EP248 - Patrick Miller, Podcasting, and the Role of Content in Digital Discipleship

Digital has a profound place in people's discipleship.

Because here's the thing,

if you're consuming podcasts or news shows consistently,

they are discipling you.

That's not neutral content.

You are taking in information

and it is shaping your view of the world.

It's shaping your view of yourself.

It's shaping your view of God.

And if you're not taking in content

that's helping you actually recalibrate yourself to Jesus,

you're going to be discipled in a different direction.

You'll begin to be apprenticed by Tucker Carlson

or the New York Times

or whatever it is that you are constantly taking in.

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 fit into all 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

will discover a newfound focus on disciple making

that will revolutionize your church.

And now, here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, hey, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast.

Jeff here, founder of the Church Digital,

Digital Church Network,

and the guy who really likes to work with digital churches.

And so, looking forward to this conversation today.

I met a guy on Twitter,

and we didn't hate each other immediately,

unlike so much else of what happens on Twitter.

And so, I brought him into a conversation

and really looking forward to where this is going,

because it's like whenever you meet somebody on Twitter,

you never really know where it's going to go.

And so, this may be the greatest podcast ever,

or it may be a giant train wreck.

But either way, you will enjoy

what's going to come from this conversation today.

So, hey, I want to bring into the conversation,

and I joke, this is going to be awesome.

I'm bringing in Patrick Miller into the conversation.

Patrick, thank you for joining us on the podcast today.

Thanks so much for having me.

You know it's going to be good

when a podcast starts with,

I met a guy on Twitter.

Pretty much.

And it happens.

It does happen.

The people I meet on Twitter,

those podcasts do typically end up being good,

except for the one guy,

but we're not going to talk about that one now.

You'll have to go back through all the episodes

and find it yourself.

So, hey, listen.

So, Patrick wears a lot of different hats,

works with the Gospel Coalition.

He is digital relationships pastor,

among other things,

with the Crossing Church in Missouri.

And dude said something on Twitter,

and immediately I was like,

I want to talk to that guy

and want to unpack this.

But before we get into the tweet,

the tweet,

can I say the tweet?

I'm going to stick with it.

Before we get into the tweet,

the Twitter tweet comment,

Patrick said something.

He just finished writing a book,

Truth Over Tribe.

And so that published in October.

Patrick, why don't you just briefly

give us a synopsis of what the book is?

Yeah, so the book really has nothing to do

with technology.

There is one chapter, though,

in it about Facebook and,

well, I should say Meta and Google

and how that's changed

our political discourse.

But the book in general

is about how political division

is dividing the church

and that Jesus wants us to be united

on what we share in common,

which is, of course,

his death and his resurrection.

We don't argue in the book

that there isn't a place for politics.

We think that's part of

loving your neighbor in the world.

And yet we also think

that the way we talk about politics

has become incredibly toxic.

And so it's a really practical

conversational book

trying to help people

to detribalize,

to leave behind their

political ideological identities

and instead focus,

as the subtitle says,

not giving your allegiance

to the donkey or the elephant,

but instead giving that

deep allegiance to the lamb.

It's interesting.

I'm going to be completely honest.

I am scared.

I am petrified

about having political conversations

in digital space.

You just won't see me do it.

And I love the idea

of truth over tribe.

Even in my own,

this is my own personal theology,

it's nothing to do

with the church digital

or anything else.

It's just I really don't like

getting into political conversations

because especially in 22, 23 social media,

I just have seen this explode

where all of a sudden

different people are arguing

about different things

and none of it has anything

to do with the kingdom.

And so for me,

politics almost feels like

it's the great distraction

of the 2020s

where it's taking us away

from maybe some of the things

that God would rather us be.

So here, I'm asking the author,

I'm inviting the author

into this conversation.

Like I want you to,

whether it's helping me

correct me in this,

but the question that I struggle with

is I want to be apolitical.

Like I don't want anything

to do with that space,

especially how it drips

into digital.

So correct me here,

guide me here,

reshape me here.

What do I need to do?

Is it completely apolitical?

Should I be more political?

Like help me understand

what my role is.

Well, I have to say

politics is subsuming everything.

And so there's a lot of people

out there who would suggest

that if you want to be apolitical

or if you want to avoid

political conversations,

there's something wrong with you.

Or maybe it's just because

you're privileged

and so your life's working out well

and so you don't have to worry

about things like politics.

And while I suppose

there might be some good things

to think about in that critique,

I don't think that every person's call

is to be highly engaged

in politics and political discourse.

And to be frank,

I think the average American

who's interested in politics

isn't actually engaged in politics.

They're engaged

in political hobbyism.

This is where you are focused

on what's happening

in the horse race

in Washington, D.C.

You're always,

you know what's happening

on the federal level,

but you aren't engaged

on a local level.

You aren't caring for the widow,

for the refugee,

for the homeless

in your own local community.

And I think that's where

real politics actually happens

because it's a place

where you have the most influence.

Now, as far as talking

about politics online goes,

I do it all the time.

So clearly,

I don't have a problem

with doing it,

but I don't expect

everybody else to do that.

I think there's a place for it.

And I think the manner

in which we do it matters.

God doesn't need

a bunch of jerks for Jesus

out there dunking

on people on Twitter.

Jerks for Jesus

dunking on people on Twitter.

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

All right.

So Patrick,

that's a tattoo-worthy

comment right there.

I have this thing

that if quotes are so good

is it's good enough

that I would tattoo it

on my body

with the name

of the person who said it.

And you right now

have made the short list.

Jerks for Jesus

dumping on people

on Twitter.

So good.

Well, Patrick,

thank you for that.

Be sure,

we'll put a link

in the show notes

to get the book.

And so if you're interested

in more information

on the book,

this podcast

is not about the book,

but if you're interested

in more information

on Truth Over Tribe,

follow the link

in the show notes

and grab it.

Patrick,

thank you for that.

I appreciate the heart

and the correction

diving into this.

Okay,

so let's get into

what we want to talk

about here

because the conversation

is centered around

content and discipleship.

He tweeted,

we'll put a link

in the show notes.

By the way,

this is like,

I'm not going to read

the whole series,

but it was a series

of tweets,

maybe 13,

14 deep.

Long-winded.

It was good.

But basically,

discipleship,

quote unquote,

this is one tweet,

discipleship is face-to-face.

Parts of discipleship.

Annually,

our church produces

365 podcast episodes,

100 blog posts,

100 plus newsletters,

100 plus videos.

It's changing lives

and energizing discipleship

in profound ways.

And then he goes

into series

to describe

how he does it.

So,

what I found fascinating

about this,

and Patrick,

what I want to dig into,

is you're a disciple,

you're a digital

relationship guy.

In so much

of the world,

when we talk about

discipleship,

we talk about it

being relational.

And actually,

I was shocked

when I saw the tweet

talking about,

hey,

here's content

that we use

for a discipleship.

And then,

on top of that,

the content

has nothing to do

with the Sunday

morning sermon.

It was kind of like

the one-two punch

that you're not

just using relationship,

you're using content,

and it's not

Sunday morning content,

it's other stuff.

So,

maybe start to,

I tell you what,

unpack for me,

kind of,

what was the mindset,

what was the genesis

as you were creating

this tweet,

and then the series

of posts following?

Well,

I think there's a lot

of people out there

who have a strong partition

between what discipleship is

and what you do online.

And for them,

discipleship is exclusively

something that happens

face-to-face.

So,

maybe that's a Sunday

morning worship

in a church,

maybe that's a small group,

maybe that's a one-to-one

meeting with someone,

that's where they think

discipleship takes place.

And I think that those things

are all important,

and they all do have a place.

But I don't think that

that's the exclusive domain

of discipleship.

I think that discipleship

is far more holistic

and involves far more

than just what

happens in relationship

with someone

when you see them face-to-face.

And by the way,

I think part of this

is ridiculous.

So,

I think about my wife,

her closest friends,

they all love Marco Polo.

It's this little app

where you take a video

of yourself

and you send it to someone

and they send one back.

And it's almost kind of

replaced phone conversations

for millennials like me,

especially women

who want to see

each other talking.

And her closest friends,

that's how they keep up.

And she'll tell me

all the time,

she's like,

I know what's happening

in their lives

because of digital technology.

It's not putting a barrier

up in our relationship.

It's deepening

our relationship.

And when we get together,

it's not weird

when we see one another.

It doesn't create

some bizarre dynamic

like I don't really know

who you are.

And I think that you can

draw that principle out

in so many other

digital spheres,

whether it's text threads

or you're engaging with

on Twitter or Facebook.

There's so many different

places where we both

build relationships,

but also to the point

of content

where we're deepening

our understanding

of Jesus

and our love for Him.

And I think that

if you think about

discipleship as being holistic,

you cannot exclusively

put it into

in-flesh meetings.

And I don't think

anyone is consistent

with that.

And I would sit down

with them

and I would challenge them.

Okay, put away your text,

put away your phone,

put away,

stop using it

because it all

doesn't count anymore.

And they'd say,

well, that's ridiculous.

I go, yes,

you're being ridiculous.

That's why that's a problem.

It's beautiful.

Now, we've said

the word discipleship,

I don't know,

15 times already

in this conversation.

So let's back up here

a little bit

because I have a running joke.

If you line up 10 pastors

and ask them

what discipleship is,

you'll get like 12

different answers,

different takes

along the way with that.

So maybe help me here

right up front here

and let's define.

What do you define?

What is your church?

What is the crossing?

I define discipleship as.

Yeah, that's a great question.

And when I think about

the gospel

that is most about discipleship,

I would go to

the gospel of Matthew

because it's the one

where it shows

a lot of the conversations

that Jesus actually has

with his disciples.

And of course,

the gospel ends

with him telling

those disciples,

go therefore

and make disciples

of the nations.

And that word,

the Greek word is methetes,

which just means a learner.

I would actually prefer

the word apprentice

personally over discipleship

because that's what

discipleship is all about.

It's about apprenticing

yourself to Jesus.

And apprenticing yourself

to Jesus is a holistic task.

It means I learn

to speak like Jesus.

I learn to walk

in the way of Jesus.

I learn to have

the practices of Jesus.

I learn to think

like Jesus.

And there's so many

different ways

in our walk with Jesus

that we're going

to be discipled.

And again,

I think digital has a place,

especially when it comes

to the learning aspect.

Digital has a profound place

in people's discipleship.

Because here's the thing,

if you're consuming

podcasts

or news shows

consistently,

they are discipling you.

That's not neutral content.

You are taking in information

and it is shaping

your view of the world.

It's shaping your view

of yourself.

It's shaping your view

of God.

And if you're not

taking in content

that's helping you

actually recalibrate

yourself to Jesus,

you're going to be

discipled in a different

direction.

You'll begin to be

apprenticed by Tucker Carlson

or the New York Times

or whatever it is

that you are constantly

taking in.

Well, let me ask this.

Because when we talk

about the discipleship,

I read books like

The Other Half of Church,

Michael Hendricks,

Jim Wilder.

I don't know if you're

familiar with that one.

It's a book came out

maybe within the past year,

but it dives into

the brain science

about how so much

of what we're doing

with discipleship,

the content model

didn't work.

And actually,

our brain operates

more with it being

in community.

And that's where

I'm surprised

what I'm seeing.

And even when you told me

before the show,

hey, my role is actually

a digital relationships guy.

When your church is doing

digital discipleship,

what's the role of content?

What's the role

with relationships?

How do you get the balance?

Is it 50-50, 60-40?

What does this thing operate

between the content

and the relationships?

Well, of course,

it's going to depend

person-to-person

and how they're engaging

with what we're doing

as a church.

For better or for worse,

I think most people

approach their churches

kind of consumeristically.

We come in asking,

what are the services

that you have to offer me?

And what on the menu

am I going to try and taste?

And I don't think

that's probably the best way

to orient yourself

towards church,

if we're going to be honest.

But that's how

the average person does it.

And so what we do

as a church

is we have all kinds

of in-person opportunities

for people

to build relationships,

whether that's

through small groups

or that's on Sunday mornings

or elsewhere.

And so we have

those offerings.

And yet on the other side,

we realize that people

are thinkers.

And so that means

that we do need

to give them good content.

Now, part of what we do

with content

is start conversations.

Because if you both

listen to the same podcast

or you both download

the same video,

now you have an opportunity

to get together

and dialogue about it

and engage with it.

And I think beyond that,

on a digital level,

we try to be really intentional

about building relationships

with our listeners online.

So I have a lot of people

who are engaging

with the podcasts

that I do

who are talking to me

on Twitter

and we DM with one another.

And I'm not saying

that it's the exact same thing

as being face-to-face

with them.

But in a lot of ways,

I've gotten to be

a pastor to them.

I'd say probably

once or twice a week,

I'm helping someone

find a church

in their local area

because they haven't found

a church to be connected to.

I'm giving them advice

on how to deal

with a problem

in their marriage.

And that's all happening.

That's all being mediated

by digital technology.

And so I don't think

that content is everything.

I think a content-exclusive model

is always going to be a mistake.

But I don't think

that content is nothing.

It's interesting.

You're literally producing

a podcast episode

every day of the year.

Is that how I'm reading this?

365 podcasts a year?

Yes.

Yes.

Help me,

map me out

what this stuff is.

Because I'm assuming

there's nuances,

there's contextualization,

you're reaching

different people.

There's some strategy

behind this.

So walk me through

40,000 foot level.

What are y'all doing?

Yeah.

So we didn't wake up

one day and said,

let's have a podcast

for every day of the year.

Yeah.

It's not like the first

10 minutes of the sermon

just breaking it up

piece by piece, right?

There's got to be

something more.

No.

And to be honest with you,

and we could have

this conversation,

I think that Sunday

morning centric,

sermon centric

digital ministries,

in my view,

make a slight mistake.

But I'll set that aside

for just a moment.

What we did was

we started identifying

needs in our congregation.

So it started with

realizing that we had

a lot of people

who wanted to spend

time in the Bible,

but didn't know

how to do it.

They didn't know

where to start.

They didn't know

how to apply it

to their lives.

We said,

let's start a little podcast

where we release

two 10-minute devotionals

on Bible passages.

And we'll just go

through books of the Bible

and do little devotionals.

And slowly over time,

we started adding in

new hosts

and adding in frequency.

And so that's one

of our podcasts,

10-minute Bible talks.

And it's been

incredibly successful.

I mean,

I think we average

something like

300,000 downloads

a month.

And that's obviously

across the country.

We don't have that many

people in our church.

But then we started

identifying other needs.

For example,

we knew that there

was this

a lot of women

in their 20s

in our church

who were trying

to navigate

their early 20s.

I'm out of college.

I'm working my first job.

Maybe I just got married.

How do I do this?

And so,

and this is where you have

to have the priesthood

of all believers.

We identified people

in our church

who were good communicators.

They're not on staff.

They're not pastors.

They're just two women

who love to talk about life

and are deep thinkers.

And we said,

hey,

why don't you put together

a little podcast

that deals with the topics

that women in their 20s

are asking?

And so,

that became another one.

Another one of our pastors

is really into prayer.

and meditation,

meditative prayer.

And so,

again,

we realized

there's a lot of people

struggling with anxiety

and they're interested

in meditation.

So,

guess what we did?

We started a podcast for it.

We started one

for our counseling ministry.

We realized that politics

and culture were an issue

and that people

were being discipled

by the news media.

So,

we started one

on that topic.

So,

what we essentially did,

if you catch it,

was we found needs.

We came up with an idea

to meet the need

digitally

in terms of content.

And then we found

and located people

inside of our church

who could speak

to those needs.

And then we began

to produce the content.

So,

it's not as though

there's one podcast

with an episode

coming out every day.

No,

we have a whole

kind of backlog

of podcasts

that are doing

different things

for different people

that are speaking

to different felt needs

that hopefully address

where they're at

in their walk

with Jesus right now.

Do you have

more ideas?

Are people

coming to you

with ideas?

What would

a new podcast,

what would that process

look like

if you were doing

something different?

Oh, yeah.

I mean,

this definitely happens

all the time.

For example,

we have another couple

in our church

who has a neighboring ministry.

So,

these are people

who are really intentional

about getting to know

their neighbors.

They live in a suburb

and kind of becoming

a hub for relationship

and community

in their neighborhood.

And so,

they've practiced

this for years

and they have

an incredible talent

for neighboring

and they have

all of these ideas

and skills

that they can teach

people to do.

They even wrote

a book on the topic.

And so,

I was talking with them

and they're,

again,

good communicators.

And I said,

you guys need to turn

this thing into a podcast.

So,

that's often how it goes

is you're talking

with someone,

they already have the itch,

they already have the need.

I see a problem.

And it's right,

that's a sweet spot.

When someone identifies

a problem

and they want to help

fix the problem

and solve the problem,

that's exactly

the kind of person

who you can bring in

and start having

create content.

I mean,

assuming that they're

creative,

good communicators,

they're skills

that have to be present

for people to be able

to do a podcast.

But that's often

how it goes.

Again,

we find a problem,

we find someone

who has a heart

for the problem

and who has

the right skills

and then we equip them.

We know how to do it.

We have the system down.

So,

we make it super easy

for these people.

They just show up

and do their thing

and leave.

Yeah,

I love this

because you're

finding people

that are passionate

about this

and you're

helping them

develop a voice

to multiply those ideas

into others.

Like,

I'll just keep flowing here.

What training?

So,

you've got a couple,

maybe they're charismatic,

this neighboring group.

Have they ever done

anything with podcasts?

Do they even

know how to spell podcasts?

What are you helping them do

to get started?

Yeah,

so we have a pretty

well-established process.

When we bring someone on

with the idea

of starting a podcast,

we begin with

what I call

target personas

and this is pretty

normal marketing speak.

We identify

and we literally create

little

one-page documents

describing

who their target listeners are

and we make them

like real people.

Like,

this is Ben

and this is Tom

and we describe

where they're at in life,

what they do,

what their education is,

what their fears are,

what they're interested in,

what questions they have

and we do that

because one of the hard

things in a podcast

is that it's a one-way conversation

and it's really important

to keep the person

that you're talking to

in views

that you're not just

talking to yourself.

So we begin there

and once we have

a target persona laid out,

that's actually when we move

more into kind of the

titling and branding

and brainstorming

of what the different episodes

could be.

That's when we get into

that phase of ideation

because again,

if you don't know

who your audience is,

your branding

and everything you put together

is not going to hit

the right target.

And by the way,

if your goal

is just for you

to become famous

or a celebrity,

that's in my mind

not very worthwhile.

I'm not interested in it.

If your goal

is to help people,

then I want to help you

and that's again

why starting with the audience,

you want to help people

so you got to start with them.

Once we get that down,

we get them into our,

we have a little studio space now

but we haven't.

I mean,

this is brand new

so we've done this largely

without having anywhere

to record

but we just developed

a really simple system

for how people

could record things

and what we actually

have them do

is record

probably three or four

test episodes.

We tell them to send it out

to kind of their

key essential people

get feedback on it

and they use that feedback

then to change

the format of the podcast

and frankly,

just to learn,

to figure out

how do we talk

on the podcast

and those episodes

never get released.

It's just kind of practice

and of course,

I listen to those

and I give them feedback

and kind of help coach them.

I mean,

part of podcasting

and you know this is

your first

you know,

hundred episodes

aren't going to be great.

That's not going to be your best.

You get better over time

and so that's where

we just try to coach people

and help encourage them

and then on the back end,

like we're really strategic

about actually marketing

these podcasts,

making sure that people

in our church

know that they exist,

making sure that people

outside our church

see that they're out there

and so that's kind of

the whole package

of what we do

to go from

idea to execution.

That's,

this is incredible.

I was not expecting

this conversation

coming out of this

but you're,

what you've done is,

you know,

we talk about here

on the show a lot

the greatest resource

the church has

is literally sitting

in the pews.

We just got to figure out

how to tap into it

and you're doing that.

You're platforming others,

helping them do

what they feel like

God is calling them to do

and multiplying

those ideas

into others

so that other people

within the church

can follow suit.

how did you get there?

Like,

this is not something

that happens quickly.

There's a,

there's a,

there's multiple levels

of culture here.

One,

you've got to be okay

doing something

other than Sunday morning.

You've got to be okay

empowering other people.

You've got to being okay

with failure

or lack of connection

or people walking away.

Like,

there's,

not your typical church

couldn't pull some of this off.

How did you,

how did you get to this point?

Yeah,

I mean,

part of it is our church culture.

We have a few values.

One of them is agility,

the ability to move swiftly

in the new things

and accept change

and to not be resistant to change.

Another one is extreme ownership,

which is the notion

that when I'm doing something,

I see myself as an owner of it.

And that goes to our last value,

which is excellence.

Doing things well,

making sure that things are executed

at a high level.

And so back in 2019,

when we started our first podcast,

I mean,

we haven't been doing this

for that long

in terms of years.

It was agility.

It was saying,

hey,

we want to reach people

in between Sundays.

We don't want church

to just be something

that you show up for

one day a week

and then it checks out on you.

It's almost a parish model.

Back in the day,

a pastor could walk around

to people's houses

and workplaces

and check in on them.

And that's what I see podcasts as.

It's kind of like a little parish

where you get to be a part.

And people tell me this all the time.

They're like,

hey,

I was out running on the trail yesterday

listening to you.

And that was a great episode.

And that's the funny thing.

That's the relational side is,

yes,

I wasn't having a conversation

with them,

but they felt like I was.

They feel like I'm a part

of their life.

And I love that.

I think that's really lovely.

But again,

we had agility.

And then obviously,

COVID hit in 2020.

And because our team

had already been working

on some of this digital stuff,

we just as a church

really reallocated

resources and people

so that we could focus

more of our actual man hours

on digital content.

And that was a major shift.

That was a financial shift.

That was a big risk.

But in the end,

it's really paid off for us

because we've realized

that using this digital technology,

we're able to reach

a tremendous amount of people.

And we just put a number on it.

We lost about 30%

of our church during COVID,

which is pretty standard

for most in-person churches.

Since then,

though,

we've added an additional 40%.

And that's largely been

through our online content,

the stuff that we've used.

And these are people

in our local town.

We're not in a big town.

This is a town

of 150,000 people.

But we've added

an additional 40%

into our church.

And a lot of these people

are baby Christians.

They're new to their faith.

So it's a different kind of person

maybe than that left initially.

But to me,

this is why it's so important.

It's because we're

in a post-Christian culture.

And in a post-Christian culture,

the expectation

that someone's just going

to walk inside your church

and they've never done that

before in their life.

Are you insane?

Especially with social anxiety

the way it is.

When's the last time

you walked into a building

that had some sort

of participative element

and you had never done it before?

We don't do that.

People don't go into spaces

that they're uncomfortable in.

So again,

we're just using digital

as an on-ramp

to becoming more connected

to the church.

All right.

So actually,

one of my next questions

is going to be the post-Christian

because you mentioned that

in the thread as well.

It's interesting.

When I say things like

the United States

is in a post-Christian environment,

that's next to churches

operating in virtual reality.

That's probably one

of the more offensive things

that I tend to say

just because people

balk at that idea so much.

But you're openly talking about that.

Unpack that for me.

Why do you think

the United States

is currently operating

post-Christian?

And how does that...

What are other examples

of how that affects your ministry?

Yeah.

I'll go so far to say

I don't think it,

I know it.

So I'll offend people worse

by making it a factual statement.

We actually,

on our digital team,

funded the most

expansive study

of de-churching

that's yet been done

in the United States.

There's a book

that'll be coming out

in a few years

exploring this.

But I'll give you

the down low early on.

So your listeners

are kind of getting in

on a secret here.

Boom.

We are going through

the largest religious shift

in American history,

period.

And for the first time

in American history,

it's not a move

toward the church,

it's a move

away from the church.

Something around 40%

of Americans

who have previously

been involved with church

have de-churched

over the last decade.

In other words,

they have stopped

walking with Jesus,

they've stopped

connecting with their faith,

they aren't doing

anything Christian

in their lives.

Add to that,

that Gen Z,

our youngest generation,

the majority of them now,

have grown up

outside of church.

They haven't been

to a church in their life.

And that's because

their parents

were the ones de-churching.

So their parents de-churched,

they didn't take them to church.

So they have no church experience.

So we are now

hitting the point

where the majority

of Americans

really have no connection

with church.

Maybe they would

self-identify as Christian,

but again,

the rise of the nuns,

N-O-N-E-S,

not N-U-N-S,

the rise of the nuns

tells us that

this number of people

who don't identify

as anything,

they're not atheists,

they're not Christian,

they're not Buddhist,

it is the fastest

growing demographic

in America.

And so by every

statistical measure,

Christianity is

vastly shrinking.

And again,

this is the largest

religious shift

in American history.

So when I say

that this is a

post-Christian culture,

I'm talking about

sociological fact,

not my opinion

of where we're at

as a culture.

I mean,

you have a whole

different conversation

about how cultural mores

around sex

and sexuality

and gender.

I mean,

there's so many other areas

that we could get into

to say,

see,

we're moving away

from kind of

a traditional

Christian way

of seeing the world.

Now,

I'm not necessarily

mourning that.

It's not as though

there's been a golden age

in America

where everybody was Christian

and everything was right.

People look back

at the 50s,

oh,

that was great.

I'm like,

well,

it's great

if you weren't

a black person.

I mean,

there's never been

a great time

in American history

to just be a Christian.

But because people

aren't used to being

in church,

it has to change

how we engage them.

We aren't dealing with,

this is not Billy Graham

doing a crusade

to a bunch of people

who've been in church

their whole life.

We are living

in a different moment.

So is your response

then empower individuals

and lean more

on individual

personal evangelism?

Is your response

moving outside of the,

because you're a physical church,

moving outside

the physical church walls

and moving more

towards a community pastor

instead of a campus pastor?

Like,

I don't disagree

with the words

that you're saying.

And it's interesting.

I just read a stat,

something out of England.

You know,

we're doing this recording

in December in England,

which is a post-Christian

environment.

There are more people

that are going to pubs

for Christmas Eve

than are going to

a Christmas Eve

church service.

So we're seeing

what life looks like

in post-Christian environments.

We're seeing,

hey, you know what?

We're not that far away

here in America.

Maybe what's

some practical pivots

or things that you're

wrestling with

on doing ministry

and post-Christian.

Yeah, I mean,

again, I think the answer

is going to be holistic.

I think what you just said

that we're going to need

community

and we're going to need

one-to-one evangelism

is a key critical factor

in the conversation.

But I think moving beyond

just community,

there's a place for digital.

And that's the topic

that we're talking about.

So I want to sit there

for a second.

Here's what's interesting

about those de-churched people.

The vast majority of them

did not leave angry.

They didn't leave

because they stopped

believing something.

They just stopped.

They just stopped showing up.

And the vast majority of them

are open to coming back

to church.

They're very open.

They just need an invitation.

And I think this is where

both the one-to-one...

And there's different scales

of this.

There's some people

it's going to take

a lot of relationship

before they will ever

step into a church.

There's also a different

subset of people

that it's not going to take

a lot of relationship.

They just need an invitation.

And to me,

digital content

is one of the best ways

to invite people

on two levels.

One,

if you're listening

to digital content

and there's someone

you want to have

come be a part

of your church,

it's a lot easier

to send them a podcast

or a video and say,

Hey, this made me think of you.

I'd love to talk

with you about it

than it is to say,

Hey, come with me

on Sunday morning to church.

But number two,

using marketing

and essentially

target audiences

on Meta's platform

and Google's platform,

we've gotten rather good

at targeting people

who aren't in church.

And all we have to do

is give them...

We've used email marketing

to do this as well.

But we just have to give them

a little bit of content

that helps them warm up

to us to where

they're not even coming

to our church,

but they begin to think

about us as,

Hey, this is someone

who's adding to my life

spiritually.

This is someone

who is kind of pastoring

me right now.

And that becomes

the on-ramp down the road.

Maybe it's a year later

or two years later

that they come.

In fact,

using our email marketing,

what we've discovered

is about 10%

of the new contacts

that we gather

will show up in person

in the next year.

And so if we can gather

1,000 contacts,

that's 100 people.

This year,

we're going to gather

around 9,000 contacts.

That's about 900 new people

that are in our church.

And it's not anything fancy.

We were just offering

them devotions.

We're just saying,

Hey, come back to God.

Don't you miss this?

Wasn't your life better

when you're with Jesus?

Here's something really simple

and easy for you

to do,

to reconnect with God.

And again,

that eventually leads them

to walking inside those doors.

Yeah.

And it's something,

I mean,

that's a low-tech solution,

right?

I mean,

you're emailing

a daily devotional

through MailChimp

or something.

This isn't TikTok.

This isn't something crazy.

It's email.

And that's interesting.

10%,

which is a low number,

maybe,

but like you said,

9,000 to get to 900,

that's a significant footprint

that you're able to move.

You know what I love, Patrick?

I love that you've got the stats

that are backing up

what you're doing.

So many times

we have these conversations

like there's,

what is it?

There's qualitative

but not quantitative.

We can tell the stories,

but we don't actually have

the numbers

that are matching it up.

And you've got

the numbers

that are doing that.

All this has been

within your,

like you said,

2018,

2019,

so three,

four,

five years.

That's how long you guys

have been pushing digital

where you are?

Yeah, so I started

in college ministry,

then transitioned

to leading a 20s ministry

that was primarily focused

on getting people

in their 20s

into small groups.

And that had about

500 people involved.

It was doing well,

but obviously I wanted

to reach more people.

And this is probably

2017, 2018.

And so I'm just thinking

about millennials at the time

and how do you reach millennials?

And the answer is obvious.

We need to reach them online.

And so just as a part

of that ministry,

I started doing

more online ministry

and more online content.

Like I said,

we launched our first podcast

in October of 2019,

so not that long ago.

Around that time,

we made our first hire

kind of in the digital space.

Now, again,

COVID really changed

everything for us

because a lot of our jobs

disappeared all of a sudden

while people were

kind of living

through the pandemic.

There was no more

in-person church.

And when in-person church

started back up,

the church,

because we're agile,

said,

hey, we're actually

going to keep you guys

on this digital stuff

because this is changing lives

and it's drawing people

to Jesus.

And we're not going

to pull you out

and make you go back

to what you were doing before.

Now, again,

that's a cost.

That's an investment.

And we're a large church,

so we have a little more freedom

to make those kinds

of decisions.

But that's how it developed.

It was just slowly

over years

trying strategies.

And like you just said,

we're very quantitative.

We don't do things

that are ineffective.

So we've tried

lots of ways

of gathering content online.

We just realized

that email devotionals

are by far the best one.

They're really easy to do.

There's nothing

complicated about it.

And we tried

lots of complicated things.

They didn't work.

So we did the thing

that works.

And isn't it great news

that it's easy?

And podcasting

is really similar.

People want to start

a YouTube channel

or do some video thing,

but they have

no videography experience.

I'm like,

why would you do that?

You can just get behind

a mic and no one

has to see you.

And you could reach

thousands,

tens of thousands,

depending on your podcast,

people with your content

and help them

draw closer to God.

That's fascinating.

How do you know,

as you've been developing

all this stuff

and developing the strategies,

working the analytics,

the measurements,

trying different things,

exploring different areas,

how do you know

if something's a win?

Like,

what are you looking for?

How do you know

if it's succeeding?

Maybe what's an example

of a failure,

something you tried

and it didn't work?

At what point

did you pull the plug on it?

Talk about some of these

successes and failures.

with the processes you got.

Yeah.

So,

you know,

this has a lot to do

with our digital team.

We set what are called

lag measures

and lead measures.

So,

lag measures are kind of

your long-term goals.

We want to have

X hundred thousand downloads,

right?

That's our long-term goal.

Lead measures are

more immediate term goals

that hopefully affect

the lag measure

in the long-term.

And so,

we run usually

six-week campaigns.

These are little

six-week chunks

where we'll focus on a theme,

we'll have a particular target

that we're trying to reach

and we'll have

a short-term goal

that we're trying to reach

during that period.

For example,

we might say,

right now,

we're in the Christmas season.

And so,

our goal is to get

3,000 people

to subscribe

to new contacts.

So,

not total,

just new contacts

to subscribe

to our Christmas newsletter,

right?

So,

that would be the goal.

And then,

we create content,

whether that's advertising content

or blogs

that point to

the devotional.

We create content

that points people

in that direction

so that they will sign up

for the Christmas devotional.

And that's how we evaluate,

did something work

or did something not work,

right?

If we don't hit the goal

or the target that we met,

we can go back

and evaluate,

why didn't we hit it?

Was this our fault

or was this just a bad idea

to start with?

One great example of this

for me,

you said failures.

In the inbound marketing world,

there's the idea

of gated content.

This will be like PDFs

that are behind

paywalls.

Not literal paywalls.

You're not paying money.

You give your email contact

and you get

this three-page document

on how to pray

the Lord's Prayer.

What we've discovered

is that the vast majority

of gated content,

free gated content,

doesn't actually

generate contacts.

And you can spend

a lot of work

creating these documents

and literally

no one will use it.

And we had to discover that

by repeatedly trying

different ideas,

different forms

of gated content.

We did things for

parents and children.

We did things for

about every demographic

you can imagine.

And we just realized

no one was interested.

No one wanted to sign up

for this.

And the people who did

sign up for it

were people who were

already consuming

everything else that we did.

So we weren't reaching

new people with it.

So again,

that's just how we've evaluated.

And my point here,

by the way,

is not to say that

gated content is bad.

I'm saying our team

doesn't know how to do it.

So we're not going

to try to do it.

We tried.

We couldn't do it, right?

Your team might be great

at gated content

and you might be able

to make some amazing stuff.

Awesome.

Good for you.

But you have to evaluate

what your skills are

and where you can be successful.

And the only way to do that

is by setting goals,

measuring success throughout,

evaluating why you did

or didn't reach that goal,

and making sure those goals

are towards your long-term ends

of what you want to accomplish

as an industry.

This is beautiful.

This is so good.

By the way,