exactly what we're praying for them. And so obviously that can be a little more

wordy, but then, um, we also have saved responses for things, you know, like we've talked about

service times a few times. That is a frequent question we get. And we, so in intercom, it's

called a macro, you know, it's a saved response. Like, you know, some of these chats, you know,

it is as simple as like, okay, I just, I use a keyboard shortcut. Here's our service times. And

maybe they don't get back to us. We do always try to end with, is there anything else I can help with or

that I can pray for, but some of them, they just end there, but, um, you know, a good number of

them. Yeah. They are more of a, you know, a personal response that does take a little more

fought and effort to write something out for. Do you, I'll put you on the spot. Do you have any

idea what, what percentages of, of maybe like one hit wonders questions versus, um, personal responses,

long engagement kind of conversations? I'd say it's at least 50, 50, if not more like a,

maybe a third, um, of two thirds being more of a requiring more of a custom response.

So the half to the majority and you're guessing, uh, non-scientific here, but a half to two

thirds are looking for deeper engagement, not a quick, that's interesting that. So for me,

that's pivoted over the past eight years. Uh, like when I did this, it would keep people more

comfortable to technology, uh, totally and completely COVID engaging in that space. COVID did a lot to

push the needle forward, you know? And, uh, cause me, what I was trying was pre COVID on this.

And, uh, but I, I, I was like 80 to 90% was like, you know, I'm trying to find this page,

you know, base, basic stupid stuff. That's like, here's the URL, you know, look under the hamburger

next time. Totally. And I think, you know, some of that maybe even comes down to how we frame it.

And, you know, in different ways that we make it available to you, a lot of our prayer requests,

actually, um, at least the ones that come in on Sunday and just a quick note. So we actually see

roughly half of our chats come in on Sunday and then the other half come in throughout the week,

kind of spread out because we see kind of a big correlation of our chats just with overall website

and app activity. Obviously, you know, we can have the most activity on those platforms on Sundays.

And so I'll, let's say a lot of our prayer requests come in actually through church online platform with

that prayer button that's really prominent on there. And so I think some of that is just even just in

those different ways that we've made it available, even to the way we speak to it. We have host spots

before service and after service and online. And I try to every week to speak to chat and to speak

to it in a way that, you know, if there's anything that we can help you with, if there's any questions

that we can answer. And also if there's anything that we can pray for, we really try to emphasize

that. And so I think, um, to some extent, that's probably also where that comes from is that, um,

and a lot of the ways that we speak to it, we try to emphasize that we have pastors and leaders

who are here to pray for you. How do you, how do you equip the pastors that are on this? Like

you've mentioned regular meetings or monthly meetings and now it's quarterly. Like, was there,

did you recruit people that were digitally friendly? Did you recruit people because of their position

and then teach them digital? Uh, like, uh, how did the building of that team come together?

It was a little bit of both. Um, you know, we wanted to pick people in some cases,

maybe just because, you know, they're already, we see them as someone who just more digitally

friendly as in general, like, you know, um, at the time we had a couple, a few different admin

people who, um, especially during COVID they were, we already saw them in other ways, replying to

people or replying to people really quickly. They were comfortable with new technology.

Um, and then, um, from the pastoral side, maybe just looking at them more like, Hey,

maybe, you know, intercom might take some training, but there's someone who,

if someone asks more of a theological question, you know, there's someone who I'd want to be able to

jump into that and try to answer that because as much as possible, we want to answer everything

on chat. There are certainly times, you know, whether it's what someone's going through this or that,

sometimes we have to suggest that we continue this conversation elsewhere. Like, you know,

we don't want to go back and forth over, you know, two weeks or a month on intercom,

the platform is just not conducive to that. But, um, you know, to answer your question to some extent,

I would say it's either it's, you know, their skillset, maybe in, um, being able to pray for

people and being able to take more theological questions, something to that extent, or maybe it's

more, um, of just this person can, is really good at responding to people and technology. And then, um,

having those two different skillsets for the people who maybe that, you know, they're just like,

man, they can pick anything up. They're good at quickly getting back to people.

We have an online prayer guide, and this is actually pulled from Life.Church. It's in the

slide deck, which I think you're going to link to. But, um, we have, I think it's like 20 some

topics where, you know, if someone says that they're going through a loss or if someone says they're

going through like, um, job trouble, there's scripture that you can share. It might encourage

them or prayer points. And so that's been a great resource to people that might not be as

comfortable praying for someone or, you know, praying for someone out loud or in this case,

like, um, over message. And then we also, we try to do a little bit of an intercom specific

platform training for those that maybe they're really comfortable praying for people. But

what is this app? What are all these buttons? What does this mean? We try to

quickly orient them. But one of the advantages with intercom, and I would, I'm sure there's

several other platforms where this would be true too, is, you know, it's designed to be user friendly.

So obviously we need to spend a few minutes or, you know, maybe a half hour going through how to use

this platform, but it doesn't require a whole lot of specialized training.

So, I mean, basically then it's, if, if somebody's knowledgeable enough to handle a text message,

I mean, given parameters of what you're typing in, but the technology here is essentially

text messaging one-on-one, right?

A hundred percent. Yep. And so, yeah, a little bit of training up front. Like I said, you know,

we try to teach them how the platform works, just some of our standards. Um, I've mentioned several

times, like we try to always end with, is there anything else that I can help you with or pray

for? So we try to instill some of that stuff. And we certainly try to look, because we do have that

wide variety of people on the team, you know, we want to equip everybody to be able to do the same

things. And so we have those macros for, you know, whether it's service times or, you know, um, and then,

you know, for someone that maybe that's more their lane, but they would have a hard time praying for

someone. We also have a lot of training for them to help equip them because we want as much as

possible, anyone who's on this team to be able to jump in and help with any type of question or any type

of chat. Yeah. And so you run that Sunday through Friday, uh, taking Saturdays off.

That's right. Yeah. We have, um, a little bit more of an on-call schedule for Friday.

Um, because our office schedule or a staff schedule primarily is Sunday through Thursday,

but we do have one person who's working Friday and then we have kind of like a pastor on call,

which is kind of a rotation just in case that's needed. But, um, it does kind of scale,

you know, just like everything else. Um, like I said, big spike of activity on Sunday,

Monday, Tuesday kind of continues and it kind of tapers off going into the weekend. So we've

found that works pretty well for us. Now you, you presented this at church it network, um,

back in 23 November. And so how, man, how, how'd that go? Were, were people open to the idea,

excited, terrified, not working for me? Like what was some of the interest? I was, um,

I was really impressed with the, you know, kind of the Q and A at the end. Um, well,

yeah, it seemed like there was a lot of interest. Um, and honestly, um, you've covered some of the

questions. I think the biggest questions were, you know, how do I get buy-in? Like this sounds great,

but you know, this also sounds like it probably requires more than just the online team. I think

it's probably safe to say in most cases, the online team, you know, is not the majority of the staff.

And so, you know, to be able to take that number of chats throughout the week, you know,

what does it look like to get buy-in from enough people on our team? Kind of like I said, just the,

any sort of intentionality, whether that's some initial training, getting together, um, for us,

having meals at those meetings has been huge, just, um, trying to build relationships, um,

to a greater extent, and just to see us each as part of this ever, this team, we're on our separate teams,

as far as our normal responsibilities, but to see this kind of as a team of teams. Um,

and so that was probably the biggest question that came up. And then, um, I think just overall,

you know, like questions about the platform or, you know, what does it look like to roll this out?

How does this integrate with X, Y, Z? What, what I love about what you, what you've done here

is you made this tool bigger than online ministry. Yep.

Like you, you took the time to get, uh, ownership to buy in from people in, in other areas. You got the

kids, um, director, you've got the business administrator, you've, you've got different

aspects of the church to own the ministry that's happening within digital space. Um, to be honest,

that's something, I mean, if I look back at my, my 10 years of digital pastor, I wasn't really good at

that. And, and oftentimes a lot of what I was trying to do was a struggle. Our implementation of live

person eight years ago was too soon. Like the technology wasn't there. I know that, but, um,

it struggled because we, we really could not get pastors to, to own the responsibility, uh, and to,

to see a vision for it beyond it. And so like it, it makes me excited. First off, you know,

well, first off, I mean, I love church homes. Awesome. Church homes, one of my favorite churches.

And so, Hey, Hey, pastor chats. Great. Good for you guys. You guys, I mean, freaking Justin Bieber

talks about them on, on Tik TOK. They're, they're, they're going to figure it out, but a more normal

church, sorry, church home. You're not normal. Uh, but a more normal church that that's engaging

towards more of a, of a DM type of approach and engaging up to 60 different conversations,

any given week, uh, direct one-on-one with someone dealing from a range of topics like this is exciting.

This is challenging. This is, this is, um, I mean, some levels revolutionary because now you're,

you're able to directly connect with people in a way that you've not been able to before. And I would

argue cheaper than you probably were able to in, in, in other methods. And so it's just really,

really, really exciting. So like, are you, is the goal to ramp up more pastors is, is the goal to,

um, like what, what's, uh, what's vision for this thing? Where's this thing going?

Yeah. So we've, um, we've gone back and forth, you know, um, on availability right now,

we're kind of holding, you know, we've talked about, you know, do you go to more hours or,

you know, Saturdays are one day off. Do you, do you find a way to cover that right now? I think we're

pretty good there. Um, I think one thing for us this year is just continuing to work on that response

time. Our goal is two minutes last year. We saw ourselves drifting a little beyond that.

So we're trying to get in the last few weeks have been great. We've been getting back there,

but, um, just trying to continue to work on that response time and then just seeing where else we

can integrate it into things. Um, wherever that's, you know, like I said, it's integrated into these

different platforms, even beyond our website and our app, but in, you know, like even within different

events, within different things that we're doing, are there ways where we can leverage this as a way

to reach out to us as a way to, you know, and even maybe as far as like, where maybe we would normally

have you like text in a question or something like that. Can we use this in the place of that

just to kind of build awareness, to build familiarity with it. Uh, but I think, yeah, biggest thing we'll

probably be focusing on this, just continuing to work with the team, create those, um, connections between

everyone on our staff that's part of this team. And then, um, I would say just even as far as how we

make it available, um, you know, any sort of ways that we can continue to build awareness of it, to

promote it. Um, we tried something a little different this past weekend pre-service where

we had a TV behind us and we were kind of like showing a screenshot of it and talking about how it

works. And so just stuff like that, because we promoted it really heavily during COVID, but then I have

looked back and, you know, just, you know, how for anything goes, you know, last couple of years,

we've just kind of assumed that people know about it. So yeah, not so much like offering a whole lot

of new things, but it just even building greater awareness of that. It's there. This is what you can

use it for maybe finding new ways to speak to it or highlighting things that we might be forgetting

to speak to you about it. Awesome. I mean, I'm so excited for this. I wish, I wish every church would,

would adopt the sort of strategy just to make pastors more accessible to, to people to, to

engage in and kind of tear down some of those boundaries and borders. I'd love to see the price

point shrink too, to get more volunteers in that space as well. But I totally, I can totally feel

that, that, uh, that pinch there. Well, awesome, man. This has been, this has been great. You are now the

official chat expert for the church digital, not only one Oh, but two Oh chats bringing you in for,

for this. And so, Hey, it says we're landing the plane here, wrapping up in any closing thoughts.

Yeah. I just say, um, you know, I love to talk about this stuff. One thing I tried to do is we

were talking about the, you know, church I see network and I want to same thing here for anyone

listening. Um, I love talking to other church leaders. And so if anyone is thinking about doing

something, maybe you're even doing this and you're like, man, why didn't you say this? Or why aren't

you doing this? Um, you know, it goes both ways there, but I'd love to talk in, um, in that link

to that slide deck, I do have contact information in there. Um, but I would love to talk to, you know,

whether it's questions about how we do something, or maybe you're doing something similar and you just

want to share that. I would love to connect about all those things. Yeah, it sounds good. So check out

the show notes or YouTube descriptions and we'll have, uh, previous podcasts and church home and, and, uh,

his CITN presentation, his slide deck will be in there as well. And so it sounds like all sorts of

good information, uh, in there on, on this idea and the strategy. And so, well, Evan, man, thanks for

jumping on here and being part of the conversation for, uh, thanks for having me. And, um, I'm gonna have

to start thinking about a third type of chat topic so I can come back on the podcast. Yeah. I mean,

what's, what are we going to do with, uh, with metaverse? Like there's exactly something. What,

what is, uh, what is, what is, um, augmented reality? There we go. Yeah. That'll be a good

excuse to buy my new Apple headset. There you go. I, you put it in the budget, Apple vision,

3,500. It's for Jeff's podcast. I have to do it. Jeff said you needed to do, uh, you're the web,

you're the, uh, oh my gosh, that would be chat 3.0, uh, for web 3.0. Yeah. It's like, it's,

it's, it's, it's, it's done. Just has to happen. Right. All right. So we'll go and schedule the

podcast. We'll record again, uh, in eight and then let's do it for another four years. Let's

try to find sounds great. Awesome. Hey, for, uh, Evan, this is Jeff with the church digital.

Thanks for jumping on the podcast here. We'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good day.