EP225: LMichelle Salvant & The Opportunities of an Digital African American Church

So I had to get to a point, even though I'm a, you know, I'm a minister and I'm a technologist, but I had to understand, you know, let's take a look.

We are, we are as a culture needing, even now more than ever, these safe spaces.

So how do we help that translate when it comes to digital and even the metaverse realm?

So there's a lot of history behind really the Black church and our role.

So to take a building or a place of meeting out of that equation, it's kind of like, where are we?

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast.

Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church.

But more than TED 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, everybody.

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast.

We've got episode 225 here.

And it's actually going to be one of the first shows in a series that we're going to be doing off and on throughout the summer here.

You know, so often I have conversations where we're looking at different contextualizations, different churches that are operating in different ways, thinking outside of the box, whether that's through fresh expressions, doing like a digital expression of church or a video game or a metaverse church.

Or even, that's one of the things that I loved working with Stadia is we really started to explore the idea of how different races and different cultures are connecting into church.

And honestly, I just discovered in my own life that there was, it was not a single way to do church, but that there was, there was freedom in a lot of these contextualizations to do something different to reach a different type of person.

And so this summer, that really challenged me to maybe explore some different ways of how we're doing church digitally.

And today's conversation is actually going to be one of the first, actually, it's the first conversation we're publishing, but one of the first conversations we're having on this as we're exploring the African-American church.

And maybe some nuances of how an African-American church can, should operate digitally, maybe how it can connect better.

Now, listen, up front, I just, I want to say something and I want to call the purple elephant out of the room.

I am a white man.

I'm bald with a goatee.

I am like the typical looking pastor, American white pastor.

That's pretty much like who I am.

And so, but I've learned by doing digital metaverse ministry, it's better to ask questions than make statements.

It's better to position yourself as a learner.

And if you've ever listened to anything with these podcasts, you've known that it's far more often I'm asking questions and learning from the guests than I am trying to tell the guests what to think, because I don't know the answer to these questions.

And even in the conversation of today, what would an African-American church look like digitally?

What are some of the challenges?

What are the opportunities?

What can we do?

I don't have the perspective because I've typically been involved in non-African-American, mostly white, but still multicultural churches.

And so I want to learn from this conversation.

I'm welcoming you to learn with me as well as I'm bringing it into the guest here, El-Michel Silvant.

El-Michel, how are you doing today?

Jeff, I love your intro.

I am doing completely fantastic.

Just glad to be here, enjoying the summer weather here in Florida.

So as always.

So yeah, I'm down here in Miami.

As a matter of fact, last week I was vacationing in the Keys.

And so it was like, you know, 95 with like 130% humidity.

It was just brutal.

Now you're up Tallahassee, am I right?

Yeah, we're in North Florida.

So yeah, a little bit closer to Georgia.

Still sunshine state, still hot.

But I love the summers.

I prefer the sun over anything else.

Yeah, okay.

We can agree to disagree on that point.

I went out of-

There we go.

We might as well get it.

Let's get it started.

Yeah, let's just roll into it and move on.

But, you know, and truly, I do mean this.

Like, I'm coming into this conversation a learner here.

And so I want to put the disclaimer on.

As I may say the wrong thing, I may use the wrong term.

I mean no offense by this, anything here.

As much as us trying to, with the Church Digital, try to draw attention to some of these nuances and how, if we're going to be effective in reaching different types of people, how we, the church here in America, need to think different.

And how we can learn, we've got a conversation coming up with a Hispanic church here in actually Miami that's got global reach.

We're talking with people from the German church and from African churches in Philippines.

Philippines is actually the second largest country that is tracking with the Church Digital and Digital Church Network, which is weird to me, more than Canada.

But for some reason, we've got a rather large Filipino crowd.

And so this is a great learning opportunity.

Elmichelle, thank you for jumping in right here.

We didn't say it.

Let's just intro it.

Elmichelle, you run your own production company, Elmichelle Media.

Why don't you just start kicking off here?

Tell us a little bit about that.

Well, Elmichelle Media, I guess we're about 14 years old now.

We are basically an emerging media and technology company.

We specialize mostly in consulting and training, work a lot in the education sector.

But our base and what got us started even in this business itself was the church being a help to the very church that we're talking about now, the churches that we're talking about now.

So anything from web design, which was emerging at the time in 2008 with kind of like the WordPress, your do-it-yourself web design, through social to now into immersive and more of the metaverse, we're teaching, we're training on this, we're helping equip teams in this area.

And then we also have a strong student base where we do these different learning experiences to help students be more positive in times like these and to move forward.

We are media that moves you forward.

And so that's kind of like the basis of what the company does.

Yeah, Elmichelle was one of the speakers at Leadership Network's Metaverse Church Summit, which was a couple weeks ago.

We'll put a link in the show notes where you can grab that.

She stole the show.

The majority of it was virtual reality.

She came in talking augmented reality and immersive journaling and all sorts of stuff.

And I've said this publicly.

I think I even said it within the summit.

I've gone ahead and claimed it.

For me, Elmichelle is the most interesting person I've met in 2022.

I don't care who else I meet for the rest of the year.

If you really unpack who this woman is, it's incredible.

And so I would love for you, we'll put some links in the show notes, really check in some of the stuff that she's working on,

because she is one of the bleeding edges right now of what church, of what Christianity is going to look like as the metaverse continues to, I guess, reveal itself, unravel, unfold.

I don't know what the term is there.

So we're really good there.

And the context of this conversation, we want to dig in.

So Elmichelle, you're a high level, a volunteer leader at your church there up in northern Florida called Higher Dimension Church.

Why don't you just tell us a little bit kind of like what serving looks like for the church there at Higher Dimension?

Oh my gosh, Higher Dimension Church, Tallahassee, where the pastors, got to give a shout out to my pastors, Carlos and Nikki Collins, of course.

Our church, very apostolic and prophetic in nature, operates in the fivefold ministry.

We started it from the ground up, so it's kind of like being a part of the launch team.

It is the first of what I believe will be many church plants under the Higher Dimension Church, Tallahassee brand.

What it's like to serve, my husband and I are, we both serve in the area of media.

I'm the media director in Tidal and also work with the women's ministry and the missions team.

But it's all hands on deck, especially when it comes to media.

It's our pastors, we are more on the side of being servant leaders.

And so even when you lead in a section, you lead, the strongest leaders are those who are serving the most.

It's kind of like our mentality.

And so when it comes to media, all areas of media, I oversee those areas.

And then I'm also given the creative freedom to introduce new and emerging media and technology and just digital,

even before the pandemic, our pastors have just been very, very open to that.

And I would say that that is a huge step in ministry in general, and especially, you know, in African-American church.

We are tech people by nature.

You know, you could look at numbers and the things we consume and who's on the networks.

You know, we're there as African-Americans.

But a lot of times on the creative end, there are, of course, it's a very huge underrepresentation of, you know, the culture in these areas.

So how does that translate?

What does that mean as it comes down to the churches?

Sometimes due to us not being in these areas as a culture in the area of creating, consuming, yeah, we're there.

But are we creating in those spaces?

Sometimes in the church, there's maybe not the openness as much as you maybe see in other ministries to the new technology,

just because there's not sometimes a face on it that looks like our face or an understanding of it.

So sometimes just in that sense, we can see a little bit of a digital divide.

A lot of times it could be access to, you know, things like Wi-Fi and just different things that might hinder the effectiveness of digital, virtual, and even metaverse ministry.

But we, I am blessed to get to your original question, to serve with leaders who are very open to what we call ways to really connect.

At one time, I had even proposed, I said, you know, pastors, instead of being the media ministry, we should be the connect ministry.

We are the people who are using all this technology and trying to find ways to connect the message with people no matter where they are.

So that's just kind of like been our mindset, not to put any limitations on what we could do as it relates to media, because the ultimate goal is to make those connections.

That's beautiful.

Very long answer to your question, but hopefully.

No, that's great.

So then I'm pulling from what you just said.

The primary way that you're using digital is that first impressions, is that connect, utilizing it to the social media, digital presence, website, broadcasting of church service, using that to pull people into a physical building for discipleship and more connection.

Right, pull them in and then also reinforce messaging, because I think what the pandemic showed us, we were one of the, honestly, few churches in our area during the pandemic that decided to close.

Or to, let me not say close, I like the way our pastors, the husband and wife pastoral team, to expand.

So to expand beyond the building and to pursue more of a virtual first approach during the pandemic.

I would say about six months prior, we were just working very hard to make sure streaming online was effective.

And this was before it was necessary, okay?

Before it was, let me say, commonplace.

It's always been necessary.

But at the time before the pandemic, obviously, majority of our congregation was in person and not online.

But my husband and I, and we know it was only God, just really in six months prior to the pandemic, just for working, like, trying this software, that software, how to stream better.

Let's get these cameras and the pastors were all in, not knowing where it was going to lead.

So I say that to say this, we had the access and we were equipped, when the pandemic hit, to take a more virtual first approach, to be ready for what we call expansion of the church.

Many were not.

Many in the African-American church were not.

Because, again, most of the worshipers or, you know, most of the members were in person.

So there was, if you were streaming, it was just kind of like, yeah, okay, that's cool.

But it wasn't just a priority.

And so we made it a priority so we were ready.

And we had more than a handful of pastors who were calling us right after the pandemic hit, calling our pastors, you know, how are y'all doing this?

How are y'all doing that?

And really just feeling like they could not afford, and I'm not just talking financially, I mean, just ministry-wise, not to meet in person.

They were like, we don't have the infrastructure.

I mean, we don't have the cameras.

We don't have what you have.

So the thought, the thinking was different.

So a lot of people, many in our area and some in other areas where I know our pastors have friends in ministry and things like that, they'll say, we never shut down.

And, you know, for us, safety and people, and like our pastor said, we have families.

We have people with young children.

We have mature adults.

We can't afford to do that.

And on the other end, people were like, we can't afford to, you know, close our doors and not be able to reach people at all with the word.

So I think there's a challenge there with even having the kind of access or the foresight or the thought to think of it as digital ministry.

You know, at the time, it was just something you do maybe, but it wasn't a priority.

And many of the churches where, you know, I'm familiar with.

You know, and that's some of the pre-COVID, some of the African-American churches that I worked with or tried to work with, honestly, were similar stories.

You know, there was one, it was a pastor friend.

He's like, he's like, Jeff, I'm okay.

I want my message heard around the world.

I want to see people get baptized in Ethiopia off of the sermons that I'm preaching.

I want global missions to go and happen digitally.

But can we block like the 50-mile radius around my physical church?

Because I don't want lazy people staying at home watching this church service.

I want them to come into the physical building.

And we, honestly, that was a pre-COVID conversation.

And as a result of COVID, they were one of these churches that pivoted and really stuck with the understanding of a digital long-term.

It's been fun seeing this church kind of expand with it.

But it seems like there's a lot of, and I don't want to overstate because I think a lot of the church, whether it's African-American or white or otherwise, a lot of the church is really grounded on physicality.

But I'm wondering how much maybe is over and above, because I've seen so many churches, and I love how you said they can't afford it, and it may not even be the monetarily as much as just their perception of the physicality of it.

How much of an African-American church is really grounded in this physicality?

I, without having done, okay, official research, I would definitely say maybe 60 to 70% that don't have a virtual first approach.

Maybe an appreciation, and that could be in the church worldwide.

So there could be people who watch this and are like, we're not virtual first.

We're in person first.

But, you know, it's even in the language.

It's in the thought process.

You know, in many of our churches, we're the sound team.

We're not even the media ministry.

You know, when I'm talking to churches, I'm like, you know, this is a ministry, right?

Or you're the place where I got to get somebody young, a young person to kind of oversee all that.

Because, you know, the pastors, many, well, many of the leaders may say, you know, I have a lack of understanding of that.

So sometimes the lack of understanding makes just the whole premise of it all just get thrown out.

Like, you know, I don't understand it, so we're not going to do that.

But what I do understand is people in pews.

You know, I read in Nona Jones' book just about, you know, social media and those type things.

Just kind of her frustration early on being a manager at Facebook over, you know, their faith-based initiatives.

And hearing pastors say they were more really concerned, having more of an aquarium mindset, she said, than more of a discipleship mindset.

How many people can we get in the tank?

It's about how many people we can see, not how many people we can reach or would be willing to reach, whether we see them or not.

And I think, you know, culturally, we're family-oriented.

We're about community.

We love it.

We love fellowship.

You know, our barbecues, that's our culture.

You know, we want to get together.

It's a place where you feel safe.

You know, in the times where America was very challenged because there's still a lot of racial challenges, not maybe a lot of racial challenges, period.

You know, it was the African-American church where we felt safe, where we felt free, you know, to worship, where we, you know, felt respected as a people.

And so you start to think about those things and then you wonder, you know, how will that even translate into digital?

What then do we become?

Where then is the meeting space, you know, the place of connection, even for the culture?

So I had to get to a point, even though I'm a, you know, I'm a minister and I'm a technologist, but I had to understand, you know, let's take a look.

We are, we are as a culture needing, even now more than ever, these safe spaces.

So how do we help that translate when it comes to digital and even the metaverse realm?

So there's a lot of history behind really the Black church and our role.

So to take a building or a place of meeting out of that equation, it's kind of like, where are we?

And so it's a little bit of a balance on that end.

But what I'm trying to say is, man, you talk about finding your tribe.

There's so many people.

We had a lot of people during the pandemic who moved due to employment, due to marriages and things like that, but they still wanted to be connected to the ministry.

The ministry still felt like home.

So, you know, my, you know, argument is what do you do in those situations when you still want to feel like home, but you physically can't be there?

You know, how do you accommodate that?

So just trying to figure it out for some, is it worth it to figure out?

You know, do they have the time to figure out?

Some will say, well, we don't have an L.

Or people, you know, it's not positioned to be priority.

The message is positioned to be the priority, and it is.

But I always say that we're the transportation.

And so you got the message.

But in one definition, media is known as, it's kind of like transportation.

So you got to kind of have both to achieve the whole goal.

So right now, I think as a church, especially with the different things that we see happening racially, we still want to be there.

We still want to be the meeting place.

But I think that we, just as a culture, want to move a little bit further ahead into these realms.

But you got a lot of things to consider.

There are still, and I work in some of these areas that are really rural areas where there's lack of access even to, you know, internet and Wi-Fi.

You know, maybe you have hotspots and things like that, but will it hold up, you know?

Sometimes that lack of access, then you say, well, then how do you reach those people, you know, who might be a part of your congregation or, you know, some have older generations.

What we saw early on was a lot of use of phone conferencing lines.

A lot of people just, you know, using phone conferencing.

Zoom has been a winner.

Zoom as a winner.

Many people are learning really how to use Zoom, even if it's just a call in.

And then we are seeing more and more people stream, use some of the streaming services we're using, like StreamYard.

So we're streaming, you know, across multiple social networks and things like that.

But I still don't think we're maxing out on the use of tools like the church online tool through, you know, Life.Church that's free.

Some of the tools that we could.

But then the question is, who's on the other side?

Would they really be on the other side, you know, or would they just prefer to meet in person?

Do you find that people are connecting digitally?

Like, I mean, you've given a couple examples, like the person who moves away.

You're also using digital as first impressions, trying to connect with a new person, trying to lead them into the building.

Like in context of the streaming of the church service, do you think that is effective in connecting with someone that has distanced themselves or someone you've not met yet?

Can you think of stories or examples where the stream of the service has been effective?

Absolutely.

In fact, it's been so effective.

Our Bible study is now entirely online.

So we still do.

We are still in the hybrid service mode and probably looking to continue the course.

I don't want to overspeak.

My pastor said, oh, yeah, okay.

Any more vision you have for us?

But I do see that, you know, our Bible studies and even our Sunday services that are entirely virtual, the response is amazing.

And people are connecting.

People feel a sense of community.

People are giving, which is another thing.

You know, it does take financial resources to run ministry, you know.

And that was another concern with many churches.

If I don't see you, are you still going to give?

We've been able to engage people in that way online.

We have gained new people who come consistently, who live in distant areas outside of the area we live.

They live in the area, but it's so far to commute that they just jump online.

We even saw people were so used to us being online that when they would come in the church, we still stream.

You would find people sitting in the actual service commenting online to the point where our pastor said, are we going to have to just take phones?

I mean, because if you're in here, can you be in the building?

Because people were, you know, just that used to and had gotten, you know, really, really acclimated with our online presentation.

But, man, we had to work.

And I will let you know that.

I think on the one end, people don't get into it because they maybe don't understand it all.

Well, I've heard the calls from pastors like, we check this equipment over and over again.

And as soon as we go live, we hear the feedback on the mic.

The camera doesn't look right.

Like they just, they want to do it, but it just won't come out the way they want it to.

So they're like, look, just everybody just come into church.

That's what we know how to do well.

But we had to work.

We had to get the lighting right.

We had to work on our sound, buy different mics, upgrade the internet service, you know, buy the software,

whatever we had to do to make the online experience as good, if not even better than what we do in person.

So when we have an in-person service, you either just have many of what used to be members just online or many of the current members online and just a very small group in person.

So we're trying to navigate those challenges too.

But in the early, early days, man, our pastors got a lot of pushback from inside and outside of the church about what we were doing.

Because if there's one church in the area who's just like, yeah, we're not going back in the building yet.

We're going to continue online.

Then others in the area are like looking at other churches like, well, why aren't you doing what they're doing?

So you had pastors that kind of wanted to have discussions about that.

And then you did have some members that said, I just can't get into online.

I don't feel connected.

I'll have to go to a church that's just primarily in person.

If being in a community that has that sort of mindset, you guys are looking at digital as first impressions to connect with initially, like you even talked about calling it connections.

So what separated that mindset from what the crowd was telling you?

Other churches in the community, it's not worth it.

You can never get the tech right.

It's just not even worth the effort.

Let's just come together physically.

We want to hang out.

We value community.

Your church has taken maybe a little different approach to what the typical African-American church, sorry for the stereotype, but the typical African-American church doesn't care anything about this.

They don't want to put the effort into it.

Maybe they can't afford it.

I don't want to judge.

But you're doing something different.

You're going countercultural to that.

What is it within your church, within the leadership, within you, that's helping to lead the church down a different path than what everybody else is?

Well, what I'll say during the pandemic and even what continues was safety.

That was our pastor's primary concern.

It was safety and having a way to ensure that the message could continue to go out, but that people could stay safe.

They did not want to go home and try to sleep at night, trying to bring everyone in the building for a message, and it wasn't safe.

So that was just first and foremost.

Secondly, it has always been about the word going forth.

And we're not just saying that to sound like this is what you would say as a Christian church.

It has always been about finding unique ways to have the word become a part of people's everyday life.

So if that's on the social networks, if it's through creating a playlist on YouTube, wherever people are is where we want to be.

It has always been the mindset.

For other churches, I'm not saying, because I started the conversation saying, you know, as African Americans, we are, you know, trendsetters in a lot of ways or trend adopters.

You put something out, you put something out, we, hey, well, we want it, you know, why not?

We want to buy it.

We want to try it.

But it's the mindset sometimes of the Black church being so, you know, so much about fellowship and that safe space.

It's hard to see how that translates into digital.

We are that safe space in a culture that can be, well, in a world that can be scary at times for our culture.

We're a place that you can come and relax and feel free and things like that.

So a lot of the times, even if it wasn't finance, it could have been access, just not having the technology in the area or not having the willingness to see it as ministry and see it as the word going forward to continue to reinforce connection.

For us, it was a no brainer.

We felt like we've always feel like the word we have needs to be shared, needs to be out there.

It's going to help someone's life somewhere, whether we see them or not.

We want to put it out there.

So we're constantly trying to find ways to do that.

I even have a branch of what I do through the company.

It's called JC Publicity, Jesus Christ Publicity.

Since 2005, it's always been about getting the word out and talking about what Jesus is doing now and not letting location or, like you say, physicality stop.

So we've always had a forward mindset about that.

So on the software side, I've been there.

But even on the tech side, our pastor has a, you know, a bit of a cabling and tech background.

Just even in the church, there's always been technology.

There's screens everywhere.

Anything, any way we can use technology to enhance the faith experience.

We've always, that's just always been a part of our DNA.

Like even now we have these bracelets through link because we realize sometimes we send out updates and, you know, people don't get them or don't know how to get on the website or whatever.

So we're like, why don't we give some bracelets that are powered with NFC chips so we can just connect with you that way.

So we're always trying to strengthen the connection.

I have never thought of using link in that way.

I got to tell you right now.

That was, that's a takeaway for me.

That was really good.

Yeah.

We'll put a link in the show notes.

Oh, totally.

Oh, yeah.

Because in all the bracelets, yeah, they update at once and then you control the updates and you just have your messages here.

Why have a CD?

Why have the, you know, you just have everything that someone needs right on their arm.

Well, tell me, I mean, because your heart is, and your church's heart, I'm hearing this, get the message out.

I want to maybe dig in a little bit here on types of content and realizing there's content that connects,

but then there's content that leads to community where you can engage around that content.

And we want to see like that engagement happen.

We want to see connecting in the groups for deeper discipleship and things like that.

We want to see, I mean, you said safe space.

That's a great word.

We want to, we want to create safe space digitally.

Have you found that, even though we want to create safe space digitally, even though people are,

there's a bias towards not going towards safe space digitally, maybe.

Have you seen that types of content are more successful to create that safe space digitally,

to create that, that engagement?

Like, are you, what are you learning?

And you've been running this company over 14 years.

What have you learned in this space?

I think that you have to be intentional about it.

And to be quite honest with you, this is why I joined, not to just try to plug it or give

you a warm and fuzzy, like our pastor would say, digital church network.

Because I realized we were tech forward, but to really dig into media ministry and digital

discipleship, that's a whole other level.

That's a whole other level that we have, even in all my tech forwardness, yet to really tap.

Like, we know how to put, we're doing all the basics really well.

We'll put a flyer out.

You're going to be notified.

Like I said, we got in the praises.

We're going to update the website.

We're going to stream.

We're going to be on time.

We're, you know, going to take the pictures, let you know what happened.

But as far as now we're looking at things like using groups more to, you know, even we call

our members partners to do our partner trainings, to use these kind of tools and these platforms

platforms to, like you said, create that community.

We're bringing the people in.

They're trusting us.

We're a trusted voice.

But empowering them in a way that you would have these kind of, these sessions in person and things like that,

we're still, it's still in development for us.

Because I think we are now finally making the shift into realizing this is a real ministry.

Like some, I was talking to my husband about it.

We don't have a digital pastor.

Our pastor is the pastor, you know, and a lot of, I don't know how many other African-American

churches have digital pastors or things like that, but I don't know any right off the top of my head,

like personally, you know.

So we, we realize that we now have to, we have all the tools down pat.

We got it and we're going to use it.

We're not scared of them.

We're moving ahead.

But now we are currently looking to develop more content to reinforce our digital ministry mindset.

Now we're going to, our pastors are looking at the ads.

I'm like, y'all know what?

We need to do ads on Facebook.

We should do these kinds of things.

So it may be going from a super high-tech discussion now to a very basic discussion.

But I think that that's just a very true statement of where we are.

Because even with all our doing, we didn't quite grasp fully that this is a full-fledged ministry now.

Let's build this community around these people who are coming online.

And now we're, we're starting to do that.

You know, I, I love that you said that.

That's, that's really, it's, it's one of these tensions.

I wrote a ebook a while back, what happens when church online grows up and what you're actually describing is this natural tension that, that happens as you start to do ministry in this space.

And as you start to build community, it draws attention to, it's not just tech, there's discipleship, there's ministry opportunities that's happening here.

And how do we let that grow on?

How can we foster a safe space, an environment where that discipleship or multiplication can happen in digital space?

Because otherwise, now you've taken people up to a point, but you don't have any infrastructure beyond that.

Well, let me, I mean, let me just ask, like in the physical space, Elmichel, like what, what does, what does your church do beyond Sunday morning?

You mentioned Bible studies earlier, it sounded like you're kind of separating Bible studies and churches, like what, what, outside of the Sunday morning service, what does discipleship actually look like at your physical church?

And then the next question is, what would it look like to do that digitally?

But, but first up front, you know, what, what would it look like?

What does it currently look like at your church?

Currently, it looks like a lot of outreach and mentoring.

We have a women's mentoring program called the Ruth Project that's been going on since 2014.

And so that's just really empowering women and girls to lead, lead by faith, step out into their purpose and produce things.

Six months mentoring program is kind of like the foundation of it.

And you go through and at the end of it, you, you birthed out something that you believe God has called you to do, whether it be a book or a movie or an album or, or whatever.

And you do that using kind of like biblical and lifestyle principles.

There's a similar mentoring initiative on the men's side of things called the Solomon Project.

Otherwise, outside of those, there's outreaches, like we've done outreaches at, our prison ministry outreach is seven, eight years in, about as old as the ministry is itself.

And doing ministry in the homeless community and things like that.

But other than that, and maybe some special workshops and the partner orientation class.

But that's, that's kind of what that looks like.

What would that look like digitally?

Well, we, we have had some of the mentorship meetings online and develop more of a hybrid approach to that, but still trying to get our footing and feeling that stick like we would, you know, that, that, that sense of community and togetherness like we would when we're in person.

And getting people to come and have that same intensity.

People do seem to be a little bit more relaxed about that, but we're still, we're a work in progress in this area.

And we're okay with that because if we've been forward in everything else and we'll do it until we get it, we're going to be kind of like the same way in here.

There's something to it that I do want to note though, that caught the attention of some other ministries early on when we were doing our virtual services.

And we continue to do that.

One of the members of our hospitality team, one of the ushers, started literally transferring those skills from in-person to online.

So as people would show up, she would be in the chat like, well, hello, Jeff.

We're so glad that you're here.

Or if Jeff makes a comment, she's like, you're right on about that, Jeff.

And, you know, she since has moved on to another city, but can now continue to do that online.

And other churches saw that and it was like, wow, we had never thought of that kind of like virtual ushering.

So that was one thing that really sticks out that we continue to do that has made people feel that sense of community and being noticed, you know, but there's still a lot more.

A lot of people, it's just about being noticed.

Our pastors too are good about that.

If you come in and you say hello and that comment goes up, they're like, hello, Jeff.

We see you out there.

Hope you and the family are doing great or haven't ever met you, Jeff, but we're glad you stopped by.

They're good at just trying to bring you in.

But there's a lot more that we want to do to try to keep people in virtually as well, which is why I'm part of Digital Church Network, just trying to learn all I can about that to bring it back.

Man, two plugs in one episode.

This has been great.

Thank you for that.

I'll write you the check later.

This has been gold.

No, listen, honestly, I envy you.

A church that has a solid foundation that's trying to figure out how to wrestle with some of this stuff digitally, looking at what do we need to reinvent?

Where do we need to think differently?

Where do we just need to port it over?

Hey, that guest service is volunteer.

Give them a keyboard.

Let them do some typing.

It may not be as different as you think.

The discipleship process, how you get somebody engaged within your church, how do you, you know, your next steps or connection or whatever the phrasing is.

Some of it's going to be the same.

Some of it's going to be different.

And you're right now, you know, at the cusp of this journey where you're trying to figure out how to make some of these adjustments, how to get started on this, or how to strengthen, you know, maybe some of these opportunities that you're seeing.

What, what's the, so your church is seeing this.

What's the, what's the, what's the largest obstacle that's preventing other African-American churches from seeing this?

I'm asking, forgive me, I may be asking you to speak to stereotypes and larger things.

And, but, but the heart of this is like, is it, is it financial?

Is it a lack of, of missions, understanding a bigger picture?

Like, just what, what do you, what do you feel?

I definitely think it is lack of understanding the bigger picture.

The resources are there.

The African-American church, faithful, committed, loyal.

Going to do what they can to see the ministry move forward.

Building, putting the money into buildings and things like that.

Going to do that, but not seeing the vision of why, really pouring resources into the digital space.

Like how that's going to work.

And then sometimes it's the manpower.

I've worked with certain pastors who are like, okay, Elle, get you over here to train.

We're going to get on this, get on this ship.

We're going for it.

And then the next month I'll be like, so how's it going?

They don't even do it anymore.

I don't, you know, they were on the camera one week and I don't know where they are now.

Or I, you know, or, you know, it's just for some reason, the media ministry in a lot of these,

our churches has become like the pool to a house.

Oh yeah, we might get that pool one day.

I don't know.

Instead of a main room in the home, you know, it's still a pool.

It's still an option.

You know, we may, we're working on it.

We don't know.

Or pretty much everybody's back now.

So now we really don't know.

Instead of, I think it's, I don't think it's the lack of resources financially as much as

it is the lack of knowledge and someone who wants to see this as ministry and wants to

do it consistently.

As much as our pastors, and this is not to, to my own horn or my husband's horn, but this

is to make a point of how serious we are about media ministry.

If they were going to preach the word, we were going to be at their house, setting up cameras

and doing whatever we could do early.

However, staying late, whatever we were going to do to get the feed, right.

We were going to be there throughout the pandemic.

We did not take a break.

If they were going to preach, we were going to get the tech right to make it happen.

It wasn't an option.

So I think getting our churches, people in our churches, the black churches to get to the

point where media is not an option.

Not understanding is not an option.

Okay.

I'm gonna have to take a class.

Okay.

I'm gonna have to get somebody.

I'm gonna have to let someone know we are passionate because, you know, we're a very soulful people.

I'm not, I don't want to overstate that for everyone, but we are in my house.

Okay.

Very soulful.

We love music.

We love these things.

You, you come to our churches.

You better believe those musicians are going to be on paid staff.

You're going to have some music, but the media or things like that may take a backseat.

So I just think it's also changing our view, reassessing our priorities.

And those things are important to what we've always had.

But I think realizing that there are so many other people on the other side of your media

or your digital ministry, whatever you want to call it, and beginning to invest in that,

not just the equipment, but the knowledge is where we're lacking.

That's gold.

But let's, let's, let's get a little more practical here.

That was, that was a solid answer of trying to figure out how to reassess and how to not,

not build the pool one day, put it in a, in a piggy bank or a jar somewhere, put the money away,

but, but actually like build it as, as a, a core part of the house.

I told a pastor once, I was like, I'm digital ministry is not icing on the cake.

It's the cake.

And so that was, he, he told me it was, he's like, Jeff, you're icing on the cake.

And I was like, that may be the most offensive thing you've ever said to me in our entire lives

together.

We were, we'd known each other a long time at that point.

But it's just, it's understanding that, well, but let me ask him, let's, let's, cause you

with, uh, with the African-American context here, um, Hey, somebody's interested in doing

this.

Maybe it's, maybe it's, it's, it's, it's an equivalent of you.

It's a high level volunteer, um, not a pastor on staff.

They're listening to this podcast and they're excited.

They're motivated.

They want to do something.

They've got ideas that you are speaking literally to the L.

Michelle version of another African-American church.

Um, how do they get started?

What, what advice can you give them?

Well, the first thing is I would join a network of like-minded people.

I think you, you know, speaking to you, wherever you are, you need consistent reinforcement yourself

to keep that fire burning and to keep learning yourself, you know, eat, just really immerse

yourself in, in digital discipleship.

Look at it like that, begin to, you know, uh, get an understanding of the platforms.

But also if I could look back, another thing you could be getting an understanding of is

the type of content that could build digital, that, that, that you could do as a digital

ministry to build community.

So the first thing would be connections like, uh, you know, digital church network or whatever

groups that you could find online, Facebook groups that just really kind of speak to media

ministry, reach out to me, you know, I'll try to connect you, uh, in any way I can.

The second thing that I'm really going to recommend, and this is key is simple, but it's key is to

have a meeting with your leadership, not under pressure, not right after they preach Sunday,

because take it from me, many years in this, a lot of my nose came because I came at the wrong time.

They're right off the pole.

You know, pastor, what we really need to do, we really need to buy this.

It's kind of like, can I just calm down for a minute?

Let's talk about this another time.

Don't let that lead to offense.

Just set up a meeting at a time where you could, uh, have the attention of your leadership.

And really after you've done maybe a little more research or, you know, listen to some

talks, you could go on YouTube and listen to talks.

You could subscribe to Barna, uh, their full access plan online and read reports and different

things like this, but have a talk with your leadership about to, to gauge their feelings

on digital ministry.

That would be two, not in any particular order, but kind of in a little bit of order.

Okay.

And the third thing that I would recommend, be consistent.

Don't put your hand to the plow, man, and then let it go.

If this is what you say you're going to do, you know how important media ministry is?

The Bible.

Wasn't that the first printed book, Jeff?

Back me up on this, right?

The Gutenberg press first printed book.

Longest ever in circulation is the Bible.

That was technology.

That was media.

We did that.

You know, the message was there, but without the vehicle, you know, you can't reach the

people.

So if you say you're going to do this, be consistent.

That's what your pastors are looking for.

And last, but certainly not least, meet your ministry right where they are.

You know who's in your church.

So you might see, oh, higher dimensions doing this.

So you want to do this because we're doing it, but you don't know the reason why we're

doing it like this.

Know your membership and start with where they are.

If it's just a conference call, hey, that's using technology.

Let's max out.

Let's be the goats of conference calls.

Greatest of all time, man.

You can't beat us on these calls.

Then move on to Zoom.

Be real.

Have a sustainable plan, not just a flash in the pan.

This is like, this is for real, man.

This is not a game.

This is media ministry.

We're talking about reaching people with the word.

Get connected yourself.

Have a meeting with your leadership at the appropriate time.

Don't delay, though.

Have the meeting.

Request the meeting and continue to meet about that so you'll have the vision right that you're

putting out there.

You know what I mean?

Be consistent and know those you labor among.

Meet them where they are.

Yeah, I wish somebody would have told me that advice right there, all four of those, like

a decade ago.

I cannot tell you how many awkward conversations I've had in a moment of frustration on a Sunday

after church when that pastor is like, I don't want to hear anything from you right now.

I want to connect to people.

I want to do other things.

And so, like, for me, that was a huge lesson that, honestly, I learned somewhere around 2015,

I think, is when that finally sunk in.

So that was really good.

By the way, you mentioned Gutenberg.

Did you know Gutenberg was actually considered a heretic, like, for decades?

People called Gutenberg basically a tool of Satan after he was printing the Bibles because when

he was printing Bibles, he basically made pastors, the scribes, the people who were writing these

Bibles out by hand, he basically got them jobless.

They were unemployed.

And there was a movement.

Actually, I wrote a blog on this, I think, for Leadership Network.

I wrote something recently on it where, like, Gutenberg was a heretic.

He was criticized by a movement of people within the church because of what he was doing with his innovation.

And so, like, for somebody who is, and I just would add to your glorious four there, El Michelle, for somebody who's thinking outside the box, tap this onto the network piece.

Be encouraged.

Realize that you're not, you're thinking different than everyone else is.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

It's funny.

Just even while we're doing this email, I got doing this podcast, an email showed up.

And there's a quote from Albert Einstein in this email.

Let me read it for you right here.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

And so, it's like, you know, I've actually, I want to, like, proof check Albert Einstein on that because I'm going to, like, start using that one.

But it's that different thinking of how we're doing ministry that's going to solve the problems of today.

So, if you're alone, get connected with other people who think like you for encouragement.

You need that.

But that does not mean you need to stop thinking different.

It needs that you need to start encouraging others to think like you.

Start talking louder, just not on Sunday mornings after the service because that's a horrible time for that conversation.

Yeah, man, I'm so, I'm so fired up after that.

Like, this, even this conversation has fanned the flame because it's, you know, it is, that is amazing that you gave that story of Gutenberg.

And then when you talk about think different, anybody with an iPhone, hey, that's Apple's tagline, right?

Yep.

Think different.

And so, you know, you're valid.

I want to tell you that.

And don't ever stop because you know what's going to happen?

One day, your leaders or the leaders, wherever you are at the time, are going to wake up to it.

And the worst thing that could happen is you not to be ready.

And you were the one who said you first believed.

I found myself in that position a few times where the leadership has been like somewhere.

And they'll say, our media person is here.

She's been talking about the metaverse and all that.

And just think if you would have just relaxed your grip, you won't be ready.

So you got to stay true to what you believe because someday people are going to wake up and they're going to need it.

Hopefully we won't have another pandemic.

But thank God, me and my husband, and my husband more than me at the time, would not come off getting the stream right.

We built that art when there was no rain.

And when it rained, everybody was like, oh, my gosh.

And even me, I was like, Chris, that's my husband.

I was like, man, you really did it this time.

Because we were positioned to win.

We win people and to be there for people when they needed us most.

And so I would just encourage anyone, and I feel encouraged myself, just that we have to go harder and reach people right where they are.

There are people in the hospital who really need us.

These are basic things we know.

But do we know them?

We have one of our partners in the hospital right now in recovery just recently to something that was just, man, so out of left field.

But it felt really good to know, I'm going to be able to take your bracelet, brother.

So even when you can't think of what that website is because you're on pain medicine, it's just too much.

Or someone in the room doesn't know our church.

What are you saying?

You need to get on what?

They don't understand.

They just tap the bracelet, and you're good to go.

You know?

So we've got to start thinking like that, how we can meet people where they are.

Beautiful.

Well, Elmichelle, we're going to land the plane.

This has been an incredible conversation.

I've learned a lot, and hopefully some of the audience that's been listening, thank you for representing African-American churches.

We're wrestling with how to help African-American churches be more effective digitally.

By the way, Elmichelle, there's like dozens of different ways to connect with her.

We're going to put all that information in the show notes.

So feel free to slide over to that or check out thechurch.digital.

And, of course, she's very active in Digital Church Network, which she plugged at least three times, which may be the most that's ever been plugged by any guest ever.

So once again, thank you for that.

But that is very appreciated.

She's definitely one to check out and reach out to, so be sure to grab some of that.

But, hey, we're going to land the plane.

So for Elmichelle with Elmichelle Media and Higher Dimension Church, this is Jeff with the Church Digital, Digital Church Network, Leadership Network, and a whole bunch of other fun stuff.

Thanks for jumping on the show here.

We'll see you next time on the podcast.

Y'all have a good day.